Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Simon Wiesenthal Center calls on US to stop funding Miftah and other anti-peace NGOs

It's always nice when my research gets recognized.

From Algemeiner:

Rabbi Cooper

A leading US-based Jewish human rights organization cautioned the US government on Tuesday against donating funds to Palestinian NGOs with a history of antisemitism.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was responding to a report by pro-Israel blogger Elder of Ziyon that Miftah, a Ramallah-based non-profit organization founded and headed by long-time Yasser Arafat loyalist, Palestinian Legislative Council member and former peace process spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi, has been receiving a hefty annual sum from the US Consulate in Jerusalem.

“The question that needs to be asked is: Where should US diplomatic and funding efforts be concentrated when it comes to the ideas and values propagated in Palestinian society? The answer is: It should go to those NGOs committed and contributing to the idea of two peoples living side by side in peace and tolerance,” Cooper told The Algemeiner.

Miftah was forced to remove an antisemitic blood libel from its Arabic website two years ago, following exposure by Elder of Ziyon. In March 2013, the watchdog noted Miftah’s publication of an article claiming that Jews use the blood of Christian children for their Passover matzah.

This caused Miftah first to defend itself — accusing critics of conducting a “smear campaign” — and then days later to take down the piece and issue an apology in English, part of which was devoted to distancing Ashrawi from its author and his ideology.

Elder of Ziyon’s current report — based on Miftah’s financial statements and the US Congressional Research Service – shows that in 2013 and 2014, the US Consulate was added to the NGO’s list of donors, among them Oxfam, NED, Norway, Austria and the Anna Lindh Foundation.

The annual sum given by the US to Miftah, according to the financial records, is $175,000.

Rabbi Cooper posited that a litmus test has to be applied to any Palestinian organization receiving funds from the US and Europe. “There should be no automatic checks signed over,” he told The Algemeiner. “The bottom line is, don’t tell me that [Miftah] hasn’t spread blood libels lately, and therefore it’s okay to give it money. The point is to examine whether, as a voice in the Palestinian Authority, it is contributing to civil society or not. If so, maybe $175,000 is too little a sum. If not, we shouldn’t be giving it a nickel.”

...This is a good time, he concluded, to revise the criteria for the allocation of American aid where the Palestinians are concerned.

“Our tax dollars should only go to efforts against violence,” he said. “That’s where we should be investing our money.”

How many recipients of Western aid in the territories have explicitly condemned the current wave of knifing and car ramming attacks?

I am not aware of a single one, but I'm more than willing to be corrected.

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.

.@UNRWA doesn't want Syrian Palestinians to be resettled. But it does want money to keep them stateless. (update)

UNRWA has never done a poll or survey of the "refugees" under its mandate. But since the 1950s, it has claimed with great certainty that Palestinian refugees later, "refugees" had no desire to become citizens of other countries but would rather wait forever for a "political solution" which would mean that they all move to where Israel is now.

The reality is that stateless Palestinians would much prefer to become full citizens anywhere than remain in limbo forever. Their actions when such a possibility emerges proves this to be the case.

Yet UNRWA has always pushed the lie of how Palestinians do not want to become citizens of any state except Israel, which cruelly enforces the policies of every other state on earth to determine who is allowed to immigrate.

The Globe and Mail (Canada) writes about the situation of Syrian refugees whose ancestors once lived in British Mandate Palestine and shows that UNRWA continues to tell Palestinians under their mandate that they prefer cash to perpetuate the problem to a permanent solution:

None of the war-weary Palestinians are likely to come to Canada under the Liberal government’s program to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees. Canada is relying on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – which doesn’t deal with Palestinians – to help identify those most eligible for resettlement. UNRWA has no role in the program.

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness declined to comment on Canada’s resettlement program, but he said he hoped that Canada would resume the funding of the agency, which the previous Conservative government halted in 2012. Canada was long a leading donor to UNRWA – providing $32.4-million in assistance in 2007 and another $28-million in 2008 – but sharply reduced that aid over the next few years to $14.6-million in 2012, before making no contribution at all over the three years since.

