Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 07, 2017

New "Apartheid?" poster

There is an inexhaustible list of people and photos to add to this series.

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Israel: The Jamaican Bobsled Team of Baseball

From ESPN:

If you aren't familiar with Team Israel (in this year's World Baseball Classic), it's essentially the Mighty Ducks, Hickory High and the Jamaican bobsled team all rolled into one. In other words, it's straight out of Central Casting for the role of "underdog team that stands absolutely no chance of winning but somehow goes on to win it all." Except for the part that so far, it has won nothing -- well, almost nothing.

This past September in Brooklyn, Israel penned the opening chapter of its Cinderella story by finishing first in a four-team qualifying tournament to earn its inaugural trip to the WBC. Although the competition wasn't exactly stiff (Great Britain, Brazil, Pakistan), Israel will take it, especially after falling to Spain in extra innings in the deciding game of the 2012 qualifier. The losing pitcher in that contest? Reliever Josh Zeid, who, in true fairy-tale fashion, just so happened to pick up the W in Israel's clinching 2016 win over Great Britain.

Six months later, skipper Jerry Weinstein's squad (raise your hand if you've ever heard of him) is arguably the biggest underdog in the history of the event.

Of the 16 nations represented in this year's WBC, Israel was the very last one in and is the only participant not currently among the top 20 in the world rankings. (It's No. 41, just behind baseball powerhouses such as Poland and the Ukraine.) As if that weren't enough, the team had to travel halfway across the world (with its lifesize "Mensch on a Bench" mascot), where it's the lowest seed in a four-team pool that features host country South Korea (2009 runners-up) and 2013 final-four squad Netherlands. Of the 28 players who made the trip to Seoul, not a single one is presently listed on a major league 40-man roster. No wonder bookmaker Bovada has Team Israel listed at 200-1 odds to win the whole thing, the longest shot in the tourney and 100 times as unlikely as 2-1 favorite USA.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Israel's national team got its World Baseball Classic campaign off to a dream start on Monday, beating host South Korea 2-1 after 10 innings in Seoul.
Mike Meyers scored the winning run for Israel in the top of the 10th inning thanks to Scott Burcham's single. Pitcher Josh Zeid was credited with the win for Israel, pitching three scoreless innings.

What is Team Israels secret?

Mensch on a Bench!

The secret to Team Israel's long-shot WBC chances? Its bench. That's where you'll find the Mensch on the Bench. If you aren't familiar with MOB, he's essentially the Jewish answer to Elf on the Shelf. This particular Mensch is a lifesize version that utility man Cody Decker bought online before the September qualifier because, well, something was missing.

"Every team needs their Jobu," Decker said. "He was ours. He had his own locker, and we even gave him offerings: Manischewitz, gelt and gefilte fish."

Given all the good karma in Brooklyn -- this year marks the first time that Israel has survived the qualifier and crashed the actual WBC tournament -- it's no surprise that the Mensch made the cut for the trip to Korea.

"I tried getting him a first-class ticket," Decker said. "But that didn't fly, so he was put in a duffel bag and checked."

Mensch with team catcher

As for seating in Seoul, that's a nonissue: "He has his allotted space on the bench. He sits on his bench, on the bench."

Outside the lines, the Mensch maintains a much lower profile, according to those within his inner circle.

"He is everywhere and nowhere all at once," Decker said. "His actual location is irrelevant because he exists in higher metaphysical planes. But he's always near."

The best part about the Mensch? Unlike a real mascot, which would be portrayed by a sweaty human trapped inside a furry costume, this one comes with no stench on the bench.

By the way, I doubt that any player on any of the other squads has ever said the phrase "higher metaphysical planes."

