Sunday, June 08, 2014
Elder of Ziyon
Those travelers who visited Palestine in the 19th century must have all been Zionist extremists.
Sunday, June 08, 2014
From Ian:
Europe is still sleeping
Europe is still sleeping
So it's a two-headed monster. On the one hand Islamic funding, on the other hand European funding. The goals are allegedly different, but there is one direction. There are those in Europe who think that turning Israel into a monster we'll exempt them from the rage of jihad. Even EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton once compared between the murder of Jews in Toulouse and what Israel does in Gaza. So terror receives justification.David Singer: "The world has been duped into the use of language that reflects fiction – not fact"
Ashton and others are finding it difficult to understand that Israel is not the global jihad's target. The target is the free world. The jihad representatives say so. Europe refuses to listen. It continues to fund bodies which are part of the red-green coalition of the far left and jihad.
Mehdi Nemmouche is another product among many of the same coalition. The result of incitement and propaganda against Jews, against Israel, against Europe, against the free world. But Europe is still sleeping.
Australia's decision to call a spade a spade will hopefully encourage other countries to follow suit – as well as implementing international action to make some further changes in the duplicitous diplomatic double speak involving the use of misleading and deceptive language which has hindered rather than facilitated any resolution of the conflict.PA to seek wider Arab reprisal against Australia
These changes include:
1. Replacing the term "occupied territories" with the term "disputed territories" to clarify that Jews also have legal rights in these territories in addition to those claimed by the Arabs.
2. Using the 3000 years old term "Judea and Samaria" to replace the term "West Bank" – first coined by Jordan in 1950 to erase any trace of Jews having lived there after having been driven out by the invading Jordanian army in 1948.
3. Substituting "Palestinian Arabs" for "Palestinians" and "Palestinian people" – terms first appearing in the 1964 PLO Charter that excluded former Jewish and other non-Arab residents and their descendants having any rights.
4. Referring to the conflict as the "Jewish-Arab conflict" – which commenced in about 1880 instead of the "Palestinian-Israeli " conflict – which only commenced in 1948.
5. Omitting any reference to the term "State of Palestine" until the provisions of the Montevideo Convention 1934 are complied with.
The world has been duped into the use of language that reflects fiction – not fact. Used often enough it takes on a highly damaging life of its own.
Erasing such language from the international lexicon is long overdue.
The world's nations need to awaken from their fiction-induced slumber.
The Palestinian Authority intends to lobby Arab and Muslim countries to reevaluate relations with Australia after Canberra announced last week that it would stop referring to East Jerusalem as “occupied” territory, a senior PA official wrote in a letter to Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
“Palestine will request that the Arab League and the Islamic Conference [Organization of Islamic Cooperation] review the relations of the Arab and Islamic world with Australia in light of Australia’s unlawful recognition of the illegal settlement regime in occupied Palestine,” Saeb Erekat wrote in the letter, dated June 5.
On Thursday, Australia’s Attorney General George Brandis explained that using the word “occupied” was judgmental and did not contribute to the dialogue about the contested area. (h/t Bob Knot)
Sunday, June 08, 2014
Elder of Ziyon
lumish
Michael Lumish, of the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under, continues his weekly column here at EoZ.
In a recent piece for the Wall Street Journal we read this:
What can one say?
Not only is the United States government paying for the privilege of helping Jihadis kill Jews, but even Jewish "progressives" are going along with it because they seem incapable of removing their ideological blinders. I am convinced that if Barack Obama came on stage before a live international audience and sang Hatikva while pissing on an Israeli flag and kicking a Holocaust survivor in the head as part of a fun-loving interpretive dance, his American Jewish sycophants would still wonder to themselves how it is that we fail to support the guy.
Western Left diaspora Jews have simply got to face the fact that the Obama government is generally supportive of political Islam. {Period. Full stop.} I understand that your average reader of the Elder of Ziyon already knows that, but therein lies the problem. Political partisanship and ideological intransigence are disallowing great numbers of diaspora Jews from seeing what is before their very eyes.
If diaspora Jewry would simply wrap their brains around this basic concept, and acknowledge what it means, it would go a long way to healing the divisions within our community.
What it means is this:
Islam, as a political movement, is driving Christians out of the Middle East entirely, with the sole exception of Israel. Islam, as a political movement, hangs Gay people from cranes in Iran. Islam, as a political movement, shoves women into potato sacks and tells them it is Allah's love. And Islam, as a political movement, calls for the murder of Jews wherever we may be found.
And this is what the Obama administration supports?
It is simply unfathomable that year after year, as the Obama administration bolstered the misnamed "Arab Spring" - which was, in fact, the rise of political Islam - our more naive progressive-left Jewish interlocutors kept telling us that Obama does not support political Islam even as he sent money and heavy weaponry to the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of both Hamas and al-Qaeda.
How ideologically blinkered one must be, at this late date, to still not grasp the simple fact the president of the United States has no real problem with the rise of political Islam throughout the world and, as part of the historical record, encouraged it?
I have never in my life seen such determined and persistent political myopia.
