Sunday, June 01, 2014
Elder of Ziyon
Sunday, June 01, 2014Elder of Ziyon
Dr Ahmad Fuad Anwar, an expert on Israeli affairs, professor of Hebrew studies and Zionist thought at Alexandria University, said in response to a question by Al Masry al Youm about the purpose of such images and their publication, especially with the strong cooperation within the Israeli army: "Such a phot series is provocative propaganda ...to serve the Israeli army."Hey, at least he isn't accusing the IDf of using the women to seduce and blackmail Egyptians the way Hamas claimed once.
Fouad adds that [for Israel] to allow the Reuters photographer to enter the training mission of Caracal and accompany them during the whole day are [it accomplished] several goals, the first of which may be to tarnish the image of the Egyptian side, especially with the facts of several incidents of [Egyptian] live fire on African infiltrators which killed them.
He pointed out that the Egyptian side deals with infiltrators using three methods, namely: hotels, prisons, and deportation, and this depends on the way the infiltrator engages with the troops, and while the Israelis are delivering a message to the world that they are recruiting women to deal with the intruders as they are always considered civilians.
He continued: the second goal is to reassure Israeli citizens, who have a tendency to panic, to calm their fears and apprehensions of infiltrators and drug traffickers, and to deliver a message to the Israeli people that it is under control and it sends women to these hot spots, and the third goal is to beautify the image of the Israeli army as it is recruiting women in combat missions which indicates equality, not only using them for administrative work like a lot of the armies of the region, especially with the publication of pictures of beautiful girls with strong physiques that are always smiling.
Fouad called on the Egyptian side to officially complain to the famous Reuters agency about such images in the Western media, as well as to request the Israeli side to refrain from provocations by releasing such images, and Fouad added that religious Israeli soldiers refuse to work near the women's camps, and he wondered "Should the Egyptian side object to the presence a of battalion on the common border that is two-thirds women?"
Sunday, June 01, 2014Elder of Ziyon
Beitunia
To be sure Palestinian propagandists from the West Bank had their helpers in the West. For example, Charles Enderlin, the man who helped broadcast the Al Durah video to French viewers in 2000, has a lot to answer for. Jews are fleeing the hate he helped promote.New book claims Israel spied on Bill Clinton
But nowhere is this harvest of hate more evident than in Palestinian society itself. In lying to the world about the cause of their suffering, Palestinian elites are lying to themselves and the people they lead.
The anti-Israel and anti-Jewish messaging that Palestinian elites have promoted to Westerners for the past few decades reveals that the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are a long way off from establishing and maintaining a democracy, making peace with Israel and coming to grips with the modern world.
They live in a demon-haunted world of their own making. The end result will be disaster for the Palestinians and possibly for the rest of the world.
The allegations in the book, reported by Newsweek on Friday, are the latest in a series of reports regarding Israeli spying on US targets. The reports have been vehemently rejected by Israel and largely dismissed by American officials.Exposing the Human Shield Industry
The new book, however, by British-Israeli political scientist Ahron Bregman, cites purported verbatim transcripts of the Clinton-Assad calls which he says he obtained through “private sources.”
Bregman writes in “Cursed Victory: A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories,” that Israel also listened in as Syria’s foreign minister called the elder Assad to report on private meetings with US officials. The author further claims that he received transcripts of confidential talks between Clinton and then-prime minister Ehud Barak, as well as a letter marked “SECRET” from Clinton’s secretary of state Madeleine Albright to Barak’s predecessor and current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in which the Americans promised to check with Israel first before offering any peace proposals to the Arabs. (h/t Yenta Press)
Here’s one example of how this industry works: On the night of September 30, 2013, IDF troops opened fire at two Palestinians who were trying to sabotage the Israel-Gaza border fence, killing one and wounding the other. Both men later proved to be unarmed, so that’s naturally how the story was reported: Israel kills two unarmed Palestinians.Brussels May Be Lying About Museum Shootings, Professor Claims
Four days later, I happened to be visiting friends whose soldier son was home on leave. It turned out his unit was involved in this incident, and he was furious over what the media reports left out: Standing just a few hundred meters behind the two men, he said, was a group of armed Palestinians waiting to see whether the attempt to break through the fence succeeded. In other words, the soldiers had every reason to believe the men sabotaging the fence were part of a much larger infiltration attempt, even though they couldn’t be sure those two were themselves armed (it was night, they were moving, and they were partially obscured by the fence). Thus the soldiers did what responsible soldiers do when facing an attempted terrorist infiltration: They used lethal force to stop it.
