Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Which embassy's "Obama in Israel" video is more bizarre?

From the US Embassy in Israel:

From the Israeli Embassy in the US:

Do you get the impression that everyone is trying too hard?

Now you can buy land in Palestine on-line! (Except for you Jews.)

A new website being promoted in Arab media allows Arabs to buy land in "Palestine." Just pick the plot you want, pay 20% with your credit card, fill out some paperwork, and voilà!

The Canadian-born son of Palestinian refugees is successfully running a business which allows Palestinians to buy land in the area, reported the Guardian on Monday.

Khaled Sabawi launched his company, Tabo (the Ottoman term for “title deed”), three years ago. It is based on his father’s wish to help Palestinians buy Palestinian land, a dream that most of the estimated five million Palestinian refugees would deem impossible.

The Tabo webpage invites potential buyers in Jerusalem , West Bank and from abroad to embark upon a virtual tour of every plot of registered land in the area. Plots are sold for prices ranging from $13,000 to $80,000 and can be paid off over a period of three years.

When you go to the Tabo webpage you can learn:

For the first time, you have the opportunity to make your connection to the holy land a reality. Since time immemorial, the ancient and historic lands of Palestine have been among the most coveted in the world. For thousands of years, kings and paupers, emperors and peasants, Popes and pilgrims alike have come to Palestine for salvation, for redemption, for fulfillment, and for riches. Palestine’s unprecedented historical significance is a testament to its value as a land.

To Palestinians worldwide, owning land in Palestine is priceless. Land represents a Palestinian’s identity, his roots, and his proof of existence. It is his ancestry, his forefather’s legacy and children’s birthright. It is the place from which he came, and to which he shall return. Now UCI makes it possible for Palestinians to reclaim their legacy, reconnect with the land of their ancestors, and own a piece of the homeland, for them, for their children, and for generations to come.

When you start reading the fine print, something interesting appears:

Once you receive your UCI Land Purchase LPOA, the following steps must be followed:

You must print and sign your LPOA.

Once signed you are required to:

Scan and save a clear electronic copy of your signed LPOA.

Scan and save a clear electronic copy of your valid passport. If you are West Bank/Gaza/Jerusalem ID holder, or a Palestinian with an Israeli ID, please scan a clear electronic copy of your ID.

When they say a "Palestinian with an Israeli ID," they are excluding all Palestinian Jews.

In other words, an Israeli Arab can buy land in the West Bank - but an Israeli Jew cannot.

Israeli Jews legally buying land are evil "settlers" and merit being boycotted, stoned, firebombed and shot., and their homes must be dismantled and their hard work and investment on the land they bought must be forfeited. Even if their families had lived in the area for centuries, the land is simply not available for them. Because they are Jews wishing to return to their ancestral lands.

Israeli Arabs buying land there, on the other hand, are welcome! Because they are - not Jews!

Sounds like apartheid, doesn't it?

I think we need to call a UNHRC session. We must inform Amnesty about this blatant discrimination. Human Rights Watch will be most interested. No doubt they will jump right on it. If the PA is found to be involved in this project, they should be boycotted.

Because such blatant discrimination is ugly, and cannot be accepted. Right?

UPDATE: I wonder what would happen if an Israeli Jew with an Arabic name would buy some land. Might be worth the money just to find out!

The "Jewish" Daily Forward now promotes the Hamas Haggadah

Last year, I noted that the "Jewish Voice for Peace" came out with a "Haggadah" that Hamas would love. Excerpt:

It is time to look at the overcrowded Seder plate, which includes:

Olive – Symbolizing the self-determination of the Palestinian people and an invitation to Jewish communities to become allies to Palestinian liberation struggles.

When breaking the middle matzah, we must of course say that Israel should be overrun with Arabs.

As we break the middle matzah we acknowledge the break that occurred in Palestinian life and culture with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 when hundreds of villages were destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people displaced. This damage cannot be undone — but repair and return are possible.

A new set of four questions must be asked, including this one:

How will we, as Jews, bear witness to the unjust actions committed in our name?

The actual Passover story is long and noring, so we will skip over that, except for the Ten Plagues, because we want to remember the suffering of the Egyptians:

Our freedom was bought with the suffering of others. As we packed our bags that last night in Egypt, the darkness was pierced with screams. May the next sea-opening not also be a drowning; may our singing never again be their wailing. We shall all be free, or none of us shall be free because our liberations are intertwined.

However, we would be remiss if we didn't talk about the ten plagues that Jews are inflicting on Palestinian Arabs today, including:

Poverty
Restrictions on movement
Water shortage
Destruction of Olive Trees
Home demolitions
Settlements
Political prisoners
Profiteering
Denial of the Right of Return
Erasing histories

Then comes the Palestinian Freedom Riders Song.

Now, the Forward has published an article by a JVP member encouraging this same self-hating mentality!

Passover has become a complicated holiday for me. I am still moved and inspired by the recounting of the Exodus. But the irony of celebrating Jewish freedom and deliverance into Israel, especially when, in today’s Israel, it is the Palestinians who face oppression at the hands of the Israelis, makes it painful. Yet it also renews my commitment to pursue the kind of justice that the story of Exodus teaches us is part of our legacy.

I bring this commitment to the Seder by including an olive on my Seder plate. The olive tree is a universal and ancient symbol of hope and peace. And sadly, the destruction of Palestinian olive trees by Israeli settlers and the Israeli army is just one example of the way that Israeli policies systematically deny Palestinians of even their most basic rights.

Yisrael Medad of My Right Word published a cogent comment at the Forward:

First of all, regards from Shiloh, a community I think you know well.

Second, an olive is not a bad idea. It reminds me of the annointing of the High Priest when we had a Temple. It reminds me of the moral ethical measurement standard (kezayit) which people of JVP blur all the time.

Third, it reminds me of all the olive trees the Arabs have destroyed here in Shiloh Bloc.

Fourth, it reminds me of the supreme value of the Land of Israel, "a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig-trees and pomegranates; a land of olive-trees and honey;", the Land conquered and occupied by Arabs in 638 CE.

I would be remiss if I didn't point to the hilarious spoof of the JVP Haggadah made by Divest This! last year. It is a shame that the Forward wouldn't get the jokes.

