Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, June 17, 2016

06/17 Links Pt2: IDF hero's widow: Challenge PA incitement at UN; Save a Child’s Heart treats 4,000th patient

From Ian:

Has Abbas' Internationalization Strategy Set the Palestinians on the Path to Statehood?

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas travelled to Athens in late December to thank the Greek Parliament for recognising the ‘State of Palestine’. Abbas hailed the Greek Parliament’s decision and declared: ‘This is a grand Palestinian-Greek wedding.’ The Palestinian leader frequently travels to European capitals these days. In the past year, he has lobbied European Union (EU) officials in Brussels, courted the support of United Nations (UN) officials in Geneva, and sought the backing of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
Glad-handing foreign dignitaries at UN offices in New York or Europe is part of a calculated strategy by Abbas to shift the Palestinian focus to the international arena. However, it has cost Abbas dearly at home. Palestinians, though overwhelmingly supportive of Abbas’s efforts to join international bodies such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), still think the aging Palestinian leader should resign.
Abbas’s quest for European recognition has come amid a downturn in relations with his Arab neighbours. A major crisis erupted between the PA and Jordan when Palestinian officials failed to coordinate with their Jordanian counterparts at the UN Security Council (UNSC) in December 2014. Saudi Arabia hosted a delegation from Hamas, Abbas’s Gaza adversaries, in July 2015. Egypt, though nominally in support of Abbas’s never-ending crusade against Hamas, regularly hosts Abbas’s top rival in Cairo.
Palestinian foreign policy in the Abbas era has largely focused on prioritising symbolic victories over pragmatic ones. Winning a vote at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in 2012, or joining a host of international organisations in 2014 and the ICC in 2015, have done little to change the daily reality for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. These symbolic victories have convinced Abbas of an area of strength in the international community that isn’t necessarily there. His plans for another push at the UNSC and a possible international conference – as referenced in a meeting with Israeli journalists in January – are unlikely to win back a disillusioned people or please his neighbours.

US House okays funding boost for Israel’s missile defense

Under the shadow of a presidential veto threat, the House of Representatives passed a defense appropriations measure Thursday that included $635.7 million for Israel’s missile defense programs.
While the White House has offered conflicting explanations for its opposition to increased missile defense support for the Jewish state, pro-Israel groups on Thursday continued to criticize the administration’s reticence to accept the extra funding appropriated for Israel by the Republican-controlled House.
The massive $576 billion defense appropriations bill for the upcoming fiscal year included $268.7 million in research and development funding for US-Israel cooperative missile and rocket defense programs; $25 million in research and development funding for US-Israel directed energy activities, such as laser technologies, to combat missiles and rockets; $72 million for procurement of the Iron Dome rocket defense system; $150 million for procurement of the David’s Sling missile defense system; and $120 million for procurement of the Arrow-3 missile defense system.
The amount allocated to Israeli missile defense programs exceeded the sum requested by the Obama administration by over $400 million.

Former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff: Until Middle East Stabilizes, Withdrawal of Israeli Military From Judea, Samaria, Jordan Valley Would Be ‘Irresponsible’

A former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army said that any decision to withdraw the IDF from Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley before the situation in the Middle East stabilizes would be “irresponsible.”
This was among many assessments made by Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yair Naveh during an interview with Israel Radio’s Esti Perez on Thursday.
Naveh also explained why he was, and still is, critical of Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza in the summer of 2014.
“[Israel] was playing on a different field from Hamas,” Naveh said. “We were trying to achieve a military victory, while Hamas was seeking political gains.”
Under such circumstances, he said, when two sides are after different goals, the whole notion of deterrence becomes irrelevant.
“What is clear to me is that Hamas’ main objective is preserving its survival as an organization.”
Therefore, he said, “In any confrontation with the group, past or future, it is its survival that Israel has to threaten. And it has to be made to understand that it is not immune…We certainly shouldn’t have said, as we did during the war, that we have no intention of harming its rule in Gaza.”

Not a bit of irony detected in this news article from The Malay Mail Online:

SABAK BERNAM, June 16 — Umno lawmaker Datuk Abdul Aziz Kaprawi alleged today that the Pakatan Harapan alliance was pitting Malays and Chinese against each other to create racial tension that would somehow lead to their electoral victory in Saturday’s twin polls.

