Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 06, 2017

2017 Hasby Award nominations (continuously updated)

It is that time of year again where I ask you for nominations for the annual Hasby Awards, the best examples of pro-Israel advocacy for the year.

Below you will find the categories of awards for this year. You can add your own nominees or you can second the ones that are listed in the comments. This is not the vote! I have pre-populated nominees from those who had been seconded last year and some others, but you are encouraged to nominate additional ones. There is no need to second nominees that have already been seconded.

No nominations or seconds from Twitter or email, they must be placed in the comments. Please include links!

Please don't second more than one in one category.

Self-nominations are allowed.

Additional category suggestions are welcome, but unlikely. It is already a crowded field.

As in previous years, no one gets awarded twice for the same category so I list the previous winners.

Some winners are decided by me and others will be based on surveys.. The awards will be given out sometime in 2017, maybe even in a real-life ceremony like last year's. (But it might have to be in the New York area this time. If you have a good venue and want to host, please let me know!)

BEST PRO-ISRAEL TWEETER (Previous winners: Avi Mayer, No Camels, Margie in Tel Aviv, Arsen Ostrovsky)

UK Media Watch

William Daroff

Hen Mazzig (seconded)

Anarcho-Zionist

Brian of London

NotAntiSemitic

Tal Ofer

Israellycool (seconded)

Omri Ceren

Eugene Kontorovich (seconded)

Judean People's Front

Andreas Fagerbakke (seconded)

Gidon Shaviv

Dumisani Washington
Yishai Fleisher
Israel Shield
Shim Rational
Petra Marquardt-B
Hillel Fuld
Father Gabriel Naddaf
Jonathan Greenberg
Frackingzionist
YMikarov
Michael Dickson

BEST YOUNG DEFENDER OF ISRAEL (under 25) (Previous winners: Muhammad Zoabi, Leora Noor Eisenberg, Alexandra Markus (Lex))

Chloe Valdary (seconded)
Hananya Naftali (seconded)
Elliott Hamilton
Rudy Rochman
Aedan O'Connor (seconded)

BEST PRO-ISRAEL COMMENTATOR EXCLUSIVE TO MIDDLE EAST/ISRAEL (Previous winners: Barry Rubin, Sarah Honig, Caroline Glick, Evelyn Gordon)

Martin Kramer (seconded)

Daniel Gordis

Khaled Abu Toameh (seconded)

Mudar Zahran

Yishai Fleisher

Fred Maroun
Noor Dahri (seconded)

Varda Meyers-Epstein (seconded)

BEST SATIRE/HUMOR (Previous winners: PreOccupied Territory, This Is Palestine)
Mideast Beast (seconded)
Daily Freier (seconded)
Dry Bones Blog (seconded)

BEST ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PRO-ISRAEL ONLINE MEDIA OUTLET (Previous winners: Times of Israel, The Tower, Mosaic)

Algemeiner (seconded)

Tablet (seconded)

JPost

Arutz7

i24News
Israel Rising (seconded)
Breitbart News (seconded)
Jerusalem Post
Israel Inside app

BEST WATCHDOG: MEDIA AND NGOs (Previous winners: Honest Reporting, CAMERA, BBC Watch, Palestinian Media Watch, MEMRI)

UK Media Watch (seconded)
Honest Reporting Canada
NGO Monitor (seconded)

UN Watch (seconded)
Center for Analyzing Media Coverage of Israel

BEST PRO-ISRAEL BLOG (PRESENT COMPANY EXCLUDED) (Previous winners: Daphne Anson, Missing Peace, Israellycool, This Ongoing War, Abu Yehuda)

Israel Matzav

Jews Down Under (seconded)

Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers

5 Minutes for Israel

IsraelSeen (seconded)

IsraelStreet

The Mike Report

Israel Thrives (seconded)

ZionTruth

Edgar Davidson

Beyond the Great Divide

Judean People's Front

Israel Shield
Judean Rose (seconded)

