Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 19, 2019

08/19 Links Pt1: Mordechai Kedar: Israel is the sole sovereign of the Temple Mount; Jpost Editorial: No need for UNRWA; Dvir was murdered and it had nothing to do with the ‘occupation’

From Ian:

Dr. Mordechai Kedar: Israel is the sole sovereign of the Temple Mount

If I were Israel's ambassador to Jordan, and I were called in for a dressing down over Israel's actions on the Temple Mount and over Israelis ascending the site to mourn the destruction of the First and Second temples on the annual Jewish fasting day of Tisha B'Av, I would remind the official doing the dressing down that we Jews worshipped the one God at the temple that was located at the site over 3,000 years ago. Islam is only 1,409 years old.

I would remind the official that in classical Arabic, Jerusalem is referred to as Bayt al-Maqdis, meaning "temple," and that this is further proof of the falsehood that prevails today among the people of the region, according to which a temple never existed on the site.

I would present to Amman's envoy official Jordanian maps drawn prior to 1967, which have the words Mount Moriah written on the site of the Temple Mount, to its southeast the words Solomon's Stables, its south, the Valley of Josaphat, to the east of the mount, the Tomb of Zechariah and the Tomb of Absalom are listed, and to its west, Mount Zion. I would show the official these maps, and then I would note the following Arabic proverb: "A liar needs a good memory."

I would remind the official that while his country's 1994 peace agreement with Israel afforded the Hashemite Kingdom special status on the Temple Mount, Amman was not made sovereign of the site, because the sole sovereign of the site is Israel.

Jpost Editorial: No need for UNRWA

UNRWA – which employs more than 30,000 workers – has no motivation to end the “refugee crisis.” And since UNRWA’s mandate to resettle the Palestinian refugees was rescinded in 1965 without a serious reform, the numbers will keep on growing, to be used as a political tool against Israel.

The PA has reason to be concerned about UNRWA’s future, but it plays a double game, and it is time it is called out. On the one hand, the PA claims to represent the State of Palestine (which has observer-state status in the UN. and is recognized by more than 135 UN members), yet on the other hand it protests that the Palestinians continue to be refugees.

Alongside the status of perpetual refugeehood, UNRWA also perpetuates a culture of entitlement. Instead of fostering self-sufficiency, it is undermining the Palestinians it professes to care for. And that is without relating to the hate-filled nature of the education being received by Palestinian children, which deprives both the Palestinians and Israelis of hope for peace in the future.

UNRWA needs to be drastically reformed, with the aim of later closing it down and moving responsibility for the relatively small number of genuine refugees to the auspices of the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees. The Palestinians themselves would be the first to benefit from UNRWA being revamped. UNRWA has done nothing to build a sustainable, peaceful Palestinian state. On the contrary. The report containing allegations of serious flaws could be the wake-up call the UN needs to reexamine UNRWA’s status. It’s time for the absurdity to end.

In Argentina, France, and Elsewhere in Europe, Attacks on Jews Are Judged by a Separate Yardstick

Indeed, a good two years before the Rue des Rosiers attack, following another terrorist outrage against a Jewish institution in Paris, Raymond Barre, then prime minister, acknowledged this reality. On October 3, 1980, a powerful bomb exploded near the entrance of the Reform synagogue on the Rue Copernic, wounding nearly 50 people and killing four: specifically, three Frenchmen and a young woman who turned out to be an Israeli tourist.

Interviewed on French television after the attack, which was blamed on far-right extremists but was more probably the work of Palestinians, Barre committed what those of a more generous disposition might describe as an unfortunate slip of the tongue. “This odious bombing,” he said, “was aimed at striking Jews who were going to the synagogue, and it hit innocent French people who were crossing the Rue Copernic.”

However distasteful, Barre’s remark was inadvertently enlightening. When Jews are in the crosshairs, an act of terrorism that might otherwise generate appalled outrage and swift police work could be rationalized if not excused. Some such thinking has left an indelible mark on governmental, judicial, and law-enforcement responses to anti-Semitic terror both in France and elsewhere in Europe. If it can be boiled down to a single principle, it is this: when it comes to the victims of Islamist-inspired terrorism, Diaspora Jews are innocent, but not as innocent as others.

