Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, May 30, 2014

05/30 Links Pt2: Palestinians say BDS Activists Are Criminals; TempleU backs Holocaust Denying Prof

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: BDS Activists Are Troublemakers, Criminals

At university campuses in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe, they are hailed as heroes campaigning for Palestinian rights. But in Ramallah, ironically, activists belonging to the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] movement are seen by the Palestinian Authority [PA] as trouble-makers and law-breakers.
For some PA officials, BDS is a movement that acts against the true interests of the Palestinians. They say that the actions of those promoting BDS make the Palestinians appear as if they are not interested in peace and coexistence with Israel. BDS activists in Ramallah have succeeded in preventing several planned meetings between Israelis and Palestinians in Ramallah and east Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Authority is also worried that BDS is harming the Palestinians' relations with other countries. The most recent example of BDS efforts to damage Palestinians' relations with friendly countries occurred a few weeks ago, when the "anti-normalization" activists tried to disrupt a performance by an Indian dance troupe in Ramallah.

A journey through Twenty-First Century antisemitism

Some Of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism, by Ben Cohen
Review by Karl Pfeifer
This well-edited volume contains selected thought-provoking articles by Ben Cohen, written in this century. His subject is the crude, violent “Bierkeller” antisemitism and the polite, modulated, ostensibly reasonable antisemitism, called nowadays “anti-Zionism” and so often expressed in the “progressive” camp.
Ben Cohen is not making sweeping judgments about the Left, but he calls a spade a spade and does not spare the rhetorical rod from those who engage in any form of antisemitism.
There is a foreword by Anthony Julius, the lawyer who successfully defended Deborah Lipstadt when she was sued by the Holocaust denier and antsemite David Irving.

Sarah Honig: A Small Tragedy

These verses were recited to Pope Francis when he visited Yad Vashem this week. He was also given a replica of a painting by the underage poet, an inmate of the Lodz Ghetto. He shook hands with several Holocaust survivors, including Abramek’s stepbrother Eliezer Gyrnfeld.
Sarah Honig was the first to publish Abramek’s story back on July 7, 1989 in the Jerusalem Post. Here is the feature exactly as it appeared then:
A SMALL TRAGEDY
At 13, Abramek was writing bright and beautiful poetry, far in advance of his years. He, and his words, came to an end in Auschwitz. By chance, some small memory of him was salvaged.
What child doesn’t, at some point in time, indulge in day-dreams of flying, of satisfying an as-yet unjaded curiosity to see and explore the wonders of the world?

David Singer: Palestine – Pope’s Political Power Play Promises Pandemonium.

The visit of Pope Francis to Amman, Bethlehem and Jerusalem this week proved that His Holiness is just as fallible – and gullible – as a host of other world power brokers like US President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Kerry and the negotiators representing the Quartet – the European Union, the United Nations, Russia and America.
All had plunged into the political mire that constitutes the 130 years old Arab-Israel conflict believing they could resolve it – but ultimately discovered it was destined to become their political graveyard.
The Pope’s descent into the political hell-hole that comprises former Palestine was totally unnecessary.
Regrettably the Pope chose to turn what should have been a purely spiritual pilgrimage to the Holy Land into a highly contentious political one.

I don't know if I will do this every week, but people liked last week's roundup, so....

Of course, this week was dominated by my original coverage of the Beitunia Pallywood incident (all posts here.)

My Synchronized video of the Beitunia incident (created Saturday night but improved later in the week) was the first and IMHO best video analysis that proved really beyond any reasonable doubt that the gunshot that corresponds to Nadim Nawarah's falling down was from a rubber bullet, and that there is no way Israeli fire killed him in the way that the medical examiner described it.

On Monday I put forth my theory that Nadim Nawarah was shot in the leg by a rubber bullet . I still think it is likely, even though the IDF claims that the first bullet, fired by an unauthorized soldier, was fired at a wall. The other alternative, of course, is that Nawara was good at reacting fast to the sound of the gunshot to fall down and create a scene, as we saw in the failed attempt I publicized in my post A botched attempt at Pallywood: "The Hopper"

That video was picked up by other media like Breitbart and has so far received 16,000 views on YouTube. My other video taken from the extended CCTV footage, showing how absolutely no blood was spilled by the supposed shooting of two youths with bullets that ripped through their midsections, is almost at 10,000 views. The videos get far more publicity than my posts do.

People who can get past the idea that Palestinian Arabs have a history of faking injuries and deaths can see that there is far, far more to Beitunia than how it is reported in The New York Times and other media. As I've said repeatedly, I dislike conspiracy theories, and I really don't know how two youths apparently died, but I do know that Nadim Nawara was not shot by Israeli forces, and the story of Mohamed Salama has serious problems as well (as I noted here.)

