Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 12, 2015

Palestinian Arab court in Jenin abrogates the Oslo Accords

The Jenin Magistrate Court has announced that under Palestinian Authority law, the Oslo agreements are no longer in force.

Looking at the question of whether the PA court system has any jurisdiction to try Jews who are alleged to commit crimes over the Green Line, the Jenin Magistrate Court Judge Ahmed al-Ashqar ruled that the Oslo Accords were only meant to be temporary and that they envisioned a final agreement within five years. No agreement since then has extended the agreements, explicitly or implicitly, according to the court. Combined with "Palestine" being considered a state by many international actors and bodies, the court ruled that statehood has created a new reality that supersedes Oslo, and that the PA institutions working for a fully sovereign state under occupation.

There is an inconsistency there that the decision seems to paper over. If the "State of Palestine" is indeed under belligerent occupation, then under international law Israel can replace the justice system in the territories. Yet this decision says "the mandate of the Palestinian courts derives from the right of the Palestinian people of the sovereign in the exercise of his powers in the state and at home through three powers under Article 2 of the Amended Basic Law for the year 2003, including the judiciary, which by courts of different types and grades, which pronounce judgments on behalf of the Palestinian Arab people." If they are under occupation, the only rights the court system would have would be the rights that the occupier allows. And the occupier has not said that the provisions under the Oslo accords has been abrogated.

Arab experts interviewed were ecstatic, saying that this ruling gives Palestinian Arabs the right to prosecute any Jews in the disputed territories, or seemingly any Israeli who crosses the Green Line, who they consider a criminal.

Of course, if Oslo is abrogated, then it means that Israel's obligations under the accords have ended as well.

(h/t Bob Knot)

Jews are being murdered in France, so naturally the NYT is worried about - Muslims

Three children and a teacher are gunned down in a Jewish school in Toulouse
Synagogues are firebombed as protesters chant "Death to the Jews"
Jewish businesses are attacked during riots
A fire is started in a synagogue as swastikas are painted on its walls
Another synagogue was besieged by a crazed antisemitic mob while worshipers barricaded themselves inside
Four Jews are murdered at a kosher supermarket by someone who admitted he was targeting Jews

So which French community is the New York Times concerned about for its safety and well-being?

I imagine it isn't fun to worry about pigs heads in mosques or about "potential" backlashes to your community. But Muslims in France are not being murdered because they are Muslim..

Jews are being murdered because they are Jews..

When the media cares more about the people who share the religion of the terrorists than the people whose religious group is being systematically targeted, there is a big problem.

(h/t Ron)

Every once in a while some genius decides that showing a photo of an old coin or stamp or poster that says "Palestine" on it is proof that there was an Arab state called Palestine in the first half of the 20th century.

One example is on the official page of the Palestine Football Association.

Arabs are excited that the "Palestine" team is playing in the Asia Cup so there are lots of articles about that team. But the "History" page of the PFA says that "Palestine" participated in the World Cup tournament in 1934 and 1938!

This claim has been going on for a while, and for last year's World Cup in Brazil, FIFA put out a statement within its statistical guide.

Under "Palestine" it says:

* The modern Palestine, an Arab state, has no connection with the Palestine (then a British mandate) delegations that played in the qualifying games for 1934 & 1938 under the name of Hitachduth Eretz Yisraelit Lakadur Regel.

Under Israel it says:

* A Jewish delegation from Palestine (then a British mandate) played at the qualifying games for 1934 & 1938. It was the first Jewish national team, and as such the forerunner of Israel. Was relocated from Asia’s to Europe’s group in 1954.

It also has some other interesting trivia:

In their first ever preliminary tournament back in 1962, Ethiopia decided to play both of their home and away matches in Israel for security reasons. The African team lost both qualifiers by one goal (1-0 and 3-2)

There were some other interesting facts about the history of the Israeli team and the teams that refused to play them - before 1967 - but I'll leave that for another time.

Two parades on Fatah's Facebook page

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party's Facebook page shows photos of two parades today.

