Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, July 11, 2016

07/11 Links Pt2: German news accuses Israel of teaching children to hate; Haaretz hires Breaking The Silence activist

From Ian:

German news network accuses Israel of teaching children to hate

An advertisement for a German television documentary which will deal with how children in the Palestinian Authority are taught to hate and kill has caused an uproar for claiming that Israeli children are also taught to hate and kill Palestinians.
The program will be aired on ZDF, a German television channel which is known for its anti-Israel slant.
The ad for the documentary, titled "teaching to hate?" asks the question "how do Israeli and Palestinian children learn to despise one another – and kill?"
The documentary makes the comparison between incitement to murder and hatred in Palestinian schools to the education and incitement to hatred which Israeli children alleged receive. This, despite the fact that the documentary clearly and explicitly proves that the education systems which spread incitement to kill and to hate is on the Palestinian side only.
While the documentary doesn't claim that the Israeli education system teaches children to kill Arabs, it does say that Arabs are presented in a negative light in Israeli textbooks. An example of this "racist education" against the Arab population is that the majority of Israeli students, when drawing a picture of an Arab, draw the Arab sitting on a camel. (h/t Gastwirt)

Israeli Newspaper Slammed For Hiring Editor Linked To Anti-Israel Activism

Yair Lapid, a leading Israeli politician in the opposition today, strongly criticized the country’s Haaretz newspaper for hiring a new chief editor for its English language edition who is connected to Breaking The Silence, a controversial anti-Israel activist group.
In a Hebrew-language statement published on Facebook, Lapid, the leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party, noted that Noa Landau was an unfit choice. Lapid wrote “Landau, the life partner of Avner Gvaryahu, the most vocal and radical slanderer from Breaking the Silence, was appointed the editor of Haaretz’s English edition,” noting that Breaking the Silence actively seeks to delegitimize the Israel Defense Forces.
Lapid accused Haaretz — an outlet that is widely quoted by influential media outlets and international governments such as the White House, the US Congress and the European Union — of spreading lies about Israel, including that “the majority of Israeli citizens support apartheid and that Israeli soldiers slaughter Palestinian children.” Lapid noted that “[t]his is further proof (as if any were needed) that Breaking the Silence is not interested in influencing Israeli society from within, but prefers to slander us abroad.”

Islamic Spain in Middle Ages no paradise for Christians, Jews, women

There is a widely held belief that in Spain, during the European Middle Ages, Islam, Christianity and Judaism co-existed peacefully and fruitfully under a tolerant and enlightened Islamic hegemony. Dario Fernandez-Morera, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University in the US, with a PhD from Harvard, has written a stunning book that upends this myth.
The myth itself has been a comforting and even inspiring story that has underpinned the so-called Toledo Principles regarding religious tolerance in our time. It has buttressed the belief that Islam was a higher civilisation than that of medieval Europe in the eighth to 12th centuries and that the destruction of this enlightened and sophisticated Andalusia should be lamented.
The great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, a century ago, saw it that way. US President Barack Obama and The Economist magazine have both very recently cited Muslim Andalusia as evidence that Islam has been a religion of peace and tolerance. In short, the myth of Andalusia has been a beacon of hope for working with Islam in today’s world with a common commitment to civilised norms.
This vision was spelled out in Maria Rosa Menocal’s The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (2002) and reinforced by David Levering Lewis’s God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 (2008). But it has deep roots. Edward Gibbon, in his famous 18th-century history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, wrote in glowing terms of the 10th-century Umayyad caliphate in Spain as a beacon of enlightenment, learning and urban living, at a time when Europe was plunged in bigotry, ignorance and poverty.
As someone who has long taken this vision for granted, it came as a considerable shock to me to discover that the conventional wisdom is quite unfounded. In The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, Fernandez-Morera systematically refutes the beguiling fable. The picture he draws is starkly different from the conventional one, troubling in what it reveals and compelling in its arguments.

Ben Ehrenreich and the myth of Palestinian non-violence (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

I am pleased to announce that Petra Marquardt-Bigman is the newest writer at EoZ. Petra is a German-Israeli freelance writer and researcher with a Ph.D. in contemporary history. She has had blogs at the Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel and has also published pieces in major newspapers.

Under the somewhat cynical title “Ben Ehrenreich Throws Stones at Conventional Wisdom About Israel,” The Forward recently gave Ehrenreich a platform to promote his new book, in which the Tamimis of Nabi Saleh and the myth of their supposed “non-violence” play a central role. EoZ has already exposed some of the most preposterous deceptions contained in an excerpt of Ehrenreich’s book, but the biggest deception Ehrenreich peddles is the myth of Palestinian non-violence. The apparent goal is to convince Americans that “we do need to stop funding this occupation,” or, as Ehrenreich put it in another recent interview: “the fact that the lockdown on criticism of Israel is now breaking up is a real opportunity. We shouldn’t forget that $3.1 billion American tax dollars goes to the Israeli military and that the US is in an absolutely direct way paying for what is happening over there … Americans who care about this have to make sure that it is not just questioned but powerfully challenged in a way that the political leadership in this country can no longer afford to ignore.”

