Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, August 11, 2017

08/11 Links Pt1:PMW: Gloating over mass murder, Hamas style; Glick: America's strategic paralysis

From Ian:

Recognizing a Palestinian State before a Peace Agreement with Israel Undermines the International Rule of Law

Those who advocate immediate recognition of a Palestinian state, without a peace agreement with Israel, show cavalier disregard for well-established legal principles for the creation of states and their recognition.
The four criteria of statehood set out in the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1933) are widely accepted as the minimum required by customary international law for the creation of a new state. Two of the criteria - a single, centralized government and the capacity to enter into relations with other states - are manifestly not satisfied by any Palestinian entity.
For reasons which are entirely internal to Palestinian society, there is no reasonable prospect for the foreseeable future of any government being formed which would exercise effective control over both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and would have the capacity to give effect to any agreements purportedly entered into by "Palestine."
Recognition of any such entity as a state would be to affirm a fiction, contrary to the imperatives of international law.
Applying the additional requirements for recognition contained in the European Community Declaration and Guidelines (1991), the Palestinians have failed, and are likely to continue to be unwilling to make commitments to respect the inviolability of the frontiers with Israel, to repudiate all territorial claims by Palestine against Israel, and to settle all disputes with Israel by peaceful means.
Recognition of a Palestinian state at the present time would also contravene the internationally recognized and witnessed Oslo Accords between the Palestinians and Israel.

Caroline Glick: America's strategic paralysis

Last week, after the UN Security Council passed a new sanctions resolution against North Korea, the regime’s No. 2 official, parliament chairman Kim Yong Nam, arrived in Tehran for a 10-day visit.
In the past, CIA officials have claimed that Iranian observers have been present at North Korean nuclear tests. Iran also reportedly financed the Korean-built nuclear reactor in Syria that Israel reportedly destroyed in 2007.
Iran’s Shihab-3 and Shihab-4 intermediate range ballistic missiles are based on North Korean designs. Former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton recently revealed that during North Korea’s 1999-2006 missile testing moratorium, Iran conducted missile tests for North Korea.
If the circumstantial evidence linking the two nuclear programs is correct, then whatever North Korea has will be possessed by Iran in short order.
It is certainly possible that there is more happening behind the scenes in Washington than anyone can possibly know. Far from the television cameras, US national security officials may be configuring strategic goals and programs that will enable Trump to abandon Obama’s failed policies in relation to North Korea, Syria and Iran and move the US – and the world – in a safer and more secure direction.
Unfortunately, in light of Tillerson’s claim that the US seeks to return to the negotiating table with North Korea, and given the administration’s decision to continue to implement Obama’s pro-Iran and pro-Hezbollah policy in Syria and Trump’s second certification of Iranian compliance with Obama’s nuclear deal, it is certainly easy to conclude that this is not the case.
As Kupperwasser noted in his essay on the dangers the US-Russian Syrian cease-fire deal pose to Israel and Jordan, Trump’s abidance by Obama’s pro-Iranian policies in Syria “worries Israel... because it casts doubt over the depth of American commitment, the ability of the Americans to deliver, or the relevance of the ‘Art of the Deal’ to the Middle East and international politics.”
It is obvious that Trump continues to seek a clean break with Obama’s policies. But as his critics’ piling on against him following his threat to North Korea and the State Department’s determination to maintain Obama’s failed policy of appeasement toward Pyongyang both make clear, more than anything else, Trump needs advisers who are capable of helping him achieve this goal. He needs advisers willing to stand up to the pressure and the inertial force of the foreign policy bureaucracy and capable of having a serious strategic discussion about how to proceed in an international environment that grows more daunting every day.

