Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, July 12, 2014

07/12 Links: IAF Aborts Strike After Spotting Children Near Target; Chloe Valdary assaulted in Boston

From Ian:

Netanyahu: Gaza conflict proves Israel can’t relinquish control of West Bank

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday vowed to fight Hamas and other Gaza terror groups until Israel was safe from the threat of missile attack, and then launched a highly unusual and extremely bitter verbal assault on would-be peace-brokers, including US Secretary of State John Kerry, who have been urging Israel to relinquish security control of the West Bank to a Palestinian state.
Speaking to the Israeli public on the fourth day of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, which he said has seen Israel attack “over 1,000″ terror targets while sustaining hundreds of rocket attacks from Gaza, Netanyahu vowed that the IDF campaign “will continue until we are sure that Israel’s residents have quiet.” He said that no terrorist target was off-limits, and accused Hamas’s leaders and gunmen of “hiding behind Gaza’s residents” — using them as human shields — and thus being responsible “for any harm that comes to them.”
While Israel did everything to protect its citizens, he said, and had “spent billions to protect the homefront” in recent years, Gaza’s terror groups deliberately put Gazans “in harm’s way.” Israel does its utmost not to harm Gaza’s civilians while targeting the terrorists, whereas Hamas targets Israel’s civilians, he said.

Israel acting disproportionately? Think again

The fact that Israeli fatalities are low in this conflict does not reduce the military necessity of attacking Hamas. As famed jurist Alan Dershowitz points out: “Proportion must be defined by reference to the threat posed by the enemy and not by the harm it has produced”.
The accusation of targeting civilians, a violation of the rule of distinction, is equally baseless. At the moment, the Israeli Air Force is carrying out precision raids on Hamas' terrorist infrastructure, including arms dumps, rocket launchers, command and control centres and the homes of terrorist figures.
Where houses have been turned into military targets, the IDF has provided advance warnings to Palestinian residents (so called roof knocking) to leave their houses prior to an attack. This is designed to minimise civilian casualties, rather than maximise them. In any case, targeting civilians would be futile. It would achieve nothing in military terms and hand a massive propaganda victory to Hamas.

Israel activist Chloe Valdary assaulted in Boston

This is the face of hate
A Palestinian "peace " activist has physically assaulted Israel activist Chloe Valdary at a Boston solidarity rally for Israel. Shrieking that the Jews would go to hell while the Christians and the Muslims took over Jerusalem, she knocked Chloe's phone out of her hand.
The unidentified woman was not arrested..
For those of you attending Israel solidarity rallies this weekend, be careful out there. Its never been about peace for the anti-Israel crowd. In the unforgettable words of International ANSWER organizer Dick Becker, this isn't about peace. Its about the "victory of the resistance"

Anti Israel Woman attacks me at Hate Fest

Israel Air Force Aborts Gaza Airstrike After Spotting Children Near Target (VIDEO)

The Israel Air Force called of an airstrike on a “terror activity site” on Thursday after spotting children in the vicinity of the target, a recently released video shows.
“There are people close to our target,” the pilot carrying out the mission is heard saying in the clip. “It looks like there are people, possibly children in our targeted area.”
An operator responds: “We are not going to strike this target now, let’s move on.”

IDF Pilot Calls Off Airstrike After Children Spotted Near Target

Turkish singer tweets "May God bless Hitler," yearns for Muslims to "bring the end of those Jews" (plus administrivia)

From Hurriyet:

On the night of July 10, Yıldız Tilbe, who has been making folk-influenced hit pop albums since the 1990s, appeared to praise Hitler in the tweets and say the end of the Jews was near.

“If God allows, it will be again Muslims who will bring the end of those Jews, it is near, near,” she tweeted on her official account @YildizzTilbee.

“They (Jews) are hostile to Allah and all prophets including their own prophet Moses.”

In another tweet she appeared to praise Hitler for the mass extermination of Jews in the Holocaust, writing “May God bless Hitler.”

Tilbe wrote after the criticism that she was not racist.

“There is oppression against Muslims everywhere in the world. Is there any single American or Jew being massacred, whose country is bombed or whose people are killed?”

While Tilbe is yet to issue an apology, she has received support from the mayor of Turkey’s capital city, Ankara, Melih Gökçek.

Gökçek, a senior member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), backed the singer’s Gaza tweets, retweeting most of her comments except the one on Hitler, calling them “full of intelligence.”

