Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 07, 2019

02/07 Links Pt1: The State of the Union is Pro-Jewish; BDS Is Linked to Terrorists, Just as You Suspected; Glick: The Limits of Arab-Israeli Cooperation

From Ian:

Abe Greenwald: The State of the Union is Pro-Jewish

At Tuesday night’s address to the American people, writes Abe Greenwald, the president made multiple pronouncements of particular relevance to the Jewish people—all of them for the good:

President Trump used his State of the Union address in part to celebrate the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, call out Iran on its genocidal hatred of Jews, confront anti-Semitism generally, and tie his conception of American greatness to the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. . . .

For Trump, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was, as he put it, a matter of “principled realism.” Based on that realism, his administration “proudly opened the American embassy in Jerusalem.” Nothing here about both sides having to bend or about Israel now having to “do its part for peace.” The president of the United States simply noted that he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital because it is. And that’s the most powerful thing he could have said on the matter.

The president [also] called Iran “the world’s leading state sponsor of terror” and emphasized that “it is a radical regime.” He went on: “We will not avert our eyes from a regime that chants ‘death to America’ and threatens genocide against the Jewish people.” No garbage about make-believe moderate mullahs, no specious conflation of the Iranian people and the regime, no wishful fantasies about Iran’s tyrannical theocracy showing heartening signs, and, finally, no equivocating about the nature of its obsessive anti-Semitism. In all, a welcome return to moral sanity.

Trump talked about a great many other things [as well], but it’s remarkable the extent to which his speech acknowledged, celebrated, and urged on America’s doing right by the Jews. It would be welcome enough if he emphasized such things in an address to an exclusively Jewish audience, but this was a State of the Union speech, and so his words were meant to shape our very understanding of America.

Jewish takeaways from Donald Trump’s State of the Union address

President Donald Trump linked his actions on Iran to the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, pivoting during his State of the Union address from his decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal to a declaration that anti-Semitism must be confronted “anywhere and everywhere it occurs.”

Trump also bookended his speech with references to D-Day, including salutes to troops, among them Jewish-American veterans, who helped liberate Europe, and Holocaust survivors who were liberated thanks to the American-led action. The salutes earned standing ovations.

Containing Iran is fighting antisemitism

“My administration has acted decisively to confront the world’s leading state sponsor of terror: the radical regime in Iran,” Trump said Tuesday evening, delivering his address in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“They do bad, bad things. To ensure this corrupt dictatorship never acquires nuclear weapons, I withdrew the United States from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal,” he said, referring to the 2015 sanctions-relief-for-nuclear-rollback agreement negotiated under President Barack Obama. “And last fall, we put in place the toughest sanctions ever imposed by us on a country.

“We will not avert our eyes from a regime that chants death to America and threatens genocide against the Jewish people,” he continued, to applause, mostly from the Republican side. “We must never ignore the vile poison of antisemitism, or those who spread its venomous creed. With one voice, we must confront this hatred anywhere and everywhere it occurs. Just months ago, 11 Jewish Americans were viciously murdered in an anti-Semitic attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.”

The October 2018 shooting, in which 11 people died, was the worst attack on Jews in American history. It was carried out by a man shouting anti-Semitic epithets, and appears to have been principally motivated by hatred of pro-immigration policies favored by HIAS, a Jewish immigration advocacy group. The alleged attacker bought into the notion that migrants from Mexico pose a national security threat, a theme also favored by Trump, who devoted much of his speech Tuesday night to securing the border. There’s no evidence that the attack was related in any way to the Middle East.

Jewish Model Harassed After Coming Out As Trump Supporter

Jewish model Elizabeth Pipko kept her work for President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign a secret, fearing she would be ostracized by the liberal fashion world. Last month she came out as pro-Trump, and she's already being called a Nazi.

The 23 year old started off as a volunteer for the campaign, but was eventually hired full-time. Late last year she got married to a man she met on the campaign, and who is already working on Trump's reelection campaign.

The wedding was at Trump's Mar-a-Lago. She said the president didn't make it because he was dealing with negotiations over the government shutdown, but she wore a Make America Great Again hat on the dance floor anyway.

She came forward with her story to the New York Post in January, telling the paper she is "hoping to take part in the reelection in some capacity" and has no plans to hide her support for Trump this time around.

"Now that it’s been two years since the election, I don’t want to keep silent any longer," she said. "Even if that means saying goodbye to modeling forever."

Was a mound of ash from Temple sacrifices visible as late as 1900?

Lenny Ben-David, who often posts historic photos of Israel, tweeted this photo yesterday:

It comes from the Library of Congress Madson Collection of photos. It was taken in 1898 and the caption is "Ash heaps from the Temple sacrifices."

Lenny adds, "It was real! Outside of Damascus Gate. Discussed in Talmud Yuma 68a as 'Beit HaDeshen.' The site was cleared in early 1900s for housing."

The idea that actual ashes from Temple sacrifices were easily seen only 120 years ago is intriguing. I looked a little further into this and found two fascinating letters about this in the 1855 "Journal of Sacred Literature."

Discovery of Altar Ashes at Jerusalem.—Mr. James Finn, Her Majesty's Consul at Jerusalem, to whose intelligent care of literary and antiquarian interests in the Holy Land our readers are indebted for much agreeable information.

