Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, March 08, 2018

03/08 Links Pt2: Corbyn was part of an anti-Semitic Facebook group; Breaking the Silence…with Holocaust Deniers?; Republican Jews Call on 7 Democrats to Resign Over Farrakhan ties

From Ian:

Before elected Labour leader, Corbyn was part of an anti-Semitic Facebook group

Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain’s Labour party, was an active member of a Facebook group which contained Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites, it has been revealed.

Corbyn appears to have been a member of the Palestine Live group for at least a year, and left it shortly after he became head of the opposition in September 2015.

In a 280-page report released Wednesday, David Collier, a researcher and blogger, details a slew of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel material shared by members of the group.

One member said they were reading “Mein Kampf,” and suggested: “Everybody should be forced to read it, especially Jews who have their own agenda as to why they were not liked.”

Others discussed the use of the terms “ZioNazi” and “JewNazi,” debated whether the BBC was controlled by Zionists, and shared conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family and Israel’s supposed involvement in the 9/11 and 2015 Paris attacks.

Members of the 3000-strong secret group — who include Holocaust denier Paul Eisen — are also said to have shared articles by David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and links to neo-Nazi material.

New Accusations of Anti-Semitism Rock Labour

Britain’s Labour Party has been trying to get its anti-Semitism problem under control in preparation for national elections that could come sometime in the next couple of years: The party expelled the anti-Zionist activist Tony Greenstein last month, and recently extended the suspension of former London mayor Ken Livingstone, who has repeatedly insisted that there were close ties between the Nazis and the Zionist movement. But two new controversies shows just how deeply alleged anti-Israel extremists have penetrated the party, which has veered sharply left under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

This week, the Daily Mail reported that Joss Macdonald, a Corbyn speechwriter, wrote a tweet in which he appeared to characterize Israel’s actions as “genocide” shortly after the 2014 conflict in Gaza. A few years earlier, Macdonald tweeted his view that “Apartheid Israel has killed the two-state solution,” leaving “a bi-national democratic Palestine” as the only possible outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Andrew Percy, a member of parliament for the governing Conservative party, has already said that Corbyn “should reconsider his decision to employ this man,” according to the Mail.

In the annals of Corbyn-era Labour anti-Semitism rows, this ranks as a refreshingly mild one. Macdonald only wrote two questionable tweets, one of which was composed nearly a decade ago; the belief that a binational state is the only fair outcome to the conflict isn’t exactly an unusual one among left-leaning Europeans either. The “genocide” accusation came in the context of an exchange with a pro-Israel Twitter user in which Macdonald paraphrases his opponent’s argument in a way that strongly suggests Macdonald agrees with the caricatured version. A single, isolated, and fleeting reference to Israeli genocide is nothing compared to receiving $26,000 from Iran’s state television network, which Corbyn has received, or laying a wreath at the grave of one of the Munich Olympics terrorists—indeed, it would be unfair for Macdonald to lose his job when his boss is guilty of far less ambiguous dalliances with anti-Semites and anti-Semitism.

Breaking the Silence…with Holocaust Deniers?

Thanks to the work of the researcher David Collier, a secret antisemitic Facebook group called Palestine Live has been exposed. At one time, the group’s membership included Jeremy Corbyn, the man who now leads the UK Labour Party.

In this group, Holocaust denial material was shared as well as other explicitly antisemitic material, whilst the idea that there was antisemitism in the Labour Party was ridiculed.

The group has over 3,000 members, two of them are or were Avner Gvaryahu and Eran Efrati, the former and current heads of the left wing group Breaking the Silence.

This came as a blow to me personally. I’ve gone to bat for Breaking the Silence a couple of times in the past, and took their tour of Hebron, which I found to be a truly eye-opening experience.

I thought that this was a group of people with Israel’s best interests at heart. Clearly, they’ve lost their way.

Palestine Live was founded by a lady called Elleanne Green, who has shared posts claiming Israel was behind terrorist attacks in France, claiming that the Kotel isn’t Jewish, that 9/11 was a conspiracy, and on and on:

PM asks Trump to allow ex-spy Pollard to leave for Israel

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked U.S. President Donald Trump this week to lift parole restrictions on the convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in order to allow him to relocate to Israel, Israel Hayom has learned.

Pollard was arrested in 1985 and eventually struck a plea bargain in which he pleaded guilty to spying for Israel while working as a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst. He received Israeli citizenship while in prison in 1995.

Pollard, 62, was paroled in November 2015 after serving 30 years and currently lives in New York City. Under the strict conditions of his parole, he must remain in the United States for five years, wear an electronic bracelet and submit to monitoring of his work computer and other devices he uses despite not being exposed to classified material during his 30-year incarceration. He is also barred from speaking to the press.

Netanyahu raised the issue of Pollard's parole terms when he met Trump some six months ago, but during this week's Oval Office meeting, the Israeli prime minister asked that Pollard be allowed to move to Israel as a gesture marking the upcoming 70th anniversary of Israel's founding this May.

Netanyahu said it was time the two countries put the affair behind them. The administration has yet to respond to this request.

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

AIPAC CEO Howard Kohr created a stir Sunday when he called for “two states for two peoples: one Jewish with secure and defensible borders and one Palestinian with its own flag and its own future.”

Kohr deliberately echoed the words of Benjamin Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University in 2009. Netanyahu said then,

In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect. Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other. …

I have already stressed the first principle - recognition. Palestinians must clearly and unambiguously recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people.