“I applaud you Yıldız Tilbe for the messages you deliver to many of your colleagues and especially to the Turkish nation,” he wrote.

Things have been crazy busy as you can imagine (and I am busy at work as well.)

I just got my 7500th Twitter follower and blog traffic is up around 70% this week as people look for news they don't see elsewhere. Ian continues to do stellar work in his linkdumps.

I had a few very popular posts this week. It already seems a long time ago that I wrote my open condemnation for the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. Over 120 bloggers and pundits signed on.

Other important and popular posts were the What Reporters Need to Know story and the Fatah shooting rockets story. Not to mention the evergreen Amnesty hypocrisy story.

I wish I had more time because there are a lot of newsworthy angles to research and report on, even far away from Israel.

I also want to thank the people who decided (without prompting) to donate to EoZ this week. I really appreciate it!

07/11 Links Pt2: How the Liberal West Turned on Israel; The NYTs Wretched Anti-Israel Bias

From Ian:

Sarah Honig: Eerily déjà vu

Directly below is an op-ed I wrote in 1990, right after the murder in Rishon Lezion of seven Arab itinerant laborers by Ami Popper (who’s still doing life and who unlike homicidal Arabs hasn’t been released to ransom hostages or to win a presumed peace-partner’s goodwill).
"Unlike our own, Arab society is unbothered by the pluralistic niceties of moral-relativism. Allah is exclusively on their side and they are the only interpreters of his will. The murder of Jews is divinely decreed and this isn’t only Hamas ideology.
By this precept, Jews must die and have no right to resist. That’s their lot. Not only do they possess no right to avenge, they posses no right to self-defense, to at all fight. Their very existence is a provocation, a casus belli.
This is key to understanding today’s Mideast. It’s axiomatic that Arabs have the right to inflict incalculable harm on all Jews – and to do so in the most sadistically inventive ways – but the Jews’ attempts to deflect such blows are evil, outrageous and deserving of merciless punishment.
Failure to admit how selective Arab rules of warfare are precludes making sense of anything in our region and dooms to failure any so-called peace drives and mediation initiatives. The tragedy is that not only is the fundamental asymmetry between Jewish and Arab mindsets not comprehended abroad, but there’s no inclination to even consider it. Worse yet – one-sided ferocious Arab indignation inevitably arouses empathy overseas."

Getting the law right on the Israel-Hamas conflict

International law has quite a lot to say about the latest violence that has flared up between Israel and Hamas. So do the media. Unfortunately, they rarely match, leading to unfortunate — and sometimes egregious — misrepresentations. In an age when both real and perceived violations of international law have a substantial effect on the legitimacy of state action, getting it wrong is way more than just bad journalism.
The core purpose of the law of war — a centuries-old framework regulating conduct during wartime — is to protect civilians and minimize suffering during wartime. In any conflict, all parties — states, rebel groups, terrorist organizations — have obligations to minimize harm to civilians. For each party, these obligations take two primary forms: protecting civilians in the areas where it is attacking, and protecting its own civilians from the consequences of attacks by the enemy party. Attacking parties must 1) attack only enemy personnel and objects; 2) refrain from any indiscriminate attacks; 3) refrain from attacks in which the expected civilian casualties will be excessive in light of the military value of the target; and 4) provide warnings for civilians of attacks where feasible. In their own territory, militaries and armed groups must refrain from locating military objectives in densely populated areas and take other steps to keep civilians out of harm's way. Specifically, the law also criminalizes the use of civilians as human shields.

How the Liberal West Turned on Israel

The Middle East is exploding in mayhem and savagery. The region’s system of nation states is disappearing before our eyes, perhaps to be replaced by one or more jihadist movements pledged to the destruction of Western civilization. In the upheavals to come, only one civilizational force, one stable democracy, has the will and the means to fight back and to defend the values of the liberal West. It is the tiny nation state of Israel.
A key moment in this development occurred at a private dinner party in 2001, when Daniel Bernard, France’s ambassador to England, was overheard remarking that “All the current troubles in the world are because of that shitty little country Israel. Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?” That ugly episode is, in turn, the starting point of a slim ebook by Joshua Muravchik, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, published last January under the title Liberal Oasis: The Truth about Israel. An important contribution in its own right, Liberal Oasis is also an indispensable companion piece to Muravchik’s newly released Making David Into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel. Together, the two add up to a powerful indictment of the West’s serial moral failures regarding Israel and the Middle East conflict.