“Palestinians are finding it increasingly hard to sustain life for themselves and their children in the Middle East,” Mr. Gunness said in an e-mail interview. “It costs seven times more to deal with Palestinian refugees once they get to Europe and beyond than for UNRWA to deliver services to them in the region – which is where they would prefer to be. We are seeing a growing acceptance of this argument among our larger donors and we hope it resonates in Ottawa.”

Gunness is lying, and he knows it. Palestinians are no different from the other Syrian refugees, and they want to have the chance to live normal lives anywhere rather than remain stuck in the limbo that UNRWA and Arab leaders keep them in.

But notice how Gunness is using the idea that paying UNRWA will keep a small percentage of refugees from Syria out of Western countries as a means to scare Western governments into spending a much higher percentage of their aid funds on Palestinians than on the 90% of refugees who aren't.

And it is a lie, too. As the article mentions, Lebanon (and Jordan) have shut their doors to Syrian Palestinian refugees altogether. Lebanon does not allow anyone to build new houses in the camps. So UNRWA's aid is not helping any Palestinians outside of basic medical and social services. Of course many of them would still prefer to take their chances in Europe rather than live in Syria with UNRWA help.

If UNRWA cared about Palestinians, it would welcome the possibility of Palestinians finally finding a home in Canada. It would be lobbying Gulf states to take them in.

But when Palestinians move out of Lebanon, Syria or Jordan, UNRWA loses a little bit of leverage to ask for funding. It prefers that they remain second-class citizens in areas of UNRWA's mandate than to allow them the possibility of living happy lives outside.

UPDATE: A relevant incident:

The commitment of anti-Zionists to maintaining Palestinians as refugees was highlighted when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in April 2000 and Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley in January 2001 offered to resettle Palestinian refugees in Canada. PLO spokesman Ahmed Abdel Rahman rejected the Prime Minister's offer. He said: "We reject any kind of settlement of refugees in Arab countries, or in Canada." John Manley, in response to his offer, was burned in effigy near the West Bank city of Nablus. Hussum Khader, head of the largest Palestinian Fatah militia in Nablus, "If Canada is serious about resettlement you could expect military attacks in Ottawa or Montreal"

(h/t Max)

UAW International overturns local union's BDS vote

Last year, BDS supporters went crazy when a local student workers union at University of California voted to support BDS:

Student workers at the University of California have voted by a landslide to support the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

The votes, which were cast on 4 December by members of UAW Local 2865, resulted in 65 percent, or 1,411 members voting in support of a BDS resolution against 35 percent, or 749 members, voting against.

UAW Local 2865 has thus become the first labor union in the US to join the BDS movement.

The union represents 13,000 student workers in the University of California system. It joins a growing number of student governments, academic associations and activist organizations in the US which have pledged to hold Israel accountable for violations of human rights and to end the complicity by corporations and universities which profit from such violations.

The ballots asked union members to cast their vote to call on the University of California and UAW International to divest their holdings from Israeli state institutions and international companies “complicit in severe and ongoing human rights violations as part of the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people.”

UAW International is the central body of the United Auto Workers union, to which UAW Local 2865 is affiliated.

The grown-ups at UAW International apparently didn't think much of a bunch of student workers telling them what to do. In fact, while that resolution was being debated, UAW International told UAW Local 2865 explicitly that their position was always against BDS.

So it is no surprise that on Wednesday, UAW International overturned the student worker union's attempt to boycott Israel..

In a landmark decision yesterday, United Auto Workers (UAW) International Union granted an appeal filed by a member of the University of California student group Informed Grads, thereby striking down a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) resolution adopted by UAW Local 2865 last year. UAW 2865 represents graduate student workers at all of the University of California campuses. UAW International, the body that oversees all UAW locals in the United States, set national precedent by denying the local organization the right to adopt such a divisive and alienating measure.

Over the past year, certain members of UAW 2865 championed a one-sided, counterproductive BDS referendum that limits academic freedom and promotes discrimination based on national origin. Rather than focusing on the needs of the student workers they were elected to represent, these activists promoted an effort that seeks to undermine peaceful dialogue and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians.

A victory for sanity.