In a May 19, 2011 speech billed as Obama's address to the "Arab World" following the widespread violence and rapes and riots and persecution of Christians throughout the region, he tells us.
And, make no mistake, supporting Hamas is a harm to the Jewish people everywhere.
The only real questions are why? Why does Obama support political Islam while claiming to be opposed to al-Qaeda, as if al-Qaeda was the end-all and be-all of the movement to advance Sharia? And why is it that western progressives, and western progressive Jews, go along with it and deny what should be absolutely obvious to any concerned observer?
Some people believe that Obama supports political Islam because he is a crypto-Muslim, but I do not think so. The man is a Christian with Muslim influences from his childhood. If I was bigoted against African-American Christians with an Islamic heritage I would never have voted for the guy to begin with... yet I did.
{Go figure.}
The fact is, we cannot fight, or in any meaningful way, oppose Islam because Islam is 1.5 BILLION people. And that, my friends, is a whole lot of people, which is precisely why they are winning the propaganda war in the west. There cannot be enough hasbara in the world to counter the expression of the political tastes of 1.5 billion people. From a practical aspect we cannot win such a fight and I do not even know what "winning" against Islam could possibly look like. Whatever it might look like it would not be the least bit pleasant and the whole notion, promoted by some, that we must oppose Islam, in general, is a terrifically bad idea.
The reason that it is a terrifically bad idea is because it simply cannot succeed and any effort to do so would obviously alienate the kinds of secular Muslims that we need to cultivate and befriend. There are 13 million Jews and something close to 1.5 billion Muslims in the world.
I have played a few poker hands in my life. Who would you bet on?
Some people think that Barack Obama wants to harm America's standing in the world. They think that he is a crypto-socialist subversive who wants to take the United States down a peg or two, but that is not true, either. Any actual socialist, that is, anyone who honestly believes in a people's revolution for the purpose of claiming the means of production for the workers, would deny that Obama is one of them.
The bottom line, however, is that American Jewry is in a tough spot.
If we stand up against Barack Obama - as I very definitely learned first hand - it means that in the eyes of many American Jews we must be extremists. It is unfathomable to the majority of diaspora Jews how any of us could not support the political left. In fact, this very question of political allegiance is one of the great questions in debate within the international Jewish community today and for the first time in a very long time.
I take that to be a good thing. For the first time since before the New Deal, American Jews are beginning to question their political allegiances. It is a long and slow process, for sure, but from anecdotal evidence, at least, it seems to be happening.
Norman Podhoretz had his finger on the pulse when he wondered how it is that so many diaspora Jews are liberal? The term "liberal" in this case is an American usage that does not really apply. Secular Jews are almost to a person "liberal" in the sense that we believe in a free press, support democracy, and oppose the kind of fascist authoritarianism characteristic of, say, ohhh, Sharia. David Horowitz, for example, is unquestionably a liberal. I, myself, am undeniably a liberal as are the Jews within most of the diaspora left who oppose my positions.
This is thereby an argument within the diaspora liberal community and it is an argument that can turn ugly.
As for just why it is that Obama's Jewish supporters cannot bring themselves to actually acknowledge that which is before their very noses, I have no definitive answer. My suspicion is that ideological intransigence, buttressed by social imperatives, are largely the culprits. I grew up in a Democratic home and I doubt that my father even met an adult who had not voted for Franklin Roosevelt until he went into the army. Growing up in the post-Vietnam War era almost everyone that I knew leaned to the left and it was almost universally understood that Republicans are one of two types, either the rich, white, northern, Anglo, snobbish, elite, i.e., "Rockefeller Republicans" or that other kind from the Deep South.
If we disliked northern Republicans or, say, "Blue State Republicans" - of which there seem to be less and less these days - then we absolutely loathed and feared "Red State Republicans." Evangelical Christians are among the very best friends that Israel has on this planet and we damn well better keep that in mind going forward, yet progressive-left diaspora Jews absolutely despise those people, the Christian people of the American heartland.
Melanie Phillips has a recent piece in Commentary entitled, 'Jesus Was a Palestinian': The Return of Christian Anti-Semitism, in which she makes the case that Israel is beginning to bleed American Evangelical support due to the concerted propaganda efforts and outreach of the Arab-Muslim world, particularly those Arab Christians who agree with Arab Muslims that Palestinian Jews are the Devil, and who coordinate with the "liberal" protestant sects, such as the Presbyterian Church.
Israel needs all the supporters and partners that it can get and western Jews need to know who their friends are and who they are not. What could not be more clear is that western Jewry has turned its back on the Evangelicals, who are among the most important supporters of the Jewish State of Israel in this world, while embracing an American president who is eager to fund Hamas.
We have to begin by acknowledging the obvious and, in these circumstances, the obvious, while horrifying, is easily acknowledgeable... at least, for some of us.
In a recent piece for the Wall Street Journal we read this:
Oh, joy.
The 1988 Hamas Charter explicitly commits the Palestinian terror group to murdering Jews. Thanks to the formation this week of an interim government uniting Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which the U.S. supports to the tune of more than $400 million a year, the American taxpayer may soon become an indirect party to that enterprise.
