Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 01, 2016

12/01 Links Pt1: Will Abbas pay salaries to the arsonists?; Keith Ellison - The Wrong Man at the Wrong Time

From Ian:

PMW: Will Mahmoud Abbas pay salaries to the arsonists?

While Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was accepting praise for sending Palestinian firefighters to help put out fires in Israel, the PA Finance Ministry was busy doing the paper work to start paying salaries to the Palestinian arsonists who were arrested for setting many of those same fires. So far Israel has arrested 23 suspected arsonists connected to the hundreds of fires that raged across Israel last week burning more than 500 homes and 32,000 acres of forests and national parks. According to Palestinian law documented by PMW, anyone imprisoned for "resisting the occupation" receives a high monthly salary. Therefore, all of those convicted and imprisoned for arson will receive PA salaries "from the day of arrest until the day of release."
Of course, it is not only arson-terrorists who receive a PA salary. All Palestinian, Israeli Arab and Arab terrorists from any country who are imprisoned are rewarded with high salaries from the PA. (See PMW Special Report) According to PA law and practice, "resisting the occupation" includes any Arab imprisoned for attacking Israelis by any means, including throwing a stone at a car, driving a car into people at bus stops, building bombs for suicide bombers to blow up at cafes, or shooting and stabbing civilians to death in their sleep. Since the PA automatically includes anyone who attacked Israelis or their possessions as "fighters" who are "resisting the occupation," there is no justification under Palestinian law and practice not to include last week's arsonists among the Palestinian "heroes" who receive monthly salaries.
Significantly, these salaries for terrorists rise the longer terrorists are in jail. Terrorists convicted of murder and serving life sentences will reach a high salary of NIS 12,000 a month - more than four times the average Palestinian salary.
The PA has already paid the five Hamas terrorists who murdered Eitam and Naama Henkin in front of their four children last October in total NIS 91,000 as reward for their murders. And terrorist Abdallah Barghouti has already received NIS 645,000 for building the bombs that murdered 67 Israelis at the Sbarro pizza shop, Sheffield Club, Moment Café, the triple bombing at the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, Hebrew University and No. 4 bus in Tel Aviv.
Today there are approximately 7,000 Palestinian prisoners on the PA payroll. The PA rewards them every month for terrorism, and this generous arrangement will cost the PA NIS 488 million in 2016 alone, according to the PA's publicized budget.

Alan M. Dershowitz: Keith Ellison - The Wrong Man at the Wrong Time

Ellison has struggled to explain his association with Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. He has acknowledged working with the Nation of Islam for about 18 months to organize the Minnesota delegation to Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March in Washington. However, Ellison insists that he never joined the Nation of Islam and more recently, he has held himself out as a friend of the Jewish people and of Israel. This late conversion coincided with Ellison's decision to pursue elected office in Minnesota, and an apparent realization that his association with the Nation of Islam might hurt his political fortunes. In 2006, he wrote a letter to the Jewish Community Relations Council in Minneapolis, in which he apologized for failing to "adequately scrutinize the positions" of Farrakhan and other Nation of Islam leaders. "They were and are anti-Semitic, and I should have come to that conclusion earlier than I did." In his recently released memoir "My Country, 'Tis of Thee: My Faith, My Family, Our Future," Ellison writes of Farrakhan:
"He could only wax eloquent while scapegoating other groups" and of the Nation of Islam "if you're not angry in opposition to some group of people (whites, Jews, so-called 'sellout' blacks), you don't have religion."
Ellison's voting record also does not support his claim that he has become a "friend" of Israel. He was one of only 8 Congressmen who voted against funding the Iron Dome program, developed jointly by the U.S. and Israel, which helps protect Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets. In 2009, Ellison was one of only two dozen Congressmen to vote "present" rather than vote for a non-binding resolution "recognizing Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from, reaffirming the United States' strong support for Israel, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process." And in 2010, Ellison co‐authored a letter to President Obama, calling on him to pressure Israel into opening the border with Gaza. The letter describes the blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip as "de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents."
Even beyond Ellison's past associations with anti-American and anti-Semitic bigotry and his troubling current voting record with regard to Israel, his appointment as head of the DNC would be a self-inflicted wound on the Democratic Party at this critical time in its history. It would move the party in the direction of left-wing extremism at a time when centrist stability is required. The world at large is experiencing a movement toward extremes, both right and left. The Democratic Party must buck that dangerous trend and move back to the center where the votes are, and where America should be.

2 Iranians charged with plan to attack Israeli embassy in Kenya

A Kenyan prosecutor has charged two Iranian men with collecting information to carry out a terrorist attack after they were allegedly found with video footage of the Israeli embassy.
State Prosecutor Duncan Ondimu said in court on Thursday that Sayed Nasrollah Ebrahim and Abdolhosein Gholi Safaee were arrested Tuesday in an Iranian diplomatic car while taking the pictures of the Israeli mission using a mobile phone, including when they were intercepted.
They were detained in the capital, Nairobi after they had come from visiting Kamiti Prison where they saw two other Iranians who have been jailed for 15 years on terrorism charges.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem had no comment on the incident.
A Kenyan driver, Moses Keyah Mmboga, who was chauffeuring the vehicle belonging to the Iranian embassy has been charged along with the suspects and also faces a separate charge of “abetting terrorism,” Ondimu said.

