Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

04/21 Links Pt1: Why Arabs Loathe Hezbollah; Obama Kept Iran's Short Breakout Time a Secret

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Arabs Loathe Hezbollah

Tariq al-Hamid, a prominent Saudi editor and political analyst, said that both Iran and Hezbollah have "gone haywire" as a result of the Saudi-led coalition's air strikes against the Iranian-backed Houthi militias in Yemen.
Al-Hamid pointed out that Iran and Hezbollah were now frustrated because of the severe blows that their allies have been dealt in Yemen. "They were hoping that the Houthi control over Yemen would boost the morale of their followers, who are already frustrated because of what is happening to them in Syria," he said. "All the crazy folks in the region are now targeting Saudi Arabia. What is the difference between Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda? And what is the difference between Iran and the Islamic State? The answer is simple; they are all trying to establish a foothold on the border with Saudi Arabia."
Addressing the Hezbollah leader, a Saudi blogger wrote: "You must pay the price for the crime you committed against Lebanon in 2006, when you destroyed Lebanon through your light-heated actions. All what you were seeking back then was to rally as many Arabs and Muslims behind you through your dirty trick." Another blogger wrote: "It is time for the Arab countries to arrest the terrorist Nasrallah and bring him to trial for his interference in Yemen's affairs and crimes against Syria, as well as his betrayal of his country, Lebanon."
Nasrallah and his Hezbollah terrorist group are now more isolated than ever in the Arab world. Until a few years ago, Nasrallah was seen as a "hero" of the Arab world because of his fight against Israel.
Now, however, many Arabs seem to have woken up to the reality that Nasrallah is nothing but an Iranian puppet whose sole goal is to serve his masters in Tehran. This, of course, is good news for moderate Arabs and Muslims in the region. But it remains to be seen whether the U.S. Administration and other Western powers will also wake up and realize that Iran and its proxies pose a real threat not only to Israel, but also to many Arabs and Muslims.

The Emergency

Let us be clear about what the White House is considering. It is threatening to cease protecting Israel from the jackals at the United Nations and other international organizations. These words from the Obama administration came the same week that the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women singled out Israel—alone among the UN’s 193 member nations—as the worst abuser of women’s rights in the world. In brief, Obama is signaling his desire to Europeanize American policy toward Israel.
Two weeks later, Obama told Friedman: “It has been personally difficult for me to hear…expressions that somehow…this administration has not done everything it could to look out for Israel’s interest.” Why? “Because of the deep affinities that I feel for the Israeli people and for the Jewish people.”
Translation: Some of my best friends are Jewish.
Many liberal American Jews think of Obama as their friend. He is not—not the friend of any Jew who understands his people are under unique and unprecedented threat. Obama is working to strengthen not only Iran’s hand but also the hand of those in the United States who believe the relationship between the U.S. and the Jewish state should be cleaved.
Nor is Obama a friend of Israel, for his policies are now aiding and abetting the nation that poses a literally apocalyptic danger to the Jewish people. If this deal is signed on June 30, Barack Obama will have made the world a far less safe and far more dangerous place—and by signing it, he will have signaled his willingness to see the Jewish future sacrificed on the altar of his own ambitions.
The threat is not immediate. The emergency is.

Why I began labeling Guardian Readers and their ilk “The Fascist Left”

Madeleine Albright was the first woman to become the United States Secretary of State when she was sworn in on January 23, 1997.
According to Wikipedia “Albright was raised Catholic, but converted to Episcopalianism at the time of her marriage in 1959. She did not learn until adulthood that her parents were originally Jewish and that many of her Jewish relatives in Czechoslovakia had perished in the Holocaust, including three of her grandparents.” It was during her tenure as Secretary of State that she learned of her Jewish religious background (or so she claimed at the time).
It was when her family history was mischievously ‘revealed’ by Britain’s Guardian Newspaper that I became forever alienated from that racist publication. They editorialized that the knowledge of her antecedents made for an unbridgeable conflict of interest between her Jewish ‘past’ and her senior American administration position as Secretary of State and therefore she had no choice but to resign from that position. It was a moment of shocking clarity for me, my Damascene conversion.
We do not ever repudiate a persons’ right to express themselves because of their race, their religion, their color, their ethnicity, their sex or their sexuality. That is one of the fundamental rights that inhere in a democratic system. To state that a politician should not have an opinion is absurdly illogical. In fact, I cannot stress enough how infantile the Guardian editorial was. If we assume the sanity of the Guardian Newspapers’ editorial staff then the only possible explanations for making such a statement was either temporary insanity or a concealed agenda.

