Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Canadian "Independent Jewish Voices" supports antisemitic conspiracy theories, linked to Holocaust denial article

Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) is essentially a Canadian version of "Jewish Voice for Peace," a virulently anti-Israel group that uses its Jewish members as a shield against charges of antisemitism - and manages to get media attention as a legitimate voice of the Jewish community.

Whoops.

This link goes to the well-known antisemitic conspiracy theory site Veterans Today, and the editor of that site added these paragraphs to the original article by rabid Ziophobe Alan Hart:

One of the most prevalent abuses of what is called the holocaust is the ritual exploitation of numbers which have long been debunked, but are still continually abused. I used to remind all media ten to twelve years ago that the Auschwitz plaque had been changed from the “four million died”, to roughly “one million died”.

I did the math for them… 6 minus 3 does not equal 6, except in holocaust math. Not a one of them was aware of the change in the Auschwitz plaque; but still, after all of this time, media never fails to use the old debunked number.

This link by IJV to the Holocaust-denial article was exposed by B'nai Brith Canada:

A group that calls itself Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), and passes itself off as an organization that speaks on behalf of Jewish Canadians, promotes Holocaust denial through social media, a B’nai Brith investigation reveals.

Postings on the group’s official Twitter and Facebook accounts have been directing followers to articles from the white supremacist hate site Veterans Today. One article in particular falsely asserts that no more than 1-million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany and characterizes modern antisemitism as a natural reaction to Israeli policies. The article was also promoted online by Sid Shniad, a B.C. resident who serves as IJV’s co-chair and official spokesperson.

Both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Law Poverty Center have denounced Veterans Today as a white supremacist hate site, replete with false accusations of Jewish responsibility for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the assassination of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, and the Sandy Hook elementary school shootings.

The posting by IJV cannot be described as accidental or unknowing. In fact, one Facebook follower of the IJV page explicitly pointed out that the article supports Holocaust denial, but IJV failed to answer it or delete the link.

IJV then went into attack and coverup mode.

It apologized for linking to the story, but defended author Alan Hart. Here is its amended defense:

In 2015 IJV provided a social media link to an article written by the widely-respected journalist and Mid-East expert Alan Hart entitled, “A truth most Jews don’t want to know about anti-Semitism”. Like Hart, IJV strongly condemns anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial of any kind.

Hart’s article was re-published on a website called Veterans Today which upon further examination proved to be an extremely disreputable site that engages in wild conspiracy theory and Holocaust debunking. The editor at Veterans Today inserted a note into the article denying the number of Jews exterminated in the concentration camps that we find repugnant.

We thoughtlessly linked to Hart’s article on the Veterans Today site. We acknowledge that our oversight in this respect was lax: we didn’t verify the nature of the Veteran’s Today website, and we didn’t examine the Editor’s note. For that, we apologize to our members and supporters for our carelessness. IJV has now removed that link.

IJV is claiming ignorance about the nature of Veterans Today - and also about the fact that the article it linked to included Holocaust denial inserted by VT's editor. It seems more than strange for a group, and many of its members individually, to link to an article without actually reading it.

The idea that they knew nothing about Veterans Today is far-fetched. After all, VT itself praises IJV and its coordinator Tyler Levitan in 2015, with the VT editor saying that he wanted to get in contact with Levitan to see how they could work together.

Even without VT's adding the explicit Holocaust denial to Hart's article, IJV's defense of Alan Hart as a "widely-respected journalist and Mid-East expert" betrays its fringe agenda. After Bnai Brith Canada pointed out that Hart peddles outrageous 9/11 conspiracy theories, IJV added that they don't support that part of Hart's oeuvre. Yet they still defend him and call him "widely respected."

Also, IJV has another 9/11 conspiracy theorist on its steering committee, Diana Ralph. IJV deleted that page after it was exposed.

In fact, IJV has been furiously cleansing its social media timelines and website of embarrassing materials as Bnai Brith Canada has been exposing them.

This isn't the first brush that IJV had with crazed conspiracy theories that they now claim to disavow. Check out this Facebook post from 2012:

This episode shows that IJV is not mainstream and represents no one besides a tiny fringe of self-hating Jews who are happy to use their ostensible Jewish ancestry as a means to bash Israel. Its orgy of support for unhinged antisemitic and anti-Israel conspiracy theories and its pathetic attempts to cover them up in the past few days proves this better than anything else.