The Sri Gading MP cited as example the racial billboards that had been put up by the federal opposition pact in Sekinchan last week in the run-up to the Sungai Besar parliamentary by-election. The controversial billboard has since been removed by the local authorities.

“They’ve run out of models to win. They are playing with racial sentiments to provoke anger. We are a multiracial nation and we need to tolerate one another. What is important is for each race to live together in peace,” Abdul Aziz told reporters after attending a function in Sungai Besar.

The Umno supreme council member alleged further that the Parti Amanah Negara-DAP-PKR pact was backed by Jews and urged Malaysians to reject the federal opposition to maintain peace within the country.

“We know that there are many Jewish elements aiding them in many ways and we don’t want any external involvement in the management of this nation,” Abdul Aziz said, without stating the basis for his allegation.

“We want this nation to be managed without external involvement. In many other countries, external involvement causes chaos, which leads to war. Here we want peace.”

Malaysian leaders routinely obsess over Israel and Jews.

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Remember: Anything nice Israelis do with Arabs is to distract the world from their crimes

Haters of Israel know that every time any Israeli does anything nice, or liberal, it is because he or she is trying to cover up for horrendous Israeli right-wing crimes. In fact, the nice things done are proof positive of this massive coverup engaged in by millions of people.

Glenn Greenwald knows this for a certainty. What more proof do you need?

From Yenta Press in the comments:

Jerusalem:
These two young Israeli musician were in a pharmacy when they overheard an old blind Arab man telling the pharmacist he does not have enough money to buy his medicines.

Since they did not have enough, they took him outside to the street, opened their guitar cover on the floor , and started playing their guitars hoping to collect money for the blind man.

It did not take long. Once they had enough, one of them went inside to buy the medicines and the other kept singing to the blind man.

How depraved these Israeli Jews are to keep finding nice things to do to Arabs so that the world is distracted from how much they despise the Arabs.

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06/17 Links Pt1: Glick: Obama and the moderate Muslims; Jihad-serving apologetics; The Middle East’s reaction to Orlando left me speechless

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Obama and the moderate Muslims

How can enforcing ignorance of a problem help you to solve it? How does refusing to call out the Islamic extremists that Islamic moderates like the Green revolutionaries and Sisi risk their lives to fight weaken them? How does empowering jihad apologists from CAIR and MPAC help moderate, anti-jihad American Muslims who currently have no voice in Obama’s White House? Eli Lake argued that it was by keeping mum on jihad that then-president George W. Bush and Gen. David Petraeus convinced Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq to join the US in fighting al-Qaida during the surge campaign in 2007-2008.
The same leaders now support ISIS.
A counter-argument to Lake’s is that Bush’s policy of playing down the jihadist doctrine of the likes of al-Qaida had nothing to do with the Sunni chieftains’ decision to side with the US forces.
Rather, they worked with the Americans first because the Americans paid them a lot of money to do so. And second, because they believed the Americans when they said that they would stay the course in Iraq.
They now side with ISIS because they don’t trust America, and would rather live under ISIS rule than under Iranian rule.
In other words, for them, the question wasn’t one of political niceties, but of financial gain and power assessments. And that remains the question that determines their actions today.
In the 15 years since September 11, first under Bush, and since 2009, to a more extreme degree under Obama, the US has refused to name the enemy that fights America with the expressed aim of destroying it.
Maybe, just maybe, this is one of the reasons that the Americans have also failed to truly help anti-jihadist – or moderate – Muslims. Maybe you can’t help one without calling out the other.

Terror-Denial

President Obama, Secretary Clinton, President Hollande and the “intellectuals” who groomed and still support them are fervent believers in “secular humanism.” They believe a collection of superstitions: that Arab-Islamic terrorists attack the West because the West attacked first, or because the West built prison camps for Muslims, or because the West supports Israel.
Memo to Barack Obama and John Kerry: Said Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood and Ayatollah Khomeini always thought the West was the enemy, and the West always supported the Arabs more than Israel — witness the British in 1933-48, Charles De Gaulle in 1967, the US State Department from 1948 through 1980, etc.
Another such superstition: there is no Arab-Islamic terror, because the terrorists also attack Arabs and Muslims. Second memo to Obama and Co.: The Nazis began their career by murdering Germans, and Lenin and Stalin began theirs by murdering Russians, even Communists. Just ask Leon Trotsky and the other Jews murdered by Stalin.
So if you want to witness a neurotic patient “in denial” of his illness, or if you want to study the superstitions by which Western leaders live, just tune in to the latest press conference of President Obama, President Hollande, the UN secretary general or the foreign minister of the European Union.
Terror-denial is not forward-thinking or progressive. It is just dumb.