Tuesday Links Part 2

From Ian:

LATMA: An Israeli Soldier's song to the world for Passover

Alan Baker: Biased, Prejudiced, and Unprofessional: The UN Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission Report on Israeli Settlements

Issuing such a slanted and biased report implants within the international community an incorrect and inaccurate view of a complex reality, in a manner that inevitably steers the debate away from practical or fruitful directions and in fact assists in entrenching the beliefs of the more extreme elements on all sides. It serves to mobilize the international community in a manner prejudicial to any future prospect of agreement and settlement of the dispute.
In short, this report is nothing more than an insult to the UN as a whole and to its Human Rights Council, as well as an insult to the intellect of all those who read it in the false expectation that it is authoritative and credible.

Lord David Trimble Nobel Peace Laureate addressed UN debate on settlements

Nobel Peace Laureate David Trimble, member of the British House of Lords, took the floor in this morning’s UN Human Rights Council debate on a new report by a fact-finding mission on Israeli settlements, to deliver the following statement on behalf of the Geneva non-governmental organization UN Watch.

Pakistan arrests suspect in Daniel Pearl murder

Pakistan arrested a suspect in connection with the 2002 kidnapping and brutal murder of Daniel Pearl, a journalist for The Wall Street Journal.
The paramilitary unit Pakistani Rangers captured Qari Abdul Hayee in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, on Sunday. CNN cited a senior Pakistani official as saying that Hayee is suspected of having facilitated Pearl’s kidnapping on January 23, 2002, in Karachi.

George Galloway Banned from University of Chester

An invitation for George Galloway MP to speak at an event organised by the University of Chester’s Debating Society has been revoked by the Student Union, after it upheld the National Union of Students’ no-platform order against Galloway — a consequence of Galloway’s recent bigoted behaviour.

Don't be surprised by Lord Ahmed's anti-Semitic rant

Lord Ahmed's comments did not appear in a vacuum. They reflect a dangerous indulgence for conspiracy theory and Jew baiting in significant sections of the Islamic world

Obama and Netanyahu: Reboot

In their second act, will Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama find happiness, and cooperate on policies that will best serve both Israeli and American interests?
The answer does not depend on psychology or individual personalities. Serious leaders leave their private likes and dislikes behind when it comes to serious issues – Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin did what they had to, despite the deep animosities. And Sadat and Begin did not need to play golf in order to negotiate peace.

Barry Rubin: The Region: Note to Obama

Current US strategy is to support anti-American, anti-Semitic radicals, with even arms and money, believing that “it pays off in the end.”
The nonsense here should be obvious: Why put into power people who hate you, lie about you and want to destroy you? What is the payoff? That if you help your ideologically motivated enemies into power they will then like you? That being in power will make them moderates, an idea that notably failed in the Israel-Palestinian “peace process” and on many other occasions? More accurately, today you give them guns, tomorrow they use those weapons to murder the US ambassador in Benghazi.

Poll: Most Israeli Jews don’t trust Obama to safeguard country’s interests

Ahead of visit, 62% of Israelis say US president is incapable of bringing about a breakthrough in peace talks

Israelis give video welcome to Obama

US Embassy in Tel Aviv hits the streets with cardboard cutout of the President so that locals can say a big ‘hello’
In addition to personal video clips that people made at home, embassy staff also patrolled the streets armed with a life-size cardboard cutout of the president so that locals could get up close and personal while giving a big “welcome” in a multitude of languages.

Netanyahu’s tiny gift to Obama: A marvel of Israeli nanotech VIDEO

Prime minister to present the US president with a minuscule version of both countries’ declarations of independence

‘Our Christmas dinners with the pope’
Argentina’s Jewish leaders describe an extraordinary relationship with Francis I, who comes to synagogue for ‘selichot’ and loaned out a cathedral for a Shoah event

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina made history last week by becoming the first pope from Latin America and the first from the Jesuit order. This week, Argentine Jewish leaders, attending a World Jewish Congress meeting in Greece, predicted a new era for Catholic-Jewish relations and described a man who is very close to the Jewish community, who regularly visits synagogues and has invited Jewish friends to Christmas dinner.

Israel’s iOnRoad wins top new mobile app prize
Qualcomm grants Israeli-created safety road app a total of $250,000 in venture capital, after it beat out apps from around the world

As far as international telecom giant Qualcomm is concerned, Israeli-created road safety app iOnRoad is the best new mobile app in the world. That’s why Qualcomm awarded iOnRoad a total of $250,000 in funding and assistance, as the winner of its third annual QPrize international venture investment competition.

Surgery without scars or scalpels
Israel’s InSightec is transforming the operating room with a new ultrasound technology that enables surgeons to destroy tumors and cysts without incisions.

Surgery without scalpels and scars? It’s not science fiction. Israel’s InSightec is in the midst of transforming the operating room with its ExAblate MRI-guided high-intensity ultrasound technology.
The ExAblate O.R. system uses interchangeable “cradles” set on a regular MRI treatment table. The tool allows doctors to destroy targets, such as tumors and uterine fibroid cysts, deep inside the body without incisions. The alert patient is monitored in real time, and changes in treatment parameters can be made instantly.

Gaza strawberry farmers must be traitors, according to anti-Israel Left

Here is yet another story showing that Gaza farmers are happily cooperating with Israel - which, to anti-Israel idiots and boycotters, must mean that they are traitors to the cause.

On Monday (March 11th, 2013), the Israeli Coordination and Liaison Administration (ICLA) for the Gaza Strip hosted twenty-nine farmers from Gaza to attend the annual Strawberry Fair in Qalansuwa, Israel.

The event (organized by the Israeli Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development's Agricultural Extension Service), is held annually in order for professionals to become acquainted with a large variety of strawberries as well as new and approved materials used within the industry. The fair was also attended by representatives of the Coordination and Liaison Administration for Gaza (CLA), Mr. Uri Madar and Mr. Eli Sadeh.

