Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 05, 2015

11/05 Links Pt2: Lumish: The Departure of European Jewry; Why is the EU stigmatizing Israel?

From Ian:

Polisar examined more than 330 surveys carried out by four major independent Palestinian research institutes to determine what Palestinians think of Israel and Jews, Zionism and the value of carrying out terrorist attacks:
• With regard to the Gaza wars, a large majority of Palestinians are convinced that Israel deliberately targeted civilians and that Hamas was blameless for positioning its leadership, fighters and weapons in residential areas.
• With regard to Israel’s goals, an average of 59% think Israel wants to “extend its borders to cover all the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and to expel its Arab citizens.”
• A 51% majority of Palestinians believes Israel will destroy al-Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine and replace them with a synagogue.
• “Palestinians characterize Israelis as belligerent and untrustworthy but clever and strong, and finger Judaism as the most violent of all religions.”
• The Palestinian Center for Public Opinion asked residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip: “Do you think that Jews have some rights to the land along with Palestinians?” Only 12% agreed that “Both Jews and Palestinians have rights to the land,” while more than 80% asserted that “This is Palestinian land and Jews have no rights to it.”
• In a 2001 PSR poll 98% of Palestinians said the killing of 29 Palestinians in Hebron by Baruch Goldstein in 1994 was terrorism, but only 15% were willing to say the same for an attack by suicide bombers that killed 21 Israelis at the Dolphinarium discotheque in Tel Aviv in 2001. An average finding of six Pew polls over the past decade is that 59% of Palestinians see suicide bombings as justified.
• With regard to the efficacy of violence, a 2005 poll by the PSR found that “Sharon’s plan to evacuate the Israeli settlements from Gaza was a victory for the Palestinian armed resistance against Israel.”

Michael Lumish: The Departure of European Jewry

Just as significant percentages of the Arab nation are on the march into Europe - taking the Middle East with them - so a significant percentage of European Jews are packing it in for Israel. This past year is a record among French Jews for the making of aliyah, i.e., Jews returning to the Jewish national home.
In fact, French aliyah is up 118 percent.
Does anyone doubt that there is a direct correlation between Arab-Muslim immigration into Europe and Jewish emigration out of Europe? I would posit that the two are intimately connected due to the fact that the demographic moving into Europe has rates of anti-Semitism around the 80th percentile and is often not the least bit shy about demonstrating that tendency, sometimes violently and sometimes murderously.
French Jews understand very well that the slaughter of Jewish people in the kosher market in Paris, concurrent with the Charlie Hebdo murders, and the 2012 slaughter at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse, means that the Jihad has arrived in Europe.
Many Europeans - those who were cognizant during the March 2004 Madrid train bombings that took 191 lives or the July 2005 suicide bombings in the London underground that took the lives of 52 commuters or the May 2013 murder and near-beheading of British soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich - have noticed, as well.

Jonathan Pollard’s lawyer still hopes to get his client to Israel

Just two weeks before the release of his pro bono client, Jonathan Pollard, New York lawyer Eliot Lauer is hopeful that US President Barack Obama will grant the convicted spy his biggest wish: to move to Israel.
The former civilian Navy analyst was given a life sentence in 1987 for espionage for Israel. He was granted citizenship by the Jewish state 20 years ago.
Following the 15 years of lobbying US government since they took on the Pollard case, Lauer and his partner Jacques Semmelman announced in July that the Parole Commission had decided to set Pollard free on November 20 — after some 30 years in prison.
One question that remains is where Pollard will go upon his release.
“President Obama … has the authority … to allow Mr. Pollard to leave the United States and move to Israel immediately. We respectfully urge the president to exercise his clemency power in this manner,” Lauer and Semmelman said in a written statement issued July 28.
That day, a White House spokesman announced that Obama had no intention of altering Pollard’s terms of parole, which state that he must not leave the US for five years. The White House said Pollard had committed “very serious crimes” and would serve his sentence under the law.

Look how "progressive" the Jewish Voice for Peace is!

I was forwarded this email from the Jewish Voice for Peace:

Tell the Center for American Progress to

rescind their invitation to Netanyahu

Dear

Since college -- actually, since grade school -- I’ve been a political activist, and I’ve spent my entire career fighting for peace, and justice, and equality. It’s what us progressives do.

But some “progressives” didn’t get the memo.

The Center for American Progress, one of the biggest and most influential progressive think tanks in the U.S. has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak. Let me put it another way: one of the most important progressive organizations in America is giving a huge platform to one of the least progressive men alive, at a time when he’s inciting hatred, entrenching a brutal status quo of apartheid, and presiding over a terrifying descent into far-right extremist violence.

Our allies at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation are calling on CAP to rescind their invitation to Netanyahu, and we’re standing with them.

But we need you, too. Add your name to our letter: Bibi is no progressive, and CAP has no business inviting him to speak.

...

Jews like me, and supporters of justice and equality from all walks of life are moving the needle, and changing the political conversation around Israel and Palestine. Fealty to the Israeli occupation is no longer guaranteed, and Netanyahu knows it. The emerging progressive majority has had enough of Israeli apartheid, and Netanyahu is running scared.

We can’t let the Center for American Progress give Netanyahu the veneer of bipartisan respectability. Not now, when the tide is turning for peace and human rights.

