Tuesday, June 07, 2016

06/07 Links Pt1: Fatah leader praises terrorist stabbers; Why Iran’s Post-Deal Terror Matters

From Ian:

PMW: Fatah leader praises terrorist stabbers

Although the number of Palestinian terror attacks has lessened, Fatah leaders continue to praise the attacks of the terror wave. Recently, Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki glorified the individual terrorists who chose to attack and murder Israelis with knives, saying they had “performed a miracle” causing Israelis to live under “curfew”:
“This people is greater than its leadership. The determination, willpower, and willingness to die for a dignified life are present among the youth who carried a knife after the disappearance of the Arab leadership, including the Palestinian. They performed a miracle by imposing a curfew within Israel with knives and rocks. Blessings to the mothers and fathers who gave birth to those who are marching on the path of light, without anyone having demanded it of them.”
[Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki’s Facebook page, May 16, 2016]
Zaki also condemned peace promotion, saying that anyone who “talks about renewing the relations with Israel is not a Palestinian and not a member of Fatah!” Zaki gave this speech at the UNRWA Ramallah Women’s Training Center and Educational Science Faculty’s graduation ceremony held at the Palestinian Red Crescent headquarters in Ramallah. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that UNRWA and the Palestinian Red Crescent have hosted or made their facilities available for terror promoting events.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: The Fatah Mess

After many years of being gagged, Fatah's young guard is finding its voice. But while members of this faction wish to see a "changing of the guards at the Palestinian palace," this does not mean that they have changed their attitude towards Israel.
Fatah's young guard is neither interested in, nor authorized to, give up the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees -- or even take the basic step of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. In short, the actors might change, but the same show will go on.
The international community, meanwhile, is busy burying its head in the sand of Abbas's very messy backyard. The participants at the Middle East peace conference held in Paris last week may have missed the latest revolt against the PA president. Had they been paying attention, instead of calling for a two-state solution, they might have demanded that Abbas and his Fatah faction get their acts together, and include Israel in the show. Perhaps they also would have mentioned that this ought to happen before Hamas takes over the West Bank and creates another Islamist regime there, too.

JPost Editorial: Peace education

Surveys carried out over the past few decades by respected Palestinian research institutes, as well as by international bodies such as the Pew Research Center and the Arab Barometer initiative, have consistently found Palestinians to hold bigoted and highly negative opinions of Israel and Israelis.
In nearly every single opinion poll that has been conducted among Palestinians, well over half surveyed have consistently expressed the opinion that Israel’s aspiration is to extend its borders to cover all the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and to expel its Arab citizens.
Palestinians also think Jews have no historical roots in what they refer to as Palestine.
In 2011, the American political consultant Stanley Greenberg commissioned a survey of Palestinian opinions on behalf of the Israel Project. Seventy-two percent declared it morally right to deny that “Jews have a long history in Jerusalem going back thousands of years,” while 90% said denying that Palestinians have “a long history in Jerusalem going back thousands of years” is morally wrong.
Similarly, in a 2015 survey commissioned for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy by David Pollock, fieldworkers from the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion asked residents of the West Bank and Gaza about Jewish rights to the land. Only 12 percent agreed that “Both Jews and Palestinians have rights to the land,” while more than 80 percent asserted that, “This is Palestinian land and Jews have no rights to it.”
These findings and others were compiled in a comprehensive essay by Daniel Polisar entitled “What do Palestinians Want?” that appeared in the November 2015 edition of the online magazine Mosaic.
Why is it that Palestinians hold such slanted opinions about Israel and Israelis? At least part of the answer lies in the educational messages taught to Palestinian children from a very young age, even at institutions belonging to the more “moderate” Palestinian leadership.

Al Masry al Youm is a well-respected, independent newspaper in Egypt. It is considered liberal and it appeals to Arab intellectuals. Part of the reason it was founded in 2002 was as a reaction to the tabloid-type sensationalist stories in other Egyptian media. It is the 20th most popular website in Egypt. It also has an English edition called Egypt Independent.

On Monday, it published an op-ed by Salah Montasser, himself a well-known and respected writer, that minimizes, and then justifies, the Holocaust.

The Jews promote and drive the discussion by accusing German leader Adolf Hitler, who took over the leadership of Germany in 1933, killed a large number of Jews. They claim some proof that he killed six million Jews, a figure that seems impossible in its size, but Jewish propaganda was able to publish and implant that figure. But the question that no one asks, and perhaps they do not allow, is: why did Hitler do what he did to the Jews?

A friend of mine sent me a recording from a German expert speaking in English to address the question: What did the Jews do to cause Hitler's revenge on them?

Under the Third Reich between 100,000 and 600,000 Jews were directly or indirectly killed by the Nationalist Party, a figure that despite its size is much lower when compared to the victims of the Algerian war of independence with France, and the victims of the Palestinians at the hands of the Jews, and what Americans, British and the Russians have done in killing people by the millions.

So what did the Jews do in Germany? Indeed, since 1850, Jews dominated the top posts in the German Reich at that time, they made three dramatic changes to Germany.

