Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 03, 2014

Hamas denies denying the kidnap/murders

Khaled Meshal, head of the Hamas political bureau, told Sky News in Arabic on Wednesday that his organization is not behind the kidnapping and murder of the three Israeli teens in the West Bank. According to the report, Khaled asked Turkey to intervene in the crisis with Israel and to convey a message that Hamas is interested in calming things down and avoiding further military conflict with Israel.

However, after this was widely reported, Hamas officials denied the report, saying that Hamas has no information either way about the kidnapping and murder of Eyal, Gil-ad and Naftali.

Al Resalah notes that Meshal had previously told Al Jazeera that he cannot confirm nor deny Hamas' responsibility for the abductions.

It seems that in Palestinian Arab society, denying that you are responsible for the depraved kidnapping and murder of kids is a sign of weakness, and therefore must be avoided. It would be a source of shame to flatly deny such a heroic act.

Which should tell you something, if you are willing to listen.

Al Resalah, a Palestinian Arab newspaper aligned with Hamas, has an op-ed by Wissam Afifah saying that Jews killed Mohammed Abu Khdeir as part of a Jewish ritual.

He says that the murder is part of a Jewish "history of treachery and murder," where he says Jews use human blood for their rituals and rites.

Afifah goes on, inevitably, to say that Jews slaughter gentile children and bring their blood to the rabbi where he mixes it with the dough to make Passover matzoh "for pious Jews."

Any chance that someone who pretends to be only "anti-Israel" will condemn this column? After all, they are all so exceedingly sensitive to racism, since they find it all over Israel.

07/03 Link Pt1: Gordis: Because they were Jews; Fatah to "Sons of Zion": "Blood for blood"

From Ian:

Daniel Gordis: Because they were Jews

To observers across the world, Israelis’ reaction to the abduction and murder of three teenagers may seem a bit overwrought. Of course, the deaths of any three children, anywhere, is horrific. And yes, a tightly knit country like Israel will invariably respond with greater emotion than might citizens of other countries.
But still, how does one explain the presence of thousands of weeping people at the funeral, most of whom did not know the families? Why did Israelis across this country light hundreds of candles on sidewalks, hold each other and cry softly? Why were Jews across the world, in France and in Australia, in the U.S. and in South America, so mesmerized for three weeks as thousands upon thousands of Israeli soldiers searched for them? Sad as it undoubtedly is, many people might understandably ask, “What am I missing here?”
It’s a fair question, with a tragically simple answer. What has Israelis so shaken is the simple fact that the three boys were hunted, kidnapped and murdered simply because they were Jews. They were not soldiers. They had not strayed into Arab villages. They were but the latest victims in a long, painful history of millions who preceded them — killed because they were Jews.

Ari Lesser - Innocent Blood

Murders of Israelis product of a Palestinian sickness

Despite all this, Israelis continue to be told that they must surrender land to the PA in order to bring about a long term peace settlement. If only a West Bank Palestinian state can be created, they are told, all will be well between the two sides. Fatah (the good guys) need to be separated from Hamas (the bad ones).
But the media war against the Jews, this terrible and insidious incitement, is promoted by Fatah as much as it is by Hamas. Thus any West Bank state will be founded on the demonisation of its Jewish neighbour, hardly a recipe for long term co-existence or stability. The notion that creating a radicalised Palestinian state will end this conflict is one of the grand follies of our time.
Unless attitudes and perceptions change for the better, the status quo is likely to remain. Israelis cannot and should not make concessions to those who want them dead.

