Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, September 22, 2014

09/22 Links Pt1: The West’s axis of evil friends; Turkey: What Ally?; The Mossad wants you!

From Ian:

Over the past six decades the US and its Western allies have fallen entirely under the spell of a few sheikhs who, in other times, would have been laughed off as characters conjured up by Dante or Euripides. It is madness, like watching a world turned upside down, to see the leaders of the free world bowing to people whose main accomplishment in life is getting religious police to hold down women to be whipped in public; whose main contribution to culture, philosophy and art are the blood stains on the ground following executions and whose bravest achievement is finding a way to confiscate the passports of foreign indentured servants and working them 12-hour days.
Americans teach themselves back home about Abraham Lincoln and democracy and the Bill of Rights and then proudly eviscerate every American value the second they search out foreign allies such as these. In the old days politicians in the West were concerned about working with despots, they actively campaigned against close alliances with the Turkish Sultan, “butcher of the Armenians,” or the Russian czar. Newspapers spoke out against injustices. But the West has become entirely inured to this today. Is it too much to ask of the leader of a democracy not to shake hands with the foreign minister of a country that lashes women for appearing in a dance video? That might jeopardize our relations with them and offend them? So what. Let them be offended. We are talking about regimes run by modern-day versions of the KKK, the Inquisition and Ray Rice... all rolled into one.
Will we never be rid of the cowardly foreign policies of countries that have become helpless democratic giants with no moral compass? The least we can do is continue to be shocked by the pandering to the abusers. It is like the Dark Ages. Yes, the world has become savage and full of abuses of humanity, but some people have to preserve the memory of what it could be and the knowledge that one day the men with dark sunglasses in Riyadh will meet with the fate that they so richly deserve.

How Independent is a Think Tank Funded by Hamas-Backing Qatar?

Although Indyk resigned from his Brookings post to assume the special envoy role, he returned to the think tank following the peace talks’ collapse. Critics say Indyk’s relationship with Qatar should have prevented his appointment by the State Department in the first place. Some also say Indyk was the source of leaks on the peace talks that were anonymously cited in media reports as coming from “a senior U.S. official” who blamed Israel for scuttling the negotiations.
Mark Rom, who worked for two years as a research follow at Brookings about 25 years ago, told JNS.org that Indyk should have considered that concerns over a conflict of interest would be raised before he took the job of U.S. special envoy.
“If someone at Brookings receives a lot of money from Qatar and then the person leaves and becomes a negotiator [in the Middle East], it’s hard not to see how that wouldn’t be perceived as a conflict of interest,” said Rom, who is currently the associate dean for academic affairs, co-director of undergraduate studies, and director of the MA in American Government program at Georgetown University. “I’m not questioning the integrity of [Indyk], but people of great integrity still can be in conflict-of-interest situations.”
A May 2013 Bloomberg View column by Jeffrey Goldberg challenged Brookings on its overly gracious treatment of the Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani. Goldberg described his attendance of a private, off-the-record dinner hosted by Brookings to honor Al Thani, writing that it was a “cringe-worthy” event.
“I went to the dinner that night embarrassed on behalf of Brookings, which, like many institutions in Washington, shouldn’t be taking money from despotic Middle Eastern regimes, yet does,” wrote Goldberg.

FIFA exec: World Cup will not take place in Qatar

Qatar will not host the World Cup in 2022, according to Theo Zwanziger, the German member on the executive committee of world football’s governing body FIFA.
“I think that at the end of the day the 2022 World Cup will not take place in Qatar,” Zwanziger said in an interview with Sport Bild Plus.
The former head of the German Football Federation cited high summer temperatures as the reason Qatar would lose the right to host football’s global showpiece.
“As Mr Zwanziger himself says, it’s his personal opinion,” a FIFA spokesman responded to AFP subsidiary SID when asked about the German’s statement.

UNHRC on Qatar: “I see no objection”

Die Welt has put together a pretty good case that Turkey is seeking to build nuclear weapons.

That Turkey is obviously working on nuclear weapons is hardly discussed publicly. The western intelligence scene, however, is largely in agreement about it.

The model for the strategy of the Turks is clearly Iran. Tehran seeks nuclear weapons by creating bomb material in secret under the cover of a civilian nuclear program. And Turkey has launched a large-scale civilian nuclear program in recent years. The official reason for this: The domestic economy is growing and needs more power.