I also challenged the media to find real experts to help decode what happened. Only some Israeli media has interviewed actual experts, but Haaretz hasn't bothered, and neither has any of the mainstream media, in regard to squaring the facts with the videos we have. Isn't that strange?

There were increasingly bizarre theories later in the week to try to pretend that Israel somehow managed to shoot live fire at the exact same moment as the rubber bullet shot, which I took apart here. One Israeli blog even claimed that the police were shooting live fire through the rubber bullet canister, which Haaretz said was impossible or ridiculously difficult today.

Other notable posts this week:

If you like what you see, please consider donating using the PayPal buttons on the right sidebar. Thanks!

"Think Progress" slyly throws in Israel hatred

You can find subtle Israel hatred in the most interesting places.

Think-Progress has an article about Pope Francis' visit to the Middle East.

At the conclusion of Pope Francis’ already surprise-ridden trip through the Holy Land last week, the first Argentinian pope turned heads by spontaneously inviting Presidents Shimon Peres of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority to visit him for a joint “prayer summit” at the Vatican. Both leaders accepted his offer, and a date was set for a meeting at the pontiff’s apartment on June 6.

The bold move by Francis — who has virtually no formal diplomatic training — rekindled hopes of reinvigorating Middle East peace talks that collapsed less than a month ago. Yet while the announcement of the summit was welcomed by many world leaders, several commentators were quick to point out that the pope’s primary goal in holding the prayer service is probably to help establish enough good will to help protect the Middle East’s Christian minority. After all, Christians, who make up 5 percent of the population in the Middle East, continue to face stiff persecution at the hands of both Jews and Muslims in the region, and Francis told members of the press last November, “We will not resign ourselves to imagining a Middle East without Christians.”

"Stiff persecution at the hands of both Jews and Muslims"? Is there any comparison between the thriving Christian community in Israel and the dwindling Christian communities in every single Arab nation?

Apparently not. The author seems to believe that Israel is worse. Because his link doesn't go to any article about Arab persecution of Christians and mass Christian flight from Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq and elsewhere. It links to PCUSA's article about "price tag" attacks in Israel!

The Presbyterian Church USA is rabidly anti-Israel and its members who write articles like that are often openly antisemitic:

For example, at an opening program of the IPMN-PCUSA annual conference, the Rev. Craig Hunter said "greed and injustice is a cancer at the very core of Zionism." In a 2010 letter to church delegates, the IPMN-PCUSA falsely accused the Jewish community of intimidating Presbyterians by sending a letter-bomb to the church’s headquarters and setting fire to a church. IPMN-PCUSA tweeted an article proclaiming “Jewish power + Jewish hubris = moral catastrophe of epic proportions.” IPMN-PCUSA also has supported virulently anti-Israel resolutions including those equating Israel with Apartheid and has been a vocal supporter of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanction movement.

The IPMN-PCUSA Facebook page includes a cartoon of President Obama wearing weighty Jewish star earrings to suggest Jewish control of the American leaders, a common theme on the site. The IPMN-PCUSA has posted articles that accuse Jews of controlling Hollywood, the media, and American politics - and blaming Israel for the American housing and economic crisis. IPMN-PCUSA's communications chair also posted her opposition to a two-state solution and the existence of a Jewish state, something which she terms "anachronistic.” The same IPMN leader, Noushin Framke, clicked "like" on the Obama cartoon with the Jewish stars and another post that Hamas should keep Israeli Gilad Shalit hostage until Palestinians are granted a right of return.

While "price tag" attacks against churches in Israel are reprehensible, they areis hardly causing a mass exodus of Christians from Israel and they have been denounced by all Israeli leaders of every major political party. I think that Coptic Christians in Egypt would be thrilled if the worst thing to happen to them would be occasional offensive graffiti on their churches. To highlight that instead of mentioning the actual life-threatening incidents against Christians under every Arab regime is more than just an oversight. It is deliberate anti-Israel incitement, albeit low key.

The article is idiotic on many levels, not least being a complete ignorance of the role of Israel's president, but this little link betrays a much deeper problem with many "progressive" writers.

(h/t Ronald)

05/30 Links Pt1: Police Prevent Suicide Bombing; Hamas pays for attacks on Jews at Temple Mount

From Ian:

Minister praises policemen who stopped suicide bombing

“Your vigilance and professionalism led to the capture of a terrorist with an explosive belt,” Aharonovitch told the policemen in a phone conversation shortly after the Friday morning incident.
“You prevented an attack and saved lives, and I’m proud of you and your professional excellence,” he said.
The incident took place on Friday morning, when Border Policemen saw a Palestinian man, a 20-year-old Nablus resident, walking toward them at the Tapuah Junction in the northern West Bank. The man was wearing a heavy coat, despite the 35-degree-Celsius heat (95 degrees Farenheit). The policemen called on the man to stop, at which point he lay down in the road.
The suspect then allowed policemen to remove his coat, revealing what looked like an explosive belt on his person. He admitted that it was indeed a bomb.