The second principle is: demilitarization. The territory under Palestinian control must be demilitarized with ironclad security provisions for Israel. …

Regarding the remaining important issues that will be discussed as part of the final settlement, my positions are known: Israel needs defensible borders, and Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel with continued religious freedom for all faiths.

Bibi’s statement was a mistake. His enemies on the right pounced on him for giving up his historical opposition to a Palestinian state, while the Arabs and the Left derided him as insincere. He got nothing in return from Obama and lost whatever reputation he still had for principled opposition to concessions for the PLO. Most damaging to Israel was the fact that the Americans and the PLO “pocketed” his statement, making it almost impossible for him or any subsequent Israeli Prime Minister to walk it back. From then on, anyone could say “Israel officially supports a Palestinian state.”

The root of the problem is that the concept of “two states” is poisonously ambiguous. Everyone can understand it to mean something different, up to embracing diametrically opposite ideas.

Bibi’s Palestine would be a less-than sovereign autonomous entity, demilitarized, without control of airspace, borders, electronic communications or the Jordan Valley. It would not be allowed to import weapons or make military pacts with other nations. The PLO would be required to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people (which of course they would never, ever, do).

The Israeli center-left calls for “two states for two peoples,” a formula which, like Bibi’s, implies recognition. In this view, after an Israeli withdrawal from all or part of Judea and Samaria and the creation of an Arab state, “Palestine” would accept the Jewish people’s ownership of the remaining part of Israel as legitimate. There would be no further claims against Israel, and any solution for the descendants of Arab refugees would take place outside of the borders of Israel. This would not fly with the PLO either.

Finally, there is what Mahmoud Abbas means by “two-state solution:” a “Palestine” in which there will be no Jews, which will encompass all of Judea and Samaria (and theoretically, Gaza) with the exception of small land swaps, fully sovereign in every respect. Next to it will be an Israel that will be a “state of its citizens.” It cannot belong to the Jewish people, because in the view of the PLO there is no Jewish people, only a Jewish religion. This “Israel” will accept as many of the millions of Arab “refugees” who wish to “return” to it and grant them full rights. One can only speculate how long and in what condition of civil war this state would exist until it would be absorbed into “Palestine.”

Needless to say, these visions are incompatible. The dishonest J Street organization claims that Abbas accepted the idea of “two states for two peoples,” but in fact he has never added anything about two peoples to the phrase “two states.” Indeed, Abbas’ recent speech (incidentally, one of the most nonsensical orations ever) that J Street refers to as a “Palestinian peace plan” implicitly but clearly calls for a right of return for the Arab “refugees” to Israel.

The best thing that could happen would be for everyone to stop talking about the “two-state solution,” a phrase which has devolved into meaninglessness.

In 2009, Bibi may have been forced to utter the formula by the Obama Administration. But what about AIPAC today? Apparently panicked by a recent poll showing diminishing support for Israel among Democrats, AIPAC is struggling to get them back. The same day that Kohr made his remarks, AIPAC’s president Mort Fridman made it explict:

To my friends in the Progressive community, I want you to know that we are partners in this project. The Progressive narrative for Israel is just as compelling and critical as the conservative one. [Yes, he said that! – vr]

But there are very real forces trying to pull you out of this hall and out of this movement and we cannot let that happen. We will not let that happen.

AIPAC hoped to fend off attacks from J Street and similar groups without weakening its support from pro-Israel elements, by employing the time honored method of political triangulation. By adopting some of the ideas of its opponents on the Left, it hopes to bring them into the fold, while its supporters on the Right will have nowhere else to go.

But this is a poor strategy because the progressives among the Democrats no longer accept AIPAC’s primary objective, which is support for Israel. It’s not that they think, as the Israeli Left does, that “ending the occupation” will be likely to lead to peace, or that their vision of Israel will be more democratic, or that another partition of the Land of Israel will prevent a demographic crisis. They have absorbed the narratives of the international Left and are simply anti-Israel. They are not coming back to AIPAC.

This is especially true of the Jews among them. At some point, the Jewish progressives replaced their connection to am yisrael with one to the oppressed peoples and gender-groups of the world, including of course the Palestinians.

The best thing for AIPAC to do now, in my opinion, is to become unapologetically pro-Israel. The progressives are gone anyway, and it might make the organization more effective.

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

03/08 Links Pt1: Pro-Erdogan Newspaper Calls To Form Joint Islamic Army To Fight Israel; To Understand Zionism, Read Herzl Not Mahmoud Abbas; Pal-Arabs are counterfeit

From Ian:

Turkish Newspaper Close To President Erdogan Calls To Form Joint Islamic Army To Fight Israel

On December 12, 2017, ahead of the summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul, the Turkish daily Yeni Şafak, which is close to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling AKP party, published an article titled "A Call for Urgent Action," which also appeared on the paper's website under the title “What If an Army of Islam Was Formed against Israel?" The article called on the 57 member states of the OIC to form a joint "Army of Islam" to besiege and attack the state of Israel. It notes that such a joint army will greatly exceed the Israeli army in manpower, equipment and budget, and presents statistics to prove this. It also advocates establishing joint bases for the army's ground, air and naval forces that will arrive from all over the Muslim world to besiege Israel, while noting that Pakistan, as the only nuclear country, has "a special status" among the OIC countries. An interactive map provides information on military forces stationed in various locations and the role they can play in the potential joint Muslim attack on Israel.