In 2011 they contracted the Russian company Rosatom Ankara for 15 billion euros to build a large reactor complex on the Mediterranean coast, about 300 kilometers east of the tourist center of Antalya. Two years later, a similar agreement with a Japanese-French consortium for the price of 17 billion. Even more interesting than these figures are the contracts - and especially what is not in them.

When companies build a light-water reactor, they usually agree with the Government that the project will operate for 60 years and they will provide the necessary uranium for the operations and then take back the spent fuel. This was offered in the case of Turkey by both Rosatom and the Japanese-French consortium. So far nothing special.

But Turkey has waived in both cases to fix the supply of uranium and the disposal of spent fuel from the contract. She insisted on the contrary, to regulate this separately later. Ankara explains that this is not an unusual maneuver in the negotiations. But the intention behind it is easy to see: The Turkish leadership wants to keep these parts of the nuclear program in their own hands - and they are crucial to any State that wants to develop nuclear weapons.

First, there are the fuel rods: All over the world, the disposal of nuclear waste is discussed as a problem. Turkey on the other hand does not want to give up their spent fuel. The only logical explanation for this: they want to make preparations for the construction of a plutonium bomb.

And this is a civilian nuclear power plant so after burning off the bars they contain only 90 percent of waste, but in addition nine percent is permanently contaminated with uranium and plutonium. A plant that can isolate the plutonium from the highly radioactive material from the rods can be built within half a year and is about the size of a normal office complex. This has been shown in the United States system studies.

The fuel rods could theoretically be processed for reuse in a civilian reactor. But this is much more expensive than buying new. If Turkey still wants to keep the spent fuel rods, then there's just one reasonable explanation: She wants to gather material for a plutonium bomb.

The gaps in the contracts open yet another way to the bomb, namely directly with uranium. For Ankara uses the same technology that is also used to make the ore for a civilian reactor fuel available: uranium enrichment.

For the power plant operation, it must be enriched to 3.5 to five per cent, for nuclear weapons on at least 80 percent. The technical process is the same in principle. And so, it is a suitable cover for those who want to say that they are using it for power to in truth produce nuclear weapons.

According to the Federal Intelligence Service..., the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has already arranged in 2010 to secretly prepare for the construction of facilities for urainum enrichment. According to other intelligence findings Turkey already has a significant number of centrifuges. Where they come from, can be guessed, after all: Pakistan.

The Turks had a leading role in the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear smuggler who provided 1987-2002 Iran, North Korea and Libya with thousands of centrifuges. The electronics of all Pakistani assets came from Turkish partners. Khan temporarily had even the intention to relocate its entire illegal centrifuge production in Turkey. 1998 offered the then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif the Turks even a "nuclear partnership" in research.

Turkey had finally been helped in the construction of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program in the 80s. At that time many components, which could not be procured openly, were delivered via Turkey to Pakistan. Therefore it is not surprising that intelligence reports to date say there is brisk nuclear scientific exchange between the two countries.

But probably it's about more than this. AQ Khan has proven to give his customers not only the centrifuges, but also with complete blueprints for the construction of nuclear weapons [like he did with Iran, Libya and North Korea.]

Another important indication in the chain is the Turkish missile program.....

Tthere is the question of the meaning and purpose of such accelerated missile development. The answer is relatively simple: medium-range missiles are suitable, due to their low accuracy and payload, only for weapons of mass destruction. A program for their preparation is a strong - a very strong - indication of an ongoing nuclear weapons program.

But why exactly does the political leadership of Turkey want the nuclear option? Again, you have to know to read hints and omissions. In August 2011, the Turkish ambassador to the United States, Namik Tan, said: "We can not let Iran have nuclear weapons." Two years later, the then Turkish President Abdullah Gul clarified this position in an interview with the magazine "Foreign Affairs": "Turkey will not allow a neighboring country to have weapons which Turkey does not have."
...

Given the already established nuclear power of Israel and the nascent nuclear-armed Iran, the Turkish prime minister has no choice but to arm his country with nuclear weapons as well, if he wants to carry out his vision of building a great Turkish power. Because otherwise, Turkey remains to his understanding of secondary importance - and therefore Erdogan cannot and will definitely not be satisfied.

The author Hans Rühle was from 1982 to 1988 the Head of the Policy Planning Staff in the Department of Defense.

(h/t Gastwirt)

Surprise! Doctors who wrote Lancet anti-Israel letter are antisemites

From The Telegraph:

For almost 200 years, it has been regarded as a well-respected medical journal.

