Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Tom Friedman's fact-free column includes an antisemitic trope

Yesterday we were treated to another Thomas Friedman column in the New York Times where he repeats his fact-free memes, ignoring reality in the face of his world class expertise in fantasy:

Netanyahu is setting himself up to be a pivotal figure in Jewish history — the leader who burned the bridges to a two-state solution and to the Jewish diaspora at the same time.

... It worked perfectly to deflect the U.S. president from pressing the relevant questions: “Bibi, you win every debate, but meanwhile every day the separation of Israel from the Palestinians grows less likely, putting Israel on a ‘slippery slope toward apartheid,’ as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak recently warned. Where is your map? What are you going to do with 420,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank? Where is your imagination for how to reverse this trend that will inevitably lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish democratic state?”

Friedman's favorite newspaper, Haaretz, only last month revealed exactly how far Netanyahu was willing to go for a two-state solution. It answered every question Friedman asks, in detail. It was Abbas who refused both the Israeli and American draft peace frameworks.

But that contradicts what Friedman knows in his heart. So he must ignore evidence and facts.

Note also that Friedman knows that he cannot actually argue with Netanyahu by saying Bibi wins every debate. Obviously, what Friedman knows in his heart is more important than actually being able to argue it effectively.

It gets worse:

I won’t waste much time on Bibi’s deft manipulation of President Trump to shift all the blame onto the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas for the absence of progress in the peace process. Bibi masterfully distracted Trump with a shiny object — a video of extreme statements by Abbas (with no mention of extremist actions by Israeli settlers).

Let's assume that some "settlers" really do perform extreme actions. Friedman is postulating two things that are, simply, stupid:

1) The actual antisemitic and pro-terror statements of the political head of the Palestinians are not as important than the actions of people who are acting against the laws of the State of Israel.

2) Israel must provide a balanced view of itself to the world, showing both its good and bad sides when engaging in diplomacy. This is a unique requirement not demanded of any other nation on the planet.

It's even worse. Friedman, although obviously not an antisemite, is engaging in antisemitic tropes. This paragraph comes very close to saying that the Jews control the White House. Undoubtedly that was not his intention but there is very little difference between him saying Netanyahu is manipulating Trump and antisemites saying Jews control Washington.

Jews are very sensitive to antisemitism. Yet no one seems to be upset at Friedman's statement here. The ADL is never going to issue a statement against someone they agree with so often. This statement of Friedman's in the most prestigious US newspaper is arguably far worse than the many topics that engage people's time (like websites that fail to list Israel in their list of countries or retailers that resell anti-Israel T-shirts.)

He gets a pass because he is a superstar to liberal American Jews and because his statement is as much about Bibi's diplomatic skill as it is about Trump's supposed naivete.

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UAE foreign minister and philosemite Gargash

This is by far the funniest story coming out of the Middle East in recent months:

United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash has accused Qatari broadcast network Al Jazeera of promoting antisemitism, supporting terrorist groups, and incitement to violence.

Gargash made the remarks in a letter written Sunday and made public Wednesday on the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation's website.

The four-page letter was addressed to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, as a rebuttal to the UN Special Rapporteur's statement on June 30, that recent demands to close Al Jazeera breached rights of freedom of expression.

Gargash defended demands to close the network by explaining that, "Freedom of expression cannot be used to justify and shield the promotion of extremist narratives."

The letter itself, which is on the official UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, says:

I have noted with dismay your spokesperson’s press briefing on 30 June, and the statement of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression on 28 June, pertaining to “the demand that Qatar close the Al Jazeera network”. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight examples of Al Jazeera’s ongoing editorial support for terrorist groups, as well as cases of incitement to violence, on-air promotion of sectarianism by Al Jazeera journalists, and the promotion of anti-Semitism in its programs.