The farmers arrived early Monday morning through the Erez Crossing and were greeted by Mr. Eli Sadeh and other representatives of the ICLA. For some, it was their first time participating but many were veterans of ICLA sponsored trips. The ICLA coordinated the transportation for the Gazan farmers who arrived in Qalansuwa around 10 a.m. When the farmers arrived, they were able to participate in the fair's activities such as meeting with growers presenting different types of strawberries as well as learning about new products such as pesticides that are used within the industry.Towards the end of the fair, the Gazan farmers were shown strawberry fields and were able to learn about the different methods used for growing the fruit and were able to ask any questions they had.

The ICLA organizes events such as these for the Gazan farmers because it assists them greatly to keep up with the ever changing industry standards and development within the strawberry fruit itself. Through sampling and presentations, the farmers were able to learn more about different growing methods and how that affects how long a strawberry can remain edible or when it needs to be planted.

This event was made possible due to the stable security climate following Operation Pillar of Defense. The Israeli Coordination and Liaison Administration for the Gaza Strip hopes for more cooperation in the field of agriculture and plans to coordinate more events such as these which provide professional training and business opportunities for Gazan farmers and merchants.

Tuesday Links Part 1

From Ian:

Rashid Khalidi and Palestinian Rejectionism

While Shavit, as an Israeli, tries to assess the situation both critically and self-critically, seeking a realistic way forward, Khalidi, blinded by hatred of Israel, places the entire onus for the conflict at its doorstep, refusing to engage in any introspection.
That’s hardly a formula to advance the peace process, and Obama would be well-served to ignore Khalidi’s counter-productive advice to America’s leader. In fact, the professor is so caught up in mining the English language for ever uglier ways of describing Israeli policy that he blithely skips over one inconvenient truth after another, presumably hoping the reader won’t pay attention.

Honest Reporting: Doctors Respond to Lancet Article on Israeli Doctors and Torture

The absence of any comment or reference to medical literature or non-biased expertise as relating to trauma induced during CPR, immediately places Ms. Devi’s article outside the realm of objective, medical/scientific publication standards. Responsibility for accepting the article for publication rests on The Lancet editor.

Why Let An Inconvenient Truth Spoil a Great Mood?

What were the circumstances of their eviction? Did the family really own the property in question? What was the basis for the Jewish claims? Had they failed to pay rent? Were they in fact squatters? Was Israeli bureaucracy running amok?
The Guardian has a disproportionate fixation on Israeli evictions and home demolitions in eastern Jerusalem. So finding background info on the Al-Kurds wasn’t hard. Indeed, The Guardian’s Rory McCarthy covered the 2008 eviction. And after hashing through the legal he-said-she-said, McCarthy wrote in black on white:
Rabbi Arik Ascherman, of the Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights, acknowledged that the al-Kurd land may have belonged to Jews before 1948 . . .

Jonathan Freedland promotes the myth of ‘non-violent’ Palestinian protests in Bil’in

Over the past several years more than 200 Israeli security personnel have been injured by Palestinian rioters in Bil’in.
Like so many symbols of the Palestinian “resistance”, the weekly protests at the security fence near Bil’in are not spontaneous, grassroots acts of civil disobedience but, rather, choreographed, media-friendly acts of violence.

IDF Blog: Rocks Can Kill

Rock throwing is common in Judea and Samaria, and along with Molotov Cocktail and booby-trapped tire throwing, is a terror act that comes under the definition of ‘popular terror’. These incidents happen daily, and are easily ignored by the mainstream media, because they don’t seem that serious. But did you know that a simple rock can kill?

2 Jerusalem Arabs Charged in Foiled Terror Plot

Two Jerusalem Arab men were indicted Monday morning on charges of plotting to carry out a terrorist attack on Jews in the holy city.

Gaza terrorist to serve 18 years for firing rockets

Man involved in firing rockets at Sderot; arrested in 2011, when he crossed into Israel from Gaza for reconnaissance.

Lawyer sues Mubarak for failing to ‘reclaim’ Eilat

An Egyptian lawyer has filed a lawsuit against former president Hosni Mubarak and other state officials for neglecting to “reclaim” Um Rashrash — the Israeli city of Eilat — and demanded that Egypt take the southern resort from Israel. The town, which had been occupied by the British and was claimed by Jordan, was captured by Israel during the War of Independence in March 1949.

UN report reveals Iranian violence against Bahais

Research discloses extreme state-sponsored discrimination against minority community, says Bahais "systematically deprived."

German university fires Holocaust-denying professor
The University of Aachen in Germany has fired historian Vladimir Iliescu for claiming the Holocaust never happened in Romania.

The institution “cancelled the teaching contract” of Iliescu “immediately after statements he made to the Romanian Academy became known,” a spokesperson for RWTH Aachen said, adding that the university was “appalled” by his words.
87-year-old Vladimir Iliescu claimed on video that claims of genocide in his native Romania are a ‘huge lie’

Greek player banned for life for Nazi salute

Giorgos Katidis booted from Greek national soccer team after making gesture to celebrate goal
Greek soccer player Giorgos Katidis has been banned from his national team for life after giving a Nazi salute while celebrating a goal in the top-flight league.

Report: Vidal Sassoon Center Lecture
Funding PA terrorists is only the tip of the iceberg. Dr. Gerstenfeld spells out the details of Norwegian anti-Semitism.

During his lecture at the Vidal Sassoon Center at Hebrew University, anti-Semitism expert Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld said that Norway serves as a most useful example to expose anti-Semitism and anti-Israel hate-mongering in the Western world. He listed a number of events in this Labor party-dominated Scandinavian country which would have been admired by Nazis.

Followup on NYT magazine piece romanticizing riots

Lots of people have written about the New York Times Sunday magazine front-page story (that I wrote about on Friday) that effectively romanticized and justified violent riots and was an advertisement for a third intifada.

David G summarized many of them well:

The New York Times has done it again. Less then two weeks after publishing an intellectual attack against Israel, it publishes an article glorifying physical attacks on Israel. The front page story of yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, Is This Where the Third Intifada Will Start? by Ben Ehrenriech. (The cover has the more provocative phrase, “If there is a third intifada, we want to be the ones who started it.”

Chemi Shalev of the left wing paper Ha’aretz lets us in on a little secret about Ehrenreich:

In 2009, Ehrenreich published a direct attack on Zionism in the Los Angeles Times entitled “Zionism is the Problem”. In the article, Ehrenreich castigates not only the “deplorable conditions in which Palestinians live and die in Gaza and the West Bank” but “the Zionist tenets on which the state was founded “as well.
“The problem is functional”, Ehrenreich writes. “Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion or to wholesale ethnic cleansing. Put simply, the problem is Zionism.”