What can one say?
Not only is the United States government paying for the privilege of helping Jihadis kill Jews, but even Jewish "progressives" are going along with it because they seem incapable of removing their ideological blinders. I am convinced that if Barack Obama came on stage before a live international audience and sang Hatikva while pissing on an Israeli flag and kicking a Holocaust survivor in the head as part of a fun-loving interpretive dance, his American Jewish sycophants would still wonder to themselves how it is that we fail to support the guy.
Western Left diaspora Jews have simply got to face the fact that the Obama government is generally supportive of political Islam. {Period. Full stop.} I understand that your average reader of the Elder of Ziyon already knows that, but therein lies the problem. Political partisanship and ideological intransigence are disallowing great numbers of diaspora Jews from seeing what is before their very eyes.
If diaspora Jewry would simply wrap their brains around this basic concept, and acknowledge what it means, it would go a long way to healing the divisions within our community.
What it means is this:
Islam, as a political movement, is driving Christians out of the Middle East entirely, with the sole exception of Israel. Islam, as a political movement, hangs Gay people from cranes in Iran. Islam, as a political movement, shoves women into potato sacks and tells them it is Allah's love. And Islam, as a political movement, calls for the murder of Jews wherever we may be found.
And this is what the Obama administration supports?
It is simply unfathomable that year after year, as the Obama administration bolstered the misnamed "Arab Spring" - which was, in fact, the rise of political Islam - our more naive progressive-left Jewish interlocutors kept telling us that Obama does not support political Islam even as he sent money and heavy weaponry to the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of both Hamas and al-Qaeda.
How ideologically blinkered one must be, at this late date, to still not grasp the simple fact the president of the United States has no real problem with the rise of political Islam throughout the world and, as part of the historical record, encouraged it?I have never in my life seen such determined and persistent political myopia.
In a May 19, 2011 speech billed as Obama's address to the "Arab World" following the widespread violence and rapes and riots and persecution of Christians throughout the region, he tells us.
There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat.The "Arab Spring" was the rise of political Islam in the Middle East and this is what Obama compares the Civil Rights Movement to? How is that for a kick in the head to Martin Luther King, Jr.? The irony is profound and deep. We have a president of the United States who would certainly not be the president of the United States were it not for the concerted effort of millions of Americans since the rise of Abolitionism. This is an American president who came out of the progressive-left, which, itself owes much to the New Deal and to American socialism from the nineteenth century. Yet he supports the most vicious and international and repressive political movement in the world today and receives applause from the very people that he harms.
And, make no mistake, supporting Hamas is a harm to the Jewish people everywhere.
The only real questions are why? Why does Obama support political Islam while claiming to be opposed to al-Qaeda, as if al-Qaeda was the end-all and be-all of the movement to advance Sharia? And why is it that western progressives, and western progressive Jews, go along with it and deny what should be absolutely obvious to any concerned observer?
Some people believe that Obama supports political Islam because he is a crypto-Muslim, but I do not think so. The man is a Christian with Muslim influences from his childhood. If I was bigoted against African-American Christians with an Islamic heritage I would never have voted for the guy to begin with... yet I did.
{Go figure.}
The fact is, we cannot fight, or in any meaningful way, oppose Islam because Islam is 1.5 BILLION people. And that, my friends, is a whole lot of people, which is precisely why they are winning the propaganda war in the west. There cannot be enough hasbara in the world to counter the expression of the political tastes of 1.5 billion people. From a practical aspect we cannot win such a fight and I do not even know what "winning" against Islam could possibly look like. Whatever it might look like it would not be the least bit pleasant and the whole notion, promoted by some, that we must oppose Islam, in general, is a terrifically bad idea.
The reason that it is a terrifically bad idea is because it simply cannot succeed and any effort to do so would obviously alienate the kinds of secular Muslims that we need to cultivate and befriend. There are 13 million Jews and something close to 1.5 billion Muslims in the world.
I have played a few poker hands in my life. Who would you bet on?
Some people think that Barack Obama wants to harm America's standing in the world. They think that he is a crypto-socialist subversive who wants to take the United States down a peg or two, but that is not true, either. Any actual socialist, that is, anyone who honestly believes in a people's revolution for the purpose of claiming the means of production for the workers, would deny that Obama is one of them.
The bottom line, however, is that American Jewry is in a tough spot.
If we stand up against Barack Obama - as I very definitely learned first hand - it means that in the eyes of many American Jews we must be extremists. It is unfathomable to the majority of diaspora Jews how any of us could not support the political left. In fact, this very question of political allegiance is one of the great questions in debate within the international Jewish community today and for the first time in a very long time.
I take that to be a good thing. For the first time since before the New Deal, American Jews are beginning to question their political allegiances. It is a long and slow process, for sure, but from anecdotal evidence, at least, it seems to be happening.