PMW: Gloating over mass murder, Hamas style

Yesterday, August 9, was the 16th anniversary of the horrific suicide bombing at the Sbarro pizza shop in Jerusalem in which 15 Israelis, among them 7 children, were murdered and 130 were wounded. Among the killed were Mordechai and Tzirel Schijveschuurder and three of their children, Ra’aya aged 14, Avraham aged 4, and Hemda aged 2.
Hamas gloated over the murders yesterday in a post on the website of Hamas’ TV channel. Referring to the guitar case in which the suicide bomber hid the bomb, Hamas headlined its story: “The Sbarro operation - The guitar that shook the [Zionist] entity and reaped 20 Zionists.”
Hamas wrote: “The news of the operation made Palestinians joyous everywhere. The largest celebrations in honor of the hero [suicide bomber Al-Masri]... Masses of people went out to the streets, cheered, and distributed candies out of happiness.”
[Website of Hamas’ Al-Aqsa Channel, Aug. 9, 2017]
The following are pictures of those murdered in the Sbarro bombing:

The article on the Hamas website also describes with pride how the terrorist mingled among the people in the pizza shop before detonating his bomb, which it describes as “playing the melodies of revenge.”
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the Palestinian Authority and Fatah likewise glorify and honor terrorists, and even reward them financially. In 2001 the Hamas student branch at Al-Najah University in Nablus celebrated the murders by creating exhibit of the pizza shop and posted on the wall images of body parts. [Source of images: Malki Foundation website]
In 2014, the Palestinian Authority likewise honored the suicide bomber by giving him a military funeral when his body was returned to the Palestinian Authority:
PA TV reporter: ”Thousands of civilians from the Tubas District, representing all segments of the political activity, took part in the funeral of the remains of the Martyr (suicide bomber who killed 15) who gave his soul for the struggle of a nation that strives for freedom.”
Mayor of Aqqaba Jamal Abu Ara: “The popular gathering around the blood of Izz Al-Din Al-Masri (i.e., the Sbarro bomber) is an honest and true expression of our people’s yearning for national unity (between Fatah and Hamas) and unity of action.”
PA TV reporter: “The flags of the political parties were raised at this national wedding (the Martyr's wedding to the 72 Virgins in Paradise), which demonstrated the national unity and cohesion among our people.” [Official PA TV, April 30, 2014]

Where is @Amnesty's Mosul Platform?

In 2015, Amnesty International spent who knows how many thousands of dollars to create an online database that purported, very falsely, to document every single death and injury (to Palestinians) from the 2014 Gaza war.

Despite my proving how wrong it was (and Amnesty read my posts), they refused to correct their data, which is still online, and still claiming hundreds more civilians killed than any other source including the UN and B'Tselem.

At the time, Amnesty justified its use of this massive amount of (flawed) research and programming by saying "Ultimately, the vision is to create a tool that could be used during future conflicts, whether in Gaza or elsewhere, to report on research findings and reveal emerging patterns that could be used to pressure those with influence over the warring parties to take action to stop violations of international humanitarian law in real time."

And yet, for some reason, Amnesty has not found any reason to spend this much effort in any other conflict. Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan - none of those conflicts are worth Amnesty's efforts.

For example:

More than 40,000 civilians were killed in the devastating battle to retake Mosul from Isis, according to intelligence reports revealed exclusively to The Independent – a death toll far higher than previous estimates.

Residents of the besieged city were killed by Iraqi ground forces attempting to force out militants, as well as by air strikes and Isis fighters, according to Kurdish intelligence services.

Hoshyar Zebari, until recently a senior minister in Baghdad, told The Independent that many bodies “are still buried under the rubble”. “The level of human suffering is immense,” he said.

This is far more causualties, in a much smaller area, with far more civilians killed by both sides.

Wouldn't this be a perfect vehicle for Amnesty to use its platform?

But there is another rule that Amnesty has for these sorts of initiatives. If Israel cannot be blamed, then it really isn't that important to spend much time and money into documenting it.

(h/t Reuben)

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Abbas goes after anyone saying (or reading!) anything he doesn't like on social media

From AP:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has clamped down on social media and news websites — the main outlets for debate and dissent in the West Bank — with a vaguely worded decree that critics say allows his government to jail anyone on charges of harming “national unity” or the “social fabric.”

Rights activists say the edict, issued without prior public debate last month, is perhaps the most significant step yet by Abbas’ government to restrict freedom of expression in the autonomous Palestinian enclaves of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The government has blocked 30 websites in the past month, according to the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms, or Mada.

Five journalists working for news outlets linked to Hamas were detained this week and charged with violating the new law, according the lawyer of one of those arrested and an official in the association of Palestinian journalists.