In other words, Ehrenreich is every bit the anti-Israel ideologue as Joseph Levine who recently explained why Israel could not legitimately be both a Jewish and a democratic state. The article is written in a measured, professorial tone. So the outrageous aspects of the article will be omissions that indicate that Ehrenreich is not telling the whole story.

For example, Ehrenreich writes:

But little was resolved in Oslo. A second intifada erupted in 2000, at first mostly following the model set by the earlier uprising. Palestinians blocked roads and threw stones.

But the second intifada didn’t just erupt. It was orchestrated by Yasser Arafat. The available evidence is overwhelming. But Ehrenreich isn’t interested.

At the blog, This Ongoing War, the Roths note another omission:

That’s all he writes about Ahlam Tamimi but we can tell you more. She is a Jordanian who was 21 years old and the news-reader on official Palestinian Authority television when she signed on with Hamas to become a terrorist. She engineered, planned and helped execute a massacre in the center of Jerusalem on a hot summer afternoon in 2001. She chose the target, a restaurant filled with Jewish children. And she brought the bomb. The outcome (15 killed, a sixteenth still in a vegetative state today, 130 injured) was so uplifting to her that she has gone on camera again and again to say, smiling into the camera lens, how proud she is of what she did. She is entirely free of regret. A convicted felon and a mass-murderer convicted on multiple homicide charges, she has never denied the role she embraced and justifies it fully.
Yet all the NY Times says about Nabi Saleh’s favourite one-time resident is that she was an escort “who now lives in exile in Jordan”. Period. This is no mere oversight. The editors at the New York Times showcased this same psychopath once before, six years ago. Then, as now, we felt someone needed to push back and we posted two blog articles: “7-Aug-07: Hot House: Cold Truths” and “28-Jun-07: About sweet-faced young women”, and got a little attention for a while. But it was clear to us that those who thought they perceived greatness of spirit in the woman continued to do so.

One of the children killed at Sbarro’s by Ahlam Tamimi, was the Roth’s 15 year old daughter Malki.

Israelly Cool notes the Roth’s story and adds another detail that was somehow omitted:

I will add the following: As I posted recently with regards to a Ha’aretz puff piece on Bassem Tamimi, his Tamimi Press Facebook page clearly indicates he is fighting for a one-state solution – a palestinian state – and supports terrorism and the terrorists who perpetrate heinous killings in support of this very goal.

Ehrenreich’s goal is to portray another intifada as a justified non-violent response to Israeli “occupation.” But as Elder of Ziyon notes, rock throwing isn’t exactly non-violent:

Too bad Mr. Ehrenreich didn’t think of pushing back on Bassem Tamimi’s irritation at justifying his idea that stone throwing is supposedly “non-violent.”
Because today a three year old Israeli girl is in critical condition as a result of a stone-throwing attack.
Then again, that story cannot be found in the New York Times, so it must not be very important.

Israel Matzav adds:

It’s like the reporters wants it to happen. He wants another violent intifada in which hundreds will be killed, God forbid.

Believe it or not this isn’t the first time the New York Times has glamorized an intifada. The Sunday Magazine of October 29, 1989 featured Inside the Intifada by then Israel correspondent, Joel Brinkley.

In the light from the nearly full moon, the shebab, crouching behind the low boulders, watch the bus approach. Sitting in a front seat is a soldier in olive green, pointing his M-16 out the window. In the jeeps leading and following the bus, troops also sit with their weapons aimed into the dark and their plexiglass face shields lowered. As they reach the town the soldiers hear several shrill whistles – the shebab signaling to one another. From the convoy, as if in reply, comes the sound of rifle bolts snapping into place, loading bullets into chambers.
As the bus lumbers into range, the young Palestinians adjust their face masks and rise quietly in the dark. Each takes careful aim and with all his might hurls his baseball-sized stone. Even as the rocks fly, they turn and run, not waiting to see the results.
…
Before the crunching sound of shattering glass has stopped reverberating across the field, the soldiers are on the ground, firing volleys of rubber and steel bullets at forms they think they see moving in the dark. The driver, Itzik Meuchas, also leaps down, waving a pistol, agitated and angry.

Joel Brinkley currently teaches journalism at Stanford University. I wonder if he discusses the ethics of running with a group of vandals intent on attacking civilians.

But the bigger problem is with the New York Times. The paper runs frequent editorials castigating the Israeli government for not doing enough for peace. However the paper uses its influence not to encourage compromise, but to promote and prolong Palestinian grievances against Israel. The hypocrisy of the New York is astounding.

Jonathan Tobin at Commentary also wrote an excellent response:

Ehrenreich is a curious choice to write an in-depth piece on the Israeli-Palestinian struggle for the supposedly objective Times. If the piece seems incredibly skewed toward the point of view of the Palestinians, it’s no accident. Ehrenreich has never made any secret about his view about the State of Israel: he thinks Zionism is the moral equivalent of Nazism and believes the Jewish state should not exist. He stated as much in a 2009 op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times titled “Zionism is the problem.” In that piece he didn’t merely repeat the canard that Israel was an apartheid state but actually said the racist South African government compared favorably to the Jewish state.

The author thinks it’s an injustice to say that denying to Jews the same rights that no one would think to deny to every other people on the planet is anti-Semitism. True to the beliefs of his Marxist grandparents, he thinks all nationalisms are bad, but he sees the destruction of the one Jewish nationalism as a priority. The piece is a farrago of distortions, not the least of which is the notion that a single secular state to replace Israel could guarantee the rights or the safety of Jews there. But the main takeaway from it is that he has no interest in even arguing the merits of a two-state solution or lamenting the fading chances of such a deal. That’s because he agrees with Palestinians who continue to refuse to recognize the legitimacy of any Jewish state, no matter where its borders are drawn.

Catherine Ashton and the EU throw the Oslo process under the bus

Under existing agreements between Israel and the PLO, borders is one of the "final status" issues that are meant to be hammered out in negotiations.