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03/06 Links Pt2: BDS Movement Backfires, Deals Blow to Thousands of Palestinians; The Mother of the IDF

From Ian:

BDS Movement Backfires, Deals Blow to Thousands of Palestinians

If these divestment campaigns, commonly referred to as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, are successful, all of these people will be put out of work, dealing an enormous blow to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
For many, including students here at Hunter College, Israel is not just a place on a map or a 30-second clip on CNN. It is home. It is where I feel most comfortable. It is also where people—including Christians and Muslims—enjoy a level of human rights that simply doesn’t exist in any of Israel’s Middle East neighbors.
Knowing that the efforts of Students for Justice in Palestine and its partners on other campuses to “punish” Israel don’t actually bring justice to the Palestinian people, we should be working to demonstrate that demonizing Israel only harms Palestinians. Simple truth, there is nothing pro-Palestinian about these groups. They exist to delegitimize the Jewish state.
I stand for human rights here at home and around the world. I care deeply about providing the best possible outcome for all people in any conflict. I also know that passing a toothless resolution through student government won’t do anything to address the conflict in the Middle East; it will only create more conflict here on our campus. I long to see students actually promoting peace in a region many call home.

Welcome to Hotel Banksy

If only. Banksy (who has never revealed his true identity) is calling for courage, but is protesting anonymously. His people explain on Facebook that he has taken the "loaded" view and turned the hotel into an "installation" against the occupation. They explain that the artistic boutique hotel creates a different reality through melting walls, courage and wisdom, creating change and making art. What lofty intellectual expressions to describe an anonymous anti-Semitic coward who refuses to identify himself or appear in the media, who came here from England to operate against Jews.
But whoever "courageously" leaves the building and looks at the bizarre hotel that was built in a strip of Israeli-controlled territory realizes that the hypocritical developer mostly wanted security. If Banksy looked out from his hotel at Bethlehem itself, he would see a particularly ugly view: the ghosts of a large Christian community that was wiped out by Bedouin rapists and Islamists from Hebron who stole the Christian bodies, souls, and property.
If Banksy had wanted to gaze at an ugly view, he'd look at the glass facade of the Park Hotel in Netanya, where he can envision the bodies of the Jews murdered by a Palestinian suicide bomber while celebrating Passover there, when there was still no fence. Banksy might call the blood spilled on the walls and the floor "psychedelic conceptual art in a hotel of occupation." He hasn't shown his face there.
Since Operation Defensive Shield in the spring of 2002, the security fence has separated Palestinians with their terrorism and death lust from the flourishing, life-embracing Israelis, who, for Banksy, represent an "ugly view." Banksy is trying to attach the stigma of apartheid and racism to Israel, tear down the wall, and make it easier for the Palestinians to carry out killing and murder sprees against the "apartheid" state. His staff is promising that Elton John will perform at the hotel, but perhaps Pink Floyd's anti-Semitic Roger Waters is a better fit.

Pro-Jewish State Activist: Through His New Bethlehem Hotel, Famed British Graffiti Artist Banksy ‘Finally Asking Critical Questions of Both Sides’ of Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

A new hotel in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem designed and owned by famed graffiti artist Banksy is one of the “most complex and nuanced” projects the mysterious Brit has ever undertaken, the head of a US-based pro-Israel artists group told The Algemeiner on Sunday.
“He is finally asking critical questions of both sides, far from his previous heavy-handed and one-sided works [in favor of the Palestinians],” Craig Dershowitz — the executive director of Artists 4 Israel — said. “And we support any fair and open discussion and are proud to [have played] at least a small part in moving him to a place of dialogue.”
The Walled Off Hotel, which was revealed to the public for the first time this week, is located next to the West Bank security barrier — built by Israel more than a decade ago as part of an effort to thwart Palestinian terrorist attacks. In the past, Banksy has painted murals on concrete portions of the barrier.

Oy gevalt: Rania Khalek is a victim of BDS-style economic terrorism!!! (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

Have your Kleenex ready for I bring oh-so-sad tidings: ardent anti-Israel activist Rania Khalek has become a victim of economic terrorism. Anyone who has a heart must feel it ache now – after all, Khalek has always done her part to promote BDS campaigns against Israel, fervently hoping that this economic terrorism would lead to the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state. What cruel fate that she’s now finding herself boycotted, divested and sanctioned by many of her erstwhile fans who loved her lies about Israel, but loathe her lies about Syria.