Israel's enemies are fixated on symbolic victories, like voting for a resolution that is meaningless or refusing to be in the same building as an Israeli flag. Meanwhile, Israel quietly works on real things like scientific and medical breakthroughs.

So let's recognize the symbolic state of Palestine, which takes up no land and has only symbolic citizens. It can have a symbolic Olympic team and symbolic currency and symbolic passports.

The plan would work, too, if this symbolic people weren't so supportive of killing real Jews.

12/16 Links Pt2: EU undermines its own arguments against Israel; Adam Sandler: “I’m very pro-Israel”

From Ian:

'The EU just undermined its own arguments against Israel'

In marked contrast to its decision to label Jewish "settlement" goods, the European Union (EU) on Monday announced it will fight a decision by its own courts to stop trade in the Moroccan occupied Western Sahara.
To make sense of the state of affairs, Arutz Sheva spoke with Professor Eugene Kontorovich, a renowned legal expert at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and head of the International Law Department at the Kohelet Policy Forum.
The law professor explained how the EU has tried to justify its double-standards regarding Western Sahara, a region Morocco has occupied since 1976 when it was handed to its troops by Spain as it ended its colony there. The area is under a territorial dispute, with the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) that holds a government-in-exile in Algeria claiming rights to rule.
"The EU's defense of their discriminatory labeling rules - which for example they do not require for Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara - has been based on a remarkable claim that Western Sahara is not actually occupied, but rather a 'special case,'" he said.
That status quo was ruptured last Thursday, when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) decided to strike down a 2012 trade agreement between the EU and Morocco in Western Sahara, ruling in favor of the Algerian-backed Polisario Front that fights for independence in the region.
"The ECJ rejected this view, saying Western Sahara is occupied," emphasized Kontorovich.

Adam Sandler: “I’m very pro-Israel”

On today’s Howard Stern Show, the funny filmmaker went off on the Pink Floyd front man who is the most famous, and most wizened, supporter of BDS, the movement that seeks to Boycott, Divest and Sanction Israel.
“I’m disgusted they single out Israel,” Sandler told Stern, who himself has ranted against Waters on his Sirius satellite radio show many times.
Stern then probed—as only Stern can—into Sandler’s Jewish identity. The creator of “The Hanuka Song”—arguably the best contribution to the holiday songbook since “White Christmas” — was out and proud.
“I’m proud of being a Jew and that’s what I am,” Sandler said.
“I get that from my father and mother,” Sandler said. “I’m very pro-Israel and when someone says sh_t about Israel, and I know people say sh_t about Israel and they f__king won’t play there… and when you go off on Roger Waters I love that you do that. I’m disgusted that they single out Israel that [they say], ‘We can’t play Israel.’ All these f__king nice Israeli people are getting a ‘f__k you’ from Roger Waters.”

IsraellyCool: Australian Delegation To Israel Infuriates PA With Stance Against Their Terror-Support

An Australian delegation led by Chris Pyne, Australian Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, has visited Israel to launch a new “landing pad” initiative that will help Australian start-ups get a foot in the door to the Israeli tech industry.
As part of this trip, the delegation went to Ramallah – and well and truly pissed off their PA hosts by standing firmly against terrorism and the PA’s support of it!
An Australian-led delegation to the West Bank featuring Minister Christopher Pyne, former speaker Bronwyn Bishop, Labor MP Tim Watts and Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson has been criticised by a minister in the Palestinian Authority, who said the group had “false information” and were “not well educated”.
Mr Pyne, the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, led the delegation — which also included British MPs — to Ramallah on Sunday.
All the delegates were visiting Jerusalem for two days as part of an annual Australia-UK-Israel leadership dialogue to discuss the challenges facing Israel and how attendees can best support the Jewish state.
Mr Wilson said the group “quizzed” the Palestinian Prime Minister and Education Minister about a range of topics.
Palestinian Education Minister Dr Sabri Saidam described the meeting as “very explosive and very challenging” and said the group had asked “rude and blunt” questions.
“The delegation had false information and twisted facts,” Dr Saidam told the ABC.
“So it was clear the delegation was not well educated.
“Obviously the delegation was under impressions, wrong impressions accumulated after the visit to Israel.
“Coming blindfolded to realities, bypassing the pain of Palestinians in terms of daily happenings is not going to solve the conflict.”
Dr Saidam said the group repeatedly asked questions about Palestinians naming schools and venues after people who had killed Israeli civilians.
“I said that one man’s hero is another man’s terrorist.”
When asked about Dr Saidam’s comments, Mr Pyne said he believed he was very diplomatic, but admitted that some members of the delegation were potentially “too robust”.
“I very diplomatically asked the Prime Minister and the Higher Education Minister questions which I thought would be useful for understanding the Palestinian attitudes to the peace process,” Mr Pyne told the ABC.
“Other members of the dialogue were slightly more robust and could be accused of quizzing them.