From Ammon News (English):

The Jordan Media Commission (JMC) on Wednesday circulated a gag order to all media outlets, banning publication of any reports about the Jordan Armed Forces-Arab Army, except statements made by its media spokesperson.
The decision, which covers social media networks and other websites, was taken to achieve "public interest."

Freedom House gives background on the JMC:

Further changes to the Press and Publications Law were passed in 2012, imposing restrictions on online news content and requiring news websites to obtain licenses to operate. The amendments apply the law’s existing provisions to websites, making it unlawful for online outlets to insult the royal family, harm “Arab-Islamic values,” or incite sectarian strife, among other prohibitions. Site owners are also responsible for patrolling reader comments to ensure that they do not violate the law. The government’s Media Commission—a new body created from the merger of several media regulators in 2014—can issue orders, without a court ruling, to block foreign and domestic websites that fail to comply with the law. Press freedom advocates have said the changes have had a chilling effect on free expression online, as the government has used the revised law in numerous prosecutions.

This story is already 24 hours old, in plain English, and no one has reported on it yet. Certainly there is no outrage about such sweeping censorship in a supposedly modern country - one that gets a billion dollars a year in aid from the US.

Imagine the harsh criticism if Israel - which does have a military censor for very specific, time sensitive stories - would do anything this sweeping. The anger from the media itself would have pushed the story to the front page by today.

But the liberal media simply doesn't expect Arabs, even moderate Arabs, to be held to the same standards as others. Even when the media is the victim.

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Mosaic Magazine has translated, into English, for the first time, a 1911 essay by Ze'ev Jabotinsky called "Instead of Apologizing." In the essay, Jabotinsky describes how Jews should react to the blood libel that was still popular at the time, and his advice applies very well to the similar libels hurled against Jews and Jewish nationalists today.

Read the whole thing, but here are large excerpts, perhaps 40% of the essay:

Taking a long, hard look at the current penchant for accusations of ritual murder, one is left with a most oppressive feeling—a feeling that any impressionable individual will find hard to bear. Just think about it: these things are being said about us—about me, about you, about your mother! So whenever we Jews speak with a Gentile, we must remain aware, every one of us, that our interlocutor may at that very moment be cowering to himself and thinking, “How do I know that you, too, haven’t been tippling from the glass of ritual murder?” Just try and get your head around that! I mean, when it comes down to it, this is even worse than everything else we have to put up with in this prison of a country.

I can imagine that an impressionable person—if he reflects on this accusation and all of its ramifications—may be driven mad with resentment and despair, or at least will need to sob and tear his hair out. A person less fainthearted but still naïve will need to run outside and grab passersby by their coattails and try to prove to them, until his throat is hoarse, that this is slander and that we are not guilty of anything of the sort.

But in the end someone who has been blind from birth (and we have very many people like that) will take a different course of action. He will console himself with the usual soothing phrases: that no one really believes in such absurdities; that even those making the accusations do not themselves believe them; that the blood libel is merely a political tactic; that the entire sensible segment of the Christian community (which naturally constitutes its majority) will never listen to such slander, and is even scandalized by it—in a word, that everything is just fine...

I am not one of those impressionable people who cry out in amazement, nor am I one of those naïve people who make excuses, nor one of those blind-from-birth folks who cannot see what is happening right under their noses. I must dissociate myself most emphatically from the last category. It is all very fine and convenient to imagine that your enemies are mere charlatans and fraudsters, but in the long run this kind of oversimplified explanation of an enemy’s psychology always leads to the severest outcomes. By no means are all of our enemies dimwits, and by no means are all of them liars. I strongly advise my coreligionists not to delude themselves on that score.

...For several years now, Jews in Russia have all too frequently found themselves sitting on the defendants’ bench. That is not their fault. But what definitely is their fault is this: they have been behaving like people on trial for a crime. We are continually justifying ourselves at the top of our voices. We swear that we are in no way revolutionaries, we do not shirk our soldierly obligations, and we haven’t sold Russia to the Japanese.

Then out jumps [the Jewish socialist terrorist Evno Fishelevich] Azev and we start swearing that we are not guilty, that we are not at all like him. Out jumps [the Jewish anarchist assassin Dmitry Grigorievich] Bogrov and once again we are being hauled into the dock by the scruff of our necks and once again we take on the role forced on us and we start justifying ourselves.

Now they have raised a rumpus over ritual murder, and once again we have taken on the role of prisoners on trial: we press our hands to our hearts, with quivering fingers we leaf through old stacks of supporting documents that no one is interested in, and we swear right and left that we do not consume this drink, that never has a drop of it passed our lips, may the Lord smite me on the spot. . . .