One shows Mahmoud Abbas as he fools the world into thinking that he is against the sort of attacks on Jews as happened on Friday in Paris.

The other parade was from Saida, Lebanon in 1982. An Israeli pilot was downed over Lebanon and Abbas' Fatah group gleefully dragged his body through the streets.

As of this writing, the second photo has far more "Likes" than the first.

2015 Hasby Award - Best Pro-Israel Tweeter

The nominees for Hasby Awards Best Pro-Israel Tweeter are:

Arsen Ostrovsky

Margie in Tel Aviv

CiFWatch

William Daroff

Hen Mazzig

Anarcho-Zionist

Brian of London

NotAntiSemitic

Tal Ofer

This is an incredibly tough category to decide. Every one of these nominees is exceptional. I urge you to follow all of these tweeters.

The 2015 Hasby Award for Best Pro-Israel Tweeter goes to...

01/11 Links: Millions rally for unity in France; Hollande honors victims at synagogue

From Ian:

Times of Israel Live Blog: Millions rally for unity in France; Hollande honors victims at synagogue

Some 1.5 million people, including over 50 world leaders, thronged central Paris Sunday afternoon in a massive and historic show of support against terrorism and to honor 17 victims of a series of attacks that rocked France last week. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, attending the rally, announced that the four Jewish victims of an attack on a kosher market Friday would be buried in Israel. Stay tuned to The Times of Israel liveblog for breaking developments.
Bernard-Henri Lévy: France ‘will not be weak anymore’
French-Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy tells CNN that today’s outpouring of people onto the streets is France’s way of saying that it has failed to stand sufficiently firm in the face of Islamic extremism, and that this is now going to change.
The message of the rally, he says, is that “we will not be weak anymore in the face of this jihadism.”

Douglas Murray and Maajid Nawaz [Big Questions] (best part 16:15)

Paris: Grand Mosque Open, Grand Synagogue Closed

It seems the drawings in Charlie Hebdo offended some true believers of Islam, but the mere existence of Jews also offends them. So, apparently, does the existence of Christians, Yazidis, Hindus, Ahmadiyyas; anyone considered a "disbeliever," "infidel" or "not Muslim enough;" other Muslims, such as those blown up on the streets of Asia each week or the unfortunate Muslim policeman, Ahmed Merabet, wounded, then slaughtered at point blank range, on the sidewalk for not being "part of the plan."
In reaction to the murders in Paris, the French capital's Grand Synagogue was closed for the first time since World War II. In fact, synagogues all over Paris were closed. There were no Shabbat services this Saturday, the Jewish day of rest. The stores in the Marais, the Jewish section of Paris, were also shuttered. In light of all the expressed concern about possible anti-Muslim incidents, claims on television, such as on CNN, that "Muslims are the most persecuted people," seemed jarring and wrong.
The Grand Mosque in Paris, like mosques all over the capital, was open for business on Friday, the Muslim day of prayer. Moreover, there was little discernible increased security around the Grand Mosque. It seems French security authorities were less worried about attacks directed at Muslim institutions than were America's media commentators. Perhaps they should have spent just a little time reporting on the anti-Jewish rioting that took place in the heavily Muslim neighborhood of Trappes, a suburb of Paris?

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Lahav Harkov tells us that Israeli firebrand Naftali Bennett has a few words for Israeli parliamentarian Tzipi Livni concerning the recent rebel attack upon the French Occupying Power:

Speaking at the same event, Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett slammed Livni, saying she "talked about the occupation and diplomatic isolation, and I wondered why she didn't get on a plane to Paris to solve their problems? Maybe she can run their negotiations, offer them a diplomatic horizon, tell them there's a solution.
"Offer them to stop the occupation for peace, tell them to apologize for the caricature; that always works," Bennett sarcastically suggested to Livni. "Tell them that you make peace with your enemies, that they have a partner. Maybe they can divide Paris and give it to Muslim fundamentalists." Bennett wondered what else needs to happen for the world to wake up: "Do they not understand that a terrorist who runs over a baby in Jerusalem and a terrorist in Paris are the same, Muslim fundamentalists?"

