Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 19, 2016

12/19 Links Pt2: Russian ambassador to Turkey killed by policeman; The REAL history of the BDS movement

From Ian:

Russian ambassador to Turkey shot and killed by policeman

A police officer crying “Aleppo” and “revenge” shot and killed Russia’s ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov during the opening of an art exhibition in Ankara Monday.
The foreign ministry in Moscow confirmed that Karlov died of his wounds in the attack, which came amid roiling tensions over the fate of Syria.
Turkish police shot and killed the gunman, a local policeman, according to Ankara’s mayor.
Karlov was several minutes into a speech at the embassy-sponsored exhibition in the capital, Ankara, when a man wearing a suit and tie shouted “Allahu Akbar” and fired at least eight shots, according to an AP photographer in the audience.
The attacker also smashed some of the photos hung for the exhibition. There was panic as people ran for cover. NTV said three other people were wounded in the attack.
Yelling in Turkish, the gunman shouted “Don’t forget Aleppo! Don’t forget Syria!”
He then yelled: “Stand back! Stand back! Only death will take me out of here. Anyone who has a role in this oppression will die one by one.”

Judaism's holiness to Muslims is a propaganda myth

The media has been abuzz with reports that President-elect Donald Trump intends to honor his pre-election promise to act on the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act –– whose implementation has been deferred by six-monthly waivers invoked by successive presidents, most recently last week by President Obama –– and move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Why has the Act, passed by massive majorities in the Senate (93-5) and House (374-37), remained a dead letter for 21 years?
Fear of enraging the Arab street and the Muslim world, most of which has neither reconciled itself to Israel’s existence nor even the peoplehood of the Jews and thus the Jewish immemorial association and claim to the city, is the short answer.
This clamor and fixation on Jerusalem, quite recent in Muslim history, has led many to conclude that Jerusalem is holy to Islam; therefore any U.S move ahead of a peace settlement is premature.
As it happens, however, its a propaganda lie that Jerusalem is holy to Islam or central to Palestinian Arab life. Though possessing Muslim shrines, including the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosques, the city itself holds no great significance for Islam, as history shows.

IsraellyCool: Know Your History: The Meaning Of UN Resoluton 242 (NY Times July 23, 1970)

UN Resolution 242 is oft cited as the basis for requiring Israel’s complete withdrawal from territories seized during the Six Day War. For instance, just a few weeks ago, Elder of Moron Jimmy Carter wrote in the NY Times:
Back in 1978, during my administration, Israel’s prime minister, Menachem Begin, and Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, signed the Camp David Accords. That agreement was based on the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which was passed in the aftermath of the 1967 war. The key words of that resolution were “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East in which every state in the area can live in security,” and the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”
The agreement was ratified overwhelmingly by the Parliaments of Egypt and Israel. And those two foundational concepts have been the basis for the policy of the United States government and the international community ever since.
This was why, in 2009, at the beginning of his first administration, Mr. Obama reaffirmed the crucial elements of the Camp David agreement and Resolution 242 by calling for a complete freeze on the building of settlements, constructed illegally by Israel on Palestinian territory. Later, in 2011, the president made clear that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines,” and added, “negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine.”
But it does nothing of the sort. The chief author of the resolution Lord Caradon has said:
We didn’t say there should be a withdrawal to the ’67 line; we did not put the ‘the’ in, we did not say all the territories, deliberately.. We all knew – that the boundaries of ’67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers, they were a cease-fire line of a couple of decades earlier… We did not say that the ’67 boundaries must be forever; it would be insanity

One thing about Palestinian leaders and fans - there is nothing that they won't try to co-opt for their cause.

The latest example was the terror attack in Jordan that killed 10 on Sunday, including a Canadian tourist.

Fatah leader Raafat Alian pretended to condemn it - and then tried to make it all about Palestinians.

He said that "the Palestinian people are exposed to the same terrorism on a daily basis from the Israeli government, which kills our people and desecrates our holy places and burns our trees and confiscates our land and exercises the most heinous crimes against the unarmed Palestinian people, who are asking for freedom and self-determination."

He went on to say that "the Israeli occupation is terrorism planted in the Middle East and the fight against terrorism begins first by fighting the Israeli occupation to stop its violations against the Palestinian people and the full withdrawal from the Palestinian territories."

Gee, he sounds like he cares about Jordanian victims of terror so much, doesn't he?

