Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

03/10 Links Pt1: Israel Imposes Unprecedented Mandatory 14-Day Coronavirus Quarantine on All Arrivals; A Purim Lesson at the White House; Gantz-Arab Gov't, Not a Purim Joke

From Ian:

Israel Imposes Unprecedented Mandatory 14-Day Coronavirus Quarantine on All Arrivals

Israel will require anyone arriving from overseas to self-quarantine for 14 days as a precaution against the spread of coronavirus, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

With 42 confirmed cases of the virus, Israel has already taken some tough counter-measures, forcing visitors from many countries in Asia and Europe into home isolation. The virus has hit travel and trade, with tourism in particular expected to suffer.

“Anyone who arrives in Israel from abroad will enter a 14-day isolation,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. He said the new measures would be in effect for two weeks initially.

“This is a difficult decision. But it is essential for safeguarding public health, and public health comes first.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chaired a series of discussions today on the #Coronavirus. Among the topics discussed were the policy regarding people entering Israel from overseas, economic preparations and scientific-technological issues, with the participation of experts. pic.twitter.com/w1ddnEMvVz
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) March 9, 2020

Government officials said the order would come into force immediately for Israelis returning to the country. From Thursday, any non-Israelis seeking to enter the country will have to prove they have the means to self-quarantine, the officials said.

Israeli media said the latest measure would mean quarantine for some 300,000 citizens in a country of around 9 million.

Palestinians in the West Bank have also been hit by the virus, reporting 25 confirmed cases. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has turned foreigners away at checkpoints and ordered schools and national parks closed.

Passengers being notified on a flight leaving from Tel Aviv to Berlin that they will have to spend 14 days in quarantine upon their return. Some decide to abandon their trip on the spot. pic.twitter.com/XJp0NAiOqV
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) March 10, 2020

JPost Editorial: The coronavirus is apolitical – editorial

The decision to quarantine all arrivals is one that shouldn’t be taken lightly or have a hint of political considerations. Reports that the prime minister was holding back from enforcing the ban on US travelers in order to not damage ties with President Donald Trump were vigorously denied Sunday. Siman Tov told Channel 12 News that “no political element was part of our decision-making process… all the decisions go to the National Security Council and the prime minister in the end. It’s a professional discussion on protecting the public. No foreign interests are involved in the decision.”

Although it’s difficult, in this acrimonious post-election period, to remove politics from any issue on the domestic agenda, there’s an imperative that the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis should rise above partisan considerations. Netanyahu seems to be meeting that criteria – so far.

Unlike in the US, where the handling of the virus has turned into a political football pitting the “downplaying” Republicans against the “take it seriously” Democrats, Israelis seem to be reacting to the crisis with one voice.

Netanyahu has, of course, made every effort to appear “presidential” and in charge of the situation. He spoke with US Vice President Mike Pence and on Sunday and then with European leaders on Monday about setting up airports to enable goods to be transported between countries so vital supplies don’t run out.

And whether that’s his intention or not, these moves could help Netanyahu as he fights for his political life.

As Jeremy Sharon wrote, “the more he looks like he’s taking care of business, the more urgent the problem, the more acute and dangerous it is, the more we won’t want to change the leadership and instead keep the status quo.”

Gone... viralHebrew ‘My Corona’ spoof of The Knacks classic proves catching

What song leads the coronavirus quarantine playlist?

“My Sharona,” obviously, the 1979 hit by The Knacks, which is so easily replaced with the words “My Corona.”

Two sisters from Hod Hasharon, Inbar and Gilor Levi, who love nothing more than a good spoof, donned nurse and doctor scrubs and a pair of masks for their YouTube spoof of “My Corona.”

In fact, said Inbar Levi, the video has gone, well, viral.

“It just caught on, it was exactly at the right time,” said Levi, who had already published the song before Israel’s March 2 elections, but found that once the elections were over and coronavirus fears took over, the song took off.

The words came to them fairly easily, said Levi, although it took a little longer to get the filming done properly.

“It’s very fast, and there’s a lot of words,” she explained.

