Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, May 16, 2014

05/16 Links Pt1: Arabs: We Want Democracy - Like Israel; Erdogan shouts anti-Israeli slur at protester

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Arabs: We Want Democracy - Like Israel

The Tel Aviv District Court's decision to send former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to six years in prison for corruption has prompted calls in the Arab world for endorsing Israel's standards of accountability, transparency and justice.
Reacting to the sentencing of Olmert, many Arabs expressed hope that the day would come when their countries would learn from Israel that no one is above the law, even if he or she is a president or prime minister.
Sufian Abu Zayda, a leading Fatah official and former Palestinian Authority minister, praised the court verdict; he said it shows that in Israel, no one is above the law.
"This verdict provides further evidence that the judicial system in Israel is fully independent in the wake of the separation between the legislative, executive and judicial authorities, as well as total freedom of the media," said Abu Zayda, who is considered an expert on Israeli affairs.

Erdogan shouts anti-Israeli slur at protester: report

Turkey’s prime minister shouted an anti-Israel slur as he was mobbed by angry protesters at the site of a deadly mine blast this week, local media reported Friday.
“Why are you running away, Israeli spawn?” Recep Tayyip Erdogan is heard yelling at a protester in video footage circulated by the opposition Sozcu newspaper, using an expression considered a curse in Turkish.
In the footage that could not be authenticated, Erdogan is seen surrounded by angry protesters shouting and whistling at him as he visited the tragedy-hit town of Soma on Wednesday a day after the blast.

Gazan, West Bank farmers learn post-harvest storage techniques in Beit Dagan

The Palestinian farmers were participating in the final workshop of a five-day course in post-harvest techniques held at the Volcani Institute, within the Agriculture Ministry complex in Beit Dagan. Receiving funding from the Netherlands government, the course took place through a partnership among the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the Israeli Agriculture Ministry, Palestinian Authority growers’ associations and the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s MASHAV and CINADCO international cooperative development programs.
Their course is also part of a larger project already extended into its fourth year – Cash Crop Gaza and West Bank – funded by the Netherlands and implemented by the FAO, according to Hillel Adiri, senior technical marketing adviser at the FAO.

PLO send message to Pope filled with lies

The PLO Negotiating Affairs Department issued a communique on the occasion of "Nakba Day" emphasizing alleged Israeli crimes of 1948 and how they affected Christians.

This year, the Nakba commemoration comes at the same time that Palestine awaits the visit of H.H. Pope Francis. As H.H. arrives in Palestine, thousands of Palestinian Christians will be marking the beginning of their exile. Palestinian Christians, around 12% of the population of Palestine by 1948, were devastated by the Nakba, as entire communities were expelled from their historic homeland. To this day, Israel has yet to recognize its responsibility for the role it played in the creations and perpetuation of the Nakba..... Palestinians Christians, like all Palestinians, were devastated by the Nakba. We call on the Pope to support our efforts in realizing these fundamental Palestinian human rights.

That's funny, because to this day, the PLO refuses to recognize its own part in ensuring that Palestinian Arabs remain stateless and in misery today - by insisting that those who want to become citizens in the countries of their birth be denied that right, by insisting that Syrians of Palestinian descent are better off dead than giving up the "right of return," and by purposefully keeping tens of thousands of people in "refugee camps" even in territories that the PA controls!

The document says that there were 800,000 Palestinian Arabs who were displaced in by the war in 1948 - the real number is closer to 600,000.

The document claims that 254 were killed in Deir Yassin. The real number is 107.

The document claims that Plan Dalet was intended to depopulate Palestinian Arabs from the land. That is a lie.

And, of course, the document says nothing about how horribly Christians have been treated under Arab, including PA, rule, to the point of Christians leaving the area in droves. They claim that Israelis targeted churches in 1948 but say nothing about how their heroes targeted and destroyed scores of synagogues.

The fact is that the only places that were ethnically cleansed in 1948 were the Old City of Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza - cleansed of Jews. And that is how the PLO envisions their state as well, as being Judenfrei.

Someone ought to tell that to the Pope.

(h/t Missing Peace)

"Iran is already a nuclear threshold state"

From Ben Caspit in Al Monitor:

[W]hat Eilam said was seriously far-fetched, to the point of perhaps being completely cut off from reality. At 80, he has been away from the defense establishment for many years. He has not been privy to secrets nor has he been exposed to the intelligence material. When he releases such headlines, he must surely be aware of the immense damage they cause the ongoing Israeli and international effort to curb Iran.

Eilam pours a bucket of icy water on the whole affair, as if all the massive bunkers that were dug underneath Iran's mountains, the 19,000 centrifuges that have been installed and the global contraband industry engineered by the Iranians aimed at importing the necessary equipment and technology, are nothing but a figment of the imagination. The same goes for the hundreds of kilograms of medium-grade enriched uranium, the thousands of kilograms of low-grade enriched uranium and the billions of dollars invested in research and development. And that's not all: There is the heavy water reactor in Arak as well as decades-old infrastructure that cost tens of billions of dollars. Are all these things a hallucination, a phantasm in Netanyahu's mind, a Zionist public relations stunt?

Why would the Iranians do that? For no reason; they're bored, says Eilam. Or maybe it's because they want to intimidate us.

Well, for your information, Eilam, the Americans, the Europeans and many other intelligence agencies around the world all share the Israeli assessment. The most optimistic among them believe Iran is about 18 months away from nuclear capability. Quite a few professionals maintain that Iran can already be deemed a nuclear "threshold" state, which is why it seeks to placate its relations with the West, to revive its economy and then press on.

