Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, June 12, 2015

06/12 Links Pt1: BDS and Hamas: The New Partnership; EU Funds Illegal Construction in Area C

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: BDS and Hamas: The New Partnership

Hamas is pinning high hopes on BDS to pave the way for the destruction of Israel through boycotts, divestment and sanctions. Hamas believes that such tools are no less important than rockets and suicide bombings, which have thus far failed to achieve the goal of wiping Israel off the face of the earth.
U.S. universities that allow the BDS activists to disseminate their hate against Israel are unaware that these people are serving as Hamas ambassadors. Moreover, Western governments, above all the U.S., are unaware that Hamas and BDS allies also consider them enemies of the Palestinians.
What Bahr is actually saying is that the BDS campaign should be intensified until Israel is forced to surrender and accept all the demands of Hamas, which include, of course, ending the existence of Israel.
While the anti-Israel activities of the BDS movement have emboldened Hamas, they have also undermined those Palestinians who believe in peace and coexistence with Israel. If BDS supporters really care about Palestinians, why don't they go to the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian territories to promote reforms, democracy, freedom of speech and the rights of women under the rule of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority? BDS seems to be more about promoting Hamas's agenda than advancing the cause of peace.

How the EU Funds Illegal Construction in Area C

Chaos continues to reign: months have passed since Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered the destruction of all illegal buildings built by the EU in the E1 area · Mida checked and found that no actual change has happened on the ground · The State authorities are paralyzed, and Zionists NGOs are left alone in the struggle to cut of the EU pipeline

It is a story of unending frustration: the Palestinian illegal takeover of Area C is in full swing and no-one's trying to stop it. It didn't start yesterday. The originator of the idea, former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, described already in 2009 his plan for a "creeping annexation," by creating corridors and territorial contiguity, which will serve as the starting point for any future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. By all accounts, he seems to have succeeded.
This impression is strengthened by the fact that one of the reasons for the Palestinian success in this land grab is the massive intervention of a foreign power. In recent years, the EU has acted to implement a "humanitarian plan for the occupied Palestinian territories." These innocent-sounding terms are a cover for active support and funding for the Palestinian illegal takeover of the plane of Mishor Edumim (E1), to the tune of hundreds of millions of Euros.

Important update from @LTCPeterLerner on Military Advocate General report on #Gaza beach incident

One of the most sensational Guardian reports during the summer war involved a July 16th IDF attack on a Gaza beach which killed four Palestinian children. Yesterday, Israel’s military advocate general’s office issued its report on the tragedy. Here’s the Facebook update from Lt. Peter Lerner, IDF military spokesman, on the report.
Today the Military Advocate General announced his decision on one of the most tragic cases of last year’s conflict with Gaza. I believe it is one of the most covered incidents that was reported on by the media, it was the incident of an air force strike on Gaza beach that resulted in the tragic death of four boys, Ahed Atef Bakr, Zakariya Ahed Bakr, Mohammad Ramiz Bakr, and Ismail Mahmoud Bakr.
The military police carried out an extensive criminal investigation. During the investigation testimonies were collected from a large number of IDF soldiers and officers who were involved in the planning and execution of the attack. Additionally, an extensive number of documents relating to the attack were reviewed, along with video footage documenting the attack in real time, as well as media images and video footage which documented parts of the incident. Efforts were made to collect the testimonies of Gaza Strip residents who were, allegedly, witnesses to the incident. In this context, the collection of testimony from three witnesses was coordinated. Regretfully, despite the prior coordination, the witnesses eventually declined to meet the investigators, and instead provided affidavits in regard to the incident.
From the factual findings collected by the investigators, it revealed that the incident took place in an area that had long been known as a compound belonging to Hamas’s Naval Police and Naval Force (including naval commandos), and which was utilized exclusively by militants. The compound in question spans the length of the breakwater of the Gaza City seashore, closed off by a fence and clearly separated from the beach serving the civilian population. It further found in the course of the investigation (including from the affidavits provided by Palestinian witnesses), that the compound was known to the residents of the Gaza Strip as a compound which was used exclusively by Hamas’s Naval Police.

From AP:

Spain's lower house of parliament gave final approval Thursday to a law setting a citizenship path for descendants of Jews forced to flee the country after all Jews were told in 1492 to convert, go into exile or risk being burned at the stake.

