Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, March 02, 2014

Aerial views of Gaza City (video) - the horror!

A bunch of Gazans put a video camera on a small remote-controlled helicopter. Here's what Gaza City looks like from between 50 and 200 meters up.

Just for fun, I'd love to compare this footage with, say, Yarmouk in Syria, or the Central African Republic, or any of the scores of places around the world that are getting less attention than Gaza does.

(h/t O)

03/02 Links: Why Liberals Must Repudiate the BDS Movement; Pal Terrorist was Obamacare navigator

From Ian:

Why Liberals Must Repudiate the BDS Movement

Like the far-Leftists who failed to recognize the evils of the Soviet Union, many Americans today—including some of its most influential editors—can’t see what’s wrong with anti-Israel activism. And liberalism itself is in now in danger.
Indeed, as many have already noted, the Palestinian Authority itself does not support a boycott of Israel, and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, has said so quite explicitly. Even some among the extremists have admitted that many tactics used by the anti-Israel industry, and BDS in particular, are counterproductive. Norman Finkelstein, who has accused Jews of exploiting the Holocaust for their own and Israel’s gain, has nonetheless described the BDS movement as “a hypocritical, dishonest cult” led by “dishonest gurus” who want to “selectively enforce the law” by posing as human rights activists. Noam Chomsky, who for decades advocated dismantling Israel in favor of a “binational” state, has said that any movement that targets Israel alone can be attacked as anti-Semitic and “unfortunately, this [characterization] is with justice.” He has also said that the BDS movement’s “hypocrisy rises to heaven,” criticizing Barghouti, the movement’s founder, for advocating a full boycott of Israel despite having studied at Tel Aviv University.
All this points to the immense importance of the media’s coverage of anti-Israel extremism: By refusing to report accurately on it, media outlets enable forces that fundamentally oppose any genuine reconciliation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They help empower extremists—some too extreme even for their fellow extremists—who use bullying and sometimes unethical tactics to marginalize and silence precisely those voices who might help bring about reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. And more than anything else, they give hope to those who will never accept a Jewish state and, in refusing to do so, make peace impossible.

Convicted terrorist who blew up Israeli students was once hired as Obamacare navigator

When the Illinois Department of Insurance (IDI) conducted a background check on Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who murdered two Hebrew University students and wounded 10 others in a grocery-store bombing in 1969, they found a clean record — the Federal Bureau of Investigation had no information on Odeh. (RELATED: Sebelius: It’s possible for convicted felons to become Obamacare navigators)
But the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Michigan brought Odeh’s crimes to light, prompting the IDI to terminate Odeh in late November and issue a disciplinary report on the ordeal, according to National Review.
Unsurprisingly, Odeh, who used as many as nine aliases to evade authorities, ”failed to reveal the conviction on her [navigator] application,” IDI found.

Mainstream charities have donated thousands to Islamic group fronted by terror suspect

A controversial Islamic rights group fronted by a man charged with attending a terror training camp in Syria is being bankrolled by two mainstream British charities, including a foundation set up in the name of Dame Anita Roddick.
CagePrisoners, an organisation founded by Moazzam Begg - who has just appeared in court on terror charges - has been given £120,000 by the Anita Roddick Foundation, which distributes part of the former Body Shop owner’s £100 million fortune.
A second charity, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, a Quaker-run fund set up by the chocolate-maker and philanthropist a century ago, has also paid CagePrisoners £305,000 over six years.
Last week, Begg, 45, who became director of CagePrisoners after his release from Guantanamo Bay in 2005, was one of four suspects picked up in Birmingham over alleged links to terrorism in Syria.

Jordanian paper: "Know your enemy - Who are the Jews?"

Jordanian newspaper AsSabeel has a classically antisemitic article that "explains" everything ordinary people need to know about Jews, because one needs to know the enemy. After all, as the introductory paragraph says, we need to confirm that Jews are a demonized creation.

So let's get to the details.

Although the article is short, it does inform us that "Jews are the enemy of God and his religion of Islam."

Thanks to the Quran, we know that Jews are known for "heresy and stubbornness and vileness and lowliness," and they are "cursed of God, and on the tongue Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him , and on the tongue of David and Jesus and other prophets of God and prayers."

Finally, we learn that "Jews are rats who desecrate Jerusalem and destroy the basis of the Al Aqsa Mosque" and "Jews are like the devil."

This is from a country that has a peace treaty with Israel.

Perhaps you might say that Assabeel is a conservative, Islamist paper. Would a liberal Arab paper say the same sort of things?

Maybe Alankabout, an Arabic paper that routinely has photos of celebrities (NSFW) that would be censored in most US newspapers?

Well, Alankabout has a much longer article that discusses in great detail how Jews control all the banks and money of the world, as well as how they want to steal Egyptian gold - just like they stole their gold during the Exodus.