The Jordan Times reports that the foreign affairs committee at UNESCO's executive board passed a resolution with a series of antisemitic demands designed to eliminate any Jewish rights in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The foreign affairs committee at UNESCO's executive board on Monday adopted a resolution submitted by Jordan and Palestine that reaffirms the definition of Al Aqsa Mosque as the entire sacred complex surrounding it.

The resolution, supported by the Arab and Muslim group, confirms that Bab Al Magharbeh, the largest entrance for non-Muslim visitors to Al Aqsa Mosque complex, is an indivisible part of Al Aqsa, Islam's third holiest shrine, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

This is the Moroccan gate; Jordan is claiming thatit should control the gate and therefore prohibit Jews from entering the Temple Mount.

The resolution also calls on Israel to cease all excavation work and demolitions within the Old City, and urges it to end all violations that exacerbate tension and conflict among the followers of various faiths.

The UNESCO committee also called for an immediate stop to all actions impeding 19 projects implemented under the Hashemite rehabilitation projects of Al Aqsa Mosque.

In other words, Arab excavations that destroy Jewish heritage are OK, but any careful Israeli archaeology in the region is forbidden.

Israel is also required to reopen the Bab Al Rahma gate of the mosque, put a stop to actions disrupting reconstruction work at the site and take the necessary measures to ensure the implementation of the Jordanian design for the reconstruction of the road to Bab Al Magharbeh.

The resolution also urged Israel to end the forced entry of Jewish extremists and armed military personnel to Al Aqsa courtyards and their assaults on Jordanian awqaf department personnel in Al Haram Al Sharif.

Moreover, it called for stopping the transformation of various buildings at the site into synagogues, and criticised decisions to change the historical names of dozens of streets and archaeological sites into Jewish names.

The committee demanded that Israel refrain from hindering Muslims’ and Christians’ access to their places of worship and urged Tel Aviv to stop working on over 100 excavation sites implemented by settler societies with the aim of imposing a Jewish identity on unearthed Islamic or Christian artefacts.

Even normally anti-Israel reporter Karl Vick recognized that the major aim of the PLO joining UNESCO was to bar Jews from their holy sites.

UPDATE: According to Arab media, the only countries to vote against the antisemitic resolution were the United States, Germany and the Czech Republic.

This pretty much says it all:

Amnesty International has rejected a motion to tackle the rise in antisemitic attacks in Britain at its annual conference.

The motion was table by Amnesty member Andrew Thorpe-Apps in March who said it was defeated at the International AGM on Sunday by 468 votes to 461.

Mr Trope Apps said: “It was the only resolution to be defeated during the whole conference.”

In March the charity confirmed the resolution calling for the group to “campaign against antisemitism in the UK and lobby the government to tackle the rise in attacks” had been accepted for discussion at the conference.

A spokesperson for Amnesty said: “We can confirm this resolution has been tabled and will be debated at the AGM.”

Mr Thorpe-Apps said he put forward the motion because “I recently joined and I believe passionately about human rights.

“I was aware that the organisation has been outwardly pro-Palestine in the past but it hasn’t stood up for the Jewish population and I think it would be good if they did that.

“I’m not Jewish myself but I’ve been appalled by what I’ve seen in the press facing the Jewish community and an organisation like Amnesty should really add their voice to that as they do with other human rights issues.”

Here is the text of the resolution that was defeated:

This AGM CALLS On AIUK to:
• Campaign against anti-Semitism in the UK.
• Lobby the UK Government to do more to tackle the rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Britain, whether physical or verbal, online or in person. The UK Government should monitor anti-semitism closely and periodically review the security of Britain’s Jewish population.

