Sunday, April 15, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
Sunday, April 15, 2018Elder of Ziyon
[I]t’s just the latest reflection of basic facts on the ground: the situation for the 2 million people of Gaza is extraordinarily harsh and difficult to resolve. It’s not surprising so many would risk death by converging on the border fence, which has now happened three Fridays in a row, with dozens killed and hundreds injured.The analysis of the players in the region is not terrible, but Federman and Perry miss the real impetus for Hamas throwing its weight behind the riots. They know the facts but they cannot draw the lines:
By and large the people of Gaza — over two-thirds of them descended from refugees who left communities in what is now Israel — cannot leave their tiny strip of arid land along the Mediterranean coast. Anger toward Israel runs deep, yet dependence is great.
For years, President Mahmoud Abbas, based in the West Bank, tried to retain influence in Gaza by paying salaries to tens of thousands of former civil servants and funding fuel shipments from Israel to generate Gaza’s electricity. The unintended result: Abbas provided a safety net that helped keep Hamas in power.Israel calibrated its measures to limit the damage Hamas could inflict while still allowing, as much as possible, Gaza civilians to live their lives. Abbas went way beyond that, sharply reducing medicines, electricity, fuel, salaries of critical infrastructure workers and the paperwork allowing Gazans to receive medical treatment.
A frustrated Abbas has taken a tougher line over the past year, scaling back electricity subsidies, reducing salaries of his former employees and now threatening to cut them off altogether.
These tough measures have added to the hardship in Gaza but had little effect on Hamas. A renewed attempt at reconciliation has deadlocked over Hamas’ refusal to disarm, collapsing last month after a bombing on the convoy of Abbas’ prime minister during a stop in Gaza.
Sunday, April 15, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Israel revealed on Friday that an Iranian drone shot down in Israeli airspace in February after launching from an airbase in Syria was carrying explosives. The base was attacked on Monday, allegedly by Israel, in a strike that reportedly targeted Iran’s entire attack drone weapons system — prompting soaring tensions between Israel and Iran.David Horovitz: Attack drone revelation shows grave, immediate, adjacent threat to Israel: Iran
The Iranian drone shot down in February was carrying enough explosives to cause damage, military sources said. Its precise intended target in Israel was not known, they said.
The February incident marked an unprecedented direct Iranian attack on Israel. Israel’s acknowledgement of the nature of the drone’s mission “brings the confrontation” between Israel and Iran “into the open” for the first time, Israel’s Channel 10 news noted Friday.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day this week to warn Iran: “Don’t test the resolve of the State of Israel.”
Iranian officials, for their part, have been vowing a response to the Monday airstrike, and an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on Thursday threatened Israel with destruction.
The alleged Israeli attack this week on the base from which the drone was despatched is understood to have targeted Iran’s entire drone weapons system at the Syrian base, which was protected by surface-to-air missiles and other defenses, the TV report said.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long warned of the danger posed to Israel not many years hence by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. As of Friday night, Israelis are contemplating the danger posed right now by a non-nuclear Iran that is working to entrench itself in Syria.Seth J. Frantzman: Three weeks: How Gaza’s mass protests are failing to make an impact
Two months after an Israeli Apache helicopter shot down an Iranian drone dispatched from Syria, 30 seconds after it crossed into Israeli airspace, Israel’s military censors on Friday finally allowed local media to report that the drone was not merely taking surveillance footage, but was carrying explosives and was primed to attack and damage an unspecified target somewhere in Israel.
The timing of the revelation — which was accompanied by the Israeli Air Force’s release of footage showing the Apache downing the infiltrating Iranian drone — was plainly linked to a potent attack, carried out pre-dawn Monday, that reportedly caused substantial damage to a facility Iran has been building at the T-4 air base in central Syria, and from which that drone was launched on February 10.