A terrorist with an explosive belt was caught at the intersection Tapuach Samaria

Sarah Honig: Proportional to the threat

Trying to get inside Jennifer Rene Psaki’s head is one heck of an intellectual challenge. The pearls of wisdom that habitually escape the lips of this US State Department spokeswoman are often no less than stupefying, so it must be edifying to get a handle on what inspires them.
She is the gauge of just how disliked we are. Our tendentious, left-dominated, agenda-driven media has turned Psaki into the adjudicator of our international standing. If she isn’t pleased, we are in obvious trouble. Her pronouncements open our news broadcasts and star on our front pages.
Thus we quaked the other day, awaiting her judgmental input following the deaths of two Arabs in Bitunia (near Ramallah) on May 15. They took part in irredentist disturbances to decry Israel’s Independence anniversary as a catastrophe – Nakba – their loaded characterization of our existence.
Psaki unequivocally put us in the dog-house when she encouraged “the government of Israel to conduct a prompt and transparent investigation to determine the facts surrounding this incident, including whether or not the use of force was proportional to the threat posed by the demonstrators.”
Ouch! We are well-familiar with that demand for proportionality. It never augurs well for us.

‘Hamas pays hundreds of youths to harass Jews at Temple Mount’

Israel arrested a major Hamas figure earlier this month as he attempted to infiltrate the country via the Allenby Bridge crossing, the Shin Bet security service revealed Thursday afternoon. Mahmoud Toameh, a “top-ranking overseas operative of Hamas,” gave the security agency a wealth of details about the activities of the radical Islamic group during his interrogation, it said, including its funding sources, international activities and activities inside Israel. Notably, he revealed that Hamas pays hundreds of young Israeli Arab citizens to harass Jews seeking to enter the Temple Mount area.
Toameh was arrested on May 14, the Shin Beit said, and formally indicted on undisclosed charges on Thursday.
In his interrogation, Toameh revealed that Hamas works with the Islamic Movement (an Israeli organization that promotes Islam among Israel’s Arab citizens) to keep Jews from entering the Temple Mount compound, by retaining a group of young men to harass and throw stones at Jewish visitors. These men, who ostensibly are studying Islamic theology at the site, are paid a monthly salary of NIS 4,000 to NIS 5000 ($1,150-$1,440) for their activities, the Shin Bet said. (h/t Bob Knot)

Story here, h/t JJ.

This poster series continues to go strong - some 5000 views every week, from all over the world.

People are hungering for the truth about Israel and it is hard to argue with straight facts showing how minorities in Israel are treated as well or better than they are in almost any nation, and how there are no limits to what they can accomplish.

Saudi cleric forbids online chat between men and women

From Al Arabiya:

A prominent Saudi cleric has declared that online conversations between men and women are religiously forbidden and has warned that they may lead to committing sin.

According to Saudi daily al-Eqitisadiya, Sheikh Abdullah al-Mutlaq, a member of the Saudi Committee of Senior Scholars, said that chatting online through social networks falls under the forbidden “khulwa” (a religious term describing a situation where a man and a woman are alone in a private area).

Sheikh al-Mutlaq, speaking on a local Saudi radio show, warned that “the devil would be present when women talk to men” and urged women not to talk to males, even if the purpose of the discussion is to obtain guidance and advice.

Saudi social media users took to the Internet to express mixed reactions regarding his statement.

Whilst some users praised the cleric and said that he was right, most other users ridiculed him and his views by saying things such as “why don’t they (religious clerics) just ban women all together?”

Meanwhile, others wondered if direct messages could cause accidental pregnancy.

Soon the Saudi religious police might open up their cyber division!

But will they sentence the violators to virtual lashes?

Moroccan journalist vilified for visiting Israel, posing with Hebrew Psalms

From Morocco World News:

Ghislaine Taibi, who works for a French-speaking private Moroccan channel has been harshly criticized by many Moroccans for a recent visit she paid to Israel. A picture of her holding the Torah [sic] while standing adjacent to the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem has set social media ablaze.

The bulk of comments on the picture associate Taibi to the Zionist cause in a derogatory way and attack the private channel 2M. “Pigs go back to their origins,” read one of the comments. “Truth need be revealed about this filth,” read another comment referring to Moroccan channel 2M.

...Asked on how she reacted to some Moroccans’ negative reactions to her visit to Israel, Taibi answered, “I’ve never considered responding to these trivial and unjustified attacks, carried out by people who don’t even know the real reasons for my visit there, and who ignore the principles of my work as a journalist.”

