Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 22, 2016

12/22 Links Pt2: Europe's Compassionate Hatred of Israel; A World of Hypocrites: Praising Fidel Castro, While Criticizing Israel

From Ian:

It is the behavior of America, along with Britain and Europe, which has incentivized Palestinian rejectionism and mass murder.
If Trump wants to break this impasse, he has to stop doing what the US has done for decades: he must stop funding the Palestinian Authority’s incitement to murder Jews, stop treating the Palestinians as statesmen-in-waiting while they continue to try to wipe out Israel, stop putting the thumbscrews on Israel to compromise its security, and stop endorsing the big lie about Palestinian entitlement to any of the land.
The turmoil in the region has created an unprecedented opportunity to reset the lethal Middle East trajectory. The Gulf Arabs have been made painfully aware that the real threat to themselves comes not from Israel but from within the Islamic world. Now they need Israel as a tactical ally against their common jihadi enemies.
The US and Israel between them have the capacity to become the “strong horse” in the region. That will make all those Arabs and Muslims who so desperately want to resist the Iranian regime or Sunni Islamists braver.
A “civilization spring” is now possible, centered on Israel and America – and, if it keeps its nerve over Brexit, Britain too.
For the desperate weakness of the West, through both cultural demoralization at home and pusillanimity abroad, is intimately connected to the erosion of national identity, patriotism and pride.
If the West is to survive, it must cast off its pathological guilt and shame and uphold once again the concept of the Western nation by putting the national interest first. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Why Did the New York Times Publish Fake News About Trump, Zionism, and Alan Dershowitz?

A Times opinion piece fabricated and erased the positions of American supporters of Israel, including Alan Dershowitz, in order to link Zionism to the alt-right
On Nov. 20, the Zionist Organization of America, a small hard-right pro-Israel group, held its annual gala. To the chagrin of many in the American Jewish community, Donald Trump’s newly-appointed senior strategist Stephen Bannon was scheduled to attend. Outside, scores of Jews protested. And inside, celebrated Zionist lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who had been scheduled to speak before Bannon had been invited, took the opportunity to issue a pointed warning to those in attendance.
“There is an equally disturbing trend that you might not be as happy to hear about, and that is the anti-Muslim and often bigoted extreme right that is pro-Jewish and pro-Zionist,” the Harvard Law professor said. “I’m a little worried today that there are Jews in many parts of the world that are being seduced by the hard right. We must not become complicit in bigotry, whether it is from the right or the left… Being pro-Israel can never serve as an excuse for bigotry against any other group.”
This warning was of a piece with Dershowitz’s critique of Bannon, outlined in an op-ed titled: “Bannon’s not an anti-Semite. But he is an anti-Muslim, anti-women bigot.” Asked by The New Yorker about the anti-Bannon protesters outside the ZOA gala before his speech, Dershowitz said, “Part of me wants to be with them. But … I confront. In the twenties, Jews were seduced by Communists. Now it’s by a populist right that has elements of Fascism. I’m going to try to warn against that tonight.” For his performance, The Daily Beast dubbed Dershowitz “the bravest man of the night.” Bannon ultimately didn’t show.
And yet, remarkably, The New York Times published a piece yesterday which falsely claimed Dershowitz defended Bannon at the ZOA. Writing for The Stone philosophy blog in a post titled “Liberal Zionism in the Age of Trump,” New School assistant professor Omri Boehm attempted to argue that “Zionism [is] a political agenda rooted in the denial of liberal politics” that inevitably dovetails with hard-right bigotry and apologism. His banner example? Alan Dershowitz.

Israel Is Not Up For Grabs

There is much noise surrounding our little land. The clamor of rival claims to the Land of Israel from the podiums of terrorist leaders ruling over a conjured up Palestinian people reverberates through the unhallowed halls of the United Nations. It is perpetuated by an Islamic cartel, anti-Israel NGO’s and an ill-educated and profoundly biased mainstream media.
As if the aforementioned were not galling enough, we are forced to contend with Jews who are stuck in a mindset of pleasing the enemy to the point of discounting their own identity, devaluing their own nation’s status, and consequently surrendering their heritage to the Land of Israel.
Many of these Jews go as far as placing the “sensitivities” of our sworn enemies before the lives of their own people and vociferously join anti-Israel NGO’s such as New Israel Fund, J Street, Jewish Voice of Peace, Peace Now, B’Tzelem, Yesh Din and Breaking the Silence. These Jews have chosen to stand with those who wish to deny the rights of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. A form of Stockholm Syndrome, if you will, left over from too many years of persecution and oppression under a myriad of unfriendly host countries.
But I’m not writing to argue against enemy narratives that are based on a deliberate and malevolent revision of history. Nor am I going to attempt in this missive to explain the Diaspora induced mental anarchy in the minds of some of our fellow Jews. Too limited a venue for the latter. I prefer only to state the obvious. The simple truth. With no apologies or drawn out explanations or justifications: The Land of Israel, in its entirety belongs to the Jewish Nation.

