Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, May 19, 2014

Excitement over "Nakba" football tournament

Is the "Nakba" a terrible tragedy that causes Palestinian Arabs worldwide to weep at the horror that was inflicted on them, or a cynical political construct?

You decide:

KUNA, May 10: Palestinians have launched an international football tournament to the mark the Nakba, or catastrophe, with participation of national teams from Palestine, Jordan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan on Saturday.

The Palestinians commemorates the Nakba every year to remember the year 1948 when the Palestinian people were expelled from their homes by the Israeli occupying forces.

Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah inaugurated the tournament, held at Dora International Stadium in the West Bank city of Al-Khalil, and said the championship, dubbed "Al-Nakba," was a message of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

He said the tournament "is a very important mean to strengthen the steadfastness of the Palestinian people by informing countries around the world about the suffering of the Palestinian human being." President of the Palestinian football federation Jebril Al-Rujoub said the Palestinian people were marking the Nakba through a sport event despite the obstacles placed by the Israeli occupation authorities.

He said Israel banned five Jordanian players from entering Palestine, banned the coach of Pakistan and the entire Iraqi team from the event.

You remember the annual Auschwitz soccer tournaments? The Armenian Genocide basketball championships? The 2004 Tsunami cricket matches? The Bhopal disaster Bollywood movie festival?

If the Nakba was truly a human catastrophe, the very idea of a Nakba football tournament would be beyond tasteless.

As it stands, Arabic readers see sports reporters writing things like "Jordan's team reaches the Nakba finals."

I'm not seeing anyone protesting, though.

In real sports news, Maccabi Tel Aviv finished its Cinderella run to win the Euroleague basketball championship.

Iran's PressTV says:

In an exclusive interview with Press TV, renowned writer and film maker, Art Olivier, said the majority of Hollywood movie houses are owned by Zionist entrepreneurs.

He said for that reason no movie critical of the Israeli regime and its illegal occupation of Palestine will be made in Hollywood.

That is why he is turning to Iran for production of his latest movie about the life of Rachel Corrie, Olivier says.

Corrie was an American peace activist who was killed by an armored Israeli bulldozer in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip back in 2003.

C. “Art” Olivier, former mayor of Bellflower, California, was the Libertarian candidate for Vice President in the US presidential election in 2000 as the running mate of Harry Browne.

During the campaign for Vice President, Olivier advocated smaller government, saying “We have to reduce the size of the federal government back to the size of its constitutional limits.”

In 2012, Olivier wrote and produced the thriller film Operation Terror, which depicted a fictionalized version of the 9/11 attacks.

The plot centered on a group of American government insiders that organized and assembled a group of people to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Olivier claims that the FBI strip-searched him upon his return from Iran.

TV review: Avoda Aravit

I've been spending the last couple of weeks watching the popular and award-winning TV series Avoda Aravit ("Arab Labor," a Hebrew colloquialism for shoddy work).

I've watched the first season and a little of the third. Episodes with English subtitles are on LinkTV online, for some reason only snippets of Season 2 are available.

The show features an Arab journalist in Israel named Amjad. Amjad is a nice man who desperately wants to fit into Israeli society and is constantly frustrated by the discrimination against Arab Israelis.

His best friend and co-worker is a photojournalist named Meir.

As with most such sitcoms, wife Bushra is the voice of sanity, and in this case his daughter and mother are also the most sensible and practical people on the show. His father, Ismail, is far more comfortable in his Arab identity and also has a knack for scamming everyone around, including his own son.

Avoda Aravit is, first and foremost, hilarious. It tackles topics that no one ever touched upon before in a comedy and it pokes fun at everyone in Israeli society, both Arab and Jew. The writing is top-notch.

The underlying message of latent and explicit anti-Arab bigotry in Israel is serious, and the show manages to deal with it in a funny way that still lets people understand the difficulty of being a minority group. At a time when the Supreme Court rules that there is no problem with explicit Christian prayers in government meetings I have a keen appreciation for how is feels to be in the minority.

Where the show falls short is that (at least for the episodes I've seen) all Israeli Jews are seen as bigots of one kind or another. Some are overly solicitous towards Arabs but most are out-and-out racists. Even Meir shows his latent bigotry, in a very funny episode where he ends up in a private Arab car service and mistakenly thinks that he is being kidnapped, singing "We Are the World" and invoking his leftist credentials to gain his freedom from Arabs who don't understand a word of Hebrew.

Meir is perhaps the most problematic part of the show. Midway through Season 1, he meets and falls for a friend of Bushra's named Amal, a radical Palestinian Arab nationalist and feminist lawyer (played by famous singer Mira Awad.) While Amal has great reservations about Meir, who serves in the army reserves, Meir has no national, cultural or religious principles. His first date with Amal was on Passover night so he could avoid going to a seder (Amjad does attend one given by Reform Jews.) Within weeks, Meir tells Amal that he would move to any Arab town anywhere to be with her..."and even Sderot." As the inevitable drama about their parents play out, Meir even tells her he is willing to convert to Islam for her. (In a later episode a potential Arab romantic rival to Meir tells him, "That's what I love about you Jews. You have no self-respect.")

In the world of Avoda Aravit, every Jew is a hypocrite, a bigot and/or a fanatic, all of them roadblocks for Amjad to be accepted in Israel as an equal but none who actually think of him as truly human. Even after he moves to a Jewish neighborhood he is confronted with nothing but suspicion and disrespect, and his landlord asks him to disappear when he is showing houses to prospective buyers.