Taibi explained that her very first motivation for visiting Israel was her job as a journalist, a job that consists of “hunting news regardless of where it is found.” The second reason for her visit to Israel, she further explained, is her intention to write a book about religions, which she intends to announce very soon.

“The reasons for my visits to Israel are only professional and scientific,” she told Febrayer.

“Supporting peace and coexistence between both sides (Palestinians and Israelis) is what matters most,” declared Taibi. “The two sides are yearning for peace, except for those extremists who are fighting against the willingness of their people,” she added.

Taibi also visited the Church of the Nativity during her trip. She didn't get nearly the same reaction to posing with Christian religious objects as she did in the photo above where she is holding a Hebrew book of Psalms.

Which goes to show that her Moroccan critics weren't as insulted at her visit to Israel as they were with her associating with anything Jewish.

MLK's Pro-Israel Legacy and the Racism of BDS (video/lecture)

IBSI (Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel) Director Dumisani Washington speaks at Hillel UCLA on Dr. King's pro-Israel legacy, Israel's multiethnic society, the formation of BASIC, and the racism and hypocrisy of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.

05/29 Links Pt2: Why So Many Palestinians Are Still Refugees; Judith Butler’s BDS “Truthiness”

From Ian:

Explaining Why So Many Palestinians Are Still Refugees (REVIEW)

As the authors elucidate, UNRWA’s steadfast espousal of the Palestinian “Right of Return” reveals both the degree to which it has been politically co-opted and compromised by its constituency, and that it is a position at odds with the United Nations’ own Charter; such a right “necessarily entails the dissolution of Israel as such… Jewish sovereignty as envisioned by the Zionist movement and the 1947 Partition Plan, would be ended and Jewish political and cultural rights necessarily curtailed.” In other words, for both AFSC and UNRWA, an initial commitment to humanitarian aid and relief became heavily politicized, reflecting the complexities of merging philanthropic (or religious) intention with geopolitics and regional conflict.
Romirowsky and Joffe are exhaustive in their research and consistent in describing an aspect of the Palestinian refugee historical experience that has heretofore been neglected in the scholarly and policy literature.
The dilemma the global community faces – building social and economic progress along with a political resolution that brings stability (if not peace) – is ultimately hampered by an agency of its own creation that pursues its agenda at the expense of the greater goal. UNRWA bears culpability for enlarging, intensifying and prolonging a refugee calamity it was intended to ameliorate. AFSC’s pragmatic withdrawal from Palestine refugee relief five decades ago, juxtaposed with UNRWA’s persistent re-entrenchment even in the face of decades of the breakdown of agency operations and the collapse of its chartered goals, should be a clear signal that a different strategy is necessary in the pursuit of Palestine refugee relief and the question of the resolution of the refugees’ status.

Musings on the Subject of Nakba Day

It behooves us, then, to make a list of other apolitical and neutral examples of human suffering to demonstrate that there are no political agendas behind the choice of which events are selected to be commemorated and mourned.
First, a day of commemoration for the tragic losses in property values by white slave owners in the American south, stripped of their slave assets, as a result of the loss of the Confederacy in the American Civil War, would be a great step in the direction of neutral apolitical honoring of human rights and dignity.
Second, we should be holding special campus days of commemoration and empathy for male rapists who have been injured while violently raping women. Their bruised knees and knuckles and scratched faces are human tragedies that all compassionate members of society must honor and respect in the name of neutral human rights and apolitical dignity.

Judith Butler’s Mythologies: “Truthiness” in the Philosophy of BDS

Although she denies being a spokesperson or leader of anything, few who have been following recent discussions concerning the BDS (Boycotts, Divestments, Sanctions) movement for restrictions aimed against Israeli academics on American college campuses would fail to recognize her name as one of its prime symbols. And it is in this case precisely the symbolic power of a name (since her books are unreadable for most non-specialists) that is at issue.
Butler lends credibility to an otherwise quirky, retrograde, and at least sometimes anti-Semitic push to reject Israel’s very right to exist in any conceivable two-state solution whatsoever to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (BDSers would prefer to liberate all of Palestine, “from the river to the sea”), because of her intellectual cache as one of today’s leading, trend-setting cultural “theorists.” The tribe of theorists, by the way, are supposed to be, like the extinct race of philosophers before them, lovers of wisdom–souls so drawn to the truth that they’re willing to run risks for it. Such at least is their reputation among the impressionable; when they aren’t, by contrast, being dismissed by cynics (like the philosophers before them) for pretensions to mere radical chic. Or worse.