...Finally, Al Jazeera has promoted anti-Semitic violence in its programming. It has given a television show (Sharia and Life) to the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf AlQaradawi, and has broadcasted his sermons. He has described the Holocaust as “divine punishment” during which “Hitler… put [the Jews] in their place.” [8]

The letter includes this footnote, showing that this Arab nation seems to rely on MEMRI for its translations:

[8] ‘Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Allah imposed Hitler upon the Jews to punish them –“Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers”’, Middle East Media Research Institute TV Monitor Project, Clip No. 2005 (28 January 2009), https://www.memri.org/tv/sheik-yousuf-al-qaradhawi-allah-imposed-hitler-upon-jews-punishthem-allah-willing-next-time-will. Additionally, on 9 January 2009, Qaradawi said he wanted to address the “treacherous Jews”, and said “Oh Allah, take this profligate, cunning, arrogant band of people… do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one”: ‘Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi on Al-Jazeera Incites Against Jews, Arab Regimes, and the U.S.; Calls on Muslims to Boycott Starbucks and Others; Says “Oh Allah, Take This Oppressive, Jewish, Zionist Band of People... And Kill Them, Down to the Very Last One”’, Middle East Media Research Institute TV Monitor Project, Special Dispatch No. 2183 (29 January 2009), https://www.memri.org/reports/sheikh-yousef-al-qaradhawi-al-jazeera-incites-against-jews-arab-regimes-and-uscalls-muslims.

Suddenly, a leading Arab Gulf state is a defender of the Jews!

The total number of Jews who live in the UAE is approximately zero.

Every year, it holds a book fair which features explicit antisemitism:

The anti-Semitic books for sale at the fair were listed alongside mainstream books in various categories. For example, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was listed in the “Political Science” category. Among the other anti-Semitic books featured at the fair were:

Blood for The Pie of Zion (The Jewish District) by Najib Al Gailany. This novel tells a story of a Christian priest from Damascus who was abducted by the Jews in order to use his blood for Jewish rituals. The story details how Jews danced and celebrated while Rabbis drain the blood of the elderly catholic priest. The book was listed in the “Novels” category and sold for 15 AED, or approximately $4.

The Jews and the Secret Movements in the Crusades by Baha Al-Amir. The book, which suggests that the Jews played a role in the Crusades, includes an introduction in which the author claims that “God the almighty declares in his statement to the people that all wars were started by Jews.” The book was listed in the “International Affairs” category and sold for 50 AED (approximately $14).

Human Sacrifices and Talmudic Slaughtering by Jews and Pagans by Fathi Muhammad Zughbi. The book was listed in the “Faith” category and sold for 83 AED (approximately $23).

Mein Kampf by Adolf Hilter. This book was listed in the “General knowledge” category and sold for 20 AED (approximately $5).

The fair provided several grants and awards in various fields of literature. In the past, it reportedly gave a grant to Gilad Atzmon to translate his anti-Semitic book “The Wandering Who,” into Arabic.

UAE newspapers have compared Israeli actions to the Holocaust and accused Israel's founders of imitating Hitler.

As recently as this year, editorial cartoons in UAE media depict Israelis as hook-nosed stereotypical Jews.

The UAE is not as antsemitic as other Arab countries but it has never fought antisemitism in its own borders. But suddenly, it finds it convenient to pretend to love the Jews when it is politically expedient.

To the UN, another institution that promotes antisemitism under the guise of being "pro-Palestinian."

We truly live in interesting times.

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Haaretz, via German news agency, blames Israel for Gaza power crisis

This unbelievably biased article was published in Haaretz and written by DPA, the German news agency:

The Gaza Strip's only operating power plant was turned off late Wednesday due to a severe shortage of fuel, leaving the coastal enclave in a complete blackout, local officials said.

Officials at the Hamas-run power corporation said they had turned off the last operating turbine at the plant in southern Gaza city.

The Gaza Strip, with more than two million people, has been suffering from an energy crisis since mid-April due to a dispute over taxes between the Islamist Hamas movement, which rules the enclave, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Gaza has been under a tight Israeli blockade since Hamas' violent takeover of the coastal enclave a decade ago and residents have been subjected to persistent blackouts.

Since April, Gaza's power station has not been generating any megawatts, while Israel has reduced the amount of power it supplies to the Gaza Strip. Power lines built to supply electricity from Egypt have been damaged amid heavy fighting in the Sinai region.

Two weeks ago, Egypt shipped around 4 million liters of fuel to operate the power plant - but it was not enough to resolve the worsening crisis.

The article doesn't say that the Palestinian Authority refuses to pay Israel for the electricity. Israel hasn't restricted fuel to Gaza for many years but the article implies that fuel is part of Israel's blockade - it isn't.

And if the article would also mention the PA's refusal to pay for medicine and to allow most patients to leave, that would add context that they don't want the readers to know.