The law allows Sephardic Jews to start applying for Spanish citizenship in October, granting them a three-year window to seek a Spanish passport complete with the right to work and live anywhere in the 28-nation European Union.

"Today begins a new stage in the history of relations between Spain and the Jewish world," the Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities said in a statement. "A new period of reunion, dialogue and harmony re-integrating a branch of the nation that was unjustly torn off in its day."

Many would-be applicants thought the Spanish law in the works since 2013 would carry few requirements beyond thorough vetting of applicant ancestry by Jewish organizations. That's the case with the Portuguese law, which was proposed after Spain's but went into effect in March 1.

But Spanish lawmakers ended up drafting a citizenship process for Sephardic Jews similar to that faced by permanent residents seeking Spanish citizenship.

The hurdles are significant: Sephardic applicants must learn and be tested in basic Spanish and must also pass a current events and culture test about Spain.

And they must establish a modern-day link to Spain, which can be as simple as donating to a Spanish charity or as expensive as buying Spanish property.

Muslims are upset, saying that they too should have the same rights after their expulsion from Spain.

Moroccan media calls this rule hypocritical. A group of activists in Morocco and Spain criticized the decision, describing it as a policy of double standards. One analyst said that the Muslims who were expelled from Spain after hundreds of years of ruling Andalusia are more important than the minority of Jews who lived there. He said, "Moroccans and the world strongly condemns this distinction that does not make sense, and we demand equality in the granting of citizenship for each of his Andalusian origin. "

There is one significant difference, though. Many Muslims claim that Andalusia is still Muslim land and they want it back. As Yoram Ettinger wrote in 2012:

The collapse of Israeli-Palestinian agreements from the 1993 Oslo Accords until today stems from the fact that both Israeli and US leaders ignore the real root of the conflict. The heart of the conflict is the denial of the existence – and not the size - of any non-Muslim entity on land that, in the eyes of Muslims, is Waqf – an inalienable religious land endowment.

On Jan. 9, 2012, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, a close associate of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, stated that all of Israel has been Waqf since 637 C.E. and will be forever. The statement was made at the annual rally of Fatah, which Abbas heads. It was broadcast on the official Mahmoud Abbas television station, and called for the killing of Jews to hasten the Islamic Resurrection.

The principle of the Waqf land is permanent, and transcends leaders and policies which are provisional. It applies to any land that was ever under Islamic control. It is an inseparable part of the legacy of Muhammad and Islamic law, especially at this time of the surge by the trans-national Muslim Brotherhood, which views Allah, the Koran, the Prophet Muhammad, jihad and martyrdom as the goal, the law, the leader, the way and the exalted aspiration respectively. Their loyalty to the Waqf land obligates Muslims to "holy wars" and the restoration of sovereignty in the Philippines, Thailand, parts of China, Kashmir, Chechnya, Israel, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere.

The centrality of the Waqf land in the Muslim experience can be understood from the precedent of Andalusia, the Arabic name for most of the Iberian Peninsula, which was under Islamic rule from 711-1492 C.E. The Muslim Golden Age did not take place between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, but rather in Andalusia, especially in the Alhambra palace/fortress in Granada. At the beginning of the 8th century, the Muslims conquered the Iberian Peninsula, southern France, Sicily and the Italian coastline and declared it "the Abode of Islam." In 1492, Spain was liberated from the occupation by Muslims, who today still view "Al-Andalus" as Waqf. The March 2004 Muslim terrorist plots in Madrid, which murdered 191 people and wounded around 1,800, intended to rectify the "Injustice of Andalusia."

Sephardic jews are not planning to take over parts of Spain. But many Muslims want to do exactly that.

This may explain why Spain is in no rush to provide "equal rights' between those those whom it expelled capriciously and those who were expelled in the course of reconquering their land.

Dave Zirin's deranged hate of Israel

Dave Zirin is a sports reporter for The Nation. But he doesn't only cover sports - he uses sports to bash Israel.

Last year he wrote two columns claiming that Israel routinely attacks Palestinian soccer players, and that some of them were deliberately shot in their feet by Israel.

