Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, May 17, 2014

05/17 Links: Max Blumenthal Attracts Jew Haters of All Stripes; Soros buys SodaStream & Teva Shares

From Ian:

Max Blumenthal Attracts Jew Haters of All Stripes

Given Blumenthal’s own conduct, there is also every reason to assume that he fully agrees with the praise by a Stormfront member who declared that by exposing Israeli evils, “Max Blumenthal has done a great service for all of humanity here, and we WNS [i.e. white nationalists], and the rest of the world, ought to be grateful to him.”
Since the publication of my documentation in February, it has emerged that in addition to the sites I mentioned, Blumenthal’s writings were also posted on the neo-Nazi forum used by the arrested suspect in last month’s fatal Overland Park, Kansas, shootings. The shooter targeted Jewish institutions and reportedly shouted “Heil Hitler” when he was taken into custody. While the suspect’s interest in one of Blumenthal’s articles certainly doesn’t justify sinking to the level of Blumenthal himself – who tried to present the 2011 massacre in Norway as inspired by writers cited in the perpetrator’s deranged “manifesto” – William Jacobson rightly argues in a related blog post that the shocking attack in Kansas provides yet another illustration of “the intersection between neo-Nazi and anti-Zionist conspiracy theories.”
Moreover, given Blumenthal’s popularity on so many reactionary and anti-Semitic sites, it is utterly disingenuous when he now complains about being “smeared” with such racist associations only on the basis of the Kansas shooter’s interest in his work. With his relentless efforts to demonize Israel, Blumenthal has certainly done his part to show over and over again that supposedly left-wing “pro-Palestinian” activists and far-right reactionaries have no problem finding their lowest common denominator in their shared enthusiasm for anti-Semitic material.

The firebomb attack (you never heard about) on a bus of Jewish schoolgirls

There is plenty of news about Palestinian “protests” and the Israeli killing of two “protesters.”
But you never hear what those “protests” involve.
It’s not just holding signs and shouting. It’s often potentially lethal firebombing, as happened to this busload of Israeli girls on a Bat Miztvah visit to a Jewish holy site in Hebron. Hebron had one of the oldest continuous Jewish communities in the world until the Jews were driven out and massacred in 1929 during Arab riots. The return of Jews to Hebron is deemed a “settlement.”
You probably never heard about the firebombing of the bus. Neither had I, until I saw a tweet linking to this story at
an Israeli newspaper, Firebombs on Bat Mitzva Girls’ Bus, Only Arutz Sheva Reports It:

Mike Lumish: Obama Backed Boko Haram

Joel Gehrke of the Washington Examiner writes the following:

When congressional leaders asked the State Department to tailor American assistance to Nigeria in a way that would protect Christians from religious persecution at the hands of Boko Haram, an extremist group that kidnapped hundreds of Christian girls last month, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s team dismissed the idea on the theory that the organization was not motivated by religion.
“This religious tension, while real, should not be mistaken as the primary source of violence in Nigeria,” David Adams, assistant secretary of legislative affairs, wrote to Congress in an Oct. 4, 2012 letter. “Similar to the United States, Nigeria’s religious diversity is a source of strength, with communities working across religious lines to protect one another.”
In other words, as late as 2012 the Obama administration considered Boko Haram to be just another religious group that comprised the rich tapestry of spiritual life in Nigeria and that, as part of the splendid diversity of the country, it represented a source of strength.
Of course, not everyone agrees with this sunny assessment.

05/16 Links Pt2: Repulsive Guardian op-ed justifies Palestinian antisemitism; The summer of BDSFails

From Ian:

Repulsive Guardian op-ed justifies Palestinian antisemitism

Yesterday we posted on the results of a new international antisemitism poll by ADL, which demonstrated that Palestinians are the most antisemitic people among the 100 countries surveyed. We noted that Palestinians are even more antisemitic than citizens in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan and Iran.
It would seem that true anti-racists would have a pretty difficult time defending such views – as some of the tropes are indistinguishable from the notorious Czarist forgery, Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
To boot, a Guardian op-ed published today by pro-Palestinian activists Donna Nevel and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark begins with this headline and photo:
"Anti-Semitism should not be waved around like a propaganda tool"
The photo is surreal. An op-ed about antisemitism doesn’t depict Jews, but Palestinians, who, we are told, are denied their basic human rights.
It gets worse, much worse.

