Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Happy Birthday to Yosef (Mike Lumish)

This is a note that I have been meaning to write for quite some time, but little things like Netanyahu's speech to Congress and his re-election as Prime Minister, kept getting in the way. And, of course, there is this never-ending nonsense with Iran which is looking more and more ugly. The EU, the UN, and the US are becoming increasingly hostile to Israel.

And, yet, the Israelis are becoming more and more prolific in their technological and economic productions.

Yosef Hartuv - who Facebook tells me recently had a birthday - is the owner / operator of Love of the Land. Yosef and his wife, Melody, live in Hebron. The pro-Jewish / pro-Israel blogosphere - Judeosphere? - is a small place. If you spend some time talking with people you find that you come to know most everyone within a reasonable short order.

All I want to do on this fine Sunday morning, however, is introduce you guys to Yosef and encourage you to drop by Love of the Land.

I am someone who - after much rending of cloth and gnashing of teeth - came to the conclusion that we must support our brothers and sisters who live in Judea and Samaria. This does not preclude the possibility of an Arab state on some of that small bit of land. What it means is that Jews should be allowed rights to property on the land that Jewish people come from.

And, please, what could be more historically Jewish than Hebron, for Chrissake?

Yosef tells us this:

I visited Hevron in November 2000 after the outbreak of the Rosh Hashanah War to see what could be done to assist in the face of the growing daily attacks on the community. After returning to work for the community in the summer of 2001, a bond and a love was forged that grows to this day. My wife Melody and I merited to be married at Ma'arat HaMachpela and now host visitors from throughout the world every Shabbat as well as during the week. Our goal, "Time to come Home!"

According to Wikipedia, Hebron contains between 175,000 and 250,000 Palestinian-Arabs and somewhere between 500 and 850 Jews. Yosef and Melody are two of those Jews.

One mistake that I believe that we have tended to make as a people is in the tendency to scorn the so-called "settlers" who are merely Jewish people living on the very land that Jews come from. Some argue that these people are somehow an impediment to peace, but this only so if we buy into the racist idea, put forward by people like Mahmoud Abbas and Barack Obama, that Jews should be allowed to live in certain places but not others.

Hebron, of course, is the city of Abraham and this makes it the site of ongoing Jewish habitation stretching into antiquity. There is, in fact, no place on this earth in which Jewish people have more legitimacy for building a community and a home then in the ancient Jewish city of Hebron.

This being the case, all I want to do this morning is wish Yosef and Melody nothing but the best in this world and I very much hope that the Jewish community in Hebron is safe and thriving.

From my perspective, all the land from the river to the sea is Jewish land, just as all the land that comprises France is French land. It is a small bit of land, but certainly no other people have a greater claim to Judea and Samaria then the Jewish people. We need not be greedy, however, and should be willing to share our historical homeland with with the neighbors, if they care to live in peace. But whether they do wish to live in peace, or whether they do not, no one is going to tell me that there are places on that land where Jews should be forbidden from living.

No one is going to tell me that Yosef and Melody have no rights, or should have no rights, to live in Hebron.

The world is a very big place and the Jews are a tiny population, but there are only a few places on the planet where one can live openly as a Jew. I live in northern California and am, therefore, blessed to be living in one of those places. Sure, San Francisco State University might make the unconscionably stupid decision to partner with a university wherein they celebrate the murder of Jews, but it's not as if a Jew would likely get attacked walking through that campus.

Yosef and Melody, however, live in a place where it should be an honor for a Jewish person to live.

I think that they should be proud and that they should have the right to expect some support from the diaspora communities. What we should not be doing, however, is denigrating Jews who choose to live beyond the "green line" any more than we would denigrate, say, Rosicrucians who choose to live in Walla Walla, Washington, or Presbyterians who choose to purchase land in Katmandu, Nepal.

When we do so we are justifying bigotry against our own people and that is never a good idea.

So, it is in that spirit that I wish Yosef a very joyous belated birthday and nothing but happiness and success for both him and Melody.

