Friday, July 10, 2015

07/10 Links Pt1: Phillips: The deadly tragicomedy at the UNHRC; Punking Iranians in Vienna

From Ian:

Report: Thousands of Israeli Arabs, Palestinians Post ‘Death to Jews’ on Their Facebook Profiles

Thousands of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs have added the tagline ‘Death to the Jews’ to their Facebook profiles, Israel’s 0404 News reported on Thursday.
Facebook has been “flooded” with the murderous phrase, written in Hebrew, 0404 said.
An initial inquiry by the website found over 300 profiles of Israeli residents, “from Jerusalem all the way to the towns up north,” bearing the hateful tagline on their pages.
In response, some Israelis posted, “Death to the Arabs” on their profiles, 0404 said. The site suggested that pro-Israel users instead use the phrase “Am Yisrael Chai” (“the nation of Israel lives”) as a less hateful alternative.
“This would be the best response towards these who want to destroy us,” said the report. The website also encouraged Facebook users to take screenshots of pages carrying the phrase “Death to the Jews” and report them to the police. (h/t Alexi)

David Keyes Punks Iranian Nuclear Negotiators in Vienna

Human rights activist David Keyes was in Vienna for the nuclear negotiations with Iran and punked several Iranian negotiators.
The United States and other world leaders are currently in tense negotiations with Iran, but Keyes looks to ease the tensions.
Keyes used humor and satire to confront several Iranian negotiations about their country’s abuse of human rights.
“Who is your favorite political prisoner?” Keyes asked several Iranian officials.
Keyes also compared United States human rights violations to Iran violations with reporter Oliver Towfigh Nia.
“I don’t think human rights in the United States is much better, you know?” Towfigh Nia said. “You have some problems too. Kill a few blacks and shooting them and like you know. And talking about gays you know.”
“No, that’s true. There are some similarities,” Keyes said. “America just allowed gays to marry and Iran hasn’t hung a gay person in at least a few hours.”

Punking Iran's Nuclear Negotiators in Vienna

Douglas Murray: What Politicians Say vs. What People Can See

President Obama is right to say that no ideology can be destroyed on the battlefield alone. The destruction of Nazi fascism in the 1940s was completed not only by its wholesale military defeat but by the world's awareness of the evil of the Nazi ideology and its wholesale moral and ethical failure. If the destruction of ISIS's ideology is to be complete, this too will have to be understood. But the U.S. and its allies ought to be wondering what is going wrong here. Although the numbers of citizens we are losing to ISIS constitute only tiny pockets of our own societies (if larger numbers across the Middle East and North Africa), we ought to consider how we are even losing people in ones and twos in a public relations war with this group.
While the Nazis tried to hide their worst crimes from the world, the followers of ISIS repeatedly record and distribute video footage of theirs. Between free and open democratic societies, and a society which beheads women for witchcraft, throws suspected gays off buildings, beheads other Muslims and Christians, burns people alive, and does us the favour of video-recording these atrocities and sending them round the globe for us, you would have thought that there would be no moral competition. But there is. And that is not because ISIS has "better ideas, a more attractive and more compelling vision," but because its appeal comes from a specific ideological-religious worldview that we cannot hope to defeat if we refuse to understand it.
That is why David Cameron's interjection was so important. The strategy Barack Obama and he seem to be hoping will work in persuading the general public that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam is the same tactic they are adopting in the hope of persuading young Muslims not to join ISIS. Their tactic is to try to deny something that Muslims and non-Muslims can easily see and find out for themselves: that ISIS has a lot to do with Islam -- the worst possible version, obviously, for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, but a version of Islam nevertheless.
ISIS can destroy its own credibility among advocates of human rights and liberal democracy. The question is how you destroy its credibility among people who want to be very Islamic, and think ISIS is their way of being so. Understand their claims and their appeal, and work out a way to undermine those, and ISIS will prove defeatable not only on the battlefield but in the field of ideas as well. But refuse to acknowledge what drives them, or from where they claim to get their legitimacy, and the problem will only have just started.

Melanie Phillips: The deadly tragicomedy at the UNHRC

When the UN Human Rights Council voted last week to back the report by Mary McGowan Davis on the 2014 Gaza war, the behavior of two council members in particular provoked protests in their home countries.
The report, which used skewed and selective reports falsely to condemn Israel for war crimes along with the true war criminal, Hamas, was a travesty. The resolution, which failed to blame Hamas for war crimes but accused Israel of such behavior not just last year but also in the 2008/2009 war, piled malice upon malice.
Only the US voted against the UNHRC resolution. Five countries abstained: Kenya, Ethiopia, Macedonia, India and Paraguay. But what caused a stir was that two countries, the UK and Germany, voted for it.
In Germany, this was denounced by the Christian Democratic Union party. In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron was accused of hypocrisy. Only last April he had robustly supported Israel’s actions in Gaza, declaring there was “such a difference” between indiscriminate attacks upon Israel and its attempt to defend itself against them.
Yet now the UK had voted for a motion that inverted this difference.
What’s more, the UK had also voted against Israel last May when, by 104 votes to 4, Israel was singled out by the World Health Organization as the only nation on earth to be condemned for violating health rights. Voting twice in support of motions designed to demonize, delegitimize and destroy Israel was behavior scarcely fitting one of its allies.