Child publicly executed in Syria (video)

This horrific video was allegedly taken in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor. Reports say that it shows the execution of a child by the Syrian Islamist group ISIS in front of a large crowd.

Just a reminder as to what kind of neighborhood Israel is in. Not to mention how little Israel's neighbors care about violence that cannot be blamed on Israel.

The grassy knoll in Beitunia

Ben Ehrenreich writes that the bullets that killed the youths in Beitunia were not fired by the Israeli shooters in the CNN video, but from an entirely different group:

In the LARB article I quoted a doctor who treated both boys and who told me that their wounds were without question caused by live fire. Nuwara was shot in the chest, Abu Thaher in the back: both bullets passed through their bodies, leaving exit wounds. The rubber-coated steel bullets used by the IDF can and often do penetrate the skin and can be lethal, but they cannot pass entirely through a human torso even when fired from a relatively short distance. I interviewed four eyewitnesses to the killings, all of whom said live fire was used. (The concussion from a live shot sounds differently than that of a shot when rubber-coated bullets are fired. I have met 11-year-olds in the West Bank who can accurately tell what sort of munitions are being fired by ear alone. All four of the eyewitnesses I interviewed had witnessed many such clashes and knew the difference well.) Three of them testified that they saw Israeli commanders choosing targets and pointing them out to snipers just before each boy was killed.

One thing is worth noting: the bullet that killed Nadim Nuwara was almost certainly not fired by the soldier caught on the CNN video. It was almost certainly a coincidence that he fired his weapon at approximately the same moment that Nuwara was hit. And he almost certainly was shooting rubber-coated bullets: the video is hazy, but his rifle appears to be equipped with the sort of extension that is attached to the barrel of an M16 to allow it to fire rubber-coated bullets. Mohannad Darabee, one of the witnesses I interviewed, told me repeatedly that he was sure the shot that killed Nuwara did not come from the group of Border Police who had gathered on a driveway just uphill and slightly back from the road. Darabee walked me to the spot where Nuwara fell, and to the spot from which the Border Police (and the now-suspended soldier) had been firing. The corner of a building stood in the way: there was no line of fire that would have allowed those soldiers to hit Nuwara.

However, another, larger group of Israeli soldiers had gathered behind a concrete blast wall on the edge of a parking lot about 200 meters from the spot where Nuwara was hit. (See image above.) It was there, Darabee said, that he saw a commander choosing targets through binoculars. Those soldiers had an unimpeded shot at Nuwara. Forgive me if this is all a bit hard to visualize: The Guardian produced a graphic that maps it all out. But I want to make this very clear, because the waters have been muddied considerably, both through deliberate obfuscation and by speculation about a video that reveals less than it appears to: the fact that the soldier caught on video by CNN was apparently firing rubber-coated bullets only confirms the accounts of eyewitnesses who testified that the bullet that killed Nadim Nuwara was likely fired by another group of soldiers gathered at the edge of the parking lot. Abu Thaher, who was shot an hour earlier, and was standing in the middle of the road, easily visible from the Border Police officers’ perch, could have been killed by either group.

I responded:

The CNN video doesn't only show two shots of rubber bullets - it has the sounds of the shots. The first two shots recorded sound the same and the first one corresponds with Nawara's falling down.

Are you saying that the Israeli police in the other area shot live fire at exactly the same time both times? That would be unbelievable.

The Guardian had also reported of another group of Israeli troops to the south with a clear line of sight. I have no reason to doubt that some border police were there are well. However, we conveniently don't have video of them to see what kind of weapons they were firing. Apparently the dozen or so journalists at the scene, all witnessing gunshots from two directions, didn't bother to photograph one of the groups of soldiers doing anything aggressive. Moreover, this theory would also assume that the CNN videographer, who would have definitely been able to tell the difference between gunshots straight ahead of him and shots from his left, ignored the actual source of the gunshots!

More to the point, however, is that if there really were Israeli shooters at this other location using live fire, and if every child in the West Bank can distinguish between live bullets and rubber bullets by sound, then the CCTV video makes no sense.

All of the people in the video use the building to the right (west) in the clear CCTV video as cover from being shot. Why would they remain in an exposed position where live bullets could kill them? Many times throughout the CCTV video we see them flinch and run for cover - always in the direction away from the "CNN shooters," closer to the building, never out of the line of sight of this new mysterious second group of Israelis that were supposedly shooting at them. They aren't nervously looking down the road, even in the footage after the first incident that supposedly came from the new southern position. They aren't seeking cover from these supposedly obvious sniper shots.

There is one exception: at 14:46:05 of the CCTV video we see everyone run away at once from something, running north, but with no discernible flinching that a gunshot would generate.