Swedish MP Kent Ekeroth uses PMW documentation to refute Foreign Minister defense of PA

.@UNRWA doctor: "Death to you, O sons of Zion"

Here's another peaceful message from an UNRWA employee on Facebook, from the first days of the 2014 Gaza war:

The message of "Death to you, oh sons of Zion" is helpfully translated into Hebrew.

Interestingly, this doctor says that he worked at Shifa Hospital, which was Hamas headquarters during the war.

But UNRWA would say that his message has mellowed since then, as this post from October only implies throwing rocks:

Frustrated By Israeli Restraint, Hamas To Provoke Russia Instead (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Gaza City, December 16 - Stymied in its efforts to undermine enemy legitimacy by engineering large numbers of civilian casualties, the militant group Hamas is considering shifting its sights from Israel to Russia, a country deemed more likely to respond with devastating, indiscriminate force that would produce the desired noncombatant deaths, organization representatives reported today.

The Russian military's unrestrained use of ordnance against targets in Syria regardless of the resulting toll in civilian lives has prompted the Islamist group to examine whether Putin might make a more suitable foe for the military-political strategy Hamas has developed over the years. Israel's insistence on avoiding unnecessary harm to noncombatants has complicated the organization's attempts to paint the Jewish State as dismissive of human life and disdainful of the laws of war, an objective at the center of Hamas's approach to asymmetrical warfare. If Israel will not cooperate as expected, say officials, Hamas will simply have to find an enemy prepared to inflict more damage on the people of the Gaza Strip.

Organization spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told journalists that while the destruction of the Zionist Entity remains the chief goal, the path to that destination may have to run through Moscow. "It is important to play to our strengths," he explained. "Russia is much better-positioned than the Zionists to play into our hands, and we believe Putin would cause much more destruction and death in Gaza than the Israeli military, if provoked properly. We must still determine both the feasibility of the shift in focus and the ways in which to make it happen."

Working to Hamas's advantage in that regard is a break with Russia's ally Basher Assad of Syria that happened early in that country's civil war. During the upheaval that followed the Arab Spring, Hamas openly sided with the Syrian rebels in a move that prompted their former patron Assad to ban them from the country. Russia, one of Assad's chief supporters, has already demonstrated its readiness to kill in defense of his regime, with a disregard for accuracy and human life that has not only claimed large numbers of civilian casualties, but resulted in one cruise missile hitting faraway Iran by mistake, and another hitting a house in Russia itself.

"Putin has shown he is more interested in attacking Assad's foes than in weakening the Islamic State, the ostensible reason for Russia's involvement," noted Mideast political analyst Kluss Terfuq. "Being on Assad's bad list puts Hamas in a good position to exploit that. On top of that, Hamas considers Turkey an ally, and with the current state of Russian-Turkish relations, that's awfully important."

Terfuq refrained from speculating what specific sort of provocation Hamas could use to target Russia. The group lacks missiles with the range to hit Russia, or even its facilities in Syria. "But now that Israel and Russia are coordinating air operations over Syria to avoid complications, Hamas can just consider an attack on Israel an attack on Russian interests, and continue pretty much as before."