How much longer will this go on? Tell me, my friends, are you not tired by now of this rigmarole? Isn’t it high time, in response to all of these accusations, rebukes, suspicions, smears, and denunciations—both present and future—to fold our arms over our chests and loudly, clearly, coldly, and calmly put forth the only argument which this public can understand: why don’t you all go to hell?

What kind of people are we that we have to justify ourselves before them? And who are they to demand it of us? What is the point of this whole comedy of putting an entire people on trial when the verdict is known in advance? How does it benefit us to participate voluntarily in this comedy, to brighten up these villainous and humiliating proceedings with our speeches for the defense?

Our defense is useless and hopeless, our enemies will not believe it, and apathetic people will pay no attention to it. The time for apologies is over.

...We think that our continual readiness to subject ourselves without a murmur to searches, to turn out our pockets, will finally convince humanity that we are honorable people. We are constantly saying, “Look at us! We are such gentlemen! We have nothing to hide!”

But that is an outright error. Real gentlemen will never allow anyone to search their apartments, their pockets, or their souls for any reason whatsoever. Only people under surveillance are prepared to be searched at any time of day or night. And that is precisely the position we are putting ourselves in, thus tempting the most terrible danger of all: suppose we are framed for theft?

...The reason that we are not liked is not because all kinds of accusations are leveled against us: no, they level accusations against us because they do not like us.

That is why there are so many of these accusations; that is why they are so diverse and so contradictory. One day people are shouting that we exploit the poor, the next day that we are sowing socialism and leading the poor to revolt against their exploiters. One Polish newspaper recently claimed that the Jews partitioned Poland and handed it over to the Russians, while a hundred Russian newspapers claim that Jews want to partition Russia and hand it over to Poland. The Italians are saying that attacks on them in the European media are organized by the Jews, and the Turks are saying that the Jews put Italy up to capturing Tripoli [in its 1911 invasion of Ottoman Libya].

What is the point of reacting to all of this shrieking and barking with sworn statements, reassurances, and pledges? There is no point, and it should be unthinkable to behave thus. As soon as we rebut one argument, another is born. There are no limits to human spite and stupidity.

We have nothingto apologize for. We are a people, just like all peoples; we have no pretensions to be any better. One of the first conditions of equal rights is that we claim for ourselves the right to have our own blackguards, just as other peoples have theirs. Yes, we have subversives, human traffickers, draft dodgers. Not only do we have them, but what is truly odd is that we have so few of them under present circumstances. Other peoples have an abundance of this kind of human asset, as well as embezzlers, pogromists, and torturers. But so what? They live side by side as neighbors and have no scruples about it.

At the end of the day, whether they like us or not should make no difference to us whatsoever. We do not practice ritual murder, and we never did; but if they absolutely must believe “there is this one sect . . . ,” well, let them go ahead and believe whatever their imaginations come up with. What business is it of ours and why should it worry us? Do our neighbors blush because Christians in Kishinev hammered nails into the eyes of Jewish infants [during the bloody 1903 pogrom]? Not at all. They walk along with their heads held high—and quite rightly, because the persona of a people is sovereign, is accountable to no one, and is not obliged to explain itself, even when something happens that requires explanation.

Why should we be happy to be thrust into the dock—we who have heard these same slanders for centuries, and know what they add up to, for ourselves and for them? We are not obliged to give account to anyone, we are not sitting for an exam, and no one is entitled to demand an answer from us for any charge he wishes to direct our way. We were here before them, and we will be leaving after them. We are fine just the way we are. We will not be any different, nor do we want to be.

(h/t David B)

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Mahmoud Abbas gave a three-hour speech to the Fatah conference on Wednesday, where he had the chance to lay out his vision of both the past and the future.

He said nothing new.

But it is still instructive to reiterate what he did say, and what he always says, because the media studiously ignores his actual words and hypocrisy and pretends that only the "peaceful" parts are what is important.

I already elaborated on his specifying the worst terrorist leaders in history as being "martyrs." Here are some other lowlights:

"I hope that the next conference will be on the Holy city of Jerusalem, the capital of the state of Palestine, which has been in the past, and it will remain so forever and ever."

When was it ever the capital of "Palestine"?

"The convening of this conference, seven years after the sixth conference, which was held in the city of Bethlehem, is a personification of our convictions and our commitment to guard them, it, and to preserve the democratic process of our movement."

There is nothing democratic about the conference. Abbas quashed any opposition, expelled troublemakers from Fatah and didn't allow them to attend.

"Fatah, which was launched in 1965 as a leading movement of Palestinian national liberation after the catastrophe of 1948..."

Fatah was founded in 1959, possibly earlier. 1965 was its first terror attack. It speaks volumes that the peaceful president considers that the real birth of the organization.

Abbas paid tribute to Ahmed Shukairy, the first leader of the PLO, whose original 1964 charter explicitly denied any claims over Gaza and the West Bank while Egypt and Jordan controlled them.