But according to senior British medical figures, the Lancet is being hijacked to campaign indefatigably against Israel, and used as a platform by alleged conspiracy theorists.

In August, it published a controversial “open letter for the people of Gaza” that condemned Israel in the strongest possible terms, but strikingly made no mention of Hamas’ atrocities.

The five principal authors of the letter made it clear that they had “no competing interests”. However, all of them have campaigned vociferously for the Palestinian cause over many years.

In addition, a cache of emails openly available in Google groups show that two of the authors, Dr Paola Manduca and Dr Swee Ang, have sympathies with the views of David Duke, a white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard.

Dr Swee Ang, an orthopaedic surgeon, and Dr Manduca, a professor of genetics at the University of Genoa in Italy – who are both members of pro-Palestine NGOs – sent round-robin emails to their contacts promoting a video entitled “CNN Goldman Sachs & the Zio Matrix”.

The video features an extended anti-Semitic rant by Duke, in which he claims that “the Zionist Matrix of Power controls Media, Politics and Banking” and that “some of the Jewish elite practices racism and tribalism to advance their supremacist agenda”.

Dr Ang wrote: “This is a shocking video please watch. This is not about Palestine – it is about all of us!”

In another email, Dr Manduca forwarded a message alleging that the Boston marathon bombings were in fact carried out by Jews. “Let us hope that someone in the FBI us smart enough to look more carefully at the clues in Boston and find the real culprits behind these bombings instead of buying the Zionist spin”, it said.

Elsewhere, she shared an article comparing the Jewish state to a “strangler fig”, which grows around other trees and takes their sunlight, often resulting in the death of the original trees.

David Duke has been delighted by the apparent support of these respected doctors. “The latest group of people to join the ranks of those who have broken the chains of Zionist censorship have been a brave group of medical professionals,” he wrote on his blog.

In response to questions by the Daily Telegraph, Dr Manduca issued a statement in which she denied being anti-Semitic. “[But] I legitimately use my right of freedom of opinion,” she said, “and do not agree or value the politics of the government of Israel, nor of many others, including Jews in and out of Israel.”

For her part, Dr Ang said: “I didn’t know who David Duke was, or that he was connected to the Ku Klux Klan. I am concerned that if there is any truth in the video, that Jews control the media, politics and banking, what on earth is going on? I was worried.”

She said that she was made aware of the video by a friend, Dr Kamal Alubaid, who appears to have been active on 9/11 "truth" websites. In one post, he referred to the Jewish State as "Racist Apparthide (sic) Israel".

Moreover, Dr Mads Gilbert, a third author of the letter, gave an interview with the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet in 2001 in which he said that the 9/11 atrocities were as a result of Western foreign policy, and that he supported terror attacks in that “context”.

Israeli campaigners brought this information to the attention of the Lancet in a letter sent on 1 September. However, the journal has refused to issue a response and has not removed the open letter from its website – through which it collected 20,000 signatures in support of the letter.

“It's utterly irrelevant. It's a smear campaign,” the editor of the Lancet, Dr Richard Horton, told the Daily Telegraph. “I don’t honestly see what all this has to do with the Gaza letter. I have no plans to retract the letter, and I would not retract the letter even if it was found to be substantiated.”

Dr Horton, who has in the past spoken at rallies organised by Stop The War Coalition, denied that the journal's reputation would be damaged by giving a platform to people who appear to hold such views, and said that the Lancet is not intending to investigate the allegations.
...
NGO Monitor, an Israeli watchdog, points out that over the past 15 years, the journal has formed a number of partnerships with Palestinian groups, including the Lancet-Palestinian Health Alliance, Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme.

By contrast, there have been no comparable collaborations with Israeli groups.

Professor Katz and a number of other senior medical figures have written to the medical ombudsman to register their complaints.

On 29 August, Professor Sir Mark Pepys, director of the Wolfson Drug Discovery Unit at UCL, wrote: “The failure of the Menduca et al authors to disclose their extraordinary conflicts of interest… are the most serious, unprofessional and unethical errors.

“The transparent effort to conceal this vicious and substantially mendacious partisan political diatribe as an innocent humanitarian appeal has no place in any serious publication, let alone a professional medical journal, and would disgrace even the lowest of the gutter press.”