David Singer: Britain rebuffs Abbas call to apologise for Balfour Declaration

However, fake news stories repetitively dealing with the “stateless Palestinians” may have influenced Ms May into also telling the CFI meeting:
“Of course, people are correct when they say that securing the rights of Palestinians and Palestinian statehood have not yet been achieved.”
The Prime Minister has ignored the following pertinent facts:
1. The term “Palestinians” was not defined until 1964 when article 6 of the PLO Charter stipulated:

“The Palestinians are those Arab citizens who were living normally in Palestine up to 1947, whether they remained or were expelled. Every child who was born to a Palestinian parent after this date whether in Palestine or outside is a Palestinian.”
2. The “Palestinian people” was declared to be an integral part of the Arab Nation under Article 1 of the revised 1968 PLO Charter – not a separate and distinct people.
3. The rights of the Arab citizens of Palestine were secured in 1922 by articles 2 and 25 of the Mandate.
4. On 13 September 1922 a Note communicated to the League of Nations by the Secretary General contained a Memorandum by the British Representative limiting the site designated for the Jewish National Home to just 22 per cent of the mandate territory.
The other 78 per cent was designated for the Arab citizens of Palestine – where Statehood was finally declared on 25 May 1946 when the area was renamed the “Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan”. Another name change to “Jordan” in 1950 followed Transjordan’s illegal occupation of Judea and Samaria in 1948.
A second Arab State in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan – remains a fatuous and unrealistically attainable goal.

From the Israel Antiquities Authority:

Who was "Hyrcanus" whose name is engraved in Hebrew on a stone bowl from Jerusalem 2,100 years ago? In 2015 a fragment of a bowl fashioned from chalk (a type of limestone) was unearthed in the Israel Antiquities Authority archaeological excavation in the Giv?ati parking lot at the City of David, in the Jerusalem Walls National Park. The vessel was published today and immediately aroused the curiosity of researchers.
According to Dr. Doron Ben-Ami of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Professor Esther Eshel of Bar-Ilan University, "This is one of the earliest examples of chalk vessels to appear in Jerusalem. These stone vessels were extensively used by Jews because they were considered vessels that cannot become ritually unclean".
The bowl was discovered during an archaeological excavation beneath the foundations of a miqwe dating to the Hasmonean period, which was part of a complex of water installations that were used for ritual bathing. The Giv?ati parking site in the City of David is among the largest excavation areas opened so far in Jerusalem. The excavations at the site, sponsored by the ?Ir David Foundation, have so far uncovered a wealth of artifacts from different periods. Of these, those that arouse special interest are the objects with traces of writing on them, especially when they can be deciphered and read.
Was Hyrcanus, whose name is engraved on the bowl, a high-ranking person, or perhaps simply an ordinary citizen during the Hasmonean period? According to the researchers, it is difficult to ascertain. Since there are few vessels in the archaeological record of this period which are engraved with names, it is not known whether this type of engraving was a routine act or a special tribute. "The name Hyrcanus was fairly common in the Hasmonean period," say Dr. Ben-Ami and Prof. Eshel. “We know of two personages from this period who had this name: John Hyrcanus, who was the grandson of Matityahu the Hasmonean and ruled Judea from 135–104 BCE, and John Hyrcanus II, who was the son of Alexander Jannaeus and Salome Alexandra; however, it is not possible to determine if the bowl belonged specifically to either of them”.

The inscription is in the modern (Ashuri) script which anyone familiar with Hebrew nowadays can read.

I visited the Givati Parking Lot excavations at rhe City of David over the summer, and it is an amazing site. Here is a Hebrew report on the find where you can see this massive dig in the middle of Jerusalem:

(h/t Yoel)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Dear Mr. President-Elect and Mr. Prime Minister,

You understand that you are being tested, do you not?

Mr. Trump, they want to know if you are as tough as you say you are and if you will live up to your promises. And Mr. Netanyahu, will you for once confront an issue head-on instead of finding a way to deflect it?

I’m talking about the embassy.

Jerusalem has been Israel’s capital since the cease-fire agreements were signed in 1949. The Knesset, the seat of Israel’s government, has been there ever since except for a few months in 1949, when it met in a Tel Aviv theater while a more permanent location was prepared. Jerusalem was also the capital of the Kingdom of Judah under King David around 1000 BCE. Israel has never had another capital.

When the city was divided and part of it was occupied by Jordan, it remained the capital of Israel. Even if under some hypothetical “peace” agreement the city were to be re-divided, it would still be the capital of Israel. The argument that recognition of this fact somehow presupposes the outcome of negotiations or is an obstacle to peace is ludicrous. Nobody is talking about putting the embassy in a disputed part of the city. It would be no different than the Knesset.

