Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

12/17 Links Pt1: Turning back the clock to pre-1948 is the real endgame; Five questions for Geneva

From Ian:

Anne Bayefsky: UN: Turning back the clock to pre-1948 is the real endgame

Incitement against the Jewish state is directly related to the stabbings, raping and killing of Jews inside and outside of Israel. But doing something to stop it requires confronting a very troubling fact: the global epicenter for incitement is the “human rights” leviathan, the United Nations.
From November 24, 2014 until December 5, 2014, UN human rights headquarters in Geneva mounted a public exhibit that was pure incitement. UN-driven antisemitism that takes the form of seeking to demonize, disable and ultimately destroy the Jewish state.
The exhibit was entitled: “La Nakba: Exode et Expulsion des Palestiniens en 1948” – or “The Nakba: Exodus and Expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948.” The occasion was the annual UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Solidarity Day marks the adoption by the General Assembly on November 29, 1947 of the resolution that approved the partitioning of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state.
The partition resolution was rejected by Arab states and celebrated by the Jewish people. Thus the Arab war to deny Israel’s right to exist began.
But in 2014, the UN overtly jettisoned the usual diplomatic lie that the 1967 occupation is the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The exhibit focused on the alleged crime of creating a Jewish state in 1948 and openly justified the rejection of the partition resolution.

Eugene Kontorovich: Five puzzles about occupation and settlements: questions for Geneva

Today, Switzerland convened a conference of State Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, to discuss the law of occupation as it pertains to Israel. There have been just a couple of previous occasions when Geneva convened the signatories of its eponymous treaty, and every single one has been about Israel. (Jerusalem, Washington, Ottawa, and Canberra have announced they will snub the confab.)
Yet there is nothing wrong with an international conference to discuss the Fourth Geneva Convention, and to attempt to better understand its requirements as they apply in particular situations. Art. 49(6)’s prohibition of “deportation and transfer” into occupied territory could certainly do with elucidation. (The “deport or transfer” ban is commonly referred to as “settlement building.”)
Indeed, an examination of movement into occupied territory in Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Western Sahara, and Cyprus would be both timely and instructive. Needless to say, this is not what the state parties will be discussing. They are, sadly, not interested in the Geneva Conventions, but only their possible use against Israel. But if the State Parties were to want an interesting agenda, here are some questions they might ask.
1. The first relates to the ICRC’s own definition of occupation (a precondition to the applicability of the “deport or transfer” norm). The state parties apparently regard Israel as occupying Gaza, to say nothing of all of the West Bank, despite the removal of Israeli troops from those areas and the existence of an independent Palestinian administration there. However, occupation in all other contexts requires the occupying power to displace and actually function as the governing authority, conditions that do not apply in Gaza and large parts of the West Bank (Area A).
Indeed, an ICRC manual excludes areas like Gaza:
Occupation ceases when the occupying forces are driven out of or evacuate the territory. (emphasis in the original)
How Israel’s occupation squares with the ICRC’s own definition of the term would be a useful subject for the state parties.

Last month, I reported that Jordan's parliament said a prayer for the murderers of the four Jewish worshipers slaughtered in Har Nof.

Given that the UK often publicly airs its impatience with Israeli actions, Edgar Davidson emailed to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office asking them if they would condemn the disgusting, pro-terror display from the parliament of one of Britain's closest allies in the region.

Their response:

Dear Mr Davidson,

Thank you for your email of 20 November in regard to the Jordanian Opening of Parliament on 19 November.

Despite Jordan's official condemnation of the synagogue attack the subsequent prayers understandably caused alarm and outrage to many.

As you may be aware, the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, condemned the attack in the strongest possible terms and called on all world leaders to step up and condemn this brutality. Taking this into account we will not be taking further [action] with the Jordanians, we do not consider it a declaration of war against Israel. [Davidson had written that he considered it so - EoZ]

The UK highly values its relationship with both Israel and Jordan, and through our partnerships we share the common purpose of ensuring the security and prosperity of both countries. We will continue working to fight terrorism and will support both Israel and Jordan and where ever possible in the fight against Terrorism.

