Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 03, 2014

03/03 Links Pt1: The Palestinian Peace Paradox; Netanyahu's Lesson from the Ukraine Crisis

From Ian:

Amb. Alan Baker: Ten Fundamental Facts Underlying the Peace Process

1. There is no such thing as the “Palestinian territories.” Such an entity has never been determined as such in any binding international document, agreement, or resolution. The final status of the West Bank is still an agreed-upon negotiating issue and should not be prejudged by any political declaration or statement.
2. The territories are “disputed,” not “occupied.” International law relates to occupation of foreign territory from a prior legitimate sovereign. The area of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) is not foreign, and has, from time immemorial, since at least 1500 BCE, been part of the indigenous Jewish presence in the area, which has been internationally acknowledged historically and recognized in international documents. (h/t Bob Knot)

JPost conference preview: Ron Prosor on Israel and the United Nations

But just above the portrait with Angelina is the perhaps the most noteworthy and largest photograph in the room. On side of the picture stands then-prime minster of Israel Yitzhak Rabin, his hands folded tensely in front of him, his eyes focused off to the side, his face furious. In the center of the picture stands former PLO leader Yasser Arafat, face twisted away from the camera, surrounded by Russian foreign minister Andrey Kozyrev, King Hussein of Jordan, American secretary of state Warren Christopher, then-foreign minister of Israel Shimon Peres with his finger in Arafat’s face — an uncharacteristic gesture for Peres, Prosor says — and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak who has just said to Arafat, “You kalb ibn kalb, you dog son of a dog, I am the host! What do you think you’re doing!”
“I call it ‘The Middle East Without Words,’” Prosor explains. The seminal picture was taken three minutes after the pictured world leaders, who had gathered in Cairo in 1994, learned that Arafat had refused to sign the maps of Jerusalem for the Oslo accords. “They find out he’s refused to sign, they’re on live TV, onstage about to make the announcement, and everything goes into chaos,” Prosor explained.

The West is led by the weaklings the Left wanted

Quite what they're complaining about isn't clear. In Barack Obama they have precisely the "Leader of the Free World" they always wanted. He embodies all that they stand for, and all that they are.
He does not believe in the primacy of Western values. Neither do they. He therefore sees no reason to show leadership around the world. Neither do they. He has downgraded and diminished the U.S. military as a consequence. The Left applauds. He shows weakness to the mullahs in Iran. The Left praises him for his diplomacy. He worships dictatorship-friendly bodies like the UN. The Left cheers him as a peacemaker.
You can't have it both ways. If you want a weak-kneed, apologetic, bleeding heart Western leadership don't feign surprise when the likes of Vladimir Putin fail to take you seriously.

Al Arabiya joins the "storming settlers" meme

On Sunday, a few dozen Jews quietly and respectfully visited the Temple Mount. This happens virtually every weekday besides Fridays.

Usually, it is the Arabic media (especially from the PalArabs, Jordan and Egypt) that freak out and say that "Extremist settler Jews stormed the Al Aqsa Mosque." But this time, the English version of Al Arabiya - one of the more moderate Arab publications - has jumped on the "storming" bandwagon:

Protected by the Israeli police, about 75 Jewish extremist settlers, who were led by a radical rabbi, have stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Sunday, a news agency reported.

The flashpoint compound sits above the Western Wall plaza and houses the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site.

It is also one of Judaism’s holiest place as Jews believe it is the site of the first and second Jewish temples. Al-Aqsa mosque is also known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary.

“The settlers stormed the complex through Al-Magharbeh Gate, passing through the Qibali and Marawani mosques, as well as Al-Rahmeh and Qatanin gates,” guard Naser Qous told the Turkish Anadolu Agency.

I don't know what they refer to as the Al Rahmeh gate, but Jews are only allowed to enter through the Moroccan (Mughrabi, or Rambam) gate and they generally leave through the Qatanin (cotton market) gate. I doubt very highly that they entered any mosque, as Israeli police would never allow that.

Qous described the rabbi Yehuda Glick, who is the head of the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation, as shouting “racist chants” against Muslims.

The guard said Glick told the Israeli police: “Keep these vandals away!”

If he indeed said that, which seems unlikely, it was probably because they were trying to "storm" him personally.

The rabbi’s sentiment led to a row between the Jewish settlers and the Muslim worshippers inside the holy compound.

The intrusion was denounced by the Palestinian Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage.

It said that the storming of the complex was meant to “intimidate and scare the Palestinians,” sounding the alarm over the Israeli police “tightening its security procedures on Muslim students within Al-Aqsa Mosque complex.”

Al Arabiya chose to illustrate the story not with photos of the Jews (not "settlers) peacefully walking on the Mount, because that would not work with the hysterical tone of the story. So they dug up a photo of an Israeli policeman arresting a rioter last Friday.