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Max Blumenthal’s recipe for fake news (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

A few days ago, Max Blumenthal posted a tweet that illustrates how he routinely produces his fake news about Israel. Retweeting Nadav Pollak’s praise for medics in the Israeli army reserve who declared their willingness to offer medical assistance to wounded Syrian civilians facing “indiscriminate slaughter,” Blumenthal added the comment “Israel bombed Damascus exactly ten days ago.”

All too obviously, Blumenthal would like his followers to believe that while Israeli hypocrites claim they want to help Syrian civilians, the Israeli army just “bombed Damascus.”

What happened in reality is that the Syrian regime accused Israel of striking an airbase near Damascus; the target of the strike was reportedly a Hezbollah weapons depot. Unsurprisingly, a Syrian military source denounced the strike against the Mazzeh airbase as part of “desperate attempts by the Israeli enemy to support terrorist groups [i.e. groups fighting against Assad] and raise their low morale.” Some Syrian sources also claimed “that Hezbollah sites near the Syrian capital were also targeted Tuesday night by airstrikes that killed and injured a number of fighters in the Shiite militia.”

Since Blumenthal seems to root for an Assad victory in Syria, it’s understandable that he would be upset about any kind of damage inflicted on the blood-drenched tyrant and his ruthless backers.

But few would think that targeting a Hezbollah weapons depot at an airbase and perhaps even injuring some Hezbollah fighters can be accurately described as “Israel bombed Damascus.”

Yet, this is exactly how Blumenthal has been operating for years. It’s worthwhile recalling that in a scathing review of Blumenthal’s screed “Goliath” that was published three years ago, Eric Alterman – a leftist who finds much to criticize about Israel – described Blumenthal as “a profoundly unreliable narrator,” noting that his “accounts are mostly technically accurate, but often deliberately deceptive.” Predictably, Blumenthal rejected Alterman’s criticism, claiming that if much of his book was “technically accurate,” Alterman panned the book just to shield Israel from the devastating truth. Alterman patiently responded, attempting (in vain) to explain some very basic concepts to Blumenthal:

“Blumenthal … does not understand why I would concede that his book is ‘mostly technically accurate’ but remain so critical. He is, apparently, unfamiliar with the concept of ‘context.’ It might be technically accurate, for instance, to say that an individual who fatally shoots a crazed killer while said killer is mowing down schoolchildren with an assault-weapon is a ‘murderer.’ But it would also be profoundly misleading, given the context. And this is the problem with Blumenthal’s facts. He tells us only the facts he wishes us to know and withholds crucial ones that undermine his relentlessly anti-Israel narrative.”

Three years have passed since then, and as I showed in a recent post, Blumenthal has in the meantime alienated some of his erstwhile fans by applying the methods he used to demonize Israel to his “reporting” about Syria. Needless to say, Blumenthal and other leading anti-Israel activists still resent being called out for their glaring failure to condemn Assad and his allies for the carnage in Syria, and they continue to pose as the innocent victims of some kind of “organized smearing/lying campaign” that is of course supported, if not orchestrated, by evil Zionists.

It also goes without saying that while anti-Israel activists like Blumenthal, Abunimah and Khalek find it hard to hide their hopes for an eventual victory of butcher Assad and his allies, they have only contempt for Israeli efforts to alleviate the suffering in Syria. So Rania Khalek was only too happy to retweet Max Blumenthal’s collaborator Dan Cohen, who wants Israelis to protest the IDF and “Israel’s direct involvement in the war on Syria” – by which he presumably means incidents like the supposed “bombing” of Damascus; Cohen also is impatient to see the Golan Heights handed over to Assad and his henchmen.

But while anti-Israel activists sneer, an Israeli grassroots campaign has raised more than $100,000 in just two days for emergency supplies to help families that have lost everything in the merciless war Assad is waging to stay in power.

To be fair to Assad and his armchair apologists on Twitter and in the blogosphere: they’d all be much happier if he did what he’s doing to his fellow Syrians to Israelis. When Assad recently declared in an interview that he considers Israel as Syria’s worst enemy, Max Blumenthal and his ilk were surely pleased: no matter how many Syrians Assad and his brutal backers kill, at least Assad shares their obsessive hatred for the world’s only Jewish state. And whatever fake news can do to fuel this hatred, Max Blumenthal &Co will no doubt do their part.