This is a sensitive period for Israel and Jordan, both sides must do everything they can to de-escalate tensions when they occur.

On behalf of the
Near East Department Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The attitude here is the same one that is endemic in how every government treats "moderate" Arabs.

Here is Western foreign policy rule #1 for the Middle East: Don't upset the Arabs, because the wrong word can turn them into crazy murderers.

If Israel does something that you object to, complain loudly because Israel won't threaten you in return. But when "moderate" Arab nations act in ways that are completely antithetical to all human values, shut the hell up. Your condemnation could result in you being the target of assassination plots or embassy burnings.

No, stories like this must be hidden away, swept under the rug, not reported on by the Western media. and never condemned. We need to pretend that the vague condemnation issued by Jordan of "all acts of violence against civilians" was a strong message to the murderers in Har Nof and the prayers that were explicitly said for their souls as martyrs are inconsequential.

We must keep the truth from the world about mainstream Arab support for terror.

So the people who support terror are coddled, the people who are victims of terror are brushed aside, and the Western world doesn't even know the truth because the media covers it up. - the story was not reported in a single mainstream media publication.

(h/t Ian)

Here is the legal reasoning behind today's decision by the ECJ to de-list Hamas as a terror organization:

On 27th December 2001 the Council of the European Union adopted a common position and a regulation to combat terrorism. These measures require the freezing of the funds of those people and entities included on a list adopted and regularly updated by Council decisions. The same day the Council adopted its first decision establishing that list. By this decision the Council included Hamas on the list and has maintained them on that list ever since.

Hamas contests the measures maintaining them on this list.

In today’s judgment, the General Court finds that the contested measures are based not on acts examined and confirmed in decisions of competent authorities but on factual imputations derived from the press and the internet.

However, the Common Position and the case-law of the Court4 requires that an EU decision to freeze funds is based not on factual elements that the Council may have derived from the press or the internet, but on elements which have been concretely examined and confirmed in decisions of national competent authorities within the meaning of the Common Position.

Therefore the Court annuls the contested measures while temporarily maintaining the effects of those measures in order to ensure the effectiveness of any possible future freezing of funds. The effects of the measures are maintained for a period of three months, or, if an appeal is brought before the Court of Justice, until this appeal is closed.

The Court stresses that those annulments, on fundamental procedural grounds, do not imply any substantive assessment of the question of the classification of Hamas as a terrorist group within the meaning of the Common Position.

The ECJ is saying that it has never independently confirmed that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and that it relied on external sources in making that determination against its own policies.

That's fine, any organization must follow its written policies.

But this means that ever since the EU was founded in 1993, despite spending tens of thousands of man-hours and untold millions of euros on Middle East topics and on the ground in Israel and the territories, no effort has been made to document Arab terrorism.

Think about it. The EU wants to be a part of the peace process - it is part of the Quartet - and it has given lots of money to anti-Israel NGOs. It has no problem criticizing Israeli actions and parsing the statements of Israeli ministers to find evidence of anything offensive.

Yet in all that time, no EU official has felt it was important to research and report on Arab terrorism! Not one bothered to visit the site of suicide bombings and read official Hamas statements taking credit for them. Not one bothered to follow up on Hamas incitement, on Hamas antisemitism, or on Hamas' public statements declaring all of Israel "occupied" and all Israelis to be targets for attack.

Not one.

Apparently, the entire EU presence in the Middle East is meant to document Israeli building in the territories and to ferret out "price tag" attacks. Thousands of pages are written about whether Israeli products that are manufactured on one side of the Green Line but packaged on the other side are considered contraband in Europe. But not one official report has been written that says that Hamas took credit for a terror attack.

There is a huge blind spot in the most studied place on the planet, and yet in 21 years the EU has not been able to write up a single report on Palestinian terrorism.

Is there any more evidence needed of EU bias against Israel than this?