Separately, four other journalists were called for questioning about social media posts critical of government policy.

One of those summoned, photo journalist Fadi Arouri, who works for the Chinese news agency Xinhua, said he was shown his Facebook posts and was told that the authorities are concerned “these expressions could lead to disorder in the society.”

The new decree stipulates prison terms ranging from one year to life for those who use digital means for a range of all-encompassing offenses. The list includes endangering the safety of the state or the public order as well as harming national unity or social peace.

Here's the part I like:

Ibrahim Hamodeh, a prosecutor in the attorney general’s office, said the decree was needed to go after those committing electronic crimes, such as hackers and those engaged in on-line libel.

“There is nothing about (restricting) freedom of expression in the new law,” Hamodeh told The Associated Press.

“The law criminalizes distortion, defamation, slandering,” he said. “One can criticize the president and his policy but one cannot accuse the president or anyone else of treason or make fun of him in an image, or something like that.”

I have rarely seen such a complete contradiction in three consecutive sentences. "We don't restrict freedom of expression. we are only going after people who say things we don't like!"

The specifics of the law are actually chilling. According to this site, it is a very wide ranging law that includes:

Article 51 of the law states that, “if a crime is committed online and harms ‘national unity’ or ‘social harmony,’ it will be punishable” by hard labor, ranging between three and 15 years, a sentence impacting all those who partook in the crime.
Articles 32 mandates internet service providers to cooperate with security agencies by collecting, storing, and sharing users’ information data for at least three years, in addition to blocking any website on the orders of the judiciary.
Article 40 allows the Attorney General or one of his assistants to request the court to issue an order to block any website within 24 hours.
Article 16 states that anyone who violates ‘public manners’ online could be sentenced to prison for one year, or fined up to 7,000 USD, or both.
Article 20 similarly punishes any internet user that owns or manages a website that publishes “news that endanger state safety, its public order, or internal or external security.” Anyone who shares these news could be imprisoned for a year or fined up to around 1,400 USD.
Article 31 outlaws any attempt to bypass website blocking or use any system or app to access a blocked website.
Articles 35 mandates the court to give the Public Prosecutor’s office the right to monitor and record online communications as well as obtaining any log-in data it deems necessary for investigations.

So not only does it chill expression, but it also punishes those who try to read things that are banned.

While it is a bit surprising to see AP publish this, a quick look through Google News and Bing News shows that only Voice of America and Fox News have published this as of this writing.

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Palestinian mobile phone provider Jawwal has a promotion on a new service plan, which it is promoting using this graphic:

Yes, that is the Dome of the Rock - which most Palestinians use as symbolism for the Al Aqsa Mosque, their supposedly holy site.

Although the promotion has been out for at least a few days, I have not seen a single negative word about placing the supposedly third holiest site in Islam on a popcorn cup to sell mobile minutes.

I guess the Palestinian definition of "holy" is a bit different than others'. I cannot imagine the Kaaba in Saudi Arabia being used in such a fashion.

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Members of Congress get briefed on how evil Israel is by Palestinian Authority PM (update)

Ma'an reports that PA prime minister Dr. Rami al-Hamdallah, on Thursday at his office in Ramallah, a delegation from the US Senate, "where he briefed them on the latest political developments and violations of the occupation."

He also asked for Congress to give the PA more money.

We know that there are two Congressional delegations in Israel this week, both Republican and Democratic. There are 18 Democrats and 33 Republicans.

The head of the Democratic Party contingent is Rep. Steny Hoyer, and if I am not mistaken, he is the one with the grey hair on the right in this photo with the PA prime minister in Ramallah.

It looks to me like only the Democratic members of Congress made an official visit to Ramallah. (The 33 Republicans wouldn't have fit in the room!)

UPDATE: Naftali Bennett's media advisor Aaron Kalman tweeted to me that the Republicans also met with Hamdallah in a separate meeting.

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08/10 Links Pt2: Palestinian 'taught to hate Israel' turns Zionist; The murky world of the Aleppo Codex

From Ian:

Did Benny Morris Change His Views on Alleged Zionist Ethnic Cleansing Plan?

