Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, August 06, 2014

08/06 Links Pt2: The Poisoned Lancet; Jewish Revolt era coins discovered near Jerusalem

From Ian:

Ryan Bellerose: Of Skullcaps And Asshats

I had people tell me they didn’t think I should wear something so offensive, which I found odd. I have some T shirts that even I think are offensive, yet nobody in Canada has ever said a word to me, even when I wore a T shirt with a woman in a hijab saying “ Thank you for not provoking my uncontrollable lusts.” Or “Save the trees, wipe your ass with an owl.” So can someone explain to me why a simple cap with some Hebrew on it is considered to be so damn offensive?
The last one is the most annoying, the “reasonable” guy who explains how he doesn’t hate Jews, he hates Zionists, and the Rothschilds and the people who control the banks and the media who happen to be Jewish. I met two of those guys, the asshats not the Rothschilds. On the asshat scale they are about a 10.5. I have no doubt they tell themselves they aren’t bigots, but what they say is every bit as offensive to me as the one guy who told me I was a genocidal baby killer. The odd thing is that wearing a kippah doesn’t mean you support Israel. I have debated Jewish people like Lucas Koerner who wore a kippah and hates Israel. I wish that kid would walk through one of these neighbourhood wearing his kippah. Maybe he would understand why the world needs Israel.
I am halfway through the week, the week I decided to wear a Kkippah. I have had some good experiences but they have been vasty outweighed by ignorance and outright bigotry. I think people are unaware of the bigotry. I have to believe that this is the case because if they knew and still said nothing , I would have to say they are asshats.

College Democrats of America Student Leader Equates Israel With Nazi Germany

In a shocking exchange uncovered by citizen journalist Aaron Robinow, high ranking student officials in College Democrats of America equated Israel with Nazi Germany and told a pro-Israel member of the CDA to "go f**k himself." Robinow highlighted the exchange on his website:
[S]enior officers from College Democrats of America took to Facebook to bully a colleague for supporting Israel’s right to defend itself. Giovanni Hashimoto, a member of CDA’s national communication team posted on Facebook to support Israel as a “peace loving.” Within minutes he was harassed, name called with classic leftists tactics–by his colleagues at CDA. Chris Woodside, a social media coordinator for the national organization, equated Israel with Nazi Germany, exclaimed Israeli PM Netanyahu is a war criminal and perpetuating genocide and declared being pro-Israel and a “good person” mutually exclusive. Evan Goldstein, also listed by College Democrats of America as a social media coordinator, told the pro-Israel student to “go (f**k) himself” and described him as a “douchebag” for supporting the Jewish state.

The Poisoned Lancet

These are the people whose Israel-hating letter was featured by the Lancet, ostensibly a medical journal. Not one is identified as the lifelong defender of Israel’s enemies and radical activist against Israel’s existence that each one is.
Lancet has a history of poisoning medical reporting with its radical left-wing politics. It made worldwide headlines in 2006 by reporting what were ultimately deemed wild exaggerations, if not outright lies, about the number of Iraqis killed during the American war in Iraq.
Lancet perfectly embodies four observations about our world.
One is from the prophet Isaiah: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.”
The second is from the legendary American screenwriter Ben Hecht (1894–1964), a two-time Academy Award winner: “How sad that in the warmest hearts I knew lurked always a little cold spot for the Jew.”
The third, if I may quote myself, is one of the earliest realizations of my life: “Those who don’t fight evil hate those who do.”
And the fourth is that, from the universities to the arts to religion, the Left damages everything it touches. Lancet was once a great medical journal.

Kent State Under Fire For Anti-Semitic Professor Who Likened Israel To 'Nazism'

On Tuesday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center sent a letter to Kent State University asking that they condemn professor Julio Pino. Pino wrote a letter to “academic friends of Israel” holding Israel responsible for deaths in Gaza and claimed Israel was the “spiritual heir to Nazism.”
“We urge you to condemn the recent, highly offensive and blatantly anti-Semitic remarks of Julio Pino – an Associate Professor of History at your university," the organization wrote to Kent State University president Beverly Warren.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center highlighted that "Pino addressed the ‘academic friends of Israel’ with the following vitriol: 'Your names are scrawled on every bullet fired, bomb dropped, body buried and burnt forehead in Gaza. May your names become a curse word on the lips of every justice-loving person on earth, along with 'Obama' and 'Netanyahu.' Pino then went on to remark, “Jihad until victory!” and '[Zionism is] a regime that is the spiritual heir to Nazism.'"