In this sense, Avoda Aravit is antisemitic. But to air a TV show that mocks the dominant culture is forgivable. After all, in the 1970s American audiences laughed to Sanford and Son and The Jeffersons - groundbreaking shows that described how blacks try to adapt in a white majority society. The popularity of Avoda Aravit in Israel, as well as the awards it is given, shows that Israelis don't mind the message.

On the other hand, notoriously anti-Israel LinkTV's decision to have this be the only Israeli TV show that they broadcast indicates that they are interested in the anti-Jewish themes of the show more than in the show helping to be a bridge to understanding.

There are some exceptions to the portrayal of Jews as nothing but resentful of Arabs. At times, Amjad is celebrated for being a "good Arab," such as in season 3, when Amjad briefly becomes a celebrity for his appearance on Big Brother in a brilliant episode. Afterwards, Israeli Jews suddenly love him for his fame - and his ability to pretend to be a Jew, as that was his challenge on the show. His fame is short-lived, as on the next episode he accidentally urinates on a Jewish memorial stone, turning him from a hero to a villain, while he is then embraced by Arab radicals.

I will continue to watch Avoda Aravit, as it is as funny as virtually anything on American TV. But I'm hoping as I catch up to this season I will see the creator (who is an Arab journalist for Haaretz) reduce the stereotyping of Jewish characters.

Given that his success is predicated on keeping them one-dimensional, however, I am not holding out much hope.

Something dawns on Bakir Oweida in the middle of an Al Arabiya op-ed about the "Nakba":

The West Bank and the Gaza Strip were under the sovereignty of two Arab states, so wasn’t it possible to declare a Palestinian state with its capital as Jerusalem? Yes. It was possible to do so but there was no will. Perhaps some would also say that international will wouldn’t have allowed this to happen just like it wouldn’t currently allow establishing an independent Palestinian state. However, I think all this aims to justify a dereliction that nothing could ever justify.

Well, well, well. An Arab notices a glimmer of truth.

It is doubtful that Oweida is brave enough to go further down that path. For example, to ask why the original 1964 PLO charter explicitly excluded the West Bank and Gaza from its desired homeland.

This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.

If the PLO didn't want a state on those lands before 1967, why should the Arab states have given it to them?

But that brings up the deeper question: why didn't the PLO want a state in the West Bank and Gaza, part of what they today claim as "historic Palestine"?

Why did they then only want land that wasn't "occupied"?

The answer, as anyone who has ever perused newspapers before 1967 knows, is that the PLO and the Arab states all shared the same goal, destroying Israel. No one cared about a "Palestinian state" and the Palestinian issue was only created as a means to create world pressure on Israel. It never had anything to do with Palestinian nationalism.

If Oweida would bother to do some more research, he would realize that the PLO was originally an Egyptian creation. It changed after 1967 when Fatah took it over. Fatah's number one goal in its charter is "Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.

Today, the PLO is still not interested in a state. If it was, it would have one. Even if a Palestinian Arab state would be created tomorrow in all the territories, the battle wouldn't be over - the battlefield would just shift to Israel itself, as the Palestinian Arabs would then demand "right to return" to a state that they never lived in, a swath of land between Gaza and the West Bank that would divide Israel in half, the right to build an army that could threaten Israel itself, and they would create new border disputes (as Hezbollah did) to keep their people good and angry.

If Mr. Oweida would honestly look at the history of the "nakba," he would see how Arab nations have been the ones perpetuating the misery and statelessness of Palestinian Arabs - and he would realize that if a Palestinian Arab state would suddenly appear, most Arab states would not hesitate to kick out the millions of Palestinian Arabs they have been barely tolerating for 66 years.

Not too many Arabs are willing to notice all of these obvious truths, let alone say them out loud. Maybe Mr. Oweida will find the bravery to research his topic a little further.

05/18 Links: The villainization of Ayaan Hirsi Ali; The Guardian's problem with anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Robert Fulford: The villainization of Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Much of the commentary treated this decision as unfair, a case of a frightened university surrendering to political correctness. As Ruth Wisse, a distinguished Harvard professor, wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “In Nigeria, Islamists think nothing of seizing hundreds of schoolgirls for the crime of aspiring to an education. Here in the United States, the educated class thinks nothing of denying an honorary degree to a fearless Muslim woman who at peril of her life, and in the name of liberal democracy, has insisted on exposing such outrages to the light.”
But lately, much of the discussion has turned against Hirsi Ali. She now stands accused of a crime against multiculturalism: She has failed to be moderate. She has overstated her case, possibly even made a mistake or two. She once called Islam “a destructive, nihilistic cult of death.” She believes democracy and Islam are at war. No doubt about it, she’s not afraid to be harsh.
As a result, journalistic opinion has transformed her from victim to villain. The New Republic has said that her various statements are so extreme they make her unworthy of honour. Salon magazine argued that her view of Islam is the same as the bigotry that informs U.S. foreign policy. The Economist stated what it considers a rule: “Wholesale condemnations of existing religions just aren’t done in American politics.” Apparently they violate some sort of national code of ethics.

European Union, you stand accused of funding terrorism and subversion. How do you plead?