The difference between a society that sanctifies life and one that worships death

Almost a hundred years ago, as the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey was staring out of the windows of the London Foreign Office on a hot summer’s day, he remarked “the lamps are going out all over Europe, we may not see them lit again in our lifetime.” The occasion was of course the eve of the First World War – Grey’s worrying prediction was to be proven unnervingly accurate.
Today there is no need for such terrible prophecies. In the maelstrom that is the modern Middle East, the lamps have already gone out. Spring has skipped two seasons and beckoned a dark and cold Winter that has lasted three years. Aggressive Iranian designs have left the beleaguered people of Lebanon and Syria stricken by bloodshed and continued strife, leading to one of the worst humanitarian disasters of our time. Radical Sunni extremists have poured into the deserts of Syria and Iraq to take advantage of the vacuum left by weak and discredited governments.
ISIS’s declaration of a ‘Caliphate’ in Iraq has been celebrated with mass summary public executions. ISIS also poses the single greatest threat to the heroic Kurdish people who have long deserved an independent sovereign territory of their own. As Douglas Murray of the Spectator has put it, it is as if the collective Islamic world has declared a ’30 Years War’ on itself.

How dare Israel attack priceless Gaza folk art rockets?

A good comment from L. King deserves its own post. I expanded it.

I would like to add my voice to condemn the senseless slaughter of innocent Palestinian rocket launchers and projectiles in Gaza. These priceless home made artifacts representing the finest of locally produced folk art, with contributions by similar artists in Syria and Iran, are the heart and soul of Palestinian culture, and it breaks our hearts to see them destroyed in so callous and wanton a manner. The firing of mortars and missiles represents the apogee and perigee of indigenous performance art, cruelly interrupted by the criminal operators of the Iron Dome system who daily prevent these national treasures from reaching their target audience.

These priceless folk-art objects, which include such historic variants as the venerable Qassam, the M-75, the K-130 and others, are protected by the 1954 Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed conflict, which states "The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect cultural property situated within their own territory as well as within the territory of other High Contracting Parties by refraining from any use of the property and its immediate surroundings or of the appliances in use for its protection for purposes which are likely to expose it to destruction or damage in the event of armed conflict; and by refraining from any act of hostility, directed against such property." Clearly these objects, lovingly crafted by artists often in their own homes, are immune from being attacked, and any attempts to deliberately destroy them violate international law.

Beyond the invaluable art objects, the world must protect the performance art that Gaza artisans have created. Some of these show an object being hurled through space and time, eventually and beautifully destroying itself together with much of the target audience. This is a powerful symbolic statement of hope and friendship, reaching out across borders to show our shared humanity. Stopping it deprives both the artist and the audience of this unique experience. The Israeli system ("Iron Dome") that intercepts the objects midway through their performance is abhorrent and must be condemned.

This performance art is the penultimate example of Palestinian Arab expression, second only to our world-famous martyrdom operations that we are continuing to refine and improve to reach the largest audience possible, as our brothers did in spectacular performances in New York, Washington, London and Madrid.

Even beyond that, the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage protects important monuments and buildings. The Zionist aggressor has been targeting our unique, intricate tunnel and bunker system underneath Gaza and extending to Egypt and Israel itself, a gesture of fraternal love. These monuments to Palestinian determination and artistry cannot and must not be attacked,

Please contact your congressman or elected representative (in Gaza and most countries in the Arab world select the nearest possible facsimile) to make your feelings known on this horrible crime which violates untold numbers of UN resolutions and the Geneva Conventions which protects innocent munitions from what clearly is an unprovoked attack on the rights of Palestinians to resist negotiating peace with their Israeli neighbours.

In Solidarity, Umm Fouhl U.

On Thursday, over 150 Gaza rockets fell in Gaza. How many people did they kill?

The Gaza NGO Safety Office counts rockets fired from Gaza towards Israel. They have been sending out updates every two hours or so during daytime.

On Thursday, they counted:

0000 - 0700 - 95 rockets
0700 - 0800 - 3
0800 - 1000 - 31
1000 - 1200 - 34
1200 - 1400 - 43
1400 - 1600 - data missing
1600 - 1800 - 30
1800 - 2030 - 71
2030 - 2200 - 33

Although some of the time periods are missing, this adds up to at least 340 rockets shot from Gaza in one day.