Anti-Israel Prof. loses job offer at U. Illinois over hateful tweets

We previously featured Virginia Tech, and soon-to-be U. Illinois (at Urbana-Champaign) Professor Steven Salaita, someone committed to the destruction of Israel, for his tweet partly blaming Zionism for anti-Semitic outbursts around the world:
That was not even the worst of his tweets. I’ve been following his account for months now, and his Twitter action was hateful against Israel to the point of deranged (view his tweets at the bottom of the post and see if you agree).
Apparently, these tweets have cost him his job offer at U. Illinois, but not before he resigned from Virginia Tech. It appears that because his “offer” was contingent on various approvals, he thought he had an actual “offer” but really only had nothing but a promise to consider hiring him and a departmental recommendation to hire.

Algeria picking a fight with Israel

A couple of days ago, a rumor started in Algeria that Mark Regev, the spokesperson for the Prime Minister's office, had said "the financial support of Algeria to the Gaza Strip is an act of support for a terrorist organization", namely Hamas, and that the $25 million given by Algeria "is a hostile act against the state of Israel."

I can find no such statement.

But now an op-ed in El Chorouk is threatening Israel for supposedly threatening Algeria.

The article goes on about "Mark Regev, official spokesman of the Government of Jewish terrorism in occupied Palestine" and how Algerian Jews were traitors against independence and engaged in terror attacks against Algerians (the truth was the opposite) and how Israel is threatened by Algeria's strong support of Hamas.

Good thing there are no Jews left in Algeria to find out how tolerant their hosts are.

John Dugard accidentally proves that Gaza isn't occupied

I received some tweets lately that indicated that Israel does not have the right to self defense under international law.

Yes, really.

One of the source-texts is by John Dugard, former U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Arab territories, writing in Al Jazeera America. His main argument is that since (he claims) Israel is occupying Gaza, therefore the normal laws of self-defense in international law do not apply. Moreover, he says that Hamas rockets aimed at Israeli civilians are perfectly legal, calling them "acts of resistance of an occupied people."

That last fact should be enough to prove that Dugard has no interest in either international law but only in finding bizarre justifications for terror attacks. However, even within the narrower framework of international law, Dugard reveals himself to be a fraud.

He states:

But the status of Gaza is clear. It is an occupied territory — part of the occupied Palestinian territory. In 2005 Israel withdrew its settlers and the Israel Defense Forces from Gaza, but it continues to retain control of it, not only through intermittent incursions into and regular shelling of the territory but also by effectively controlling the land crossings into Gaza, its airspace and territorial waters and its population registry, which determines who may leave and enter.

Effective control is the test for occupation. The International Court of Justice recently confirmed this in a dispute between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The physical presence of Israel in Gaza is not necessary provided it retains effective control and authority over the territory by other means. Modern technology now permits effective control from outside the occupied territory, and this is what Israel has established.

The ICJ, in defining "effective control" in the Congo vs. Uganda case, says the exact opposite of what Dugard is claiming!

The ruling stated:

[T]o reach a conclusion as to whether a State … is an ‘occupying Power’ … the Court must examine whether there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the said authority was in fact established and exercised by the intervening State in the areas in question. … armed forces [must] not only be stationed in particular locations but also substitute[] their own authority… .”

The test is very simple. If Israel cannot substitute its authority for Hamas, it is not an occupying power. If it cannot change Gaza's government, or court system, or police force, then it is not an occupying power. Occupation only extends to areas where they can exert authority, and in Gaza, authority is exclusive to Hamas.

(For further proof, the Hague Conventions that define occupation give the occupant the obligation to "take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety." It is obvious that the occupier must have that ability in order to be able to have that obligation.)

This is not the first time this lie has been spread. The UN Human Rights Council tried to push the exact same lie - using the same bogus source - in a 2008 document, as I demonstrated at the time. They rely on the fact practically no one will actually look up the citation and find that they are lying. Chances are, Dugard was behind that citation as well.

Dugard is not only an immoral supporter of terror, but a proven liar in the very subject that he claims expertise in. His own proof-text of Gaza being occupied proves that Gaza is not occupied.

Since Dugard is now an emeritus professor of international law at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, perhaps people might want to ask the school if they know that one of their faculty fabricates source material?