It takes several minutes before people re-appear, many from inside the building. But no one ducked into the building as one would expect if they wanted to take cover as quickly as possible. Also, some of them ran into the street - into a more exposed position (other angle video) and not around the corner. My guess is that this quick evacuation was either a false alarm that someone shouted out or maybe the sound of a tear gas canister coming that way.

Notably, no one reacts this way during either of the alleged shooting incidents on video. If the shots came from this other position, the crowd would react very differently.

So this new theory has no objective evidence, and the lack of audio evidence in the CNN video makes it highly unlikely, at least in the case of Nawara. Even the video of the incident with Mohammed Thaer doesn't show anyone looking in the direction of, or taking cover from, the supposed mysterious second shooter with the completely different sounding bullets from the completely different position.

If Ben Ehrenfeld can dig up more video from his journalist buddies showing the second Israeli position, by all means, let's see it. But the CCTV footage shows nothing that would support this new theory, which at the moment sounds more like a conspiracy theory than anything that has solid evidence.

And it might be reasonable to be a little more skeptical about Palestinian eyewitness testimony.

05/29 Links Pt1: Without Zionism, the Temple Mount would not be as holy to Islam

From Ian:

Baker: Govt. Should Act Now on Sovereignty

Baker was a member of a panel headed by former High Court Judge Edmund Levy that in 2012 researched the question of Israel's “occupation” of Judea and Samaria and found that Israel could not be considered as such under international law. Baker said that it was impossible to dispute Israel's right to the Land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria, as ancient and modern history makes it clear that the land belongs to the Jewish people.
Ancient writings, from the Bible to Greek, Roman, and early European and Middle Eastern sources all attribute the Land of Israel to the Jewish people. In modern times, the defining documents of the current status of the Land of Israel, from the Balfour Declaration to the UN partition plan all recognized this historic connection as well. “This cannot be disputed,” Baker told the conference.
With that, he said, Israel could not ignore the fact that it had a large Muslim population. It was on this basis that the Oslo Accord was signed, with the final disposition of the land to be decided in negotiations. So far, Baker said, those negotiations have not gone very well, and Israel should use this fact to advance its own ideas on the matter.
In recent months, Baker said that the PA had committed significant violations of the Oslo Accords. “They changed their status, indicating to the United Nations that they wished to be regarded as a state, not an Authority as specified in Oslo. This was a fundamental violation of the Oslo Accords. In addition, they have been engaging in foreign policy-setting,” he said, by signing international agreements – also specifically forbidden under Oslo.

Without Zionism, the Temple Mount would not be as holy to Islam

“Temple denial,” however, is a recent phenomenon that stands in stark contrast with Islamic tradition.
During the early Muslim period (between the 7th and 11th centuries), the Arabs used to call Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, interchangeably, Bayt Al-Maqdis, an Arabic transliteration of the Hebrew Beit Hamikdash (Temple). A 1924 tourist guidebook published by the Supreme Muslim Council says the Temple Mount is the site of the Jerusalem Temple. Araf al-Araf, a Palestinian Arab historian who, as a close friend of Haj Amin al-Husseini could hardly be suspected of pro-Zionist sympathies, wrote in his 1951 book "Tariah Al-Quds" that the Temple Mount “was bought by David to build the Temple, but it is Solomon who built it in 1007 BCE.”
Not only is “Temple denial” a recent phenomenon; so is Islam’s interest in the Temple Mount. Muhammad made a point of eliminating pagan sites of worship and of sanctifying only one place: the Kaaba in Mecca. In the 14th century, Islamic scholar Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya ruled that sacred Islamic sites are to be found only in the Arabian Peninsula. The Koran does not mention Jerusalem, and Muslim Jerusalemites pray toward Mecca. They do not take off their shoes in the space between the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque.
Without Zionism, there would have been no Muslim sanctification of the Temple Mount and no Arab denial of the existence of the two Jerusalem Temples.
Israelis may still be divided about their reunited city; but their ideological divide is thankfully being narrowed by modern Palestinian mythology.

Do they have a right to a state?

They lie about everything. The create fake atrocities to smear the IDF (one is in progress now). They have a made-up version of history that gets wilder every day. The Jewish Temple didn’t exist, they say. “Jesus was a Palestinian,” they say. Was he an Arab? A Muslim? A Canaanite? What Temple did he throw money-changers out of? This is so far beyond nonsense that it’s impossible to respond, but it’s used to justify both their crimes and their demands.
The culture, thanks mostly to Arafat’s educational and media systems, is obsessed with death, martyrdom, and revenge. Palestinians make it clear to anyone who is prepared to listen that their greatest aspiration is to destroy the state of Israel, kill or expel the Jews, and take the land that they believe they have a right to.
In a moral sense, then, are they ‘deserving’?
The Pope mentioned the “right to live with dignity and freedom of movement.” I presume he is referring to the security barrier. But the barrier was built because allowing Palestinians total freedom of movement led to hundreds of Israelis dead from bombings and shootings. Does the Pope think they have a ‘right’ to go where they want to kill whomever they want?
What does he think?