He accuses Dr Horton, the Lancet editor, personally: “Horton’s behaviour in this case is consistent with his longstanding and wholly inappropriate use of The Lancet as a vehicle for his own extreme political views,” he says. “It has greatly detracted from the former high standing of the journal.”

In response, Dr Horton said: “How can you separate politics and health? The two go hand-in-hand.”

Somehow, however, Dr. Horton can separate clear antisemitism and politics. He cannot even be bothered to issue a perfunctory denunciation of Jew-hatred.

Perhaps there is a reason for that.

NGO Monitor has more.

In the past couple of hours, Dr. Swee Ang issued this bizarre apology:

"I thought about the situation and if it is not too late, please would you kindly include my regret for circulating Dr Duke's lecture and my apology for the offence I have caused to many of my friends, both Jewish and non-Jewish in doing this. I have done this out of shock at the contents and my ignorance of the undercurrents, and will be more discerning in future about these kind of allegations."

Are we expected to believe that an educated doctor has no idea that blaming the Jews for having a secret conspiracy to control the world is offensive?

She is also on the record for justifying suicide bombings. But, hey, supporting cold-blooded murder isn't enough to convince The Lancet to question her opinions on politics and health.

The Daily Mail reports:

ISIS is once again urging Muslims to 'kill disbelievers' and attacking Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama for recent statements they have made about the terrorist group in a new audio recording.

Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani refers to Sec. of State Kerry as 'the old uncircumcised geezer' and calls Pres. Obama 'the mule of the Jews' on the recording, which is roughly 42-minutes long.
He then asks Muslims to do whatever they can to kill those who do not share their faith.

'If you can kill a disbelieving American or European - especially the spiteful and filthy French - or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State … kill him in any manner or way however it may be,' says al-Adnani.

The group then takes aim at Pres. Obama just days after his announcement that 40 countries would aid the U.S. in the fight against ISIS.

'Obama, the mule of the Jews, suddenly became a sheikh, mufti, and an Islamic preacher, warning the people and preaching in defense of Islam, claiming that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam,' says al-Adnani.

'This occurred during six different addresses he made in the span of a single month, all of them about the threat of the Islamic State.'

The group is also directing their anger at Sec. of State Kerry, who said ISIS was 'not a state' and 'did not represent Islam' in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this week.

'The uncircumcised old geezer, suddenly became an Islamic jurist, issuing a verdict to the people that the Islamic State was distorting Islam, that what it was doing was against Islamic teachings, and that the Islamic State was an enemy of Islam,' al-Adani says in his speech, which was translated and released over social media.

The released translation refers to ISIS' enemies multiple times as "guardians of the Jews" and "mules of the Jews." The entire screed is suffused with antisemitism, but chances are that most news reports will not emphasize that.

Meanwhile, Ammon News reports that an official source at the General Command of the Jordanian Armed Forces stated that late Saturday night a jeep tried cross the Jordanian border at very high speed coming from Iraqi territory . Jordanian forces fired warning shots to force from it to stop but they did not comply, forcing Jordanian troops to destroy the vehicle inside Iraqi territory.

Another source said the Jordanian Royal Navy foiled an attempt from a boat to infiltrate from the territorial waters of "one of the brotherly countries" to the Jordanian territorial waters. Again, Jordanian forces are said to have fired warning shots to stop the boat but they were ignored,, which led to the firing on the boat and the arrest of two people on board of Arab nationality who are currently being interrogated.

Meanwhile, another article says that Jordanian security recently arrested a number of people affiliated with ISIS who were plotting to target the Kingdom and the group confessed of cooperating with organization's leaders in Syria .

A senior security source said that one of the members of the terrorist organization lives in a town in the north of the kingdom. His house exploded during the process of manufacturing explosives, which seems to be how this group was found.

Israel has said that if ISIS makes gains in Jordan, Israel "will not hesitate to act."

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

You might be an antisemite if...

PreOccupied Territory started a Twitter hashtag a couple of weeks ago* of "YouMightBeAnAntiSemite," with tweets like

If you believe Palestine was a bucolic paradise of coexistence and prosperity before the Zionists came #YouMightBeAnAntisemite
— PreOccupiedTerritory (@POTerritory) September 4, 2014

so on Sunday I ran with it a bit.