Saudi Arabia, US and Israel targeted at "Quds Day" rallies (photos)

From AFP:

Tens of thousands marched in Tehran Friday in annual Quds (Jerusalem) Day demonstrations in support of Palestinians, but Saudi Arabia this year joined arch-foe Israel as the target of protesters.

President Hassan Rouhani attended but did not speak at the main rally in Tehran, which coincided with seemingly deadlocked nuclear talks between Iran and world powers led by the United States.

Large demonstrations were also expected in Iraq and Lebanon to mark the annual solidarity day inaugurated by Iran’s revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

While Iran does not recognise Israel’s existence, and supports Palestinian militant groups that fight it, Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign in Yemen drew anger.

The crowd in Tehran chanted "Down with US, Israel and the House of Saud," and carried placards that declared "Zionist soldiers kill Muslims" and "the Saudi family will fall".

Here are some photos of the festivities, including this nice antisemitic one:

There are also rallies in Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere. There's usually a large anti-Israel rally in Toronto.

And one is planned for Times Square:

We invite all peace loving people to voice their opposition to the unjust and illegal occupation of the great Al-Aqsa Mosque and the usurpation of the Holy Land by the Zionist regime. In addition, we will also protest about the Police Brutality which have been witnessed all across the nation recently as well as the current Saudi aggression in Yemen.

The rally & march for International Day of Al-Quds in New York has been endorsed by -
BDSApp.org
Al-Awda NY, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition
Jafria Association of North America
Neturei Karta
International Action Center.
Workers World Party
United National Antiwar Coalition
International League of People's Struggles and Fight Imperialism Stand Together
Colectivo Honduras USA Resistencia
Muslimgirl.net
Students for Justice in Palestine - John Jay
Students for Justice in Palestine - Brooklyn College
Universal Muslim Association of America (UMAA)

Speakers confirmed -
Chris Hedges
Cyrus McGoldrick
Istafa Naqvi (JANA)
Rabbi Yoel Glauber (Neturei Karta)
Jasiri X
Lamis Deek
Deray Mckesson
Sara Flounders (Co-Director of International Action Center)
Bill Dores
Mazzi
Amani Al-Khatahtbeh
S.O.U.L. Purpose
Caleb Maupin
Raja Abdulhaq

------------------------------------------
NOTE: "Muslim Congress and its AlQuds subcommittees in respective cities have no affiliation with any foreign entity.
Funds for Al-Quds events are generated by local community organisers who strongly believe in exercising their legal right to protest against oppression."

The agenda is clearly Iranian, so the disclaimer is very interesting. But they might not be too big on burning American flags in Times Square.

The Boston and Chicago rallies include this description:

Let's stand united with all the humans of conscience including the Jews, the Christians and all the Muslims to show support for the innocent civilian victims of global Zionism, imperialism, occupation, neocolonialism, racism, Islamophobia, takfirism and oppression, for the sake of Haqq(truth).

Hmmm...what do they mean by "global Zionism"?

And how are they going to find enough Neturei Karta guys for 19 rallies?

(h/t Elihu)

.@Amnesty says this house had no terrorists. Wrong again.

Amnesty International keeps on deceiving its readers to demonize Israel.

From its website pushing its new anti-Israel campaign that includes the Gaza Platform that I have shown to be filled with lies:

It is in big letters so it must be true!

Now, it is true that 25 family members were tragically killed. And I do not know if any of them were terrorists. But to say that the house had nothing to do with the fighting is not quite true.

There is one crucial fact that Amnesty, and Tawfiq Abu Jame, don't want you to know.

The house had a guest at the time of the bombing.

His name was Ahmed Suleiman Mahmoud Sahmoud.

And he was a commander for the Hamas Al Qassam Brigades.

Don't take my word for it. This was documented by B'Tselem.

Here is the "civilian" that Amnesty doesn't want to tell you about. (Full video here.)

Amnesty quotes a survivor as saying that "the house had nothing to do with the fighting" without noting that a Hamas commander (who received a huge funeral commensurate with his position) was positioned in the house, perhaps with the family's blessing or perhaps treating them like human shields.

Either way, Tawfiq wouldn't tell Amnesty the truth. If Sahmoud was invited into the house as a "guest," that means that the family supports Hamas and follows Hamas instructions to lie to NGOs to demonize Israel. If Sahmoud forced himself into the house, Tawfiq wouldn't tell the truth because he still lives in Gaza under Hamas rule.

But Amnesty takes him at his word and doesn't bother to fact-check his lies.

It is fair to ask whether the attack that killed 25 family members was proportionate to the presumed target of Ahmad Sahmoud. Israel does not have the right to violate the rules of war. If Israeli intelligence said that there was a command center or tunnel entrance or weapons cache then bombing the family home would not necessarily be a violation of the laws of war. It all depends on the specific circumstances and perceived military advantage. Those are the real laws of war, but Amnesty doesn't want you to know that.

Nevertheless, the IDF should not act with impunity. The incident should be investigated.

And it is. By Israel.