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07/12 Links Pt2: Scottish BDS protest Radiohead, promote Holocaust denial; Jews protest play about Toulouse killer

From Ian:

UAE slams Al-Jazeera for anti-Semitism over imam’s sermons

A top UAE official on Wednesday accused Qatari broadcast giant Al-Jazeera of anti-Semitism, discrimination and inciting religious hate, in a rebuttal to UN accusations of attacking freedom of expression.
The United Nations has warned that demands that Qatar close Al-Jazeera by a rival Saudi Arabian-led alliance, which includes the UAE, violate basic freedoms.
The United Arab Emirates’ state minister for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, hit back in a letter to UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein.
In it, Gargash wrote that Al-Jazeera had “promoted anti-Semitic violence by broadcasting sermons by the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi.”
Qaradawi, he added, had “praised Hitler, described the Holocaust as ‘divine punishment,’ and called on Allah to ‘take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people… and kill them, down to the very last one.'”
The letter was published in a statement from the UAE National Media Council.

French Jews protest play about Toulouse killer

Leaders of France’s Jewish community and relatives of the murderer of four Jews in Toulouse protested the staging of a play on his life at the prestigious Avignon theater festival.
The play, titled “I Love Death as You Love Life,” which premiered last week at the Festival of Avignon in southern France, is about the last three hours in the life of Mohammed Merah, the Islamist who in 2012 murdered three French soldiers before also executing three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse, Myriam Monsonégo, and brothers Arié and Gabriel Sandler, along with the boys’ father, Yonathan Sandler.
Ariel Goldmann, a vice president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities and spokesperson for the SPCJ communal security unit, called the play “a disgrace and an ignominy” in a statement Wednesday that he co-authored with three other notable members of his community.
The play is an “enterprise of justification being falsely presented under the alibi of artistic expression,” added Goldman in his letter, which was cosigned by Patrick Klugman, Elie Korchia and Jacques Gauthier-Gaujoux.
But the Algerian playwright Mohamed Kacimi, who authored the play, defended it as “anything but a justification or rehabilitation of Merah” but rather as “an interrogation about a monster created by society.”

David Collier: Scottish BDS in Glasgow who protest Radiohead promote Holocaust denial

‘There’s no antisemitism ‘ere guv’. We are just humanitarians who want to protest the Radiohead gig in Israel.
Just four days ago, on the 7th July, a few Scottish anti-Israel activists set out to protest the fact Radiohead are going to perform in Israel. As usual, this BDS activity is noisy and makes local and industry press. Here is an image of the protestors in Scotland.
Let’s play a game called “how many Holocaust deniers can you spot”? It is only a group of about twenty. The person who posted the images, Jolanta Hadzic appears to be the one in the green top. This is one of Jolanta Hadzic’s posts:

On Monday there was a ramming attack near Tekoa, not far from where I live. The terrorist rammed his car into a group of soldiers, then jumped out of the car brandishing a knife, and attempted to stab as many soldiers as possible. One soldier was injured. The terrorist died, as he intended, while doing his evil deed.

These are the facts, cut and dried.

An hour later, I happened to be on Twitter and saw that the top trending hashtag was "Tekoa." Mildly curious, I clicked to see what people were saying. First there was the IDF Spokesperson's blog, which had everything anyone would want to know in a brief update, except for the missing bit about the injured soldier. We can assume and appreciate that this was not yet known at that point. Fine.

Moments ago, a Palestinian assailant attempted car ramming attack in Tekoa. Armed w/ a knife, assailant then attempted to stab IDF soldiers pic.twitter.com/x5yMxBAHiq
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) July 10, 2017

The next tweet was the Jerusalem Post story on the attack.

BREAKING NEWS: One injured in car ramming attack in Tekoa https://t.co/BoS1Cs7RAz #BreakingNews pic.twitter.com/zVpNAlxJJd
— The Jerusalem Post (@Jerusalem_Post) July 10, 2017

The JPost lets you know there was an injury, but you don't know that the injured person was Jewish, a soldier, and the attacker, an Arab. To me, this is whitewashing the news piece, whether or not the information is contained in the body of the article. People are busy. Like me, they scan things quickly, register, and move on. How many people read past the headline?

The fact is, it was only going to be an Arab attacking Jews and it had to be said. Why are these details important? People need to know that there is no such thing as an Arab/Israeli conflict. There is only an Arab war against the Jews. Professor Ruth Wisse explains this as no one else can. Everyone should watch THIS VIDEO multiple times.

Be that as it may, the next tweet in the lineup shocked me so that I gasped. I had to read it a few more times to take in the utter duplicitousness of this man, Muntaser Alrefai, and his account of what had happened only an hour before, in my neighborhood.