Abbas reiterated and bragged yet again that he has not changed the political position of the PLO one iota since 1988 - even before Oslo. No concessions in 1993, or 2001, or ever, for peace with Israel.

Abbas said Oslo was important, though, because it allowed the Palestinian leadership to return from abroad and it gave them some measure of sovereignty, although not enough, "it is a step forward, we still see steps forward, liberation of the country and access to independence is the accumulation of steps brick by brick by brick by brick, step by step." This is entirely consistent with Arafat's plan to destroy Israel in stages.

He mentioned Israel's relinquishing of the Sinai and Gaza as examples of how he expects to gain a nation. Which means that Abbas agrees that Gaza isn't occupied.

Abbas said "I am against the so-called Arab Spring," calling it an Arab version of Sykes-Picot meant to divide the Arab nation. The will of the people is clearly not what Abbas is interested in. "In this regard, we wish our brothers in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, to regain security, safety and stability, and to ensure the unity of their land and their people," Abbas is equating the desire of Arabs to achieve democracy with the terrorism of ISIS.

He is also telling the Kurds to go to hell.

"We kept on all of our commitments, but that Israel has reneged on those agreements...It has been agreed in accordance with the Declaration of Principles that was signed at the White House in 1993, and the subsequent agreements with Israel, that negotiating the final status issues of the Palestinian state would be a period not exceeding five years, before the end of 1999, followed by a signed peace agreement to end the Israeli occupation of the land of the occupied State of Palestine, based on the borders of June 1967."

These are outright lies. Nothing in the Oslo process said that it would result in a Palestinian state and nothing in the process said that the final border would be based on the "1967 lines." And the Palestinians continued to commit terror attacks even during those five years, in violation of the agreements, let alone the second intifada where the terror became all but official policy.

"The US administration through its Foreign Minister John Kerry insisted we go to negotiations, nine-month-sponsored (time period), but the Israeli government returned to the 'Shuffle' again, and made those negotiations going round in circles, and used them to gain time, and the imposition of new settlement facts on the ground."

Another absolute lie. Israel froze the settlements for the nine months while Abbas refused to come to the negotiating table for eight of those months, and then only pretended to negotiate in order to have the US pressure Israel to extend the freeze.

We have participated in the funeral of Shimon Peres in order to send a message to everyone that we are seeking to achieve peace, but we are ready to go anywhere, even to the end of the world, to realize the demands of our people for freedom and independence.

Seriously? Attending a funeral while adamantly refusing to negotiate is proof of wanting peace? Abbas is all about the "messaging" but nothing about actual negotiating, which means a give and take.

UNESCO recently issued decisions, aimed at preserving the heritage in the occupied East Jerusalem, effacement of systematic operations and changes carried out by Israel.

This historic decision was the fruit of joint efforts made by Palestine and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, together with our brothers and friends in the UNESCO, and these efforts will continue in order to protect our rights and heritage of the plots and schemes occupation.

Meaning, cynically using UNESCO to deny any Jewish history in Jerusalem altogether.

Abbas announced that he would name streets and squares in PA-controlled areas after Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

"We will not accept a proposal to recognize the Jewish state." He said this twice.

Does anything else need to be said?

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Mahmoud Abbas pays tribute to terrorists by name in Fatah speech

Mahmoud Abbas gave a three-hour long speech the the seventh Fatah conference in Ramallah on Wednesday.

Although he mentioned many times that he only supports "peaceful and popular resistance" he did say "at this stage," meaning that he has no moral qualms with terrorism, but only tactical issues with it at this time.

And he proved that he is not against terrorism by calling out terrorists by name as "martyrs" in his speech. These included:

Dr. George Habash - founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group, pioneer of airplane hijackings
Abu Ali Mustafa - also of the PFLP, responsible for ten car bomb attacks in Israel
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin - founder of Hamas terror group, responsible for many suicide bombings and other attacks
Fathi Shikaki - cofounder of Islamic Jihad terror group, also responsible for numerous suicide bombings and other attacks
Muhammad Zaidan (Abu Abbas) - Founder of the Palestine Liberation Front terror organization, responsible for the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship where Leon Klinghoffer was murdered
Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem who instigated deadly riots against Jews in the 1920s and 1930s and worked with the Nazis during World War II

Abbas said of all these "martyrs" that "they are all our heroes, you will not forget them, they are immortal in our people's memory, and the homeland of Palestine. Their sacrifices will not be in vain."

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11/30 Links Pt2: NYU President Slams BDS as ‘Affront to Academic Freedom’; Keith Ellison Said Israel Controls US Policy

From Ian:

JCPA: The War of a Million Cuts: The Struggle Against the Delegitimization of Israel and the Jews, and the Growth of New Anti-Semitism (free book)

The War of a Million Cuts explains how the delegitimization of Israel and anti-Semitism can be fought. The book describes the hateful messages of those who defame Israel and the Jews, details why anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism have the same core motifs, and discusses the main groups of inciters, including Muslim states, Muslims in the Western world, politicians, media, NGOs, church leaders, those on the extreme left and the extreme right, Jewish self-haters, academics, social democrats, and many others. It explains how the hate messages are effectively transmitted to the public at large, and discusses what impact the delegitimization has already made on Israel and the Jews.