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12/19 Links Pt1: Palestinians: Welcome to the World of Western-Funded Terrorism; Aleppo: Reflection of world politics

From Ian:

Palestinians: Welcome to the World of Western-Funded Terrorism

Palestinians and their families are being financially rewarded by the West for taking part in terror attacks against Jews. It does not take a brain surgeon to figure out that this promotes terrorism.
Palestinian terrorists released from prison have far higher chances of getting a job with the Palestinian Authority (PA) government than people who went to university, because by carrying out an attack against Jews they become heroes, entitled to a superior job and salary.
The more time you spend in an Israeli prison, the more prestigious the job you will receive. Graduating from an Israeli prison is better than graduating from an Ivy League university.
These people have not been imprisoned for running a red light. Most of them are behind bars because they have masterminded suicide bombings and other terror attacks that have killed and maimed hundreds of innocent civilians during the past few decades.
So, when you hear that it is the PLO, not the PA, that pays the terrorists' salaries, you might want to mention that this statement is a sleight of hand designed to dupe unsuspecting and well-intentioned American and European donors.
It is time to tell Abbas and his associates, in terms that they understand, that the West will no longer fund terrorists. This message, above all others, will discourage terrorism -- and perhaps even encourage peace.

Aleppo: Reflection of world politics

Aleppo's fate is clear proof that the international community does not exist, and apparently never did, certainly not as far as the civilian population is concerned when it is stuck between the proverbial hammer and nail, targeted by a dictatorial regime and its powerful allies. Aleppo is being decimated; its residents are being killed by the hundreds and thousands, homes are being lost; but aside from several limp condemnations or expressions of grief from leaders in Europe and the United States, the world is silent.
For Israel, the lessons to be learned from Aleppo are clear: First, anyone who pins his hopes and stakes his future on help from the international community is bound to be disappointed. The world supports the strong and the victorious. Therefore it would behoove Israel to strengthen itself in earnest, as a necessary -- albeit not exclusive -- guarantee of its ongoing existence and growth in our region.
Second, the war in Syria will not go on forever. Its conclusion, possibly in victory for the regime and its allies, could come sooner than was expected in Israel. Assad returned to Aleppo and could also return to the Golan Heights, which he lost to the rebels two years ago. The window of opportunity that opened to Israel several years ago, to act freely in Syria against weapons shipments to Hezbollah, could also close.
Third, for the time being Assad is under the influence of Moscow, Iran and Hezbollah. Russia, supposedly, has claim to seniority. But in contrast to the Russians, who maintain presence in the air and sea, and who view Syria as another piece in an international game, the Iranians and Hezbollah have boots on the ground in the form of thousands of conscripts and volunteers, in Shiite militias formed by Iran to fight in Syria.
Fourth, winning the battle for Syria will free up forces, resources and energy for Iran and Hezbollah to move on to the next target. Neither wants a conflict with Israel, or to pay the necessary price of such a conflict, but their brazenness will undoubtedly reach new heights if and when the war in Syria ends.
Finally, terrorism and radical Islam will not vanish, but rather intensify with the events in Syria serving as a recruitment tool and motivation for more terrorist attacks. Israel is hundreds of kilometers away from Aleppo, but it could also pay the price of the tragedy transpiring there. It needs to account for all these eventualities and prepare on all fronts.

Elliott Abrams: The Next Ambassador to Israel

President-Elect Trump’s choice of David M. Friedman as his ambassador to Israel has occasioned both appropriate news coverage, and a barrage of nasty, ignorant, politically biased comments.
Most of those comments (including the poison-pen editorial in The New York Times) have informed readers that Mr. Friedman is unfit for this post because he is a “bankruptcy lawyer” lacking diplomatic experience. I was previously unaware that being a “bankruptcy lawyer” was equivalent to a crime of moral turpitude, but that is in any event an odd description of Mr. Friedman. In fact he is one of the top lawyers in that field in the United States, year after year being so listed in articles about the very best American lawyers. The New York Times tells us that he has since 1994 been a partner at a firm called Kasowitz, Benson, Torres, & Friedman, but does not bother to tell readers that he is in fact the Friedman of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres, & Friedman–a firm whose name was changed when he joined it, and which he has helped build to about 350 lawyers in seven cities. He is also a self-made man, the son of an Orthodox rabbi who came to the practice of law without the benefit of wealth or fancy connections.
To the Times all that is irrelevant; presumably they would prefer a fellow at a white-shoe Wall Street firm whose father or grandfather had been a diplomat, who belonged to the right clubs, and who rather than soil himself with the actual practice of law opens doors and makes connections. But I doubt most Americans take that view, and Mr. Trump did not. I’ve met Mr. Friedman once; we connected because I have a son who works in the Kasowitz firm. What do you learn from one meeting? Only that you’re dealing with one smart cookie, and that his involvement with Israeli affairs for decades has given him a far better insight than the average diplomat.
Of course that Mr. Friedman is a “bankruptcy lawyer” is not his only, nor his primary, disqualification in the eyes of the Left. You may be sure that if he were a lawyer handling traffic violations but belonged to J Street, they would all be applauding. Their real problem is that Mr. Friedman’s views are anathema to them. He thinks J Street is actually an anti-Israel rather than a pro-peace organization, that settlements are not an obstacle to peace, and other terrible things. He even thinks the U.S. embassy should be moved to Jerusalem. That these views are apparently shared by the President-Elect and will be American policy is of course what really troubles the Times and others, and they label all these “extremist views” and call Mr. Friedman “dangerous.”