While Jerusalem has been silent, the Monday raid has been widely attributed to Israel — by Russia, Syria, Iran and some in the US. At least seven Iranian military personnel were killed in the raid. Iran has threatened retaliation. A top Iranian aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that Iran could destroy Haifa and Tel Aviv. Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Netanyahu not to cause
destabilization in Syria. And so, if anyone was asking why Israel would have risked the repercussions of a raid like Monday’s, Friday’s revelations evidently provided at last part of the answer:
Iran is now sufficiently emboldened as to directly attack Israel. The February drone attack was the first direct Iranian confrontation with Israel, after years of it employing Lebanese and Palestinian proxies to target the Jewish state from Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. That attack had real cost for Israel, which lost an F-16 in retaliatory raids later that same day.
The “Great March of Return” protests that Hamas and Gaza activists launched on March 30 saw their lowest turnout in three weeks and the smallest number of casualties in clashes with Israeli forces, with one Palestinian killed and 528 reported injured on Friday.
Israeli authorities have been steadfast and on message about the protesters being a cover for violent action, while Hamas and the local activists have attempted to keep up the momentum. The proportion of those injured by live fire has declined by half, indicating a major reduction not only in the size of the protests but the level of violence along the border.
On the eve of the third Friday of mass protests in Gaza, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza published a list of casualties from the past two weeks, stating that 3,078 Palestinians had been injured, including 1,236 from live ammunition. It claimed four people had lost legs. Of those injured 445 were under 18 and 152 were women. Thirty had been killed. It also said 30 paramedics had been injured and 14 journalists, including Yaser Murtaja who was shot on April 6.
This Friday the protests didn’t reach the levels they had in the past. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman tweeted that “from week to week there are fewer riots on our border with Gaza. Our resolve is well understood from the other side.”
The IDF tweeted that 10,000 had participated in the “rioting” on the border. It also posted a photo showing a “terrorist wielding an item suspected of being an explosive device” while crouching next to journalists and a handicapped person.
This terrorist wielding an item suspected of being an explosive device used for terror purposes while journalists & a handicapped person stand closely behind him pic.twitter.com/TjHopT3Rw2— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) April 13, 2018
On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the New Israel Fund announced it signed a partnership agreement with Anne Frank Fonds, the foundation Anne Frank’s father, Otto Frank, established in 1963 to administer the profits from the sales of her diary.Anne Frank House employee barred from wearing kippah
Frank’s diary has sold more than 30 million copies in 60 languages since it was first published in 1947. Its sales and global reach make it the most famous book authored by a Jew aside from the Bible.
The New Israel Fund’s deal with the Anne Frank Foundation is a symbolic expression of the existential struggle being waged in the Jewish world today. That struggle pits the government of Israel against much of the American Jewish leadership. It pits Israel’s public against the justices of the Supreme Court. It pits IDF line soldiers and commanders against the General Staff.
The effective merger of the New Israel Fund with the Anne Frank Foundation is the latest chapter in the theft of Anne Frank’s legacy, which began in the 1950s.
In 1952, a Jewish-American journalist named Meir Levin discovered The Diary of Anne Frank in French translation. Levin recognized that her diary was the ideal vehicle for telling the story of the genocide of European Jewry to the American public.
Frank was a Westernized Jew. Her family wasn’t religious. They were cosmopolitan German Jews who decamped to Amsterdam in 1933 when the Nazis rose to power, and immediately fit right in.
But for the Nazi occupation of Holland in 1940, Anne would likely never have received any Jewish education. But when the Dutch collaborationist government implemented the Nazi race laws, and expelled all Jewish children from public schools, in 1941 her parents were compelled to enroll her in a Jewish school.
As Prof. Ruth Wisse explained in her discussion of Anne Frank in The Modern Jewish Canon, Anne’s period in the Jewish school gave her a chance to develop a familiarity with Jewish tradition and history and to develop a positive sense of her Jewish identity.
“Thus,” Wisse wrote, “by the time the family was forced into hiding, she was well armed to face the assault against her as a Jew.”
Of all the places on earth, the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam prohibited its Jewish employees from wearing kippot. The outrageous policy was changed only recently after a local media outlet intervened.Melanie Phillips: The toxic reality of antisemitism in Europe
It all began when Barry Vingerling, a 25-year-old Dutch Jew, began working at the museum. He told NIW, the local news website for Jews and Israelis in Holland, that a while after he began working there he started wearing a kippah, and was promptly asked by the museum directors to remove it.