The UNHRC Davis Report - which despite its bias did not say anything as egregiously false as Amnesty does - notes:

On 6 December 2014, the MAG reported that:

“In reports received by the MAG Corps, and in correspondence from various NGOs, it was alleged that on 20 July 2014, 27 civilians were killed as a result of an IDF strike on the house of the Abu-Jama family in Khan Yunis. As a result, and in accordance with the MAG's investigation policy, the incident was referred to the FFAM. The factual findings and materials collated by the FFAM and presented to the MAG, indicated the existence of grounds for a reasonable suspicion that the incident involved a deviation from the rules and procedures applicable to IDF forces. As a result, the MAG has ordered a criminal investigation into the incident.”^{^*} * Military Advocate General. Up-date of December 2014 at: http://www.law.idf.il/163-6958-en/Patzar.aspx

Israel had a legitimate target. It may have acted against its own rules, however. It is opening a criminal investigation against its own army to determine what happened.

But Amnesty doesn't want you to know that either. They want you to believe that the IDF acts with impunity, that there are no checks and balances, and that its soldiers run wild and gleefully shoot Arabs for no reason without fear of prosecution.

They don't want you to know that the average Israeli commander know the laws of armed conflict better than anyone at Amnesty does.

Why would Amnesty purposefully ignore evidence that mitigates its charges against Israel that was documented by other groups like the UNRHC and B'Tselem?

The answer is in the question. Amnesty will ignore all evidence that exonerates or contextualizes Israel's actions in war or afterwards. It does not care about the truth.

Amnesty International has an agenda, and if the facts contradict that agenda, the facts must be suppressed.

Hamas commits another war crime. But NGOs only talk about "rockets."

Yesterday we found out the shocking news:

Two Israeli men are being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, including one who was captured in the Strip in September after he sneaked over the border fence for unknown reasons, it was cleared for publication Thursday.

The man who has been in Gaza since September was named as Avraham Mengistu, 28, of Ashkelon. The gag order on his case was lifted Thursday morning following a lawsuit from Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth. The name of the second man, a Bedouin who also apparently crossed the border of his own volition, was not released.

Now, it just so happens that hostage taking is a violation of the laws of war, a violation of humanitarian law, and according to some statutes a war crime.

So where are the condemnations of Hamas holding Israelis hostage from "human rights" NGOs?

In reality, these NGOs only condemn Hamas for one thing: shooting rockets at civilians. And the only reason they do that is to inoculate themselves from the charge that they focus exclusively on Israel.

For example, see this Twitter exchange from yesterday:

We've heard it time and time again - people and organizations who are accused of bias against Israel say "but hey, I'm against rockets too" and they get a free pass. (William Schabas' interview on Hardtalk that I mentioned yesterday included that exact point.)

Yet Hamas has been guilty of far more violations of the laws of war and humanitarian law, - 18 other violations by my count.

Using medical facilities and ambulances for military purposes. Booby trapping civilian areas. Fighting while not in uniform. Using the local population as human shields. Recruiting and exploiting children. Stealing humanitarian aid. Using the uniform of the enemy. Threatening journalists. Mistreating the dead. The list goes on and on of how Hamas violated the laws of war, all well documented, and "human rights" groups are all but silent.

Sometimes "human rights" NGOs ignore, even defend Hamas against any charges except for rockets. Ken Roth from HRW last year said that Hamas attempts to take Israeli soldiers hostage through tunnels was perfectly fine from an IHL perspective. He also changed the definition of "human shields" to exonerate Hamas from that charge.

The same groups who interpret international law overbroadly to damn Israel do the exact opposite to minimize Hamas war crimes.

Journalists, NGOs and politicians are often more guilty of crimes of omission than crimes of commission. I listed 22 egregious Hamas actions from last summer that Ken Roth didn't include among his hundreds of anti-Israel tweets during the war.

NGOs and journalists are out to get Israel. Their perfunctory condemnations of Hamas are only a means to make their anti-Israel efforts more effective. Their ignoring of the many violations of international law by Hamas and Islamic Jihad show that they are n't interested in that topic nearly as much as they are in blasting Israel.

This is why the news of Israeli hostages in Gaza, today, will be downplayed in the media and by so-called "human rights" NGOs - even as they spend enormous efforts to demonize Israel on the one-year anniversary of the Gaza war.

.@Amnesty's "Gaza health workers" also happened to be terrorists

Amnesty's Gaza Platform says:

Last September I reported that all three people killed were Islamic Jihad terrorists.

Here is the martyr poster for 'Aatef Saleh al-Zameli. Note that he is not wearing scrubs. He's in uniform.

The name of the "nurse" killed was actually Yousef Ahmad Sheikh al-Eid. Here is his Islamic Jihad martyr poster:

The "paramedic" Yousef Jaber Darabih was also a proud member of the jihadist terror group:

If these three terrorists were using an ambulance as a means to protect themselves and weapons from attack - and given that every single one of them is a member of Islamic Jihad, this seems likely - then they were the ones performing war crimes. It also indicates that the Gaza Ministry of Health was not only working closely with the Al Qassam Brigades to use their ambulances to transport terrorists and probably weapons, but they also worked with Islamic Jihad.

I wrote then that neither the UN nor any "human rights" NGO will investigate that war crime. And I was 100% right.

Amnesty had an entire year to research the people killed like I did in September. But Amnesty is not interested in spending any time or money to exonerate Israel. No, they spent probably hundreds of thousands of dollars building a platform and producing associated materials and videos to blame Israel for crimes that it simply did not commit.