Perverted Israel-haters claim Israel trying to sicken Palestinians with Covid-19

There is nothing too low for Israel-haters.

The "Students for Justice in Palestine" chapter at the University of Maryland is having a conference today where they want to somehow tie the coronavirus to Israel's actions.

As of this writing, only one person expressed interested and no one said they were going. Maybe some universities still have some sense.

But not at California State University, which employs Asad Abukhalil (who has a blog called The Angry Arab), a professor accuses Israel not only of withholding coronavirus treatment from Palestinians but of putting all non-Jews in mass prisons.

Really.

Hatred of Israel is a mental illness.

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Manchester, 1914

Algeria, 1923

Italy, 1938

Czechoslovakia, around 1900

Haifa, 1958

Israel, 1967

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Linda Sarsour lies about Israel in her book

Linda Sarsour wrote a book and she includes some notable anti-Israel lies.

For example:

No land was "stolen" in 1948 except by Egypt and especially Jordan. Arabs tried to destroy Israel before it existed - they started the war on Jews in 1947; the Jews refusal to die is not theft of land.

Israel didn't expel 750,000 Arabs. Most of the 600,000 Arabs who left what became Israel fled.

Sarsour tries to imply that Israel expelled three quarters of a million people in a single day, although she left the language ambiguous enough to tell her fans what they want to hear but to allow an interpretation of including all the Arabs who fled up until then. Even so, in May 1948 many of the Arabs who eventually left were still in their homes.

Israel did allow some 70,000 Palestinian Arabs to return to their homes within the Green Line over the years. More importantly, though, was that in many cases, the Haganah almost begged the Arabs to return to their homes, as was especially the case in Haifa, from where 10% of all Arabs fled. As Ephraim Karsh writes:

The Hagana’s truce terms stipulated that Arabs were expected to “carry on their work as equal and free citizens of Haifa.” In its Arabic-language broadcasts and communications, the Hagana consistently articulated the same message. On April 22, at the height of the fighting, it distributed a circular noting its ongoing campaign to clear the town of all “criminal foreign bands” so as to allow the restoration of “peace and security and good neighborly relations among all of the town’s inhabitants.” The following day, a Hagana broadcast asserted that “the Jews did and do still believe that it is in the real interests of Haifa for its citizens to go on with their work and to ensure that normal conditions are restored to the city.”

On April 24, a Hagana radio broadcast declared: “Arabs, we do not wish to harm you. Like you, we only want to live in peace. . . . If the Jews and [the] Arabs cooperate, no power in the world will ever attack our country or ignore our rights.” Two days later, informing its Arab listeners that “Haifa has returned to normal,” the Hagana reported that “between 15,000 and 20,000 Arabs had expressed their willingness to remain in the city,” that “Arab employees had been appointed to key posts,” and that Arabs had been given “part of the corn, flour, and rice intended for the Jews in Haifa.” And on April 27, the Hagana distributed a leaflet urging the fleeing Arab populace to return home: “Peace and order reign supreme across the town and every resident can return to his free life and resume his regular work in peace and security.”

That these were not hollow words was evidenced by, inter alia, the special dispensation given to Jewish bakers by the Haifa rabbinate to bake bread during the Passover holiday for distribution among the Arabs, and by the April 23 decision of the joint Jewish-Arab Committee for the Restoration of Life to Normalcy to dispatch two of its members to inform women, children, and the elderly that they could return home. In a May 6 fact-finding report to the Jewish Agency executive (the effective government of Jewish Palestine), Golda Meir told her colleagues that while “we will not go to Acre or Nazareth to return the Arabs [to Haifa] . . . our behavior should be such that if it were to encourage them to return—they would be welcome; we should not mistreat the Arabs so as to deter them from returning.”

