Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Yes, J-Street has a Haggadah insert as well

Here's part of J-Street's Haggadah insert for this year:

Here's part of what it says (not pictured):

Though the spiritual connection of the Jewish people to the historical land of Israel, the future of the State of Israel depends on our ability to separate from a part of it. Freedom for the State of Israel will come only by breaking from a piece of itself.

As we break this matzoh tonight we do so with the recognition that sometimes we must encounter brokenness if we are to become free. We break this matzoh in the hope that it breaks us free from the
bondage of violence, from the bondage of hatred, from the bondage of occupation.

So I decided to make a more accurate J-Street insert (click to enlarge):

(h/t Daniel Mael)

04/12 Links: Mark Steyn: The Wretched Jelly-Spined Nothing Eunuchs of Brandeis; The J Street Challenge

From Ian:

Mark Steyn: The Wretched Jelly-Spined Nothing Eunuchs of Brandeis

Jamie Weinstein: And people when they get honorary degrees, it's not like they only go to non-political people. Universities have awarded them in the recent past to people that want Israel to be wiped off the map and destroyed. Is that not right?
Mark Steyn: Yeah, that's true. And that was Brandeis, a guy called Tony Kushner... I stand back and occasionally roll my eyes at the dreary left-wing hacks invited to give commencement speeches, garlanded with state honors, things that if you trend to the right side of the spectrum, you know you're going to be labeled 'controversial conservative', and you'll never get anywhere near. But this woman is a black, feminist atheist from Somalia. And so what we're learning here, which is fascinating, in the hierarchy of progressive-politics identity-group victimhood, Islam trumps everything. Islam trumps gender. The fact that she's a woman doesn't matter. It trumps race. The fact that she's black doesn't matter. It trumps secularism. The fact that she's an atheist doesn't matter. They wouldn't do this if it was a Christian group complaining about her, if it was a Jewish group complaining about her. But when the Islamic lobby group says oh, no, we're not putting up with this, as I said, these jelly-spined nothings at Brandeis just roll over for them.

The J Street Challenge

What should happen then, if the conflict turns out to be absolutely insoluble? Let’s say even J Street, which defended every single “no” given by Palestinian leaders since 2000, comes to the conclusion that establishing a Palestinian State will not end the conflict, and the true dilemma will be between an existential conflict and giving up the only Jewish State in the world? What will J Street choose?
One of the intervewees, a young and enthusiastic J Street activist, has a simple answer to this difficult question: “I just have to believe that peace is possible.” But Daniel Levy takes this bull by the horns: “If we’re wrong, and if a collective Jewish presence in the Middle East can only survive because of the sword, if we can’t get recognition, and if they hate us not because of what we do but because of who we are, then if so, then apparently Israel isn’t a good idea.”
In other words, if it does turn out even to J Street that the very existence of a Jewish national state requires an unending struggle, than the whole thing isn’t worth it. If Zionism can’t match up with the values that Ben-Ami and Levy define as “Jewish”, then there must be a problem with Zionism itself. This is why Ben-Ami often quotes Peter Beinart: “We can’t teach our children to give up Jewish values for Zionism.”
Both Jeremy Ben-Ami and Daniel Levy left Israel after they failed to impose an “eternal peace” on the Middle East. They figure that if you’re going to experiment with human lives, better to do it in the safe comfort Washington or London, and not near the cafes and buses that might at any moment demonstrate the difference between utopia and reality. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Why Have American Taxpayers Supported Hamas Trainers?

Why would Hamas see nonviolence as a useful tool?
Simple.
It’s not just acts of terror that makes groups like Hamas effective, but the story they tell to justify and frame this violence. And Awad’s Holy Land Trust, has given Hamas and other militant groups expertise in framing their acts of terror for Western audiences.
As I have written elsewhere, “Awad’s group, the Holy Land Trust, has taught Hamas and other militant groups that seek Israel’s destruction how to speak the language of peace activists in the West and appeal to the conscience of human rights activists in the U.S. and Europe.”
In addition to being irresponsible, it may also be illegal. Federal law prohibits providing terrorist organizations with material support, which according to the statute includes “training” and “expert advice.” That seems to describe what HLT has, by Awad’s admission, provided to Hamas and other militant groups.