I’m Progressive. Netanyahu isn’t. Add your name, and tell CAP to disinvite Netanyahu.

Onwards,

Stefanie Fox
Co-Director of Organizing

Eleven times she reminds us of how "progressive" she is - while advocating silencing any views that she disagrees with!

I never fail to be stunned at how the words "liberal" and "progressive" have been co-opted to push the most illiberal and regressive ideas. Jihad, after all, is about as regressive as possible, yet people who want to kill Jews as a religious imperative must be given a platform for their speech in liberal, progressive newspapers. The most liberal state in the Middle East is attacked as supporting terror while the terrorists and their cheerleaders are hailed as progressive and moderate. It is truly an Orwellian use of language, yet it is one that is not pushed back on nearly enough.

The Center for American Progress can invite or not invite anyone they want; it is not a violation of free speech either way. But "progressives" like Fox insist that the only speech that may be free is speech that they have labeled as "progressive kosher."

JVP shows its hypocrisy in other ways, of course. Here is what they say about The Canary Mission:

While students who stand up for Palestinian rights are under special scrutiny regardless of their identity, Palestinian students, along with Muslim and Arab students, bear the brunt of this intimidation and demonization. They are often deliberately “named and shamed” publicly for standing up for Palestinian rights, and are vulnerable to marginalization and exclusion in campus communities. This is nowhere more clear than when looking at the recent “Canary Mission” database, which claims to expose student activists as “hatefomenting individuals” by compiling dossiers of their pro-Palestinian political activities.

Yet they have built their own dossier of pro-Israel organizations on campus, complete with names and associations! Their list:

THE LOUIS D. BRANDEIS CENTER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS UNDER LAW
THE AMCHA INITIATIVE
AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE
AMERICANS FOR PEACE AND TOLERANCE
ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE
CAMPUS WATCH
CANARY MISSION
DAVID PROJECT
GLOBAL FRONTIER JUSTICE CENTER
HASBARA FELLOWSHIPS
HILLEL
INSTITUTE FOR JEWISH & COMMUNITY RESEARCH
ISRAEL ACTION NETWORK
ISRAEL ON CAMPUS COALITION
THE LAWFARE PROJECT
SCHOLARS FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
SHURAT HADIN
STANDWITHUS
ZIONIST ORGANIZATION OF AMERICA

I personally don't think there is anything wrong with a dossier, as long as it is accurate, but to complain that the other side is keeping tabs on you while you do the same for them is the height of hypocrisy.

This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 11 years and over 22,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

Although the perpetrators of the recent terrorist incidents are mostly young people not associated with terror organizations whose actions are not explicitly ordered by the Palestinian Arab leadership, they are nevertheless part of a planned campaign that is orchestrated by that leadership. The strings are pulled effectively by way of social media, with no direct link between the ‘commanders’ and the ‘soldiers’. This is one of the reasons that it is so difficult to interdict the terrorists before they strike.

A recent bulletin of the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center tells us that

The current wave of violence and terrorism is part of the overall “popular resistance” strategy adopted by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah at the Sixth Fatah Conference in August 2009. It is manifested by rising and falling levels of popular terrorism. The current wave (which is unique in some aspects) is one of the most serious. Its popular terrorism includes riots, throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, and stabbing and vehicular attacks which are supported and condoned by the PA. The current wave of Palestinian terrorism, like those before it, has included several shooting attacks, which are not included in the modus operandi of the “popular resistance,” but the PA does not condemn them, and in effect supports them.

The long-term objective of the Arab leadership is to foment violence and chaos in Israel so as to interfere with her ability to defend herself against external threats and also to provide an excuse for intervention by the ‘international community’ to force Israel to make territorial and other concessions to the PLO and to Hamas. A weakened and attenuated Israel, they believe, will ultimately suffer a defeat in a regional conflict severe enough to cause enough of the population to flee so that the state will disintegrate and they can take over.

Although Hamas and the PLO will fight each other for control, they have consistently cooperated in the endeavor to disrupt the Jewish state. This is nothing more than an updated version of the PLO’s ‘phased plan’ of 1974.

This intifada is different from the last one because control over the violence is almost entirely decentralized:

In most instances [the terrorist] carries out the attack by himself following a spontaneous personal decision without instructions from any organization or leadership. He does not follow an Islamist ideology (some of the terrorists lived fairly secular lives) and does not belong to a terrorist organization, although he feeds off the incitement to terrorism and anti-Israel hatred disseminated by the various terrorist organizations. …

The Palestinian terrorist who carries out an attack in Israel is motivated by Palestinian nationalism, and for the past six years he has been deeply influenced by reports of popular terrorism. He has also been influenced by events on the Temple Mount and by the false slogan “Al-Aqsa mosque is in danger.” He is personally and socially frustrated and feeds off the anti-Israel hatred and incitement on the social networks (mainly Facebook).

Indeed, Micah Lakin Avni, whose father Richard Lakin was murdered in Jerusalem last month, has called it “The Facebook Intifada,” and called for action by social media providers to stop the use of their networks for incitement. They are used for promulgation of lies about Israeli actions (“al-Aqsa is in danger,” “executing Palestinians and planting knives on them”), encouraging terrorism, giving practical advice on ways to kill, and honoring those who have perpetrated terrorist acts – especially ‘martyrs’.

