Friday, November 13, 2015

11/13 Links Pt1: 2 shot dead in WB; Stabbing in Milan; Kontorovich: Europe Mislabels Israel

From Ian:

Israeli father and son shot dead in West Bank terror attack

An Israeli father and his teenage son were killed Friday afternoon by two Palestinian gunmen who fired on their vehicle south of the West Bank city of Hebron. The mother of the family was lightly injured, and a second son suffered moderate injuries. The family’s three daughters were not hit by the gunfire but were treated for shock.
Just before 3 p.m. on Friday, the Magen David Adom rescue service received a report of gunshots fired at a car near Otniel Junction in the southern West Bank. Paramedics arrived to find two Israelis critically injured. They subsequently pronounced them dead at the scene.
The two were later identified as a man in his 40s and his son of about 18. The murdered father and the son were seated in the front seats of the vehicle; initial reports said the family was on its way to relatives in the southern town of Meitar for Shabbat when the attack happened.
Channel 2 reported that two gunmen opened fire at the vehicle and that one of them then got out and fired more shots from closer to the family’s car. The TV report said the critically injured son managed to telephone emergency services and was then hit by more gunfire.
The TV report said security authorities were also investigating whether the first ambulance on the scene, from the Palestinian Red Crescent, slowed, saw that the victims were Jews, and sped away, failing to provide medical assistance.

Eugene Kontorovich: Europe Mislabels Israel

In fact, the labeling controversy must be viewed as just one step in a broader, purposeful and gradual escalation of anti-Israel measures by the European Union. Two years ago, the commission promulgated a regulation that barred spending money on Israeli academic, scientific or cultural projects in the West Bank or Golan Heights. Then the union began refusing to allow imports of certain Israeli agricultural products. Last year, 15 European states issued warnings, alerting people to unspecified legal dangers of interacting with Israeli settlements. These steps, while supposedly motivated by what the European Union sees as Israel’s occupation of territory, have been applied only to Israel, and not to other countries regarded as occupiers in international law, such as Morocco or Turkey.
Having warned about settlement products, the European Union is now labeling them. Diplomats in Brussels and NGOs have made clear that more coercive measures will follow. In this context, labeling is important not in its immediate economic effects but as a highly visible step in a conscious process of building a legal ghetto around Israel, within which a special set of rules applies.
What has largely escaped notice is that the labeling policy violates the European Union’s own express policy on such issues. The commission primarily justifies labeling as a necessary tool to provide consumers with the information that it does not regard the territories “as part of Israel.” However, European Union and national authorities that have addressed the issue have clearly ruled that special labeling is not required in such situations — neither for consumer protection nor to reflect the European Union’s view of the underlying sovereign status of territories.
Thus the European Union allows Morocco — which has extensive trade ties with Europe, but has occupied Western Sahara since 1975, and populated it heavily with settlers — to export products from its occupied territory labeled “Made in Morocco.” When challenged, the commission formally declared that labeling such goods as “made in” Morocco is not misleading, and is consistent with European trade agreements.
Also, European courts have considered the consumer protection rationale specifically in the context of Israeli products, and rejected it. Just last year, the British Supreme Court ruled, in a case involving Ahava beauty products produced in the West Bank, that “there was no basis for saying that the average consumer would be misled” by a “Made in Israel” label. The court held that such labeling was not deceptive as a matter of both British and European Union law.

Caroline Glick: Fighting fire with fire

Maybe the EU did us a favor on Wednesday.
At least now we know what we’re up against.
With the publication of its new guidelines to member states encouraging them to label Jewish products produced beyond the 1949 armistice lines, the Europeans finally convinced us that they hate us. They don’t care about peace. They don’t care about the Palestinians. They just want to harm Israel.
This is old news for longtime EU watchers.
Since late 2000, Europe has inexorably ratcheted up its hostile treatment of the Jewish state to the detriment of chances of peace.
Take for instance the timing of the EU’s first official act of open economic warfare against Israel.
On July 29, 2013, US Secretary of State John Kerry brought the heads of the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams together in Washington to officially launch a new round of peace talks.
The same day, the EU announced that starting at the beginning of 2014, it would be ending all joint projects with and all funding from the EU and its member governments of Israeli entities located or operating in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights. The only exceptions to the funding and cooperation ban were Israeli organizations working to harm Israeli control over the areas, and non-Jewish Israeli entities.
The message was obvious. As far as Europe is concerned, “the peace process” isn’t a means to achieve peace. It is a means of criminalizing Israel.
This week’s labeling guidelines were no surprise.