Revealed: In Private Fundraiser, Keith Ellison Said Israel Controls US Policy

Congressman Keith Ellison’s announcement earlier this month that he wants to be the Democratic National Committee’s next chairman drew quick support from several key lawmakers, including Jewish senators Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders.
Ellison’s backers have also defended him against claims that he may hold antisemitic views, as well as being anti-Israel. A column in Israel’s liberal daily Haaretz quotes two rabbis praising Ellison, as “the best of our constitutional democracy and the best of America” and “an extraordinary leader. Anyone who would associate him with any kind of hatred hasn’t met him and certainly hasn’t worked with him.”
But a 2010 audio of Ellison speaking at a private fundraiser obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism calls such praise into question. In a fairly intimate setting, Ellison lashed out at what he sees as Israel’s disproportionate influence in American foreign policy. That will change, he promised:
The United States’ foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of 7 million people. A region of 350 million all turns on a country of 7 million. Does that make sense? Is that logic? Right? When the Americans who trace their roots back to those 350 million get involved, everything changes. Can I say that again?
The fundraiser for Ellison’s re-election campaign was hosted by Esam Omeish, a past president of the Muslim American Society (MAS), who was forced to resign from a Virginia state immigration panel in 2007 after an exclusive IPT videotape showed him praising Palestinians for choosing the “the jihad way … to liberate your land.” Omeish was a candidate for Virginia’s general assembly the previous year, and Ellison spoke at a fundraiser for that losing effort.

Keith Ellison’s Saudi Arabia Trip Included Meetings With Radical Cleric, Bank That Funds Suicide Bombings

Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) during a 2008 trip to Saudi Arabia met with a radical Muslim cleric who endorsed killing U.S. soldiers and with the president of a bank used to pay the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
Ellison, now a leading candidate to head the Democratic National Committee, was brought to Saudi Arabia for a two-week trip by the Muslim American Society (MAS), a group founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood to act as its “overt arm” in the United States.
Details of Ellison’s religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia are scarce, but photographs discovered by the Washington Free Beacon show that Ellison met with controversial figures during the trip.
A photo album of Ellison’s hajj trip posted by MAS’s Minnesota chapter includes a picture of the congressman meeting with Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, who was vice president of a Muslim Brotherhood-created group that in 2004 issued a fatwa urging “jihad” against U.S. troops in Iraq and supported the Palestinians’ Second Intifada against Israel.
“The Jihad-waging Iraqi people’s resistance to the foreign occupation … is a Shari’a duty incumbent upon anyone belonging to the Muslim nation,” the fatwa said, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
Bin Bayyah’s group, the International Association of Muslim Scholars, issued the fatwa after a conference in Beirut, Lebanon.

It is a terrible time in Israel. Arabs are setting fire to our land, our forests, our homes. This cruel occupier of Jewish land plagues us much as God plagued the Egyptians. But instead of hail; locusts; water turned to blood (and etc.), there are rocks; firebombs; missiles; shootings; knives; car rammings; suicide bus bombers; just plain people blowing themselves up in a crowd; and (just now) arson.

The arson has, thank God, not taken any lives. But it hurts almost as if it had. Every tree, every home, every precious school or photograph is a loss. My country is burning. And it is happening by design, by intention. By someone who has no respect for the land, nor love.

Growing up in America, I attended a Jewish day school. We had a class once a week on the laws connected to the Land of Israel. I remember being very impressed to learn that it is not allowed to litter in the Land of Israel, because it shows disrespect for the land. The exception being biodegradable material that would compost itself and become part of the land itself.

They Kiss The Soil

From my perspective, there was and is a vast difference between not littering because you respect the law of the land, and not littering because you love the land. To Jews, the Land of Israel is holy and beloved. When Jews arrive in the land, they bend and kiss the soil.

There is a symbiotic relationship between Jews and the Land of Israel. It is the only place we are whole. Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, is the only place where, according to Nachmanides (the Ramban), Jews can properly execute the 613 commandments (mitzvot). Outside the land, said the Ramban, mitzvot don't count.

When I do a spot of gardening around my home, there's something special about it because I know I'm working in holy soil. It almost feels as though the land were vibrating under me and between my fingers, as I plop seeds into the ground, or weed. There's something about the smell of the soil that is more fertile, more fecund somehow than the soil in say, Pittsburgh, or Detroit. The sky above is different, bluer, closer somehow. The air is not the same. It feels alive, a thing that moves and breathes.

Act Of Love

Here is something I know deep down: when you make a seed grow in holy soil, it is an act of love.

Sometimes I'll be walking outside and I will say to myself, "I love Israel. I just love this place so much."

