Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 07, 2017

08/07 Links Pt2: Bolt: Telling Jews they are too dangerous as neighbours; Anti-Semitism is an integral part of European culture

From Ian:

Andrew Bolt: Telling Jews they are too dangerous as neighbours

Australia is shamed. A NSW court last week banned construction of a synagogue at Bondi, to save locals from getting accidentally hurt if the Jews are shot or bombed.
After this decision by the Land and Environment Court, what next? Send Jews back to the ghettos to keep us safe?
What a victory for the jihadists trying to kill them.
This disgrace started when the Friends of Refugees from Eastern Europe decided to build a synagogue on tennis courts at Wellington St, Bondi.
Waverley Council, which ironically includes several Jews, resisted, worried at first by a design with apartments at the back.
That design was then modified; a planned blast wall — a defence against car bombs — was made smaller and less obtrusive.
And when Waverley Council still failed to approve the project, FREE appealed to the Land and Environment Court.
The council now claims it was the court alone that rejected the appeal, on the grounds of the danger to the neighbours.
But Commissioner Graham Brown made clear in his findings that the council’s barrister had queried the “suitability of the site having regard to impact on safety and security ‘of future users of the synagogue, nearby residents, motorists and pedestrians’.”

Anti-Semitism is an integral part of European culture.

The level of anti-Semitism in the Visegrad countries differs. In 2014, an ADL study asked 11 basic questions concerning classic anti-Semitic attitudes in a number of countries. It found that 45% of Poles harbor anti-Semitic attitudes. In Hungary the figure is 41%, and in the Czech Republic 13%. No data is available for Slovakia. When asked if Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust, 62% of Poles responded yes, with 61% of Hungarians agreeing. 44% of Czech citizens answered affirmatively to the same question.
In 2004, I interviewed Mark Sofer, then Deputy Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. At that time the Visegrad countries and several others had just joined the EU. He said: "Conventional wisdom tells us that the accession of these countries to the EU is positive for Israel. For once, conventional wisdom may well be correct." He has indeed been proven correct. These and other central European countries often support Israel in a frequently politically hostile EU. They are also important for Israeli investors.
Another reason these countries are important not only for Israel but also for European Jewry is that they oppose immigration. The immigrants are to a large extent Muslims from the Middle East. Brussels and the leaders of European countries know well that most Muslim immigrants have been indoctrinated with extreme anti-Semitic propaganda from childhood. An advisor to the European court wants it to reject the challenge by Hungary and Slovakia against the EU European council decision that EU members must take in hundreds of asylum-seekers.
Yet the EU leaders do not care. The decent thing would have been to vet Muslims immigrating into Europe so that these so-called liberal democracies would not have admitted anti-Semitic immigrants. As this is not the case, the policy of the Visegrad countries not to receive immigrants is preferable. In this way in future at least a few European countries where Muslim anti-Semitic hatemongers will not play a prominent role.

Palestinian Propaganda Is Infiltrating US Public Schools

Six years ago, a teenager in Newton, Massachusetts — Shiri Pagliuso — asked her father if it was true that Israel tortures and murders women activists in the Palestinian resistance movement.
Then a high school freshman, Shiri had learned the information from her textbook — the Arab World Studies Notebook, a 540-page volume so riddled with unabashed bias that it had garnered a scathing 30-page report from the American Jewish Committee (AJC).
Back in 2011, Shiri’s father — Tony Pagliuso — wasn’t yet aware of the AJC’s report. But he knew outright propaganda when he saw it.
He contacted his daughter’s teacher, the head of the high school’s history department, the principal, and eventually the superintendents — who all defended the Arab World Studies Notebook as essential for sharpening critical thinking skills. They also praised the book for providing a “balanced perspective” and an “Arab point of view.”
Pagliuso realized that he was being stonewalled, which got him thinking: If he looked at Shiri’s other course materials, what other dreadful stuff would he find?
Determined to expose the extent of the problem, a bitter multi-year battle ensued that pitted Pagliuso — who was soon joined by a group of other parents and Newton residents — against a shockingly hostile school district.
Together, the parents and residents fought to get school officials to acknowledge their legitimate concerns, provide access to all the curriculum materials as required by law, and to pull the Arab World Studies Notebook and other academically unsuitable materials.
Now, in a new study by CAMERA (the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting), researcher Steven Stotsky carefully traces how these partisan materials — many with scant scholarly value — seeped into a nationally prominent public school system.

Did I ever tell you about my dinner with Tuvia Tenenbom?

Tuvia is a bestselling author that I've reviewed twice here. He writes in a very entertaining style. I like Tuvia!

I was invited to a dinner party about a month ago hosted by Phyllis Chesler in her apartment. The food was great and the guests were even more so. One of them was Tuvia, who is a lot like Phyllis in important ways.

Phyllis is one of the pioneers of the modern women's movement. However, she has become disillusioned with her old friends who have now become anti-Zionist and anti-Israel. Phyllis, no fool, knows first hand how dangerous Islam is to feminism and how feminism and Zionism fit together naturally.

In other words, both Phyllis and Tuvia care little about political correctness. They care about the truth. That's why I like them.