Proposer background notes:
It has been 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. Yet, even in 2015, European Jews are facing intolerance and abuse from anti-Semites.

There are now Jewish schools in the UK where the children are prepared for a potential terrorist attack, and there are Downing Street-style car bomb barriers to shield school buildings.

This year witnessed the murder of four Jews following the appalling Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris. In February a Jewish man was shot outside Copenhagen’s main synagogue following an attack at a free speech debate.

On 9th February, the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into AntiSemitism report was launched at Lambeth Palace. The report found that there was a 221% increase in hate crimes directed at Jews during the 2014 conflict between Israel and Gaza, when compared with the same period in 2013.

The Community Security Trust, which monitors anti-Semitic abuse and attacks, recorded 314 incidents in July 2014, the highest ever monthly total and more than the preceding six months combined. A quarter of these incidents took place on social media, and one third used Holocaust-related language or imagery.

The All-Party Parliamentary report recommends that:
• An independent council of non-Jewish figures is established to highlight trends in anti-Semitism, and make suggestions to the police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
• The UK Government fund more research into antiSemitism, report the findings to Parliament at least once per session about its work combating hate crime, and work with the CPS, police, and social-media companies to make online anti-Semitic abuse easier to report and stop.

I assume that the voting was by secret ballot, which means that while Amnesty publicly says that it is against antisemitism, in reality most members actually have no problem with attacks against Jews.

Which indicates that Amnesty's bias against Israel isn't a result of Israeli actions, but a result of the Jew-hatred among Amnesty's membership, a hate that they hide behind the false mantra of human rights.

Even more troubling is the fact that there are so few Amnesty members condemning this. The only tweets from the conference itself about this issue seem to have all come from Matt Provost:

Difficult to understand why #amnestyagm appear to believe Jewish people don't have human rights as no substantive arguments made
— Matt Provost (@m2provost) April 19, 2015

One would think that at least some of the 461 "human rights activists" who voted in favor would be publicly upset at Amnesty's obvious double standards, or how it has been taken over by Jew-haters. (Really, how else would you characterize people who vote against condemning Jew-hatred except that they support it?) If Amnesty really cared about human rights, this event would evince some soul-searching among its leadership.

Yet we are hearing practically nothing, even though the conference ended two days ago.

Amnesty claims to be for universal human rights - but Jews who are being attacked are apparently not human enough for these self-righteous hypocrites.

Amnesty International has zero credibility as a human rights group.

Netanyahu's $50 billion Iran "prediction" comes belatedly true

On March 2, President Obama preemptively criticized Binyamin Netanyahu's upcoming speech to Congress:

He reiterated the administration's criticism of Netanyahu's address and said the Israeli leader had been wrong before with his opposition to a 2013 interim deal with Iran.

"Netanyahu made all sorts of claims. This was going to be a terrible deal. This was going to result in Iran getting 50 billion dollars worth of relief. Iran would not abide by the agreement. None of that has come true.

"It has turned out that in fact, during this period we’ve seen Iran not advance its program. In many ways, it’s rolled back elements of its program."

I cannot find anywhere that Netanyahu said that Iran would get $50 billion of relief under the JPOA. This graphic shows how much Iran has received since the interim agreement, though: over $10 billion.

But that $50 billion number is very interesting for another reason. From the WSJ:

The Obama administration estimates Iran has between $100 billion and $140 billion of its oil revenue frozen in offshore accounts as a result of sanctions. U.S. officials said they expect Tehran to gain access to these funds in phases as part of a final deal. Iran could receive somewhere between $30 billion and $50 billion upon signing the agreement, said congressional officials briefed by the administration.

Obama's seemingly fictional Bibi quote has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Will "snapback sanctions" somehow take those $50 billion away?

Now, about Obama's other assertion that Iran had not advanced its program since 2013.

March 2013:

Iran is about a year away from developing a nuclear weapon and the United States remains committed to doing everything in its power to prevent that from happening, President Barack Obama said in an exclusive interview aired Thursday on Israeli TV.

Just days before he is to arrive in Israel for his first presidential visit, Obama told Israel’s Channel 2 TV that while he still prefers diplomacy over force, but that a nuclear Iran is a “red line” and all options remain on the table to stop it.