First, understand they were a minority that did not exceed 2% of the German population. When Hitler came to power in 1933 there were about 500 thousand Jews among the 60 million Germans. But this small minority succeeded in controlling 50% of the media and consituted 70% of judges and imposed their presence in the press, film and theater, as well as literature. During their control there were economic meltdowns that occurred to the banks in the period between 1870 and 1920.

At that time, caused in several economic collapses. This is not a Nazi propaganda speech but the words of the Jews themselves. In this period millions of Germans lost their savings and investment opportunities because of the Jewish gangs banks.

The other point was their influence on the psychology of the Germans, which is the most dangerous factor at all. They planted in the press and media, theater, and literature, a culture of moral degradation. The first theaters of homosexuality were in Berlin in the twenties, the first pornographic performances were in 1880 and 1890 at the hands of Jewish authors .. .. adultery, homosexuality .. all kinds of sexual obsession .. art is decadent morality. This absurd art that is today called Modern Art. All of this has been paid and planted by the Jews.

This created a state of anger and revolution within the German society as they wrote graffiti mocking of Christianity and make fun of Jesus, just as Salman Rushdie did with the Muslims.

The Nazis, of course, benefited from this anger and revolution. When Adolf Hitler came to power the population of unemployed has reached six million Germans. Hitler was able to in two years (from 1933 to 1935) to employ them all. Six million jobs in two years, a stunning achievement. That is why the Jews wanted to tarnish the success of the Hitler, and said that if Hitler had created six million jobs, it is because he burned six million Jews. And Jewish propaganda triumphed and even become prevalent in all the media that six million Jews were victims of Hitler, while all the number of Jews in Germany was less than a quarter of that number who they say that Hitler burned!

This is the kind of thing that the mainstream Arab press publishes every damn week. But it is kryptonite to speak about institutional antisemitism among Arabs - you will have far more Western articles about how they are only anti-Zionist and how much they love Jews than you will have about this lying, sickening filth that literate, supposedly liberal Egyptians are spoon fed all the time.

Where is the New York Times or AP or Reuters? Why aren't stories like this considered news?

The only way to change Arab attitudes is by exposing it and shaming them. And that is exactly what the major media refuse to do.

They have nothing against shaming Christians or Jews, Europeans or Americans. Any Westerner who would write such a piece of garbage would be blacklisted instantly and forever. But Arabs and Muslims are expected to be bigots, and therefore their bigotry isn't news, and Arabs who insist to Western media that they distinguish between Zionists and Jews are never challenged.

By treating Arabs as if they are inherently bigoted, the news media proves that it is not only the Arabs that are bigoted.

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I could not find this in English as of this writing, but Arab media is reporting a "scandal" where Israel has been nominated to become the head of the Sixth Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations on combating terrorism and issues of international law.

According to the report, which is the top story at Ma'an Arabic as of this writing, Israel was nominated by Western European nations to head this legal committee. The leadership rotates among the different geographic groups and this year the Western European group, which also includes Israel, Australia and New Zealand, gets to choose the leader.

They unanimously chose Israel.

The Arab and Muslim bloc bitterly opposed the nomination they couldn't do anything about it.

The Arabs tried to get Turkey to run against Israel, but a Turkish diplomat in New York stingingly responded, "What unites Israel and Turkey in the fight against terrorism is far greater than what brings together Turkey with other Islamic and Arab countries."

The Arab/Muslim block claimed that Israel wasn't qualified to head a legal committee "because of its shameful record of crimes and violations."

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This was supposed to be a landslide victory for the Israel haters, and although the vote was very close, the defeat is resounding.

From JPost:

In a massive blow to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanction (BDS) movement, the American Anthropological Association voted to reject a resolution for the academic boycott of Israel, it was announced Tuesday.

The resolution, which sought to officially adopt a boycott to refrain from formal collaborations with Israeli academic institutions, though not of individual academics, was narrowly defeated by 2,423 votes against and 2,384 votes in favor.

88% of AAA members in a meeting in Denver last year voted to have this referendum, which seemed to indicate that a majority of actual members supported boycotting Israel. As usual, the haters lobbied the smaller group to make it appear like they had massive support within the organization at large.

The BDSers are trying to put a positive spin on their devastating loss:

Despite this setback, the decision to hold this vote in the first place marks a historic step forward in opening spaces for critical discussion of the U.S. role in enabling Israel’s widespread and systematic abuses against the Palestinian people. The past three years of debate about the boycott have brought exponentially more discussion of Palestinian rights in the AAA than ever before in the Association’s history. This includes a ground-breaking report by a AAA Task Force recognizing the settler-colonial practices of the Israeli government. These represent important first steps towards opposing Israeli human rights violations. Separately, over 1,300 anthropologists have signed a petition pledging to uphold the boycott through their own personal practice.

The BDSers, who routinely make death threats against musicians who want to play in Israel, are also accusing the pro-Israel side of intimidation tactics. Examples include that the pro-Israel side "lobbied university presidents across the country to intervene in the vote; paid AAA membership dues for boycott opponents; called for the firing of Israeli scholars accused of supporting the boycott; and, just as the AAA began voting, filed a frivolous lawsuit against the American Studies Association for its own endorsement of the boycott in 2013."