Over a delicious dinner, Tuvia asks me why I didn't review his book about his travels through America. I tell him that if he sends me a review copy, I'd be happy to! I have a weak spot for free books, just like Tuvia has a weak spot for good food and honest people no matter who they are or what they believe.

During the course of the evening, Tuvia tries to wheedle out of me my real name. My anonymity is almost a shtick now, but I refuse to tell it to him. He keeps trying. He asks the server to pour me liquor. He asks me other questions to trap me to tell it to him.

I realize fairly soon, having read his work, that he won't give up until he gets the answer. I also realize that I am giving him my address to send the book to, so he can figure out my name anyway! So I tell him my name, knowing that he would like it. He does.

After I review his book, Tuvia emails me asking me if I'll review his brand new book, Hello Refugees!, about his travels throughout Germany to dig up information about the huge wave of Muslim refugees that were admitted there. I am skeptical about whether this fits into the general theme of the blog, but he writes back to me and says:

It’s about a people who not long ago were very busy cremating Jews and are now quite busy trying to impress the world that they the best human beings world-wide, so that can stand tall and tell the Jews what they really think of them. Is this not an Elder's cup of tea?

I agree it is my cup of tea and in no time the book arrives at my doorstep.

Tuvia writes in an entertaining way, first person and present tense. His style, both in writing and interviewing, is knowingly naive. But Tuvia is quite smart and he a skilled interviewer who can almost always get past the soundbites to find out what his subject really thinks. Sometimes he employs subterfuge to get there.

We are traveling along with him as he takes his rental car from city to city in Germany, speaking to any refugees he can find and sneaking in to their refugee camps/housing. In general, these places are guarded by good German guards who will not let in any Westerners or any reporters. Tuvia knows Arabic, and he convinces the refugees he meets to let him in so they can tell him their stories.

Tuvia genuinely likes his Arab friends, and he is genuinely horrified at the conditions of most of the places they are staying. The Germans are happy to allow these refugees into their country but didn't plan very well how they would be housed. So groups that have hated each other for centuries are thrown together, where in at least one place they spend the evenings knifing each other.

Nice!

Tenenbom also speaks to German officials, from the left and the right.

One question he asks every German he meets is, why are the Germans so much more welcoming of these refugees than any other European country? The answer, no matter whom he asks, is the same: Because of Adolf. The Germans do not want anyone to think that they are still Nazis and they want to show the world how progressive and open-minded and open-hearted they are so everyone will love them.

There is another fairly consistent pattern among the German leftists he meets. They like to bring up, often unprompted, how evil Israel is. They'll throw the word "Gaza" in the conversation even if they don't know Tenenbom is Jewish. They want the world to know not only that they are progressive and welcoming, but also that they are better than those Israeli Jews whose grandparents they gassed to death.

Another surprising bit comes when Tuvia interviews the most hated right-wing Germans, who are reviled as today's Nazis. Every single one says that they support giving asylum to people who are genuinely fleeing persecution and war, for example in Syria. They want to allow entry to people who would be killed in an instant if they returned to their homes.

The German Right is more liberal than many centrist Americans.

But this doesn't stop them from being spit upon, hounded, and regarded as evil incarnate by the good Germans who are so proud of how they have transcended the nastiness of the past and now treat their Muslims better than they treated their Jews. Sure they are still in camps, with inadequate medicine and plumbing and beds, but they aren't dead! And besides, the Jews are acting horribly in Israel now, so the Germans can feel good about themselves.

In fact, many of the refugees that Tuvia interviews are economic "refugees," looking for a better life in Europe. They aren't in danger. They want to marry blonde German women.

The good German liberals aren't so liberal as they are self-righteous. They don't really care about the condition of their Muslim guests, but they want everyone to know that they are really good people today, and not like their own ancestors. (East Germans don't have the same complex, Tuvia notes.)

Hello, Refugees! is an entertaining read. While it isn't about Jews and Israel, in many ways it explains a great deal about how Jews and Israelis are treated today. But most of all, as always, Tenenbom shows in his deceptively simple style that the truth is far more complex than any of the intellectuals can understand.

(If you didn't notice, I tried to mimic Tenenbom's writing style here. With mixed results.)

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Vile propaganda and incitement from American Muslims for Palestine (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

Maybe I’m late, but I recently discovered “American Muslims for Palestine.” It’s not a particularly prominent organization: it was founded in 2006; its Twitter account has some 6,600 followers, while the Facebook page – which describes the outfit as a “Public & Government Service in Falls Church, Virginia” – has some 15K followers. I’d love to know which government is behind this “service”…

In any case, the main “service” offered at the time of this writing on Twitter is a frantic effort to promote the hashtag #HonorRasmea in support of convicted supermarket bomber and US immigration fraudster Rasmea Odeh. I have to confess that it strikes me as not terribly prudent when groups that surely oppose restrictions on Muslim immigration to the US cheer a convicted terrorist like Odeh – though I guess the Trump administration will only be too happy to have this kind of opponents.

Consider this tweet: “If more people were like her, we would live in a more just world #HonorRasmea and come to her farewell.” Yeah, if more people bombed supermarkets full of Jewish shoppers and then sneaked into the US by lying about their terrorist past, it would be really great, wouldn’t it.