If you give a concert with a giant inflatable pig featuring a Jewish star, #YouMightBeAnAntisemite http://t.co/AFgbSUfZeJ
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 21, 2014

If you ever referred to #Gaza as a concentration camp, #YouMightBeAnAntisemite
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 21, 2014

if you justify attacks on Jews in Europe because of Israeli actions. #YouMightBeAnAntisemite
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 21, 2014

If you've attended numerous anti-Israel rallies and not a single anti-Syria event, #YouMightBeAnAntisemite
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 21, 2014

If you believe in the "dancing Israelis" story from 9/11, #YouMightBeAnAntisemite http://t.co/jdRSFb7qBv
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 21, 2014

If equaling Israelis to Nazis turns you on, #YouMightBeAnAntisemite
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 21, 2014

If you support all indigenous peoples' rights in their native lands except for the Jews, #YouMightBeAnAntisemite
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 21, 2014

*(ThisIsPalestine had actually created that hashtag in 2013.)

More on child terrorists in Gaza

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center just translated into English a report from last week about children who are recruited by Gaza terror groups.

Most of the examples they give I have already dealt with in my "Fake Civilians" series but it is a good place to see them all at once. I am actually cited for one of their photos. (I also had a post on evidence of children being recruited for terror activities.)

An examination of about a third of the names of Palestinians killed in Operation Protective Edge revealed several instances of children and teenagers serving as military operatives in the terrorist organizations. The examination also revealed instances in which the ages of Palestinian casualties were falsified by Gaza's Hamas-controlled ministry of health. For example, boys aged 15 and 17 were integrated into the terrorist operative networks; the age of a nine year-old terrorist auxiliary was listed as 24; and a terrorist operative in his twenties was listed as 13 years of age.

Children and teenagers in Gaza's educational system undergo basic military training in the schools and summer camps.[1] Using them as auxiliaries and sometimes as operatives, in ITIC assessment, is not limited to isolated cases although at this stage it is difficult to estimate the extent of the phenomenon.

They also showed photos of children of terror commanders playing with weapons, but they had no evidence that those children were actually militants.

I'm still waiting for the center to publish the remainder of their research on the number of terrorists killed in Gaza.

(h/t Gary, Gidon S)

Al Hayat al Jadida reports:

The calm that dominates the atmosphere of the classroom is suddenly shattered with shrieks and groans from a building next to the school. Those cries and pain are emanating from those detained at the Department of General Intelligence, which is witnessing on a daily basis more cases of summons, investigations and arrest and torture.

Those shreiks sparked a state of fear and terror among the students of the school, located in the middle of the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, which operate on double shifts until the tenth grade..The students are complaining that they shouldn't be forced to listen to the cries of that increase their own suffering.

Al Hayat al Jadida received a collection of complaints and appeals to be filed to the competent authorities without being able to reveal the names, especially as the region's population watches and hears these sounds, but they can not publicly complain because they fear the consequences.

One student in the ninth grade joined the school this year was surprised in the first days to hear screaming. She tried to ask about it but her colleague told her that these screams issued from one of the detainees and pointed her to that site adjacent to the school where the intelligence services are doing their investigations.

"Y" said she began to feel scared about the presence of the police station near the school, especially as police are supposed to promote security, stability and order and not to provoke fear and terror.

Add another to the list of things that the news media will ignore and that Human Rights Watch or Ken Roth will not tweet.

09/21 Links: Dear Fellow Liberals: I’m Done Apologizing for Israel; Israeli pop. hits 8.9mil

From Ian:

Dear Fellow Liberals: I’m Done Apologizing for Israel

As a liberal American Jew, I’m tired of apologizing for Israel’s actions regarding its own security, and as of last month, I’m done with it. I’m done for the following two reasons: my eldest child, Sam, motivated by a desire to do something more meaningful than argue about religion, policy and politics, is currently serving as a lone soldier in the IDF, and he spent much of July in Gaza, as part of a team dismantling terror tunnels. In New Jersey, where the rest of his family lives, we didn’t know, from one day to the next, if we’d ever see him again. The second reason is that Israel, despite its highly imperfect record (unlike that of, say, America or France or England or Pakistan or Kenya or Argentina…) is the world’s sole guarantee against another frenzy of murderous hatred against my people, a hatred that is once again raising its voice, and fists, not only among the dispossessed Muslim residents of Europe, but, most especially, in the official organs of the chattering, and highly influential, classes—so much so that the off-hand remarks of my long-ago dinner companion seem almost reasonable.
Facts are such nifty things, so solid, so sure. Yet we as a species don’t seem to cotton to them, especially when it comes to Jews.
In Pakistan, one human rights group estimates that 1,000 women are murdered in honor killings by their families every year. In Nigeria, Islamic militants have killed more than 1,500 people in 2014, according to Amnesty International. And the death toll from the slaughter in Syria—just spitting distance from Israel—adds up to a robust 191,000. But the world—or at least the world as personified by the British law professor with his fondness for exaggeration—doesn’t pay a lot of attention to these Muslim but non-Palestinian corpses. Nope: you’ve got to be a dead person in Gaza or Hebron to claim the world’s sympathy. Merely being an Arab, or a Muslim, doesn’t cut the mustard, because when Muslims are murdering other Muslims—like more than 2,400 Iraqis killed by other Iraqis in June of this year. The civilized world, or at least the chattering classes, does little more than shrug.