Leaving aside Ehrenreich’s real or pretended cluelessness about US support for Israel, it is noteworthy that he acknowledges in the Forward interview “that people have been killed by stonethrowing and people have been injured by stones. Of course stones hurt if you’re hit by them.” But he claims the IDF confirmed to him that there are “no records at all of any soldiers ever being killed in a stone-throwing incident.” So Ehrenreich feels it is justified to wonder if there is “no form of Palestinian resistance so innocuous that it wouldn’t be condemned?” (Incidentally, Rabbi Alana Suskin, Director of Strategic Communications at Americans for Peace Now, quoted this question when she promoted Ehrenreich’s Forward interview on Twitter.)

So never mind the civilians – including children – who were killed or maimed by Palestinian rock throwers.

But when it comes to the Palestinian “resistance” that Ehrenreich so eagerly glorifies, he knows full well that neither the Tamimis nor the Palestinians in general are keen on anything “innocuous”. As polls of various reputable organizations going back almost two decades amply document, Palestinians have long been ardent supporters of violence and terrorism. Consider the following examples from Daniel Polisar’s important study:

“For most of the last decade-and-a-half, suicide bombings, which have generally been aimed at civilians and have been the most lethal in their impact, have enjoyed the support of solid Palestinian majorities. On 17 occasions between April 2001 and March 2013, JMCC asked, ‘How do you feel toward suicide-bombing operations against Israeli civilians?’ Supporters outnumbered opponents all but four times, and on average the level of support exceeded opposition by a full twenty points.”

Even when the victims are not Israelis, Palestinians enthusiastically support violence and terrorism:

“[Palestinians] led the world over the course of a decade in believing that Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks and a vociferous foe of Israel, could be counted on to ‘do the right thing in world affairs.’ In 2011, the last time Pew asked about bin Laden before his death at the hands of American commandos, the Palestinians once again outdid all others in their admiration, just as they did on various occasions in their favorable assessments of al-Qaeda—and (the one time they were asked in a Pew survey) of the Taliban.”

Moreover, while Ehrenreich laments Palestinian casualties in confrontations with Israel and the Forward notes with apparent admiration that he “makes no bones about siding with the losers,” the Palestinians themselves are firmly convinced that they are winning:

“a PSR survey that appeared after the August 2014 ceasefire ending the latest war between Israel and Hamas … reported, among other findings, that fully 79 percent of Palestinians believed Hamas had won the war and only 3 percent saw Israel as the victor. So convinced were respondents of their side’s strength that nine in ten favored continued rocket fire at Israel’s cities unless the blockade of Gaza were lifted, 64 percent declared their support for ‘armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel’ (meaning, among other things, suicide bombings in Israeli population centers), and 54 percent applauded the event that in large measure had precipitated the 50-day war: the abduction and murder by Hamas operatives of three Israeli teenage boys hitchhiking home from school.”

As I have shown in a comprehensive documentation, the Tamimis of Nabi Saleh, who play such a central part in Ehrenreich’s new book, are absolutely representative of such “mainstream” Palestinian support for violence and terrorism. Back in 2013, Ehrenreich himself acknowledged in his New York Times Magazine tribute to the Tamimis that the family included several murderers – most notably Sbarro massacre mastermind Ahlam Tamimi – and that these murderers were greatly admired and “much-loved.”

Even though Ehrenreich’s reporting seems exceptionally unreliable, he got it right on this issue. The perfect illustration for just how right he got it are the first two people he profusely praises in the Acknowledgements at the end of his new book: the prominent Nabi Saleh “resistance” leaders Bassem and Nariman Tamimi. As I have shown in a previous EoZ post, both Bassem Tamimi and his wife Nariman (as well as their famous daughter Ahed aka “Shirley Temper”) are Facebook “friends” with a certain “Princess of the Free” – and the content posted by this user indicates that this pseudonym is used by Ahlam Tamimi, who displays as her profile and cover pictures images of Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri, the terrorist whom Ahlam sent to detonate himself in the crowded Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem on August 9, 2001, killing 16 civilians , including 7 children and a pregnant woman, and wounding some 130 other people.

Nariman Tamimi has repeatedly shared posts from this page, including two posts last fall that called on individuals to perpetrate terror attacks on their own initiative and with whatever means they have available – in other words, something of a blueprint for the kind of “lone wolf” attacks that have characterized the wave of terror attacks that started last fall. Moreover, in remarks reported by an Israeli news site last September, Nariman Tamimi explicitly justified the Sbarro bombing as “an integral part” of the Palestinian struggle, declaring that “everyone fights in the manner in which he believes. There is armed uprising, and there is popular uprising. I support every form of uprising.”