Algerian news site: "Trump consolidates Satanic alliance with sons of Zion"

Algerian news site Akhbar el-Youm has this headline (Google translation):

The article relied on another Time magazine piece by Karl Vick decrying Trump's appointment of David Friedman, but it implies that Vick wrote the "satanic alliance" phrase, which he didn't. He just said, "Trump’s choice fits Netanyahu’s like a lock fits a key. Who knows what’s in the box they open?"- a clear allusion to the Pandora's box of Greek mythology, where the box released all the evils in the world when opened.

Which isn't that far off from calling Trump and Netanyahu a "satanic alliance,"come to think of it.

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Back in 2013, I found that the Miftah NGO, founded by Western media darling Hanaa Ashrawi, had published the blood libel of Jews drinking Christian blood for Passover as fact, along with explicit support for terror and terrorists.

Even today, the website includes explicit antisemitism in Arabic.

Now it has been discovered that Miftah even has an article (cached here) from the neo-Nazi "National Vanguard " site with classic Judeophobic tropes in English!

Entitled "Who Rules America - The Alien Grip on Our News and Entertainment Media Must Be Broken", the article ends off with this call to arms against "alien" Jews in the US:

The Jew-controlled entertainment media have taken the lead in persuading a whole generation that homosexuality is a normal and acceptable way of life; that there is nothing at all wrong with White women dating or marrying Black men, or with White men marrying Asian women; that all races are inherently equal in ability and character -- except that the character of the White race is suspect because of a history of oppressing other races; and that any effort by Whites at racial self-preservation is reprehensible.

We must oppose the further spreading of this poison among our people, and we must break the power of those who are spreading it. It would be intolerable for such power to be in the hands of any alien minority, with values and interests different from our own. But to permit the Jews, with their 3,000-year history of nation-wrecking, from ancient Egypt to Russia, to hold such power over us is tantamount to race suicide. Indeed, the fact that so many White Americans today are so filled with a sense of racial guilt and self-hatred that they actively seek the death of their own race is a deliberate consequence of Jewish media control.

Once we have absorbed and understood the fact of Jewish media control, it is our inescapable responsibility to do whatever is necessary to break that control. We must shrink from nothing in combating this evil power that has fastened its deadly grip on our people and is injecting its lethal poison into their minds and souls. If we fail to destroy it, it certainly will destroy our race.

Let us begin now to acquire knowledge and to take action toward this necessary end.

The article is from 2001, but its age does not acquit Miftah of antisemitism. On the contrary, the fact that Miftah decided that this article is worth spreading before anyone investigated their history of hate, and that the well-funded organization didn't remove it after worldwide publicity over its blood libel article, proves that Jew-hatred is part and parcel of the organization itself. This article, together with the other articles we've unearthed, proves that Miftah is an organization where antisemitism is a fundamental belief, and any so-called apologies issued in English are not a reflection of what Miftah members believe but of a desire not to jeopardize their sources of funding.

Those sources, deplorably, turn a blind eye to this overwhelming evidence of naked Jew-hatred at Miftah because they believe that Miftah is a moderating influence on Palestinian society. Instead of using their funds to make a fundamental change in Palestinian society, they use them to protect their precious NGOs whom they do not want to antagonize.

It is way past time that Western NGO and nations end writing automatic checks to people who push the worst forms of hate and pretending that somehow their funding advances peace.

NGO Monitor lists Miftah's funding sources:

2013 budget of $1,194,627, of which $1,005,304 was donated by foreign governments and entities.
2012-13 donors include: International Republican Institute (United States), Norway, NGO Development Centre, United Nations Development Programme, Ireland, United Nations Population Fund, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Germany), National Endowment for Democracy (US), UN Women, Oxfam Novib (Netherlands), Arab Fund (Kuwait), U.S. Consulate and the British Council.
In 2014-2016, Miftah received $330,000¹ from the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat (joint funding by Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands) in core funding.
In 2013, Miftah received EUR 70,000 from Ireland.