At the beginning of the previous decade, some of his positions began to evolve. Correcting a Mistake was the name of his 2000 book. The most publicized revision concerned the current political question: are the Arabs ready to accept the existence of a Jewish state in any borders? In a response to Blatman about a year ago, Morris wrote:
As for my change of opinion, it changed during the 1990s about only one thing – the Palestinians’ willingness to make peace with us. At the beginning of the decade, I thought maybe something had changed in the Palestinian national movement and they were willing to recognize reality and arrive at a compromise of two states for two peoples.
But in 2000, after Yasser Arafat’s “no” at Camp David (which was backed by his successor Mahmoud Abbas), and in light of the second intifada and the nature of that intifada, I realized they weren’t interested in peace. Unfortunately, the situation hasn’t changed since.
Another change in Morris' position, articulated in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (2003), concerned the history of the 1948 war. According to Morris, he adjusted his view in light of new access to archival material which wasn't available when he wrote his original book:
Birth Revisited describes many more atrocities and expulsions than were recorded in the original version of the book. But, at the same time, a far greater proportion of the 700,000 Arab refugees were ordered or advised by their fellow Arabs to abandon their homes than I had previously registered. It is clear from the new documentation that the Palestinian leadership in principle opposed the Arab flight from December 1947 to April 1948, while at the same time encouraging or ordering a great many villages to send away their women, children and old folk, to be out of harm's way. Whole villages, especially in the Jewish- dominated coastal plain, were also ordered to evacuate. There is no doubt that, throughout, the departure of dependents lowered the morale of the remaining males and paved the way for their eventual departure as well.
Contrary to Daniel Blatman's assertions, there was no revolutionary change in Morris' position regarding the general picture of the Palestinian "Nakba." Evolutions in his views over the years, which occurred, he said, due to new revelations and a new assessment of the Arabs' intentions, did not touch on his assessments about the source of the Palestinian refugee problem. Perhaps his detractors attack him precisely because he is a renowned historian who doesn’t hesitate to "correct a mistake" even if the correction is in favor of the Israeli side; who doesn’t wholeheartedly adopt the Palestinian narrative; and who dares to express views that deviate from what is customary in the radical left.
Morris Comments
This writer asked Morris whether this piece accurately reflects his views over the years. Morris responded (CAMERA's translation from Hebrew):
Your description is completely accurate.
But I would add another thing- that Israel, as an agreed government policy, prevented the return of those who became refugees. That decision was made at government meetings in April, August and September 1948 (that is, already when only half of the refugees became refugees).
The word 'refugees' is problematic- because two-thirds of the refugees have moved to another place in the land of Israel (the West Bank, Gaza) and only a third left Mandatory Palestine (a refugee is usually defined as one who left his country).

Palestinian 'taught to hate Israel' turns Zionist

A Palestinian woman, who is also the niece of one of the founders of the Fatah movement, recently stated her unequivocal disapproval of terror attacks carried out by Palestinians against Israelis, citing violent education as the root cause of the phenomenon’s continuation.
Sandra Solomon, a Palestinian born in Ramallah who converted to Christianity more than ten years ago and became a supporter of Israel, condemned the recent Halamish attack in which a terrorist broke into a home and killed three members of the Salomon family.
“The Palestinian terrorist who murdered a family on Friday evening in Halamish; where did he get the idea to enter a home and kill the people who were in there?” asked Solomon. “The young Palestinians who carry out attacks are already murdered from a psychological point of view by the education that is given to them.”
The 39-year-old Solomon, originally called Fida, is the niece of a Fatah official Sahar Habash who was a close confidant of Palestinian Authority Yasser Arafat.
“As a child, I was brought up to hate Israel,” she admitted during a visit to Israel. “The most important thing to us was the liberation of the Al-Aqsa mosque, the liberation of Jerusalem and the destruction of the State of Israel.
“We watched the second intifada on television” she said as she recalled her childhood between Jordan and Saudi Arabia. “After every big terror attack—including when children were killed—candy was given out. The education that was given to me was that only Palestinians are the victims, that they are oppressed in this conflict and that the Zionists are the occupying criminals who took the land for themselves.”
The life changes Solomon underwent and her decision to turn away from the culture of hate instilled within her didn’t take place overnight.