Activists Want Israeli Justice Minister Banned from Britain

Livni is due to speak in London on May 15 at two events organised by the Jewish National Fund.
Anti-Israel activists claim her visit is "an outrageous racist provocation and an incitement to hatred".
May 15 is observed as Nakba (Catastrophe) Day in anti-Israel circles, as it is the anniversary of the failure by invading Arab armies to annihilate the newly declared state of Israel in 1948.

Brandeis using J StreetU to repair relations with Al Quds U

I had to check the calendar, but no, Purim was a month ago and we are past April Fools as well.

From Free Beacon:

Two student leaders of J Street who recently came under fire for heckling an Israeli soldier have been selected by Brandeis University to help repair the school’s relationship with the Palestinian Al Quds University, which has hosted several anti-Israel terror rallies on its campus.

Brandeis was forced to sever its long-term partnership with Al Quds after it hosted a military rally last year that featured masked men performing the traditional Nazi salute. A second Hamas rally was held in late March.

Two leaders of J Street’s campus group, J Street U, were recently given a $10,000 grant to travel to Al Quds and spearhead a “student dialogue initiative” aimed at repairing relations between the two universities.

The students—Eli Philip and Catriona Stewart—serve as the copresidents of Brandeis’s J Street U group. They most recently drew headlines for heckling a former IDF soldier who was speaking on campus.

The Al Quds dialogue initiative comes at a critical time for Brandeis, which is facing a fierce backlash for rescinding an honorary degree from the Islamic human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

The J Street leaders were awarded the $10,000 as part of Brandeis’s Davis Projects for Peace program, which encourages students to “design grassroots projects for peace.”

...Al Quds students associated with Islamic Jihad’s campus faction donning black military gear and mock automatic weapons. They then marched across the school’s campus flashing the traditional Nazi salute.

J Street leaders Philip and Stewart say that the Nazi rally inspired them to pursue the new partnership, which will allow a delegation of Brandeis students to spend a week at Al Quds.

...The students claim that Brandeis’s decision to cut ties with Al Quds “lacked appreciation for [former Al Quds University head Sari] Nusseibeh’s desire to uphold the values of free speech and respect, as well as for the realities of life in the West Bank.”

J Street U sparked a row on Brandeis’s campus late last year, when Philip and others were reported to have been “disruptive and rude” during a speech by former IDF spokesman Barak Raz.

“Philip and his [J Street U] colleagues were so disruptive during Raz’s talk that there were calls for him to resign his student leadership position for having embarrassed the Brandeis community,” the Jewish Press reported at the time.

Raz later responded to the incident by stating that Philip “walked in [to the event], over an hour late, and aside from the disruptive chatter, missed the points that were made.”

“The behavior you displayed was quite sub-par,” Raz wrote, adding that “should you desire to continue this conversation, it’s probably best done in a way that reflects a little more integrity. I’m surprised that while you came to learn and listen, you refused to do that.”

Here's part of the grant proposal.

Brandeis seems to be teaching the philosophy that the worse people act, the more important it is to reward them.

(h/t Daniel Mael)

04/11 Links Pt2: ScarJo Tells the Truth About Anti-Semitism; Code Pink Funded by CAT Shares

From Ian:

ScarJo Tells the Truth About Anti-Semitism

In an interview with the Guardian, she refused to accept the premise that settlements were illegal and defended the factory as a model of coexistence. That has brought down on her the contempt of anti-Israel ideologues and left open the question as to whether the career of the woman who was twice named the “sexiest woman in the world” by Esquire would suffer in an industry dominated by the left and more dependent than ever on revenue from international markets.
Reportedly in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine to be published in May, the actress doesn’t shy away from getting to the heart of this matter. As YNet reports:

American Jewish actress Scarlett Johansson believes anti-Semitism is to blame for much of the fire she drew earlier this year over her endorsement of Israeli company SodaStream, which operates a factory in the West Bank.
“There’s a lot of anti-Semitism out there,” Johansson told Vanity Fair, in an interview for the cover of their May edition.
A member of the Hollywood elite has never spoken truer words. While this will undoubtedly cause even more criticism of the actress, by raising the question of anti-Semitism, Johansson has cut straight to the heart of the problem with the movement that seeks to boycott Israel.