BEST SOCIAL MEDIA ADVOCATE FOR ISRAEL (NON-BLOG) (previous winner: Varda Meyers Epstein)

The Muqata (seconded)

Miriam Goodman
Mottle Wolfe
Ben Shapiro (seconded)

Muslims of Israel (seconded)
Alexandra Markus

BEST ARTICLE

"Instead of Apologizing” (Mosaic translation of 1911 Jabotinsky article) (seconded)
Israel Conducted No Ethnic Cleansing in 1948 (Benny Morris) (seconded)
Palestinians: Western Media's Ignorance and Bias (Khaled Abu Toameh)
Yes, Many Journalists Choose Sides in a Conflict—and Often for the Worst Reasons (Zenobia Ravji)

Where Does All That Aid for Palestinians Go? (Tzipi Hotovely) (seconded)

"Prophecy in Israel: Expression of the Collective Hebrew Soul and Unity of Creation" by: Yehuda HaKohen (seconded)

300 attackers are not 'lone'

Andrew Pessin: A new way to respond to BDS, without resorting to Bullying, Deceiving, and Smearing: Part I

Steven Horowitz: Is Jordan Legal?
Israellycool: Know your History (series)

Major Alaa Waheeb: There’s only one country in the Middle East that could produce a soldier like me (seconded)

Jonathan Sacks: ANTI-ZIONISM IS THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM, SAYS BRITAIN'S EX-CHIEF RABBI
Strategic self-respect (Vic Rosenthal)

Ryan Bellerose, Hearts And Minds

Yoram Ettinger: U.S. Investment in - not Foreign Aid to - Israel

Ryan Bellerose, Justice

Fred Maroun, The macabre commemoration of the Nakba
Alan Sdersjowiyz: Visit to the Old and New Hells of Europe Provides a Reminder of Israel's Importance

Ryan Bellerose, The Pendulum

Ari Soffer, To defeat BDS, stop 'fighting BDS'

CHLOE VALDARY: 21st Century Zionism: The Importance of Place & Homeland i n Popular Culture
Evelyn Gordon: The Truth About Settlement Growth

Why do I love Israel? (Forest Rain)

My grandmother, the Palestinian (Forest Rain)
Dear Anti-Israel Activist (Nevet Basker) (seconded)

At the U.N., Only Israel Is an ‘Occupying Power’(EUGENE KONTOROVICH and PENNY GRUNSEID) (seconded)

BEST VIDEO

Zionism: an Indigenous Movement (Einat Wilf) (seconded)
Why Are There Still Palestinian Refugees? by Dumisani Washington (seconded)
Born to Hate Jews by Kasim Hafeez

Terror is terror is terror

Alan Dershowitz Brilliantly Strikes down Anti-Israel Question at Conference
120 Days of Terror

Why the Jews Are Indigenous to Israel Ryan Bellerose (seconded)

Where Has All The Money Gone? (seconded)
Egyptian-German Scholar Hamed Abdel-Samad: Our Hatred of Jews Has Poisoned Us

68 Facts You Probably Didn't Know About Israel
NO2BDS: Almost a million people lost everything when Israel declared independence

IDF Blog: This Is Why We Defend Israel
Six Days of Miracles

“Forever” – An ode to the people of Israël

UNRWA: A Palestinian "Refugee" Speaks out
Israeli Druze diplomat answer to the Syrian representative in the UN (seconded)

BEST BOOK

150 Palestinian Tales (seconded)

BEST PRO-ISRAEL ACTIVIST ORGANIZATION (Previous winner: My Truth)

Regavim (seconded)

Northwest Friends of Israel (seconded)fshapi

Sussex Friends of Israel (seconded)

StandWithUs (seconded)

Students Supporting Israel (seconded)

Canary Mission (seconded)

Im Tirtzu (seconded)

Irish4Israel

Calgary United For Israel (seconded)
Israel's Voice

BEST SPEECH
Jeremy Gimpel, Yom Haatzmaut, Canada (seconded)
International Law Issues in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict, Eugene Kontorovich (seconded)