Some point to the 1947 UN partition resolution (UNGA 181), which called for all of Jerusalem to be placed under international control, as a justification for denying Israel’s clear title. But this resolution was a non-binding recommendation and it was never implemented, since the Arabs chose to try to settle the question of a Jewish state by war. If the US Administration and State Department insist on this, then they should also insist that much of the Galil and the Negev also don’t belong to Israel, following the map of resolution 181. They don’t, because they realize that it would be insane to do so.

The non-recognition of Israel’s capital is no less than a denial of Israel’s sovereignty. What else does it mean to say that a state can’t choose its own capital city on its own territory?

Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu, if you do not proceed with the transfer of the embassy, you will be allowing the gang of murderers and thieves that the international community – and the Israeli government – has cravenly anointed as the leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, to exercise a “terrorist’s veto” over this overdue recognition of Israel’s sovereignty.

PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat recently said that such a move would create “chaos, lawlessness and extremism.” He also promised that “the infuriated Arab public” around the world would force US embassies in their countries to close (presumably by means of rocks and firebombs). Erekat said that moving the embassy would legitimize “Israel’s illegal annexation of eastern Jerusalem.” I hate to repeat myself, but how does moving it to western Jerusalem do that?

Erekat’s comments are meant as a threat that he will invoke the terrorist’s veto. He knows that you, Mr. Trump, don’t want to see US embassies worldwide under siege, and that you, Mr. Netanyahu, don’t want to be blamed for yet another intifada in which Israelis, Jewish and Arab, will die. The gangsters of the PLO are confident that this technique – that they have employed countless times – will be successful yet again.

But appeasement is not the way to respond to terrorism. Surely we’ve all learned that by now! If the US embassy may not be located in Jerusalem, then why should the Knesset and the Prime Minister’s office be there? If Jerusalem isn’t part of Israel, why is Tel Aviv? Maybe the Jews should all move “back” to Poland, Iraq and Russia?

Giving in to blackmail seems like the easy way out, but in the end you will pay ten times as much.

This is a test, Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu. Please don’t fail it.

Sincerely,

Vic Rosenthal
Abu Yehuda

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

12/22 Links Pt1: UNSC anti-settlement vote postponed; One Ambassador and Two States

From Ian:

WATCH: Israeli PM Netanyahu Delivers Chilling Message During Speech

During his September 22, 2016, speech before the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a powerful story. His official YouTube channel just released a clip from the speech, called "Remember Ali," and it's something quite extraordinary.
Netanyahu begins with the following:
"Had the Palestinians said yes to a Jewish state in 1947, there would have been no war, no refugees and no conflict. And when the Palestinians finally say yes to a Jewish state, we will be able to end this conflict once and for all. Now here’s the tragedy, because, see, the Palestinians are not only trapped in the past, their leaders are poisoning the future.
I want you to imagine a day in the life of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, I’ll call him Ali..."
The prime minister goes on to deliver a chilling message. To simply transcribe the story would rob it of its impact. Instead, take three minutes out of your day to watch this clip:

Remember Ali?

Egypt’s Security Council anti-settlement vote postponed, possibly ‘indefinitely’

The United Nations Security Council on Thursday postponed a vote on an Egyptian-drafted resolution demanding that Israel immediately halt its settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, diplomats said. The vote had been set to take place later in the day.
Egypt requested the delay to allow time for consultations on the measure, but no new time or date was scheduled. One unnamed Western diplomatic source told Reuters that the vote was postponed “potentially indefinitely.”
Egypt sought the postponement at Israel’s request, after “high level” contacts between the two governments, Reuters said.
The delay came as Israel was scrambling to head off a possible surprise move by the United States, with some indications the Obama administration may not have been willing to exercise its veto power.
According to a report in the Israeli news site Walla, an unnamed Israeli official said that outgoing US Secretary of State John Kerry told a Palestinian delegation to Washington earlier this month that the US would not veto the resolution; however, the Palestinians later denied this claim.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had convened his security cabinet for an emergency session Thursday evening, just hours before the vote was scheduled.

Eugene Kontorovich: By allowing an anti-Israel Security Council resolution, Obama will hurt the U.N., and not help peace

The Security Council is expected to vote today on a resolution, introduced by Egypt, condemning the presence of settlements — Jewish communities in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. For years, there has been mounting speculation, fueled by the administration itself, that President Obama would use his lame-duck period in office for a major anti-Israel action, probably by not providing the customary U.S. veto to such resolutions.
I expect the United States will veto today’s resolution, but that may be only a prequel to allowing the passage of one of the numerous similar resolutions that have been floated. The other resolutions are substantively similar, but unlike the Egyptian proposal, they may make cosmetic, inconsequential half-criticisms of Palestinian Authority “incitement” (while ignoring the PA’s ongoing solicitation and sponsorship of actual killings of Jews). Then the administration would then say it vetoed “anti-Israel resolutions,” but simply could not hold back the tide against a “balanced” resolution.
Obama’s goal with such a resolution would be to punish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he personally dislikes, and to create diplomatic facts on the ground to box in President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy. The folly of a such resolution has been underscored by both Hillary Clinton and Trump, as well as near-unanimous majorities in both houses of Congress and an array of Democratic foreign policy experts, including former Senate majority leader and Obama administration peace negotiator George Mitchell.
Such a resolution would not cement any positive legacy for Obama. To the contrary, it would vastly magnify the actual obstacles to resolving the Palestinian issue. Moreover, by setting the U.N. against Israel, Obama may provoke a sharp conflict between Washington and the U.N. — one that would harm the latter much more than the former.