Yehuda Glick: The right road to peace

After the signing of the agreement titled, “Gaza and Jericho First” in Cairo in 1994, Peres said in interviews that “this agreement is an agreement on Gaza and Jericho.
As for what will come next – I am opposed to a separate Palestinian state. I’ve said so a thousand times, and I have not changed my mind.”

How is it then that nowadays, even a prime minister from the rightist Likud party is touting this idea? As I understand it, this change in the public discourse occurred primarily as a result of a well-oiled propaganda campaign of the radical Left. Its method was simple – for many years any leftist who was interviewed by the media, no matter what the subject was, always made sure to begin his reply with something along the lines of: “Everyone knows that in the end there will be two states here, and that a Palestinian state will be established alongside Israel...” Slowly but surely, this supposed “fact” permeated the collective Israeli consciousness to the point that it came to dominate the public discourse as if it were an undeniable truth.
Today, while nearly half a million Jews live in settlements throughout Judea and Samaria, and an additional million residents in Greater Jerusalem, it’s very hard to believe that anyone rational really thinks that a Palestinian state can be established here. Albeit, the Palestinians were given chances in the past to establish such a state – whether according to the 1947 Partition Plan proposed by the UN, or just a few years ago during the terms of Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert as prime minister.
But now this option seems to be totally unrealistic, and therefore no longer on the table.
This being said, it should now be clear to any reasonable person that in the future there will be only one state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River – the State of Israel, with Israeli law and Israeli sovereignty applied over all parts of Judea and Samaria.

Before Tel Aviv, terror attacks had gone down for 7 straight months

In April I reported that the number of terror attacks in Israel had been continuously going down on a monthly basis since the current spree started in October.

The latest Shin Bet report for May shows that the pattern has continued:

Still, things are hardly calm:

Following is a regional distribution of attacks: 16 attack from the Gaza Strip, (3 in April); 67 attacks in the Judea and Samaria (75 in April); 17 attacks in Jerusalem (35 in April); 1 within the "Green Line" (2 in April).

Jerusalem and the Judea and Samaria area: Most attacks executed in May 65 out of 84 were in the form of firebombs (April: 91 out of 110).

Distribution of attacks according to regions and pattern profile:

Following is a distribution of attacks in May 2016 according to regions:

The Gaza Strip – 16 attacks: 2 rocket launchings; 12 mortar shell launchings; 2 small arms shooting.

Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem – 84 attacks: 11 IED (including pipe bombs and improvised grenade) (1 in Jerusalem); 4 small arms shooting; 3 stabbing (in Jerusalem); 1 run over; 65 firebombs (13 in Jerusalem).

The "Green Line" – one stabbing attack in Tel Aviv.

And rocket attacks have resumed after a rocket-free April:

Throughout May 2016 three rockets were launched** from the Gaza Strip towards Israel (within 2 attacks) and 19 mortar shells (within 12 attacks), as opposed to April in which no rockets or mortar shells were launched.

The amount of incitement in Arabic media has certainly been reduced, although there is still plenty there. It would be worthwhile to do a study showing correlations between incitement in news and social media and attacks. Incitement is the biggest cause of terror attacks, not generalized "frustration" as terror apologists like Ben Ehrenreich like to pretend.

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Greta Van Susteren's video makes her a star in Israel

Last week, Greta Van Susteren of Fox News gave a video editorial supporting Israel in the face of terror attacks.

She was interviewed by Channel 10 in Israel about the piece which achieved huge popularity there.

(h/t Yoel)

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Jamal Shawahin wrote an article that was published in various Arab media praising the Tel Aviv attackers as "New Fedayeen."

The article contains both classic antisemitism and projection.

The opinion of the Jews is that the land can only accommodate a single religion, and they mean to destroy Islam and then Christianity and afterwards they will go to East Asia for the elimination of Buddhism, Hinduism and all religious beliefs as long as they are not Jewish. They plan to spread east and in all directions for the elimination of peoples, and their motto is that the whole earth is for Jews only and that all others must leave either by force or voluntarily and it does not matter where.

