Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, September 17, 2016

Mahmoud Abbas' Lie of the Day

Mahmoud Abbas spoke at the Non-Aligned Nations Summit in Venezuela.

One of the things he said in his speech was that "the occupation deprives us of everything."

Really.

Here is what Abbas' Presidential Palace looks like:

Indeed, the palace only has 2 helipads.

Abbas obviously understands deprivation.

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09/17 Links: Congress Probes Obama's anti-Bibi Campaign; BDS activist: Move Israel to Germany

From Ian:

Leading BDS activist: Move Israel to Germany

It would not be absurd to relocate Israel to Baden-Württemberg, embattled German BDS activist Christoph Glanz wrote.
The news that Glanz welcomed the idea that the Jewish state should be eradicated surfaced on Thursday in a review of his YouTube comments endorsing a pro-BDS video in 2015.
Alper Çugun wrote in the comments section on YouTube in English: “I always wondered why they didn’t just carve out a piece of Germany and found the State of Israel in Baden-Württemberg” state in southwestern Germany.
Glanz responded in the same language, “an absurd idea? i don’t think so given that it was us Germans who perpetrated the genocide of Jews in Europe. and an Israeli artist came up with precisely that idea.”
The school authorities in Lower Saxony have launched an investigation into Glanz because he is a public school teacher in the city of Oldenburg.
When asked about the Israel transfer comments, Bianca Schöneich, a spokeswoman for the school system, told The Jerusalem Post on Friday, “We are examining all accessible information” as part of the legal process.
German teachers are required to remain politically neutral because of their status as members of the civil service.

The "Virtuous" New Nazis

Instead of worrying about Islamist terrorism and Molenbeek, Brussels' nest of jihadists, there are racists in Europe who want to crush Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.
They all falsely claim to be a "peaceful", using "economic means" to correct "wrongs" in the Palestinian territories. However, they never seem to try to correct any of the wrongs of the corrupt, repressive governments of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza, or even to advocate there for a free press, for the rule of law or for building a stable economy. Their true, racist motives are unmasked.
The pre- or post-1967 lines are only an alibi for these new Nazis. Many consider Israel in its entirety illegal, immoral, or both -- even though Jews have lived on that land for 3,000 years -- part of it is even called Judea. Their appetite for accusing Jews of having the audacity to "occupy" their own historical, Biblical land only reveals their collusion the darkest lies of Islamic extremists, who are trying to destroy the indigenous Christian Copts in their native land of Egypt, and the indigenous Assyrian Christians whom we see being slaughtered throughout the Middle East. Should the French be accused of "occupying" Gaul? Just look at any map of "Palestine," which blankets the entire state of Israel: to many Palestinians, all of Israel is a single giant settlement that has to be dismantled.

Gil Troy: A useless nihilist seeks asylum - The Canadian Jewish News

An Israeli leftist who supports boycotting his own country has applied for asylum in Canada, claiming that because some Israeli officials denounce the boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, he needs refuge. “I said that I’m persecuted as a BDS activist due to the general threats by ministers [Gilad] Erdan and [Arye] Deri,” Gilad Paz told Ha’aretz from his new home in Montreal, where, I guess, no public disputes ever take place and no ministers ever denounce positions dissidents take. Paz has a hearing on Sept. 29.
If I were a satirist, I wouldn’t be brave enough to make up this absurdity – who would believe it? Beyond the fact that most serious human rights activists in Israel have never even heard of this guy, the Israeli left remains loud, proud and free. Read the anger that Ha’aretz spews daily. Watch how many Israeli academics ingratiate themselves with Europeans by knocking their own country with outlandish criticisms. Beyond that, note that Israel’s political culture, while famously fragmentary and volatile, certainly compares to a burkini-banning France, to a Trumpificacious America and to a French-first Quebec. In fact, Paz’s case is less compelling than an Anglo Montrealer applying to the United States for asylum in flight from Quebec’s language police, and no American judge would take such idiocy seriously.
Alas, in our topsy-turvy world, filled with people anxious to believe the worst about Israel, many will respect Paz’s claims. To use words like “persecution,” and “asylum” and “refugee” in a conversation about the free-spirited debates of Israeli democracy demeans refugees who genuinely need asylum. Those of us lucky enough to live in democracies that pass what former Soviet Refusenik Natan Sharansky calls the public square test – can you denounce your leader publicly and avoid jail or worse – should never compare the occasional discomfort we might feel when debating with the suffering dissidents experience in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and other dictatorships.