"Jewish dogs playing tennis in Al Aqsa!"

From Fawzi Ben Younes Ben Hadid in Oman Daily:

I received on my mobile phone a picture, what I saw was more like a nightmare. I asked myself, what do I see? Is it true or is painful past?

I saw the dogs in the form of human beings, the Zionists criminals whose flesh corrupts the pure land, I saw men and women playing in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, using the prayer mat and turning it into a playground for tennis...These stinking dogs are now bragging about their desecration in front of the world, ...defiling the first qiblah and the third holiest site: where are the Muslims? Where is the free world?

Jewish extremists, the Zionist criminals, and are now applying what they had planned, and like it or not we are spectators, they described Arabs as stupid...Saladin will come , O Zionist criminals, you know it 's soon, and your evil will be expelled, and humiliated, and the Muslims will enter the house, God willing .

...Jewish criminals will not survive, ye apes and pigs. There is great difference between us and you, we are guardians of God and you are the parents of demons and evil .

There are a lot of other colorful curses on Jews but I couldn't figure out the translation.

I had discussed this claim last year. Here's the photo that this idiotic writer is referring to:

It was at a mosque in Turkey, not Jerusalem, where, besides badminton, they also taught children karate and soccer - in order to get the kids more interested in visiting mosques.

As to the writer's claim that Jews regard all Arabs as stupid - well, if the shoe fits, Mr. Hadid....

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Lebanon's Ain el Hilweh camp is pretty much run by Palestinians. In some ways, it is a microcosm of how Palestinian self-governance would work.

It is a mess.

Two people were killed Wednesday by gunfire in a southern Palestinian refugee camp following the assassination of a member of an extremist faction, a security source told The Daily Star. The source said that Samer Hmeid, a member of militant group Asbat al-Ansar, and known as Samer Nejmeh, was killed by gunmen in the Ain al-Hilweh camp near Sidon. Nejmeh was previously a member of Fatah.

Security sources from within the camp said that CCTV footage showed two individuals on motorbikes make their way to the Safsaf neighborhood – a stronghold of the rival Asbat al-Ansar faction – where they shot Nejmeh and his companion before escaping.
A coffee vendor identified as Mahmoud Saleh was wounded in the attack, and later succumbed to his injuries.

A woman named Alia Hourani also sustained gunshot wounds and was admitted to a nearby hospital.

That's the headline story, but the rest of this story (behind the Daily Star Lebanon's paywall) shows that the camp is much worse than the occasional assassination would indicate.

A man named Mahmoud Abu al-Yaman was killed in the Baraksat neighborhood during the gunfire that followed the assassination.

Students in nearby schools fled the volatile Taamir neighborhood to take shelter as tensions heightened at the camp. Announcements were made from mosque loudspeakers calling for parents to pick up their children. Witnesses said that masked gunmen were also seen on the camp’s Tahtani Street after the incident.

A gunfight erupted after the assassination between members of the Fatah Movement and friends and relatives of Nejmeh. Nejmeh’s relatives also fired into the air and targeted shops in the area.

Fatah members erected a barrier to separate the Fawqani Street from the Barakat area.

A Hamas official in the Sidon area, Abu Ahmad Fadl-Taha, told The Daily Star that the movement was attempting to mediate a cease-fire and had contacted all the clashing groups to restore order and calm at the camp.

Hamas is the moderate group there!

Another story in the Daily Star is enlightening as well:

Militants fired rocket propelled grenades in the south Lebanon Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp Monday to celebrate the killing of Russia's ambassador to Turkey in Ankara.

We've all heard about celebratory gunfire - but celebratory RPGs?

Whatever the pressures that Palestinians in Lebanon have - and they have a lot, as they are forced to live in crowded camps and severely limited in what they can do by the apartheid Lebanese regime - there is no justification for them to turn their communities into a constant war zone.

That, they do on their own.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

This is surreal. From JTA:

One of the world’s leading historians on the Jewish communities in Arab countries is being prosecuted in France for alleged hate speech against Muslims.

The Morocco-born French-Jewish scholar Georges Bensoussan, 64, is due to appear next month before a Paris criminal court over a complaint filed against him for incitement to racial hatred by the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, the group recently announced on its website.

