Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

08/17 Links Pt2: Germany’s State-run Broadcaster Peddles Anti-Israel Water Libel; Has the ADL lost the plot?

From Ian:

Funding groups like Breaking the Silence is not an accident. As the 2013 leaked report says: "Our theory of change was based on strengthening the advocacy efforts of civil society organizations and platforms in order to maintain sustained and targeted international advocacy that would oblige the international community (mostly Europe and America) to act and to hold Israel accountable to its obligations under the international law."
In Obama's first term, this meant pushing for Israelis to be "held accountable" for the 2008-9 Gaza War, when Israel barraged Hamas positions interspersed in the civilian population. The foundation's Washington office arranged meetings in 2010 with Richard Goldstone, the author of a report that said Israel may have sought out civilian casualties. Goldstone recanted in 2011, saying the report was used to demonize Israel.
In this respect, Open Society is treating Israel the way it treats autocratic countries like Russia or Iran, as an adversarial abuser of human rights. In the case of Iran though, the group has also supported Obama's outreach to the country. "Human rights defense work remains an important priority for the Iran Program," a 2014 program summary says. "But should not be pursued to the exclusion of all other work, including work on supporting better policy outcomes such as support for a nuclear deal with Iran." In 2009, the Open Society Policy Center in Washington worked with other groups to open relations with Iran, and in 2015 the nuclear deal was signed.
There has been little progress on Open Society's goal of pressuring Israel. Eight years into the Obama administration, the organization has certainly not isolated Israel as a rogue state, and it's unclear what the threat of doing so has accomplished. While Obama has been more public than any of his predecessors in condemning Israeli settlements, he has also strengthened the U.S.-Israeli military bond. The U.S. today is close to signing a new 10-year extension of the defense subsidy to Israel. Obama's advisers promise it will be the most generous aid package in U.S. history. Meanwhile, the peace process has been dormant for more than a year.
This is not to say Israel doesn't have its problems. It faces boycotts on college campuses and frosty relations in Europe, and some businesses are wary of investing in the West Bank. But in a Middle East upended by civil war and revolution, the region's one open society has not become a pariah or ended its occupation of the West Bank. Despite the best efforts of George Soros and his foundations.

Isi Leibler: Has the ADL lost the plot?

I rubbed my eyes with incredulity when I read the bizarre statements emanating from Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), one of the most powerful American Jewish organizations whose principal mandate is to combat anti-Semitism.
A few months ago I was drawn into a heated dispute with Greenblatt after criticizing an address he delivered to J Street students which included implicit criticisms of Israeli government policy and a failure to urge J Street to cease demonizing Israel and canvassing the US government to intensify pressure against the Jewish state.
Instead, he should have encouraged them to engage in the battle against the mushrooming anti-Semitism proliferating on campus. Greenblatt responded that he was “impressed” with these students and felt that they were “the future Jewish leaders of our community.”
But more recently, Greenblatt appears to have entirely lost the plot, behaving as though he remained employed by the Obama administration.
He was entirely out of line in his condemnation of the Republican platform as “anti-Zionist” for omitting reference to a two-state solution.
One can disagree about a two-state policy, but for an American Jewish organization which must remain bipartisan and should be concentrating on anti-Semitism, to issue such a statement breaches all conventions. It is totally beyond the ADL’s mandate to involve itself in such partisan political issues.

Zionist-Hating Young Labour Chief Pictured Brandishing Gun

Young Labour’s International Officer Abdi-Aziz Suleiman sparked a furore over the weekend when he appeared on the Iranian state-run Press TV to defend Corbyn. He has previous. In another Press TV interview, Suleiman rails against “dedicated Zionists” and rants about Israel. When he was called out, he responded by arguing Israeli media should be boycotted instead. What does the Momentum-backed Corbynista get up to in his spare time? The above image of Suleiman brandishing a gun, finger curled around the trigger, has been circulating in Labour circles. He reassures Guido he was just on holiday in America. Glad to hear he’s not taking the whole Jezbollah thing too seriously…

Why is Pollard being Forced to Violate the Jewish Sabbath? (Judean Rose)

I am pleased to announce a new columnist, Varda Meyers Epstein, winner of this year's Hasby Award for Best Social Media Advocate for Israel.

by Varda Meyers Epstein

There was always something wrong about the Pollard case, a cloud of hovering stench. Pollard was punished for giving critical info to an ally; info the U.S. was bound to give that ally (Israel) according to signed agreements between the two countries. But still, the U.S. called it "spying" and put Pollard behind bars for life, the same sentence given Aldrich Ames for the treasonous act of sharing critical U.S. defense secrets with the enemy.

Pollard was no threat to anyone, and still, the powers that be didn't let him attend his father's funeral. He was dangerous to no one and still the powers that be let him waste away without proper medical treatment. Lame duck presidents running out their final days in office could have pardoned Jonathan Pollard, but did not do so.

One might suppose that Pollard was the Jew behind bars, a captive proxy for all the ways U.S. presidents wanted to slap Israel's hands for being too uppity. And now that he's been sprung, they're still slapping him around, the Jew Pollard. They have taken away the thing that is dearest to him, his observance of the Jewish Sabbath.