Norman Podhoretz had his finger on the pulse when he wondered how it is that so many diaspora Jews are liberal? The term "liberal" in this case is an American usage that does not really apply. Secular Jews are almost to a person "liberal" in the sense that we believe in a free press, support democracy, and oppose the kind of fascist authoritarianism characteristic of, say, ohhh, Sharia. David Horowitz, for example, is unquestionably a liberal. I, myself, am undeniably a liberal as are the Jews within most of the diaspora left who oppose my positions.This is thereby an argument within the diaspora liberal community and it is an argument that can turn ugly.
As for just why it is that Obama's Jewish supporters cannot bring themselves to actually acknowledge that which is before their very noses, I have no definitive answer. My suspicion is that ideological intransigence, buttressed by social imperatives, are largely the culprits. I grew up in a Democratic home and I doubt that my father even met an adult who had not voted for Franklin Roosevelt until he went into the army. Growing up in the post-Vietnam War era almost everyone that I knew leaned to the left and it was almost universally understood that Republicans are one of two types, either the rich, white, northern, Anglo, snobbish, elite, i.e., "Rockefeller Republicans" or that other kind from the Deep South.
If we disliked northern Republicans or, say, "Blue State Republicans" - of which there seem to be less and less these days - then we absolutely loathed and feared "Red State Republicans." Evangelical Christians are among the very best friends that Israel has on this planet and we damn well better keep that in mind going forward, yet progressive-left diaspora Jews absolutely despise those people, the Christian people of the American heartland.
Melanie Phillips has a recent piece in Commentary entitled, 'Jesus Was a Palestinian': The Return of Christian Anti-Semitism, in which she makes the case that Israel is beginning to bleed American Evangelical support due to the concerted propaganda efforts and outreach of the Arab-Muslim world, particularly those Arab Christians who agree with Arab Muslims that Palestinian Jews are the Devil, and who coordinate with the "liberal" protestant sects, such as the Presbyterian Church.
Israel needs all the supporters and partners that it can get and western Jews need to know who their friends are and who they are not. What could not be more clear is that western Jewry has turned its back on the Evangelicals, who are among the most important supporters of the Jewish State of Israel in this world, while embracing an American president who is eager to fund Hamas.
We have to begin by acknowledging the obvious and, in these circumstances, the obvious, while horrifying, is easily acknowledgeable... at least, for some of us.
- Sunday, June 08, 2014
- Elder of Ziyon
Ma'an reports:
Also, there are reports today that Hamas attacked the Office of the Central Committee of Fatah Commissioner Dr. Zakaria al-Agha in Gaza City, and beat some of the staff.
Sources said that Hamas broke into the office Agha's office and expelled all workers and shut down the office, demanding their salaries by the Government of National Reconciliation.
Other reports said that the members of the Hamas police beat a female member of the Arab Socialist Baath Party and member of the General Union of Palestinian Women unconscious, while she tried to enter a bank in Gaza City.
If 50,000 Hamas employees aren't being paid, that is a recipe for another civil war in Gaza. Look for Abbas to beg Gulf countries to pay these salaries in the next week or two.Banks in the Gaza Strip remained closed Sunday morning as a financial crisis which began Wednesday evening threatened to undermine confidence in the newly-formed Palestinian unity government.
Employees of the formerly Hamas-run government in the Gaza Strip have insisted that they should receive their salaries from the new reconciliation government, and local police deployed around banks and ATMs again Sunday to prevent PA employees related to the new unity government from receiving their salaries until a solution is reached.
Hamas and Fatah, it seems, had neglected to reach an agreement on whether the newly-formed unity government would take over paying the 50,000 employees, including security officers, who were employed by the Hamas-run government that was in power in Gaza since the beginning of the political division in 2007.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday that the financial crisis -- which he blamed on Hamas -- was "unacceptable."
The crisis began on Wednesday, when Gaza-based Palestinian Authority public sector employees went to withdraw their salaries from ATM machines but were prevented from doing so by security officers of the formerly Hamas-run government.
On Thursday morning, banks were unable to operate after Hamas' security forces deployed around them in protest against the unity government's failure to pay the salaries of Gaza employees who had been hired by the formerly Hamas-run government.
When banks tried to open on Sunday morning after the Friday-Saturday weekend, officers of the former Hamas government refused to allow banks to operate because they still had not been paid their monthly wages by the unity government.
Also, there are reports today that Hamas attacked the Office of the Central Committee of Fatah Commissioner Dr. Zakaria al-Agha in Gaza City, and beat some of the staff.
Sources said that Hamas broke into the office Agha's office and expelled all workers and shut down the office, demanding their salaries by the Government of National Reconciliation.
- Sunday, June 08, 2014
- Elder of Ziyon
We have previously discussed Mohammed Dajani, the leader of the tiny Palestinian Wasatia party, who is essentially the only Palestinian Arab moderate enough to publicly endorse a statement drafted by an Israeli liberal giving Jews and Arabs completely equal rights to live in the territory of British Mandate Palestine.
Dajani is also the person who visited Auschwitz with some of his students to withering criticism from his fellow Palestinian Arabs.
It looks like he has resigned from his job over that episode:
Dajani is also the person who visited Auschwitz with some of his students to withering criticism from his fellow Palestinian Arabs.