09/16 Links Pt2: Tuvia Tenenbom: The dark side of America; Glick: Twilight of American Jewry

From Ian:

The dark side of America

Tuvia Tenenbom, author of "Catch the Jew!" and "I Sleep in Hitler's Room" sits down for a frank chat with Israel Hayom • His new book, "The Lies They Tell," exposes the real America, the one where racism and anti-Semitism lurk just beneath the surface.
Tuvia Tenenbom is a funny man. I am not the first to describe him as such. Behind the jokes and sarcasm, however, is an undercurrent of anxiety. Anyone who has read his recent travelogues knows he has taken a thankless task upon himself: village idiot, court jester, who in his profound wisdom deploys humor to reveal the existential truth cloaked by daily life. "I'm the foreign observer," he tells me, "and like the classic Jew I am a nomad, living here and there and everywhere. I am a resident of Germany, and I have Israeli and American citizenship. But I am a Jew who cares about Jews and I am not ashamed of that."
He is currently releasing a new book, "The Lies They Tell" (Sela-Meir Publishing). Following his accounts of Germany and Israel (and the Palestinian Authority), it is now the United States' turn. For seven months, Tenenbom traversed that vast country, "the land of the free and home of the brave," speaking to thousands of people on his path, from the most far-flung rural areas to the cosmopolitan centers of the universe. The result: a jarring, disconcerting testimony. Not to worry, Tenenbom knows how to serve his dishes in an easy, palatable manner, which won't allow you to put the book down until it's finished. The soul-searching and pondering will come later. The United States exposed in this book is not the idyllic dream many Israelis picture in their minds. At a cafe adjacent to Rehovot's Beit Haam community center, built in 1913 by the pioneers of the First Aliyah, we sat down for a contemplative discussion.
Were you surprised?
"Yes. I thought America was much better. When you write a book, you need to dig deep. When you live in New York, for example, you automatically make connections and bring people closer. It's something psychological that has to do with the brain's immune system; you collect people who love and respect you around you. Before I wrote the book ('I Sleep in Hitler's Room'), I didn't think anti-Semitism was common in Germany. But when you start asking pointed questions, and use humor ... you understand, I try not to be 'heavy,' we have drinks together, share a smoke, and only afterward do I ask, 'What do you think of Jews?' And things come out. I didn't think racism in America was so harsh. I didn't think there were places in the Unites States where refugee camps in Jordan and Iraq are heaven in comparison. I spent countless hours in these places, and I discovered a world that is hard to believe exists."

Khaled Abu Toameh": Palestinians: Jibril Rajoub and the "Merry Christmas Group"

Jibril Rajoub, chairman of the Palestinian Football Association and a top official of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, made the offensive remarks during a recent interview with an Egyptian television station.
Many Palestinian Christians said that Rajoub's derogatory remarks would further heighten tensions between them and Muslims. They pointed out that the top PA official was excluding them from being an integral part of the Palestinian people.
Christians see Rajoub's derogatory remarks as part of the widespread persecution of Christians in Arab and Islamic countries, which has claimed the lives of thousands of Christians over the past few years and prompted many of them to flee to the US, Canada, Australia and Europe.
In an open letter to Rajoub, who previously commanded the PA's notorious Preventive Security Force, and served 17 years in Israeli prison for terror-related charges, Bethlehem Pastor Danny Awad wrote: "We have been here for more than 2000 years... We are not strangers or guests or aliens who speak a foreign tongue."
Rajoub's disparagement of Palestinian Christians is indeed likely to encourage Christians to leave the Western-funded PA areas. Such comments are particularly unwelcome at a time when Christians in Syria, Iraq and Egypt face a campaign of terrorism and intimidation by Muslim extremists.

