Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, July 02, 2014

07/02 Links Pt2: As Global Anti-Semitism Rises, We Must Stop Funding Terror; Congress Cuts PA aid

From Ian:

Daniel Mael and Chloe Valdary: As Global Anti-Semitism Rises, We Must Stop Funding Terror

As many in the Western world grieve and attempt to comprehend the brutal murder of three Israeli teenagers -- including one American -- emotions abound. Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar, and Naftali Fraenkel, three yeshiva students from central Israel, were kidnapped and murdered by Arab terrorists while on their way home from school. Their crime was simply that they were Jews daring to live in Israel. Although disturbing, when viewed in the context of Palestinian culture, this crime is not shocking. One cannot be surprised that a society governed by a regime that indoctrinates its children to hate Jews would actually produce individuals who act on that impulse and murder them.
Viewed in the context of global Jew hatred, this heinous crime is not an aberration. There has been a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism around the world and responses have ranged from disinterest in the slaughter of Jews to sympathy with the “freedom fighters” seeking to “kill” them.

An Open Letter to Jeremy Ben-Ami

That noted, I found your recent post on the murders of Naftali Frankel, Eyal Yifrach and Gilad Shaar to be both disappointing and extremely disturbing. You began your post by referring to “three teenage boys…” You did not even show the boys or their families the dignity of referring to them by name. Moreover, you never mentioned the perpetrators of these horrific crimes and you never used the term “terrorist.”
To equate the murders of three Israeli teens who were hitchhiking home from school to the shooting of a Palestinian teen who was throwing rocks at soldiers is an outrage. I understand that you were trying to equate the grief of a Jewish mother with that of a Palestinian mother. To be sure, the anguish of a parent whose child has died is heartbreaking, no matter the circumstances. But there is no basis for equating how or why the two boys died. One was an innocent hitchhiker. The other was throwing stones – not pebbles, but stones – at soldiers.
You claim that, “until there is a two-state solution, this awful conflict will grind on and on and on, and there will be more tragedies – more Naftalis, more Mohammeds.” The terrorists who kidnapped and murdered Naftali Frankel, Eyal Yifrach and Gilad Shaar did not do so because there is no two-state solution. They kidnapped and murdered Naftali Frankel, Eyal Yifrach and Gilad Shaar because the teens were Jewish Israelis, because they cannot accept a Jewish State in the Middle East and because that is what terrorists do. To think such evil will cease when there is a Palestinian State is simply naive. (h/t Ken Kelso)

Israel Faces Death Once More

Outside of Israel, the kidnapping of the three teenagers has gone practically unnoticed. Many will say that there was other, more relevant, news, such as Iraq's collapse. However, I am convinced that it is just another excuse. To insult, intimidate, attack, and even to kill Jews has again become commonplace today. It is rarely denounced. For example, Belgian authorities tried to deny that the attack against the Jewish Museum in Brussels was an anti-Semitic terrorist attack.
The silence of the lambs is the product of fear. And in Europe, people are in fear -- a lot of fear -- of being seen as pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. A delegation of American Jews, for instance, was expelled last week from the African Union Summit, to which it had been invited. This happened because the delegates of Egypt, Iran and South Africa could not stand seeing the American Jews wearing the traditional Jewish kippah [skullcap]. Did any of our leaders, including the president of the Spanish government, make the slightest gesture of disgust or disapproval? No. There are too many interests in play, too many fears of being singled out by Arab countries, losing access to Arab markets, oil and gas; of becoming a target of Islamic and Palestinian terrorism.

Wikipedia says:

William Dennes Mahan (July 27, 1824 - October 19, 1906) was an American Cumberland Presbyterian minister in Boonville, Missouri and author of a book, commonly known as The Archko Volume (1884), purported to be a translation of a Jewish, Roman, and other contemporary documents about the trial and death of Jesus of Nazareth. The volume was initially received by some as true, but soon after its publication, its authenticity was questioned. The book has been definitively discredited as a forgery and fraud.

In 1884 Mahan published the first version of the Archko Volume, entitled The Archaeological Writings of the Sanhedrin and Talmuds of the Jews, Taken from the Ancient Parchments and Scrolls at Constantinople and the Vatican at Rome, Being the Record Made by the Enemies of Jesus of Nazareth in His Day: The Most Interesting History Ever Read by Man. This included an expanded version of "Pilate's Court" plus a series of other texts that he claimed to have obtained himself in a visit to Rome and Constantinople and translated with the aid of Dr. M. McIntosh of Scotland and Dr. Twyman of England, also otherwise unheard of. These texts include interviews with the shepherds, Gamaliel's interview with Joseph and Mary, Caiaphas's reports to the Sanhedrin, Eli's story of the Magi, Herod Antipater's defense before the Senate for the slaughter of the innocents, and Herod Antipas's defense before the Senate—all with the claim that they were copied from ancient manuscripts and translated into English.

The texts are otherwise unknown to scholarship, and the volume contains various inconsistencies.
...
Among the first to call Mahan's work into question was Rev. Dr. James A. Quarles, of Lexington, Missouri. He was soon followed by William E. Curtis, a correspondent for the Chicago Record-Herald. In Rome, Curtis investigated Mahan's claims and declared the manuscript spurious and the alleged translation a forgery.

Mahan denied all the charges against him and asserted the truth of he had written. He was summoned before church authorities in September 1885 on charges of falsehood and plagiarism, and a church trial was held. The New Lebanon Presbytery, of which he was a member, tried the case at length.