(h/t Aidan Fishman)

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Yehudah Glick is routinely referred to in Western media as a "zealot" for his efforts to allow Jews to have equal rights on the Temple Mount. His entrance to Knesset earlier this month brought a wave of tweets and articles calling him every name in the book and using him as further evidence that the current Israeli government is the most "right-wing extremist" government in history.

Today he showed that his critics are all idiots.

Knesset members from nearly every political party were set to propose a new law on Wednesday to halt arms sales to “gross human rights violators” around the world.

Meretz MK Tamar Zandberg has been leading the charge on that front, with help from activist attorney Eitay Mack and Professor Yair Auron of Israel’s Open University. Their proposals, however, have rarely gained traction, as Zandberg’s left-wing party is in the opposition, putting a majority out of reach.

To help raise this issue out of the mire of partisan politics, freshman MK Yehudah Glick of the Likud party stepped into the fray, bringing with him another 16 members of Knesset.

The proposal was written by Mack, but is based on a similar American law, Zandberg told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. It is an amendment to the existing law that would require the Defense Ministry to reject export licenses for Israeli companies selling technology or services to human rights violators.

Though the legislation is originally hers, Zandberg allowed Glick to take charge — and credit — for the renewed initiative. His name deliberately appears above hers on the proposal. “It’s not just alphabetical,” she said.

Glick, a polarizing figure in Israeli politics due to his campaign for the right to Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, also tried to distance the topic from partisan politics.

“I try to deal with things not based on the people, but based on the issue,” Glick told The Times of Israel over the phone on Tuesday. “This is an issue of the Jewish people. We have to be sure that nothing coming from Israel has anything to do with breaking basic human rights on a very severe level.

“There is no reason we should be arming people who are killing women and children.”

Yes, brand-new Knesset member Glick worked with the ultra-left Meretz party to rescue a proposal that is purely liberal and help it gain bipartisan support, something that no one else had done.

This should not be surprising. After all, Glick has campaigned for rights to the Temple Mount based on liberal concepts. But since he was supporting Jewish rights, his critics showed their own antisemitic tendencies by calling him names and tacitly condoning the Arab who tried to assassinate him.

In just a few weeks, Glick has already proven himself to be the most liberal member of Likud. But his critics will never admit that they were wrong about him because to admit that would also be to admit that perhaps Jews should have equal rights to the Temple Mount - and what self-respecting leftist would ever admit that?

Apparently, Yehudah Glick is more liberal than his critics from the Left are.

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Hating Trump in Saudi Arabia (Mike Lumish)

Writing in the Times of Israel, Josef Federman tells us:

An opinion poll of attitudes inside Egypt and Saudi Arabia conducted by Israel’s Interdisciplinary Center found virtually no support for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the two Arab countries.

The survey could signal trouble for Trump if he wins the November election and sets out to devise a Mideast policy. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are two of America’s most powerful and important allies in the Arab world.

When asked who their preferred candidate was, just 3.8 percent of Egyptian respondents chose Trump. In Saudi Arabia, only 6% favored Trump.

According to survey director Alex Mintz, “The overall pattern is that most people … do not support either candidate, but they hate Trump..."

Ya don't say!

They hate Donald Trump in Saudi Arabia, do they?

I have to tell you, it almost makes me want to support the guy.

Saudi Arabia is the very fountainhead of Salafism and thus Islamism and thereby ISIS.

It was the Arabian Peninsula, of course, where Muhammad and his friends came to believe that killing Jews was not only a dandy idea, but adored in the eyes of G-d.

For all that Koranically-based hatred murdering its way around the Middle East, and all those chopped heads toppling onto the beaches in Libya, and all those young girls raped as a matter of religious privilege... let's hand it to our friends on the Saudi peninsula.

Let's hand it to the King, the Crown Prince, and the Royal Family.

Let's give them a big round of applause.

I am not writing this as a Trump supporter, you should know, mainly because the guy is just so obnoxious that I do not see how he can possibly function as president of the United States.

People say that Trump is both a racist and a sexist and he definitely threw away my likely support when he demeaned Carly Fiorina's looks.

The racism charges, however, are primarily based on the notion of a wall separating the United States from Mexico and the fact that Trump intends to keep Islamic terrorists out of the United States.