The sincerity of the Jewish position is attested as well by reports from the U.S. consulate in Haifa. Thus, on April 25, after the fighting was over, Vice Consul Aubrey Lippincott cabled Washington that the “Jews hope poverty will cause laborers [to] return [to] Haifa as many are already doing despite Arab attempts [to] persuade them [to] keep out.” On April 29, according to Lippincott, even Farid Saad of the National Committee was saying that Jewish leaders had “organized a large propaganda campaign to persuade [the] Arabs to return.” Similarly, the British district superintendent of police reported on April 26 that “every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open, and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe.” Several more reports in the same vein were sent by British authorities in Palestine to their superiors in London.

The casual reader would not realize how incredible the bolded section is. Religious Jews are not allowed to own or even see leavened products on Passover; to have a rabbinical ruling that Jewish bakers must bake bread for Arabs on Passover itself is stunning.

The truth of Arab flight is not at all what Sarsour and the Arabs say it is. But her lies don't end there.

"Their mosques were razed to the ground?" There were a few that were damaged and destroyed in the fighting, but to say that Israel deliberately destroyed most or all of the mosques is out and out slander.

Even according to UNRWA, the majority of Palestinian "refugees" today are not in the territories. About 2.2 million UNRWA "refugees" are, the rest are in Jordan (2 million), Syria and Lebanon (officially about 500,000 each,) plus millions who live in other Arab countries or the West.

Palestinians in Arab countries (save most in Jordan) remain stateless, 71 years after the "nakba." Somehow, this "civil rights leader" doesn't want to mention that her fellow Arabs have treated their Palestinian "guests" far worse than Israel has - official apartheid against them in Lebanon, thousands killed in Syria in recent years and in Jordan in 1970, effectively illegal in Egypt. Lies of omission are just as bad as explicit lies.

Sarsour no doubt was raised on these lies. But when you write a book, you should do fact checks. Sarsour doesn't care about facts.

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03/09 Links Pt2: Anti-Israel AIPAC protester: “The Jews should be on their knees begging for forgiveness”; BDS Movement to Boycott Coronavirus for Attending AIPAC (satire)

From Ian:

Anti-Israel AIPAC protester: “The Jews should be on their knees begging for forgiveness”

Like many veteran attendees of the annual AIPAC conference, usually held at the sprawling Walter E. Washington Center in northwest D.C., I have learned to expect packs of anti-Israel demonstrators to gather every year during the event. They usually wave Palestinian flags, chant familiar slogans through bullhorns, and brandish signs and banners inscribed with various accusations about the supposed sins of the Jewish State.

The 2020 AIPAC conference was the sixth I’ve attended, but the first I attended as a member of the press. So on the first day of this year’s conference—Sunday, March 1—I decided that instead of ignoring the usual anti-Israel demonstrations, I would visit and observe the protests, talk with the protesters, and ask them to explain their ideas in their own words.

At their rally, I met and spoke with several of the group: young and old, male and female, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular, and several who identified as Palestinian. My conversations with each of them were enlightening, but perhaps none more so than my exchange with two keffiyeh-clad American women, one of whom claimed Palestinian ancestry. They were both vehement and emotional in their replies to my questions, and insisted that Israel was to blame for the sorry state of Palestinian affairs. Neither seemed to notice when the other accused “Jews” of barbarism, but both seemed utterly convinced of their own moral superiority.

During our conversation, I mostly listened quietly, but eventually did ask them both what they believed must be done to bring about peace.

At that, one of them let it slip. Calling Israel an “illegal country in the first place“, she subsequently declared,
“the Jews should get on their knees and beg for forgiveness for what they’ve done to the Palestinians since 1948.”

She continued:
“They’ve ethnically cleansed villages. They massacred 700,000 people.“

Her compatriot (who had claimed Palestinian Arab ancestry) added,
“I think they feel bad. I think that’s why they’re so aggressive a lot of the time.“

It did not seem to occur to either of these women that they had both condemned “the Jews” rather than “the Zionists” or “the Israelis”. At no time did either of them amend the sentiment, though one of them later pointedly referred to “the Zionists” because “not all Jews are Zionists”. You can see a short excerpt of this exchange below.

Anti-Israel party in Germany discusses shooting rich people, forced labor

The German Left Party, which opposed last year’s anti-BDS Bundestag resolution, held a conference last week in the city of Kassel in which calls to shoot wealthy Germans and impose forced labor on them were discussed.