07/09 Links Pt2: French Jewish Community: Is It Time to Leave?; Say "Good-Bye" to the Democrats

From Ian:

The Troubling Question in the French Jewish Community: Is It Time to Leave?

The most troubling question in the French Jewish community is also the most obvious one: “Is it time to leave?”
I asked Roger Cukierman, the head of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France, or CRIF, the umbrella group for secular Jewish organizations in France. I expected him to equivocate, but, by way of an answer, he quickly reeled off some of the horrors that have plagued the Jews of Europe during the last decade: the case of Ilan Halimi, a cell-phone salesman kidnapped, brutally tortured, and killed in the Paris suburbs by a gang in 2006 for being Jewish; the 2012 murders of three small children and one adult at point-blank range at the Ozar Hatorah school, in Toulouse, by Mohamed Merah; the 2014 slaughter at the Brussels Jewish Museum; the deadly attack at the synagogue in Copenhagen in February of this year. This March, Merah’s stepbrother was pictured in the New York Post in his camouflage ISIS togs pronouncing a death sentence, as a pre-pubescent boy beside him pulled the trigger in the videotaped execution of the 19-year-old Israeli Arab Muhamed Musalam. Then there are the riots. As Cukierman told The Telegraph last summer, “They are not screaming ‘Death to the Israelis’ on the streets of Paris. They are screaming ‘Death to the Jews.’ ”
To get a better idea of why Ghozlan decided to leave, I went to visit his friend and colleague Yossi Malka, a retired businessman who works for the B.N.V.C.A. Malka met me at the commuter rail station at Stains, a suburb in Le Neuf Trois. If you didn’t know better, you could be in parts of Queens or the Bronx. Here are the same gray projects, laundry flung over the balconies.
Malka wore a worn brown leather jacket, a natty tie, and a fedora—what I think of as the uniform of the banlieues—and drove me to Sarcelles, 20 minutes away and part of what is called the Red Belt, a string of suburban towns, many with Communist or Socialist mayors historically but, now, an expanding National Front. “This is not the Paris of Woody Allen,” Malka told me as we approached a small synagogue ringed by low apartment buildings topped with satellite dishes. “That Paris no longer exists.”

13-year-old Jewish boy wearing kippah attacked in Paris

The National Bureau of Vigilance against Anti-Semitism (BNVCA) condemned Monday's anti-Semitic aggression against a 13-year-old boy wearing a kippah in the 19th district of Paris.
The boy was beaten by a band of six youths described as being of ‘’African origin’’ who attacked him as he left his Jewish school.
One of the attackers shouted: ‘’Beat that dirty Jew’’. Before fleeing, they stole the victim’s phone.
The Jewish boy was taken to hospital with wounds on his head.
The BNCVA, which monitors anti-Semitic incidents across the country, recommended the victim’s parents to file a formal complaint and urged police authorities to find and arrest the aggressors.

Michael Lumish: Say "Good-Bye" to the Democrats

Can one be considered supportive of the Jewish people if one is hostile to the Jewish state?
I certainly would not think so, but I would bet that more and more Democrats think that way.
Israel is the only country on the entire planet that cannot coax the United States into recognizing its capital, yet somehow Israel is said to have too much influence on US foreign policy.
I have been arguing for years that the Progressive-Left and the Democratic Party have betrayed their Jewish constituency through accepting the BDS movement as part of the larger coalition. It would be something akin to telling black people that if they wish to remain Democrats than they will just simply have to get used to the fact that the Ku Klux Klan has a seat at the Democratic Party table.
The movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel has nothing to do with peace. BDS has nothing to do with social justice or universal human rights and everything to do with the Palestinian-Arab determination to weaken, undermine, and eventually eliminate Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

Abbas recalls envoy to Chile after anti-Semitic remark

The Palestinian Authority on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Chile over a speech in which the diplomat cited from a notorious anti-Semitic text.
In a video of the speech, which was delivered in May, Imad Nabil Jadaa can be seen quoting from “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and claiming that the creation of the State of Israel was a pretext to protect Jewish plans for “world domination.”
Jadaa also told the Conference for Peace in Palestine and Israel, held in Santiago, Chile, on May 15, that there is “no Jewish People” and that Palestinians don’t recognize the existence of such a people. An English translation of his comments was only recently made public.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters that Jadaa’s statements were in “contradiction to the official Palestinian position.”

Palestinians hate BDS

From Haaretz: (This is the entire article.)

Thirty-four year old Samir is busy slicing wood on his ban saw for a kitchen cabinet he is building for neighbors in the Beitar Ilit sttlement across the road.

The planks of wood were imported from Sweden and purchased in Israel. They are stacked in his carpentry workshop on the muddy main street in the village of Husan, in the Jerusalem hills near Bethlehem. "I have clients from Beitar and Gilo, and if I could make contacts in Efrat, I would," he says in fluent Hebrew, referring to nearby Jewish settlements. "We trust each other. It is not about politics; it is about cooperation for survival."

Outside, workshops, construction supply depots, garages and stores all have signs in Arabic and Hebrew, and they are relatively busy with contractor customers, both Israeli and Palestinian. A young, bearded Haredi man drives his van away from a gas station after filling up. Nobody looks twice.