(h/t AB)

Now even elderly Jews are "storming Al Aqsa!" Plus - Jordanian antisemitic "flash mob"

Shehab News Agency shows the latest example of how those Jews stop at nothing to "storm the Al Aqsa Mosque:"

It's under attack from old Jews! (I've never seen the women chanting "Allah hu Akbar" to tourists, only Jews.)

Al Aqsa must be defended!

How?

Students at the University of Jordan show us, in an antisemitic street theater they call a "flash mob."

It shows a "Jewish" person attacking a model of the Dome of the Rock and being stopped by valiant Arabs with sticks and rocks.

Then, most tellingly, it shows a "Jew" taking selfies of himself in front of the Dome and then being attacked by incensed Muslims as well.

Women sweep up the area, presumably to cleanse it of the Jewish filth that desecrated it.

A young man with a slingshot gets shot by "Israeli police."

A stereotypical "religious Jew" holds up a sign that seems to say that the Temple Mount is Jewish, while Muslims hold up their own signs.

Just another day of antisemitic incitement at a "moderate" Arab university.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)

12/16 Links Pt2: Zionism, The Moral Struggle; Fmr AP Reporter: I Didn’t Leave Journalism, It Left Me

From Ian:

Ryan Bellerose: Zionism, The Moral Struggle

I find myself writing about things that I think are common sense. I wrote extensively about the indigenous status of the Jewish people, and in a bemused fashion, watched as people tried to deny something that is verified not just in religious texts of every major faith, but through genetics, history, archaeology, and anthropology. I never really concerned myself with the hurt feelings of people who had bought a false narrative, or the feelings of a people who went from being the dominant group who colonised and oppressed the entire region, to being stateless refugees used as pawns by their brethren.
It’s amusing to me that something I saw as common sense, was such a groundbreaking argument and is only now coming into the mainstream.
Now I am gonna blow some more minds with my next statement. I am taking back a word that has long been misused by ignorant people. I am proud to call myself a Zionist, and every Zionist should be.
ZIONISM IS AN INDIGENOUS RIGHTS MOVEMENT COMPLETELY BASED ON MORAL AND ETHICAL PRINCIPLES.

Former AP Reporter: I Didn’t Leave Journalism, It Left Me

More broadly and more deeply, Lavie is profoundly pessimistic about the quality of the work put out by AP and most sources of mainstream journalism today. Driven as they are by the Internet’s insatiable appetite for the latest flash, people who call themselves reporters are interested, he says, primarily if not exclusively in speed, not substance.
Perhaps even worse, Lavie provides direct testimony that journalists no longer even pretend that their job is to report facts. Instead, he’s been told by former colleagues, the job of the media is to advocate for those actors on the world stage that the journalists feel deserve support – to “speak truth to power.”
“But that isn’t the job journalists are supposed to do!” Lavie cries. “The job of journalists is to take a significant story and make it interesting, by explaining it and putting it in context.”
Lavie had a front row seat to the seismic changes in the Middle East, including every major outbreak of fighting, terrorist attack and peace negotiation efforts over the past nearly half a century. He also was ringside in Cairo when the “Arab Spring” was revealed to him as a “Broken Spring,” instead. That is also the name of his recently updated book and his blog.

NBC’s Richard Engel Says U.S. Support for Israel is Creating More Terrorists (VIDEO)

NBC’s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel said on Sunday that U.S. support for Israel is a contributing factor to creating more terrorists.
“There’s a whole history of why people are getting radicalized. It goes back to U.S. support for Israel [and] what’s considered to be a war against Islam,” Engel, who is Jewish, said on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd. “But the drone war is certainly part of it. The torture program is certainly part of it. I don’t know if you can say one is more influential at creating more of a problem than the other.”
Engel’s reporting has been called out in the past for being sympathetic to the Hamas terrorist organization. During a July segment of NBC’s Today, the journalist expressed concern that the Palestinian terror group was not getting enough out of a temporary cease-fire with Israel during the summer’s Operation Protective Edge.
“What is Hamas getting in return? So far, nothing,” he said. “No deal, no immediate lifting of the closure of the Gaza Strip. Just a reprieve from Israel’s assault that has flattened entire Gaza neighborhoods and killed more than a thousand Palestinians, many of them civilians, many of them children.”
Engel then outlined Hamas’ demands, saying, “The war could easily escalate again. Hamas wants an agreement to end the fighting, not for Israel to unilaterally scale back the assault on its own terms.”
A few days later, in another report for Today, Engel brought attention to a Palestinian teenager who celebrated Hamas’ terror attacks. The teen gained a following online after live tweeting about the terror group’s activities. She was quoted saying, “When I see the rockets getting to Israel, I start loving them more and more and I pray for them.”

