Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Palestinians remain top recipients of international aid per capita

Every couple of years, I update this chart of top recipients of international humanitarian aid per capita for the previous ten years. Here it is based on the latest figures from Global Humanitarian Assistance:

If you are wondering about whether the pattern holds for the most recent years, the answer is yes. Here is the humanitarian aid per capita for 2013 alone:

It is apparent that some causes, like disaster relief for Haiti, become big for one or two years and then fade away. Lebanon and Jordan are near the top in the past two years because of the hugenumber of Syrian refugees flooding those countries. But per capita aid to the Palestinian Arabs remains always at the top.

NYC, Boston, Chicago "Quds Day" rallies look like they were duds

On Friday, an anti-Israel rally was held in Times Square.

This PressTV report makes it look like only about 30-40 people came. Given that there were about 13 scheduled speakers and 12 organizations sponsoring the rally, that looks like a big fail.

The PressTV reporter, Caleb Maupin, interviews an incoherent Neturei Karta member and an almost incoherent retiree:

But Caleb Maupin had more than one job. He also spoke at the rally, from the top of a rusty pickup truck:

The organizers of the event claimed to "have no affiliation with any foreign entity." Yet PressTV is controlled by Iran, Mauphin is on Iran's payroll to some extent, and having Mauphin speak about "Saudi terrorism" is exactly what Iran's themes for the Quds Day rallies have been throughout the world.

Even another Muslim from Yemen on the Facebook page of the NYC rally complained about Iran's influence in the rally.

Boston's rally seems to have also only attracted a few dozen people. Chicago's rally seems to have been even smaller, no more than 20 people.

07/11 Links: Israel must use UN as an offensive tool; 6 months after Paris kosher market attack

From Ian:

Guy Bechor: Israel must use UN as an offensive tool

On the fifth year of the Middle Eastern destruction, which is going to last for decades, it's time to determine that the United Nations has become irrelevant here, except in regards to one country, which is the last remnant of the old regional order – Israel.
Can the UN do anything in Syria? In Iraq? In Yemen? In Saudi Arabia? In Egypt? In Libya? That's why it focuses on Israel.
It gives this organization's institutions a feeling that they have some advantage, that they are useful. The larger the failure in the region, the more the obsession towards Israel will grow, to the point of a farce. The more the Arab regimes fall apart, their attempt to divert the attention towards us becomes more desperate.
Israel is defending itself – at the grotesque "Human Rights" Council, which is controlled by dictators, at the delusional UNESCO and at the Security Council, where some members don't even recognize Israel. So it might be time to change direction, to turn the regional void into something which could assist us. It's time to use the UN as an offensive tool, not just as a defensive tool. It's time to move the warfare into enemy territory.
From now on, the UN institutions should be flooded with complaints, reports and information about the destruction taking place around us. Every day, a complaint, a report to the media, a resolution in the different institutions. The quality will create the quantity. Even if it isn't accepted, the conscious effect will eventually become fixated. We should embarrass them, just like they seek to embarrass us.
Every day, we should file a report about the Mahmoud Abbas gang which is carrying out mass arrests, including torture, which is persecuting minorities, where UN funds have been disappearing for years, which is responsible for racist incitement against Israel on a daily basis.

Fear and defiance in Paris, 6 months after kosher market attack

On her way home from food shopping, Mirelle Bensason pauses to rearrange wilted wreaths and posters hanging on the perimeter fence that police set up around the kosher supermarket where an Islamist gunned down four Jewish shoppers six months ago.
Bensason, who does not keep strictly kosher, is not a Hyper Cacher regular, but sees the continued flow of customers into the shop as proof of the Jewish community’s resilience.
Hyper Cacher reopened in March, about two months after Amedy Coulibaly entered the chain’s Port de Vincennes location and took its patrons hostage. Since it reopened, the store is guarded during its hours of operation by police officers toting machine guns.
“I take care of the commemorations on this fence to remember the victims and my pain, our pain,” said Bensason, a blue-eyed grandmother of four who was born in Morocco and now lives on the eastern edge of Paris, not far from Hyper Cacher. “But we’re not afraid to come shopping here. We refuse to be cowed by our enemies. Life has not changed much, except for the pain that comes with loss.”