The Israeli occupation forces shot killed a Palestinian youth at town of Tekoa south of Bethlehem on the pretext of an attempt to run over pic.twitter.com/ujAL01uoNK
— Muntaser Alrefai (@muntaser_buz) July 10, 2017

Imagine: Jewish soldiers looking for a reason to kill an Arab youth, and then saying, "Well, HE tried to run us over!"

Why would anyone believe this? It's ridiculous. Absolute rubbish. Just a LIE from start to finish.

A lie.

But I knew that most of the world would believe that lie, for the simple reason that people love to hate Jews and want to see Arabs as victims. The truth doesn't matter to them, no matter how many terrorists shoot people up in airports in Belgium, supermarkets in France, or run them over with trucks in Germany or England. When it happens in Israel, it's not terror, natch? It's FREEDOM FIGHTING.

It could make you tear your hair out, that people want to believe this stuff, as unbelievable as it is. It makes you despair.

More than that, it makes you realize that people like Alrefai are black hearted and truly evil. There is nothing there with which one can make peace. Not ever.

In fact, for safety's sake, it's best to stay away from them. Far away. An Alrefai (and there are multitudes of them) will wield his black magic, swaying the undecided to his side as well as the already convinced, by rushing them with a tsunami of distorted vocabulary: pretext, occupation forces, Palestinian youth.

Lies, lies, lies. And the sheeple are convinced. You can't change their minds by showing them facts. They'll tell you they have their own facts. And what are their facts? A body no less than UNESCO (!), for instance, says that the Jews have no right to Yerushalayim, and that Hevron, where Sarah, Rivka, Leah, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov are buried, is an "endangered Palestinian site."

Their lies are mainstream.

And you know who helps them rile people up against the Jews? Do you know who helps rile up ARABS against Jews?

Haaretz.

At least one person was lightly wounded in a suspected car-ramming attack near the West Bank settlement of Tekoa https://t.co/hxFEbTgDzZ
— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) July 10, 2017

Yes, Haaretz, who called it a "suspected car-ramming attack" when no. There was no such suspicion. It WAS indeed, a ramming attack.

Not to mention that it was followed by a STABBING attack. And look how they order the words. "lightly wounded" is the first thing you see, so you'll say, "Oh, no big deal. Someone got a scratch."

*yawn*

And then, of course, it's his own fault, the guy who got injured, because he was in the WEST BANK, near a SETTLEMENT. As opposed to a town in Judea.

Judea. Funny, how that's the proper geographical name of the territory. And it's certainly the name you'd expect it to be called by a Jewish publication. But no. There's a reason they call Haaretz, "the only Arab newspaper that's printed in Hebrew."

"Settlement" is a word tossed about like an epithet. As if Judea and Samaria were not the indigenous territories of the Jewish people, won fair and square in a battle we were forced to fight. People who read Haaretz think Jews have no right to live in these places.

I, meanwhile, wonder why the people at Haaretz live in Israel, to begin with. If they really think the Arabs are living under occupation and that we should give them Jewish land, why don't they frickin' LEAVE?

The answer, of course, is subversion, which is why they continue to limp along, though sales are drastically down. They want to bring down the state.

It was a relief to see the next tweet. Ynet showed class in this instance. Without mentioning nationalities or religions, this publication made it clear: A terrorist attacked a soldier.

Vehicular attack in Tekoa wounds soldier; terrorist neutralized - https://t.co/XN85MqnuEO
— Ynetnews (@ynetnews) July 10, 2017

My blood pressure probably dropped 20 points reading that. But then I came to a tweet by Judah Ari Gross, the military correspondent for the Times of Israel.

#breaking IDF: reports of a suspected car ramming attack near the Tekoa settlement
— Judah Ari Gross (@JudahAriGross) July 10, 2017

There's that word again: "suspected." Add it to "settlement" and you've got the formula down. It means: anyone who gets hurt in Judea and Samaria damn well DESERVES IT.

Just as Haaretz has been dubbed the only Arab newspaper that appears in Hebrew, the Times of Israel is (not so fondly) called Haaretz 2 by those in the know.

These are the papers of record that the big news outlets turn to for their stories. Papers like the Washington Post and CNN. And it's like the game "telephone" we used to play at birthday parties, where a kid whispers a word into a kid's ear, and that kid whispers it into the next kid's ear, and so on and so forth and then the last kid in the circle calls out the word and everyone laughs, because the word is totally different from the one originally uttered.