Jezebel: Evidence of Rasmea Odeh guilt “counter to a feminist understanding of rape culture”

A coalition of the usual leftist-Islamist suspects is getting ready to give Rasmea Odeh a big farewell party in Chicago on August 12, 2017.
It’s a farewell party because just a few days later, on August 17, 2017, Rasmea will be sentenced in federal court in Detroit after a guilty plea to immigration fraud. By her plea agreement, Rasmea will be deported and will lose her U.S. citizenship, but will not serve any further jail time.
This farewell party is part of the continuing attempt to turn Rasmea into a social justice hero, as I documented in September 2015, The Sickening Deification of Rasmea Odeh.
Rasmea, readers will recall, failed to disclose on her immigration applications her 1970 conviction and imprisonment in Israel for a 1969 supermarket bombing that killed two Hebrew University students, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner.

Yemeni Jews arriving in Israel in 2016

Arab media, looking for more crimes to ascribe to Qatar, has found one: the report that Qatar helped hundreds of Yemeni Jews escape their country in 2013.

The fleeing Jews allegedly went to Qatar first and from there flew to Israel according to Lebanese media at the time.

Arab newspapers have the story today, and this op-ed explains why it is a big deal: It shows that Qatar is helping Israel and hurting Palestinians by allowing Jews from Arab countries to move to Israel. The writer says that Qatar falsely claims to defend Arabism but in fact is helping Israel at the expense of Yemen and Palestinians.

And, yes, the writer says that by doing this, Qatar has sold its honor.

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Tuesday’s news contained a particularly infuriating although totally predictable report to add to my collection of “things that show why coexistence is impossible.” It seems that Israel is required by the 1994 Paris Protocol to the Oslo Accords to grant permission to ‘qualified’ Palestinian tour guides to work in Israel. Tour companies hire them because they cost about half as much as an Israeli tour guide, or in some cases if the company wants to provide a ‘balanced’ tour in which both the Israeli and Arab narratives are honored.

So what happens is that Palestinian guides take naïve foreigners to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and explain that the lessons to be learned there are that today’s Israelis treat Palestinians the way the Nazis treated them; that Israel was founded because of Western guilt over the Holocaust; and that Palestinians are victims of genocide (despite the fact that their number has tripled since 1970).

Then they go to the Old City where they tell their clients that the Jews have no history in Jerusalem, and that whether or not there was a Jewish Temple there is “controversial.” They explain that there was a Palestinian civilization in existence for hundreds or even thousands of years, until colonialist Jews came along and dispossessed, expelled and occupied them.

This is yet another small but significant way that the Palestinian Arabs chip away at historical reality and promote their narrative – an untrue story that they believe with absolute sincerity.

They believe that the Jewish state is entirely illegitimate and has no moral or legal authority to arrest or imprison Palestinian murderers, who are not terrorists or criminals but political prisoners or prisoners of war, and that it is appropriate to treat them as heroes and for the Palestinian Authority to pay pensions to their families.

And they believe that the occupation narrative justifies any form of ‘resistance’ including the murder of Jews, whom they call “settlers” (even if they live in Tel Aviv). They even believe that like James Bond, they have a license to kill, granted to them by international law!

But it isn’t merely a belief about historical facts or international law or human rights or who was here first or whether Arab refugees fled voluntarily in 1948 or were kicked out (both happened). There is an overwhelmingly powerful emotional content in the narrative. It places a massive weight of humiliation and shame on the shoulders of the Palestinian Arabs, whom the entire world knows were defeated in war, expelled and subjugated – by Jews, of all people!

Every argument is used to prove that the Jews didn’t do it themselves – that they had the Western world on their side and the money of international Jewry behind them, that the Arab nations betrayed the Palestinians, and so on. But excuses don’t cut it. The only thing that can lift the burden of the narrative from the Palestinian man is the blood of the Jews who humiliated him.

The narrative is independent of the religious imperative that drives pious Muslims to murder infidels who infest a land that was once and therefore must forever be, Muslim. It is independent of the fury born of shame felt by a Muslim who has to submit to even the slightest restraints on his right to worship (like metal detectors, or temporary closures or age restrictions at the Temple Mount) imposed by Jews. But the intense shame and rage it generates fit neatly alongside the religious humiliation felt by Muslim Palestinians.