Since at least 2009, the PA changed the rules - frustrating US government mediators - and refused to go back to the negotiating table without Israel agreeing, against UNSC 242, that the 1949 armistice lines should be the basis of the negotiations - arbitrary, indefensible lines that were never considered national borders for any purpose.

Instead of supporting the Israeli position that negotiations should continue without preconditions, the EU has given support to the Palestinian Arab position and strengthened Abbas' intransigence.

Here is the latest example, as the EU's Catherine Ashton announces, in effect, that the negotiating framework that has given autonomy and land to the Palestinian Arabs is dead, and giving the PLO carte blanche to tear up the Oslo Accords:

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Palestinian Premier Salam Fayyad on Tuesday signed in the headquarters of the European diplomatic service, an accord with which the EU will grant 7 million euros in aid for the development of the so-called 'C area' representing roughly 60% of the West Bank. Fayyad is in Brussels to take part in a meeting of the ad hoc committee to coordinate assistance to the Palestinians.

The accord, said Ashton, aims to support the Palestinian presence and promote social and economic development in the C area, which is key to Palestine's economic sustainability.

Ashton also said she was impatient to work constructively with all partners to change the C area.

Relations between the EU and Palestinian National Authority are also being boosted. The EU Council has adopted a common action plan of neighbourhood policy. The plan provides for a shared engagement to deepen bilateral relations and boost the privileged partnership, Ashton said. She also said she had discussed with Fayyad how to better implement shared objectivesi n the plan, and in particular a full association accord between the EU and PNA.

Ashton's statement is here, where she states that the EU is "focusing our efforts on East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and Area C."

Effectively, Abbas' temper tantrum in 2009 has now become EU policy.

Amazing how much you can be rewarded by just saying "no" repeatedly.

Followup on Oakland assault of Zionist woman

Last week I posted a video showing the repeated assault of a woman in Oakland after she wrote "Am Yisrael Chai" in chalk on what appeared to be a public park.

The Jewish Press' Lori Lowenthal Marcus did some real reporting:

Ogawa Park was named for a civil rights activist who was the first Japanese member of the Oakland City Council. But Ogawa Park was “renamed” by Occupy Oakland protesters to “honor” Oscar Grant, a felon who had been imprisoned for drug dealing and weapons offenses, and who was shot by Oakland police 1n 2009, while resisting arrest.

An area in the Park is specifically designated for public expression; it has been the scene of many boisterous protests, including the long-term occupation by Occupy Oakland, last year.

Last week a perfect example of what so much of the anti-Israel movement is built on, was on display in Ogawa Park. In this “free speech” park taken over by “peaceful” protesters of all kinds of oppression, a young woman who was drawing a message of peace was physically assaulted, cursed out with the foulest possible language, and thrown out of the public park by people who claim to be, and are referred to by the mass media, as “peaceful,” “non-violent,” “free speech” activists. In truth, they are frequently abusive, intolerant, violent anarchists who believe the highest form of expression is provoking violence with what is usually aggressive resistance, but occasionally spills over into outright violence.

This is what happened.

...Channa decided, after looking around and finding no one interested in talking about why they hate Israel, to take a piece of chalk from one of the communal bags that had been placed around the Plaza for people to use to ‘express themselves.’ She began to draw, underneath a message in large block letters – FREEDOM TO SPEAK – and drew in large letters, “Am Yisrael Chai.” Why? “I’m from Israel, I love my country, and they are attacking my people, my culture.”

Channa said she was simply writing a message of peace, but before she could finish her short message, a harpy descended on her, yelling, “you can’t write that here,” grabbing at her chalk, screaming, cursing and shoving her. It was Gabrielle Silverman, a resident of Oakland, formerly of Brooklyn, and full-time, long-term “peace” activist. Name a major protest – one in Washington, D.C. against the International Monetary Fund in 2000, when she was only 17, Occupy Oakland, Black Bloc attacks in San Francisco, and Silverman has been involved in some way. She’s been arrested for violent, destructive behavior, as recently as this past October.

The attack, shown in the video, went on for several minutes, with more and more people coming to assist Silverman in menacing and ejecting Channa. The crowd assisted Silverman in shoving Channa and her friend David out of the public square.

Freedom of speech? Nah. Freedom to assemble? Nope.

The Jewish Press reached Silverman late Saturday night, and asked her “why you felt it was justified to attack someone who was expressing a view – even one you find abhorrent – in a public place.”

Silverman’s response:
We had created a space at the Plaza to chalk the names of our dead friends and people who have suffered because of state or corporate violence. (“freedom to speak and assemble” was written either semi randomly or as a statement on the wittling away of constitutional rights that we are experiencing in the present time.) It was over this memorial space that they intruded. They came to pick a fight with us on the anniversary of Tristan’s shooting. I want to say that I don’t like or respect the right wing, but I would never disturb one of your memorial spaces, and I find their targeting of an event for Tristan Anderson to be cowardly and unethical. They are a shonda for the goyim.

She added, “I also want to add that my only regret is calling her a whore. Solidarity with whores everywhere!”

“As a former soldier, I was trained to maintain my composure in the face of that kind of provocation,” Channa said.

Read the whole thing.

I saw on Twitter that the Oakland police are looking at this incident.

On eve of Obama visit, Mahmoud Abbas gives terrorist mom high honors

Mahmoud Abbas has gone out of his way to honor Maryam Farhat, known as Umm Nidal, the mother of three "martyrs."

Farhat is the Hamas lawmaker and mother of terrorists who justified killing Israeli civilians and enthusiastically celebrated her son's death after he killed several Jewish pre-army students.

Abbas opened a "tent of condolences" for Farhat at his headquarters in the Muqata in Ramallah.

Not only that, but he gave her a high Palestinian Authority posthumous honor, the "Order of Sacrifice."

Abbas is showering honor on Farhat on the eve of being visited by President Obama.

Yesterday I showed a video of Farhat which made even the Arab interviewer cringe with her naked support of terror.

Here's a video of her with her son who is about to murder Israeli civilians. She talks about her happiness at her son's forthcoming murder spree and expected death:

This sick creature is considered a hero worthy of the greatest honor by Israel's supposedly "moderate" peace partner.

Will President Obama address this issue when he meets Abbas in Ramallah? Will he even pass by the mourning tent on his way to the meeting? That would be a photograph that would haunt him.

