Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, June 05, 2016

Is Egyptian cement going to Hamas?

Cement from Egypt being unloaded in Rafah, June 2015

YNet reports:

Egypt opened the Rafah crossing for three days this week and announced that it will remain open on Sunday, as well. Egypt has opened the crossing only a handful of times since the overthrow of former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, leaving many Gazans unable to travel outside the small coastal enclave.

According to the Ma'an News Agency, 499 travelers crossed the Rafah Crossing on Thursday, 1,136 travelers crossed on Friday and 900 crossed on Saturday. The travelers included humanitarian cases, stranded travelers, students studying abroad and others.

Egyptian authorities also allowed the passage of cement and other building materials into Rafah.

Ma'an says that some 20 trucks of cement, gravel and timber were exported into Gaza on Saturday.

As far as I know, the restrictions in place to ensure that cement doesn't get diverted to Hamas do not exist on cement that comes from Egypt.

Which means that chances are pretty good that some of these building materials will be used to build tunnels into Israel - and maybe even into Egypt.

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06/05 Links: Jerusalem: The Media Myth of Two Cities; ((( How Twitter Is Teaming Up to Mess With the Nazis )))

From Ian:

Cuomo, Fighting Boycott Against Israel, Will Halt State Business With Groups That Back It

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York is planning to order agencies under his control to divest themselves of companies and organizations aligned with a Palestinian-backed boycott movement against Israel.
Wading into a delicate international issue, Mr. Cuomo will set executive-branch and other state agencies in opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or B.D.S., which has grown in popularity in some quarters of the United States and elsewhere, alarming Jewish leaders who fear its toll on Israel’s international image and economy.
Several states have moved to support Israel and prevent their governments and agencies from doing business with companies or individuals that endorse the boycotts. Similar bills are currently pending in both houses of the New York Legislature.
But on Sunday, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, intends to flex his executive power — a more familiar demonstration in the governor’s second term — to expedite such action.
According to a draft version of an executive order obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Cuomo will command the commissioner of the Office of General Services to devise a list over the next six months of businesses and groups engaged in any “boycott, divestment or sanctions activity targeting Israel, either directly or through a parent or subsidiary.”

((( How Twitter Is Teaming Up to Mess With the Nazis )))

Spend any time around prominent opinionated Jews on the Internet, particularly on platforms like Reddit or Twitter, and you’re likely to encounter an odd anti-Semitic practice. White supremacists associated with the alt-right, many of them avid supporters of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, like to highlight Jewish users for targeting with parentheses: (((Rosenberg))), for example.
As Mic reported, the Internet’s neo-Nazis even have their very own Chrome browser extension that automatically places these parentheses around Jewish names on web pages. But on social media, they typically add the symbols themselves to troll Jews and alert fellow bigots to a potential target. Mic’s staff, for example, received these charming tweets singling out Jews on their team:
(((Echoes))), Exposed: The Secret Symbol Neo-Nazis Use to Target Jews Online
With a name like “Yair Rosenberg,” I might as well be called Jewy McJewface on Twitter. As a result, I’ve been on the receiving end of this sort of treatment for years, long before Donald Trump entered the political fray. Likewise, The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg, being a Very Prominent Jew With Opinions on the Internet, has been a lightning rod for such abuse. So last night, he decided to preempt the neo-Nazis and put parentheses around his own Twitter username. It seemed like a good idea to me, so I tweeted this:
Then I went to bed. It turned out a lot of people—not just Jews—liked the idea. Some anonymous accounts even outed themselves as Jews to show solidarity. Muslims, Christians, and Hindus changed their names to show their support. As of now, hundreds of accounts have appropriated the Nazi symbols as their own.
It’s worth noting that the internet’s anti-Semites hate when their culture is appropriated by their opponents.