To somehow alleviate that poverty and enable the ‘moderate’ Palestinian leadership to function, the European Union (and also many European governments, including that of United Kingdom) donates considerable amounts of taxpayer money to the PA. In fact, the EU (not oil-rich Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates or Qatar) is the PA’s largest donor. Ostensibly, European funds are not used to pay the ‘contracts’ of jailed terrorists, but the salaries of Palestinian civil servants; for instance, the Gazan teachers who, having been sacked by Hamas following its takeover of the Strip, are now being paid by the PA (with EU funds) to… not teach. But the issue is much more serious than just wasting European taxpayers’ hard-earned money. In fact, the fact that those funds cover civil servants’ salaries allows the PA to free-up other funds to pay the jailed terrorists.
Funding terrorism is illegal; paying for teachers’ salaries isn’t. But the effect is the same – in practice Europe’s ‘generous donation’ contributes to rewarding and incentivising terror.
And that’s not the only way in which European politicians misuse our money. Both the EU and several European governments also fund extremist organisations in Israel. Let’s examine, for instance, the case of the so-called Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). This organisation cites among its donors the EU Commission and the Government of Spain.

The Guardian's problem with anti-Semitism

Let's imagine that an authoritative survey found evidence of widespread prejudice against black people. Let's suppose it found countries where a majority of people bought into anti-black stereotypes and prejudices, the kind promoted by the KKK or other white supremacist groups. We would be rightfully horrified and appalled by such attitudes, and would abhor those who sought to justify them.
But such is the Guardian's fanatical obsession with Israel that when it comes to anti-semitism, a different set of rules applies. Apparently Jewish victims of prejudice don't deserve sympathy and, in some ways, deserve the opprobrium heaped upon them.
That is the only conclusion one can draw from an appalling op-ed that appeared in the paper yesterday. The article, 'Anti-Semitism should not be waved around like a propaganda tool', by Donna Nevel and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark was a response to a survey from the Anti Defamation League which found that roughly 1 in 4 adults around the world held deeply anti-Semitic beliefs. It was based on polling more than 50,000 adults in over 100 countries, representing nearly 90 percent of the world's adult population.

Intermission (Michael Lumish)

Michael Lumish, of the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under, continues his weekly column here at EoZ.

In my recent Sunday pieces for the Elder we have discussed the western-left's betrayal of its core values and constituency. We have discussed its betrayal of women in the Middle East, its betrayal of Gay people in the Middle East, its betrayal of the dying-out Christian minority in the Middle East, and its betrayal of the besieged Jewish minority there.

My argument is that there is a generally unacknowledged tension between the twin progressive pillars of universal human rights and the multicultural ideal and that the latter has won out, organically, and is now in the process of strangulating the former.

That is, within progressive-left venues, the movement for universal human rights - which stands at the very heart of progressive-left ideology - is currently being eroded by the multicultural ideal because the two are logically incompatible. The movement for multiculturalism in the West comes out of the finest ideals of western liberalism. The animating spirit behind the movement was "live and let live." Countries do not need to be "melting pots" in which assimilation wipes out cultural distinctions, but can be "salad bowls" in which cultures come together while maintaining their delicious differences.

The problem, of course, is that multiculturalism depends upon a certain type of cultural sensitivity which discourages criticism of previously subordinate cultures. It is fine and good for western Europeans to castigate their own cultures and societies for any number of crimes and shortcomings, both real and imagined, but there is very little place for the grandchildren of white "imperialists" and "colonialists" to criticize the grandchildren of their former servants within progressive-left venues for reasons that are entirely obvious.

Thus post-colonialist sensitivities trump concerns over misogyny, gender or religious apartheid, or the kind of violent homophobia typical of political Islam. And in this way the ideal of universal human rights is eroded in the west - while being virtually non-existent in the Muslim Middle East - because it cannot be championed within a spirit of multiculturalism. Universal human rights is a concept that ultimately derives from the western political Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe and the North American continent. To insist that it be applied elsewhere is often discussed as a form of cultural imperialism and therefore good progressives avoid doing so.

Who are we, after all, us children of white privilege, to push our allegedly "enlightened" agendas upon the rest of the world?

In other words, we are witnessing a crash of ideologies within the western-left, itself, and I landed on the Elder's yard simply as one individual fall-out from that crash.

It is precisely because of this conflict between the ideal of universal human rights and the ideal of multiculturalism within the progressive-left soul that we are currently witnessing the betrayal of women in the Muslim Middle East, the betrayal of Gay people in the Muslim Middle East, the devastation of millenia-old Christian communities in the Muslim Middle East, and the never-ending siege of the Jewish minority in that part of the world.

We have touched upon the ways in which the so-called "Palestinian Narrative" has colonized Jewish minds and the manner in which Palestinian-Arab nationalism blatantly seeks to erase actual Jewish history for the purpose of replacing it with some fake and insidious historical doppleganger in which all things Jewish magically become "Palestinian." Jesus, therefore, becomes the first "Palestinian shaheed," for example. Or we get images of Anne Frank in a keffiyah, with the clear implication that just as the "Palestinians" are the New Jews, so the Jews are the New Nazis.

The point in introducing these concepts and this material is to lay out some relevant progressive-left ideological trends, and thus backdrop, to the behavior of the Obama administration viz-a-viz the State of Israel and Middle East policy, more generally.

All of this, of course, needs to be fleshed out far more thoroughly and fairly articulated objections need to be considered.

All Acknowledge the Obvious is is the beginning of an outline.