Multi Millionaire BDS'er Medea Benjamin is a shareholder of Caterpillar

The anti-Israel movement is built upon a fragile foundation of lies, omissions and hypocrisy. Shake it just a bit, it comes crumbling down. Wait for the dust to clear- you’ll be surprised at what’s revealed.
Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of Global Exchange. Wearing her Code Pink hat, she was front and center at the occupy movement, bemoaning the influence of the 1%. Yet both her and her colleague Jodie Evans are 1 percenters, who toy with their activists like true puppetmasters.
In spite of her populist rhetoric, Medea Benjamin controls the assets of a foundation worth 12 million dollars.
What does the Benjamin Foundation spend its funds on? Just what you’d expect. Extremist groups like Code Pink and JVP. Agitprop sites like Mondoweiss and Democracy now. Thats not a surprise. However, this might be.
Where does Medea Benjamin invest her money? In classic "Do as I say, not as i do" mode Medea's money is working hard for her in Intel, General Electric, and wait for it...Caterpillar. All objects du rage for the BDS cru. Apparently divestment does not begin at home.

Caroline Glick: A moving, just discovered speech by the immortal Ben Hecht, Jewish warrior

I just read an amazing speech Ben Hecht gave in 1948 at a fundraiser for the Etzel or Irgun, Menachem Begin’s Zionist army in the pre-state years that played a decisive role in forcing the British to finally leave the land of Israel.
The entire text, and the backstory are published in The Jewish Review of Books.
Here’s an excerpt, but the entire address is moving and informative. I urge you to read the whole thing and think about Hecht, and be inspired by his legacy at Pessach.

Rima Khalaf

In late February I wrote about a report written by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), where Israel wa blamed for pretty much all the problems in the Arab world.

The head of ESCWA, Rima Khalaf, amplified the report's thesis when she effectively said Israel has no business existing:

Foreign interference comes in various forms, such as violations of Arab rights and dignity, but its worst manifestation is the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the Syrian Golan Heights and Lebanese territories, in flagrant breach of all international conventions and resolutions.

The authors of the report claim that the damage caused by Israeli policies is not limited to occupation activities, but they believe that aggressive Israeli policies, including its support for discord aimed at establishing Arab sectarian mini-States and its nuclear programme that is not subject to international monitoring, pose a continuous threat to the security of Arab citizens in the region as a whole.

The most dangerous of these policies is Israel's adamancy that it is a Jewish State, which violates the rights of both the Muslim and Christian indigenous populations and revives the concept of state ethnic and religious purity, which caused egregious human suffering during the twentieth century.

The report claims that Arab rights would not have been trampled; Jerusalem would not have suffered under Judaization policies, land confiscation and the expulsion of populations; and Muslim and Christian holy shrines would not have been desecrated if Arabs had stood united and coordinated their efforts, or at least met their existing commitments to joint defence.

According to Arabic media, Israel is demanding the the UN fire Rima Khalaf for these remarks. The story says that Ambassador Ron Prosor wrote a letter to Ban Ki-Moon requesting her removal from her position.

04/11 Links Pt1: Pity the Palestinians? Count Me Out; White House’s Campaign to Scapegoat Israel

From Ian:

Pity the Palestinians? Count Me Out

Nor, alas, is it only the leaders of the Palestinians who harbor this evil intent. As revealed by poll after poll, as well as by the elections that led the way for Hamas to take power in Gaza, a decisive majority of the Palestinian people does so as well. No doubt this is the fruit of relentless indoctrination from above, but the damage has been done, and the end result is what it is.
Indeed, the best that can be said of both Palestinian leaders and led is that many of them no longer imagine—as did Gamal Abdel Nasser, the former president of Egypt—that they have the power to drive the Jews of Israel into the sea. Therefore they are now willing to give up pursuing the goal of genocide and to settle for the more modest objective of politicide—that is, to get rid of the Jewish state by transforming it, through various "peaceful" means like the "right of return," into a state with a Palestinian majority.
I for one pray that a day will come when the Palestinians finally let go of the evil intent toward Israel that keeps me from having any sympathy for them, and that they will make their own inner peace with the existence of a Jewish state in their immediate neighborhood. But until that day arrives, the "peace process" will go on being as futile as it has been so many times before and as it has just proved once again to be. Another thing that never changes: When John Kerry testified on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, it was the Israelis he blamed for this latest diplomatic fiasco. (h/t Herb Glatter )