12/16 Links Pt1: Palestinians in Plot to bomb Israeli Embassy in Berlin; Palestinian Lies Kill

From Ian:

2 Palestinians accused of bomb plot on Israeli Embassy in Berlin

Two Muslim Germans, both reportedly Palestinian, who were arrested on suspicion of planning an attack on the Israeli Embassy in Berlin were brought before a German court on Wednesday.
The men, both aged 21, were arrested in June while trying to prepare an explosive device from firecrackers. The police found a large quantity of supplies for building a powerful explosive device in their possession, Israeli news site Ynet reported.
The suspects have been identified only by their first names — Muhammad and Ali — as per German law.
Officials said they made preparations between December 2014 and July 2015 to carry out an attack on the Israeli Embassy or some other Israeli or Jewish institution, having possibly been inspired by the Islamic State.
They were accused of “preparation of an act of violence that would gravely endanger the security of the state,” according to the charge sheet.

PMW: Official PA TV to kids: Israel will cease to exist

In two recent broadcasts, official Palestinian Authority TV emphasized the PA message to children that Israel's existence is only temporary and will eventually cease to exist. The host of the program Children's Talk stated that Israel is "all ours" and that it "will return to us."
The host explained that Israeli towns like Haifa, Jaffa, Acre and Nazareth are in "the '48 lands" - a PA reference to all of Israel. Following general PA education policies, she instructed a young boy that "this information should be inside of us all the time."
Official PA TV host: "My friend, do you know what the '48 lands are?"
Boy: "Yes, the occupation of lands by the Israelis in the year 1948."
Official PA TV host: "These are the lands that are under the occupation's [Israel's] rule at the moment. Do you know cities from among them, can you remind me - the '48 lands?"
Boy: "In the diaspora?"
Official PA TV host: "No, the '48 lands: Haifa -"
Boy: "Haifa, Jaffa, Acre."
Official PA TV host: "Correct, and Nazareth and many more cities in these lands. We will mention them in the coming episodes, Allah willing. I apologize Yazan, I do not mean to embarrass you, I mean that this information should be inside of us all the time. The occupation must know that we fully believe and are confident that all of this land belongs to us, the '48 [lands] (i.e., all of Israel) are all ours and will return to us, right?"
Boy: "Yes, of course." [Official PA TV, Nov. 13, 2015]

PA TV to kids: Israel is “our land... it will all exist under the name of ‘the State of Palestine’’’

Palestinian Lies Kill

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon sent a message to the (deep breath) "Meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on the Question of Jerusalem" which was held in Jakarta.

The conference itself was the usual tsunami of Israel hatred and incitement we expect from the UN. For example, the Jordanian representative said that "the occupying Power had taken measures to desecrate the [Al Aqsa] Mosque, threatening its very existence."

Ban Ki Moon, however, needs to at least pretend to be even handed. And those attempts bring up absurd sentences like this one:

In such a critical context, all parties must refrain from attempts to establish facts on the ground that alter the character of the Holy City or the demographics of the West Bank.

Really? Arabs must not build new buildings in Jerusalem because they change the facts on the ground? Arabs cannot move into, say, the new city of Rawabi because it changes the demographics of the West Bank? Arabs cannot expand their houses in Ramallah because their families are growing?

Doesn't every new Arab child change the demographics of the area?

Luckily, Mr. Moon clarified what he means by "all parties" by saying that settlements are illegal in his next sentence. He says "all parties" have responsibilities but he means "Jews." Jews are the ones that cannot live in or have kids in Judea and Samaria. Jews are the only one who threaten anyone demographically.

Ban Ki Moon also helpfully explained why Arabs like to stab Jews so much:

The anger we are witnessing is bred from nearly five decades of Israeli occupation. It is the result of fear, humiliation, frustration and mistrust. It has been fed by the wounds of decades of bloody conflict, which will take a long time to heal. Palestinian youth in particular are tired of broken promises and they see no light at the end of the tunnel.

The Palestinian representative disagreed. He didn't say the violence is the result of five decades of evil Zionist actions, but seven:

Israel, he said, had held his nation hostage for seven decades by counting on international involvement that had been limited to calling for bilateral negotiations between a colonial occupying Power determined to pursue its colonization and the occupied people, who wanted to fulfil their inalienable rights.

Another Palestinian representative urged all countries to boycott Israeli products, and have the International Criminal Court enforce that as law.

All in all, another UN hatefest.