Social media are used directly by the PLO/PA, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others, but also by individuals. Some of the pages quite explicitly incite murder.

In addition, the presentation of videos and descriptions of terror attacks after they occur, especially including accusations of deliberate murder of Palestinians and other humiliations, builds on previous incidents to infuriate susceptible young people and encourage them to go out and commit attacks of their own.

Of course there are other means of communication but social media have been a game-changer, making it possible for our enemies to order up a more pervasive violent upheaval than ever in the past, to recruit people ready to die for the cause, to make it almost impossible for Israeli security forces to stop them, and to provide a continuous stimulus to perpetuate the violence for an unlimited time.

It seems then that there are two points at which we can attack this: the leadership that provides the top-down impetus and justification for it, and the social media that create the positive feedback loop that keeps the intifada alive.

Israeli officials, particularly in the army, have argued that the PA/PLO and Hamas are better alive than dead: they would be replaced by something worse; Israel would then have to take over the governance of the Arabs; the army would have to deal with insurgencies like those in Iraq and Syria; and nobody wants to do reserve duty in the territories. I think current events show that it is becoming harder to justify this position.

After Oslo, the PLO systematically eliminated any Arab leaders who would admit that they favored coexistence with the Jewish state. And since Oslo, the PA/PLO has been ‘educating’ its children for martyrdom (and needless to say, Hamas is doing the same thing). We are paying the price today, as members of the empathy-free Oslo generation have come of age with the ability to plunge a knife into the back of an 80-year old Jewish grandmother or stab a 2-year old toddler, feel good about their ‘accomplishments’, and be considered heroes in their society.

At the same time, the diplomatic and legal war against the state of Israel waged by the PLO/PA, which quite successfully plays off the latent (and not-so-latent) Jew hatred in Europe and the American Left, is beginning to bear fruit. The EU is about to take the first steps toward boycotting Israeli products, and the Obama Administration is simultaneously getting ready for a new round of badgering Israel, while threatening to not veto a French resolution in the UN Security Council declaring all settlements illegal and calling for the creation of ‘Palestine’ beyond the 1949 lines.

Further, in the event of a conventional military conflict with Hezbollah or Iran, the possibility of the PA “security forces” opening an additional front is a real possibility.

These considerations suggest that the PA has outlived its usefulness, and the vicious PLO – which cynically violated its promise to be a peace partner from day one of Oslo – should be eliminated for once and for all.

It is also absurd for Israel to accept Hamas control of Gaza, whereby its leaders devote all available resources to preparing for the next war, which needs to be fought and re-fought every several years. So far we’ve been lucky that they haven’t succeeded in tunneling into a nearby kibbutz, and that none of their rockets has struck a skyscraper in Tel Aviv, but it’s stupid to let them keep trying.

It is not unthinkable that within a few years Israel could find herself fighting Hamas, Hezbollah, the PA, Iran and the Islamic State at the same time!

This is not to say that the tanks should roll tonight. A great deal of creative thinking and planning has to take place first. The experience of Iraq and Libya shows what happens when a regime, no matter how evil or dysfunctional, is destroyed without sufficient consideration for what will replace it.

The other pressure point to stop the bleeding is the social networks. Facebook is now the target of a class-action suit to force it to remove hateful and inciting pages, which they have been resistant to do. This may or may not be effective, but in any case will take time.

There are technical solutions to stop incitement, although it would not be cost-free for the networks. But if they don’t cooperate, there are also ways to block them – Iran and China have done so to some degree – and I’m sure that the corporations that are raking in cash from their operations among affluent Israelis (both Jews and Arabs) would listen to a credible threat from the Israeli government that they might be blocked.

The effects of decades of education for hate will not be erased in a short time, even if the PA/PLO and Hamas are taken down, but the spigot of social media incitement can be shut off relatively quickly.

Let’s interdict the flow of incitement immediately, as aggressively as we act against weapons shipments to Hezbollah. And we should begin the process of undoing the Oslo mistake as soon as possible.

11/05 Links Pt1: Danon: PA 'organ harvesting' UN blood libel must be denounced

From Ian:

Danon: PA 'organ harvesting' UN blood libel must be denounced

In response to a PA blood-libel letter to the UN accusing Israel of harvesting organs of Palestinians, Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon on Wednesday called on the Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, to condemn the Palestinian representative for his anti-Semitic remarks and hateful lies‫.
“After returning the seized bodies of the Palestinians killed by the occupying forces through October, and following medical examinations, it has been reported that the bodies were returned with missing corneas and other organs, further confirming past reports about organ harvesting by the occupying power from the Palestinian victims of its brutality,” the Palestinian representative, Riyad Mansour, charged in his letter.
In response, Danon said, "This blood libel by the Palestinian representative exposes his anti-Semitic motives and his true colors."
Ambassador Danon told the Secretary-General: "Anti-Semitism has no place in the halls of the United Nations and must be denounced. I call on you to repudiate this sinister accusation and to condemn the ongoing incitement by Palestinian leaders."
Mansour's letter was published hours after Israel returned to the PA the body of the Arab terrorist who critically wounded a Border Police officer near Halhul in the Hevron region. (h/t Bob Knot)

Palestinian attempts stabbing in Gush Etzion, is shot dead

A Palestinian man attempted to stab a group of people standing at a bus stop at Gush Etzion Junction in the West Bank on Thursday and was shot dead by an IDF soldier, according to preliminary reports.
“IDF forces thwarted an attack at a crowded bus stop in the Gush Etzion Junction,” an Israel Defense Forces statement said.
“A Palestinian, armed with a knife, attempted to stab the soldiers. Forces at the scene responded to the immediate threat and shot the assailant.”
According to Palestinian media reports, the attacker was identified as Malek Talal Sharif, 25, from Hebron.
There were no injuries on the Israeli side.