A Left Party attendee named Sandra L. explained what needed to be done post-revolution after “we have shot the one percent of the richest.”

Party leader Bernd Riexinger responded that, “We don’t shoot them, we use them for useful work.” Forced labor was one of the extermination methods used by the Nazis and their collaborators to murder Jews during the Holocaust.

Columnist Harald Martenstein wrote in the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel on Saturday that “Almost at the same time as the shooting debate, eight left-wing politicians filed a criminal complaint against [Chancellor] Angela Merkel for “aiding and abetting the murder” of the Iranian terrorist general [Qassem] Soleimani and that Germany had supported the murder. At least Israel haters don’t have to be afraid of the Left.”
Riexinger chalked up his comment about forced labor to “irony.”

Alan Dershowitz | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep 85

Alan Dershowitz — was the youngest full professor in Harvard Law history where he is now the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, writer of numerous best-selling books including, "The Case Against Impeaching Trump," and his latest, "Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo" — joins Ben to discuss being a civil libertarian, Trump, Obama, Israel, #MeToo, O.J. Simpson, impeachment, going from loved to hated by the Left, and much more. (Israel at 39Min)

Saudis start trial of dozens of Hamas members, other Islamists

Over the past year, Saudi Arabia has been arresting dozens of Palestinians and Jordanians. They all seem to be connected to Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood.

Among those arrested was former Hamas representative in Saudi Arabia Mohammed Saleh Al-Khudari, 81, and his son.

The reason for the arrests seems to be that Hamas tilted towards Iran in accepting funding and the Saudis look at any allies of Iran as implacable enemies.

Last September, after trying to negotiate behind the scenes, Hamas came out with a public statement against the Saudis for the arrests. Now Hamas is publicly protesting, saying that the arrests are political (which seems likely) and their only crimes is supporting jihad (which is also likely.)

On Sunday, the trial of the al-Khaduris began, and it appears that they will return to court the beginning of May.

Of course, Hamas supporters are claiming some sort of Israeli conspiracy behind this.

This infighting is not being widely reported in the West.

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I found a play about the Purim story, written in rhyme, from 1889, by a Rabbi H. M. Bien. All I can find about him is that he lived in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Queen Vashti's part is surprisingly feminist and modern.

Here she as as she enters after being summoned by the King to show off her body.

Vashti (Enters weeping, r. h.)-
And this to me? the queen! unprecedented shame!
I will resent the outrage !-or Vashti's not my name!
I, who brought up retired-strict Oriental fashion,
Now be made sacrifice to his unbounded passion,
For hollow pride and power. I? show myself? indeed !
(stamps her feet)
I will not go—no never-nor his vile bidding heed !

(Muses, walking to and fro—more composed.)
These men will always play our masters, and be they low or be they high,
Will rule and lord it over woman, at least they will imperious try.
Weak-minded, pliant and obedient, our sex most always does submit;
Aye! it were different had they only a little more of pride and wit.
For we by nature fair and lovely, the nobler part of human kind,
To men superlatively better, in soul and body, heart and mind;
We bear the burden of existence, serve from the cradle to the grave.
Yet could be free if we would never permit ourselves to be the slave.

I'd willingly become a beggar or instantly would rather die,
To be example to my sisters, while I my lord's command defy.
True! he has given me these baubles, a royal diadem and crown.
Like pretty puppets men adorn us, with gaudy gems and costly gown;

And then degrade us as their creatures. Now let one learn what woman can
If once aroused ; that she is stronger than most despotic, selfish man.

I know the time is near approaching when females will their rights assert.
The more advanced will be determined to act harmonious in concert.
They will no longer then permit it, that man shall rule the world alone;
And will no longer be the servants of kitchen, feasting-hall or throne.

We too can traffic. plead and labor, can sculpture, sing and play and paint;
Strong-minded women will hereafter take Vashti for their patron saint.

Ahasuerus, he will rage and bluster, that I his bidding disobey !
I scorn his wrath-defy his anger; the consequence be what it may.