It looks like he has resigned from his job over that episode:
Dajani spoke at a peace forum in Israel last month, in English. The entire video is here.Mohammed Dajani, the Al-Quds University professor who received plaudits and threats earlier this year after leading the first organized group of Palestinian university students to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, has resigned from the university after weeks of mounting pressure.
He heads the Department of American Studies and is the director of the Al-Quds University Library, which has just moved into an impressive new building.
Professor Dajani told Haaretz he felt he had no choice after the university authorities refused to back up their private assurances with a display of public support after what he described as a campaign of “incitement” against him from some members of the university faculty.
Following the Auschwitz trip, Dajani was denounced as a “traitor” and “collaborator” by Palestinian critics and expelled from a university staff union. He says it is important for Palestinians to understand their “enemy” – the Israelis – including the role the Holocaust plays in shaping Israeli policy and consciousness.
Dajani submitted a letter of resignation on May 18, hoping the university authorities would reject it and denounce the campaign against him. Instead, he received a response from the university personnel department that his resignation would take effect on June 1.
“I wanted the president of the university to take a stand by not accepting my resignation and in doing so to send a clear and loud message to the university employees and students, and in general, to the Palestinian community, that the university supports academic freedom and considers my trip as an educational journey in search of knowledge by which I broke no university policy, rules, or regulations,” Dajani said.
“Some may consider my letter of resignation from Al-Quds University as a kind of ‘surrender’ to those opposed to academic freedom and freedom of action and of expression. I don’t,” he said. “In submitting my resignation, I feel I took the battle to a higher level. My letter of resignation from Al-Quds University was a kind of litmus test to see whether the university administration supports academic freedom and freedom of action and of expression as they claim or not.”
Dajanai said he decided to resign after his students were told that university officials had played an active part in the campaign against him, including his expulsion from the staff union – an organization he never joined in the first place. He was also dismayed that in its only official response to the trip, the university tried to distance itself from their professor, claiming he was "on leave" and acting "in a personal capacity."
In May, Dajani met with Prof Sari Nusseibeh, the outgoing university president, and Dr Imad Abu Kishek, the incoming president, who assured him privately that they were committed to academic freedom at Al-Quds, that he had broken no university rules in taking his students to Auschwitz and that none of the university’s leadership supported the campaign to oust him from the university. Dajani says he decided to test their resolve by submitting his resignation so they could reject it and give him their public backing – but they didn’t come through.
- Sunday, June 08, 2014
- Elder of Ziyon
From Tarud's Blog (Norwegian):
By the way, here's an 11th reason:
(h/t Spiker's Corner)
How many lies it is possible to get in a single short story? The Palestinians and their friends in Norway have long ago lost any shame in lying about Israel. And the competition is fierce between "friends of Palestine" in Norway about who can find more imaginative liars.
Norwegian People's Aid is one of the organizations that have positioned itself at the forefront in the fight for demonization of Israel. On April 28th 2014 the Chairman of Norwegian People's Aid, Finn Erik Thorsen, held a lecture in Molde. According to one of the spectators at the lecture, Thorsen, who regards himself as a "Palestine expert," told horror stories about "Zionists and the Jewish state that is controlled by the Russian mafia."
One of the most colorful stories was about red roof tiles. He showed a picture of a [settlement] house with red roof tiles and asked a rhetorical question: "Do you know why Palestinians are not allowed to use red roof tiles on their houses in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), and only the (Jewish) settlements use such roof tiles?" And the answer was: "It will be easier for the Israeli bombers to identify Palestinian houses when they bomb them, while they avoid hitting the Jewish houses."
The natural reaction for those who do not know the situation in Judea and Samaria must be one of shock and anger: Poor Palestinians, this sounds pretty awful, does it not? But the correct question should be: how many lies can you find in this tiny anecdote? Here's a list:
1 Most Palestinians in Judea and Samaria live in areas A and B under control of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA has full responsibility for zoning and import of building materials, including the type of roof tiles that can be used. There are no Palestinian regulations that prohibit the use of red roof tiles.
2 Israel has no laws or regulations that prohibit the use of red roof tiles in Area C which is under Israeli control. This means that both Arabs and Jews who build in this area can use red roof tiles in their houses, if they want to.
3 Red roof tiles on houses in a neighboring village can not possibly help a pilot of a bomber to hit its target. It would have been more logical if the target was colored red.
4 Israeli aircraft does not bomb houses in Judea and Samaria.
5 The Israeli air force is regarded as one of the best in the world. Israeli aircraft use precision weapons that can hit its target with great accuracy both day and night, and is completely independent of the color of the house or on the roof tiles.
6 The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) do not attack civilian buildings. Houses used by terrorists are not protected by the Geneva Convention and can be considered military targets.
7 Red roof tiles are traditionally used in many countries of the world including Israel and Norway . I can not find any evidence to suggest that in some countries the red roof tiles help selection of military targets, or to distinguish military from civilian buildings.