And sometimes I'll even say it aloud. If I'm with a girlfriend at the time, dollars to donuts she will answer, "I love Israel!" and she will mean it, too. As if we were competing. Competing to see which of us loves the land more. And we will have to agree to agree to a tie out of sisterly (Jewish) love for each other and for the land.

Now, I loved and still love my hometown. It was good enough for three generations of my maternal family. But I cannot recall feeling this kind of love for Pittsburgh, the kind that zings you in the heart and makes your spirits soar toward the heavens thanking God for this gift.

The gift of the land.

As it happens, just now I'm in a musical by and for women called Count the Stars. It's about the journey of Abraham and Sara to the Holy Land. My dear friends Sharon Katz and Avital Macales wrote this play, drawing on the words of the bible. There's one particular scene I'm in called Lift Up Your Eyes that gets me every time. We are a choir representing the voice of God's angels singing (in gorgeous harmony and accompanied by harp) the words of Genesis 13:14-17 (and Sharon Katz):

Sa na einecha ure'ei. Lift up your eyes. Lift up and see!

Min hamakom asher ata sham. From the place where you are.

Tzafona ve'negba ve'keidma ve'yama. North, South, East, West.

Ki et kol haaretz asher ata roeh le'cha et'nena ule'zaracha ad olam.

All this land you see I give to you and your descendants forevermore.

Vesamti et zaracha ka'afar haaretz. I will make your seed like the dust of the earth.

Asher im yuchal ish limnot et afar haaretz, gam zaracha yimane.

If one can count the dust of the earth, so your seed will be counted, too.

Kum hit'alech baaretz le'orka ule'rochba, ki le'cha et'nena.

Arise and walk this land, its length and its breadth. To you I give it all.

I sing those words and think: Is there anything else to say? Anything else in the entire world?

"To you I give it all."

This right here is an eternal covenant. One that is all about love and completion. It cannot be erased by talking heads at the UN or in the White House. It doesn't care about Camp David or Nobel Prizes. It's in the bible and in the Quran, where, the Jews are referred to as Bani Isra'il (the Children of Israel, Bnei Yisrael).

Pick a language, any language, any holy book, it will say the same thing. The Jews are the Children of Israel.

And yet we are set upon by a cruel occupier, one who does not love the land. Does not feel it breathe and vibrate. Callously sets fire to beautiful trees that give shade, fruit, hold the land in place.

This cruel occupier wants only to rape and despoil. To destroy that which belongs to someone else, so that someone else won't have it. Namely, the Jews.

The people who set fire to Jewish land, has no room in its heart to love the land or to interpret the Quran in a way that is at all sympathetic to the people who do: the Jews, the Bani Isra'il.

The goal of the arsonists comes from hate. Their hatred is as much a part of them as my love for the land is a part of me. They are a people who must hate and hate and hate until they can find their way to something else. If they can find their way to something else. And that's a choice.

Always a choice.

Their hatred, the hand that sets a match to a fruit tree, to a home, something that someone built or grew, each time it happens it's a choice someone made to hate and destroy. Each person has the right to choose which path of the heart to travel. To love or to hate. To create or destroy.

This way or that. Collectively, separately.

It's a choice. Hate, love. Love, hate.

Pick one.

They have chosen. They chose the path of hate. And with their hate they continue to destroy. Nothing can satisfy or slake their thirst for yet more hatred, more destruction. This is the journey they chose and choose, this instead of that, with every act of terror.

But they will never make us leave this land. No matter what they do. No matter how much they hate and destroy.

So I say to them, "Take it in. Take it into the very pores of your skin.

"Then read this and read it again and yet again until it is etched on your hearts: it is not the settlements, not the building of Jewish homes on Jewish soil that prevent peace, but the burning them down."

Peace, you have to know, cannot exist in the same space as hate. Peace is the absence of hate. And this too, the act of absenting hate from the heart, is always a choice.

I chose and choose a different journey. We, my people, chose and choose the path of love.

We chose to make things grow, to build. And so will our children, their children, and the children of their children.

Forevermore.

(feature photo credit: Sharon Katz)

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The story is from October:

The niece of a top official in the Palestinian Fatah party and a close confidant of the late leader Yasser Arafat says she loves the State of Israel so much, she had the word “Israel” in Hebrew tattooed across her shoulder blades.
Sandra Solomon, 38, was born a Muslim in Ramallah under a different name, but grew up in Saudi Arabia before moving to Canada where she converted to Christianity.
Solomon is the niece of Saher Habash, one of the founders of the Fatah party, a member of its Central Committee and a leader of the Second Intifada.
“I grew up in a home that hated the Jews, hailed Hitler and praised the Holocaust,” she told Channel 2 in an interview Wednesday.

Here's her interview, subtitled in English:

Right after this was shown on TV, her family disowned her.