The AAA will do some symbolic anti-Israel moves anyway, including writing letters of censure to Israeli ministries. It also says

Considering the ways in which Israeli government policies and practices make it difficult for Palestinian academics, including anthropologists to travel to international conferences, and considering the ways in which Israeli policy emplace obstructions on Palestinian and dissenting Israeli academics, AAA will establish fellowships to enable the travel of Palestinian and/or Israeli academics to AAA conferences, and of academics and/or visiting scholars in anthropology to act as teachers, mentors or research collaborators with colleagues in the West Bank and Gaza, assuming financial feasibility and/or successful fundraising efforts.

I'm willing to bet that this never happens, because the haters aren't interested in raising money for actually helping their Palestinian colleagues but in attacking Israel.

I'm also not so sure that any Palestinian anthropologists have problems traveling anyway. I found a single lecturer in anthropology at the English-language Al Quds University website, who received his PhD from Hebrew University.

(h/t David A, Leonard K)

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06/06 Links Pt2: UK professors refuse “Israeli money” but merrily take Arab funds; The Roots of American Support for Israel

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: The Dangers of Subcontracting EU Foreign Policy to Fringe NGOs

In 1995, the European Union’s Barcelona Conference launched the grand-sounding Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, a massive effort encompassing the countries of North Africa, Israel, Syria and Jordan. The main objective was to establish economic and political frameworks to stabilize the Arab regimes; the second goal was to compete with the US in Arab-Israeli peace making after Oslo.
Both missions failed. But in the process and through a very large budget, the EU built alliances with a number of highly politicized NGOs. Through frameworks such as Partnership for Peace and the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights, and via delegation offices in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Amman, the EU began bankrolling dozens of NGOs, including the Israeli B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence and Adalah and the hard-core Palestinian political NGO, Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ), a hard-core Palestinian political NGO receiving close to €1 million annually. This NGO funding was and still is decided in great secrecy and without external oversight.
Within post-Cold War Europe, NGOs, known collectively as civil society, are seen as important contributors to the democratic process, providing alternative voices which are, in theory, untainted by party politics and narrow interests. To this end, select NGOs active in EU member states receive an estimated two billion euros annually from government budgets – a huge amount by any standard.
But not all this funding goes towards strengthening European democracy; the Barcelona framework extended the relationship between EU governments and NGOs to the very different realm of foreign policy –especially with regard to the complex Israeli-Palestinian issues.
Engagement with a narrow group of political NGOs became a substitute for direct EU interaction with Middle Eastern governments and the wider political spectrum. Thus, the EU-NGO relationship took the form of policy outsourcing or subcontracting, particularly as EU experts and resources in this realm are very limited compared to major countries like the US, UK, France and Germany.

UK professors refuse “Israeli money” but merrily take Arab funds

The Israeli Dan David Foundation annually awards a prize of one million dollars to scientists, writers, musicians, thinkers, politicians. The British historian Catherine Hall, a feminist chosen for her research on the British empire, shared the prestigious Israeli Prize this year with two other scholars, the French Arlette Farge and Australian Inga Clendinnen.
The prize is named after philanthropist Dan David, it is administered by Tel Aviv University and has been awarded to former US Vice President Al Gore, former British prime minister Tony Blair, the city of Istanbul, the Warburg Library of London, theatrical talents such as Tom Stoppard and Peter Brook, novelists such as Margaret Atwood and Amitav Ghosh, Muslims such as Goenawan Mohamad. Professor of History at University College London.
Catherine Hall, however, refused the prize, along with $300,000, because it is Israeli money and she had joined the boycott movement against the Jewish State.
In Great Britain, “Islamic studies centers” have been set up in the major universities. A report by Anthony Glees, director of Brunel University’s Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, estimates that the Saudi rulers have spent 233 million pounds in these English universities. Including that University College London of Catherine Hall, which also has a campus in Qatar and has recently accepted a loan from Abu Dhabi.
This is the reason these English barons, who are shamefully boycotting the Israeli Jews, never raise the veil on abuses in the Islamic crescent.

June 1967: anti-Jewish riots in Tunisia

Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Tunisia on 5 June 1967. Although no deaths resulted, the Jews took the hint - and 13, 000 Tunisian Jews left within the year. David B Green writes in Haaretz (with thanks: Lily):
Unlike other Arab and Muslim states, which effectively expelled their Jews in the period surrounding Israel’s establishment, Tunisia went to some lengths to keep its Jews from leaving. There were several waves of departures, but they had more to do with the overall policies of the revolutionary government of Habib Bourguiba than with explicitly anti-Jewish actions.
Bourguiba (1903-2000), who became president when Tunisia was granted independence from France, in 1956, was a benign dictator who was determined to modernize the economy and society. Among other moves he eliminated the Ottoman-era system that gave significant powers of self-rule to protected religious communities and dissolved the rabbinical courts. He also ordered the unification of the country’s network of Jewish organizations into a single “Jewish Religious Council,” whose members he appointed. And, under the pretext of slum clearance, the Jewish Quarter in Tunis was bulldozed under.