8 The main reason that most Palestinian houses do not have red roof tiles is that they do not tile their roofs at all. The traditional Arab architecture in the area includes a solarium that can be used for different purposes.
9 A number of houses built in recent years in Arab settlements in Israel, Judea and Samaria, have red tiles.
Apparently, it is even easier to lie about Israel in Norwegian than it is in English. I don't think even Mondoweiss or Electronic Intifada are idiotic enough to make this claim - but the head of this Norwegian NGO can spout such stupidity with impunity.
10 Many houses in Jewish towns and villages have a rooftop terrace, or use tiles with a different color than red.
By the way, here's an 11th reason:
The first neighborhood outside of the Old City of Jersualem, called Mishkenot Sha’ananim (“Tranquil Dwellings”), was built in 1860 by the wealthy Jewish philanthropist Moses Montefiore. Influenced by Mediterranean architecture, Montefiore designed the settlement of terraced row houses with red roof tiles. Since then, this style of construction - terraced house with red-tiled roof - has became a prototype for Jewish residences all over Israel.
(h/t Spiker's Corner)
Saturday, June 07, 2014
- Saturday, June 07, 2014
- Ian
From Ian:
J Street: Anti-Israel, Pro-Lying
J Street: Anti-Israel, Pro-Lying
The liberal fringe group J Street is facing renewed questions over its purported dishonesty to journalists and editors after one of its top campus officials penned an op-ed that was so thoroughly riddled with factual errors that a leading Israeli publication was forced to delete the piece and apologize.MAEL: Unpacking J Street's 'Myths and Facts' Page
Jacob Plitman, the president of J Street U’s National Student Board, recently attacked several pro-Israel groups in an editorial published by the Times of Israel (TOI). However, TOI editors quickly removed the piece after at least four major factual errors were discovered, according to an explanation of the incident provided to the Washington Free Beacon by sources close to the incident.
This is not the first time that J Street has come under fire for misleading reporters and editors at major publications.
J Street suffers from one major problem- an inability to tell the truth. Again and again the organization misleads both the public and its constituents on matters of policy, funding, and co-sponsorship. In its attempt to ignore the film the J Street Challenge and other critics, J Street often relies on its 'Myths and Facts' page, even claiming that "the Myths and Facts page offers a more comprehensive address of the film’s catalog of spurious allegations."Is the International Consensus on Jerusalem Fracturing?
The fact that the leftist lobby group has a need for such a page should be cause for concern in itself. The Orwellian contents on the page only confirm the widespread concern that J Street misrepresents the truth. Rather than address any of the issues that J Street's critics has raised, the George Soros-funded group resorts to double-speak to "diffuse" the situation. Here are four such examples of J Street's public relations spin, with J Street's "Myths and Facts" followed by commentary:
If Israelis have not been willing to vocally and uncompromisingly assert their rights to their own undivided capital before the court of world opinion, then it is hardly surprising if those who don’t have much love for the Jewish state have taken this as a cue to further delegitimize Jewish rights in Jerusalem. Both the Europeans and the Obama administration insist that they are friends of Israel, but if Israelis want to know what real friends look like then they can look to Stephen Harper’s government in Canada and now to Tony Abbott’s in Australia. The decision to no longer refer to East Jerusalem as “occupied territory” is a bold and brave move that displays a degree of moral clarity that one could barely imagine coming from Obama’s State Department and certainly not from London’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.Australia just made an enormous contribution to the Middle East peace process
Ideally, the move by the Australians will be repeated by other governments, but if nothing else it calls into question the attitude in Europe that holds the illegality of the Israeli presence in north, south, and east Jerusalem to be an open and shut case.
So why has the Australian announcement advance peace, if it has angered the Palestinians?
Because the history of Middle East peace negotiations is the refusal to speak the truth to the Palestinians, and instead, to cower at false claims of illegal occupation and Apartheid. Such diplomatic cowering, evidenced by John Kerry’s futile shuttle diplomacy, simply encourages even more unreasonable and unrealistic Palestinian demands.
If peace ever is to be achieved, it will be when the Palestinians accept that they can get no more from international boycotts and pressure than they can get through direct negotiations and meaningful concessions. The Australian announcement brought that moment a little closer.
The U.S. finally moving our Embassy to Jerusalem would move the peace process even closer still.
Friday, June 06, 2014
- Friday, June 06, 2014
- Elder of Ziyon
We've seen many times that Palestinian Arabs claim that Jews have "stolen" their culture, by eating hummus and falafel, or by wearing Jewish keffiyehs and claiming it is their own (which, actually, it might be.)
Now, Dr. Salim Nazzal says that the Jews have gone too far, by eating (and supposedly claiming) kenafa, a sweet dairy dish.
I have never heard that Jews claim this dish. Kenafa apparently originated in Egypt, although there seems to have been a variant that was centered around Nablus using their cheese.
Nazzal's complaints are hysterical:
I am not seeing any Jews complaining that Palestinians love to eat matzoh. No one would be upset if Palestinian Arabs started claiming cholent or gefilte fish - it would actually be funny. It seems that the existential crisis is not from the Jewish side - we have lots of traditions from all over the world, thank you - but from the "Palestinian" side where people freak out over supposedly having their culture "stolen."