And indeed, Nariman Tamimi’s Facebook posts provide ample evidence that she supports every kind of terrorism: she not only posted graphic instructions on the most lethal stabbing techniques, but also hardly ever failed to hail the perpetrators of terror attacks as heroes and glorious “martyrs.” One example is a post* Nariman Tamimi shared in the evening of March 8, glorifying the “General [grand master] of knives” who had just killed US Army veteran and Vanderbilt student Taylor Force and injured ten other people in Tel Aviv.

And while Ben Ehrenreich was busy promoting his book that glorifies the Tamimis, the Tamimis were busy glorifying* the teenaged murderer of a 13-year-old Jewish girl who was sleeping in her bed: as far as the Tamimis are concerned, this murder was a noble act that was necessary “to return to the homeland its awe/reverence”.

Whether the terror victim is a young and accomplished American stabbed to death while visiting Tel Aviv as a tourist, or a 13-year old girl butchered in her bed by a Palestinian youngster just six years older than her doesn’t really matter to the Tamimis: they will always feel admiration and patriotic pride. Ben Ehrenreich likely knows that, he just doesn’t want his readers to know it.

* Archived versions of the posts are here & here (time stamps do not correspond to Israel time); translations from Arabic courtesy of Ibn Boutros.

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07/11 Links Pt1: I incite, therefore I am; Holding Arab Culture Accountable; ISIS Comes to Gaza

From Ian:

Mordechai Kedar: I incite, therefore I am

Incitement against Israel is the only thing that the PA and PLO it established can do, because Israel has never exacted a real and tangible price for the incitement and assaults against Israel as the Jewish national homeland and its Jewish citizens. This is why the PA has adopted the religious symbols of Palestinian Arab existence, the Al Aksa mosque for example, whose surrounding area was once called "Al Haram Al Shairf." They prefer to call the entire area of the Temple Mount by the name Al Aksa, because that is mentioned in the Koran, which does not mention Al Haram Al Sharif nor the Palestinian People. By the way, the Koran does mention the Children of Israel and Jewish people many times, but not the Palestinians. I wonder why…
There is, unfortunately, no escaping the conclusion that the PA and PLO must continue their anti-Israel incitement. They have no substance or legitimacy without this struggle, so that one can deduce as a founding principle that even if another Palestinian State, in addition to the one created by Hamas over nine years ago in Gaza, is established in Judea and Samaria one day, this state will not cease its incitement against Israel, so as to justify its existence.
The proof that this is an accurate assessment is what went on in Syria under the Assad family regime, who belong to the Allawite sect: Because they were seen as heretics, collaborators and idol worshippers, they had absolutely no legitimacy and made use of anti-Israel incitement to glue together the various tribes and families who were under their dominance but who had never been a Syrian nation. There never was a united, recognized Syrian nation, a bitter truth revealed by the last five years of bloodshed and massacres. And in the same vein, there is no Iraqi, Libyan or Algerian nation either – wait a minute, there is, nevertheless, a Palestinian one? Whom are we kidding?
That is the reason the international and Israeli demand that the PA refrain from anti-Israel incitement is a demand that the PA cannot and will not accept. Ceasing incitement pulls the rug from under the already shaky feet of the PA. and is a demand that cannot be acceded to. If the incitement brings people, mainly youth, to grab a knife in order to stab Israelis, or to load a gun in order to shoot at a civilian car, that is a necessary result of the very existence of the Palestinian Authority, whose entire being is contingent on a total war against Israel, one also being waged in the media, academia, the courts and the marketplace in Israel and around the world.

Murder of Israeli-American child offers look at parental terrorism

Hallel Yaffa Ariel, a 13-year-old Israeli-American child, was sleeping soundly in her bed last Thursday when 17-year-old Muhammad Tarayrah broke into her home in Kiryat Arba, Israel, proceeded to her bedroom, and repeatedly stabbed the life out of her. This heinous desecration of life was immediately celebrated by the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, proclaiming the neutralized murderer a “martyr.” Tarayrah’s mother expressed pride in her son, describing him as a hero.
Seddique Mateen, the father of Omar Mateen, is a resident of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Hours before his son slaughtered 49 people in Orlando, Seddique, of Afghan ancestry, posted a pro-Taliban video on Facebook. On June 13, the day after his son committed the massacre, Seddique posted on Facebook,“God himself will punish those involved in homosexuality.”
Could there possibly be an ideological connection between these acts of atrocity – the teachings of the proud mother and the rants of the homophobic father? Could it be that these parents have been reading from same 1,400-year-old “playbook” of Islamist subjugation?
Might we speculate, from the same gruesome pattern of butchery found at the scene of similar bloodbaths worldwide, that the same “playbook” has been followed to breed a multi-tentacled army of predatory monsters?
Since 9/11, radical Islam has claimed over 28,000 attacks across the globe. Nevertheless, the U.S. government maintains two decades’ worth of policy delirium that refuses to name radical Islam as the cause.
By referring to the Orlando shooter as a “deranged individual,” President Obama once again obscured the obvious Islamic fingerprint of Nidal Hasan, infamous perpetrator of the Fort Hood massacre in 2009. In that instance, despite Hasan’s cries of “Allahu Akbar,” our president insisted on reframing the barbaric execution of 13 unarmed soldiers ed as a case of “workplace violence.”