Cop hurt in Hebron car-ramming still in critical condition

A Border Police officer critically injured in a Wednesday car-ramming attack near the West Bank city of Hebron remained in critical condition, officials at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem said Thursday.
The officer, 20, is in the hospital’s intensive care unit.
He sustained multiple injuries, including a severe head wound, and was rushed to the Jerusalem hospital in serious condition after the attack.
A second Border Police officer was also hit in the attack, but was only very lightly hurt.
The Palestinian driver of the ramming vehicle was shot dead by security forces at the scene, near Halhul Junction on Route 60, and his body returned to his family for burial.

On Monday, quoting the official Palestinian Authority news service, I showed that the "status quo" that the Palestinian Arabs insist on for the Temple Mount is one where there are no Jews allowed whatsoever.

I surmised that the "status quo" they insisted on was from 1949, the beginning of the Transjordanian occupation of the Old City.

I was wrong. The PLO Negotiations Affairs Department informs us that the "status quo" that they insist on is much earlier than that:

The Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound is a holy site comprised of 144 dunums of land1, which includes the two mosques (the Dome of the Rock and Al-Qibli) as well as open areas for prayers around them. The Status Quo of Religious Sites which mandates prayer rights, right to access, and excavation and maintenance regulations, dates back to the Ottoman Period. However since 1967, Israel, the occupying power, has effectively changed Al-Aqsa’s Status Quo through several policies, including terror attacks, the destruction of the ancient Minbar (prayer platform) of Salah ad-Deen al Ayyubi (1969), several military raids and storming of the compound, including the one led by former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon (2000), illegal and unauthorized excavations, destruction of 20 Islamic graves to make room for the “Jewish Biblical Garden” (2014), as well as systematic closures over the Holy Site.

The entire document is filled with lies, but here are a couple to note from just this short section.

"The destruction of the ancient Minbar (prayer platform) of Salah ad-Deen al Ayyubi (1969)" refers to the arson at the Al Aqsa Mosque done by a mentally ill Christian. Only rabid conspiracy theorists blame Israel. And here, the PLO does also.

"illegal and unauthorized excavations" - since Israel does not excavate on the Temple Mount (but the Waqf does and has destroyed uncountable priceless artifacts), this means that the PLO is declaring the entire area around the Mount to be part of Al Aqsa. This is confirmed by their assertion of "destruction of 20 Islamic graves to make room for the 'Jewish Biblical Garden'" - the graves were both new and many were fake, placed near the walls of the Mount illegally, but they were not on the Mount itself.

Which means that the PLO is saying that they also want the Ottoman "status quo" to apply to areas adjacent to the Temple Mount, including the Western Wall.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)

The "Proto-Islamic" era

Normally I don't waste my time with Twitter trolls, but this exchange last week was especially interesting:

@dunn_martin @elderofziyon @Ostrov_A The Menorah was used in the proto-Islamic Temple
— Disgusted Muslimah (@DisgustedMoslem) October 28, 2015

@elderofziyon @dunn_martin Talmudists need to stop appropriating proto-Islamic regalia and symbols. #StopTalmudism #CulturalAppropriation
— Disgusted Muslimah (@DisgustedMoslem) October 28, 2015

Hey @DisgustedMoslem, I would love to see a link to all the proto-Islamic regalia and symbols. What years cover that period? @dunn_martin
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) October 28, 2015

Muslim coin with Menorah

The term "proto-Islamic" was new to me, so I was wondering exactly what time period this period covers. So I checked it out.

Abraham is indeed the patriarch of the Jews but he is also the patriarch of the Muslims, as in Quranic Muslims. In the Quran, it is stated that Abraham was a Muslim.

Islam is not the name of a religion founded by Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad merely restored Islam to the world. Islam existed before Muhammad. Islam is an Arabic word that means Worship The One God.

Adam is the founder of Proto-Islam, the informal Islam which we are all born with. When Abraham came, Proto-Islam became two, namely Universal Monotheism (Hinduism) which is described in the Quran as the Sabaean faith, and Abrahamic Islam, the religion of Abraham.

Abraham acknowledged both Abrahamic Islam and Universal Monotheism as valid and correct.

Abraham, also called the Friend of God, was the prophet who received the formal Islam from God. This formal Islam, later revived by Muhammad, was a distinct community, with its mission of doing good to the ends of the Earth.

If everyone since Adam was proto-Islamic, then it is hard to argue that Islam came after other religions.

A somewhat more scholarly source - a book synopsis at the National Endowment for the Humanities site from Oxford Islamic Studies Online - identifies "proto-Islam" as being founded by Abraham:

Abraham, one of the many Old Testament figures that appear in the Qurʿān as a prophet of the Biblical tradition, assumes an outstanding role in Islam because of his association with (proto-)Islam, an uncorrupted form of Biblical monotheism that preceded the foundations of Judaism and Christianity.