As to the former, what Trump wants is simply to keep out illegal immigrants and I do not have a problem with that. I do not know that a big wall is the answer and I certainly would hate to see the National Guard rounding up gazillions of Latinos for deportation, but I do not believe in an open-door policy, either.

But Latinos are not the problem.

The gang activity in places like Los Angeles or Phoenix, Arizona, is considerable, but it is not particularly political or ideological and no more troubling than gang activity throughout the United States from other ethnicities, including white people.

And, unlike political Islam, it is not grounded in religiously-based Jew hatred.

Middle Eastern immigration into the United States, though, is another matter entirely.

What we do not want - or what we should not want, at least - is for Jihadis to slide through the process and end up murdering people in places like San Bernadino, California.

It is not "racist" to defend oneself against a large and hostile political movement that would prefer to see your family dead.

Must it be reiterated that polling throughout the Arab-Muslim Middle East demonstrates a distinct hatred for both Jews and Americans?

And why should Jewish Americans happily welcome people who decidely hate us into our own country?

It is a matter of basic common sense and fundamental human decency - particularly among a small minority - to want to protect one's friends and family and children from those who would seek them harm.

No people of any ethnicity would willingly welcome a much larger hostile population into their own homes and it is not bigoted to say so.

But this is the dilemma for Jewish people throughout the world.

Jewish self-defense is considered a form of aggression in both the Middle East and the West.

And it has been that way for a very long time.

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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06/14 Links Pt2: Zionism didn't cause the Farhud, Israel didn't cause Sarona; NYTs Launches a Shavuot Attack on Israel

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: Zionism didn't cause the Farhud, Israel didn't cause Sarona

75 years later on, the motives behind the pogroms on Baghdad's Jews are the same as the Sarona Market and Orlando attacks: murderous hatred; Huldai is presumptuous and erroneous to justify terrorism.
It happens again and again. Last week at Sarona Market, Saturday in Orlando, and exactly 75 years ago, June 1941, during the Shavuot holiday, in Baghdad, Iraq, when a mob set out on a pogrom against the Jews. Some 180 Jews were murdered in the "Farhud," the Iraqi version of Kristallnacht. That isn't a mistake. It was a night of bloodshed preceded by Nazi propaganda directed by the German ambassador in Baghdad, Dr. Fritz Grobba.
Iraq was in those days an independent country. Grobba's influence on the local elite was large. Inter alia, he sent delegations to Berlin, bought a newspaper and took pains to publish therein Hitler's Mein Kampf in installments. The hatred of Jews was not because of Zionism. The majority of Iraq's Jews were not then Zionists. They were, precisely like the Jews of Germany, part of the backbone of the economy, development and progress. During those years, Grobba ensured a steady and virulent drip of anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda. The drip worked: The government took a series of steps against Jews, and their situation worsened.
Later, after having successfully spread the al-Aqsa plot hoax throughout Palestine and after getting into trouble with the British Mandate authorities, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, came to Baghdad and added fuel to the fire. Two months before the Farhud, a pro-Nazi coup took place in Iraq, headed by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. The Second World War was at its height, and the British were advancing on Baghdad. Al-Gaylani and the mufti, the largest inciters, fled to Berlin, where they were received as heroes. The two left the massacre of the Jews of Baghdad to the incited local crowd.

Jennifer Rubin: Israel makes do without a steady U.S. ally

The situation is far from ideal. The U.S.-Israel relationship, rooted in common values and interests as well as mutual foes, has been beneficial to both sides. Autocratic regimes that have no particular attachment to the idea of a Jewish state are not the most reliable of allies, and the degree of cooperation Israel can expect from them in the intelligence realm, for example, is limited.
Ironically, as Kramer points out, the “status quo is unsustainable” narrative that Western diplomats repeat ad nauseam to justify fruitless attempts to secure an Israeli-Palestinian solution does not take into account just how sustainable the status quo has been and may continue to be with Israel’s multifaceted alliances. (“Israel is well positioned to sustain the status quo all by itself. Its long-term strategy is predicated on it.”)
One should not, however, make the mistake of concluding that the U.S.-Israel relationship has been irrevocably changed. One president does not remake decades of policy, especially given the bipartisan support for Israel in Congress and among American voters. Moreover, whether the U.S.-Israel relationship is permanently transformed will depend on the next president. Kramer writes that Hillary Clinton has added a caveat to the “status quo is unsustainable” line. He quotes her as saying “Now, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be sustained for a year or a decade, or two or three …”
In short, President Obama’s departure may repair much of the damage done by his effort to put “daylight” between the United States and Israel and his desire to retreat from the region, provided that the next president returns to the bipartisan policy in place before Obama. If, as an added bonus, Israel can also maintain and bolster its new relationships despite an unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the latter will seem more sustainable than ever before. At the very least, it will convey that Palestinians’ dream of eliminating or wearing down the Jewish state is a fantasy — one not shared by the United States, China, Russia or even Israel’s Arab neighbors. (h/t Alexi)