Naturally, if you call any of these news outlets on their facts, they'll say, "But we read it in an Israeli publication!"

Uh huh.

By the way, the Washington Post, via the Associated Press, skews the order of its headline to make the killing of the terrorist the main event:

"Israel: Palestinian assailant killed after attacking soldier"

Note that the terrorist becomes an "assailant," and soldiers becomes "soldier." There's no mention of any injury caused by the attack. That would be deemed too sympathetic to Israel.

We should be grateful for small tidbits: the headline refers to Judea as "Israel."

Shhhhhhhhh.

Don't anyone tell them.

Poor, Uneducated, Underemployed Americans Somehow Not Resorting To Terrorism (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Gary, Indiana, July 12 - Terrorism experts confessed today they cannot explain why tens of millions of Americans under economic circumstances similar to those of Islamist terrorists have not embraced hijacking, suicide bombing, burning people in cages, mass execution, and other forms of violence.

Conceding that they lack important data, analysts of the phenomenon of religious violence by Islamist militants declared themselves today unable to explain why the poverty, political voicelessness, despair, social immobility, and feeling of being exploited by more powerful forces that serve to explain Islamic terrorism have not led American, or any Western, economic underclass to pursue similar violent strategies in response to those conditions.

"We just can't think of anything that might get to the root of the difference," lamented Forrest Furthtriis of the Davis-Utley-Howe (DUH) Research Institute, a think tank. "President Obama insisted for eight years that providing good jobs for people across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia would alleviate the grievances those societies have that lead to terrorism. He didn't get that from thin air - it's a well-established line of analysis."

"But then we started to look at the numbers and conditions of the American poor, and discovered no such violent movements with mass support," he continued. "I mean, there are fringe groups, but you don't have them taking over whole regions and recruiting thousands of like-minded fighters from far away. It's bizarre."

"We're stumped," admitted Ben Rhodes, an adviser to Obama. "According to the logic we've applied for years and years to the development of Islamic terrorism, Americans significant numbers should be joining terrorist groups to fight the oppressirs, backed by an even larger number of sympathetic supporters. Maybe it's just a matter of time? In any case, I would suggest adopting the most patronizing attitude possible, both with the Islamic societies and the American poor. Obviously, neither one knows what's good for them, and they need the educated elites to make those determinations for them."

A second DUH researcher disputed Rhodes's reasoning. "All this requires is a change in nomenclature," insisted Linda Sarsour. "All those people who voted for Donald Trump should be described as committing an act of terrorism against tolerance, and against anything I can claim is congruent with my values. Once we've drawn the equivalence between murderous terrorism and a democratic act, we no longer need to worry about silly distinctions such as violence vs. non-violence. You just have to recast 'violent' to include other things and the whole problem goes away."

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07/12 Links Pt1: Jewish Cemetery Promised $100K by BDS Activist Sarsour hasn't seen a cent; UNESCO Supports Terrorism

From Ian:

Daniel Pipes: Israelis Want Victory — Not Just Peace

What does the Jewish Israeli public think about convincing the Palestinians that they’ve lost their century-long war with Zionism — that the gig is up? In other words, what do Israelis think about winning?
To find out, the Middle East Forum commissioned the Smith Institute to survey 700 adult Israeli Jews. Carried out on June 27-28, the poll has a margin of error of 3.7 percent.
It reveals a widespread Israeli belief that a Palestinian recognition of defeat will eventually lead to the acceptance of Israel as the Jewish state, thereby ending the conflict.
Palestinian defeat: “A peace agreement with the Palestinians will only be possible once the Palestinian leadership recognizes the fact that it has been defeated in its struggle against Israel.” Overall, 58 percent of respondents agreed, with opinion deeply polarized by political outlook: 69 percent on the Right concurred, but only 16 percent on the Left did so.
Israeli victory: “The reason that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict still continues is that none of the military operations or diplomatic engagements with the Palestinian leadership have led to Israeli victory.” This resembles the first statement, but reverses it; doing so increases the positive responses to 65 percent of the Israeli public. More surprising, the results show that — across the entire political spectrum from Right to Left — an awareness exists that Israel needs to win. The results also show that a majority of every subgroup of voter — male and female, young and old, adherents of every kind of Judaism, supporters of every Jewish political party represented in the parliament — concur with this sentiment.