Khaled Abu Toameh: ISIS Comes to Gaza

Recent reports leave no doubt as to cooperation between Hamas and ISIS groups in Sinai. These reports, the Egyptians and Palestinian Authority argue, provide further evidence that the Gaza Strip remains a major base for various jihadi terror groups that pose a real threat.
The report said that terrorists wanted by the Egyptian authorities were admitted to the Gaza Strip hospital in return for weapons given to Hamas by the Islamic State in the Sinai.
Mahmoud Abbas and the leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) can continue to talk all they want about a Palestinian state that would be established in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. But when ISIS-inspired groups are active in Gaza and there are no signs that the Hamas regime is weakening, it is rather difficult to imagine a Palestinian state.
The jihadi groups clearly seek to create an Islamic emirate combining the Gaza Strip and Sinai. Abbas might thank Israel for its presence in the West Bank -- a presence that allows him and his government to be something other than infidel cannon fodder for the jihadis.

Vic Rosenthal: Who will cut off the head of the snake?

The persistence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also abetted by Iran. Much of the intransigence of the Palestinian Arabs is due to their hope that outside pressure – both diplomatic pressure from the West and military threats, including those from Iran and its proxies – will force Israel to give in to their demands. Neutralizing Iran would take much of the military pressure off.
It is probably true that if the IRGC were to disappear tomorrow, so would most of the worst threats facing Israel. The IRGC is the “head of the snake” that former Saudi king Abdullah wanted to see cut off.
Until recently, Israel (as well as Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states) depended on the US to keep order in the Middle East and protect them from aggression. The botched response to 9/11 and the disaster of the Iraq war disrupted this, and now the Obama Administration has chosen to pull back precipitously, leaving a power vacuum that is being filled by Iran and Russia.
Israel is not a great power like the US still is or even a less-great power like Russia. It doesn’t have the depth or resources of a larger country like Iran. But it has extraordinary military power for its size. Unfortunately, despite its traditional desire to be left alone to tend its own garden, it is being forced into a situation in which the only way to guarantee its security will be to intervene more actively in regional affairs.
Someone needs to cut off the head of the snake. It may turn out to be us.

As I mentioned, I visited Ariel University last week. It is a very impressive place and, considering that it is considered by most of the world to be an "obstacle to peace"by virtue of its location on the wrong side of an arbitrary line drawn by some Westerners in 1949, it is surprisingly apolitical, with students from all over the world including Israeli Arabs. (I am told that the PA will not let Palestinian Arabs attend.)

While there, a senior official told me about something that happened not too long ago.

Ariel University was in negotiations to partner with two US universities on various initiatives as universities partner with each other all the time. (I was told which ones they were but am not permitted to name them.) One was intended to be a general partnership, the other was a specific partnership with the architecture school at Ariel which is well-regarded.

Old map of proposed fence including Ariel

Both those negotiations were abruptly cancelled.

When officials at Ariel asked the schools what happened, they were told (off the record) that the US State Department had put pressure on the American schools to stop any partnerships with Ariel University since it is in the territories.

There is no US law against partnering with schools in so-called occupied territories. There is no international law against it either. This was an initiative by Israel's greatest ally to actively work against Israeli policy and Israeli democracy. In any conceivable peace agreement, Ariel would remain in Israel, even though Palestinians claim that it destroys their contiguity. (It doesn't: the city of Jerusalem itself goes much further east than Ariel does.) Anyone who actually takes the time to visit Ariel itself would see that it is not realistic to consider dismantling it and forcibly moving its 20,000 residents somewhere else. (Which, by the way, I would argue would violate the very same Geneva Conventions article that is used to claim that "settlements" are illegal, but that is a discussion for another day.)

The State Department is working against Israel and is taking sides against Israel before any final status negotiations. The schools involved are too scared and vulnerable to push back.

This is a new low for the State Department in working clandestinely against its greatest Middle East Ally.

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Administrivia: Jerusalem speech, falafel and more

Been too busy to blog much. But Mrs. Elder and I are having a blast during our time in Israel.

Editing and uploading videos is taking a long time on the equipment we brought along so there are many interviews and events that I'll get to as soon as I can.