And they won't give it back.

Here is how they make Jonathan Pollard break Shabbos:

By the terms of his parole, Pollard is forced to wear an electronic tracking device on his wrist, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The device cannot be removed and must be recharged by Pollard's own hand. This can only be accomplished by Pollard plugging the device into an electric socket and sitting immobile for several hours a day. It is a violation of the Jewish Sabbath to plug an electric device into an electric socket.

Now when fully charged the transmitter lasts, at most, 24 hours, that is as long as Pollard is sitting still at the base station. If he moves outside the range of the receiver, however, the device begins to track his location, which uses up the battery faster.

Since the duration of the Sabbath is 25 hours (not to mention Jewish holidays which are twice as long), even if Pollard were to sit absolutely still at the base station, he'd need to plug in the device to recharge it at least once during this time, thus violating the Sabbath.

But there's more: in addition to being forced to violate the Sabbath, Pollard is unable to attend Sabbath services where he might be able to pray with the prescribed quorum of 10 men (a minyan). At an earlier hearing, Pollard's lawyers argued that, “Courts have held that ‘an opportunity to worship as a congregation by a substantial number of prisoners may be a basic religious experience and, therefore, a fundamental exercise of religion.’”

Perhaps the most irksome part of all of this is the fact that Pollard's right to observe the Jewish Sabbath was sacrosanct as long as he remained in prison. From the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) website:

Courts have also found that restrictions requiring prisoners to violate the Sabbath or other religious duties violate the First Amendment. McEachin v. McGuinnis, 357 F.3d 197, 204-05 (2d Cir. 2004) (intentionally giving Muslim prisoner an order during prayer may violate First Amendment); Love v. Reed, 216 F.3d 682 (8th Cir. 2000) (failure to provide inmate with food from the prison’s kitchen on Saturday for his consumption on Sunday violates the Establishment Clause where the inmate’s sincerely held religious belief prevented him from leaving his cell or working on the Sabbath, or eating food prepared by others on that day); Hayes v. Long, 72 F.3d 70 (8th Cir. 1995) (requiring Muslim prisoner to handle pork violated First Amendment); Murphy v. Carroll, 202 F. Supp. 2d 421, 423-25 (D. Md. 2002) (prison officials’ designation of Saturday as cell-cleaning day violated Free Exercise rights of Orthodox Jewish prisoner).

While in prison, Pollard could keep Shabbos to his heart's content. Having been "set free" however, his conditions are actually more, and not less onerous. The question is "why?"

It is widely accepted that the information Jonathan Pollard shared with Israel has been long ago rendered moot and therefore harmless. Releasing him to such harsh conditions in which he cannot leave the house to seek gainful employment or observe his most basic religious rights seems to be gratuitous and cruel: retributive. Of U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest's recent decision to keep these restrictive parole conditions in place, Nachman Shai, head of the Knesset's Pollard Caucus, said, “It is frustrating to see that the unmerciful pursuit of Pollard by American authorities continues,” Shai said. “We have been saying ‘enough is enough’ for so long, and the response has been insensitivity and inflexibility. He should be allowed to live a normal life, but he can’t when he is stuck to his house and prevented from working in a manner that has passed all limits of what is reasonable. They let him leave jail, so they should have let him have a longer string.”

One has to wonder whether there is something darker to the decision to deprive Pollard of his civil liberties, just as there was something dark about keeping him imprisoned for so long. Oft-quoted essayist Ahad Haam said that "More than Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews." It is no exaggeration to say that remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy ensured Jewish survival, helping the Jews outlive enemy after enemy over a two-thousand year span. It is what set the Jews apart from the others, helped us stay what we were and still are, so many years later. It kept us alive as a people, a nation.

And maybe that's the problem, from the perspective of those who insist on taking this cherished right, the right to keep the Sabbath, away from one man, Jonathan Pollard.

Our efforts to honor Sabbath day despite the Crusaders, despite the Inquisition, despite the Holocaust makes it rankle all the more that the courts have played fast and easy with this, our cherished observance. They have deemed our Jewish Sabbath not important enough for them to stop playing this game with Jonathan Pollard, in which they rob him of everything he cares about, by making him break Shabbos.

Or maybe it's the complete opposite of that: they want to break him.

If you look at the photos of Jonathan Pollard, you can see it happening. He is no longer a cunning New York Jew in a whole mess of trouble, but a kindly-looking meek man, afraid of his own shadow.

All he has left, it seems, is his Yiddishkeit and his love of Israel.

Which is why they'll never let him have those things. They'll never let him observe his Jewish religion or live in the Jewish State.

That would be letting him win, the Jew. The Jew Pollard.

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This video, of Hebrew University professor Moshe Sharon, has been going around Muslim websites as proof that a Jewish professor accepts Islam as the perfect religion, that Mohammed was the best prophet after a long line of Muslim prophets starting with Adam, that Islam is a universal religion meant for everyone on Earth, and that it is the job of Muslims to spread their religion.