The US Consulate started its funding of Miftah after I exposed their spreading the blood libel.

(h/t מיכאל)

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Priti Patel

In October, after reports surfaced in the UK that much of the monetary aid given to the Palestinian Authority was going towards payments to terrorists and their families, the government suspended sending millions in aid pending review.

Prime Minister Theresa May mentioned this in her speech to Conservative Friends to Israel earlier this month, saying:

Let me be clear: no British taxpayers’ money will be used to make payments to terrorists or their families.
It is right that Priti Patel has called for an examination of aid spending in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to ensure that every penny is spent in the right places and in the right way.

That review is now bearing fruit, and (for now) the UK's aid towards Palestinians has been drastically limited to specific sectors.

In a statement, the Department for International Development said it was continuing to examine UK aid to the Palestinian territories but was imposing a series of “critical changes”.

From now on, British aid will focus “solely on vital health and education services”, with funding going towards “the salaries of health and education public servants on a vetted list” only.

No more UK funding will be available to PA workers in Gaza, and Britain will assess the PA’s “fiscal and public financial management reforms” with targets set in order to secure future payments.

It is expected that British money will be used to pay salaries of up to 30,000 Palestinian teachers, doctors, nurses and midwives. The funds will be used to ensure around 25,000 Palestinian children continue their education, are immunised, and have medical consultations.

There will be up to £25m of DfID money sent to the PA in this financial year.

This is very welcome. It is way past time to end blanket aid to the Palestinian Authority with little oversight as to how the money is actually spent.

Of course, the PA is trying to make up the shortfall with aid from Arab countries who have fewer compunctions about aid. Mahmoud Abbas visited Saudi Arabia today for that purpose.

May also said in her speech:

And she [Patel] is looking at options for the UK to support co-existence projects in the region – something I know so many people in this room have called for.

Keep in mind that the PA explicitly rejects co-existence projects with Israel as "normalization." As of earlier this year, essentially none of the UK's aid to the region included such projects, meaning that they acceded to the PA's bigotry in not accepting Jews as part of the region.

It looks like the UK is actually trying to do something positive in how it allocates funding to the Palestinians. Hopefully they will do the same towards UNRWA, and other nations will start to question their own aid priorities to the Palestinian Authority.

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White supremacists threaten Jews in a small Montana town

From ThinkProgress:

A white-supremacist call to action to “troll” Jewish people in Whitefish, Montana — home of white nationalist Richard Spencer’s mother — is gaining support on social media and putting lives in danger.

On Friday, Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer published an inflammatory article about Jews “targeting Richard Spencer’s mother,” Sherry Spencer, claiming that her real estate business is failing because of public backlash against her son, a white supremacist and prominent member of the National Policy Institute (NPI) who coined the term “alt-right.”

Anglin falsely claimed that Jewish people in Montana are “harassing” Sherry, attempting to extort money from her, and forcing her to sell a building she owns — all because they disagree with her son. He cites a Daily Mail article in which Sherry complains that her sons’ views are damaging her business. The article does not mention any particular religion. But Anglin called on his readers to harass Jews, describing them as a “vicious, evil race of hate-filled psychopaths” and “a people without shame.”

It reads:

“Are y’all ready for an old fashioned Troll Storm?
Because AYO – it’s that time, fam.
And as always: NO VIOLENCE OR THREATS OF VIOLENCE OR ANYTHING EVEN CLOSE TO THAT.

Just make your opinions known. Tell them you are sickened by their Jew agenda to attack and harm the mother of someone whom they disagree with.
The post included photos, phone numbers, email address, and social media accounts of members of Love Lives Now, a peace organization “committed to co-creating a caring, open, accepting and diverse community, free from discrimination and dedicated to equal treatment,” which is smeared by Anglin as a “terrorist group.” The action also incorporated photos of a local real estate owner, her husband, and young sons, as well as addresses where people can find them.

Love Lives Here Chairman Will Randall told the Missoulian that the fallout has been “gut-wrenching.” “These are some of the best people around, and to see them attacked because they’re Jewish or have a Jewish-sounding name is disgusting,” he said.

On Sunday morning, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke lent his support to Anglin’s effort on Twitter.