(h/t Yoel)

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Mideast Countries Regret Not Leaving Some Jews For Their Kids to Expel (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Baghdad, November 30 - Community elders throughout the Muslim Middle East voiced wistfulness today at the realization that present and future generations in their countries will never know the pleasure of kicking Jews out, since almost none remain anymore.

Once-thriving Jewish communities across the region suffered precipitous decline in the decades since the establishment of the State of Israel, as local Muslims, with government sanction, made Jewish life all but intolerable, and official policy led to the confiscation of Jewish-owned property and the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the lands that had been home to them for thousands of years. Now all but bereft of Jews to persecute and expel, Muslims in Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and elsewhere who remember what it was like to participate in pogroms, looting, or random anti-Jewish mayhem against their Hebraic neighbors expressed some regret that because of their thoroughness in conducting such activities, their children and grandchildren will never know the visceral pleasure of raping Jewish women and beating their husbands and fathers to a pulp for trying to prevent it.

"The people of Iran are fortunate," opined Mustafa Massikr, 78, of Sanaa, Yemen. "They have thousands of Jews they can still dump on, and against whom they can take out whatever frustrations they might have. But here in Yemen we have maybe a few hundred, and they're hardly worth the trouble. I wish I could give my descendants the same thrill and sense of vitality I felt when I helped my older brothers torch those Jewish shops in response to Israel's declaration of statehood. Good times."

In Egypt, where fewer than a dozen openly practicing Jews are known, older folks gave voice to similar sentiments. "It's not the same, persecuting Copts," observed Aiwil Qillemal, 80. "They're just everyday dhimmi, not the very embodiment of every kind of evil against which any and all violent measures are not merely justified, but a sacred duty. I miss having Jews to kick around." He noted that the handful of Jews remaining in the country have enjoyed official protection for many years so that the government can claim not to be antisemitic.

"Maybe for old times' sake we can knock off one or two of them?" he suggested. "You know, so the children can experience it in an authentic, close-up way, not the fake opposition to Israel that so many so-called Muslim countries have maintained since 1973."

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11/30 Links Pt1: Where Talking to Israelis is Taboo; Glick: Castro's Greatest Victory

From Ian:

America’s Middle East Policy, From Eisenhower to Trump

Few American presidents have done so much to shape U.S. relations with the Arab world as Dwight D. Eisenhower, who, like many of his successors, believed that the Arab-Israeli conflict was central to the region and that he could win the respect of Arab leaders by demonstrating “daylight” between Washington and Jerusalem. But unlike subsequent presidents, he eventually learned that these and other assumptions were wrong. Michael Doran, Walter Russell Mead, and Ray Takeyh discuss several decades of American policy makers’ failures to understand the Middle East, and what the Trump administration can do to avoid making the same mistakes. (Moderated by Lee Smith. Video, 90 minutes.)

Where Talking to Israelis is Taboo

The indoctrination effort is assisted by the fact that most Palestinians today have no firsthand knowledge to counteract the vicious incitement churned out daily by Palestinian schools and media. That’s a result of the escalating terror that followed the PA’s establishment in 1994 severely curtailed the daily interactions between Israelis and Palestinians that were commonplace until then. Those interactions made it easier for both sides to at least view the other as human beings.
Today, outside the construction industry, most Israelis never encounter a Palestinian unless they’re doing army duty, and most Palestinians never encounter any Israelis other than soldiers. In other words, the only Israeli-Palestinian interactions that take place today are the kind that reinforces each side’s view of the other as an enemy. That is precisely what the “anti-normalization” campaigners want, and why they castigate any other type of contact with Israelis as tantamount to treason.
It’s going to take a long, long time, and probably a lot of pressure from the PA’s Western donors, to reverse these decades of hate education. But until that happens, the chances of Israeli-Palestinian peace are considerably less than a snowball’s chance in hell.

Caroline Glick: Castro's Greatest Victory

The Soviets also viewed their ideological assault on Zionism as a means of demonizing the US. The Jews’ native rights to the land of Israel were as old and wellknown as the Bible. If Westerners could be convinced that the Jews were colonial usurpers in Israel, they could be convinced that Western civilization was evil.
According to Pacepa, by 1968 the KGB completed its control over the PLO. It used Castro and his DGI agency as a means to promote the Palestinian political war against Israel. According to Cuban American researchers, Castro was a conduit for promoting anti-Zionism and support for Palestinian terrorists among Western radicals. For instance, the DGI introduced PLO terrorists to African American radicals like the Black Panthers, who were trained by Castro’s forces.
Castro’s lionization by the Palestinians and the international Left alike shows that 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the legacy of the Soviets’ political war against the US-led West was not only successful during the Cold War, but is still very much a part of our world.
Castro never taught the Palestinians how to live in peace. He never taught them how to raise crops. He taught them how to murder and libel. He taught them how to indoctrinate others to believe lies about themselves and about their perceived enemies.
The fact that these lies are still believed by so many in the Left shows that Castro died a victor. The fact that the terrorist methods he developed with Arafat under the guiding hand of Moscow are still viewed by Western intellectuals as legitimate “tools of resistance” shows that he won.
And the fact that Palestinian murderers who learned the trade at his knee are still viewed as legitimate forces in world politics shows that together with his KGB bosses, Castro was able to get away with his crimes.
The West managed to defeat the Soviet state, but not the Soviet cause. And the flags at half-mast for Castro in Ramallah are proof of the Castro-executed Soviet victory over morality and over truth.