Remember, this is one of the most liberal Arab media outlets

Brooklyn College departments officially supporting "Israel Apartheid Week"

Here is a flyer from Students for Justice in Palestine about an "Israel Apartheid Week" event this Thursday at Brooklyn College:

According to this flyer, the Sociology Department and Political Science Department are co-sponsoring an event meant to destroy Israel.

And the Political Science Department Facebook page confirms it.

But if you look at the small print - not even readable in the image on the SJP page - the PoliSci Department tries to have its cake and eat it too:

"'Co-sponsor' does not imply endorsement of any viewpoints expressed at the event."

So what exactly does it mean? Usually it entails giving money towards the event's expenses, so it means that Brooklyn College department budgets are going to pay Ali Abuminah to push his vision of a world without Israel.

This tiny, almost unreadable disclaimer is meaningless. Sponsoring means that these departments believe that the message being offered deserves to be listened to, under their aegis. I somehow doubt that these same departments would offer a platform to David Duke with a similar disclaimer.

And they are even less likely to sponsor Moshe Feiglin.

Last November, when the same departments "supported" Ben White, the college also said that it does not necessarily endorse the viewpoints of those it sponsors. As absurd as that explanation was, this case is even worse, because these departments are associating themselves not only with specific anti-Israel speakers but with a specifically anti-Israel event whose very name is meant to be libelous. These departments are not just sponsoring a hater - they are supporting the entire concept of "Israel Apartheid Week."

Sorry, Brooklyn College. You are clearly showing your support for the unconscionable, notwithstanding pathetic attempts to pretend otherwise.

(h/t David L)

Obama's delusions about peace

President Obama plans to channel Peace Now in his talk with Binyamin Netanyahu today, in this interview by Jeffrey Goldberg:

John Kerry, somebody who has been a fierce advocate and defender on behalf of Israel for decades now, I think he has been simply stating what observers inside of Israel and outside of Israel recognize, which is that with each successive year, the window is closing for a peace deal that both the Israelis can accept and the Palestinians can accept -- in part because of changes in demographics; in part because of what's been happening with settlements; in part because Abbas is getting older, and I think nobody would dispute that whatever disagreements you may have with him, he has proven himself to be somebody who has been committed to nonviolence and diplomatic efforts to resolve this issue. We do not know what a successor to Abbas will look like.

This is the crux of Obama's arguments. And Israel has been terrible at countering them.

When the problem is not defined correctly, one cannot find a solution. The reason that there is no peace is because the vast majority of the Western world defines the problem incorrectly.

1) "Changes in demographics" - this argument has been around since at least the 1970s. Yet every Israeli-proposed peace plan, as well as the Clinton parameters, ends this issue completely. In fact, even if Israel annexes the entire Area C and the 40% of the remainder of the West Bank is turned over to the PLO - obviously not a viable solution either, but for argument's sake - the demographic issue is dead, since 96% or more of Palestinian Arabs live in Areas A and B.

In other words, the demographic argument is not the correct frame of reference. The correct frame of reference is to answer a very simple question: Why have Palestinian Arabs have rejected all previous peace plans that would have given them a state?

2) "What's been happening with settlements" - As I have noted before, Israel has officially allowed a grand total of three new settlements since 1990, under the Shamir government and years before Oslo.

The idea that Israeli settlements are expanding inexorably is one of the biggest lies of the Middle East, and it is one that even the President of the United States believes. Sure, the Jewish population has been growing, inside Area C, which is allowed under existing agreements signed by both parties. But essentially all that population growth has been accompanied by no growth in area.

Abbas knows this fact far better than Obama does, and apparently far better than Jeffrey Goldberg does. Because if the settlements really were inexorably growing, then Abbas would be panicking that time is not on his side, and he would compromise and accept far less than the unreasonable demands he is making. However, his thoughts on the matter were crystallized in 2009, when Abbas said that he is willing to wait for everyone else to come around to his way of thinking. "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements. Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life." Erekat that same year made much the same points.

3) "We do not know what a successor to Abbas will look like."

Now, who suffers the most when Palestinian Arabs are willing to wait until Washington pressures Israel to give up a couple of percentage points of more land?

The Palestinian Arabs who live in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere in the Middle East, that's who. They are in limbo while Abbas waits. Over 2000 have been killed in Syria while Abbas waits. Those in Lebanon are choking in their overcrowded camps while Abbas waits. Those in Jordan - even those who are citizens - are living second class lives and nervous about their status while Abbas waits.

If Mahmoud Abbas, Obama's great hope for peace, doesn't feel a sense of urgency to help his people in Arab countries, what does that say about his priorities? What does that say about his leadership?

More importantly, what does that say about his strategy?