According to the IDF, which doesn't have any incentive to downplay the number of rocket attacks, only 185 rockets crossed the Green Line of which 44 were intercepted by Iron Dome. (The IDF only counted 192 total rockets, meaning only 7 falling in Gaza, but GANSO is on the ground in Gaza and this failure rate is far more in line with historical trends than only 4%. Chances are that the IDF is simply not prioritizing counting rockets that don't make it into Israel.)

If these numbers are accurate, then over 150 rockets that were fired from Gaza either exploded on the ground or fell short.

Given the number of deaths and injuries this year already in Gaza from rocket misfires when they were being fired at a much lower rate, it is a reasonable assumption that many of the civilians who are dying in Gaza are being killed by terrorist rockets.

It is a certainty that none of them will be reported as such by the Gaza media or medical authorities.

UPDATE: The IDF tweeted this:

A rocket fired from Gaza today fell short and crashed into UNRWA warehouses. Now there is a massive fire. pic.twitter.com/wHmMIuzATQ
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) July 12, 2014

(h/t MtTB)

07/11 Links Pt1: UN: Gaza Casualties Were Warned by IDF; Dershowitz, current conflict shatters myths

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Hamas’s (and Iran’s) fail-safe strategy

Peace can only come to Israel and its neighbors when the Muslim world liberates itself from its hatred of Jews.
What is Hamas doing? Hamas isn’t going to defeat Israel.
It isn’t going to gain any territory. Israel isn’t going to withdraw from Ashkelon or Sderot under a hail of rockets.
So if Hamas can’t win, why is it fighting? Why rain down destruction and misery on millions of Israelis with your Iranian missiles and your Syrian rockets and invite a counter-assault on your headquarters and weapons warehouses, which you have conveniently placed in the middle of the Palestinian people on whose behalf you are allegedly fighting? Hamas is in a precarious position. When the terror group took over Gaza seven years ago, things were different.

Alan Dershowitz: The current conflict between Israel and Hamas shatters myths

The current warfare between Hamas and Israel shatters several myths that have been accepted as gospel by many in the international community and the media.
MYTH 1: The primary cause of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is the occupation of the West Bank and Israel’s settlement policy.
MYTH 2: What is being experienced now is a “cycle of violence”, with equal blame on both sides.
MYTH 3: Muhammad Abbas is part of the solution, not part of the problem.

United Nations: Most Gaza Casualties Were Warned by IDF to Leave Targeted Buildings in Advance

A new United Nations document says that in most cases where Palestinians have been killed or injured during Israel’s ongoing Gaza campaign, the Israeli army alerted civilians ahead of time who were occupying buildings, that they planned to bomb in Gaza, to leave the premises.
“At least 35 residential buildings were reportedly targeted and destroyed, resulting in the majority of the civilian casualties recorded so far, including an attack on 8 July in Khan Younis that killed seven civilians, including three children, and injured another 25,” according to the Occupied Palestinian Territory: Hostilities in Gaza and Israel Situation Report. “In most cases, prior to the attacks, residents have been warned to leave, either via phone calls by the Israel military or by the firing of warning missiles.”
The document was released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) at 15:00 on July, 9, 2014.

The Gaza Rules

According to many critics, Israel is slaughtering civilians in Gaza. It’s “purposefully wiping out entire families,” says an Arab member of Israel’s parliament. It’s committing “genocide—the murder of entire families,” says Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. Iran says Israel has committed “massacres against the defenseless Palestinians.”
The charges are false. By the standards of war, Israel’s efforts to spare civilians have been exemplary.
Israel didn’t choose this fight. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the terrorist organizations that dominate Gaza, claim that Israel provoked the conflict by arresting Hamas members in the
West Bank. But arrests in one territory don’t justify aerial bombardment from another. Israel didn’t hit Gaza until terrorists had fired more than 150 rockets into Israel and had rejected a cease-fire.
Some of the pictures that purport to show devastation from the Israeli strikes are fakes borrowed from other wars. As of Wednesday afternoon, the death count ranged from 30 to 50 or more, depending on where you mark the onset of the conflict. Every death is tragic, and the longer the assault goes on, the higher the toll will go. Still, given that Israel has launched more than 500 airstrikes, you’d have to conclude that either Israel is failing miserably to kill people or, more plausibly, it’s largely trying not to kill them.