It is laughable because it is obvious that the snippet is showing Sharon describing how Muslims interpret Islam, not what he believes. I found the original video - from Arutz-7 in 2011 - and while this one isn't edited much, the context is missing. As A7 says:

Professor Moshe Sharon, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, took part on Sunday in the Holy Temple Conferences held by the Movement for Temple Renewal with the participation of leading temple-oriented organizations.

During the conference, which took place in the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem, Prof. Sharon warned against Islamic revisionist history, and explained the Islamic worldview of history and geography.

In fact, Professor Sharon is quite critical of Islam. Here are excerpts from a 2003 article he wrote:

Peace in Islam can exist only within the Islamic world; peace can only be between Moslem and Moslem.

With the non-Moslem world or non-Moslem opponents, there can be only one solution - a cease fire until Moslems can gain more power. It is an eternal war until the end of days. Peace can only come if the Islamic side wins. The two civilizations can only have periods of cease-fires. And this idea of cease-fire is based on a very important historical precedent, which, incidentally, Yasser Arafat referred to when he spoke in Johannesburg after he signed the Oslo agreement with Israel.

Let me remind you that the document speaks of peace - you wouldn't believe that you are reading! You would think that you were reading some science fiction piece. I mean when you read it, you can't believe that this was signed by Israelis who are actually acquainted with Islamic policies and civilization.

A few weeks after the Oslo agreement was signed, Arafat went to Johannesburg, and in a mosque there he made a speech in which he apologized, saying, "Do you think I signed something with the Jews which is contrary to the rules of Islam?" (I have obtained a copy of Arafat's recorded speech so I heard it from his own mouth.) Arafat continued, "That's not so. I'm doing exactly what the prophet Mohammed did."

Whatever the prophet is supposed have done becomes a precedent. What Arafat was saying was, "Remember the story of Hodaybiya." The prophet had made an agreement there with the tribe of Kuraish for 10 years. But then he trained 10,000 soldiers and within two years marched on their city of Mecca. He, of course, found some kind of pretext.

Thus, in Islamic jurisdiction, it became a legal precedent which states that you are only allowed to make peace for a maximum of 10 years. Secondly, at the first instance that you are able, you must renew the jihad [thus breaking the "peace" agreement].

In Israel, it has taken over 50 years in this country for our people to understand that they cannot speak about [permanent] peace with Moslems. It will take another 50 years for the western world to understand that they have got a state of war with the Islamic civilization that is virile and strong. This should be understood: When we talk about war and peace, we are not talking in Belgium, French, English, or German terms. We are talking about war and peace in Islamic terms.

What makes Islam accept cease-fire? Only one thing - when the enemy is too strong. It is a tactical choice.

Sometimes, he may have to agree to a cease-fire in the most humiliating conditions. It's allowed because Mohammed accepted a cease-fire under humiliating conditions. That's what Arafat said to them in Johannesburg. When western policy makers hear these things, they answer, "What are you talking about? You are in the Middle Ages. You don't understand the mechanisms of politics."

Which mechanisms of politics? There are no mechanisms of politics where power is. And I want to tell you one thing - we haven't seen the end of it, because the minute a radical Moslem power has atomic, chemical or biological weapons, they will use it. I have no doubt about that.

Now, since we face war and we know that we cannot get more than an impermanent cease-fire, one has to ask himself what is the major component of an Israeli/Arab cease-fire. It is that the Islamic side is weak and your side is strong. The relations between Israel and the Arab world in the last 50 years since the establishment of our State has been based only on this idea, the deterrent power.

The reason that we have what we have in Yugoslavia and other places is because Islam succeeded into entering these countries. Wherever you have Islam, you will have war. It grows out of the attitude of Islamic civilization.

What are the poor people in the Philippines being killed for? What's happening between Pakistan and India?

Furthermore, there is another fact that must be remembered. The Islamic world has not only the attitude of open war, but there's also war by infiltration.

One of the things which the western world is not paying enough attention to is the tremendous growth of Islamic power in the western world.

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You Can't Tell People The Truth About Me! That's Slander! By Ashraf Hakimi,SJP (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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You Can't Tell People The Truth About Me! That's Slander!

By Ashraf Hakimi, Students for Justice in Palestine

I've had enough of pro-Israel propagandists harming the Palestinian Muslim cause by taking my exact words, in context, and making them public, which results in people considering me a bigot and supporter of violence. You can tell the truth about me! That's slander.

The Palestinian cause will never make the inroads it needs to make in American society if the public gets the wrong idea about our movement - which is to say, exactly what our movement is about. It will not do to have Americans realize we stand for all the things they oppose: religious and ethnic discrimination, genocide, violence, dehumanization of Jews, and sundry other Palestinian values. If Americans get the impression that we are exactly who we are, we don't stand a chance of garnering enough sympathy to affect policy. So it's not fair, and probably immoral, to have these facts exposed where everybody can know them. It's damaging to our cause, and therefore slanderous.