UK aid 'indirectly spent on Palestinian terror groups' former Cabinet minister warns

UK aid money is indirectly funding Palestinian terrorism, a former Cabinet Minister has warned.
Sir Eric Pickles claimed financial assistance sent to Palestine by the British Government is being used to free up money to pay prisoners who have committed crimes in the conflict with Israel.
The former communities secretary also warned there are "worrying reports" that some NGOs supported by UK taxpayer's money are "promoting violence on social media pages" and called on Ministers to investigate urgently.
International Development Minister Desmond Swayne denied the claims, insisting money given to the Palestinian Authority funds specific civil servants and cannot be misused.
ODI Statement: Daily Telegraph article on links between terrorism and UK Aid to the Palestinian Authority citing ODI research ‘factually inaccurate

Israeli invention allows quadriplegics to move while upright

By now everyone has heard of the ReWalk, the Israeli invention that allows people whose legs are paralyzed to walk using a mechanical exoskeleton.

One of the ironies of the device is that its inventor, Amit Goffer, could never use the device himself because he is a full quadriplegic.

Now Goffer can view the world at eye-level as well, with a new Israeli invention, UPnRIDE:

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Back in 2001, in a letter to the London Times (18 August), Baron Hylton, one of the representative British hereditary peers sitting in a House of Lords (which, by legislation enacted in 1998, consists mainly of life peers) proposed a confederation of Israel, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon. In a spirited response published six days later, a British Sikh observed:

‘You cannot form a confederation between states with mutually exclusive values and a few common denominators witness how the “confederation” of Europe (the EU) is still reluctant to admit Turkey as a full partner.’

Nearly fifteen years on, and that observation is as valid as ever, a fact underlined by the insane immigration policies of Angela Merkel and others that will affect Europe’s demographic forever and may well see the unravelling of the great grotesque tyranny and gravy train for unaccountable unelected bureaucrats and venal superannuated politicians that the EU has become.

“Only a policy of mutual co-existence and the realisation of the Muslim world that Israel, like Palestine, has the right to exist, could help to unknot the Middle East imbroglio,” Mr Randhir Singh Bains went on. Referring to Hylton’s assertion that Israel has been “a source of wars and friction ever since the Mandate” and his blaming Israel for, in Bains’s paraphrase, “forcing Palestinians to become refugees in their own country,” Mr Bains pointed out: “But the 20th century saw the creation of many states where original [sic] inhabitants were forced to become displaced persons. India and Pakistan were both created in areas where an indigenous population was forcefully uprooted to make way for the incoming immigrants. While India recognised Pakistan and made every effort to accommodate the Hindus and Sikhs displaced by the creation of a new Muslim state, Arab countries turned a blind eye to the plight of the displaced Palestinians with the expressed purpose of using them to threaten the existence of Israel.”

He was, of course, absolutely right.

In the words of a well-known British regional newspaper, the Western Morning News (7 October 1947):

‘One of the greatest mass migrations in history was yesterday nearing completion as a 75-mile convoy of uprooted non-Muslims continued to pour over the Pakistan border into India from the most fertile areas of the western Punjab. The whole convoy was expected to have crossed into the East Punjab within the next two or three days. The gigantic task of resettling them will begin. So vast is this moving mass of humanity – sustained by food dropped by air and by doctors flown to its aid – that it took eight days to pass a stationary point. The convoy included shopkeepers, artisans, doctors, lawyers, and once rich landlords. The old and sick died on the way, but the convoy moved on, blood from torn feet of the weary immigrants staining the dusty road.’