Greetings from the other side of the planet, my friends.

Peace to you, please.

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.

There has been a little media attention paid to Yarmouk recently, after ISIS took over most of the area and reportedly beheaded some Palestinian fighters there. This coverage is of course dwarfed by anything Israel does in Gaza, but there is at least a little..

What is funny, though, is that for the two years before ISIS took over, Syria's regime has put the camp under siege. Over 128 have starved to death as of last May, far more than have been killed by ISIS. Over 150,000 residents have fled the Syrian bombing campaign there. And even after the takeover, Assad's regime has been dropping barrel bombs on the camp.

The only reason there is even a little interest in Yarmouk now is because of ISIS, not because of the victims.

There was also a story today, not verified, that 120 Palestinian kids between 12-15 were kidnapped in Mosul recently. I see no keen interest by anyone to track this down.

No Jews, No News 1: 400 kids killed or injured by Saudi airstrikes

A tweet from the Yemen Post:

More than 400 children have been killed or injured from #Saudi Airstrikes according to #Yemen Health Ministry, #اليمن pic.twitter.com/2Ujnpg2i7n
— Yemen Post Newspaper (@YemenPostNews) April 11, 2015

Did you miss the massive rallies in European capitals against "indiscriminate airstrikes" and "disproportionate response"?

At this time, hundreds of people have been killed in Yemen from airstrikes, including many civilians killed every day, versus 3 Saudis.

I haven't seen any scorecards in the media comparing the two numbers either.

Fatah shows how peaceful it is again

From the Fatah Facebook page:

You are noble, oh Fatah

Fatah is the one that began the journey, and it is the one that will complete it

We're Fatah members and we are proud

It must mean "through negotiations." After all, Yasir Arafat - whose pictures are featured in about 30% of all Fatah Facebook posts - wrote in 1993 that "The PLO commits itself to the Middle East peace process, and to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations. The PLO considers that the signing of the Declaration of Principles constitutes a historic event, inaugurating a new epoch of peaceful coexistence, free from violence and all other acts which endanger peace and stability. Accordingly, the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators."

And he wouldn't lie, would he?

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Time's Joe Klein paints all opponents to Iran deal as "Likudnik neoconservatives"

This was published on March 30 in the Times of London under the title "A Bad Deal":

The deal is flawed. First, the Fordow plant can be quickly switched back to enriching uranium. Second, Iran has still not come clean to the International Atomic Energy Agency about its past attempts to develop nuclear weapons. This has made it difficult to determine whether secret programmes are continuing. Third, any arrangement hinges on transparency: Iranian readiness to accept snap inspections without let or hindrance. Finally, the supposedly comprehensive deal is set to run only for ten to twelve years.

It is therefore possible that Iran has made a conscious decision to prepare for nuclear “breakout” but not to go fully nuclear until 2025. Sanctions will be lifted.Tehran will prosper and spin an ever wider web of regional alliances that challenge Saudi Arabia and Israel. Its support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and its backing for the Assad regime and for the Shia militias in Iraq and the rebels in Yemen are only a foretaste of what is to come. Its clout will be increased by the knowledge of its nervous neighbours that it is on the cusp of becoming a nuclear power, and that the US is not willing to slow Iran’s ascent.

The agreement taking shape in Lausanne is based on the most generous possible reading of Iranian intentions, namely that the regime will make genuine concessions because it is desperate to be readmitted to the club of rational, benign states who crave nothing but peace in the Middle East. That is naive. Instead of containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, this deal may simply give Tehran carte blanche to plan a future with its own bomb.

This was in the Washington Post, which wrote:

THE “KEY parameters” for an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program released Thursday fall well short of the goals originally set by the Obama administration. None of Iran’s nuclear facilities — including the Fordow center buried under a mountain — will be closed. Not one of the country’s 19,000 centrifuges will be dismantled. Tehran’s existing stockpile of enriched uranium will be “reduced” but not necessarily shipped out of the country. In effect, Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will remain intact, though some of it will be mothballed for 10 years. When the accord lapses, the Islamic republic will instantly become a threshold nuclear state.