IsraellyCool: Proleptic Dhimmitude, Palestinianisation And A Bottle Of Beer

Some very big words used in this week’s video.
Palestinianisation: this comes from the prophetic mind of Bat Ye’or. She started writing about what Europe would become back in the 1980’s. And she’s been proved right. Everything concerning Islam, going on in Europe today is predicted in her books going back more than 25 years. This interview is absolutely essential reading if you want to understand how Israel has become so hated.
Proleptic Dhimmitude: first you have to understand dhimmitude (which I’ve written about before) or you can understand it from Bat Ye’or. Then you have to understand the fairly obscure, but brilliant, word “proleptic” which comes from “prolepsis”:
Rhetoric. the anticipation of possible objections in order to answer them in advance.
So this is submission to the rules of Islam by non-Muslims before one is actually living under a Muslim ruler. For instance judging that insulting the prophet of Islam or desecrating one of Islam’s holy texts should be illegal so as to avoid “unpleasant consequences”. That is “proleptic dhimmitude”.

Yikes!

{But can you have one without the other?}

The primary religions of the Middle East are, obviously, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Each tends, speaking in broad terms, toward a universal perspective or a non-universal perspective.

Each tend to be, more or less, political or non-political.

I recognize that such broad characterizations invite noting the exceptions.

There are Jews who want to see the imposition of Torah law within Israel. That is what Meir Kahane wanted. There are Christians in the United States who would be delighted to live in an American Christian Fascist Theocracy. It is alleged that Sinclair Lewis said, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." And there are people of Muslim origin throughout the world who would very much prefer not to live under al-Sharia, thank you very much.

Nonetheless, there is a continuum among the religions of the Levant between the universal and the non-universal, the political and the non-political.

What I outline below is a sort-of pedagogical tool for considering the great religions of the Levant and how they relate to one another and to the rest of us today. It is not meant to be definitive, but is a construct that offers a way to consider current vital political questions around the Middle East. These questions include the Caliphatic dreams of many Muslims, the pulverization of Christians living within Muslim lands, and the efforts of the Jews of the region to hold-off a violent never-ending onslaught of hate.

Judaism

Judaism, the first of the great three religions of the Levant, tends to be neither universal, nor political.

Judaism has never been a universal religion in the sense that it has never insisted that non-Jews must conform to the faith.

Nonetheless, the Jewish people represent the most inclusive nation in the world because anyone can join it via the faith. The Jews are a people like the French are a people and like the Japanese are a people, but if I were to move to Tokyo and learn the Japanese language and convert to Shinto, I could never actually be Japanese.

However, any Japanese person who converts to Judaism is a Jew.

Period.

Judaism, today, is also non-political. That is, virtually no Jews are calling for Israel, or any other country, to be ruled by the Torah. This does not mean, however, that Israel is entirely secular. There is an article in today's (6/2/16) Times of Israel by Amanda Borschel-Dan that discusses criminal penalties within Israel for Jews who marry outside of the rabbinate.

This represents the lingering of religious-based law within Israeli society - and it is a terrible law - but it does not define that country.

Whatever anyone might want to say about the Jewish State of Israel it is very definitely not a theocracy.

The rabbinate may have some power, but it is the secular government that rules.

Christianity

Christianity is universal but, today, generally not political.

Christianity is universal because at the heart of the faith is the idea that the only way to come to know G-d - and thus the only way to come to heaven - is through devotion to Jesus Christ. Christian theology, unlike Jewish theology, is universal in the sense that its religious ideology applies to every soul on Earth. If you want to know the Truth of the Father than it must come via the testimony of the Son.

However, Christianity today is, like Judaism, generally non-political. The European Enlightenment of the seventeenth-century forced a schism between Church and State that holds. Virtually no one is calling for any country to be ruled according New Testament principles. Even die-hard, right-wing Evangelical Christians in Nebraska are not calling for the US government to be ruled according the will of Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Islam

Islam is both universal and political.

Islam, like Christianity, is universal. That is, the only way to gain entrance to Paradise is via the prescriptions of the Prophet Mohammad. The difference is that within Christianity we are taught to turn the other cheek, whereas within Islam we are taught to head-chop the infidel.

Within Christianity there is the notion that the unrepentant sinner will be damned to eternal hell-fire.

Within Islam there is the prescription to crush the Infidel in this world, as well.

Thus Islam, in its political aspect, is far-and-away the most aggressive of the three.

