Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, May 09, 2014

One more "Apartheid?" poster

I saw this photo tweeted by Avi Mayer, so how could I resist?

Israeli paramedic receives Presidents Award - for saving Syrians

Meet Noga Erez, a paramedic in the IDF who works in the field hospital on the Syrian border.

On Yom Ha'Atzmaut, Nioga received The President's Award for Excellence for her outstanding service.

As the IDF blog notes, "Every year, out of thousands of candidates, the President of Israel honors the most outstanding soldiers in the IDF. These soldiers are an inspiration to their peers, acting as leaders and demonstrating the highest degree of excellence."

What other nation on the planet would give one of their highest honors for someone who saves the lives of people from an enemy country?

Here's her story:

(h/t Shlomo HaLevi)

05/08 Links Pt2: Khaled Abu Toameh wins Daniel Pearl prize; One Synagogue, 20 Victims of Terror

From Ian:

Abu Toameh wins 2014 Pearl prize for journalistic courage

Khaled Abu Toameh, a reporter for The Jerusalem Post who has covered Palestinian and Arab affairs for the past three decades, is the recipient of the 2014 Daniel Pearl Award.
The award, named for Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan in 2002, recognizes courage and integrity in journalism.
“Khaled Abu Toameh has been telling us, with courage and objectivity, what life is like in the West Bank and Gaza,” said Judea Pearl, father of the dead journalist. “Rarely has a reporter been so successful in penetrating a conflict so complex and remaining consistently and definitively on the side of truth.”

Mike Lumish: University of California Cancels Nonie Darwish Speech

Nonie Darwish is among the prominent anti-Jihadists writing today and should therefore be supported.
Progressive western Jews must get beyond the cowardly fear of being called “racist” or “Islamophobic” if they oppose the movement of political Islam. Islam is Islam and so long as it does not seek to impose itself upon the rest of us then I have no grievance, but when Islam is the heart of a political movement – which it most certainly is – then it becomes a problem for all of us who are not both Muslim and male.
This is why Barack Obama’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood is such a betrayal of his own alleged values, not to mention a betrayal of the United States, itself, given the fact that the Brotherhood is also the parent organization of both Hamas and al-Qaeda.
The late, great Barry Rubin certainly understood this

A perverse Leftist racism against black women?

Aging radical leftists still fighting the Vietnam War and extreme Islamists fighting any hint of criticism of their religion triumphed in two battles in US universities against two extraordinary black women who happen not to be leftists -- Condi Rice, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali
One wonders if the Rutgers protestors are interested in anything of real importance in the world, especially abuse of women. At the time of their outbursts against Rice a more imperative incident affecting young black women was occurring. At least 276 schoolgirls, 16 to 18 years old, who are mostly Christians but including some Muslims, girls eager to become teachers or doctors, were kidnapped from their school, an all Girl’s Secondary School in Chibok in northeastern Nigeria, by a fanatical Islamist group Boko Haram, a murderous group with a five-year record of atrocities, that is strongly against the education of women.
The intention of the group is to sell the girls into sexual slavery to Muslims in Chad and Cameroon. The women Muslim students at Rutgers have not at this point registered sit-in protests against this barbarism.
One brave young girl has made her protest. This is Malala Yousafzai, who was shot at the age of 15 by a Pakistani Taliban fighter in October 2012 because she advocated education for girls. She joined the protest in London against the abduction of the schoolgirls.
By contrast, the Muslim students at Rutgers have remained silent on the cruel action of the Islamists. One knows they will not learn the virtue of tolerance from the aging revolutionaries in the faculty.

Father Gabriel Naddaf is the leader of the movement to encourage Christians to join the IDF. As Fox News reported last December:

Some Arabic-speaking Christians in Israel are well aware that they live in the region’s only safe haven for their faith. And they have decided to do more than give thanks.

They want to defend their homeland, and a number of them have chosen to take action. Not only do they want to serve in the IDF, but they also are forming a political party and seeking reforms in Israel’s educational system, insisting that its curriculum include Christian history alongside that of Judaism and Islam.

Father Gabriel Naddaf leads this movement. He is articulate, bold and outspoken. He explained to the Jerusalem Report (Oct 7, 2013). “We want to be fully integrated into Israeli society... This land is holy to us too, and we are partners in it. We live under its protection and we should protect it along with its citizens.

“Given all that is happening in the region,” he says emphatically, “the time has come to discuss this. Now.”

As a result, Naddaf has been threatened and his son attacked.