The complaint, which leading French scholars dismissed as attempt at “intimidation” in a statement Friday, was over remarks about anti-Semitism by Muslims that Bensoussan, author of a definitive 2012 work entitled “Jews in Arab Lands,” made last year during an interview aired by the France Culture radio station, the Collective said.

The Collective based its complaint on two remarks by Bensoussan.

“Today, we are witnessing a different people in the midst of the French nation, who are effecting a return on a certain number of democratic values to which we adhere,” read the first quote flagged.

The second quote cited read: “This visceral anti-Semitism proven by the Fondapol survey by Dominique Reynié last year cannot remain under a cover of silence.” Conducted in 2014 among 1,580 French respondents, of whom one third were Muslim, the survey found that they were two times and even three times more anti-Jewish than French people as a whole.

“Besides, with the animosity toward the French nation, there will be no integration as long as we will not be rid of this ancestral anti-Semitism that is kept secret (…) as an Algerian sociologist, Smain Laacher, very bravely said in a film that will be aired on France 3, ‘it’s disgraceful to keep in place this taboo, knowing that in Arab families in France and beyond everybody knows but will not say that anti-Semitism is transmitted with mother’s milk,” the quote continued.

Neither of those quotes are anything close to hate speech.

But people who want to shut down free speech in France have a powerful weapon:

[H]ate-speech indictments are “quasi-automatic” in France when police receive complaints of defamation, according to the L’Express news website.

So anyone can prosecute anything that they consider offensive. This absurd rule is completely incompatible with free speech. Hate speech indeed should be prosecuted, but a system needs to exist to vet the complaints in order to stop its abuse, which is clearly the case here.

The criteria should not be difficult to create: Hate speech encourages hate actions. No one is going to attack Muslims because an intellectual notes that Arabs generally hold antisemitic views or that their cultural influence on France is at odds with traditional French values.

Three prominent French thinkers, Jacques Tarnero, Yves Ternon and Michel Zaoui, issued a strong condemnation:

These approaches are now part of a strategy of intimidation aimed at the censorship of all lucid speech, of all critical expression. The new thought police seeks to use the weapons of democracy to constrain it. That they are adorned with the feathers of the antiracism does not change the case. The accusation of "Islamophobia", equated with a racist discourse, is itself part of a strategy of deviating from the meaning of words aimed at disqualifying any lucid analysis of the present situation.

Let us not deceive ourselves: today we are facing an all-out attack aimed at setting up cultural and political norms foreign to democracy and the spirit of the Enlightenment in the French and European landscape. This model seeks to act against our historical cultural order . This strategy is in line with the other aggressions which France and Europe have been the victim of for a number of years. This cultural terrorism complements the physical, murderous terrorism.

The trial is set for January 25.

(h/t Ronald)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Latest "Apartheid?" poster

From the Jerusalem Post:

Two women from Israel’s Ethiopian community broke through the glass ceiling on Tuesday, becoming the first to be appointed judges. They were among six women who were included in the 13 new judicial appointments as judges and registrars serving in the district, magistrate’s and traffic courts in Haifa and Tel Aviv.

Although there is no shortage of Ethiopian-Israeli lawyers, none had previously reached the bench.

At the appointments ceremony at the President’s Residence, Ednaki Sebhat Haimowitz and Esther Tafta Gardi were the last two judges to be called to make the pledge not to pervert the law or to show favor. Haimowitz has been appointed to the Central District Magistrate’s Court, and Gardi to the Haifa District Traffic Court.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

(This post will be pinned to the top of the webpage all day.)

At EoZ we don't have any wealthy patrons who offer to match, or double match, all donations. (Anyone who wants to volunteer for such a role, contact me!)

But we do have a group of people who, day in and day out, work hard to promote the truth about Israel and the Middle East to the world.

Sometimes the results are immediate and dramatic. as when McGraw-Hill withdrew and destroyed textbooks that included anti-Israel lies this year.

Sometimes the stories that we find take a little more time to become known to the world.

Elder of Ziyon strives to provide, above all, the truth - and to expose the lies that are too often espoused in the media, by NGOs, by pundits and politicians.

We've received feedback from Israeli and IDF officials that our articles are read - and used - internally.

We want to give tools to those who need them. A reference site where the haters can be dispatched with facts and with clarity. A place to go when you see an anti-Israel essay but can't quite put your finger on why it is wrong. A resource where the news that is not reported elsewhere can be read, countering the bias inherent in the mainstream media. A destination where like-minded people can meet and be read. And a site where little-known voices are amplified.

EoZ is all of those things, and we want to do more. But 2000 articles a year, nearly all of them original, does take a great amount of time and money.

If you care about Israel, donate to EoZ.

Please donate today. You can give a one-time donation:

You can become a patron through Patreon, giving money every month and enjoying some perks.

You can send us an Amazon gift card.

You can hire me to speak to your organization. (I'm going to be in Chicago next month, any interest?)

You can also retweet and repost EoZ articles.