Another “service” provided recently by American Muslims for Palestine was a demonstration with “Friday prayers outside Israeli embassy;” the demonstrators were mobilized with the blatant lie “AQSA UNDER ATTACK” – with “Aqsa” referring to the entire Temple Mount.

Just how low American Muslims for Palestine will go is nicely illustrated in a slideshow that is featured on the group’s website under the title “Jerusalem in the crosshairs.”

We learn that it all started in December 1917, when the British marched into Jerusalem, “ending hundreds of years of Ottoman rule of Jerusalem, ushering in an era of colonization and dispossession. Despite Palestinians’ best efforts, the Judaization of Jerusalem has been ongoing since this period and exacerbated after the June 1967 war.”

Right – who wouldn’t be sentimental about the good old days of “Ottoman rule of Jerusalem,” when the city became the ‘backwater of a dying empire’ – but at least non-Muslims “lived under numerous restrictions” and were “subject to special taxes” that had to be paid “both to the Turks and the local Moslem authorities.” Glorious!!!

And naturally, when such glorious times end and non-Muslims, especially Jews, are no longer treated as second- or third-class citizens, rampant “Judaization” sets in. Horrific!!!

The slides are full of distortions and outright lies, which are all too obviously meant to incite and justify Muslim rage and terrorism.

The slide for June 7, 1967 is entitled: “Israeli forces occupy Al Aqsa;” the text mentions the raising of the Israeli flag on the Dome of the Rock – but not that the flag was quickly taken down; it also claims that Israeli soldiers “burned the Quran,” prevented worshippers from praying and confiscated the keys. Needless to say, there is no slide explaining that, in a concession that may have no precedent in history, Israel quickly handed control of Judaism’s holiest site back to the Muslim Wakf.

The intentionally misleading use of “Al Aqsa” for all of the Temple Mount in many of the slides clearly serves to add fuel to the fires of religious passions; one example is the slide for January 28, 1976, which asserts: “Israeli Supreme Court rules that Jews have the right to pray in Al Aqsa.” The next slide claims that “Members of the extremist Temple Mount movement storm Al Aqsa and raise the Israeli flag with the Torah.” The accompanying image is taken from a 2015 Daily Mail article about renovations at the Dome of the Rock and shows the shrine with two regular Israeli flags (without Torah!!!) in the foreground, i.e. clearly not on the Temple Mount, let alone the Al Aqsa mosque.

No less vile than the incitement propagated by American Muslims for Palestine are the justifications offered for the murderous Al Aqsa intifada and the more recent “stabbing intifada.”

Since American Muslims for Palestine prominently emphasize that they want “to educate the American public and media about issues related to Palestine and its rich cultural and historical heritage,” it’s a pity that the historic Palestinian leader who clearly inspires their efforts gets no mention in the slideshow. But at least Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas knows how to honor this important Palestinian hero: he has repeatedly paid homage to Haj Amin al-Husseini (a.k.a. “Hitler’s Mufti”), praising him for having “sponsored the struggle from the beginning.”

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08/07 Links Pt1: Weakening Palestinian rejectionism; Arabs marginalize the Palestinian issue

From Ian:

PA minister defends payments deemed incentives to murder by US senators

Reuters quoted Sen. Bob Corker, the committee’s Republican chairman, as saying he hoped it would prevent innocent people “being murdered by someone who’s being incentivized to do that by his own government.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the bill’s sponsor, said: “I insist that they stop paying their young people to become terrorists and I don’t want our tax dollars used to support any government that would do that.”
But Qaraqe termed the committee vote “an incorrect decision” and said “the reason for it is Israeli incitement against the prisoners and martyrs. It cannot be implemented. We as Palestinians reject the accusation that the prisoners are terrorists. We consider the occupation the reason for terrorism in the region and that these prisoners are victims of the presence of the Israeli occupation.”
“Legally, the responsibility is individual, not collective. The individual is in prison but he has a family” that needs support, he said. He said that about 7,000 families receive monthly payments.
Qaraqe voiced confidence that Abbas would not cave in to American pressure over the payments. “Abu Mazen can’t give up on thousands of families that fell victim to the Israeli occupation. The authority cannot accept this decision.”
Over the weekend, Husam Zomlot, chief representative of the Palestinian General Delegation to the US, told a gathering of Palestinian expatriates that he had informed the US administration and members of Congress that “if there is a choice between the American aid and our responsibilities to our people we will choose the latter” the Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency reported.
But officials in the PA are deeply concerned about the impact of a halt to the American aid. An official in the Social Affairs Ministry, who requested anonymity, said it would harm the PA’s ability to keep making its welfare payments to 110,000 families living below the poverty line. “We refuse this decision. It will affect the poor families our ministry supports, most of which don’t have income and live off of our assistance.”

