Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, March 09, 2014

03/09 Links: Scarlett Johansson- I believe in SodaStream; Do Palestinians Really Want a State?

From Ian:

Scarlett Johansson: I believe in SodaStream

Johansson stirred a vehement debate in January when she accepted the role of spokeswoman for SodaStream, which makes home carbonation machines and operates a plant in Ma’ale Adumim, a large West Bank settlement near Jerusalem.
“I’m not an expert on the history of this conflict, and I’ve never professed to be,” Johansson told the British newspaper the Telegraph in an interview published Friday.
“But it is a company that I believe in, that I think has the ability to make a huge difference, environmentally. [CEO] Daniel Birnbaum has said many times that this factory is one he inherited, and that he doesn’t want to fire people – the majority of those people being Palestinian,” she said.

Mordechai Kedar: Time to put an end to the fantasy of a Palestinian people

Despite the benefits of this ambiguous situation, Israel should adopt a clearer policy: Since the PLO has not abandoned its plan to destroy Israel, it must end the dream of establishing a state under the rule of this organization. The Hamas movement began the process in Gaza, and Israel must continue it in Judea and Samaria in order to establish seven city-states and to leave the rural areas under Israeli control.
The seven city-states will free most of the Arab population in Judea and Samaria from Israeli control and Israel can offer citizenship to residents of the rural space. These city-states based on local clans will be real entities and not the fantasies of some Palestinian intellectuals and tired Israeli souls regarding the existence of a single united Palestinian people in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria.

Hevron Children Tackle Left-Wing Extremists - With Sweets

Chief among those groups is Breaking the Silence, a far-left NGO funded by foreign donors (some 45% of its funding comes directly from the European Union), which encourages ex-soldiers to speak out against the IDF to international audiences. Much of the group's activities center on Hevron, where it conducts regular tours and demonstrations, alleging war crimes by both IDF soldiers and local Jewish residents - allegations based almost entirely on hearsay and which have been emphatically rejected as "slander" by residents and the military alike.
Recently, the organization helped bring some 200 people to the holy city to demand the opening of King David Street - also known as Shuhada Street - which was closed to Arab locals after being used as a launchpad for numerous terrorist atrocities against Jewish residents.
But on Friday, as another Breaking the Silence group entered the city's Jewish neighborhood, they were greeted by an unexpected sight: dozens of Jewish children handing out sweets in honor of the upcoming Jewish festival of Purim.

Recent antisemitic cartoons in Arab media

Yisrael Medad found these at Al Quds al Arabi, a UK-based pan-Arab newspaper that is run by Palestinian Arab expatriates:

But don't call them antisemitic! They are really only anti-Israel! Really! They insist that you understand that clearly!

They have no problem with Jews!

As long as the Jews don't demand actual rights, that is.

American Halloween costumes making Ethiopian kids in Hadera happy for Purim

From the JCC at Durham-Chapel Hill:

Thank you to all of you who donated your Halloween costumes. They have arrived in Hadera, Israel just in time for Purim. As you can see from the pictures below – the costumes have made a lot of kids very happy!

The community held a “costume bazaar” where kids could come by and pick out the costumes (that you donated)! It was a great event- and we hope you enjoy seeing the smiles on their faces as much as we do!

(h/t Jeanette)

Now Egyptians are saying the Muslim Brotherhood are part of the Elders of Zion. Really.

Egypt's Karama Press just started a series, that seems to be based on a new book, claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood is really part of the Elders of Zion.

Here's the cover of the book, showing prominent Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas members entwined in that Jewish web of intrigue.

This is hardly the first time that the Muslim Brotherhood has been accused by Egyptian secularists of being secret Zionists or Jews, as we've seen before.

The Jew is the gold standard as a hate object in the Arab world. All others who are despised must be compared to Jews.

The antisemitism is thoroughly embedded in Arab culture. It isn't only a Muslim thing. The Copts, as oppressed as they are, hate the Jews too.

Yet there are still idiots who pretend that it is all because of Israel. Sorry, it isn't.

