Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 15, 2014

05/15 Links Pt2: Chloe Valdary: J Street’s Bigotry & Intolerance; Deal struck on Iraqi-Jewish archive

From Ian:

Chloe Valdary: J Street’s Bigotry & Intolerance: A response to Jeremy Ben-Ami

On Tuesday, May 13, Jeremy Ben-Ami, president and co-founder of J Street, published an article in the Times of Israel discussing the positions his organization takes on major issues. According to Ben-Ami, many in the pro-Israel community have been deluded about J Street’s mission and so he decided to go about “setting the record straight” with his article.
The crux of the piece was a call to refrain from issuing baseless personal attacks against J Street and to instead engage in a more intelligent debate about the substance of the organization’s arguments. I agree with this approach. Unfortunately Ben-Ami’s article was dismally lacking in upholding the very standards he claimed to advocate. Instead it was replete with contradictions, half-truths, and snide remarks against those who disagree with J Street’s positions.

StandWithUs: Standing Up for Israel

ADL Now Swamped By ‘Arabs Are Semitic So They Can’t Be Anti-Semitic’ Comments (satire)

The study found the Arab world rife with antisemitism, with Arab countries averaging a 74% prevalence of the sentiment across the Middle East and North Africa. But since Arabic is described by linguists as a Semitic language, ignorant individuals are demanding to know how the ADL can assert that Semitic peoples are themselves so antisemitic. In thus challenging the data, those individuals betray their lack of knowledge of the term, making themselves appear even stupider than they otherwise would.
The term “antisemitism” itself was coined by a nineteenth-century German writer specifically looking for a less vulgar term than “Jew-hatred” in order to make the notion more acceptable in polite company. In the more than a century since, the term has gained mainstream currency, except among complete dimwits who confuse a linguistic term for an ethnic one. The ADL now finds itself the target of a barrage of complaints and rebuttals, all stemming from, or relying on, such dimwittery.

"Leaked Syrian document" describes Lebanon's restrictions on Pal refugees

Arabic social media is discussing a supposedly leaked document from the Syrian Interior Ministry that describes the Lebanese policy on the limitations on accepting Palestinian Syrian refugees.

The letter has no apparent letterhead, so I am not sure if it is legitimate, although the text follows pretty closely what is known about how Lebanon is treating its Syrian refugees of Palestinian ancestry.

Here's the translation:

The Syrian Arab Republic
Ministry of Interior
Passport and Immigration Department
The Palestinian Emigration Department

The cases in which it is allowed to travel to Lebanon, knowing that the prohibition is by the Lebanese authorities alone

1. Those who have valid residence permits in Lebanon
2. Those students who study in Lebanon and have student cards for this year or documents proving that they are registered in Lebanese schools
3. Palestinians whose mothers are Lebanese or Palestinian Lebanese
4. Those traveling through Lebanon and have a visa and a plane ticket, 10 hours before the time of the flight
5. Other cases must be approved by the Lebanese Embassy in Syria

This fits in with the recent HRW press release on the topic as well as various reports over the past couple of years.

What is clearly true is that no Arab nation is treating Palestinian refugees from Syria the same as they treat non-Palestinian Syrian refugees. (I am not aware of whether Turkey differentiates between the two groups.)

Fatah offers a great lesson in Zionism for Nakba Day

The official Fatah Facebook page offers a list of "Nakba criminals" today, which ends up being a pretty good list of major Zionist historic figures.

How many can you identify? Some are obvious, some not quite as well known.

Here's a crowdsourcing exercise: Pick a face or two or three, write up a three sentence biography (essentially the first paragraph of Wikipedia entries, such as #9: Mr. X, 18xx-19xx, born in Y, active in the Z movement, became Israel's first P, well known for coining the phrase "AAA BBB CCC".) Number them left to right, top to bottom.

I will put them on this page in a few hours so we can have a decent reference of Zionist pioneers, thanks to Fatah!

(In the Facebook page, clicking on any of them opens up a link to a short, anti-Israel bio of the people in Arabic. Between Google Translate, Google Image Search and Wikipedia, you should be able to figure out everyone pictured.)

Note that most of the people on the list had nothing to do with the so-called "Nakba." This shows, more than anything, that it is Jewish self-determination that upsets the Arabs, not anything that happened to Palestinian Arabs in 1948.