Chanukah first night video: Six13 - Chanukah (Shake It Off) + bonus

They weren't the only one with that idea.

Jordanian paranoia over "Jewish state" bill

When Jordanian politicians say they are against the proposed "Jewish state" law in Israel, they aren't saying that because they love Palestinian Arabs.

They are saying it because they hate them.

From Al Monitor/Ammon News:

Former Prime Minister Taher al-Masri wrote in the daily Al Ghad on Dec. 7 that if Israel adopts the law it will “deliver a painful blow to the concept of peace entailed in the 1994 Wadi Araba peace treaty while revealing its true position on a final settlement to the Palestinian problem.” He added that the proposed law is a direct threat to Jordan’s national security.

Masri [="Egyptian" - EoZ], viewed by many as the titular head of Jordanians of Palestinian origin, said that the Nationality Law may cause the transfer of 1.8 million Palestinians to Jordan. He added that Jordan stands to be a casualty of this law...

Adnan Abu Odeh, former chief of the Royal Court, agrees. He told Al-Monitor that passing the law would mean that Israel’s Arab minority, and all other non-Jews, “will be second-class citizens in Israel and will be threatened with transfer.” He added, “Jordan faces two challenges — demographic and geographic.”

“Transferring Israel’s Arabs to the Palestinian territories, as recently suggested by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, will surely be followed by a mass exodus to Jordan.”

Forget that the idea that Israel will expel its Arab population is ridiculous.

Here we have a Palestinian "leader" in Jordan arguing against Jordan allowing those poor, stateless Palestinians to live there!

He really cares about his people, doesn't he?

Of course, major parts of Jordan are actually in "historic Palestine." - if your definition of historic Palestine goes back over a hundred years. For reasons never quite explained, the supposed Palestinians who say they have been there since ancient times never claim eastern Palestine anymore.

If they would, then Jordanians would have reason to be paranoid.

Report: European Court of Justice to reconsider whether Hamas is a terror group (update 2)

Israel's Channel 10 international affairs reporter tweets:

Channel 10 TV: EU DIPLOMATS BRIEFED THAT ECHR RULING REMOVES HAMAS FROM LIST OF TERROR ORGANIZATIONS. DECISION TO BE PUBLISHED TOMORROW.
— Nadav Eyal (@NadavEyalDesk) December 16, 2014

I couldn't find any document listing terror groups on the webpage of the European Court of Human Rights. The only mention I saw of Hamas was peripheral to a discussion of hate speech.

However, 124News reports:

The European Court of Justice is due to debate whether placing Hamas placed on the list of terror organizations was done according to procedure or whether it should be voided.

This makes more sense, the ECJ does have Hamas listed on a terror list from 2010.

Eyal clarified:

@ngomonitor It argued that legally the process was flawed since it was based on American fact sheet. The EU will receive time to re-present.
— Nadav Eyal (@NadavEyalDesk) December 16, 2014

Apparently, Hamas filed a motion to be removed from this list, and the ECJ agreed that the methodology it used to place it on the list was not as rigorous as they would prefer.

If this is true, it is ironic that such a decision may be made the very week that the group publicly held a burning of a stereotypical Jew, and a model of the Jewish Temple, in effigy.

And Hamas also declared this weekend in no uncertain terms that they want to increase the amount of terror attacks against Israel.