The Source Of The Yeni Şafak Article: The SADAT Company Website
The main points of the article are taken from the website of the Turkish SADAT International Defense and Consulting Company, which provides consultancy on defense and warfare, both conventional and unconventional, and on military organization, training and gear. The company has an agenda of promoting pan-Islamic military cooperation. According to its mission statement, it seeks "to establish defense collaboration and defense industry cooperation among Islamic countries, to help the Islamic world take its rightful place among the superpowers by providing... strategic consultancy and training services to the militaries and homeland security forces of Islamic countries."

According to Israeli security sources, the SADAT company is involved in aiding Hamas, and seeks to assist – with funds and military gear – the creation of a "Palestine Army" to fight Israel.

SADAT Founder Adnan Tanrıverdi
The SADAT company was founded by Erdoğan’s senior advisor on military affairs, retired general Adnan Tanrıverdi, and is chaired by his son, Melih Tanrıverdi. Adnan Tanrıverdi (b. 1944) served in the Turkish army's Artillery Corps and headed the Home Front Command in northern Cyprus. He is an expert on assymetric warfare, and was dismissed from the Turkish military in 1996 for his Islamists leadnings. A former Turkish army officer, Ahmet Yavuz, described him as "an enemy of Atatürk" and stated that his dismissal from the army was not surprising.

To Understand Zionism, Read Herzl Not Mahmoud Abbas

We can see the toxic results of this in countless news reports on the conflict with the Palestinians. Israel’s perceived flaws and mistakes are highlighted, but not those of the Palestinians. Settlement building is headline news, but not Palestinian incitement to terror. The Palestinians are helpless victims, an oppressed people not responsible for their actions; infantilised and coddled at every turn, no matter what violence they commit – and no matter that their poverty and despair is as much a result of the corruption and criminality of the Palestinian Authority as it is of Israeli policies.

That’s the narrative, here’s the reality. From the very beginning, the Zionist movement envisaged a democratic Israel. Israel was established as a democracy in 1948, at a time when there were no more than twenty or so democracies on the planet. And unlike almost every other new country that emerged during that epoch of state creation after the collapse of the European empires, it has remained a democracy from day one to the present.

Israel has become a military super-power, but this is nothing to with some inherent Zionist militaristic impulse. Israel has fought multiple wars against states and, more recently, terror organisations, expressly committed to its annihilation. Israel today has Hamas on one border, Hezbollah on another, and the Iran-dominated ruins of what used to be Syria on a third. Each one of these troublesome neighbours sees the destruction of Israel as a religious imperative. When the only way to appease an enemy is to commit suicide, the situation requires sticks not carrots; military might and the willingness to exert it.

I’ll conclude with another recent news story, one that attracted far less coverage than the Abbas speech. This was the revelation that the Israel Defense Forces’ Military Intelligence had helped foil an ISIS terror attack on an Australian passenger plane last summer. European countries that so frequently wag the diplomatic finger at Israel have intelligence services grateful beyond measure for the assistance they receive from the Mossad and the IDF in thwarting terrorist plots. In today’s global conflict between free and open societies, and Islamist terrorists and the states that sponsor them, Israel is not just on the right side of the fight, it is leading the way. Meanwhile, our ‘peace-seeking’ friend Mahmoud Abbas has just increased the annual payment to the families of Palestinian terrorists to $403 million, seven percent of the Palestinian Authority budget.

Abbas and other propagandists will continue to spread lies and disinformation, and far too much of the world will continue to swallow it whole. Israel, approaching its 70th birthday, will continue to do what it must to survive and to thrive as the Jewish and democratic state that Theodore Herzl could only dream of.

Pal-Arabs are counterfeit

Recently, the Holocaust-denying head of Terror, Inc, known as the Palestinian Authority, one Mahmoud Abbas, upped his erstwhile mentor and arch terrorist, Yasser Arafat, by spewing yet another Arabian Nights hallucinatory diatribe at the United Nations Security Council. It went as follows:
“We are the descendants of the Canaanites that lived in the land of Palestine 5,000 years ago and continuously remained there to this day.”

We should remember that the grisly, blood soaked Arafat had claimed that those Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, were descended from the Philistines. But then the followers of the ‘religion of peace’ will tell you that even Adam was a Muslim. Loony tunes for loony people!

But let’s come back to reality and deconstruct the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.

There is no such thing as a Palestinian people; no such thing as a Palestinian history; and no Palestinian language exists.

The present-day so-called ‘Palestinians’ are an Arab people sharing an overwhelmingly Muslim Arab culture, ethnicity and language identical to their fellow Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, with few if any distinctions. They are primarily the descendants of those itinerant Arabs who illegally flooded British Mandatory Palestine from Arab territories as far away as Sudan, Egypt, Syria and what was Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). They were attracted during the early decades of the 20th century by new employment opportunities provided by the Jewish pioneers, whose heroic efforts were turning the desert green again and restoring centuries of neglect that the land had endured under a succession of alien occupations.

J Street has come out with an ad in The New York Times advocating for peace talks, more specifically advocating for "a new proposal for two-state negotiations" by none other than Mahmoud Abbas.

Based on the picture used to illustrate the rest of the ad, J Street is making a not too subtle point:

The J Street ad even makes the point of listing all the people who support a two-state solution:

o US presidents from both parties
o  Veteran US foreign policy leaders
o  The majority of the Israeli security establishment
o  80 percent of Jewish Americans
o  The Arab League
o  Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who last month laid out a new proposal for two-state negotiations

That leaves out just 2 groups: the Israelis and Arabs themselves.