How do English Arab/Muslim newspapers report on two car rammings?

AFP reports:

Clashes erupted on Wednesday after Israeli soldiers raided a refugee camp near Ramallah and shot dead two Palestinians who sought to ram their cars into troops.

Headlines about the incident from the Arab and Muslim world in English:

Ma'an:

Al Ahram (Egypt):

Albawaba (pan-Arab):

Shahernama (Muslim news site based in India):

Of course, the Arabic headlines are worse, referring to the dead terrorists as martyrs.

So it is not a surprise when polls show that Palestinians support the wave of stabbings. Their media not only makes the stabbers and rammers into heroes but it simultaneously describes them as victims.

Because to them, "human rights" means the rights to murder Jews with impunity.

The only "Jewish value" at J-Street is its chutzpah

Israeli NGO Im Tirtzu just released a video that names specific Israelis who lead NGOs that defend terrorist human rights.

I think the video goes a bit too far; one can and should criticize these NGOs but this goes over the line by using individuals' names and photos. It can easily appear to be inciting against them. But J-Street is seizing on this to insist not on taking the video down or asking for an apology - they want to use this as an excuse to shut down Im Tirtzu altogether!

Their statement is incredibly disingenuous:

Let us be clear: J Street condemns incitement in all of its forms and over the past couple of months has repeatedly called on Palestinian leadership to refrain from incendiary statements that seek to fuel or justify violence.

Indeed, J-Street's site has a couple of pages that condemn Palestinian incitement, but they have no audience for this message. It is a smokescreen to make them look even-handed, but J-Street is not lobbying Congress to pass bills to punish Palestinian incitement, for example. Its J-Street U division talks about incitement, though - it accuses Jews, including American Jews, of doing most of the incitement!:

When we read reports of this incident, we were deeply disturbed that such violence had unfolded on a street many of us knew so well. Yet many of us were not surprised. While our Jewish community regularly speaks out against incitement against Jews within Palestinian society – as we should – when it comes to Palestinians, we often hear rhetoric of broad generalizations and even prejudice, racism, and dehumanization. We hear this language on the streets of Jerusalem. And we hear it too often in our day schools and synagogues.

J-Street's statement concludes with a call to shut down Im Tirtzu:

There is a democratic and Jewish way to conduct the vital debate we need to have at this critical juncture for Israel, the US and the world. But the hateful way in which Im Tirzu pursues its agenda should have no place and no support from the Jewish community here or in Israel.

Isn't it wonderful that J-Street is now pretending to care about Israeli democracy, when its entire purpose is to subvert an Israeli democracy that consistently votes for leaders that J-Street hates?

J-Street believes that giving a platform to those who say that Israel engages in genocide and who compares Israel to ISIS is perfectly OK.

J-Street believes that supporting politicians who give political cover to terror groups is perfectly OK.

J-Street's co-founder says that maybe the entire idea of a Jewish state in the Middle East isn't a good idea, and it thinks that is perfectly OK.

A J-Street speaker and member of their advisory panel goes further and says that Israel should not exist and Jews should live as a minority in a hostile Arab Palestine - and that is perfectly OK, with no one on the stage challenging it.

When J-Street U members are told that Zionism is racist, they don't bother to disagree - and that is perfectly OK.

Act against how Israeli citizens vote, promote those who want to destroy the Jewish state and demonize those who support it - those maxims must be the "democratic and Jewish ways" of J-Street.

12/15 Links Pt2: The West’s wrongheaded analysis perpetuates the conflict; Michael Lumish: Enemies

From Ian:

Michael Lumish: Enemies

There are at least two important reasons why the progressive-left finds it difficult to acknowledge groups like ISIS as an enemy. The first is because the United States is a powerful, largely white country, and people "of color" in the Middle East are considered underdogs and the natural instinct is to protect the underdog even, apparently, if the underdog is burning people alive in cages.
The second reason is because most progressives blame the West for the rise of political Islam due to unjust material factors imposed by Europe for centuries and by the United States since early in the twentieth. That is, they believe that western and American imperialism destabilized traditional societies, subjecting them to war, poverty, and thereby encouraged a rational hatred of the West.
There is only one major problem with this analysis. It infantilizes Arabs in an exceedingly bigoted and prejudicial manner and it fails to acknowledge the linkage between strongly held religious beliefs and behavior. ISIS, whatever else it may be, is a religious-political movement drenched in the Salafist form of Islam. When they say that they wish to carry out the violent Jihad for the purpose of establishing the Caliphate, they mean it. When they say that head-chopping is the pleasure of Allah and that if they die in Jihad they will go to paradise, they mean that, as well.
They act on their beliefs and those belief are not due to the fact that sometimes Jewish people build housing for themselves beyond the Green Line. Their beliefs are grounded in their religious faith and the primary sources of that faith are the Qur'an and the hadiths.

Elliott Abrams: A panel of military experts clears Israel of trumped-up war-crimes charges.

The latter point should be a warning for Americans, whose forces are spread across the globe and do engage in combat. If an Israeli officer can be detained today on some trumped-up charge laid by a far-left political group, an American officer can face that risk tomorrow. And the completely unprofessional and unrealistic standards of conduct being imposed on Israel today can be imposed on our forces tomorrow as well. In fact, the HLMG worries that Israeli standards of conduct are too high:
Following our professional assessment of IDF conduct, several members of the HLMG expressed strong concerns that the actions and practices of the IDF to prevent collateral damage were so extensive, over and above the requirements of the Law of Armed Conflict, that they would curtail the effectiveness of our own militaries, were they to become constraining norms of warfare enacted in customary law.
So the work of the HLMG is welcome, and not just by Israel. “Israel’s experience carries important strategic, tactical and operational lessons for other democratic nations’ armies battling some of the most brutal and dangerous adversaries since the Second World War,” the HLMG notes. This won’t stop Palestinian extremists from calling every Israeli action against terror a war crime, but it should remind us that every ally in the war against jihadi terror should defend the Israeli record — or fall prey to media and NGO critiques and assaults that will make defense against terror nearly impossible.

Video reveals 'foreign agents' subverting Israeli democracy

Zionist group Im Tirtzu has released a powerful short video to accompany the shocking report it compiled, which examines 20 Israeli NGOs that receive foreign funding and are actively involved in anti-Israel activity.
The report illustrates how much money was received by each extreme leftist organization, all of which participate in or actively create programs and media that harm Israel. Such activity includes disseminating anti-Israel propaganda across the globe, working towards preventing the punishment of terrorists, and defending murders of Israeli citizens.
The foreign funding includes the New Israel Fund (NIF), foreign governments, the EU - and over 13 million shekels from a Palestinian foundation based in Ramallah.
Matan Peleg, the CEO of Im Tirtzu, told Arutz Sheva, “We knew that these organizations were sponsored by foreign governments, but we were very surprised at the sheer amount of foreign help that is going towards these organizations. I have no words to describe how bad the situation is.”

Meretz trying to block video exposing European '

MK Zehava Galon (Meretz) is trying to get Facebook to block a video produced by grassroots Zionist movement Im Tirtzu, which singles out four leftist activists as examples of "foreign agents" who are assisting the terrorist enemy.
Galon called Im Tirtzu's video "warped and dangerous," and claims it encourages viewers to physically harm the four "human rights activists," and amounts to "a call to action." The video "accuses them of assisting terrorists and publishes their names and pictures," she claimed, "under slogans like 'they live here and they have been planted,' and 'while we fight terror, they fight us.' "
"It is getting hundreds of 'shares' at this very moment," she said.

Arab yarmulka-phobia

In The Jordan Times, Jawad Anani writes a reasonable article about tolerance.

But the way he begins the article reveals something:

We, in the Arab world, get indignant when American presidents or secretaries of state wear a yarmulke at a Jewish organisation, in a synagogue or at concentration camp memorial. We think that these American officials have stepped out of their way to please the Jewish audience at the Arab’s expense.

He is admitting a bit more than I think he meant to. Why would visiting a synagogue or Holocaust memorial be at Arab expense?

The Arab zero-sum mentality is a bit more ingrained than even I thought. And it shows that the mindset is not zero-sum vis-a-vis Israel, but in respect to Jews altogether.