So if the ECJ really decides that Hamas is not a terror group, they are about as useless a symbol of "human rights" as one can imagine.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv et. al.)

UPDATE: Here's the case:

Action brought on 12 September 2010 — Hamas v Council
(Case T-400/10)
(2010/C 317/60)
Language of the case: French
Parties
Applicant: Hamas (represented by: L. Glock, lawyer)
Defendants: Council of the European Union
Form of order sought
— Annul Council Act C 188/13 of 13 July 2010;
— annul Council Decision 2010/386/CFSP of 12 July 2010;
— annul Council Implementing Regulation (EU) No 610/2010
of 12 July 2010;
— order the Council to pay all the costs and expenses.
Pleas in law and main arguments
The applicant seeks the annulment of Council Act 2010/C 188/09, (1) of Council Decision 2010/386/CFSP (2) and also Council Implementing Regulation No 610/2010, (3) in so far as the applicant’s name was retained on the list of persons,

UPDATE 2: Hamas was removed from the blacklist, on a "technicality." They have three months to decide whether to reclassify Hamas as a terror organization.

12/16 Links Pt1: Abbas’ advisor: All of “Palestine” will “return” to Palestinians ‎through "resistance"

From Ian:

Abbas’ advisor: All of “Palestine” will “return” to Palestinians ‎through "resistance"

In his latest sermon, Mahmoud Abbas' advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs stated that "all our occupied land, all our rights in Palestine... our ancestors' legacy - all of it will return to us even if it takes time." Since the Palestinian Authority claims historical rights to all of Israel, by referring to "our ancestors' legacy" returning, Abbas' advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash is assuring Palestinians that Israel's demise is assured.
Palestinian Media Watch reported that Al-Habbash gave a speech about the same them in October, when he taught that accepting Israel's existence is "prohibited" under Islamic law:
"The entire land of Palestine (i.e., includes all of Israel) is waqf (an inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law) and is blessed land... It is prohibited to sell, bestow ownership or facilitate the occupation of even a millimeter of it."[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 22, 2014]
In the current sermon, he explained that violence is one of the tools that the PA will use against Israel: "In terms of resistance - all options are on the table."

Abbas advisor: "In terms of resistance, all options are on the table"

Did Fatah call for assassination of Israeli minister?

Fatah’s military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, publicized a call “to respond in kind” to what they called the “assassination of [PA] Minister Ziad Abu Ein.” Calling to “respond in kind” to what Fatah calls an “assassination” of a Palestinian minister could be interpreted as a call to assassinate an Israeli minister.
Abu Ein collapsed and died of a heart attack during a demonstration against Israel last week. The Israeli coroner reported he died of a “stress-induced heart attack” while the Palestinian coroner said the heart attack “was caused by injury” a few minutes after a heated exchange with an Israeli soldier, in which the soldier had grabbed his neck.
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the Palestinian Authority political establishment has decided to call his death “murder.”
Fatah’s military wing released this statement yesterday calling to “respond in kind”:
“Fatah’s military wing, the Al-Aqsa [Martyrs’] Brigades, called on its members in the West Bank to respond to the assassination of Minister Ziad Abu Ein.
In a statement, it said: ‘We call on the Al-Aqsa Brigades in the West Bank to respond in kind to the cowardly assassination crime,’ noting that Palestine would be liberated through the barrel of the rifle.
In addition, it demanded the cessation of all security cooperation with this treacherous enemy, and called on the masses of the Palestinian people to expand the Intifada and the resistance to the occupation.” [Ma'an (independent Palestinian news agency) Dec. 10, 2014]