For example, besides the remainder of the Hasby awards (5 more parts) and more of my interview with Ben Dror Yemini, I also interviewed a world expert on antisemitism and a scholar of Islam and the Islamic world. Both fascinating interviews, and also long.

Last night I gave my speech in Jerusalem and the feedback was fantastic. I hope to upload the presentation soon. In the audience was a really nice young Arab man (wearing a kippah out of respect for the shul) who asked a great question, and a woman who is currently based in Amman, Jordan who came to Jerusalem just to hear me speak.

Also, the falafel at the greasiest gas station blows away the best falafel in New York. Just sayin'.

UNESCO has a curious definition of "history"

Times of Israel reports:

The UN cultural body’s World Heritage Committee is set to vote on a controversial draft resolution challenging Jewish historical ties to the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and calling of a return to the “historic status quo” on the holy site. A similar resolution was adopted by the organization’s executive board in April, a move that infuriated Israel.

A revised joint Palestinian-Jordanian draft resolution on “the Old City of Jerusalem and its walls” was submitted to the 21-member committee which is convening for its annual meeting in Istanbul, Turkey. The text calls for a return of the Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa Mosque to “the historic status quo,” a status that existed before the 1967 war.

The language of "historic status quo" is new and wasn't in the April resolution.

The wording implies that the anomalous situation in Jerusalem during the 19 years between 1948 and 1967 was not anomalous at all, but was a "historic status quo."

While this absurd draft resolution denies any Jewish connection to Judaism's holiest site on the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, the use of the word "historic" to refer to before 1967 could easily be used to claim that any Jewish presence in the Old City is a violation of the 1948-1967 situation when Jordan ensured that the Old City was Jew-free.

The PLO and Jordan have an interestingly skewed definition of "historic." After all, neither Jordan nor the Palestinian Arab people existed a hundred years ago, if you try to look for them in any contemporaneous newspaper articles or books.

The Palestinians use the word "Historic Palestine" to refer to the borders of British Mandate Palestine, an entity that existed for less than three decades. There are no maps of "historic Palestine" that include those borders prior to 1920.

By emphasizing the word "historic' to refer to events that are a blink in the eye of history, the Palestinians and Jordanians are attempting to remove any Jewish connection to the only historic Jewish land.

After all, if events that happened in the 20th century are "historic," then anything before than is prehistoric and irrelevant.

The intentional misuse of the word "historic" is an attempt to ethnically cleansethe Jewish people from history - and to inflate the value of the recently invented Jordanian and Palestinian Arab people.

Perhaps Israel should submit a new resolution to return Jerusalem to the historic status quo of how it was under King Solomon. At the very least it could expose how the Arabs are trying to hijack the very word.

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07/10 Links: UNESCO again tries to deny Jewish connection to Temple Mount; Another Gaza tunnel collapse

From Ian:

UNESCO again tries to deny Jewish connection to Temple Mount

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is again entertaining efforts to deny any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.
The motion, which was filed by Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, repeats previous attempts to declare the entire complex as a holy Muslim site and leaves out any relationship to Judaism, even regarding the Kotel.
It would require Israel to restore the site to its "historic status quo," presumably meaning that Jews would be banned from visiting, as was the situation under the Jordanian occupation from 1948 to 1967.
The document casts Israel in a negative light whenever possible, referring to it as an "occupying force" that allegedly violates the Geneva and Hague Conventions. The drafters claim that Israel severely damages the historic buildings, gates, windows and ceramics, and that it prevents Jordanian repair efforts.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry is working to convince countries to vote against the motion. "The document that was presented to UNESCO is an another malicious and dishonest attempt to harm Israel’s affinity with its capital," an official statement read. "This is a tendentious text and we hope that it is does not receive support from the member states. Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the nation of Israel and of Israel’s alone."
Israel's ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama Hacohen, says: "Anyone who thought that after the criticism voiced by Israeli and international Jewry against this decision and the recanting of the heads of state and foreign ministers around the world following the last decision that Palestinians would come to their senses need to come to their senses and internalize this complicated reality.

PMW: Al-Aqsa preacher: US responsible for terror in Muslim world

In a Friday talk at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Al-Abu Ahmad blamed America for all acts of terror in Muslim countries targeting Muslims. Sheikh Al-Abu Ahmad posts his videos on a YouTube channel called Aqsa Calls.
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the Palestinian Authority has repeatedly said that the US and Israel are behind the civil wars and killings in the Muslim and Arab world today.
The following is an excerpt of the Sheikh's talk, delivered at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on July 8, 2016:
Sheikh Al-Abu Ahmad, preacher at the Al-Aqsa Mosque: "America's crimes in Muslim countries are known to all. Any action carried out, any explosion and any operation in which a Muslim is killed in Muslim countries, America stands behind it, together with the infidel West that hates Islam and Muslims. It doesn't matter who takes responsibility for the crime and who announces it. We will never believe it. We will never believe it. We will never believe it because America is the one that blows up Muslims and it is the one that kills Muslims." [YouTube Channel Aqsa Calls, July 8, 2016]