JPost Editorial: EU hypocrisy

What happened to Europeans’ strict adherence to the letter of international law? The Europeans are similarly lenient regarding goods produced in Chinese-ruled Tibet, Indian-controlled Kashmir and Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus. No special labels are required to prevent European consumers from being misled into thinking they are buying Chinese, Indian, or Turkish products.
Unless they live in an alternative universe, Faaborg-Anderson and other EU officials must be aware that by insisting on singling out Israel for special treatment, the Europeans are feeding into the Israel bashing that is so prevalent throughout most of Europe.
Europeans like Faaborg-Anderson might think Israelis are over-reacting to the EU labeling decision. But based on their track record, Israelis are rightly concerned about the caustic environment in which Israeli policies are discussed in Europe.
Maybe Israel has reacted strongly to the labeling decision. But maybe there is a good reason. People like Faaborg-Anderson should at the very least consider this before attempting to play down the damage caused by their hypocritical actions.

I had never heard of ELNET, but it sounds like they are doing some vital work.

Which means that they will soon be targeted (if they haven't been already) as a group that seeks to have Jews take over Europe.

Excerpts from JNS:

The European Leadership Network (ELNET)—a non-governmental, non-partisan organization founded by European, Israeli, and American leaders in 2007—works to improve strategic relations between Israel and European Union countries. With current activity and presence primarily in Germany, France, Spain, and Poland, as well as an office opening near the seat of the EU and NATO in Brussels in the near future, ELNET has hosted more than 50 European delegations of parliament members, top government officials, and other European policy leaders to Israel. ELNET has also held more than 20 strategic meetings in Europe, and has engaged more than 500 participants in its effort to enhance European-Israeli understanding and cooperation on a wide variety of fields.

JNS.org interviewed ELNET’s co-founder, Raanan Eliaz, and the U.S.-based national executive director of Friends of the European Leadership Network (FELNET), Lee Rosenblum. Below, they discuss the current state of Europe’s relationship with Israel and the significance of ELNET’s work.

Eliaz: ELNET creates for the first time in these countries a local power base of pro-Israel citizens who are capable and are well-equipped to communicate directly with elected officials, policy makers, and leaders of opinion. ELNET also hosts informal strategic discussions between top leaders from Israel and Europe that help create better policies towards each other.

[The migrant crisis and the growth of the Muslim population of Europe] affect what we do because we are interested in that European leaders, our primary audience, take this into account when they make policies. Most of the migrants do not care about Israel and simply want to become citizens of their new countries. There is a local minority in some countries, France for example, that is violent and extreme. When integration fails most dramatically is where these countries have the most tension, and one of the ways we see this is violence against Jews, but not only. Violence in France is not targeting Jews only or Jews primarily. It is targeting the values of the (French) Republic. We need to remember that.

Most of the people we are engaging are not Jewish. Israel is not an issue that belongs only to the Jews in these countries, but it’s a matter of values and democratic principles. There is also a positive impact of this issue because this crisis helps Europeans understand Israel better in some cases.

[In France] the challenge comes at the leadership level. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius [recently issued some] initiatives that are questionable (such as the French U.N. request to impose a deadline on the Israelis and Palestinians, and the initiative to have an international presence in the Temple Mount).

[Germany has] a very unique history and a unique commitment to Israel (due to the history of the Holocaust), and is one of the most helpful partners in some areas [with Israel], for example in security and defense exchange. Younger Germans who are already in ministerial positions look at the past differently. Our agenda in Germany is to talk and speak about the present and future, and bring to the surface those interests that connect Germany and Israel now and tomorrow.

[Upcoming elections in Spain could lead to a] dramatic shift in the country. And there is a constant challenge to keep Israel a neutral issue [in Spain]. We are making a constant effort to keep the socialist leadership in Spain educated about our issues. In fact, we just had a delegation of Spanish center-left leadership, they almost never come without us.

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FOX News notes that @UNRWA still condones violence through "youth ambassador"

Fox News has a nice article about Palestinian songs that incite listeners to kill Jews, following up on a similar New York Times piece last month.

The NYT piece mentioned Mohammed Assaf, Palestinian Arab Idol winner, as joining the fray to support violence in his music. But they didn't mention that Assaf is UNRWA's "youth ambassador" and that UNRWA refuses to distance themselves from his message of hate.

Fox News, however, highlights it:

One of the poster boys of the disturbing craze is Muhammed Assaf, a resident of Gaza who won the 2013 "Arab Idol" TV talent show that attracts huge audiences across the Middle East. Soon after his victory, the 23-year-old, born and educated in a United Nations-sponsored refugee camp, was appointed regional youth ambassador by the UN organization, known as UNRWA.

The lyrics of one of his recent hits, Ya Yumma, are accompanied by images of rioting young men, the iconic Golden Dome in Jerusalem's Old City, and the shroud-wrapped body of a dead Palestinian. Assaf sings, “Salute the determined people who are resisting the occupiers, Fight back until you defeat the aggressor.”

Despite the fact that his songs often glorify violence, UNRWA has continued to endorse and promote Assaf as its example to Palestinian youth.

“As a "child of UNRWA," Mohammed Assaf is the ideal individual to be the first goodwill ambassador in the more than six decades of our history,” a current statement on UNRWA’s website reads. “His mother, too, was an UNRWA teacher… With the universal language of his music, he carries the message of UNRWA and young Palestine refugees to new audiences.”