Bob Knot demolished every single one of Zirin's arguments and exposed him as a liar. His last piece of evidence, that he was trusting the reporting of Haaretz, was found to be wrong as well, as Haaretz plagiarized its report and was forced to take it down.

Yet The Nation and Zirin, full of venomous hate for Israel, didn't adhere to the slightest shred of journalistic standards and no corrections were made.

This week Zirin finds another tenuous sports story to hang his anti-Israel hate on: the NBA finals.

David Blatt, born in Framingham, Massachusetts, holds dual citizenship in Israel by virtue of being of the Jewish faith. His Israeli citizenship (which I could also claim by virtue of my own familial Judaism) gives him a set of political and civil rights that non-Jews born on this land 5,500 miles from Framingham do not possess. After playing and coaching in Israel following a Princeton education, Blatt became in his own words, “much more Jewish and much more Zionist.”

Blatt’s proud Zionism means that he has been a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces (the IDF), an experience described in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as “his most significant bonding experiences with the country.” He is also on a first-name basis with the nation’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. This friendship, which ABC broadcaster Jeff Van Gundy described at high decibels as “impressive” during Tuesday night’s primetime Finals broadcast, is so intimate, that Blatt boasts of being able to call Netanyahu “Bibi” when they speak. Blatt told The Plain Dealer that the prime minister “said all of Israel is behind the Cavaliers. That was great.”

What went unmentioned by Van Gundy, not to mention The Plain Dealer, are the ethical implications of an NBA coach beaming about his friendship with Netanyahu. “Bibi’s” last campaign was so riven with virulent anti-Arab racism, it was condemned across the globe. The aforementioned Israeli newspaper Haaretz printed an editorial about feeling “shame” that their “prime minister was a racist” after Netanyahu’s March election victory. The New York Times editorial page credited his triumph to a “desperate and craven” campaign that relied on a “racist rant” against Arab citizens of Israel to pull out a victory. Time’s Joel Klein wrote that Netanyahu’s victory represented an “appalling irony” that “brought joy to American neoconservatives and European anti-Semites alike.” I use these examples because they represent how even staunch supporters of Israel were nauseated by Netanyahu’s toxic political platform.

Blatt has evidenced no such concerns, but this should not surprise. Last year, as NBA players were being excoriated for just posting messages about the loss of innocent life during Israel’s war on Gaza, Coach Blatt, without consequence, publicly cheered a venture that, according to the United Nations, killed more than 2,200 people and over 500 children, 1,500 of whom were civilians. Israel lost six civilians in the fighting. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Globes, Blatt said, “In my opinion, this war is Israel’s most justified war I can remember in recent years. I’m really sorry about what’s happening in Gaza, but there’s no doubt that we had to act there, so that Israel will have quiet there once and for all.” He then reprimanded the people of the United States for not supporting Israel’s war more heartily, saying, “There’s support, although sometimes it’s not enough.”

The absence of public criticism or even discussion about Blatt’s politics represents a head-spinning double standard.

So an Israeli citizen is proud of his friendship with his adopted nation's leader and supports its war against terrorism.

But to Dave Zirin's twisted mind, this means he supports the murder of children and anti-Arab racism. (Counterexamples showing how Bibi supports Arab citizens in Israel of course must be censored from the pages of The Nation. We can't let facts get in the way of a false narrative.)

The other irony of the column is that the father of the Golden Warriors coach was murdered by"Islamic Jihad" in Beirut, which has the same name as one of the terror groups that Israel was defending itself against in Gaza.

Does Dave Zirin know how many children have been killed by the US military since President Obama has entered office? For some reason, those numbers are hard to come by, but they seem to be well over 150 from drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan alone. We don't know how many were killed in airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Libya. If Zirin supports Obama, then by his logic he must support killing babies too!

A high school essay couldn't get away with this ridiculous attempt at logic. But to The Nation, it is impeccable.

Zirin once wrote, "It's always dangerous, but never boring, when a newspaper sports columnist uncorks a political thesis." In his case, it reveals his ignorance and sickening hate.

I have some bad news for Zirin, though. Other people call Bibi their friend, and they even say the same about IDF generals.

Will Zirin find a way to write the same hateful words against General Martin Dempsey? Or does that apply only to Jews who dare to be proud of Israel?