Writing in Commentary magazine, Evelyn Gordon tells us:

On Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon predictably assailed Israel’s announced decision to build 800 new apartments in Ma’aleh Adumim and eastern Jerusalem. He noted that just four days earlier, the Middle East Quartet (i.e. the U.S., EU, UN and Russia) had issued a report deeming settlement construction an obstacle to peace. What Ban didn’t mention is that just a few days before that report came out, a leading Israeli leftist expert on the settlements published a comprehensive rebuttal of this claim, providing facts and figures showing that the settlements effectively aren’t growing at all.

The sheer unbridled racism and arrogance of the international Left, of the EU, the UN, and the Obama administration never ceases to amaze.

They honestly want us to believe that Jews living upon, and thus building upon, land that we come from, and that was purchased, makes us thieves.

They honestly want us to believe that the land of our ancestors actually belongs to the Arab invaders of the seventh-century CE despite the fact that Israel was the land of the Jewish people millennia before Muhammad's armies showed up with their religious-imperialist ideology of head-chopping.

The hypocrisy is profound.

The Criminalization of Jewish Existence

Ban Ki-moon wants us to think that the decision to build 800 new apartments in Ma’aleh Adumim and the eastern section Jerusalem somehow represents an obstacle to peace? How is this possible? If an Arab builds a home in the suburbs of Paris is that a war crime? Is that an obstacle to peace?

Should that Arab not be allowed to build on land that he has purchased because it is not "Arab land"?

Anyone who ever suggested any such thing would be knocked in the head as a stone-cold racist, but not if you suggest it about a Jew living in Judea!

If a Jew building a second bathroom for his family in the eastern part of Jerusalem, or anywhere in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, is an obstacle to peace it is only because the Arabs and the EU and the UN and the Obama administration have made it an obstacle to peace. There is nothing unpeaceful about building on property that one has purchased and that is precisely what we are talking about.

They are criminalizing the mere Jewish presence on Jewish land because Jews cannot live on that land if they cannot build on that land. Does the Obama administration really want to tell the Jews of Judea that if they build an elementary school for their children that they are unethically imposing upon the rights of Arabs?

A Touch of History

The Arabs stormed out of their peninsula in the seventh-century, gobbled up the Middle East, almost took-over Europe, but were stopped at the "gates of Vienna" and thereby had to satisfy themselves merely with conquering the Iberian Peninsula.

Since that time they have conducted an ongoing genocide of both the Christians and the Jews in the Middle East and, yet, somehow, feel themselves morally aggrieved.

It is an astonishing long-term propaganda success story.

Arab-Muslim imperial aggression is historically the foremost example of imperial aggression in the world. It even, remarkably, overshadows imperial Roman expansion. Medieval Christian Europe responded to this Arab-Muslim aggression against their fellow Christians with what we call "the Crusades." In the West the Crusades are interpreted as a form of European malice that is often docketed with other atrocities, including the Holocaust.

The reason for this is because, since the Enlightenment, Europe and the West have undergone a remarkable transformation that has brought us from a primarily theological worldview to a primarily secular and scientific worldview. The secular and the scientific suggested a questioning stance toward the world. This questioning stance met with Jewish introspection and moral sensibilities to give us the West as we know it today.

{G-d help us.}

As we know, the Arab-Muslim world has not gone through such a reformation since the early days of the empire... when Islam stood atop the world. There was a time when Islamic societies led in science and discovery, but those days are long over and the reason for that is because Islam means "submission" - not "peace" as Obama would tell you - and submission by its nature must stifle free inquiry.

Ask Galileo.

Settlement Construction and the Racist Left

And this brings us back around to those uppity Jews, like my friend Yosef Hartuv of Love of the Land fame, and all the other hippie Jews like, say, Yishai Fleisher, who insist that we have every right to live in the land of our posterity.

When racists like Barack Obama suggest that the Jewish people have no right to build on historically Jewish land they are resurrecting old, long established, medieval tropes that portray Jews as endless wanderers... as the Wandering Jew.

Somewhere in the introductory pages of A Tale of Love and Darkness Amos Oz reminds us that early twentieth-century European Jews were told, and I paraphrase, "Get out of Europe! Go back to Palestine where you belong!"

Now we are told by leftist legends like former White House correspondent Helen Thomas to "get the hell out of Palestine."

The Jewish people are a long abused minority and we represent a whopping .02 percent of the world population.

Much of the Left often suggests that world peace is dependent upon making the Jews of the Middle East leap through imaginary hoops.

But the Day of the Dhimmi is Done.