14 French Islamists sentenced for targeting kosher shops

A Paris court on Friday jailed 14 Islamists for planning jihadist attacks on French Jews and other targets.
The Correctional Tribunal of Paris sentenced 39-year-old Mohamed Amchalane, the leader of the banned terrorist group Forsane Alizza, to nine years in prison, Le Figaro reported.
He and 13 of his accomplices, all members of the group, were convicted of “participating in a group formed with a view to preparing terrorist acts.”
The accomplices received lighter punishments of varying severity, ranging from a suspended sentence of one year to six years in prison, Le Figaro reported.
Among the group’s alleged targets were five Jewish supermarkets of the Hyper Cacher chain, the news website ouest-france.fr reported, and several other Jewish businesses. A Hyper Cacher market in the Paris area was the scene of January’s deadly terrorist siege, in which four French Jews were murdered.

07/10 Links Pt2: UNESCO Crosses the Line Into Anti-Semitism; The Woman Who Will Crush BDS

From Ian:

Iran deal ‘done,’ Israeli report says, after major US concessions

According to Yaari, Israel’s most respected Middle East analyst, the deal was reached because the Americans “have made a series of capitulations over the past two to three weeks in almost every key aspect that was being debated.”
Yaari said that even those in the US who had supported the agreement with Iran “admit that it is worse than they thought.” Now, he said, the ball is in the court of Democratic lawmakers who have to decide whether to support their president as he seeks to secure Congressional approval, or to join the vocal Republican opposition to an agreement.
One major concession, Yaari said, is the issue of inspections of Iranian nuclear sites, which has long been a sticking point in the negotiations. According to Yaari, the US negotiators have given in to an Iranian demand that inspections are “managed” — in other words, there will be no surprise visits, only those that are pre-arranged and approved by the Iranian regime.
While there has been no official word that the deal is finalized, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday evening that progress had been made in the talks, and praised what he called the “constructive” atmosphere.

Eugene Kontorovich: The State Department’s response to Israel boycott law — a line-item veto for trade legislation?

The administration’s criticism of the bill it just signed is particularly striking in light of Zivotofsky. Since Foggy Bottom adamantly refuses to treat Western Jerusalem (i.e. part of “pre-67” Israel) as part of Israel, the only way Congress can make U.S. trade policy toward Israel’s capital is by using language like “areas under Israel’s jurisdiction.” It is the administration policy of not treating the nation’s pre-67 capital as part of the country that blurs the Green Line, not Congress’s law.
Finally, the State Department repeatedly referred to the “two state solution” and the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Presumably it has no objection to the law’s application to the Golan Heights, which is not part of that conflict.
If the Executive were considering not enforcing the law, it would be extraordinary constitutional usurpation by the Executive, effectively giving State Department spokesmen line-item veto power over enacted trade laws. Obama’s lawyers may have greatly over-read Zivotofsky as holding that the chief executive can nullify laws willy-nilly if they involve foreign affairs, or maybe just Israel. This would be particularly extraordinary as applied to foreign trade laws, all of which by definition have serious foreign policy implications.

Veteran Labour MP Embarks on Anti-Israel Rant in Commons

A Jewish Member of Parliament has provoked outrage by accusing Israel of using the Holocaust to justify killing “thousands upon thousands” of Palestinians in Gaza. Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman, the father of the House of Commons was accused of being disrespectful to the House by his repeated assertions that Israelis are “murderers”.
Kaufman’s comments came during a Westminster Hall debate on Wednesday into the UN’s Inquiry into last year’s fighting in Gaza, in which he told colleagues:
“The Israelis are murderers in Gaza. They have murdered thousands of people in Gaza. They have achieved nothing by doing so, except to make the lives of the people of Gaza total hell.
“When I was in Gaza, I spoke to a girl who told me she was standing between her parents when an Israeli soldier came up and shot her father dead in the head, and then shot her mother dead in the head. The Israelis use the holocaust: they use the murder of 6 million Jews to justify their murder of thousands upon thousands of Palestinians.”
He also accused Israel of starving the people of Gaza, saying: “There are children whose brains will never develop because their inadequate diet prevents them from developing physically and therefore mentally.”
In fact, the Gaza strip has one of the highest levels of obesity in the world, with four in five residents being classed as overweight. Diet centres in the strip are booming.