“Right now, we think it would take over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon, but obviously we don’t want to cut it too close,” he said.

Obama press statement, April 2015:

Today, estimates indicate that Iran is only two or three months away from potentially acquiring the raw materials that could be used for a single nuclear bomb. Under this deal, Iran has agreed that it will not stockpile the materials needed to build a weapon. Even if it violated the deal, for the next decade at least, Iran would be a minimum of a year away from acquiring enough material for a bomb.

So somehow Iran went from a year away to 2-3 months away - without advancing its nuclear program!

(h/t Mike Anon)

Hebrew language charter school in Washington DC serves diverse student body (video)

An interesting report from Israel's Channel 10:

I'm familiar with a couple of other Hebrew-language charter schools in the US, but I hadn't seen one that was in a predominantly non-Jewish neighborhood before.

(h/t Yoel)

04/20 Links Pt2: EU To Combat ISIS Beheadings By Labeling Settlement Products (satire)

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: European boycott

European foreign ministers, who are acquainted with the challenges of balancing human rights with security needs – particularly in the wake of 2004 Madrid train bombings, the July 7, 2005, London public transport bombings, the 2012 Toulouse and Montauban shootings and the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher massacres, must understand that Israel cannot simply lift movement restrictions placed on Palestinians living in the West Bank as long as Hamas and Islamic Jihad operate in the area and the Palestinian Authority continues to glorify terrorists.
Using economic boycotts to punish and ultimately close down Jewish businesses located in Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem also works under the assumption that only by making the entire West Bank judenrein can there be peace. These boycotts ignore the extensive economic cooperation that exists between Palestinians and Israelis.
Large proportions of Palestinians living in the West Bank are interested in various forms of cooperation with Israel, including economic. In a survey conducted in 2011 by pollster Geocartography Knowledge, 85 percent of respondents said they were interested in cooperation with Israel. Jewish businesses in Judea and Samaria and east Jerusalem employ tens of thousands of Palestinians.
European nations are engaged in a struggle to protect their Jewish communities from predominately Muslim aggression. When EU foreign ministers issue declarations that are driven by bigotry and distortions, they are feeding into anti-Semitism disguised as criticism of Israel. They are helping to spread lies.

PreOccupied Territory: EU To Combat ISIS Beheadings By Labeling Settlement Products (satire)

Fresh on the heels of yet another brutal video clip featuring a mass-execution of “infidels” by Islamic State fighters, sixteen Foreign Ministers of the European Union decided to address the danger by voting to mark products produced in Israeli settlements.
IS militants in Libya conducted two mass executions this week, beheading one group of Ethiopians and Eritreans along the Mediterranean coast and shooting the other. Dozens of victims were killed in the two incidents, which were filmed and distributed to international media. In response, the EU ministers vowed to take measures to protect those threatened by IS barbarism, and determined that the best way to prevent recurrences of mass beheadings in Syria, Iraq, and Libya would be to apply a distinctive label to all products imported into EU nations from areas in the West Bank where Jews live.
“We realized just how precarious existence is for so many people in the shadow of the Islamic State, and elected to make an unequivocal statement in that regard,” said Federica Mogherini, the head of EU foreign policy who presided over the conference of ministers. “We can think of nothing better in our capacity as European leaders than this important measure.”

UN Watch: Ex-UN Expert Richard Falk Compares UN Watch to Goebbels, “Their Defamatory Attacks Damaged My Reputation”

In a new diatribe delivered before an April 10th anti-Israel gathering in Washington, DC, former UN expert Richard Falk lashes out at UN Watch for “defamatory attacks” that “damaged my reputation, referring to the exposure of his support of 9/11 conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic remarks. Falk compared the Geneva NGO’s practices to those of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels (see video 9:00 to 10:00).
In fact, those who joined UN Watch in condemning Falk’s poison included UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the U.S., the UK, Canada — and the Palestinian Authority, which famously tried to fire him. For a glimpse into Falk’s numerous statements supporting terrorism against America, the West and Israel, click here.
According to Falk, writing in prepared remarks, UN Watch was the “most aggressive” of organizations to take him on, and “with incredible persistence” gave voice “to their denunciation of my character and activities.”
Falk complains that UN Watch circulated “defamatory attacks” calling for him to be fired to prominent international personalities, “including high-ranking civil servants in the UN itself, such as the UN Secretary General, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and a variety of ambassadors of countries friendly to Israel.”