But given the current popularity of fake news, Khalek still has some ardent fans – they either write blog posts railing against her detractors, or, more usefully, donate to her new GoFundMe campaign “Help out Rania”. In just four days, 320 hardcore Rania fans have coughed up more than $10 000 to prevent her detractors from “successfully weaponiz[ing] poverty to silence an independent journalist.” Add to this the almost $7500 she raised last October and the money she likely earns from publishing on various “alternative” sites – including the “Grayzone” run by her very dear friend Max Blumenthal – and it would seem that poor Rania is not so terribly poor.

However, now that Khalek is finding herself at the receiving end of the tactics she and her fans have always promoted against Israel, we can learn a whole lot about the real nature of BDS from the very people who love to see it used against the Jewish state and its citizens.

So forget about claims that BDS is non-violent: threatening someone’s employment is “violence,” or, as Khalek herself put it, “economic terrorism.”

And while BDS supporters are always proud when they manage to shout down – or even shut down – pro-Israel speakers, it now turns out that silencing someone’s free speech “is fascistic.”

Furthermore, we learn from Glenn Greenwald that even if one doesn’t agree with someone’s views, a campaign to prevent a person from speaking is “toxic.”

So to sum up: BDS is “economic terrorism,” it is “fascistic” and “toxic.”

Thanks Rania for clearing that up!

I have no doubt that even Khalek and her supporters would agree that something that is terrorist as well as “fascistic” and “toxic” should have no place in universities or anywhere else where human rights are taken seriously. That is of course the reason why Khalek and her ilk spend so much energy on demonizing Israel. But the fact that they obsess about the world’s only Jewish state while ignoring or even whitewashing the atrocities committed by Assad and his allies illustrates all too well how truly toxic BDS is.

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03/06 Links Pt1: Jerusalem's Secret Embassies; After Decades of Bias, It’s Time to Hold the UN to Account

From Ian:

Jerusalem's Secret Embassies

The West has for decades displayed a diplomatic double standard when it comes to its consulates: refusing to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but holding diplomatic missions to the Palestinian Authority in the very same city.
Much has been made in recent months of President Donald Trump’s pledge to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and its possible repercussions. The public conversation has generally concentrated on the potential diplomatic and political fallout, especially the possibility of a new outbreak of Palestinian violence. Lost in all the controversy, however, is the fact that the U.S. is one of nine countries that already has a de facto embassy in Jerusalem. But these are all embassies to the Palestinians, not Israel.
The U.S. embassy in Israel is located in Tel Aviv, but much less well known is that the U.S. consulate-general sits in Jerusalem, just around the corner from the Prime Minister’s residence—and it handles diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority. It is one of nine consulates-general in Jerusalem, all of which serve the same purpose. Five of them—the UK, Turkey, Belgium, Spain and Sweden—are in eastern Jerusalem. The consulates-general of the US, France, Italy, and Greece are in western Jerusalem. The European Union also has a representative office in eastern Jerusalem, and the Holy See has an Apostolic Nunciature there, alongside the Palestinian offices of several international agencies.
None of the countries that have consulates in Jerusalem recognize Israeli sovereignty over the city. Consequently, their official embassies remain in Tel Aviv. Their consulates in Jerusalem are, almost uniquely, accredited to no state. And none of the consuls seek an exequatur, the diplomatic authorization required by international law. Nevertheless, the Israeli Foreign Ministry treats them for all intents and purposes as if they were normal consulates accredited to the State of Israel. Their jurisdiction covers the whole of Jerusalem, as apart from Israel, as well as the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Arab Idol or Arab Apartheid?