Jews and Judaism are under the impression that they are created as a chosen people and everyone else is meant to carry firewood and perform irrigation and everything that they see as trivial. The Jews saw themselves in the position not only of religion. Even those who can be described as moderate [are the same], they are all alike in their desire to subjugate everyone who is not a Jew.

The Jews and the Torah may adopt references to love and peace and even heaven and the afterlife, but the transmission of the Jewish spirit is only to Jews, who believe this since the dawn of Islam, and even before that to insist to the Roman governor to crucify Christ.

Throughout known history they use the basest means to implement their goals and this is what made them isolated in Europe. The Germans warned of their danger, as did US presidents, especially at the beginning of the last century.

The Palestinian Authority and others link up with Netanyahu and Lieberman and claim that peace is possible as they condemn the heroic deeds carried out by neo-Fedayeen, most recently in Tel Aviv where they prevailed over four.

Another article, from a Qatari writer, justifies all terrorism against Israelis under the pretext that all Israelis are soldiers and all Israeli children are paramilitary as they are taught from kindergarten to hate and fight Arabs and Muslims.

Once again, there is no backlash in Arab media for articles like this (although this week there was respectful disagreement by one writer saying that an article that claimed that the Holocaust was a myth and the Jews deserved it anyway was not quite accurate in all its specifics.)

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06/16 Links Pt2: US Congressman: defund UNRWA schools; NGO Monitor Triggers Major Changes in Holland, UK, and Switzerland

From Ian:

Lawmakers call for defunding UN schools after film shows Palestinian kids praising ISIS

U.S. lawmakers want to cut off funds to United Nations-run schools where a new documentary shows kids as young as 13 declaring they want to kill Jews and join ISIS.
The documentary, “The UNRWA Road to Terror: Palestinian Classroom Incitement," shows children as young as 7 in schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) expressing support for terrorism. One clip shows a 13-year-old Palestinian student chanting “With Allah’s help I will fight for ISIS, the Islamic State.”
Members of Congress and sources with knowledge of pending legislation told FoxNews.com that lawmakers are looking to introduce bills cutting off funding from such schools before Congress adjourns this summer.
Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., said major reform is needed to UN schools.

NGO Monitor Triggers Major Changes in Holland, UK, and Switzerland

Today, June 16, the Dutch Parliament approved a proposal requiring the government to review funding for NGOs that promote BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) targeting Israel, and, in particular, the Human Rights and International Law Secretariat based at Birzeit University in Ramallah.
A similar debate and vote is scheduled to take place in the Swiss Parliament on Friday, June 17. The Dutch and Swiss governments, along with Sweden and Denmark, provide $17 million to this framework over three years ending in 2016. As documented in NGO Monitor research reports, this money is used for core funding to 24 NGOs, including many of the leaders of BDS and lawfare campaigns, such as Badil and Al Haq, and a number of Israeli political NGOs.
In parallel, the British Parliament held a debate this week on the government’s international aid activities, including the distribution of funds by the Department for International Development (DFID). In this debate, MPs cited NGO Monitor research reports on this funding, calling on the government to stop diversion of funds to anti-peace Israeli and Palestinian NGOs. Following the debate, DFID officials announcement policy changes. In response, Sir Eric Pickles, MP declared: “I welcome a shift in DFID’s funding toward peaceful coexistence projects that better support a peace process, along with the Minister’s agreement to look at alleged abuses of British aid by particular Palestinian NGOs.”
In all three instances, the parliamentary debates, votes, and policy changes followed recent briefings from NGO Monitor, based on our research reports. The need for responsible policies regarding NGO funding from Europe has been repeated by Israeli government officials, diplomats, and members of the Knesset in their contacts with European counterparts.