The Elder was kind enough to give me a space within which to discuss such things and I appreciate it very much. Beyond that what I want is for people who care about Israel, and the well-being of the Jewish people, to begin the process of rethinking what I sometimes call the Oslo Delusion. This is the idea that the Jews of the Middle East have not made nearly enough concessions to the Arab majority and if they would only make more concessions and, perhaps, release more murderers of Jews from Israeli prisons, then maybe we can have honest peace deal.

What I will consider next, therefore, will primarily be Obama administration behavior concerning the peace process and its relationship to the State of Israel. We will also discuss the Obama administration's reaction to the "Arab Spring" and its failure to force the Muslim Brotherhood down the throats of unwilling Egyptians. We will discuss how the Obama administration had Hamas's back during Operation Pillar of Defense and the ways in which the Obama administration leads from behind in the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction the Jewish State.

An early outline of what I am up to might look something like this:

On Settlements and Stupidity:

The Progressive-Left Betrayal of the Jews and Human Rights in the Age of Obama

A Personal Introduction: Defaming the Jews on the Progressive-Left

The Betrayal: Stating the Problem
9/11 and America Gone Crazy
The Blogs and Bush Hatred
Progressive-Left Anti-Zionism
Universal Human Rights encounter the Multicultural Ideal
Jewish Stockholm Syndrome and My Departure

The Progressive-Left and the Democratic Party

Chapter 1: The Backdrop of BDS and Anti-Semitic Anti-Zionism
Traditional Islamic Jew Hatred
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
The New Historians and Edward Said
The Mavi Marmara and the Red-Green Alliance

Chapter 2: Erasing Jewish History
Language and Propaganda
“Jesus was the First Palestinian Shaheed”
Pallywood and the Fabrication of History through Fake Journalism
The Social Construction of Palestinian National Identity

Chapter 3: The Palestinian Colonization of the Progressive Jewish Mind
Post-Modernity and Neo-Colonial Theory
The Oslo Syndrome
Friends as Enemies, Enemies as Friends
The Palestinian Narrative

Chapter 4: Multiculturalism and the Betrayal of Universal Human Rights
The Betrayal of Women
The Betrayal of Gays
The Betrayal of Jews
The Betrayal of Christians

The Obama Administration

Chapter 5: Killing Oslo and Validating Arab Anti-Jewish Racism
“Total Settlement Freeze”
Biden’s Outrage and Hillary’s Tongue-lashing
A Judenrein Palestinian State

Chapter 6: The “Arab Spring” and the Rise of Political Islam
Befriending the Muslim Brotherhood
Syria and the American Retreat

Chapter 7: Saving Hamas and the Birth of the State of Palestine
Operation “Pillar of Defense”
Mr. Abbas Goes to the United Nations
The Failure of Talks and Delegitimization "on steroids"

Conclusion:

Chapter 8: Moving On

Filmed at Ariel University by students of the Film/TV track of the Moskowitz School of Communication, “Sound of Ariel” showcases a side of the city that is often overshadowed in the media by the city’s geo-political significance.

Ariel has long been the beacon of culture in Samaria, with the Ariel Regional Center for Performing Arts founded in 2010 to host the finest of Israeli and international culture. With a population of 20,000, Ariel counts among its residents many immigrants from the former Soviet Union who came with a strong background in music, song and dance.

The “Sound of Ariel” flashmob brings together a multi-generational ensemble of the city’s musical groups, including Ariel’s violin ensemble, the “Sound of the Heart” senior choir, and the Piccicata children’s choir. The Atzil Nativ-Masa program for Russian-speaking students at Ariel University have rounded out the “Sound of Ariel” ensemble with a student contingent. The musical track was recorded by the Sound Engineering department at Ariel University’s Design and Technology Center of Samaria.

Ariel University has been the subject of one of my posters.

(h/t Lenny Ben David)

Admitted Palestinian terrorist may be deported from US (updated)

From YNet:

A Chicago activist might plead guilty in Detroit to failing to tell US immigration officials about her conviction in a deadly bombing in Israel in 1969, her attorney said Saturday. If convicted, she may face deportation.

A court hearing is scheduled Wednesday for Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, associate director at the Arab American Action Network in Chicago.

"We are engaging in serious negotiations, which could lead to a guilty plea," defense lawyer William Swor told The Associated Press. "If she enters a guilty plea, she will likely have to leave the country."

Odeh, who is in her 60s, entered the US from Jordan in 1995 and became a naturalized citizen in 2004. She is charged with not disclosing her past when she applied for citizenship in Detroit.

Odeh was convicted of an attack that killed two people at a Jerusalem market in 1969. An Israeli military court sentenced her to life in prison in 1970, but she was released 10 years later in a prisoner swap with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The government hasn't said how it learned about Odeh's record.

The indictment refers to her as Odeh, but she's commonly known as Rasmea Yousef in Chicago. Hatem Abudayyeh, head of the Arab American Action Network, called her an "icon" in the community after her arrest last year. She's been free on bail.

Here are some details on the bombing from JTA, February 24, 1969:

Many housewives brought bouquets of flowers today to the employees of Supersol, Israel’s largest supermarket, but the bright spring colors could not overcome the evidence of grisly destruction wrought by a terrorist bomb last Friday. The two victims of the Supersol bombing, Leon Kaner, 21 of Netanya, and Edward Jaffe, 22, or Kiron, a Tel Aviv suburb, were buried Sunday side-by-side as thousands stood by. They were friends, room-mates and students together at Hebrew University. They had been buying canned food for a botanical field trip when they were blown to bits.