Jerusalem, April 2. Outside of this city, towards the north-west, and not far from the Nablus Road and the Tombs of the Kings (so called), are some considerable heaps of blue grey ashes, on which no grass or weeds ever grow. One of them may be 40 ft. in height. They are remarkable objects in themselves, especially as contrasted in colour with the dark olive groves around them. These are commonly believed by the people of the city to be heaps of refuse from the soapboilers' works of former times. Some of our English residents here, having conceived a different idea of their origin, namely, that it was not impossible they should be ashes from the ancient sacrifices, begged of Dr. Roth, of Munich, when here in 1853, to carry away samples for analysis in Germany, which he did; and Dr. Sandreczki has now laid before the literary Society of Jerusalem an account, in English, of a letter received from Dr. Roth on the subject. After some remarks on the beetles and mollusca which he collected in Palestine, and tendering generous offers of assistance, he proceeds thus: "Hitherto it has been questionable whether the two ash-hills without the Damascus Gate have been heaped up from the ashes of the burnt sacrifices, or from the residuum of the produce of potash in the soap manufactories here. Dr. Roth, who had taken with him two samples, states that their analysis in our famous Liebig's laboratory bears evidence to the supposition that those ashes are the remnant of the burnt sacrifices, because they are chiefly of animal, and not of vegetable origin; and even contain small fragments of bones and teeth burnt to coal; and yet it would be impossible to ascertain the species of the animals to which they belonged.' The analysis exhibits a small percentage of silicic acid, which is never found in the ashes of flesh or bones. Dr. Roth is of opinion that we may account for this circumstance by supposing that the ashes of the meat-offerings in which silicium may be found, were likewise carried off to the hills in question. The samples were taken both from the top and the basis of the larger hill,—not just from the surface, nor from a considerable depth either. Dr. Roth, intends to send the whole account of that analysis, together with a new analysis of the mineral waters near Tiberias.

This almost unexpected result is one that leads to important antiquarian consequences,—not only exciting wonder at the confirmation of Holy Writ, and bringing our feelings back to immediate contact with those of the Aaronic priesthood, but as helping among other facts to determine the course of the ancient walls, since these ashes must have been thrown beyond the wall.— Yours, &c.

"James Finn."

The second letter is even more astounding:

The insertion of the above letter in the Athenaeum called forth the following— The Valley of the Ashes.—

Referring to the letter from Mr. Finn, Her Majesty's Consul at Jerusalem, whose courtesy and hospitable kindness it has been my privilege to share, 1 beg to make one or two remarks.

I visited Palestine in 1852, it having beforehand been mutually arranged with Dr. Robinson that I should meet him there, and accompany him on his journey. Finding, when I reached the country, that our plans and objects did not coincide, I gave up the arrangement; and thereafter visited almost every place of interest, "from Dan to Beersheba," accompanied only by my Arab attendants.

While at Jerusalem, some remarks of my friend Mr. Caiman, of the London Jews' Society's Hospital there, in reference to the mounds to the west of the Damascus Gate, suggested the probability of the view referred to in Mr. Finn's letter. I proceeded, in company with Mr. Caiman, carefully to examine the mounds; believing that if I were correct in supposing that they were the ashes of the ancient temple sacrifices, proof to that effect might probably be found.

Digging, both at the top and near the base of the largest heap, I was struck with the fact that the whole seemed homogeneous, there being no earth, stones, pottery, or rubbish of other kind apparently mixed with the grey-blue mould. This seemed unfavourable to the popular idea of their being formed from soapboilers' ashes. Continuing to dig, I was greatly interested soon to find among the ashes, (which appeared to me to be animal, though I never have had them analyzed) small portions of bone, still strengthening my belief that I was surrounded by the remains of the burnt-offerings of Israel during a thousand years. But the proof appeared to amount to demonstration when I discovered, a foot or more from the surface, fragments of bone sufficiently large to leave no doubt as to the kind of animal to which they belonged. I have in my possession a number of specimens, among which is one, three inches long, evidently the leg-bone of a sheep or lamb; another, a fragment of the skull or nose-bone; and two others, fragments of ribs, which it seems impossible to mistake for any other but the same animal. The first mentioned of those specimens has marks, in some parts, of having been charred or blackened by the action of the fire.

Since I returned from the East, I have frequently, both privately and in public, mentioned the above circumstances, and my intention to have the ashes analyzed, that it might be ascertained whether they consisted chiefly of animal matter. Further inquiry on this point is rendered unnecessary by the analysis of Dr. Roth, as stated in the letter of Mr. Finn.

While upon the spot, I was also struck with the light which the position of those mounds seemed to throw upon the vexed question of the ancient course of the city wall. It seemed to confirm the theory of Dr. Robinson, that instead of running considerably within the present city boundary, as is contended for by those who maintain the authenticity of the so called Holy Places,—the ancient wall must have run considerably to the westward of the present Damascus Gate, it being most probable that the ashes would be deposited immediately outside the wall, and not carried so far from it as the heaps are now found.

If these ideas be correct, do they not seem to throw light also upon an expression,—to which I am not aware any definite meaning, as to the locality, has ever been attached,—in the boundaries of the city referred to in Jeremiah xxxi. 40 ?—" the valley of the dead bodies, and of the ashes." If by "the valley of the dead bodies" is meant the Valley of Hinnom, it seems likely, from the connexion of the passage, that by "the valley of the ashes," is meant the locality where the ashes are now found. It is not improbable that anciently, when the wall ran close by, there was a descent outside to the westward, accounting for the expression valley, the hollow now being filled up or levelled by the accumulated rubbish of the city's "long desolations."