Referring to Abbas's obsession with Arab Idol, other Palestinians launched a hashtag on Twitter: #AbbasFollowUsToo. The goal of the campaign is to express Palestinians' disappointment with their leaders' carelessness and disdain.
Palestinian leaders have long ignored the plight of their people in Lebanon and other Arab countries. In Lebanon, the living conditions of the Palestinians are unquestionably inhumane. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Palestinians in Lebanon
"do not enjoy several important rights; for example, they cannot work in as many as 20 professions... Around 53 percent of the Palestinians in Lebanon live in 12 refugee camps, all of which suffer from serious problems, including poverty, overcrowding, unemployment, poor housing conditions and lack of infrastructure."
Abbas, however, is nothing if not savvy. He knows very well that if he had so much as set foot in a refugee camp in Lebanon, it might have been the last step he would ever take. So he was smart to stay away from the refugee camps, where his people bleed and which have become militia bases for armed gangs that are affiliated with so many groups, including his own Fatah faction.
Yet, it is not only Lebanese refugee camps in which Abbas feels a bit edgy. Similar camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are also teeming with bitterness. The residents are furious with their leaders, who have kept them there for decades, lying to them about a mythical return to their forbears' homes in Jaffa, Haifa, Acre and Ramle. That is the real reason Abbas and other Arab leaders stay as far as possible from these miserable holding-pens. That is also why Palestinian leaders do not care if Lebanon or any other Arab country treats Palestinians as second- or third-class "citizens" (Palestinians in any case cannot be citizens because, with the exception of Jordan, Arab countries deny them the right to citizenship). And that is why Abbas would rather spend time with Arab singers and Arab Idol contestants than confront those he betrays on a daily basis -- people being subjected to real apartheid and discrimination in Lebanon.

Getting International Law Right in Gaza

In October 2009, a few months after the completion of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, Robert L. Bernstein, the former chairman of Human Rights Watch, penned a much-discussed article for The New York Times. Distressed by the direction of the organization he founded, he wrote,
At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them—through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press, and many other mechanisms that encourage reform. … When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies….
Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties, and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world—many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel.
Today, we are living with the fruits of this drift in emphasis and attention. NGOs have not merely cast aside the distinction between democracy and dictatorship, they have capsized it. In spite of the vilification of Israel, Israelis still fight because they have no choice. But Americans, oceans away from the bloody mayhem of the Middle East, feel under no such obligation. For five years, Americans sent their tax dollars and their young men and women to the Middle East in support of a free Iraq, only to be told by the world’s most respected humanitarians that they were no better than the savage Ba’athists they had overthrown. Those who accepted the accusation were ashamed. Those who did not were resentful. And so they elected Barack Obama, who pledged to keep the country out of further foreign conflicts. The price of this American withdrawal from the region has been the devastation of Syria and the surrender of Iraq as far less scrupulous actors have filled the vacuum—to say nothing of the ensuing refugee crisis.
Liberal democracies are not just valuable for the freedoms they afford their own citizens, but for the way in which they behave. The reckless practice of holding them to higher standards than those demanded of totalitarian actors, and the misrepresentations of international law this requires, has produced a morally disfigured view of the world and of the ethics of military conflict. It has made it harder for democracies to defend themselves or sell potentially costly humanitarian interventions to their own war-weary publics. It has helped to undermine the post-Cold War liberal order and empowered its most brutal and cynical enemies. Arresting this slide requires us to recover the moral clarity and self-confidence described by Bernstein in his Times article. The costs of continued confusion are already steep, and they are still rising.

There is an important element of the BDS mindset, indeed of the anti-Israel mindset generally, that provides its practitioners a significant amount of rhetorical power in any argument, protest or debate: their ability to ignore every inconvenient fact that gets in the way of their own narrative.

How many times at a rally or debate have we seen these “Friends of Palestine” confronted with questions about rocket and bombing attacks on Israeli civilians, about the killing of Palestinians by each other or by Arab leaders (like Assad of Syria), or about the abuse of women, gays and minorities in Muslim lands, only to watch them deal with such criticism by:

1. Ignoring it completely

2. When that fails, rolling their eyes and issuing a scoffing laugh while spinning on their heels and walking away

3. And when that fails, pretending to agree “yes, the killing of Israeli civilians is completely unacceptable…” followed by the usual “big but” (as in “…BUT those missiles, kidnappings and bombings would never have occurred if not for the Occupation™).