UNRWA is wholly funded by the international community and has repeatedly been accused of turning a blind eye to Palestinian incitement against Israel. Its critics accuse the humanitarian organization of allowing Hamas to dictate a warped educational agenda at its schools in Gaza that is both anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic, something UNRWA strongly denies. However, despite conclusive evidence of Assaf's songs inciting Palestinian youth to violence, UNRWA apparently remains steadfast in its admiration for the singer nurtured in its system.

Fox even captioned this photo of Assaf with the fact that he celebrates "martyrs" who kill Jews.

UNRWA might be trying to silence the publicity about its tacit support for terror, but as long as they don't cut their ties with Assaf, it is all just lip service.

ASAL Technologies is a software development house in Ramallah. They've done business with Cisco, Intel, HP, Microsoft and others.

Their FAQ page reveals a lot about how "pro-Palestinian" activists are in fact hurting the most skilled and creative Palestinians. Because in order to gain business abroad, ASAL has to convince potential customers that the propaganda that they have been hearing for decades is all wrong.

Can Palestinians travel?
Yes. Palestinians are able to travel to any part of the world. Provided with the proper and necessary documentation, Palestinians can acquire a visa and travel to any destination.

Do you have internet?
Yes. We do have internet and electricity. Over the past 60 years, the West Bank had not sustained any outages due to political reasons. Currently ASAL Technologies has two fiber optic cables from two different ISPs to ensure 24/7 internet connectivity. And short term plans are to move the headquarters of ASAL Technologies to Rawabi -the first Palestinian smart city- where the infrastructure of the whole city has been optimized to meet international standards.

Does the political situation affect your work?
No. Though it is hard to visualize if one hasn’t visited Palestine, the reality is that the political situation does not affect our ability to conduct business as usual with all of our clients. And to ensure that our employees can always access their workplace, we opened up a new branch in north of Palestine, and future plans are to open up yet another branch in the south.

These people should be role models for the Palestinian Arabs - they don't spend all of their time whining about what they can't do, but instead they show what they can do. And already they managed to build a modern workplace in a nice building.

The company also does business with Israeli companies, much to the chagrin of the BDSers:

Israel’s high-tech industry is among the country’s crowning achievements. Many Israeli tech firms send work offshore to Eastern Europe, India or China.

In the past three years, however, some have turned to Palestinian engineers and programmers. They are cheaper, ambitious, work in the same time zone, and – surprisingly to many Israelis – are similar to them.

“The cultural gap is much smaller than we would think,” said Gai Anbar, chief executive of Comply, an Israeli start-up in this central Israeli town that develops software for global pharmaceutical companies like Merck and Teva.

Palestinian engineers have also warmed up to the idea. “I doubt you would find a company who says, ‘I am closed for business,” to Israelis, said Ala Alaeddin, chairman of the Palestinian Information Technology Association.

“We have a window of opportunity to demonstrate our skills,” said Murad Tahboub, CEO of Asal Technologies, a Palestinian outsourcing company that works with Comply and a handful of other Israeli-based companies. “The more people know about us … the more comfortable they will be in doing business with us.”

This is what real peace looks like. And the people who support boycotts and labels and all the other anti-Israel initiatives are the ones who are working against peace - and against the very people whom they are pretending to care the most about.

Unfortunately, Palestinian society is geared to silencing the voices of people like these workers -people who want to truly build their communities and are eager to work with Israelis to get it done.

(h/t Mike)

73-year old terrorist told daughter that she wanted to be a shaheeda

The son of the 73-year old woman terrorist denied that she tried to purposefully ram her car into a group of soldiers:

Ayoub Sha’arawi was meeting with guests Saturday at a local mosque in Hebron who had gathered to pay their final respects to his mother, Tharwat al-Sha’arawi, who was killed during an suspected attempted car ramming attack outside the West Bank city a day earlier.

“Does the Israeli public think it’s logical that a 73-year-old woman that has a hard time climbing the steps would go and carry out a car-ramming or stabbing attack?” asked 53-year-old Sha’arawi,

Sha’arawi spoke to The Times of Israel while organizing lunch for everyone, which was supposed to be delivered to the mosque. “We prayed together, everyone, at the mosque and after prayers she was supposed to go to my uncle’s house. But on the way, she decided she wanted to stop and get gas. Her car was a small gray Hyundai. She left, from this alley where we’re standing, and turned right on the main road. I ask you again. The gas station is 100 meters away from us. She drove 20-30 kilometers an hour and you see this clearly in the video filmed by the soldiers. Is that how you carry out a car-ramming attack?”

When asked about his mother’s swerve to the right, which prompted the soldiers to open fire, Sha’awari said the gas station is on the right side, which is why she swerved. “But if she wanted to run over soldiers, she would have sped up in their direction, and toward those standing on the sidewalk, and wouldn’t have continued to drive into the gas station.”