Hundreds of merchants cross Gaza border every day

From the news articles about Gaza, one would think that Israel only allows medical patients, foreign dignitaries, NGOs and journalists into and out of Gaza.

But COGAT's statistics for the last several months show that the largest category of people crossing the Gaza border are actually the people we hear about least - merchants.

On Wednesday, 966 merchants crossed the border - more than all other categories combined.

That's the way it was all week, with 1,253 merchants crossing on Monday.

For a territory under "siege," there sure is a lot of business going on.

Other statistics on COGAT's new Facebook page:

115,000 Gazans crossed Erez for medical treatment in Israel and abroad in 2014
Nearly 900 tons of goods were exported from Gaza in 2014
100 mobile homes were donated by Oman to Gaza and COGAT is coordinating their entry

On that last point, the homes are too large to take up one lane of the road leading to Gaza, he effectively close the road. COGAT must coordinate with the police to allow them to be transported at night.

You won't read this in the media.

06/11 Links Pt2: The Six Day War, and the Origin of the Left’s Hatred for Israel; Beheadline goes viral

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Exposed: Orange telecom involved in war crimes in occupied territories, according to French official

First, let us review developments thus far. Last week the French telecom giant caused an international fracas by saying it was going to “drop” its business with Israel – apparently in response to Arab boycott calls.
After first suggesting that the divestment was designed to ingratiate Orange to to Arab countries, and before saying it was a routine business decision, the CEO said it was due to the local affiliate’s activities in “occupied territory.” The French ambassador to the US, Gerard Araud, backed this claim, declaring on Twitter that “Contributing to settlements in an occupied territory is illegal”.
To be sure major French companies, like Total, are quite active in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, with the apparent approval of the French government. But it turns out that Orange itself directly and openly operates in occupied territory. Orange provides cell phone service in Nagorno-Karabakh, an area of Azerbaijan that has been occupied by Armenia since seizing it in a bloody 1992-94 war. The U.N., along with the E.U. and U.S., considers the area occupied territory. Nonetheless, Armenian settlers have moved into the occupied territory in in significant numbers, amid constant complaints from Baku and others.
Nor is this Karabakh some long-forgotten frozen conflict. Fighting broke out this year across the line of control, killing dozens, and a full scale war over the occupied territory is looming.
In other words, Orange, and the French government, is committing what a senior French official just described as a war crime. Indeed, by the theoretical international law standards applied to Israel, Orange’s behavior in Armenia is particularly egregious. Having cell phone towers in the West Bank (the purported crime of Orange’s Israeli licensee) does not involve any recognition of Israeli sovereignty or any judgement about the status of the territory.

The Six Day War, and the Origin of the Left’s Hatred for Israel

June 10, 1967, marked the end of the Six Day War and the beginning of the radical left’s hate affair with the Jewish State.
Although Israel neither welcomed nor wanted this conflict, the Left declared that Israel, not the invading Arabs, had been ‘militaristic,’ ‘colonialistic,’ and ‘fascistic.’
Was Israel really that bad, or was the Left biased, twisting or ignoring inconvenient facts to fit a prepackaged verdict – and has been biased ever since?
By 1967, Vietnam-war, civil-rights, and feminist protestors joined with hippies, yippies, flower-power pacifists, and not so pacifistic Hells Angels to form a vast anti-Establishment counterculture. The 1960s had become the Sixties. It was not the most rational of times.
Amorphous, anarchic, and contradictory, the movement nevertheless enjoyed basic principles and a single voice: America was Amerika. Revolution was imminent. Frantz Fanon’s Marxist anti-colonial Wretched of the Earth was the radicals’ book of the month.
Facts – such as who actually started the war, and why – were irrelevant. The left was Manichean, pitting the evil West against the good Third World. Israel – a western nation and ally of America – was on the wrong side. It was guilty on all counts.

UN Watch: Beheadline goes viral

Was the alleged typo in our viral headline “Saudi Lose Bid to Behead of UN Human Rights Council” intentional, or not?
Autocorrect will do just the darnedest things when the word “Saudi” is in context?
One thing is sure: the faux typo caught the attention of the world’s leading news agencies, whose reporters posted it all over Twitter — turning a global spotlight on Saudi Arabia’s shockingly cruel system of gross and systematic human rights abuses.
The buzz sparked a feature debate on Twitchy.com, which concluded: “Amazing UN Watch ‘typo’ regarding Saudi Arabia ‘has to be on purpose’.”

