Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

While Jews love Jerusalem; Arabs use it to blackmail the world

Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu said on Jerusalem Day, "This is our home and here we will stay."

The response from Mahmoud Abbas is telling.

Did he say that Jerusalem was Muslim? Did he say that it was Arab? Did he say that Bibi was wrong?

No. Instead of asserting rights because of how much he loves the city that was all but ignored by Arabs when they controlled it, he decided to use the language of blackmail.

President Mahmoud Abbas' spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh told Palestinian news agency Wafa on Monday that there would be no peace or stability in the Mideast unless the Palestinians can claim East Jerusalem as their capital.

Not only no peace in Israel - no peace (or stability!) in the entire Middle East!

When naive Westerners claim that there is linkage between the Israel-Arab conflict and the stability of the entire Middle East, they are channeling the constant blackmail threats of Palestinian Arab leaders to the world.

Why Westerners want to succumb to explicit threats of blackmail by so-called "moderate peacemakers" is probably a question better answered by psychologists.

We already know that when a performing artist announces a concert in Israel, he or she will face insults and even death threats because of a heartfelt desire for peace and justice.

So it would be disappointing if we don't see the same types of threats against Queen Elizabeth from the moral BDS crowd:

Ben-Gurion University president Prof.Rivka Carmi – the first woman to head an Israeli university and previously to serve as dean of a medical school here – has another honor to celebrate.

Buckingham Palace announced Monday that the leading pediatrician and geneticist is to receive a rare honor from Queen Elizabeth – an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) – for her work to deepen scientific and academic relations between the UK and Israel.

Ben Gurion University has been a specific target of the BDS crowd, and Carmi has been an outspoken opponent of the boycott movement.

OK, haters. Time to show the Queen the same concern for morality and justice that you show to those who don't oppose Israel.

God save the Queen from anti-Israel idiots.

(h/t Zvi)

05/18 Links Pt2: An open letter to Roger Waters; Legitimizing the Groups that Hate You

From Ian:

BDS : An open letter to Roger Waters

There is nothing personal in this letter. I am putting aside your history and ignoring the relationship I have had with your music; I have simply read your recent public comments and felt a need to respond.
I am a Zionist, which simply means that I believe the Jews have the right and need to control their own destiny just like every other nation does. That for a long time, Jews were without that nation, doesn’t detract from that right. Or arguing another way, believing what you do, I doubt you would suddenly announce that all Palestinian claims had expired due to some imaginary time limit.
You argue by having ‘researched’ that your opinion is of more weight and value than anyone who disagrees with you, claiming as you have in the Dionne Warwick case that she is ‘ignorant’ and ‘misunderstands’. You support dismantling the Middle East’s only liberal democracy (the ‘one state solution’) in line with the central tenets of the BDS platform. I have no intention of dealing with propaganda or the creation of a separate storyline; my intent is simply to show that the basic facts highlight that the BDS narrative is wrong. What I am also not going to do is suggest Israel is without flaws, nor posit that Israel is always right; that isn’t my Zionism; for me Israel has every right to be a state that makes mistakes; just like the UK. At the same time, my Zionism allows for the Palestinians to be victims too, even if you and I would radically disagree both about the causes and the possible solutions to the conflict.
As for your research; many people have studied the conflict, many taking opposing views to yours. I too have done so, spending many years living and working with both Israelis and Palestinians. You have clearly taken a stance that considers some ‘sources of information’ untrustworthy, building your opinion only from those you have chosen to follow. Most people do that when taking sides, but it is important to remember your opinions are not facts but merely conclusions drawn from individually and carefully selected pieces of information. (h/t cba)