If you have your own newspaper or site, you can contact me about republishing.

As always, we appreciate all your support! Have a happy Chanukah, a merry Christmas, and a great new year!

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

12/21 Links Pt2: Down with the Norwegian occupation!; JStreet Do You Even Support Israel?

From Ian:

Down with the Norwegian occupation!

Norway’s third largest city, Trondheim, has announced a boycott of all Israeli goods originating in areas beyond the 1967 line.
Ironically, however, the policies of occupation, colonization and discrimination that these Norwegians are accusing Israel of imposing, have been practiced for centuries by Norway against its own indigenous minority.
Long before there was such a thing as Norway, the northern part of that country was the homeland of an indigenous people known as the Sami. While the Norwegians’ first king, Harald Fairhair, ruled in the 9th century CE, the roots of the Sami nation are much deeper – going all the way back to prehistoric times, according to archaeologists.
The name “Sami” first appeared in recorded history in the writings of the Roman historian Tacitus in the year 98 CE. Coincidentally, that was at almost the same time that the Romans tried to wipe out all memory of the Jewish inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael by renaming the country “Palaestina.”
Giving the Land of Israel a new name did not, however, change the ethnic, religious or national identity of the inhabitants, and claims of a “Palestinian” nation would not be heard until the late 20th century. In the meantime, in far-off Scandinavia, the poor Sami were enduring long centuries of mistreatment at the hands of their Norwegian occupiers.
In the 15th century CE, Norway began encouraging its farmers to establish settlements in the Sami region, an area the indigenous people call “Samiland” but the Norwegians renamed “Finnmark.”

Joel Pollak: In Attacking David Friedman, J Street Condemns Itself

J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami writes in the Washington Post that David Friedman, chosen by President-elect Donald Trump as the next ambassador to Israel, is unfit to serve.
He begins by sharing how wounded he feels that Friedman has referred to “me and Jews who share my politics on Israel as ‘worse than kapos’ and not really Jews.”
What crocodile tears.
For several years, Ben-Ami and his group have tried to bully everyone less radical than J Street — which is to say, most of the rest of the American Jewish community.
It’s not enough to support the two-state solution — which Ben-Ami, disingenuously, claims to be the reason Friedman attacked J Street. No — J Street has cast even supporters of the two-state solution as enemies of peace if they dare to expect Palestinian concessions.
In 2010, J Street ran an advertisement describing supporters of the two-state solution like Alan Dershowitz and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) as part of the “chorus of no.” Unless you pressured Israel, you weren’t part of the “community of yes.”
Then Ben-Ami and his organization began pressuring the U.S. Treasury to investigate Jewish charities — and only Jewish charities — whose beneficiaries may have included Jews living across the 1949 armistice line, i.e. in East Jerusalem or the West Bank.

Students Supporting Israel: JStreet Do You Even Support Israel?

Yesterday Jeremy Ben-Ami published an article titled "MOVING THE US EMBASSY TO JERUSALEM IS STILL A BAD IDEA". In his article, Ben-Ami mentioned three points that should hold back the move of the U.S. Embassy: The Situation on the Ground, Danger to US Interests, Misunderstanding the American Jewish Community. After I read the article,
I would like to let Jeremy Ben-Ami know what my view on the issue is.
Let's start with the following: Until the embassy won't be moved I won't be excited about it. Many Presidents had the chance to move it and until today no one has done so. That day, and if it will move at all, I will make sure to get excited about the issue.
Now let's get to the point.
J Street is not a pro-Israel organization. An organization that backs up its decisions and articles in paragraphs like "Danger to US Interests, Misunderstanding the American Jewish Community," cannot say they are pro-Israel. Maybe J Street isn't anti-Israel like others but they are not pro-Israel.
An organization that is pro-Israel will first worry about Israeli interests before they will worry about how the American Jewish community will be seen and judged here; they should worry about how their cousins in Israel won't be killed by their other cousins in the Middle East. J Street = not a pro-Israel organization.

Love him or hate him, Bibi's all we've got at present. There really is no one else on the Israeli political spectrum who cuts such an appropriately statesmanlike figure as Benjamin Netanyahu. Which is why he's the second-longest running Israeli prime minister after David Ben Gurion. Israelis know that Bibi's it.

This doesn't mean that the other politicians aren't going to angle themselves into position for a takeover, hostile or otherwise. You'll always see Naftali Bennett , for instance, using any issue du jour as a platform to knock Bibi while at the same time taking credit for any progress made on said issue. Yair Lapid, too, is always looking for opportunities to advance his political fortunes. He has a knack for speaking and videos of his speeches always go over well on social media. Also: he has GREAT hair.

Finally, Lapid, unlike Bennett, is not right wing. Which could theoretically make him palatable to the mainstream media, which hates Netanyahu with a passion. They hate Netanyahu because President Obama hates Netanyahu, and they, the mainstream media, always do Obama's bidding.