Why Palestinians hate Shavuot

A thought occurred to me as we were reading the story of Ruth in synagogue this week: Palestinians must hate Shavuot.
If there is one Jewish holiday which overflows with reminders of the flimsiness of Palestinian claims against Israel, it's Shavuot. Start with Megillat Ruth. The central events of the story all take place in Bethlehem. The first two verses identify the city as "Bethlehem, in Judea." The residents are all Jews. They speak Hebrew.
There is no mention of any "Palestine" or "Palestinians." Those terms did not even exist until many centuries later.
These facts cannot sit well with Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. As recently as March 21, Abbas declared on official PA Television: "We were in this land since before Abraham…The Bible says, in these words, that the Palestinians existed before Abraham." I wonder which Bible it is that Abbas has been reading!
Similarly absurd statements were recently made by Abbas's Advisor on Religious Islamic Affairs and Supreme Shari'ah Judge, Mahmoud al-Habbash. "We have been here for the last 5,000 years, and have not left this land," he declared on PA Television on June 3. "Our forefathers are the monotheist Canaanites and Jebusites." (Translations from Palestinian Media Watch.)
Of course, Habbash's claims are nonsense. As every legitimate archaeologist, anthropologist, and Mideast historian will attest, there is no connection whatsoever between the Palestinian Arabs of today and the Canaanites. Islam did not even exist until the 7th century CE. The Arabs came here from the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century C.E.

Back to Entebbe: Former Israeli hostage reveals diary

"Every time I fly abroad, I take a close look at every passenger and at each member of the air crew to make sure they are not terrorists," says 81-year-old Sarah Davidson, one of the Israelis who was held hostage in Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976, after Air France Flight 139 was hijacked en route to Paris.
"This is just part of who I have been for the past 40 years," she said.
Davidson, her husband, Uzi, and their two sons, Ron, then 16, and Benny, then 13, were on their way to the United States on what was supposed to be Benny's bar mitzvah trip. She kept a diary detailing their captivity, which ended on July 4, 1976, after Israeli commandos carried out a daring raid and rescued the hostages in Operation Thunderbolt (later renamed Operation Jonathan, in memory of Sayeret Matkal commander Yoni Netanyahu -- brother of now-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- who was killed in the raid).
Ahead of the 40th anniversary of the events, the Davidson family recently gave an interview to Israel Hayom in which they talked about their ordeal. Benny said he had been "very afraid of [Ugandan dictator] Idi Amin, who arrived and spoke with us."
Uzi Davidson, then an Israeli Air Force navigator, recalled how he made a split-second decision to eat his military entry pass to make sure his hijackers wouldn't find out about his sensitive position.

A bizarre story has been popping up in Arabic news sites today about the origins of a Jordanian dish called mansaf.

Mansaf is lamb cooked in a sauce of fermented dried yogurt and served with rice or bulgur.

According to a supposed expert in Jordanian folklore, the dish was invented to help slaughter Jews.

Hamed Al-Nawaisa says that the root n.s.f in Arabic means to blow up, to destroy or demolish. Arab women would tell the guests that their dish is “destroyed” (munassaf), meaning that all traces of undesirable parts of wheat were cleared from it.

But then the article claims that Wikipedia (Arabic) has another version, with a story about an ancient “Jordanian Arab” king and Jews.

It is well known that Jews must not mix meat and dairy products. So there was a “Jordanian Arab” king called Mesha (in fact he was 9th century BCE Moabite, not "Jordanian Arab." The Jordanians are pretending that they are descended from Moabites just like the Palestinians pretend to be Jebusites or other Canaanites.)

Mesha asked that his people (who were familiar with the Jewish kosher law) to cook meat together with milk in order to be sure that his people were not Jewish and were hostile towards the Jews and violate Jewish beliefs.

When he was told that his entire people indeed cooked meat in milk, he announced that he was destroying/demolishing (nasf) his pacts with the Jews who “betrayed him and violated all their pacts with him”.

The last sentence of the article sums it up:

“And this is the reason that this dish was named mansaf, because it destroyed (nasafat) the pacts/agreements/treaties with the Jews, and then Mesha declared war against the Jews, and defeated them badly."

The main Arabic Wikipedia entry on mansaf says nothing of the sort but the Egyptian Wikipedia does say this story.

I see mention of this legend in recent years. This writer says that Mesha then used the mansaf as a lucky meal before all battles with the Jews, and that the food itself today is a declaration of eternal Jordanian enmity towards the Jews. He recommends that mansaf be served often to ferret out Jewish spies in Jordan who would naturally refuse to eat this dish.

While the story is fiction, the fact that it is reported and believed so readily is a sign of how eager Jordanians and other Arabs are to cling to an illusion of military superiority over the Jewish nation - and how they are all too happy to ascribe antisemitic origins to the food they eat.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Analogical reasoning is basic to human survival. If you can eat a peach, it’s probably safe to eat an apricot. Those of us who favor profiling for security believe that future terrorists will probably be a lot like past terrorists, and so we should look harder at the ones that fit the profile. Every day we make hundreds of decisions based on analogical reasoning: a thing or situation seems like one we are familiar with, so we treat it in a similar way.