Sounds like they are merely "anti-Zionist."

Anti-Israel conference at NYU goes on despite protests

In a follow-up on a story I broke, JPost reports:

The American Studies Association hosted a large pro-Boycott, Divest, Sanction at New York University from Friday night to Saturday evening, sparking a backlash from NYU students, who wrote a letter of protest to the school’s administration.

The letter, co-signed by 26 NYU students and student leaders from both the college Democrat and Republican groups, was hand delivered to NYU President John Sexton and to NYU faculty member and incoming ASA President Lisa Duggan.

The ASA-BDS event, which coincided with Israeli Apartheid Week in New York and was titled “Circuits of Influence: US, Israel and Palestine,” was not widely publicized and was closed to the press.

When a reporter from The Jerusalem Post tried to register as a civilian earlier in the week, she was told the conference was completely full. Flyers for the event cautioned: “Please do not post or circulate the flyer.

We are trying to avoid press, protesters and public attention.”

“We are immensely disappointed with both the nature of this event and how it has been met with complete silence from the NYU administration,” the letter said, citing the fact that invitations to the event were extremely selective and the event itself features only pro-BDS, anti-Israeli speakers.

The students condemned the fact that the event coincided – “almost to the minute” – with Shabbat, a move that the letter called “seemingly deliberate... to prevent the presentation of other views in this complex issue.”

“Our concern is that New York University, a global leader in education, is permitting the occurrence of an event that is antithetical to the principles that the global academic community stands for,” the letter said, “if anything, the university condones the event with the administration’s disconcerting silence... While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed complex and deserves intense debate, hosting events that unequivocally reject and refuse to acknowledge dissenting opinions is an appalling gesture of intolerance.”

I don't know yet if anyone physically protested the event or if anyone infiltrated it.

I found one person who tweeted some highlights.The first two are pretty funny:

One of the problems of the political pushback to ASA/BDS is that organizers don't want their vibrant gatherings (I'm at one now) publicized.
— Sean M. Kennedy (@slicksean) March 1, 2014

Panelist talking about how even media writing off BDS, such as NYT piece on Scarlett Johansson as "glamorous" Israel ally, spread BDS info.
— Sean M. Kennedy (@slicksean) March 1, 2014

This one is classic, as an Arab defines antisemitism for us poor deluded Jews:

"Claiming opposition to Israel is 'anti-Semitic' *is* anti-Semitic, because it claims all Jews are the same." Panelist from @AdalahNY.
— Sean M. Kennedy (@slicksean) March 1, 2014

This one had me scratching my head, though:

"Palestinians and Americans are differently situated subjects of settler colonialism." Panelist at BDS conference.
— Sean M. Kennedy (@slicksean) March 1, 2014

Is that speaker saying that Americans are victims of colonialism?

Well, in 140 characters it does sound pretty stupid, but here is how I imagine it was presented so that academics could nod their heads and then burst out in applause:

In the scale of continuum of colonizer to colonized, most peoples do not fall on the extreme axes, but somewhere in between. The exception, of course, are Zionists, who are colonizers in extremis. Yet colonization is not only of land, but colonizers can also occupy governments, businesses and collective consciousness. In that sense, perhaps the United States can also be considered colonized by the Zionist entity, as the Zionist narrative has invaded the government, the financial centers of power and the very mindset of the average citizen who is woefully ignorant of Zionist crimes and abuses. I call this colonialism of the mind "ethereal colonization." So in a very real sense, Americans and Palestinians stand together, as victims of Zionist colonialism, and we must work together to free ourselves from all forms of insidious occupation, the concrete and the abstract!

Now it makes sense!

If anyone finds any other tweets or social media posts about this conference ofexclusion, it would be fun to reproduce it more fully,

MK Moshe Feiglin's video tour of the Temple Mount

A few days ago, Israeli MK Moshe Feiglin went to the Temple Mount. (He claims Jewish law allows him to visit areas much closer to the actual Temple site than most religious Jews would be able to visit.)

The video has some fascinating scenes.

Keep in mind that Feiglin is denounced as a wild eyed Jewish fundamentalist fanatic by both the Arab and much of the Israeli media. This video does not exactly jive with that characterization.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

The serious lesson from UCLA's Meltdown Girl

Amid the joking about Meltdown Girl (and here is a well-worn Internet meme used to good comedic effect on the subject), there is something important for supporters of Israel to realize.

As commenter Max writes:

Even though many of us are enjoying this moment of schadenfreude, that video contains some clues about what we're struggling with, especially on college campuses:

1. The girl is having a purely emotional experience. To her, and millions of other impressionable college kids around the world, understanding the Middle East conflict isn't about historical facts, complex political realities, or necessary security measures. It is simply an emotional issue. Pathos-based rhetoric will very often carry the day. Many of these impressionable kids get whipped into a frenzy. Which leads to my next point:

2. To much of the pro-divestment crowd, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been reduced to a cartoon image of sadistic, imperialistic Israelis brutalizing helpless, innocent Palestinians. To them, the conflict boils down to depraved Israelis perpetrating their evil unless "we" can stop them.