...As the founder of proto-Islam, Abraham is connected closely with the Prophet Muḥammad. Abraham is the name of the Prophet's son, who did not survive, by his wife Mary the Copt. Abraham also appears prominently in most versions of the legend of the Prophet Muḥammad's Night Journey and Ascension to Heaven (al-isrāʿ wa al-miʿrāj), along with Moses and Jesus; the Prophet meets with him either in Jerusalem or in the sixth or seventh heaven, and in some traditional reports (ḥadīths) Muḥammad refers to Abraham as his father. A number of ḥadīth reports stress the close physical resemblance between Muḥammad and Abraham; he is reported to have stated, “I saw Abraham; I look like his son.”

Scholars of Judaism would recognize that last hadith as a theft from the Talmudic passage that says that God made Isaac resemble Abraham so that no one could doubt the boy's parentage.

Or did the Talmud steal it from proto-Islam - before Mohammed was born?

Over the past 24 hours, at least three news services have written articles about Egypt's flooding of Gaza smuggling tunnels.

IBT, Andalou and especially Reuters all came out with stories about the topic. All of them played up how ordinary Gazans are suffering from Egypt's decision. All of them downplay the fact that the tunnels are used to smuggle in - and, according to Egypt, out - weapons for jihadist terror groups.

The cluster is not coincidental. It means that Hamas is pulling the strings behind media coverage in Gaza, in this case to pressure Egypt to stop destroying their weapons imports and tax revenue from smuggling commercial goods.

Of course, the media won't report how they are being used as puppets.

Andalou talks about new sinkholes and landslides from the tunnel destruction:

Major landslide late Tuesday in the southern border area between the blockaded Gaza Strip and Egypt resulted in a major sinkhole after the Egyptian army pumped seawater into the strip’s tunnels for around two months, the Gaza Ministry of Interior said.

Palestinian security and civil defense teams rushed to the area to protect civilians at risk, the ministry added.

A number of tunnels had collapsed south of Rafah, causing a sudden landslide, a Palestinian national security source told Anadolu Agency, adding that this is the fourth time the area suffers from landslides and sinkholes.

Blockaded by Israel since 2007, Gaza used to receive much-needed supplies through the network of smuggling tunnels on its border with Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Reuters also manages to blame Israel in an article about how Egypt is acting:

Local residents say that at the peak of the tunnel business, after Hamas Islamists seized the Gaza Strip in 2007 and Israel tightened a closure of its crossings into the enclave, nearly 2,500 underground passages snaked under the border with Egypt.

The direction of traffic was mainly into Gaza. Commercial goods - and weapons smuggled in separate tunnels controlled by Hamas and other militant factions - flowed in defiance of what Palestinians and many of their supporters decried as neighboring Israel's siege.

Yet none of the articles mentions that Egypt is the Gaza neighbor that has hermetically sealed the sector, with practically zero imports, zero exports and almost no people traveling across Rafah, while Israel allows thousands of trucks of goods and thousands of people to cross between Israel and Egypt every week.

Reuters does finally mention a little truth:

At one point an estimated 22,000 Palestinians worked in the tunnel "industry". However, it shrank markedly in 2010 after Israel, under international pressure to ease restrictions on commercial imports into Gaza, allowed more goods in through its overland crossings.

Then this September, battling an insurgency in northern Sinai, Egypt decided to shut down the tunnels once and for all. Determined to halt what it said was an arms flow in the opposite direction, from Gaza to the militants, it cleared the area on its side of the border and began pumping water into the underground maze, collapsing the land.

Tunnel-builders said Egypt has pumped in water several times since September, and that over the course of a few weeks had done more damage to the network, which once accounted for an estimated 30 percent of Gaza's imports, than Israeli bombing had caused over the past two decades.

Now, the diggers said, fewer than 20 tunnels remain for commercial goods, with easy-to-smuggle cigarettes the main contraband. No one can, or will, say how many weapons tunnels remain - a secret that is guarded by Hamas and other armed groups, which last fought a war with Israel in 2014.

But Reuters' main focus is the environmental damage:

What is left is an environmental mess, residents and local officials said, with the sea water polluting underground drinking reserves. The overflow has reached streets and homes within 100 meters (yards) of the border fence. Vast puddles and mud are everywhere.

"One cubic meter of sea water pollutes 40 cubic meters of underground water," said Tamer al-Sleibi, water department director in the Palestinian Environment Quality Authority in Gaza, who is concerned about long-term environmental damage.

Egypt's campaign, he said, could weaken the foundations of homes already on shaky ground due to tunnel-building and make land unfit for agriculture in areas near the frontier. There is also a health risk as the water turns stagnant, allowing mosquitoes and other disease carriers to breed.

The fact that thousands of rockets whose components were smuggled in those tunnels have been shot at Israeli civilians is just not worth mentioning.

Hamas has largely succeeded in manipulating the media. You know - the reporters who pretend to be so fiercely independent but who instead jump when a terror group tells them to.

.@UNRWA worker shows how much he wants to live in peace

The cover image of the Facebook page of UNRWA staff nurse Adnan Hammash:

HERE WE WILL STAY

In Lidda, in Ramle, in the Galilee

We shall remain.