Pinkwashing, in summary (ElderToons)

I was inspired to create this cartoon after seeing a Twitter debate sponsored by Haaretz this morning that effectively legitimized the absurd charge of Israel "pinkwashing" its supposed crimes by engaging in progressive policies.

In fact, anti-Israel "progressives" created the "pinkwashing" charge to inoculate their fellows from being sympathetic to Israel's progressive agenda.

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

Israel’s Declaration of Independence calls for a Jewish and democratic state. This is creatively ambiguous because very few people agree on precisely what each of these characteristics entails, although they have very strong opinions. This isn’t a theoretical discussion; both of these concepts have a direct bearing on Israel’s policies, in particular the question of a “Jewish State Law” and the possible annexation of all or part of Judea and Samaria. Today I’m interested in the ‘democratic’ part.

As everyone knows, the ancient Greeks gave us the word δημοκρατία, democracy. What they had in Athens, of course, wasn’t terribly appealing by modern standards, since only free males had the right to vote (and there were plenty of slaves). Here is a modern definition of democracy:

1. A political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections.
2. The active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life.
3. Protection of the human rights of all citizens.
4. A rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens.

Significantly, this definition, and most others, refer to ‘citizens’ as the beneficiaries of democratic governance. But who is a citizen? Some things are clear: as in the case of Athens, a definition of citizenship which excludes women is not acceptable. An extreme view is that anyone who resides within the borders of a polity is automatically a citizen of it, regardless of any other considerations (how he or she came to be there, etc.)

Although some immigration activists in the US would like to see this criterion adopted, it has not been and probably will not be anywhere in the world. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948, says that “everyone has a right to a nationality,” but not that a state needs to offer one to anyone who lives within its boundaries.

In Saudi Arabia, a citizen must either have lived in ‘Saudi land’ before 1914 and not have taken non-Ottoman citizenship, have a Saudi father, or apply for naturalization. In the US, anyone who is born on US soil receives citizenship automatically, but otherwise must undergo naturalization. In Germany, those residents who do not have at least one German parent must apply for citizenship (but there are exceptions for children born in Germany of long-time residents).

Under some conditions states can revoke citizenship. In Canada, a dual citizen who is convicted of treason, espionage or membership in a group engaged in armed conflict with Canada can lose his Canadian citizenship. In the US, naturalized citizens can have their citizenship revoked for various reasons, including membership in a subversive organization or refusal to testify before Congress. This has happened more than a few times.

Today it is considered wrong to grant or deny citizenship on the basis of race, religion or ethnicity, although some Arab countries require all citizens to be Muslims. Prior to 1965, the US had immigration quotas based on national origin; but these were considered unacceptable and replaced by a system based on family unification, skills, etc. with per-country caps. Nevertheless, many countries (e.g., Greece) are adjusting their citizenship laws to deal with the reality of ‘irregular’ population migrations.

What happens when a country annexes territory? When Israel extended its authority to eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, Israeli citizenship was offered to existing residents. Those who didn’t accept it were granted residency, along with the right to vote in local (but not national) elections. When Russia annexed Crimea, it offered Russian citizenship to the inhabitants — and let them know that after a month anyone that refused it would be barred from government jobs. In 1950, Jordan gave most Arab residents of Judea and Samaria (the Jewish ones had been expelled during the conquest) Jordanian citizenship, although lately it has been revoking the citizenship of ‘Palestinian refugees’ whom the ruling Hashemites see as a demographic threat.

What would happen if Israel annexed all or part of Judea and Samaria? One thing that’s certain is that Israel would not refuse to grant citizenship to anyone on the basis of ethnicity or religion. But as we’ve seen, it would not be exceptional to limit full citizenship on the basis of other criteria, such as criminal convictions or membership in terrorist organizations, or to require a process of naturalization.

Would it be ‘democratic’? When we talk about democracy, it’s important to understand that it is a more limited concept than fairness or even human rights in general. Strictly speaking, democracy resides in the relationship of a state to its citizens, and therefore the process for obtaining citizenship doesn’t bear on the democratic nature of the state. Of course, fairness demands that the process not be based on irrelevant factors like skin color or gender. But — just like screening airline passengers — it is not necessarily unfair to allow security considerations to affect decisions to grant citizenship or not.