By the way, it is interesting to see how the ICRC defined "occupation" before Israel withdrew from Gaza.

The rules of international humanitarian law relevant to occupied territories become applicable whenever territory comes under the effective control of hostile foreign armed forces, even if the occupation meets no armed resistance and there is no fighting.

The question of "control" calls up at least two different interpretations. It could be taken to mean that a situation of occupation exists whenever a party to a conflict exercises some level of authority or control within foreign territory. So, for example, advancing troops could be considered bound by the law of occupation already during the invasion phase of hostilities. This is the approach suggested in the ICRC's Commentary to the Fourth Geneva Convention (1958).

An alternative and more restrictive approach would be to say that a situation of occupation exists only once a party to a conflict is in a position to exercise sufficient authority over enemy territory to enable it to discharge all of the duties imposed by the law of occupation. This approach is adopted by a number of military manuals.

...The normal way for an occupation to end is for the occupying power to withdraw from the occupied territory or be driven out of it. However, the continued presence of foreign troops does not necessarily mean that occupation continues.

A transfer of authority to a local government re-establishing the full and free exercise of sovereignty will normally end the state of occupation, if the government agrees to the continued presence of foreign troops on its territory. However, the law of occupation may become applicable again if the situation on the ground changes, that is to say, if the territory again becomes "actually placed under the authority of the hostile army" (H R, art. 42) – in other words, under the control of foreign troops without the consent of the local authorities.

Compare how it has changed that definition since then to shoe-horn Israel into a definition as an occupier - something they wouldn't have done for any other country.

The mention of military manuals is important, because much of international law is sometimes derived from a consensus in such manuals. As far as I know, no military manual defines anything close to Israel's relationship to Gaza as being an occupation.

The only actual legal ruling that has ever occurred regarding whether Gaza is occupied comes from Israel's quite liberal Supreme Court, which stated:

[S]ince September 2005, Israel no longer has effective control over the events in the Gaza strip. The military government that had applied to that area was annulled in a government decision, and Israeli soldiers are not in the area on a permanent basis, nor are they managing affairs there. In such circumstances, the State of Israel does not have a general duty to look after the welfare of the residents of the strip or to maintain public order within the Gaza Strip pursuant to the entirety of the Law of Belligerent Occupation in International Law. Nor does Israel have effective capability, in its present status, to enforce order and manage civilian life in the Gaza Strip.

No wonder Israel-haters have to resort to sui generis arguments and fake citations to pretend that Gaza is occupied. They have no legal leg to stand on.

This is the 20,000th post at EoZ since the blog started nearly 10 years ago.

Those 20,000 posts included over 11 million words, about a quarter the size of Encyclopædia Britannica.

Also, Monday was a blog record for pageviews - over 30,000 hits that day alone.

Thanks for all your support!

I will be speaking one evening next week in Manhattan about new media and the Gaza war. If you are interested in attending, email me and I can send you the details. (The event is meant for Jews in their 20s and 30s exclusively.)

08/06 Links Pt1: What Would Hamas Do If It Could Do Whatever It Wanted?; 475 Rockets fell in Gaza

From Ian:

Jeffrey Goldberg: What Would Hamas Do If It Could Do Whatever It Wanted?

Hamas is an organization devoted to ending Jewish history. This is what so many Jews understand, and what so many non-Jews don’t. The novelist Amos Oz, who has led Israel's left-wing peace camp for decades, said in an interview last week that he doesn't see a prospect for compromise between Israel and Hamas. "I have been a man of compromise all my life," Oz said. "But even a man of compromise cannot approach Hamas and say: 'Maybe we meet halfway and Israel only exists on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.'"
In the years since it adopted its charter, Hamas leaders and spokesmen have reinforced its message again and again. Mahmoud Zahar said in 2006 that the group "will not change a single word in its covenant." To underscore the point, in 2010 Zahhar said, "Our ultimate plan is [to have] Palestine in its entirety. I say this loud and clear so that nobody will accuse me of employing political tactics. We will not recognize the Israeli enemy."
In 2011, the former Hamas minister of culture, Atallah Abu al-Subh, said that "the Jews are the most despicable and contemptible nation to crawl upon the face of the Earth, because they have displayed hostility to Allah. Allah will kill the Jews in the hell of the world to come, just like they killed the believers in the hell of this world." Just last week, a top Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, accused Jews of using Christian blood to make matzo. This is not a group, in other words, that is seeking the sort of peace that Amos Oz—or, for that matter, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas—is seeking. People wonder why Israelis have such a visceral reaction to Hamas. The answer is easy. Israel is a small country, and most of its citizens know someone who was murdered by Hamas in its extended suicide-bombing campaigns; and most people also understand that if Hamas had its way, it would kill them as well.