Yes, technically, slander refers to untrue statements, but since my cause by definition represents truth - it is, after all, the one I choose to promote - then other things that happen to be true in terms of facts and the like must not get in the way of advancing that cause. All you have to do is redefine truth, and you can redefine slander to mean what we want. We do it all the time. Look at what our movement has done with "peace," "Apartheid," and the term "Palestinian" itself. That was a masterstroke, that last one.

But I digress. The point is, when my allies and I get filmed calling for the murder of Jews, or excusing it, that cannot be allowed to see the light of day. Similarly, it is slanderous - remember, we're using my definition of it - to take posts or comments any of us make on Facebook or Twitter or whatever, and show them to people outside our movement. They just won't understand. They'll get all caught up on the fact of our trampling free expression by shouting down anyone who disagrees, or of our engaging it what they would consider slander, and miss the real message, which is that Israel has no right to exist, Jews are ape-pigs, Jews control the media and banks, there's a genocide of Palestinians, our culture is being erased, we were always there, and other truths that inconveniently don't have the facts to support them.

It's slanderous, I tell you.

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08/17 Links Pt1: It’s a bad day for Anjem Choudary – and a good day for secular law; Is the US Complicit in UNRWA-Hamas Cooperation?

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: It’s a bad day for Anjem Choudary – and a good day for secular law

So farewell then Anjem Choudary. At least for a few years. Britain’s biggest loudmouth Islamist has finally been convicted in the UK for encouraging support for Isis. He now faces up to ten years in prison.
There have been reporting restrictions on his conviction for several weeks now, as we waited for the conclusion of the trial of his associate Mohammed Mizanur Rahman. But now it’s over. At least for a while. There is much to say, but allow me one particular reflection for now.
Like his mentor and predecessor Omar Bakri Mohammed, Anjem Choudary was always a subject of enormous interest in Britain and abroad. Indeed you could argue that for some years now he has been Britain’s most famous Muslim. Most Muslims understandably hated this, but so did everybody else. I once ground my teeth hearing him introduced by a foreign interviewer as ‘leading British Imam Anjem Choudary.’ He was regularly invited onto television and gave other media interviews liberally, as it were.
Which was understandable because he was the perfect go-to guy. Where others ‘ummed’, ‘ah-ed’ and talked of ‘context’ Choudary could be relied upon to give his fundamentalist views straight up. Yet as a trained solicitor he knew where the lines were and carefully stepped away when he felt you encouraging him over them. This was always done in the mutual awareness that his views lay a long way over that line. Whenever people – especially Muslims – assured me that Choudary was merely a joker I always reminded them that in that case he was a joker with a particularly unfunny contacts book.
But all of this presented a problem for the media. You couldn’t avoid him – as some people insisted the media do – not least because (as with the murderers of Lee Rigby) he had a tendency to know the terrorists who were the story. But each non-avoidance of course also made him grow, which among other things risked further flagging him up for anybody attracted to his kind of extremism. But could someone so outspoken seriously be at the centre of anything? Surely every movement and word was listened into by someone?

Web of hate: How Anjem Choudary's sermons inspired a generation of home-grown terrorists while he played cat and mouse with the police for two decades

The hate-filled circle around Anjem Choudary has been a breeding ground for the Islamic extremism which has plagued Britain in the last two decades.
Former law-student Choudary, who previously called for adulterers to be stoned to death and branded UK troops 'cowards', has always hidden behind free speech rules whenever challenged by the authorities.
But the group he helped to set up have been linked to a series of terrorist attacks, as easily-influenced young men became inspired by his twisted vision of jihad.
The best known of his disciples was Muslim convert Michael Adebolajo, who, along with Michael Adebowale, attacked Fusilier Lee Rigby with a meat cleaver in Woolwich in 2013 in a murder which shocked the country.
Adebolajo was a supporter of Choudary's al-Muhajiroun group and was pictured standing behind the hate preacher in 2007.
After the incident, Choudary said Adebolajo was 'a practising Muslim and a family man' who he was 'proud of'.
But he denied encouraging the killer to carry out the attack, insisting he was 'channeling the energy of the youth through demonstrations and processions'.

Diaa Hadid in the New York Times has written some surprisingly good articles in recent weeks. Earlier this week she wrote one about how Israeli doctors, through the Save a Child's Heart program, saved the life of an Afghan boy in Pakistan with a heart defect.

I've written about SACH in the past and even visited them. It is a great organization that is happy to help whenever it can. It is not political and does only good.

For the most part, Hadid's article is positive, describing how the child, Yehia, managed to get to Israel and be helped. She give background on the organization:

Yehia — whose father spoke on the condition that the family name not be published for fear of a backlash if it became known he had taken the boy to Israel for treatment — is the first Afghan treated by Save a Child’s Heart in its 20 years of operations. About half the charity’s 4,000 patients have been Palestinian; 200 others were children from Iraq and Syria, and the roster includes patients from Tanzania, Ethiopia and Moldova.

But she cannot resist finding someone to accuse the dedicated doctors of SACH of "med-washing:"

Tony Laurance, head of a group called Medical Aid for Palestine, said that while providing children “world-class surgery” was “an unequivocal good,” it should not obscure the broader impact of Israeli policies on medical care for Palestinians. Gaza hospitals are perennially short of medicine, equipment and well-trained staff because of Israeli restrictions on travel and trade, and many Gaza residents struggle to get exit permits for care outside the territory.