That’s a long way from the standard set by President Obama in 2012 when he declared that “the deal we’ll accept” with Iran “is that they end their nuclear program” and “abide by the U.N. resolutions that have been in place.” Those resolutions call for Iran to suspend the enrichment of uranium. Instead, under the agreement announced Thursday, enrichment will continue with 5,000 centrifuges for a decade, and all restraints on it will end in 15 years.

TOI reported:

The terms delineated in the framework agreement will leave Iran as “a threshold breakout nuclear state for the next 10 years,” and after that the remaining safeguards against a breakout to the bomb will begin to fall away, former IAEA deputy director Olli Heinonen warned.

How would you describe the Times of London and the Washington Post and Olli Heinonen and other mainstream critics of the deal?

If you are an unthinking and uncritical cheerleader for everything Barack Obama does like Time's Joe Klein, this is how:

The weird ideological confluence between Likudnik neoconservatives and the Iranian hard-liners in opposition to the deal is instructive. It is reflexive, uninformed, pessimistic.

Reflexive? Uninformed? Sounds like Klein, with his namecalling response to those who disagree with Obama, is describing himself.

04/11 Links: The Palestinian Statehood Idea Crumbles; Why Palestinians in Yarmouk Are Unlucky

From Ian:

The Palestinian Statehood Idea Begins to Crumble

A sea change began within hours of the Israeli election returns.
Thomas L. Friedman, who has devoted much of his life to promoting Palestinian statehood, declared in his New York Times column that the idea of a Palestinian state is “not possible anymore.” That was followed by his Times colleague David K. Shipler, another longtime advocate of a Palestinian state, announcing that the “the two-state solution looks dead.”
Just a couple of elite, pro-Palestinian journalists venting their frustration?
Don’t bet on it. The American public is losing faith in “Palestine” too. Friedman and Shipler’s declarations merely echo the latest poll numbers on the American public’s view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll has found that Americans’ support for the idea of creating a Palestinian state has reached its lowest point in 20 years. Just 39 percent of Americans support it; 36 percent are opposed.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Palestinians in Yarmouk Are Unlucky

For Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders, the desire to punish Israel is stronger than the will to save the lives of thousands of Palestinians being killed in Syria by the Islamic State and starved by the Syrian army, which has been besieging Yarmouk for 700 days.
Instead of devoting their energies and efforts to stop the massacres in Yarmouk, PA officials were busy preparing a new draft resolution to be submitted to the UN Security Council, establishing a timeline for ending Israeli "occupation."
The Arab foreign ministers who met in Cairo earlier this week to discuss ways of backing the new Palestinian bid, deliberately ignored that, as they were chatting and sipping coffee, Palestinians were being slaughtered and forced to flee their homes in Yarmouk.
For the PA, Jews participating in a marathon seems to be more serious and life-threatening than Islamic State terrorists beheading Palestinians and destroying Palestinian homes in Yarmouk.
"All that is left for us to do is howl, slap and cry." — Ashraf al-Ajrami, former Palestinian Authority minister.

French Activist Praises Retirement of ‘Al Durah Hoax’ Architect Charles Enderlin

With reports that veteran France 2 reporter Charles Enderlin is stepping down from his job, the French-Jewish activist who spearheaded claims he falsely accused Israel in the death of a 12-year-old boy back in 2000 is relieved to see him go.
Phillipe Karsenty spoke to The Algemeiner regarding Enderlin’s departure from the state television network, though he expressed disappointment it was not over ethical issues regarding the infamous report on the death of Mohammed al-Dura.
“This is good news but it has nothing to do with any desire of the French authorities to stop incitement against Israel and the Jews. Enderlin is leaving his job because he is retiring. He will reach 70 years old in October 2015 and he doesn’t have the right to keep on working in a French public company, which France 2 is,” he said.
The 70-year-old Franco-Israeli correspondent will be replaced as France 2‘s bureau chief in Israel by reporter Franck Genauzeau. Karsenty noted that Enderlin’s “replacement by someone who doesn’t have any track record of anti-Israel or antisemitism is good news too,” and could allow the network to prove it doesn’t engage in systematic anti-Israel bias.
“From Genauzeau’s future attitude, we will know if Enderlin’s constant incitement against Israel was his own decision or if it was a state oriented political decision,” he said. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Chag sameach, again

Passover's last days in the Diaspora start Thursday evening, so no blogging until Saturday night or Sunday morning.