Alan Dershowitz: Palestinians must come to the table for peace

It is clear therefore that the Israelis and the Palestinians do not stand in equivalent positions — morally, legally, diplomatically or politically — when it comes to negotiating Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank.
Israel captured this territory in an entirely lawful defensive war.
The Palestinians want it.
Unless they are prepared to negotiate with the Israelis, they can’t get it.
The burden is on the Palestinians to come to the negotiating table, not as equal partners, but as claimants, seeking to obtain something that they do not have.
Possession is 9/10th of the law, and in this case, 9/10th of morality as well.
Those who seek a change in the status quo have the burden of coming forward and showing a willingness to negotiate.

Inside the White House’s Secret Campaign to Scapegoat Israel

Multiple sources told the Washington Free Beacon that top Obama administration officials have worked for the past several days to manufacture a crisis over the reissuing of housing permits in a Jerusalem neighborhood widely acknowledged as Israeli territory.
Senior State Department officials based in Israel have sought to lay the groundwork for Israel to take the blame for talks collapsing by peddling a narrative to the Israeli press claiming that the Palestinians were outraged over Israeli settlements, the Free Beacon has learned.
These administration officials have planted several stories in Israeli and U.S. newspapers blaming Israel for the collapse of peace talks and have additionally provided reporters with anonymous quotes slamming the Israeli government.

Down with the cisheteropatriarchy! (UPDATED)

People have looked a little more at the women who was screaming incoherently at the Cornell #BDSFail last night.

Her name is Kat-Yang Stevens, and she describes herself - no joke - this way:

Kat Yang-Stevens is a cisgender queer woman and first generation Asian American of Chinese ancestry. Kat grew up on and currently lives on occupied territories belonging to the Onondaga & Cayuga Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in so-called New York.

Full Time Unpaid Community Organizer
Shawn Greenwood Working Group
Marcellus Shale Earth First!
Youth Engagement & Empowerment Program!
Groundwork for Praxis
Shalefield Justice Spring Break Track Coordinator
No Diplomas. No Degrees.

Apparently, she is not even a Cornell student.

Anyway, all you need to know about her can be seen in this tweet she wrote last week:

My organzng 2 brng dwn colonialist whtsprmcst cisheteropatriarchy trancends the physical: #hashtagactivist @suey_park pic.twitter.com/BLzHAjWArE
— Kat Yang-Stevens (@greencircleas) April 3, 2014

The responses to this gibberish were awesome.

Check them out:

From Reuters:

Kicking up dust on the back roads of northern Gaza within sight of the Israeli fence that seals off the enclave, Olympic athlete Nader Al Masri is still training, despite being barred from competing in his people's largest sporting event.

Masri, who has participated in 40 international contests including the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, was denied a permit by Israeli authorities to travel to the occupied West Bank for the Palestine Marathon on Friday.

"I'm sad. This is a race for all Palestine and I wanted to participate, but unfortunately the Israeli side coldly rejected me," said the 34-year-old policeman.

Ah, having a consistent policy in who can enter your country is now considered "cold rejection."

The New York Times - in a front page story - gives a slightly more accurate account:

In denying Mr. Masri’s permit request — made through Gisha, an Israeli group advocating free movement — the Israeli government said in a March 30 letter that “the present diplomatic/security situation” meant that Gaza residents could cross into Israel only “in exceptional humanitarian cases.”

One of the organizers of the marathon disingenuously claims to the New York Times that the event is not political:

“It illustrates the whole concept,” said Lise Ring, one of the two Danish women who founded the Palestine Marathon, which is expected to draw 3,000 runners this year, half from the West Bank. “We want people from around the world to see a Palestine that’s not about the conflict,” she said. “But it’s hard to say ‘Palestine’ without talking politics.”

This is of course a lie.

The entire purpose of the marathon is meant to be a political weapon against Israel.

The very course of the marathon was chosen for political reasons - going past two refugee camps and the separation barrier with a turnaround at an Israeli military checkpoint.