If he has any sense of morality at all, if the tent is there Obama should turn around and nix the meeting.

This is a prime example of how the Palestinian Arab leadership supports and glorifies terror, and sweeping it under the rug is exactly the wrong approach. It is their despicable embrace of the most disgusting terrorists and their actions that is the real "obstacle to peace" and here we can see it as explicitly as possible.

Incidentally, this shows how Palestinian Arab "unity" would work - Fatah would go towards Hamas' positions, not the other way around, as here is a prominent Hamas member that Fatah and Abbas is happy to publicly embrace.

Aish's Passover video 2013

(h/t Yerushalimey)

Summing up the Mishrawi incident (JE Dyer)

J.E. Dyer has brilliantly put together the evidence that a Hamas rocket killed Omar Mishrawi, referring to my blog posts and others.

"J. E. Dyer is a retired US Naval intelligence officer who served around the world, afloat and ashore, from 1983 to 2004. Her last operations in the Navy were Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom in 2003, and she retired at the rank of Commander."

She was the person who I originally asked to examine the photos of the Mishrawi house to see if she agreed with me that the damage looked more like a Hamas rocket than an Israeli missile.

After reading this, see who you think the bigger expert is - Dyer or the BBC's Jon Donnison who declared that "Most likely is that Omar died in one of the twenty bombings that the Israeli military says made up its initial wave of attacks."

Oops – The IDF didn’t kill Baby Mashrawi (and other things that didn’t happen during Pillar of Defense)

by J.E. Dyer

: Not killed by the IDF (AP Photo)

Diligent readers of the Washington Post may know by now that UN observers in Gaza attribute the death of 11-month-old Omar Mashrawi, during Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012, to a Hamas rocket which fell short and hit a Gaza City home.

WaPo initially reported the death using an AP photo with a caption that implicated an “Israeli strike.” The corrected story has that reference removed from the caption, after AP removed it ina correction to its original posting with the photo. Numerous print and online news outlets used the same AP photo, however, with the original caption alluding to an Israeli strike.

Yet bloggers doubted at the time that the damage done to the Gaza City home was caused by an Israeli strike. Elder of Ziyon’s post on the Mashrawi question mentioned these doubts first, I believe, and got wide attention. Full disclosure: I am the correspondent with military experience whom he quotes analyzing the photos of the damage and assessing that it could not have been caused by an Israeli weapon. (For reasons my readers are aware of, I didn’t have the time to write a post of my own on this topic, and it’s Elder who deserves full credit for putting the argument together, with photo references, for public consumption.)

My initial skepticism about the “Israeli strike” narrative was based on examining the photos of the damage. Later, as reports of eyewitness statements came in, it became even less likely that an Israeli weapon was what hit the home in Gaza City.

Conflicting statements about the event

For example, eyewitness accounts of a “mass of fire” hitting the roof were inconsistent with an Israeli weapon, which would be fuzed to detonate by proximity, timing, and/or command guidance, but which would not have descended toward the home’s roof as a “mass of fire.” The “mass of fire” report could well have described what was visible with a Hamas rocket hitting the home, however. (The baby’s father, BBC Arabic journalist Jihad Mashrawi, said originally, in Arabic, that “shrapnel” hit his home.)

Mashrawi home: Not damage done by an IDF weapon.

But some of the reporting in Arab media described the projectile that hit the home as a “tank shell” – which in this context usually means any type of common short- or medium-range artillery round, whether fired from a tank or not. It is frequently used interchangeably with “mortar,” by the media and civilian eyewitnesses; it does not refer to ananti-tank round.

Hamas uses former-Soviet shells for artillery fire, and uses the explosive material to make warheads for its indigenously assembled rockets. The level of damage in the photos is consistent with the amount of explosive in a Hamas “tank shell,” something Elder demonstrates nicely with his photo comparison. The damage is much less than would be expected from an attack with an IDF stand-off targeting weapon, however, such as a guided bomb or air-to-surface missile.

Related to that point is a third statement attributed by the BBC’s Jon Donnison to unnamed Israeli officials, who reportedly said that the IDF was targeting “the building” – implied to be either the Gaza City home or a building near it – because there was a “militant” in it. This element of the narrative doesn’t hang together, either as an implication about Israeli intent (Elder’s takedown of the implication’s idiocy is comprehensive), or in conjunction with the “tank shell” report from eyewitnesses. If the IDF were targeting a militant inside a building, it would not use a weapon like a “tank shell” to do it.

Not an Israeli “tank shell”

This is the case for two reasons: first, because a tank shell – even a modern, penetrating or anti-personnel tank shell – is not the weapon for ensuring an interdiction-type objective like killing specific terrorists; and second, because in Pillar of Defense, there was no ground-combat phase in which the infantry was engaged with terrorists in close combat, or in which the firing platforms for the “tank shell” were brought in close to the target.

Using “tank shells” to go after terrorists in buildings is something the IDF does in ground combat, when its own troops have tactical objectives in an urban close-battle environment. (As with the IDF in Cast Lead in 2009, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps made great use of this approach in Iraq with newer munitions created for the M1A2 Abrams tank, including the 120mm M1028 “Room Broom” anti-personnel round. Scroll down for a summary at this link.) The purpose for which these modern tank shells are suited is denying terrorists a place to hide in urban combat. They target physical features of the landscape, destroying them or making them uninhabitable; they are not used to ensure that specific, named terrorists are targeted or killed.

For tactical urban-warfare use, these “tank shells” must be deployed from positions relatively close to the structure or other hiding area a commander wants to deny to the enemy. “Close” in this case means 500 meters or less; typically, around 200 meters. Obviously, no Israeli tanks or mobile artillery were deployed that close to buildings in Gaza during Pillar of Defense. None entered Gaza at all. IDF artillery can lob some types of shells considerably further than that, but using those shells from a distance for an interdiction-type targeting purpose – trying to kill a specific terrorist or terrorists during a stand-off bombing campaign like the one in Pillar of Defense – would be a flawed approach. There are weapons better suited for the purpose (the guided bombs and missiles mentioned earlier). The IDF could be reasonably sure of causing damage to a buildingwith a “tank shell” attack, scattering or wounding whoever was in it, but would not have reasonable certainty of killing a particular terrorist.