Have a chag kosher v'sameach!

04/09 Links Pt2: Brendan O’Neill: Yarmouk exposes callous double standards of ugly Israel bashers

From Ian:

Brendan O’Neill: Yarmouk exposes callous double standards of ugly Israel bashers

If there were an award for double standards, for getting crazily angry about some people’s behaviour while turning a blind eye to other people’s behaviour, anti-Israel activists would win it every year.
These are people who take to the streets to march and holler whenever an Israeli warplane leaves its hangar, yet who say next to nothing about the militarism of France, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and too many other states to mention.
They bang on endlessly about Israel being an apartheid state, yet through BDS they have created a system of cultural apartheid. In their eyes, culture created by us, or by China, or by Zimbabwe, is fine, but culture produced by them, those nasty Israelis, must be hounded out of theatres and galleries lest it infect us all with its contagious Zionism.
These are activists who cry “Censorship!” when a conference of theirs is pulled, as happened at Southampton University recently. Yet they spend the rest of their time agitating for the No Platforming of Israeli representatives on campus and for the shutting down of pro-Israel university societies. “Free speech! (For nice people like me, not for rotters like you)” — that’s their fantastically hypocritical motto.
And now we can see that their double standards extend even to the people they claim to care for: the Palestinians.Even here, even on the question of Palestinian suffering, anti-Israel activists only care some of the time. If you’re a Palestinian whose life is made harder by Israeli forces, they’ll share pictures of you, march in the streets for you, write tear-drenched tweets about you. But if you’re a Palestinian under threat from a non-Israeli force, forget about it. You’re on your own.

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

I just listened to an interview with Tuvia Tenenbom, author of Catch a Jew and I Sleep in Hitler’s Room. Although the interviewer talks far too much — I always wish they would just shut up and let the subject talk, especially when it’s someone as engaging as Tenenbom — I strongly recommend it. Be prepared to be upset, angry or depressed (depending on your personality) by what he reports.

Among the truths that Tenenbom discovered in his travels in Europe and Israel in the guise of a non-Jewish German journalist were a) many Europeans are really anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist, b) so are some Jewish Israelis, and c) they are getting together to work towards the replacement of Israel by some kind of non-Zionist state in which Jews will be a minority.

This isn’t news — NGO Monitor has been documenting the massive flow of Euros to anti-Zionist organizations run by left-wing Israeli Jews or Arabs for years — but Tenenbom emphasizes how pervasive the influence is, extending from large organizations like the Red Cross to small operations like the tour guide (a self-described ‘ex-Jew’) who brings groups of Europeans to Yad Vashem, where he explains that this is what the Jews are doing to the Palestinian Arabs.

It’s hard to see how a tiny country, which doesn’t threaten anyone and only wants to be left in peace deserves this. But the NGOs are only a tiny part of it. There is also the phenomenon of the worldwide academic onslaught on Israel, in which critical standards and honesty are thrown to the winds in the production of ‘scholarship’ that is no more than political polemics against Israel and the Jewish people; while, at the same time the professors replace teaching with indoctrination, and use university resources for political activity such as promoting boycott-divestment-sanctions against Israel. Jewish faculty are in the forefront of the effort.

Tenenbom also notes how many of the Jewish Israelis that gnaw away at the state that protects them — one of his interviewees is writer Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz — positively venerate Palestinian Arab Muslim culture. But, he points out, they don’t know a word of Arabic and haven’t read the Qur’an. What can they know about Arab culture or Islam?