Now it's interesting to watch all this angling for power and position on either side of the Atlantic. We Israelis watch President Obama as he blames Russia for interfering with the American election. We find this especially ironic, considering that Obama's State Department interfered with Israeli elections to the tune of $349,276 in taxpayer's money.

So no. It's not a new idea: trying to find someone, anyone, who might take over from Bibi, if not now, then at some future point in time. And so Ruth Eglash's interview with Yair Lapid in the Washington Post makes perfect sense. Washington is looking for fresh Israeli blood. Someone malleable. Someone who, unlike Bibi, will do the left's bidding, and say, "Sir! Yes, Sir," when ordered to stop building Jewish homes, release Arab terrorists, and offer up another slice of Jewish land to the Arabs.

So you can just imagine this is thrilling stuff for Yair Lapid, he of the amazing hair, of the legendary MK father. An interview with the Washington Post! Lapid must have been over the moon. What a chance!

Now there were two key points in this brief interview that stand out. First of all, a dig at Israel and Netanyahu from reporter Ruth Eglash, who manages to insert the idea that Israel's leadership is the equivalent of the PA leadership and isn't making any real efforts toward a peace settlement. This is supposed to show balance and symmetry.

Eglash demonstrates this supposed symmetry by asking Lapid if he believes that in Mahmoud Abbas, Israel has a partner for peace. When Lapid confirms that Abbas is no peace partner, that he's just more of the Tunis people, more of Arafat's ilk, and will never sign a deal, Eglash asks, "Isn’t the same true about the Israelis? In Israel, the same people have been saying the same things about the same peace deal for 20 years. Do we need to see a change in Israel before peace can be reached?"

So here's the thing. During Bibi's reign, settlement construction was frozen as per President Obama's bidding. This affected people I know, personally. People who were building homes had the construction stalled at length, and had to pay penalties because their homes were not ready when it was time for them to move according to the contracts they had signed. People could not add on to their homes to provide for the natural growth of their families. Not to mention, the idea has always been for the two sides of the conflict to meet WITHOUT PRECONDITIONS, for instance, without any construction freeze.

The construction freeze was flat out wrong. But Abbas demanded the freeze, Obama backed him, and Bibi felt forced to accede. Even though building homes has nothing to do with peace or the lack of same. As we saw with Disengagement, homes can easily be torn down and Jewish families expelled in the event that the State of Israel decides to do these things as part of a gesture of "peace."

This question so craftily posed by Eglash to draw a moral equivalency between the murderous PA and democratic Israel, was meant to make it sound as if Israel, like the PA, has done nothing for the sake of peace. But this is not true. Israel has made numerous concessions to the Arabs for the sake of peace, while the Arabs have made not a one. The settlement freeze, which, de facto lasted much longer than the ten months demanded, was one such concession. But there have been many.

And the PA? They have made not a single concession for the sake of peace. They will not even recognize the State of Israel. Meantime, the PA's Facebook page, and official television station are used to incite terror against Israeli citizens.

Now that is something you surely do not see on the other side. You don't see Bibi telling Jews to go out and kill Arabs. Not on his Facebook page. Not on Israeli television. Not anywhere.

You don't see Israelis throwing firebombs and boulders at Arab cars. You don't see Israelis ramming their cars into babies in strollers. You don't see Israelis hacking at Arabs with knives, scissors, and axes, or shooting people on buses, And you don't see Israelis kidnapping, murdering, and dismembering teenage Arab boys on their way home from school.

But here is Eglash. She wants to draw some kind of symmetry between the Arabs and the Jews and how little they've done to make peace? Frankly, it makes the bile rise in one's throat. The lack of peace is due to the presence of terror. Arab terror. Against the Jews. Jews like Eglash.

These are the things Lapid, oh he of the great hair, could have and should have said. It was an opportunity, one handed to him on a platter by Eglash, on behalf of that bastion of the liberal media, the Washington Post. Right here, at this point, was where Lapid could have redeemed himself, shown us that he can someday step into Bibi's shoes and be a leader worthy to rule the great nation of Israel.

And here is where he utterly failed.

Here is where he should have backed his prime minister, his people. Here is where he should have listed all the weighty sacrifices the Jews have made in the name of peace. Here is where he should have recounted, at length, all the ways in which Israel is genuinely good to its Arab minority. Here is where he should have firmly pointed out the disparity between the murderous nature of the Arab regime and the terror it incites, as against the democratic and utterly moral and upright nature of the Jewish State.

Instead, he of the great hair reverted to type and became a politician, grandstanding, angling for his piece of future pie. He said:

"Since the Oslo accords, there have been 11 rounds of bilateral talks and all of them came out to the same nothing. It was the same people, saying the same things to each other."

Translation: All of these leaders of Israel haven't managed to create peace. They are failures. (As if the PA were not the responsible party for the absence of peace!)