Of course there are good analogies and bad ones. There are poisonous mushrooms that look like edible ones. Part of intelligence is knowing when an analogy is a good one in regard to the particular aspect that is important in that case. Political analogies are common, and can be dangerous.

One of the worst analogies ever is the analogy between ‘Palestinians’ and black Americans (here’s a classic expression of it by Condoleezza Rice). Their history is different, their situation is different, and their behavior is different. There is nothing that one can deduce from the story of American blacks that can help one understand the ‘Palestinians’, or vice versa. The reason blacks in pre-1960s America were not allowed to sit at lunch counters with whites is nothing like the reason Arabs aren’t allowed to move freely between Gaza and Israel.

Why on earth would anyone think this? Lately, an entire ideology has appeared based on bad analogies. Just as Freud made sexuality the main driver of human behavior and Marx placed economics in that role, the new ideology of intersectionality tells us that it is oppression and discrimination. From the (somewhat mind-numbing) Wikipedia definition:

Intersectionality holds that the classical conceptualizations of oppression within society—such as racism, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia and belief-based bigotry—do not act independently of each other. Instead, these forms of oppression interrelate, creating a system of oppression that reflects the "intersection" of multiple forms of discrimination.

Apparently the idea developed after feminist scholars argued that black women are doubly oppressed because of their membership in two oppressed groups (this may be empirically false, but nobody cares). It has since been generalized to a sort of unified field theory for all victims of all kinds of ‘oppression'.

This concept is related to the hierarchy of victimhood, in which being black gets more points than being white, being Palestinian gets more than being American, and so forth. Then the one with more points is allowed to tell the other that his perceptions are invalid due to his privileged point of view.

It also fits in with postcolonial theory, in which most conflict between groups is explained as a result of the oppression of a (usually non-white) colonized people by (usually Western) colonialists. The colonization can be military, economic, spiritual, or a combination; or it can be in the past but have left its victims traumatized. We could call this ‘post-colonial stress disorder’.

The prime analogy for Americans is always racism toward African-Americans, with which their national conscience is pathologically obsessed, even more so than Germans are with Jews. The more it is studied, the more it seems sui generis and not similar to other forms of discrimination. But to the intersectionalist, all the isms are similar.

You may have noticed that Jew-hatred (commonly called ‘antisemitism’) is not mentioned in the definition, being subsumed along with ‘Islamophobia’ in “belief-based bigotry.” This obscures the fact that Jews are hated for reasons having nothing to do with their beliefs or lack of them. If this isn’t clear from recent history, it should be obvious from looking at anti-Jewish propaganda which depends on all of the traditional racial stereotypes and blood libels that have characterized Jew-hatred for several hundred years.

It also enables those who want to minimize its prevalence by lumping it with other minor ‘bigotries’, while the minuscule phenomenon of ‘transphobia’, for example, has its own category.

Finally, it’s convenient to not explicitly mention Jew-hatred because most people who subscribe to intersectionality and related dogmas see Jews as oppressors rather than victims. Needless to say, Muslims are high on the list of the victimized, colonized and oppressed, which brings us to another failure of analogical reasoning.

There’s no recognition of the distinction that can be made between irrational hatred based on race or ethnicity, and opposition to the ideological aspects of Islam and shari’a and its violent manifestations. It’s all considered ‘bigotry’. So intersectionalists suppress the legitimate criticism of the jihadist ideology that more and more characterizes Islam as it is practiced today.

I’ve saved the worst bad analogy for last. A corollary of intersectionality is solidarity, “the belief that there is a common thread of discrimination that binds together many ostensibly different communities,” which include everything from the poor, to disabled people, to animals, to climate-change activists, to Palestinians. Because all kinds of ‘oppression’ are thought to benefit a Western, white, male, rich, heterosexual ruling class, activists join together with other ‘oppressed’ groups against the power structure that is responsible for it. This Marxist panacea-ism* leads to absurdities like anti-sexual assault activists cooperating with Students for Justice in Palestine – “because all oppression is one.”