Sharia forms the primary legal basis of the Muslim countries. This is why they hang Gay people from cranes in Iran, stone adulterous (or allegedly adulterous) women to death in Pakistan, and flay the skin of bloggers critical of Islam in Saudi Arabia.

As has been often noted, Islam has simply not gone through the Enlightenment changes and reforms that both Judaism and Christianity have.

The Islamic states have a generalized revulsion toward modernity even as they embrace the technological products of modernity.

They love iPhones but despise Britney Spears.

At the same time, the focus of their studies tend to be more Koranic than scientific and this is why the Caliphitic Dreams of so many Muslims can never be fulfilled. The Muslim governments can never hurt the western states by beating us over the head with the Koran.

What they can do, and what they are doing, is shooing their "excess population" into the West, most particularly Europe.

Germany and Sweden are leading the way toward a new Europe.

Europe in the future - if not the West, more generally - is going to become more racist, more anti-Semitic, more homophobic, and more misogynistic.

The great irony is that it is the western-progressives, who supposedly stand for none of that, are leading the charge.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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Arab sites celebrate Mohammed Ali's antisemitic statement

Arab and Muslim sites are commemorating the death of perhaps the most prominent Muslim convert, boxing great Mohammed Ali.

And the thing they like about him most seems to be his antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

Both Islam21C and Middle East Monitor lovingly quote Ali from a 1980 interview:

You know the entire power structure is Zionist. They control America; they control the world. They are really against the Islam religion.

That's pretty much pure antisemitism there, under the guise of "anti-Zionism."

The sites also quote when Ali visited a Lebanese UNRWA camp in 1974, where he said he wanted the state of Israel to be destroyed:

“In my name and the name of all Muslims in America, I declare support for the Palestinian struggle to liberate their homeland and oust the Zionist invaders,” he said during his visit.

Over 1700 people shared this photo of Ali in the Lebanese camp on Twitter. Not one of them asked why Lebanon keeps its Palestinian Arab brethren stuck in those ghettos without basic human rights over four decades later.

Because they are so "pro-Palestinian."

Ironically, Ali's grandson identifies as a Jew.

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Ma'an, the Western-funded news agency, reports in Arabic:

Dozens of extremist settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday morning, in memory of the "naksa," the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, to coincide with the tours and provocative marches on the doors of the mosque and in the streets of Jerusalem's Old City under Israeli police protection.

The director of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Omar Kiswani said that 208 settlers stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque through the Mughrabi Gate, in small groups, tightly guarded by Israeli police and special forces.

Al-Kiswani said the Israelis started their tour at the Moroccan gate, before moving on to the al-Qibli and al-Marwani mosques on the compound, and then to Bab al-Rahma area. Some of them attempted to perform religious rituals but were prevented from doing so by guards.

Sheikh Kiswani stressed that the settlers have no right to storm Al-Aqsa, blaming the Israeli government and the Israeli police responsibility tense situation in the Far eve of the holy month of Ramadan.

The Islamic Waqf denounced the provocative practices that took place by the settlers in the Aqsa Mosque.

Jews peacefully visiting the Temple Mount is the top story in Ma'an today in both English (where the rhetoric is toned down) and Arabic.

This hysteria is published day in and day out in Arabic media worldwide.

But last year secular Israeli journalist Shlomo Eldar decided to visit the holy spot to see what the fuss was all about. He published the truth in Al Monitor:

I did not visit the Temple Mount for religious, political or ideological reasons. Rather, I came as a journalist wishing to know what the commotion is all about. I wanted to find out firsthand whether the Palestinian allegations that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is in danger are founded. Has Israel really changed the sanctified status quo at the Temple Mount or is it — as Israeli officials claim — the unbridled and deliberate incitement by the northern chapter of the Islamic movement in Israel and by Palestinian Authority (PA) officials that sparked the current wave of terror?

Visiting the compound is possible only through organized groups or those that get organized on the spot. That’s why I asked to join a tour of the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation headed by right-wing activist Yehuda Glick, who heads the LIBA Initiative for Jewish Freedom on the Temple Mount. To my surprise, however, I discovered that I was the only tourist in the initiative, which is why I was privileged to have a private tour guide who gave me a detailed overview of the history of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

Orna — a certified tour guide and a secular woman — volunteers once a month, as do many other tour guides, to provide a free-of-charge professional tour “without religious, political and ideological agendas,” for anyone who wants to see the site and be informed.