Daniel Pipes: Weakening Palestinian rejectionism

The discrepancies between the two responses point to a deep Palestinian ‎reluctance to accept Israel as the Jewish state. Very few accept that "Jews have some rights to this land" and ‎great majorities insist that, some day, "Palestinians will control almost all of Palestine." Ritualistic denial of ‎Israel's legitimacy is standard; it is more noteworthy that such denial only partially interferes with recognizing Israel's ‎inescapable existence. ‎
Confirming this point, note the dramatic change in attitudes over just two years. Asked if two states ‎means the "end of the conflict" or whether it must continue "until all of historic Palestine is liberated," West ‎Bank residents voted 35% to 55% in favor of continued conflict, while Gazans voted 47% to 44% in favor of ‎resolution. Back in May 2015, West Bank residents voted almost as they did this year but Gazans 2-to-1 preferred continued ‎conflict, prompting Pollock to note that, in the intervening two years, "many Gazans have probably come to regret ‎the lasting damage of the disastrous 2014 war on their territory, and shifted their views in a relatively peaceful ‎direction." More proof: Asked whether Hamas should maintain its cease-fire with Israel, the 55% and 80% ‎affirmative replies point to the impact of many rounds of warfare in Gaza.‎
When it comes to Washington, "pressure on Israel to make concessions" is not the Palestinians' priority. ‎For West Bank residents, the priority is U.S. pressure on the PA to make it "more democratic and less corrupt"; for Gazans, it is ‎‎"increased economic aid." ‎
These replies suggest that some Palestinians have moved away from grand anti-Zionist ambitions and that ‎they are not imbued with an infinite spirit of resistance; they are not supermen. Like everyone else, they are ‎prone to despair, a collapse of will, and defeat. ‎
This conclusion points to the utility of an Israel victory strategy that increases the pressure on ‎Palestinians until their dictators in Ramallah and Gaza accede to this turn toward the practical. This could ‎potentially start the long process of ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. ‎

The Decline of the Palestinian National Movement

The contemporary Palestinian national movement is reaching its end. As its institutions wither and its leaders fade away, there is no obvious successor to take its place. With the passing of Arafat and most of his colleagues, Fatah's ability to hold its fractured parts together waned.
The social and political milieu of the West Bank and Gaza - steeped in clannish and personal influences - highlighted local fiefdoms as Fatah became mired in narrow and parochial turf wars. With no new leaders, no marked success in government, and no progress toward peace, Fatah fundamentally disappeared as a real political agent.
Abbas' peace policy has provided the PA with a formidable firewall against the kind of international pressure associated with the Palestinian national movement's past violence and, since 1994, many of the day-to-day governing affairs of municipal, health, education, and other functions have been in Palestinian hands.
Perhaps most important, Abbas has succeeded in insulating the Palestinian people from much of the violence and destruction of the "Arab Spring" and from the growth of Salafi and jihadist movements in the West Bank. However, as a result of the failure to make diplomatic progress even in the shadow of a relatively friendly U.S. administration, the entire notion of peace negotiations has been discredited.
Hamas' adoption of armed struggle has been no more successful than Fatah's. The suffering of Gaza's population has not served as a model or source of inspiration for the rest of the Palestinians.
Similarly, Hamas' decade-long governance of Gaza has been marred by the same charges of corruption, incompetence, and heavy-handedness as its PA counterpart. Those looking to Hamas as a replacement for Fatah would find it difficult to argue that the former has delivered where the latter has failed.

Elder and others have forwarded me this recent bit of BDS bombast, one which celebrates the “movement’s” unstoppable momentum by highlighting not just one-hundred but two-hundred successes!

My first instinct was to write an analysis similar to this one which took apart the boycotter’s BDS@100 Victories fantasy list from 2015. But this would have largely been a word-for-word repeat refutation, given that this year’s 200 list simply copied and pasted “wins” from yesteryear, ignoring how many of them have been exposed as fraudulent, outdated, or irrelevant long ago (how many more years are we going to be asked to believe the Hampshire College divestment hoax for example).

For a while, I flirted with generating a BDS Fail at 20,000 list that would crowdsource a compendium of BDS catastrophes one-hundred times larger than their alleged list of triumphs. Once I hit 50, however (and started toting up the considerable work others had done in this area), I realized such a project could easily get caught up in the old debate over what constitutes an actual BDS win or failure.

Does someone playing a concert in Israel represent a slap in the face to the boycotters, for example? Certainly when they openly defy targeted protests, as Radiohead did this year. But what about the hundreds of artists (not to mention thousands of scholars, pilgrims and tourists) who flock to Israel on a regular basis? Are they also pushing a thumb in to the eye of Omar Barghouti and Roger Waters, or are they just taking advantage of the free, open, exciting, intellectually, culturally and spiritually vibrant nation that is Israel?

Similarly, do the billions in investment and even more billions in M&A and IPO dollars pouring into Israel represent a failure of the BDS movement or the success of the inventive and determined Israeli people? In other words, might turning Israeli triumphs into BDS defeats be a way of diminishing Israeli accomplishments?

Rather than zero in on the BDSers faux triumphs, or try to overwhelm them with our own list of defeats, what if we instead looked at the concept of victory and defeat through the lens of warfare, a perspective I continue to urge our side to embrace.

For in war, the enemy distributing a leaflet or picketing a store doesn’t register as either a win or a loss, unless such action – in conjunction with others – can ultimately trigger attacks on an enemy or an abandonment of an ally. In which case, we should be looking at whether BDS is having an impact on those nations where support for Israel is strategic.