Some fascinating glimpses on the future of the IDF. From Israel Defense:

Maj. Gen. (res.) Avi Mizrachi, former commander of the IDF Ground Arm and GOC Central Command and now executive VP of Elbit Systems, opened earlier today (Wednesday) the special session held by Israel Defense and Bynet Company regarding the digital revolution in the defense establishment. According to Mizrahi, Elbit Systems is an active partner with the defense establishment and IDF in the Tzayad (Digital Land Army) program, aimed to expand the digitization levels of the individual soldier in the IDF and to improve his integration with other military functions. Elbit Systems also shares this knowledge with other countries around the world. It is involved in two major projects (designated "The Future Soldier") in Australia and in the Benelux Union.

As for the IDF "future soldier", he already carries only three kilograms of military equipment on his back, compared to dozens of kilograms in the past. The radio gear carried by the soldier enables him to connect to his squad, platoon, company, and even higher echelons. The IDF's operational requirements, says Avi Mizrahi, are for the "digital soldier" to have high survivability, mobility, lethality (in the sense of the "first round on target" concept), and command and control (C2) capabilities. Elbit systems are developing solutions to meet these requirements, with an emphasis on urban warfare and the underground arena – namely tunnels.

Another important element of the "digital soldier" is the operation of precision-guided munition. In the future, soldiers will be equipped with a weapon system that would allow them to identify a target, and then simply to aim and shoot. They will receive relevant data, and will be equipped with night vision equipment.

Another key element is the ability to identify the soldier. Soldiers will be equipped with a system that would allow their commanders to identify them when they operate inside a building. The system will transmit data on the physiological condition of a soldier to his commanders, to let them know if he has been injured. Additional equipment will allow the soldier to identify fellow troopers so to prevent incidents of 'friendly fire'. All this is part of the great network that will encompass the entire fighting force: ground, air and naval.

Chen Azoulay, CEO of Bynet, opened the conference and said that his company is cooperating with the defense establishment in the development of digital solutions for control rooms, contact centers and smart cities. Some of these solutions have already been implemented in the defense establishment.

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Religion, Politics and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief
Asaf Romirowsky & Alexander H. Joffe

This is a meticulously researched book that concentrates on a very small bit of history: the time period from 1948-50 when the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group, was organizing refugee relief in Gaza.

Before UNRWA, the UN created the United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees (UNRPR). It outsourced refugee relief to three other groups: the International Committee of the Red Cross, the League of Red Cross Societies, and the AFSC, which had won accolades for its non-political relief activities during the 1930s and 1940s.

The AFSC was in charge of relief for some 200,000 refugees in Gaza. Even though it was not fully successful in keeping itself above the fray of Middle East politics, it did an admirable job with very few resources in providing food, medical care and even education to this huge population that fled Israel. In fact, the 25,000 native Gazans were in worse financial shape than their 200,000 forced guests.

The AFSC initially wanted the refugees to be repatriated to Israel, but eventually it accepted that the majority would have to be resettled in Arab countries. Of course, the Arab countries did not want to settle them.

The AFSC is interesting in a number of ways. The Quakers, alone among the UNRPR NGOs, actually tried and to a large extent succeeded in performing a census of the refugee population, foiling the elaborate schemes that the Arabs used to inflate the numbers of members of their families (sending kids from one home to another to be counted multiple times, not registering deaths, and so forth) in order to maintain a fair and equitable distribution system. Even so, they allowed some additional food parcels to be distributed, as the food rations created a mini-industry of trade in the camps.

An AFSC member realized early on that some 200,000 of the then-assumed 670,000-700,000 refugees were not refugees at all, having lived on the other side of the Green Line the entire time, but they applied for refugee relief to take advantage of the free food.

The group also emphatically did not want to be stuck in the Middle East forever. They set a deadline by which they would leave, and UNRWA exists partially because of that ultimatum. The AFSC was keenly aware of the facts that the refugees themselves did not want to resettle at that time, and their desire to "return" was predicated on Israel being destroyed first. The refugees also felt that the aid that they were receiving was their right, and they blamed the UN as being responsible for their homelessness and therefore responsible to house and feed them until they return victoriously to their homes.

The AFSC quickly realized that this was a quagmire that they did not want any part of. The AFSC noted, prophetically, that withdrawing aid is actually the best thing that could happen to the refugees as the alternative of perpetual aid "contributes to the moral degeneration of the refugees and may also, by its palliative effects, militate against a swift political settlement of the problem."

As they left and handed over the reins of Gaza relief to UNRWA, the FSC members naively thought that now a professional organization would be able to do things that they could not - but they quickly realized that UNRWA officials were completely incompetent and often political hires who thought that the assignment was to drink scotch all day with Egyptian officials.

For a short time the AFSC was an UNRWA contractor to help the transition. One mentioned in a letter that the Egyptians had taken over the education of the Palestinian children under UNRWA in 1950, where "the kids are learning reading, writing and bombing tactics."

The AFSC is also, as the authors point out, a precursor to today's powerful and very political NGOs. The Committee itself became very political in the decades since, taking on US involvement in Vietnam and the Cold War, and in recent decades they became implacably anti-Israel, which some but not all of their volunteers were in 1948.

The book is dense with facts and footnotes, and it is often difficult to keep track of all the players. It places the AFSC in context of the many American, mostly Protestant groups with ties to the Middle East, whose members were often antisemitic (and many of whom ended up working for the State Department.) But it tells a story that simply had not been previously told about the history of the refugee problem and how it turned from something that might have been solvable into today's intractable problem of descendants of the original refugees still stateless, still pawns and still believing that they are entitled to free food, medicine and education forever.

