Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, July 08, 2011

ElderToons: What BDS could lead to

UN Flotilla report delayed as Israel and Turkey negotiate

A U.N. panel inquiry’s report on Israel’s attack last year on a Turkish-flagged Gaza-bound aid flotilla has been delayed because the countries have not yet reached a consensus on the matter, a Turkish Foreign Ministry official has said.

In the run-up to the U.N. report’s release, Israeli and Turkish representatives have been holding talks in New York since Tuesday in order to find a compromise on the wording of a statement regarding the May 31, 2010, Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara ship, which resulted in the death of eight Turks and one Turkish-American.

The parties have been seeking reconciliation on a statement before the release of the report, which was to be released Thursday.

Asked if the parties had reached a consensus on the statement, the Turkish official told the Hürriyet Daily News that “we are not there yet.”

Ankara has repeated its demand that Israel offer an apology and compensation for the families of those killed and wounded in Israel’s attack on the ship, Turkey’s foreign minister said.

“We have been saying the same thing since last year. Israel must apologize and pay compensation. This is our principal stance on the issue,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu told reporters on Wednesday.

However, Israel Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman restated his opposition to Israel offering an apology to Turkey over the incident on Wednesday.

“An apology is not a compromise, it is a humiliation and it is an abandonment of IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] soldiers,” he was quoted as saying by the Jerusalem Post at a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “We regret the loss of life of people from any nation. There are things we can discuss and things we cannot. We cannot discuss things that will harm Israel. National honor has a real significance. We expect flexibility from the Turkish side as well.”

Davutoğlu confirmed that Turkish and Israeli officials were holding talks on normalizing relations. It was natural for Turkish and Israeli authorities to hold talks to meet Turkey’s demands and such talks should not be viewed as an extraordinary development, the minister stated.

Meanwhile, Israel and Turkey have not yet agreed on the report of the U.N. panel, which Ankara, on legal grounds, insists should not contradict with the findings of a previously released U.N. Human Rights Council report.

Davutoğlu highlighted that the report of the U.N. panel led by Geoffrey Palmer must be in compliance with “criteria of international law.”

“An attitude contradicting with the U.N. Human Rights Council is unacceptable,” he added. “We hope Israel will meet our rightful demands on this issue.”

The U.N. Human Rights Council said in 2010 that Israel’s military broke international laws during the raid. The report said Israel used excessive force, but implied Israel used “its legal right to impose a naval blockade against the Gaza Strip,” a finding which could pave the way for further interventions by Israel in the Mediterranean Sea, Turkish officials said.

This makes it sound like the sides are very far apart.

I admit I do not quite understand why a UN report that deals with the conduct of nations needs to have those nations' approval to be released. This certainly wasn't the case with any anti-Israel reports the UN has issued.

How can Turkey insist that a legal expert change his opinion on a legal issue?

Perhaps the delay is because the UN believes that a rapprochement between Turkey and Israel is a higher goal, but to change the report based on that still seems very strange, and calls into question the legitimacy and objectivity of every UN report.

But here's how the UN explains it:

U.N. spokesperson Martin Nesirky told reporters on Tuesday that more time was needed.

“I don’t think we are yet at the point where the report would be handed over,” he said.

Nesirky responded to some allegations that the language of the report could be toned down.

“What I would say is what we said at the time; and that is that there is clearly a need for the parties concerned to find consensus on the report, and the wording of the report. And that’s why more time was given,” he said.

The reported issues that divide the two seem to be more than just language, though.

Ami Isseroff z"l

I just found out that Ami Isseroff had died last week.

While he was an anti-religious and very liberal Zionist, he was, above all, a Zionist. He literally wrote an on-line encyclopedia about every major event and concept in Israel's modern history. He practically single-handedly ran two major websites: MideastWeb, on the Middle East altogether,and Zionism-Israel, which has a plethora of information as well. The latter site, besides having lots of information, also housed his blog.

I always hoped that he would organize the sites better, because they should be read by everyone who wants to learn about Israel.

I'm going back to a couple of his pieces I've linked to over the years, and I am again amazed at his knowledge and erudition. The best on-line resource on Arab land ownership in Palestine before 1948 is on his site. Not too many people can take on Benny Morris on specific facts in his books. But he was similarly impressive as a blogger - and as a satirist.

Here is a eulogy written by his brother.

May his family be comforted and may his memory be a blessing. And I suggest helping keep his memory alive by browsing the thousands of articles he has written on his sites.

Latest Latma

Including the song posted yesterday, "Guns Guns Guns."