If culture can be so easily stolen, maybe it wasn't your culture to begin with.
Now, Dr. Salim Nazzal says that the Jews have gone too far, by eating (and supposedly claiming) kenafa, a sweet dairy dish.
I have never heard that Jews claim this dish. Kenafa apparently originated in Egypt, although there seems to have been a variant that was centered around Nablus using their cheese. Nazzal's complaints are hysterical:
Zionists now using a new tactic to integrate themselves in the area knowing that it excluded them. This tactic is based on the theft of Palestinian culture and claiming it for themselves, in other words they want to say that they are not invaders from overseas as it is, but Eastern people of the region. And their claim that the Kenafa sweets are Jewish is the latest thing from the mind of the Zionist Jew who lives an existential crisis and a crisis of identity, despite his military superiority. Just claiming this shows the crisis in which they live. It is a crisis of legitimacy of their presence in Palestine.
I am not seeing any Jews complaining that Palestinians love to eat matzoh. No one would be upset if Palestinian Arabs started claiming cholent or gefilte fish - it would actually be funny. It seems that the existential crisis is not from the Jewish side - we have lots of traditions from all over the world, thank you - but from the "Palestinian" side where people freak out over supposedly having their culture "stolen."
If culture can be so easily stolen, maybe it wasn't your culture to begin with.
From Ian:
Eugene Kontorovich: The Apartheid Libel, Demolished
Eugene Kontorovich: The Apartheid Libel, Demolished
Whatever critics may think about Israel’s control of parts of the West Bank, the “apartheid” label is such a gross distortion that it can only discredit them. It is inaccurate in terms of both international law and the facts on the ground. And it raises the question of why critics of Israel use the label, despite the risk of discrediting their arguments with their rhetorical overkill.The Anti-Zionism of J Street
The answer can be found in the unique international response to South Africa’s apartheid regime. Numerous countries, from Turkey to Russia to Armenia, occupy and annex territory. Numerous countries—perhaps most—are grossly undemocratic, discriminate against minorities, and deny political rights to much or all of their population. Yet only the apartheid label resulted in orchestrated international sanctions that sought to completely eliminate a specific regime. Falsely applied to Israel, the accusation is clearly not a serious criticism, but a diplomatic weapon. It is not about the reality it seeks to describe, but the reaction it seeks to elicit—in a word, BDS. For some, it serves as a scare tactic to push Israel toward dangerous concessions. For others, it is a step toward literally destroying Israel as a Jewish state. Israel has paid a very high price for avoiding anything like apartheid. Creating Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and much of the West Bank has required Israel to forcibly expel its own citizens from all of Gaza and parts of the West Bank. And it has subjected Israel to an unprecedented terrorist war coordinated by the PA, as well as ongoing rocket attacks from Gaza. Yet the international community continues to perpetuate the libel of the apartheid accusation. This indifference to the price in lives and security Israel has paid seems to suggest a stark truth: Whatever Israel does, it can never be safe from such diplomatic demagoguery.
The biggest problem with the controversial group isn’t its bullying, mischaracterization of opponents, outrageous lobbying positions, or childish huffing and puffing. It’s their implicit rejection of everything Zionism stands for.Cleveland Unites over Anti-Semitic murals
Why does the Zionist movement still exist, while the Women’s Suffrage movement has been gone for nearly a century?
Both movements were founded and led by utopian visionaries whose dreams were initially decried—both inside and outside their circles—as unrealistic, if not dangerous to their group’s well-being. Both based their claims on liberalism, dignity, and human rights. And, most importantly, both movements succeeded in their goals. The Jewish people now have a sovereign state of their own, while women have the right to vote in almost every country on earth.
It seems, then, that the questions of women’s right to vote and the Jewish people’s right to a state are both answered. The debates ought to be over. No one would seriously suggest that after nearly a century, women should now be disenfranchised. Similarly, the 66-year existence of a Jewish state is an immutable and irreversible fact, and no mainstream figure is arguing for its abolition. So why, and why now, is the American Jewish community undergoing such a storm of conflict and recrimination over the issue of Israel?
Anita Gray, regional director of the ADL has described the paintings as "highly offensive and anti-Semitic." adding "We are appalled by the intolerance and bigotry these signs convey...The owner of this establishment has the right to have it decorated as he chooses, but we urge fellow members of the community to join us in saying, loudly and clearly, that such hate is not welcome here, and we categorically reject it."Mayor calls for graphic mural to be taken down at Biggies gas station
The owner of the gas station/grocery store Brahim "Abe" Ayad Ayad was born in the United States but is of Palestinian descent. Expect JVP to express its outrage at the Zionist lobby attempting to stiffle Palestinian activism in 3, 2, 1.....
- Friday, June 06, 2014
- Elder of Ziyon
"Go Palestine" is "A Summer Experience for Diaspora Palestinian Youth and Friends (Age 14-17)."