05/15 Links Pt1: Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Blame Palestinians for Breakdown in Talks

From Ian:

Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Blame Palestinians for Breakdown in Talks

A poll released this morning by The Israel Project (TIP) shows that voters overwhelmingly hold the Palestinian Authority (PA) responsible for the recent breakdown in peace talks and overwhelmingly agree with the stance – emphasized by both the Israeli government and the State Department – that Jerusalem can’t be expected to negotiate with an anticipated unity government that includes the designated terror group Hamas.
The group of 1,595 likely voters was among other things asked to respond to a range of “narrative” questions to evaluate how the public debate over the Palestinian unity agreement was progressing. For each question, they were asked to evaluate the Israeli position and the Palestinian position. The results were not close. Two-thirds of Americans (66%-34%) sided with the Israelis on the how the Palestinians’ move will affect the peace process:

Palestinian Reconciliation and the Rising Power of Hamas and Islamic Jihad: An Iranian Windfall

In sum, the Palestinian Authority has launched a diplomatic war against Israel complemented by the continued use of terror at varying levels of intensity. The main goal of this campaign is to secure, via unilateral measures, international recognition of the PA’s demand for Palestinian sovereignty and independence in all of the 1967 territories as an interim stage toward pressing further demands, most of all the demand for the “return” to Israel of millions of Palestinian “refugees” and their descendants. This is indeed the essence of the Phased Plan ratified by the PLO in 1974, which has now reached an advanced stage of implementation in cooperation with the other Palestinian terror organizations.
Israel is in a trap. Accepting the Palestinian conditions and capitulating to international pressure will likely lead to the rise of a hostile Palestinian state ruled by the Islamic terror organizations with Hamas and Islamic Jihad at the forefront, a state that is an extension of Iran. Moreover, should Israel be compelled to withdraw from the Jordan Valley, regional Islamist forces will feel empowered to seek the destabilization of the Hashemite regime in Jordan, once Palestinian independence is attained.

Analysis: The Coming Collapse of the Palestinian Economy

The Palestinian economy inside of Judea and Samaria is in official crisis mode. The long-term effects of the Arab Spring as well as rampant corruption have effectively brought to an end to several years of modest growth inside the territories administered by the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian economy
Regarding the Arab Spring, Muslim nations swept up in it have responded by dramatically increasing domestic spending. As a result, the emphasis of many governments that had once provided financial aid to the Palestinian economy has shifted, with the aim of maintaining internal stability.
According to the Palestinian Finance Ministry, NIS 630 million (roughly $182,000,000) in aid has arrived from abroad since the beginning of 2014, a 65-percent decrease from the first quarter of 2013.

A reader wrote to me pointing to an NPR show in Chicago that regularly mentions that Hamas has offered a "100-year hudna" to Israel, effectively offering peace. This is how they dismiss any talk of Hamas having an uncompromising terrorist stance.

(He sent me a link to the most recent example, although I did not listen to it.)

I have looked high and low and cannot find any source for this supposed offer. There are only a couple of secondary sources, mostly comments on anti-Israel websites, none of which link to anything even remotely authoritative.

I once researched about supposed Hamas offers of a 10 or 20 year hudna if Israel would withdraw from every inch of territory across the Green Line before any cease fire.

But what is so funny about these NPR-style leftists clinging to any scrap of a rumor that Hamas wants peace is that they ignore, repeatedly, what Hamas says explicitly every single day.

And here's today's example:

The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas confirmed today that it will go in the path of resistance and loyalty to the blood of martyrs and sacrifices of prisoners of war and will not compromise on its rights and values and sacred principles.

The group said in a statement on the 66th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba that "We will use resistance in all its forms, especially armed resistance that has proved to be able to deter the occupation and break his arrogance, and we will not deviate from this approach until our rights are fully realized and our achievement of liberation and return."

Hamas rejected any compromise on any inch of the land of Palestine or a portion of our holy places, and said "Jerusalem will remain the capital of the liberated state of Palestine , God willing, and will Al-Aqsa Mosque will remain purely Islamic and undivided."

It takes great effort to misinterpret these words. Unfortunately, NPR and many others will bend themselves into pretzels to figure out a way to do exactly that.