No, in fact, they do not understand that a terrorist attack in Paris against non-Jews comes from the same ideological well-spring as does a terrorist attack in Jerusalem toward Jews.

Most white western anti-Zionist "liberals" tend to believe that killing Jews in Jerusalem is justified due to the racist, colonialist, imperialist, apartheid nature of the insidious Jewish state.

When a Muslim kills an innocent non-Muslim in Paris that is terrorism.

When a Muslim kills an innocent Jew in Jerusalem that is righteous resistance against the despised Zionist imperialist authority.

In my opinion, Livni deserves Bennett's mockery.

Perhaps the French do need to apologize to the Muslim world for their extreme insensitivity through allowing satirical newspapers, such as Charlie Hebdo, to make fun of the Prophet Muhammad.

{Peace be unto him.}

You can poke fun at Jesus and you can poke fun at Moses, the Easter Bunny, and Barack Obama, but if you say anything about Muhammad you better watch your backside. Not all of these intense, dark-eyed, hawk-nosed, desert deities have much of a sense of humor, after all.

So, yes, the French must apologize not only for their extreme insensitivity toward their Muslim citizenry, but also to Islam, in general. Just as Hillary Clinton stood up before the world and groveled after Jihadis slaughtered Ambassador Chris Stevens and his diplomatic team in Benghazi, Libya - allegedly because some unknown guy with a camcorder in California was mean to the Prophet - so the French need to grovel now.

Or, perhaps Paris should be divided in order to make a capital for an Islamist state in that part of the world.

Arabs and Muslims have lived in France for centuries and deserve a state for themselves in peace next to the French state. The ethnically "French" have no exclusive claim to the land that they occupy and by any measure of human justice need to end the occupation of Islamic and Arab lands in Europe. France, after all, has been the home to any number of people aside from the exclusively "French." Over the centuries the place that we call "France" has been the home of Romans, Greeks, Franks, Celts, Carthaginians, Arabs, Africans... and even Jews.

The "we got here first" argument holds no water.

France is a major part of the European imperialist infrastructure that dominates and controls people of color throughout the world and therefore deserves no special privileges or considerations. Crusading white European powers, such as France, deserve a commupence due to centuries of racist abuse of indigenous peoples everywhere, most particularly within France itself.

France needs to be a state for all its peoples and so long as France defines itself exclusively as French then it can expect the kind of understandable response from the indigenous population that we just saw in Paris.

The indigenous Arabs are persecuted by the racist French government which keeps them in poverty and in separate and entirely unequal economic and educational systems throughout the country, so what would the French expect?

For example, French government intransigence in insisting that the French language exclusively be the official language of the French state just screams white, western privilege and is a well-understood insult to other native peoples throughout the country, such as the Basque. The Israelis, for an alternative humanist perspective, are not nearly so xenophobic and therefore have institutionalized Arabic as one of the official languages of Israel and France must do likewise if it wishes to be considered among the fair and civilized nations of the world.

The French, it must be further understood, are guilty of centuries of foreign oppression in places like Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and even India; not to mention Syria, Lebanon and parts of Turkey, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

France recently voted at the United Nations, over the objections of the Jewish people worldwide, for the creation of a 23rd Arab state to be imposed directly upon the heartland of the Jewish people in Judea and Samaria.

If the French wish to be free of Arab-Muslim resistance toward the French occupation of Muslim lands in Europe then it must end that occupation.

Until it does so, France will never know peace and therefore a French version of J Street is necessary.

We'll call it F Street and, much like F Troop, it will be the necessary moral French equivalent of J Street.

What we need is for progressives to tell the French people and the French government what they must do in order to make peace with the native population. What I recommend is that we finance a series of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to monitor French settler behavior, and the behavior of the French government, toward the native Arab population.

There will be no peace until there is justice toward the Arab-Palestinian population of France and there shouldn't be.

No Justice.

No peace.

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.