Viewed in this light, much of the tension between Jewishness and democracy in Israel evaporates. The Law of Return, a prime target for those who claim that a Jewish state can’t be democratic, is a criterion for immigrationwhich does not apply to those who are already citizens — and there are no states in the world that don’t assert the right to make rules about immigration. The expressions of national identity that are essential to a Jewish state — the flag, national anthem, holidays, etc. — may be disliked by minority citizens, but they do not affect their participation in the democratic process. And it’s quite a stretch to argue that there is a basic human right to an approved national anthem.

Israel, by any reasonable definition, is a democracy. It will remain one if a Jewish State Law is passed, and even if it annexes all or part of Judea and Samaria without granting citizenship to all their inhabitants.

This is not the dream of the post-nationalist, post-Zionist, post-everything Left which believes that the Hatikvah is ‘racist’ and that economic migrants from Africa and ‘Palestinians’ who have never lived in Palestine have as much right to be citizens of the one tiny Jewish state as the descendents of Jacob. But it may be the reality that will sustain the democratic Jewish state.

BDSing in Ireland (brilliant Ami Horowitz film)

Another brilliant film by Ami Horowitz showing the hypocrisy of Israel boycotters, this time in Ireland.

Horowitz goes to stores that boycott Israeli products and gets them to consider buying products from Iran, Sudan and North Korea, all while explicitly saying how his sponsors violate human rights.

Stop everything and watch this now.

(h/t Vandoren)

06/11 Links Pt1: Michael Oren's Memoir to Expose Obama Administration's Abuse of Israel

From Ian:

'Ally': Michael Oren's Memoir to Expose Obama Administration's Abuse of Israel

Former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren is set to release a new memoir June 23: Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide. The book tells the story of Oren’s four years (2009-13) as Israel’s representative in Washington–and reveals just how hostile the Obama administration is towards Israel. Though he argues Obama is not anti-Israel, Oren notes that his administration did all it could to bully Israel into compliance with its hopelessly naïve new agenda in the Middle East.
Breitbart News was shown an uncorrected galley of the text, on the promise that we would not quote from it. Suffice to say that the Obama administration–and to a lesser extent Hillary Clinton, who was responsible for carrying out its foreign policy at the time–emerge looking ill-informed at best, thuggish at worst.
In one episode, State Department staffers cheer as a senior official slams Israel’s envoy. In another, Susan Rice does her best impression of a Chicago mobster, with an implied threat.
Oren is uniquely placed to chronicle the deterioration of relations between the two government–just as he was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s best choice to limit the damage. An American Jew who became an Israeli citizen, Oren understands both countries and their cultures. A distinguished historian, he has a keen sense for detail, and his book weaves personal recollections and anecdotes into a detailed, even forensic, narrative of diplomatic disenchantment.
Oren encounters an administration stacked with left-wing professors and their students, who are attempting a perilous experiment in American foreign relations, and who treat Israel, at best, as their guinea pig. He begins to worry that many of Obama’s public gestures of support for Israel are also attempts to constrain Israel in a bear hug, preventing it from acting on its own. And he frets about an erosion of support for Israel among American Jews, urged along by left-wing J Street.

A new inside account of Obama’s Israel ire

When it’s released June 23, the new book by bestselling historian Michael Oren is going to be the talk of Washington and Jerusalem — not to mention everywhere people take an interest in the relations between the United States and Israel, which is to say, in many if not most places on the planet.
It’s called “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide,” and I’m not sure that in the annals of diplomatic history there’s ever been anything quite like this astonishing account of Oren’s four years (2009-2013) as Israel’s ambassador in Washington.
It’s an ultimate insider’s story told while all the players save Oren are still in place; the Israeli prime minister he served still holds office and the administration to which he was the ambassador will remain in power until January 2017.
It’s not that there’s lots of breaking news in “Ally” that will startle people. Rather, it makes news on almost every page with its incredibly detailed account of the root hostility of the Obama administration toward the Jewish state.