J Street does actually claim support for the two-state solution by both Israelis and Palestinians:

Reaching a two-state solution is vital to securing Israel’s future as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people and to advancing overall peace and stability in the region. That’s why it’s long been supported by the majority of Israelis and Palestinians... [emphasis added]

But that is not accurate. According to a poll taken in November of last year into the beginning of December, under 50% of Palestinians, Israeli Jews support the two-state solution - that's 47% of Palestinians and 46% of Israeli Jews, according to the poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research. In a similar poll conducted earlier in June 2017, 52% of Palestinians and 47% of Israeli Jews supported a two-state solution.

To put it simply, the people who are going to have to live with this "solution" are not really in favor of it.

On the other hand, what about the people who are in favor of it? The presidents and policy leaders have successfully proven themselves far from infallible. The Jewish Americans may find the idea of a two-state solution emotionally satisfying, but that is no argument - especially since they need not worry about the consequences. The Arab League? Who knows if their motivation is because they believe the plan will work. As for the Israeli security establishment, their recommendation cannot be rejected out of hand but requires explanation: are they arguing abstractly on the basis of peace being the best kind of security, or do they anticipate specific conditions being fulfilled for that peace to be effective and lasting?

And that brings us to Abbas.

Looking at the record of the man J Street insists is the only man who is pushing for peace, it is clear that J Streets omission of Abbas's spotty record in peace negotiations slants the story.

In 2008, then-Prime Minister Olmert made an offer to Abbas. Years later, in 2015, Abbas admitted he was the one who rejected Olmert's peace plan, an agreement that would have given him nearly all of the land the Palestinian Arabs wanted, an almost total withdrawal from the West Bank, a land link to Gaza, with the Old City in East Jerusalem under international control. Abbas rejected the offer, claiming he was not given an opportunity to study the map that described Israel's offer. Olmert's version is a little different. He says he showed the map to Abbas, who wanted to take it with him. Olmert agreed - on the condition that they both sign the map since Olmert considered this as the final offer and not a basis for future negotiations. Abbas demurred and instead said he would return the next day with experts. Olmert never saw Abbas again.

In 2009, Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl described Abbas's self-described waiting game. Abbas told Diehl his only role was to wait. He would wait for Obama to force Netanyahu to freeze settlements and publicly accept the two-state solution. Abbas basically waited during the 8 years of the Obama administration.

In late 2009, Netanyahu agreed to Obama's request for a 10-month moratorium on building settlements in order to facilitate peace talks. Abbas waited and did nothing until the last month, at which point he demanded an extension of the freeze. When Netanyahu refused, Abbas walked out.

Then came the peace talks in 2013-2014, http://www.thetower.org/0249-graphic-timeline-of-collapsed-peace-talks/as outlined in this infographic from The Israel Project:

Abbas did nothing to support the negotiations, instead failing to condemn a terrorist attack and announcing a unity government with Hamas terrorists.

Now, on February 25, J Street came out with the strangely named post "The Palestinian Peace Plan" -- strangely named because there is no description of the plan. Instead, part of J Street's argument for the plan is an admission of just how bad a peace partner Abbas actually is:

Let’s be clear: We have no illusions that Mahmoud Abbas is the ideal partner. His rhetoric is at times incendiary, and his frequent refusal to acknowledge the Jewish people’s historic connection to Israel or Jerusalem is troubling. His hold on leadership is tenuous and his critics are legion.

Yet we know there will never be a Zionist sitting on the Palestinian side of the negotiating table — and there doesn’t need to be to reach a lasting agreement that will make Israel safer.

As Yitzhak Rabin said, “You don’t make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.” [emphasis added]

While admitting the problems of Abbas as a peace partner, J Street leaves out:

o Abbas's hold on leadership is more than tenuous - his term as president ended in 2009
o  He has a history of pocketing concessions and then leaving negotiations
o  He incites hatred against Israel, paying stipends to terrorists and naming stadiums after them
o  Palestinians don't support the two-state solution

Even members of the Palestinian government don't support real peace, and say this openly - in Arabic:

This is not an issue of being "unsavory"; the Palestinian government does not support the idea of peace, or even Jewish right to a state, to its own people. That is not unsavory, it is dishonest.

While J Street is quick to credit Abbas with suddenly coming forward with a peace initiative for the first time, it is worth noting that he was happy to sit back and wait during the Obama adminstration and never actively pushed for peace until the Trump administration, which put an end to coddling the Palestinian Arabs.

J Street appears happy to ignore the anti-Israel actions of Abbas and other members of the government.

This is the same J Street that once bragged, “Our No. 1 agenda item is to do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president’s blocking back.”

Apparently they are blocking for Abbas now.

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.

Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei recently gave a speech in honor of the Syrian minister of religious endowments, a Sunni, that was ostensibly about unity of Islam between different sects. But he divided the Muslim world in a much different way:

We are by Syria's side. Today, Syria stands in the frontlines. It is our responsibility to support Syria's steadfastness. Mr. Bashar al-Assad – the honorable President of Syria – has appeared as a warrior and great resister. He did not let doubt appear in him and he stood firm. This is very important for a nation. The Muslim nations which live with disgrace are not disgraced nations, rather it is their leaders who are disgraced. If a nation has leaders who have a feeling of dignity about Islam and about their identity, that nation will become dear and the enemy will not be able to do a damn thing against such a nation.
...

Another issue is that Islam has promised us that victory belongs to the mujahid believers. If faith does not exist, victory will not be achieved completely. If faith exists without jihad and endeavor, there will not be any result. It is our responsibility to support and defend Islam and the Islamic movement.