When we arrived at the entrance gate another surprise awaited me: Hundreds of tourists from around the world were lining up, waiting patiently for the visiting hours. Buses packed with tourists parked close to the Western Wall parking lot. Column after column of visitors from different countries joined the long meandering line that sprawled all the way from the entrance to the Old City's Dung Gate. Naively, I thought that only a handful of people, mainly from right-wing Israeli groups that insist on changing the existing order, would come to visit this hot spot.

As it turns out, tourists have a priority accessing the compound. When a group of Jews gets organized, it has the last priority to enter. Jews wishing to visit the Temple Mount are assigned police officers, border police soldiers and Waqf security guards who make sure they bring no Jewish ritual objects whatsoever. They are also forbidden from praying, bowing, sitting down, quietly reciting prayers, bringing a prayer book, a photo of the compound or a Star of David. They are allowed to bring nothing that could potentially upset Muslim worshipers and stir up more tension. Before going in, Orna carefully stashed all the photos, drawings and maps she was carrying under the stairwell so as to meet the stringent visiting restrictions. Standing next to the long line of tourists were five Jews wearing skullcaps. Once organized as a group, they waited for the instructions of the security guards to let them in. After going through a rigorous security check at the entrance gate, they were assigned border police soldiers as well as Waqf security guards that surrounded them throughout the visit. As soon as they set foot in the plaza, the women of the Mourabitat (organized Muslim activists) started shrieking in loud voices: “Allahu akbar.” This was the first time I saw from up close the women who have been recruited by the northern faction of the Islamic movement in Israel and who receive pay for participating in the mission to “defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

At the farther perimeters of the entrance, some 20 women in a religious study group were sitting down in a circle and reading the Quran. On a knoll across from there, outside the structure, were the Mourabitoun — the men — who were also having a Quran class. When they noticed the religious Jewish men they, too, started shouting in loud voices — which blended in with the yelping of the women — “Allahu akbar.”

Unflustered by those chants, the small Jewish group continued to walk slowly along the plaza all the way to the entrance to the mosque, which is marked by a strip on the ground. That’s where they stopped for fear that they would cross into an area that is prohibited. From there they proceeded to take another round along the plaza. Then they left the compound escorted by the guards and the Allahu akbar yelling.

I drew closer to the group of Mourabitoun men. I pulled out my cell phone and took their picture. All of a sudden a few Waqf guards showed up, demanding that I hand over my device, claiming that I had taken a photo of a sight that cannot be photographed.

“I have no objection deleting the forbidden photo,” I told one of the guards, who made sure I deleted all the photos showing the Mourabitoun and Mourabitat at the Temple Mount as well as photos of the Waqf security guards around the mosque. However, they did let me keep a photo of myself against the backdrop of the mosque. But then another group of Waqf security guards showed up with their commander (which is what I inferred from the tone of his voice and the orders he bossed around to his subordinates.) They demanded that I be removed from the Temple Mount because, according to them, I had violated the rules. “Nobody told me I couldn’t take photos of the worshipers,” I tried to explain. To support my argument, I added that I had taken the photos openly and in the presence of the security guards. “If I had known that you can’t take pictures of the Mourabitoun, would I have done so in front of your own eyes?” I wondered out loud.

Raising his voice, the commander of the Waqf detail said forcefully, “Get him out right now. Khalas! [That’s enough!] Out.” As they started escorting me to the exit gate, a border police soldier stationed at one of the security posts showed up where the altercation was taking place. At that point an argument about sovereignty at the Temple Mount ensued. “You have no right to remove any visitors from the plaza,” the soldier told his Waqf counterparts, who insisted on removing the “rogue tourist.”

One of the Waqf officials turned to me in English and said, “Here, we make the decisions. Here, we call the shots. Here, we are kings — the rulers.” He kept repeating the word “king” over and over. “Nobody can dispute what we say,” he argued. “We determine who comes in and who goes out and what they can or can’t do. We are the sovereigns at Al-Aqsa Mosque.” The border police soldier tried to calm him down, telling him that those were not the procedures and that decisions have to be made jointly. Yet, the Waqf guard insisted that they were the sovereign and that they had been explicitly ordered to banish me.