The US is obviously the place to start, and if you look at the fact that half of state legislatures have already overwhelmingly passed anti-BDS legislation and the federal government is contemplating the same, it seems as though BDS continues to be considered toxic within communities whose decisions have real strategic impact.

Now such relationships could change over time. Enough indoctrination of the young, for example, might turn upcoming generations of leaders against the Jewish state. Indeed, one could analyze the hostility of the last President to Jewish and Israeli interests as a success for the Israel-haters long game.

But keep in mind that such long games are subject to reversals and influence by confounding variables. To cite the most obvious example, does the most recent US election represent the “victory” of pro-Israel/anti-BDS forces, or was it the result of a much more complex set of factors, most of which had nothing to do with Middle East or Jewish politics?

If we move from treating every student government vote as a victory or defeat to thinking about factors that are truly strategic, what seems to matter more than failed (or even successful) hummus boycotts are the factors that led to the explosion of the Israeli economy (including liberalization of finance, cultivation of entrepreneurship, and an embrace of the modern information-based economy).

Similarly, while it’s painful to see Israel harangued at yet another BDS conference or rally, what has more impact on the world: those shrieks and scolds, or the fact that Israel has just become a de-facto ally of the world’s second most populous nation (India), and is making diplomatic inroads into areas of the world that have been hostile to it for decades such as Asia, Africa, and even the Middle East?

At the center of these genuine victories has been an Israeli government which, whatever its shortcomings, has set priorities where they belong: growing the economy, expanding diplomacy, doing what is necessary to keep the flames engulfing the entire Middle East outside, rather than inside, the walls.

Similarly, friends of Israel in the US who have built strategic relationships with both political parties, not to mention strategic alliances within academia, business and mission-focused organizations, understand that we too can play a long game. And one key to victory in such a game is to never mimic our enemies by mistaking fleeting (never mind trivial or false) “wins” as the measurement for genuine success.

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The situation at Gaza hospitals is getting more and more desperate, while the world ignores what "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas is doing to his own people.

It has now been four months since the Palestinian Authority decided to withhold medicines and medical equipment from Gaza hospitals.

According to the Gaza ministry of health, some 516 medicines are completely unavailable in Gaza hospitals, representing 40% of the medicines that are normally used. Additionally, some 291 medical supplies (out of 853 total) are unavailable.

Patients in Gaza hospitals who need painkillers and similar medicines are told to go to private pharmacies and pay for them themselves.

Every day, Gaza hospitals run out of more medicines and medical supplies.

Yet Doctors Without Borders, which has blamed Israel for Gaza medicine shortages in the past, is silent.

The World Health Organization issued a statement last month about how the medicine and electricity shortage is affecting Gaza hospitals, but the only party it blamed was Israel. This is even though the Palestinian Authority has publicly bragged about reducing electricity to Gaza!

A couple of reporters mentioned the medicine crisis a month or two ago, and then promptly dropped the story.

Other "Palestine activists" are also suddenly silent about this human rights violation by the "moderate man of peace" Mahmoud Abbas, who has promised to further cut off supplies to Gaza.

The hypocrisy is stunning, but normal and expected.

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PCHR, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, held a workshop last month entitled “Consequences of Former Prisoners’ Salary Suspension on their Economic and Social Rights.”

The conference centered on some 277 former prisoners in Gaza, all of them Hamas as far as I can tell, who lost their permanent salaries from the Palestinian Authority. But the arguments that PCHR is putting forth in defending them are the same arguments that they would use to defend paying the thousands of prisoners and former prisoners, including murderers, who take up a significant part of the PA budget.

The workshop was opened by Dr. Fadel Muzeini, a researcher at PCHR’s Economic and Social Rights Unit. Muzeini emphasized that PCHR has paid special attention to prisoners and former prisoners over their years of work and always supported their just causes. He also stressed that the Palestinian Authority’s decision to suspend the salaries of former prisoners is unfair and in violation of former prisoners and their families’ right to a decent life. He added the decision is unconstitutional and explicitly violates the Basic Law and Prisoners and Former Prisoners Law No. 19/2004 and its amendments, which guarantee former prisoners’ rights to be monthly paid a salary according to a specific system.

Lawyer Raji Sourani, PCHR’s Director, reviewed PCHR’s position on the suspension of former prisoners’ salaries. He said that the decision of suspending former prisoners’ salaries was shocking to the prisoners, their families and all Palestinians as it is illegal, immoral, and violates the Basic Law and the international human rights law. Sourani also demanded the Palestinian Authority to apologize for this unjust decision, end this abnormal situation and regularly re-pay the former prisoners’ salaries, considering all of this as a lawful right for the prisoners and former prisoners.

The director of a lavishly funded human rights NGO says that "international human rights law" demands that people who murder Jews must be paid a lifetime salary for their efforts.

The Palestinian Basic Law indeed provides that terrorists should get rewarded:

Article 22
Social, health, disability and retirement insurance shall be regulated by law.
Maintaining the welfare of families of martyrs, prisoners of war, the injured and the disabled is a duty that shall be regulated by law. The National Authority shall guarantee these persons education, health and social insurance.