One of the requirements for this is that we should put aside these denominational and tribal differences. Well, if we put aside these differences, there are some people who are opposed to this and who do not want to let this happen. They provoke some of us and some of our brothers and as a result, they are forced to speak, act and work against the movement of unity. If those who play this role are not affiliated with global and arrogant policies and if their activities do not stem from these policies, they should be ignored. We should not pay attention to these individuals. However, if like the Saudis and some others, this effort to create discord stems from arrogant policies, they should be confronted in a firm manner.

We do not believe in the kind of Shia which is supported by London. We do not consider those Sunnis who are supported by the US and Israel as Muslims. We do not consider them Muslims in any way. Islam is that which is opposed to kufr, to oppression and to arrogance. These are our common points.

Suddenly, Alawite Bashir Assad is a Muslim - and Saudi leaders aren't.

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Women in Gaza held a protest for International Women's Day.

Were the demanding equal rights with men? An end to honor killings? Perhaps a protest against forced headcoverings in schools?

No - this protest, organized by Hamas, was against Trump recognizing that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel.

The head of the Hamas women's movement, Raja al-Halabi, explained that the Palestinian women celebrate International Women's Day differently from the women of the world. Palestinian women have one form of protest, she explained, "dyed with the blood of the martyrs and the wives of the women and children."

In other words, if you are planning to hold a protest in Gaza, you better make sure that you are protesting something that the rulers allow you to protest. And protesting Israel and the US are always safe bets.

Al Halabi stressed that "the only option in dealing with the Zionist enemy is the armed resistance, not peaceful resistance."

Fatah also tried to use International Women's Day as a means to avoid talking about any possible problems women have in Palestinian society. They instead highlighted how important women have been in being "martyred" for fighting Israel and claim that 15,000 women have been arrested by Israel over the years and that 60 of them remain in prison. The implication is that women should be allowed to attack Jews without any consequences. Because.....women.

And of course another poster on the Fatah Facebook page shows, yet again, that Palestinians intend to destroy Israel.

This is feminism, Palestinian style.

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03/07 Links Pt2: Collier: Jeremy Corbyn with hard-core antisemites, say what about the Mavi Marmara?; The Quiet Radicalization of the Democratic Party

From Ian:

David Collier: Exclusive: Jeremy Corbyn with hard-core antisemites, say what about the Mavi Marmara?

It would be easy to start this blog with Jeremy Corbyn. After all, it seems as if he was part of a rabidly antisemitic Facebook Group, along with Paul Eisen, Gilad Atzmon, numerous other Holocaust Deniers, hard-core antisemites, white supremacists, and all the other wretched political ideologies that gather together to pretend it is about the Palestinians, and not the Jews.

But this has been a long haul, it is 4am, and I haven’t slept properly in weeks. I have been engaged in an exercise to analyse a secret Facebook Group called ‘Palestine Live’. Immersed deeply in an antisemitic soup was disturbing enough, but seeing names there that simply should not ever have stepped foot inside, gave an entirely new, and far darker feel to the entire exercise.

Corbyn was there in late 2014, he may have joined a year earlier, and every indication is, that he stayed in the group until shortly after he became leader of the Labour Party. Jenny Tonge is still a member, David Ward too. Clive Lewis? Go figure. It just shows how blind everyone is to anti-Jewish racism.

I quantified the level of antisemitism within the group, by analysing all those who shared posts over a two week period during February 2018. The level was 64%. When I extracted the Jewish anti-Zionists, the level rose to 73%. Nobody should be able to spend any time at all in that group, without understanding the twisted antisemitism that drives so much of the activity.

The report was so large, I split it into two. The first looks at the founder and admins of the group, it contains Jenny Tonge and David Ward had too. Then there is Greta Berlin, from the ‘Free Gaza Movement‘. She engaged in an argument over Ken O’Keefe, and was clearly upset by the love the group had for him. It was a long exchange, and midway through she said this:

AIPL Antisemitism in Palestine Live – Report Part One Download Link
AIPL Antisemitism in Palestine Live – Report Part Two Download Link

CAA files fresh disciplinary complaint against Jeremy Corbyn over allegations that he actively participated in a secret Facebook group where antisemitism was on brazen display

A document issued today contains screenshots allegedly showing that Jeremy Corbyn was a participating member in a secret Facebook group called “Palestine Live” in which vehement antisemitism was posted, right up until his first weeks as Leader of the Labour Party.

The screenshots, gathered by blogger David Collier, catalogue exchanges which apparently took place within the Facebook group, including discussion of conspiracy myths about the Rothschild family and supposed Israeli involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as well as links to material produced by neo-Nazi groups.

The Facebook group’s membership reportedly includes numerous antisemites and Jew-baiters, including Paul Eisen, Baroness Jenny Tonge and Gilad Atzmon. Some users are said to have shared articles by conspiracy theorist David Icke and David Duke, former grand wizard of the KKK. Other members of the group allegedly include Thomas Suarez and the journalist, Paul Mason.

Among many chilling posts, the screenshots show members of the group discussing whether they prefer the term “ZioNazi” to “JewNazi’. One member is shown commenting: “am reading Mein Kampf [by Adolf Hitler]…everybody should be forced to read it, especially Jews who have their own agenda as to why they were not liked”. The Labour Party’s logo is also proudly displayed in the group, alongside exhortations to join the Party, even as links to articles from far-right websites such as the Daily Stormer and Veterans Today are circulated by group users.