BEST PRO-ISRAEL CELEBRITY (The David Draiman Award) (Previous winner: Mayim Bialik)

Roseanne Barr (seconded)
Ashton Kutcher
Jon Voight (seconded)
Jenna Jameson

BEST "OWN GOAL" (Anti-Zionists acting so stupid they disgust even disinterested parties or backfire spectacularly) (Previous winners: Max Blumenthal/David Sheen, Rototom Sunsplash Music Festival)

Israeli flag burned outside DNC
Senator Dianne Feinstein supporting abstention of UNSCR 2334 (seconded)
Barack Obama crafting UNSCR 2334 (seconded)
US collusion with PA revealed by Egypt
Bernie Sanders (seconded)

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.

01/06 Links Pt1: UNSC 2334: A Victory of Jihadism; Why Israel’s Critics Are Losing Ground

From Ian:

Bat Ye'or: UN Security Council Res. 2334: A Victory of Jihadism

No European nation protested against the Islamic colonization of Jewish-Palestinian areas, the expulsion of their Jewish inhabitants and the seizure of their belongings, or against the persecution of Jews in Arab countries.
An artificial Palestinian Arab "people" was created in order to replace the people of Israel. A European army of forger-historians and Arab Christian dhimmis transferred the historic characteristics of the Jews onto them. Names of towns and regions were Islamized: Jerusalem was called Al-Quds and "the West Bank" replaced Judea and Samaria.
Israelis, guilty of existing, were expected to apologize for that, humbly to maintain their enemies and suffer their terrorism without protesting or defending themselves. Their crime? They refused to mingle with and disappear into dhimmitude by giving up their rights and their history to the people created by the Euro-Arab alliance to replace them.
It is the turn of Europeans to see a replacement population be created in their countries, with all the rights that are being taken away from them. It is their turn to be forced to renounce their national, historic, cultural and religious identity, to apologize and take the blame for existing. It is their turn to be forced to monitor their borders and guard their airports, their schools, their trains, their streets and their cities with soldiers. European governments that contemplated the destruction of Israel worked together with the enemies of Israel to destroy their own people, their sovereignty, their security and their freedoms.
The recognition of the legitimacy of Israel's return to its homeland is the essential condition of Islamic peace with the world, because it will abolish the jihadist ideology.

Caroline Glick: The IDF’s new social contract

Ya’alon and Eisenkot and his generals have repeatedly offended the public with comparisons of “IDF values” with alleged processes of barbarization, Nazification and ISIS-ization of the public by the likes of Azaria and his supporters.
If there was a specific moment where the military brass abandoned its compact with society once and for all, it came on Tuesday, the day before the military court convicted Azaria of manslaughter. In a speech that day, Eisenkot insisted that IDF soldiers are not “our children.” They are grownups and they are required to obey the orders they receive.
By making this statement the day before the verdict in a case that pitted society against the General Staff, which sided with B’Tselem, Eisenkot told us that the General Staff no longer feels itself obligated by a sacred compact with the people of Israel.
Azaria is the first victim of a General Staff that has decided to cease serving as the people’s army and serve instead as B’Tselem’s army. The call now spreading through the Knesset for Azaria to receive a presidential pardon, while certainly reasonable and desirable, will likely fail to bring about his freedom. For a pardon request to reach President Reuven Rivlin’s desk, it first needs to be stamped by Eisenkot.
A pardon for Azaria would go some way toward repairing the damage the General Staff has done to its relationship with the public. But from Eisenkot’s behavior this week, it is apparent that he feels no need and has no interest in repairing that damage.
As a result, it is likely that Azaria will spend years behind bars for killing the enemy.
Moreover, if nothing forces Eisenkot and his generals to their senses, Azaria will neither be the last nor the greatest victim of their betrayal of the public’s trust. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Evelyn Gordon: The IDF’s Self-Inflicted Wound