Like a Wall on your Chest

And in your Throat

Like a Shard of Glass, a Cactus Thorn

And in your Eyes

A Sandstorm

Notice that the places named are all inside the Green Line.

Meaning that this UNRWA worker believes that Arabs will keep attacking Jews as long as Jews remain in power in Israel.

Nothing to do with Al Aqsa or "occupation" or "settlements."

It all has to do with Jews.

11/04 Links Pt2: Dershowitz: Debating against BDS - and winning; Beware of friends bearing boycotts

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Debating against BDS - and winning

BDS sends a false message to the Palestinian street: namely, that international economic and political pressure can force Israel to capitulate to all Palestinian demands.
BDS opposes any effort at negotiation that isn’t premised on the recognition that Israel is an apartheid state. Indeed, many of its leaders refuse to recognize the right for Israel to exist as a nation-state for the Jewish people. In so doing, they are empowering radicals on both sides of the issue who have no desire to see a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Many liberal activists such as Mr. Tatchell—whose advocacy on behalf of LGBT rights I greatly admire—have made common cause with BDS, hoping to pressure Israel to end the occupation, and afford greater self-determination to Palestinians in the West Bank. They seem to believe that a movement advocating non-violent tactics is necessarily the best way to achieve a lasting peace. But BDS is radically opposed to any negotiated settlement, and has increasingly begun to regroup bigots of all stripes who feel comfortable with the language used by its leaders, such Mr. Barghouti.
Mr. Tatchell and many pro-BDS academics also feel that Israel has committed human rights violations both in the occupation of the West Bank, and in its prosecution of the armed conflicts in Gaza. During the course of the debate I issued the following challenge to the audience and to my opponent: name a single country in the history of the world, faced with threats comparable to those faced by Israel, that has a better record of human rights, compliance with the rule of law and seeking to minimize civilian casualties.
I invited audience members to shout out the name of a country. Complete silence. Finally someone shouted "Iceland", and everyone laughed. When the best is treated as the worst, in the way the BDS movement singles out Israel for accusation, the finger of blame must be pointed at the accusers rather than the accused. In the end, the case against BDS won not because of the comparative skill of the debaters but because I was able to expose the moral weakness of the BDS movement itself.

Douglas Murray: Britain's New Racism

This effect -- the Corbynization of British politics -- has already had one notable effect. Last week Sir Gerald Kaufmann, a man with a track record of anti-Semitic comments, said something crazed even by his own high standards. Speaking at an event organized by the Hamas-affiliated "Palestine Return Centre" in Parliament, Kaufman claimed that the Conservative party had been influenced by "Jewish money." Asked why the UK government had allegedly become more pro-Israel in recent years he said, "It's Jewish money, Jewish donations to the Conservative Party -- as in the general election in May -- support from the Jewish Chronicle, all of those things bias the Conservatives."
What Kaufman said next is in some ways even more extraordinary. He claimed that the Palestinians "are living a repressed life, and are liable to be shot at any time. In the last few days alone the Israelis have murdered 52 Palestinians and nobody pays attention and this government doesn't care." He went on to claim that the recent stabbing attacks on Israeli citizens had been fabricated by the Israeli government in order to allow it to "execute Palestinians."
There have already been complaints about this statement from other MPs, including other Labour MPs. But what can be expected of the Labour leadership? Jeremy Corbyn is an old friend and ally of Kaufman's. They have shared anti-Israel platforms for years. However, whereas ordinarily a party leader would discipline an MP for such outrageous and false claims, nothing has happened -- nor will happen -- to Kaufman. It is a failure that should bring shame on the party. Even the Liberal Democrats managed eventually to withdraw the whip from their Baroness Jenny 'Boom' Tonge, who has repeatedly spread blood-libels about Israel. But Kaufman is part of Corbyn's Parliamentary base, and the kind of people who lap this sort of thing up are part of Jeremy Corbyn's wider base in the country. What is a leader like him to do?
This, then, is one of the already jolting effects of the Corbyn leadership. Wholly predictably, it has begun to mainstream anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories, and it has encumbered the political left with few defences to the accusation that it is they who now harbour the proponents of the greatest racism of our time. Is it too much to hope that an alliance of Jews and non-Jews of every imaginable political stripe will push back to ensure this does not happen?

Israeli academic shouted down in lecture at University of Minnesota

On Tuesday afternoon an Israeli academic was shouted down by two dozen protesters as he tried to begin a lecture before about 100 students and faculty at the University of Minnesota. The speaker was Moshe Halbertal, a professor at NYU Law School and a professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at Hebrew University. He was invited to deliver the Dewey Lecture in the Philosophy of Law, which is organized annually by the law school. That the freedom to present a lecture is threatened in this way at a public university is appalling, calling not only for punishment of violations but for a clear statement by university officials defending the free exchange of ideas.
The lecture, which I attended, was delayed half an hour as one by one the protesters stood up to shout denunciations of Israel and were escorted from the hall by university police. One young woman came screaming back into the lecture after having been ejected. Outside the hall, the protesters chanted so loudly that it was difficult to hear Halbertal, much less to concentrate on what he was saying, until 45 minutes after the lecture was to have begun.
The protests were apparently organized by a group calling itself the “Anti-War Committee,” which bragged on its Twitter feed about having disrupted the lecture and complained that the protesters’ “free speech” rights were violated when a few were arrested. It appears that no law students were involved, but many of the demonstrators were college-aged and the protest was endorsed by a group called Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a university group. According to its Facebook page, SJP “promotes justice, human rights, liberation, and self-determination for the Palestinian people.”
The lecture was entitled, “Protecting Civilians: Moral Challenges of Asymmetric Warfare.” The talk did not directly address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though Halbertal drew in part on his experience helping to draft the Israeli army’s code of ethics. When he was finally able to speak, Halbertal argued that in fighting “asymmetric wars” (typically, wars between professional militaries and insurgencies or resistance movements) professional combatants should err on the side of protecting noncombatants from casualties, even when they thereby increase risks to themselves or to their cause. (h/t Zvi)