The Partition of British India in 1947 into a mainly Hindu state (India) and a Muslim state (Pakistan) demanded by the Muslims led by Muhammed Ali Jinnah was probably based on the Partition of Ireland in 1922 into a Protestant state (Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom) and a Catholic State (the Irish Free State, now the Republic of Ireland). The Peel Commission (1937) which first recommended the Partition of Palestine, probably has the Irish precedent in mind, as it appeared to work satisfactorily.

A guest post on my own blog by Professor William Rubinstein cross-posted to UK Media Watch (https://ukmediawatch.org/2010/09/20/in-contrast-to-palestine-partitions-population-transfers-and-no-demanded-right-of-return/ ) noted inter alia:

‘It is worth remembering that while in Palestine the Arabs opposed the creation of a largely Muslim Palestinian state, in India it was the Muslims who demanded Partition. Pakistan has no historical foundation whatever, and the very name Pakistan was invented by Muslim students and activists in London in 1931. The Partition of British India in 1947-48 was accomplished by bloodshed on an unimaginable scale, with probably 500,000 deaths in communal violence. Literally millions of Hindus and Muslims living in the “wrong” part of British India left for the other state. Karachi became known as a city of refugees.Yet – in contrast to Palestine – no one demands the “Right of Return” for these “refugees”, and in any case neither India nor Pakistan would be likely to allow any of their former residents back.

At that very time, too, vast population transfers were taking place in early post-war Europe. An estimated ten million Poles, Balts, and Russians fled to the West, ahead of the advancing Red Army, or, in some instances, were deliberately moved on. In Czechoslovakia, Eduard Beneš, the “good” Czech head of state between the end of the Nazi occupation in 1945 and the imposition of Stalinist rule in 1948, expelled three million Sudeten Germans from the Sudetenland in 1945-46. The Sudetenland is the rim area of what is now the Czech Republic whose demands (sparked by Hitler) for incorporation into the German Reich led to the Munich Crisis of 1938. After the war, the democratic Czech government was taking no more chances with a potential Fifth Column in the reborn state, and expelled the Sudeten Germans en masse. If there were any demands for their “Right of Return” these were unacknowledged. Most fled to West Germany, where, frankly, they were a lot better off than they would have been in a wretched Stalinist satellite regime, which is what Czechoslovakia became in 1948.’

Professor Suzanne Rutland, formerly of Sydney but now of Jerusalem, recently attended a large US Holocaust Memorial Museum-sponsored conference on the theme of “Mass Violence and Memory” at an academic venue near Delhi last month at which this issue was considered.

Remarked Professor Rutland afterwards (http://www.jwire.com.au/partition-parallels-indian-sub-continent-palestine/):

“The parallels between the end of British rule on the Indian sub-continent and Israel are clear, and some of these emerged during presentations. In both cases the British wanted out as quickly as possible; in both cases the decision was made only a few months before the British left – in India’s case, in March with the two new nations being formed in August 1947; with Palestine the UN Resolution was passed on 29 November 1947 and the British withdrew in May 1948. And in both cases there was religious violence – in India between Hindus and Muslims, and also involving Sikhs, and in Palestine between Muslims and Jews. The result for both was loss of life and displacement… In addition close of a million Jews were displaced from the Arab world in the years following the 1948 war, so that today there are less than 4,000 Jews left in the Arab-Muslim world. With the millions of Hindu refugees the newly formed Indian government set to work to integrate them. In the period 1947-1951 camps were set up, loans for homes provided and the refugees assisted with finding employment. This was done with a minimum of drama – the government officials simply got to work. The same was true with the survivors of the Shoah and the refugees from the Arab world flooding into Israel. There was much hardship and suffering in both countries but eventually new lives were created. The integration of Muslims into Pakistan has been less successful but the world does not hear about this. There was further violence and dislocation leading to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 whilst Kashmir has been a running sore with ongoing violence. Since 1995 there has been systematic ethnic cleansing there with 200,000 Hindu refugees fleeing the area. Yet the world is silent.”

There was, of course, a sharp reminder of Muslim violence towards Hindus and other minorities last week, with the butchery of an elderly Hindu priest and the news that 750 people from vulnerable minority communities are fleeing from Bangladesh into India every day. (http://www.dw.com/en/bangladeshi-hindus-seeking-safety-in-india/a-19310941)

No outcry, of course, from the obsessed and oblivious Israel-haters.