My challenge to the media reporting on Beitunia

Ok, I've stared at the videos and photos taken during "Nakba Day" for hours. I've read all the articles I can find. I've come up with my conclusions that there is no possible way that Nadeem Nawara was shot and killed by Israeli forces.

But CNN and the New York Times, showing far less diligence, have concluded that he was killed by Israeli live fire.

OK. I'm just an anonymous blogger, with a weird and ironic name. Why should my arguments - no matter how reproducible they are and taken from open sources - hold any weight with journalists who will only quote experts? It is not like CNN or the NYT will quote "Elder of Ziyon" as an expert. And - I'm not an expert. I just lay out my arguments and let people try to disprove them, and modify accordingly.

However, the mainstream media can do something I cannot: they can ask the real experts.

CNN, laughably, showed Nawara's father and the supposed "bullet" that killed Madeem, something which Israeli experts showed was completely impossible. But neither CNN nor Robert Mackey bothered to contact any objective Western experts to easily identify the types of weapons used or the supposed bullet or to verify the story of the bullet hole in the backpack next to the bloodless exit wound.

So my challenge to the media is to find the experts and show them the videos and photos. Get hold of the head of New York's and Los Angeles' police forensics departments. Find military ballistics experts. And report what they say, even if they contradict what you have already reported. (Please don't go shopping for only the "experts" who verify your narrative. We know that trick.)

I'll be happy to bow to the experts showing me reasonable proof for how the youths are likely to have been killed by live fire. Do you, as real journalists, have the same intellectual integrity?

Or is your narrative more important than the truth?

Unfortunately, we know the answer. CNN has lots of footage of the day's events, but they only decided to release what they felt contradicted Israeli claims. They blew it. Yet their conscious decision was to only release what they thought supports the anti-Israel narrative, and nothing that shows how many holes it has.

Imagine the goldmine of information sitting in AFP's and AP's and CNN's archives, hours of video that could shed light on the truth rather than be cherry-picked to support a predetermined outcome!

There are a few real journalists out there, who have integrity. Let's hope that some of them start doing real research, dig up the full footage, and talk to experts who have no reason to lie.

A fascinating story from Reuters:

In an unprecedented, three-year cyber espionage campaign, Iranian hackers created false social networking accounts and a fake news website to spy on military and political leaders in the United States, Israel and other countries, a cyber-intelligence firm said on Thursday.

ISight Partners, which uncovered the operation, said the hackers' targets include a four-star U.S. Navy admiral, U.S. lawmakers and ambassadors, members of the U.S.-Israeli lobby, and personnel from Britain, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The firm declined to identify the victims and said it could not say what data had been stolen by the hackers, who were seeking credentials to access government and corporate networks, as well as infect machines with malicious software.

“If it's been going on for so long, clearly they have had success,” iSight Executive Vice President Tiffany Jones told Reuters. The privately held company is based in Dallas, Texas and provides intelligence on cyber threats.

ISight dubbed the operation “Newscaster” because it said the Iranian hackers created six “personas” who appeared to work for a fake news site, NewsOnAir.org, which used content from the Associated Press, BBC, Reuters and other media outlets. The hackers created another eight personas who purported to work for defense contractors and other organizations, iSight said.

The hackers set up false accounts on Facebook and other online social networks for these 14 personas, populated their profiles with fictitious personal content, and then tried to befriend target victims, according to iSight.

The operation has been active since at least 2011, iSight said, noting that it was the most elaborate cyber espionage campaign using “social engineering” that has been uncovered to date from any nation.

To build credibility, the hackers would approach high-value targets by first establishing ties with the victims' friends, classmates, colleagues, relatives and other connections over social networks run by Facebook Inc, Google Inc and its YouTube, LinkedIn Corp and Twitter Inc.

The hackers would initially send the targets content that was not malicious, such as links to news articles on NewsOnAir.org, in a bid to establish trust. Then they would send links that infected PCs with malicious software, or direct targets to web portals that ask for network log-in credentials, iSight said.

The hackers used the 14 personas to make connections with more than 2,000 people, the firm said, adding that it believed the group ultimately targeted several hundred individuals.

“This campaign is not loud. It is low and slow,” said Jones. “They want to be stealth. They want to be under the radar.”

Facebook Inc spokesman Jay Nancarrow said his company had discovered the hacking group while investigating suspicious friend requests and other activity on its website.

“We removed all of the offending profiles we found to be associated with the fake NewsOnAir organization and we have used this case to further refine our systems that catch fake accounts at various points of interaction on the site and block malware from spreading,” Nancarrow said.