Anatomy of a hanging

The show trial is underway and the guilty verdict is guaranteed, as a United Nations panel makes a pretense of investigating human rights violations in the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas.
To his severe discredit, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has sanctioned a proceeding whose transparent rigging would be at home in a totalitarian regime. Israel is, of course, the defendant going down the tubes.
Hamas started the conflict by firing thousands of rockets indiscriminately into the Jewish state from heavily populated areas of Gaza, and prolonged the suffering by violating ceasefire after ceasefire that Israel honored.
While each Hamas rocket was a war crime, too much of the world attacked Israel for retaliating in self-defense. Among those in that camp is the UN Human Rights Council, a body dominated by Israel’s foes that has focused incessantly on Israel while turning a blind eye to abuses by the world’s worst regimes.
With the end of hostilities, the Council empaneled a commission “to investigate all violations of international humanitarian law” during the war. But it dispatched the panel with marching orders to convict Israel.

UN Watch: UNHRC chair on Qatar: “I see no objection”

Mr. President,
No less than 78 out of the 84 country statements in this report offer praise for the human rights record of Qatar. That’s over 90 percent.
Yet the truth, Mr. President, is the opposite.
Let us be clear:
The truth is that the 1.4 million migrant workers in Qatar object to this report because they are dying at the rate of one a day from inhuman conditions. At the current pace, more than 4,000 migrant workers will die to build the infrastructure for Qatar’s 2022 World Cup.
The truth is that the women of Qatar object to this report because they are denied basic rights to equality, for example denied the right to be elected to the Shura legislative council.
The truth is that journalists and aid workers who are abducted by the ISIS terrorist group and face beheading object to this report. In the words of Germany’s development aid minister, Gerd Mueller, from August 20th: “Who is financing these troops? Hint: Qatar.”
The truth is that the Palestinians, Israelis and other victims of Hamas war crimes — their exploitation and targeting of civilian populations, mosques, hospitals and schools — object to this report. As one Arab diplomat said to the FDD, as quoted in its testimony before the U.S. Congress, “Qatar finances Hamas strongly.”

I have had it.

There comes a point where the level of disgust reaches such a crescendo that it makes me want to rip my left arm directly out of the socket so as to beat myself senseless with it.

{Now there is an image for you to carry through your day!}

Look, I have a question. How is it that western-left venues always harp on alleged Jewish atrocities in the Middle East, such as the latest wholly justified Gaza incursion, while almost entirely ignoring the much more significant and perverse Muslim-on-Muslim, Sunni versus Shia violence throughout that part of the world featuring beheadings, no less?

It is profoundly unjust, which is part of the reason that Matti Friedman's work for Tablet magazine uncovering institutionalized anti-Israel / anti-Jewish media bias in "Operation Protective Edge" resonates so well.

A few years ago I wrote a brief piece entitled, Israel 1242 - Tibet 18 which garnered some attention and in which I noticed the following:

A basic tag search of the Daily Kos blog reveals that between Feb 21, 2009 and today there were a grand total of 18 essays on the topic of Tibet. That is a total of 18 essays over the period of about 13 months on a left political blog with over 200,000 registered users. During that exact same period of time, however, there were 1242 diaries on the subject of Israel...

In truth, these people do not really care about human rights at all for if they did they would care about the human rights of people who do not happen to live in Ramallah or Gaza City. If they honestly cared about human rights they would care about the Tibetans. They would care about Darfur. They would care about Congo and Chechnya.

They don't.

1242 to 18.

The blatant hypocrisy is astounding.