And apparently there are other more detailed Palestinian laws guaranteeing their salaries as well.

However, PCHR is going further, asserting that the right for people who tried or succeeded in murdering Jews to be given salaries is protected under international law! Not only that, but this NGO says that not paying them is immoral.

Rewarding terrorists is moral. Not rewarding them is immoral. That is the position of perhaps the most prestigious Palestinian human rights NGO.

The list of funders to PCHR is impressive. It includes the European Union, UN OCHA, Ireland, Norway, Finland, Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat (joint funding from the governments of Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark), Spain, George Soros' Open Society Foundations (US), Christian Aid (UK), Grassroots International (US), Kvina Till Kvina (Sweden), Al-Quds Association Malaga (Spain), Oxfam Novib (Netherlands), Norwegian Refugee Council (Norway), Trocaire, and DanChurchAid (Denmark).

All of these funders and nations are indirectly supporting financial incentives for murdering Jews.

Out of all the egregious, immoral actions of "human rights" groups, this is the most shocking. Answers must be demanded from not only PCHR but also from every one of its funders. And the answers must not be of the "let's sweep it under the rug" type where PCHR makes a half-hearted statement that gets eagerly swallowed by these governments and non-government funders so they can continue to throw money - often taxpayer money - to a "human rights" group that has just proven that it is the antithesis of human rights.

As long as you consider Jews to be human, that is.

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Hamas' "military wing" beating up people who insult them

From PCHR:

‘Abed al-Rahman Ahmed Barakah (59), from Deir al-Balah, said to PCHR’s fieldworker that, at approximately 19:40 on Monday, 31 July 2017, while he along with his two sons, Shadi (36) and Mohammed 31, was training some young men in the Equestrian Club he owns in al-Bassa area, northwest of Deir al-Balah, around 30 masked armed men from Al-Qassam Brigades entered the Club. The armed men pointed their firearms at ‘Abed al-Rahman’s sons and then started beating him with batons and the riffels’ butts. Around 30 minutes later, the armed men pushed ‘Abed al-Rahman into their jeep, took him to al-Barouq neighborhood, southwest of the city, where he lives. They then threw him near his house, telling him, “This is what you get for cursing Al-Qassam Brigades.” ‘Abed al-Rahman’s relatives saw that and attempted to approach him, but al-Qassam Members opened fire in the air and withdrew from the area. ‘Abed al-Rahman was then taken via an ambulance belonging to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) to al-Aqsa Hospital, and he underwent medical tests which showed that ‘Abed al-Rahman sustained bruises and fractures to his hands.

Of course, the "moderate" Palestinian Authority does the same with those it deems enemies.

But the "pro-Palestinian" groups somehow never manage to utter a word about these sorts of incidents. I wonder why?

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Kurdish independence opposed - because Kurdistan wouldn't be anti-Israel

From Al Monitor:

Objections to the Iraqi Kurdistan’s referendum scheduled for Sept. 25 have gone beyond the political arena. Mosques are now involved, and religion is being inserted into the equation of supporting or opposing the calls for an independent state.

Oh? For example?

Mohammad Mahdi al-Khalsi, the religious authority in al-Kazimiya, called on all Iraqis July 7 to stand up against “divisive projects” and asked to put a nail in the coffin of this "suspicious" project. He also warned the Islamic world against forming a new Zionist entity that is Kurdistan.

Ammar al-Hakim, who heads the Shiite alliance, the largest political Shiite coalition in Iraq, said on TV in Egypt April 19, “I personally do not know any country that might recognize a Kurdish state — if announced — other than Israel. The Arab countries have Iraq’s unity at heart.”

Remarkably, linking Israel to a Kurdish state goes as far back as the Baathists, when the Kurdish movement was described as “Israel’s spy.”

These don't sound like religious arguments to me!

In the end, of course, no one is thinking about whether Kurds deserve a state considering their history and their fierce ties to the land. They are, as always, looking out for their own self-interests and pretending that their positions on Kurdistan is aligned with high sounding principles like "unity".

By any sane measure, Kurds deserve a nation far more than Palestinians. But sanity is not the deciding factor in the world we live in.

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08/06 Links: Israel slanderer waits for Israeli transplant; Stone-throwers ambush bus filled with children

From Ian:

Israel slanderer waits for Israeli transplant

Legal human rights organization Shurat Hadin, joined by 50 IDF reserve officers and soldiers, wrote to the Health Ministry and the National Transplant Center requesting that PA diplomat Saeb Erekat be removed from the waiting list for transplants in Israel.
About 50 soldiers and officers who fought in Operation Defensive Shield and who hold organ donor cards today petitioned the Health Ministry and the National Transplant Center to immediately remove Saeb Erekat from the list of transplants in Israel, due to the fact that Erekat has repeatedly slandered IDF soldiers, called for the boycott of the State of Israel, campaigned for sanctions against it, and led the BDS movement to isolate and harm the State of Israel.
Yesterday the media reported that an application had been filed on behalf of Saeb Erekat, a senior PA official, for a lung transplant in Israel.
In the wake of Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, and the reserve soldiers battle in Jenin in which 13 IDF soldiers were killed, a propaganda film by director Muhammad Bakri, entitled Jenin Jenin, was released. The film purports to provide prima facie evidence of war crimes committed by the IDF in Jenin which turned out to be wholly spurious, as was decided by the Central District Court.
Erekat took a large part in disseminating the blood libel embodied in the film, which portrayed the story as if a massacre took place in Jenin. He appeared at the time in the various media, mainly on foreign television channels, and disseminated the lie of the massacre.
In addition, in November 2010, Erekat wrote a letter praising the planner of then Minister Rechavam Ze'evi's assassination, and in December 2015 he paid a condolence visit to another terrorist family who carried out a shooting attack against IDF forces.
In addition, Erekat is an enthusiastic supporter of the boycott movement against Israel - BDS. He has visited EU representatives in the past because they did not support BDS, and asserted that all their support for the two-state solution is meaningless if they do not support the boycott of Israel.