Here is how the event is described in the "Right to Movement Palestine Marathon" site:

Running is a means of terrestrial locomotion allowing humans and other animals to move rapidly on foot. Having the right to move means that you have the choice, possibility, and right to move from A to B at any time and for any reason. The right to movement is a basic human right as stipulated in Article 13 of the UN Human Rights Charter: "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement"

Everyone has the right to freedom of movement, but not everyone has the option. Restriction on movement is one of the major challenges for the Palestinian people living under occupation. Palestinians cannot move freely on roads, or from one city to another. The Palestinians right to move is controlled by their ID, permits, which city they live in, or who they are married to. The environment that Palestinians were supposed to move freely in is occupied and thus controlled by a foreign army. An army that controls their movement with roadblocks, checkpoints, military zones, an illegal wall and a complex set of discriminatory laws. Ever been through Qalandia? Then you know why we do this! The EU and the US talks about a two-state solution, an independent Palestine, but we cannot even find the 42 KMs needed for a marathon. This is why we do it.

The website doesn't quote the entire sentence in the UDHR, which says "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state." If the PLO would have seriously negotiated a peace plan instead of using the pretence of talks to get the US to force Israel to make unilateral concessions, they would have had a state by now with no restrictions on movement.

But that nuance is lost on mainstream media reporters.

Also lost is the difference between Israel not allowing Gazans to enter its territory and "Israel barring Gaza runners from competing." Could, perhaps, Nader al Masri get to Bethlehem by going through Egypt and Jordan? If he did, would Israel "bar" him from the race? Is adhering to a policy that applies to everyone equally the same as a "bar" on a runner?

Speaking of Egypt, there was a marathon in Luxor, Egypt in January and a half-marathon in Cairo in February. Did al-Masri apply to run in those marathons? I don't know, but if he did I must have missed the stories about how Egypt "blocked" him by not allowing him to enter the country.

Those Egyptian marathons weren't political, so no one bothered to call the lazy media to hand-feed them a story tailor made for the front page.

Aish HaTorah's 2009 Temple model freaks out Muslims today

The Al Aqsa Foundation has a major article, picked up by many other Arabic language media outlets, about a model of the Second Temple on the roof of the Aish HaTorah center opposite the Kotel in Jerusalem.

Occupation authorities officially opened a model view of the temple built on the roof of the Jewish school Aish HaTorah, located a few meters west of the Aqsa Mosque.

According to the Al-Aqsa Foundation for Waqf and Heritage, the roof can accommodate hundreds of visitors, in addition to a large model of a monument to the alleged structure, as well as a vantage point from which to see the al-Aqsa mosque and the Old City and the periphery.

The organization described this as a serious step against the Al-Aqsa Mosque, pointing out that the occupation aims to accelerate the pace of work and support to build the temple, at the expense of Al-Aqsa mosque, and that the model of the structure and binoculars off the Al-Aqsa Mosque (was in support pf the plan.)

It noted in a statement that tens of thousands of visitors, both foreign tourists and Israelis, are expected to visit this overlook every year, and will listening to explanations about the building of the alleged temple.

According to the organization this is a strategic location overlooking the yard near the Wall and the Al Aqsa Mosque...

The Al-Aqsa Foundation warned of the risk of this and similar projects that the occupation is using for quickly Judaizing.

The model has been there since August 2009.

As the Jerusalem Post wrote then (copied from the Aish site:)

Some 50 people gathered on Wednesday to watch the installation of a Second Temple model on the roof of a yet-unfinished Aish HaTorah building, across from the Western Wall and just a few hundred meters from where the real thing once stood.

With the Dome of the Rock and the Aksa Mosque standing conspicuously in the background, a crane lowered the 1.2-ton model onto the roof.

It took about a year for Michael Osanis, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union who has built a number of other Temple models, including one in the Temple Institute, also in the capital's Jewish Quarter, to complete this model, which is made from gold, silver, wood and Jerusalem stone.

The model will sit on a new educational building for Aish HaTorah's short-term outreach programs, which is set to open in December. Aish, which provides a network of educational programs for Jews around the world, is also building a new "Explorium" - an interactive museum on Jewish history, which it expects will host 300,000 visitors annually after it opens in two years.