The BDS movement in Europe and the United States, which includes activist groups and student unions, has been stepping up calls to cut off Israel in the fields of culture, business and education, in order to protest the occupation.

But why are they not calling on Palestinians in the West Bank to take part on a local level - to cut contacts with Israelis, and stop buying Israeli goods and services? It might sound like a logical move, but it is here, in the West Bank, that the boycott movement loses its logic.

The push by BDS leaders has made the boycott the most fashionable way for Europeans and Americans to protest against the Israeli occupation. But for Palestinians, this is a problem, to say the least.

How much contact do boycott proponents have with average Palestinians, not those who work in offices in Ramallah? If they were to come to Husan and dozens of other villages like it in the West Bank, the European and American activists would find that Palestinian entrepreneurs and workers want and need more contact with Israelis, not less.

"We small-time entrepreneurs in Palestine cannot survive without working with Israelis, and the benefits are mutual," Samir states. "For us, the boycott, the moukata'a, is ridiculous. Nobody here likes the Israeli occupation, but cutting ties would be a death wish."

It appears to many Palestinians - and to this journalist - that most BDS proponents in the West either have never been to Israel and Palestine, or do not know much about the ties between the two peoples that exist for better or worse. Or perhaps they care more about trying to damage Israel than they do about improving Palestinians' lives.

In his busy building supply depot in Husan, Mahmoud Ibrahim al-Shushe, 51, sells materials and tools made in Hebron, Palestine's industrial capital, as well as in Israel, Europe, China and India. Supplies are imported through Israel and Jordan.

"We have relationships and mutual interests with Israelis from Beitar and elsewhere," he explains in careful English. "We must nurture these relationships and commercial exchanges. You know, the occupation is very difficult, and I wish it would end tomorrow. But even if it did, we would maintain and grow the same relationships. Our future is with Israelis - for me, my wife and my seven children."

He adds with a trace of anger, "The boycott is absolutely not the way to end the occupation. The people in Europe and the U.S. don't know what they are talking about." I'm inclined to believe he's right.

Two older men arrive - contractors from Gilo, I am told. They are clean-shaven, without skullcaps, and are not carrying pistols – not visibly, at least. Coffee is poured immediately, cigarettes lit, and conversation flows, all in fluent Arabic. The gestures are very clear: These Palestinians and native Arabic-speaking Israeli Jews are very comfortable with each other. I wonder what the boycott proponents would think of this little scene.

In fact, what would Palestinian Authority officials say? My friend Nadal, who works in Ramallah, but is from the Husan/Gush Etzion area, says PA officials are in a very uncomfortable position.

"Because the boycott, the moukata'a, has become the focus of the fight against the occupation, the PA feels forced to support it, even though they know that so many Palestinians would starve without work with Israel," he says. "They certainly cannot make statements against the boycott."

How to solve this situation? Bring the boycott advocates to Palestine, to villages like Husan. Here, they could speak to hundreds of Palestinian contractors and workers, ordinary people who want an end to the occupation, yes, but who also want more access to work with Israelis.

Samir and his family, and others like them, would be hurt more than Israelis would by a boycott. Enabling their economic survival is more important than winning politically correct propaganda points for international media consumption. The international community has – or must find - other tools to pressure Israel to ease or end the military occupation of the West Bank. Focus on these other means, and let the boycott fade away.

The article betrays a great deal of naivete. To think that the BDSers give a damn about Palestinians and would drop their attempts to destroy Israel if they thought they were hurting Arabs shows that the writer knows nothing about what animates the haters.

But it is still quite rare for a journalist to actually do real reporting from an area that has more reporters per square kilometer than anywhere else on Earth.

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

My post about Michael Oren and American Jews last week brought many comments and emails. Some liked it, but the ones that didn’t either didn’t like my tone (“bitter, negative, polarized”) or felt that I was being unfair to those who did continue to support Israel.

I’m sorry about the tone, but I can’t pretend I don’t feel strongly about this. While I’m not happy that otherwise nice Scandinavians don’t support us, it hurts much more when unfair criticism comes from our own people. And I should note that there are some American Jews that really do care about Israel, who work hard to counteract anti-Israel propaganda and to inform and influence policymakers about issues that are critical for us. But they are a minority.

There were several things that came between me and much of the US Jewish community. In short, I think my problems with Jews are symptomatic of a major change that has happened on the left side of American politics in the past two decades or so: the replacement of liberalism by what is called ‘progressivism’, but is really a doctrinaire leftism that incorporates elements of the so-called “post-modern/post-colonial” worldview. Jews, as is ever so, are in the vanguard of this movement, and it is these Jews with whom I came into conflict.

I admit to having strong opinions about some things that go against the ‘progressive’ narrative about Israel: I think Israel needs to hold on to Judea and Samaria for security reasons, because it is the spiritual and historical heartland of the Jewish people, and because we are wholly justified in this by international law. I think that the problem that the Arabs refuse to accept a Jewish presence between the river and the sea needs a solution, but that it won’t be found by expelling Jews. It’s an Arab problem, not a Jewish one.

So if this position puts me out of the mainstream, I can understand that not everyone agrees with me. What I found hard to accept was that they refused even to listen. Again, there were exceptions, but in so many cases the response was not to dispute or debate me but to try to shut me up. That was problem one.

Problem two was Barack Obama.