Evidence was introduced to show that Mahan had never been to Rome, but that he had spent the time he was absent from Boonville on a farm in Illinois. The editor of the Boonville Advertiser showed that the letters that paper had printed were postmarked from a small town in Illinois. Mahan rebutted the evidence by saying that they had been sent there to be re-mailed. Additional evidence that Mahan had not traveled to Rome included a letter from Father Ehrie, prefect of the Vatican Library. Ehrie stated that Mahan was entirely unknown there and that no person connected with the library had ever seen or head of the "Acta Pilati" or any such manuscript.
...
The verdict of the presbytery was nearly unanimous. He was convicted and suspended from the ministry for one year.

The early versions of this forgery are available online, and even a cursory reading shows an ignorance of Tannaic writing style and basic Judaism. For example, the forgery quotes Caiaphas the High Priest about Jesus: "He looked upon the whole of the Levitical institutions, temples, sacrifices, and priesthood included, as no longer necessary and not worth the life of the animal. This was certainly the opinion of the Hillelites. Jesus, it seems, found in this Hillelite school a party furnished to hand, ready to take up with his heresy."

Hillel a heretic?

In a later chapter Hillel the Third is said to have approved Peter's teachings, first-hand of course.

The book also purportedly has a conversation between Gamaliel with Jesus' contemporaries when the latter would have been 26, with the Tannaic giant concluding that there is no doubt that Jesus is the Messiah.

It is quite obvious that the entire work is meant to fulfill wishful thinking for contemporaneous accounts of Jesus' life that would correspond with the New Testament stories.

Even though the work was exposed as a forgery immediately after publication, it continues to be republished to this very day. A version available on Amazon from 1998 is getting reviews today, and there was another reprinting in 2012.

More from the humor site PreOccupied Territory:

Seal_of_the_Islamic_State_in_Iraq_and_the_Levant

Geneva, July 2 – The United Nations General Assembly voted today to add the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to the UN Human Rights Council. The council is the world’s foremost international forum for the advocacy and protection of basic human rights and is made up of 47 member states, which are elected by the majority of members of the General Assembly of the United Nations through direct and secret ballot. The General Assembly takes into account the candidate states’ contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights, as well as their voluntary pledges and commitments in this regard.

“We are delighted that ISIS, a new player on the international stage that has liberated great swaths of territory formerly living in terror under the oppression of violent and savage regimes, will be joining us in our efforts,” said Council president H. E. Baudelaire Ndong Ella. “We have all witnessed the advances in human rights in the areas under its control.”

ISIS, a jihadist Sunni ad hoc agglomeration of lands and peoples from Syria and Iraq assembled in the wake of the bloody internecine war in the former, and the inability of the army to take a stand in the face of invasion in the latter, has created tens of thousands of refugees from its area of control. It has been posting proud videos of decapitations and executions to the internet and has been applying strict Sharia law, such as cutting off the hands of supposed thieves. Its national symbol appears to be a pick-up truck with a machine gun mounted in the back and its stated goal is the recreation of the caliphate from Iraq to the Mediterranean, including Israel.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said in March 2007, “All victims of human rights abuses should be able to look to the Human Rights Council as a forum and a springboard for action,” enshrining the high ideals to which the council has steadfastly adhered. More recently, Mr. Ban indicated that – while most council members had no knowledge of the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers near Hebron – at least he, for one, had indeed heard of the disappearances, but since the UN was not an investigatory body in regards to such matters, he was unable to confirm or deny that any abduction had actually taken place.

The mothers of the three teenagers had flown from Israel to attend the current (8^th) HRC session and were given two minutes to make their presentation to the world and to request its help in freeing the boys. The 47 states’ representatives on the council were unmoved, determining that the supposed abduction of Jewish children hardly rose to the high level of noble concern expressed by Mr. Ban. No-one from the council approached the women afterwards to extend a hand in understanding.

Newly-installed ISIS representative Zeheeg He’ayl said ISIS was delighted and honored to be elected and to be entrusted with the protection of basic human rights worldwide. Dr. He’ayl, in his first official statement as a member state’s representative, also commented on the three mothers’ presentation, dismissing their concerns with a wave of his hand. “These people are not human. Why can they not live up to the ideals we practice in Syria and Iraq, where decapitation, mutilation, mass murder and indiscriminate destruction have led to a veritable Garden of Eden? The Israelis know nothing of human rights; if they did, they’d act more like us.”

07/02 Links Pt1: Kidnapping roundup, Op Ed's, Reactions and Media Malpractice

From Ian:

Where do we go from here?

Shortly after the bodies were found, a Hamas spokesman said that any Israeli action over deaths of the three teens would "open the gates of hell." No, the gates of hell were opened when you decided to mercilessly slaughter three of our children. Israel will however be the one to close the gates on you.
Now, I can’t help but ask: Was the murder of these three boys also the death of peace, or whatever shreds of hope we still had?
What does it say about a Palestinian society, where so many celebrated the kidnappings, including by handing out candy and creating a sadistic "three-finger salute," or where the mother of one of the Hamas abductors said how "proud" she was of him, while the father of the other was overjoyed that his son might become a "martyr"?
I am reminded here of a quote by former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, who once said that "there will only be peace in the Middle East when the Arabs learn to love their children more than they hate us."

JPost Editorial: Israel’s mission

Meanwhile, the Jewish state has continued to flourish and grow and develop in leaps and bounds. It has produced amazing people such as Naftali, Gil-Ad, Eyal and their families and it will produce many more.
While Palestinians focus their energies on destruction and victimization, Israel has became one of the most innovative economies in the world, producing technologies in every field from medicine and computers to agriculture.
There is nothing we can do to stop the Palestinians from choosing, time and again, violence over compromise, destruction over construction, and we should not deceive ourselves that we can.
All we can do is mourn the terrible loss of Naftali, Gil- Ad and Eyal, and continue with the amazing project of Zionism. This is our revenge and our way of honoring the memory of the three boys. This is our mission.