Caroline Glick: Fighting without silver bullets

The UN is institutionally committed to delegitimizing and ultimately destroying Israel.
Fatah can only come into Gaza after Hamas has been destroyed completely and driven from leadership by Israel.
Under any other circumstance, Fatah will collaborate with Hamas against Israel, as it has always done. And if Hamas is routed and destroyed Fatah would only destabilize the situation.
The time has come for us to recognize that there are no easy answers for Israel. IDF operations in Gaza in recent weeks have dealt a harsh blow to Hamas. Perhaps the terror commanders have been deterred. Perhaps not.
Whatever the case may be, if Israel and Egypt are able to continue to block US attempts to open the borders for Hamas resupply until Kerry gets swept up in another major crisis, then Hamas can be defeated through attrition.
If not, then Israel will have no choice but to retake control of Gaza while maintaining enough forces in reserve to respond to a second front in the North, and finally end Iran’s dream of becoming a nuclear power.
There are no silver bullets. The price of freedom is hard work and vigilance.

David Horovitz: Israel might have won; Hamas certainly lost

Ten thoughts at the (possible) end of the Israel-Hamas war.
1. Hamas lost. Whether or not Israel “won” — by which I mean attaining the “sustained calm” for its people that was the limited goal of the war — will be determined by the negotiations now taking place in Cairo, or the failure of those negotiations. But Hamas certainly lost. Three weeks ago, with its rocket capacity largely intact, its fighting forces completely intact, the tunnel network it had spent seven years building intact, and most of the Gaza it claims to represent intact, it rejected an unconditional ceasefire which Israel accepted and instead issued a long list of arrogant preconditions.
On Tuesday, with most of its rockets used to relatively little effect, hundreds of its gunmen dead, 32 of its major tunnels smashed, and Gaza devastated, its “military wing” in Gaza overruled its fat-cat political chief Khaled Mashaal in his Qatar hotel, waved a metaphorical white flag, and pleaded for the very same unconditional ceasefire. That does not constitute evisceration. Hamas aims to live to fight another day. But it does constitute defeat.
8. Challenges faced by the ground forces. Israelis are deeply impressed with how the IDF ground forces tackled Hamas. The troops faced gunmen in civvies, gunmen in IDF uniforms, snipers, IEDs, booby-trapped homes, suicide bombers, sophisticated weaponry, gunmen popping out of tunnels, holes in walls, cupboards. They learned to their cost that even areas that had been theoretically rendered safe were not — that gunmen could appear out of nowhere and shoot them dead. When soldiers fell in battle, thousands upon thousands of Israelis came to some of their funerals. Few Israelis doubt that the IDF could and would have “smashed” Hamas and retaken Gaza if ordered to do so. Had the IDF been told to go get the bunkered Hamas leaders, “we would have gone to Shifa [hospital] and pulled them out by their ears,” Lt.-Col. (res.) Ori Shechter, the deputy commander of the Nahal Brigade, said on Army Radio on Wednesday. But there’s been no vocal criticism from the IDF about the political direction, and nor is there likely to be.

Saudis and Egyptians might want Hamas destroyed, but they still hate Jews

Even though many have noted that Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been quietly rooting for Israel to destroy Hamas and deal a major strike at the Muslim Brotherhood, both countries remain stridently antisemitic.

Al Ahram, the major Egyptian newspaper, has an op-ed by (believe it or not) Dr. Gamal Abdel Nasser, about how Gaza is just another manifestation of how Jews are uniquely evil:

The history of the Jews - with the Arabs in particular - shows the extent of their corruption....The Qur'an told us about them; you will find the character of the Arab in their books in Jewish literature one of humiliation, where they portray the Arab in their stories as a petty stupid person with no value.

The four Jewish tribes Jews that escaped from the persecution of Roman rulers and others, lived in the Arabian Peninsula, corrupting the earth; by working in the arms trade and charging interest and spreading immorality among the Arab tribes, and trying to sow sedition and inciting tribes against each other, and they lit wars between tribal elders.