All that said, the level of damage visible in the photos indicates that what hit the Mashrawi home was not an Israeli “tank shell” anyway. It was a round too weak to achieve the objective of killing a specific terrorist – a form of malpractice it would be laughable to accuse the IDF of. Using a weapon that doesn’t offer a reasonable guarantee of eliminating the terrorist – one that will do little more than poke a hole in the roof and rearrange the furniture, while still potentially injuring bystanders – would be an irresponsible use of force, and not at all characteristic of the IDF. When the Israelis attack terrorists inside buildings in Gaza, they use weapons of sufficient power to ensure the terrorists are killed.

I am confident in assessing that during Pillar of Defense, when there was no IDF troop presence in Gaza and all targeting was done from a stand-off distance, the IDF was not targeting a terrorist in a building using a “tank shell.” It’s the wrong weapon for the desired effect, and IDF planners know that.

Unlikely to have been collateral damage from a nearby strike

An alternate theoretical possibility is that a flaming projectile was expelled from the explosion in an actual Israeli strike somewhere nearby, and ended up falling through the Mashrawi roof. That possibility is low, however, partly because photos of the damage to the home show kinetic effects, which would have had to be produced by blast. The flaming projectile would itself have had to explode inside the home, or have caused an explosion (theoretically, for example, of a propane tank), rather than merely causing things to catch fire. Whether such a projectile would have penetrated the roof is one question; another is whether an eyewitness would have called it a “tank shell.” There are too many special coincidences necessary for this to be a likely conclusion about the event.

Elder looked early on at the possibility that the Mashrawi home was affected by IDF strikes on a group of Hamas Fajr-5 rocket launch sites, not far from the Zeitoun neighborhood where the Mashrawi home is located. The distance of the Zeitoun cluster from the sites, anywhere from 200 to 500 meters, makes it possible that some fragments from the presumed blast area traveled as far as the Mashrawi house. But it is unlikely that anything heavy and flaming – a projectile that could penetrate the roof of the home – did so. Fragments flying that far from a nominal 500-pound-class bomb blast (presumably with detonation at or very close to ground level) would be small.

Child killed by Hamas rocket (not by IDF).

If an IDF attack with the larger bombs used against big buildings (1,000- and 2,000-pounders) had set off sympathetic explosions from an ordnance storage site near the Mashrawi home, everyone in the area would have been aware of it and would have mentioned it to reporters. The Fajr-5 sites and large factory buildings identified in the IDF graphic at Elder’s post are less than a kilometer – in American terms, less than half a mile – from Zeitoun. An explosion big enough to send lethal fragmentation that far would have been heard by everyone, would have put up visible smoke, and would probably have caused neighbors to rush out and discuss the event (not to mention capturing evidence of the blast on video).

No reporting from the day in question indicates an incident or reaction of this kind. Ultimately, I consider it unlikely that whatever hit the Mashrawi home was frag from an IDF strike nearby. And, of course, even if the damage did turn out to be from an IDF strike, the fault lies with Hamas for putting rocket launch and storage sites so close to civilian homes.

Media credulity about multiple false reports

The positive evidence reported about the damage to the Mashrawi home points to a Hamas rocket, whereas it is not consistent with a direct hit by an Israeli weapon. At a certain point, the media’s failure to recognize this has to reflect on the practice of their craft. From embattled regions of Africa to Afghanistan and Chechnya, there are very fine reporters out there who know what they’re seeing, when they see combat and bomb damage. But there seems to be no critical eye cast by the major news organizations on reports coming from Gaza.

Scene from Syrian civil war (not from Gaza).

Even without knowledge of weapons and weapons effects, however, the parade of false photo-essay depictions from sources in Gaza should give reporters and editors pause. As the Camera link in my second paragraph above reminds us, there was another damning piece of photo “evidence” at the heart of misrepresentations during Pillar of Defense. (I wrote it up at the time.) The lifeless body of four-year-old Mohammed Sadallah, who was killed by a Hamas rocket on 17 November, was paraded for grotesque photo ops with Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil, and the world media reported little Mohammed as the victim of an Israeli attack. Israel was not attacking in Gaza at all when the boy was killed, however, and even the New York Times concluded that he was actually killed by a Hamas rocket.

Pillar of Defense also saw pioneering work from Hamas in the faked-injuries department. CNN and BBC both ran footage of Gazans carrying a supposedly injured man who – a few seconds later, in the same video – was up walking around as if nothing had happened. CNN made an on-air correction due to Elder’s post on this video fakery.

Meanwhile, the least-effort method of creating a false narrative from images is to simply swipe the images from another conflict, because who knows the difference, right? Thus was the image of a father clutching his bleeding son swiped from the civil war in Syria, and passed off by Hamas as an image from Gaza during Pillar of Defense.

A method that exertion-free is bound to crop up more than once, and so Mr. Donnison of the BBC was caught up in a separate recycled-Syrian-casualty-photo incident.

A third such incident was reported by The Algemeiner, when a site called Alarab Net, on 18 November, posted a photo purporting to show a massacred family in Gaza, which turned out to be a massacred family in Syria, photographed at least a month earlier.

Scene from Syrian civil war, not Gaza.

This series of video- and photo-narrative fakery incidents is what we in intelligence call a “pattern.” Richard Landes wrote an excellent summary of the pattern in November for the UKTelegraph, bringing in evidence from years past. It isn’t a new thing. Hamas and Hamas’s apologists in the blogosphere routinely attempt to create a false narrative through the use of images and unsubstantiated claims. News reporting from Gaza simply assumes Israeli guilt even where none has been established, as with the invalid narrative about Mohammed Sadallah’s death.

The more times this happens, the more careful Western media organizations should be about vetting sources and verifying the details of events. It’s because they don’t have a reputation for doing so that arguments like Robert Mackey’s defense of the original, careless and slanted reporting on the Mashrawi incident come off as special pleading. Throwing up the argument that “both sides are at fault” is a cheap dodge, when the Western media are routinely complicit in falsely depicting Israel – in exactly Hamas’s own terms – as extra-specially at fault.