The supermarket re-opened for business today and was thronged, mostly by Israelis who wanted to view the damage to the rear of the store, which is part of a chain in several municipalities. Nine persons were injured in the blast–the eighth terrorist bombing since the 1967 war. All told 15 persons have died and 151 have been injured in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv bombings.

About 150 persons, mostly women and children, were in the store doing their pre-Sabbath shopping–at 11 A.M., one of the peak shopping hours–when the explosion sent goods flying and broke glass. They ran screaming into the streets. Police said that the explosives consisted of “primitive gelignite charges” placed in coffee cans on a shelf among oil cans.

About 15 minutes after the store had been cleared, a second somewhat smaller bomb was found and de-fused. A third one was found in front of the British Consulate in East Jerusalem and detonated in a field. The explosion recalled the dynamiting of the Mahane Yehuda marketplace in Jerusalem last November which killed 12 persons and wounded 55.

The PFLP took responsibility for the attack, and Odeh never hid the fact that she was a member of that terrorist group. In fact, she admitted to Israeli police that she carried out the attacks.

Jerusalem police said today that they had confessions from three suspects directly involved in planting bombs that wrecked the Supersol supermarket in West Jerusalem on Feb. 21, killing two Hebrew University students and injuring nine other persons. About 40 members of the gang responsible for the supermarket blast and subsequent bomb plantings at the British Consulate in East Jerusalem have been arrested. Today police said that all members of the gang were in custody.
Police said the bombs were planted by two girls who received the explosives from a third saboteur. They were concealed in shopping bags. The crime has been reconstructed with the aid of the suspects, according to police.

Even though the facts of the case are clear, and no one disputes that Odeh lied on her application to become a US citizen, anti-Israel groups have been whitewashing her role and pretending that this is some sort of US witch-hunt against Arabs. Here's part of a petition, signed by 1500 people, from last November:

On October 22, the Department of Homeland Security arrested Rasmea in her home for alleged immigration fraud as part of an ongoing witch-hunt that targets Arabs and Muslims who criticize U.S. and Israeli policy and labels them “terrorists.”

Rasmea has been demanding justice for Palestinians for most of her life. Like the experience of approximately 20% of the total Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza, she spent time as a political prisoner in Israeli jails in the 1970’s. There, she was violently tortured and humiliated-- despite the international legal prohibition on torture and ill-treatment.

What evidence is there of torture? Zero*. Ray Hanania writes in her defense:

An Israeli military court convicted Odeh and three others “for membership in an illegal organization,” (the PFLP) and as such she was accused of participating in all three bombings. Odeh’s supporters insist she was tortured by Israeli interrogators who are notorious for their brutality, and she was forced to make an admission of guilt.

Odeh’s supporters insist she was not involved in the attack and was convicted the same way all Palestinians are convicted in the Israeli court system, without justice or the right to defend themselves. Odeh has refused to discuss the incident and declined several interview requests on the issue. At the time of the attack, Israel was arresting and killing Palestinians as a part of a campaign to eliminate critics in the West Bank which it had occupied only 21 months earlier.

So if Odeh has never spoken publicly about why she pleaded guilty in Israel for the terror attack or about her allegedly being tortured, how do her supporters "know" she was tortured?

They don't. They made it all up. They are just interested in damning Israel, not the truth.

Hanania of course doesn't mention the other terrorist bombings in Israel at the time, by pretending that she was just arrested as a critic in the West Bank. But he does say that it is not right for people to blow up other people, so that makes him a "moderate."

The idea that Odeh was tortured into this admission - yet told police exactly how she placed the bombs - is ridiculous.

(Hanania also makes the completely absurd claim that "For every one Israeli who has tragically died in this ongoing conflict, 400 Palestinians have died at the hands of Israeli settlers, extremists in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and as part of Israel’s official policy of 'extra-judicial killings'." This is another obvious lie. There have been over 3700 Israelis killed by Palestinian Arab terror [not counting other Arab attacks] since 1948, which would mean that 1.5 million Palestinian Arabs have been killed, an absurd number. The real number is closer to 20,000, a lie of 2 orders of magnitude.)

At a Milwaukee "Nakba Day" rally last week, the Israel-haters held several signs to "free Rasmea."

Naturally, Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada have had articles in support of Odeh and ignoring her role in the cold blooded murder of two young men.

(UPDATE: Additional info from Bob K)

*UPDATE 2: Bob found a video where Odeh does say she was tortured. I don't know how truthful her testimony is, she claims that the Israelis tried to force her father to sleep with her. Her friend in the video who says she witnessed the torture says that it prompted her to show the Israelis "where the weapons were hidden" meaning that they do not deny that they were terrorists.

Starting at about 10:00 Odeh's partner describes their role in placing the bomb in the SuperSol, so there is no doubt that Odeh is guilty, even if what she claims about being tortured is true.

BNP video blames "heartless Zionists," bankers, gays for British woes

From Jake Wallace Simons at The Telegraph:

Earlier this week, BNP Youth released a campaign video entitled Fight Back (above). It is in equal part worrying and comical. Beginning with music that evokes a Death Star fascist aesthetic, it is presented by a handful of (white) teenagers, all of whom look awkward, pimply, nerdy and gauche – the sort of kids who would be stalwart members of the Dungeons and Dragons society if they hadn't been quite so politically aware. And the message they promote, which targets "militant homosexuals", "cultural marxists", bankers, "heartless Zionists", the media, UK immigration policy and (bizarrely) Doreen Lawrence, comes across as little more than unreconstructed fascism.