This girl is probably not consciously anti-Semitic. But she's definitely been infected by this Israel-as-pure-unmitigated-evil rhetoric that's so reminiscent of some of history's more loathsome, demagogic anti-Jewish propaganda campaigns.

Indeed. The girl is not an idiot. She was valedictorian in her high school class of some 700 students. The only way to understand her severe emotional reaction to a meaningless vote is to understand that she isn't using her brain when thinking about Israel.

For people like her, Israel is not the nation state of the Jewish people. - it is a shorthand meme for evil itself. It is not a place where people are born, live, love and laugh, where people care about each other and even about those who want to destroy them. It is not a place that has given back to the world far more than it takes. It is merely a symbol of racism, oppression and tyranny, more so than its truly tyrannical neighbors.

How do people like Danielle get infected with such hate? Simple, actually. It is because one side of the Israel/anti-Israel debate deals with facts, and the other side deals with emotions.

And emotions always win.

I spoke about this in my 2010 Hasbara 2.0 lecture, but since no one wants to watch a movie-length lecture, here is a ten minute section on this very theme, along with what Zionists must do to even the playing field.

Funny BDSFail in Brighton

Israel haters apparently announced that they would hold a march on Saturday to protest a store in Brighton selling Sodastream.

As usual, Sussex Friends of Israel were there to video the proceedings:

They have lots more videos on their Facebook page.

In other news, the Sussex Jewish News featured my Hasby Award to the group on the front cover of their March issue:

The article about the award says:

Sussex Friends of Israel (SFI) is now an award-winning organisation, thanks to the incredible grassroots support of the whole community in the fight to neutralise the activities of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement.

This community support for SFI’s activism has been recognised with the award of a special achievement ‘Hasby Award’, the brainchild of the popular and influential pro-Israel blogger ‘Elder of Ziyon’.

In the world of social media, Facebook, Twitter and online blogging Elder, an anonymous American writer, stands out from the crowd. For more than 10 years his blogs have stood up to scrutiny and he has been recognised as a trusted pro-Israel voice.

In his Award announcement, Elder described SFI as a group of people who, on their own, decided to counter-protest the haters who were intimidating the Ecostream shop in Brighton every Saturday.

The narrative also confirmed that SFI receives no help from the organised British Jewish or Zionist community, and that this lack of an organised response is what helped create SFI.

The award citation also explains that every week SFI come up with a different gimmick - handing out cookies or cake to passers-by. They mercilessly videotape and try to interview the haters, exposing their ignorance and how little they really care about Palestinian Arabs.

Elder said: “The greatness of SFI isn’t that they are counter-protesting. Their brilliance is in how they do it. They have effectively nullified and turned the tables on the anti-Israel protesters.

“On their Facebook page you can see that they generate a huge number of pro-Israel posters, often with a great sense of humour.

“No one else has the creativity, energy and effectiveness of Sussex Friends of Israel. Their model should be replicated around the world”.

Neil Duncanson, SFI’s director said: “Just to be nominated for a Hasby Award has proved the reach and reputation of SFI around the globe, especially when you consider the other esteemed nominees and past winners of the awards.

“To actually win an award is fantastic news and recognition for everyone who stands up against the hatred and lies of those who stand against Israel week in and week out.”

“I would like to thank Elder on behalf of Sussex Friends of Israel and its supporters, we are very proud that our work is held in such high regard by you and by supporters of Israel around the world”.

Elder’s blogs have been mentioned on CNN, Fox News and the New York Times. Blog posts have also been cross-published in Algemeiner Journal and Jewish Press.

The Jerusalem Report published the article Battle of the Bloggers, which called Elder of Ziyon “perhaps the most influential” pro-Israel blog.

(h/t Gary)

03/01 Links: Don't Buy the Israel Boycott Hype; Israel Honors MLK's legacy in New York

From Ian:

Former British Commander: Amnesty Report Will Incite Even More Hatred (INTERVIEW)

“The undisguised one-sidedness in this report is a technique reserved by human rights groups like Amnesty for Israel alone,” [Colonel Richard] Kemp said. “No other nation on Earth is singled out for this kind of distortion of the truth, not even the worst human rights offenders, such as Syria, Sudan and Pakistan.”
Kemp said Amnesty’s report was reminiscent of the Goldstone report on Cast Lead, Israel’s 2009 operation in Gaza, produced for the United Nations that was subsequently discredited.
“The flawed methodology of the Goldstone report has been re-cycled by Amnesty,” he said. “Both treated unsubstantiated allegations made by local people as being absolute proof of Israeli heavy-handedness and wrong-doing. Both failed to take any account of the immense pressures imposed on Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank to follow the anti-Israel line of their leaders, irresistible pressures that self-evidently have an effect on what is said to UN and Amnesty investigators, even when witnesses are guaranteed anonymity.”