Us Jews Should Respond With More than Tears

Jews throughout the United States will hold memorial services this week to mourn the murders of the three Israeli teenagers. There will be tears, there will be prayers, there will be words of consolation. And then the mourning needs to be followed by action -- political action.
The murder of the three Israeli boys is not just an Israeli problem. It is an American problem, too -- both because one of the victims was an American and because the U.S. government plays a major role in shaping what happens between Israel and the Palestinians. That's where the American Jewish community comes in. American Jews need to undertake focused political action to urge the Obama administration to help Israel in its fight against the Hamas terrorists.
So far, the administration's response to the crisis has been deeply disappointing. Despite the kidnappings, President Obama continues to recognize and support the Palestinian Authority-Hamas unity regime. The annual U.S. aid package of $500-million to the Palestinian Arabs continues, even though Hamas is now indirectly benefiting from that aid. (h/t Canadian Otter)

Mohammad Zoabi tells his cousin MK Hanin Zoabi "Get the hell out of Israel"

Mohammad Zoabi, the 16-year old cousin of antisemitic Arab MK Hanin Zoabi, has defied death threats for his Zionist positions and released a video attacking his cousin Hanin Zoabi.

In the video, where he speaks in English, Hebrew and Arabic, Mohammad refers to Hanin as a terrorist supporter, a traitor, and an antisemite, and tells her to "get the hell out of Israel."

(h/t Yoel, from Israel's Channel 2 website.)

60% of PalArabs say five year national goal is to destroy Israel

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy recently commissioned a survey of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. The results prove yet again that Palestinian Arab attitudes towards Israel are anything but peaceful.

The clear majority of Palestinians polled - 60%, including 55% in the West Bank - say that their five year national goal should be "to work toward reclaiming all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea."

Yes, despite the insistence of biased "experts" who claim that Palestinian Arabs support a two-state solution and only want peace with Israel, the fact is that a convincing majority explicitly say that the real goal is to eliminate Israel altogether.

Only 27% said the goal should be to "end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza to achieve a two-state solution," and 10% said "The goal should be to work for a one-state solution in all of the land: a state in which Arabs and Jews will have equal rights in one country, from the river to the sea."

What about the supposedly peaceful Palestinian Arabs who told other pollsters that they want a two-state solution? What exactly do they mean?

As in one previous survey, this poll confirms that the majority of Palestinians regard the "two state solution" as a Trojan horse, a mere stage in the ultimate goal to destroy Israel.

64% say that after a peace deal is signed with Israel, "resistance should continue until all of historic Palestine is liberated." And 65% say that the Palestinian Arab leadership agrees; that any negotiated solution "would be part of a 'program of stages,' to liberate all of historic Palestine later."

This is about as explicit as can be. The conventional wisdom that a majority of Palestinian Arabs want a permanent peace with Israel is a baseless myth. It is based on flawed surveys which do not list the alternative of an Arab-only state from the river to the sea.

The survey, released June 25, was all but ignored in the media. Besides Zionist media, I cannot find a single mention of the survey anywhere else. The reason is simple: the mainstream media and pundits are ideologically wedded to the two-state solution and this involves willful blindness towards the majority of Palestinians who see it, at best, as a stage in destroying Israel.

The same thing happened with a similar survey released in 2011, the first one to actually dig deeper into the answers that Palestinian Arabs give to pollsters. That one even went further to expose Palestinian Arab antipathy towards real peace, as I showed in this video:

The scandal isn't that Palestinian Arabs have these attitudes. Anyone with an open mind and research skills knows that already.

The scandal is the conspiracy of silence to suppress this information.

The scandal is the millions of dollars being spent to pressure Israel to accept a "peace" that would be anything but peaceful.

The scandal is that over 20 years after Oslo, there is no credible attempt on the part of the international community to encourage Palestinian Arab acceptance of Israel as a permanent neighbor.

The scandal is that as a result of the willful blindness - or malicious intent - of politicians and media "experts," the world has exactly the wrong impression as to who wants peace and who wants to destroy the other side.

That's why this survey was buried, while the polls that use flawed questions get coverage.

Burying the truth is the biggest scandal of all.

From Ma'an:

The Islamic Jihad movement said Wednesday that settlers were a “legitimate target” for Palestinians and the resistance.

In a statement, Islamic Jihad held Israeli authorities and the army responsible for its continuous attacks on Palestinians, their lands and religious sites.