Caroline Glick: The time has come for America to stand up

The cold-blooded murder of Fraenkel, Shaer and Yifrah requires Israel to stop playing a sucker’s game. The PA is not our partner. It is our enemy.
The US is not our enemy. It is our friend. The American people are our friends.
The time has come for our friends to also take action and stop funding and supporting our enemy and his efforts to destroy us.

Why the boys were kidnapped

Jerusalem must begin relating to the Palestinians for who they are: our sworn enemies. It must also abandon a tired and futile peace process, the ramifications of which increasingly threaten the safety of all Israelis.
Only then can a clear-eyed public debate be held as how best to proceed.
And there are other options (which I and numerous others have repeatedly advanced in these very pages).
But Israel can only move forward by first coming to terms with why it has lost three sons: the Jewish state is at war with a radicalized Palestinian people that has no interest in peace.

The cultural roots of violence in the Middle East - nothing to do with "statelessness"

Yesterday I showed what an idiot Juan Cole was for claiming that "statelessness" is the driving factor behind terrorism (and, therefore, Israel becomes responsible for every terror attack against it.)

To see some real analysis, this article by a PhD candidate published in Now Lebanon highlights once again the difference between a real academic and a fraud like Cole:

The Middle East has developed its own identity-based hierarchal order through the centuries. From the Omayyad to the Ottoman Empire, political legitimacy in the region rested on Islam. Non-Muslims were tolerated in Muslim realms, but only as second class members of society – i.e. dhimmis. The first cleavage in the region’s hierarchy separated believers from non-believers, the kuffar. The second great dividing line established the dominance and superiority of Sunnis over heterodox Muslim sects, most notably Shiites, Alawites, Ismailis, and Druze. Heterodox Muslims were frequently portrayed as the “enemy within” and were repeatedly accused of collaborating with foreign invaders, whether Mongols, Crusaders, or Persians.

Frequently, heterodox sects found refuge in rugged mountainous terrains away from the direct control of Sunni imperial centers (e.g. Jebel Ansarieh for the Alawites, Jebel Amel for the Shiites, Jebel al-Dourouz for the Druze). In the relative security of their fiefdoms, they developed a strong sense of we-ness coupled with a suspicion of Sunni Islam, as well as a deep resentment of their inferior status.

The rise of modern Middle Eastern states did not upset old hierarchical orders as dominant elites paid only lip service to secularism and modernization. The rhetorical emphasis on Arab nationalism did little to transcend the sectarian cleavages of old but instead rekindled an additional line of fracture, this time separating Arabs and non-Arabs (e.g. Kurds in the Levant and Berbers in North Africa). In Iraq and Syria, the current battlefields of the region, it was better to be Muslim than Christian or Jewish, Sunni than Shiite or Alawite, and Arab rather than Kurdish. Beyond the emotional wounds stemming from inferior social status, belonging to the lower echelons of the hierarchy meant having restricted access to state services, educational opportunities, and professional advancement.

Like any other hierarchical order, the system was seen as fundamentally illegitimate by subordinate groups. Consequently, it could only be defended through violent means. From the time the British Royal Air Force was used to bomb restive Shiite tribes in southern Iraq in the 1930s to the mass slaughters of Shiites and Kurds by Saddam Hussein’s army in the early 1990s, the Sunni elite in Iraq upheld the status quo by brute force. Ruling elites hailing from the long-oppressed heterodox groups did not prove any better when military coups, or the exogenous shock of foreign invasion, allowed them to reverse the order: the Alawite-dominated regime in Syria, firmly established since 1970, was discriminatory and violent from the beginning. The same can be said about the Shiite-dominated regime of Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq.

In America, when the racial hierarchy was dismantled after the triumph of the 1960s’ Civil Rights Movement, it was gradually replaced with an inclusive order, one that eventually allowed an African-American to become president. The tragedy of the Middle East is that each time a hierarchy has collapsed – such as when Sunnis lost power in Syria in the 1960s and in Iraq in 2003 – it was immediately reproduced, only with the previously oppressed quickly emerging as oppressors and vice-versa. Herein lay the cultural roots of the region’s continued civil wars.

Now, when a Jewish-majority state emerges in the middle of this already-existing friction between various classes of Arabs, how do you think they will think about the Jews who do not accept their second-class status with joy?

As I noted last week in my post about how different sects in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine hated each other in 1876, it was admitted that "all despised the Jews."

Anyone who pretends that Arab hate of Jews has anything to do with how Israel acts needs to explain why the Arabs hated the Jews before Israel existed. Cole, and the legions of Israel haters that he is a member of, cannot do that. So instead they spend their days and nights effectively justifying Arab antisemitism - and antisemitic murders - as if they are natural.

PA effectively fires 50,000 Hamas workers in Gaza

From Khaled Abu Toameh in JPost:

In a move that could lead to the collapse of the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation agreement, the Palestinian “national consensus” government on Tuesday ordered Palestinian Authority civil servants in the Gaza Strip to return to their workplaces.

Some 70,000 PA civil servants were left jobless after Hamas seized full control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. However, the employees continued to receive their salaries from the PA to keep them from joining the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip. Hamas replaced the employees with its own civil servants, numbering about 50,000.

The new Palestinian government, headed by Rami Hamdallah, has refused to pay salaries to the Hamas civil servants – sparking a crisis that is now threatening to end the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation deal signed in Gaza City in April.