Legitimizing the Groups that Hate You

On May 21, a representative of a prominent British Jewish charity, the Anne Frank Trust, will share a platform with one of Britain's most anti-Semitic extremists: the Salafist preacher, Abdurraheem Green.
The event, organized by the Islamic Diversity Centre, is named "Against Racism Against Hatred: Tackling Anti-Semitism & Islamophobia."
The speaker, Abdurraheem Green, has spoken of a "Yehudi [Jewish] ... stench" and urged Muslims to "push them [Jews] to the side." In addition, he encourages men to hit their wives to "bring them to goodness," and has called for the killing of homosexuals and adulterers.
In addition to Green, Councillor Alyas Karmani will also be speaking at the event. A former member of George Galloway's Respect Party, Karmani has claimed that the "ideology" of "the Yahood [Jews] and the Nasara [Christians]" has "no issue killing women and children."
Despite these views, Grace Dunne, a representative of the Anne Frank Trust, as well as anti-racism campaigners and Labour MP Jeremy Beecham, seem happy to share a platform with these two anti-Semitic preachers, all in the name of tolerance.

The pro-Palestinian activists are not pro-Palestinian

What have “pro-Palestinian” activists done for the Palestinians?
Did they help Palestinians achieve national independence? Did they help them build an economy? Did they help them build a civil society? Did they help them grow talent and integrity among their leaders? Did they help them define their identity as anything other than victims and terrorists?
Where are the pro-Palestinian conferences helping Palestinians achieve all these things? Where are the organizations who believe in the Palestinian identity and who help shape it towards the future? Where is the funding that would help grow the Palestinian civil society that Palestinian Bassem Eid believes is fundamental to the Palestinians’ future?
When the United Nations approved in 1947 the partition plan aiming to create a two-state solution that gave little to Jews, the Arabs were eager to kill it, and they used war to try to do it. Did anyone care that the Palestinians’ interests would have been greatly served by that plan?
Between 1948 and 1967, when Gaza and the West Bank were under full Arab control, did anyone attempt to create a Palestinian state on that land?

Israel: Vital to the US and Arabs

For some time, there have been voices within U.S. intellectual and academic circles that question how vital Israel is to the U.S. Some openly wonder whether Israel has done anything good for the U.S., or if Israel is actually important at all to American national interests. Such voices, while few, still manage to utilize a very effective anti-Israeli propaganda machine, for example the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, as well as some academic institutions that have chosen to turn themselves into enemies of the Jewish state. Their main argument is: What do we need Israel for?
Of course, those voices get a lot of support from us, the Arabs. We Arabs have been claiming for seven decades now that Israel is the source of all evil. Some of our rulers have been saying this to the Western media for decades. Basically, we claim that if Israel disappears, our lives will become wonderful and iPhones will grow on the trees in our backyards.
Nonetheless, facts on the ground suggest that these claims could not be further from the truth. Let's see why.
It is no secret that the Obama administration has had a very difficult relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Nevertheless, Israel has become more vital to American interests than ever, for the following reasons: (h/t Alexi)

Fairies, unicorns and a peaceful binational state

Yossi Beilin in the NYT writes:

[W]e who know that a peace settlement is essential for Israel’s future should now rethink the ultimate goal. When I do that, I keep returning to the idea of an Israeli-Palestinian confederation, rather than a classic two-state solution. By acknowledging that our two peoples live too close together to ever be completely separate, we might finally persuade both sides to make historic concessions to each other.

I answered this stupidity in 2010 when an Arab proposed it in another op-ed in another major US newspaper. Here was my post:

George Bisharat, writing in the Washington Post, paints a lovely picture of how well a bi-national state in Palestine would work:

The answer is for Israelis and Palestinians to formalize their de facto one-state reality but on principles of equal rights rather than ethnic privilege. A carefully crafted multiyear transition including mechanisms for reconciliation would be mandatory. Israel/Palestine should have a secular, bilingual government elected on the basis of one person, one vote as well as strong constitutional guarantees of equality and protection of minorities, bolstered by international guarantees. Immigration should follow nondiscriminatory criteria. Civil marriage between members of different ethnic or religious groups should be permitted. Citizens should be free to reside in any part of the country, and public symbols, education and holidays should reflect the population's diversity.