Today, as then, terrorists can (and do) make the same calculation. Over the last decade in France, eight Jews have been killed by Islamist terrorists, three of them small children gunned down at a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012. This has occurred amidst an atmosphere of rising anti-Semitism in the country and, with it, a broader tolerance of extreme violence directed at Jews.

Of course, terrorists have struck at many more general targets in France during the same time period, but these are seen by politicians and the media unambiguously as attacks on France itself, and not “merely” as attacks on Jews who happen to be living in France. This practical distinction between Jew and non-Jew, which has licensed bloodshed in the past, will no doubt do so again.

Media portraying Gaza terrorists as victims

The photos accompanying many of the news stories of Israel neutralizing three heavily armed terrorists at the Gaza border show nothing but sympathy for the terrorists.

Relatives of the terrorists are shown as mourning their deaths in at least three major news sources:

France24:

Reuters:

VOANews:

Photos are often more important than the text of a story. The causal browser of news sees mourners and assumes that the relatives who died were unjustly killed.

The headlines from VOANews and France24 don't help matters - they imply that Israel just randomly killed Palestinians.

All of these photos were taken by Mohammed Salem at Reuters. The scenes look posed and contrived to me.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

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Here are six basic facts about Israelis, and one about Palestinians, that are hardly mentioned in the media or universities. That refusal to report on the truth causes a major gap in Western understanding of the conflict.

Israelis desperately want peace and to be accepted as a normal nation in the Middle East. This is an understatement. Israelis have made serious sacrifices for peace with Egypt and with the Palestinians. But their yearning for peace is not at the expense of the security of Israelis. Security of the citizens is the overarching desire of every conceivable Israeli government, and is more important than any peace plan that does not fully guarantee security.

No one in Israel wants to rule over Palestinians. As much as is possible, Israel has tried to avoid that - by withdrawing from Gaza and allowing Palestinian autonomy in Area A and to some extent Area B. But the alternative of fully withdrawing from the territories is generally considered to be worse. Gaza shows the worst case scenario of unilateral withdrawal.

Almost no one in Israel wants to go to the 1967 lines. It is obvious that the human cost of doing that is unacceptable. Pretty much everyone agrees that some territories will always remain under Israeli rule, perhaps with land swaps. Framing the question as whether Israelis are "against the occupation" or "for the occupation" is deceptive, since the vast majority are against fully controlling 100% of the territories and a vast majority are also against dismantling the homes of half a million people. Spinning either position as "pro" or "anti"-occupation is simply not to report the truth.

Israelis deserve human rights as much as Palestinians do. Israel wants to provide as many human rights for Palestinians as possible without compromising on the security of Israeli citizens, who also deserve human rights. The line between the two is in flux. When threats are reduced, restrictions are (or should be) reduced as well. All of Israel's security measures that upset people (like the separation barrier) have been put in place to save lives. "Human rights" advocates who ignore Israeli lives are not interested in human rights.

Racism exists in Israel, but it is no worse than the racism in other Western countries. Arguably Israel is far more tolerant than most Western nations towards Muslims. The Palestinian issue is not a race issue at all from Israel's perspective - it is a security issue.

Israel can do better. Israelis admit that. In general, it strives to do better, even in the face of vicious world opinion. Even when no one will notice. Western armies study Israeli methods of warfare while minimizing casualties of civilians/human shields because they are so good at it, but no one is perfect. No one in Israel wants innocent Arabs to die.

Palestinians have had 25 years since Oslo to teach their children peace, but they have done the exact opposite. Violence has been reduced not for any moral reason but because terror is seen as counterproductive at this time. Palestinians still teach their people that violence is a legitimate, moral option, and that terrorists are heroes.

People who ignore these facts are not interested in peace. People who say that Israel must make all the concessions are not serious about peace.