This ended my visit to the Temple Mount, from which I learned that if Waqf officials have the authority and ability to decide who gets to visit the compound and who fails to meet the threshold criteria, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is therefore not in danger.

Knesset member Ghattas alleged that Israel was deepening its control and occupation, yet I don’t understand what he saw. The Waqf security guards are densely deployed at the Temple Mount compound, going to great lengths to make sure that only small groups of Jews get to visit the site compared to the thousands of tourists that are allowed to visit almost uninterruptedly. While keeping order and security at the Temple Mount and at Al-Aqsa Mosque is shared jointly by Israel and the Waqf, the tension awards the Palestinian almost total control of who is allowed into the Temple Mount and who isn’t. This, of course, stands in total contrast to the Palestinian allegations that Israel has changed the status quo and that Al-Aqsa is in danger.

Even an Israeli journalist had believed the hysteria without question, until he decided to look at the situation first-hand.

The reality is that Jews are peacefully visiting the Temple Mount and are subject to rigorous restrictions that secular tourists and Muslims are not. And every time they visit the Muslims make a big deal out of it in order to create a situation where Jews would be banned altogether.

And to a large extent, the strategy has already worked.

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From the NYT:

“Mr. President!” a woman called out to Waad Qannam at a rally last week in East Jerusalem. “We want you to represent us!” The crowd cheered passionately, even though Mr. Qannam was actually running for president on a reality television show.

In the United States, a reality television star is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. For Palestinians, it’s the other way around: A candidate chosen on a television show is the closest they have come to an elected leader in more than 10 years.

“This is just a show,” acknowledged Mr. Qannam, one of three contestants who made it to Thursday night’s finale of “The President.” “But people are hungry for a leader.”

The show, now in its second season, began with 24 contestants culled from more than 1,200 applicants who had to take a series of exams on Palestinian politics, international law, development and gender equality. Each week, contestants shadowed a Palestinian minister or business person, then told a panel of judges what they had learned and how they would improve on the job.

On Thursday night, the three finalists all had similar platforms: Boycott Israel. Designate East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. Bring about a reconciliation for the bitterly divided Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza. (Six of the candidates in the round of 24 were from Gaza, though none made it to the final round.)

“The President” — broadcast on the Maan satellite network to large audiences in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere in the Arab world — was funded mostly by a State Department grant to Search for Common Ground, a nongovernmental group that focuses on conflict resolution.

AP adds:

The prospects of reaching peace with Israel rarely came up, and when the topic was mentioned, contestants tended to take strong positions against Israel.

Qannam said Israel was responsible for the current wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence and said he wouldn't call on Palestinians to stop stabbing attacks.

Why does the US fund a reality TV show in the PA? They have other TV series that seem to be able to pay for themselves without outside help.

And why is the State Department paying for a TV show that not only urges the audience to boycott Israel and tacitly condones stabbing Israeli civilians?

American tax dollars are paying for anti-Israel incitement that is far more popular than the total of all of the "peace" initiatives that the State Department has ever sponsored in the territories.

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06/04 Links: Incitement rife in Palestinian textbooks; 35 years on: mission to bomb Saddam’s nuke reactor

From Ian:

Incitement rife in Palestinian textbooks

In almost every study conducted by researchers looking into incitement in Palestinian textbooks, materials have been found which breach the Palestinian Authority's pledges to halt anti-Israel incitement in schools.
Researchers have been surveying Palestinian school textbooks frequently over the past few decades to see if they have inciting material, such as the non-recognition of Israel as a sovereign state or the glorification of terror attacks and terrorists.
The schools researched in the various surveys are all public schools under the control of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Ministry of Education.
It turns out that in the vast majority of Palestinian textbooks, Israel isn't on any maps in any form. Israeli cities within the 1967 Green Line - such as Acre, Haifa, Nazareth, Jaffa, and others – are presented as being Palestinian cities. There are only a few schools which use textbooks that show a difference between PA controlled areas and Israel.
The IMPACT-se group looks into the issue of what governments teach their children and put in their textbooks worldwide in an attempt to determine how peaceful and tolerant a society is. They also looked into the school curriculums in the PA.
According to Chairman Marcus Sheff, "we looked for characteristics of peace and tolerance. We investigate education systems all over the world. We search using objective criteria written by UNESCO, and use these criteria to rank the peace and tolerance in children and in the society itself. There is a definite and clear correlation between the level and peace and tolerance and political violence in a society."