This impression was reinforced over the ensuing months by the fact that Eisenkot, in particular, refused to stop talking about the case, while demonstrating shocking insensitivity to the way his comments would sound to most Israelis. The very day before the verdict was issued, for instance, he said, “An 18-year-old man serving in the army is not ‘everyone’s child’ … He is a fighter, a soldier, who must dedicate his life to carry out the tasks we give him.”
Obviously, the second part of that statement is true; the army can’t function if its 18-year-old draftees aren’t treated as soldiers and fighters. But to parents, their child is always “their child,” even after he turns 18 and dons a uniform. And because in Israel, most young men do army service, most parents can imagine their own son in any other soldier’s place. In that sense, Azaria is “everyone’s child,” just as kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit was “everyone’s child.” Israelis therefore overwhelmingly supported freeing 1,027 terrorists to secure his freedom. Israeli parents entrust the army with their most precious possession–their children–and in return, they expect the army to take the best possible care of them that’s consistent with carrying out its military functions.
Thus, when Eisenkot dismissively declared that a soldier isn’t “everyone’s child,” what Israeli parents heard was a refusal to acknowledge that his soldiers are indeed also their children, whose protection must be high on his priority list. And that merely reinforced the impression left by his initial hasty condemnations: In responding to the case, he had given insufficient weight to his responsibility toward his soldiers.
Based on the evidence, I see no reason to think Azaria was in fact convicted unjustly. But from the start, Eisenkot and Ya’alon created the appearance of injustice by routinely speaking out against Azaria when they should simply have kept silent and let the military justice system do its work. The result is that now, many Israelis still aren’t certain Azaria was convicted fairly, and that has translated into overwhelming support for an early pardon.
This case has sowed devastating distrust of both the army’s leadership and its justice system among a large section of the Israeli public. Yet much of that distrust could have been avoided had Ya’alon and Eisenkot simply kept their mouths shut. That neither man proved capable of doing so is a damning indictment of them, and a tragedy for Israel.

Eugene Kontorovich on The John Batchelor Show (starts about 10:30)
Risks to Israel in UNSC Resolution 2334 & What is to be done? @jschanzer, @followfdd.

Two 2017 sightings of "Rabbi Fischmann, Zionist expansionist"

The New Zealand Herald has an op-ed by someone named Malcolm Eves where he recycles anti-Israel and antisemitic tropes:

The Christians are never going to be persuaded that Israel, as I believe, behaves as a rogue state responsible for the merciless slaughter of thousands of Palestinians under the leadership of Netanyahu and the other Israeli Prime Ministers before him because they believe that the Jews are God's chosen people (meaning they can do what they like and it must be God's will), so whatever the crime, they look to excuse the appalling behaviour.
It's impossible for Palestinians to negotiate, no one "negotiates" with Netanyahu, in a normal give and take manner, it's only his way and he cares not one bit for global condemnation of his assault on Palestinians as he has the American neocon Zionist Jews politically behind him and the hoodwinked US taxpayer haplessly funding him to the tune of billions of dollars each year calculated at about $US11 million each day.

He invokes The Map That Lies and he claims that Palestinians are starving:

Anyone wanting to see the truth of the just how much Palestinian land has been stolen by the Israelis since 1946 should simply use their home PC and google "Palestine map-loss of land" to see that Palestine has virtually been wiped from the face of the earth already, land confiscated, buildings bulldozed and any Palestinian commercial activity on a daily basis continually frustrated by the Israeli military such that Palestinians starve in what was once their homeland.

And he talks about the famous Rabbi Fischmann. At least, he's famous to antisemites:

According to Rabbi Fischmann, "The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon". This is being played out now with the destruction of Iraq and now Syria by the US backing the al-Qaeda rebels as they have now openly admitted.

It just so happens that another "news" outlet this week mentions this mysterious Rabbi Fischmann who never has a first name - in Pravda:

According to the founding father of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, circa 1897, the area of the Jewish State should stretch: "From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates." And according to Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, in his 1947 testimony before a UN special committee, "The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon."