The Palestinian government’s decision to reinstate the PA civil servants came as a surprise to Hamas, whose leaders and spokesmen rushed to denounce the decision as a breach of the reconciliation pact.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that article No. 5 of the reconciliation accord stated that a special committee would be set up to discuss the PA employees’ return to their former jobs.

He said Hamas was surprised to hear the government’s decision before the committee had even met.

Abu Zuhri accused the Hamdallah government of succumbing to Fatah’s dictates, adding that this government had started to lose its credibility.

Another senior Hamas official, Salah Bardaweel, denounced the decision to reinstate the PA civil servants, calling the move “politically motivated.”

Bardaweel accused PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction of “settling scores with Hamas and the Gaza Strip with the backing of the Zionist occupier.” He, too, accused the new government of violating the reconciliation deal.

Al Quds reported that the PA doesn't see an option. Israel has threatened to withhold tax revenues if the PA pays the salary of Hamas terrorists, and the US and EU apparently feel the same since Hamas is still considered a terror group.

Hamas used to pay salaries with taxes they collected plus money they received from pro-terror Muslim governments like Turkey and Qatar. But with "unity" the Hamas government no longer officially exists.

It seems very clear that the Gaza security forces are still being run by Hamas.

So we will probably see Hamas forces physically stopping workers from their jobs. Throw into the mix the hot weather and Ramadan fasting, and things are going to get very interesting in Gaza.

"Unity," however, seems to be pretty dead.

J-Street's Ben-Ami explicitly equates murdered teens with combatants

We mentioned the implicit moral equivalence by Jodi Rudoren in the New York Times between the (then) kidnapping of Naftali Frankel, a boy who was simply trying to get home, and the IDF killing rock-throwing teen combatant Mohammed Dudeen, who sneaked out of his house just to attack Israeli soldiers.

Rudoren denied that she was making any moral equivalence, but the article was written in such a way that it is impossible to get any other impression.

Jeremy Ben-Ami of J-Street, the purportedly "pro-peace, pro-Israel" organization, went much further in a stomach-turning post on his site:

The New York Times this week ran a moving, but difficult, article about two mothers, Rachel Fraenkel and Aida Abdel Aziz Dudeen. It was written before the discovery of the body of Rachel’s 16-year-old son, Naftali, one of the three murdered teenagers. “I was praying maybe he did something stupid and irresponsible,” Ms. Fraenkel recalled thinking when police came to her door at 4 a.m., “but I know my boy isn’t stupid, and he isn’t irresponsible.”

A few miles away in the West Bank town of Dura, Aida also tried to stop her 15-year-old Mohammed from doing something stupid and irresponsible. She locked the door of the family home to stop him from going out to confront Israeli soldiers after days or house searches and arrests. He got out anyway by jumping out the window and was shot dead, with the key still under Aida's pillow, when soldiers opened fire on a group of young Palestinians hurling stones at them.

Ben-Ami, in his zeal to say that a boy trying to get a ride home is the same as a terrorist-in-training who goes out of his way to perform acts of violence, loses his reading comprehension skills. Rachel Fraenkel knew her son wasn't irresponsible; Aida Dudeen knew her son was irresponsible.

To moral midgets like Ben Ami, their deaths are equivalent.

Ben Ami is equating a properly raised boy who was killed because he was a Jew to a wannabe terrorist who turned himself into a combatant, going out of his way to attack an army. To him, both are equally tragic. And this is after he already knew that Frankel had been brutally murdered.

He then approvingly goes on to further prove that he is a morally corrupt person:

Times correspondent Jodi Rudoren succinctly summed up the gulf between the sides in the way they look at these twin tragedies. “Most Israelis see the missing teenagers as innocent civilians captured on their way home from school, and the Palestinians who were killed as having provoked soldiers. Palestinians, though, see the very act of attending yeshiva in a West Bank settlement as provocation, and complain that the crackdown is collective punishment against a people under illegal occupation.”

As President Obama memorably said in his speech to young Israelis in Jerusalem last year, we must try to see the world through the eyes of the other side.

There is a difference between being able to see the world through the eyes of the other side and approving of it. A wife-beater has a viewpoint but that doesn't give it validity. Ben-Ami cannot make the simple moral distinction between aggressor and victim, between moral claims and immoral ones. To Ben-Ami and his J-Street acolytes, the Palestinian Arab narrative of no compromise, no agreement without crippling the security of Israel, of denying Jews the right to a homeland, of explicitly advocating the ethnic cleansing of Jews from their historic homeland, of honoring terrorists and raising children to want to blow themselves up as long as they kill some Jews - all of that is morally equivalent to the Jewish longing to live in the Jewish national home in peace and security.

How sick is that?

This is the mentality that Ben-Ami brings to the table as he zealously tries to reduce US support for Israel - that Arab attackers are as innocent as kids who were killed for the crime of being Jewish.

J-Street, like "Jewish Voice for Peace," exists to provide a pseudo-Jewish cover for decidedly anti-Jewish opinions, allowing people who hate the idea of Jewish nationalism to point to people like Ben-Ami and their indefensible anti-Israel opinions and say, "See? Even Jews agree with me!"