The seething hatred of Israel isn't because of anything Israel has done - it is because weak, despised Jews have humiliated the great fictional Arab nation.

So anyone else who is hated must be a secret Jew.

Work accident!

From Ma'an:

The military wing of Hamas said on Saturday evening that a field commander was killed in an accidental "internal explosion" in the Hashashin neighborhood of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, while medical sources said that nine others were wounded.

The Qassam Brigades said that Ibrahim Nagib al-Ghoul, 30, was killed in the explosion.

A spokesman for the Gaza Strip Ministry of Health Ashraf al-Qidra said that the majority of the nine individuals wounded in the explosion were suffering from serious injuries.

Al-Qidra said that five of the wounded were taken to Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, while the four others were transferred to the European Gaza Hospital.

No details of the cause of the explosion were released.

Let's all pray for the injured Hamas terrorists to become elevated to the status of martyrs, just like al-Ghoul.

Hamas does have a "training camp" in that neighborhood.

03/08 Links: Chloe Valdary- A letter to the all-knowing Max Blumenthal; Surviving Obama

From Ian:

Chloe Valdary: A letter to the all-knowing Max Blumenthal: Co-written by Daniel Mael

Since you have found us out, we may as well list a few other things the Zionists are planning: We actually work for an organization called ‘The Elders of Zion.’ Perhaps you’ve heard of them? At any rate, we are two of their agents. As you can imagine, we are paid hefty sums of money, $4.6 billion a year to be exact. We are in charge of disseminating information around the globe, regulating U.N. meetings in New York, controlling seagull calls, and sending signals to sharks in the deep blue sea. We elders also work closely with Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and Cinderella’s stepsisters in controlling things that occur in the world. You see, we were the ones who made Cinderella’s glass slipper come off when the clock struck “12.”
We are also behind the misinformation campaign that mischaracterizes Iran’s regime as evil and sinister. The Iranian regime is actually a democracy ruled by angels and ponies. The images on television of Iranian civilians being persecuted and oppressed is actually a vast conspiracy, a television show put on by Zionist actors and directors. The Iranian people are actually treated with kindness and goodness by their leaders; They are even given cute little treats from Candy Crush every day, and some are even selected to visit Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory if they really behave.

Caroline Glick: Surviving Obama

In his speech at the AIPAC Conference on Tuesday, Netanyahu rebutted every position Obama has staked out on the Palestinians and Iran without ever mentioning Obama’s name. By doing so he energized Israel’s supporters while denying Obama the ability to claim that Netanyahu is unsupportive of his policies.
In other words, he humored the White House while staking out an independent Israeli policy for which he secured the support of Israel’s American backers.
But Netanyahu’s skill in maneuvering around Obama is not enough for Israel to safely weather his presidency. Israel needs an overall strategy for securing its interests.

Richard Millett: Bibi declared “most dangerous political world leader today” at Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS.

Khalidi is the Godfather of “Palestine Studies”. Gilbert Achcar introduced him as “the founder of the scientific study on the question of Palestine”. But at the Centre for Palestine Studies on Wednesday night Ilan Pappe had referred to the “so-called scientific research” of Zionism as nothing more than “marketing” by Israel.
Hypocrisy doesn’t come bigger than that. While the study of “Palestine” is “scientific”, the study of Israel is mere “marketing”!
The glitterati of the Palestine Lobby, including “Ambassador” Manuel Hassassian, were present to hear Khalidi describe the Balfour Declaration as “the single most destructive political document on the Middle East in the twentieth century”. But the 16 million dead of WW1 were not even mentioned by Khalidi.

Another pro-BDS academic conference at CUNY

It takes academics to defend things that are indefensible.

Panelists: Professor Bill Mullen (Purdue), Radhika Sainath (Palestine Solidarity Legal Support), Sherry Wolf (International Socialists Review), Professor Ashley Dawson (CSI/GC, CUNY).

April 2, 2014
7:00-9:00pm
Skylight room, CUNY GC

Following the official endorsement of the American Studies Association of the call from Palestinian civil society for a boycott of Israel, concerns over “academic freedom” have been repeatedly invoked as reasons to oppose academic boycotts. Moreover, official statements by university presidents, attempts by New York, Maryland state legislatures, and now the US Congress, to outlaw such political affiliations demand that the significance of “academic freedom” and its functionality in the US university system be interrogated and reaffirmed.