The irony is that it is this very intransigence and love of terror that causes there to be a real nakba, today and for the past 66 years.

(h/t Eli)

Mondoweiss repeats false Pope banner story

After this blog (with the help of Bob Knot) had already exposed and debunked the Arab rumor that Israeli authorities had demanded a Christian group remove a large banner welcoming the Pope to Jerusalem in order to avoid Jewish anger, Mondoweiss naturally reported the story without the context:

Here is some disturbing news from Israel, which calls itself the only democracy in the Middle East. Authorities in Jerusalem have asked Catholics to take down a banner featuring the Pope, lest it spur attacks ahead of the Pope’s visit May 25-26.

In the comments section (a technical glitch removed most of the comments but I have them cached) there was this exchange:

Zach S says:

May 13, 2014 at 4:43 pm

Actually the Israeli police asked the church to take it down because there are laws against hanging banners on archaeological sites:

Leave it Phil and Annie to immediately assume the worst.

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tree says:

May 14, 2014 at 6:05 am

According to your link, as well as Phil and Annie’s news link, unnamed “informed sources” are saying that the request was made by police because of fear of hate crimes. Your link goes on to say that, after the fact, an unnamed police source says that the request was made because of a legal ban on signs on “archaeological sites” and not because of fears of violence. (Is the Franciscan Christian Information Center even considered an “archaeological site”?) According to your link, the Catholic Church refused to remove the banner, something that seems unlikely if the banner was really a violation of municipal or state law. I suspect the “legal reasons” were concocted as an explanation for the request after the request became public. Note of course that it was a request, not a demand, which again, seems unlikely if the banner was in fact a violation of law.

The assumptions here are all yours, Zach. Phil and Annie were simply reporting on actual news.

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Shmuel says:

May 14, 2014 at 6:17 am

The assumptions here are all yours, Zach. Phil and Annie were simply reporting on actual news.

More like Elder of Ziyon’s assumptions (almost word for word, including the link to Roya News).

(A later commenter showed that the building is, in fact, of historical importance.)

So who is right - the Mondos or me? Is Israel trying to play down the Pope's visit to Jerusalem to avoid supposed friction with Jews?

Do you really have to ask?

Last month, during Easter week, this banner was put up in Jerusalem, with no reports of any issues:

Throughout Jerusalem, today, one can see signs like this:

And not only in English:

So if Israeli authorities are trying to pacify these alleged gangs of ultra-Orthodox Jews by removing posters welcoming the Pope, why are they putting up signs welcoming the pontiff themselves?

I'm sure the Mondo crowd will find some pilpul reason to keep themselves secure in the knowledge of unrestricted Israeli hate for all things non-Jewish.

(h/t RealJerusalemStreets for the photos)

(h/t Peter the Hungarian)

UPDATE: Much older joke than that, originally Israellycool.

Saudi writer says Palestinians have to accept reality

I have noted Abdulateef Al-Mulhim before with other straightforward, honest articles he has written for Arab News. Here he writes about "Nakba Day:"

[W]hat happened on May 14, 1948?

It was the day when the state of Israel emerged on the world map. Do we know the rest of the story? No. We don’t know the entire story because we are wont of dealing with events with emotions. One day after the United Nations mandate (May 15), a long and bloody conflict broke out and after the dust settled, the Arabs called it Nakba or the Day of Catastrophe. It was a defeat but the Arabs chose to call it a catastrophe. Many Palestinians were displaced from their homeland and were promised that they would return to their homes soon. Despite the passage of over six decades, the promise has yet to be delivered. The thousands of Palestinians who fled their homes have turned into millions.

The question now is what if those Palestinians had accepted the mandate and decided to live side by side with the Israelis? I ask the readers to please note that I am just asking a question. So, would the fate of the Palestinians be the same? The reason I am asking is that we read reports that the Palestinian refugees are not allowed fleeing the atrocities in Syria and seeking refuge in Lebanon. That is double the agony.