If you sat down and tried to invent a way to prolong a conflict forever, you couldn’t do better than the Palestinian narrative. It is the narrative that justified the way the Arab nations that hosted the 1948 refugees forced them into refugee camps and refused to allow them to integrate into their societies. Even the Palestinian Authority, which they claim is actually the “State of Palestine,” refuses to end their refugee status! It is the narrative that fuels the rejection of any kind of “normalization” process that might help make it possible for Jews and Arabs to live side by side in the future. It is the narrative that insists that only the “return” of the descendents of the 1948 refugees to “their homes” – that is, the expulsion of the Jewish people from the Land of Israel – can even begin to correct what they view as the moral inversion of 1948.

Some Zionists say that there is no Palestinian people, that they are just a bunch of Arabs whose ancestors migrated into the land in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. And it is correct that few of them have any long-term history here, and that they don’t have a distinct language or religion.

But I would not agree that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people. If the Jewish people are “the people of the book,” the Palestinians are the people of the narrative. The narrative, and the always simmering and sometimes boiling conflict with the Jews, made a people out of them just as the journey through the desert finished the work of creating the Jewish people.

The Palestinian identity today rests entirely on their narrative and their opposition to us, even their hatred of us. If the Jewish people disappeared tomorrow, there would be no Palestinians, just Arabs.

And this is why the conflict will not be ended by a peace agreement, a compromise of some kind, another partition or even a gradual reconciliation. An end to the conflict would mean an end to Palestinian identity, something which they will not give up voluntarily. It’s all they have.

The narrative feeds on itself and only grows stronger with conflict and time; and the stronger it is, the more conflict there is. There is only one way for it to end: one side must win and the other must lose.

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08/10 Links Pt1: Hanan Ashrawi: Queen of delusion; Palestinians Try to Make Jerusalem ‘Judenrein’

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Queen of delusion

According to PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi, Israel holds the Palestinian people captive, denying its historical rights and the imperative to get real about peace. Her weekly diatribe happened to coincide with Jordanian King Abdullah’s first visit to Ramallah in five years, which demonstrated that the rest of the Arab world could not care less about history.
The telegenic Ashrawi is often trotted out for a public display of the kinder, gentler Palestinian nationalist, but in fact she is a protégé of the late Columbia University scholar and anti-Zionist Edward Said. As the holder of a PhD in medieval and comparative literature from the University of Virginia, she might be expected to be a voice of cultural enlightenment, if not reasonableness.
However, in accordance with the Palestinian tradition of never failing to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, she instead pushes antisemitic tropes masked as anti-Zionism.
Google lists more than a few sites of “famous Ashrawi quotes” that illustrate her consistent misrepresentation of fact in aid of the establishment of a Palestinian state. She began her deluded efforts with a breathtaking statement about the some 800,000 Jews who fled persecution from Muslim countries for refuge in the new State of Israel.
In Ashrawi’s historical analysis, these Jews were only “emigrants,” who had left their ancestral homes voluntarily.
Jews lived happily among their Muslim neighbors and were brought to Israel to usurp “ancestral” Palestinian lands as part of a plot by “Zionists.”

Shmuley Boteach: Palestinians Try to Make Jerusalem ‘Judenrein’