People who ascribe the lack of peace to a lack of will on the part of Israelis for peace are pretty much accusing Jews of being evil. Calling Israelis "Nazis," calling Zionism "racism" or accusing Israel of "apartheid" are not serious arguments, and people who insist on those designations are only interested in demonizing the Jewish state. They are either antisemites or hopelessly deluded.

But if the West would report on these basic facts, then the number of people who are susceptible to the antisemitic arguments would fall dramatically.

Everything I am writing here is obvious to all Israelis, Zionists and to anyone who has spent any time in or seriously researching Israel. But practically everything I'm writing here is generally not mentioned in Western media reports on Israel or in textbooks.

That gap between the truth and what is being reported is a major impediment to peace.

The real story is not hard to uncover. But the fact that it is so hard for an average Westerner to understand these seven points based only on the materials easily available is a scandal.

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Before the Hebron massacre: The Palestine Bulletin on August 19, 1929

The Palestine Bulletin described the events concerning the disturbances around the Kotel in Jerusalem that led to the 1929 pogroms in Hebron and elsewhere.

Here is a summary published on August 20, 1929, of the events so far up until the 19th:

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Jordanian article compares Jews to the devil, says Hajj ritual means Jews must be wiped out from Israel

Here's yet another example of egregious antisemitism in a mainstream Jordanian news site.

Rachid Hassan writes in Ad Dustour:

One of the greatest rituals of Hajj - and all of them are great blessed rituals - are the sacrificial rituals and throwing stones.
...
The rite of stoning the devil is a call to Muslims at all times and places and even this hour....The devil is today the Zionist enemy who occupies the land and desecrates holy sites, and appropriates Al Aqsa, and practices the dirtiest kinds of debauchery and immorality in the areas of the first Qiblah, the second of the two mosques and the third holiest shrine...

The stoning of Satan is an invitation to Muslims, wherever they may be, to support Jerusalem, to crawl to Al Aqsa, to cleanse it of the abomination of the enemy, and to purify all Palestine from the barbarity of the Jews who filled the land with injustice, and to cleanse this land.

The stoning of Satan must be translated into daily action, practiced by Arabs and Muslims, especially the Palestinian people, in confronting the Zionist enemy. The Great Satan, and its ally Washington, which supports this devil, and unleashes its madness to destroy the sanctities and the disenfranchised, and shed blood ..

He is saying that it is an Islamic obligation to kill all Israeli Jews as symbolized by the Hajj ceremony to stone the devil.

As usual, there is no negative reaction in Arab media on blatant antisemitism and calls to ethnically cleanse Jews from the Middle East.This is the sort of Jew-hatred that Arabs are taught from childhood.

And it is not only tolerated but supported by Western leftists.

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08/18 Links: Dems and Jewish Groups pick wrong side on Omar-Tlaib; IDF kills three armed terrorists attempting to infiltrate Israel; PMW: PA lies, but video tells the truth

From Ian:

Dems and Jewish Groups pick wrong side on Omar-Tlaib

Who can forget the embarrassing vote to reinstate language recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital at the 2012 Democratic National Convention? Convention chairman Antonio Villaraigosa had to call a voice vote three times before declaring it for the "Ayes." Anyone who heard the catcalls knows it was at best a tie, nowhere near the two-thirds votes required to make the change.

Some congressional Democrats are trying to fight the anti-Israel forces typified by Omar and Tlaib. The 41 Democrats who visited Israel this month is an example. Democrats on July 23 overwhelmingly supported a resolution which said BDS "promotes principles of collective guilt, mass punishment and group isolation, which are destructive of prospects for progress towards peace."

But Democrats have been afraid to take Omar and Tlaib head-on. Not only are they scared of their base, they’re fearful of antagonizing American Muslims, a voting bloc they have begun to woo. That is why their effort in May to pass a resolution condemning anti-Semitism, again sparked in reaction to Omar, was rewritten and watered down so as to be meaningless.

If American-Jewish organizations wish to help Israel, they’d encourage Democrats to go further in their efforts to push back against Omar-Tlaib. AIPAC, the ADL, the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and all the others who see their job as defending Jewish interests should be encouraging Democrats to isolate this hateful duo and cut them off from the rest of the party.