Her son also claimed that the knife that was found in her bag was planted.

An Arabic website, however, leaves no doubt about Tharwat's intentions.

The article says that two weeks before her death, Tharwat al-Sha'rawi wrote a will and spoke with her daughter Ihlam, saying "I think I am going to die soon… If I die, oh, Allah, let me die as a shaheeda and not in my bed."

The Meir Amit Center adds that her daughter is married to a jailed Hamas member - and Hamas issued a "martyr" poster for her!

Hamas doesn't do this for people who are not fighters.

So, yes, old Palestinian women are as susceptible to the same mass brainwashing that makes teens want to risk their lives for the chance to kill a Jew.

(h/t Josh K)

11/12 Link Pt2: Luxury Alongside Poverty in the Palestinian Auth; Suicide attacks on Hezbollah 41 dead

From Ian:

JCPA: Luxury Alongside Poverty in the Palestinian Authority

A Photo Album of Palestinian Luxury in the West Bank
Completing the Picture of Palestinian Life in the West Bank
Ramallah’s landscape is undergoing a transformation. Multi-story villas fronted by ornamental porticos and columns are rising on Ramallah’s hilltops along with glass and marble office buildings. There are newly paved roads. Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts opened Ramallah’s first five-star hotel. The 172-room, $40 million hotel boasts a head chef imported from Florence, a pastry chef from Paris, and a lobby bedecked in marble and Italian suede.
Across the West Bank, similar scenes are unfolding. Building cranes pierce the sky. Outside Nablus, new car dealerships sell everything from BMWs to Hyundais. In Ramallah, the Mercedes dealership does a brisk business selling luxury-class sports cars and sport-utility vehicles to wealthy Palestinians with sticker prices ranging from $100,000 to $200,000. The Hirbawi Home Center opened just outside Jenin. The five-story shopping mall cost $5 million. Fireworks marked the opening. On the fifth floor in-demand electric gadgets may be found: enormous TV screens, vacuum cleaners, espresso machines. The prices are not much cheaper than in Israel, perhaps except for the furniture. One can find china plates, crystal, and classical furniture. The chain’s CEO, Ziad Turabi, says, “We believe we can make a very handsome profit. Many people in the…territories have money but they have nowhere to spend it if they’re after quality. We offer them the best quality there is.”
This may not sound like the familiar description of the West Bank – the impoverished Palestinian village or the overcrowded refugee camp, a population sustaining itself on international aid. But it turns out that quite a few Palestinians consider a plasma screen, a surround sound stereo and comfortable chairs to be fairly essential items.

Dershowitz: Doctors Without Borders Really Is ‘Doctors Without Morals’

International law experts are blasting Doctors Without Borders for forcibly removing civilian patients from the aid group’s Kunduz, Afghanistan, hospital and replacing them with wounded Taliban fighters when the city fell to the rebel control in late September.
Alan Dershowitz, an acclaimed Harvard constitutional lawyer and authority in international law, said that he was not surprised that the group, known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, favored Taliban fighters over civilian patients, telling The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview that he regards Doctors Without Borders as “Doctors Without Morals.”
Dershowitz charged the group with having a long history of anti-Western political stances and of not being neutral. He says MSF “is a heavily ideological organization that often favors radical groups over Western democracies and is highly politicized.”
The lawyer said the doctors also were hypocritical. “What they violate is their own stated mandate and that is of taking no political ideological position and treating all people in need of medical care equally. It’s just not what they do.”

At least 41 dead in twin suicide attacks on Hezbollah’s Beirut stronghold

At least 41 people were killed Thursday evening in a twin suicide attack in a suburb of southern Beirut controlled by Shiite militant group Hezbollah, the Lebanese Red Cross said.
Lebanese Health Minister Wael Abou Faour said more than 200 people were injured, and that “many were in critical condition.”
Police said two men on foot set off suicide vests minutes apart during rush hour, in front of a shopping center in the suburb of Bourj el-Barajneh. The army claimed to have found the body of a third terrorist who was unable to detonate his belt.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombings that detonated around 6:00 p.m. (1600 GMT), witnesses said. (h/t Yenta Press)

Teaching toddlers how to stab (video) (UPDATE)

If this is what it looks like, it is one of the most disgusting videos to come out of Arab society, ever.

(h/t cba)

UPDATE 2: The adult repeatedly asks the child, "Are you a man or a woman?" At first the child, scared, answers "Not a man" and then "A woman" before he answers "A man."

The original video was removed from YouTube.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

UPDATE: MEMRI posted this video on the same theme a couple of weeks ago.

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

I opened my newspaper Wednesday morning to read that two Palestinian terrorists had attacked a security guard in a car on the oft-targeted Jerusalem light rail. The guard was stabbed twice; one of the terrorists was shot and the other overpowered by passengers.

The thing is that the terrorists were cousins, 11 and 14 years old.