There are many facts that were not clear to the Palestinians on May 15, 1948. Many of them didn’t have to flee their homes. It is said that it was the Mufti (Hussini) who encouraged them to flee. At the end of the day, the Mufti wasn’t a popular figure in the West or in then USSR because of his stand on the Nazis. And yes, it is true that many Palestinians were attacked and murdered but on that day it was chaos and all sides were fighting each other. On that day, Israel didn’t have a fully organized IDF so they wanted to disarm the Irgun and when refused, the IDF attacked one of their ships. In other words there was havoc but the Palestinians could have had acted more wisely.

As time passed, the Palestinians were promised to return to their homes but 66 years later with many wars and loss of human lives, the conflict continues. Since May 15, 1948 till 1967, the Palestinians and all Arab nations insisted that either all lands or no peace. In the course, the Palestinians were used, abused and misled even by their own leaders. Palestinians’ agony became a moneymaking machine for some of the Palestinian elite. Many Arab and non-Arab countries extended financial aid but the average Palestinian received nothing from the aid. Many of the Palestinian leaders will not go to a nearby refugee camp in Syria or Lebanon to see the living standard but they travel thousands of miles to stay in the best hotels in foreign capitals.

Nowadays, the peace negotiations are at a standstill with no light at the end of the tunnel. And if the Palestinian refugee situation is not resolved then there will be no solution to this conflict. Let us get real and think straight. How can the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank accommodate the millions of Palestinians from the refugee camps? And even if full peace is achieved and the two-state solution is accepted, how are we going to relocate millions of refugees back to theirs’ or their grandfathers’ towns and villages? The Palestinian-Israeli conflict could have been resolved on May 15, 1948 by either accepting the United Nations mandate or by absorbing the thousands of Palestinian refugees into the Arab world. Tomorrow, it is May 15, 2014 and we are not only back to square one but we are far away from it. And finally, I tell the Palestinians, don’t fool yourself. No one has ever felt your pain. Just look at what some regimes in the Arab world are doing to their own people. If they don’t care about their own people’s pain, then what will make them care about your pain? In the past, the Palestinians had better chances for peace but they never read the fine prints or between the lines.

(h/t Herb G)

05/14 Links Pt2: My First Trip to Israel, a Light to Indigenous People; Israelis Create ‘Electronic Guide Dog’

From Ian:

My First Trip to Israel, a Light to Indigenous People

I had been asked to come to Israel by an organisation named Stand with Us and I was excited to see the land I have studied for so many years of my life.
Some of you have read my articles, you know that I am an indigenous rights activist from Canada who believes strongly in the rights of all indigenous peoples. What you may not know is that I am also pretty well versed in middle eastern history and geo politics. At least I thought I was.
I have always supported Israel's right to its ancestral lands, but after visiting Judeah, Samaria and Gush Etzion, I have become much more firm in my belief that these lands are sacrosanct and cannot be given up. These are the lands of the forefathers of your people, something that cannot be denied. I stood on the hills at Shiloh, I walked to the Lone tree at Gush Etzion, I walked the walls of Old Jerusalem, these are places that hold sacred spots in the hearts of many, both Christian and Jew, but they are Jewish to the core. If we do not support Jewish presence in the jewish ancestral lands why are you here? You would have been better off in Uganda.

The Spiritual Origins of Jew-Hatred

Far be it for me to suggest that the BDS movement has that distinctive Nazi like stench but forgive us for noticing that the “Final Solution” started off with a series of boycotts as well. Forgive me also for saying that once again you have it all backwards -what you believe to be ugly is in truth beautiful and perhaps worse, what you believe to be beautiful is actually evil.
I have news that you may not like to hear – we are not going anywhere and we are not going to just shut up and die. We’ve been at this for more than three millennium. Do you think that you’re stronger or more clever than Egyptians or the Romans or the Third Reich? No, we and our message are here to stay. In fact, we’ve been promised: “And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you, throughout the generations, an eternal covenant to be your God, and the God of your descendants after you.” (Genesis 17:7)‎
Mark Twain also wondered about this dynamic and wrote:
“The Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Persian, rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dreamstuff and passed away. The Greek and the Roman followed, made a vast noise and they are gone. Other peoples have sprung up, held their torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal, but the Jew. All other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

Stand With Us: What's Behind the 'Boycott Israel' Movement?