That's a pretty accurate description:

The BNP leader defended the video:

BNP leader Nick Griffin has defended a video by his party's youth wing which refers to "heartless Zionists" and "militant homosexuals".

The MEP said he stood by the film, which also accused the media of "pandering to the likes of Baroness Lawrence", whose son Stephen was stabbed to death in an unprovoked racist attack in 1993.

Mr Griffin insisted the video had been entirely the idea of the children, but admitted when pressed one of those taking part was his own daughter.

Despite the views expressed in the video, Mr Griffin claimed he was not anti-Semitic or anti-gay.

05/17 Links: Max Blumenthal Attracts Jew Haters of All Stripes; Soros buys SodaStream & Teva Shares

From Ian:

Max Blumenthal Attracts Jew Haters of All Stripes

Given Blumenthal’s own conduct, there is also every reason to assume that he fully agrees with the praise by a Stormfront member who declared that by exposing Israeli evils, “Max Blumenthal has done a great service for all of humanity here, and we WNS [i.e. white nationalists], and the rest of the world, ought to be grateful to him.”
Since the publication of my documentation in February, it has emerged that in addition to the sites I mentioned, Blumenthal’s writings were also posted on the neo-Nazi forum used by the arrested suspect in last month’s fatal Overland Park, Kansas, shootings. The shooter targeted Jewish institutions and reportedly shouted “Heil Hitler” when he was taken into custody. While the suspect’s interest in one of Blumenthal’s articles certainly doesn’t justify sinking to the level of Blumenthal himself – who tried to present the 2011 massacre in Norway as inspired by writers cited in the perpetrator’s deranged “manifesto” – William Jacobson rightly argues in a related blog post that the shocking attack in Kansas provides yet another illustration of “the intersection between neo-Nazi and anti-Zionist conspiracy theories.”
Moreover, given Blumenthal’s popularity on so many reactionary and anti-Semitic sites, it is utterly disingenuous when he now complains about being “smeared” with such racist associations only on the basis of the Kansas shooter’s interest in his work. With his relentless efforts to demonize Israel, Blumenthal has certainly done his part to show over and over again that supposedly left-wing “pro-Palestinian” activists and far-right reactionaries have no problem finding their lowest common denominator in their shared enthusiasm for anti-Semitic material.

The firebomb attack (you never heard about) on a bus of Jewish schoolgirls

There is plenty of news about Palestinian “protests” and the Israeli killing of two “protesters.”
But you never hear what those “protests” involve.
It’s not just holding signs and shouting. It’s often potentially lethal firebombing, as happened to this busload of Israeli girls on a Bat Miztvah visit to a Jewish holy site in Hebron. Hebron had one of the oldest continuous Jewish communities in the world until the Jews were driven out and massacred in 1929 during Arab riots. The return of Jews to Hebron is deemed a “settlement.”
You probably never heard about the firebombing of the bus. Neither had I, until I saw a tweet linking to this story at
an Israeli newspaper, Firebombs on Bat Mitzva Girls’ Bus, Only Arutz Sheva Reports It:

Mike Lumish: Obama Backed Boko Haram

Joel Gehrke of the Washington Examiner writes the following:

When congressional leaders asked the State Department to tailor American assistance to Nigeria in a way that would protect Christians from religious persecution at the hands of Boko Haram, an extremist group that kidnapped hundreds of Christian girls last month, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s team dismissed the idea on the theory that the organization was not motivated by religion.
“This religious tension, while real, should not be mistaken as the primary source of violence in Nigeria,” David Adams, assistant secretary of legislative affairs, wrote to Congress in an Oct. 4, 2012 letter. “Similar to the United States, Nigeria’s religious diversity is a source of strength, with communities working across religious lines to protect one another.”
In other words, as late as 2012 the Obama administration considered Boko Haram to be just another religious group that comprised the rich tapestry of spiritual life in Nigeria and that, as part of the splendid diversity of the country, it represented a source of strength.
Of course, not everyone agrees with this sunny assessment.

05/16 Links Pt2: Repulsive Guardian op-ed justifies Palestinian antisemitism; The summer of BDSFails

From Ian:

Repulsive Guardian op-ed justifies Palestinian antisemitism

Yesterday we posted on the results of a new international antisemitism poll by ADL, which demonstrated that Palestinians are the most antisemitic people among the 100 countries surveyed. We noted that Palestinians are even more antisemitic than citizens in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan and Iran.
It would seem that true anti-racists would have a pretty difficult time defending such views – as some of the tropes are indistinguishable from the notorious Czarist forgery, Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
To boot, a Guardian op-ed published today by pro-Palestinian activists Donna Nevel and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark begins with this headline and photo:
"Anti-Semitism should not be waved around like a propaganda tool"
The photo is surreal. An op-ed about antisemitism doesn’t depict Jews, but Palestinians, who, we are told, are denied their basic human rights.
It gets worse, much worse.