Isi Leibler: American Jewish leaders fail to respond to Obama’s threats

Stressing that he considers Israel’s security paramount and that he “understands Israeli concerns and fears,” he insisted that the Jewish state needed tough love from its friends, assuring his audience that he felt he had a better understanding of Israel’s needs than Israelis themselves. He effectively called on American Jews to choose between his flawed evaluation of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the concerns about security and survival shared by the majority of Israelis.
Obama had the chutzpah to warn that the current Israeli government would alienate the people of America and the global community because it was diverging from the noble sentiments expressed in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.
Intensifying his vendetta against Netanyahu, he effectively described him as a deceitful liar who could not be trusted. He constantly harped on two statements that Netanyahu had uttered in the heat of the election and had subsequently repeatedly repudiated. However, not even once did he condemn the Palestinian Authority for its daily incitement of hatred, sanctification of mass murderers, or criminalization of Israel at the UN.
He warned that Israel has become obsessed with fear, claiming ludicrously that the US had proposed solutions by which, given goodwill, Israel’s security concerns could have been overcome. He urged Israelis to adopt “the politics of hope.”
He chided Israel for being obstinate and inflexible, thus preventing the peace process from moving forward, and clearly held Israel responsible for the breakdown of negotiations – conveniently ignoring the fact that it was PA President Mahmoud Abbas who terminated the talks and breached the Oslo Accords by unilaterally seeking recognition at the United Nations and uniting with Hamas. He failed to make mention of Israel’s major concessions, including a 10-month settlement freeze to pave the way for negotiations – to which Abbas only responded in the 10th month – and the wretched release of mass murderers who were subsequently fêted as heroes and many of whom renewed their terrorist activities.
And to top it off, Obama even made the outrageous observation that Netanyahu “had so many caveats, so many conditions” that the Palestinian officials and others might not see Netanyahu as a reliable negotiating partner.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Obama’s No Anti-Semite – But He Fails To Understand History’s Oldest Hatred

In his recent Atlantic interview with President Obama, Jeffrey Goldberg asked about Iran, anti-Semitism, and the nuclear bomb.
While admitting “there are deep strains of anti-Semitism in the core [Iranian] regime,” the president tried to explain them away with a historical analogy: “Well, the fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival. It doesn’t preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn’t preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that the supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations. You know, if you look at the history of anti-Semitism, Jeff, there were a whole lot of European leaders . . . .”
This argument is essentially a revival of the Western democracies’ (wishful) thinking in the years leading up to World War II. Hitler’s regime, they admitted, was anti-Semitic – but the same could be said, they noted, for other European regimes, past and present. The problem with this apology for appeasement was its failure to recognize the difference between the traditional anti-Semitism of European leaders and the Nazis’ genocidal anti-Semitism.
Genocidal anti-Semitism had never been put into practice when in 1938 Neville Chamberlain ignored the potential catastrophic threat it posed. By 1945 a shocked world saw the results of a war of extermination against the Jews carried out by a modern state – a state so driven by virulent anti-Semitism that it often diverted personnel and materials from the epic military conflict in order to expedite the killing of Jews.

Ma'an has a fawning article about the latest Gaza flotilla. In the middle we learn its cargo:

On board, the Marianne is carrying one solar panel to al-Shifa hospital and medical equipment for Wafa hospital, both in Gaza City. If everything goes as planned, activists will also leave the fishing trawler for Palestinian fishermen to use.

“The people in Gaza never have electricity all day long. Solar panels could be a sustainable solution for the power shortage,” Ighe said.

The spokesperson admits that bringing only one solar panel is mainly a symbolic message.

Israel allows solar panels into Gaza. Many UNDP solar-power projects are in flight, Individual Gaza homeowners have been importing solar panels for years,

And Shifa Hospital already has a system of solar panels.

Given that there are no restrictions on imports to Gaza except for materials that can be used to kill Jews, there is only one reason that these people want to end the naval blockade.

The Global Ministries website of the United Methodist Church says:

Janet Lahr Lewis is a missionary with the Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church serving in the Middle East as liason between ecumenical groups, Israel and Palestine.

Focusing on advocacy and activism, Janet's responsibilities are numerous. She is the main contact for VIM teams and United Methodist visitors who wish to follow the recommendation of the General Conference to spend a significant amount of time in the area with local Christians, acting to make those connections with UMC partner organizations and Advance Projects.