I won't link to the neo-Nazi site that is making the threats, but it includes exhortations to tweet to a 12 year old boy: "You can hit him up, tell them what you think of his whore mother’s vicious attack on the community of Whitefish." (The boy closed his Twitter account.)

The husband of one of the targets has a law firm, and Anglin told people to give him bad Google reviews. Sure enough, only in the past few days, people have gone to his Google site and made up stories about how they were scammed in a Ponzi scheme by the lawyer, or that he ruined their lives with bad representation - all obviously fiction.

As pathetic as Anglin is, the people who mindlessly do what Anglin decrees from his hiding place are a huge and toweringly stupid waste of oxygen.

This is the address where Anglin's father accepts donations to his son's neo-Nazi website.

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RT (formerly Russia Today) has a half-hour program where former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, at home in his new Russian media outlet, interviews Rania Khalek about how Israel is supposedly testing out cool weapons on Palestinians and then selling them, as well as how Israel trains US police to use violent methods against minorities.

The interview is a farce masquerading as reporting, with Hedges asking Khalek things that she has no idea about and she pretends to spout some answers.

The only specific weapon Khalek mentions that Israel "tested" in Gaza and then marketed was a bunker buster bomb. Of course, she didn't mention that Hamas builds tunnels 30 meters below the ground to Israel in order to stage terror attacks, and only a bunker buster can hit something like that.

Similarly, she accuses Israel of killing Palestinians for the mere crime of carrying a knife, without mentioning what exactly they were doing with those knives.

What is most interesting is that both Hedges and Khalek are known plagiarizers.

Hedges has a long history of plagiarism, as this New Republic article lays out in excruciating detail. He stolen lines and paragraphs from several other writers, including Ernest Hemingway.

Khalek was once booted from Alternet for her own plagiarism, lifting essentially an entire article from Cracked magazine.

Hedges and Khalek - what a perfect combination of frauds. Not only frauds, but frauds who pretend that the are motivated by ethics in their libelous reporting when they are both proven to be thieves of others' intellectual property.

RT is the perfect venue for the false pieties of these "progressive" frauds.

(h/t Spotlighting SA)

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12/18 Links: Nazareth school children honor murderer of 3 Israelis; Amona residents take deal, avert forced evacuation

From Ian:

PMW: Nazareth municipality has school children honor murderer of 3 Israelis

Last week, the municipality of Nazareth, a predominantly Arab town in Israel headed by Israeli-Arab Mayor Ali Salam, held an event that glorified terrorist murderer Baha Alyan who together with an accomplice murdered 3 Israelis on a bus in Jerusalem last year. "Hundreds of elementary and high school students and young men and women of all ages" participated in the event organized by Nazareth municipality and the Inma'a Association for Democracy and Capacity Building. [Al-Quds, Dec. 11, 2016]
At the event, the coordinator Saeb Masawrah from Inma'a stated that the chain was a "completion of the message of Martyr Baha Alyan" and that the "Nazareth municipality supported the project":
"'We saw fit to establish the largest and longest chain of readers in the city of Nazareth as a completion of the message of Martyr Baha Alyan who came out of Jerusalem. We are gathering here in order to emphasize our unity as Arabs everywhere, and we will complete the message in all of the Arab cities and villages.' Masawrah noted that the Nazareth municipality supported the project and welcomed the cultural idea."
[Al-Quds, Dec. 11, 2016,]
Before Baha Alyan's terror attack, in which he murdered 3 innocent Israeli civilians, he had once established a readers' chain in Jerusalem. It is under this pretext that Nazareth honored him. However, his public legacy is one of murder.

UK Limits Aid to Palestinians Following Terror Financing Scandal

The United Kingdom issued new guidelines on Friday limiting the foreign aid it gives to the Palestinian Authority following reports that the money was being used to pay salaries to terrorists and their families.
The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) announced that the Palestinian Authority will continue to receive British aid money “in order to maintain stability, provide vital services and build and strengthen the institutions needed for a viable two-state solution.” However, “key changes” have been made regarding how and to whom the money will be distributed.
1. UK support will now focus solely on vital health and education services, in order to meet the immediate needs of the Palestinian people and maximise value for money. Funding will only go towards the salaries of health and education public servants on a vetted list.
2. UK funds will no longer be used to support the salaries of Palestinian Authority public servants in Gaza who have not been able to work.
3. The UK will assess fiscal and public financial management reforms that the Palestinian Authority will need to show progress against in order to secure full future payments from the UK.
According to the FCO, Palestinian aid will now be directed through the European Union’s PEGASE mechanism (Palestinian-European Socio-Economic Management Assistance Mechanism), which will provide a list of qualified individuals limited to the health and education sectors. Those on the vetted list will be “checked by independent auditors” for risk factors including terror financing.