“What gets up my nose,” Mr. Laurance said, “is that it presents an image of Israel that betrays the reality.”

Israeli doctors saving Muslim lives "gets up his nose" because it "betrays reality"? Laurance is saying that positive articles about Israel must not be published because they blunt the impact of the unrelenting anti-Israel propaganda that he and his organization pushes.

Laurance's idea of "reality" is that Gaza suffers shortages of medicine and equipment because of Israeli policies, a statement that Hadid does not check. It is unequivocally false. While a tiny percentage of medical equipment going into Gaza may be delayed because it could be considered dual-use, if it is legitimate it gets through. And there are no restrictions on medicines altogether. Teh medicine restrictions are because of infighting between Hamas and Fatah, plus Hamas stealing aid. It has nothing to do with Israel.

Laurance lied, and Hadid allowed the lie to be published unchallenged in the New York Times.

Even his statement about "many Gaza residents struggle to get exit permits " is skewed. I have no doubt that there is paperwork to complete and approvals involved, but they are traveling to another country - the restrictions are not any worse than with most international travel. Beyond that, Mr. Laurance conveniently decides not to say a word about that other country that borders Gaza, an Arab country, that refuses virtually all patients from entering. Which calls into question the true interest he has in Medical Aid for Palestinians (the actual name of the organization) - how much of it is altruistic and how much is political?

There was no reason to include his mini-diatribe in the article, and in fact it is a jarring departure from the tone of the rest of the article. But what is worse is that the casual reader would think that the NYT agrees that Israel restricts medical aid to Gaza.

(h/t EBoZ)

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Saeb Erekat wrote an article in Newsweek that is the usual mix of half-truths, lies and omissions.

Israeli government officials have announced further measures against nonviolent actions by civil society. During the First Intifada, the Israeli occupation authorities deported non-violent activists and tried to prevent any peaceful demonstration against the imposed and oppressive policies. Nowadays, Israel, with some international support, is trying to quash a growing solidarity movement with the Palestinian cause for freedom and independence.

Over the past year, the Israeli government and other organizations have conducted a campaign against any expression of disapproval of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, its crimes and its racist policies. Palestinian human rights organizations, such as Al Haq, have been victims of orchestrated efforts aimed at jeopardizing their funding, including vicious attacks and hateful incitement that has led to death threats against some of their employees.

Regrettably, this campaign against Palestinian civil society and partners has been somehow accepted and even encouraged by some members of the international community. We were astonished to see an official European Union presence at two anti-BDS conferences, with the EU representative to Tel Aviv not only praising Israel for its “human rights record,” but also by publicly stating that “settlement products are welcome in European markets.”

The PLO is clearly panicking over anti-BDS moves in Europe. And Erekat is happy to publicly support BDS, which supports the destruction of Israel.

Erekat doesn't want readers to know that the point of BDS isn't peaceful protest against Israeli policies but a campaign to destroy Israel itself, as its leaders admit. No other nation faces such a challenge, which is the reason that the EU has been backtracking on its support for BDS. Europe's anti-BDS moves are based on existing EU anti-discrimination laws, something else Erekat doesn't want the readers to know.

Another thing that Erekat doesn't want Newsweek readers to know is that BDS is against any peaceful cooperation between Israel and Palestinians. The movement condemns any joint sports programs, peace seminars or any other contact between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs - in direct opposition to the EU, which pours money into such programs to help establish an atmosphere of peace in the region. BDS is fundamentally against a two-state solution that the EU supports.

BDS rules would prohibit any nation from competing against Israel in the Olympics, and it supports athletes from refusing to compete and refusing to shake hands with their Israeli opponents. That is something else Erekat desperately wants people not to know.

The biggest omission is the statement from Mahmoud Abbas himself in 2013:

“No, we do not support the boycott of Israel,” the Palestinian leader told a group of South African reporters on Monday. “But we ask everyone to boycott the products of the settlements. Because the settlements are in our territories. It is illegal.

“And the Israelis should first of all stop building in our territories, should stop everything in our territories,” he stated, according to South African media outlet The Star.

“But we do not ask anyone to boycott Israel itself,” he reiterated. “We have relations with Israel, we have mutual recognition of Israel.”

That reluctance to publicly associate the PA with BDS continues to this day.

Erekat most certainly doesn't want Newsweek readers to know that - because it undercuts his entire thesis that such boycotts help the cause of peace.

It is interesting that Erekat has chosen the very time that BDS is failing as the time to try to prop it up, against the PA's own policies. Either it is another example of spectacularly bad timing on the PLO's part, or an attempt by Erekat to bolster his own chances to succeed Abbas as the PA and PLO leader.

(h/t Dan P)

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Palestinians agree: they have little or no freedom of expression. What does this mean for the media and NGOs?

Here is another major finding from the recent JMCC poll I mentioned earlier also didn't get any attention in the media either.