PHOTOS: PA President Abbas’ Dedication Of Street In His Name Backfires

A West Bank municipality’s decision to name a street after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has backfired, with street signs vandalized and a great deal of abuse on social media.
Abbas dedicated the street in the town of Bir Zeit last week with pomp and circumstance.
The naming of the street was “a token of appreciation for [Abbas’] efforts to better the lives of the Palestinian people and his efforts to realize the dream of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” the municipality said in a statement.
Less than a week later, the sign was vandalized and Abbas’ name erased from it. The official media ignored the incident, but it went viral on social media, accompanied by many comments ridiculing the President, some of them accompanied by a picture of the tweeters raising their middle finger.
“The youth of Bir Zeit couldn’t stand that sign for more than a week,” Beesan wrote.
“We congratulate our great leader, the liberator of Jerusalem and the crusher of the Jews, Mahmoud Abbas, for the naming of a street in Bir Zeit after him,” Dr. Khalil Awadi wrote ironically.

06/03 Links Pt2: BDS: A new face on an old hate; Jeremy Corbyn on Israel; Mekonen – Journey Of An African Jew

From Ian:

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: This bigoted radical does not deserve a "feminist artist" award

[Angela] Davis experienced her first visit to “Palestine” (with other “scholars of color”) as a “nightmare . . . the wall, the concrete, the razor wire everywhere conveyed the impression that we were in prison.” Deftly, she compares the jailing of black Americans with the jailing of Palestinian . . . terrorists. She tells her audiences that if they support BDS, “Palestine will be free.”
In the guise of anti-racism, Davis is a bigot — an activist Jew-hater. In her lectures, she doesn’t condemn Jordan or Egypt for their anti-Palestinian actions, nor does she fault the many Arab and Muslim countries that have systematically refused citizenship and even employment to Arab Palestinians.
Davis doesn’t talk about the anti-black racism of Arabs or about the practice of real gender and religious apartheid in Muslim countries. She doesn’t even fault the Palestinian leadership for torturing and executing its gays and dissidents or for forcibly veiling and subordinating Palestinian women. A real feminist would do so.
Real feminists wouldn’t be honoring such a figure.
In early May, 100 activists and artists staged a protest at the Brooklyn Museum about “displacement both in Brooklyn and Palestine.” This demonstration was organized by the Decolonial Cultural Front and Movement to Protect the People.
No one mentioned the relentless Palestinian terrorism against Israeli Jewish civilians — or the enormous “displacement” and murder of Christians by Arab Muslims, or the “displacement” brought about by indigenous civil wars among Muslim Afghans, Libyans, Iraqis and Syrians, a “displacement” that threatens the stability and viability of the Western world.
I doubt they will demonstrate against Angela Davis.

BDS: A new face on an old hate

BDS- boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the world’s only Jewish State are nothing new, and are not related to the "occupation"- but against the very existence of Israel, within any borders.
From the Saturday Evening Post, Dec 27 1947 spoken by Salel Jabur, Prime Minister of Iraq
“What is it”, he asked me, that Americans want?” If it is a safe home for the Jews, that cannot be found in Palestine for Palestine is in the heart of the Arab world. We surround it. How shall a Jewish state live there?”
We will boycott it, give it no foods or raw materials, buy nothing from it. We will squeeze it in a ring of steel until it dies and our heart is ours again”

Fatah media reports that Hamas arrested five members of the Presidential Guard for "collaborating" with Palestinian Authority that it claims it is unified with.

On Wednesday morning, Hamas reportedly arrested Mohammed Ghazi Khitab, Isaac Ibrahim Abdullah Hussein, Shadi Alslol, Hatem Yousef Mohammed Hasanat, and Mohammed Abdul Rahman Ibrahim Mattar.