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06/06 Links Pt1: Abbas falsely claims 6,000-year-old Palestinian nation; How Khomeini suckered Jimmy Carter

From Ian:

PMW: Abbas falsely claims 6,000-year-old Palestinian nation

Mahmoud Abbas:
"The Bible says that the Palestinians existed before Abraham"
"The invention of the Canaanite-Palestinian alphabet [was] more than 6,000 years ago"
Abbas' advisor claims 5,000-year Palestinian history in the land:
Mahmoud Al-Habbash: "We have been here for the last 5,000 years, and have not left this land"
"Our forefathers are the monotheist Canaanites and Jebusites"
In order to make Palestinians believe that they have an ancient history that precedes Jewish history in the land of Israel, Palestinian Authority leaders regularly fabricate tales of a 5,000- or sometimes 6,000-year-old Palestinian nation. Recently, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash each spoke on two different occasions about a Palestinian nation that they claim preceded Abraham in the land of Canaan. Abbas even misrepresented the Bible by claiming biblical support for his claims:

Mahmoud Abbas fabricates history: "The Bible says the Palestinians existed before Abraham..."

Transcript: PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas: "Our narrative says that we have been have been in this land since before Abraham. I am not saying it. The Bible says it. The Bible says, in these words, that the Palestinians existed before Abraham. So why don't you recognize my right?
[Official PA TV, March 21, 2016]
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas: "This land was never without a people, as we have been planted in its rocks and dust and hills since the beginning of civilization and writing and the invention of the Canaanite-Palestinian alphabet more than 6,000 years ago."
[Official PA TV, May 14, 2016]
Abbas’ Fabrication #1: The Bible says that Palestinians predate Abraham.
Fact #1: The Bible says Abraham dwelt “many days in the land of the Philistines.” (Genesis 21: 34). The Bible’s “Philistines” have no connection to today’s Arabs called “Palestinians.” The Philistines were a people of Greek origin who settled in the land of Canaan and lived beside the Israelite tribes. Both nations were exiled by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, the Philistines in 604 BCE and the kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE. The Philistines ceased to exist as a nation soon afterward, while the Judeans returned 70 years later, and rebuilt the Jewish/Judean national home.
Abbas’ Fabrication #2: There was an ancient Palestinian- Canaanite people connected to today’s Palestinian Arabs.
Fact #2: The land of “Judea” was renamed “Palestine” by Rome in 136 CE, as a punishment to the Jews for participating in the Jewish Revolt against Rome, known as “The Bar Kochba Rebellion.”
Arabs first arrived in the land of Israel/Judea with the Muslim invasion in 637 CE.
Arabs of “Palestine” first identified themselves as “Palestinians” in the 20th century.
Abbas’ Fabrication #3: Canaanite-Palestinians invented an alphabet 6,000 years ago.
Fact #3: Writing was invented around 3,500 BCE. The earliest Canaanite alphabet, considered to be the ancestor of most modern alphabets, is dated to around 1,500 BCE.

In 2013, a geneticist named Eran Elhaik published a study that claimed that, based on his interpretation of existing genetic studies, Ashkenazic Jews were descended from Khazars.

The media ran with this story without doing a modicum of fact checking, and I showed at the time that Elhaik had set out to prove this theory before he even did the research - the exact opposite of what a real scientist should do. His paper was sloppy and the actual researchers who created the data that he misused wrote a later paper debunking his theory.

Elhaik wasn't finished yet. He suddenly changed from a genetics expert into a linguistics expert and in April put out a paper and video claiming that Yiddish is actually derived from Slavic languages and not from German. This was a new attempt to buttress his debunked theory, and to gain maximum publicity he invoked Yoda from Star Wars.

Again, the media jumped on this, and it took a couple of weeks before this cockamamie theory was also shown to also be junk science. (By the way, "cockamamie" is not a Yiddish word.)

This weekend an interesting story came out about a community of over a hundred people in Madagascar who converted to Judaism.

A nascent Jewish community was officially born in Madagascar last month when 121 men, women and children underwent Orthodox conversions on the remote Indian Ocean island nation better known for lemurs, chameleons, dense rain forests and vanilla.

The conversions, which took place over a 10-day period, were the climax of a process that arose organically five to six years ago when followers of various messianic Christian sects became disillusioned with their churches and began to study Torah.

Through self-study and with guidance from Jewish internet sources and correspondence with rabbis in Israel, they now pray in Sephardic-accented Hebrew and strictly observe the Sabbath and holidays.

The conversions were facilitated by Kulanu, a New York-based nonprofit that specializes in supporting isolated and emerging Jewish communities, but were initiated by the residents.

“Now that we’ve re-established the State of Israel, it is time to re-establish the Jewish people, especially in the Diaspora,” said Bonita Nathan Sussman, vice president of Kulanu.

Her husband, Rabbi Gerald Sussman of Temple Emanuel on Staten Island in New York, added: “We are in the process of reconstituting the Jewish people, which would have been more numerous had it not been decimated by the Holocaust and had we not lost millions of Jews in Arab lands.”