Caroline Glick: Twilight of American Jewry

Perhaps the most striking thing about the Jewish Republicans’ behavior is that while attacking the anti-Semites at the margins of the Republican Party, they ignore the anti-Semites at the heart of the Democratic Party.
While Trump has disavowed the support of the GOP’s Jew-hating wing, some of Clinton’s closest advisers harbor virulent anti-Semitic beliefs.
Take Sidney Blumenthal for instance. Blumenthal has been a close adviser to the Clintons for decades. We learned from Clinton’s emails made public earlier this year by Judicial Watch that Blumenthal was one of Clinton’s most intimate advisers throughout her tenure as secretary of state.
Blumenthal’s son Max is a raving anti-Semite. He calls for the destruction of Israel. He compares Israel to Nazi Germany and IDF soldiers to the Nazi SS.
Blumenthal Sr. is a proud father. He regularly shared his son’s ravings with Clinton, and she shared his delight. In eight separate emails over the course of her tenure in office, Clinton enthusiastically praised his Jew-hating propaganda.
In one message email, Clinton wrote, “Your Max is a mitzva.”
On the one hand then, we have the Jewish Democrats who are faced with a party that is increasingly controlled by anti-Semitic forces. And on the other hand we are in the midst of the collective political suicide of the Jewish Republican establishment.
It is hard to know how Israel will be affected by the dramatic enfeeblement of the American Jewish community that we are now witnessing. The fact remains that the vast majority of American support for Israel comes from the evangelical Christian community.
What is clear enough though is that the political waning of the Jewish community across the political spectrum means that the golden era of American Jewry is not only over. It is gone.

Do Native Americans know they are being used by Palestinian activists?

I received an email from "End the Occupation" about a protest this weekend:

As the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe continues their resistance to the U.S. government’s plan to install an oil pipeline on Native land, thePalestinian Youth Movement (PYM) has organized a caravan of Palestinians and allies arriving today in North Dakota to stand in solidarity.

Artwork in solidarity with Standing Rock and the water protectors. (Leila Abdelrazaq)

The proposed route of the pipeline runs through an area of Sioux land that is of utmost cultural, spiritual, and environmental significance. There are historic burial grounds, village grounds, and Sundance sites that would be directly impacted. The pipeline is also supposed to run under the Missouri River, whose water is essential to life on the Standing Rock Reservation.

Palestinians are expressing solidarity with this resistance, recognizing the similar experiences of violent settler colonialism Native American and First Nation peoples continue to endure.

While working to end all US support for Israeli settler colonialism that continues to steal the land and resources of the indigenous Palestinian population, it is essential for Palestinian rights activists here torecognize the settler colonial nature of the United States and challenge the continuing denial of the rights of Native nations and their people.

The cynicism of these "pro-Palestinian activists" who live in territory that used to be Native American land and pretending suddenly to be against the "settler colonialism" that their homes and universities are built upon would be astonishing if we already didn't see that same cynicism every day in all the other claims they make.

One of the people signing this was Anna Baltzer, who is quite American and hasn't as far as I can tell burned her US passport in solidarity with Native Americans.

My question is, do the Native Americans realize that this support is not exactly wholehearted and that they are being used, and ultimately will be hijacked, by their supposed benefactors?

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09/16 Links Pt1: The PA makes terrorism a profitable profession; Powell’s Selective Outrage

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Why the U.N.’s Israel obsession should worry even people who don’t care about Israel

One of the striking findings here is that the supposedly more sober Security Council shares the General Assembly’s vice: When it comes to settlements and occupation, it can see no evil if Israel is not the culprit.
This provides further demonstration of the findings of my new research paper, that the supposed international norm against settlers is in practice a norm about Israel, rather than a general rule of law.
But some may be inclined to shrug off the U.N.’s particular interest in Israel, on the theory that “one has to start somewhere.” In this view, international law is deeply intertwined with politics (which is true), and the international legal system is weak and immature. Dealing with alleged Israeli wrongdoings is the first level in an eventual broader and more systematic approach. Another response is that if it is impossible to censure serious wrongdoers — say, Turkey and Morocco, whose occupied territories are now mostly populated by settlers — something is better than nothing.
But the data — which covers the past 50 years — show this is not happening. If anything, causation seems to run the other way. Turtle Bay’s focus on one country has apparently robbed it of the ability to address the world’s many situations of occupation and settlements. This shows the double role of the scapegoat: It does not just get all the blame, but it also effectively absolves others. The U.N.’s blindness to settlements around the world is actually the flip side of its focus on Israel.