Richard Falk compares UN Watch to Goebbels, says he was subjected to "defamatory attacks"

UN TV features Israeli initiative to save Palestinian kids' lives

A couple of years ago I visited the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon and made a mini-documentary about the remarkable Israeli organization Save a Child's Heart:

SACH was recently featured in a video report in, of all places, United Nations Television:

This must not have been easy for the UN to produce.

While Save a Child's Heart is recognized as an NGO by the UN's Economic and Social Council, that wasn't a slam dunk. This press release shows that SACH had hurdles that no other NGOs had to clear simply because it was Israel, as the representative was peppered with questions from Cuba, Venezuela, the PA and especially Syria casting doubt upon its true humanitarian purpose:

The Committee reviewed the applications of a range of organizations for consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, and heard substantive debate on a handful of NGOs present at the meeting. A highlight of the discussion concerned Save a Child’s Heart in Memory of Dr. Ami Cohen, an international organization founded in Israel working to improve the quality of paediatric cardiac care for children in developing countries suffering from rheumatic and congenital heart disease. It also aims to create centres of competence in those countries.

Questions arose about the organization’s involvement with Palestinian children and medical institutions, along with its stance on the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. In response, the NGO representative stressed that it stood for Israeli society and not the State of Israel. Of the more than 2,600 children served since the organization’s inception, more than 1,500 were Palestinian children recommended by a group of partnering Palestinian doctors and hospitals in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, he said.

(h/t Yoel)

Iran-Saudi naval showdown looms as world's double standards crystallize

From TheHill:

U.S. military officials are concerned that Iran's support for Houthi rebels in Yemen could spark a confrontation with Saudi Arabia and plunge the region into sectarian war.

Iran is sending an armada of seven to nine ships — some with weapons — toward Yemen in a potential attempt to resupply the Shia Houthi rebels, according to two U.S. defense officials.

Officials fear the move could lead to a showdown with the U.S. or other members of a Saudi-led coalition, which is enforcing a naval blockade of Yemen and is conducting its fourth week of airstrikes against the Houthis.

Iran sent a destroyer and another vessel to waters near Yemen last week but said it was part of a routine counter-piracy mission.

What's unusual about the new deployment, which set out this week, is that the Iranians are not trying to conceal it, officials said. Instead, they appear to be trying to "communicate it" to the U.S. and its allies in the Gulf.

It is not clear what will happen as the convoy comes closer to Yemen. Saudi Arabia has deployed ships around Yemen to enforce the blockade, as has Egypt. An official said the ship convoy could try to land at a port in Aden, which the Houthis have taken over.

Although the U.S. is assisting with the Saudi-led air campaign, it is not participating in the naval blockade of Yemen, said U.S. Central Command spokesman Col. Pat Ryder.

However, the U.S. Navy is in the region and has already "consensually boarded" one Panamanian-flagged ship in the Red Sea on April 1 on the suspicion it was illegally carrying arms for the Houthis.

None were found, but the move raised alarm bells in Washington over an increasingly active U.S. military role in the conflict. The Pentagon indicated this week that more boardings could occur.

U.S. officials say they are unsure why Iran is making the brazen move. One theory they have floated is that the Saudi-led coalition has effectively blockaded any air routes into Yemen and there are no other ways to resupply the Houthis.

Another theory is that Iran is trying to distract the coalition from another ship it has tried hard to conceal that is currently docked at Oman — a potential land route for smuggling arms into Yemen.

Yet another theory is that Iran wants to force a confrontation with Saudi Arabia that it believes it will win, because Iran views the Saudi military as weak and suspects the U.S. lacks the willpower to support its Gulf ally.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei last week on Twitter taunted Saudi Arabia, calling its military puny and smaller than Israel's. He also said the air campaign was tantamount to genocide of innocent Yemeni civilians and that the U.S. would also fail in Yemen.