Unlike the small child who simply blots out that which they don’t agree with or understand, the effort to ignore so much history, so many facts, so much bloodshed delivered by their allies actually takes a great deal of creative effort on the part of the BDS brigade.

For example, take a look at the elaborate constructs surrounding the need to ignore peace deals offered to the Palestinians over the last ten years, nearly all of which would give them 99-100% of the land they claim to have craved since time immemorial. Now one could make the case that those peace deals did not include things the Palestinians hold more dearly than land (such as the so-called “Right of Return”). Or you could highlight the obvious political division within the Palestinian camp to point out the difficulty of cutting any deal. Both would expose the Palestinian position as not ready for reasonable negotiations towards peace, but at least they reflect something approaching reality.

But rather than go down this route, the boycotters instead create an elaborate fantasy world in which peace deals everyone knows about down to the last detail were never actually made. And their constructs include maps, essays, books, articles, speeches, curricula and all kinds of other materials that require a huge amount of effort to prove that white is black and night is day (similar to the fantasy literature around faux “massacres” such as Jenin).

My favorite example of this kind of creepy creativity has to do with gay rights. As a blogger friend once described, the difference between Israel (which give homosexuals more legal rights than almost any other country in the world) and the rest of the Middle East (where homosexuality is legally and religiously outlawed and its practitioners killed) is “so true they can’t stand it.”

But when the magnitude of this truth became too huge to ignore, they came up with a novel solution to this problem by inventing the non-existent phenomena of “pinkwashing.” This term (originated by breast-cancer advocates, as it turns out) implies that anyone bringing up the issue of gay rights in the Middle East is doing so as part of a nefarious propaganda campaign designed to distract from the dark, evil that is Israel and “the Occupation.”

Now I understand that homosexual rights is a challenge for BDSers, given that their main target are progressives who care about issues such as gay marriage. And you can only ignore an elephant this large for so long. But rather than simply accept the fact that Israel is in a superior position on this issue (and make the reasonable claim that it does not mean they should be given a pass universally), instead the Israel haters rant and rave about “pinkwashing” (and now “greenwashing” – which declares Israel’s entire green technology revolution is also part of a propaganda war) so as to make the debate about these manufactured controversies, rather than the genuine underlying issue under discussion.

Naturally, the rights of actual gay human beings in the actual Middle East (like the plight of actual Palestinian human beings killed by actual Hamas members and Syrian soldiers) gets lost in all of these creative efforts to ignore what is inconvenient to the boycotters. And yet they still demand the moral high ground be granted to them immediately and unconditionally and never be questioned as to why.

Well ignore, and scoff, and eye-roll and spin all you like BDS. But the rest of us have taken your measure, and all we see is a bunch of immoral creeps.

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EoZ in Israel

Mrs. Elder and I are on an almost - last minute trip to Israel.

I am having Internet problems so until everything is ironed out posts may be sporadic.

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.

Hey @UNRWA! Gaza girls playing baseball need your $$$!

One of the benefits to Palestinian Arabs who are considered "refugees" by UNRWA is that they are the recipients of programs that no other refugees worldwide would ever get from the UN.

So besides the free schools, medical care and places to live, UNRWA proudly provides TV programming, microloans for businesses, summer camps and other programs that they proudly talk about on their Twitter account and other social media.

But there is another important need that the "refugees" in Gaza clearly have, and UNRWA is just the organization to redirect your tax dollars towards this.

Gaza girls' baseball.

These poor, starving girls living in their open-air prison don't even have proper bats - and are forced to use tennis balls to play!

Come on, UNRWA. Imagine the fundraising possibilities in America when you make an expensive film about how you are helping Gaza girls play the American sport. And, face it, they need coaches and gloves and bats and balls. And a stadium.

This sounds like a priority, at least as much as teaching the same girls that they will one day destroy Israel, isn't it?