There is, of course, singularly one set of persons displaced by the population transfers and partitions of the twentieth century who remain “refugees” today, and those are those Arabs, long since rebranded “Palestinians,” whom the surrounding Arabs nations, having failed to destroy Israel by arms from 1948 onwards, have deliberately let fester in refugee camps as a cudgel with which to beat Israel.

Not long after the Six Day War, Arthur Balfour’s nephew Robert Balfour, the 3rd Earl of Balfour (1902-68), justifiably observed:

“Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War ... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every two acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved.”

The unique status accorded by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA; established in 1949) to the displaced Palestinian Arabs of 1948, regarding their patrilineal descendants as refugees, feeds the Palestinian Arabs’ sense of grievance and fuels biased “analysis” such as this rather outrageous piece in 2010 (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-11104284) by the BBC’s Martin Asser (who left the Corporation last year for pastures new). Moreover, having a vested interest in the continuation of the Arab-Israeli dispute, UNRWA is a massive and seemingly immovable impediment to peace. UNRWA’s original brief was to "carry out direct relief and works programmes in collaboration with local governments"; "consult with the Near Eastern governments concerning measures to be taken preparatory to the time when international assistance for relief and works projects is no longer available", and plan for the time when relief was no longer needed. It subsequently took it upon itself to extend its mandate to embrace the provision of relief, human development and protection services to Palestine refugees and persons displaced by the 1967 conflict, encompassing the Disputed Territories (no, it did not use that term!), Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Periodically renewed by the UN General Assembly, the current mandate expires in a year’s time.

David Singer recently reminded us, inter alia (http://daphneanson.blogspot.com.au/2016/02/david-singer-end-west-bank-refugee.html):

‘As of 14 September 2015, 136 of the 193 United Nations member states have been playing the PLO name-game change [from Palestinian Authority] and recognised the “State of Palestine”. These 136 States now need to answer two questions: 1. How can any person living in his own country still be classified as a refugee? 2. Shouldn’t the 760,000 registered Palestinian Arab refugees living in the West Bank have their refugee status revoked and be resettled and fully integrated among their fellow Palestinian Arabs? Claiming the trappings of Statehood – whilst segregating its citizens into two different classes – is a recipe for continuing tension and future conflict. Change the name – change the game – but be prepared to accept the consequences.’

“In effect, UNRWA has come to depend on the refugee problem itself. While the refugees benefit from its services, the organization benefits even more from the refugees. They are, of course, the organization’s raison d’être. UNRWA has no incentive whatsoever to resolve the Palestinian refugee problem, since doing so would render it obsolete. As a result, the agency not only perpetuates the refugee problem, but has, in many ways, exacerbated it. In doing so, it has made Israeli-Palestinian peace all but impossible,” argued Asaf Romirowsky, executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, inter alia two years ago. (http://www.thetower.org/article/the-real-palestinian-refugee-crisis/ )

‘UNRWA’s role in perpetuating and even expanding the refugee problem is a complex one; but, more than anything else, it is the result of the agency’s own definition of a Palestinian refugee—which is unique in world history. The standard definition of a refugee, which applies in every case except that of the Palestinians, includes only those actually displaced in any given conflict. UNRWA has defined a Palestinian refugee as anyone whose “normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” But it has also continually expanded this definition, now stating “the children or grandchildren of such refugees are eligible for agency assistance if they are (a) registered with UNRWA, (b) living in the area of UNRWA’s operations, and (c) in need.” As a result, the number of official Palestinian refugees—according to UNRWA— has expanded almost to the point of absurdity. In its relentless defense of its own unique definition of a Palestinian refugee and its complete refusal to reconsider its demand for the “right of return,” it buttresses and perpetuates the Palestinians’ eternal sense of victimhood and the refugees’ narrative. This narrative accepts no responsibility whatsoever for the refugee problem, blaming it entirely on Israel, regardless of the decisions and actions of Palestinians and their leaders. Due to its economic and institutional interests in doing so, UNRWA must continue to maintain and even expand the refugee problem until the refugees’ complete and total repatriation and compensation. This demand for the “right of return” is clear and absolute and has not changed to this day. Over and over again, it has torpedoed any possibility of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians... It appears that peace cannot be achieved without compromise on the “right of return,” and there can be no such compromise until UNRWA is either substantially reformed or entirely dismantled.’

Amen to that.

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06/14 Links Pt1: World in Chaos, Israel Gets Singular Focus at UN Rights Body; Report: ISIS leader Baghdadi killed?