The survey asked, "There has been a debate recently on the issue of freedom of expression in the Palestinian society. In your opinion to what extent is the freedom of expression permissible in the PA-controlled territories?"

The answers are telling. 21.2% said that there was freedom of expression "to a very great extent" (2.2%) or "to a great extent" (19.0%).

However, a total of 74.3% said that freedom of expression was "low" (32.8%), "very low" (18.1 %) or "not permissible at all" (23.4%).

There are ramifications to this news.

If Palestinians themselves agree that there is little or no freedom of expression, then that means that their newspapers, TV stations and even social media are not accurate barometers of reality. The news that is published is the news that is allowed to be published by the governments of Fatah and Hamas.

It also means that Palestinian stringers for major networks and wire services have no more freedom of expression than any other Palestinian. This naturally implies that any reporting from areas under Palestinian control is ab initio suspect .

None of this is a surprise, but it shows that the news media that operates in the territories is not being honest by default. If they cared about accuracy, they should say that the reporters and news services are under pressure - sometimes overt, often covert - that shades the coverage towards the story that the authorities want the world to hear. If news services valued accuracy, they they must inform their readers of any factors that could be coloring their stories, and let the readers decide what the truth is.

There is another ramification. If the Palestinians widely believe that they have no freedom of expression, then one would expect NGOs to pressure their leadership on this issue. Amnesty and other NGOs have elaborate programs to defend freedom of expression worldwide.

Yet I have not seen any initiative of any consequence targeting Palestinian territories. The topic is mentioned briefly in the annual Amnesty report, but the last time I can find that there was a report specifically on the topic of freedom of expression under the PA was in 2000. HRW is somewhat better, but often feels it must "balance" its reports by throwing in gratuitous anti-Israel accusations for no reason.

What it also means for the NGOs is that they must adhere to known fact-finding standards in order to ensure that what people tell them reflects reality, not what people think that their local security services want them to say. Palestinian Arabs have made up anti-Israel accusations without any support many times - a phenomenon that Amnesty itself has noted. But as long as the NGOs refuse to use published standards that can eliminate bias, their reports themselves will continue to suffer from the same bias that Palestinian Arabs see in their media every day.

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08/16 Links Pt2: The Palestinian Charity Trap; The Illiberal Left and Political Islam

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: The Palestinian Charity Trap

World Vision officials have professed to be “shocked” by the arrest in Israel last week of Mohammed El-Halabi, the head of the megacharity’s Gaza operations. Mr. Halabi is accused of repurposing over the course of 10 years up to $7.2 million a year, in cash and materials, to Hamas. That’s approximately 60% of World Vision’s total aid to Gaza.
The broader problem is that due diligence for humanitarian aid in war and terror zones requires the allocation of significant resources and a professional staff capable of detaching itself from the pressures and sympathies of the local environment. World Vision, like most aid groups operating in Gaza, clearly failed in this respect.
World Vision’s troubles in Gaza reflect the broader moral failures of the humanitarian-aid industry. The narrow vision of aid workers contribute to a willful blindness to terrorism. The competition for publicity and donations results in alliances with brutal regimes and corrupt warlords. But thanks to the NGO “halo effect,” many donors also neglect due diligence, instead relying on the pure reputation of the recipient organization.
Aid groups also need to obtain and use intelligence information, particularly regarding employees and their activities. Some of this can be developed internally, and some can be purchased from consulting firms. And instead of adopting the Palestinian culture of noncooperation with Israeli security, it is in the interests of these organizations to quietly open channels of communication and information sharing.

The Illiberal Left and Political Islam

The liberal dread of being labelled Islamophobic, a penchant for tolerating the intolerant, combined with the fear of provoking violence, has effectively silenced intelligent debate about the rise of political Islam in Europe and its impact on secular democratic politics. Over the past decade, not only the media but also the art world has opted for collusion and self-censorship.
The combination of Islamophobia, balance and the omnipresent threat of violence means that it has become impossible to organise a conference or even a debate on political Islam and freedom of expression on a British or Australian campus. The preoccupation with “safe spaces” on Western campuses, along with the fact that the Gulf States endow chairs in Islamic Studies at Oxford, Princeton and Griffith University in Australia further inhibits discussion. Of 198 member states of the UN, ninety-four have blasphemy laws and the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation regularly pushes for the UN Human Rights Council to recognise the defamation of religion.
The rising price of political freedom, it seems, is too high for many Western governments to pay. The long war for cultural freedom which began in 1989 is in serious danger of being lost. As Karl Popper observed of an earlier totalitarian threat to the open society, “If we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” We should therefore claim “in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant”. Unfortunately, this argument does not gets much air-time, let alone political support.
The UK media and the national student union now consider any mention of inconvenient facts about vote rigging in Asian, primarily Muslim communities, or the imposition of sharia law in some UK communities, as “Islamophobic”. Thus the Guardian, the BBC and academe ignore or condone the profound change in the character and conduct of UK politics that the resistible rise of Sadiq Khan and Naz Shah intimates.
“Life imitates art, far more than art imitates life,” Oscar concluded his essay on lying. Yet the slow-motion collision of mainstream Islam with the multicultural transnational Left has led to a Ben Abbes-style transformation of liberal democratic London into a progressively illiberal, Islamophile Londonistan that exceeds even Houellebecq’s fervid imagination.