Now, he is being stripped of his role in the Church by the West Bank-based Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III.

Theophilos' spokesman, Father Issa Musleh, said that as a result of Naddaf's political activities, he will no longer be allowed to perform his pastoral and ecclesiastical duties.

He said, "We have asked several times for Father Gabriel Naddaf, priest of the Church of Jaffa, Nazareth, to retreat from positions that call for recruitment in the army of occupation, as we reject it. "

Musleh said Naddaf cannot work with any church in Palestine (which includes, clearly, Israel.)

He also said that Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah II contacted the Patriarchate about this issue and support the decision.

This shows how frightened the Palestinian Arabs are of the still small initiative to recruit Christians to the IDF. In 2013, the number of recruits tripled.

It remains to be seen if any Christian leaders of other denominations will criticize this heavy handed interference by Palestinian Arab churches into Israeli clerics and churches.

UPDATE: The story was denied.(h/t Ian)

Fatah's terror wing says it won't give up its weapons

Is there any real difference between Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party and Hamas?

Once again, the answer is no.

Just like Hamas said that its Al Qassam Brigades will not give up its weapons in any "unity" agreement, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades of Fatah has said exactly the same thing.

Abu Mohammed, spokesman of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades Nidal division which operates in Gaza, said, "I do not think that the weapons of the resistance will be a roadblock on the subject of Palestinian reconciliation. On the contrary, Palestinian reconciliation will unite the Palestinian rifle against the enemy, both at the political level and at the military level."

The spokesman added, "We in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades will not allow anyone, whether The current government in Gaza or the Ramallah government or a government of national unity to withdraw weapons of the resistance because they are legitimate weapons and directed against the enemy."

Abbas, of course, told gullible Westerners that he had dismantled the al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in 2008. He lied.

Here they are, today:

And they are in the West Bank as well as Gaza.

As far as I can tell, they are on Fatah's payroll, and very possibly getting indirectly financed by Western governments who bend over backwards to pretend that Mahmoud Abbas and his party are the moderate, peaceful guys.

You would think that people would have caught on to the "good cop, bad cop" routine by now. Because the Fatah and Hamas terrorists are laughing every day at the stupidity of the West.

05/08 Links Pt1: Palestinian Magical Thinking; Jordan is Eastern Palestine

From Ian:

Palestinian Magical Thinking

The Palestinian elite and their children live comfortable and privileged lives in Ramallah and elsewhere in the region and beyond it. Combining this with diplomatic and political activity can be pleasant and rewarding. Combining it with military activity, by contrast, could be harmful and has already been proven not to work.
So expect more furious and pathos-filled denunciations of Israeli crimes from various UN committees largely staffed by the representatives of sundry dictatorships.
Expect Saeb Erekat and the others to come up with yet more inventive reasons as to why Islam and Arabic are “indigenous” to Jerusalem while Judaism and Hebrew represent foreign implants. And so on, and so forth.
And at the end of all this, expect more failure, more bewilderment and a pause until the next alternative to a negotiated peace is stumbled upon. This is the nature of the magical thinking that lies at the core of Palestinian Arab politics.
This politics, in its various manifestations, exists to reverse the verdict of the war of 1948. It has no other purpose.

Ex-ICC prosecutor warns Palestinians on anti-Israel war crimes effort

The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, on a visit to Israel, urged the Palestinians to proceed with caution as they consider pursuing war crimes charges against Israel. He said it would be preferable for the two sides to work out their differences directly.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo said the Palestinians should not rush ahead with a case against Israel, saying they could expose themselves to the same accusations.

White House Escalates Secret Media War Against Israel

Indyk, a longtime Middle East hand and peace negotiator, has for years personally disliked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to these sources.
“It’s been going on for many years,” said one former Israeli diplomat, referring to Indyk’s leaks to the press. “He was defending the Palestinians. That is a long time story. His antipathy to Netanyahu is also a very long story. It’s not recent. It goes back years.”
Indyk has enjoyed a long relationship with reporter Barnea and has used those ties to leak stories critical of Israel and Netanyahu, the source said.

Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty field investigator, wrote an interesting article about the challenges of fact finding in war situations.

One of her main points is that eyewitnesses are often unreliable. For example:

In Gaza, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and other places I interviewed civilians who described what they thought were artillery or bomb strikes being launched by far away government forces and striking near their homes – whereas in reality the loud bangs and tremors were caused by mortars or rockets being launched by opposition fighters from their positions nearby. For the untrained ear it is virtually impossible to distinguish between incoming and outgoing fire, and all the more so for those who find themselves close to the frontlines.