The brainwashing starts early:
Somehow, the campers in this land where Israel steals all the water still manage to enjoy swimming in Ramallah. Because brainwashing kids visiting is a much higher priority than efficiently bringing water to farms.
(h/t Russell)
The brainwashing starts early:
We look forward to welcoming our campers here in their homeland and to helping them explore as much of Palestine as possible. Go Palestine is planning trips not only throughout Ramallah but to other cities as well such as Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nablus, and Haifa. For instance, campers swim in the Mediterranean Sea and absorb the breathtaking view of Palestine’s hills as they hike across the West Bank. Visits to olive groves and villages such as Birzeit and Taybeh, in addition to volunteer work in the refugee camps, will give a full picture of life in Palestine.Last year's trip included this on its blog:
We visited a small Palestinian village, and compared its dry environment to the lush, green settlements who redirect water from Palestinian wells to their settlements and farms.This is of course a lie; Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria get their water from Israel and from well built just for them, nothing from Palestinian Arab wells. Also, the Palestinian Arabs have not been using all the water they are allowed to under existing agreements, and waste a huge amount of that they do use.
(h/t Russell)
- Friday, June 06, 2014
- Elder of Ziyon
Resolution 2014-1 (see text below) was not ratified by the membership and therefore does not represent a position taken by the MLA. Resolutions forwarded to the membership must be ratified by a majority vote in which the number of those voting for ratification equals at least ten percent of the association’s membership, which was 2,390 votes this year. There were 1,560 votes in favor of ratification and 1,063 votes against ratification. The vote therefore fell short of ratification by 830 votes.Even so, of the people who voted, far more voted for the resolution.
A couple of week ago an internal MLA mailing list was leaked showing that some of the Israel-haters pushing the resolution were also antisemites.
Academia is in sad shape.
(h/t StandWithUs)
06/06 Links Pt1: FM lauds Australia for dropping 'occupied' Jerusalem label; False Palestinian Unity
From Ian:
Miffed by Palestinian criticism, Aussies boost pro-Israel stance
Miffed by Palestinian criticism, Aussies boost pro-Israel stance
“The Palestinians handled this very badly. Such disagreements are usually handled in private,” the senior Australian source said, adding that the Palestinians’ behavior partially led to Canberra’s announcement this week to no longer refer to East Jerusalem as “occupied.” “Erekat’s letter was quite personal and does not reflect the way senior officials would usually write to each other. Apparently, they don’t put much stock in their relationship with Australia, and don’t really have appreciation for our financial support.”FM lauds Australia for dropping 'occupied' Jerusalem label
Canberra also has not welcomed the establishment of the new Palestinian unity government, which is backed by Hamas – as the UN, the EU, and many countries have – but also has not severed ties with the PA, as Jerusalem would have liked. Aid will continue to flow to the new government, and Australian officials traveling to the region will continue to visit their counterparts in Ramallah. At the same time, Australia does not bar officials from meeting Israeli officials in East Jerusalem, as opposed to most other countries. (h/t Yoel)
Lieberman lauded Brandis' stance as a "serious approach to the issue," adding that the former's remarks were "free of populism or efforts to kiss up to extreme Islamists, who terrorize anyone who dares tell the truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."It's time to stop apologizing
"The territories [in question] have been part of Jewish history for thousands of years and were never a part of any Palestinian state, which never actually existed," Lieberman went on to say.
Lieberman concluded with the hope that "additional countries will find the integrity and courage shown by the government of Australia."
Judea and Samaria are not Palestinian land; at the very most there is debate about them. We also demand full ownership of them. Our historic, legal, and religious rights to them are greater than those of Saeb Erekat and Abbas.Caroline Glick: Ending Abbas’s winning streak
The fight to legitimize our hold on the land of our life depends to a large degree on our determined activity and a righteous stance. The government in Australia changed, and along with it the definition of construction in east Jerusalem. It is no longer "occupied territory" but Israeli territory, the Jewish people's only homeland.
The fact is that Israel has gotten nothing from playing along with American coddling of Abbas. It receives less support from Obama every day. And its willingness to go along to get along has demoralized and angered the Republicans who oppose what Obama is doing. It has given cover to Democrats who are loath to oppose the White House.
The time has come for Israel to stop playing this game, where the PLO gets to materially breach its agreements and so render them effectively null and void, while Israel, the sucker, keeps upholding them.
The time has come for Israel to stop collecting tax revenues for the PA. All of the money Israel collects and transfers to the PA is now serving Hamas directly.
And it isn’t enough to keep collecting, but stop transferring the revenues. The monies always end up being transferred eventually.
The only way to end this is by actually ceasing to serve as the PA’s taxman.
Obama won’t like it. But what’s he going to do? Facilitate Iran’s nuclear weapons program? Blame Israel for Palestinian aggression against it? Recognize and fund Hamas? The only way to get off this train is to get off. And disembarking is also the only way to impact US behavior. No single act by Israel will do more to empower the US Congress to stop funding the Palestinians than that.
And once that happens, a virtuous circle is formed, where at a minimum, Abbas’s winning streak will end.
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