This panel discussion specifically addresses the question of academic freedom and political affiliation from the different perspectives of academics and activists working with and around BDS in the US academe today. Panelists interrogate how the pursuit of “academic freedom” has been used to both open and close debate, how it frames the call for solidarity with Palestinian students and scholars, structures relationships with dissenting opinions, and how it applies in a US university system increasingly dependent on a contingent workforce of graduate students and adjunct labor.

Co-sponsored by: The Adjunct Project; the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics; Critical Palestine Studies Association; International Socialist Organization at the Graduate Center; Middle East Studies Organization; Post-Colonial Studies Group; and Haymarket Books.

They even created a graphic for the event that apparently portrays people who are against boycotting Israel as imprisoning pro-Palestinian minds:

I do not support any law that would outlaw any form of speech except incitement for violence. But outlawing boycotts is not the same as "outlawing political affiliations."

Even the description of this academic conference proves that the organizers are liars.

By the way, here is an example of "academic freedom" that not one of these academics would ever condemn. It occurred this week at the National University of Ireland Galway as BDS supporters of "academic freedom" cursed and shouted down the evil Zionists who were discussing - how to fight boycotts.

Will any BDS advocate on this panel about freedom of expression condemn this? You know the answer. They make their decisions first, and justify it later using lots of polysyllabic words. Everyone sees through this but the BDS academics themselves.

Next month maybe these brilliant academics will contextualize rape for us and show how it could be a moral act.

It sounds horrible, I know - how can I even think such a thing?

Yet some Arabs have said that they want to use rape as a weapon against Israeli Jewish women. This turns rape from a horrible crime against women into legitimate resistance against the Zionist oppressor. And BDS' intellectual leaders say, quite explicitly, that all forms of resistance are legitimate, even if they are not tactically appropriate at all times. Anything that is part of the struggle to destroy the Zionist regime - even immoral acts - is by definition righteous.

So is it really so far-fetched that a "rape Israeli women" conference could attract the same kinds of moral midgets who are organizing these jokes on campus?

(h/t David L)

(corrected headline; I had mistakenly said NYU)

03/07 Links Pt2: The Obscenity of Blaming Zionism for the Holocaust; Krake Zuckerberg

From Ian:

The Obscenity of Blaming Zionism for the Holocaust: A Response
Wolfgang G. Schwanitz answers Tablet’s review of his and Barry Rubin’s book

In his Feb. 3 review in Tablet, David Mikics misrepresents our book Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East. It is not a biography of the grand mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husaini, though one is in the making, and Mikics fails to show how it compares to related works. He bit off more than he can chew. Thus, he exaggerates: the book, he alleges, purports to demonstrate that “Zionism caused the Holocaust.” He then calls this invention “their logic, a “flawed conclusion,” as if he were refuting what he has in fact attributed to us. In the light of Barry Rubin’s passing—see the obituary by Lee Smith in Tablet—I will answer here.
Zionists rescued Jews on many occasions: in the attempted genocide in Palestine 1915 to 1917, in the Holocaust of World War II, and thereafter in global pogroms and Middle Eastern conflicts. As we have shown, the seeds of the State of Israel stem from the advent of Zionism and the League of Nations. At its 1922 San Remo conference this world body assigned the mandate of Palestine to Great Britain as 52 states recognized historical ties of the Jewish people with Palestine and favored the “reconstituting of their home” there.