And when they are fully equipped, you can then move on to help the poor Gaza equestrians.

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.

03/05 Links: PLO names children's camp after terrorist who murdered 37; US delegation studies relocation of embassy to Jerusalem

From Ian:

PMW: PLO names children's camp after terrorist who murdered 37

The PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports has announced it is naming a youth camp after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi. Mughrabi led the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, in which terrorists hijacked a bus and killed 37 civilians, including 12 children.
District Governor of Ramallah Laila Ghannam, a Palestinian Authority official, praised the initiative for "remembering the pure-hearted Martyrs":
"Dr. Ghannam... welcomed [the delegation's] efforts to hold a camp named after Martyr Dalal Mughrabi. She praised the creative initiative and its goals, and particularly everything connected to remembering the pure-hearted Martyrs... She also ordered all of the parties involved to do all that is necessary so that the solidarity rally will take place in a fashion worthy of Martyr Mughrabi, her comrades (i.e., the other terrorists participating in the 1978 Coastal Road massacre), and all of Palestine's Martyrs."
[Facebook page of the PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports, Feb. 27, 2017 and official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 28, 2017]
It is far from surprising that the PLO Council for Youth is naming a youth camp after a terrorist murderer, as the council is headed by terror supporter Jibril Rajoub, who explicitly promotes and endorses terror, as Palestinian Media Watch has documented in its report The Rajoub File.

US delegation in Israel to study relocation of embassy to Jerusalem

An official United States delegation led by Congressman Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is briefly visiting Israel on Saturday and Sunday to study the possibility of relocating the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
"The delegation is in Jerusalem to learn first hand what it will mean to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,” said Ruth Lieberman, a friend of DeSantis and a political advisor in Israel.
“Its leadership intends to return to Congress with a report and a deeper understanding of what to expect, and of some of the decisions that have to be made as well,” Lieberman said.
DeSantis chairs the subcommittee for National Security for the US House Oversight Committee.
The delegation will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli political leaders during their visit.
US President Donald Trump had promised to relocate the embassy during his campaign for the White House. But since his January 20th inauguration, his lukewarm statements about the matter led many to speculate that he would not make good on his pledge.
The delegation’s visit is the first sign that there might be some movement on the issue.

Crescent Magazine's May Cover Is a Doozy

Israel-hate: check. Traditional tropes about sinister, hidden Jooos pulling the strings of the powerful: check.
But wait--May brings us a zany twist. As the Khomeinist rag sees it, the Jooos are now collaborating with--wait for it--Nazi-esque "White Racists." Their joint project: putting threatening words into Trump's mouth.
Not that the Khomeinists thought any better of Obama, even though he sucked up to 'em endlessly and embarrassingly.

Charlie Hebdo Cover, Oct 2014

Many westerners seem to believe that opposition to political Islam (Jihad) is equivalent to racism.

This is why progressives - or what Dave Rubin, and others, refer to as the "regressive-left" - so vehemently oppose the vetting of Arab-Muslim immigrants into the United States.

They honestly do not care about the rise of political Islam, or Koranically-based violence against innocent people, because they tend to believe that Jews, Americans, and westerners deserve whatever beating radical Muslims are prepared to dish out.

As an American of the Jewish persuasion, however, I would very much prefer it if newly minted Americans from the most antisemitic part of the world did not think that the Jewish people were the unnatural cosmic offspring of swine and orangutan in need of a good slaughtering in the name of Allah.

Does this make me a bad, or ignorant, person?

Probably.

But if you assume that opposing political Islam is the same as opposing Muslims then you must think that all Muslims are jihadis who wish to spread Sharia by any means necessary.

They aren't.

In fact, I might even go so far as to suggest that if you think that denigrating or mocking or opposing jihadism is the same as "Islamophobia" than it is you who are the racist.

The defenders of political Islam, and mass Muslim immigration into the West, need to stop confusing Muslims with jihadis and they need to stop conflating opposition to political Islam with racism. Suggesting that western opposition to the Jihad is the same as opposition to Muslims is something akin to suggesting that British opposition to Nazism during World War II was the same as a racist opposition Germans.