CNN goes to Shiloh

A pretty reasonable piece:

(h/t My Right Word)

List of accomplishments of flotilla/flytilla drones this week

Here is a list of everything that anti-Israel activists managed to accomplish this week:

Cause the already cash-strapped Greek government to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on coast guard and security
Lose their cement
Start a riot at a French airport
Whine about every obstacle stopping them from doing illegal activities
Upset airlines who lose money for every empty seat
A hunger strike that accomplished nothing
Tick off passengers trying to travel
Turn sympathetic Dutch reporters against them
Insult Greek authorities, airlines, airports, European and American leaders
Continuously lie to the media, pretending that the very media attention they are getting is a victory
Get every major Western nation to publicly side with Israel
Fail to help a single Palestinian Arab in any way

All in all, they accomplished about the same amount they did last week and the week before.

Syrian singer slaughtered after writing, leading anti-Bashar song

From Now Lebanon:

A graphic video posted on YouTube Wednesday claims to show the body of Syrian activist Ibrahim Kashoush after having his throat slashed by security forces in Hama. His body was reportedly found dumped in the Assi River on Wednesday morning.

Kashoush’s song “Yalla Erhal Ya Bashar” (It’s time to leave, Bashar) gained recognition in recent weeks as the spirited anthem for peaceful demonstrators demanding an end to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

He reportedly joined crowds in Hama for massive street demonstrations that took place [last] Friday, where as many as 500,000 protesters gathered in protest, according to activists who spoke with AFP.

In the video below, Kashoush can be heard screaming the lyrics to a large group of people as they repeat the refrain with vibrant enthusiasm.

“To die but not be humiliated,” he sings in an eerily prophetic, but touching moment toward the end.

Here are the lyrics:

"Yalla Erhal Ya Bashar" -- It's time to leave, Bashar!!

Bashar, you’re a germ, your statements don't make sense, your news is that of an owl, and its time you leave Bashar!!

It's time you leave Bashar!!

Bashar, Maher and Rami are thieves, they've stolen from my brothers and uncles, Bashar it's time you leave!!

Bashar, screw you, and screw any who salute you, it's time you leave Bashar!!

Bashar, stop going in circles, your blood in Hama "mahdour" (killing you as a form of retribution is acceptable), your crimes here have not been forgiven.

It's time you leave Bashar!!

Bashar, you're an agent, screw you and the Baath party. It's time you leave Bashar.

Bashar, you're a liar, screw you and your speech. Freedom is near. It's time you leave Bashar!!

Bashar, you're damned, you believe you have words over us, we will not forgo our martyr's blood. It's time you leave Bashar!!

It's written on our flag: Bashar is a traitor to our nation.

To die but not to be humiliated.

The people want to bring down the regime!!

Noam Chomsky proves it isn't about pro-"Palestine" but anti-Israel

Noam Chomsky wrote an article, being distributed by the New York Times syndicate although I do not know where it was originally published, called "In Israel, a tsunami warning." The article is mostly about how Israel is concerned over the planned statehood bid by the PLO.

Chomsky, whom the Guardian calls a "respected American academic" and who embraces Hezbollah, subconsciously proves in this article that he doesn't give a damn about "Palestine" - by making a really stupid mistake:

The U.N. would presumably recognize Palestine in the internationally accepted borders, including the Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza. The heights were annexed by Israel in December 1981, in violation of U.N. Security Council orders.

Chomsky thinks that the Golan Heights are occupied Palestinian Arab territory? I am not so sure that Syria would appreciate that opinion!

And this is from a supposed expert, a man who gets regularly invited to give speeches on the topic because of his gravitas and knowledge!

But this proves that, for Chomsky and most of the other people who couch their vitriol in humanitarian and democratic pro-Palestinian Arab terms, it is really all about Israel and not at all about "Palestine." Chomsky cannot even be bothered to understand the difference between the WB, Gaza and the Golan, because to him they symbolize Israeli Jewish crimes, and have nothing to do with PalArab self-determination.

How ironic that a linguist is so careless with his words.

(h/t Kramerica)

Flytilla fumbles, fizzles and flops

From YNet:

Two American activists, who arrived in Israel from Athens overnight as part of the fly-in, were refused entry by Ben Gurion Airport authorities.

The two women arrived at Israel's gates dressed in Gaza flotilla shirts. Border control officers who interviewed them, as they do every individual entering Israel through the airport, determined that "their expressed purpose was to disrupt public order and cause provocation."

They did not resist the proceeding and are set to be deported later Friday. Six people have been deported so far.