Sarah Honig: Krake Zuckerberg

Most German publications no longer even pretend any wariness about coming off as anti-Jewish. Gone are the days when Germans had to at least appear a tad more cautious than their fellow Europeans. The latter reverted quickly enough to their old Jew-baiting habits but the Germans have willy-nilly caught up.
A cogent example is being consistently provided by Munich’ s left-liberalSueddeutsche Zeitung, which also happens to be Germany’s largest broadsheet daily. It recently featured a cartoon lampooning Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg after his outfit had acquired WhatsApp. The idea was to show Zuckerberg as a voracious octopus that swallows up everything around it. The caption at the bottom left-hand corner of the cartoon clearly read “Krake Zuckerberg” (German for Octopus Zuckerberg.) Up to this point, it’s tolerable criticism.
But the octopus, as drawn by cartoonist Burkhard Mohr, was also given quite a distinctive face. Its function, presumably, was to make sure we don’t lose sight of the fact that young Zuckerberg – innovative enough to have given the world a social network which millions of Germans also use – is a Jew. To that end, Mohr portrayed him with a preposterous hook-nose and thick fish-lips – as per the freakish stereotype sinisterly ascribed to Jews by their tormentors.

Richard Millett: Jews under attack at Centre for Palestine Studies as Ilan Pappe comes to SOAS.

Jews came under fire last night at the Centre for Palestine Studies, based at SOAS and under the chairmanship of Gilbert Achcar. It was irrelevant if you are a Jew in Israel, Scotland, Wales or England. Ilan Pappe, the CPS guest speaker, doesn’t discriminate.
Pappe, a lecturer at Exeter University, started by saying he wished “to answer the riddle of the growing gap between the image Israeli Jews have of themselves and the external image the world has of them”. In North Korea the gap between the view North Koreans have of themselves and that of them by outside world would not be much different, but in Israel there is “genuine difference”.

Saudi Arabia outlaws Muslim Brotherhood - and Saudi branch of Hezbollah

From Al Arabiya:

Saudi Arabia on Friday blacklisted the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, along with three other Middle East-based militant groups, Al Arabiya News Channel reported, citing a royal decree.

The Saudi terrorism list also includes the kingdom’s branch of the Shiite movement Hezbollah and Syria-based militant groups the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front.

Hundreds of Saudi fighters are believed to have joined ISIS and al-Nusra in Syria.

The royal decree gives fighters a 15-day ultimatum to return home. The declaration came after King Abdullah announced on Feb. 3 tough penalties for activities deemed as terrorism.

Under the previous decree, Saudi citizens fighting abroad face up to 20 years in jail. Similar punishments will be applied to “extremist religious and ideological groups, or those classified as terrorist groups, domestically, regionally and internationally,” the state news agency SPA reported at the time.

The royal decree also criminalized taking membership in, supporting and sympathizing with any of those groups “through speech or writing.”

Well, it's official. Israel is more tolerant towards Muslim extremists than Saudi Arabia is. In Israel, someone has to make a public speech advocating terror before he is branded a criminal; in Saudi Arabia you can now be jailed for a tweet in support of the Muslim Brotherhood.

At the same time, Mauritania also outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood.

03/07 Links Pt1: Obama's Worthless Guarantees; Erdogan threatens to ban Facebook, YouTube

From Ian:

Sarah Honig: Worthless guarantees

However, the immediate victims are those who trusted American assurances – like, in this case, the Ukrainians.
Of course, they are not the only ones left with guarantees not worth the paper they were printed on. Many of America’s loyal allies were abandoned in the “Arab Spring.” Obama backtracked from the red lines he himself drew for Damascus despot Bashar Assad, leaving Putin and the Tehran axis with yet another victory. Red lines regarding Iranian nuclear ambitions were just as blithely ditched.
Israel is now being coerced to divest itself of all its strategic assets in Judea and Samaria and expose its soft underbelly – its frightfully narrow and heavily populated central region – to terrorist predations.
Israel’s sole safeguards are to be guarantees disturbingly similar to those supplied the Ukrainians. What now unfolds in the Crimea should serve as a thunderous warning against placing ourselves at the mercy of apparent allies. Here, but for the grace of God, go we.