The museum's policy, Vingerling was told, was that religious symbols of any kind must be concealed from visitors to the museum (Dutch law applies to all public institutions in the country).
"I was stunned by the demand to take off the kippah," Vingerling told NIW. "Here of all places, where Anne Frank was forced to hide because of her identity, I have to hide my Jewish identity?"
Vingerling said he reported the case to his superiors, who told him the matter was being addressed. An answer, however, never came. Meanwhile, at his request, Vingerling was promised that the museum's board of directors would convene an official discussion on the matter in October 2017, but it has since been delayed until May 15.
Vingerling then turned to Rabbi Menno ten Brink, who serves on the museum's advisory board. Brink's answer, however, left him equally dumbfounded.
In France, Jews are being murdered by Muslims; in Sweden, the Netherlands and elsewhere, Jews are being attacked, threatened and intimidated. Who poses the greater threat to Jewish safety – the governments of Europe which are doing nothing to stop the influx that has so increased this threat, or Viktor Orban?
Some of the ultra-nationalist parties coming to the fore in Europe, such as the Austrian Freedom Party, Golden Dawn in Greece or Jobbik in Hungary, are indeed openly antisemitic or have Nazi pasts. And many Muslims are not only opposed to Islamist extremism but are its most numerous victims.
But those who ignore or deny Muslim antisemitism or other aggression effectively connive at its continuation. And that includes many Jews who denounce such concerns as “Islamophobic.”
Such Jews are themselves stoking the fires of antisemitism. People who are angry and resentful at mass immigration destroying their national identity bitterly resent being told by Diaspora Jews who have their own country in Israel that it’s racist to oppose multiculturalism.
It’s not only dangerous for Jews to oppose Europeans having their own national and cultural identity. It’s morally wrong. We Jews have ours. Why can’t they have theirs?
Mass migration into Europe is a toxic subject for Jews. But in this week when we have remembered the Shoah, we surely have a duty not to diminish antisemitism by exaggerating lesser dangers while ignoring or sanitizing the principal sources of this poison today.
Friday, April 13, 2018Elder of Ziyon
I saw what you wrote on Twitter.Adraee quoted the Quran about the role of the Muslim woman and pointed out that it is opposed to the idea of a woman throwing rocks. Being that his entire job is psyops, this is quite appropriate for his audience.
About what?
About the honor of the Arab woman, who shouldn’t go out to demonstrate but stay at home and look after the children.
I didn’t write that she shouldn’t go out to demonstrate, I wrote that she shouldn’t go to terror demonstrations and throw rocks. The picture there made it very clear what the intention was.
I’m more interested in the second part: Did you really recommend that Arab women look after the house and children?
No, what I’m saying is that I quoted from what the Prophet Mohammed said what the woman I’ll translate it for you he says that a good woman is a woman who has honor, and a woman who has the interest of her home and her children at heart. That what interests her is the interest of her home and her children so she can be a good example for them. And in contrast, the bad woman is one who behaves selfishly and doesn’t set an example and is not um a mark of honor to the society from which she comes.
So you agree with the Prophet Mohammed, if you’re quoting him in this context.Gontarz, not realizing that he made no point whatsoever, goes on:
What does it matter if I agree with the Prophet Mohammed?.
You also tweeted that burning tires is a non-Muslim act.Again, there is nothing wrong with the IDF pointing out to Muslims that they are violating their own holy book, just like there is nothing wrong with quoting international law. But Gontarz thinks this is evil.
What Allah said, what’s written in Sura Verse 56 It says that Allah commands the believers not to harm the world that he created.
That that’s not environmentally friendly.
The Prophet Mohammed also said that the Muslim should plant trees, guard the soil, plant it, care for all living things and so on. And that it’s not environmentally friendly what burning tires do to the environment, to the soil, to the world that was created, that it goes against everything that’s written in the holy books.