Amona residents take deal, avert forced evacuation

In a move likely to quell fears of a violent showdown between settlers and security forces, residents of Amona voted Sunday to evacuate their outpost peacefully, accepting a proposal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would see 24 families moved to an adjacent plot of land while the rest set up in nearby Ofra.
The state said earlier that it would request an extension for the evacuation notice — set for December 25 — which the High Court is likely to accept, in order to allow time for the implementation of the compromise deal.
The residents voted 45 in favor of the proposal, with 25 opposed and two abstentions. A few hours later, cabinet ministers embraced it in a unanimous vote.
The last-ditch effort to prevent the forced evacuation of Amona, presented Saturday night, was built on a previous proposal, rejected by the settlers last week, that would have seen only half as many families remain on the hilltop.
Under the agreement, presented by Netanyahu, Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Yossi Dagan, head of the Shomron Regional Council, 24 of Amona’s 40 families would receive mobile homes on a plot just meters from the outpost — as opposed to the 12 in last week’s offer — while the remaining families would be given temporary residences in Ofra.

Perhaps the most difficult part of speaking out against political Islam is the fact that so many otherwise intelligent people insist upon interpreting that opposition as one of irrational prejudice or, as is more often suggested, flat-out racism.

Let's dispatch with this immediately.

Opposing the Jihad (or political Islam or Islamism or whatever-you-want-to-call-it) constitutes unjust, illiberal bigotry against Muslims in the way that opposing Nazism constituted unjust, illiberal bigotry against Germans.

This is to say, it doesn't and it didn't.

Why do so many people - yes, particularly on the Left - have so much difficulty understanding such a basic concept? Why is it that western-progressives, who flatter themselves as the most well-educated and sophisticated people on the planet, are also the ones most likely to be stone-cold ignorant of Jihadism (i.e., the various ways in which Sharia is advanced) and the fun it's been having in Europe the last few years?

Why is it that they continue to disregard Jihadi activity in the United States or pretend that it is something other than what it is? Barack Obama, for example, famously referred to the 2009 massacre at Fort Hood as "workplace violence"... and the best minds of my generation nodded their heads in quiet submission.

So, this is two points for you guys.

Number 1:

There is Nothing Racist in Opposing Jihad

Please allow that to sink in for a moment.

Nazism was a racial supremacist philosophy and opposing Nazism did not represent anti-German bigotry.

Likewise, Sharia is a Muslim theo-supremacist legal philosophy and opposing it does not represent bigotry toward anyone. On the contrary, opposing Sharia is the "anti-racist" position.

Those of us who oppose the rise of political Islam - and, thus, Sharia - generally do so out of a commitment to secular humanism wherein people are free to practice their faith in any manner they choose so long as they do not throw Gay people off of tall buildings, behead Christians, force their kidnapped daughters into conversion, coerce women into black potato sacks where their individuality can be snuffed, or seek the genocide of the Jews via the eventual conquest of Jerusalem.

Those of us vocal in our disapproval of such behavior are, in fact, protesting the rise of a widespread theocratic movement that also happens to be the single most successful political movement of this century. This is not about Muslims as people. It is about a supremacist ideology that rules most of the Middle East, making significant advances into Europe, and that would see me, my family, and all of my friends either in submission or dead.

Not all Muslims support Sharia law, however, and the foremost victims of political Islam are Muslims, themselves. Anti-Jihadis are not anti-Muslim. Anti-Jihadis are almost always pro-democracy, pro-liberalism, pro-women's rights, and pro-ethnic minorities. Sharia is anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-women, anti-all-non-Muslims, and would sentence me to death for having the temerity to say so.

Yet, in the United States, progressives and Democrats look upon those of us standing up for universal human rights, by opposing Sharia, as right-wing, conservative, bigoted troglodytes. What the Left needs to understand, however, is that by accepting the rise of political Islam - as, for example, Obama did in his support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt - they are undermining the very purpose of their ideological existence.

If the progressive-left no longer believes in universal human rights then it no longer believes in much of anything, now, does it?

Number 2:

The Jihad is Real

It's a bit strange that after the 9/11 Jihadi attack, the Boston Marathon Jihadi attack, the Fort Hood Jihadi Attack, the San Bernardino Jihadi attack, the Orlando Gay nightclub Jihadi attack and the recent Ohio State University Jihadi attack - to mention just a few - that American progressives fail to acknowledge the reality of the thing.