A very high-ranking Israeli official told me earlier this week that Iran has already reached what is known in Israel as the "nuclear threshold sphere." Its goal for the permanent status agreement, which might be brokered with the world powers, is to "consolidate itself in the sphere of that threshold."

"The fact remains," he said, "that they insist on pursuing uninhibited research and development. It won’t be long before they are able to manufacture far more cutting-edge centrifuges than what they currently have, which will shorten the timetable and the dates."

In reply to my question as to how long it will take Iran to break from the nuclear threshold sphere to a bomb, the official said: "Two [to] three months." The Iranians have reached advanced levels of research and development. They are able to enrich uranium faster than ever. They can skip from low-grade enrichment to military grade within a matter of weeks, thanks to their large number of top-notch centrifuges.

I am assuming that Eilam bases his rosy estimate on the fact that Iran has yet to complete its work on "weaponization" and is still unable to take a nuclear bomb, reduce its size and have it mounted on a missile.

Even if true, it's of no significance. The Iranians can wait for an opportune moment and then break toward a bomb. And suddenly — with the world off-guard — they can carry out a nuclear test. From that moment on, Iran would be a nuclear state — with or without a deliverable missile. The same thing happened with North Korea, Pakistan and other countries. This could very well be the case with Iran, too — not in 10 years, but 10 months.

Even if we adopt the assumption that they will not have nuclear warheads that can be mounted on missiles, they still have fighter aircraft. And there's no air force in the world, not even Israel, which can provide a foolproof guarantee to completely foil the penetration of many, or even just a few, fighter aircraft.

The Israeli leadership has been working hard, indeed, since the previous century, to convince the world of Iran's true intentions. We paid in blood, sweat and tears. The claim that Israel forged Iran's nuclear project cannot even be dismissed as childish.

There isn't a single respectable intelligence agency in the world today that is not on the same page, in almost perfect synch, with the Israeli Mossad. The centrifuges are not spinning in the feverish minds of this or that spy. They are spinning in the many installations — some of which are secret — that have been unveiled in Iran. Everything is based on evidence on the ground, ongoing inspections and visits by the International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as on existing, photographed and known sites, some of which remain until this moment locked and barricaded and some of which are under supervision.

The UN even adds anti-Israel language to a fishing protection initiative

From CBCNews:

A United Nations-sponsored proposal to protect and promote small-scale fisheries has run into a problem, with Canada emerging as the lone dissenting voice in a dispute that may have a connection to policy on the Middle East.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had nearly unanimous support among 98 countries for guidelines to protect family-run, independent fleets that seek access to species in an increasingly industrialized fishery.

But Canada is at odds with other nations, because of a wording change that calls for the protection of fishermen "in situations of occupation," meaning any occupied territory or region.

Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs objects to the wording change.

While the Israeli-Palestinian situation is not specifically mentioned in the addition made by Mauritania, a Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson called the amendment a needlessly political move, and Canada thus will not support it. [Mauritania shares a border with Western Sahara, which is in dispute with neighbouring Morocco.]

Christian Brun, director of the Maritime Fishermen's Union, agrees the amendment is provocative, but still wants Canada to approve the deal for the sake of small fishing fleets.

"This is just a principled issue," he said.

"They can make their point somewhere else ... because what is at risk here is that the document might just not exist at all."

The full text can be found here.

Some details on the dispute from last February indicates that it was indeed the Arab nations that added the wording, and refused to remove it:

The main reservation of the Canadian delegation was the "Politically Sensitiveness" of the issue. There were several compromise texts were proposed by USA, Ecuador and Argentinian delegations which did not acceptable to either Canadian delegation or many of the Arab World delegations alternately. Finally, the proposed two texts were bracketed and decided to send to 31st COFI session which will be held in July 2014.

The people behind this proposal are frustrated that this issue to protect family fishing enterprise, that they feel passionately about, is being politicized and is endangered because of Canada's principled stand. The pressure on Canada to overlook the anti-Israel paragraph for the "better good" must be enormous.

It is interesting that Canada alone is objecting to this clearly anti-Israel addition to the text, and not the US.

(h/t Manny)

"Arabs recognizing Israel would mean suicide for the Arab cause"

An op-ed in Moheet by Mohammed Saif Eldawla describes Israel's historic claims on Israel and why Arabs can never accept it.

As he describes it, the Israeli narrative goes like this:

1) Israel is the land of the Jews

2) Arabs invaded from Arabia

3) The Islamic Arabs have been illegally living in Palestine for 1400 years.

4) Zionism is a national liberation movement meant for liberating their land from Arab settler colonialism.

5) the current state of Israel is the only legitimate state built on this land for thousands of years.

This alarms him, because not only does that (pretty accurate) narrative destroy Palestinian Arab nationalism, but Arab nationalism itself!

If the Arab presence in Palestine in 1948 is illegal, the current Arab presence in the West Bank and Gaza is also illegal, they are all the land of the Jews which should be freed sooner or later, when the balance of power and international and regional circumstances allow them to do so.

It also means that the Arab presence in Egypt and the Levant, Iraq and the rest of the region is illegal, since the invasion of the Arab Islamic of other people's lands, and that these peoples will recover their homelands sooner or later, when the balance of power and international and regional circumstances allow them to do so.

The recognition of Israel in this sense is a particular suicide.

What is interesting is that Eldola doesn't try to deny this narrative, because...it is entirely true! Arabs are colonizers and have been since the seventh century. Now, his conclusions based on that are a bit silly - there aren't too many Babylonians around to reclaim their ancestral homeland - but the facts are unassailable.

The Arabs know this, but they know they can't admit it aloud, because that would cause them to admit that everything they hate about the West applies to them far better..

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.

Log in to Reply

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)