Hating the Jew you’ve never met

The question is put into sharp relief by the finding that fully 27% of people who have never met a Jew nevertheless harbor strong prejudices against him. Or, indeed, that a huge majority, 77%, of those who hate Jews have never met one. Even more starkly, the survey found an inverse relationship between the number of Jews in a country and the spread of anti-Semitic attitudes there. As a general rule, the fewer the Jews in a particular country, the more numerous the anti-Semites.
This should not surprise us. We already understood that anti-Semitism is skyrocketing in precisely those parts of the world where Jews fled from or perished in the last century, primarily the Middle East and Eastern Europe. But by giving numbers to these beliefs, the study allows us to think more carefully about the sources of the phenomenon. (h/t Bob Knot)

Can’t stop the rock: a summer of #BDSFails

The Rolling Stones. Neil Young. Justin Timberlake. Kansas. Jay Leno. All coming to Israel this summer.
How’s that BDS working out for you?
Since the incredible failure of the campaign to force Scarlett Johansson to quit SodaStream, the news has not been good for the Israel haters this year. After making a splash at the end of 2013 with the American Studies Association leadership being hijacked by anti-Israel, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists, 2014 has seen one major anti-BDS push back after another. From the viral campaigns supporting Neil Young and Scarlett Johansson to a cavalcade of statements from universities distancing themselves from the ASA statements, to anti-Israel resolutions failing at Michigan, UCLA and Loyola, 2014 has so far been a very positive time to be a pro-Israel activist – especially after the disappointments of 2013.

As part of the Hamas/Fatah attempt at unification, Hamas has agreed to help create a fund to pay compensation for "victims of the division."

Ismail Haniyeh, speaking at a mosque on Friday, said that it was agreed between Hamas and Fatah on the establishment of a national fund of around $60 million dollars to compensate the families of victims.

During the 2006 coup in Gaza and into 2007, over 600 Palestinian Arabs - many of them civilians - were killed by their fellow Arabs in Gaza. Hamas killed far more Fatah members than vice versa.

Some $5 million of this fund will be provided by Qatar.

Where will the rest of the money come from? It isn't like Hamas is rolling in dough.

So, they will probably steal it from other Gazans, one way or another.

A first person account from Avi Issacharoff at Times of Israel:

BEITUNIA, West Bank — I found myself seconds away from being beaten to death by a mob of Palestinian masked men during clashes in the West Bank town of Beitunia, north of Jerusalem, on Friday.

I’m not prone to exaggeration. It was a case of life and death, and I was within moments of falling victim to the kind of lynch that saw two Israeli soldiers who strayed into Ramallah in 2000 beaten to death by a baying mob.

I was saved by pure good fortune: Two plainclothes members of the Palestinian Authority security forces happened to be nearby and waded in to extricate me. I was already being hit and kicked from behind when they rescued me.

I’ve been covering the Palestinian territories for many years, and been in no shortage of sticky situations, but this came out of the blue. It was totally unexpected.

I was there to report on the Nakba Day protests with a cameraman colleague from Walla News. He was some distance from me when he was approached by several Palestinian journalists who told him to “Get out.”

I walked toward them, and told them that if they had a problem, they should be talking to me. One of the Palestinian journalists, a young woman, then called over to a group of masked men, who swiftly surrounded me and began attacking me.

Only the fact that those two PA security personnel happened to be there saved me. They extricated me and my colleague, and got us to safety. I dread to think what would have happened if they hadn’t been there.

Think about that. A Palestinian journalist works so closely with "a group of masked men" that she can just beckon them to beat an Israeli to death whenever she wants to.

She must write really objective news articles.

Any chance that the PA security forces have taken any action against her? Sorry, just a Friday afternoon joke.

UPDATE: A followup article by Issacharoff. (h/t JK)

Sometimes doing nothing is the best policy (Efraim Inbar)

From Prof. Efraim Inbar at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies:

Now that the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations have ended in failure, many political actors advocate taking advantage of the political limbo to advance their preferred unilateral plans. The Israeli political right-wing is promoting annexation of Area C, while the left-wing is advocating a “coordinated” (whatever that means) unilateral withdrawal. Government officials have spoken about the need for Israel to “do something.” Others suggest negotiating with the Quartet, instead of the Palestinians.

Activism is unquestionably a trait that is admired in Israel. Zionist-rooted rhetoric such as “we have to determine our borders and destiny on our own” indeed falls on receptive ears.