Seth Frantzman: Israel is at its most and least integrated moment in the Mideast

The discussion in Israel, from the Right to the Left, is primarily an internal one. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has shared interests in Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Egypt, it isn’t because he enjoys meeting with leaders from there, it’s simply a statement of fact. One gets the feeling that previous generations of Israelis, with the exception of the cultural Eurocentric elites, felt more a part of the Middle East, more comfortable in it. That is ironic, since Israel was more isolated in the 1950s, surrounded by real Arab armies. Today Israel has peace with two Arab countries, and relationships with others, yet it is less integrated in the region in some ways.
Israel was always going to be a janus-faced country because of its nature. Founded primarily by Eastern European Jewish nationalists, it was a gathering place for Jews from the Middle East and has the food, music and culture of the region ingrained in it. Many of its cultural elites still see the region as “primitive” and their cultural leanings are toward Europe. It’s no surprise some of them and their children emigrate to places like Berlin.
In the 1960s many Arab nationalists believed Israel was a colonial implant in the Middle East and would go the way of Algeria. They didn’t understand that it was not colonial in foundation, but seeking to reconnect an indigenous people with their land. The problem the indigenous people have had is that some of them do not feel comfortable in the land.
Ben-Gurion thought the problem was an education system in need of modernizing “primitives.” He was wrong. The problem was creating an education system that roots people in the Middle East and makes them feel a part of it and teaches them to respect and be interested in it. After all, Israelis are all supposed to learn Arabic in school, but few of them actually end up understanding it.
That in itself is a symbol of how it is more integrated, but also less integrated.

Forward: ZOA head more worrying for Jews than Linda Sarsour

A recent piece published by the Forward claims that Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) president Morton Klein is more worrying for Jews than controversial Palestinian Arab-American firebrand Linda Sarsour.
"As leader of the Zionist Organization of America, Klein has embraced and defended alt-right figures like Bannon and Gorka for their unabashedly pro-Israel-at-any-costs position, cozying up to anti-Semitic forces if it advances the ZOA’s ardent Zionist goals." wrote Forward editorial fellow Steven Davidson in an article titled "19 People Jews Should Worry About More Than Linda Sarsour."
"It would require a book replete with exclamation points to fully explain the dangers of an ostensibly Jewish organization aligning with xenophobic elements to accomplish narrow political goals."
Also present on Davidson's list are Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah,and former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke. Bottoming out the list was United States President Donald Trump, whose campaign Davidson wrote "either rode the coattails of the alt-right or allowed the alt-right to follow his nativist coattails."
Davidson had penned the article as a defense for Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian Arab-American activist who has turned into the face of the anti-Trump movement. Many of her comments have made Jews uneasy, such as saying that "nothing is creepier than Zionism" and claiming that supporting Israel and being a feminist are incompatible.

Ma'an last week published a story (in Arabic) about the obstacles to building a desalination plant on the Gaza coat to alleviate the severe water shortages there.

The governor of the central Gaza Strip, Abdullah Abu Samhadana, on Wednesday called on Hamas to overcome all obstacles to start work on the project to build the largest desalination plant in the Gaza Strip, describing the project as strategic.
"The importance of this project is that it serves 2 million Palestinians and delivers desalinated water to every house in the Gaza Strip," Abu Samhadana said during an inspection tour conducted by the delegation of the Water Authority. The report comes in light of international reports that Gaza lacks drinking water.
He called on the media to shed light on this issue because of its importance and to use public opinion to exert pressure to accomplish this project.
He said that President Mahmoud Abbas had issued a presidential decree allocating 100 dunums of land west of the city of Khan Younis to establish an alternative power plant to operate the desalination plant in the light of the worsening electricity crisis, while the Hamas land authority in the Gaza Strip refuses to implement the decree.
He explained the importance of working to remove the obstacles that prevent the allocation of this land to establish the project to establish the station without delay.
He added that what prevents the start of work is the position of the Land Authority in Gaza on the grounds that the financiers see in the project all integrated and they refuse to start before overcoming all obstacles.
Abu Samhadana said the project would cost $ 600 million, and the national consensus government headed by Rami Hamdallah is continuing to communicate with financiers to keep this project a priority.

Notice what word is missing from this story? Israel. No one thinks for even a minute that Israel would block such an important project.