Gontarz, who reveals that he has no interest in any journalistic integrity or objectivity, nor in listening to his interviewees words, is complaining that the IDF spokesperson is not doing his job properly.
Tell me, what exactly is this job you’ve taken upon yourself to interpret the Koran for them, as to how a woman should behave and how a Muslim should behave? Is this as a private person, or in the name of an IDF that is now also becoming an educator and Koran analyst for the Palestinians? This is the IDF’s job? You don’t think it’s a little patronizing for the Jewish officer from the occupying army to be teaching the Arabs how they should behave?
The colonialists and occupiers have always taught the “children” the “proper” way to behave.
To me your quotes read as if you’re a propagandist for the army. Not a spokesman. You’re a propagandist for the army.
Do you think it’s dignified for an Israeli officer to be teaching the Arab civilians who are under occupation or blockade how they should behave as Muslims? To be saying that a Muslim woman’s honor requires modesty?
As an Israeli citizen, I’m embarrassed by what you’re doing. You represent the cliché of occupation.
Last question: Should a Jewish woman also stay home and look after the children?
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| Ruth Wisse Professor of Yiddish Literature, Havard |
Had the Arabs accepted the 1947 UN partition plan, there would have been two states - the larger one Palestine, the smaller one Israel. The Jewish leaders accepted the proposal, reluctantly, but the Arabs rejected it and chose to launch a war that, despite all odds, resulted in the creation of the Jewish state. Seven decades later, the major stumbling block to peace remains Arab resistance to a Jewish state in the region, regardless of its borders.
The "March of Return" is not just an effort to mourn the Arab defeat but an attempt to undo it. Rather than face the reality of Israel, Hamas seeks to destroy it through violent means. Despite claims that the border protests are peaceful, the goal is to break through the physical barrier and wreak havoc on Israel's citizens.
Most Israelis hate the violence but are not ready to allow the state's borders to be breached so that their sworn enemies can come in and kill them. What country would?
While I have much empathy for Gazans who live in poverty, they should be venting against Hamas, which spends precious resources on digging tunnels and stocking up on rockets to attack Israel rather than attending to the needs of its people.
After the Holocaust and the decimation of the great majority of European Jews, the Jewish leaders of Palestine wept but did not whine. They proclaimed a state and fought valiantly to make it a reality. Palestinian leaders lost that war of aggression and still blame everyone but themselves for their predicament.
In the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, one side seeks peace and pursues the future with optimism, despite serious challenges, while the other seeks revenge and focuses on the past with bitterness and regret.
Two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day, an official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV channel broadcasted claims that Jews “colluded with Hitler.”What is the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Really About and How Will it End
On April 10, 2018, PA TV aired an interview with Hani Abu Zeid, a Palestinian political analyst and commentator. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a non-profit that translates Arabic, Persian and Russian media, reported on the incident:
Hani Abu Zeid: "The [Israeli] soldier, the officers behind him, and even the Israeli war [sic] minister, and above him, Netanyahu should stand trial as war criminals. The accumulation of cases, one after the other... The Israelis will end up shedding tears of blood [out of regret] for their current conduct. They used to cry about the false Holocaust in the days of Hitler, the scope of which was not that large. I'd like to point out..."
Interviewer: "The [Holocaust] is a lie that they spread worldwide."
Hani Abu Zeid: "Yes, it was a lie, and many Israelis, or many Jews, colluded with Hitler, so that he would facilitate the bringing of settlers to Palestine."
As the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has noted: “Holocaust denial and minimization or distortion of the facts of the Holocaust is a form of antisemitism.”
Yet, Holocaust denial remains commonplace in much of the Arab world, including in Palestinian society and culture. PA President Mahmoud Abbas, for example, claimed in his doctoral dissertation—done under Soviet auspices—that the Holocaust was exaggerated.
Dr. Einat Wilf, former member of Israel's Parliament (Knesset), giving a definitive explanation as to the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how it will end.