The 11-year old, who was shot by the guard he or his cousin had stabbed, was taken to Hadassah Hospital, where – as I find myself writing yet again – he will receive the best medical care available in the Middle East. Because of his age, he will then go home to his parents. Israeli law makes no provision for attempted murderers below the age of 12.

When I was 11, I was a Cub Scout. Not even a Boy Scout, for which you had to be 12. I built model airplanes and crystal radios, played ball in the street and rode my bike to the swimming pool in the summer. The greatest violence I had experienced in my life was a fight with a boy my age that resulted in a bloody nose.

It’s been a long time, but I can’t begin to imagine myself or any of my friends or acquaintances planning and carrying out an attack intended to cause the death of a stranger, simply because he was a member of a group defined as an enemy.

To plunge a knife into the flesh of a human being. Think about it. Think about how you would need to feel in order to do it. Most of us would have a hard time killing an animal, even a chicken we intended to eat. Then think aboutplanning to do it in advance, sharpening a knife and hiding it in your school backpack so that you could go out and stab Jews after school. Think about doing this when you were a kid.

There are cases of children committing murder in the US, but they are rare and usually the child is in some way psychologically defective. But there are numerous cases of Palestinian teenagers, girls as well as boys, committing stabbing attacks. A few weeks ago, another pair of cousins aged 13 and 17 seriously wounded two Jews, one of whom was also a 13-year old, in a stabbing spree that ended when the older assailant was shot by police and the younger one hit by a car.

One reason it’s hard for us to comprehend their behavior is that most Westerners really don’t get the concept of an enemy. You belong to a tribe, and there is an enemy tribe. When you meet a member of the enemy tribe, you fight. If you can kill him you do. Often killing an enemy is justified as revenge for a series of crimes committed by the enemy tribe. It doesn’t matter who he is as an individual.

The other difficult concept is hate. We use the word loosely: not wanting to sit next to a person of a particular race on a bus isn’t hate, regardless of how reprehensible it may be. Hate is the emotion that makes you want to plunge a knife deep into the neck of the hated person. Most 11-year old children haven’t experienced real hate. Most grown-ups in Israel and the West may have felt it a few times and certainly only a very small number have acted on it.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is asymmetrical because most of the hate and the enmity is on one side. A US State Department spokesperson will say “both sides need to exercise restraint” as if both sides are doing the same, unrestrained violent thing. Jeffrey Goldberg referred to Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs as “two warring tribes” as if both tribes treat the other as an enemy. These expressions are misleading, because in this conflict Jews are primarily defending themselves out of necessity while Palestinian Arabs are attacking them out of tribal hatred.

Of course there are exceptions. The Jews that burned Muhammad Abu Khdeir to death saw him as a representative of a hated enemy. His murder was a classic case of revenge against a member of an enemy tribe.

But note that Jews are in the majority, have access to more and better weapons and have an organized fighting force. If they were as suffused with hatred for Arabs as Arabs are for Jews, there would be no Arabs left from the river to the sea. And if Arabs had the means that the Jews have, there would be no more Jews.

There are several reasons for the Palestinian Arabs’ hate, and they seem to have combined to create a perfect storm of murder.

The honor-shame character of the Arab culture calls for humiliation to be extirpated by blood.

The violation by Jewish sovereignty of the Islamic hierarchy which places Jews several steps down from male Muslims is an endless source of humiliation for them.

The idea that Jews are lower than Muslims, close to animals, makes it easier to consider killing them. And Arabs, even children, are familiar with the slaughter of animals.

The essential aspect of Palestinian – not just Arab – culture, the fact that it’s defined in opposition to Jews and Jewish sovereignty, makes Jews blamable for everything bad that has happened to Palestinian Arabs.

The flood of hateful indoctrination that Palestinian Arabs receive from the Palestinian Authority and Hamas makes them furious and gives their fury an object – the Jews. Any Jews.

The approval their society gives terrorists validates their behavior as not only normal but laudable.

Incitement on children’s programs on regular media plus social media is aimed directly at children.

There is nothing remotely similar to any of these in mainstream Jewish culture. So while we may fight Hamas on a regular basis and push back at the violent ‘demonstrations’ incited by the PLO, we don’t systematically or sporadically try to kill Arabs. And we certainly don’t encourage our children to do so.

All of these strong emotional motivators act on children as well of adults, but in children the safety mechanisms that might make an adult pull back from actual murder aren’t well-developed. Emotions go straight to action, hate straight to stabbing.

The encouragement of children to become terrorists is not an accident. The Palestinian educational system is designed to do it. Child soldiers are nothing new, but their use as self-guided terrorist missiles is a Palestinian innovation. It can be counted along with the other Palestinian contributions to humanity, like the popularization of airplane hijacking, the Qassam rocket, and automotive terrorism.