JPost adds:

Around 200 pro-Palestinian activists were denied entry to Israel or were prevented from boarding flights to the country as part of an "air flotilla," Israel Radio said on Friday.

Let's do the math.

The activists predicted 500-600 people coming to Israel today. Israel's list of people to be denied entry is 200. So we should have expected 300-400 people who were not on the list to make it through, right?

So where were they?

Even funnier is this latest tweet from the flytilla fumblers:

Sit-in happening at CDG airport, Paris as some airlines are not issuing refunds. #palspring.

All of a sudden, they have turned into capitalists, protesting for money!

This one too:

Israeli activists are thinking of canceling their demo in the airport today because "arrest is definite' #palspring

Since when do such idealists cancel protests because they would be arrested? I thought they thrived on that!

Idiots in the Twittersphere

Over in the twittersphere, the Israel haters are fun to watch. One will tweet something and then an entire army of drones will mindlessly retweet it without thinking. One great example from Thursday night:

@YousefMunayyer Years ago, a student from #Gaza told an American audience "If you can not visit me in my home, you too are occupied" #airflotilla #palspring

Doesn't that sound profound?

I guess this means that if I cannot visit a friend who lives in Mecca due to the fact that I am Jewish, or I cannot visit Jordan overnight because I would be barred from bringing along a pair of tefillin, then I am occupied too!

By the absurd logic of this tweet, the entire world is occupied because there happen to always be restrictions on where people can go.

Yet this drivel gets retweeted ad nauseum by idiot moonbats who think that this sounds so, like, true, man. It was retweeted 79 times!

Video of French flytidiots being stopped from boarding plane in Paris

Here is a video taken on July 7 of anti-Israel activists in Paris being stopped from boarding planes to Tel Aviv.

They are shown holding a copy of the letter that Israel sent the airlines:

The text reads, in part:

Due to statements of pro-Palestinian radicals to arrive on commercial flights from abroad to disrupt the order and confront security forces at friction points, it was decided to refuse their entry in accordance with our authority according to the Law of Entry to Israel 1952.

Attached is a list of passengers that will be refused entry to Israel.

...In light of the above-mentioned, you are required not to board them on your flights to Israel.

Failure to comply with this directive would result in a delay on the flight and their return on the same flight.

For some reason, the airlines gave the activists the entire list.

The letter also states that the list might have more names added at any time.

New Latma Beach Boys song parody: "Guns, Guns Guns." And a modest EoZ effort.

Doesn't quite hit the spot for me, though.

I would have chosen Van Morrison's "Gloria" instead:

Like to tell you 'bout my Gaza
Their people believe in their god,
You've never seen such hospitality,
The guys in Islamic Jihad,
They like to shoot their Qassams,
Just about midnight,
They make me feel so welcome,
They make me feel so right,

And we're coming on F-L-O-T-I ---
FLOTILLA (Flo-tilla!)
FLOTILLA (Flo-tilla!)
I'm going to sail every night
I'm going to tweet every day
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Hamas cleans the streets,
Of every infidel,
If their women don't cover up,
They'll all go to hell,
They cannot admit,
Every war they lose,
That's why I love them,
And because they hate Jews.

FLOTILLA (Flo-tilla!)
FLOTILLA (Flo-tilla!)
Press conferences every night,
Hunger strikes every day,
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Eh, maybe I need to think a few more minutes.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

Israel-haters in the UN freaking out over upcoming flotilla report

From AFP:

A UN rapporteur Thursday slammed a highly anticipated UN report set to back a 2010 Israeli commando raid on an aid flotilla aiming to break Israel's blockade of Gaza which left nine people dead.

"The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Prof. Olivier De Schutter, has received a draft of this report and he firmly opposes its conclusions," De Schutter's office said in a statement.

He was preparing "a statement where he denounces the conclusions" of the report by a UN commission which the UN chief is expected to release on Friday, it said, adding such a move would be "exceptional" within the UN.

"Tomorrow, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon will release a statement supporting the legality of the Israeli intervention against the 2010 'Gaza Freedom Flotilla,'" the statement said.

"According to Olivier De Schutter, the blockade and the Israeli intervention clearly violate international law and the human right to food," it added.

A UN rapporteur denouncing a UN report before it is even released?

And his name isn't Richard Falk?

The Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food is an expert in maritime law?

The institutionalized anti-Zionists at the UN will find their heads exploding at a UN report that is actually semi-fair to the Jewish state.

By the way, I still have not found a single person who starved to death in Gaza. I hear that they have some very expensive specialty chocolates available there, however.