Hamas announces military training camps for 15 year olds

The Hamas al Qassam Brigades announced that it open up registration for military camps for children aged 15 and up throughout the Gaza strip on January 20.

The camps will be called "Vanguard of the Liberation."

Hamas doesn't try to hide that it is training children to be armed terrorists. The announcement states that "the camps will include military drills and skills, shooting live ammunition, scouting skills and sermons, as well as courses in civil defense and first aid."

Kids can register for the camps "at the nearest mosque or the nearest Qassam Brigades military site." Since the army sites are sprinkled liberally throughout residential areas, that makes it much easier to find a place to register.

Here's the flyer announcing the camps:

This is the third year of the camps. Here are some photos from last year's graduation ceremony (a full video is here.).

Terror booster Mahmoud Abbas uses massacres for PR while Fatah instructs people "don't show sympathy for Paris Islamists"

One of the world's biggest boosters of terrorism is going to Paris to pretend to be against terrorism:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to take part in a rally in the French capital Sunday against terrorism and in solidarity with the victims of the recent Paris attacks, as well as to stress the peaceful nature of the Islamic faith.

His participation comes a day after he called French President Francois Hollande to express his outrage and condemnation of the attacks, which left 16 civilians dead.

Abbas told Hollande Saturday that the Palestinian people and leadership would remain supportive of France against "this terrorism which has no religion," official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Abbas expressed his condemnation and strong opposition to any "terror attack" that hurts innocent citizens, regardless of whether the victims are Christians, Jews, Muslims, or followers of any other religion or creed.

"Human life is sacred and God has created us all," he reportedly said.

for anyone who follows Abbas' statements, this is meaningless. His definition of "terrorism" is quite different from that of any normal human being.

Last week his top aide Saeb Erekat called Jews building houses "terrorism" and equated it to ISIS beheading civilians.

Abbas himself has justified the history of Palestinian Arab terror in his latest UN speech.

Abbas has gone out of his way to meet a child killer.

In the past 18 months Abbas has publicly embraced people who murdered Israeli civilians, some in the most heinous ways.

In September he praised a terrorist who targeted children at a circus.

Abbas has praised the mastermind behind the Munich Olympics massacre and was involved in its funding.

His Fatah platform claims that terrorism against Israelis is legal under international law.

To have this supporter of terror pretend to march in solidarity against terror is an insult to the victims and an insult to France.

Meanwhile, his Fatah party is so concerned that some Palestinians might praise the attacks on Jews in Paris that their European spokesperson went out of his way to warn people not to express "understanding" of the Paris attacks on Palestinian TV.

The reason? Because they don't want to make the climate of Europe more uncomfortable for Muslims and Arabs.

(autotranslated)

(h/t Yoel)

UPDATE: see Palestinian Media Watch.

Just last week, five terrorists, who in total recently killed 10 Israelis, were included on a list of "Martyrs of 2014" who "ascended" to Heaven, published in the bi-weekly Al-Asima distributed with the official Palestinian Authority daily.

The terrorists on the list, who were called "Shahids" (Martyrs) and thereby achieve the highest status possible in Islam, included the synagogue murderers who recently killed 5, three terrorists who killed 5 by running them over with cars and an excavator and the terrorist who attempted to assassinate Rabbi Yehuda Glick. See descriptions of their attacks below.

Another article described the terrorists as having died while "carrying out Martyrdom-seeking (Istish'had) operations."

In July of 2010, after the death of Hezbollah spiritual leader Muhammad Hussein Fadl-Allāh, I was the first to report about CNN correspondent Octavia Nasr tweeting about the death of Hezbollah spiritual leader Muhammad Hussein Fadl-Allāh, saying that he was "one of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot."

Within 80 hours, Nasr was gone from CNN. An internal CNN memo said "we believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward" because of her one tweet.