Beginning on May 9, members of the community came before a beit din, or rabbinical court, convened for the occasion at the Le Pave Hotel here, the Madagascar capital. The court comprised three rabbis with Orthodox ordinations: Rabbi Oizer Neumann of Brooklyn, Rabbi Achiya Delouya of Montreal and Rabbi Pinchas Klein of Philadelphia. All three belong to a group of rabbis who serve far-flung Jewish communities and support converting emergent Jewish groups.

Delouya, whose background is Moroccan, spoke with the converts in their second official language, French, and also provided Sephardic influences for which the Madagascar community feel an affinity.

The conversion process included periods of intensive Torah study, interviews by the beit din and full body immersions in a river located a 90-minute drive from Antananarivo. A privacy tent was hastily erected beside the river for the occasion, and a festive atmosphere ensued as men, women and children, ranging in age from 3 to 85, lined up to take the ritual plunge.

What this story highlights is that it takes years of intense effort, education and desire to become a Jew according to Jewish law. The Khazar story of the king who forced his people to "convert" en masse may or may not be true (most evidence is that only some leaders and aristocrats converted), but large numbers of converts would not have been accepted as Jews by the existing Jewish communities in Europe without a lot of controversy - controversy that has not been recorded anywhere in rabbinic or responsa literature.

The old Yiddish expression is "es iz shver tsu zayn a Yid," it is hard to be a Jew. Well, it is even harder to become a Jew. That simple fact is simply never addressed by the academic frauds with an agenda like Eran Elhaik.

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Last week I reported on an interview that BDS leader Omar Barghouti had with the Lebanese TV channel "Palestine Today TV" in April.

It turns out that the TV station violated Lebanese law against speaking to residents of Israel.

Barghouti was born in Qatar, raised in Egypt and married to an Arab-Israeli woman, so he is a resident, although not a citizen, of Israel.

According to the 1955 Lebanese Boycott Law, it is against the law for Lebanese to speak to or communicate with "institutions or persons having residence in Israel."

There was some discomfort in Lebanon in 2012 when an Israeli spokesperson was interviewed on a TV station. Legal experts said that Lebanon could have prosecuted the interviewer. Even tweeting to an Israeli is a punishable offense.

However, the law is not limited to dealing with Israelis, but it explicitly says that any entity that “conducts a direct agreement, or through an intermediary, with entities based or people residing in Israel” can be prosecuted.

If Omar Barghouti respects boycott laws against Israel, then he must ensure that he never gets interviewed by Lebanese TV again. And if he wants other Arab states and the PA to pass similar laws - which he apparently does, based on this interview - he must avoid any contact with any non-Israeli Arabs via video, telephone, email or social media.

Barghouti must be boycotted by the people he wants to see boycott Israel.

(h/t David Abrams)

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Baqaa camp archive photo

BBC reports:

Five people have been killed in an attack on Jordanian intelligence officers at a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of the capital, Amman, government officials say.

They described the incident as a "terrorist attack".

At least three of the five people killed were intelligence officers, the officials said.

The attack took place at the sprawling Baqaa camp north of Amman at about 07:00 local time (04:00 GMT).

The Baqaa camp was one of six set up in 1968 for Palestinian refugees fleeing the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a result of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Government spokesman Mohammed Momani said the "cowardly" attack targeted the intelligence agency office at the camp. No other details have been given so far.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) says Baqaa is the largest camp in Jordan.

It is believed to house more than 100,000 refugees.

UNRWA says the camp continues to face major challenges, including unemployment, poverty and the need for structural repair.

Al Arabiya adds:

“This attack was obviously a deliberate attack that the group, whoever is responsible, that they are present in Jordan and are capable of carrying attacks,” Former Jordanian Minister of Information Samih al-Maaytah told Al Arabiya News Channel.

“They clearly chose to attack the intelligence group as the Jordanians are one of the best intelligence groups in the Arab world,” he added.

Maaytah also added that the attack should not be seen as a major attack as the office was administrative in nature serving Palestinian refugees.

“There is a chase currently taking place against the perpetrators of the attack. Investigations are currently taking place. It is not sure as of yet if this was the work of organized group or a lone wolf attack,” Al Arabiya News Channel’s correspondent Ghassan Abuloz reported.

Al Arabiya sources reported that Jordanian security forces captured two attackers a few hours after the attack.

Last month Jordan killed 8 ISIS members who were planning an attack, an there were fears that there would be more attacks in revenge.

It seems unlikely that this was a "lone-wolf" attack, and it remains to be seen if Palestinians were behind it.

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The displaced Palestinians of 1967

Al Jazeera described the Six Day War this way:

On June 5, 1967, an unprovoked Israel invaded Palestinian, Egyptian, and Syrian territories at once.

Six days and over 300,000 Palestinian refugees later, it had occupied the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Golan Heights.

That first sentence would be laughable if it was not believed by one or two billion people. (Notice how they call Jordanian annexed areas as "Palestinian." Historical revisionism runs deep.)

But the second sentence mentions "300,000 refugees" as fact, and it just ain't so. Nearly all the Arabs who fled did so quite voluntarily and openly told the media that they simply didn't want to live under Jewish rule.