LinkedIn spokesman Doug Madey said the site was investigating the report, though none of the 14 fake profiles uncovered by iSight were currently active.

The easiest way to hack someone is to gain their trust, and in cyberspace this happens more easily than in the real world. Between installing malware and getting people to create accounts with passwords they are likely to have used elsewhere, this could have been a very effective operation.

The New York Times lies about Nakba Day shooting

From Robert Mackey of the NYT:

The Israeli military suspended a soldier who was captured on video this month firing his rifle at protesters in the occupied West Bank. Video evidence showed that the soldier fired his weapon within seconds of a Palestinian boy’s collapsing to the ground with what proved to be a fatal gunshot wound.

As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Wednesday, the suspended soldier, seen in video recorded by a CNN producer, was a member of a communications unit assigned to document the work of combat troops and border police deployed to contain a demonstration in the West Bank town of Beitunia, near Israel’s Ofer Prison, on May 15. The CNN video appeared to show that another shot was fired by a police officer who was standing near the soldier on a hillside above the protesters.

Just seconds after those shots were fired, the CNN camera panned to show demonstrators and medics in a frantic scramble to evacuate the wounded protester, 17-year-old Nadeem Siam Nawara, who died a short time later.

...An Israeli security official who requested anonymity to comment on a continuing investigation told The Times that the soldier had been suspended from his position for firing his weapon without authorization. The official insisted, however, that the soldier had fired only rubber bullets, not live ammunition.

Doctors who examined the boys before their burials reported that they were both killed by gunshot wounds through their chests.

Mackey puts the "rubber bullet" claim as a dismissive footnote that is only believed by Israeli officials, but he says definitively that the Israeli shot "proved to be" fatal. However, look at how Haaretz reported the story Mackey is basing his article on:

A probe into the deaths of two Palestinians killed in the West Bank village of Bitunia during a Nakba Day demonstration earlier this month took a dramatic turn on Wednesday, when a CNN video clip showed a non-combat soldier, who had accompanied his comrades on the mission, firing what appeared to be a rubber bullet during the incident.

The soldier, a member of an IDF communications division, apparently fired his bullet at around the same time that one of the Palestinians, Nadim Nuwara, 17, was killed. However, the IDF has found no evidence proving that this soldier's bullet caused Nuwara's death. The details of the case are under a military court gag order.

...The IDF has acknowledged that its troops fired rubber bullets during the incident – a fact confirmed by footage from both local security cameras and journalists. But the two Palestinians were apparently killed when they were relatively far away from the troops, which would seem to indicate that live fire was used. Yet the soldiers, officers and border policemen present at the scene have all denied that any live bullets were fired.

(The analysis done in the comments here show that the event indeed occurred within range of rubber bullets.)

Haaretz doesn't have to resort to "Israeli security officials" to see what anyone with eyes can see - that the CNN video shows a soldier shooting a rubber bullet at the time Nawara fell to the ground.

Mackey's "reporting" is editorial malfeasance.

I slightly modified my video synchronizing the CNN video and audio with the CCTV footage to make the first shot clearer and to be more explanatory:

More evidence that this was a rubber bullet comes from the anti-Israel side. (In fact, all the proof exculpating Israeli forces comes from images and video intended to do the opposite.) A remarkable photo that apparently shows the second rubber bullet in flight was posted, I believe, on Mondoweiss, and reproduced in the comments here:

(At first I thought the object might simply be a hole in the door, but other photos show no such holes.)

The sounds of the first and second shots in the CNN video are virtually identical, meaning that they were from the same type of weapon, same type of ammunition and the same location. If this shows a rubber bullet (and it does appear to - no regular camera would catch a live bullet in flight like this and the shape is that of the rubber coated cylinder used by Israel) then the first shot that coincides with Nadeem's fall must also be a rubber bullet.

Now, there is no doubt that the Israeli border police have some serious issues to be addressed - why they apparently allowed someone to shoot who was not authorized, and why they shot rubber bullets at people who were not rioting or endangering anyone at the time. Not to mention that the person who shot the bullet against regulations was apparently from the IDF division that was supposed to be recording events like these specifically to prove what really happens when baseless accusations are leveled against Israeli forces.

There is plenty of blame to go around - but the evidence proves that Nadeem was not killed by Israeli live fire during the timeframe of these videos. Of this there is no doubt. Even in the highly unlikely scenario that a simultaneous shot was fired from a mystery Israeli at the exact same time, we would hear the difference in sounds on the CNN audio.

What needs to be investigated is how he, or someone, really died, and that is a question that implies such a repugnant answer that no one wants to even contemplate it.

(h/t YMedad)