Michael Lumish: This Week on Nothing Left (August 16, 2016)

These guys are a breath of fresh air.
Nothing Left - Episode 112 - 8/16/16
Rev Willem Glashouwer & Andrew Tucker (Christians for Israel)
Aussie Dave (Israellycool)
Julie Nathan (Executive Council of Australian Jewry)
Michael Kuttner (The Israel Resource News Agency)
Isi Leibler (Jerusalem Post)

There are three reasons I'm posting this bigoted, hateful, and inciteful speech given by Palestinian cleric Sheikh Issam Amira at Judaism's holiest spot.

One is to show what Islamic preachers say to their congregants, even when the cameras are rolling. Imagine what happens when the cameras are turned off.

Two is to see if any mainstream Muslim figure will denounce him, or at least disagree with him publicly on his interpretation of the Koran. Because if what he is saying is true, then that is a problem for the West than goes beyond worries about immigration and silly arguments about burkinis.

And three is to see if any supposedly liberal group will condemn these words.

I'm not betting on either #2 or #3.

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.

Jewish time is different. In addition to being unusual, this difference is important because it is one of elements that that has preserved the Jewish people over the centuries.

What's 2000 years?

Americans think that 100 years is a long time. Many do. There are other nations that know better, for example the Greek and Italians who can see the evidence of their ancient history and know the impact their culture has had on the world.

It is not the existence of a glorious past or even the sheer number of years that make the difference - it is the way they are remembered. Time is shaped by memory.

On Tisha B'Av, the 9th day of the month of Av (Jewish calendar) we commemorated the day when both the first and second Temples were destroyed, the first by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E.; the second by the Romans in 70 C.E.

Tisha B'Av is a day of mourning, fasting and introspection. Secular Jews may not fast but do spend the day thinking about hatred (which is what led to the destruction of the Temple) and how we can make our society a better, kinder place.

The Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E. it is now 2016. Nations rose and fell, borders were drawn and redrawn. Many wars occurred. A number of genocides. The Holocaust. Indoor plumbing, electricity, cars and the internet. It is next to impossible to fathom all the changes that have occurred in that time.

One thing has not changed. The Jewish people still exist, remember the Temple in the heart of Jerusalem and mourn its loss.

The Temple that stood on the Temple Mount was built on top of the Foundation Stone, the rock tradition says God used as a foundation for creating the world. The Ark of the Covenant was placed on top of the Foundation Stone, in the Holy of Holies, making the Temple the physical home of God in the world. God is intangible and everywhere but that is the spot that marked God's resting place thus making it the center of the world.

The Temple was the center of Jewish culture. It was the place the Nation of Israel looked to, gathered in and focused on. Destroying the Temple was meant to destroy the Jewish people. The exile that followed, scattering the Jews across the globe, should have eliminated any cohesive nationhood that existed. The people should have become like the nations they lived amongst and forgotten their Jewishness, that they belonged to Israel and that there is supposed to be a Temple on the mountain in the heart of Jerusalem.

It didn't work.

Why?

You could say the religion helped preserve Jewish culture (and it did) but throughout history there have been other nations whose religion was not enough to preserve them. You could say sheer stubbornness. That is also true but many other people are also stubborn so obviously that is not enough either. People of faith will exclaim: "It is God who made this so! The story of the Jewish people is that of prophesy being fulfilled."

I believe most people view the restoration of Israel as miraculous, whether they believe it is a miracle from God or a man-made miracle of sheer determination. Either way the question becomes, how was this possible?

It is easy to forget. Do you remember what you did this day one year ago? Now try imagining 2000 years ago… impossible right?

Jewish time is different. It is fluid in a way no other time is, due to Jewish memory.

Every year when we celebrate Passover, tradition commands us that we REMEMBER being slaves in Egypt. It is not our ancestors who were saved from slavery, it is each and every one of us. We were slaves. We experienced the Exodus. The Torah was given to us.

Not to people that lived thousands of years ago but to each and every one of us living today.

Ever since the Exodus from Egypt Jews have been telling their children that the rise from slavery to a free nation was their own personal miracle. Ever since Jews have been teaching their children to REMEMBER.

Today many Jews have become secular. They may never pray at all or even believe in God and yet they still preserve the tradition of telling their children of the exodus from Egypt in the present tense: "We were slaves in Egypt and God rescued us."

Jewish memory is reinforced with Jewish experiences.

Jewish women that light the Sabbath candles know that at the very same time there are women throughout their country and around the world doing the exact same thing. This is the same action and ritual that was done by countless women, over the generations, across the globe, for centuries. When I light the Sabbath candles I am not just me, I am also all of those women.

Jews lived (and are still living) in vastly different cultures. The experiences of Jews in India were different from those of Jews in France and yet they were also the same, connected by rituals, traditions, holidays, priorities and values that all stem from Judaism. Even the non-religious Jews knew they were connected by mutual heritage. Jews may live in other countries but they all belong to Israel.