The statement condemned the “crime” of kidnapping and killing of Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir.

The movement said this “crime” was a continuation of a series of crimes by the Israeli army and settlers which also killed Youssef Abu Zagha from Jenin refugee camp on Tuesday.

The actual statement mentions "price tag" attacks as well, and says that the terror group is "regaining its vitality in the West Bank, and the day will come that punishes the enemy for each drop of Palestinian blood spilled by the aggression of the Israeli army and settlers."

This is not a change in policy, of course.

And no Palestinian Arab will speak out against this incitement to kill Jewish civilians, of course.

(And yes, it is obviously aimed specifically at Jews, and not at Israeli Arabs who moved across the Green Line since 1967. Which means that Islamic Jihad has something in common with the EU.)

We don't know anything. But here's what we do know. (update)

At this time, no one knows who killed Mohammed Abu Khdeir, or why. Different media are spinning the story differently; Times of Israel claims sources tell them that police are leaning towards the theory that Jews did it as revenge, while Haaretz is saying the police aren't sure about anything. Rumors are rampant as to how Arabs might be responsible - a family feud being the most dominant theory, with some Israeli media reporting of previous suspicious incident with Mohammed's brother.

That lack of knowledge is not stopping irresponsible news outlets from claiming that they know what happened. Particularly egregious is The Independent, which doesn't only claim that extremist Jews killed the youth, but that "Israel" murdered him.

(UPDATES: The headline has been changed but is still confusing; Harry's Place says [probably correctly] that it refers to Gilad/Eyal/Naftali, in which case it should have said "Murdered Israeli teenagers." But the Independent is hardly the only news outlet or organization that reflexively assumes a "revenge attack."

(The headline has been changed yet again, see CiFWatch)

Unfortunately, there have been plenty of irresponsible and disgusting statements made by some Jews who are deeply upset over the murders of Gil-ad, Eyal and Naftali. Facebook pages that call for revenge against all Arabs, rallies where "Death to Arabs" is said openly, and similar incidents are immoral and disgusting. Is it possible that in the frenzy of anger after the national mourning over the three kidnapped boys turned into murder of an innocent boy? In the flood of sadness and anger that followed the discovery of the bodies it is conceivable, and that fact is utterly shameful.

There is nothing wrong with saying that all terrorists should die. They should. But saying that all Arabs should die is unconscionable.

The "hate-Israel" crowd is as happy as can be with every single example, real or imagined, that they can find to prove their long-standing accusations of Israeli racism. Every society on the planet has some racism, and the amount in Israel is quite tiny compared with most nations, but context is not something that matters to the haters, and Israelis who speak this way in their anger are giving the anti-Israel crowd ammunition for years to come.

There is plenty that we don't know.

But we do know is that no Israeli openly celebrated the death of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. And no one will. (UPDATE: Unfortunately, there are way too many examples of Facebook pages and the like where some Israelis did disgustingly say they were happy. Even so, idiots on social mediaare a long way from openly handing out candy or shooting off fireworks.)

This is in marked contrast to this cartoon from Arabic social media that was captured by the Terror Watch Facebook page (h/t Yoel):

We do know that for every Jew who shamefully shouts "Death to Arabs," there are hundreds of Arabs who shout "Death to Jews.*"

We do know that there will be no headlines about Arab threats to Jews, but there will be headlines about Jews threatening Arabs, precisely because the first is pervasive and the second is so unusual.

We do know that thousands of Israelis rallied against racism today, and we have never ever seen a similar Arab rally against racism.

Plenty of irresponsible people are rushing to report what they don't know. But no one is reporting what we do know.

UPDATE: Yes, I know quite well that the photo above says "Death to Israel" and not "Death to Jews," I was only coming up with the fastest illustration I could while writing this. But if you don't believe that Arabs say "Death to Jews," you are suffering from problems way beyond what I can help you with.

Still:

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.