"What could be more appropriate than to have here, as people are standing looking out over our holiest place, the Temple Mount, a sense of what it was really like to have the Temple here?" asked Ephraim Shore, director of Aish's programs in Jerusalem.

Aish hopes that this model will help people to visualize the Temple and therefore forge a stronger connection with Judaism and Jewish history.

This is a pattern: the Al Aqsa Foundation puts out press releases that are often completely made up, they routinely get picked up by media throughout the Arab world, incitement spreads and no one bothers to check actual facts because, after all, facts aren't as important as propaganda and incitement.

The Arabic newspapers know this game very well, and they happily play their part.

Major #BDSFail as haters lose Cornell resolution 15-8-1

From Legal Insurrection:

The Cornell Student Assembly voted late this afternoon to table indefinitely a Resolution to Divest from companies doing business in Israel.

The decision foiled the last-minute stealth move on the eve of Passover to push the Resolution forward so that the vote would take place next week in the middle of Passover: ALERT: Sneak Passover Anti-Israel Divestment attack at Cornell.

Even getting to that vote to table required that the Assembly overrule the decision of the President of the Assembly not to allow the motion to table until the Resolution was presented. Under no circumstance was there to be a vote today on the substance of the Resolution, this was a procedural decision to take it off the agenda.

This is a crushing defeat for SJP — maybe one of the most decisive yet on any campus.

They tried to pull a fast one, and never even were able to present their Resolution.

This reflected widespread opposition not only to the substance, but also a resentment of students who see SJP tryig to usurp campus dialogue. As one Assembly member wrote to me:

[Resolution backer] wants to see 20 year old college students form firm opinions on an issue we know very little about and have no responsibility for.

Expect claims that speech was stifled. To the contrary, there is no “right” to take up Student Assembly time on a Resolution that had so little support it couldn’t even survive a procedural motion.

A member of the Cornell faculty who attended wrote to me:

The BDSers are physically intimidating and ugly the way they act as a group with all their finger clicking and so forth. I'm a tenured faculty member and I felt quite intimidated; I can't imagine what a young more vulnerable student feels when confronted by this crap, especially if he/she is not secure about his or her Jewish identity.

But the BDSers are claiming that the pro-Israel students are the ones who were intimidating. Check out this tweet:

Gutless @CornellSA refuses to debate students' #CornellDivest Res. @CIPAC_CU swamps meeting w/ blueshirt Zionist hoodlums #trolltheCornellSA
— Kevin (@Dr_Manhatten) April 11, 2014

So who were the hoodlums, the anti-Israel crowd or the Zionists? Who is lying?

Luckily, we have a video that shows the answer brilliantly:

Apparently, polite applause is the act of "blueshirt Zionist hoodlums" while repeatedly and profanely interrupting a student association meeting is simple manners.

It seems that when you have an irrational hatred of one of the world's most liberal and tolerant countries despite it being surrounded by tens of millions who want it to be destroyed, seeing things as exactly the opposite of truth becomes a habit.

Unfortunately for them, the tide is turning against BDS this year, quite decisively. There will be more angry, profanity-filled outbursts, and more humorous videos of Israel haters.

Rational people remain rational when they lose. Irrational haters become even more irrational when things don't go their way. Nothing I can say is more convincing than this video.

Press freedom in Turkey? Hahahaha!

From Kate O’Sullivan and Laura Benitez at Vice:

"Journalists wanted for international news agency," read the Guardian job ad. As an editor in an industry where legitimate opportunities are few and far between, you apply for pretty much any full-time job you see, so apply we did. A couple of months later, we arrived in Ankara, Turkey, ready to “write history” as the first international journalists to be welcomed into the Anadolu Agency (AA) family.

We joined the agency in January, supposedly to edit English-language news, but quickly found ourselves becoming English-language spin doctors. The AA’s editorial line on domestic politics—and Syria—was so intently pro-government that we might as well have been writing press releases. Two months into the job, we listened to Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç talking some shit about press freedom from an event at London's Chatham House, downplaying the number of imprisoned journalists in Turkey. Soon after that, we got the chance to visit London on business. We grabbed it and resigned as soon as we hit UK soil.