While I am glad that the attention of others has been directed to this interesting matter, I trust that it may not seem uncalled for thus to advert to it, that I may not seem to be entering into other men's labours, should I ever be able to publish notes of my journey.

I am, &c., William Dickson.

20, George Square, Edinburgh, April 24.

Dickson claims to have seen animal bones that were charred in the mound.

A skeptical note can be found in Dr. William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (1877), where he writes that similar mounds were found in Shechem, Lydda, and Gaza, where no sacrifices were made, so he believes the theory that these were refuse from soap manufacturing, without explaining why animal bones would be there nor verifying that the other mounds really were made out of the same material.

Charles Wilson's maps of Jerusalem from 1865 identifies two ash heaps:

An article in Hebrew about this identifies the locations in relation to the discovery of the buried ancient wall of Jerusalem, discovered afterwards but adjacent to it. The ashes would have been dumped outside the city walls.

Here's a map of where this is today:

This is what the area looks like now (as close as I could get with Google Street View):

From the other direction:

The building is the Legacy Hotel, formerly a YMCA.

A formerly 40 foot high mound of ashes outside Jerusalem seems worth exploring. (By 1898, it was already much lower.)

With Wilson's maps, perhaps it is worth the Israel Antiquities Authority exploring to see if there are any residual animal ashes in that area, perhaps in the parking lot.

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I received an email from the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, about Angela Davis receiving a human rights award. In the email it says, "Palestine is a racial justice issue, and Dr. Davis’ insistence that the Palestinian people be included in that vision of justice qualifies her for the award all the more."

There is nothing remotely racial about the conflict between Israel and the Arab world, including Palestinians. After all, half of Israelis have some heritage from northern African and Middle Eastern communities and are indistinguishable from Arabs. (European Jews are genetically closer to Middle Eastern Jews than to other Europeans, as well.)

If skin pigmentation is your criterion, there are roughly 100,000 Israelis from Ethiopia who are darker than virtually any Palestinian Arab. Yet they are considered "white" by the bizarre logic of those who want to paint this as a racial justice issue.

Of course there is discrimination in Israel, just as there is in every other country on Earth. But the Palestinian Arabs aren't discriminated against based on race. It is a political, religious and cultural conflict but there is no racial component - half of Israelis are the same "color."

The people who want to call this a racial conflict are the racists. Against all visual and genetic evidence, they want the world to view Israelis as the evil "white" oppressors and the Palestinian Arabs as the victimized people of color. If racism is the idea that some people are better than others based on skin color, the anti-Israel racists are demanding that the world hate Israelis based on skin color that most don't even have!

It is the anti-Israel crowd that is obsessed with race, assigning racial definitions to people purely to incite others to hate them. If that isn't racism, what is?

I saw a different, more sophisticated and even more deceptive argument about why the Israeli-Arab conflict should be considered a racial justice issue. At the United Methodist Church website, a 2014 article entitled "Why Justice in Palestine Is a Racial Justice Imperative" says:

[Phyllis] Bennis pointed out that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, as a case for racial discrimination, can be made based on the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The convention defines racial discrimination in terms of exclusion and restrictions based not only on “race,” but also on color, descent, or national or ethnic origin. Under this definition, Bennis said the case for racial discrimination could be made for Palestinians...

That seems like a very good point. Article 1, Paragraph 1 of The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination indeed says that racial discrimination does not only apply to race but also to those other criteria.

However, Paragraph 2 of the Convention rips the argument that this applies to Palestinian Arabs to shreds:

2. This Convention shall not apply to distinctions, exclusions, restrictions or preferences made by a State Party to this Convention between citizens and non-citizens.

Palestinian Arabs are not citizens of Israel, and as such Israel is not required to treat them the same as citizens - just like no nation on the planet gives the same rights to citizens and non-citizens.

It is easy to prove this, since Israeli Arabs have the same legal rights as Israeli Jews, and more rights in Israel than Palestinian Arabs, as they should. They are racially and ethnically identical to Palestinian Arabs so any difference in how they are treated is purely because the Palestinians are not citizens, not because of color or ethnicity or national origin.

The people who are calling "Palestine" a racial justice issue are not only liars - they are the only racists in this discussion.

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The Palestine Chronicle has an article by former Al Quds professor Rima Najjar, who now lives in the US, where she admits that Zionism is indeed part of Judaism:

Those who smear anti-Zionists by falsely accusing them of antisemitism understand very well that anti-Zionism means anti-Jewish-nationalism as expressed in the territory of historic Palestine, now subdivided into Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but effectively controlled by the Jewish State.

Zionism is a product of Jewish philosophy and is based on Jewish culture and thought, which has its roots in Judaism. The core purpose of Israel’s settler-colonial Zionist regime is to maintain itself as a Jewish State. Exaggerated or false claims of antisemitism aim to create a climate of fear in which Palestinian legitimate human rights campaigns are stifled.

If Zionism is rooted in mainstream Judaism, as Najjar admits, then being against Zionism means one is against Judaism, which she denies.