Palestinian Arabs went on a murderous rampage within hours of the Partition vote

Today is the anniversary of the beginning of Israel's War of Independence.

Because in the hours immediately following the UN partition vote, Palestinian Arabs started attacking Jews wherever they could find them.

Here are articles from the Palestine Post the next day:

The descendants of these people are now pretending at the UN that they deserve a state based on the resolution that they so violently rejected.

And the UN now whitewashes the facts that the entire Arab world, and specifically the Palestinian Arabs, opposed the resolution in its video about the resolution. (As well as how Jordan and Egypt occupied "Palestinian land" in 1948.)

This year's #PalestineDay observance in NYC will feature embroidery, a Dabka performance + more. pic.twitter.com/TVEqofcVCa
— United Nations (@UN) November 29, 2016

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"Rabbis for Human Rights" calls Abraham, Sarah - and God - cruel

Rabbis for Human Rights' Amy Klein wrote a commentary on last week's Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, which she felt was very important because it describes how Abraham bought the Tomb of the Patriarchs and RHR wants to ensure that Jews have no rights to the place that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their wives are buried.

I was struck by this part of Klein's description of the story of Abraham:

There are those who believe that the story of Abraham’s purchase of the Cave of Mahpelah established eternal rights to the land of Israel. ... Limiting the interpretation of the text to a record of land deeds strips the text of its heart. It is a text of human and social complexity. It is a story that brings to a close two overlapping triangles of tragedy: Abraham – Isaac – Ishmael and Abraham – Sarah – Hagar. Their tragedy is personal and national. It is the cruelty endured by Hagar at the hands of Sarah with Abraham’s acquiescence and the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael and with them, any threat to Isaac’s inheritance.

Is that how she reads the story of Hagar's banishment?

Because the actual text (Genesis 21) shows that Abraham was reluctant to send off his son with Hagar - until God told him to listen to Sarah, assuring him that Ishmael will grow into a great nation:

9 And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne unto Abraham, making sport.
10 Wherefore she said unto Abraham: 'Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.'
11 And the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight on account of his son.
12 And G-d said unto Abraham: 'Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah saith unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall seed be called to thee.
13 And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed.'
14 And Abraham arose up early in the morning, and took bread and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away; and she departed, and strayed in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
15 And the water in the bottle was spent, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs.
16 And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bow-shot; for she said: 'Let me not look upon the death of the child.' And she sat over against him, and lifted up her voice, and wept.
17 And G-d heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of G-d called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her: 'What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for G-d hath heard the voice of the lad where he is.
18 Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him fast by thy hand; for I will make him a great nation.'
19 And G-d opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink.

Sarah was protecting her son from the influences of Ishmael, who was tormenting Isaac, a toddler.

Abraham loved Ishmael, and didn't want to send him away - but God told Abraham that Sarah was right.

Rabbi Amy Klein is calling God cruel! Apparently, the Lord doesn't satisfy her definition of human rights.

Indeed, we can learn a lot from the story about the difference between the love that the mother of the Jewish people had for her child and how the mother of the Ishmaelites treated her son.

Hagar threw her son under a shrub and left him to die alone. She didn't pray for him. She didn't comfort him. She simply felt sorry for herself at the possibility of watching him die, so she abandoned him.

This is not the first example of Hagar's cruelty. Sarah, selflessly, gave Hagar to Abraham as a wife when she couldn't have any children. Hagar repaid her kindness by despising Sarah and mocking her (Gen. 16) Sarah knew exactly what Hagar and Ishmael were like and she did not want these selfish, cruel people in her household while she was raising the most important person in the world, based on God's promise to Abraham.

Is there a better analogy between Sarah and Israel, and Hagar and the Palestinians? Sarah is willing to do whatever it takes to protect her family and her people's future, beyond even Abraham's wishes. Her motherly instinct is vindicated over Abraham's legendary kindness - God tells Abraham that too much kindness can endanger his own future.

Hagar cares only about herself, not caring who gets hurt along the way and not even lifting a finger to help her own son, whose impending death is an inconvenience to her.

But Rabbi Klein doesn't call Hagar cruel. Oh, no - that would be Arabophobic. Klein thinks Sarah is the cruel one, for not wanting her son to be influenced by a mother who cares so little for her own son, and who treated her like dirt. It is Sarah's love and protection for her miraculously-born child that Amy Klein considers cruel, while the truly odious Hagar - whose evil personality was already clear to Sarah some 15 years prior - is considered the victim.

Which is exactly consistent with how "Rabbis for Human Rights" views the Israel-Arab conflict, today.

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