Tenenbom uses the expression “self-hating Jews” to describe Jews like Gideon Levy, but I think that’s misleading. They don’t hate themselves — they see themselves as better than the others, the ones that have all the ‘Jewish’ characteristics that they hate (religious belief, for one). They identify with their enemies that want to kill them, even to the point of adopting their anti-Jewish beliefs, because they subconsciously think it will protect them.

Upset, angry or depressed yet? I haven’t even mentioned the United Nations, which spends millions of dollars each year on events, exhibits and production of materials that present the Arab narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (in which Israel is entirely at fault), or the Human Rights Commission which generates more resolutions condemning Israel than those for all other nations combined.

Then there is a multiplicity of smaller groups, trade unions, professional organizations, church groups (the Presbyterian Church USA comes to mind) which allow themselves to be used as vehicles for delegitimizing the Jewish state.

All this, despite the fact that there is no objective basis for it. Most anti-Israel arguments revolve around the alleged mistreatment — even ‘genocide’ — of Palestinian Arabs under Israel’s control. But the Arab population continues to increase, and its levels of health and nutrition are among the highest in the Arab world. More than 95% of the Arabs in Judea and Samaria live in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority (and of course 100% of Gazans are ruled by Hamas). Even during wars, objective analysis has shown that Israel’s actions to reduce civilian casualties areunmatched by those of any other nation.

At any given time there are numerous wars, rebellions, insurgencies, occupations, massacres, etc. throughout the world which receive far less attention in the media and academia despite hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of casualties (the Boko Haram uprising killed almost 11,000 in 2014 and almost 5,000 already this year). Did you know that the Second Congo War (1998-2003) caused more than 350,000 violent deaths, and 2.7-5.4 million excess deaths, with low-level violence still continuing to this day? The Israeli-Arab conflict is comparatively very small potatoes.

And then there are the positives: the remarkable number of scientific and technological advances by Israelis, the almost full-employment economy, the democratic political system, the high degree of personal freedom enjoyed by Jewish and Arab Israelis despite the pressure of wars and terrorism, the degree of equality for women and gay or otherwise unconventional people, the production of art, music and literature, and more.

It’s revealing that the haters object to pro-Israel people mentioning any of this. One is not allowed to say that Israel is the most (the only) LGBT-friendly country in the Middle East, because that is “pinkwashing,” using this undeniable truth to ‘cover up’ the oppression of Arabs. But if no empirical fact can count against the proposition that Israel is an oppressor, then that’s a clue that the proposition is itself not based on empirical facts.

So what is behind the irrational hatred for Israel and the amount of resources — Western, enlightened resources — devoted to an attempt to destroy it and to replace it with another unstable, undemocratic, racist Arab-majority state?

There are lots of reasons. American academic institutions have been infused with Arab oil money, and Arab countries have supplied many of them with activist foreign students. The UN is dominated by the non-aligned movement, which is controlled by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which in turn is led by the Arab League. ‘Progressive’ ideology includes a large serving of guilt for Western colonialism, and the Arab narrative that presents Israel as a Western colonialist resonates with the Left.

But I’m afraid that Tenenbom’s experiences in Europe and among Israel’s academic and media elite are the most important indicator. I said the hatred is ‘irrational’, and an irrational attitude has an irrational cause: in this case, pathological Jew-hatred, deeply implanted in so many Europeans, and paradoxically also in the best-educated Israelis.

This could be a lesson for those Jews who can’t decide to stay in Europe or leave. Don’t expect the Europeans to stick up for you if you stay. They don’t like you.