She tries to explain away this obvious contradiction, and fails miserably. Her point is pretty much that she should be free to attack Jews in the name of being pro-Palestinian:

Today all around the world, synagogues and rabbis are the ones indoctrinating their communities into worshiping Israel and a tribal, some would say Medieval, identity.

And, in defending Alice Walker's antisemitism:

... Is it anti-Judaism (I won’t say antisemitic because I am not sure I understand what that means anymore) to look into what in the Talmud might be inspiring Chief Rabbis of Israel in his racism and cruelty, in condoning ethnic cleansing and genocide?

She sums it up this way:

Jewish nationalism manifests itself as settler-colonialism. One concept does not exclude the other operative concept in Palestine, namely that Jewish Zionism = Jewish nationalism = Jewish supremacy = Apartheid.

Of course, by her logic every nationalism is apartheid. Including Arab nationalism and Palestinian nationalism. But in her zeal to attack only Jewish nationalism and equating it with racism and evil, she wants her readers to ignore her inconsistencies.

And only focus on the Jews.

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02/06 Links Pt2: European Anti-Semitism Goes Well Beyond “Criticism of Israel”; Dershowitz: Double Standard for Historical Revisionism; BDS for thee, but not for me

From Ian:

European Anti-Semitism Goes Well Beyond “Criticism of Israel”

While there is little doubt that hatred of Israel has become the dominant form of anti-Semitism in Europe, its more naked forms persist as well. Manfred Gerstenfeld writes:

Polls by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) show that the evil myth that Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus is alive and well in Europe. It was found that 46 percent of Poles, 38 percent of Hungarians, 21 percent of Danes and Spaniards, and 19 percent of Norwegians and Belgians believe this. So do 18 percent of Austrians and British, 16 percent of the Dutch, 15 percent of Italians, and 14 percent of Germans. Once a belief is so deeply ingrained in a culture, it takes a very long time to flush it out. Rather than disappear, it will change its shape. . . .

From [another] study, it emerged that at least 150 million adult EU citizens agreed with the statement that Israel is conducting “a war of extermination against the Palestinians.” . . . In another new mutation of anti-Semitism, European Jews are now accused of being responsible for Israel’s actions. . . .

The way that ingrained anti-Semitism manifests itself varies not only from subculture to subculture but also from country to country. In January 2014, a mass rally in Paris took place. This “Day of Anger” was not related to any specific Jewish topic, and part of the protest was against French president François Hollande’s economic plans. However, various groups of participants started to shout anti-Semitic slogans. These included, “Jews, France doesn’t belong to you” and [the Holocaust denier] “Faurisson is right,” as well as “the Holocaust was a hoax.”

The same has happened recently in the “Yellow Vest” demonstrations. These are ostensibly a protest against the French president Emmanuel Macron’s decision to raise fuel prices—again, a topic that has nothing to do with Jews. Yet during some of the demonstrations, there have been signs describing Macron as a “whore of the Jews” and as their “puppet.”

Alan Dershowitz: Double Standard for Historical Revisionism

Ford's book, The International Jew, became a bestseller in many parts of the world and was cited at the Nuremberg trials as a work that turned many Germans and Austrians into anti-Semitic Nazi leaders and followers. Ford was the single most influential anti-Semite in the first quarter of the 20th century and beyond.

Yet, according to the New York Times, Ford's "name or likeness graces everything from the performing arts center to the manhole covers." Bill McGraw, a historian of Dearborn, has written that "Ford's attacks on Jews were distributed around the world before and after World War II and, alarmingly, they influence budding neo-Nazis today."

The New York Times continues: "But Mr. McGraw also included in his report an article on how Mr. Ford's descendants have consistently supported Jewish charities and cultural organizations..." These descendants should be praised for those contributions and not condemned for the sins of their ancestor. But the truth about Henry Ford must be told -- to the residents of Dearborn and to the world.

Many buildings are named after Henry Ford, who remains Dearborn's favorite son. It's difficult to go anywhere in Dearborn without encountering the Ford name. Even buildings carrying the generic name Ford are based on his deeply flawed legacy. There is too much honoring of Henry Ford and too little educating about the horrible influence he had on promoting anti-Semitism and Nazism.

I'm not one for destroying or removing statues or other historical works of art, but I strongly believe that these images must be accompanied by contemporary descriptions of the evil deeds committed by those portrayed in the art. Removing the Ford name from Dearborn's Ford Community & Performing Arts Center raises more difficult issues. There is no art, just honoring, in the selection of a name for a center. Henry Ford does not deserve to be honored. The question the good people of Dearborn should ask themselves is: What would you do if the center were named after Jefferson Davis? If the answer is that you would remove Davis's name, then you should remove Ford's. There cannot be differences between how anti-Black, anti-gay, anti-women and anti-Jewish practitioners of bigotry are treated. There must be a single standard for historical revisionism.

Melanie Phillips: Ireland bigotry, EU bares teeth on Brexit

Please join me in the video below for my latest chat about our crazy world with Avi Abelow of Israel Unwired. We discuss the bill which is currently going through the Irish parliament to boycott Israeli goods or services produced in the disputed territories or eastern Jerusalem. You can read what I wrote about this piece of poisonous bigotry here.

We also discuss the latest in the Brexit crisis, in which the EU negotiators have decided to double down on their intransigence by refusing to re-open negotiations with the UK in the hope that the supposed chaos caused by leaving the EU with no deal will cause the British to come crawling back on their knees to accept the terms they have so far rejected. What this tells us is that the Eurocrats not only have the mindset of the mafia but really don’t understand democracy, political liberty or the British national character at all.