International Law Expert: UN’s Obsession With Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Robs It of Ability to Deal With More Serious Problems (INTERVIEW)

The UN’s obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has robbed it of the ability to deal with other more serious problems around the world, an international legal expert told The Algemeiner on Thursday.
Dr. Eugene Kontorovich — a professor at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law and head of the international law department at the Kohelet Policy Forum — said his research has found that the standards the UN applies to Israel regarding its policies in the West Bank are not applied to any other country.
“As I was doing research, one of the things I discovered was that even in situations which under international law clearly qualify as an occupation, the UN almost never uses the word occupation,” Kontorovich told The Algemeiner.
Speaking with The Algemeiner, Kontorovich said, “What Israel is told by the international community to do, which is to prevent its Jewish nationals from living in territories it controls, is told only to it. The important part of this research was not to show that there is a double standard and not to show that Israel is singled out — that’s a bit like saying cops stop minorities more on suspicion of illegal activities. What this shows is that what the UN is telling Israel to do is not legally required. In other words, the rule it says Israel is violating doesn’t exist. You can’t have a rule in just one situation.”
Kontorovich said that while change at the UN was a hopeless prospect, “the question is whether the American government will empower the UN by not vetoing damaging resolutions. Will America give greater strength and legitimacy to this dysfunctional institution?”

Powell’s Selective Outrage

Powell’s top aide and chief-of-staff for years was Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a man who has embraced bizarre, anti-Semitic conspiracies with increasing volume. He has, for example, suggested that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons was really an Israeli false flag operation. He flirted (though did not endorse) with 9/11 conspiracies. His hatred and description of neoconservatives to support various partisan polemics reads like something out if Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
While the email dump shows that Powell and Wilkerson still talk like old friends, through all of Wilkerson’s antics, Powell has said nothing, seemingly endorsing Wilkerson’s rants with his own public (and private) silence. In doing so, Wilkerson’s problem with Jewish policymakers has become Powell’s.
Of course, there’s an additional irony here to Powell’s cynicism. He may have supported Wilkerson’s efforts to delegitimize critics, figuring that so long as he himself didn’t use the dog whistles, he’d maintain his luster as a senior statesman. He may simply have also simply felt that the ends justified the means. That cynicism disqualifies Powell as any arbiter of political morality.
There’s an additional irony here, of course. Russia is the chief suspect in the hacking of Powell’s account, as well as recent hacks of the Democratic National Committee, and perhaps other figures as well. But Wilkerson often was a fixture on Russia Today (RT), the Kremlin’s chief propaganda arm. His presence legitimized the conspiracies Russian President Vladimir Putin which to disseminate. The interplay of Wilkerson and RT was symbiotic. Once again, Powell at any point could have instructed Wilkerson privately or, better yet, publicly to knock it off, to stop embarrassing him, and to stop embarrassing his country. And yet, Powell was happy to allow Russian propaganda to do its trick so long as the subject of its attacks were elements of the U.S. political debate with whom Powell disagreed.
Perhaps if Powell had guided himself more by principle than cynical political calculations, his embarrassment might not be so great.

‘The Boys in Tehran Know Israel Has 200 Nukes Pointed at Them,’ Says Former Secretary of State Colin Powell in Leaked Email

Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell told a colleague last year that Israel has a slew of nuclear weapons pointed at Iran, according to emails released by hacking group DCLeaks and reported on by US foreign policy blog LobeLog on Wednesday.
In a March 2015 exchange between America’s former top diplomat and his current business partner, Jeffrey Leeds — about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial speech to Congress to warn against the Iran nuclear deal that was being negotiated — Powell wrote:
Negotiators can’t get what he wants. Anyway, Iranians can’t use one [a nuclear weapon] if they finally make one. The boys in Tehran know Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran, and we have thousands. As Akmdinijad (sic) [said], “What would we do with one, polish it?” I have spoken publicly about both nK and Iran. We’ll blow up the only thing they care about—regime survival. Where, how would they even test one?
This assertion about the existence of Israeli nukes, as LobeLog‘s Eli Clifton pointed out, is significant, because Jerusalem continues to maintain a policy of “nuclear ambiguity.”
Powell, who publicly endorsed the Iran deal a few months later, during an interview on NBC‘s “Meet the Press,”

Aw, look at those cute kids dressed like terrorists at Islam's thiird holiest site

This photo was from earlier this week during Eid festivities on the Temple Mount:

Perfectly natural.

Teaching kids to idolize murderers and to associate terror with Islam is not outrageous, but expected by the world.

And news outlets like AP and Reuters won't show these pictures, because, you know, it might foment Islamophobia. Some things are more important than news.

(h/t Ambassador Dani Dayan via Dan K)

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Hamas' Eid al Adha Greeting Card

From the Al Qassam Brigades of Hamas comes this graphic to celebrate this year's Eid al Adha:

See how festive it is? This is the softer side of Hamas!