The Palestinians have tried to appropriate Jewish history in the land of Israel, to create a ‘holocaust’ for themselves, to claim our holy city and our holy sites, even to claim the Jewish founder of Christianity for themselves. But one thing that they did not copy was our love and concern for our children. Instead they cynically and cruelly use them, as soldiers, human shields, human bombs and terrorists. They have created a generation of haters and killers. Karma is not a Jewish concept, but I expect that they will pay dearly in the future for what they are doing today.

11/12 Link Pt1: Why Aren’t Tibetans Knifing Chinese?; Shin Bet: 609 Terror Attacks in October

From Ian:

Why Aren’t Tibetans Knifing Chinese?

Where the argument breaks down is his assertion that this frustration naturally leads them to “explode and strike at anything that walks down the Jewish street.” Or as Beinart put it, that “today’s Palestinian terrorism is a monstrous, demented response to Israel’s denial of basic Palestinian rights.” For if that is true, comparable situations elsewhere in the world should have produced comparable outbreaks of violence. And they haven’t.
Take, for instance, Tibet, which has been occupied by China since 1951 – longer than Israel has controlled the West Bank. The occupation certainly hasn’t brought prosperity to Tibet, which has the highest poverty rate in China. Moreover, Beijing has sought to eradicate Tibetan culture and religion, a process that reached its climax when the government asserted the right to choose the next Panchen Lama, the second-highest post in Tibetan Buddhism’s religious hierarchy. Israel, by contrast, scrupulously respects Palestinians’ religious freedom. Finally, there has been such an influx of Han Chinese settlers into Tibet that ethnic Tibetans are now a minority in “greater Tibet,” whereas Palestinians, despite Israel’s much-hyped settlement activity, remain an overwhelming majority in the West Bank.
So by the Heilman/Beinart standard, one would expect Tibetans to respond to their relative deprivation by launching periodic waves of vicious violence against the Chinese. And yet, that hasn’t happened. Instead, there has been a wave of self-immolations, and even those have been few and far between. According to the International Campaign for Tibet, 143 Tibetans have set themselves on fire as an act of protest since February 2009 – a shocking figure, but spread out over almost seven years. By comparison, there have been 65 Palestinian stabbing attacks in the last six weeks alone.
In short, something in Tibet’s culture or leadership caused Tibetans to respond very differently to “relative deprivation” than Palestinians have.

Obama Has a Strategy in the Middle East, and It’s Working

The Obama administration is “operating on a crisis basis” in the Middle East, says Leon Panetta, and doesn’t “have any kind of larger strategy” for the region. The president’s recent actions there, including the deployment of 50 special operations troops to Syria, are too incremental and “will not work,” says Fareed Zakaria. Indeed, the situation in that country has “spiraled out of control,” according to Vox’s Max Fisher in a post headlined “Unfixable: How Obama Lost Syria.”
And that’s what liberal critics are saying! The tone on the right is even more harsh—and why shouldn’t it be? Headlines this week from the region inform us that new footage shows about 200 children being shot to death by members of the Islamic State while lying in a row, faces in the dirt; that a Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt was quite likely downed with the use of military grade explosives; and that Russian airstrikes in Syria in support of the Assad regime have increased in intensity. It is Wednesday.
Zooming out, we see Assad in power, the Islamic State not going anywhere, Yemen still the focus of a regional proxy war, and a nuclear deal with Iran that has only empowered hardliners there.
The natural question thus seems to be: Why doesn’t Obama change course? Other presidents have shifted their approaches when confronted with failure—Carter’s late foreign policy and Bush’s Iraq surge both spring to mind. Why not Obama?
One answer to this question we ought to take seriously is that the president thinks things are, on the whole, going just fine.

Mordechai Kedar: There is no "radical Islam" and there is also no "moderate Islam"

Beginning more or less with 9/11, the expression "radical Islam" became the accepted way for the media, politicians and public to define the religious and ideological foundations of Islam-based violence when referring to what the world calls "terror." This expression was meant to be contrasted with "moderate Islam" which presents Muslims as ordinary people who wish to live in peace with all of mankind - Christians, Jews, Buddhists, unbelievers and the rest of us. The world created the image of two Islams, one radical and impossible to live with, and one moderate and "just like us."
This differentiation between "radical" and "moderate" Islam is what gave rise to the claim that Islam had been "hijacked" by the radicals, implying that the real and original Islam is the moderate, not the false, radical one.
This is what allows today's Europe to relate positively to the wave of mostly-Muslim illegal immigrants washing up on its shores – they represent "moderate Islam" and all they want is to live in peace and harmony with their European neighbors.
Permit me to raise some doubts concerning the psychological mindset that claims the existence of two types of Islam. In order to do this, let us clarify an important point: Islam is a text-based framework of ideas and behaviors, covering religion, culture, strictures, politics, law and economics. It is an all-embracing way of life. The most basic text is the Qu'ran, followed by the Hadith (oral law) and the Sura – biography – of Muhammad. The Sharia, Muslim law, is a system of binding laws and injunctions that Muslims are obliged to obey.
There are no two Islams, no moderate one and no radical one, there is just one Qu'ran that includes everything: verses on Jihad and all out war against unbelievers along with verses that speak of recognizing the "other" and living beside him.