07/01 Links Pt2: What Happened at Lydda; How Abbas Duped Kerry and Indyk

From Ian:

What Happened at Lydda

In his celebrated new book, Ari Shavit claims that “Zionism” committed a massacre in July 1948. Can the claim withstand scrutiny?
Others have found Shavit’s account of Lydda “riveting” (Avi Shlaim), “a sickening tour de force” (Leon Wieseltier), and “brutally honest” (Thomas Friedman). As I read through it, however, the alleged actions and attitudes of Shavit’s Israeli protagonists struck me as implausible. To me they seemed to personify much too readily Shavit’s broader thesis: that “Zionism” had been preprogrammed to depopulate the country of its Arabs, and that this preprogramming filtered down even to the last soldier. In Lydda, soldiers licensed by “Zionism” then became wanton killers of innocents, smoothing the work of expulsion.
Perhaps my suspicion was stoked by the fact that, time and again over the decades, Israeli soldiers have stood accused of just such wanton killing when in fact they were doing what every soldier is trained to do: fire on an armed enemy, especially when that enemy is firing at him. That such accusations might even be accompanied by professions of “love” for Israel is likewise no novelty. (See under: Richard Goldstone.) When such charges are made today, they tend to be subjected to rigorous investigation. Could Shavit’s narrative withstand a comparable level of scrutiny?
Shavit relies largely on his interviews, conducted those many years ago. Since he doesn’t cite documents in a public archive, I have no way of knowing whether he fairly represents his subjects. But it did occur to me that these same protagonists may have told their stories to others. And, with a bit of research, I discovered that they had.

Khaled Abu Toameh: How Abbas Duped Kerry and Indyk

Abbas appears to be the only player who benefited from the botched U.S.-sponsored peace process. Not only did this peace process get 78 prisoners released, but it also paved the way for Abbas to embark on unilateral moves and wage a diplomatic war against Israel in the international arena.
As if that were not enough, the peace process eventually drove Abbas into the open arms of Hamas: Abbas would rather join forces with Hamas than succumb to U.S. pressure to reach a "treacherous" agreement with Israel.
Kerry and Indyk failed to understand that no Palestinian leader has a mandate to make real concessions to Israel as part of a peace agreement.
Instead, they chose to endorse the false assumption that Abbas would be able to deliver a deal. By doing so, they actually forced Abbas to mislead them into thinking that if only Israel released more prisoners, he would be able to make concessions. The question now is whether Kerry and Indyk will be prepared to admit that they were duped by the Palestinian Authority president. Probably not.

State Dept Claims Palestinian Govt ‘Making Every Effort’ to Abide by U.S. Requirements

While AP reporter Matt Lee pressed State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on the United States’ relationship with Palestine, Psaki maintained that President Abbas and his technocratic government “are making every effort” to abide by U.S. requirements, including the rejection of violence.
Lee questioned Psaki about the recently confirmed deaths of three kidnapped Israeli teenagers, but Psaki declined to predict how the matter might weigh into the United States’ relationship with Palestine. Lee continued, “There also, I think — for — more than a dozen rockets that were fired into Southern Israel from Gaza today. Is that something that would make you rethink your position as it relates to the Palestinian government?”
Psaki replied that the State Department would “continue to review and take a look at the circumstances at the ground on a daily basis”, but that “I don’t have anything new to predict for you or outline”, indicating that the United States maintains its support for the Palestinian government.
“Do you think right now that they are abiding by the requirements?” Lee asked.

State Dept: Palestinian Govt 'Making Every Effort' To Abide By U.S. Requirements

Even as the nation mourns, Israel is planning to improve the lives of Arabs living in Jerusalem.

From Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

The Cabinet, at its weekly meeting today (Sunday, 29 June 2014), approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan for the socio-economic development of Jerusalem.

This is the first time that a comprehensive socio-economic development will be formulated and implemented for eastern Jerusalem.

In the field of socio-economic development, the plan will focus on four fields of action:

1. Improving physical infrastructures: Improving the level of infrastructures in eastern Jerusalem in all areas - drainage, sewage, water, electricity, roads and sidewalks, as well as carrying out an infrastructures survey in the area.

2. Education, vocational education and higher education: In order to work toward improving the socio-economic situation of the population and in order to create an economic alternative for residents of the eastern part of the city, it has been proposed to advance plans in the field of education, higher education and vocational training including pre-academic classes, increasing the study of Hebrew in schools and enacting plans to prevent dropping out. It was also decided to enact a city-without-violence plan in five neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem.

3. Offering accessible employment possibilities: Due to the severe socio-economic situation in eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods and due to the difficulty of integrating with the conclusion of academic studies, in light of clause two above, many young people drop out of studies in order to assist in earning a living for their families. The difficulty of concluding studies, alongside the negative expectation of integrating into the labor force with a Palestinian matriculation certificate and limited employment possibilities, significantly reduce the motivation to conclude studies and lead to a high drop-out rate and a smaller chance of in finding quality employment.

4. Social affairs: Adding social workers and youth workers, building recreational facilities and operating youth recreation programs, enrichment classes and programs for children and youth at risk.

Isn't this awful? Improving the Arab sector, helping the Arabs (most of whom refuse citizenship) to live better and get better jobs, is obviously part of the Judaization of Jerusalem.

I expect OIC and UN resolutions condemning this.

(h/t Irene)

We've looked before at sixth-rate "academic" Juan Cole before. We've shown him to be a liar a number of times. He twists statistics, and sometimes he just makes them up. He compared an Islamist dictator to Thomas Jefferson.

Once, because he was apparently so sick of how many times I showed him to be a lying piece of garbage, he even (falsely) accused me of inspiring a mass murderer.

Cole lies as easily as he breathes. And he never corrects his lies, a sure sign of someone for whom ideology trumps facts.

Now he is justifying terrorist acts and blaming the victims, all the while pretending that he isn't doing exactly that:

The kidnapping and killing of three Israeli squatter youth whose parents usurped Palestinian land has produced a paroxysm of hatred and calls for reprisals in Israel. Whoever is responsible for it, the killing of the youth was a horrid and inexcusable crime, and the heart of any parent goes out to the bereaved families.

Can there be a more backhanded "condemnation" of terror than this?