Hamas and the PA are fighting about where to build such a plant. If they could get past their differences, the donors would rush in to help. But Hamas doesn't want the PA to run the project, and the terror group certainly cannot raise those sorts of funds itself (Iran pays Hamas to buy equipment to kill people, not to help people.)

Meanwhile, the PA itself is doing even more to hurt the residents of Gaza in order to assert its own authority. Both Hamas and the PA are eager to play with the lives of Gazans for their own political purposes.

Mahmoud Abbas even insulted those, like the US, who were against his cutting electricity to Gaza - endangering hospital patients and ordinary citizens.

Palestinian Arabs have been pawns since 1948, played by Arab leaders for their own selfish purposes. Why should their own leaders behave any differently? It isn't like the world really cares about Palestinian lives unless Jews can be blamed.

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There have been plenty of articles on this site about how many NGOs use their halo of supporting human rights as a chakram to bash Israel to the point of appearing antisemitic.

But sometimes one can find an NGO that actually tries to help people - and to create peace.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Growing up in Syria, Shadi Martini was taught to stay away from Israelis: they were evil enemies seeking to kill him and his people.

Today, he works with them to help Syrians survive the devastating conflict in his country.

Earlier this month, the IDF disclosed the scope of its aid to Syrians affected by the bloodletting as part of Operation Good Neighbor, an initiative begun in June 2016 to increase civilian aid while maintaining the principle of noninvolvement in the civil war. More than 110 aid operations have been conducted since August 2016.

The IDF said it has begun working with international organizations and donors to transfer aid to more than 200,000 Syrians living close to the Israeli border.

One of these organizations is the Multifaith Alliance, an umbrella group of some 90 faith-based organizations in the United States coming together for Syrians in need. Martini is the alliance’s director of humanitarian relief and regional relations.

Martini begun his humanitarian work in 2011, as the Arab Spring was unfolding in the region and demonstrations begun in his hometown of Aleppo. At the time, he was managing a hospital there.

“We started seeing more and more people getting hurt and avoiding hospitals for fear of getting arrested,” he said. “We were seeing increased pressure from the government and security agencies who told us that if anyone comes to our facility, we have to report them and they will come to pick them up immediately.”

Martini and his team began disobeying the orders and smuggled people in and out of the facility, treating the wounded.

“They needed medical supplies and couldn’t get them, some people needed to be treated secretly,” he told The Jerusalem Post last week. “So we developed a network with friends inside Syria, and we helped people, we started smuggling things to the besieged areas.”

A year later, Martini’s operation was discovered and he had to flee Syria.

He moved to the United States, where his family had arrived earlier. Despite the danger, he continued to travel to his country, into zones where the government had no control, in order to provide aid.

“It’s a choice I had to make,” he said. “Some people chose to do nothing, just observe. I thought it was the wrong thing to do, I saw that people needed help, and regardless of who they are, if someone is suffering and injured, he should receive help.”

In 2013, Martini was approached by Israelis who wanted to send aid into Syria. He was skeptical.

“I thought maybe they were Mossad, maybe they wanted information,” he told the Post. “We were always told they are the devil, not to believe whatever they say, that they want to kill us. In a society that is not a free society, you tend not to question it. If everyone is saying that, even if it’s not true, who cares? It was part of the norm.”

But he did not want to pass on valuable aid and decided to take a chance.

He would receive the unlabeled Israeli products and distribute them into Syria. That’s when the Multifaith Alliance, which had just formed, learned about this activity, and approached him.

The organization has a three-part mission: to collect aid and raise money for organizations that help Syrian war victims, increase awareness of the crisis, and plant the seeds for stability in the region by fostering people-to-people engagement.

The alliance launched in 2013 as the Jewish Coalition for Syrian Refugees, which at that time was made up of 16 organizations and quickly scaled up to a multi-faith initiative.

With 90 organizations now involved, it collects aid in the US and ships it to Israel where the IDF now distributes it to Syrian NGOs, as part of the Good Neighbor policy.

When the Multifaith Alliance learned about existing collaborations between Syrian and Israeli NGO s, it knew that the partnerships could have important implications not just in the immediate need of delivering aid, but for long-term relations in the region.

Dr. Georgette Bennett, a daughter of Holocaust survivors who founded the alliance, told the Post, “Israel shares a border with four of the most affected countries [by the Syrian war] and therefore it makes enormous sense for Israel to be used as a staging area for the delivery of outbound international humanitarian aid, because Israel is a reliable partner, it’s got geographical proximity, it’s got tremendous expertise in search and rescue and it’s got technology that is designed to address disaster situations.”

The Multifaith Alliance includes these organizations, representing Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and Christian groups:

The idea of not only helping Syrians but of also looking for long-term contacts that can facilitate peace between Israel and whatever Syria becomes is exactly what makes this organization different from so many other NGOs. Too many "human rights" groups pander to Arab antisemitism, and the idea of "normalization" with Israelis - anathema to so many Arabs - has morphed into support for boycotting the Jewish state, the modern manifestation of antisemitism that cloaks its hate as being "pro-human rights" and "supporting justice."

Seeing an organization with real people trying to do real humanitarian work is inspiring in a world where so many so-called humanitarian groups actually work against peace.

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