It isn't and it wasn't and the very notion is both hateful and absurd while turning history inside-out and backwards.

Furthermore, "progressives" need to stop implying that Jewish opposition to the murder of our own family somehow indicates an essentialized Zionist form of racism. They need to stop suggesting that speaking out against the rise of political Islam, from any quarter, is a form of retrograde white redneck bigotry against a perfectly innocent indigenous population "of color."

And, make no mistake, this is precisely what the Left and the Democrats say to their Jewish friends when they suggest that opposing unvetted Arab-Muslim immigration into the United States is "racist."

It isn't because it does not matter where a person comes from or the color of their skin.

It does not matter what languages they speak or what deity they worship or refuse to worship.

It does not matter what their sexual orientation is.

It does matter, however, when people from the Middle East or North Africa teach their children to despise non-Muslims as a religious imperative even as they seek immigration into the West.

These are a people with a long and proud history that predates the rise of European civilization and they should be accorded respect. In doing so, however, they should be treated as equals and therefore as responsible for their own views and behavior, including their views on Jewish people.

This matters very much.

According to Anti-Defamation League polling statistics the Muslim Middle East is absolutely roiling with hatred toward the Jews. 75 percent of Egyptians despise Jews. 78 percent of Lebanese despise Jews and a whopping 93 percent of Palestinian-Arabs do so.

And it is spreading.

Mosques emphasize Arab-Muslim innocence and western / Jewish aggression in Haifa and Malmö and Brooklyn, NY... home of our friend, Linda Sarsour.

They teach ideologically-inspired hatred toward Jews and "crusaders" in Paris and London and Berlin.

The truth, of course, is that Islam is the single most successful theocratic imperial project in world history.

Early Islamic Imperial Expansion

Therefore, those of us who care about how Islam meets the contemporary secular west are watching the results unfold in Europe and most of what we see is violent and ugly.

We remember the jihadi murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, a one-time colleague of Islamic apostate Aayan Hirsi Ali in the Netherlands. We remember the fatwā placed on the head of author Salman Rushdie for daring to pen The Satanic Verses. We remember the unbelievably brutal near-beheading of Lee Rigby in the streets of southeast London in broad daylight. We are cognizant of such things as Islamic rape-gangs in Britain.

And we are well-aware that aggression toward indigenous peoples throughout world history is not the privilege of Europeans alone.

The Failure of Discussion

Thus the question of Muslim immigration into the West is an exceedingly serious matter that must be honestly discussed... but it is not.

The western-left and the Democratic Party have made any such discussion impossible via the politically-correct tactic of silencing, shunning, and de-platforming "deplorable" speakers... which is to say, anyone whom they disagree with.

And this is the reason that we end up with fascistic "anti-fascists" beating the hell out of innocent people at UC Berkeley at the mere presence of Milo Yiannopoulos who, whatever else he may be, is not a white nationalist.

The fire of progressive-left hatred toward Trump and his supporters is so intense, so polarizing, and so irrational that normal discussion on important issues, such as immigration, have become impossible.

When "progressives" and Democrats shut down discussion of Arab-Muslim immigration into the United States as "racist" they also block discussion of anti-feminist, anti-Jewish, anti-liberal, pro-Sharia influences into Europe and coming to an American movie theater near you.

This shutting down of discussion on immigration also blurs any candid distinction between jihadi immigration and the immigration of regular Muslims.

This is not a matter of "racism" against jihadis - as if there could be such a thing - but it is a matter of ideological blinkertude on the part of westerners who condescend to Muslims as little children in need of a cookie.

If mainstream and non-traditional opinionators throughout the West would look up for a moment from their incessant, self-serving, emotionally-driven Trump-bashing, they might consider honestly discussing the question of mass Muslim immigration into the West.

But they don't.

Nonetheless, according to recent Pew poll, terrorism was second only to the economy in the election that brought Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States.