'UNHRC focuses on Israel, ignores companies operating in other occupied areas'

Despite pushing efforts to boycott businesses active in Israeli settlements, the UN Human Rights Council is turning a blind eye to more than 40 European companies that operate in four other areas deemed occupied by the UN.
A report issued last month by two pro-Israel advocacy organizations – Kohelet Policy Forum and NGO Monitor – says that “some of the world’s largest industrial, financial services, and other major publicly traded companies,” are operating in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus, Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and Russian-occupied portions of Ukraine.
The UNHRC has been pushing efforts to boycott businesses that are active in Jewish settlements since it adopted Resolution 31/36 on March 24, 2016. A new boycott list is due out by December.
The report, authored by Kohelet legal expert and Northwestern University Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, accuses the UNHRC of formulating a boycott list that “is far too narrow in its scope, and fails to capture the full context and magnitude of business activities that support settlement enterprises in occupied territories.”
Its singular focus “undermines both the legal and practical value of the resulting database, and is likely to produce consequences both unexpected and undesired,” wrote Kontorovich.
Further, the report says that “as a matter of human rights, the council’s focus on Israel is difficult to understand.

UNESCO Supports Terrorism

Denying Jews' rights in Jerusalem and Hebron has long been a major component of the Palestinians' anti-Israel narrative. In school textbooks and other publications, Jewish religious sites are featured as "Arab, Palestinian and Islamic" religious places. The Western Wall, for example, is only described as "Al-Buraq Wall," while the Tomb of the Patriarchs is referred to as the Ibrahimi Mosque.
Generation after generation, Palestinian children are taught that Jewish history is a figment of some twisted Jewish imagination. They are also being taught that only Palestinians and Muslims are entitled to the Holy Land. And they learn this lesson well: many Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims continue to deny Israel's right to exist because they have absorbed this message of hate. This message, moreover, is pervasive -- it is disseminated not only through school textbooks, but also through media outlets and the rhetoric of their leaders, especially mosque preachers and imams.
As of now, Palestinians also have an international agency (UNESCO) to support their anti-Israel narrative and rhetoric. The UNESCO resolutions are being interpreted by many Palestinians as proof that Israel has no right to exist. For many Palestinians, the resolutions are a green light to pursue their "armed struggle" to "liberate Palestine, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river." Translation: UNESCO has given the Palestinians yet another incentive to take to the streets and kill the first Jew they meet.
The latest UNESCO resolutions are a catalyst for Palestinian terrorism against Israelis. Yet they are more than that: they also make the prospect of peace even more distant. UNESCO and other international agencies that deny Jewish history are sending a green light for violence and extremism to Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims.
These resolutions are seen by Palestinians as supporting their false and invented narrative that they are the true owners of the land and that all the holy sites belong solely to Muslims.

Global Christian Group Says UNESCO Has Become Mouthpiece for Global Jew Hatred

The World Council of Independent Christian Churches (WCICC) is calling on member states of the United Nations to defund the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in the wake of the passage of a resolution to declare the Cave of the Patriarchs and the Old City of Hebron to be World Heritage Sites in Danger, and under the authority of the Palestinian Authority government.
“Instead of protecting our shared history and values, UNESCO has become the mouthpiece for global Jew Hatred,” the organization said in its release. “Their latest motion which suggests that Hebron and the Cave of the Patriarchs are Palestinian Heritage sites is both pathetic and offensive to history and the billions of Jews and Christians worldwide.
“There can be no place for such hatred within a world organization that exists to foster peace and understanding and protect history. It’s time to defund UNESCO once and for all.”
WCICC represents more than 45 million Evangelical Christians around the world, and is represented at the United Nations by special envoy Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN).
Cardoza-Moore said Monday in a statement of her own, “UNESCO has once again proven that they are not interested in protecting historic sites globally, but instead, blatantly disregarding over 3,500 years of documented history, they are more interested in their outrageous attempts at revisionist history.

An Israeli policeman wore a small Israeli flag on his shoulder yesterday, causing the Waqf on the Temple Mount to issue a condemnation.

(I cannot discount the possibility that this police officer confiscated the flag from a visitor.)

Here are some of the flags that have been proudly flown on the holiest spot in Judaism.

Palestinian

Algeria

Syria

Hamas

ISIS

They have their priorities.

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Wafa reports that 5 people were injured in Gaza from celebratory gunfire after students received their results from secondary school exams.

One victim was 53-year old Asaad al-Zatma who was shot in the head. He is in serious condition. Four of the other injured live in Beit Hanoun.