In fact, Vashti is the heroine of this play! After the king banishes her she disguises herself as Hatach, the king's servant, and pushes the narrative to her will without anyone realizing it.

At the end, Vashti says:

Vashti as Hatach , the Scribe ( To king and queen .) —
I'll write this in my annals of Esther's reign and thine !
We'll call it the “ M 'gillah ; ” forever it shall shine
To rulers and to princes a plea for tolerance !
(Advances to front of stage ) And to the house of Israel a great inheritance !
And unto me (muses and sighs) I own it, the time for woman's right,
Among these barbarous Asians, it is not yet in sight.
But I have learned it lately , that ’mongst some Northern nation
In a far distant country has a new civilization
Arisen in its mighty power, and women there elated ,
Already to their hearts' content the men have well berated .
I hear they there are doctors, and learned in law and lore .
One does command a ship , and some preach where they God adore.
The men tend quite submissively to duties of the houses :
They mind the babes, they cook and wash as well as their good spouses.
The government will shortly too by woman's rule grow free !
They will fill all the offices ! That is the land for me!
The cause of Vashti lives triumphant, when I shall be no more,
Farewell, home of my birth ! I'll go to that far distant shore,
And though my fate to history be lost fore'er and aye
Our sex will build me monuments ! I'm off, my friends ! good -bye !

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03/09 Links Pt1: What we know about Iran five years after Netanyahu’s speech to Congress; Palestinians Revive Blood Libels as Israel Saves Their Lives

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Purim is approaching.

In the Megillah, we will that in the face of the antisemitic threat of Haman, Esther and the Jews found an unlikely ally in King Achashverosh, who originally supported Haman in his plan to kill the Jews.

Apparent enemies of Jews can become allies, or at least find common cause.
It is a recurring theme in Jewish history.
And it is what Theodore Herzl believed.

In his book, Zionism: The Concise History, Alex Ryvchin notes that while Herzl became keenly aware of the strength of antisemitism, he felt that there were antisemites who could be allies and help provide a homeland for the Jews. He turned to antisemites such as Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm and Russia's Foreign Minister Vladimir Lambsdorff. Herzl calculated that such men were so eager to rid their countries of the Jews that they would support the establishment of a Jewish state and thereby rid their respective countries of the Jews they did not want. Some of these leaders did see a benefit in supporting political Zionism for just that reason.

This was the realpolitik that guided Herzl in seeking alliances with apparent enemies, in the interests of reaching his goal. Eventually, Herzl realized that such leaders could not be counted upon to act in good faith and were in fact fundamentally opposed, if not outright hostile to Jewish rights.

For this reason, Herzl shifted his search for allies to Great Britain.

However, Netanyahu has gone one step further than Herzl, and has arguably succeeded where Herzl did not.

While the growing ties between Israel and some of the Arab countries in the Middle East is in the news, Netanyahu has also developed key alliances with Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia -- the Visegrad Group.

But not without controversy.

Netanyahu has been making overtures to Eastern Europe, to countries that during WWII were not only accessories to the Nazis, but in some cases actively helped the Nazis kill Jews and even went so far as to kill Jews on their own initiative.

The issue is more than past history. Even today there are accusations of antisemitism against leaders such as the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. He has been accused of antisemitism for his attacks against George Soros and his right-wing government has been accused of rehabilitating wartime figures as anti-communist icons and minimizing their complicity in deporting and killing Jews.

An article in The New York Times put the contradiction of Viktor Orban like this:

He is a far-right leader of a country whose Jewish citizens say they face less harassment than Jews in any other part of Europe. Mr. Orban and his party, Fidesz, have used anti-Semitic tropes to promote his vision of Hungarian nationalism, and have been accused of trying to understate Hungarian complicity in the Holocaust — even as he has bankrolled many Jewish institutions and causes.

Meanwhile, Poland is still trying to play down its role during the Holocaust.

In the Czech Republic, a report came out that antisemitic attacks are on the rise -- yet the same report also says the Czech Republic remains safe for Jews and that antisemitism is relatively low compared with other European countries.