Although the one-state option is sometimes dismissed as utopian, it overcomes major obstacles bedeviling the two-state solution. Borders need not be drawn, Jerusalem would remain undivided and Jewish settlers could stay in the West Bank. Moreover, a single state could better accommodate the return of Palestinian refugees. A state based on principles of equality and inclusion would be more morally compelling than two states based on narrow ethnic nationalism. Furthermore, it would be more consistent with antidiscrimination provisions of international law. Israelis would enjoy the international acceptance that has long eluded them and the associated benefits of friendship, commerce and travel in the Arab world.

It sounds so lovely! Palestinian Arabs from Lebanon, Syria and Jordan can move into this new binational Palestine by the millions, but don't worry: they won't do anything to hurt their treasured Jewish minority.

Once upon a time, not too terribly long ago, there was an Arab majority in Palestine. How well did they treat the minority population? Here are the news briefs for a single day, September 4, 1938, in the Palestine Post:

Wasn't life just grand then? Didn't everyone live together in peace and harmony? No need for a state for Jews - that would be racist. No, they can live in peace among the Arabs, in full safety and security, knowing that they are protected as dhimmis by force of Koranic law.

Bisharat couches his dream in multicultural terms:

The main obstacle to a single-state solution is the belief that Israel must be a Jewish state. Jim Crow laws and South African apartheid were similarly entrenched virtually until the eves of their demise. History suggests that no version of ethnic privilege can ultimately persist in a multiethnic society.

The idea that there are 22 or so states that define themselves as "Arab" - and discriminate against non-Arabs - is not a problem at all for Bisharat. The fact that the constitutions of many of those statesproclaim that their state religion is Islam, and that the Koran is the source for their laws, is also just peachy for oh-so-cultured Bisharat. No, the only evil is a Jewish national home - that is racist! Jewish self-determination is inherently evil, while the addition of another de-facto Arab state is supremely moral.

His plan recalls another Arab plan.

In 1947, on the eve of the partition, Arabs put forth another single-state plan in a desperate effort to avert the possibility of a Jewish state, however tiny, in Palestine.

In this plan the Arabs stressed that the state would have equal rights, free access to holy places, and they would even deign to let Hebrew be spoken in certain ghettos where Jews would be the majority.

This plan was just as utopian-sounding as Bisharat's plan today, and its purpose was exactly the same: to destroy Israel.

Yet one only has to look at what happened a mere ten days after this transparent Arab plan couched in liberal terms of equality and tolerance and co-existence was offered. Jews were attacked mercilessly by the very people who were supposedly ready to display tolerance towards them.

And what happened when the relatively liberal kingdom of Transjordan took over the Jewish areas? Jews were forbidden to visit their holy places. Every Jew in the country was expelled. The Jewish Quarter was destroyed; the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives gutted, dozens of synagogues burned down in the course of a few weeks.

This is the reason why a Jewish state is needed. To have a tiny area in the world where Jews can live as Jews, without fear. The morality of a Jewish state where Jews can live safely and securely far outweighs the pseudo-morality of Bisharat's vision where the clock would go back to the days of Jews being bombed in markets because of a never-ending series of perceived injustices and affronts.

When the Arab world shows that it can treat its minorities with the sensitivity that Israel treats hers, then maybe Bisharat can make a valid point. When Jews can buy land in Jordan and Lebanon and Syria and Saudi Arabia and move there without fear, then maybe we can talk about how Israel discriminates against parts of its population. When that day occurs, and Jews can live anywhere in the world with as little fear as Muslims can today, then the raison d'etre of a Jewish state would melt away.

However, today, it is Arabs themselves who show by their actions exactly why a Jewish state, in the Jewish homeland, is not only necessary but moral.

(h/t Yoel)

Al Saud al-Yahud - Iran's anti-Saudi cartoons

These cartoons have been found in Iranian media:

Notice the Saudi offering a blood offering to the Jewish Golden Calf, and the last cartoon says "Hypnosis Jewish," not "Zionist."