Protesters shout down Israeli Professor at U. Minnesota law school

Leora Eisenberg, a high school student who wanted to attend the lecture, posted on Facebook:
So, you think BDS wants peace?
I was lost. I needed to get a lecture by noted Jewish-Israeli lecturer and philosopher Moshe Halbertal on the ethics of war. I had just come from school. I knew I’d be the youngest in the audience, and I was okay with that. I’ve always been precocious, especially for Israel.
I saw one lame protester in front of the building. So, one person showed up to protest the “apartheid regime.” Carry on. Protest. You have your rights.
As I came into the building, I heard some really loud chanting. I mean, really loud. And as a Russian-Israeli Jew, I know loud. I didn’t realize it was in front of the lecture hall. I couldn’t actually get in.
Because if I did, they would probably physically assault me. They championed their slogans of peace… right? (“Hey hey, ho ho, they occupation has got to go!”) But they also had at least three police officers standing in front of the doors and brandished (fake) blood-covered babies and made some vaguely anti-Semitic slurs. (all while holding signs proclaiming that Zionism is not Judaism)
I was afraid to go in. And when I finally could (through the secret back door), I was shaking too hard to focus. At one point, a BDS protester burst in, started screaming and was escorted back out by the cops– at which point, I heard the protesters drift off (and finally be taken outside).
So, you still think BDS wants peace?
Think again. I didn’t realize peaceniks make 17-year-olds girls scared to go to lectures on foreign policy. I didn’t realize peaceniks could be so violent.

Ayatollah Khamenei explains it all (ElderToons)

From AP:

The slogan "Death to America" is not aimed at the American people, but rather American policies, Iran's supreme leader said in comments reported on his official website Tuesday.

Khamenei says the "aim of the slogan is not death to American people. The slogan means death to U.S. policies and arrogance." The slogan has "strong support" In Iran, he said.

Ah, but what about that other phrase?

.@UNRWA Maintains Neutrality On How To Destroy Israel (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Jerusalem, November 4 - In keeping with the organization's mandated policy of not taking sides in political disputes, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) clarified today that the agency has no official position on how the destruction of the world's only Jewish state will be accomplished.

Spokesman Chris Gunness stressed to reporters today that contrary to recent reports of UNRWA employees violating the neutrality required of them by celebrating the murder of Jews, the agency enforces a strict code of ethics under which no specific avenue for causing the demise of the State of Israel and killing its Jewish inhabitants is shown favor or disfavor.

"You might have been hearing about teachers at UNRWA schools, or other UNRWA functionaries, allegedly violating our organization's neutrality policy," said Gunness at a press conference. "But those reports are either malicious distortions or erroneous renderings. This agency does not, and had not in the past, allowed its employees to express exclusive preference for any particular method of bringing about the end of Israel and massacring all Jews who reside there." Gunness explained that Facebook posts and other evidence that appeared to show UNRWA employees glorifying stabbing, vehicular homicide, shooting, or rockets were in fact merely metaphorical devices for conveying the purpose and goals of the organization and the population it serves, rather than a violation of neutrality regarding how best to rid historical Palestine of the usurper rapist ape-pig Jews and any pretensions they may have to sovereignty.

"I guarantee that none of the supposed violations of neutrality by UNRWA teachers, for example, stands up to scrutiny" challenged Gunness. "For neutrality to be breached, you would have to prove that the person who made the allegedly non-neutral post, or who shared an allegedly non-neutral image, is actually trying to say that the specific kind of violence being invoked is preferred over others. That's just nonsense. No UNRWA personnel are irresponsible enough to think, let alone say, that stabbing every single Jew is the only acceptable path toward bloody redemption of the homeland from the Khazar invader. Every single one of our employees has been vetted, and we have determined to our satisfaction that nary a one would object to, say, nuking Israel out of existence, or poisoning the whole country's water supply with anthrax, instead of stabbing all the Jews or running them over."

"So please stop giving coverage to these alleged violations of neutrality," he asked reporters. "This is a non story."