He said:

"If we are going to do this, then there needs to be a different mechanism. Since last September, I have been pushing a new concept, a regional conference that will include many of the players who are involved anyway — Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the gulf states."

Translation: You need someone new. You need ME. I have a new idea. (Which actually isn't new and is predicated on the cooperation of all the Arab allies that Bibi has cultivated while serving in office as prime minister.)

He said:

"And, we need to start with Gaza. Gaza is a simpler deal. There are no Jews in Gaza, no holy sites. We will not talk to Hamas, but with regional players present, we will have moderators to talk through. If we start in Gaza, we will have a win. I think the entire area needs to see progress."

Translation: Let's move the conflict to a different arena and pretend this will make a difference. (Certainly sounds good if you don't look too closely or demand any details.)

So basically you have Lapid boasting that he can do what Bibi cannot just by changing the venue, the words, the players. Boasting. Instead of backing his prime minister or his people. During an opportunity to make Israel look good in the Washington Post. An opportunity scorned.

But okay, he was led. He was asked a leading question. And he's a politician and ran true to type.

Alas, it got worse. Much worse.

Eglash asked, "Netanyahu boasts about how Israel is now getting along with the rest of the world; he says he is 'optimistic' about relations he has cultivated in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, but surely the only relationships that really matter diplomatically are those with the United States and Europe?"

Eglash paints Netanyahu as boastful. She makes him sound stupid because he doesn't know that the only real players (according to Eglash) are the U.S. and Europe. Yet in her rude question that knocks the leader of an American ally in a major American news outlet is a second chance. A chance for Lapid, he of the great hair, to say staunch and supportive words to back the foreign policy of his country's leader. To say something good and positive about Israel and the tack it is taking on the world stage.

Instead, Lapid takes the bait and takes a stab at Bibi. He says, "Without criticizing the prime minister, I will say there is a difference between how you handle trade policy and foreign policy. Trade policies deal with everyone everywhere in the world, but foreign policy is subjective. It is dependent on three places — Washington, Brussels and international institutes. This is where the game is played, so if you are in the game, then you have to make sure you are on good terms with all these three."

Note to Lapid: whenever someone prefaces his remarks by saying, "Without criticizing the prime minister," you can be sure that what will follow is exactly that. A criticism of the prime minister. Which is what that was, your response. A criticism.

For all that Lapid and his party are part of the opposition, there comes a time when supporting your people trumps party lines and politics. If Lapid had unequivocally backed Bibi in this interview, it would have told Israelis (and Americans!) something important: that here is a man of quality and substance—someone who might one day fill Bibi's most substantial shoes.

Alas, we came away knowing that the only thing to know about Lapid is what we already knew:

He sure does have great hair.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Muslims Call Display Of Hanukkah Lights An Assault On Their Religious Freedom (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Jerusalem, December 21 - Religious leaders in the Muslim community across Israel warned today that if millions of Israeli Jews kindle their annual Hanukkah lights as planned beginning this Saturday evening, the act would constitute a violation of Muslims' religious right not to have to see anyone practicing a religion other than Islam.

A group of Sunni Imams and Islamic religious educators gathered in Jerusalem today to prepare a statement protesting the Ministry of Religious Affairs allowing Jews to light their candles and oil lamps in full view of Muslims, in some cases even tolerating the erection of candelabra tall enough to require a cherry-picker to light, visible as far as the eye can see. The group agreed that while they lack the political power to prevail upon the Jewish-run ministry to prevent millions of Jews from thus trampling Muslim religious freedom, they must at least register their objections lest their silence be taken as acceptance of such abuse.

"We Muslims in this land who have already known decades of persecution in the form of being prevented from implementing the Pact of Omar cementing our social and political dominance over non-Muslims, condemn the ongoing attempt by the Zionist usurpers of this Islamic land to assert that anyone but adherents of Islam may so confidently remain non-believers. Our community reserves the right to resist this onslaught of heresy by any means," read the statement.

Participants in the conference explained that in addition to the violation of their religious freedom that public display of Hanukkah lights represents, the environmental damage deserves consideration. "Here you have tens of millions of flames burning at once, releasing who knows ho much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and contributing to global warming," admonished Duwas Assay, an Imam from Umm el-Fahm. Even in our city, where we are not plagued by the sight of Hanukkah lights or symbols everywhere, we will suffer the consequences of such wanton ecological negligence," he explained.

Others noted the hypocrisy of such garish displays of light at night, when others want to sleep. "There was almost a law passed last month banning the use of mosque loudspeakers for the pre-dawn call to prayer," recalled Aiwish Tuqilyu, a religious educator in Jerusalem's Jebel Mukaber neighborhood. "Supposedly, the concern was for people who wish to be asleep at that hour, as if anyone not coming to pray then has any right to object, or any worth at all as a human. Yet these same authorities do nothing about the assault on our senses of all this light shining from every Jewish window during nighttime hours. The hypocrisy stinks."

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.