The story goes on to accuse Hamas of building secret, underground prisons specifically for political opponents, where they routinely engage in torture. Some are in the basements of mosques which are soundproofed so that the residents nearby don't hear the screams.

Fatah media is even less trustworthy than Hamas media, but the arrests and charges of torture are probably true.

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Hundreds attend funeral of Holocaust survivor they didn't know

From Miriam Goodman on Facebook:

Now this is Israel...and her people!

Following an announcement that there was no minyan (quorum) to accompany Holocaust survivor Fernand Pavel Klitz, a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, hundreds of people came to his funeral. They came from all over the country . Secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox. Old and young. School children
The burial society motorcycles escorted the procession and the coffin was carried by IDF officers and soldiers who came on their own initiative.

While this is impressive, it also points to a problem: people should worry more about these incredible survivors while they are still alive. so they wouldn't die alone.

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06/03 Links Pt1: Israel Criticized for Declining Invitation to National Suicide; Iran’s chess board

From Ian:

Charles Krauthammer: Israel Criticized for Declining Invitation to National Suicide

This seems a gratuitous provocation. Sanders hardly made Israel central to his campaign. He did call Israel’s response in the 2014 Gaza war “disproportionate” and said “we cannot continue to be one-sided.” But now Sanders seeks to permanently alter — i.e., weaken — the relationship between the Democratic Party and Israel, which has been close and supportive since Harry Truman recognized the world’s only Jewish state when it declared independence in May 1948.
[Cornel] West doesn’t even pretend, as do some left-wing “peace” groups, to be opposing Israeli policy in order to save it from itself. He makes the simpler case that occupation is unconscionable oppression and that until Israel abandons it, Israel deserves to be treated like apartheid South Africa — anathematized, cut off, made to bleed morally and economically. The Sanders appointees wish to bend the Democratic platform to encourage such diminishment unless Israel redeems itself by liberating Palestine.
This is an unusual argument for a Democratic platform committee, largely because it is logically and morally perverse. Israel did in fact follow such high-minded advice in 2005: It terminated its occupation and evacuated Gaza. That earned it (temporary) praise from the West. And from the Palestinians? Not peace, not reconciliation, not normal relations but a decade of unrelenting terrorism and war.
Israel is now being asked — pressured — to repeat that same disaster on the West Bank. That would bring the terror war, quite fatally, to the very heart of Israel — Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ben Gurion Airport. Israel is now excoriated for declining that invitation to national suicide.
It is ironic that the most successful Jewish presidential candidate ever should be pushing the anti-Israel case. But perhaps not surprising considering Sanders’ ideological roots. He is old left — not the post-1960s, countercultural New Left. Why, the man honeymooned in the Soviet Union — not such fashionably cool communist paradises as Sandinista Nicaragua where Bill de Blasio went to work for the cause or Castro’s Cuba where de Blasio honeymooned. (Do lefties all use the same wedding planner?)
For the old left, Israel was simply an outpost of Western imperialism, Middle East division. To this day, the leftist consensus, most powerful in Europe (which remains Sanders’ ideological lodestar), holds that Israeli perfidy demands purification by Western chastisement.

Caroline Glick: Iran’s chess board

Strategic thinking has always been Israel’s Achilles’ heel. As a small state bereft of regional ambitions, so long as regional realities remained more or less static, Israel had little reason to be concerned about the great game of the Middle East.
But the ground is shifting in the lands around us. The Arab state system, which ensured the strategic status quo for decades, has collapsed.
So for the first time in four generations, strategy is again the dominant force shaping events that will impact Israel for generations to come.
To understand why, consider two events of the past week.
Early this week it was reported that after a two-year hiatus, Iran is restoring its financial support for Islamic Jihad. Iran will give the group, which is largely a creation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, $70 million.
On Wednesday Iranian media were the first to report on the arrest of a “reporter” for Iran’s Al-Alam news service. Bassam Safadi was arrested by Israel police in his home in Majdal Shams, the Druse village closest to the border with Syria on the Golan Heights. Safadi is suspected of inciting terrorism.
That is, he is suspected of being an Iranian agent.