I once looked up Rabbi Fischmann, who was a real person:

It turns out that he was Rabbi Yehuda Leib Fishman, later known as Yehuda Leib Maimon, a founder of the Mizrachi religious Zionist movement in America. He gave testimony to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, and he was answering a question from an Indian representative:

Sir ABDUR RAHMAN (India) : Rabbi Fishman, I do not know the Bible, I do not pretend to know it, but I should like to get information from you, your point of view, and I hope you will enlighten me as to what you have to say in regard to a few matters which I will put to you.

Rabbi Fishman, what was "the Promised Land"?

RABBI FISHMAN: The Promised Land was quite a large one, from the river of Egypt, up to the Euphrates.

The rabbi was answering a history question, not saying what he wanted the borders of Israel to be.

In fact, Rabbi Fishman did not even think it was realistic to have a Jewish state in all of British Mandate Palestine!

Not exactly a proponent of "Greater Israel!"

If you Google "Rabbi Fischmann Euphrates" you can find some 13,000 webpages that mention this obscure episode as proof of Israel's goal to take over the Middle East.

Honest Reporting also noticed the New Zealand op-ed, and does what it normally does to idiots like Eves.

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From The College Fix:

The Modern Language Association may soon follow in the footsteps of the American Studies Association, National Women’s Studies Association and other academic groups in boycotting Israeli academic institutions.It has been flirting with an anti-Israel agenda for the past three years, and this Saturday the MLA’s Delegate Assembly could make it official by approving a formal boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) resolution, Inside Higher Ed reports.It’s not the only Israel-related resolution under consideration: There’s another opposing a boycott and a third asking the MLA to “condemn attacks on academic freedom in Palestinian universities, whether they are perpetrated by the Palestinian Authority or by Hamas.”University of Toronto Prof. Rebecca Comay calls it “a matter of urgency” for the MLA to approve the BDS resolution she has proposed:

How can we turn a deaf ear to the appeal of our Palestinian colleagues whose academic rights are being so flagrantly and systematically violated (along with so many other fundamental human rights that are being trampled on a daily basis)? This is a moment where our actions might actually make a difference.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Prof. Rachel Harris, who is circulating the opposing resolution, says the BDS resolution would actually hurt the Arabs who are educated at Israeli institutions.It’s also a huge distraction from more pressing issues for MLA members, such as “adjunctification” and attacks on tenure in Wisconsin, she told Inside Higher Ed:

[T]hese topics are not being addressed because all of the oxygen in the room is being sucked out to engage in this one topic, which does not directly affect the teaching and instruction of languages and literatures and cultures.
Her UIUC colleague Cary Nelson agrees that it’s ludicrous for the MLA to create its own “foreign policy” and thus “divide the membership,” while former MLA President Russell Berman – an anti-boycott cosponsor at Stanford – said the group would be in “breach of contract” if it approved BDS:

I believe that if we were to endorse a boycott, we would be acting specifically against the constitution of the MLA, because the universities we would be boycotting are themselves pursuing the goals of the MLA — that is, the study and teaching and research of modern languages.
Even an approved BDS resolution can be shot down by the MLA executive council if it concludes the resolution violates the “constitutional, legal and fiduciary” obligations of the group. If it sails through the council, the full MLA membership would vote on it.

I am very interested in seeing the results of the second and especially third resolutions. If the MLA cares so much about academic freedom, yet they condemn Israel and not Hamas and the PA for restricting it, that tells you something very basic about the intellectual honesty of the members.

Here's a lengthy report about how the PA and Hamas restrict academic freedom.

More details on this weekend's votes here.

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In the US House of Representatives vote yesterday against the US allowing the one-sided anti-Israel UN Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass, here is the breakdown of Republican versus Democrat votes:

Party	Yea	Nay	Percent For
Republican	233	4	98%
Democrat	109	76	59%

Considering that the Democratic President supported the UN resolution, that is a healthy majority of even Democratic members of Congress to vote for Israel.

How about J-Street supported candidates?

	Yea	Nay	Percent for
J-Street Endorsed Candidates 2016	26	59	31%

Once again, J-Street shows that it supports the extreme anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party.

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.