Hating the Jew you’ve never met

The question is put into sharp relief by the finding that fully 27% of people who have never met a Jew nevertheless harbor strong prejudices against him. Or, indeed, that a huge majority, 77%, of those who hate Jews have never met one. Even more starkly, the survey found an inverse relationship between the number of Jews in a country and the spread of anti-Semitic attitudes there. As a general rule, the fewer the Jews in a particular country, the more numerous the anti-Semites.
This should not surprise us. We already understood that anti-Semitism is skyrocketing in precisely those parts of the world where Jews fled from or perished in the last century, primarily the Middle East and Eastern Europe. But by giving numbers to these beliefs, the study allows us to think more carefully about the sources of the phenomenon. (h/t Bob Knot)

Can’t stop the rock: a summer of #BDSFails

The Rolling Stones. Neil Young. Justin Timberlake. Kansas. Jay Leno. All coming to Israel this summer.
How’s that BDS working out for you?
Since the incredible failure of the campaign to force Scarlett Johansson to quit SodaStream, the news has not been good for the Israel haters this year. After making a splash at the end of 2013 with the American Studies Association leadership being hijacked by anti-Israel, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists, 2014 has seen one major anti-BDS push back after another. From the viral campaigns supporting Neil Young and Scarlett Johansson to a cavalcade of statements from universities distancing themselves from the ASA statements, to anti-Israel resolutions failing at Michigan, UCLA and Loyola, 2014 has so far been a very positive time to be a pro-Israel activist – especially after the disappointments of 2013.

As part of the Hamas/Fatah attempt at unification, Hamas has agreed to help create a fund to pay compensation for "victims of the division."

Ismail Haniyeh, speaking at a mosque on Friday, said that it was agreed between Hamas and Fatah on the establishment of a national fund of around $60 million dollars to compensate the families of victims.

During the 2006 coup in Gaza and into 2007, over 600 Palestinian Arabs - many of them civilians - were killed by their fellow Arabs in Gaza. Hamas killed far more Fatah members than vice versa.

Some $5 million of this fund will be provided by Qatar.

Where will the rest of the money come from? It isn't like Hamas is rolling in dough.

So, they will probably steal it from other Gazans, one way or another.

A first person account from Avi Issacharoff at Times of Israel:

BEITUNIA, West Bank — I found myself seconds away from being beaten to death by a mob of Palestinian masked men during clashes in the West Bank town of Beitunia, north of Jerusalem, on Friday.

I’m not prone to exaggeration. It was a case of life and death, and I was within moments of falling victim to the kind of lynch that saw two Israeli soldiers who strayed into Ramallah in 2000 beaten to death by a baying mob.

I was saved by pure good fortune: Two plainclothes members of the Palestinian Authority security forces happened to be nearby and waded in to extricate me. I was already being hit and kicked from behind when they rescued me.

I’ve been covering the Palestinian territories for many years, and been in no shortage of sticky situations, but this came out of the blue. It was totally unexpected.

I was there to report on the Nakba Day protests with a cameraman colleague from Walla News. He was some distance from me when he was approached by several Palestinian journalists who told him to “Get out.”

I walked toward them, and told them that if they had a problem, they should be talking to me. One of the Palestinian journalists, a young woman, then called over to a group of masked men, who swiftly surrounded me and began attacking me.

Only the fact that those two PA security personnel happened to be there saved me. They extricated me and my colleague, and got us to safety. I dread to think what would have happened if they hadn’t been there.

Think about that. A Palestinian journalist works so closely with "a group of masked men" that she can just beckon them to beat an Israeli to death whenever she wants to.

She must write really objective news articles.

Any chance that the PA security forces have taken any action against her? Sorry, just a Friday afternoon joke.

UPDATE: A followup article by Issacharoff. (h/t JK)

Sometimes doing nothing is the best policy (Efraim Inbar)

From Prof. Efraim Inbar at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies:

Now that the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations have ended in failure, many political actors advocate taking advantage of the political limbo to advance their preferred unilateral plans. The Israeli political right-wing is promoting annexation of Area C, while the left-wing is advocating a “coordinated” (whatever that means) unilateral withdrawal. Government officials have spoken about the need for Israel to “do something.” Others suggest negotiating with the Quartet, instead of the Palestinians.

Activism is unquestionably a trait that is admired in Israel. Zionist-rooted rhetoric such as “we have to determine our borders and destiny on our own” indeed falls on receptive ears.

However, probably the wisest course of action for Israel is a patient and cautious “wait and see” approach. Resolving the conflict is impossible, but attempting to manage it in order to minimize suffering to both sides and to minimize the diplomatic costs to Israel – is within reach.

Kerry’s initiative has indeed ended in failure. But the sky has not fallen. There is no sense of alarm or fear of a great impending crisis, not in Israel nor in the region nor elsewhere in the world.

Real pressure on Israel to change the status quo is unlikely. The assumption that time is running against Israel is simply wrong. As a matter of fact, the Palestinian issue is likely to become less salient in the international arena over time.

After the Kerry debacle, Washington is left counting an additional foreign policy failure, trying to digest what happened and pondering on how to proceed. Its current instinct is to stay away from interventionist initiatives. The US, drained by two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) and blessed with new energy finds, does not want to get dragged into further conflicts in a Middle East that seems less central to its interests. So the Obama administration may be less inclined to intervene in the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict than ever before. Even if the US obsession with Palestinian statehood persists for some reason, it is still better for Israel to wait and learn Washington’s next moves before devising an adequate response.