One reason the Taylor Force Act is so vital is that it would send a message to Abbas that the United States, at least (sadly, the rest of the world has not seen the light), will no longer put up with his doublespeak. He may dress in a suit but his actions mirror his fatigue-wearing predecessor.
Equally important is moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. The president must fulfill this campaign promise to send another message to the Palestinians — namely, that Jerusalem will remain the indivisible capital of Israel.
For those unaware of history and misled by claims that East Jerusalem is “Arab” and therefore should belong to the Palestinians, I would point out that before 1865 the entire population of Jerusalem lived behind the Old City walls in East Jerusalem. When the UN voted to partition Palestine, a thriving Jewish community was living the eastern part of Jerusalem, which contains many important Jewish sites, including the City of David, the Temple Mount, and of course the Western Wall. This is also the home of Hebrew University and the original Hadassah Hospital. The only time this area of Jerusalem was exclusively Arab was between 1949 and 1967, when the Jews were forcibly expelled under Jordan occupation, a time when the Western Wall was desecrated and Jews of course were barred from prayer.
I will always remain hopeful that a solution can be found that will allow Jews and Palestinians to live together peacefully. One-sided compromises, such as those made during the Oslo period, only embolden the Palestinians to believe they can “liberate” all of “Palestine,” which includes Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem – East and West.
I feel sorry for the many thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who want nothing more than to live their lives in peace, and would gladly compromise to achieve independence. Alas, unlike Israel, the PA is not a democracy and the people remain hostages of their radical leaders. It is hard to envision peace so long as Palestinians are taught to hate in their schools, encouraged to become martyrs by their preachers and media, and rewarded for murder by their leaders.
Regardless of these provocations, Jews will not be driven from their capital or their homeland. Jerusalem will never again be Judenrein.

PA: Israel 'falsifying' Jerusalem's history

The Palestinian Authority (PA) government, headed by Rami Hamdallah, on Tuesday warned against Israel's “escalating policy” following UNESCO's recent resolutions recognizing the Muslim right to the Temple Mount and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron, while ignoring the Jewish connection to those sites.
An official statement released after a meeting in Ramallah said that celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the "occupation" of Jerusalem included a light and sound show in Silwan which, the statement claimed, was based on "falsification of the historical narrative of the Holy City."
The statement further claimed that Israel is re-implementing a policy of removing Arab residents from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, including a decision to evict several families over a claim that the building in which they live belonged to a Jewish family before 1948.
The PA government noted that the escalation of the Israeli government’s “settlement” activity requires the immediate intervention of the international community in order to put an end to it and requires international protection for the Palestinian people and its holy sites and serious action by the Arab and Islamic nation.

Waqf condemns Al Aqsa mosque being used as weapons depot. (Just kidding!)

Israel closed the Temple Mount for less than 48 hours after terrorists used weapons that were hidden there to kill two Israeli soldiers. During that time the police searched the complex for more weapons, and it found knives, chains, clubs and other materials.

Today, the Waqf issued a preliminary assessment of that search - a search that originally spawned rumors that religious Jews were ransacking the area and setting it up for a third Temple.

Reluctantly, the Waqf concluded that there is no evidence that the Israeli police actually took anything. Historical records and manuscripts were left intact.

But it is outraged anyway that there was damage done in the course of the search.

For example, lockers at the mosque were opened and their locks smashed:

These actions, the Waqf says, "constitutes a flagrant violation of the sanctity of the mosque and the sanctity of its facilities."

Using the mosque as a weapons depot isn't a violation of the sanctity of the mosque. Searching for those weapons - is.

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The American Center in Jerusalem (19 Keren HaYesod St) is a section of the Office of Public Affairs of the US Embassy in Israel. It is "an information resource as well as an educational and cultural center with a range of activities aimed at the Israeli public. The Center strives to initiate and strengthen bonds between Israelis and the United States, and to promote understanding of U.S. policies, society, values, and culture."

This office is part of the US Embassy, not the Jerusalem consulate. Its webpages are in the US Embassy website. Its Facebook page says "The American Center in Jerusalem is part of the U.S. Embassy's Office of Public Affairs."

Which means that, for many years (since at least 2009, here's a 2011 event) the US Embassy in Israel has had an official presence in Jerusalem, essentially recognizing Jerusalem as part of Israel. It celebrates Jewish holidays, and Yom Haatzmaut, something you won't see at the Jerusalem consulate.
If an official office of the US Embassy has been in Jerusalem for so long without any problem, why would moving the embassy altogether be an issue? The recognition is already there, at least for the parts of Jerusalem to the west of the Green Line, which is where any embassy would be anyway.

(h/t Irene)

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Davis, CA residents protest Imam Shahin hate speech

Last month MEMRI published several transcripts of hate speech by Imam Ammar Shahin at the Islamic Center of Davis (ICD) in Davis, California, where he explicitly called for the genocide of all Jews. These included these words from July 14::

Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews....Oh Allah, show us the wonders of Your ability that you inflict upon them. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon them. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon those who wish ill upon [the Al-Aqsa] Mosque. Oh Allah, keep them preoccupied with one another, and make a deterrent example out of them. Oh Allah, count them one by one and destroy them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them. Oh Allah, destroy them and do not spare their young or their elderly. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon those who occupy Palestine. Oh Allah, show us the wonders of Your ability that you inflict upon them. Oh Allah, turn Jerusalem and Palestine into a graveyard for the Jews.