A Swiss professor wrote on Facebook that Belgian officials may be part of a conspiracy to falsely present the Brussels Jewish museum shootings as anti-Semitic.
Tariq Ramadan, a Geneva-based lecturer on Contemporary Islamic issues at Oxford University in Britain, speculated on Tuesday that the slaying of four people last week at the Jewish Museum of Belgium was a deliberate attack on Israeli secret agents.
“The two tourists targeted in Brussels worked for the Israeli secret services,” Ramadan wrote, citing media reports.
“The [Belgian] government does not comment,” Ramadan wrote. “Coincidence. Is this a case of anti-Semitism or a maneuver to divert attention from the real motives of the executioners? We oppose all slaying of innocents and racism but at the same time, it’s time they stopped taking us for fools.”
Friday, May 30, 2014Elder of Ziyon
No one can deny the suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli government. For too long, they have been deprived of their sovereignty, as well as their basic civil and human rights, at the hands of a ruthless military occupation. At Sussex, we have a proud tradition of standing up for the victims of injustice and oppression. This cannot be an exception.This anti-boycott argument shows, very clearly, how embedded the lies and distortions of the Israel-hater are in British universities.
But this referendum is not about solidarity with the Palestinian people. Throughout the history of the conflict, Israeli academics have been known for their outspokenly left-wing and pro-peace views. According to Sari Nusseibeh, the Palestinian president of al-Quds University in East Jerusalem, ‘if you look at Israeli society, it is within the academic community that we’ve had the most progressive pro-peace views and views that have come out in favour of seeing us as equals… If you want to punish any sector, this is the last one to approach.’
The academic boycott of South Africa was a result of the apartheid policy to restrict the black population’s access to higher education. Within the legal borders of the state of Israel, there is no such policy. A significant percentage of Israel’s students are Arab Palestinians. And while advocates of a boycott may point to the fact that the Israeli military restricts access to higher education within the occupied territories, this is a result of military rule and occupation, not the policies of Israeli universities themselves.
An academic boycott of Israeli universities would be a form of collective punishment. Israel’s entire academic establishment cannot be held responsible for the actions of its government, as just as in Britain, our students and lecturers often disagree entirely with our government’s actions.
We cannot afford to lose the moral high ground when it comes to our solidarity with the Palestinians – this only serves to strengthen the arguments of chauvinistic right-wingers who will point to this boycott as an example of anti-Semitic prejudice. Widely considered as one of the most prominent activists for the Palestinian cause, Noam Chomsky has stated in numerous interviews that an academic boycott ‘will only strengthen support for Israel’, and will seriously hurt Palestinians in the process.
Instead, we should be encouraging co-operation with critical and progressive elements within Israeli academia. Otherwise, we risk isolating Israeli students and lecturers solely by virtue of their nationality.
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.A journey through Twenty-First Century antisemitism
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.
Some Of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism, by Ben CohenSarah Honig: A Small Tragedy
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.
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.David Singer: Palestine – Pope’s Political Power Play Promises Pandemonium.
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?
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.
Friday, May 30, 2014Elder of Ziyon
Friday, May 30, 2014Elder of Ziyon"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?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.”
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.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 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.
“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.A terrorist with an explosive belt was caught at the intersection Tapuach Samaria
“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.
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.‘Hamas pays hundreds of youths to harass Jews at Temple Mount’
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.
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)
Friday, May 30, 2014Elder of ZiyonSoon the Saudi religious police might open up their cyber division!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.
Friday, May 30, 2014Elder of ZiyonTaibi 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.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.
Thursday, May 29, 2014Elder of Ziyon
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.Musings on the Subject of Nakba Day
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.
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.Judith Butler’s Mythologies: “Truthiness” in the Philosophy of BDS
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.
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.
Thursday, May 29, 2014Elder of Ziyon
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