The Google autotranslate is not 100% accurate. It translates closer to "May you be well every year" and is used as as a standard greeting for annual holidays as well as birthdays. So, for example, this is the same phrase being posted by Hamas at the end of Ramadan this year:

The flowers are a nice touch. It makes the message of "death to Jews" a lot homier.

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Ibrahim al-Zaeem, who appears to be a cleric and an intellectual of sorts, wrote an article published in the Huffington Post Arabic where he decries any thought of Arabs accepting Israel in any way.

He starts off by saying that more and more Arabs are tacitly accepting Israel's existence, as a type of realpolitik, since Israel is strong enough that it is not going to be destroyed any time soon.

He says that these Arabs are cozying up to Israel because they believe that it is invincible and it controls the media and the banks. Probably referring to the Gulf states, he says that when they visit Israel it is in the name of tolerance of Islam.

"You fools!" he responds. "Have ye not read about Islam, but you (pretend to) know the ethics of your prophet?"

"Many in the Arab and Islamic nation, and I am one of them, refuse to mention 'Israel' in the abstract but always to mention its aggressive nature. Mentioning 'Israel' without qualification is a betrayal of Palestine! How can some people want the Arab and Muslim conscience to accept the presence of a malignant cancer in the body of the 'umma? How can they want to re-wire the Arab collective mind to deliver a fait accompli (of Israel)? How can we leave our civilization and history and heritage behind us? And for whom - for the 'chosen people!'" Zaeem adds.

He then goes on to say that Israel is quite vulnerable, as the October 1973 war and the terror intifadas and the Gaza wars showed.

Zaeem stresses that he is not against Jews but only Zionists. The only response to Zionism is jihad.

It is better to be defeated militarily that to lose one's soul, which is what the Arabs who accept Israel's existence are doing, Zaeem concludes.

If this Iranian-educated cleric had just spewed his hate in a regular Arab newspaper, this would not be very newsworthy. But for the Huffington Post Arabic to publish this (even with its caveat that it doesn't necessarily agree with the views of its writers) is much more significant - and it says more about HuffPo pushing an Iranian narrative to the Arab world even as mainstream Arabs are starting to accept Israel.

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Who is more antisemitic: Hamas or the PLO?

MEMRI translated an August sermon by Hamas MP Marwan Abu Ras:

It included a part where Abu Ras called the Jews "the vilest and most despicable nation in history."

OK, that's pretty antisemitic.

But the PLO may be worse.

Because the PLO denies that Jews are a nation or a people, claiming merely that Judaism is a religion. They deny the very idea of Jewish peoplehood. In their words:

Recognizing the Jewish state implies recognition of a Jewish people and recognition of its right to self-determination. Those who assert this right also assert that the territory historically associated with this right of self-determination (i.e., the self-determination unit) is all of Historic Palestine. Therefore, recognition of the Jewish people and their right of self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people’s claim to all of Historic Palestine.

The PLO ambassador to Chile accepted these talking points:

About the hatred we have against the Jewish people. As Palestinians, first, we don’t have hatred. Second we don’t recognize the existence of the Jewish people-there is no Jewish people.

Hamas admits that the Jewish nation exists, and merely says that it is "despicable." The PLO, on the other hand, doesn't even accept that the Jews are a people.

Which is worse?

I would argue that the PLO's denial of Jewish nationhood is even worse than Hamas' explicit antisemitism.

You can argue about the matter.. But both Hamas and the PLO are undoubtedly antisemitic by their own words.

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09/15 Links Pt2: The ADL Takes Sides Against Israel; Black Lives Matter's Anti-Semitic Bedfellows

From Ian:

The ADL Takes Sides Against Israel

When Abe Foxman retired from his post as national director of the Anti-Defamation League after 50 years there, including 28 at its head, there was uncertainty about the direction his successor would take the organization. Unlike Foxman, Jonathan Greenblatt wasn’t a longtime staffer at the anti-Semitism monitoring group nor was his background in pro-Israel advocacy or Jewish philanthropy. He was, instead, representative of a new generation of Jewish leaders, an entrepreneur and corporate executive with experience in non-profit charitable work. But the items on his resume that stood out the most to those with an eye on ADL’s ability to interact with the political world were those that spoke of his time as a staffer in both the Clinton and Obama White Houses. That raised questions as to whether the veteran Democratic operative would stand up for Israel in conflicts with his former boss.
This week we received the answer to that question in the form of an article in Foreign Policy by Greenblatt attacking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Greenblatt took issue with Netanyahu’s video posted last week accusing the Palestinians of advocating “ethnic cleansing” because of their efforts to force the eviction of hundreds of thousands of Israelis from their homes in the West Bank and Jerusalem in order to create a Palestinian state where Jews could no longer live. The Obama administration reacted to the comments with fury. The administration views arguments about whether Jews have a right to live in the territories as irrelevant to the quest to create a Palestinian state.
But rather than side with Netanyahu on a question of Jewish rights or even maintaining a stance of public neutrality while voicing his opinion behind the scenes, Greenblatt dove headfirst into this debate with an opinion piece. Echoing the administration’s talking points, Greenblatt said the prime minister was wrong to assert that Palestinians should accept the potential presence of Jews in their state the same way Jews accepted Israeli Arabs as fellow citizens with equal rights. Since Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem consider themselves Israelis and need to be protected by the Israeli Army, he says there’s no comparison. More than that, the ADL head says that by using the phrase “ethnic cleansing,” Netanyahu is invoking the specter of genocide in an inappropriate manner for “crass political ends.”
Greenblatt’s stance is deeply troubling.

UN Watch: UN Watch questions High Commissioner on Israel bias

We commend the High Commissioner for his statement highlighting abuses in many countries. At the same time, we wish to request some clarifications.
The High Commissioner rightly mentioned abuses by Venezuela, and said his office would speak out at “every opportunity.” If so, why has his Twitter account, followed by 1.5 million people, refused to post even one word on Venezuela over the past 6 weeks of escalating hunger, arbitrary arrests, and oppression?
The High Commissioner mentioned Crimea, Abkhazia, and Nagorno-Karabakh — yet failed to say that, under international law, these are occupied territories. Instead, he only used that term in one case: for the Palestinian territories. Why?
Finally, the High Commissioner criticized Iran, Syria and North Korea for refusing to cooperate with UN inquiries—and he then lumped in Israel with that list.
Let us be clear: UN Watch continues to demand that all countries cooperate with legitimate UN inquiries. But what if a UN mechanism is manifestly not legitimate?

Another amazing Second Temple find - a stone weight with a priest's name

From JPost:

A routine archaeological excavation of an Old City synagogue destroyed by Jordanian troops during the War of Independence turned into much more, after the burnt remains of rare relics from the Second Temple period in 70 AD were revealed several meters below ground level.

Among the artifacts unearthed in the 2013 excavation in the Jewish Quarter included a rare stone scaled weight inscribed with the name of a priestly family, covered in millennia-old ashes from the fire that Roman soldiers used to burn Jerusalem to the ground.

The temple in question, Tiferet Yisrael, which was built during the mid-19th century, and served as one of the two main synagogues of the Jewish Quarter, along with the Hurva synagogue, was bombed in May of 1948 by the Jordanian Legion.

Despite its historic import, the process to rebuild the synagogues did not begin in earnest until 10 years ago, said Israel Antiquities Authority archeologist Dr. Oren Gutfeld on Thursday, noting that antiquities laws require excavations before construction of any kind.

“After we cleared all the ruins from 1948, we started in the basement of the synagogue and uncovered its ritual bath [mikveh], heating system, and parts of a chandelier,” said Gutfeld, who oversaw the dig.

“And when we dug beneath the basement floor we uncovered a building from the Mamluk Period in the 13-14th centuries, which turned out to be a Byzantine structure in secondary use, probably for public purposes.”

Approximately 3 meters below the basement, Gutfeld said the Byzantine building was paved with mosaic tiles amid fresco walls, indicating it was a non-residential structure.

“Immediately after we took out the floors we arrived to a very, very massive and deep conflagration layer from the year 70 AD, when the city was burned to the ground,” he said.

“It was so massive, that every day after finishing the work we were all black [from the ancient soot], like firemen.”

Upon removing the burnt layer of debris, Gutfeld said a mikveh from the Second Temple period was found next to a storage facility filled with fragments of pottery, stone vessels, animal bones, and ancient coins.

“During the fire and destruction, something blocked it, and it stayed frozen in time for 2,000 years,” he said.