The point, of course, is that the grassroots / netroots of the Democratic party in the United States, and the western-progressive left, as a whole, excoriates Israel far-and-away out of all proportion to Israeli-Jewish sins. Those who read these pages know this. The problem is getting the rest of them to understand the nature of the ongoing misinformation campaign against the Jews of the Middle East.

Let us look at one small example from Peter Beinart that the Elder quoted last Thursday, September 18.

Beinart claims:

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the story of a powerful state oppressing a stateless people. But it’s also the story of rival, equally legitimate, nationalisms.

This is simply, wholly, and entirely false.

These two brief lines show us very clearly that Beinart has swallowed the so-called "Palestinian narrative" whole. He lapped up every ounce of poison cream and believes wholeheartedly in The Great Inversion of 1967 that Joshua Muravchik recently wrote about in Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel and that the Elder recently reviewed. Beinart's first big mistake, therefore, is buying into the nonsense that the conflict is between a powerful state and a small, helpless, largely innocent native population.

This is not only false, it is precisely the Arab propaganda line that the PLO first started hawking, upon Soviet tutelage, in the mid 1960s. It sounds good from a semi-academic, post-colonial, Edward Saidian perspective, but it also happens to be historical hogwash.

There is no "Israeli-Palestinian conflict." What there is is an Arab conflict with everyone else in that part of the world, including the Jews. We must make it very clear that this is an ongoing, millenia-long aggression by the majority Arab populations against all minorities in the Middle East. The problem arises when we allow acidic and ignorant individuals such as Beinart to decontextualize the conflict by making it seem that Jews are the aggressors when, in fact, Jews are defending themselves from an exceedingly aggressive and hostile Arab majority, as are others, such as the Copts and the Kurds.

The question of Israel is a question of the civil liberties and human rights of the Jewish people. The Arabs hold well over ninety-nine percent of the landmass of the Middle East and control twenty-one countries. These are Algeria, Bahrain, the Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

And, yet, Peter Beinart thinks that the Jewish people, his own people - a people held under a system of submission to a foreign power for thirteen long centuries - needs to cut itself in half to give a state to its enemies on its own minuscule bit of land. And he thinks so despite the fact that the Arabs have always and perpetually turned down the two-state offer. They turned it down in '37 and '47 and '67 and 2000 and 2008... and every moment and every day in between.

Furthermore, the "Palestinians" are not a stateless people quite simply because they are not a distinct and separate ethnicity. The conquering Arabs represent something close to 400 million people throughout that part of the world and they have, over the centuries since Muhammad, claimed all of that territory for themselves while driving out and persecuting both Christians and Jews and all non-Muslims.

Finally, to call "Palestinian" nationalism equivalent to Jewish nationalism is to show a deep and profound disrespect not only for history, but for one's own people. The Jewish people have lived on that land for something over 3,500 years. We are, in fact, the closest thing to an indigenous people that that land has... unless there is some misplaced tribe of Jebusites wandering around somewhere who have eluded notice.

"Palestinian" nationalism, on the other hand, was born a quarter past last Tuesday and represents an entirely aggressive response to Jewish national reconstitution. These are hardly "equivalent" nationalisms and I do not see where the Jewish people are under any obligation (moral, legal, or otherwise) to recognize a people who only recently constituted themselves as a people for the sole purpose of opposing the creation and maintenance of our small home.

In the mean time, I cannot even book a room at the Mecca Hilton.

That is quite some beautiful building, wouldn't you say?

The Elder recommended that I give it a shot and I thought, "why not?" So I called the Hilton Corporation and, indeed, I failed in this modest endeavor. I tried twice, in fact, and both times I ultimately found myself listening to muzak.

I also called the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles a couple of times, but they were even less helpful than the Hilton staff.

At one point one of the clerks from Hilton said, "We don't want to exclude anyone," yet, another, perhaps more honest clerk, told me straight-up, "Non-Muslims cannot enter the Holy City of Mecca."

Ya don't say?
And, yet, the left constantly excoriates ~~the Jews~~ Israel on issues of universal human rights.

It is entirely unjust,

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

Ahmed Qurei, member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, says that Jews who peacefully visit the Temple Mount are guilty of "religious aggression."

The story is published in at least 15 Arabic media outlets.

Qurei charged that the Jews who regularly stroll around the holiest site in Judaism "provoke the feelings of Muslims worshipers by deliberately drinking wine," which is of course a complete fabrication.