Besides the utterly disgusting implication that Jews who live in Judea and Samaria do not have the same human rights that everyone else on the planet does, and the utterly loathsome implication that most Zionists are responding to the news of the murders with vengeance rather than deep sadness, Cole appears not to know that two of the murdered boys lived in central Israel!

But why should Cole bother himself with mere facts? He has other fish to fry, and mere facts just get in the way. Cole lives in a post-factual world. He is more interested in what he calls "context."

But assuming that Palestinians were the culprits, the social and political structures fostered by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party form an essential context here. Social scientists always contextualize, an anathema to propagandists and the more glib of the journalists, who confuse it with excusing things. To put things in context is not to justify anything, it is to seek and understanding of human actions beyond the simple demonization of the Other.

Hate to break it to you, Juan, but when all of your "context" is in the same direction, against Jewish Israelis, it is just a slightly more sophisticated kind of propaganda. Don't kid yourself - there is no "social science" involved here at all. It is all propaganda. And here's proof.

The Likud has a policy of keeping the Palestinians stateless.....Since the stateless lack a state, they also lack law and order. What most struck me from my last visit to a Palestinian refugee camp was how much of a frontier situation it was. There are no police. Everyone has to fend for themselves. And it is easy for predatory gangs to form.

That is, statelessness produces small violent groups such as Islamic Jihad and perhaps the Palestinian branch of the so-called “Islamic State” of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It produces them because in the absence of formal state structures, such groups thrive in the interstices of society. And it produces them because statelessness and the consequent deprivation of basic human rights produces potent grievances.

What a great social-science theory!

Except that Al Qaeda members, and ISIS members, and the members of Egyptian Salafist groups, and most of those of the PLO and Fatah before 1967, and pretty much every other terror group in history have been made up of full, card-carrying citizens of states!

Now, who else has been against the establishment of a Palestinian state? Well, the entire Arab world before 1967, for starters. Yet the Palestinian terror groups that emerged then were aimed at Israel, not at Egypt and Jordan.

Imagine that - Cole's entire thesis completely destroyed by a little "context."

Who else is forcing Palestinian Arabs to be stateless? The leaders of every Arab nation that refuses to allow Palestinians who want to become citizens from doing so. No, they prefer that they remain stateless in order to justify and foment hate against Israel.

Exactly what Juan Cole is doing in this very article.

After all, if he is so upset over Palestinian Arabs being stateless, why won't he demand that Lebanon or Syria allow people who have lived there for generations become citizens if they want to? Why doesn't he encourage the Palestinian Arabs to accept one of Israel's many peace plans put forward - which would have resulted in a Palestinian state?

No, Cole doesn't give a damn about statelessness - he only cares about slamming Israel, and all his other "facts" are being twisted and used for only that purpose.

Which is the definition of propaganda.

What kind of "social science" is it when you cherry-pick your facts to come to a predetermined conclusion? Ah, the fraudulent kind!

Hypocrite Cole is flattering himself when he calls himself a "social scientist" - I've just proven, in a few minutes, that Cole is cares nothing for facts, for social science, for context, or for anything except for propaganda.

Why Cole is still employed and occasionally quoted as if he adds any value to the world is beyond me.

(h/t Ezra)

07/01 Links Pt1: Tens of thousands stream to cemetery for burial of three teens

From Ian:

Live Blog: Tens of thousands stream to cemetery for burial of three teens

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon vows the Israeli security forces “will not rest” until the operatives behind the deaths of the teenagers are brought to justice. Speaking at the funeral for Eyal Yifrach, 19, in Elad, the defense minister says the teenagers “were kidnapped and murdered just because they were Jews.”
“The grief and agony that envelops you since receiving the bitter news, envelops the entire country,” he says, after the recitation of a Natan Alterman poem.
“In the past three weeks that have passed since the kidnapping of Eyal, Gil-ad, and Naftali, we discovered daily a bit more about their unique personalities: Their warm and loving connection to their families, their hobbies that were their trademark among the families and friends, all the small things that remind us, at the end of the day, that they were youngsters at the beginning of their lives, which was cut short.”
The defense minister addresses the Yifrach family directly, saying “these are the hours when the personal grief is in the public domain.”
Ya’alon says he had the “privilege” of meeting the Yifrach family during these tumultuous, difficult times, who embody “all that is good and noble,” and are “a symbol for us all.”

Rabbi Lord Sacks: In memoriam Eyal, Gilad and Naftali

Eyal, Gilad and Naftali were killed by people who believed in death. Too often in the past Jews were victims of people who practised hate in the name of the God of love, cruelty in the name of the God of compassion, and murder in the name of the God of life. It is shocking to the very depths of humanity that this still continues to this day.
Never was there a more pointed contrast than, on the one hand, these young men who dedicated their lives to study and to peace, and on the other the revelation that other young men, even from Europe, have become radicalised into violence in the name of God and are now committing murder in His name. That is the difference between a culture of life and one of death, and this has become the battle of our time, not only in Israel but in Syria, in Iraq, in Nigeria and elsewhere. Whole societies are being torn to shreds by people practising violence in the name of God.
Against this we must never forget the simple truth that those who begin by practising violence against their enemies end by committing it against their fellow believers. The verdict of history is that cultures that worship death, die, while those that sanctify life, live on. That is why Judaism survives while the great empires that sought its destruction were themselves destroyed.
Our tears go out to the families of Eyal, Gilad and Naftali. We are with them in grief. We will neither forget the young victims nor what they lived for: the right that everyone on earth should enjoy, to live a life of faith without fear.