False Symmetries and “Cycle of Violence” Fantasies in the Middle East

Arab terrorism is not caused by Israeli “occupation” but rather by the removal of Israeli occupation. The “Palestinians” have about as legitimate a claim to statehood and independence as did the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia. Granting “Palestinians” independence will have precisely the same effect as did the granting “self-determination” to the Sudeten Germans. The only reason Arabs demand that the “Palestinians” be granted a state is in order to use it to launch an all-out war of annihilation and terror against what would be the rump Israel.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East that is NOT an apartheid regime. The only Arabs in the Middle East enjoying human rights are those living under Israeli rule. The treatment of Arabs by Israel is at least a thousand times better than the treatment of Arabs by Arab regimes. The “stateless Palestinians” are Arabs, and Arabs control 22 states. No one is stopping any Arabs uncomfortable about living in a Jewish state from moving to any of those 22 states and taking all their assets and wealth with them. The Middle East conflict is about injustices perpetrated by Arabs against Jews and not the other way around.
None of this belies the possibility that if one seeks hard enough one can find incidents in which some Jews behave badly towards some Arabs. Just as Hershel Grynszpan may have murdered the wrong German. But that hardly makes the Middle East conflict a symmetric cycle of violence and injustice. There were a handful of white slaves owned by slaveholders in the American south before the Civil War and there were small numbers of black slave-owners. Using that to paint pre-Emancipation slavery as a symmetry of black and white slaves with black and white slave-owners would of course by an obscenity. Use of the assassination of vom Rath to create fictional symmetry would be even worse. But nothing can compete with the malicious, repugnant, and perfidious distortion of the Middle East conflict by the media as a symmetric conflict and a cycle of violence. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, in a video interview, admits that Hamas' role in the second intifada of suicide bombings and other terror attacks was done with the blessings of Nobel Peace Prize winner Yasser Arafat.

In a video interview, Zahar says that Arafat gave Hamas the green light to launch terror attacks after the failure of the Camp David summit in 2000 - not after Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount.

Some Hamas leaders thought that this was one of Arafat's tricks to entrap Hamas and give information to Israel about them, but others were convinced when Arafat transferred RPGs to them. The cooperation was given the code name "Ammar al-Mukhtar."

(Zahar also claims to have met Yitzchak Rabin along with a Fatah official during the Oslo process, and that it was a awkward meeting because it was about security cooperation with Israel which Hamas had no interest in.)

From Sulayman Ushayhib Ali Al-Faqir, writing in Jordanian site Assawsana:

On every Friday, in all the (Hashemite) Kingdom’s mosques, at the end of every Friday sermon, we hear the dear preachers say “Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and those who follow them/are friends with them”.

Truth be told, I have some reservations regarding this saying, but I think that we are cursing the Muslims and the Arabs.

When we interpret this sentence, cursing those who support/are friends with/allied with the Jews – well, we (Jordan) and some (Arab) countries have a peace treaty (with Israel). Therefore we must not curse ourselves, while we have diplomatic and trade ties (with Israel), security exchange (of information) and private visits.

As for the word “Jews”: it is the group that is now centered in the state of the Israeli entity in plundered Palestine. As for the word “muwalaa” (being friends with, allied to, close to), it means that you are friends with/allied with/close to them (the Jews) because of their deeds and their conduct, and you are content with their killing (of Arabs), their loathsome crimes against the Palestinian people, and we are silent in the face of crimes being committed from time to time against the innocent (Palestinian) people, who have no weapons and no state.

I hereby ask the Minister of Religious Endowments to instruct the dear preachers to change the sentence (“Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and those who follow them/are friends with them”) and say instead “Oh Allah, destroy the Jews because of their deeds”.

Every Friday, in every Jordanian mosque, there are calls for genocide against Jews! And the article implies that this is a decision from a Jordanian government minister!

In some science-fiction, alternate universes, this might be considered newsworthy.

A Google search of the phrase "اللهم عليك باليهود ومن ولاهم" "Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and those who are associated with them," gets 31,000 hits.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Hamas adds taxes to dozens of goods that come from the PA

The Gaza version of the Ministry of Finance, using PA letterhead, announced that it was adding taxes to 50 types of goods that are being imported from the West Bank through Kerem Shalom.

For example, a 15 shekel tax is being imposed on each kilo of honey.

It sure sounds like Hamas hasn't taken this "unity" thing that seriously, doesn't it?