UNESCO Crosses the Line Into Anti-Semitism

It is comical to even address the complaints lodged against Israel, but let’s briefly note that the charge of undermining the structural integrity of the Temple Mount is simply a lie. What the members who voted for this lie are doing is seeking to stigmatize Israel for work in the area of the Western Wall that has opened up the tunnels as well as an archeological park. The not-so-secret agenda here is to deny Jewish history and the ties of the Jewish people to their ancient capital. If there is any destruction going on in Jerusalem it is the work of the Wakf which has conducted excavations that have trashed ancient sites and treated artifacts that predate the 7th century arrival of Muslim conquerors as trash to be discarded.
Just as telling is the fact that this UN resolution refers to the Western Wall only as the “Buraq Plaza,” a Muslim term. It also references the Temple Mount — the holiest site in Judaism — as only a “Muslim holy site of worship.” Nor is there any reference in the text to the city’s ties to Christianity.
As for the building of the Light Rail, the creation of a system of mass transit was a vital necessity for what is a living city and serves Arab neighborhoods as well as Jewish ones. Built to blend in with its surroundings, it in no way affects the “visual integrity” of the city. But, like every other evidence of the revival of Jewish life, it is seen as inherently offensive to those who think the Jews have no right to live in their ancient homeland, even in territory controlled by Israel before 1967.
But UNESCO’s embrace of these canards isn’t harmless or merely an offense to Jewish sensibilities. By parroting Palestinian propaganda in this manner, the UN agency is feeding into efforts to foment hatred against Jews. Throughout the last century, Arab leaders have whipped up anti-Semitic sentiment by spreading lies about the Jews plotting to do damage to the mosques on the Temple Mount. These efforts led to pogroms in 1921, 1929 and 1936 and inspired terror attacks during the last year. Seen in that light, this resolution isn’t merely just another instance of UN prejudice against Israel. By endorsing incitement and denying Jewish history, it is a UN endorsement of anti-Semitism.
If not rescinded, this resolution should be justification, in and of itself, for a U.S. decision to completely pull out of UNESCO (funding has already been cut off) and to raise the ante by threatening funding for the UN itself. It is long past time for both the U.S. and other democracies to stop participating in a hate group masquerading as a force for world peace. So long as UNESCO behaves in this fashion, it no longer deserves the presence of an American delegate.

Since Amnesty and the BBC and so many others are commemorating the anniversary of Operation Protective Edge with anti-Israel rhetoric, I decided to update my ebook on that war.

The original ebook only covered the first three weeks of the war. This new edition adds many new and essential articles from the remainder off the war, articles that are essential in understanding context and recalling events that happened as they happened.

The book is now nearly 200 pages of essential reading.

From the introduction:

During the 2014 Gaza conflict, I had been frustrated by a sense of deja-vu. I was seeing the same mistakes made by journalists and “human rights” NGOs that we’ve seen on previous Israeli operations – a willingness to believe facts that are given by terror groups and to discount facts given by the IDF, a reticence to report on Hamas war crimes, the assumption of Israel’s recklessness and even accusations of the IDF targeting civilians, one of the most absurd idea that could be made (if the IDF wanted to kill Gazans, there would have been be tens of thousands dead the first week.)

Beyond that is another frustration. I am a blogger based in the US. I use tools to read the Arabic press and search through the Western media as well for details on the war. And I found lots of information that the professional reporters were missing, or often, that they were aware of but did not emphasize. Perhaps the most egregious was when the Washington Post mentioned that Shifa Hospital in Gaza was the de facto headquarters of Hamas – later verified by a French/Palestinian reporter who said that the Hamas terror group “Al Qassam Brigades” had an office, complete with armed fighters, next to the hospital emergency room. Clearly every reporter who entered that hospital to publish heart-rending stories of injured children (and they are indeed heart rending) noticed when armed Hamas militants are wandering around – but they were too afraid or too biased to think that this is an important enough story.

It has become more and more apparent that if Israel had not waged this war, Hamas would have been able to use their tunnels to perform a mass casualty terror attack against Israeli communities and kibbutzim adjacent to Gaza – a territory that Israel had naively believed would become less of a threat after a complete withdrawal of citizens and troops.

Among the stories I added were the lies of Ken Roth, background on international law and more.

The ebook is available (as a PDF file) for a $25 donation to EoZ. You can order it from the upper-right section of the main blog page.

Thanks for your support over the years!

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.