Moreover, in light of America’s great importance to Israel, uncoordinated unilateral steps by Israel regarding the West Bank are not advisable. Israeli statements expressing a commitment to future peace negotiations, coupled with restraint in building beyond the settlement blocs, might be enough to keep America at bay and reluctant to intervene.

The US is also unlikely to be confronted with Arab pressure to focus on the Palestinian issue if Israel does not engage in drastic steps. The Arab world is undergoing a tremendously difficult economic and socio-political crisis and is busy dealing with domestic problems. Moreover, the Iranian nuclear threat continues to be the most urgent foreign policy issue, putting most Sunni states in the same strategic boat as Israel. Even the Palestinians do not take Arab lip service on their behalf seriously.

In all probability, most countries of the world can also live with an unresolved Palestinian issue. There are many simmering territorial conflicts all over the world. Nowadays, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine dominate the news. In the coming months and years, many human and political tragedies will divert attention away from the Palestinian issue.

Significantly, the Palestinians have no impact on truly important strategic issues such as nuclear proliferation or energy that might galvanize powerful states into action. Once, the Palestinians were an important actor in international terrorism. This is no longer true. Nowadays, Palestinians are very dependent upon international aid. Rocking the boat by using too much violence threatens the livelihood of Palestinians receiving the Palestinian Authority’s salaries and benefits, and risks Israel’s strong retaliation. Simply put, the Palestinians have only limited international leverage and are vulnerable to Israel’s potentially harmful countermeasures.

Moreover, the Palestinians have an excellent record of “shooting themselves in their own foot.” The unity agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas is the latest example of this.

Whatever some experts say, Israel is not isolated in the international community. Israel is a strong country, possessing a remarkable web of international interactions. Significantly, Israel’s relations with the world are only marginally affected by its conflict with the Palestinians.

The political actors most obsessed with the Palestinian issue, the Israeli political Left and the Europeans, are in decline. The Oslo process, with which the Israeli Left was associated, has failed, delegitimizing its initiators. The Eurozone is facing acute problems, further reducing its limited ability to be a true strategic actor. The ability of these weakened political actors to push the Palestinian issue to the top of the international agenda has become increasingly curtailed. Contemporary international circumstances could lead to further marginalization of the Palestinian issue.

Israelis, like many misguided Westerners, often succumb to counterproductive hyper-activism. Yet doing almost nothing might bring about better results than activating unilateral plans of all kinds.

I would add that the Palestinian Arabs and their supporters know all of this quite well. The entire reason that they have been relying on stunts rather than make substantive concessions for peace is because they are used to their stunts making international news. But people get tired of them. Abbas has threatened to quit time and time again, now everyone yawns. Threatening to join international groups is also more symbolic than real. So are prisoner hunger strikes, which received headlines once upon a time but are now ignored. The flotilla stunts have likewise run their course.

They'll come up with new ones, but in a world where more people are being killed in Syria every month than in the territories in several years, it is more and more difficult for Palestinian Arabs to get people worked up over their whining - except for their core of supporters, most of whom care far more about destroying Israel than in helping Palestinian Arabs.

The status quo isn't a solution, but if there is no solution, then managing the conflict is the next best thing until the PLO decides that it really wants a state and not a launching pad for attacking Israel. With the scheduled "unification" looming and Hamas joining the PLO, that is not going to happen in the foreseeable future.

05/16 Links Pt1: Arabs: We Want Democracy - Like Israel; Erdogan shouts anti-Israeli slur at protester

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Arabs: We Want Democracy - Like Israel

The Tel Aviv District Court's decision to send former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to six years in prison for corruption has prompted calls in the Arab world for endorsing Israel's standards of accountability, transparency and justice.
Reacting to the sentencing of Olmert, many Arabs expressed hope that the day would come when their countries would learn from Israel that no one is above the law, even if he or she is a president or prime minister.
Sufian Abu Zayda, a leading Fatah official and former Palestinian Authority minister, praised the court verdict; he said it shows that in Israel, no one is above the law.
"This verdict provides further evidence that the judicial system in Israel is fully independent in the wake of the separation between the legislative, executive and judicial authorities, as well as total freedom of the media," said Abu Zayda, who is considered an expert on Israeli affairs.

Erdogan shouts anti-Israeli slur at protester: report

Turkey’s prime minister shouted an anti-Israel slur as he was mobbed by angry protesters at the site of a deadly mine blast this week, local media reported Friday.
“Why are you running away, Israeli spawn?” Recep Tayyip Erdogan is heard yelling at a protester in video footage circulated by the opposition Sozcu newspaper, using an expression considered a curse in Turkish.
In the footage that could not be authenticated, Erdogan is seen surrounded by angry protesters shouting and whistling at him as he visited the tragedy-hit town of Soma on Wednesday a day after the blast.

Gazan, West Bank farmers learn post-harvest storage techniques in Beit Dagan

The Palestinian farmers were participating in the final workshop of a five-day course in post-harvest techniques held at the Volcani Institute, within the Agriculture Ministry complex in Beit Dagan. Receiving funding from the Netherlands government, the course took place through a partnership among the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the Israeli Agriculture Ministry, Palestinian Authority growers’ associations and the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s MASHAV and CINADCO international cooperative development programs.
Their course is also part of a larger project already extended into its fourth year – Cash Crop Gaza and West Bank – funded by the Netherlands and implemented by the FAO, according to Hillel Adiri, senior technical marketing adviser at the FAO.