Instead, they’ve strengthened Omar and Tlaib by giving moral backing to the position that these two should have been admitted to Israel regardless of their agenda, that it was Israel that was in the wrong. But Israel was right. It acted sensibly, stopping a propaganda-fest from being carried out on its home turf.

The House vote condemning BDS was 398-to-17. Five voted present. Two of the nays were Omar and Tlaib. This is a fight U.S. Jewish groups can win. Once they stop putting the ball in their own net.

JPost Editorial: Confronting Democrats

The decision to bar Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from entering Israel is a story that combines political interests in Washington and Jerusalem, the BDS movement, the future of bipartisan support for Israel in the United States and much more.

On the one hand, it is a decision that has the potential to create irreparable damage to Israel. Still today, members of the Democratic Party recall Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “insult” – as they call it – to President Barack Obama when he spoke before Congress in 2015 against the Iran deal. Many refer to that moment in time as the breaking point in ties between the party and the Jewish state.

The decision not to let Omar and Tlaib into Israel – on Friday the government agreed to let Tlaib cross into the West Bank to visit her grandmother but she has decided not to – could be remembered as another moment like the 2015 speech.

By reversing an earlier decision to let the congresswomen in, Israel – in one fell swoop – aligned the entire Democratic Party behind its two most radical and extreme members. It essentially gave Tlaib and Omar a gift they could not have imagined – propelling them to a status that even the mighty country of Israel is afraid of what they would do if allowed inside its borders.

Republicans: 'Attention-grabbers' will not hijack bipartisan goodwill from Israel trip

The decision by Israel to bar Reps. Rashid Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) due to their support for the anti-Israel BDS movement has generated international deadlines while at the same time sparking further partisan divide and debate. The controversy over the congresswomen, however, comes shortly after of a visit to Israel by 72 fellow members of the US House of Representatives that seemed to highlight rare public goodwill between Democrats and Republicans, as well as the broad bipartisan support that Israel still enjoys among lawmakers.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said “all members should visit Israel if they come with open minds, open eyes and open ears – ready to hear all sides.”

He told JNS that “coming to Israel and seeing it for themselves transforms every member from simply believing that the United States should support Israel to feeling the strong bond the United States has with Israel.”

McCarthy led the Republican contingent of a visit to Israel that wrapped up this week, sponsored by the American Israeli Education Foundation (AIEF), a division of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Both Omar and Tlaib rejected the AIEF-sponsored tour.

Despite their known hostility towards the Jewish state, Israel initially permitted Omar and Tlaib to visit the country “out of respect for Congress.” However, after it emerged that the two congresswomen’s visit would be one-sided and include only meeting with BDS groups, some with ties to terrorist organizations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reversed course.

“[T]he itinerary of the two Congresswomen reveals that the sole purpose of their visit is to harm Israel and increase incitement against it,” he said in a statement.

Too crazy for satire. From Tehran TImes:

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah secretary general of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement gave a televised speech on Friday on the 13th anniversary of the “Grand Victory” during the ‘Israeli’ 33-day July 2006 war on Lebanon.

Over the speech, Nasrallah said “if Israelis intrudes into Lebanon, all their war tanks will be destroyed. In the past, Israel wanted to destroy Hezbollah movement, but today, the movement has turned into a major power in the region.”

Nasrallah told Zionists, “I warn you not to come to Lebanon, if you start a war with Lebanon, everybody will eventually see your final annihilation in a live televised broadcast. The 33-day war revealed the real face of the Zionist regime. Today, the Israelis have lost their confidence that they will be able to defeat Lebanon.”

Nasrallah added that Hezbollah movement has always been after peace and stability in the region, and today “Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) are the ones who want to wage war in the region.”

Anyway, the most important part of Nasrallah speech was about the power of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the foreign threats against it.

“Now that American officials have retreated from their previous threats about attacking Iran, we are on the verge of making a historic achievement. Any war against Iran will burn the whole region into pieces; attacking Iran, as a member of resistance, means attacking all members of resistance.”