But Iranians insist that they aren't antisemitic,and Roger Cohen agrees, so that's that.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)

05/18 Links P1: Abu Mazen is not an Angel of peace; Jerusalem Day exercise sovereignty or lose it

From Ian:

The UNRWA farce: Nothing more than a blatant travesty of human integrity based on a political agenda

Why is it that the Palestinian method of inciting hatred and killing people over what they term as the “Naqba’ that occurred 67 years ago, is still considered a valid cause? Why is it that we never hear about the millions of other people around the world who were displaced from the lands of their forefathers owing to war or political unrest? The list of people who were forcibly exiled or who fled their war ravaged homelands for safety zones in recent history is so long that it makes the mind boggle, it represents far greater numbers of refugees than the Arabs of Palestine, whose status of ‘refugee’ has been maintained by a special United Nations Agency (UNRWA) that functions with a different set of criteria than any other UN refugee agency. Hence the facts that nearly all of Europe’s forty million refugees were settled in under two years following the end of WW11, whilst nearly seven decades later the Palestinians have been left to stagnate as ‘pawns’ to be used in their immoral struggle against Israel. It is flabbergasting that according to the ‘special criteria’ set out by UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee count stands at around 6.5 million worldwide…one in three refugees worldwide being Palestinian! Currently 3.8 million of those ‘Palestinian refugees’ and their descendants are registered with UNRWA; a staggeringly big number considering that there remains only a mere 30,000 to 50,000 of the originally displaced people created by the Arab Israeli war in 1948.
All other refugees have learned to cope and move on. But the United Nations is maintaining and prolonging this farce of millions of people known as ‘Palestinian refugees’ which is nothing more than a blatant travesty of human integrity based on a political agenda.
There has never been much interest or horn-blowing shown to any of the world’s far worse refugee problems.

Abbas to Syria's Palestinian Refugees: Go to Israel or 'Die in Syria'

Faced with the suffering of their own people, the Palestinians' leadership recently decided not to help. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas rejected a deal with Israel brokered by the United Nations that would allow Palestinian refugees living in Syria to resettle in the West Bank and Gaza. Abbas stated unequivocally that "we rejected that and said it's better they die in Syria than give up their right of return." The Palestine Liberation Organization has also ruled out any military action to help the 18,000 or more refugees who are trapped in the Yarmouk camp near Damascus.
Abbas's cold-blooded response reveals something fundamental about Palestinian society and identity. Far more than territory, the key Israeli-Palestinian issue is the idea of a Palestinian "right of return"—the belief in a legal and moral right of Palestinian refugees, and more importantly their descendants from around the world, to return to ancestral homes in [Israel's part of] what was once Mandatory Palestine. This belief is so vital to Palestinian national identity that their leaders would rather they die than give it up and have a chance to live.
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) of December 1948 supposedly codifies this "right." However, a closer look reveals it to be conditional: "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and … compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return." The resolution also calls for the United Nations "to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation."
Interestingly, all the Arab States in the UN at the time (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen) voted against the resolution, since it implicitly accepted the partition of Mandatory Palestine that recognized the Jewish right to a state. But the actual text of the resolution has been irrelevant since the beginning; Palestinian identity has crystallized around the dream of an unconditional "right of return," as has Palestinian propaganda to the world.

IDF official: If our war crimes probes no good, all of the West's are no good

With a veiled threat to the International Criminal Court, a top IDF legal division official said on Monday that “if others say that our investigations” into war crimes allegations are insufficient, then “the entire Western world” must realize that their investigations will be declared insufficient.
IDF Deputy Magistrate Advocate General Col. Eli Baron’s statement, at the Israel Bar Association Conference in Eilat, was the first major statement by a high ranking IDF official since ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda last week issued what was interpreted as a warning to Israel to cooperate with her office more quickly on her preliminary examination of war crimes allegations in the 2014 Gaza War.
Bensouda implied she might be stuck deciding whether to open a full criminal investigation against Israeli soldiers solely based on evidence from Israel’s human rights critics, if Israel did not provide her with its own evidence on the Gaza war soon.
Israel’s response was to attack the ICC Prosecutor’s move and her preliminary probe in which she recognized a State of Palestine.
Jerusalem still vehemently rejects the idea of a State of Palestine, especially regarding any issues relating to the ICC.