Along with economic issues, whether progressives and Democrats like it or not, immigration combined with terrorism top the political charts.

The reason that many of us came to the rational conclusion that we need a tightening on immigration policies is because for too long the European Union, with the assistance of globalist neo-liberals like Angela Merkel, refused to do so and we see the results.

For example, the other day Trump referenced the immigration crisis in Sweden and was roundly spit upon by media and politicians, both here and there.

The truth, however, is that Sweden and Germany are experiencing street violence and serious social consequences due to their open-borders policies and because of Muslim disinterest in European social and cultural integration.

Democrats need to understand, as philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris emphasizes, that Hillary's failure to honestly discuss the problems of mass Muslim immigration into the West is one of the reasons why she lost the recent election.

If Democrats wish to take back the U.S. Presidency in 2020 it might be helpful to be forthright with the American people concerning the immigration crisis in Europe and what that suggests for U.S. immigration policy going forward. We need not draw foregone conclusions, but we very much need to have an open and fair national discussion around the question free of partisan demonization.

It might also be helpful if the Democratic Party would let their constituency know that opposing the Jihad on American soil is not racist toward Muslims. This will have to be something hashed-out between the Bernie / Ellison semi-socialist wing and the Obama / Hillary neo-liberal, corporate wing of the Democratic Party.

However, until western-progressives affirm and honestly discuss the meaning of political Islam to western immigration policies then they are deceiving their own people and deserve whatever electoral beatings that they get.

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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Makor Rishon has a recent article that describes the statistics of Palestinian medical patients in Israel. (I found the statistics online as well from a May 2016 article in Mako.)

In 2015, Israeli hospitals treated over 97,000 Arabs from the West Bank (allowing over 100,000 people to accompany them). In addition, over 31,787 Gaza patients and escorts arrived in 2015.

At any given time there are 60-70 Gazans receiving care at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv alone.

Only 10% of the cost to care for these patients comes from the Palestinian Authority. The rest is paid for by the Israeli taxpayer.

This is while the Palestinian leadership continues to pay full salaries to terrorists and their families. But they can't be bothered to pay for medical care of their regular populace - because the Israelis will.

It is one thing to show compassion and help all people who need help. I'm happy to see sick kids get the help they need, no matter who they are.

It is another thing to be a sucker.

The EU happily pays for illegal schools and homes to be built, willy-nilly, in the West Bank that they know Israel will demolish, but does it pay for actual medical needs of Palestinians being treated in Israel?

Why should they when they know that Israelis will pay the price? Israel gets next to no media attention for the help it gives to those who want to destroy it, but if Israel would insist on full payment, you can be sure that sob stories will be published by Reuters about how heartless Israelis are for refusing to allow unlimited Palestinian patients.

(h/t Yenta Press)

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Ma'an News has a story about how the beloved dog of Abdel-Hamid Abu Srour went missing.

Abu Srour was heartbroken, going sleepless nights and posting "lost dog" notices on Facebook for his favorite pet Cinderella.

The timeline of the story isn't clear, so we don't know if the dog was found by April 18, 2016.

That is the day that Abu Srour - who came from a well-to-do family - took a bomb on Egged Bus #12 in Jerusalem, sat on top of the fuel tank, and detonated it, turning the bus into a fireball and injuring 20 innocent Israelis.

He was killed by his device, which seems likely to have been built by Hamas.

Abu Srour's body has still not been returned, so Ma'an apparently decided that they must publish a story to make their audience even more sympathetic towards a cold-blooded terrorist than usual.

Ma'an is not an Islamist newspaper. It is not associated with either Fatah or Hamas. It prides itself on its journalistic standards and objectivity. And Ma'an - as a mainstream, modern and moderate news source - humanizes terrorists by describing how much more they care about their dogs than about Jews.

And Arabs revile dogs.

Here is the list of funders of Ma'an as of 2014. So-called "human rights groups" and even the US Consulate gave thousands of dollars to an organization that glorifies terrorists.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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