Greg Sheridan: ABC Four Corners on Israel: Evil and deeply untrue

WE are living in a time of infamous lies against the state of Israel and the Jewish people. We are witnessing, even in Australia, a recrudescence of some of the oldest types of anti-Semitism. One of the worst recent examples of anti-Israel propaganda that led directly to anti-Semitic outbursts was the Four Corners episode Stone Cold Justice, purporting to be about treatment of Palestinian children in the West Bank.
So this is what we’ve come to in 2014. The national broadcaster tells us that Jewish soldiers crucify innocent children and Christian clerics routinely portray Israel as the murderous oppressor of the Middle East. But these stereotypes are both evil, and deeply untrue.

Don't Buy the Israel Boycott Hype

But as soon as one examines these cases individually, the boycott story melts away. They are either not new, not motivated by the boycott movement or have limited impact.
For instance, Danske will maintain its banking relationship with Hapoalim. It simply stopped buying shares in Hapoalim as a default policy for its investment banking clients; if a client wants the shares, Danske will happily buy them for the account. In any case, Danske made the decision almost a year ago and announced it in September, so it could hardly be part of a boycott "wave."
Deutsche Bank has excluded Hapoalim from a single investment fund it set up for a specific client; otherwise, it is doing business with Israel as usual. Boskalis says that far from dropping out of the port tender, Israel disqualified it from the bidding.
So how did this become an "exodus" from Israel, as the Financial Times headlined it in a February article?
For the Western media, the boycott and all the ideological baggage it carries makes it irresistible. But the hysterical coverage was mostly a function of laziness (almost no one was fact-checking) and ignorance (boycott stories are typically covered by political reporters who know nothing about business, trade or investment).

Palestinian doctors sterilize women - for "honor" reasons!

Remember last year when Haaretz falsely claimed that Israeli doctors would routinely sterilize female Ethiopian immigrants against their will? Israel's health ministry put out a memo asking doctors to ensure that their Ethiopian patients understand exactly what is involved in taking the (reversible) Depo-Provera drug, and Haaretz took that to mean that it was some sort of policy.

Israel haters naturally believed the lies, and some even mentioned it at the UCLA divestment meeting this week. If it was true, it would be reprehensible, but it is a complete and utter lie.

So that makes this story very interesting.

The PA Minister of Social Affairs, Kamal Sharafi issued a memo to all departments and centers affiliated to the ministry demanding that they stop giving hysterectomies to women with disabilities, or women in mental institutions!

This is all being done without permission or informed consent from the patients.

Al Hayat Al Jadida reports that Sharafi added that hysterectomies should only be allowed where it is medically necessary, and not as part of routine procedure for the disadvantaged girls.

Unlike the memo published by Haaretz, this one explicitly admits that Palestinian Arab doctors perform hysterectomies on handicapped and mentally ill women! Not Depo-Provera, whose contraceptive properties end after one stops taking the injections, but permanent sterilization for disadvantaged women!

It turns out that this story has another couple of layers. Not all of the women are mentally ill - but their families are forcing them to have these procedures to preserve "family honor!"

The practice was discovered in 2011, and this story was written two years ago. I can't vouch for every fact, though.

A Palestinian researcher at Birzeit University uncovered a scandal and crime against humanity in which Palestinian families in the West Bank force their daughters to undergo “uterine surgery” (hysterectomy). The girls are mostly said to have mental disabilities, the hospitals are administrated by the Palestinian National Authority (“PNA”). The surgeries are performed after these families are talked by doctors and religious authorities into fearing that their daughters can be raped, become pregnant or be unable to care about themselves during the period due to their (supposed) mental disability.

A Palestinian psychologist revealed that there currently are 50 cases of girls in the West Bank which are still on the waiting list for these operations for their daughters.

...Dr. Breget told a story of a girl from Nablus in the northern West Bank who underwent hysterectomy, pointing out that the girl cried and begged her mother at the moment of entering the operating room not to do it to her. The doctor confirmed, adding: “These operations are done in government hospitals”, he wondered, saying: “who is responsible for that?”.

In the same context, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health, Dr. Anan Al Masri, covered up the crimes since the hysterectomy operation are made at the hospitals of the government and the medical teams involved in the crimes are covered by his ministry. Mr. Al Masri denied that hysterectomies are done at PNA hospitals, he said that “the Ministry of Health did not approve the conduct of these operations”, pointing out that the Ministry “does not conduct these surgeries in its hospitals, whether public or private, and that the Ministry will prosecute any doctor who has conducted these operations because this work is far from humanity and the laws”.