If Israel says that Jerusalem is a red line, that a Jewish presence must remain in Hebron and Bethlehem and elsewhere to ensure safe, continuous access to holy sites, and if the borders are created to reflect all of that, there is no demographic problem. Time is no longer an issue. But, as Obama says, there has to be a plan that "the Palestinians can accept." If they are the weaker party, why are they acting like they are the ones that can dictate terms of the agreement? Why, specifically, is Jerusalem necessary for a viable Palestinian Arab state when it was never the capital of any Arab state in history?

There is only one way to explain all these anomalies: why Abbas is willing to wait, why he doesn't care about his people, why he insists on Jerusalem, why he insists on "1967 lines," why he insists on "right of return," why he adamantly refuses to accept a Jewish state.

The reason is because he is not interested in a permanent peace, but he is trying to implement the PLO's "stages" plan to destroy Israel piece by piece. Obama (and Goldberg) might be deluded and think that a piece of paper can ensure that this long standing PLO plan cannot come to be, but it is clearly still the strategy that Abbas and Fatah are following. And it is the narrative that Abbas has been teaching his own people, in Arabic. Instead of preparing them for permanent peace with Israel the majority of Arabs all see any peace plan as only the beginning of the destruction of Israel.

They are willing to wait to accomplish this. but they are not willing to accept any plan that stands in the way of that goal. And that is why accepting any Israeli proposed peace plan, one that ensures the permanent existence of a Jewish state, is anathema to them.

When looking at a large set of facts, any analyst must try to find consistency. Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah's actions are utterly inconsistent with the desire to have a permanent peace with Israel and completely consistent with the PLO's plan to destroy it in stages. Positioning Abbas as the most reasonable alternative when his goal is identical as Hamas' does no one any favors.

If there was any real indication of good faith on the part of Abbas - if his schools would teach real peace, if his media would stop incitement, if Israeli Jews could trust him enough to believe that when they want to visit holy sites under his control that his own people won't try to kill them - then peace would be at hand. The reason that Israelis don't accept his words is because they see the divergence between what he says in English and how he acts with his people.

This is the message that Israeli leaders have been terrible at conveying, possibly because they don't want to insult Abbas when the West loves him so much. But at some point diplomatic niceties need to yield to cold facts, and the reason there is no peace is because everyone is ignoring the facts, and how they fit together.

Obama implies in this interview that Bibi is not interested in a peace plan. This is absurd. he is interested in a peace plan that ensures Israel's future. And for all his communication skills (Obama still talks about how Israel is continuously building settlements, for example) he has not been able to communicate this simple fact.

(h/t EBoZ)

BDS News from 1945: Arabs buy all the Jewish goods they can find!

The Arab League prepared to start a boycott of Jewish goods on January 1, 1946.

So what did Arabs do before the boycott would go into effect? Why, they went on a spending spree of Jewish goods!

From the Palestine Post, December 12, 1945:

Last week was a pretty good week for EoZ.

It started with the news that the "Khazar" theory was thoroughly debunked by the same people whose data was misused by a publicity-seeker who set out initially to prove the stupid theory before even gathering the evidence. The excellent PreOccupied Territory site, which is quickly becoming a Zionist Onion, even made fun of me for posting it!

Then I had my scoop about the "secret" ASA meeting at NYU this week. That story made it to JTA and was published in Times of Israel and elsewhere, and others ran with it.

Given that this was the first of who knows how many "Israel Apartheid Weeks," I added to my viral poster series, which is still getting more hits daily than my other articles.

I was one of many who went after US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power for her idiotic Daniel Pearl tweet, although I may have been the first to write an article about it.

Another scoop was finding out about State Department official Shaun Casey, who made a silent trip to the Middle East and met with some very anti-Israel figures. The State Department responded, badly, with generic diplospeak. But the more I and others look at this story, the worse it gets.

I went after Haaretz for exaggerating the number of Israelis who boycott some Israelis.

I went after Peter Beinart for demanding right wing Zionists do things that leftists would never do.

I went after AP for its bias.

And I went after Amnesty International for their clear and provable anti-Israel bias.

There were also two historical pieces about previous boycotts of Jews in the region, and how they worked out.

The most popular post of the week was UCLA Meltdown Girl, and while it was funny (to most,) it teaches a serious lesson.

I exposed a major new UN document that is almost laughable in how it embraces Arab lies.

Finally, I revealed a most disgusting and hushed-up facet of Palestinian Arab society, the phenomenon of "honor hysterectomies," where families tell doctors that their daughters are mentally ill in order to sterilize them. Besides how disgusting this practice is, the contrast between how this story is ignored and how lies about Israel are publicized is insane.

Not too shabby. No wonder I am making Israel haters nervous.

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)