A few years ago, I started writing a book about the history of Palestinian refugees and the "right of return." Unfortunately, I never finished it. Here is the section on what happened to Palestinian Arabs during the Six Day War, with footnotes.

The displaced Palestinians of 1967

The Six Day War did not last six days in the West Bank.

After three days of fighting, mostly centered on Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Jenin, the Jordanian forces withdrew to the East Bank. Only when the IDF realized this did it take over the entire territory. [i]

During the war, the IDF did destroy some West Bank areas that were suspected of harboring Fatah terrorists, and as a result nearby villagers did flee, but often to other towns in the West Bank. They returned relatively quickly and Israel helped in their reconstruction.

Jordan claimed an entire slew of atrocities by the Israeli forces, including forced expulsions, looting, atrocities, and use of napalm against civilians. The UN sent a special representative to the area in July for a fact-finding mission and he could find no evidence for these allegations. The mayor of Hebron said explicitly that most of those from his district who fled did so before the Israeli army arrived and that they left of their own free will. [ii]

Even though the actual fighting did not take long, over 175,000 West Bank Palestinians fled to Jordan during and after the war. The Arabs of Hebron, fearful that the Jews would exact revenge on them for the 1929 massacre, surrendered before any troops arrived and hung white sheets out their windows.[iii]

Many of those who fled had lived in refugee camps. Practically all of the 30,000 residents of the Aqabat Jaber camp, and most of the 20,000 who lived in Ein el-Sultan camp, crossed the river. All in all, the vast majority of the residents in the Jericho District went to the East Bank, joined by about one-fifth of those from the Tulkarm, Ramallah and Qalqilya areas.[iv] The vast majority of those who fled were not close to any fighting.

Similarly, Gaza fell in only two days. And just as in the West Bank, many Gazans fled as well into Jordan. UNRWA set up a new camp, Jerash, just for 11,500 Gazans who fled there. The Baqa'a, Talbieh, Marka and Husn camps also hosted thousands of Gazans as well as West Bank Jordanians who fled.

West Bank Arabs crossing the remains of the Allenby Bridge

Most of the Palestinians who fled to Jordan chose to do so after the war. In the weeks after the war ended, thousands of West Bank Arabs took whatever possessions they could carry and walked across the wreckage of the Allenby Bridge, across wood planks where the bridge was destroyed, to flee to what they considered their country. [v] They freely admitted that Israel did not drive them out and they chose to flee voluntarily. Not only poor West Bank residents fled, but also the well-to-do.[vi] Jordan’s King Hussein, alarmed at the influx, pleaded for them to remain in the West Bank and even stopped the buses and taxis that waited for them on the Jordanian side of the bridge. He also instituted roadblocks to stop them from going towards Amman.[vii] None of this dissuaded the Palestinian Arabs from their flight away from Jewish rule.

Even when Israel and Jordan negotiated to allow tens of thousands of them to return to the West Bank in late summer and in the fall of 1967, there were still more who chose to cross in the opposite direction every day. In September, the number crossing into Jordan was estimated to be up to 400 a day.[viii] As late as November it was estimated that 200-300 Arabs were still crossing into Jordan every day across the newly-rebuilt bridge. Other reports said that hundreds of Arabs were fording the river at night in the other direction, sneaking back into the West Bank. Still others illicitly commuted across the river to gather and sell produce.[ix]

They certainly did not flee because of how Israel was treating them. While Israeli forces were forceful in rooting out terrorist cells, the government had a more laissez-faire attitude towards ordinary Arabs. Israel allowed Arab farmers to export their goods to Jordan and they allowed existing mayors and other officials to stay in their roles. [x] Schools opened as usual in September, Arab banks were allowed to re-open, and Gaza residents for the first time were allowed to visit their relatives in the West Bank. [xi]

The reasons for the initial flight lay in nearly two decades of anti-Israel indoctrination in the media and Jordanian-run schools. Israeli soldiers related how the Arabs newly under their control would look for horns on their heads. Arithmetic lessons would ask how many Jews would remain if five of them were killed in a group of eight.[xii] One man said, “For years I had heard stories about what the Israelis would do if they conquered us. The stories said they would kill all the men and rape all the women if they ever got the chance.”[xiii]

However, the flight of 1967 illustrates a little-realized aspect of the flight of 1948. It was not only fear and news of atrocities that prompted the Arabs to flee in 1948; some of them they simply did not want to live under Jewish rule and would prefer to uproot their families. Recall that some residents of Umm al-Famm chose to move to the Jordanian side of the armistice line in 1949, even as others chose to be on the Israeli side.

This was especially true of Gazans, who had been effectively imprisoned in the narrow strip for nineteen years, unable to go to Egypt or abroad. Israel lifted restrictions on their travel and allowed them to go to the West Bank, or to cross the river and live in Jordan if they preferred. And thousands did.[xiv] As one of them, bitter after his experience of Egyptian rule, said, “We want to live under Arabs, not under Israel. Not under the Egyptians but under the Jordanians.”[xv] Another incentive for the Gazans to leave was the ability for the first time since 1949 to look for work beyond Jordan, in the Gulf countries that were booming with the help of Palestinian labor.