According to our sources, there is a group of doctors working at the PA hospitals who are bound together by private interests for a net of (“Fat Cats”), several staff of the Palestinian National Authority who take money for covering these crimes. The doctors are conducting these and other operations for a high price, which goes directly into the pockets of these “fat cats”. All these operations are deleted from the hospital computers. Some of the doctor makes the operations in their own clinic, at home, in complete disregard for their duty as doctors and the dignity of the patients.

In connection with the hysterectomies it must be noted that the issues of sexual abuse and incest are widespread in the Palestinian territories and within families, schools, and institution in the cities, villages and the government institutions. In such a morass, forced hysterectomies of young girls and women who are accused of having “mental problems” are more than convenient to avoid unwanted pregnancies and the shame they would bring. All these crimes are banned from public discussion and publication in the media. In all cases, these crimes are treated in a way that will cover up the perpetrators, protecting and helping them to continue perpetrating more crimes, and by punishing the victims (women, minors, girls) or killing them in so-called “honor” killings, and forcing disabled or mentally ill (real or adduced) girls to undergo hysterectomy operations. This has the added “benefit” of income for the perpetrators and the facilitators, who wear expensive suites and ties and work at PA institutions.

I can't be sure how widespread this problem is, but it seems to be much larger than just "doctors performing hysterectomies" - it is honor-sterilization!

So...where is the coverage? Where are the protests? Where are the human rights organizations that didn't notice and publicize this practice for the past several years? Where was the media while all this was happening?

This story will never get the same coverage of the bogus Haaretz story. The reason is very simple. Even if this somehow makes it into mainstream media, the world does not expect Palestinian Arabs to live up to the same standard that they demand from Jews.

Not even close.

The gap between how Israeli Jews are expected to act and how Palestinian Arabs are expected to act is a canyon. Too bad that the people who are so quick to bleat "racism" don't realize that they are the bigots. And there can be no peace when only one party is expected to act like adults.

(h/t Arthur)

UN commission says Israel is THE major problem in the Arab world. Yes, really.

The UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) just unveiled a report called "Arab Integration: A 21st Century Development Imperative." The report is book-length, 324 pages long.

It took two years and dozens of authors to write this.

The Foreword says:

There is general agreement that the current state of the Arab world warrants serious concern. Observers concur that the Arab countries appear to be at a development impasse, evidenced by persisting knowledge gaps, fragile economies and the prevalence of human injustice. But when it comes to the reasons for the status quo, or what it will take to change it, agreement gives way to heated debate.

This report, entitled “Arab Integration: A 21st Century Development Imperative”, suggests an alternative to the present predicament. Readers may wish to study its ideas and
recommendations, take up those which they find relevant and reflect constructively on how to adapt others that may seem contentious. The report results from an ESCWA initiative conducted with a group of distinguished Arab thinkers from various schools of thought, occupations and regional backgrounds. What unites this eclectic group is a common belief in the role of the Arab world and a shared desire to protect its future. Its members firmly agree on the main aims and recommendations of the report, if not with every detail in it.

In the overview, it says in a pull-quote: Israel’s policies threaten the security of all Arab citizens

Yes - every single Arab citizen is threatened by Israel.

In the speech launching the report, Rima Khalaf, Executive Secretary of ESCWA and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, said:

The effects of fragmentation have blighted all Arabs; observers cannot but notice the consequences of decades of division and underdevelopment. It is an explosive combination of threats and challenges, characterized by unconstrained foreign interference and human misery.

Foreign interference comes in various forms, such as violations of Arab rights and dignity, but its worst manifestation is the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the Syrian Golan Heights and Lebanese territories, in flagrant breach of all international conventions and resolutions.

The authors of the report claim that the damage caused by Israeli policies is not limited to occupation activities, but they believe that aggressive Israeli policies, including its support for discord aimed at establishing Arab sectarian mini-States and its nuclear programme that is not subject to international monitoring, pose a continuous threat to the security of Arab citizens in the region as a whole.

The most dangerous of these policies is Israel's adamancy that it is a Jewish State, which violates the rights of both the Muslim and Christian indigenous populations and revives the concept of state ethnic and religious purity, which caused egregious human suffering during the twentieth century.

The report claims that Arab rights would not have been trampled; Jerusalem would not have suffered under Judaization policies, land confiscation and the expulsion of populations; and Muslim and Christian holy shrines would not have been desecrated if Arabs had stood united and coordinated their efforts, or at least met their existing commitments to joint defence.

This sure sounds like the UN is saying that Israel shouldn't exist, and if only Arabs had been united, that scourge would never have arisen.