With these statements, Nasrallah gave very serious warnings to the enemies of resistance, including the United States, Saudi Arabia and UAE who are constantly trying to cause tensions and start wars in the region.

Nasrallah threatened that if the enemies pose any danger to Iran, other members of resistance, including Hezbollah will not remain silent; rather, they will support Iran and target the intruders.

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I initially thought that Rashida Tlaib only wrote her letter asking to visit her grandmother with the proviso of not promoting boycotting Israel with the expectation that Israel would refuse, thereby making her into a martyr of sorts.

But since then news articles indicate that Tlaib buckled under pressure from extremists who hated the idea of her visiting the West Bank without a political agenda.

The New York Times reported "A storm of Palestinian criticism on social media denounced Ms. Tlaib for selling out the cause in exchange for a glimpse of her grandmother, and a few hours after gaining Israeli approval, she announced that she would not come after all."

Outrageously, the story has since been changed and this section is no longer in the story (the original story is archived here.)

Khaled Abu Toameh in the Jerusalem Post also notes the initial negative reaction to Tlaib's decision to go, and her about-face:

Some Palestinians criticized Tlaib (D-Michigan) for writing a letter to Interior Minister Arye Deri requesting permission to visit her relatives in the village of Beit Ur al-Fauqa, west of Ramallah.

Tlaib’s letter drew criticism from several Palestinians, who took to social media to express their opposition to the congresswoman’s request to visit her relatives in accordance with Israeli preconditions.

Her critics did not like Tlaib’s pledge not to promote boycotts against Israel and called on her to reject Israeli preconditions. “Why didn’t she ask her grandmother for her opinion about the Israeli preconditions?” asked one Palestinian on Facebook. “Her grandmother would have surely said no.”

The uproar apparently prompted Tlaib to backtrack, saying she will not allow the Israeli government to humiliate her.

The Washington Post also noted the reactions of Palestinians to the news that Tlaib might quietly visit:

For many Palestinians, the fact that Tlaib accepted these terms was itself an affront, a humiliating compromise in which she was made to forgo her opinions to see her loved ones.

“Israel is the oppressor and its racist attitude towards Palestinians is established policy,” Nour Odeh, a Palestinian journalist, wrote on Twitter. “Rashida should have known better. She should have acted with more dignity & pride.”

NPR reports this as well.

It seems that Tlaib really did want to see her grandmother, but she did not have the conviction to stand up to her critics from even further left. She sacrificed visiting her "sitty" to avoid unpleasantness from a few Palestinian extremists.

Tlaib likes to present herself as a champion for leftist causes, as someone who stands up to pressure. But when the pressure comes from her own side, she is gutless. Her justification for her about-face is pure politics, and her own grandmother is paying the price for her cowardice.

This is a perfect example of how leftist politics works nowadays. Even far-left politicians cannot deal with criticism from their own left. They will conform to the desires of even a fringe on social media so as not to be outflanked. This is how the Democratic presidential candidate debates have turned into an exercise on who can appear the most "progressive" and even the most outrageous ideas are accepted by most candidates in fear of being criticized by the fringe.

Speaking truth to power means standing up not only to your political opponents but also to your political allies. That attribute is woefully rare in American politics nowadays, on both sides of the political spectrum.

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Al Qaws is a gay rights group that is supposedly based in the Palestinian territories but that in fact stages all its events in Israel, where they are allowed to hold events without objection.

They just reportedly tried to set up a gathering in Nablus.

The Palestinian police said that they will not allow any such events, ever.

Police spokesperson Colonel Louay Arzaiqat wrote on his Facebook account that any such activities are "considered a blow to the ideals and values of the Palestinian society that our people have maintained throughout history."

Arzaiqat stressed that there are "suspicious parties trying to create sedition and prejudice the civil peace of the Palestinian society."

He said that the police will arrest and work to prosecute those in charge any gathering by Al Qaws in Nablus.

He called on citizens to report any person who they suspect is trying to create a pro-gay event in Palestinian Authority administered areas.