Go figure... dozens of conflict zones around the world and @PSCupdates and Corbyn only want a musical boycott of the Jewish state.

See their PSC campaign page: https://t.co/5OFdcFi3GQ #Antisemitism #News @COLRICHARDKEMP @CUFI_UK @mishtal @lucianaberger @margarethodge pic.twitter.com/pETVcF97yq
— Jewish Human Rights Watch (@jhrwatch) February 5, 2019

A balloon landed in Moshav Bitkha, near Ofakim, on Sunday night. This time, the colorful rubber orb carried no incendiary device—only a message in Arabic, which read:

"We, the people of Gaza, need medical treatment. Remove the blockade."

Well, “we, the people of Israel” would like to suggest that the blockade has nothing to do with your ability to obtain medical treatment for your people. Take all the European aid you receive and build hospitals. If you want to be a state, don't depend on your neighbors to provide you with basic necessities like medical care.

And don’t go crying to us about your poverty. You’ve launched thousands of rockets, mortars, and missiles into Israel. That costs money. Lots of money.

Take mortars, for instance. They cost $24,717, each. But when Israel hits back, there goes the mortar (and $24,717).

Mortar rounds can get expensive, too. They cost anywhere from $5.52-$438, depending on type.

How about a Grad missile? They cost $1,000 a pop, if you’ll excuse the expression. (As an aside, the cost to intercept them with Iron Dome, is $100,000.)

And then, of course, there’s the Qassam rocket. The raw materials for one of these babies cost $800.

But it’s all actually much more expensive than it appears to wage a war of terror, according to this 2012 Jerusalem Post article by Akiva Hamilton:

And the losses continue once the Grad gets to Gaza, with the IDF regularly destroying rocket caches. Thus, 1,000 Grads, which cost Iran $1 million to purchase, may end up as 300 Grads which cost a further $2 million in “delivery charges.” This turns a $1,000 Grad rocket in Iran into a $10,000 Grad rocket in Gaza.

. . . The strategic implications are that the current rocket-based terror strategy of Hamas and Hezbollah has been rendered both ineffective and economically unsustainable. I estimate it is currently costing Hamas (and thus its patron Iran) around $5m. (500 rockets at $10,000 each) to murder a single Israeli. When Iron Dome reaches 95% interception rate these figures will double and at 97.5% they will double again.

In 2012, the interception rate for Iron Dome was over 90%. It may be higher now, but Israel may not be so eager to share the current interception rate, which may well be regarded as a military secret.

We haven’t even gotten to the cost of constructing all those terror tunnels. The IDF estimates that Hamas spent $30 to $90 million, pouring 600,000 tons of concrete, to build three dozen tunnels from Gaza into Israel. Some of those tunnels cost as much as $3 million to build.

But let’s move away from the costs of terror to talk about all that beautiful aid money. It’s starting to shrink, for sure, as the world wakes up to the corruption of UNRWA, and what it means to fund the Pay for Slay program, but the “West Bank” and Gaza received over $27b in international aid between 1993 and 2013. By now, well. Pshaw. We’re way past that.

And then there’s this UNRWA funding chart from 2016:

That’s an awful lot of money going down the toilet. The people are still poor. And they still need Israel’s hospitals instead of building their own.

By the way, wondering what it costs to build a really nice hospital? The University of Texas Southwestern Hospital, at over 1.3 million square feet and 532 beds, cost $800 million to build. Parkland Memorial, Dallas County's public hospital, at around 2 million square feet with 862 beds, cost $1.3 billion to build. That was in 2017.

University of Texas Southwestern Hospital

Yes. We are all well aware that Hamas keeps this money from the people. We are aware that Hamas offers you incentives to make war on civilian Israel, while starving your families and keeping them in subhuman conditions. But you voted for Hamas in democratic elections. And you are sleeping in the bed you made.

That’s not on us.

We gave you land. We gave you autonomy. We gave you money. We gave you greenhouses.

These are the high-tech greenhouses Israeli settlers built in Gaza, that provided employment for thousands of Palestinians and produced an array of fruits and vegetables in the midst of a barren desert. Rich westerners (including Bill Gates) bought and gave them to the Palestinian Authority when Israel withdrew from Gaza. (photo and caption credit: Tom Gross)

These are how the greenhouses looked a few weeks later, after Palestinians looted and burned them. (photo and caption credit: Tom Gross)

In October 2006, Israeli troops temporarily went back into Gaza in an attempt to stop continuing Palestinian rocket fire on Israeli towns and villages. The Israeli army found that the greenhouses were now being used to build arms-smuggling tunnels. (photo and caption credit: Tom Gross)

But instead of making something of yourselves: making good, and caring for your own, your hate drives you only toward your own self-destruction.

The money will continue to dry up, and as it does, you might take a minute to rethink this whole thing. Build a hospital or two, try to stand on your own two feet.

But we know you won’t. Because you really don’t care if your people live or die.

As long as you can continue to make war against the Jews.

(Thanks to Dov Epstein for assisting in the research for this piece.)

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IDF Causing Palestinian Heart Attacks As Pretext To Give Care, Boost Image (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

: Credit: Medical Corps

Gush Etzion Crossing, February 6 - Israeli soldiers instigate cardiac arrest in vulnerable Palestinians for purposes of treating them and looking good as a result, human rights groups allege in a new report.

Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontièrs, Human Rights Watch, Btselem, and several smaller organizations charge that the IDF not only sees the emergency medical treatment it provides to Palestinians as a public relations opportunity; they allege that it actively foments medical events with the aim of creating publicity for the treatment. The means by which the IDF remotely generates heart attacks, seizures, and other emergencies were not mentioned in the report.

A spokesman for Amnesty told reporters that activists from numerous human rights organizations had monitored interactions between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians, and discovered that in nearly all cases in which a Palestinian required medical attention that did not result from a violent encounter, IDF medics hurried to provide that care. "Obviously that could not be an altruistic act, since this is Israel we're talking about," explained Raul Panim. "But it occurs far too often to be coincidental, and we came to the conclusion that Israel must be engineering these events somehow to help counter the prevailing image of them as sadistic, inhuman, uniquely evil occupiers, an image we are proud to note we payed a large role in creating."

"Of course Amnesty couldn't have done this alone," he continued. "Not just because there are numerous locations where the interactions take place, but also because we've been allocating our limited manpower of late to getting TripAdvisor not to carry Jewish homes in the ancestral Jewish homeland. Because of human rights. Anyway, because we've been devoting most of our recent attention to other aspects of this uniquely evil occupation, Amnesty hasn't had the time to take on this monitoring project itself, and we're happy to collaborate with our partners on it."

The groups plan a follow-up research project to determine the means by which Israel causes the heart attacks and other medical events. "Figuring out that aspect of this conspiracy is beyond our capabilities," conceded Médecins Sans Frontièrs activist Faith Heeler. "Very few of us are involved in actual medical research. So we're going to have to partner with other organizations who are willing to manage that side of things. Fortunately, we've already lined up some enthusiastic partners such as Dr. David Duke, Dr. David Irving, and Dr. Josef Göbbels."

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02/06 Links Pt1: Senate Passes Anti-BDS Measure by 77-23; Marco Rubio: The Truth About B.D.S. and the Lies About My Bill; WH Official: No Need for Equivalency between Israelis and Palestinians

From Ian:

Marco Rubio (NYTs): The Truth About B.D.S. and the Lies About My Bill

A bipartisan supermajority in the Senate passed the Combating BDS Act on Tuesday. Yet a few of my colleagues recently echoed false claims made by anti-Israel activists and others that the bill violates Americans' First Amendment rights.

That line of argument is not only wrong but also provides cover for supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, who embrace an international campaign of discriminatory economic warfare against Israel, a fellow democracy and America's strongest ally in the Middle East.

In a high-profile case in 2014, the BDS movement drove the Israeli company SodaStream from the West Bank. Five hundred Palestinian employees were left jobless by the move.

The Combating BDS Act does not prohibit Americans' right to engage in boycotts. It focuses on business entities - not individuals - and, consistent with the Supreme Court, it focuses on conduct, not speech. It does not restrict citizens or associations of citizens from engaging in political speech, including against Israel.

Rather, the bill merely clarifies that entities - such as corporations or companies - have no fundamental right to government contracts and government investment.

"Anti-discrimination restrictions on government contractors are commonplace and a normal requirement for government funding," Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at George Mason University, notes.

Senate Passes Anti-BDS Measure by 77-23

The U.S. Senate approved in a 77-23 vote a bill that codifies $38 billion in defense assistance to Israel and which provides legal cover to states that target the boycott Israel movement.

The bill, sponsored by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., had stirred controversy because a number of Democratic senators said that while they oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, they were also concerned that state laws aimed at BDS impinged on speech freedoms.

Among the Democratic dissenters were declared presidential candidates like Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California. Non-declared but likely presidential contenders who voted included Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sherrod Brown of Ohio who voted against; and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota who voted for. The sole Republican voting against was Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Rubio, writing Wednesday in The New York Times, defended the bill against charges that it would violate free speech. Democrats supporting the anti-BDS component included Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

The bill now goes to the U.S. House of Representatives where the Democratic majority will break it up into its components, and its leadership is likely to bury the anti-BDS section while advancing the other components.

In addition to the money for Israel and the proposed anti-BDS laws, the bill intensifies sanctions on Syria’s Assad government and reinforces ties with Jordan.

David Singer: Hamas and PFLP Embroil USA and EU in Plans to Destroy Israel

A look at just one organisation – Al-Haq – headquartered in Ramallah and operating in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), the Netherlands, France, and Northern Europe – indicates the modus operandi that similarly exist in the others.

Al-Haq (established in 1979):

Has Governmental Sponsors: European Union, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Ireland

Received Grants from Governmental Sources, 2014-2018: Over $3 million

Published with a group of French NGOs a report in March 2017 entitled “The Dangerous Liaisons of French Banks with the Israeli Colonization”.

Leads the legal effort to delegitimize Israel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague

Shawan Jabarin, General Director of Al-Haq since 2006, served as a senior PFLP official in the past and at least until recently maintained close ties with PFLP operatives in Judea and Samaria. Jabarin was tried and convicted for his military activity in the PFLP and has served multiple prison sentences.
Jabarin was described in a 2007 Israeli Supreme Court case by the presiding judge as:
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Some of his time is spent in conducting a human rights organization, and some as an operative in an organization which has no qualms regarding murder and attempted murder, which have no relation whatsoever to rights. Quite the opposite, they reject the most basic right of all, without which there are no other rights, that is, the right to life.”