Clearly, US forces in the Gulf are not frightening Iran in the least. The mullahs have concluded that there is no way that Obama would do anything to upset them.

At any rate, Saudi Arabia is enforcing a real blockade against Yemen and there is a real humanitarian crisis there:

Millions of Yemenis, especially in the south, are living through similar hardship, cut off from food, water, electricity and other basic needs. As the bombing campaign enters its fourth week, aid agencies are warning of a burgeoning humanitarian crisis in what is already the Arab world’s poorest country.

“Probably in the last 10 years, it’s one of the worst crises that has hit Yemen and the situation is deteriorating very rapidly,” Abeer Etefa, World Food Programme’s spokeswoman for the Middle East and North Africa, said by phone from Cairo. “We’re talking here about really a very grim outlook.”

At the beginning of the month, the Houthi-controlled Saba news agency said there were enough food stocks to last six months. But amid the fighting, those supplies are dwindling fast. On April 8, thick clouds of smoke hung over Aden when grain silos went up in flames.

No further food shipments are expected, Etefa said, as the coalition has blockaded ports to control shipping routes.
A country of 26 million, Yemen imports the bulk of its food, including nearly all its wheat and rice. The number of “food insecure” people in Yemen has increased to 12 million, a 13 percent rise since the start of the crisis, the WFP says.

Yemenis “will be starving soon, literally,” said Farea Al-Muslimi, a visiting scholar and Yemen analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

Yemen has 10 times the population of Gaza, and probably less than one percent of the news coverage that Gaza had last summer - despite Saudi airstrikes that have killed hundreds of civilians, a Saudi blockade that is keeping out nearly all food, and even Saudi bombings of supplies of aid, as it did yesterday:

The relief organization Oxfam said in a statement on Sunday that the coalition had also bombed one of its storage facilities in Saada Province, in northwest Yemen.

“The contents of the warehouse had no military value,” the group said. “This is an absolute outrage, particularly when one considers that we have shared detailed information with the coalition on the locations of our offices and storage facilities.”

This morning, dozens more were feared killed after an apparent Saudi airstrike on a munitions dump in a residential area.

The lack of concern from so-called "peace activists" who were holding daily protests against Israel last summer is striking, but not surprising.

04/20 Links Pt1: Can You Capture Your Home?; Executions Surge in Iran after Nuclear Talks

From Ian:

Honest Reporting: Can You Capture Your Home?

The historical connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem is a well-established fact. Jews have lived in that small area for thousands of years. It is the site of the ancient Jewish Temples as well as dozens of more modern places of worship. For most of recorded history, Jews have lived inside its walls.
But in 1948, that connection was disrupted. The city fell during Israel’s War of Independence to the Jordanian Legion. All the Jewish homes were destroyed, the synagogues burned down, and the surviving Jews were exiled. Watch our video where eyewitnesses tell what it was like for the Jewish refugees of Jerusalem to have to flee their homes. The military attack was an unprovoked assault, part of a wider campaign to destroy the nascent Jewish State.
Only after the city was liberated by the Israeli Defense Forces 19 years later was the Jewish quarter rebuilt, and Jews allowed to once again live in their historical and spiritual capital.
This is history. It is the key context, without which there can be no understanding of the “issue” of Jerusalem. Yet in almost every case when the media report on events in Jerusalem, this context is left out. Instead, one finds a short background sentence, such as the one below appearing in a recent New York Times article:
Israel captured the compound — along with the rest of the Old City from Jordan in the 1967 war

U.N. Watch: End this 'relief'