Janet circulates updates about developments in the ongoing crisis and suggests courses of action people can take to address it.

What kinds of courses of action?

Here's one, from an article she wrote last month:

Don't participate in Holocaust Remembrance Day without participating in Al Nakba Remembrance Day. Don't visit a Holocaust museum until there is one built to remember the other holocausts in the world: the on-going Palestinian holocaust, the Rwandan, the Native American, the Cambodian, the Armenian ... You could be waiting a long time!

The love of one does not automatically mean enmity towards the other.

Calling for the boycott of remembering the Holocaust sure sounds like an expression of enmity to me. Her statement is outrageous and antisemitic, implying that Jews are blocking the commemoration of other genocides. Her equation of the situation of Palestinians today with the Holocaust is pure antisemitism.

But the Methodist Church has no problem with her.

Lewis was the keynote speaker for a Methodist Federation for Social Action conference in Iowa last weekend, and people paid $25 for the honor of listening to her wisdom borne from years of antisemitic indoctrination:.

A Methodist bishop in Iowa, when asked, wrote an implied mild rebuke but hardly a condemnation of Janet Lahr Lewis' hate and antisemitism.

This is yet another example of how hate of Jews is made kosher by pretending to be "pro-Palestinian."

Janet has written other outrageous things, for example "the state of Israel is directly and indirectly imposing its goal to be rid of all non-Jews and justify it’s declaration of Israel as a Jewish state." This is on the United Methodist Holy Land Task Force website.

Of course, you will not find a word in her writings about how Arabs treat their Palestinian brethren. No, for Janet as well as so many others, the only time that Palestinian suffering matters is when it can be blamed on...Jews.

(h/t Mark)

RAND falsely claims that releasing terrorists would save money

From the NYT, June 6:

Supporters of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict generally start with a moral argument: Both peoples deserve the rights of self-determination and sovereignty; one should not rule over the other. Lately, President Obama and liberal American Jewish leaders also frame their case in security terms, saying Israel cannot survive as a Jewish democracy without ending its occupation of Palestinian territories.

But how about $173 billion as incentive for a peace deal?

That is how much a new report by the RAND Corporation says the Israeli and Palestinian economies stand to gain over the next decade if an independent Palestine were to emerge tomorrow — admittedly a development that might require divine intervention. It translates to an average per capita income increase of $1,000 (36 percent) for every Palestinian in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and $2,200 (5 percent) for each Israeli.

There is a lot to criticize in this study, and Joe Settler covered many of the issues. But I want to look at one specific point that RAND makes in order to highlight how little the "experts" know.

The study lists eight costs that the Palestinian Authority would avoid if there is a peace deal. One of them is the cost of paying terrorists a stipend:

An estimated 6 percent of the PA’s budget is spent annually providing stipends to the families of prisoners held in Israel. The total annual value of this direct cost is approximately $200 million.

So if there is a two-state solution, RAND says, the state of Palestine can save these $200 million annually.

This neatly shows how worthless this study is.

First of all - why do these terrorists have to be paid today? What exactly makes this expenditure so important that the PA must go deeper into debt to pay the families of terrorists? Why not recommend that the PA stop these payments today?

The answer is because one of the two states that RAND is pushing happens to wholeheartedly support terrorism. These payments are, after all, an insurance policy to support terrorist activity.

Secondly, why should Israel be obligated to release murderers in any "peace" agreement? Isn't releasing known terrorists the antithesis of peace?

Thirdlly, there is more than one financial issue with releasing terrorists. There is in fact a good chance that some of these terrorists will return to terrorism, peace deal or not. While RAND obviously doesn't care about Israelis being killed in this scenario - the study is only about money, after all - what about the financial costs to the victims of terror, of hospitalization and insurance and funerals?

Finally, a point that shows how the authors of the study aren't even aware of the basics of Palestinian Arab priorities. When hundreds of prisoners were released in the Shalit deal, the PA didn't stop paying them - they hired them in ceremonial jobs that they have for life! These ex-prisoners are paid as much as $50,000 annually as their reward for killing Jews.

There is no cost savings!

RAND makes the fatal assumption that a Palestinian state would not support terror and would not pay lifetime stipends to murderers. Yet we know they do.

When researchers have blind spots, their research is next to worthless.