CNN’s Jake Tapper Demolishes PLO Spokeswoman

CNN’s Jake Tapper thoroughly demolished and exposed as a liar one of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s foremost purveyors of propaganda Thursday during a tense interview.
Tapper invited former PLO spokeswoman and legal advisor Diana Buttu to explain why Hamas is launching terror rockets and trying to kill Israeli citizens.
Buttu attempted to push several lies about the conflict, but was quickly shot down by Tapper.
“Why is Hamas launching rockets into Israeli population centers and are any other Palestinians trying to stop them from doing so?” Tapper asked.

CNN's Jake Tapper Destroys Fmr PLO Spox

Videodump: "Roof-knocking," Ashdod petrol station, people under attack, human shields, more

Here are two videos showing Israel's "roof knocking" - shooting a small projectile at the roof of a house as a final warning (after phone calls) for residents to flee, before the big bombs are dropped.

Here are videos showing the Ashdod petrol station at the moment it got struck by a rocket, and the aftermath of the huge fire that resulted:

Here is a video of ordinary people caught in a rocket attack:

Here is video of the IDF precisely blowing up a terrorist car:

This 2009 video showing how Hamas usues human shields, and brags about it, it very worthwhile viewing:

Here is a cartoon I tweeted a couple of days ago:

(h/t Israel Muse, Josh K)

"Primitive rockets" (video)

While Palestinian propagandists go on TV and say that Gaza rockets are "primitive," Gaza terror groups brag about how powerful they are.

Who's lying?

Videos from the Islamic Jihad website.

IDF tells West Bank Arabs how to remain safe during Gaza rocket attacks

Reshet Bet reports:

The Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria (COGAT) passed on the Home Front Command guidelines in Arabic for Palestinians (in the territories,) and explained to them how to act when the (Code Red) alarm is heard or when rockets are falling.

The Civil Administration guidelines were designed in recent days together with PA officials in all sectors, at their request, following concerns within the territories of the escalation of Gaza rockets.

In most homes in the West Benk there is no safe room.

COGAT is part of the IDF.

Yesterday, two rockets went past the Green Line, one landing near Ramallah.

Here is a video of Arabs celebrating rocket attacks from the Temple Mount on Tuesday

(h/t Yoel)

Palestinian Red Crescent Society creates a new anti-Israel rumor about depleted uranium

From The Palestine Red Crescent Society website, in an article from today:

In a recent exclusive interview with Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel, Professor Christopher Busby from the European Committee on Radiation Risk, announced the results of his research and analysis having examined air and soil samples in the Gaza Strip months after the 22 days of Israeli military operations there had ceased.

Prof. Busby is one of the most prominent and widely respected radiation experts in the world, and an accredited witness on international fora such as the UN. In the past, he has testified on the impact of weapons used in wars in Iraq, Kosovo and Lebanon. The Israeli authorities prevented Professor Busby from entering the occupied Gaza Strip to undertake the necessary analyses, but with the help of other physicians he was able to obtain the samples he needed.

The professor said that he had obtained two items to analyze, one of which was a filter from an ambulance covered with dust, and the second was some soil from a hole created by an Israeli bomb. He stated that the analysis showed the filter to contain a degree of uranium, and that the soil sample contained a high degree of enriched uranium. Analysis also showed a high degree of zinc, chrome, and niobium in the air. This is not the first analysis carried out by Professor Busby; he also discovered a high rate of uranium in Lebanon after examining samples from the area in the wake of the Israeli aggression of July 2006.

Say what? 22 days of Israeli military operations?

Ah...they are referring to Cast Lead!

To give an idea of how reliable Busby is, after he accused Israel of using depleted uranium in Lebanon in 2006 , he was proven wrong.

By the UN!

UN experts have found no evidence to support a press report that Israel used depleted uranium (DU) munitions during the July-August conflict in Lebanon, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) says. "The samples taken by the UNEP scientists show no evidence of penetrators or metal made of DU or other radioactive material," said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. "In addition, no DU shrapnel, or other radioactive residue was found. The analysis of all smear samples taken shows no DU, nor enriched uranium nor higher than natural uranium content in the samples." The UNEP statement said inspectors looking specifically at the DU issue had visited 32 sites south and north of the Litani River.

In October, the British Independent quoted Chris Busby, the British scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, as saying that craters at Khiam and At-Tiri in southern Lebanon caused by Israeli bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures." (AFP/ABC-Australia)

Oh, but Busby is not just a overly zealous scientist. He is a well-known crank and a fraud.