It is not surprising that when you get a bunch of Arabs who disagree about everything in a room to write a report about Arab problems, the one thing they will all agree on is to blame Israel. Privately they might think differently, but you will never find any of them to admit it publicly.So naturally the report will be top-heavy on blaming Israel for everything, especially their own disunity. From the report:

Before the State of Israel was established in 1948, the Zionist movement sought to thwart any Arab attempt at unity, or even cooperation. Post-1948, this policy extended to supporting civil wars in the region and sowing sedition among various groups. Israel took advantage of the sectarian and ethnic diversity of Arab countries, stoking feelings of injustice among minorities. In Lebanon, Israel supported certain parties in the civil war and sought to divide the country into a series of sectarian cantons. In the Sudan, it played a role in encouraging secessionist tendencies. In Morocco, Israel sought to strengthen its relations with Amazigh factions, but failed to penetrate the Moroccan social fabric.

Every page of the report indicates that the Arab world will never live with the Western world. It praises Nasser lavishly, even quoting his refusal to speak to Israel after the 1967 war to negotiate Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai.

You will not often see a UN report that praises a war of aggression, but when Israel is the object of such a war, then it becomes admirable:

Israel was to remain an obstacle to Arab unity. It occupied further Arab territories during the 1967 Six-Day War, which ended in the disastrous defeat of the Egyptian army. From then until his death, Nasser waged a war of attrition against Israeli occupation and sought to rebuild the Egyptian army in preparation for another war. He did not live to see the Egyptian army launch a surprise attack on Israeli positions and achieve a military victory in the 1973 October War, with the cooperation of several Arab States and the support of their peoples.

There are lots of lies and ridiculous assumptions in this report - downplaying if not ignoring Arab corruption and infighting and highlighting that the major problems are really everyone else's fault.

You really have to wonder why any enlightened nation give any respect to this thoroughly corrupt, immoral organization.

02/28 Links Pt2: Richard Silverstein’s racist abuse continues; Anelka 5-match ban for ‘quenelle’

From Ian:

Richard Silverstein’s racist abuse of Chloe Valdary continues: calls her a ‘house slave’

So, Silverstein, a Comment is Free contributor, has now called Valdary a ‘Negro Uncle Tom’ and a ‘House Slave’!
This blog has previously exposed Silverstein’s defense of Hamas, his suggestion that Israel behaves like Nazi Germany (and, of course, his faux scoops), but after his latest racist outburst is there really anyone who can honestly claim that the Seattle-based Jewish blogger represents anything resembling liberal values?

Anelka gets five-match ban for ‘quenelle’

Nicolas Anelka’s future in English football was in the balance after the former France striker was given a five-match ban on Thursday for making a gesture widely condemned as anti-Semitic.
The Football Association found the French striker guilty of an “aggravated breach” of their rules for making the ‘quenelle’ playing for West Bromwich Albion in a Premier League match away to West Ham in December.
That saw the 34-year-old banned and fined £80,000 ($133,368).

'X Factor' Israel's Rose gets warm welcome upon return to Philippines

Rose Fostanes, the Filipina care-giving singer who took home first prize on Israel's X-Factor, returned to her home country on Wednesday to a warm welcome.
Appearing on popular evening talk show, Aquino and Abunda Tonight, hosted by Boy Abunda and Kris Aquino, who are known as the country's "King and Queen of talk," Fostanes showed off her pipes.

02/28 Links Pt1: Abbas rewords the three no’s; Why Israel No Longer Trusts Europe

From Ian:

Sarah Honig: Those three no’s – reworded

This in effect is Abbas’s counterpart to Khartoum’s no-negotiation stipulation. Abbas has set up a hurdle so high that, without duplicitous pretense, it becomes unsurpassable and thereby makes genuine negotiations a farce.
Next comes Abbas’s present-day equivalent to Khartoum’s no-recognition proviso. While not identical in wording, its bottom line is no different from the 1967 prototype. Abbas repeats insolently that recognition of Israel as the legitimate nation-state of the Jewish people is out of the question – not now, not ever, no way, nowhere, under no condition.
This isn’t a negligible semantic equivocation. It means a refusal to accede even to the 1947 UN Partition Resolution minimum which determined that the Jewish people deserve a state. To crush said UN Resolution, seven Arab armies attacked the overwhelmingly outmanned and outgunned newborn Israel but lost, triggering their piteous lamentations to this day.
As long as the very notion of the rightful existence of a Jewish state is repudiated, the irredentist ambition to eradicate Israel as a Jewish state will fester and rule out even a remote likelihood of a true and lasting peace.

Why Israel No Longer Trusts Europe

Despite these discouraging experiences, every Israeli military action against radicals in Gaza or Lebanon is met with protests in Europe. Which doesn’t inspire confidence in Israeli leaders that Europe would accept Israel’s right to self-defense if a future Palestinian state in the West Bank became a similar hotbed of extremism and revisionist politics.
It is always comfortable for Europeans to demand that Israel make hard decisions for peace. But Europe must now ask itself some hard questions, too. What guarantees could Europe offer Israel in return for a Palestinian state to protect it if the peace experiment failed and radicals took over the West Bank? Would Europe be ready to offer membership in NATO and the European Union if the Israelis asked for it?
I am not sure there are any promising answers to these questions. But if all Europe has to offer Israel is criticism and disapproval, then it will be part of the problem, not the solution.