Al Qaws responded, "The Palestinian police statement on the prevention of Al Qaws activities in the West Bank is very unfortunate...Al-Qaws is a Palestinian organization that has been operating since 2001 in all parts of Occupied Palestine (in areas occupied in 1948 and 1967) and is doing educational and professional programs on sexual and gender pluralism with dozens of Palestinian civil society organizations. ... The police, as well as all authorities, must focus on and work to address the occupation and other forms of violence that undermine the values and sensitive fabric of our society, rather than pursuing our activists...".

I don't think Rashida Tlaib or Ilhan Omar, those leftist darlings, will ever denounce the anti-gay stance of Palestinian officials. At best, if confronted, they will blame Israel, just like Al Qaws itself does.

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.@Miftah_org and @DrHananAshrawi refuse to condemn antisemitic and terror supporting articles

Miftah is Hanan Ashrawi's organization that I have exposed in a series of articles between 2013 and 2016 as having published a blood libel, having consistently supported terrorism and praised terrorists, having published a neo-Nazi screed against Jews that is not about Israel at all, directly attacking Judaism, and for being against any kind of peace-building initiatives between Israel and the Arab world.

In the wake of Miftah's intention to sponsor Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar's trip to Israel, its history of antisemitism and support for terror is now being reported in the media.

This caused Miftah to issue a statement that screeches as if it is the victim, ignoring every single example of outrageous posts except the one it belatedly apologized for in 2013:

It has come to the attention of the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, MIFTAH, that it is being targeted by extreme pro-Israeli hasbara groups and individuals who are propagating unfounded accusations and fabrications. We strongly condemn and reject these libelous allegations, which are nothing short of contemptible, against an organization that has been dedicated to global dialogue, good governance and democracy in Palestine for over 20 years. The example used as “evidence” of what is being called MIFTAH’s support for anti-Semitism was the result of a misstep by a junior staffer who inadvertently posted an outside article in Arabic on the organization’s website back in 2013 without having it reviewed. Once MIFTAH’s senior management became aware of the offensive article, they immediately removed it and issued an apology despite the fact that a disclaimer on its website clearly states that articles posted from other sources do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the organization. Nonetheless, a widespread smear campaign instigated and obsessively pursued by vicious hate-filled groups continued against MIFTAH and its founders. This hackneyed campaign is now being rehashed in an orchestrated manner with clear malicious intent.

MIFTAH is and has always been a respected organization both in Palestine and abroad and is known for its contributions to good governance, the empowerment of women and youth, to maintaining open, inclusive and democratic dialogue and to the exchange of ideas. We will not tolerate any attempts at the misrepresentation and defamation of MIFTAH’s good name.

Nothing is being misrepresented. Everything I have reported and is now being noticed is fully documented - and many of the posts are still on their site, today, including posts with fabricated quotes from Israeli leaders.

So, Miftah, if you want to defend your neo-Nazi post or your praise for terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi, at least have the guts to defend them and not to pretend that these accusations aren't true. And if you are going to call me and others liars for posting your own articles, it just proves that you are the liars.

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08/17 Links: IDF strikes Hamas targets in Gaza in response to rocket attack; Comedian Bill Maher calls BDS 'a bulls**t purity test'; Palestinians fear UNRWA mandate may not be renewed

From Ian:

IDF strikes Hamas targets in Gaza in response to earlier rocket attack

The Israel Defense Forces attacked Hamas targets in Gaza overnight Friday-Saturday in response to a rocket that was fired by Palestinian terror groups into Israel earlier Friday, the army said in a statement.

“A short time ago, IDF warplanes and aircraft attacked two underground terror structures of the Hamas terror group in the north and center of the Gaza Strip,” the IDF said.

“The attack was carried out in response to the rocket that was launched from Gaza earlier tonight. The IDF will continue to act against attempts to harm Israeli civilians and sees the Hamas terror group as responsible for all that is done in the Gaza strip,” the statement said.

The rocket that was fired into Israel earlier was intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system and caused no injuries or damage.

Rocket sirens wailed in southern Israel on Friday evening near the Gaza border and local residents reported hearing explosions.

The sirens sounded in the town of Sderot, and in the communities of Or Haner, Nir Am, Erez and Gevim.