As the Palestinian Authority officially becomes the 123rd member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and threatens to use it as a cudgel to beat Israel, the United States must back up its displeasure with more than words.
It can begin by withholding its significant share of funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Established six decades ago as a “temporary” assistance agency for Palestinian refugees, it has metastasized into a partisan operation with direct ties to Hamas terrorists.
This so-called humanitarian agency has “repeatedly downplayed” Hamas' instigation of three conflicts since 2008, according to Brett D. Schaefer and James Phillips for The Heritage Foundation. Last summer the UNRWA found itself fumbling to explain how Hamas rockets turned up in its facilities.
Meanwhile almost three-fourths of the UNRWA's so-called clients aren't living in refugee camps, report Messrs. Schaefer and Phillips. Yet since 1950, the United States has dumped about $4.9 billion into an agency that “obstructs its original mission” and “impedes negotiations for a permanent peace agreement,” they add.
As the Palestinian Authority now nose-thumbs U.S. objections to its ICC membership and drifts further from negotiations with Israel, the U.S. must register its disappointment appropriately by withdrawing its “relief” agency funding

Iran’s regime and IS are two sides of the same medieval coin

Do you see the similarities between the experiences of the Yazidi girls and mine? Do any of you have daughters? Do you realize that when you negotiate with Iran about its nuclear capabilities, it is your moral duty as fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, brothers, and sisters to pressure Iran to improve its human rights record? The conditions of Evin and other Iranian prisons have not improved since I was there. The bystander allows atrocities to take place, and no amount of justifying would take the blood off your hands. I’m not asking you to bomb Iran. No. I believe that violence never leads to lasting good; it perpetuates the cycle that turns victims into torturers and torturers into victims. Unlike my captors, I believe in justice according to the rule of secular, democratic laws that refrain disallow shooting first and asking questions later or never, laws that do not allow crimes against humanity, including torture and rape, to be justified for any reason. If you lift the sanctions against Iran, whether quickly or slowly, you would be releasing billions of dollars of frozen assets to a brutal killing machine that is not fundamentally different from Islamic State. IS hides behind the name of God to gain power, and so does the Islamic Republic of Iran. Both “caliphates” are built on mass graves, rape of women and children, and various other atrocities.
A few days ago, Iranians danced on the streets of Tehran and other cities to celebrate the possibility of a deal between Iran and the United States. Iran’s economy has been suffering because of the sanctions, and money has been tight, so people are desperate for some economic relief. The last time I saw such celebrations in Iran was when the Islamic revolution of 1979 succeeded. It didn’t take long after that for Iran’s revolutionary regime to throw thousands of Iran’s best children into prison and torture, rape, and kill them. Without knowing it, in 1979, Iranians were dancing on the graves of their own children.
Please do not give in to the IRI and do not pour money into its bloodthirsty machine. This will lead to nothing but more devastation. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. The IRI and IS are two sides of the same medieval coin.

Terrorists like selfies, too

As far as I can tell, this photo was taken on March 23 for a anniversary celebration of the death of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Lenny Ben David made a quick Twitter caption contest. Some entries:

.@lennybendavid "That green really brings out your eyes!"
— Gidon Shaviv (@GidonShaviv) April 19, 2015

@lennybendavid Photo Bomb . . . .Literally @GidonShaviv
— Rob (@BooRadleee) April 19, 2015

@lennybendavid @elderofziyon “They may be apes and monkeys, but you gotta love their camera technology.” http://t.co/My7FIQSCLn
— David Frum (@davidfrum) April 19, 2015

HRW again gives benefit of doubt to Saudis for airstrikes on civilians

Last month I showed the striking differences between how Human Rights Watch treated Saudi and Israeli airstrikes that kill civilians.

Here is another example of the differences between the wording of a recent HRW report on a Saudi airstrike in Yemen versus a similar report from last Just about an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.

Note how HRW is bending over backwards to not directly accuse the Saudis of doing anything illegal, only suggesting that there might be problems and asking for an impartial investigation, while noting that the Houthis are placing military targets near civilian structures.

As opposed to Israel where they immediately accuse the IDF of violating the laws of war, purposeful targeting of civilians for no reason, and including sarcasm about Israel's "precision" strikes.