It is the living memory that has preserved the traditions which, in turn have preserved Jewish culture. Our nationhood was not determined by the Temple that was the center of all Jewish experience or even by the possibility of living in the land where our nation belonged. Remembering our connection to God, Israel and each other did. Sometimes it was the nations that Jews lived amongst that helped us remember that we belonged to each other and not to them but it was always our belonging to the same memory that came first.

After the re-establishment of Israel as the Jewish State many Jews feel that their belonging to the State can replace their sense of belonging to the traditions or religion. This is dangerous in that it weakens the ties of the collective memory.

The secular Jew may teach their children of the Exodus from Egypt but forget to teach about the Temple that was once at the heart of the Nation. Religious Jews remember to grieve for the Temple, for the connection to God and the rich culture that was lost. Many secular Jews do not see this as their personal loss and this is dangerous.

Memory is what gave our people meaning and preserved it over centuries. It upheld the Jewish people through terrible experiences. It facilitates belonging, the connections of a nation between people who can live continents apart and still belong together and to the same country.

Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are central to all of this. They are what symbolize our connection to God and to the land of Israel. For centuries Jews have yearned for Jerusalem saying every year: "Next year we will be in the rebuilt Jerusalem." Jewish weddings cannot be completed before the groom publically states that Jerusalem comes before all other joys and the destruction of the ancient Temple is commemorated. It is not our holidays or our rituals that have held the Jewish people together (although they have helped) it is our core, the anchor on earth, the center of Jewish consciousness and meaning: Jerusalem and the Temple that once stood in the heart of the city.

If this is forgotten or neglected what will preserve the nation in the years to come?

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.

08/16 Links Pt1: Fatah Slams Hamas For Stealing Humanitarian Aid; ISIS Copies a Palestinian Tactic

From Ian:

Al Jazeera: Diabetes is the the leading indirect cause of death in Palestine

An estimated 15 percent of Palestinians have been officially recorded as suffering from diabetes, compared with a global average of nine percent. But Abu al-Halaweh believes the real number in Palestine is higher - more than 20 percent.
"In the surrounding areas of Yatta, we believe half of the adult population has Type 2 diabetes. But many of them don't know they have it," he told Al Jazeera, blaming the region's high unemployment rates and lack of education for the increased rates.
The Israeli occupation has exacerbated the diabetes crisis in a number of ways, "especially the psychological stress that comes from it", Abu al-Halaweh added.
"People in Gaza or Palestinian refugees suffer from an even poorer diet," he said, noting that one-third of Palestinians are considered to be short of food. "They may not have nutritional deficits in terms of calories, but the food aid they receive can be pallets of canned tuna eaten for weeks. Such an unvaried diet is not optimal."
The mobile clinic roaming the streets of the occupied West Bank is the only such service in Palestine for screening and treating diabetes patients. It also functions as a tool for educating Palestinians about the dangers of diabetes.

IsraellyCool: Fatah Slams Hamas For Stealing Humanitarian Aid Money & Arresting Journalists

The following cartoon was posted on the official Fatah Facebook page.
They seem to be taking a swipe at Hamas for misusing funds earmarked for humanitarian organizations like World Vision and the UN.
Interestingly enough, even though they post everything in Arabic, they accompanied the cartoon with the words “No comment” in English – clearly aiming it at an international audience.
They have also posted the following – again with an English description.
This all follows their biting video response to the Hamas video showing how great life in Gaza is.
Fatah are clearly on the warpath against Hamas. One can only hope this goes beyond social media and leads to a terrorists vs terrorists war of epic proportions.
My only concern is whether I have enough popcorn in the house.

Hezbollah terror cells, set up via Facebook in West Bank and Israel, busted by Shin Bet

Israel’s security services broke up two terror cells, which had been created by the Hezbollah terrorist organization, arresting nine suspected members over the past few months, officials revealed Tuesday.
Hezbollah operatives from the group’s Unit 133 — its foreign operations unit — working out of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip recruited members in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and within Israel through social media sites, notably Facebook, the Shin Bet security service said.
The terror cells had planned to carry out suicide bombings and ambush IDF patrols in the West Bank. They received funding from Hezbollah, and some members had begun preparing explosive devices for use in attacks, the Shin Bet says.
“The Hezbollah organization has recently made it a priority to try to spark terror acts, doing so from far away, while attempting to not clearly expressing its involvement,” the Shin Bet said in a statement.
The terror operatives were arrested earlier this summer, but information about the case was kept under a court-issued gag order. The Shin Bet has credited their operation with thwarting a number of terror attacks against Israeli targets in the West Bank and Israel.
According to Israel’s security forces, the ringleader of the West Bank terror cell was Mustafa Kamal Hindi, 18, a resident of Qalqilya.
During his interrogation, Hindi told interrogators that he’d been recruited through a Facebook page, “Palestine the Free,” where Hezbollah posted “anti-Israel and pro-jihad content,” the Shin Bet said.