(h/t Mike Tan)

Tony Karon's latest attempt to push a lie

Time Magazine's Tony Karon is at it again, creating a straw man argument about Israel as he loves to do:

There's nothing new about those hoping for a game-changing U.S. intervention groaning at the news of Ross -- the personification of two decades of "process" without end -- being put in charge. But one paragraph stood out in the exasperated Israeli's [Akiva Eldar] column:

"Now Ross, the former chairman of the Jewish People Policy Institute, is trying to convince the Palestinians to give up on bringing Palestinian independence for a vote in the United Nations in September and recognize the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people - in other words, as his country, though he was born in San Francisco, more than that of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who was born in Safed."
The institute to which Eldar refers is a Jerusalem-based think-tank established by the Jewish Agency, a government-backed institution promoting Jewish immigration to Israel. Ross headed it up for a period between his service to the Clinton and Obama Administrations. Now, Eldar accuses him of using the bully pulpit of American power to cajole the Palestinians into heeding Netanyahu's demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a "Jewish state" and as "the national home of the Jewish people."

Skeptics view this demand as simply the latest red herring tossed out by an Israeli prime minister who has built his political career on opposing the Oslo peace process. It has been introduced very late in the game, and its' purpose is largely to preempt any negotiation over the right of return for Palestinian refugees who lost their homes and land to the nascent State of Israel in 1948. After all, it's not recognition of a Jewish theocracy that Netanyahu is demanding; rather, he insists that the state's ethnic composition will remain predominantly Jewish.

Because of the refugees -- and also because of the implications for the status of the 1 million Muslim and Christian Palestinians who are Israeli citizens -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas demurs. The PLO has long ago recognized Israel in keeping with all the requirements of international law, he counters, and Israel's definition of itself is a matter for its citizens to decide.

It's hard to know how far Ross and the Obama Administration are pressing Abbas to go in accommodating this new Israeli demand, but Eldar's observation is worth unpacking: Should the Palestinians be required to recognize Israel as Dennis Ross' "national home"?

He then goes on to quote lots of doom and gloom statistics that indicate that Jews, Israelis, young people and Israeli expatriates all do not seem to regard Israel as the "Jewish national home" and therefore it is ridiculous for Netanyahu to demand the same from Abbas.

There is only one problem: Netanyahu never made that demand.

He only demands that Abbas recognize Israel as a Jewish state - which is much, much different. For one thing, it is possible to have more than one Jewish state - look at how many Muslim and Arab states there are.

To Zionists, of course, Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, by definition. It makes no sense to demand that Abbas accept that definition. However, it makes a great deal of sense to demand that Abbas recognize that Israel will remain a Jewish state - in order to finally make the Palestinian Arabs realize that they have no choice but to integrate into their current countries of residence, or move to countries that would welcome them. Their dream of destroying Israel demographically must finally be put to rest - if they are ever to get out of their 63 year limbo. There is no doubt that if their ancestors were asked in 1949 whether they would prefer that their descendants be stateless living outside of "Palestine" or full citizens of other countries, they would choose the latter. That same question can, and should, be asked today.

However, Karon's entire screed is based on a premise that doesn't exist. It is a real issue for Zionists and Jews as to how Israel has lost its centrality in Jewish thought. That issue has nothing to do with the politics of the peace process, and Karon's attempt to conflate the two is simply another method of Israel-bashing under the patina of deep thought.

If you need more proof that Karon is engaging in histrionics rather than analysis, it is worth noting that it was not Netanyahu who introduced the idea of a "Jewish state" being part of the negotiations as Karon says. It was Olmert, and it was enthusiastically defended by Tzipi Livni. Karon is trying to position this as a fringe right-wing Israeli issue, using Akiva Eldar as his basis for what Israelis think.

Left wing columnists, especially Jewish ones, love to pretend that Akiva Eldar and Gideon Levy represent Israeli public opinion - because they desperately want Israel to reflect their own beliefs. They will never admit what every Israeli knows: Eldar and his ilk are the ones who are on the fringe of Israeli society. The mainstream Israeli public fully supports the demand that the PA accept Israel as a Jewish state. They also overwhelmingly support defensible borders for Israel, and they support Israel keeping Jerusalem and its Jewish suburbs. You will never find writers like Karon admitting this in their columns, though. They prefer to push the lie that average Israelis hate their government and think the way Western leftists do.

And that deep desire makes them write idiotic lies like we see here.

(Karon made fundamentally the same points last year, in the friendlier waters of the UAE's National newspaper, where he makes it clear that he himself is the one who is so uncomfortable with the idea that Israel could be considered his home.)