My suspicion is that a growing number of Jewish people are getting tired of being pushed against the wall - for our own alleged well-being - by false friends like Barack Obama.

The real lesson of the Holocaust is that we must stand up for ourselves.

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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EoZTV: #HasbyAwards part 5: Eugene Kontorovich presents Best Commentator award to Evelyn Gordon

World renowned legal expert Eugene Kontorovich starts with a comedy routine about the Hasbys and the Elders' superhero identities, but then talks about how the anti-Israel narrative is meant not to be descriptive but self-fulfilling and how people like Evelyn Gordon effectively fight the propaganda.

Evelyn talks about the importance of restating the obvious, over and over again, and how hasbara also helps even pro-Israel activists.

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.@Amnesty changes Abu Jame story, but still blames Israel

Last year Amnesty International came out with a page on the one-year anniversary of the Gaza war (advertising their very inaccurate Gaza Platform) with its usual combination of lies and half-truths.

One of the charges they made was that Israel deliberately targeted family homes for no reason except to murder entire families. Here's what they wrote:

I pointed out that by the time that they wrote this report it was already well-known that in fact there was a Hamas military commander who was killed in that airstrike, something that Amnesty purposefully hid from its readers.

We know that Amnesty hid is because it was known that 26 people were killed in the strike, not 25.

Here was what B'Tselem wrote about the Abu Jame home in 2014:

I published photos of Sahmoud and pointed out that he had a huge funeral, indicating his importance to the terror group.

I wrote at the time that it is still reasonable to ask whether the 25 family members killed indicated a violation of the principle of proportionality in war, and that Israel was investigating it.

But this proved that Amnesty knowingly misrepresented the circumstances of the incident.

This year, Amnesty put out another report on the anniversary of the Gaza war, and once again trotted out the Abu Jame family as an example of Israeli war crimes. But this time it admitted that Sahmoud was killed too:

Although Israel has not released any information on the attack, its apparent target was Ahmad Sulaiman Sahmoud, a Hamas operative, who died in the strike. The families said he was not in the building at the time but may have been in the vicinity. If Ahmad Sulaiman Sahmoud was the intended target, the attack was disproportionate and a potential war crime. It should have been apparent that a large number of civilians were in the house, and the attack should have been cancelled or postponed.

So they changed their charge from "Israel obviously targeted civilians" to "Israel should have been more careful when targeting militants." Yet they still claim "war crime."

We don't know the circumstances of the targeting of the home. But what we do know is that Amnesty was wrong to assume in 2015 that Israel had no military target, and they are wrong to assume in 2016 that Sahmoud was the only reason that Israel targeted the home. After all, if the Abu Jame family lied to Amnesty about whether they were harboring a Hamas terrorist (whether voluntarily or not) they would also lie about whether there were any command centers or weapons caches hidden in their house, which would make it a valid military target if either Sahmoud was a high-enough level Hamas operative or if the targets were of sufficient value.

Amnesty declared Israel guilty while apparently hiding some exculpatory evidence. And now they are declaring Israel guilty even with that evidence. This only goes to prove that Amnesty knows that it wants to damn Israel and it creates and modifies the narrative to achieve that aim.

It is also telling that Amnesty chose to highlight the Abu Jame family again. If Israel had routinely attacked family homes in Gaza, as Amnesty charged last year and the year before, surely they could have found other houses without any terrorists being targeted?

Yet last year Amnesty tried to do exactly that on the anniversaries of many Israeli attacks, and for virtually all the cases I was able to find a legitimate target.

Israeli air strike hit Joudeh family in their garden. 4 children & mother killed. http://t.co/gcEFrcDfMc #50days4Gaza pic.twitter.com/f6FM4eG1Eo
— AmnestyInternational (@AmnestyOnline) August 24, 2015

Fact: Homeowner Essam is a fighter for the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades of Fatah. His nom de guerre is Abu Mustafa.

Israel bombed home in #AlShati without warning & killed 6, including 4-year-old: http://t.co/MhYwhZx2gG #50Days4Gaza pic.twitter.com/Eefaf3xoAW
— AmnestyInternational (@AmnestyOnline) August 4, 2015

Fact: Two Islamic Jihad militants were killed in the same attack, including a family member.

#DeirAlBalah: family home bombed. 8 civilians killed. 2 children found on roof: http://t.co/A9ZPlxmS0E #50Days4Gaza pic.twitter.com/SYiBtu9dRl
— AmnestyInternational (@AmnestyOnline) August 20, 2015

Fact: A family member was a Hamas militant, even though Amnesty investigated this themselves and couldn't figure that out.

Amnesty's lies were demolished by me last year about Israel's supposed indiscriminate bombing of houses - and therefore they are moving the goalposts without correcting the older reports and tweets that slander Israel. This new report even links back to the old Amnesty report that gives the slander of indiscriminate bombing, a report that has not been corrected despite the fact that Amnesty clearly is aware of the facts by now, as evidenced by their grudgingly adding the fact that terrorist Ahmad Sahmoud was killed at the Abu Jame home.