Intersectionality suppresses the cognitive dissonance that would normally arise when, as is happening now, LGBT people are being asked to join the struggle against “Islamophobia,” while others are pointing out that there is a shari’a-based death penalty for gay sex in several Muslim countries, and when a Muslim has just murdered 49 people in a gay nightclub – and at least in part was motivated to do so by his religious belief. In a feat of mental acrobatics, the conflict between Muslims motivated by Islamic ideology and the gays they oppress evaporates, and only the fact that each group sees itself as a victim remains.

Just as human behavior is motivated by more than sex and economics, not every conflict is a case of oppression, not all forms of discrimination are the same, and not every problem is related to entrenched white straight male privilege. But thanks to the doctrine that arguing against the propositions of intersectionality indicates that the speaker supports the ruling class and can be ignored, the dogma becomes irrefutable. Like other irrefutable dogmas (e.g., Marxism, Objectivism), intersectionality gets its persuasiveness from a massive circular argument. Unfortunately, it is as pernicious as it is popular.

* Panacea-ism: the belief that there is one single solution for all the world’s ills.

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06/16 Links Pt1: PA Minister of Education honors terrorist who murdered policewoman; Islamic Terrorists Are Not Motivated By Hate

From Ian:

PMW: PA Minister of Education honors terrorist who murdered 19-year-old policewoman

The Palestinian Authority Minister of Education visited a school this week in order to “honor the souls” of three terrorist “Martyrs” who had attended the school. Among the “Martyrs” was the murderer earlier this year of 19-year-old Hadar Cohen, an Israeli policewoman.
The article in the official PA daily points out that the students in the school named their class after two of the terrorists.
The Minister of Education, Sabri Saidam, added that:
“After the announcement of the results of the high school matriculation exams, a tribute to the Martyrs' families will be held at this school as a sign of loyalty to them and to their sacrifice.”[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 12, 2016]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that a central teaching of the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education is terror glorification.

A terrorist's mother makes 'V' sign at site of attack

The parents of Palestinian terrorist Muhannad Halabi, who murdered rabbis Nehemia Lavi and Aharon Bennett in Jerusalem's Old City last October, decided to carry out a provocation in the same spot: They recently visited the site of the attack, on Hagai Street, where the mother was photographed making a "V" sign.
It was just another effort to glorify Halabi, who was killed by Israeli security forces at the scene of the attack. He was recently honored by al-Quds University, where he studied law. During a recent event at the university, Halabi was praised by the speakers and his parents were given his diploma.
Recently, Palestinian groups began collecting money to rebuild his family's home, in the village of Surda near Ramallah, which had been demolished by the IDF as a deterrent against future attackers. After it became clear the home would not be rebuilt on the same plot, the money went toward buying a fancier place in the nearby village of Abu Qash. The place spans about 3,870 square feet and is currently undergoing renovations. Palestinian officials also named a road after Halabi and built a memorial honoring him.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Anarchy Returns to the West Bank

Hostility towards the Palestinian Authority (PA) seems to have reached unprecedented heights among refugee camp residents.
A chat with young Palestinians in any refugee camp in the West Bank will reveal a driving sense of betrayal. In these camps, the PA seems as much the enemy as Israel. They speak of the PA as a corrupt and incompetent body that is managed by "mafia leaders." Many camp activists believe it is only a matter of time before Palestinians launch an intifada against the PA.
Nablus, the largest city in the West Bank, is surrounded by a number of refugee camps that are effectively controlled by dozens of Fatah gangs that have long been terrorizing the city's wealthy clans and leading figures.
Hamas, of course, is cheering on the sidelines as it watches the PA-controlled territories going to hell.

The Fatah Facebook page looks back nostalgically at some older PLO posters with identical themes of a rifle emerging from the Dome of the Rock that is covered in a keffiyeh:

The caption for this 1979 poster says "Long live Jihad!" And indeed, the Facebook post also emphasizes "on the path to Jihad" - where the meaning of jihad is clearly military given the context.

Fatah has long linked violence with the religious symbolism of the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock.

For example, these two Fatah posters with the themes "The Flags of the Revolution Will Fly Until Liberation" and "Confrontation is our choice" were both notably created during the Oslo process:

This Fatah poster is even more recent, from 2010, with the caption "No choice except resistance":

The use of the holy spot as iconography for Fatah posters is fairly widespread, and the message is unmistakable - the impetus for fighting is religiously-directed jihad, not a secular concept of independence.

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