Established in 1920, the AA was once a point of national pride. Today, it's at the end of one of the many sets of strings in the ruling AK Party’s puppet parade. Most of Turkey’s TV stations are heavily influenced by the state, and the few opposition channels can expect to have their licenses revoked at any time or be banned from broadcasting key events, such as live election footage or anything that might detract from how fantastic the government is doing.

For example, Turkey’s media regulator, RTUK, fined the networks that aired footage of last year’s Gezi Park protests. Funnily enough, the watchdog is made up of nine “elected” members nominated by political parties—and the more seats in parliament a faction has, the more influence it possesses.

Media outlets that aren't being hounded by RTUK can always look forward to direct intervention from Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan himself. In 2009, independent mogul Aydin Dogan’s media group—made up of various newspapers and TV channels, CNN Türk, and a news agency—was fined $2.5 billion for evading taxes. Incidentally, the audit came just after one of the group’s platforms published news on the Lighthouse charity scandal, which saw a German court convict three Turkish businessmen for funnelling $28.3 million into their personal accounts.

In one recent leaked recording, Erdogan is heard asking his former justice minister to ensure that Dogan be punished. Since then, the Dogan empire has been bound and gagged accordingly.

It is easy to see a slick, modern looking website and assume that it is a professional, independent site. One has nothing to do with the other.

04/10 Links Pt2: How UNRWA Contributes to Palestinian Incitement; Ayaan Hirsi Ali Speaks

From Ian:

How UNRWA Contributes to Palestinian Incitement

Bedein said he believes children at UNRWA schools are being told that the only end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be for them to resettle to the areas that are now part of Israel, which sets an unrealistic expectation. He said that his organization’s primary goal is to raise awareness of the issue among politicians, journalists, and diplomats worldwide, in order to get them to reassess their support of UNRWA.
“The important thing is that there is going to be an expiration of the UNRWA mandate at the end of June and we’re hoping to tack on some very important conditions for the renewal of UNRWA [funding],” he said. “Why should a United Nations agency, which is supposed to be promoting peace, have a curriculum which is basically a war curriculum?”
In a statement last fall, UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness flatly denied the allegations in “Camp Jihad,” calling the claims “baseless” and “patently false.”

There is Apartheid in Israel

Unfortunately though, the only Apartheid I see in Israel is against Jews. Here at the Mughrabi bridge (an intentionally temporary structure so as not to claim official permanent Jewish ties - EVERYTHING is symbolic in the Middle East), there is no dispute that it is a state of apart-hood, the literal translation of Apartheid. Is there any other reading of this? How can there be?
While talking to my new Dutch friends, and explaining the situation, they asked, "but, why are you treated differently?". How do I answer this so that it will make sense to them? I couldn't really find a plausible answer other than saying "Israel has become weak. in 1967 when Israel recaptured and reunified Jerusalem, they let the Waqf stay in power. Today, we are too weak to change anything. Everyone is afraid to upset the apple cart." "But why? Isn't this Israel?" they persisted. I answered with the only words I had left....I don't know!
At this point, the tourist line opened up again, and my new friends wished me well and said "don't worry, one day this will be different and you will be allowed to go up, and we will also be allowed to go up freely and see where it all began". WOW! the Dutch tourists are giving the Jewish guy Chizuk (spiritual uplifting) that it will be ok, you will return to Zion and once again Ascend the Holy Temple Mount where people of all Nations were once welcomed and will be so again, may it be speedily in our time. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

What Germany owes the Jews

This time next year, Israel and Germany will be gearing up to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties — a spectacularly sensitive relationship between the nation whose leadership set about annihilating the Jews and the nation-state whose revival, tragically, came too late to save six million of them.
The conventional wisdom is that the Israel-Germany “special relationship” remains both firm and delicate, marked by Germany’s extraordinary commitment to Israel’s well-being, as a consequence of that eternally unpayable historical debt owed by the Germans to the Jews.
The reality, however, is that while Germany has proved willing to some extent to bolster Israel’s defense militarily and diplomatically, much of its political and diplomatic leadership is as witheringly and ignorantly critical of Israel as the rest of the willfully blind European consensus. The only real difference is that German politicians and diplomats don’t generally make public their ill-informed critiques and their facile conclusions. In deference to that special relationship, they don’t put themselves openly at odds with the Jewish state.