Almost immediately after his inauguration, when President Obama made the notorious speech in Cairo that explicitly validated the Palestinian historical narrative, I realized that, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we were not in Kansas anymore. This was not the pragmatism of Bill Clinton or the liberalism of Lyndon Johnson or Adlai Stevenson; instead, there were echoes of Edward Said. And as Obama’s contempt for our state and our Prime Minister became clearer and his Mideast policies worse, I became more and more critical.

But most progressive Jews, many of whom had worked in his campaign, didn’t want to hear anything negative about “their President.” Especially in social media, reactions to criticism of administration policies were vicious, often including accusations of racism. The discussion ended once the question of Obama or his policies came up.

It wasn’t that we disagreed; it was that no communication was possible.

I don’t expect them to pop out of their mother’s wombs quoting Jabotinsky because of their Jewish DNA. But this wasn’t just a political disagreement. We were starting from wholly different premises, living inside different conceptual schemes.

There is a certain minimum degree of – dare I say it? – tribal attachment that traditionally characterized Jews. It’s a starting point for discussion. And they don’t have it.

A person with a tribal attachment would at least listen to a pro-Israel view because it would be important to them. He or she would be open to talk about the idea of Jewish peoplehood, the idea that there is value in the preservation of a distinct Jewish people, and that a Jewish state may be essential to it and be worth defending.

This attachment has all but disappeared among liberal or ‘progressive’ Jews. And I blame the doctrinaire leftism I mentioned above. It is responsible for both the demise of Jewish tribalism, and the obsession with race that has seized left-of-center dialogue today.

A basic principle of this ideology is that there are oppressed groups and oppressors (often called ‘people of color’ and ‘whites’). The greatest sin is racism, which is the mistreatment of people of color by whites. This actually has little or nothing to do with race: Jews are considered white, while Arabs, their genetic cousins, are ‘people of color’. Any criticism of a person of color by a white is suspect, which explains the sensitivity to my objections to Obama Administration policies.

It is seen as a form of racism for whites to behave tribally to any extent, although people of color are permitted to do so (thus Israel is described as an ‘apartheid state’, while the insistence of Mahmoud Abbas on a racially pure ‘Palestine’ is considered unexceptional). Jewish protesters whosaid the mourner’s kaddish for Palestinian victims of one of the Gaza wars did it to embarrass those of us who (tribally) care more for our own than for our enemies. Can you imagine Arabs mourning dead IDF soldiers?

Liberal American Jews have taken this to heart. Their tribalism has been stamped out. They are embarrassed to feel that there is anything special or worth preserving about Jewish peoplehood. They like Jewish food, Jewish summer camp, Jewish music, etc. But they don’t see themselves as part of a people, a distinct unit with a connection to biblical times. They have been taught that there’s something ugly, even racist, about this idea.

As a result, the best that can be expected from them is indifference, and the worst the wholesale acceptance of the Israel-as-colonial-oppressor narrative. As one of my correspondents said, “Israel is just another foreign country to them.” And it is frustrating to tribal people like Oren and myself when they just don’t care. But why should we expect them to?

Nevertheless, the tribal feeling exists elsewhere. Most Israelis, religious or secular, feel it, and most observant Jews anywhere feel it. Michael Oren obviously does. Unless carried to extremes, it is a positive force. It is what built the Jewish state, and will guarantee its continued existence. Who volunteers for a combat unit in the IDF because they see themselves as citizens of the world?

Tribalism may be out of fashion, but it may also be necessary for our collective survival. Since Korach, Jews have been easy prey to seduction by the Left. Will American Jewry suffer the same fate as Korach?

07/09 Links Pt1: Hamas holding 2 Israelis hostage in Gaza; Israel’s Existence Lost in BBC Translation

From Ian:

Why ‘Jews’ were lost in translation in BBC Children of the Gaza War documentary

Children of the Gaza War will air on BBC Two on Wednesday night
A BBC documentary has substituted the word “Israelis” for "Jews" in its translation of interviews with Palestinians, its maker has admitted.
Lyse Doucet has stood by the decision to translate “yahud” as “Israeli” in subtitles on her hour-long documentary Children of the Gaza War, which airs on BBC Two tonight.
The correct translation for “yahud” from Arabic to English is “Jew”.
The BBC’s chief international correspondent said that Gazan translators had advised her that Palestinian children interviewed on the programme who refer to “the Jews” actually meant Israelis.
In one instance, a Gazan child says the “yahud” are massacring Palestinians. However the subtitles read: “Israel is massacring us”.
Canada-born Ms Doucet said: “We talked to people in Gaza, we talked to translators. When [the children] say ‘Jews’, they mean ‘Israelis’.
“We felt it was a better translation of it.”

BBC: Being Anti-Semitic is Being Anti-Israel

The BBC will air a show tonight, a documentary chronicling the lives of children during the Gaza war a year ago. In it, both Israeli and Palestinian children are interviewed, with one key difference. When Palestinian children say things that are unpalatable to the Western ear, the translations have been doctored.
One word in particular stands at the centre of this particular phenomenon: يهود, or Yahud. There is not a dictionary in existence that would not translate this word as “Jews”. The BBC have therefore taken the logical step and helpfully rendered it as “Israel”.
The maker of the 1-hour programme, Lyse Doucet, has stated that this is acceptable. She says the children didn’t mean Jews, they meant Israel. Gazan translators have assured her on this point.
Ms Doucet deserves our sympathy. Evidently, it is still harder to arouse the sympathy of the West with an anti-Semitic diatribe than an anti-Israel one — a fact for which we should certainly be thankful. Nonetheless, simply editing the words of her subjects means that Ms Doucet has not produced a documentary, but a work of fiction. It is at most “based on a true story” or “inspired by actual events”.