Egyptian professor of Judaism describes how Jews drank Christian blood

Dr. Sami Al-Emam, professor of Judaism and an "expert" of Zionist ideology at Egypt's Al Azhar University, spoke to Jordan's Dostor newspaper about - what else - how evil Jews are.

He says that Israel has secret maps showing their ambition to take over all Arab lands from the Nile to the Euphrates. The turmoil in Iraq, Syria and Yemen is, naturally, the Jews' fault and foretold in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Israel is "demonic."

One of the illustrations of the article shows the Rothschilds' evil tentacles.

This is all positively moderate compared to his personal blog.

There, this "expert" asserts that the blood libel is completely true, but that the Jews don't kill non-Jewish children for their blood any more after the Russians and Germans found out and retaliated by murdering millions.

(h/t Shawarma News)

The UNHRC actually helps real refugees in UNRWA-land

This is quite amazing:

Six Palestinian and Syrian families left the Gaza Strip on Sunday through the Erez border crossing en route to Sweden after being officially granted the right to immigrate and live in the Scandinavian country.

The immigration of the 27 members of the six families was done in coordination with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and facilitated by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“Our organization facilitated the departure of the six families through the [Israeli-controlled] Erez border crossing at the behest of the UNHCR,” Soheir Zaqout, the spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told Anadolu Agency.

According to UN figures, the Palestinian population residing in Syria was estimated at 581,000 before the outbreak of the 2011 Syrian war, the majority of whom lived in the Yarmouk refugee camp in southern Damascus and other camps in various Syrian regions.

However, the ongoing war in Syria has forced tens of thousands of families to migrate to Lebanon, Jordan and hundreds have managed to relocate to the Gaza Strip.

“The Red Cross doesn’t coordinate immigration, our task was to only aid them [the six families] in leaving the Gaza Strip through the Erez crossing because the UNHCR has no official office in Gaza,” Zaqout said.

The immigration of the six families was done through the official channels and after coordination with the Swedish government, she added.

Dozens of Palestinians have recently immigrated illegally through the sea due to the harsh economic conditions plaguing the Gaza Strip and the destruction caused by last summer’s Israeli onslaught on the embattled enclave.

Normally, UNHRC doesn't do anything in the areas that UNRWA works, namely Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. While not mentioned here, my guess is that these families had fled from Iraq to Syria (or the Syrian border) and were never in the UNRWA system but were rather considered real refugees from Iraq under UNHCR. From there, when the Syrian war broke out they probably made their way to Egypt and then Gaza.

The interesting part is that UNHCR, which actually tries to reduce the number of refugees, has taken these 27 people out of the land where UNRWA works so hard to maintain the refugee status of its people and increase the numbers of o-called "refugees."

This is the sort of news UNRWA doesn't like to hear, because so many of the people it keeps in its system would love to move to Sweden or South America or anywhere else, but UNRWA doesn't give them that option. Fewer "refugees" means less funding and less reason for UNRWA, meant to be a temporary agency, to exist.

One other point: Notice that not one Arab country is offering to naturalize any refugee whose ancestors happened to live in British Mandate Palestine n 1948. The countries that offer to help are Western. Arab countries prefer that Palestinian Arabs remain stateless - supposedly for their own good.

The contrast between how the UNHCR and the Western world acts compared to how UNRWA and the Arab world acts cannot be more striking.

Israel catches Hamas attempting to smuggle diving suits

Hebrew media is reporting that the Shin Bet has managed to catch a shipment of 40 diving suits to Gaza, hidden among a larger shipment of sportswear, earlier this month.

The shipment was discovered at the Nitzana border crossing between Egypt and Israel, which is used only for commercial goods.

Hamas terrorists used diving suits during Operation Protective Edge in attempts to attack Israel from sea.

Since Egypt has cracked down on smuggling tunnels, Hamas has tried harder to smuggle in goods through the normal daily imports of hundreds of truckloads of goods to Gaza from Israel.