Keep in mind that this is being reported in pro-PA media to make Hamas look bad. Chances are there was also similar gunfire in the West Bank but the PA and Hamas only report the ugly news from the other side.

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From Times of Israel:

An ex-Palestinian Authority minister on Sunday slammed the government in Ramallah for corruption, and said dirty practices were what caused him to quit his post.

Shawqi al-Issa, who served as minister of agriculture and minister of social affairs in the Palestinian unity government sworn in in June 2014, resigned from his post in October 2015. At the time he did not reveal why he stepped down.

On Sunday, in post on Facebook, Issa said the reason he quit was the high level of corruption in the Palestinian government.

“It was not possible nor permitted to carry out any useful action to reduce corruption, or improve the services provided to our people” he wrote.

He added that “the well-qualified and non-corrupt officials continued to be removed, while those suspected of corruption had their positions strengthened.”

Finally! A moral Palestinian politician!

Except, in Pallyland, morality means something quite different than it means in the real world.

At the time Issa quit, a persistent wave of stabbing, ramming and shooting attacks by Palestinians against Israelis was at its early peak.

In his Facebook post, the ex-minister criticized the Palestinian government for not backing the wave of violence against Israel at the time, while instead chasing “opportunism.”

Ah. So this moral ex-minister doesn't think that the many examples of support of terror in the Palestinian media (and by Mahmoud Abbas himself) during the "knife intifada" was enough. he feels that the PA should have explicitly praised young murderers of Jews.

And this is one of the better Palestinian politicians. Someone who would without a doubt be described as "moderate" by Western media invested in the myth of a peaceful Palestinian leadership.

(h/t Josh K)

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07/11 Links Pt2: PalExpo: Outside and Inside; Isso Amro: A Pretext for NGO and UN Lawfare

From Ian:

PalExpo: Outside and Inside

First the good (and exclusive) news about PalExpo, the event at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London which happened at the weekend. Mark Taylor, the CEO of the Conference Centre, was not in London at the weekend. Because he was on vacation. In Israel! #BDSFail.
The other good news was the resistance to the event, led by the StopPalExpo Coalition.
Sharon Klaff in particular worked really hard to ensure there was a pro-Israel anti-extremist presence outside the venue on both days. Well done Sharon and to all who came in support and helped in any way, especially the Zionist Federation.
Thanks also to the Met who ensured our safety, without in any way disrupting the sometimes very heated debates in the blazing sunshine outside the venue.
Now the not-so-good news. This event should never have been allowed to happen at a publicly-owned venue. Because it was organised by Friends of Al-Aqsa, which has been charged with expressing support for terrorists. And because it featured 25 speakers who have either supported terrorism, expressed antisemitism or defamed Israel – or its supporters – with lies (this booklet says 24, but Hatam Bazian was a late addition).
We have to conclude that after the election the government is too weak to act against this part-hatefest (there was also an unobjectionable cultural element). And too preoccupied with Brexit – and at DCLG (the Department responsible for the QEII Centre), too preoccupied with the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower inferno.
The organisers have defended one speaker, Shaykh Ebrahim Bham, who quoted Goebbels in a sermon (“People tell me that Jews are human beings. Yes, I know they are human beings. Just as fleas are also animals. Just as fleas are also animals, they are also part of human beings like that”).

How East Germany and the West German Left Waged War on Israel

The historian Jeffrey Herf, in Undeclared Wars with Israel, tells of East Germany’s vicious anti-Zionism, which went well beyond condemning Israel and expressing solidarity with those seeking its destruction: indeed, the German Democratic Republic provided funds and weapons to both Arab regimes and the PLO. For its part, Herf relates, the West German far left equated opposition to the government in Bonn with opposition to Israel, often crossing the line into anti-Semitism and, for the most committed, active participation in terrorist attacks against Jews. Allan Arkush writes in his review:
Unlike other Soviet-bloc nations, East Germany didn’t break relations with Israel after the Six-Day War—because it never had them in the first place. This was mostly due to its refusal to pay reparations for the crimes of the Nazis. But it did denounce Israel as the aggressor and likened it to the Nazi regime. . . . In the ensuing years, East Germany’s sales of armaments to the Arab world . . . ran in to the hundreds of millions of dollars. . . .
The West German far left, [meanwhile], emerged in a society that believed its own legitimacy to be bound up with a Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) that entailed not only repudiation of the Nazis but reparations to their Jewish victims. While East Germany was denying any responsibility for the Nazi regime and excoriating Israel, West Germany was transferring massive amount of money to it and offering the country its broad support. . . .
As the New Left turned against Israel after 1967, West German leftists followed suit and, in Herf’s words, “redefined the meaning of Vergangenheitsbewältigung” to justify the equation of the Jewish state’s alleged crimes with those of the Nazis. Leftists in the Federal Republic began speaking of the malign effects of Germany’s “Jewish complex” and condemning philo-Semitism.