In the end, it does matter who killed the baby, because Hamas in fact kills its own people, as well as getting them killed, in the pursuit of its goals. That is the nature of the opponent Israel faces in Gaza. And that is the larger reality of which Omar Mashrawi’s truncated, 11-month life is powerful evidence.

Monday Links Part 2

From Ian:

Remembering the 65th Anniversary of the Hadassah Medical Convoy Massacre

While the State Department denounces Israel for building houses in Jerusalem, the 65th anniversary of the Hadassah Medical Convoy Massacre reminds us that the Muslim terrorists worked to ethnically cleanse the native Jewish population from their city, engaging in attacks on civil and communal institutions, a wave of violence that concluded with the destruction of the synagogues of East Jerusalem and the expulsion of its Jewish population.

‘Most Americans don’t want US to push Mideast peace’
New poll finds broad support for Israel in the US; 69% want to leave resolution of the conflict to Israelis and Palestinians

With just two days left before US President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that seven in 10 Americans would prefer to leave peace negotiations to the Israelis and Palestinians rather than see the US take a lead role in trying to resolve the conflict.

Netanyahu's Gift to Obama: Symbol of the U.S.-Israel Connection
Netanyahu will give Barack Obama a chip in which the independence scrolls of both countries are embedded side by side.

The nanochip will be placed on a Jerusalem stone from the Second Temple period which is normally used for sealing pottery in which liquids and perfumes had been stored. The gift was developed by the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute at the Technion in Haifa.
The Prime Minister's Office said on Sunday that the unique gift symbolizes the key messages of the visit - the strong and deep relationship between Israel and the United States and the shared values between the nations, the thousand-year relationship between the people of Israel and the land of Israel, and Israel’s leadership when it comes to technological research and development.

Iron Dome to get airport photo op with Obama

IDF to move missile battery to Ben-Gurion to simplify president’s visit to see American-funded system

Obama to get first-hand look at Start-Up Nation’s innovations
Netanyahu to show his guest remarkable examples of Israel’s high-tech prowess, and introduce some young pioneers

Israel, Netanyahu will tell Obama, has made unique contributions in the fields of medicine, agriculture, road safety, robotics, and more — and will prove it by showing him some of the world-changing innovations developed here.

‘Obama, don’t bring your smartphone to Ramallah’ by Khaled Abu Toameh

The large signs appeared over the past few days in a bid to draw US President Barack Obama’s attention to the fact that Palestinians in the West Bank still don’t have the 3G Internet service.
The posters read: “President Obama, don’t bring your smart phone to Ramallah; you won’t have mobile access to Internet; we nave no 3G in Palestine!” It was not clear on Sunday who was responsible for the posters. Some Palestinians said they did not rule out the possibility that the two local mobile phone companies, Jawwal and Wataniyeh, were behind the signs for purely commercial purposes.

Ann Bayefsky: Apartheid Palestine?
The campaign to rid the world of Israeli settlements is a campaign to rid the world of Israel.

Now the 22nd Judenrein Arab state is in-the-making: Apartheid Palestine.
Meanwhile, 20 percent of Israel’s population is Arab, and free Arab citizens sit on the highest courts of the land, represent Israel abroad, and hold political office. An Arab living (and thriving) in the Jewish state is fulfilling a human right.
How does this obvious contradiction make it past the human rights geniuses at the UN? The answer is almost as old as humankind: intolerance, xenophobia, bigotry and lawyers.

Douglas Murray: Lord Ahmed: Disgrace to Britain

It would be easy for them not to do so. Apart from his endless lies and extreme statements, Lord Ahmed has regularly hosted extremists, including people associated with terrorist groups, at the Houses of Parliament. Any panel invitation sent out at the behest of Lord Ahmed can be guaranteed to be a unique blend of conspiracy theorists, rabid anti-Semites and apologists for international terrorism. He has long been not just an embarrassment to the Labour party but an embarrassment to Parliament and a shame and disgrace to Britain.

BBC pussy-footing around British antisemitism again

So why did the BBC elect to airbrush the racist nature of Lord Ahmed’s alleged remarks by using the ambiguous terms “Jewish claims” and “anti-Jewish remarks”? Coming hot on the heels of the BBC’s previous attempts to downplay the antisemitic nature of remarks made by David Ward MP, this really does suggest an endemic problem at the BBC.

UK Parliament debates hate incitement and UK funding of PA, based on PMW findings

UK Parliament scrutinizes Palestinian hate incitement, terror glorification and British funding of PA in debate examining PMW findings
MP Ellman: "The matters... are truly shocking and put a question mark over the status of the Palestinian Authority as a partner for peace"
MP Henderson: "No peace agreement will be able to guarantee... peace if a generation of Palestinians is growing up indoctrinated to hate Israel, Jews and the West"

The Israeli who can predict the future
She has a PhD and a black belt, but where Kira Radinsky is really making her mark is in Microsoft disaster-prediction software.

It was at Microsoft’s US headquarters that Radinsky, now 26, met Eric Horvitz, head of Microsoft Research. He suggested they work together on a data-mining project that’s been grabbing headlines. The duo’s software can predict disasters of many types, including disease outbreaks, violence and natural catastrophes.

IAI Wins $300 Million Brazilian Contract

Israel Aircraft Industries has won a contract worth $300 million to build an airborne refueling system for Boeing 767-300 planes of the Brazilian Air Force. IAI beat out several companies in the U.S. and Europe to win the contract.

#BDSFail!

Having achieved world peace and utopian harmony, last week marked the most anticipated social event on the calendar of Israel haters’, oops, pro-Palestinian activists, across campuses in the United States – the ‘Israel Apartheid Week.’
With the situation in Syria resembling Club Med in Vanuatu, feminists finally controlling the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and China open to the most robust free press and thriving Tibetan community in the world, clearly this is an opportune time for our bastions of human rights and defenders of freedom to turn on the sole democracy in the Middle East – that grand pariah of them all … the Jewish State of Israel.

Welcome to "Palestine," President Obama (video)

Bethlehem residents decided to greet President Obama in that quaint, Middle Eastern way:

The rumor is that Obama didn't want to visit the Knesset out of fear of being heckled. Well, his visit to Bethlehem should be lots of fun....

Avi Mayer on Twitter asserts that the pickup truck running over Obama's picture is an official Palestinian Authority vehicle.