Elliott Abrams: Iran and 'Karine B'

While we talk of outreach to Iran and unclenched fists, Iran continues to be the largest state sponsor of terrorism. During the nuclear negotiations the Obama administration seems to think it must be on its best behavior lest the regime in Tehran become offended and walk away from the table. So, the administration stops Congress from enacting additional sanctions -- even sanctions never to be imposed unless negotiations fail. News reports say that there was administration pressure on Israel to stop its covert action program inside Iran. And we hear endless discussions of how President Hassan Rouhani is a moderate and we have to help the moderates in their struggle against hard liners inside the regime.
But during this period, while the administration says we must carefully watch our conduct lest we offend Iran, Iran ships advanced missiles to Hamas in Gaza. Iran ships arms to opposition groups Bahrain. The regime in Iran continues a brutal campaign of repression at home. Whatever our approach, theirs is to use this period of negotiations to destabilize the entire region and crush all internal opposition.

Ottomans, British Apparently Unaware Palestine Actually Sovereign The Whole Time (satire)

Palestinian historians examining the administration of the Holy Land during the British and Ottoman periods have discovered that the rulers of that land remained completely oblivious to the fact that they were not really the ones in charge. In reality, say the researchers, the Palestinian people were in control of their homeland, which is why the emergence of Israeli control over the same parcel of land was such a disaster.
While the Ottomans took control of the Holy Land in the first half of the sixteenth century, say the historians, they in fact never truly reigned, despite their monopoly on tax collection, land ownership registration, road construction, military recruitment, and the management of commerce, for example. Throughout the four hundred years of Ottoman rule in the Holy Land, an indigenous people called Palestinians were in fact sovereign, despite there being no record of any indigenous sovereignty since the Second Jewish Commonwealth two thousand years ago.

Lisa Duggan of the ASA tries to attack me

Lisa Duggan, president elect of the American Studies Association who put together an anti-Israel conference last week that made her drool, seems a bit upset:

On February 23, the right wing Zionist blog Elder of Ziyon leveled accusations tantamount to an “exposé“ of our NYU American Studies conference scheduled for March 1: “ASA’s President Elect Hosting Secret Anti-Israel Conference. ”

This post’s allegations, that the event would feature “obscene “ Israel bashers living in an “echo chamber of their own hate,” quickly rocketed around Twitter, generating more posts and an avalanche of hate mail. Extending the expressions of outrage over the American Studies Association’s support for the academic boycott of Israel (well-known throughout the Zionist blogosphere), this post focused its “exposé” on the supposed “secret” conspiracy unveiled in the post. Letters sent to NYU President John Sexton denounced the limited range of views represented, pronounced the supposed secrecy shameful, and demanded that NYU cancel the conference and fire me (the named ASA president elect).

While I am hardly responsible for hate mail generated by exposing a conference that Duggan explicitly wanted to keep quiet, isn't mail demanding that she be fired considered free speech? After all, Duggan just this week signed a petition that pretends to support free speech. She wouldn't want to be considered a hypocrite, would she?

I posted the conference flyer to the CUNY Revolutionizing American Studies faculty seminar page on Facebook, asking the professors and student members to share it only with colleagues and students.

Her exact words were "PLEASE DO NOT post or circulate the flyer. We are trying to avoid press, protestors and public attention. Feel free to share it with friends, colleagues and grad students though." The Facebook page is open to the public, and the description of the group is to expose the program outside CUNY:

This group is one of the public faces of a conversation taking place within CUNY in the field of American studies, and to a vast array of intellectual, political, social, and cultural issues.

This initiative intends to animate a critical engagement with American Studies at and beyond the CUNY Graduate Center.

So Duggan posted the flyer on a public group but then says that it was not intended for the public. But those in the group could invite "friends." It is quite obvious what her motivations were, even as she furiously tries to spin it.

Admittedly, it is very funny watching her fume.

The Elder of Ziyon, well known for inflammatory posts, interpreted this ordinary limited registration academic conference held in a small space as a sinister conspiracy, and our Event Brite registration page overflowed with requests from Zionist bloggers and pranksters like I.A. Tollah.

See - I'm well-known! And inflammatory!

But don't worry, my efforts were all for naught:

There was no migration to the mainstream and tabloid press, there was no massing of protesters at the event site. The conference proceeded smoothly. We proclaimed it a success.