Kikar Hashabbat lists a number of these attempts that were caught over the past four months, most of which have never been reported in English-language media as far as I know:

1200 tubes of polyurethane, used for the production of rocket propellants
Rocket fuel hardener, also for propellants, hidden in paint cans
200 kg of crude sulfur rods used in weapons manufacture, hidden in a food shipment
18 tons of metallurgical coke used in furnaces to forge metal

Somehow, I missed this in the Twitter feeds of all those people who are saying that Israel should "end the blockade" to Gaza. Because smuggling in materials to kill Jews fit right in with their "human rights" agendas.

CNN becomes a mouthpiece for Palestinian propaganda

From CNN:

The official Palestianian news agency is reporting that Israeli settlers have chopped down and seized about 800 Palestinian-owned olive trees near the town of Shuyukh, east of Hebron.

The report, by WAFA, the Palestine News & Information Agency, cited "a local source," whom it did not identify. Israel has yet to comment on the report.

The source, described by WAFA as "a local activist," told the agency that residents of the Israeli settlements of Bani Kadim and Asfar broke into an olive orchard near the town and chopped down the trees, which belonged to people who lived in the area.

Really? CNN has sunk so low as to parrot Wafa's lies without doing a modicum of fact checking?

OK, how can we tell that this is garbage? By looking at the wording in Wafa. It says "Israeli settlers Sunday chopped down and seized about 800 olive trees belonging to Palestinians near the town of Shuyukh, east of Hebron, according to a local source."

What does "chopped down and seized" mean? 400 chopped down and 400 seized? Or did they chop down 800 olive trees and then put them onto a convoy of trucks to cart them away?

It takes a long time to chop down a mature olive tree. New saplings, which are often planted by Palestinians in order to steal public land, are relatively easy to uproot, but this says "chopped down and seized."

No photos. No videos. No named sources. No corroboration. WAFA reports a story that matches none of the normal standards of journalism- and CNN parrots it under the guise of only reporting what anti-Israel Arab media is saying.

But it doesn't stop there.

Also Sunday, more than 175 right-wing Jewish extremists entered the Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, escorted by Israel police and security personnel, according to sources inside the mosque. The sources cannot be named for security reasons.

175 is a much larger crowd than the usual 30 or so, and one would think that other media would have photos or video of such an event.

But there is no such video on the Waqf website, or at Hona Al Quds, or QPress YouTube page, which jealously show any video they can find of Jews walking peacefully on their holiest site, usually to aggressive screams by the Muslims.

The best video I could find from Sunday was a couple of dozen Jews who may or may not have exited from the Temple Mount, singing.

But there is one video that was taken from the Temple Mount today. It shows hundreds of Arabs screaming anti-Israel slogans!

Wow, I found more evidence for Arab hate against Jews in two minutes of searching than CNNs' scores of reporters found of Jewish hate for Arabs.

Traveling, reading open thread

I'm going on a business trip to Florida, so blogging may be a little sporadic this week.

I will say that I am reading Tuvia Tenenbom's Catch the Jew, and so far it is fantastic. While no one of any religion or origin in Israel is spared from his acerbic wit, he does an amazing job hilariously documenting how EU governments and NGOs are paying millions of euros to Palestinian Arab projects whose only purpose is to instill hate of Jews. (Tenenbom is the one who documented that a B'tselem researcher denied the Holocaust to him.)

Tenenbom, who grew up haredi and since rejected religion, is skilled at gaining the trust of his subjects, by pretending to be a German or Arab or Austrian. Once Arabs and European do-gooders and self-hating Jews in "Palestine" trust him, they reveal the ugliness within them, all with smiles.

A photo of the real Jerusalem

Matti Friedman has an excellent essay at Tablet about Jerusalem, with eye-catching photos.

This photo detail, of a Jewish saleswoman helping a Muslim woman apply eye makeup, says more about the real city of Jerusalem than thousands of Pulitzer-chasing wire-service photos.