You see, Busby has made a career out of finding radioactive dangers all over the world, where no one else can find it. He even hawked special, expensive, and worthless vitamins for Japanese after Fukushima. His theories about the dangers of low-level radiation have been disproven quite categorically - every single scientist on a panel to investigate his claims disagreed with his conclusions.

And guess where else he found "evidence of a nuclear explosion"? Where all conspiracy-theory cranks go: 9/11.

So not only is the PRCS - a supposedly non-political, humanitarian organization - digging up old discredited claims about Israel, but they are quoting a well-known fraud.

(h/t Gaia)

On Wednesday, it was reported:

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas told a crisis meeting in Ramallah on Wednesday that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza during its military offensive which has so far killed at least 50 Palestinians.

“It’s genocide -- the killing of entire families is genocide by Israel against our Palestinian people,” Abbas told the crisis meeting of the Palestinian leadership.

“What’s happening now is a war against the Palestinian people as a whole and not against the (militant) factions.

“We know that Israel is not defending itself, it is defending settlements, its main project,” said Abbas.

“Is this collective punishment?” Abbas says. “No way it’s collective punishment. It’s genocide. It’s called genocide. What can I say about Abu Khdeir? Shall we recall Auschwitz?”

It is obvious that Abbas throwing the term "genocide" around is about as wrong and sickening as can be.

Of course, no world leaders take him to task for sounding more like Saddam Hussein rather than the statesman they pretend he is. They still believe him to be a man of peace, because the truth is so depressing.

Still, it is worthwhile to do the grisly math.

Let's underestimate and say that there are 1.5 million people in Gaza. (Palestinian Arabs claim 1.8 million.)

The birthrate is 34.3 per 1000 population.

The crude death rate is only 3.22 per thousand.

Crunching the numbers means that every day in Gaza there are 128 more people than the day before.

To commit "genocide" one would have to kill far more quickly than people are being born - at least 1000 a day, which would still take quite a few years to decimate Gaza.

Now, lets actually do the obscene comparison that Abbas is hoping that is listeners are making in their minds, especially by invoking Auschwitz.

Six million Jews were killed over a five year period in a real genocide. That comes out to nearly 3300 people a day, every day, for five years. Far more Jews were killed every hour of every day than have been killed in the current "genocide."

But Abbas wants you to equate the two.

Using the term "genocide" so flippantly towards a people who actually did suffer that crime cannot be considered anything other than antisemitism. Any decent world leader should unequivocally condemn Mahmoud Abbas for his words.

And none will.

(UPDATED with Auschwitz quote, h/t Yair)

07/10 Links Pt2: An Open Letter to Israel’s Critics; CAIR Promotes Justification of Palestinian Terror

From Ian:

An Open Letter to Israel’s Critics

To Israel’s critics:
Want to be taken seriously by Israel and its friends?
Here’s your moment to demonstrate your bona fides.
If you really mean what you say about criticizing Israeli policies but not questioning Israel’s inherent right to live in peace and security, then raise your voice right now.
Not tomorrow, not the day after, but today.
Speak up and say that the scores, if not hundreds, of rockets being fired from Gaza at Israel are an abomination. Say there can be no justification for such acts of terror.
Say that this assault is a brazen violation of fundamental human rights.

Schumer, in Senate floor speech: There is no moral equivalency between Hamas & Israel (h/t Alexi - happy now?)

Mandela’s legacy and Israel

Mandela’s attitude to Israel has indeed been a subject of much confused discussion and it is frightening to realize how propaganda can lead to widespread belief in false allegations. This is nowhere better demonstrated than by the fake letter circulated on the internet that led many to believe erroneously that Mandela regarded Israel as an apartheid state even though he never made that accusation. Former president Jimmy Carter eagerly quoted from it during a speech at Brandeis University and the BDS movement has used it enthusiastically
The lie originates in a 2007 fake memo that is still circulating on the internet that was purportedly signed “Nelson Mandela” and addressed to New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman but actually written by Arjan El Fassed, co-founder of the virulently anti-Israel blog, The Electronic Intifada.
El Fassed has since claimed he had no intention of misleading as he was merely copying the style of Friedman’s mock letters. But the important difference is that in Friedman’s mock letters he made the true origin absolutely clear as in his 2001 NY Times piece “Foreign Affairs; Powell’s First Memo”.