CNN swallows the myth of Israel dominating US foreign aid

CNN reports:

American taxpayers doled out $5.9 billion in foreign military financing in 2014, according to the government's Foreign Assistance report -- that's roughly the GDP of Somalia. But where did the money go?
To the usual suspects, mostly -- Israel ($3.1B) and Egypt ($1.3B) received roughly 75% of all foreign military aid money handed out by the U.S. last year.
This map from the cost-information website howmuch.net shows the relative size of countries based on how much U.S. military aid they receive.

There are a lot of problems with this story, geared to make it look like Israel is taking the lion's share of the US budget spent overseas.

Here's what is not being said up front: The US government, for whatever political or bureaucratic reasons, uses two departments to hand out foreign aid, both military and non-military: the State Department and the Defense Department. Yes, the Defense Department sends out non-military aid as well.

The thinktank quoted by CNN decision to discuss only military aid and only from the State Department budget. not total aid. The same document they link to shows over $50 billion in foreign aid in 2014 when you include non-military aid so Israel's percentage goes down from more than half to around 6%.

The second issue is that the vast majority that the US spends overseas is not from the State Department budget, but from the defense budget. The amount directly earmarked for foreign military and economic aid is about another $56 billion,

But that is what is directly spent. Far more is spent indirectly. For example, there are 150,000 US troops stationed in South Korea, the EU and Japan. The best estimate I could find for the cost of each soldier is $112,000 a year for each soldier - in 2004.

That comes out to over $16 billion directly defending other countries and being mostly spent in other countries. (This doesn't count US active combat troops who are far more expensive per soldier.)

The numbers also don't include how much the US defense budget spends on NATO in Europe, which is a difficult number to find but it seems also to be in the tens of billions annually.

The implication that the US spends huge amounts of its overseas budget in Israel is a complete fabrication, In reality, just based on the numbers I documented here, it is probably closer to 1%.

This is an excellent example of how Israel-haters cherry pick statistics to make Israel look bad - and how lazy news agencies will parrot anything that looks and sounds good without bothering to do any real reporting.

(h/t Andrew)

@Amnesty extols film calling Israel an apartheid state, with antisemitic nutcase Alice Walker narrating

From the list of movies being screened this semester by the Amnesty International Club/ Political Science Club, Mt. San Jacinto College, Menifee Valley Campus:

Wednesday, November 18 4:30pm - 6:30pm, Room 927 (MVC) Roadmap to Apartheid: Ana Nogueira, a white South African, and Eron Davidson, a Jewish Israeli, draw on their first-hand knowledge of the issues to investigate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Narrated by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Alice Walker, this award winning documentary is as much a historical document of the rise and fall of apartheid in South Africa, as it is a film about why many Palestinians feel they are living in an apartheid system today, and why an increasing number of people around the world agree with them. The film compares the many similar laws and tools used by both Israel and apartheid-era South Africa. The audience will see what life is like for Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and inside Israel while gaining a deeper understanding of the conflict with the help of respected analysts on the subject. Combined with archival material and anecdotes from South Africans, the film forms a complete picture as to why the analogy is being used with increasing frequency and potency.

Amnesty's idea of fairness is to screen a film that takes a South African that hates Israel, an Israeli that hates Israel and a narrator that not only hates Israel but is a deluded nutcase and borderline antisemite.

Why do I say that? Here is a section from Alice Walker's book, The Cushion in the Road:

So the Torah enshrines the idea of Jews being allowed to steal land. This is from Amnesty's role model.

The parts of the book that I could see are filled with hate and ridiculous assertions. Here's one that struck me as a perfect example of how Alice Walker would believe the most ludicrous, obvious lies as long as they were making Israel look evil.

Yes, Alice Walker believes that an old Jew who was born in British Mandate Palestine is treated like dirt when he returns to Israel because of the word "Palestine" in his passport. Um... he is still using his British Mandate Palestine passport to enter Israel?

Not only that, but every single non-Jewish tourist to Israel is dehumanized as they enter! It is a wonder that the 1.7 million Christians who visit Israel every year haven't noticed what "most of us are aware of."

Walker's grasp of reality has always been less than solid. After all, she's the one who believes that the world is run by shape-shifting reptilian aliens who practice mind control from the Moon.

But to Amnesty, she is an expert on Israel and very well qualified to weigh in on calling it an apartheid state.

Which shouldn't be surprising, since Amnesty shares with Walker the belief that any accusation against Israel must be true as well as her contempt for facts.

The Israeli protagonist in the film, Eron Davidson - no surprise - has written for Electronic Intifada.

Amnesty eagerly pushes this film as a wonderful piece of fact-finding. Which goes to show, yet again, how far Amnesty will go to demonize Israel.