Simply put, BDS calls for the dissolution of the Jewish state. Consider one of its three demands: that Palestinian refugees of the 1948 War and all their descendants—who live in Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, Syria and Lebanon now numbering close to 5 million—have the “right to return” to Israel--not to the proposed new state of Palestine within agreed-upon borders, but to today’s Israel.
The result? Jews would become a minority in their own state.
Since 1948, the demand for "right of return" has been a euphemism for destroying the Jewish state. President Obama has said that the right of return “…would extinguish Israel as a Jewish state, and that is not an option.”
The people who advocate BDS are abetting a dangerous movement that opposes peaceful coexistence, masks the century-old Arab war against the Jewish state with new rhetoric, and promotes the destruction of the state of Israel in the name of social justice and human rights, values which BDS activists pervert beyond recognition.

The rate of women being murdered in the West Bank and Gaza has increased dramatically even over last year's high numbers.

In 2013, there were 27 women killed, which was double the number killed in 2012.

In less than five months this year, however, 18 women have been murdered - 13 in the West Bank and 5 in Gaza. At this rate, the number of women killed - usually under the excuse of "family honor" - may double again this year.

Last December, the Palestinian women's affairs minister blamed Israel for Arabs killing Arab women.

Fatah demands all Jews leave Israel

A graphic posted on the official Fatah Facebook page:

They aren't talking about Israeli Arabs, so the only people they are demanding to leave their homes are Jews.

And they nicely threaten to shoot them if they don't.

This is, after all, their "peace plan."

(h/t Palestinian Media Watch)

05/14 Links Pt1: Turkey Hosts UN Anti Israel Conference; Israel Offers Help for Turkey Mine Disaster

From Ian:

Michael Lumish: And Peace to You, Jimmy Baby

Some say that Jimmy Carter is an anti-Semite, although I have never drawn that conclusion. What I think is that Carter remains entrenched within the kind of left-leaning, soft-hearted, soft-minded, Vietnam War era sensibility that vilified western imperialism and romanticized anti-imperialist forces of any sort – however violent, however vile – so long as they represented “people of color.”
How else to explain Carter’s equanimity with Hamas’s articulated genocidal intentions? How else to explain that he honestly believes that murderous lunatics make for good negotiating partners?
I tell you what. I have a better idea. Instead of folding Hamas into the PLO – which, itself, is a terrorist organization, of course – why do we not defeat Hamas and thereby make them go away?
I know that wishing to actually defeat one’s mortal enemies is today considered dangerously hard-right radical, but I feel reasonably certain that Franklin Roosevelt approved of the notion.

Netanyahu: In Unity Deal, Abbas Would be Held Responsible for Gaza Rocket Attacks

Speaking ahead of meeting Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, in Tokyo, as part of a state visit, Netanyahu described the unity pact as “a turn for the worst” because “Hamas is committed to our destruction.” But he said, “We remain committed to advancing the peace, preferably a negotiated peace.”
“We can only negotiate with a government whose constituent parts are committed to peace. If President Abbas goes ahead with this national unity with Hamas, a terrorist organization that regularly fires rockets into Israel, then we’ll have to hold him accountable for every rocket that is fired from Gaza, to Israel,” he said. “We hope that this pact is dissolved and we can find a way to return to genuine negotiations with a genuine peace partner.”

Missile from Gaza fired at southern Israel

A missile alert went off in the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council before 7 a.m. Wednesday morning after a rocket was fired out of the Gaza Strip at southern Israel.
There were no reports of injuries or damage and security forces began searching for the impact site, apparently in an open area, Israel Radio reported.

Caroline Glick: Believing Obama on Iran

The malevolent slander of Israel’s actions and intentions is of course only the opening act in this new administration campaign to discredit Israel ahead of a nuclear deal with Iran. Speaking to The Washington Free Beacon, former Bush administration deputy national security advisor Elliott Abrams said he believes the administration will frame the issue “saying that it’s this deal or war.”
He’s doubtlessly correct. After all that what the administration did in November when it signed the interim deal and when it forced the Senate to mothball its sanctions bill against Iran.
The truth is that the choice isn’t between war and an agreement. It is between doing something to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power, or doing nothing to prevent that from happening. The administration has opted to do nothing. Unfortunately for the world, the price for doing nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is exponentially higher – in the cost of lives that would otherwise be saved – than the price of doing something.