11/04 Links Pt1: How a Blood Libel against Israel Is Born; PA names soccer tournament after terrorist

From Ian:

JCPA: How a Blood Libel against Israel Is Born

On Friday, October 30, the primetime show The Agenda on Ontario’s TVO network, with anchorman Steve Paikin, explored the question of whether the Palestinian violence marks the beginning of the Third Intifada.
Two interviewees were asked to give their assessment: Yoni Goldstein, editor of the weekly Canadian Jewish News, and Khaled Elgindy, a fellow of the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy and former adviser to the Palestinian Authority on permanent-settlement issues from 2004 to 2009.
Elgindy presented a distorted picture of the situation that pins full responsibility for the Palestinian violence on Israel. He asserted that a new intifada would probably be a better option for all of the sides, because it would be organized and would seek clear-cut objectives. In other words, Elgindy implied that a wider outbreak of violence, which would wreak numerous civilian deaths like the Al-Aqsa Intifada that began in September 2000, would be better than the current level of Palestinian violence, which so far has not succeeded to kill large numbers of Israelis.
Elgindy went on to say:
I would disagree that the Israeli response has been effective. It’s not been effective. It’s been very repressive, and it has been almost as random in its violence as the knifing attacks except far more deadly in terms of the number of Palestinian casualties….
Israel has arrested hundreds of Palestinians basically just mass arrests rounding people up. It has shot into crowds of unarmed protestors. There is a sort of ‘shoot to kill’ policy that appears to be the main rules of engagement for Israeli security forces where they shoot first and ask questions later. And we saw just the other day, the Israeli police conducted an investigation into a Palestinian woman who was shot in the city of Afula and they found in fact that she wasn’t carrying any weapon. That the initial report that she had a knife was false and that she was simply executed for no reason.
To put it mildly, Khaled was not speaking the truth. There have been no cases whatsoever of Israeli security forces shooting into innocent crowds. The casualties among the Palestinians stem from the multitude of terror attacks against Jews, of which there have been many hundreds just in the last month. The arrests being made are not random, but are responses to violent activity or to intelligence information. Israeli open-fire orders do not allow shooting to kill except in life-threatening cases, such as the use of firearms, firebombs, knives and potentially lethal stonings.
The blood libel against Israel has reached a peak with the description of the incident where the woman in Afula was shot. The facts are entirely different from those Elgindy presents in his version.
The female attacker was not Palestinian, but rather an Israeli Arab residing in Nazareth named Asra Awad. She was not “executed,” but rather moderately wounded in her lower extremities by the gunfire and treated in a hospital.

PMW: Palestinian football tournament named after murderer ‎who stabbed two to death last month

Terrorist Muhannad Halabi murdered two Israeli civilians and wounded the wife and infant of one of them, in a stabbing attack in the Old City of Jerusalem in October. Now, the Yasser Arafat Youth Center in Jenin has named a football tournament after the murderer.
Headline: "Bal'a Club wins the Martyr Halabi cup for football"
"The Martyr Yasser Arafat Youth Center (Al-Attara - Jenin) succeeded in organizing the first football tournament named after Martyr (Shahid) Muhannad Halabi, which took place on its football fields. The final game was played by the Yasser Arafat Youth Center and Bal'a, which rightly won the title." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 2, 2015]
Palestinian Media Watch has reported on official PA gestures in honor of this murderer. A PA municipality named a street after him and the mayor said, "This is the least we can do for Martyr Halabi." Abbas' Fatah movement brought soil from the Al-Aqsa Mosque to his grave. Private institutions and people have also honored terrorist Halabi, with the PA Bar Association awarding him an honorary law degree and parents in Gaza naming their newborn son after the murderer.
It is not surprising that private institutions and organizations like the Jenin youth club decide to honor murderers who have killed Israelis. Glorification of terrorist murderers is a practice repeatedly carried out by the PA and Fatah, as documented by PMW.

Sudanese Man Attempts to Murder Israeli on Ethiopian Airlines Flight

A Sudanese man was arrested by Ethiopian authorities for attacking an Israeli man on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from N’Djamena to Addis Ababa last week, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Tuesday.
A 54-year-old Israeli man, identified as Arik and an employee for an Israeli communications company that operates in Africa, was on the flight with the intent to get on another flight to Israel after landing in Addis Ababa.
“About 20 minutes before the plane started its descent the passenger sitting behind me identified me as Israeli and Jewish,” Arik told the newspaper.
“He came up behind my seat and started to choke me with a lot of force,” he continued, “and at first I couldn’t get my voice out and call for help. He hit me over the head with a metal tray and shouted ‘Allah akbar’ and ‘I will slaughter the Jew.’ Only after a few seconds, just before I was about to lose consciousness, did I manage to call out and a flight attendant who saw what was happening summoned her colleagues.”
Most of the other passengers chose not to get involved, with the exception of one Lebanese passenger who assisted the crew in stopping the attack, Arik said. (h/t Yenta Press)

Orthodox Jewish Man Stabbed in Brooklyn; Victim in Stable Condition (VIDEO)

An off-duty volunteer for Brooklyn-based Jewish ambulance service Hatzalah was stabbed in the back on Tuesday night while walking in Crown Heights, local blogs reported.
The victim, identified as 34-year-old Dovid Katz, was treated on the scene by his colleagues and then rushed to the nearby Kings County Hospital, where he was reported to be in stable condition, sources said.
According to the report, he did not see the attacker, who approached from behind and then quickly fled the scene following the assault. One witness cited by a local blog described the assailant as an “African-American male wearing a hoodie,” but noted that “this has not been confirmed.” The attacker is still at large.
Local website Crownheights.info warned local residents, “Please beware of your surroundings and be extra cautious when going outside until the assailant is apprehended.”
A leader of the largely Chabad Chasidic local Jewish community also called on residents to be on guard.