The rocket fire came after several thousand Palestinians joined protests on the Gaza Strip border earlier Friday, with several hundred rioting and throwing stones and explosive devices at Israeli troops.

Soldiers responded with tear gas and occasional live fire. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said 16 Palestinians had been injured.

Rocket Sirens Sound as Iron Dome Intercepts Gaza Projectile

Red alert sirens rang out in southern Israel near the border with Gaza once again. An Iron Dome missile intercepted the projectile from the Gaza Strip, as well. Our Daniel Tsemach reports.

Rockets fired at Israel from Gaza for second night in a row; 2 of 3 intercepted

Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip on Saturday night fired three rockets at southern Israel, two of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system, the military said.

Rocket fragments struck the yard of a home in the town of Sderot, causing damage.

There were no physical injuries caused by the shrapnel in Sderot. One woman received medical treatment after she suffered an acute anxiety attack because of the impact, medics said.

In addition, two people sustained minor injuries while running to bomb shelters, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service. Elsewhere, three other people were treated for acute anxiety attacks brought on by the rockets. One of them, a 76-year-old woman, required hospitalization, medics said.

Shrapnel also landed inside a community in the Sha’ar Hanegev region of southern Israel, northeast of Gaza, causing no injuries, local officials said.

It was the second night in a row that sirens sounded in Sderot.

IDF kills armed Gazans on Israeli border as tensions spike

Israeli forces shot dead a group of armed Palestinians along the Gaza Strip’s security fence late Saturday night, hours after three rockets were fired at southern Israel from the restive coastal enclave.

The exact number of Palestinians killed during the suspected infiltration was not immediately known. Gaza-based news outlets reported four or five people killed in the strike.

Palestinian media reported that the men were members of the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s military wing, Saraya al-Quds. This could not be immediately confirmed.

The Israeli military said an attack helicopter and a tank were used to kill the suspected terrorists.

“A short while ago, IDF troops spotted armed suspects near the security fence around the northern Gaza Strip. An IDF attack helicopter and a tank fired at them,” the army said in a statement.

08/16 Links Pt2: Campus Lies About Israel; Max Blumenthal is a Useful Idiot; Jewish group exploits Holocaust memory to fight migrant detention crisis. It’s dishonest and unJewish

From Ian:

David French: Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib Partnered with Vicious Anti-Semites to Plan Their Trip to Israel

This should be a national scandal.

To the extent that I care at all about Israel blocking entry to two U.S. congresswomen who partner with anti-Semites who seek its destruction, I agree with critics who argue that Bibi Netanyahu should not appear to bow to Donald Trump’s tweeted demands and that blocking Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from visiting Israel handed them a short-term propaganda victory. But that’s not the most important part of the story.

The most important element of the story is the fact that two American congresswomen shunned a bipartisan congressional delegation to Israel to go on an independent trip to Israel sponsored by vicious anti-Semites. Another important element of the story is that, as of today, the mainstream media have whitewashed Omar and Tlaib’s vile associations.

Writing yesterday, the Washington Post said that “Omar and Tlaib’s trip to Jerusalem and the West Bank was planned by Miftah, a nonprofit organization headed by Palestinian lawmaker and longtime peace negotiator Hanan Ashrawi.” The New York Times described it as an organization “headed by a longtime Palestinian lawmaker.” In its editorial, the New York Times editorial board identified it as a group “that promotes ‘global awareness and knowledge of Palestinian realities.’”

This is a whitewash. Thanks to a Twitter thread from the Washington Examiner’s Seth Mandel — who pointed to multiple additional sources — I started looking at the articles and views published on the Miftah website, and it was like peeling an onion of evil. There was layer upon layer of vile anti-Semitism.

First, the group actually published blood libel, posting an article that accused “the Jews [of using] the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover.” When pro-Israel bloggers condemned the article, Miftah first claimed that the attacks against the piece were part of a “smear campaign” and minimized the reference to blood libel as merely “briefly addressed.”

It was just a light sprinkling of blood libel. Move along, nothing to see here.