Three other PFLP members arrested by Israel are also identified as working or having worked for Al-Haq: Ziyad Hmeidan, Zahi Jaradat and Majed Abbadi.

European and American funding of these organisations should be banned, their offices in the USA and EU closed – and those identified as Hamas and PFLP members deported.

Terrorists in suits denigrating and delegitimising Israel in slick racist and ongoing deceptive public relations campaigns of lies and half-truths – can be just as dangerous as terrorists armed to the teeth.

The EU and America must stop being played for suckers by these Jew-hating organisations.

Back in 2013, the Israel Foreign Ministry launched a Twitter account, @IsraelintheGCC, to speak directly with the Arabs of states in the Gulf Cooperation Council, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain.

It fizzled out in 2014 with very few posts, all of which were in English.

Now it has been relaunched, in Arabic. Ofir Gendelman, the spokesperson to Arab media for Israel, announced on his Twitter "To our dear Gulf followers, follow this account, which is intended for you to broaden the dialogue between us and you."

One of the first posts shows a video of Israeli innovations narrated by an Arabic speaker.

إبتكارات إسرائيلية تجعل حياتنا أفضل

هل تعلم أن إسرائيليين اخترعوا جهازًا يحول الهواء إلى ماء وتكنولوجيا تمكن السيارات من القيادة بشكل ذاتي؟ فيما يلي معلومات عن ابتكارات إسرائيلية قد تجعل حياتنا أفضل. pic.twitter.com/gsLdCw2Ezu
— إسرائيل في الخليج (@IsraelintheGCC) February 5, 2019

Most of the responses are typical of the Arab responses to any Israeli initiative in Arabic - cursing Israel. But as you scroll down there are a significant number of Arabs who are fans of Israel, who support peace and who see positive possibilities in normalizing relations with Israel.

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.

Palestinians were leaders in "stochastic terrorism" before the term was invented

The current Wired magazine has a "Jargon Watch" article about a hot phrase, "Stochastic Terrorism:"

In 2011, after the shooting of US representative Gabby Giffords, a Daily Kos blog warned of a new threat the writer called stochastic terrorism: the use of mass media to incite attacks by random nut jobs—acts that are “statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.”

The term is in Dictionary.com and other reference works online.

As is often the case with all forms of terrorism, like suicide bombing and airplane hijackings, Palestinians are the innovators of this type of terrorism.

During the Oslo process in the 1990s, Israel insisted on a committee to monitor Palestinian media for incitement to terror, for precisely this reason - people could perform attacks or join terror groups based on what they read in their media.

The "lone wolf" attacks against Israeli Jews have ramped up in recent years, notably the "knife intifada" that started in 2015 with a wave of "random" stabbings and car rammings that were done by individuals. But the wave started shortly after Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech where he said, “Al-Aqsa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We won’t allow them to do so and we will do whatever we can to defend Jerusalem.”

This was a call to violence where Abbas could claim that he was not directly inciting. But the effects could be predicted. And sure enough, the attacks came.

Similarly, a wave of violence in 2017 after Israel installed metal detectors around the Temple Mount in response to another terror attack was prompted by media coverage of the defensive measures.

Israel has been working hard to try to predict the unpredictable, by monitoring social media posts that often can indicate that a person is preparing an attack. The entire reason that they have to do this is because Palestinians are the world leaders in stochastic terrorism.

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.

Arabs upset: New President of El Salvador, of Palestinian descent, is a fan of Israel

The National reports:

Cast aside from El Salvador’s ruling party, a businessman, former mayor and figure of Palestinian descent surged to a decisive victory by carving an uncustomary path to the top.

Nayib Bukele, a 37-year-old who was dubbed the “millennial mayor” of San Salvador, won around 54 per cent in the election to secure the presidency of this small Central American nation, representing the right-wing party known as Grand Alliance for National Unity. That was after being expelled from the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front party and then prevented from forming his own party.

His victory was not only notable in that he became the first ruler to end a two-party system that had presided over the country since the end of its civil war in 1992, but he became its second-ever leader of Palestinian descent after Tony Sacca, who led from 2004 to 2009.

Around 100,000 Salvadorans with Palestinian ancestry live in the country out of a population of 6.5 million, ranking it as the second highest population of Palestinian descendants in Central America behind Honduras.

The former mayor traces his Palestinians roots to the early 20th century, when many left the cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem to find a new home in El Salvador. Some left for a better life while others were escaping from conscription under Ottoman rule at the time.

Palestinian joy at this victory has been short-lived. Because a year ago. Bukele, as mayor, visited Israel.

He was honored by Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat. (He also met with the mayor of Tel Aviv.)

He laid a wreath at Yad Vashem:

And he visited the Kotel:

An analyst in El Salvador praised Bukele at the time, saying that while the government and leading parties at the time were visiting Venezuela and Cuba, Bukele wanted to visit Israel where the Jews made the desert bloom, where Israelis can teach El Salvador how to farm more efficiently and a much better partner for the future.

Palestinians were upset at Bukele's visit at the time, and they are not celebrating his election now. Al Araby is typical in saying that by this visit "denies the suffering of his ancestors." Video of his visit to Israel is being shared on social network sites.