Watchdog Group Highlights Anti-Israel Credentials of Amnesty International’s Researchers

As Amnesty International published an anonymous 85-page report condemning Israel on Thursday, NGO Monitor, the Jerusalem-based charity watchdog, highlighted the backgrounds of Amnesty’s researchers, several of whom were full-time anti-Israel activists before joining the human rights group.
Anne Herzberg, NGO Monitor’s international legal counsel, told The Algemeiner on Thursday, “We are not sure who wrote the report because Amnesty doesn’t say — in violation of NGO fact-finding guidelines established by the International Bar Association.”
The cover photography from the report was courtesy of Haim Schwarczenberg, who describes himself as a “photographer and activist in Israel” on the anti-Israel blog Mondoweiss, to which he contributed a report last year. Schwarczenberg’s Facebook account features a stream of hundreds of photos showing Arabs igniting tires to hurl at soldiers, aiming slingshots, and, of course, throwing rocks at the Israel Defense Forces.
Herzberg said that what NGO Monitor has been able to confirm is that “the Israel researcher based in London, Deborah Hyams, was a human shield in Beit Jala; the Amnesty US Israel researcher, Edith Garwood, used to be a member of the International Solidarity Movement. Also, another one of the researchers, Rasha Abdul-Rahim, describes herself as ‘a ranty Palestinian activist‘ on Twitter.”

Naughty NTB doctors amnesty international report

Apart from the cheek of the Amnesty International, it is much more serious that the Norwegian news agency NTB resorts to doctoring the Amnesty report in order to smear Israel (they must have suffered badly from withdrawal pains, there has been pretty much nothing that could be blamed on Israel for several months now) by adding a word that appears nowhere in the AI report: Atrocities.

One more Shaun Casey visit to Israel-haters pops up

Earlier today I wrote that the State Department said that Shaun Casey, the head of the State Department's Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives, had met with Jews, Christians and Muslims on his recent, unannounced visit to the West Bank. At the same time Yisrael Medad found a third meeting that Casey had with a virulently anti-Israel Christian group during his trip.

Since them I found that Casey also visited Episcopal Bishop Suheil Dawani in Jerusalem. Dawani was once accused by Israel of illegally transferring Jewish-owned lands to Arabs but it does not appear that he was ever tried for this, so I don't know if the accusation was withdrawn or placed on a back-burner.

I have also discovered that Casey visited Muslim leaders - on the Temple Mount.

In a move considered precedent-setting, and the first of its kind since the occupation of Jerusalem, Assistant Secretary of State for Interfaith Affairs Sean Casey met in the dome inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque with Sheikh Abdel Azim Salhab, Chairman of the Islamic Waqf in Jerusalem, Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib al-Tamimi, Director General of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and Dr. Yousef Natsheh, Director of Tourism and Antiquities in the Islamic Waqf
.
According to Sheikh Tamimi [Casey] was informed of all Zionist violations related to Al-Aqsa Mosque from the incursions of settlers and abuses of Zionism and breaches.

He said: 'We have provided a detailed explanation of the conditions of Jerusalemites of uprooting and Judaization and blocking of buildings and the demolition of homes, confiscation of land and interfering with the freedom of worship and access to the holy places of all the Palestinian territories.'

The Waqf religious leaders told the assistant secretary to convey the message clearly to the American administration, especially about the violations of the occupation and carried out by extremists against the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which may lead to religious conflicts all over the world if the mosque is damaged or if the state of Jordan and the Islamic sovereignty is stripped from the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy sites in Jerusalem.

... In turn, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State said he wants the city of Jerusalem to have safety and security and stability, and "I will truthfully convey what I heard from all of you to the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry."

I am not certain, but I do not believe that Ambassador Dan Shapiro ever crosses the Green Line from the Tel Aviv side. I see no evidence so far that Casey ever went to the Israeli side of the Green Line - every single meeting we've seen so far was in the "eastern" part of Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Maybe he arrived from Jordan.

Still trying to find any Jews he might have visited. But judging from what we've seen so far, the only Jews he might deign to visit are "Rabbis for Human Rights."

By the way, I also see that he made a visit to the West Bank in 2011 as part of a Methodist delegation.

So far, nothing I am seeing about Casey is instilling confidence in this new office that he heads.