HRW communique April 16, 2015 17 days after the Saudi airstrike in Yemen	HRW Communique July 16, 2014 7 days after Israeli airstrike in Gaza

Yemen: Factory Airstrike Killed 31 Civilians Saudi-Led, US-Backed Attack Raises Laws-of-War Concerns Airstrikes by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition that hit a dairy factory in Yemen on March 31, 2015,killed at least 31 civilians and wounded another 11. The governments that participated in the attacks should investigate the airstrikes, which may have been indiscriminate or disproportionate, in violation of the laws of war. Forces of Ansar Allah, known as the Houthis, and other opposition forces, also appeared to put civilians at unnecessary risk. Area residents told Human Rights Watch that the Yemany Dairy and Beverage factory, a multi-building compound 7 kilometers outside the Red Sea port of Hodaida, was about 100 meters from a military air base controlled by Houthi forces. Military units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh were at another nearby military camp. “The coalition's repeated airstrikes on a dairy factory show cruel disregard for civilians, as does the deployment near the factory by Houthi and pro-Saleh forces." said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “The attack may have violated the laws of war, so the countries involved should investigate and take appropriate action, including compensating victims of unlawful strikes.” While civilian casualties do not necessarily mean that the laws of war were violated, the high loss of civilian life in a factory seemingly used for civilian purposes should be impartially investigated, Human Rights Watch said	Israel/Palestine: Unlawful Israeli Airstrikes Kill Civilians Bombings of Civilian Structures Suggest Illegal Policy Israeli air attacks in Gaza investigated by Human Rights Watch have been targeting apparent civilian structures and killing civilians in violation of the laws of war. Israel should end unlawful attacks that do not target military objectives and may be intended as collective punishment or broadly to destroy civilian property. Deliberate or reckless attacks violating the laws of war are war crimes, Human Rights Watch said. “Israel’s rhetoric is all about precision attacks but attacks with no military target and many civilian deaths can hardly be considered precise,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Recent documented cases in Gaza sadly fit Israel’s long record of unlawful airstrikes with high civilian casualties.” Human Rights Watch investigated four Israeli strikes during the July military offensive in Gaza that resulted in civilian casualties and either did not attack a legitimate military target or attacked despite the likelihood of civilian casualties being disproportionate to the military gain. Such attacks committed deliberately or recklessly constitute war crimes under the laws of war applicable to all parties. In these cases, the Israeli military has presented no information to show that it was attacking lawful military objectives or acted to minimize civilian casualties. On July 9, an Israeli attack on the Fun Time Beach café near the city of Khan Yunis killed nine civilians, including two 15-year-old children, and wounded three, including a 13-year-old boy. An Israeli military spokesman said the attack was “targeting a terrorist” but presented no evidence that any of those at the café, who had gathered to watch a World Cup match, were participating in military operations, or that the killing of one alleged “terrorist” in a crowded café would justify the expected civilian casualties.

Notice how HRW took far less time to "investigate" Israeli actions and declare them guilty than they spent to tell us that they don't quite know what happened in Yemen.

There is another difference.

The dead Yemenis are not even worth naming in HRW's dispatch, but HRW went into details of the lives of the victims of Israeli airstrikes, humanizing them.

For example:

Relatives and survivors said the victims frequently went to the beach café. Khaled Qanan, 30, told Human Rights Watch that the attack killed two of his brothers, Mohammed, 25, a master’s degree student in Arabic, and Ibrahim, 28, who sold fish. Ramadan Sabbah, 37, the two victims’ brother-in-law, said:

They went to the beach café all the time, including every day since this operation started [on July 8]. They said they felt safer there than they did in Khan Yunis. But there was nothing to shelter them; it was just chairs and fabric. When we found the bodies, they didn’t have visible injuries. Ibrahim had only a small cut, but we found his body almost 200 meters away. Mohammed was found on the asphalt. The road is cracked from the explosion.

Too bad that HRW couldn't figure out that the Qanan brothers were terrorists.

As the Meir Amit Center documents, they were both members of the Fatah Abu Rish Brigades.

But HRW said, flatly, that these soccer-loving terrorists were civilians. And HRW used that as a reason to accuse Israel of war crimes.

Once again, HRW's bias against Israel is unmistakable.

Living proof against "Israeli apartheid" to accuse Israel of apartheid at NYU

From NYU's "Students for Justice in Palestine" Facebook:

Yes, an Arab who leads a Knesset party and who Israel's Supreme Court allows to serve despite her hatred for the state for which she is a representative is telling the world that she has an "insider's view" on "Israeli racism and apartheid."