Another factor she mentions:

Even if they disregard it, investigators must be alert to the fact that disinformation and misinformation can contribute to shaping the perception of events, the narrative surrounding the events, and the behaviour of people who take it in good faith and internalize it, including victims, witnesses, and others potential sources.

Here Rovera is referring to lies that spread quickly and then become widely believed - including by "unbiased" NGOs - before anyone has a chance to investigate. How many times have we seen that?
She gives a specific example from Gaza:

Fear can lead victims and witnesses to withhold evidence or give deliberately erroneous accounts of incidents. In Gaza, I received partial or inaccurate information by relatives of civilians accidentally killed in accidental explosions or by rockets launched by Palestinian armed groups towards Israel that had malfunctioned and of civilians killed by Israeli strikes on nearby Palestinian armed groups’ positions. When confronted with other evidence obtained separately, some said they feared reprisals by the armed groups.

Meaning that "eyewitnesses" will often claim that there was no terrorist activity in the area of an airstrike and Israel wantonly and indiscriminately killed people for no reason.

This gets wholly believed and parroted by the UN and other NGOs. The Goldstone Report has many such examples.

Unfortunately, in many cases the NGOs themselves are part of the problem. Rovera admits, a little elliptically:

Conflict situations create highly politicized and polarized environments, which may affect even individuals and organizations with a proven track record of credible and objective work. Players and interested parties go to extraordinary lengths to manipulate or manufacture “evidence” for both internal and external consumption.

It is a shame that Rovera didn't include Amnesty International itself as being guilty of this, and she ascribes the lack of objectivity almost only to fake evidence that is created by one side rather than to the ideological desire to find war crimes when none exist.

They might strenuously deny it, but Amnesty and HRW have systemic biases against Israel. This article, while a step in the right direction, only scratches the surface of how NGOs themselves contribute to the culture of lies in order to issue their reports and maintain their funding without doing basic fact checks.

And while Rovera notes that some "eyewitnesses" act out of fear, she doesn't go far enough. At least in the territories, the lies about Israel are repeated so often that the witnesses will often tell Western reporters and researchers what they expect to hear rather than what happened. This isn't necessarily out of fear; it is part of their culture to ensure that Israel is always blamed no matter what. It saturates their media. I cannot count how many times "eyewitness" accounts were found to be complete fiction, and fear didn't enter into the equation. However, many of the "witnesses" happen to work for the largest employer in the West Bank - the PA - which lies constantly.

Not to mention that many anti-Israel activists that will knowingly repeat the most outrageous lies to further their own agenda.

Lets hope that this article can at least open up the discussion of how inaccurate much of the reporting and research is about Israel, even from NGOs that pretend to be objective.

(h/t Sara)

He wears a tie so he's a moderate

Taleb Abu Arar, a Knesset member under the United Arab List, has said that Jews have no claim on the Kotel or the Temple Mount.

He issued a statement saying "no matter how Zionists try to falsify history, they will not succeed. The Jews do not have any right to the Al-Aqsa Mosque or the Buraq Wall Buraq, and there is no statute of limitations [on this issue.]"

Speaking from the Temple Mount in a meeting with the Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation, Abu Arar added that "Zionism is trying hard to defraud, and this is recognized by Jewish rabbis, who deny the Jewish Zionists claims in their right-to Aqsa and the Wailing Wall as invalid."

He said that the Jews who visited the Temple Mount on Yom Ha'Atzmaut "in the shadow of the Nakba" intended to change Israeli public opinion towards building a Temple on the Mount.

"The presence and the leaders of the Islamic movement in al Aqsa are here today... to deal with the break-ins and tackle the extremists trying to enter the Haram and who threatened to storm al Aqsa."

A Palestinian group that calls itself a "Human Rights Center" counted 1300 Jews and Israeli soldiers who went up to the Temple Mount in April, calling each visit a "violation."

Because, of course, Jews have no human rights.

Small children performing Talmudic rituals at the Temple Mount!

The Aqsa Heritage Foundation scours Jewish websites to find photos of evil Jews "desecrating" the "Al Aqsa Mosque" this week. They came up with this:

What they missed is that these children were performing those nefarious Talmudic rituals!

The original webpage that shows these photos of Jews at the Temple Mount on Yom Ha'Atzmaut includes this picture:

The kids are drinking water at the Muslim washing station.