The State Department responds (well, not really) to my question about Shaun Casey (update)

After my two posts expressing concern over Shaun Casey, the head of the State Department's Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives, and his silent visit to the West Bank with some viciously anti-Israel (and antisemitic) Christian leaders, I asked Matthew Lee of AP if he would ask the State Department about what happened on this trip. (Lee is well known for his relentless questioning of State Department officials. )

He kindly agreed and submitted the questions yesterday. Here was the exchange that happened at today's press briefing:

QUESTION: Okay. So then, on the meetings that Mr. Casey had --

MS. PSAKI: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: -- with the religious leaders, including some that are allegedly anti-Israel, can you – what do you have to say about that?

MS. PSAKI: Sure. Well, during his recent trip to the region, Special Advisor Shaun Casey met with a wide range of religious leaders, from the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian faiths. So this is – part of the context here is, of course, very important.

QUESTION: Okay, wait. Just before you go on, he did not just meet with Palestinian and Christian leaders? He met with all members of all their different faiths?

MS. PSAKI: Correct. Exactly.

QUESTION: Or leaders of all --

MS. PSAKI: Exactly.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. PSAKI: And this was, of course, part of our ongoing outreach to religious communities vis-a-vis the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. He also met with local interfaith organizations and international faith-based development groups, and he hopes to continue to engage on an even more diverse range of religious voices in future visits. As you know, this is kind of a newer position and he just came to the State Department a couple of months ago, so this serves an interesting utility in terms of reaching out to faith groups around these important policy issues.

QUESTION: And what do you think of the concerns expressed by some in Israel that he met – that he was giving credibility, credence to anti-Israel figures?

MS. PSAKI: Well, I think I would point to the fact that he met with a very broad range of officials from across the faith spectrum. And it’s important to us, it’s important to Mr. Casey, to hear from a range of officials, to have a dialogue with them. And that was the pure purpose of his engagement.

QUESTION: Right. Well, there was one specific meeting that caused some extra concern. Do you – can you say anything about that?

MS. PSAKI: I don’t have anything more to say about it.

QUESTION: All right.

My very simple question is - what Jewish (and Muslim) leaders did he meet? No one seems to know.

UPDATE: Yisrael Medad found one more Christian site he visited, Bethlehem Bible College.

The President of Bethlehem Bible College, Rev Dr. Jack Sara together with members of the college leadership team, Dr. Bishara Awad, President Emeritus, Dr. Munther Isaac, Mr. Jamal Ateeq and Ms Nisreen Nassar, met Dr. Casey and his officers and together they discussed issues of importance to Palestinian Christians, and in particular, the role of the Palestinian church in politics and in the peace process. They also talked at length about the up-coming Christ at the Checkpoint Conference and the impact that such an international event can have in promoting peace.

"Christ at the Checkpoint" is a virulently anti-Israel conference that last year portrayed Israelis as "The Impossible People" who stand in the way of peace. It has speakers who support the PFLP terror group.

So far, Casey's record of who he secretly visited does not seem to be very conducive to peace.

Thanks to Israel haters, we know where to buy incredible toys - part 1 (update)

I mentioned on Monday that Haaretz made up some numbers of Israelis who boycott settlements pretty much out of thin air, because Gush Shalom assumed that everyone who visited their webpage listing settlement products were boycotters.

People then asked in the comments where to get this list so they could buy these products themselves!

Usually, when you see lists of Israeli products made by Jews across the Green Line, they are mostly wines and artwork. This is all very nice but I would like something more practical.

Luckily, the people who hate Israel already spend hour upon hour trying to figure out which products are made in Israel and in Judea and Samaria, so we don't have to!

And one product that Israelis excel at is toys.

According to the hate site Inminds, no less than five toy manufacturers with international reputations are based out of, or have factories or stores in, the settlements. These toys help children develop cognitive and motor skills. If the haters want to boycott them and keep their kids at a disadvantage because of their disgust for Jews living across a non-existent border, that's fine by me.

TinyLove makes innovative toys for babies. Check out this video, showing only one of their many products:

Inminds, while telling us to boycott Tiny Love, mentions that "in 2004 the company held a 25 percent global market share for musical mobiles and activity gyms."

The boycotters also helpfully inform us that "the popularity of Tiny Love products has opened the doors for the marketing of Shilav children's clothing abroad, which has also proved successful." And that "one of the stores of Tiny Love parent company Shilav is located on the West Bank in Shilat in no-mans land."

Isn't that great? The haters do the research for us!

Any parent that decides do deprive their baby of these award-winning toys because of their hate for Israel is a pretty lousy parent. Then again, who would have guessed that people who are so obsessed with telling others to boycott the Jewish state were bright to begin with?

Now we know where to get the perfect gifts for families welcoming newborns. They are wonderful to help with a baby's development, they are Israeli products, and they drive the haters insane. How much better can it get?

More great toy companies in upcoming posts.

UPDATE: A commenter noted that Tiny Love was sold to a Canadian company last month.