Honest Reporting: Israel’s Existence Lost in BBC Translation

It wasn’t a better translation. In Arabic, Yahudi means a Jew (plural is Yahud). Yisraili means an Israeli (plural is Yisraileen). Full stop.
Several problems came into play here.
1. The Gaza children.
A Palestinian friend told me that Palestinians commonly refer to Israelis as Yahud. It may have begun out of hostility, but has become common usage. I’m also told that more educated Palestinians sometimes do make the distinction and use the word Yisraili. This provides a window into the Beeb’s thinking, but Doucet’s not off the hook.
The kids Doucet talked to were either born after Israel disengaged from Gaza, or too young to have any memories of “the occupation.” They grew up with a purely Palestinian education and media, both of which indoctrinate kids to deny the existence of Israel.
2. The translators.
The Gaza translators the Beeb relied on are part of a bigger issue.
The Western media depends on freelance Palestinian (and Israeli) writers, photographers, and cameramen (collectively known as stringers) as well as the assistance of “fixers,” who help reporters get access, navigate the foreign land, and avoid trouble, among other things.
Stringers know the area, and employing them is a less expensive option than flying in entire reporting teams. Also, it’s not a bad thing for Big Media to provide job opportunities for the locals.
The problem is when the Palestinian support team brings its own baggage to the coverage

Hamas holding two Israelis hostage in Gaza for months

Two Israeli men are being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, including one who was captured in the Strip in September after he sneaked over the border fence for unknown reasons, it was cleared for publication Thursday.
The man who has been in Gaza since September was named as Avraham Mengistu, 28, of Ashkelon. The gag order on his case was lifted Thursday morning following a lawsuit from Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth. The name of the second man, a Bedouin who also apparently crossed the border of his own volition, was not released.
Ethiopian-born Israeli Mengistu is alive and being kept by Hamas in Gaza, an Israeli security source said Thursday in a briefing with reporters. The source said no negotiations were currently taking place for his release.
An official said Israel does not consider the Israeli to be a captive, and that Israel was treating the matter as a humanitarian issue. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
Hamas denies holding Mengistu, but the Israeli sources said this was because the Islamist group is seeking to avoid responsibility for his fate.

Another lie by Amnesty International. Why are they respected by anyone?

In the Jerusalem Post, Philip Luther, the director of Amnesty International’s Middle Eastern and North African program, responded to NGO Monitor's criticism of the "Gaza Platform."

"We are not claiming that the Gaza Platform itself, on its own, gives you a conclusion in every case about whether a war crime was committed or not. It is not able to do that; we are not claiming to do that,” Luther says.

Actually, Amnesty does claim that the tool proves Israeli war crimes.

Here are two screenshots from the beginning of the video, made by Amnesty, touting the purpose of their Gaza Platform:

If the tool doesn't prove any individual case is a war crime, how can Amnesty claim that the tool proves Israel committed war crimes? Does Amnesty believe that a bunch of unproven allegations based on lying sources somehow becomes more accurate when you put a pretty face on top of lies?

Yet another lie by Amnesty, and more proof that the platform is meant not to illuminate but to obscure.

All my posts proving Amnesty bias and lies about their Gaza Platform can be seen here.

William Schabas lies on Hardtalk

William Schabas, the original chair of the UNHRC commission designed to malign Israel's conduct in the Gaza war last summer, appeared on BBC's HardTalk to defend himself from accusations of bias and to defend the report that he started before he was forced to resign:

His defense of his desire to investigate Israel despite his bias is laughable.

The criticism that many leveled against him is that the appearance of bias is enough to disqualify anyone in his position. Two examples of many from UN Watch:

Joseph Weiler, President of the European University Institute in Florence, the European Union Jean Monnet Chair at New York University School of Law, and Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Law,described Schabas’ tenure on the commission of inquiry as “a self-evident case where an appearance of impartiality might be created… When the appearance of justice is compromised, so is justice itself.”

Lord David Pannick, QC, a leading UK human rights lawyer and former High Court judge—whom Schabas has often cited as a legal authority [1]—published an article in The Times that sharply criticized Schabas’ appointment given his prior record of prejudicial statements. Lord Pannick stated the legal principle that a person should not sit in a judicial or quasi-judicial role “if the fair-minded and informed observer, having considered the facts, would conclude that there was a real possibility that the tribunal was biased.” The very “appearance of bias,” noted Pannick, is sufficient to disqualify a person. Schabas’ protestations that he would leave his opinions “at the door” were, under the legal principles of impartiality, “unlikely to be helpful.”

But Schabas bizarrely claims that there was no appearance of bias (8:10) - but that there was an outside campaign charging him of an appearance of bias.