However, probably the wisest course of action for Israel is a patient and cautious “wait and see” approach. Resolving the conflict is impossible, but attempting to manage it in order to minimize suffering to both sides and to minimize the diplomatic costs to Israel – is within reach.

Kerry’s initiative has indeed ended in failure. But the sky has not fallen. There is no sense of alarm or fear of a great impending crisis, not in Israel nor in the region nor elsewhere in the world.

Real pressure on Israel to change the status quo is unlikely. The assumption that time is running against Israel is simply wrong. As a matter of fact, the Palestinian issue is likely to become less salient in the international arena over time.

After the Kerry debacle, Washington is left counting an additional foreign policy failure, trying to digest what happened and pondering on how to proceed. Its current instinct is to stay away from interventionist initiatives. The US, drained by two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) and blessed with new energy finds, does not want to get dragged into further conflicts in a Middle East that seems less central to its interests. So the Obama administration may be less inclined to intervene in the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict than ever before. Even if the US obsession with Palestinian statehood persists for some reason, it is still better for Israel to wait and learn Washington’s next moves before devising an adequate response.

Moreover, in light of America’s great importance to Israel, uncoordinated unilateral steps by Israel regarding the West Bank are not advisable. Israeli statements expressing a commitment to future peace negotiations, coupled with restraint in building beyond the settlement blocs, might be enough to keep America at bay and reluctant to intervene.

The US is also unlikely to be confronted with Arab pressure to focus on the Palestinian issue if Israel does not engage in drastic steps. The Arab world is undergoing a tremendously difficult economic and socio-political crisis and is busy dealing with domestic problems. Moreover, the Iranian nuclear threat continues to be the most urgent foreign policy issue, putting most Sunni states in the same strategic boat as Israel. Even the Palestinians do not take Arab lip service on their behalf seriously.

In all probability, most countries of the world can also live with an unresolved Palestinian issue. There are many simmering territorial conflicts all over the world. Nowadays, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine dominate the news. In the coming months and years, many human and political tragedies will divert attention away from the Palestinian issue.

Significantly, the Palestinians have no impact on truly important strategic issues such as nuclear proliferation or energy that might galvanize powerful states into action. Once, the Palestinians were an important actor in international terrorism. This is no longer true. Nowadays, Palestinians are very dependent upon international aid. Rocking the boat by using too much violence threatens the livelihood of Palestinians receiving the Palestinian Authority’s salaries and benefits, and risks Israel’s strong retaliation. Simply put, the Palestinians have only limited international leverage and are vulnerable to Israel’s potentially harmful countermeasures.

Moreover, the Palestinians have an excellent record of “shooting themselves in their own foot.” The unity agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas is the latest example of this.

Whatever some experts say, Israel is not isolated in the international community. Israel is a strong country, possessing a remarkable web of international interactions. Significantly, Israel’s relations with the world are only marginally affected by its conflict with the Palestinians.

The political actors most obsessed with the Palestinian issue, the Israeli political Left and the Europeans, are in decline. The Oslo process, with which the Israeli Left was associated, has failed, delegitimizing its initiators. The Eurozone is facing acute problems, further reducing its limited ability to be a true strategic actor. The ability of these weakened political actors to push the Palestinian issue to the top of the international agenda has become increasingly curtailed. Contemporary international circumstances could lead to further marginalization of the Palestinian issue.

Israelis, like many misguided Westerners, often succumb to counterproductive hyper-activism. Yet doing almost nothing might bring about better results than activating unilateral plans of all kinds.

I would add that the Palestinian Arabs and their supporters know all of this quite well. The entire reason that they have been relying on stunts rather than make substantive concessions for peace is because they are used to their stunts making international news. But people get tired of them. Abbas has threatened to quit time and time again, now everyone yawns. Threatening to join international groups is also more symbolic than real. So are prisoner hunger strikes, which received headlines once upon a time but are now ignored. The flotilla stunts have likewise run their course.

They'll come up with new ones, but in a world where more people are being killed in Syria every month than in the territories in several years, it is more and more difficult for Palestinian Arabs to get people worked up over their whining - except for their core of supporters, most of whom care far more about destroying Israel than in helping Palestinian Arabs.

The status quo isn't a solution, but if there is no solution, then managing the conflict is the next best thing until the PLO decides that it really wants a state and not a launching pad for attacking Israel. With the scheduled "unification" looming and Hamas joining the PLO, that is not going to happen in the foreseeable future.

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.)