NGO Monitor: Isso Amro: A Pretext for NGO and UN Lawfare

The trial of Isso Amro, which began on July 9 with charges of unlawful activity including violence, is deeply intertwined with the political complexities and narratives of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This issue has become an opportunity for advocacy NGOs and the UN officials closely linked to these organizations to falsely impugn the Israeli justice system and distort international law along the way. This campaign is a form of lawfare, exploiting the language of justice and aimed at demonizing and delegitimizing Israel.
Two UN officials, Michael Lynk and Michel Forst (Special Rapporteurs for Palestinian territories and human rights defenders, respectively), released an absurdly prejudicial statement (July 7, 2017) that “If the Israeli military court convicts Mr. Amro on any of the charges against him, the convictions will be stained by reasonable doubts about the system’s ability to ensure justice.” Likewise, Amnesty International prejudged the case before any evidence was presented and announced (November 22, 2016) “If he is convicted we will consider Issa Amro a prisoner of conscience.”
These statements do not point to the quality of the Israeli justice system, but rather to the possibility of an outcome that these ideological advocates do not like. The claims of the UN officials and Amnesty notwithstanding, the legitimacy of the verdict in this case will be established by the evidence presented by the prosecution and defense. Israel’s military courts employ the same evidentiary rules as civilian courts, and their standards are on par or exceed any system in the world. (Under international law, specifically the Geneva Conventions, Israel is required to try Palestinians domiciled in the West Bank and arrested on security offenses in military courts.)
In other words, either Amro violated the law, or he did not. Being automatically labeled a “human rights defender” does not generate immunity from prosecution.

A Palestinian human rights NGO has confirmed the story we mentioned recently that the Palestinian Authority has greatly reduced the number of permits allowed for Gazans requiring hospitalization to leave the enclave.

PCHR has the statistics:

Data collected by PCHR indicates there is a gradual decline in the number of medical referrals issued for the Gaza Strip patients, as the number reached 2,190 referrals in March, but declined to 1,756 in April at a rate of 19.8%. Moreover, the medical referrals decreased in May to 1,484 at a rate of 32.2%. The information collected by PCHR shows that the number of referrals in June did not exceed 500, which points out that they declined at a rate of over 75%. On the other hand, the External Medical Treatment Department adopted a new mechanism when dealing with serious cases, under which patients are referred upon the approval of the Department’s Director, as the “financial coverage is offered later and following the coordination needed”. On Thursday, 15 June 2017, this mechanism stopped upon the instructions given by Ramallah’s Ministry of Health to the External Medical Treatment Department in Gaza. The number of medical referrals approved by the Higher Medical Committee in the Gaza Strip since early June is over 2,500 referrals so far for patients suffering from serious diseases that have no treatment in Gaza. These patients are awaiting for the approval on the financial coverage for their treatment abroad. However, Ramallah’s External Medical Treatment Department issued only 400 referrals. This raises concerns on the delay of about a month and a half, in addition to the decline in the number of medical referrals despite the approval of the Higher Medical Committee in the Gaza Strip.

Not only that, but patients that do get permission to go to the West Bank for treatment are being rejected by the hospitals themselves!

PCHR is shocked as the West Bank hospitals has started rejecting hospital appointments for the Gaza Strip patients with medical referrals from the External Medical Treatment Department although these hospitals used to reserve a bed for the referred patient under the term “financial coverage offered later“. The new measure taken hinders the Gaza Strip patients’ access to those hospitals and aggravates the health situation.

The PA has shown time and time again that it doesn't care about its own people.

Why should the rest of the world prioritize helping those who actively and consciously allow their own people to die?

Is Abbas' decision to stop electricity, medicines, anesthetic, medical equipment and other life saving material from Gaza morally different from Bashar Assad's siege of Yarmouk? Yet Assad is considered a monster and Abbas a peacemaker.

It goes to show that facts have little to do with how (or even if) things are reported.

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