But the caption in the Hebrew site says that the children, before drinking the water, naturally said the appropriate Hebrew blessing that is said before eating or drinking anything.

Out loud!

The formula of the blessings was codified in Talmudic times, so this is clearly a Talmudic ritual!

Then again, the adults managed to sneak a few prayers in before police could stop them:

Here's another photo that caused much angst among the Jew-haters - MK Tzipi Hotovely posing with an Israeli flag, with the Dome of the Rock in the background, declaring that she would love to see the flag fly over the Temple Mount:

It doesn't get much worse that that!

Administrivia: Mailing list is back

After a couple of weeks of looking for a way to restore my daily email digest, I finally found a solution that seems to work. (The first solution had severe limitations on number of emails per month.)

Hopefully everyone that had subscribed to my emails have resumed receiving the emails every day.

Unlike some of the other services I looked at, this one emails the entire article, not just the first paragraph. Photos also get sent (although not videos.)

GMail users may find that the digests are going to the spam folder, so you need to mark them as not spam to get them into your mailbox.

You can subscribe to the Daily EoZ Digest by clicking here or by using the Subscription form on the left sidebar.

New "Apartheid?" poster: Rimon Cafe, Jerusalem

Continuing to add to my viral poster series:

Over 170 of of my posters on all topics can be found here.

(h/t Arsen Ostrovsky)

05/07 Links Pt2: Deep UN, Inside the Infrastructure of Hate; Peace goes by the name Hadassah

From Ian:

The Deep UN: Inside the Infrastructure of Hate

Indeed, even UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has conceded that “Israel has been weighed down by criticism and suffered from bias—sometimes even discrimination” in the international body.
The most glaring example of this tendency was UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which horrendously declared Zionism to be a form of racism. Passed in 1975 following a sustained campaign by the Soviet Union, and rescinded in 1991 after a major push by the United States, the resolution triggered a measure of international revulsion, as it symbolized the extremity of the UN’s aversion to one of its own member states. But what few people realize is the extent to which we are still living with the resolution’s influence—especially in the form of a network of extremely well-funded UN structures and offices that have until now remained largely hidden from public scrutiny.
Despite the “Zionism-is-racism” resolution having been annulled, these offices, agencies, and committees continue operating as the engine of the effort to delegitimize the Jewish state and attack it through boycotts, sanctions and divestment. It is these structures and their activities that are being exposed here systematically for the first time.

The Real Palestinian Refugee Crisis

The simplest solution would be to eliminate UNRWA and immediately subordinate all its agencies to the UN High Council on Refugees. This would be equitable and efficient–but since the prospects of such a decision being effected by the UN are slim to none, it is probably more sensible to look for solutions that can be implemented directly by the United States.
Enacting Congressional demands for greater accountability and, especially, bringing UNRWA’s refugee policies into line with those of the rest of the world, would be essential steps toward meaningful reform. At the same time, we must strive to decrease UNRWA’s hold on Palestinian society. The services UNRWA currently provides should be slowly handed over to parallel agencies within the UN, which already provide these services to others, but which have no financial or political interests in perpetuating the problem. In particular, the ultimate goal should be to wean the Palestinians off UNRWA’s largesse completely, and shift the responsibility for providing services and employment to the Palestinian Authority. Doing so would not only be good for the Palestinians, but also for the peace process. It appears that peace cannot be achieved without compromise on the “right of return,” and there can be no such compromise until UNRWA is either substantially reformed or entirely dismantled.

JPost Editorial: For the record

Recently, Jerusalem Post columnist Avraham Avi-hai placed a new word and a new concept before its readers as well as on the agenda of world and Jewish public discourse.
The word is “culturocide.” With the murder of the six million in the Holocaust, two vibrant and living Jewish languages and cultures were murdered as well.
True, pockets of Yiddish- and Ladino-speakers still exist. The languages and cultures are studied in universities, and Holocaust museums devote exhibits to the theme. But Yiddish culture, the living Ashkenazi culture of the Jews of Warsaw and Vilna, Riga and Bucharest, Vienna and Budapest, as well as of hundreds of cities, towns and villages, was destroyed together with the Jews of Eastern and Central Europe. The living Ladino/Sephardi culture was similarly slaughtered along with the Jews of Salonika and Athens, Monastir and Sarajevo.
We are now entering the 70th year since the end of World War II. The number of survivors of the Holocaust dwindles daily. They lived in a world of rich language, press, theater, film, music and literature both sacred and secular.