And on July 21:

Oh Allah, support the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the rest of the Muslim lands. Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews. Oh Allah, destroy those who closed the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon them, and the wonders of Your ability. Oh Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them.
[...]
Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Oh Allah, make this happen by our hands. Let us play a part in this. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds.

After California members of Congress issued a condemnation, the Islamic Center of Davis released a non-apology apology filled with lies that is no longer on their website. The "apology" says

The sermon was about the theological virtues of one of Islam’s holiest sites, Al-Aqsa Mosque. He also addressed the recent horrific events including the illegal closure, occupation, and attacks against Al-Aqsa Mosque, in addition to the killing and injuring of Muslim worshipers, including the wounding of the Imam of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the prevention of worship and the call to prayer at the Mosque. Specifically, the Imam was referring to individuals that are contributing to this oppression.Imam Shahin and the ICD reject any attempt to blame all Jews for Israel’s policies just like we reject the attempts to blame all Muslims for the acts of fringe groups. In reality, Jews around the world are on the front lines speaking out and protesting Israel's repressive policies against Palestinians.
MEMRI, an extremist agenda driven organization that supports Israel's occupation of Palestinian land, and other Islamophobic news organizations, accused Imam Shahin of anti-Semitism, quoting edited, mistranslated, passages of the sermon out of context.
If the sermon was misconstrued, we sincerely apologize to anyone offended. We will continue our commitment to interfaith and community harmony.

Afterwards, when the outcry remained, Shahin issued a somewhat stronger statement of apology - but he didn't repudiate his words in any way. “To the Jewish community here in Davis and beyond, I say this deeply: I am deeply sorry for the pain I have caused.”

Essentially he said: Sorry you were hurt. But I still believe every word I said.

The organized Jewish community seemed to accept his apology at face value, even though the initial outrageous fake apology proves that he was only engaging in PR and does not in any way disagree with his very explicit antisemitic words that were documented in great detail.

A grassroots group formed in Davis and held a silent vigil last night.

Here was the announcement sent via email:

As most of you know by now, Imam Ammar Shahin of the Davis Islamic Center preached a hate-filled sermon on Friday July 14 and also on July 21, in which he (quoting a Hadith) called for the annihilation of Jews. "Oh Allah, make this happen by our hands," asking for his followers to participate in the slaughter "Oh Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them.".and referred to "the filth of the Jews".
Shahin's supporters initially doubled-down and made excuses for the translated sermon, an "apology" was later issued, and some elected officials and Muslim and Jewish leaders held a closed joint press conference in which speeches were made, including an "apology" by Imam Shahin for the "pain" he caused. At no time was there any retraction or denunciation of the words quoted from the Hadith (the same words that are in the Hamas Charter which call for the murder of our Jewish friends, families and children). Neither was there any call for the Imam to be fired. Equally disturbing is the fact that no member of the DIC's board of directors, nor its congregants, have come out asking for his resignation.
No Christian, Jewish, or Muslim clergy who preaches murder of any minority group should be tolerated. Such speech leads to violence and murder. It simply has no place in a civilized society.
We need to do more to bring awareness to our community of this despicable and dangerous man. Imam Shahin has NOT said he was wrong to have made his statements (just that he was sorry for causing "pain"---as if he did not know beforehand). Nor has he said he will stop preaching such vile ideas!
THEREFORE WE ARE HAVING A PEACEFUL VIGIL WITH SIGNS. NO SPEAKERS. NO MEGAPHONES. MAKING A STRONG STATEMENT WITH OUR PRESENCE AND SIGNS.

The protesters were purposefully spread out so that drivers would see them, which unfortunately does not make for good photos of the protest, but some 60 people participated, including many Christians.

I am told that many people of Davis had not been aware of the events happening in their own town and that they were shocked when they heard the details.

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