Friday, April 13, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Two alternative Jewish lobbies, the Jewish Peace Lobby and J-Street are locked in a conflict that may dominate the upcoming J-Street National Conference.Yes - Jerome Segal considers an endorsement from a Palestinian newspaper to be fantastic news!
The issue is one of the keynote speakers: Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland.
The President of the Jewish Peace Lobby, Jerome Segal, himself a member of J-Street has challenged Cardin in the June Primary for the Democratic nomination.
Cardin is AIPAC's most prominent ally in the Senate. Segal says he has adopted the "big dog" strategy: to take down mega-lobbies like AIPAC and the NRA, go right at the "big dog" pulling the sleigh and send him into retirement.
Recent polling data by John Zogby Strategies suggests Segal could have an upset victory if he has substantial funding and a bit of luck. Last week luck started coming his way when the largest Palestinian newspaper, Al Quds, endorsed his candidacy. This kind of thing has never happened in the Arab world.
If Segal expected J-Street to ask its members to give $5 million to his doomed campaign, he is completely crazy. The largest amount J-Street gave to any candidate in 2016 was $341,000, to Russ Feingold (who lost.)
Segal had been counting on a J-street endorsement and funding. J-Street has 200,000 members and just $25 each would be $5 million, enough, in Segal's eyes to win.
Segal's campaign site has a foreign policy section. Here it is in its entirety:
J-Street, however, has declined to endorse Segal, and will not support his campaign financially. Not only have they given Cardin, a key AIPAC figure in the Senate, a keynote, they have refused to allow Segal to speak at the conference altogether.
In response Segal has prepared a glossy 20-page booklet, "Has J-Street Lost Its Way?" 3000 copies are now being printed and will be given to all attendees and press at the conference.
FOREIGN POLICYNot a word about Syria or Russia or China or Iraq. His entire foreign policy is aimed against the government of a single nation: Israel.
1. Cardin is a vehicle of AIPAC, the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, only second to the NRA in its influence over Congress. AIPAC carries the agenda of Bibi Netanyahu, for Israel and, unfortunately, too often for the United States as well. Twenty-nine years ago, I founded the Jewish Peace Lobby (www.jewishpeacelobby.org) as an alternative vision of what it means to be pro-Israeli. This campaign is the first time we, or anyone, has challenged AIPAC electorally, and challenged their tight grip on Congressional action on all things directly or indirectly related to Israel.
2. AIPAC/Cardin defends and shelters the aggressive settlement activity of the current Israeli government. This is destroying the possibility of the two-state solution, and thus, necessitates an Israeli choice between being a Jewish state or being a democracy. It is clear that democracy is losing in that contest. This is a heart breaking tragedy, and must be fought with all we have got.
3. Secondly, Cardin, again aligned with AIPAC, joined with all 54 Republican Senators in opposing the Iran Nuclear agreement negotiated by the Obama Administration. President Obama told us that the choice was either between the nuclear deal or the use of force against Iran. Bibi wanted an American attack. John Kerry confirmed this publicly a month ago. In effect, Ben Cardin voted for war against Iran. Anything he says to the contrary is BS.
4. Cardin, in his blank-check support of any Israeli government policy introduced legislation that would felonize (up to 20 years in jail) any American who joined and supported a boycott of the Israeli settlements, if that boycott was called by the United Nations or any of our European allies. The ACLU has condemned this as un-Constitutional, as has my excellent Congressman, Jamie Raskin, formerly a Professor of Constitutional Law.
Further, I join the Congressional Black Caucus in calling on Israel to halt the deportation of African refugees seeking asylum in Israel. Of course, Israel has to have control of its borders, but as a country that calls itself the Nation State of the Jewish People, Israel must be true to our people's historical experience. We must remember Exodus 22:21 "And a stranger shalt thou not wrong, neither shalt thou oppress him; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."
Friday, April 13, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Friday, April 13, 2018Elder of ZiyonWhat the @NYT misses about the #GazaReturnMarch at the border fence.— LTC (R) Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) April 13, 2018
The 5 protest camps are staging grounds for the violent riots.
Every camp is approx. 3000 Meters from the closest Israeli community.