04/09 Links Pt1: How I learned to stop loving Obama and worry about the bomb

From Ian:

How I learned to stop loving Obama and worry about the bomb

Finally the Iran deal began to take shape. And with it several truths started to poke through the soil: The US did not view Iran’s Islamic revolution as a disaster that needed to be curtailed and combated globally, tirelessly, like communism. It saw Iran, under the regime of the ayatollahs, as a legitimate actor in the region, despite its annihilationist rhetoric. It did not believe former Israeli Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin when he said that a US strike against Iran would be, on the spectrum between the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 1981 strike against the Osirak nuclear reactor, far more similar to the latter. “It’s one night’s work,” Yadlin said on several occasions, noting that the regime would not risk all-out war with the US, imperiling its very survival. Instead the Obama administration viewed the military option as a disaster; one it had no fortitude to pursue.
And so, after the sanctions brought the regime to the table, the lack of a credible military option brought the world the framework deal reached last week in Lausanne. From an isolationist American perspective, the deal makes a great deal of sense. This week, President Obama explained his rationale to The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman. He said that America’s size and strength enabled it to take chances, to engage with Castro’s Cuba and Khamenei’s Iran. “We are powerful enough to be able to test these propositions without putting ourselves at risk,” he said. Iran’s military spending is $30 billion; the US’s is $600 billion. “Iran understands that they cannot fight us.
The deal, he told NPR, is better than no deal because even if engagement produces no shift in the attitude of the people and the leadership toward western democracy, it rolls back the nuclear program and places it under a verification regime for 10-15 years. If 13 years down the line, Iran turns its back on the agreement and employs modern centrifuges, though, the president conceded, “the breakout time [to a nuclear weapon] would have shrunk almost down to zero.”

State Dept Downplays Kissinger/Schultz Op-Ed as ‘A Lot of Big Words and Big Thoughts’

Harf sparred with AP reporter Matt Lee, interrupting him several times as he tried to get a reaction to the op-ed from the State Department.
“Really, you don’t think it’s nuanced?” Harf asked Lee.
“Is there a question or are you just commenting?” Harf replied. “I’m not going to go line by line.”
The Obama administration has repeatedly challenged critics of the deal to offer an alternative. This response has been used to rebut Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Republicans, foreign leaders, and even some from his own party.
“I didn’t hear a lot of alternatives. I heard a lot of–sort of a lot of big words and big thoughts in that piece, and certainly there is a place for that. But I didn’t hear a lot of alternatives about what they would do differently,” Harf said.
The same administration that asked questioners for their own solutions insisted that there are only three options in dealing with Iran: To bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, leading to war, to negotiate a deal with Iran that will cap their enrichment capabilities, or to increase sanctions on Iran in hopes it will force them to accept a better deal.

Iran supreme leader: Nuclear framework no guarantee of deal

A framework nuclear deal reached with world powers last week is no guarantee a full agreement will be secured by the end of June, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Thursday.
“What has been done so far does not guarantee an agreement, nor its contents, nor even that the negotiations will continue to the end,” Khamenei, who has the final word on all matters of state, said on his official website.
In the first comments by the supreme leader since the Lausanne framework agreement, an evasive Khamenei said he was “neither for it or against it.”
The supreme leader also addressed the discrepancies between the US and Iranian accounts of the terms of the framework agreement, accusing the White House of lying.

All you need to know about Iranian negotiating tactics

From David Frum in The Atlantic:

Back in the Bush years, negotiations with Iran were entrusted to a three-power contact group: Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. I once spoke with one of the lead negotiators during a dinner at his nation’s embassy. He told me that repeatedly he and his Iranian counterpart would agree on some point—only for the counterpart to open the next meeting by denying that anything had been agreed the day before, casting them back to zero.

After this had happened more than once, the Western negotiator introduced a new tactic. He would have a member of his delegation take notes on the discussions in Farsi. At the end of the day, the Farsi-language notes would be presented to the Iranian counterpart for his review. “Have we understood everything correctly?” The counterpart nodded. “Would you then please kindly sign these notes to confirm that understanding?” The pen was produced, the document signed.

The next meeting opened as usual, with the Iranian counterpart rescinding everything that had been agreed at the last meeting. The Western negotiator triumphantly produced the signed minutes. The Iranian glanced contemptuously at the paper. “That’s not my signature,” he said.

(h/t Eli Tabori)