“While I was digging in the burnt layer, I found a stone weight covered with soot, and only one of the 600 stone weights uncovered from the Second Temple period had a Hebrew inscription. So, I looked at it and smiled to myself thinking maybe it’ll have an inscription, and when I put it in a bucket of water and took it out I started to shiver.”

Immersion in the water, Gutfeld said, revealed two lines of inscribed text.

“The lower line had the name of the family of a high priest named ‘Katros’ written in Aramaic, but we could not understand the meaning of the upper line until recently, which is why we delayed publication of the find until now,” he said.

After years of analysis, Gutfeld said it was recently determined that the first line also was inscribed with the family’s name, but in ancient Persian.

“It was used to measure weight on a scale – maybe even for objects in the Temple,” he explained. “So it makes sense that the family name was inscribed on the stone.”

Moreover, Gutfeld said the family is criticized in the Mishnah for being corrupt and buying the title of priesthood.

“It was very popular during the Second Temple period to buy into the priesthood,” he said.

Asked how it felt to have the soot of one of Judaism’s most historic events on his flesh, Gutfeld paused thoughtfully for a moment.

“It is amazing when you think about what you are digging,” he said, noting that neighborhood residents and rabbis came to the site to take some of the debris as souvenirs.

For now, as the new synagogue is being built, Gutfeld said he is still awaiting publication of the find in a scientific journal.

Another weight with the Kathros family name was discovered a while back in "The Burnt House," another Old City structure that is from the time of the Temple's destruction that may have actually been their family home.

(h/t Yoel)

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

On Tuesday afternoon, Shimon Peres, 93, suffered a mild stroke. Later that evening his condition worsened, and now (Wednesday morning) he is fighting for his life.

I was surprised at how sad I felt. After all, Shimon Peres is a man that I have bitterly criticized time after time. He was one of the so-called “architects of Oslo,” the men who secretly violated the law to negotiate with the PLO, and then presented their deal as a fait accompli to PM Rabin, who had no choice but to go along. How could an Israeli PM reject an offer of peace? Rabin thought he could manage the process, but the pressure that was immediately applied to him by the US placed him in the position of someone stuck on the back of an angry bull and told to ride. And then, ironically enough, he was assassinated by a right-wing extremist.

Coincidentally, Tuesday was the 23^rd anniversary of the festive signing of the Oslo Accord on the White House Lawn. I wouldn’t have known – it is not a ‘festive’ day in Israel, not at all.

I wrote that the actions of Peres, Yossi Beilin and others bordered on treason. I wrote that Beilin and the ones who went to Oslo for secret talks with PLO representatives should be prosecuted, and that Peres, who as Foreign Minister directed the negotiations without informing Rabin, should be forced to retire from public life.

I opposed Peres’ candidacy for President of the State of Israel. He never repudiated Oslo, even after the Second Intifada that took the lives of more than 1000 innocent Israelis, even after it became clear that bringing Arafat and the PLO back from exile was the single worst mistake made by any Israeli government since 1948, even after PLO incitement gave us the “Stabbing Intifada.” An arrogant man, he never said “we were wrong,” he never apologized for his role (as far as I know, neither did Beilin).

His arrogance is the arrogance of the Left, the unwavering belief that they know better than the rest of us, and that the end justifies the means. Every time he opened his mouth I was annoyed.

I wanted to yell at him “Admit it! Admit you were wrong!” But he wouldn’t.

As President, he lived like Louis XIV. His maintenance cost Israel almost $16.5 million between 2012 and 2014.

And yet, I find myself feeling remarkably sorrowful. Because this man loves his country and loves the Jewish people in a way that very few of our politicians do. He came to Israel in 1934 at the age of 11, and as a young man he became involved in the politics of the yishuv. He took on many military and political responsibilities over the years, including numerous ministries and three terms as PM.

Some say that he was responsible for Israel’s obtaining its nuclear deterrent. I don’t know, but he did play a key role in building the nuclear reactor in Dimona.

Peres has always been a Zionist. Unlike some Ha’aretz writers, he never said that if the Jewish state failed to conform to his model, he would move to Europe. He does not believe that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the Jewishness of the state and democracy, nor that the former should be sacrificed in the name of the latter. A symbol of the Ashkenazi establishment, he nevertheless didn’t call anyone “chachchachim.”

Just hours before his stroke, Peres posted a video on Facebook (Hebrew), calling on Israelis to buy Israeli-made products, “not just because it’s more patriotic, but simply because they are better.”

May Shimon ben Sara have a full and speedy recovery.

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