BBC reporter revealed to be member of secret anti-Israel Facebook group

Among the members of that group are several people who have appeared on BBC programmes such as Avner Gvaryahu of ‘Breaking the Silence’, Rebecca Vilkommerson of JVP, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Tony Greenstein, Haim Bresheeth and Glyn Secker.

Additional members of the group featured in other BBC content include Deborah Fink, David Ward, Jenny Tonge and Richard Falk.

However the name of one member of that secret Facebook group where antisemitic material, Holocaust denial and anti-Israel propaganda is regularly posted may come as a surprise (see Pt 2, p. 175).

The item promoted by Green appears to be Knell’s April 23rd 2016 report from Gush Etzion.

Whether or not Yolande Knell’s editors know about her membership in a secret group of anti-Israel activists where discussions are rife with anti-Israel conspiracy theory, gross antisemitism and Holocaust denial is unclear. What is however once again very obvious is that Knell’s position as an ‘impartial’ BBC correspondent reporting from the corporation’s Jerusalem bureau is severely compromised.

By Dnalor 01 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 at (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/at/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

This year, when it came time for my son, the youngest of 12 children, to register for the class trip for Poland, I was ready. I sat Asher down for a talk and explained that he wasn’t going, that even if we had the money for such a trip, even if the school were to give him a full scholarship, he wasn’t going. I wasn’t going to allow my son to become a source of income for a country of antisemites.

And that was that.

Asher understood. More than that, he agreed. At 17, he is politically “woke.” He gets it.

This was before the whole business with Poland’s new legislation became big news. I didn’t need Poland to pass a law to understand which end was up. They don’t want us to connect Poland with the Holocaust? So fine, let us not send our children there to see the remnants of Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto.

So what if the Holocaust couldn’t have happened without Germany, without the Nazis?

Does that whitewash the long history of Polish Jew hatred, the pogroms?

Does it make Poland pure and innocent compared to Bulgaria and Denmark, that did so much to help the Jews?

So what if Poles were killed, too. This too, does not erase the antisemitism that Poles imbibe with their mothers’ milk.

Moreover, why, of all countries, should the Jewish State be propping up Poland’s economy with these trips that have become a rite of passage for Israeli high school students? We’re talking some 30,000 children, spending at the very least, a few thousand shekels each for this “privilege.”

To my mind, this is one thing we can do: not support people who hate us. Just as we shouldn’t be using Israeli tax money to help the PA pay stipends to terrorists who have spilled Jewish blood.

It is exactly the same thing. No reason to reward such people or even give them a living. The latest expressions of Polish antisemitism (see for instance: Antisemitic Images, Cartoons, Flood Polish Press as Holocaust Law Dispute Festers, Polish Jews Reel from Wave of Antisemitism Following Furur Over Country’s New Holocaust Law, Top Polish Educator Blames Jews for Communist Atrocities in Antisemitic Facebook Rant, Polish PM: There Were Jewish Perpetrators of the Holocaust) only serve to reinforce what I already knew in my marrow.

What of the people who say the experience of visiting Poland is moving, and a good way to teach the Holocaust?

I say hogwash. I never traveled there and I have an acute understanding of the Holocaust and so do my children. In fact, I’d say that boycotting the place is every bit as powerful a teacher as going there.

Which is why I was raised to check labels, to not buy items from Germany or Spain or from companies that are known to be owned by antisemites. I was proud to express my heritage in this manner. Always was. Even from a young age.

We are lucky enough to have survivors still among us. Let us bring them into the schools to give testimony to our Israeli children. Let us teach the children about the horrors through books and museums. It was enough for me, and it is enough for them.

A friend very involved in Holocaust education told me that my attitude only reinforces the antisemitic trope that Jews turn everything into a matter of money. My response? Do I really care if by refusing to spend money in their country, I look “Jewy” to the Poles??

I couldn’t care less.

Let me tell you a little story: some years ago, I studied my family tree. Politics were off-topic for all the genealogy forums so I started a little yahoo group for this purpose, for people who wanted to speak about Lithuanian politics, in particular as they pertain to the Jewish people. We weren’t a huge group but we had some really interesting members, for instance, the late Prof. Dov Levin, who was a partisan in Kaunas (Kovno) during the war, and who wrote hundreds of articles and at least 16 books on the subject of the Holocaust.

At the same time, I remained active in various genealogy groups, including one for those researching my ancestral shtetl of Wasiliski (Vashilishok), Belarus, in what used to be Lithuania. Our Vashilishok group was approached to clean up the centuries’ old cemetery, which was in a deplorable condition. It wouldn’t cost very much, we were told, since the locals could be hired dirt cheap to do the job. It would take a few weeks at most to get it done.

My maternal paternal great grandfather Haiman Kopelman in Egypt in 1914. He was born in Wasiliski Belarus.

One of our group was going out there anyway for a roots trip, so he took a look and reported back to us. It seems the locals had plowed under the Jewish cemetery, claiming they were preparing to build a strip mall there. But years had gone by, and nothing had been built. Instead, the residents were grazing their cattle in this spot.

Our landsman looked, but could not find a single legible fragment of stone, so thorough had been the destruction of our ancestors’ final resting place, now a place for cows to eat and crap.

We were essentially being asked to build a fence around the area, using local labor, to keep the cattle out, and to put up a sign marking the site as a Jewish cemetery.