Jihadism is a political movement grounded within Islam that seeks to spread Sharia Law the world over. The violence is a means of spreading fear among the public in order to undermine the likelihood of political push-back. The primary way this is accomplished is through intimidating people into giving away their fundamental civil liberties. Thus free speech is stifled and people will not mutter too loudly about the destruction of Palmyra nor the Christian genocide in the Middle East.

None of this means, of course, that non-dhimmitudinous westerners should go chasing after Muslims.What it does mean is that the West is long over-due for an honest discussion of the significance of Sharia in terms of US immigration policy. Because opposing Sharia is considered "racist" on the progressive-left, the Democratic Party shows very little interest in monitoring just who comes into this country from parts of the world where Sharia dominates. In this way, non-Muslims from Muslim countries who wish to to become Americans - and thereby free themselves from living under Sharia - are given no more consideration in the immigration and naturalization process than actual Jihadis.

If the progressive-left and the Democratic Party would simply recognize that opposing Sharia is not racist, and that the rise of political Islam is a serious matter, then we can finally begin to have a rational conversation around US immigration policy. One aspect of this discussion, in my opinion, should be concerned with the need to fast-track non-Muslims from oppressive Sharia-dominated countries into the United States as asylum seekers.

In 1883, Emma Lazurus wrote,"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...". She did not write, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to kick your ass and undermine secular humanism."

We should allow Muslims into the United States who yearn to breathe free.

The other kind, maybe not so much.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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The reporters who falsely claim J-Street is equivalent to "liberal Jews"

There are plenty of liberal Jews who support Israel. There are plenty of Zionists who support a two-state solution. I might disagree with the specifics of what they believe and how they want to see peace in the Middle East, but their love for Israel and support for Israelis is unquestioned.

Then there is J-Street.

J-Street is an anti-Israel organization that has been artificially boosted by the White House and the media as the home for liberal Jews, even though its positions are outside the mainstream of the majority of Jewish Zionists, including liberals.

So while the overwhelming majority of American Jews support Benjamin Netanyahu - the democratically elected leader of Israel - J-Street does everything they can to undercut him, and Israeli democracy.

Liberal Jews like Alan Dershowitz advocate for a two-state solution. AIPAC supports a two state solution. The Jewish Agency supports a two state solution. And the Israeli government does, too.

As long as the security of Israel is not compromised by that solution.

J-Street has no such caveats. They have opposed essentially everything Israel has done over the Green Line even in areas that are undoubtedly going to be part of Israel under any conceivable peace plan. They have lobbied for the US not to veto one-sided, anti-Israel resolutions. They refuse to say that they support Israel as a Jewish state as part of any peace deal. They oppose tax deductions for even ambulances and medical clinics over the Green Line.

And that, in a nutshell, is both why J-Street is anti-Israel and why they do not represent liberal American Jews who support Israel.

But when the designated American ambassador to Israel called J-Street "worse that kapos" - a term I would not use personally, but one that indicates the depth of how J-Street uses its pretense of being "pro-Israel" as a screen to hide its anti-Israel activities - the media that has boosted J-Street beyond its actual importance is now trying to claim that there is no daylight between J-Street's positions and that of most liberal Jews.

So we see these tweets from the New York Times writer Matthew Rosenberg pretending that J-Street represents "dovish Jews" and "Jews who support two-state solution:"

Next Amb to Israel: More Settlements? Done. Annex West Bank? Sure. But dovish Jews? Worse than Jews who aided Nazis https://t.co/kg5a3x9mg8
— Matthew Rosenberg (@AllMattNYT) December 16, 2016

Trump Chooses Hard-Liner as Ambassador to Israel — said Jews who support two-state solution "are not Jewish" https://t.co/stII3meNpt
— Matthew Rosenberg (@AllMattNYT) December 16, 2016

That's not all. Look at this lying headline from New York magazine:

As if "liberal Jews" and "J-Street" are synonymous.

And the worst example of a Jew who tries to pretend that J-Street's positions, and therefore his own, are mainstream for American Jews, is Rob Eshman of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, who wrote an entire absurd article on this theme:

All of these tweets and headlines are purposeful lies meant to mainstream an anti-Israel organization as somehow being pro-Israel.

And all these examples prove is that one cannot trust reporters who cannot distinguish between reality and their wishful thinking.

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