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.

02/05 Links Pt2: Why has HRW become an anti-Israel activist group?; Why Democrats embrace antisemitism and anti-Israel bias; How the BDS movement is poisoning academic discourse

From Ian:

Could Jewish and Zionist Leaders Have Done More to Rescue the Jews of Poland?

In the view of Philip Roth’s narrator in The Plot Against America—a fictional account of how fascism might have come to the United States in 1940—history as schoolchildren study it is the story “turned wrong way around”: a tale told after the fact, with “everything . . . chronicled on the page as inevitable.” By contrast, the narrator asserts, history experienced in real time is a story of the “relentless unforeseen.”

Historians have a term—“hindsight history”—for accounts that ignore the daunting uncertainties and moral dilemmas presented by history as it actually unfolds. That is precisely what Jehuda Reinharz and Yaacov Shavit set themselves against in their important and provocative book The Road to September 1939: Polish Jews, Zionists, and the Yishuv on the Eve of World War II (2018). Bringing us right up to the edge of the destruction of European and particularly of Polish Jewry, they seek to recover the story of the “relentless unforeseen.” As they put it in the book’s preface:

We do not intend to describe the events by reading history backward. We have tried not to read the story from its endpoint, but rather to tell it as much as possible in the “present.” Before August 1939, as well as during that month, no one really knew what was in store. It is only a retrospective reading that determines that the events moved inexorably toward an unequaled calamity and that it was impossible to halt their course.

The authors are themselves distinguished historians. Reinharz has to his credit a magisterial two-volume biography of the great Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, a major figure in the events narrated here, and Shavit is a longtime scholar of another major figure of the time, Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, and of Jabotinsky’s Poland-centered Revisionist Zionist movement. With an important exception to be discussed below, the two authors succeed admirably at their task. Theirs is an extraordinary account of a horrific time, told mostly through the letters, diaries, and recorded thoughts of those who lived through it.

Moreover, in telling this tale of uncertainty, the authors shed light on a key question that has troubled—and still troubles—countless minds: could Jewish and Zionist leaders have done more than they did to rescue the Jews of Poland?

Why has Human Rights Watch become an anti-Israel activist group?

Jabarin denies his PFLP connections while he continues to assail Israel through his NGO, which has called for a European boycott on Jewish goods from the West Bank and a French financial boycott of Israel. Jabarin submitted several reports to the International Criminal Court as part of an anti-Israel lawfare campaign, and he was instrumental in the recent push in Ireland to criminalize business transactions with Jewish businesses in the West Bank.

Jabarin is not al-Haq’s only contribution to HRW. A former legal researcher with al-Haq, Anan AbuShanab, is currently HRW’s West Bank researcher. There is also Charles Shamas, a co-founder of al-Haq, who has been an HRW adviser since at least 2002. Shamas also founded the MATTIN Group, which lobbied Europe to exclude Israeli products from free trade agreements.

HRW has since joined several other controversial BDS campaigns. This includes the malicious 2015 effort to lobby the U.N. to blacklist Israel as an abuser of children in armed conflict. In 2016, the group unsuccessfully petitioned the world soccer federation FIFA to block matches in Israeli settlements.

In January 2016, HRW published “ Occupation, Inc.,” a report claiming Israeli businesses in the West Bank contribute to Palestinian human rights violations. The U.N. Human Rights Council, the group former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley blasted as a “cesspool of political bias,” soon called for a blacklist of companies operating in Israeli settlements, in line with HRW’s vision. HRW brass cheered the move and even recommended three companies to blacklist for good measure.

In October 2016, HRW hired BDS advocate Omar Shakir as its new Israel-Palestine director. In 2017 and 2018, HRW began pressuring banks to cease operations in Israeli settlements. It was also around this time that HRW began lobbying Airbnb and Booking.com to delist Jewish properties in the West Bank. When Airbnb relented in November, Arvind Ganesan, business and human Rights director at HRW, crowed, “Airbnb has taken a stand against discrimination, displacement, and land theft.”

While HRW may do serious work on other issues, it is now an activist group aligned with a vitriolic movement. The connection to al-Haq may explain some of this. But it’s unclear why HRW’s leadership, beginning with Executive Director Kenneth Roth, allowed an otherwise mainstream group to become a ringleader for BDS.

Did WCC Activists Attend A Birthday Party Promoted by Palestinian Extremist Organization?

This is why it is so troubling that WCC and EAPPI officials have not responded to queries posted on Twitter regarding the party. The question is a pretty simple one: Did EAPPI activists attend a propagandistic birthday party promoted by Palestinian Human Rights Defenders, an anti-normalization organization that seeks to drive Jews from their homes in Hebron?

If the answer is no, great!

If the answer is yes, well, then the WCC owes Israel and its citizens an apology for allowing its peace activists to affiliate with people who promote hatred and hostility toward Jews in the Holy Land in clear contradiction of the organization’s stated opposition to antisemitism and violence.

This would not be the first time EAPPI activists have associated with promoters of hatred in the West Bank. They made regular visits to Hasan Breijieh, coordinator for the Committee Against the Wall and spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in the 1990s.

Watch this video here to see Breijieh being accompanied by two EAPPI activists as he harasses Jews outside their homes — on shabbat no less — in the West Bank. He's also written a poem that looks forward to the murder of Jews living in the West Bank.