From Ian:

World in Chaos, Israel Gets Singular Focus at UN Rights Body

Wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen have killed hundreds of thousands of people. Enforced disappearances, torture and extremist attacks infringe on human rights worldwide. Tyrannical, autocratic leaders and their allies from Belarus to Burundi repel dissent with an iron fist.
But while human rights abuses are legion in these troubled times, only one country has its record inspected at every single session of the United Nations Human Rights Council: Israel, over its policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel, which trumpets its bona fides as a democracy in a difficult neighborhood full of enemies, is crying foul. And it is not entirely alone: Other critics, notably the United States, also decry what they see as an entrenched bias in United Nations institutions and an obsession with the Palestinian issue at the expense of other crises around the globe.
As the council convened Monday in Geneva for its second, weeks-long session this year, "Item 7" considers the human rights implications of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. The standing item at the 10-year-old council has come to exemplify the spotlight on Israel in a number of U.N. bodies.
"I don't know whether it's fair or unfair, but it's obvious that the majority of members want to continue to focus on the situation of Israel and Palestine," council president Choi Kyong-lim told The Associated Press.
Of 233 country-specific HRC resolutions in the last decade, more than a quarter — 65 — focus on Israel. About half of those are "condemnatory." Israel easily tops the second-place country in the infamous rankings: Syria, where since 2011 at least 250,000 have been killed, over 10 million displaced, and swaths of cities destroyed, was the subject of 19 resolutions.

Anne Bayefsky: UN-happy anniversary to the Human Rights Council: The anti-Israel body makes a mockery of its responsibilities

Coinciding with Ramadan, the United Nation's top human rights body — the Human Rights Council — has been celebrating its tenth anniversary in Geneva starting on Monday. Council members like human rights stalwarts Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, along with President Obama's delegation, will be singing the Council's praises — accompanied by a mandatory cacophony of rumbling bellies.
Here are four reasons that UN bosses & their government cohorts are celebrating — and human rights advocates and victims are not.
3. The Council has a Jewish problem. One-third of all its resolutions and decisions critical of a country for violating human rights are directed at just one state — democratic Israel. That's three times as many condemnations of Israel as its nearest competitor — hellish Syria’ 10 times more than the Al Qaeda vacation spot of Libya and thirteen times more than the execution-per-capita capital of the world, Iran.
As for the millions of women experiencing modern slavery in Ramadan-compliant Saudi Arabia, the millions in Crimea "freed" by Russian tanks, and the billions in China who've never known civil liberties: zip.
4. The biggest and most important fan of the Council is none other than the United States. The Bush administration refused to join or to pay for the Council on the grounds that a human rights body where decision-makers don't respect human rights might not be in sync with American values. But the first major foreign policy decision in 2009 of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was to jump on the UN bandwagon and throw taxpayer money at it.

Caroline Glick: Is ISIS a GOP franchise?

Is Islamic State opposed to gay marriage? Was anger at the US Supreme Court's decision mandating recognition of homosexual marriage what prompted Omar Mateen to massacre fifty Americans at the gay nightclub in Orlando on Saturday night? What about gun control? Is Islamic State, to which Mateen announced his allegiance as he mowed down innocents like blades of grass, a libertarian group that abhors limitations on private ownership of firearms? In other words, are Islamic State and its fellow jihadists from Iran to Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram and al Qaida adjuncts of the Republican Party? Is Omar Baghdadi, the self-declared caliph at the helm of ISIS a social conservative, a libertarian and a card carrying member of the GOP, or just one of the three? Because President Barack Obama seems to think that this is the question most Americans should be asking. In his statement on the massacre on Sunday, Obama placed Mateen's action in the context the partisan debate on gay rights and gun control.
With regard to the former, Obama said that the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, which was the site of the attack was more than a mere nightclub. It was, "a place of solidarity and empowerment where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds and to advocate for their civil rights." In other words, Obama intimated, the victims were murdered because Mateen opposed all of those things, specifically.
Turning to gun rights, Obama said, "The shooter was apparently armed with a handgun and a powerful assault rifle. This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub. And we have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well." So as the president sees things, if you oppose limitations on firearm ownership, then you're on Mateen's side.
To say that Obama's behavior is unpresidential is an understatement. His behavior is dangerous. It imperils the United States and its citizens.