As we discussed this issue in our forum, I found myself really not wanting to do this thing. I knew that more Lithuanian Jews had been murdered by Lithuanians than Nazis during the war. Why would I want to support their descendants? Not to mention, I’d seen recent photos of what used to be the Jewish matzoh factory and was now a school. Covered with antisemitic graffiti.

Nothing had changed.

I sought counsel from a local rabbi on behalf of our group. The rabbi saw nothing wrong with fencing off the cemetery. Nor did he find it to be something we must do. The ball was back in our court.

I was going to see Prof. Levin in his Jerusalem home on a different matter. I figured I might as well ask him what he thought. Prof. Levin’s entire family had been murdered in the Holocaust, including his twin sister. He was from the same country as my ancestors, and like me, had made Aliyah. I figured that if anyone could give us an informed opinion, a response touched with the pain of having lived through the Holocaust, it would be Prof. Levin.

I put my question to him. Prof. Levin said (with some vehemence), “Your ancestors would not want you to spend a single shekel on restoring that cemetery! Save your money and spend it in Israel on a suitable project, where it helps the Jewish people. This is what your ancestors would want you to do.”

I felt relieved and comforted to hear Prof. Levin say this. I knew that our collective conscience could now rest easy not doing this thing. We didn’t have to do it. Moreover, we should NOT do it.

We all of us contributed, instead, to a local project that spoke to us.

And that was the last of that subject.

Now you should know that a lot of pressure was brought to bear on us by the local Belarussian Jewish community to do this thing. But we said no.

And that is as it should be.

The trips to Poland by Israeli high school students must stop. Instead, let us invest our money in their education here in Israel. Because our ancestors would not have wanted us to be sending our youth to Poland. They would want us to be building our own country, the Jewish State, with all our might and resources.

One more small story: back in the 1970’s, it was the fad for Jews to bring blue jeans and matzoh to the Jews of Russia. The refuseniks, in dire straits, could sell the jeans on the black market and have money to live on. The matzoh was for them to eat on Pesach, something unobtainable in that black hole of repression. One couple came back from Russia to tell my youth group about their trip, how they knew their hotel room had been bugged, and how dangerous it had been.

I told my late great uncle, Morris A. Paul, all about it. Uncle Morris was president of the Pittsburgh ZOA for years on end, honorary vice president of the national Executive Committee of the ZOA, and on the national budget and finance committee of the ZOA. He also served on the national Executive Board of State of Israel Bonds. Hearing about this couple’s trip to Russia, Uncle Morris commented, “I don’t know why anyone would go to Russia. I was glad to leave.”

Uncle Morris sent all my cousins to Israel for their 16^th summers. He knew where he wanted to put his consumer dollars. Right in the hands of the State of Israel.

Morris A. Paul, or “Map” as he liked to be called, would never have financed a high school student’s trip to Poland, and he sure as shooting would have been downright irritated to hear about Israeli high school students traipsing off to Auschwitz.

This is something our children do not need. And it is something we should not do.

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Mossad Replaces Shipment Of Iran Missile Components With Anal Lube (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Tehran, March 7 - Officials in Iran's ballistic missile program discovered today that a vessel carrying illegal cargo intended for the Islamic Republic's weapons program had been duped into instead transporting barrels of lotion used to smooth the passage of items into the rectum. The officials blamed Israeli intelligence for the switch.

Iranian customs and counterintelligence facilities went on red alert this morning after cylindrical components offloaded from a North Korean freighter turned out not to be canisters for the delivery of ordnance, as agreed between the regimes, but similarly-shaped containers of anal lubrication ointment. An anonymous source within the weapons program disclosed to PreOccupied Territory that all indications pointed to Mossad involvement.

"The captain's log has clearly been tampered with," explained the source. "On top of that, the ship appears to have disappeared from radar during part of its Indian Ocean journey, and some of the crew display signs of having been drugged. None of them recall anything suspicious, but we have tested some of the rations on board and found traces of sedatives."

In itself, clarified the source, the disappearance from radar represents nothing unusual, as transportation of contraband by North Korean vessels necessitates frequent use of ruses to mask the exact purpose and itinerary of a voyage. However, he noted, the period when the ship could not be tracked also made it vulnerable to the operation in question.

Experts are reserving judgment on the claim of a Mossad operation. "It's certainly poetic, and Mossad have style, so that's a tight fit," conceded Pia Tabaat, an analyst at Jane's. "And it's of a piece with earlier Israeli operations. But all the rest is speculation, so I would caution everyone not to jump to any conclusions."

Inspection of the cargo hold revealed that the original material in the shipment was in fact loaded onto the ship in Wonsan, as attested to by several open containers compatible with the missile components. The ship's manifest includes certification of cargo inspection before departure from North Korea last month, but the identification of the cargo is registered there as "agricultural machinery" to disguise the actual contents of the shipment, and matches neither the desired components nor the large barrels of anal lube.

The episode may prove an embarrassment to authorities in Iran already facing unrest over their

handling of the economy, international relations, and religious coercion. Mention of it has been barred in official media.

Smirking Israeli officials declined to comment.

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03/07 Links Pt1: Glick: Trump's Urgent Lebanon Problem; In historic first, Air India cleared for Israel flights over Saudi Arabia

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Trump's Urgent Lebanon Problem

Since visiting Israel’s borders with Syria and Lebanon late last month, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has been sounding the alarm about the growing danger of a devastating war between Israel and Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

Ahead of his meeting Monday with President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters that Iran and its rapidly expanding regional power, as well as its nuclear program, would be the major focus of their discussions.