BDS leaders whine about left wing peace groups and Arabs as foreign investment in Israel skyrockets (update)

From MEMRI:

Palestinian BDS Operatives: Activities of US Peace Groups Are Destroying Anti-Normalization Efforts

Gaza BDS activist Haidar Eid said that there was resentment among BDS activists toward Palestinian authorities for allowing American peace groups such as One Voice, Seeds of Peace, and the Peace Alliance, to operate in the West Bank and Gaza. "Allowing such groups to operate in the Gaza Strip destroys the boycott campaign," he said.

BDS activist Omar Barghouti said that the Right of Return was "the most important of the three rights upon which we are insisting."

They were speaking on the Lebanese channel Palestine Today TV on April 10, 2016.

Barghouti (who, remember, went to Tel Aviv University while saying that all normalization with Israel by everyone else is absolutely prohibited) gives a nice list of BDS fails in the Arab world:

- Israeli security delegations in Saudi Arabia
- Israeli sports delegations in Qatar
- Israeli trade delegations in the UAE
- Other Israeli delegations in Bahrain, Morocco and elsewhere.

Barghouti laments how poorly the BDS movement is doing among his Arab brethren at the same time he tells Bloomberg News that even though Israel's foreign investment has tripled since he started the BDS movement, "BDS is not just working. It is working far better and spreading into the mainstream much faster than we had anticipated."

Bloomberg notes:

Despite the appreciating shekel -- a sign of foreign investor confidence -- Israeli startups raised $3.76 billion last year from non-Israeli investors, the highest annual amount in a decade, according to data collected by IVC Research Center. Foreigners, who are responsible for at least 50 percent of total yearly investment in Israeli startups, spent an additional $5.89 billion acquiring them. Chinese buyout firm XIO Group’s $510 million purchase of Lumenis Ltd. led high-tech mergers and acquisitions followed by a U.S. private equity firm’s $438 million buyout of ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. (Acquisitions aren’t captured as part of foreign investment in startups.)

UPDATE: Transcript of the interview:

Omar Baghouti: "The BDS movement embraces international law, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is intrinsic to our movement, not something alien to it. Ever since we established the movement, we insisted that it would not be exclusionary, and would include anybody who abides by international law and human rights, and who believes in the rights of the Palestinian people – the entire Palestinian people, in the homeland and in the diaspora. We are talking about putting an end to the occupation, and to apartheid – Israel's racist system of segregation – and about the need for the return of the refugees, the most important of the three rights upon which we are insisting, because some 68% of the Palestinians, in Palestine and the diaspora, are refugees."
[...]
Haidar Eid: "To be honest, I embrace this opportunity to point out that there is resentment among the BDS activists in Palestine, both in the 1948 and the 1967 borders, at all the normalization projects, which are allowed to operate in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – especially in the West Bank."
[...]
Host: "Are you saying that normalization activities are taking place in Gaza?"
Haidar Eid: "I would not call this 'normalization activities,' but rather, the undoing of the standards of the boycott in the Gaza Strip, by authorizing pro-normalization American organizations, such as One Voice, Seeds of Peace, or the Peace Alliance, which was established after the Geneva Accord, which gave up the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees, even though approximately 75% of Gaza's residents are refugees, to whom international law has guaranteed the Right of Return. Allowing such organizations to operate in the Gaza Strip destroys the boycott campaign."
[...]
Omar Baghouti: "Unfortunately, the official Arab and even Palestinian normalization is on the rise. We hold the official Palestinian circles primarily responsible for this, because they are the gateway to Arab-Israeli normalization. If official Palestinian normalization had not reached this level, nobody would have dared to host Israeli delegations in Saudi Arabia, sports delegations in Qatar, trade delegations in the UAE, and delegations in Bahrain, Morocco, and so on. Official Arab normalization has reached critical proportions. In light of the oppression of Arab liberties and civil society, our allies and BDS activists in the Arab world oppose this normalization, but with great difficulty. They are in need of help, but the litmus test is, first and foremost, putting an end to Palestinian normalization."

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