Now, compare that with the entire series of offensive tweets that CNN anchor Jim Clancy spewed out last Wednesday night. He lashed out at anyone who pointed out his obvious mistake of claiming that none of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons made fun of Mohammmed, claiming that anyone who showed him to be wrong was part of a "Hasbara team," that pro-Israel tweeters like me are part of an anti-Muslim public relations campaign and implying that being pro-Israel meant being against human rights. He seemed to think that an anti-semitic tweeter was really a false-flag pro-Israel tweeter. He also used the offensive term "cripple."

By Thursday morning, Clancy seems to have realized that his possibly drunken tweetfest was not the smartest idea, and he deleted many of his tweets, although not before they were saved. But he continues to block anyone who even refers to his offensive tweets; judging from Twitter it appears that scores of people were blocked.

Since then, the story of Clancy's meltdown has been in Breitbart News, the Washington Free Beacon, MediaLite, Newsbusters, Algemiener, Israel National News, Honest Reporting and other media sites.

Yet we have heard only silence from CNN.

Clancy exhibited shockingly unprofessional behavior that was borderline antisemitic and blatantly anti-Israel. This by itself disqualifies him from reporting on any Middle East topic. CNN is clearly aware of the criticism, and for every hour that it remains silent, it gives the impression of supporting an old-boys network rather than caring one whit about professionalism and objectivity.

01/10 Links: The siege in a kosher shop in Paris proves why Israel needs to exist; #JeSuisJuif

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The siege in a kosher shop in Paris proves why Israel needs to exist

As I write a siege is ongoing in a Kosher shop in Paris. In France, Belgium and across Europe in recent years, Jews have repeatedly been the targets of Islamist attack. They always are. Last year saw the largest upsurge of anti-Semitic hate crime on record even in the UK.
But it is the continent that has seen the worst and growing litany of attacks. In 2012 Mohamed Merah killed three Jewish children and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse. In May last year three people were shot dead by an Islamist gunman at the Jewish museum in Brussels.
During the twentieth century Judaism on the continent of Europe was almost wiped out. In twenty-first century Europe the remaining Jews are once again the target. But from a different type of fascism and from a population who came to Europe since the Holocaust. In the last few years France has seen a larger exodus of Jews moving to Israel than any other country.
There are two questions we really need to consider at such a time. The first is, ‘Why do they always target the Jews?’. In 2008 when Mumbai was attacked, the Islamic terrorists rampaged through that great Indian city. But they specially sought out the tiny Chabad house in Mumbai and there they slaughtered the young rabbi and his wife. It is the same story everywhere. And of course the sort of people who gun down cartoonists for exercising their right to free expression will be the same people who will target Jews.
The second question is this: How dare so many Europeans still wonder why Israel needs to exist. Today Israel is the world’s only really safe haven for Jews who live in a world which cannot keep them safe, even when it wants to.

Ben-Dror Yemini: The forces of darkness are winning

The City of Light suffered a painful terrorist attack this week. It wasn't just another terror attack; it was a terror attack aimed at the very heart and values of the free world. It was a terror attack on freedom of speech and the status of women. It wasn't a terror attack perpetrated in protest against discrimination.
It wasn't a terror attack for the sake of the rights of the Muslims. It wasn't a terror attack against unemployment or alienation. The Jihadists aren't fighting for a better world. They are fighting against anyone and anything different from them. They're fighting to establish a dark Islamic entity.
The problem is the battle is lost. They are winning. Almost a decade and a half ago, the world suffered a jarring experience – the large-scale terror attacks in the United States. There have been other large-scale terror attacks in the West too, in Madrid and London. And what has emerged since? A lot. A whole lot.

David Brooks: I Am Not Charlie Hebdo

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.
Public reaction to the attack in Paris has revealed that there are a lot of people who are quick to lionize those who offend the views of Islamist terrorists in France but who are a lot less tolerant toward those who offend their own views at home.
Just look at all the people who have overreacted to campus micro-aggressions. The University of Illinois fired a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality. The University of Kansas suspended a professor for writing a harsh tweet against the N.R.A. Vanderbilt University derecognized a Christian group that insisted that it be led by Christians.
Americans may laud Charlie Hebdo for being brave enough to publish cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad, but, if Ayaan Hirsi Ali is invited to campus, there are often calls to deny her a podium.