Speaking Sunday on Fox News, Graham warned that the U.S. has no policy to push back Iran’s gains in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

Specifically regarding Lebanon, Graham warned, “Southern Lebanon is a nightmare. It makes Gaza look stable. The IDF, the Israel Defense Force, says there are over a hundred thousand rockets and missiles in the hands of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.”

Graham continued, “Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon years ago, the United Nations was supposed to police the area. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon [UNIFIL] has sat on the sidelines and watched Hezbollah dominate southern Lebanon with missile technology that now threatens every part of Israel. So it’s a matter of time until Israel strikes southern Lebanon.”

Last month, officers in UNIFIL — the 10,300-strong multinational force charged with preventing Hezbollah from deploying in southern Lebanon — told a French newspaper that the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) blocks UNIFIL from fulfilling its mission. The officers explained that in undermining UNIFIL’s operations, the LAF is acting as Hezbollah’s agent.

As the Jerusalem Post reported, speaking to the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, a warrant officer from UNIFIL’s French contingent said, “In the evening we never leave the barracks because the Lebanese forces are not friendly.”

“We are caught in the aggressor’s grip. Doing the bare minimum has become a political choice,” he added.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: The Arabs Do Not Care about Us

The PA leadership is not happy about the interference of Qatar and UAE in the internal affairs of the Palestinians. It is also not happy with the way Egypt seems to have endorsed Dahlan, an arch-enemy of Abbas. The PA sees Arab meddling in Palestinian affairs as harmful and counterproductive. It has yet to recover from the days when each Arab country had endorsed its own Palestinian faction.

The Palestinians are once again being forced to face the unpleasant truth that their Arab brothers are more interested in their own survival than in the Palestinian issue.

This Arab apathy towards the Palestinians is the result of a long-standing belief in the Arab world that the Palestinians are an ungrateful people who do not hesitate to bite the hand that feeds them. Palestinian support for Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait -- a country that used to provide the Palestinians with millions of dollars annually -- was the turning point in relations between the Arab countries and the Palestinians. Since then, the Palestinians have been almost entirely dependent on American and EU funding.

When Trump finally does announce his Middle East peace plan, the Palestinians will discover that they are alone in threatening to thwart it. The Palestinians have good reason to believe that the Arab countries are about to leave them to their own devices. And, after half a century of failed and corrupt leadership, the Palestinian devices leave much to be desired.

In historic first, Air India cleared for Israel flights over Saudi Arabia

Air India confirmed plans for a direct route between Tel Aviv and Delhi Wednesday, with the flight being given permission to fly over Saudi airspace, a first.

The ability to fly the route over Saudi Arabia is expected to cut the flight time by nearly two hours, and marks a significant achievement in Israel’s campaign to upgrade its ties with the Gulf.

An Air India spokesman confirmed that the new seven-hour service will begin on March 22 and will see three flights a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Tickets went on sale Wednesday.

The announcement comes days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters on Monday that the Saudis had given the go-ahead to Air India to fly through its airspace to and from Tel Aviv.

The permission marks a historic turn by the Gulf state, which has not previously allowed flights to or from Israel over its airspace, like many other Middle Eastern countries that do not have relations with Israel.

Israel does not have diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia, but it has been a known secret that the two nations have been working covertly on their shared security concerns regarding Iran in the wake of the 2015 nuclear accord, which both governments’ strongly opposed.

Palestine Today has an article showing a protest by Gaza families of "martyrs" claiming that the PLO-run Foundation for the Care of the Families of the Martyrs and the Injured has not paid them anything from the 2014 war.

The PLO has said in the past that its budget for paying families of terrorists is sacrosanct, and there is much anger (and hilarious justifications for the payments by Israel haters) when the US or EU complains about so much of the PLO budget going to paying prisoners and families of "martyrs."

But just as the PLO has been denying medicines, fuel, power and salaries to Gazans, it has also apparently been denying even this.

Apparently, the PLO hates Gaza even more than it loves to support terrorists and their families.

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Hamas issued a statement on Tuesday that was completely in line with BDS - and then it went ahead and praised the BDS movement itself.

Hamas stated that "normalization"with Israel is an "unforgivable crime" and that "the Palestinian people will not forgive anyone who deals with Israel."

The terror group said that it is following the Arab nations who are warming up to Israel, complaining that it "strengthens the occupation and covers its ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people."

"There is a great and new effort of normalization in which the scandal of the practice of normalization does not embarrass the media, in an attempt to penetrate into the awareness of generations to entrench acceptance of the occupation as a fact that can not be overcome."

This is exactly the BDS philosophy. If Israel is accepted as a fact, then BDS loses. Its purpose is to make the world think that Israel will fall, that it is a temporary blip and it makes no sense to work with it because its disappearance is inevitable. This was the way the Arab world looked at Israel as well until the past decade or so.

Ordinary Palestinians, however, may accept Israel's existence, but poll after poll shows that the ones who support a two state solution only want peace as a tactic towards the eventual destruction of Israel. BDS and Hamas are a little more honest.

In its statement, Hamas praised the role of the BDS movement, "whose goals and strategies have been widely supported worldwide in the face of injustice and the siege of the occupation of the Palestinian people."

You will be hard pressed to find a BDS supporter who does not support Hamas' goals. It would be interesting to ask them if they will distance themselves from a group that openly espouses murdering Jews, just to see them hem and haw and try not to say something that would get them in trouble with either the terrorist supporters or the deluded peaceniks who they try to attract.

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