In Slovakia, 80% of the Jews there consider antisemitism a serious problem according to a 2018 survey -- as opposed to Slovaks in general, of whom only 20% see it as a serious problem.

Whatever else these four countries gain by allying themselves with Israel, they get what might arguably be called a "kosher seal" that deflects claims that they are antisemitic.

In return, Netanyahu has gained a way of blunting, to a degree, the attacks by the European Union against Israel.

o In 2017, when the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to reject the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Hungary abstained.

o Hungary joined the Czech Republic and Romania in blocking a European Union statement that criticized the US Israeli embassy moving to Jerusalem.

o In November 2019, the EU failed to get all 28 member states behind a joint statement condemning the US decision to no longer consider Israeli settlements as illegal. It was blocked by Hungary, which meant that instead of a joint statement, the EU was reduced to a statement by then-EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini

o In January, the EU again failed to get a consensus, when it tried to unanimously condemn Trump's peace plan

o Hungary and the Czech Republic are also among the countries that will file an amicus brief with the ICC in response to ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda's statement in December that there was enough evidence to investigate alleged war crimes by Israel.

And then there is Bernie Sanders, cynically creating alliances with antisemites -- who are not merely critical of Israel, but also demonize it, accuse it of being supremacist and accuse those who support it of having dual loyalty.

This is a different kind of 'realpolitik'.

Like Herzl, Sanders is not out to change his allies such as Sarsour, Tlaib, Omar or any of the other antisemites that he has gone out of his way to ally himself with. But while Herzl's goal was to channel the influence of powerful antisemites to establish a Jewish state to save the Jewish people, Sanders accepts the endorsements of these people while they continue to attack and demonize Israel. There is nothing about such associates that in any way helps Jews in general or Israel in particular.

We never hear Sanders publicly challenge what they say.
On the contrary, Sarsour, for example, is a surrogate whom Sanders has chosen to actually represent him and speak on his behalf.

At least Herzl realized that people like the Kaiser could not be relied upon to act in good faith. Sanders shows no interest in what his "allies" say against Israel, so long as they strengthen his 'progressive' creds.

In the process, Sanders -- a self-proclaimed 'proud Jew' -- acts as a shield for these people, for their attacks against Israel and against those who stand up for it.

While one can argue that Netanyahu provides a shield for leaders who engage in antisemitic themes, it is undeniable that those same leaders have been instrumental in frustrating a number of the EU's attempts to attack and isolate Israel.

Sanders, on the other hand, is distant from his fellow Jews.

o When he praised the Soviet Union, but never stood up for the persecuted Soviet Jews
o He has never attended pro-Israel rallies
o He has never attended an AIPAC conference - this last time trying to justify his absence by attacking AIPAC as racist

And now Bernie is becoming even more distant --

Whatever one may criticize about Biden's gaffes, it appears that Bernie Sanders -- in distancing himself from both his 'Jewishness' and his fellow Jews -- is also becoming increasingly difficult to watch.

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Salon praises Gaza astrophysicist - without mentioning he is a Hamas member

Salon published a piece originally in Undark that describes the difficult life of a leading Gazan astrophysicist - without mentioning that he identifies as a Hamas member and his brother was a major Hamas terrorist.

The article says:

[A]strophysicist Suleiman Baraka's life's work — along with that of his students and mentees — illustrates the promise and challenges of astronomy in Gaza.

Baraka studies space plasma, the electrically-charged soup of ions and electrons that constitutes the vast majority of space. And he creates kinetic models that simulate how these charged particles in solar wind interact with the magnetosphere of the Earth. He holds a part-time appointment at the National Institute of Aerospace in Virginia, and he also has a teaching position in Gaza, at al-Aqsa University. Colleagues around the world have praised his efforts to bring astronomy to Gaza.