Phyllis Chesler: #Je Suis Juif (I am a Jew)

At least four, possibly five French Jewish hostages, probably women who were shopping for the Sabbath, were killed by Jihadists before the French police stormed the kosher supermarket. The male and female pair of jihadists were demanding the freedom of the Charlie Hebdo jihadists.
Simultaneously, the police also stormed the building in north Paris where the Charlie Hebdo jihadists were holding a hostage; they apparently freed that hostage and killed the terrorists.
I am launching a #Je Suis Juif hashtag, not only in honor of these latest Jewish victims, but in honor of all the Jewish victims whose deaths have met with the hashtag world’s indifference.

The heroic Muslim employee of HyperCacher, and the victims

From HuffPo:

Lassana Bathily, a Muslim employee at Paris Kosher grocery store Hyper Cacher, saved several people by hiding them in a walk-in freezer when a gunman laid siege to his workplace on Friday.

Amedy Coulibaly burst into the market and opened fire, killing 4 people. He took several shoppers hostage and threatened to kill them if police stormed the printing shop where Cherif and Said Kouachi, who killed 12 people in an attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo earlier in the week, were holed up in a village to the north.

Bathily, identified by French media as a "Malian Muslim," helped several customers to safety as the chaos unfolded. "I went down to the freezer, I opened the door, there were several people who went in with me. I turned off the light and the freezer," Bathily, 24, told French network BFMTV. "I brought them inside and I told them to stay calm here, I'm going to go out. When they got out, they thanked me."

It's unclear exactly how many people Bathily managed to hide inside the freezer in the store's basement. City councillor Malik Yettou said that six people and a baby escaped the gunman by hiding there, while BFMTV put the number at about 15.

Bathily told BFMTV that he managed to get out of the store through the freight elevator. When he encountered police, they seemed to initially mistake him for one of the terrorists. "They told me, get down on the ground, hands over your head," he said. "They cuffed me and held me for an hour and a half as if I was with them." He said that he then helped police with his knowledge of the floor plan of the store.

Also:

The four victims killed in the terror attack on a kosher shop in the French capital were all Jews, the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities said.

CRIF identified the victims of the attack Friday as Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham, Yohan Cohen and Francois-Michel Saada.

“These French citizens were struck down in a cold-blooded manner and mercilessly because they were Jews,” read the CRIF statement sent out on Saturday.

Hattab, was the son of the chief rabbi of Tunis.

According to testimonies of people who survived the attack on the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket, the four people who were killed during the incident were shot in the early stages of the seven-hour standoff, which ended when police stormed the shop and killed the hostage taker — a 32-year-old man identified as Amedy Coulibaly.

And:

Cohen was the grandson of a famous Jewish-Tunisian singer, Doukha who died last month. His parents, of Algerian and Tunisian descent, immigrated to Sarcells, a Jewish neighborhood of Paris, in the 1960s.

He was a fan of rap music, according to his Facebook page, and had recently published an image bearing the popular “Je Suis Charlie” slogan, in honor of the 12 people massacred on Wednesday at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris by two terrorist brothers who, it later turned out, were working together with the gunman of the market attack.

Cohen is believed to have been the first victim of Coulibaly, who started his siege of the market under a hail of gunfire, according to an account on JSSnews. Reports still differ but it seems Barham and Saada were also shot and killed during the take-over or shortly after the siege began

Saada leaves behind two children, both of whom live in Israel. “He was a remarkable husband and father, a man who lived his life for his family,” an unnamed friend told AFP.

Barham’s children go to a Jewish school, near the site where a policewoman was gunned down by Coulibaly on Thursday.

Hattab, one of seven children to parents living in Tunisia, was a university student living alone in Paris. He is reported to be the son of the chief rabbi of Tunis.

According to reports, Hattab was the market customer who managed to snatch one of Coulibaly’s weapons, turning it on him before realizing it was jammed. Coulibaly then executed him on the spot, according to a witness who spoke to Le Point.