Another reason that many of the fleeing West Bank Arabs were reluctant to return was because of their relatives who were making money in Gulf countries and sending money back to them. They were afraid that the cash, which many of them relied upon, would not be delivered to Israeli-ruled territory.[xvi]

The refugee issue was not forgotten in the wake of the Six Day War, neither by the Arabs nor by the West.. Already on June 19^th, President Johnson gave a speech on five fundamental principles of peace in the Middle East. The second principle was stated this way:

[T]his last month, I think, shows us another basic requirement for settlement. It is a human requirement: justice for the refugees.
A new conflict has brought new homelessness. The nations of the Middle East must at last address themselves to the plight of those who have been displaced by wars. In the past, both sides have resisted the best efforts of outside mediators to restore the victims of conflict to their homes, or to find them other proper places to live and work. There will be no peace for any party in the Middle East unless this problem is attacked with new energy by all, and certainly, primarily by those who are immediately concerned.[xvii]

Politically, the PLO was a ruin in the months immediately following the war. Ahmed Shukairy, who had threatened Israel before the war as stridently as any Arab leader, was vilified for abandoning his people as soon as the war started. Arab states cut off the PLO’s funding, to the tune of $15 million annually.

For a time it appeared that the local Arab leaders in the West Bank could become the new leadership of the Palestinian Arabs. Sheikh Mohammed Ali Ja’abari of Hebron was in the forefront of trying to organize a new Palestinian leadership to negotiate with Israel. Some wanted independence, others wanted a confederation with Jordan and still others thought that local autonomy under Israeli rule would be the best option.[xviii]

One result of the war was that Nasser-type pan-Arabism was dealt a huge blow among Palestinians, and into that vacuum came a resurgence of Palestinian Arab nationalism. Some of this nationalism might have been deliberately kept low-key in the West Bank for fear of angering King Hussein; and as the ties between Jordan and the territories it formerly occupied lessened, the willingness to talk about a separate Palestinian state increased.

Fatah, however, saw the defeat as an opportunity to raise its profile by increasing terror attacks inside Israel. As Israeli security scrambled to gain a presence in the new territories, Fatah took advantage of the easier freedom of movement between the West Bank and Israel and staged a series of attacks.

In September in Tel Aviv, a time bomb was left in the library of the US Information service but it failed to go off. Also in September, a series of three bombs exploded in Jerusalem, including at a print shop where Arabs worked for Jews. There were also explosions at a power station and a railroad line. The most chilling attack of in 1967 was unsuccessful – a time bomb left in a crowded Jerusalem movie theatre in October that was discovered in time. [xix] In Haifa, a car bomb damaged a factory, and Fatah terrorists attacked kibbutzim and moshavim – one attack in September killing a three year old. [xx]

[i] Shlaim, Avi, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, 2001, pp.245-246

[ii] Report of the Secretary-General under General Assembly resolution 2252 (ES-V) and Security Council resolution 237 (1967), United Nations A/6717, September 15, 1967

[iii] Rabbi Shlomo Goren quoted in "The Return to Hebron," Hebron.com website, published April 9, 2006

[iv] UNRWA website "Aqbat Jaber" and "Ein el Sultan" pages; Levy Economics Institute "West Bank population according to 1967 census and Jordanian 1961 census"

[v] “Refugees Crowd Bridge to Jordan,” New York Times, June 21, 1967

[vi] “Jordanians Count 200,000 Refugees,” New York Times, June 17, 1967

[vii] “Jordan Fails in Bid to Block Refugees,” New York Times, June 27, 1967

[viii] “200 to 400 Arabs Still Cross Span to East Bank Each Day,” New York Times, September 2, 1967

[ix] “Some Said to Cross Back,” New York Times, July 15, 1967

[x] “Israel: Unusual Occupation,” TIME, December 29, 1967

[xi] “Israel: Still Crossing the Jordan”, TIME, September 8, 1967

[xii] “The Bridge on the River Jordan,” New York Times, November 26, 1967

[xiii] “Why the Refugees Go Back,” New York Times, August 27, 1967

[xiv] “Jerash refugee camp,” UNRWA website http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=131

[xv] “Arabs in Gaza Strip Pouring Out in Searchof Kin After 19 Years,” New York Times, September 7, 1967

[xvi] TIME, loc. cit.

[xvii] Lyndon Johnson speech before the Department of State Foreign Policy Conference for Educators, June 19, 1967, retrieved from sixdaywar.org

[xviii] “Middle East: Sense Amid the Shambles” TIME, September 22, 1967

[xix] “Six Months After the War, Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem Lead a Strained Coexistence,” New York Times, December 9, 1967; “US Aide Finds Bomb in Office in Israel,” New York Times, October 2, 1967; “Israel Arrests 9 Arabs,” New York Times, September 21, 1967; "Live Bomb Placed Under Seat in Jerusalem Cinema; Detonated in Open Without Injuries." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 10 Oct 1967.

[xx] "El Fatah Leader Seized As New Acts of Sabotage Are Reported." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 26 Sep 1967; "Sabotage, Terror Hit Wide Front Along Israel’s Borders; El Fatah Leaves Signs of Action." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 4 Dec 1967; "Bomb Damages Auto Assembly Plant in Haifa; Israel Army Camp Attacked Near Hebron." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 15 Nov 1967.

(h/t Yehudah P)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.