Baraka graduated in 1987 from al-Quds University in East Jerusalem with an undergraduate thesis on the formation of black holes and an offer to study astrophysics at the Australian National University in Canberra. ....
He never made it to Australia, though this isn't unusual. Scientists in Gaza are "essentially isolated," says Robert Williams, an astronomer and former president of the International Astronomical Union. In 2010, Williams attempted to enter the Gaza Strip to attend an astronomy event, but was denied entry. And even within the West Bank — the Palestinian territory not under blockade by Israel — it is difficult for scientists to travel from one place to another, due to checkpoints and travel restrictions.

Really? Any examples of how Western scientists were stymied in traveling through the West Bank? No, just a commonly accepted "fact."

In 2008, almost four decades after first seeing Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, Baraka started his fellowship as a post-doctoral researcher for the National Institute of Aerospace — the closest a foreigner can ever get to working with NASA.

But three months into that appointment, a rocket tore into his house in Gaza, destroying his father's books and critically injuring his 11-year old son, Ibrahim. The boy was transported to an Egyptian hospital, where doctors tended to shrapnel wounds in the left side of his brain. Baraka says he flew from Virginia to Egypt and sat by his son's bed for four days until his son's body was sent back to Gaza in a coffin.

Why might Israel have targeted this house?

Probably because Salon doesn't mention that the Baraka family is Hamas.

Suleiman's brother Noor, a cleric, was a field commander for the Qassam Brigades in 2008 when this rocket attack occurred. He was killed in 2018 after a firefight with the IDF.

Suleiman himself had been arrested twice by Israel. He told the reporter that one arrest was for helping foreign journalists report on the region, and one for secretly teaching Palestinian students. That was accepted as truth in the article.

But as YNet notes, Suleiman has admitted to more than that:

Recently, Suleiman gave a speech at a Palestinian TED event and received loud applause from the Gazan audience as he recounted his life-story in the Arab world. .... "But in the end, like my brother Nour, I belong to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades," he said.

Yes, a Palestinian who has reached the heights of fame for his scientific work also identifies as a member of Hamas' "military wing" that is responsible for the deaths of thousands, and no one wants to mention that.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

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From Daily News Egypt:

Ethiopia announced on Friday its rejection to the Arab League’s Wednesday resolution that showed solidarity with Egypt in protecting its historical rights to the Nile River water and refused any unilateral measures that might be taken by Addis Ababa regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile.

Tensions between Cairo and Addis Ababa have been escalating recently after Ethiopia missed the last US-sponsored ministerial meeting with Egypt and Sudan in Washington to conclude a deal over the rules of filling and operating the GERD.

Egypt accused Ethiopia of not attending the last round of talks in Washington “to deliberately hinder negotiations.”

Ethiopia has justified its absence that it needs more time to consider the matter, and that it would commence filling the dam’s reservoir in parallel with its construction.

While Ethiopia, an upstream country, puts a huge development strategy based on GERD, Egypt is concerned it might affect its 55.5bn cubic meter annual share of Nile water, if the filling of the dam’s reservoir was executed in less than 7-year period which would cause low flooding seasons.

Afterwards, the war of words heated up some more. On Saturday evening the Egyptian Foreign Ministry issued a heated statement that said, in part, "Ethiopia’s posture and position during these negotiations, which has been criticized by the Arab League, evinces its intent to exercise hydro-hegemony and to anoint itself as the unchallenged and sole beneficiary over the Nile. This is especially apparent in its insistence on filling the GERD unilaterally in July 2020 without reaching an agreement with downstream states, and while holding negotiations on the GERD hostage to domestic political considerations. This constitutes a material breach of the DoP and demonstrates, beyond any doubt, Ethiopia’s bad faith and its lack of political will to reach a fair and balanced agreement on the GERD."

This is the sort of thing wars break out over, although analysts are minimizing that possibility. Still, you cannot minimize the importance of the Nile to Egypt's culture as well as its economy. This crosses from an economic or food issue into an honor issue, and as such anything can happen.

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"Jewish Voice for Peace" uses a terrorist group poster for International Women's Day

A tweet from the quite misnamed "Jewish Voice for Peace:"

The graphic that they chose is from a 1985 poster by a terror group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Here are some other posters for International Women's Day by the PFLP and other Palestinian groups over the years that JVP supports:

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