And without question, we all owe an immense debt of gratitude to @elderofziyon, who did the work from which the rest of our efforts grew. Yashar koach, chazak u'baruch, Elder. A gentleman and a scholar who also happens to be a great Shabbos host.
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) August 16, 2019

Thread and a reminder that you can donate on @elderofziyon ‘s website. https://t.co/oJxd448YGL
— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) August 16, 2019

Useful Idiot

Again and again, in The Management of Savagery, Blumenthal insists that Assad’s enemies in Syria are at least as bad as he is; that those enemies have been funded and abetted by the West; that other tyrants in the region are, likewise, no better than Assad; and that Assad and his circle have long been the targets of “armed Sunni Islamist groups,” presumably because Assad does not share their backward theocratic views. It is interesting to observe that whereas Blumenthal, prior to his Moscow trip, almost invariably stood up for Islamic theocracies, he now sees things the other way around and is willing to speak critically about “Islamists.” He is willing to do this, that is, so long as he can cast them as the tools or allies of the U.S., or the West generally, against Assad and Putin. The one constant in his view of these matters is that he has always been more critical of the U.S. and other Western liberal democracies than of any tyrannical Middle Eastern regime, whether theocratic or secular.

More than any other American writer who has reached his level of notoriety, Blumenthal has proven consistently to be too hard-left even for some of the banner names of the hard left. “Pro-Assad, pro-Maduro, pro-Putin—literally nothing redeemable about this fellow and his moronic second-campism,” tweeted the British writer James Bloodworth, an old Trotskyite and longtime Guardian contributor, on June 9. The good news is that more and more respectable members of the journalistic profession have woken up to the fact that Blumenthal’s work is simply not to be trusted—that he is not a legitimate reporter but a propagandist. The bad news is that he is still able to get his books published and still has readers who, heaven help them, take his writings seriously.

Perhaps even more striking to contemplate are the emails released by WikiLeaks in which Sidney Blumenthal proudly shared his son’s writings with Hillary Clinton, who responded by praising them and even passing some of them around to her State Department colleagues. This included the epilogue to his Israel-bashing Gomorrah. “I loved the epilogue but it stopped abruptly and I can’t pull up the rest so I’m anxiously awaiting for the rest,” Hillary Clinton wrote to Sidney. “Pls congratulate Max for another impressive piece. He’s so good.”

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a Max Blumenthal!

Campus Lies About Israel
Review of 'Israel Denial' By Cary Nelson

Anti-Zionism is thus anti-Semitism’s moral salvation, its perfect disguise, its route to legitimation,” writes Cary Nelson in Israel Denial, a book about the faculty campaign against the Jewish state. In a year that’s been rife with an old hatred rearing its ugly head in new and myriad ways, it’s profoundly refreshing to see an academic so clear-headed about the overlapping nature of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. The past decade has seen an increasing number of Jews publicly expressing their internal conflicts over Israel, with a growing number of progressive Jews identifying as anti-Zionist, and using their own membership in the community to suggest that hatred toward Jews and hatred toward the Jewish state are in no way linked.

This is a lie. Nelson, a professor emeritus of English and Jewish culture and society at the University of Illinois, explains how. “Anti-Semitism,” he notes, “enables and underwrites castigation of Israel whenever it is based on practices typical of other countries, not different from them.” Thus when Israel acts in an entirely unremarkable fashion, Jew-hatred inspires critics to react as if the Jewish state has committed unspeakable horrors.

What’s noteworthy about Nelson’s full-throated defense of Israel is that he is decidedly not on a mission to represent the country as perennially innocent. Rather, Israel Denial serves up all the nuance that dovish groups like J Street promise but never quite deliver. Early on in the book, Nelson makes quite clear how anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism intersect with each other. But he doesn’t shrink from informing the reader that anti-Semitism is “certainly not the only motivation fueling opposition to Israel.” He states that “Israel discriminates against segments of those under its control,” and that “Israel’s human rights record in areas over which it exercises control is imperfect.” But his broader point is that no country could ever live up to the impossible standards of progressive perfection expected of Israel.