I mean, how biased do you have to be to support a film as factual that is narrated by someone who literally cannot distinguish fantasy from reality?

This is not the first time an Amnesty branch has raved about this piece of Israel-hating propaganda. They have sponsored showings in San Jose and University of Florida.

And despite their half-hearted attempts to pretend that they aren't directly calling Israel an apartheid state in the description here, Amnesty has sponsored Israel Apartheid Week on college campuses as well as this poster for an event at Rutgers in 2013 shows.

(h/t Andrew)

We have seen UNRWA claim to be acting against incitement by its teachers on Facebook and other social media that I discovered and that was publicized by UN Watch.

I did notice that it is more difficult to find antisemitic and terror-supporting posts by UNRWA teachers in the past week or so.

Now I found an article that shows that UNRWA did indeed warn the teachers not to post hate.

Al Araby had an article on the issue last week.

Sources from UNRWA in Palestine for "al Araby" said that Israel monitors Agency staff accounts and documents any posts from them that are attacking the occupation forces, or attacking the Agency. They name names and their positions, thus UNRWA staff, especially teachers, have come under control by the State of the occupation on the one hand and the Agency on the other.

I'm not aware of any Israeli program to look for UNRWA incitement, only me and UN Watch, which means that UNRWA teachers think I control them!

Sami Mshasha, Arabic spokesperson for UNRWA, told Al Araby, "Everyone in the agency knows the concept of neutrality in all cases, and the employees must do their duties as fully as possible within specific parameters in order not to weaken its services to refugees."

UNRWA isn't telling teachers that antisemitism and supporting stabbing Jews is wrong. Just that it makes UNRWA look bad.

The teachers have called this a "harassment policy" which UNRWA decided to pursue, because the Palestinian teacher would feed their disciples in the spirit of the defense of the Palestinian territory and encourages them in any anti-Israeli attacks, in order to create a generation defending their land. There are now growing fears about control of teachers in their schools, that they are held accountable if they tell their students about violations of the occupation. This could threaten the future of thousands of teachers and workers in other sectors.

If I am understanding this paragraph correctly, it means that UNRWA teachers are known to routinely go outside the official curriculum and incite against Israel, and now they are upset that this might threaten their jobs.

The director of one of UNRWA schools west of Gaza City, who preferred anonymity, told Al Araby that he was "surprised that UNRWA management notified teachers not to publish any entries against the occupation, to keep their jobs and livelihood." This upsets him, pointing out that "it is natural thatthe teachers and staff at the agency express their solidarity with their country's territory and attack the occupation. Their country wa usurped and this must be taken into account." He adds that the teacher are leaders, and should enhance the values of belonging to a nation.

Showing that UNRWA employees cannot distinguish between expressing political positions and encouraging murdering Jews. I didn't bother to publicize political posts, or even posts that were upset at Israeli actions, real or not.

It should be noted that some of the most influential leaders of the Palestinian resistance were teachers in UNRWA schools who were able to perform their work without any restrictions on political freedom, and they are active politically.

There's a UNRWA accomplishment that the agency doesn't brag about on their website!.

Mohammed Mustafa (not his real name) is one of the teachers who received a warning from UNRWA management in the event that he continues his support of the current uprising, the issues of Jerusalem and attacking the occupation. His postings were documented and sent to the management of the Agency in Palestine. One of the posts said, "The Occupiers claim we are terrorists when we stab illegal settlers, and do not talk about the arson and murders committed by them." He said: "If it comes to this point that we cannot express any opinion, this would not work." From that moment, he did not express any position on any social networking site, describing himself as a "citizen living without feelings." Mustafa points out that this issue at present affects a large number of teachers, especially since they had received Agency warnings.

Despite the fact that social networking sites have served the Palestinian cause, we cannot turn a blind eye to their drawbacks . The occupation can monitor some activists and staff in various sectors, and keep track of most of their activities and their views on issues related to the occupation. According to sources from UNRWA for al-Araby, "An employee can express his position on an issue, according to his personal point of view; I do not mind it. But to associate it with his career in the Agency is not desirable and he may be held accountable for it. This is part of our labor contracts. "

It sure looks like my work has gotten results. Many of the people I exposed have taken out their association with UNRWA in their profiles, and others took their pages down altogether.

This article shows that rather than being a tiny number of teachers who violate UNRWA policies as was claimed, it is likely thousands of them, although not all on Facebook - but in the classroom itself.

The Israeli organization "Sons of Zion" monitors and tracks the number of UNRWA staff accounts, and says there is "incitement by the staff of international organizations in the Gaza Strip, and lack of respect for international conventions and processes." It has already filed a lawsuit against the agency, claiming that staff incites against Israel on behalf of the agency.

I have no idea who they are referring to here. I don't think it is me, since I never threatened a lawsuit, but I've never heard of this organization. But maybe it is me and they just badly mistranslated my posts.