Schabas explicitly admits that he is biased, He participated in a kangaroo court charging Israel of war crimes. He was paid by the PLO for services. He embraced comparisons between Zionism and Nazism when speaking with his friends, antisemite Richard Falk. He applied to become Falk's replacement as special rapporteur to Gaza. But this isn't the appearance of bias - it is only the charge of the appearance of bias. And, as he goes n to say, the people accusing him of this are just a bunch of Zionists.

And Zionists are "our enemies."

Unfortunately, the Hardtalk host didn't press him on this bizarre distinction that exists only in his head between "appearance of bias" and "charges of appearance of bias." And he then accuses those who accuse him of having an appearance of bias of being Zionists.

Schabas then goes on to defend the UNHRC's pattern of anti-Israel bias by claiming, even more bizarrely, that even though more than half of UNHRC resolutions are against Israel, that the commission actually spends less than 1/193 of its time on Israel. (13:40)

He is lying. As UN Watch notes:

The Council’s fixation with Israel is not limited to resolutions. Israel is the only country listed on the Council’s permanent agenda (Item 7). Moreover, Israel is the only country subjected to an investigatory mandate that examines the actions of only one side, presumes those actions to be violations, and which is not subject to regular review.

Finally, Schabas responded to the report by international generals and politicians who said Israel was not guilty of war crimes by purposefully misusing the word "intent" from its legal meaning in the Geneva Conventions when determining if an action by a military commander is proportional and if that commander employs the principle of distinction.

Schabas knows the laws of war well, and his misuse of that term here shows that he was never suited to judge Israel of anything.

Amnesty's blood libel against the IDF (update)

Amnesty International created a publicity film for its newly released"Gaza Platform" which I have proven uses inaccurate data meant to bash Israel. under the pretense of being noble.

The film includes this section that is a complete, provable lie.

:

Watching that video you would think that there was only one minute and nine seconds for the family to flee the house. Amnesty put up a timer and everything! It must be true! There's no way that a family can escape in such a short amount of time; we must have witnessed their deaths.

But if you look at the original video itself things aren't quite so clear. Look at the smoke on the side of the house and listen to the background noises - there is a clear edit at 1:16. (It is more obvious at fullscreen.)

The edit proves that there was more time than 1:09 shown in the Amnesty timer. Making this video a lie.

How much was edited out?

From The Independent, July 13, 2014:

A video has emerged showing the extraordinary “knock on the roof” technique used by the Israeli military to warn Palestinian civilians of an impending missile strike.

The footage was uploaded to YouTube yesterday by the Gaza-based Watania news agency, and shows from extremely close quarters a small missile striking the roof of a house across the street.

According to the caption, around 15 minutes later – though most of this time has been edited out of the final clip itself – two fully-armed missiles from an F16 jet strike one after the other, blasting the front of the house away and sending a cloud of debris and rubble into the air.

When the dust settles, the full extent of the damage is slowly revealed, with only the exposed back half of the home still standing.

The Watania agency reported that the home in this case belonged to Samir Nofal, who was able to get out in time along with his family and neighbours.

The 15-minute gap in the video was also reported by the New York Daily News, The Daily Mail and CNN.

(Watania's description, however, says that Israel called the homeowner first, waited 15 minutes for the "roof knock," and the larger bomb was 5 minutes later after the family was safely out of the house. Only The Telegraph got it right, showing how lazy reporters are in copying others' stories. )

Perhaps, you might say, this is an innocent mistake. Somehow Amnesty saw this video without the explanation that was easily available in major news outlets and in the YouTube video that they edited to create their propaganda film.

Perhaps it is possible, but every one of those stories quoted Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Director at Amnesty International, saying how Amnesty is against the "roof knock" procedure. Amnesty, like any large organization, follows its news coverage closely. They read each of these news stories that emphasized that the video edited out several minutes of inactivity.

The only conclusion is that this little propaganda film was knowingly deceptive. Amnesty knows the truth and chose to create a film that strongly implies that Israel cruelly bombed houses that they knew still had civilians inside scrambling to grab their belongings.

This is a blood libel.

Amnesty's on-screen timer is the exact same kind of deception that the entire Gaza Platform propaganda is. They are overlaying their own spin and lies on top of flawed information and presenting it as if it is more accurate than what had been seen before.

But all that Amnesty has proven is that it has no credibility. To Amnesty, bashing Israel is far more important than little details like truth and accuracy.

The Gaza Platform data also includes in many cases the an insulting term for the IDF - it calls the army the "IOF," or "Israel Occupation forces," a term used up until now exclusively by Arab media and Arab NGOs. Now Amnesty has adopted that derogatory term as its official terminology, further proving that Amnesty is not an unbiased source.

Amnesty has a halo around it as a reliable, major human rights NGO. Any fair observer, looking at only the evidence I have compiled over the past three days, must conclude that it Amnesty is a travesty.

Every day that they refuse to apologize for and correct this consistent pattern of lies, deception and bias is more proof of that very bias. Newspapers issue corrections, but that is beneath Amnesty.

Amnesty is well aware of my posts which have been tweeted to them hundreds of times, and others including myself have emailed them asking for comment, which they have ignored.

To Amnesty, truth is sometimes just an inconvenience that gets in the way of a good story.

Their donors might be interested in knowing this.

If I am wrong in a single one of my accusations, I invite Amnesty to respond,. I promise to print their response in full.

UPDATE: Amnesty replaced the video with another. Details on their new deceptions here.