He is also upset that there are signs in the area pointing visitors to the Kotel HaKatan, or "Little Wall", a tiny area a bit north of the Western Wall plaza, saying that giving it this "Biblical" name is another form of Judaizing.

He called for "Arab and Islamic nations to intervene" to save Jerusalem from those Jews.

Last week I posted this video - from a Muslim site - where you can plainly see who is guilty of "religious aggression."

See also this from April, where Muslims were terrorizing little Jewish kids visiting the site.

Meanwhile, Ma'an "reports:"

The Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron will be closed to Muslim worshipers on Thursday and Friday, an official at the mosque told Ma'an Sunday.

Hijazi Abu Sneina told Ma'an the mosque would be open to Israeli settlers during the two days of Rosh Hashanah, or Jewish New Year, but closed to Muslims.

What they fail to mention is that this happens every year. For about ten days the site is closed to Muslims, for another ten days it is closed to Jews. The implication from this and similar articles in the Arab press is that Israel is arbitrarily closing the site to Muslims without warning, but this is part of a signed agreement.

For some reason, Palestinian Muslim intolerance of religious freedom is another of those things that is just not considered newsworthy.

PLO ambassador: Israeli Jews return to "their countries of origin," we're hoping to shoot 100 ton warheads

From MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from an interview with Palestinian Ambassador to Iran Salah Al-Zawawi, which aired on Kawthar TV on September 16, 2014:

Salah Al-Zawawi: [Khamenei] is a big-hearted and broad-minded man of innovative wisdom. He is the successor of the great man, Imam Khomeini, who wished to visit Jerusalem and pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. I hoped that his wish could have been fulfilled, and that he could have prayed at the liberated Al-Aqsa Mosque.

I wished we would see the black banners of Khorasan on the move towards Jerusalem, as foretold by our Prophet Muhammad, and that we would live to celebrate the victory just as we suffered tragedies throughout our long history. Then we would witness our great people's return to their homeland, the land of their forefathers, and we would see the demise and the shattering of this alien entity. Nothing bonds them together, no chemistry. Only physics are at work in occupied Palestine. All those people who have gathered to occupy our land must return to their countries of origin, leaving behind only the Palestinian Jews, with whom we had lived in love, respect, and fraternity.

[...]
I would like to reiterate my gratitude to the Islamic Republic of Iran for the training, financing, and weapons it has provided us, as well as for its political and diplomatic positions regarding Palestine. Iran has helped us to attain our great victory.

[…]
I am not saying that Palestine will be liberated tomorrow, but we have made real strides on the path to liberation. A missile with a 200 kilogram warhead will carry a warhead of 100 tons in the future, because weapons change as men change. We just need to cross the scientific threshold to get to our goal.

But I thought that the PLO accepted Israel's right to exist and that they no longer support military attacks against Israel!

Must be a bunch of slips of the tongue. This will no doubt cause a big scandal within the Palestinian diplomatic ranks and their media will denounce Mr. Zawawi's anti-peace statements. Of course. Any minute now. Because they really want peace. They say it all the time in English. So it must be true. Let's just ignore things like this.

Egyptian jihadists behead an "Israeli spy," Egyptian forces kill a Gazan. Ho-hum.

From Ma'an:

A 35-year-old Bedouin man has been beheaded in southern Sheikh Zuweid city in Egypt for allegedly collaborating with the Israeli intelligence.

Egyptian officials said Friday that the head of the unidentified man was found near his body on Friday morning, two weeks after he was seized by the Ansar Bait al-Maqdis militant group for interrogation.

Sinai jihadists are beheading people - and no one is really talking about it.

Also from Ma'an:

Egyptian border police shot dead a Palestinian and detained two others after they exited the opening of a smuggling tunnel in the border town of Rafah on Saturday morning, Egyptian military sources said.

Border guard officers reportedly spotted three men walking out of a tunnel opening in area of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier area on the Egyptian side of Rafah, a town that straddles the border.

The sources said that officers shouted at the men to stop, but the men instead attempted to return into the tunnel.

As a result, officers opened fire, killing one. The other two men then stopped and were taken into custody.

The sources told Ma'an that the operation came after the Egyptian army announced a state of alert along the border with the Gaza Strip following intelligence information regarding the potential "infiltration" of "gunmen" from the Gaza Strip into Sinai Peninsula.

Egypt kills Gazans - and no one is talking about that either.