If you still need evidence that Amnesty is more interested in bashing Israel than in reporting the truth, you are simply not willing to listen.

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.

Don't forget: Elder speaking in Jerusalem on Arab antisemitism tonight

I will be giving a talk on Arab antisemitism and why NGOs, the media and politicians largely ignore it.

The talk will be tonight in Jerusalem at the Young Israel of Talpiyot Mizrach.

You can sign up on Facebook.

Hope to see many of you there!

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.

07/09 Links: UNRWA – Who asked you?; Iran sought chem and bio weapons in Germany

From Ian:

New York University’s Students for Justice in Palestine Blames Police Shootings of Blacks on Israel

The killings this week of African Americans Alton Sterling and Philando Castile by police have sparked soul-searching and protests across the nation. Thousands have rallied against police violence and racism towards blacks. In Poland, President Obama took the time after midnight to deliver a sobering speech on the racial disparities in America’s criminal justice system. Both liberals and conservatives have called for reform.
Meanwhile, the New York University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine was busy trying to pin the police shootings on the world’s only Jewish state. On Thursday, the group—which advocates the total boycott of Israel—posted the following on its Facebook page:

The irony of critiquing racism in American society through the bigoted displacement of responsibility for it to Jews in the Middle East was apparently lost on SJP. As was the fact that the sordid history of American violence towards black people far predates the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. (And let’s not even get into the libelous and offensive allegation of Israeli genocide, for whose refutation one need only consult the official Palestinian Bureau of Statistics, which records the Palestinian population’s exponential growth since Israel’s creation.)
What’s particularly pernicious about the posting is that by erasing the American history of predatory conduct towards blacks and instead exporting culpability to a scapegoat, SJP short-circuits any necessary national conversation about U.S. police violence. As long as shadowy outside forces can be blamed for the problem, there will be no internal reckoning.
As of this publishing, despite critical comments on its Facebook page, NYU SJP has not apologized for crudely instrumentalizing the suffering of African Americans to disingenuously attack the Jewish state—or corrected their misspelling of Alton Sterling’s hometown of “Baton Rouge.”

David Collier: From Hezbollah to Hamas. The PSC rally at Downing Street

After the events of last weekend, when the Hezbollah flag was raised in London, spending an evening at a rally with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) seemed positively benign. How wrong I was.
08 July 2016. Richmond Terrace, London SW1A. An area directly opposite Downing Street that is used for demonstrations. It is two years since the 2014 Israel–Hamas conflict, and today the PSC dusted off their ‘stop the attack’ banners, and came out to protest.
But it isn’t 2014 anymore. It was staged to be a big event. It was an anniversary, it was advertised heavily by the PSC minions, their ‘interim head honcho’ Sarah Apps was there, as were their other ‘chiefs’. By half time I heard conversations amongst the organisers making excuses for the low turnout. Scores of banners were left by the sidewalk, with not enough hands to raise them all aloft
A fact about the state of pro-Palestinian activism is this: More people turned out for the Hezbollah Flag than for this PSC anniversary. There were 170, maybe 200. The Facebook event page suggests 557. It seems lots of those that did attend have multiple accounts on Facebook.
I did learn that I need to take my disguise up to another level. I was wearing a hat and a large Keffiyeh, but was ‘clocked’ as soon as I entered. The PSC and I have history, I am passive, I am an ‘investigative journalist’ and they don’t like what I write. A ‘persona non grata’ they can do little about.

UK Lawmakers Call for Ban of Hezbollah Following Public Outcry Over Displays of Terror Group’s Flags During ‘Al-Quds Day’ Rallies

After Hezbollah flags were waved during recent anti-Israel rallies in Britain, two lawmakers are calling for an outright ban of the Lebanese terror group, the Jewish Chronicle reported on Thursday.
In the UK, only Hezbollah’s military branch — which shares the same flag as its political branch — is classified as a terrorist organization. Leader of the House of Commons Chris Grayling announced he would be taking up the issue with Home Secretary Theresa May, after the matter was raised by MP Matthew Offord, who pledged to the pro-Israel community to address the issue in parliament.
“The European Union, including the UK, recognizes the difference between the military and political wings of Hezbollah, but such a distinction does not appear to be recognized by the organization itself,” Offord told lawmakers.
“Therefore in the light of the confusion about the legality of demonstrators displaying Hezbollah flags on the streets of London last Sunday, can we have a statement on the legality of the display of Hezbollah flags?” he asked.
In response, Grayling said, “I agree with my honorable friend. If an organization is proscribed in the UK, it should not be able to publicize itself in the UK whether through flags, or placards, or anything else.”