Follow Golda's lead

Following the news, the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet convened in the exact same place where it met 41 years ago, headed by then-Prime Minister Golda Meir. It was the day that conflicting reports about a possible terror attack at the Munich Olympics started pouring in. At the end of that day, the murder of 11 Israelis by Palestinian terrorists was confirmed. The elderly, heavy footed woman turned to the generals around her and declared that the murderers and their accomplices must not be allowed to live. She spoke plainly, and the world knew that the Palestinian murderers were dead men walking, with targets on their foreheads just waiting for an Israeli bullet.
The full execution of Meir's instructions stretched out over 20 years. In 1992, the last of the terrorists who took part in the Olympic massacre was killed. To their dying day, they were frightened and on the run.

Netanyahu Spokesperson: Murder of Israeli Teens 'Demonstrates Clearly What Hamas is All About'

Just a little religious intimidation by Muslims. Nothing to see (video)

Ammon News reported yesterday:

Groups of Jewish settlers on Monday raided the al-Aqsa Mosque’s compound through the Al-Magarbah Gate, under the protection of Israeli soldiers.

The settlers stormed the compound and carried out provocative tours inside the compound grounds.

The intrusion angered the Palestinian worshippers and the mosque's guards who stay inside the mosque, and they tried to prevent the extremist settlers from entering the yards of the holy mosque.

The Palestinian worshippers confronted the settlers at Bab Al-Rahma and Bab Al-Silsila and forced the settlers to leave the mosque.

Here is what the "raiders" looked like:

Here is the peaceful reaction by Muslims, including (at about 0:25) women using the three-fingered gesture of support for the kidnapping of Jews:

And here is a picture of more peaceful Muslim worshippers silently saying their prayers, from today (possibly a file photo)

Allowing people access to their holy sites is recognized as a human right - except for Jews.

The Qawasameh family, which includes suspected kidnapper Marwan Qawasameh, has a long tradition of terror:

Notable Qawasameh Hamas members:

Mahmud Amaran Qawasameh (suicide bomber in Haifa bus 37, dead)
Hazem Qawasameh (committed shooting attack in Kiryat Arba, dead)
Fuad Qawasameh (suicide bomber in Gross square in Hebron, dead)
Hamza Qawasameh (killed Netanel Uzari, dead)[1]
Muhasan Qawasameh (committed attack on Negohot settlement, dead)
Raad Misk Qawasameh (suicide bomber of Jerusalem bus 2 massacre, dead)
Abbedallah Qawasameh (leader, dead)
Bassal Qawasameh (leader, dead)
Ahmed Abed Qawasameh (suicide bomber in Beersheba, dead)
Imad Qawasameh (leader, arrested October 13, 2004)

The Hamas in Hebron is led by a family from the Qawasameh tribe. Two of its prominent leaders, Abbedalla Qawasameh and Bassal Qawasameh were suspected of/involved in many terrorist attacks, including the Jerusalem bus 14A massacre and Jerusalem bus 2 massacre, which claimed the lives of 40 Israelis.[citation needed] They were later killed by Yamam and IDF forces.

Shlomi Eldar writes a well-researched article in Al Monitor where he argues that the Qawasameh clan has a long tradition of ignoring Hamas leadership attempts at ceasefires with Israel, calling them a "rogue Hamas branch":

Though the clan is known for identifying with Hamas, it also has a well-earned reputation as troublemakers. Not only does it tend to ignore the movement’s leaders. It even acts counter to the policies being advocated by the movement.

That is why officials in the Palestinian Authority (PA) were shocked by the timing of the three boys’ abduction, just two weeks after the establishment of a Palestinian unity government. After all, the very creation of this new coalition came with the assumption that the Hamas leadership had come to terms with reality and moderated their positions.

Enter the Qawasmeh clan. The total number of people belonging to the clan is estimated at about 10,000, making it one of the three largest clans in the Mount Hebron region. At least 15 members of the family were killed during the second intifada, nine of them while committing suicide attacks against Israel. All of the terrorists lived in the Abu Qatila neighborhood, within a radius of less than 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) from one another. Whenever the head of the terrorist organization within the clan was assassinated or arrested by Israel, one of his brothers or cousins was selected to replace him.

Marwan Qawasmeh, the man behind the abduction, emerged as a dominant figure in the clan after Israel arrested Imad Qawasmeh and sentenced him to life in prison.

Each time Hamas had reached an understanding with Israel about a cease-fire or tahadiyeh (period of calm), at least one member of the family has been responsible for planning or initiating a suicide attack, and any understandings with Israel, achieved after considerable effort, were suddenly laid waste. If there is a single family throughout the PA territories whose actions can be blamed for Israel’s assassination of the political leadership of Hamas, it is the Qawasmeh family of Hebron.

On Aug. 19, 2003, after a tahadiyeh was reached between Israel and all of the Palestinian factions, with the support of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, two suicide bombers blew themselves up on the No. 2 bus in Jerusalem. Some 23 Israelis were killed in the attack, including seven children. All of the passengers on the bus were on their way back from prayers at the Western Wall to mark the end of the Sabbath. Most of them were yeshiva students. The attack put an abrupt end to the tahadiyeh just 52 days after it was announced. The bombing was intended to avenge Israel’s assassination of Abdullah Qawasmeh three days before the tahadiyeh came into force. The Qawasmeh family planned and implemented the attack during a cease-fire, which was supposed to have ended the second intifada, a cease-fire that had the support of Yasser Arafat, then-PA chairman, his Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and, of course, Yassin, the leader of Hamas.

But Hamas refuses to distance itself from the clan.

Indeed, Hamas tries to have it both ways. They might claim (privately) that the Qawasamehs are not part of the movement, but they are quick to take credit for actions by the family.

The Al Qassam website mentioned the Qawasamehs hundreds of times (before a recent revamping of the site. ) Here, for example, is a loving Hamas tribute to the family and to their track record of terror attacks.