The fence is the last line of defense! https://t.co/ueRdVXXby2 pic.twitter.com/oLE3mmTSjf
Last week, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad used chemical weapons on his own people. The government of Israel responded to that atrocity, as well as Iran’s use of Syria as a thoroughfare for weapons transfers to terrorist groups like Hamas, by bombing Syria’s T4 airbase. The media responded by castigating Israel: for example, the Associated Press headlined, “Tensions ratchet up as Israel blamed for Syria missile strike,” and accompanied that story with a photo of suffering Syrian children targeted by Assad, making it seem that Israel had targeted the children.JPost Editorial: The Holocaust and Assad
That media treatment was no surprise — the week before, the terrorist group Hamas used large-scale protests against Israel on the Gaza border as a cover for terrorist attacks on Israeli troops. When Israeli troops responded with force, the media falsely suggested that Israel had indiscriminately fired into the crowd. Meanwhile, reporters touted the story of a supposed photographer killed by Israeli forces; it turns out that the photographer was a known Hamas officer.
A few weeks earlier and some 2,000 miles away in France, 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll was stabbed 11 times and her body set on fire by a Muslim neighbor who knew her well, and had convictions for rape and sexual assault. In 2017, there were 92 violent anti-Semitic incidents in France, a 28 percent year-on-year increase.
Moving across the English Channel, Israel’s Labor Party finally was forced to cut ties completely with the leader of the U.K.’s Labor Party, Jeremy Corbyn, a longtime anti-Semite who has routinely made nice with terrorists and defended open Jew-hatred in public. And, of course, in the United States, the alt-right’s anti-Semitism continues to make public discourse more crude and the Women’s March continues to make nice with anti-Semites such as Louis Farrakhan.
In other words, there is a reason for Israel to exist.
If Syria, Russia and Iran are right and Israel did in fact carry out an attack on a Syrian air base a day and a half after Bashar Assad’s regime used chlorine gas against civilians in a Damascus suburb, the Jewish state should be proud.
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, as Israel commemorates the destruction of European Jewry at the hands of Nazi Germany and its allies in Vichy France, Austria, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine and elsewhere, it is essential for the world – and the Assad regime – to know that indiscriminate acts of barbarism will not be tolerated.
US President Donald Trump was exercising a healthy moral sense when he responded strongly on his Twitter account to the atrocity committed by Assad’s regime against Syrians in Douma, including women and children.
“President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay.”
Trump’s Tweet should be followed up by military action and it should be backed by all civilized countries, particularly the nations of the European continent on which the Holocaust was carried out. (Russia, which prides itself so much on having destroyed Nazism during World War II, is now protecting the Assad regime and spreading lies that poison gas was not used in Douma.) The point of the military action is not to change the course of the civil war in Syria. Rather, the point of a combined US, European military strike that causes significant damage to the Assad regime’s military capabilities is to make a moral statement and, one hopes, to deter Syria from using poison gas against anyone in the future.
What makes the Syrian use of chlorine gas all the more despicable is that it was motivated not by desperation but by depravity. Assad, with the backing of Russia and Iran, has all but won the civil war. Forces loyal to him have surrounded Douma.
In any event, the ruthless murder of civilians is rarely if ever a deciding factor in war. In World War II the Axis powers were responsible for the vast majority of deaths – as well as for a disproportionately high rate of civilian killings, in part due to the Holocaust – yet their defeat was total and relatively speedy once the US entered the war.
Assad, apparently emboldened by Trump’s declaration that the US plans to pull its troops out of Syria, believed that the world would stand by in indifference, as it has in the past when he used barrel bombs containing chlorine against civilians.
Perhaps Assad also thought that the Trump administration’s decision a year ago this month to fire Tomahawk missiles at Syrian army bases in response to his use of Sarin gas was a blip and that the US under a fickle Trump, who was now in the mood for retreat, would not act again alone among the nations.
Perhaps he also thought that the US and other nations would make a distinction between the chlorine gas used this week and sarin, the nerve gas developed by the Nazis during World War II.
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PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
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