Except that Duggan has already tried multiple times to spin this conference into making it less exclusionary than it was. She failed miserably in her attempt to compare it to private Zionist groups choosing Zionist speakers. The controversy was written up in JTA (republished worldwide, in places like JNS and Haaretz and Times of Israel) and in Tablet.

And, today, the New York Post wrote an op-ed about this very conference:

NYU’s faculty handbook requires instructors to “show respect for the opinions of others.” Too bad a closed-door university event last weekend did nothing of the kind. Which may explain why organizers took pains to keep it quiet.

The annual event, sponsored by four NYU departments, looks like a thinly disguised session aimed at mobilizing support for the anti-Israel boycott movement.

President John Sexton has previously written to the national American Studies Association to express NYU’s “disappointment, disagreement and opposition to” its embrace of the boycott. But he says that to have required sponsors of the NYU event to represent all sides would be tantamount to censorship. That’s more or less the position taken by Lisa Duggan, an NYU professor who is also the ASA’s president-elect. Prof. Duggan supports the boycott of Israel and moderated a panel at the event.

In an e-mail to The Post, Duggan says: “The conference was not secret. It was just a limited registration academic conference in a small space.” And yet before the conference, she posted a warning on Facebook asking people not to circulate the flyer advertising the event to avoid public attention. That post was later removed.

We are a newspaper, so the last thing we want is to censor people or tell them they have to run their conferences in a certain way. What would be nice is to hear some voices from the other side — say, by a concerned trustee or donor.

In the meantime, NYU gets to have it both ways, officially condemning the boycott while professors and departments use NYU facilities to advance it.

Sorry, Lisa. Tens of thousands more people now know about your pathetic attempts to keep your little Israel-bashing conference a secret.

It's almost as if you are embarrassed by what you stand for.

(h/t David L)

Abbas sentenced hundreds of Syrian Palestinians to death in 2013 (poster)

Ma'an reports on a brand new Palestinian Arab lie:

Fatah central committee member Mohammad Ishtayyeh said on Thursday that the Palestinian Authority had attempted to negotiate the return of Palestinian refugees from Syria, but Israel had refused.

Ishtayyeh said in a meeting with diplomats organized by the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Ramallah that the PA had tried with all its might to "end the suffering" of Palestinians in Syria through international mediation.

Israeli officials, however, had refused to allow them to come to the Palestinian territories.

What really happened, from AP, January 10, 2013:

The Palestinian president said he has rejected a conditional Israeli offer to let Palestinian refugees in war-torn Syria resettle in the West Bank and Gaza, charging it would compromise their claims to return to lost homes in Israel.

Abbas said he asked U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon last month to seek Israeli permission to bring Palestinians caught in Syria's civil war to the Palestinian territories. The request came after fighting between Syrian troops and rebel fighters in Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. About half of the camp's 150,000 residents have fled, according to a U.N. aid agency.

Abbas told a group of Egyptian journalists in Cairo late Wednesday that Ban contacted Israel on his behalf.

Abbas said Ban was told Israel "agreed to the return of those refugees to Gaza and the West Bank, but on condition that each refugee ... sign a statement that he doesn't have the right of return (to Israel)."

"So we rejected that and said it's better they die in Syria than give up their right of return," Abbas told the group. Some of his comments were published Thursday by the Palestinian news website Sama.

Hundreds of Syrian Palestinians have died since then. And it is all because Abbas didn't even give them the choice to live. His "principles" are more important than their lives.

Even as Palestinian Arabs continue to die in Syria, no one is pressuring Abbas to reverse his death sentence. The UN is silent. NGO's are silent. World leaders continue to treat Abbas with respect. Newspaper editorials gush how "moderate" he is.

And Syrian Palestinians continue to die, every day, directly because of a decision Abbas made more than a year ago.

Every single "pro-Palestinian" activist should be asked in every venue they speak if they agree with Abbas. Amnesty International and Oxfam and Human Rights Watch should be asked whether they agree that Syrian Arabs are better off dead than given the even the choice to live.

The Heinrich Boll Foundation, which heard this new Palestinian Arab slander against Israel, should be told the truth.

Shouldn't everyone?