Hamas cannot take gleeful credit for the many atrocities performed by the Qawasamehs and then claim ignorance when there are going to be consequences for their actions. If Hamas really wants a ceasefire, they need to denounce the clan. Otherwise, their distancing themselves now after celebrating and taking credit for the family's many terror attacks over 20 years rings more than hollow.

(h/t Oren Kessler)

How NGO's make up lies about Israel

We've looked before at the Euro-Mid Observer, a Geneva-based organization that has no compunction about lying about Israel in order to push its agenda.

We've seen that one of its members openly celebrated a Hamas murderer.
We've seen them write a report blaming Israel for Gaza men beating their wives.
In the same report, they falsely claim that Israel limits medical equipment to Gaza.
We've seen them count Gaza terrorists as "children" who were killed in Gaza.

Clearly, Euro-Mid Observer is not too interested in truthful reporting.

They just released a new report with this graphical summary:

Let's look first at the cartoon. Notice that the word "Israel" on the soldier's jacket is backwards. The original cartoon was a mirror image. Why did they flip the cartoon?

The cartoon is one of Latuff's most famous antisemitic cartoons, which is meant to evoke the famous photo of a Jewish child being arrested by Nazis (although edited to take out the dish and fork):

Euro-Mid is using an antisemitic cartoon to illustrate their anti-Israel report! But since the original cartoon is so obviously a product of a sick Jew-hating mind, they were considerate enough to flip it so as to not be so explicitly antisemitic.

Let's look at one of the statistics, that 75% of Palestinian Arab children detained by Israeli forces are supposedly tortured. Going through the report, they do not give a source for this statistic: they merely say that "International humanitarian agencies have documented that 75 percent of Palestinian children
detained by Israeli forces are subjected to treatment that meets the definition of torture."

What agencies might these be?

It turns out that the main source for this statistic is another rabidly anti-Israel NGO, called DCI-Palestine. We have looked at them before, too - they lied about the number of children killed in Operation Cast Lead, and they consistently report kids killed by Palestinian Arab rockets as being killed by Israel. DCI-Palestine openly admits that it "develops its programs and acts according to Palestinian children's needs and Palestinian priorities."

In other words, its objectivity is zero.

DCI-Palestine describes its methodology here:

Initial identification of potential human rights violations

Al Mezan and DCI-Palestine identify potential violations through two main avenues: victims’ reports and field monitoring. Al Mezan is a well-known Gaza-based human rights organisation in operation since 1999 and victims of human rights violations regularly contact one of Al Mezan’s three offices located across the Gaza Strip for assistance; in addition, Al Mezan’s five experienced fieldworkers based throughout the Gaza Strip use their strong community links to identify potential cases of human rights violations. Similarly, DCI-Palestine receives reports from children and parents in any of its four West Bank offices and through Gaza-based fieldworkers; however, most investigations are initiated following ongoing and proactive field monitoring from nine fieldworkers across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

This means that the way DCI (and Al-Mezan) work is that every case of "torture" that they document is either self-reported or they go out of their way to find them. And if there are inconsistencies, what do they do?

Fieldworkers frequently go back to the source in order to verify details and correct any data inconsistency.

An organization that admits up front that it is biased says that rather than discard any inconsistent testimony as being unreliable, they go back and massage the reports until they fit together better with the other facts!

This is a fancy way of admitting that they coax the "witnesses" to lie, or at the very least to shade the truth until they fit the agendas of the Israel-hating NGOs.

The 75% statistic (actually, in 2013 the number increased to 76.5%) comes from "affidavits" that DCI-Palestine coaxes "victims" to give, and then coaxes "eyewitnesses" to corroborate in turn. They pretty much say this explicitly. There is nothing scientific about their methods, the "victims" are all but handpicked for their fanciful stories, not chosen according to any objective criteria of children detained. A real statistician would cringe at this methodology.

So DCI-Palestine coaxed about 100 Palestinian Arab kids to say what they wanted them to say. Then they published a statistic saying that about 75% of the kids they interviewed - not all the kids, but the ones they handpicked - claim that they are tortured.

Euro-Mid Observer runs with that statistic as if it has any validity, and expands it to the (unverified) number of Palestinian Arab kids who are supposedly detained, to claim that Israel physically tortures thousands of Palestinian Arab kids a year.

It is a lie built on top of previous lies, but they are lies that no journalist bother to follow back to the source. I fully expect there to be articles today about this report without the slightest bit of skepticism.

Now that we know the methods that these NGOs use, how valid is the statistic that "95% of children are forced to admit to charges they did not commit"? Or any of the other bogus statistics mentioned?

Given the published methodology and the knowledge that Palestinian Arabs often lie to NGOs, and knowing that DCI-Palestine and Euro-Mid are anything but unbiased, the only conclusion is that every single statistic in this paper is not only suspect but can be assumed to be knowingly false.

The idea that Euro-Mid Observer, or DCI-Palestine, or Al Mezan, or PCHR, any of dozens of other biased anti-Israel NGOs can produce verifiable facts, is a joke.

IDF wishes Muslims worldwide a happy Ramadan

The IDF Arabic spokesperson, Avichai Adraee, has posted a YouTube message wishing Muslims a happy and blessed Ramadan, saying that true religion rejects terrorism.

Nearly 10,000 people watched it in one day.

Adraee has nearly 100,000 followers on Twitter and his Facebook page has over 430,000 "Likes."

(Sorry, not translated)

One Arabic newspaper marveled at the message, and while saying it is clearly propaganda it asked if there are any Muslim nations that are trying to communicate directly with Israeli Jews?