Ninth anniversary of Hamas coup

Today, Fatah is taking a rare break from its normal non-stop demonization of Israel to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the violent Hamas takeover of Gaza.

Here is video of Samih Madhoun, one of the senior leaders of Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades, being murdered by members of Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades in the Nuseirat camp in Gaza.

The Fatah Facebook page includes "martyr" posters of many other Fatah members who were murdered by Hamas on June 14, 2007.

This image of Hamas members stepping on a photo of Arafat in the Gaza PA offices seems to incense the Fatah members more than the murders.

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The official Palestinian Wafa news agency reports:

The head of the State of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas spoke about the need to stop violations against Al Aqsa Mosque, stressing that it is a red line that can not be tolerated in the face of the suffering of daily attacks and violations by the occupation forces and settlers.

The PA Ministry of Information says that any Jews that visit the holiest spot in Judaism are doubling their "terrorism" by visiting during Ramadan, that Israel is "waging war on holy sites" and is disregarding the feelings of Muslims by entering the site. The ministry requested that UNESCO put pressure on Israel to stop its "religious terrorism" and "prevent the establishment of Talmudic rituals in the Haram al Sharif."

Nothing is being said against Christians peacefully visiting the site. Only Jews must be banned, and now Abbas is saying that such a ban on Jews is a red line before any peace agreement is made.

Abbas is demanding that the world support his antisemitism as a prerequisite for "peace."

This joins his demand that Israel release all Arab terrorists from prison before any "peace" agreement could be signed.

Which means that Abbas is telling the world that the state that he is demanding will enforce terror-supporting and antisemitic policies.

And still not one Western nation or major Western media outlet is willing to publicly call their "moderate peacemaker" out for what he explicitly says.

The Ministry of Information also complained about the fact that during the Shavuot holiday, Muslims are not allowed to visit the "Ibrahimi Mosque" in Hebron. This is a long standing agreement where the Cave of the Patriarchs is used exclusively by either Jews or Muslims for an equal number of days every year, and the spaces are divided between Jews and Muslims the rest of the year.

When Abbas says he wants a return to the "status quo" on the holy sites, he means the status quo of when Jordan didn't allow a single Jew to visit any of Judaism's holy sites in Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem or elsewhere.

Antisemitism is part and parcel of the Palestinian Authority's official policies.

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Last week EoZ was the only English-language outlet to report about how the "Western European and Others" group had unanimously nominated Israel to be the head of the UN's Legal -Sixth Committee, and how the Arab states were freaking out over it.

Things got even more interesting since then:

The chairmanships of the GA main committees are allocated on a rotational basis and are usually confirmed without a vote. In this case, however, Yemen, on behalf of the Arab Group, challenged Israel’s nomination and asked for a vote.

Syria and Kuwait, those paradigms of human rights, also demanded the vote.

This is apparently the first time in UN history that such a vote was requested for a committee chair.

The representative of Norway, speaking on behalf of the Western European and other States Group, expressed regret that the Arab Group had requested a vote, she said, noting that never before had any Committee Chair been elected by a vote. Today’s proceedings would set an unfortunate precedent, she said.

Turkey was the only state in the Western European group that did not agree to Norway's statement of regret.

The secret ballot supporting Israel passed:

In Monday's secret ballot election in the 193-member world body, Israel received 109 "yes" votes. Nobody voted against Israel but there were 23 abstentions, 14 invalid ballots, and 43 votes for other countries in the Western European and Others group which nominated Israel to chair the assembly committee dealing with legal issues.

Other states known for their human rights records whined about the vote afterwards:

The representative of Yemen, speaking on behalf of the Arab Group, said Israel violated the United Nations Charter, international laws and United Nations resolutions. Israel had considered itself to be “above the law”. He regretted to say that there had been no alternative candidate and reaffirmed the Group’s rejection of Israel’s nomination. The representative of Iran said the secret ballot would go down in history. Israel had violated international law, humanitarian law and many United Nations resolutions and had denied those actions, rejecting calls made by the international community. The decision to elect Mr. Danon undermined the credibility of the United Nations

It is interesting that a secret ballot supported Israel's chairing the committee. Presumably, if the ballot had been open, many countries would have voted against Israel simply because of their fear of backlash or consequences from Arab nations.

The entire episode shows that despite the rare welcome outcome, the UN remains a joke populated by clowns.

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