...Jews today own have the largest usurious banks in the world, and have companies in costumes and fashions and they trade in sex and even promote this type of trade, and are working in the drug trade and promotion [of drugs] to the Arab and Muslim countries in particular.

Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, major Islamic scholar Saleh bin Awad al Maghamsi, who is the imam of the Quba Mosque of Medina, tweeted that the only reason Allah placed Jews in Israel is to destroy them, as the Quran says (17:104), "And We said after Pharaoh to the Children of Israel, 'Dwell in the land, and when there comes the promise of the Hereafter, We will bring you forth in [one] gathering.'"

For those who so desperately pray for peace in the Middle East - this is what it looks like. At best.

(h/t Shawarma News)

Dead Gaza children win again, at the NYT

The New York Times has an article about the looming war over statistics of what percentage of the Gaza casualties were civilian and terrorist.

It pretends to be even-handed, although it falls very short.

The article downplayed the fact that Hamas killed collaborators and counts them as civiiians killed by Israel, and the possibility that many of the victims were killed by Hamas rockets and bullets and mortars. It didn't mention that Hamas took steps to ensure that terrorist casualties were not reported or named - something that the PCHR, a group mentioned, adhered to. It didn't mention that PCHR goes out of its way to minimize the number of terrorists counted. It didn't mention the flawed methodology of the information gatherers that the UN relies on, at Israel's expense. It gives credence to the uninformed guesses of a volunteer from New Zealand - a volunteer for Hamas. It didn't mention that at the end of Operation Cast Lead, Hamas had claimed only a few dozen killed; only much later did they admit that Israel's statistics of 709 terrorist deaths were largely correct. It didn't mention comparable statistics of civilian dead in other wars in urban areas, including wars fought by Western powers that killed orders of magnitude more people. It didn't look up the latest statistics from the Meir Amit ITIC published on their website, only saying that their much earlier statistics before the ground war were impressive. It didn't mention that on Sunday, the day of the casualties outside the Rafah UNRWA school, even according to the Hamas-obedient PCHR more than 60% of those killed were terrorists.

But even if Jodi Rudoren's team had done all of that, it wouldn't have made a difference. Because accompanying the article was a large, poignant photo of a dead child.

There is no such thing as objectivity when there the subconscious message is that Israel is murdering babies. The message from the photo overwhelms the article, no matter what it says.

Of course it is newsworthy to mention civilian casualties. But anti-Zionists and antisemites are using the photos of dead children as their most potent weapons. Even though this article notes that the proportion of children and women killed were far smaller than their percentage of the Gaza population, all of that is meaningless when there is a dead child's hand hovering over the article.

The Israel-haters are repeating over and over, implicitly and explicitly, that the rules of war do not allow a single civilian to be killed, and every violation is a war crime. This is nonsense, but you wouldn't know that from reading the NYT. On the contrary, the newspaper is playing up that lie, without explicitly saying it.

Did the New York Times ever a similar number of photos of dead children killed by Western armies in Afghanistan or Iraq or Pakistan? Did the newspaper ever investigate the number of civilians being killed in Egypt's similar battles against Islamists - that are being covered up?

The photos may be accurate, but they poison any accuracy that may have been in that article. No amount of IDF videos showing Hamas shooting rockets from civilian areas and the IDF avoiding innocent civilians can counteract those images.

And the haters of Israel and Jews couldn't be happier at this coverage.

(h/t EBoZ)

Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson wrote an op-ed, published in Foreign Policy and many newspapers, that continue their shameful record of supporting terror.

There is really no other way to look at it.

Their only criticism of Hamas is a perfunctory condemnation of missiles - the same kind of fake condemnation that we see from groups like Human Rights Watch, as a fig-leaf to pretend that they are "balanced" when they are anything but. Carter and Robinson couch it this way:

There is no humane or legal justification for the way the Israeli Defense Forces are conducting this war. Israeli bombs, missiles and artillery have pulverized large parts of Gaza, including thousands of homes, schools and hospitals. More than 250,000 people have been displaced from their homes in Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinian noncombatants have been killed. Much of Gaza has lost access to water and electricity completely. This is a humanitarian catastrophe.

There is never an excuse for deliberate attacks on civilians in conflict. These are war crimes. This is true for both sides. Hamas' indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians is equally unacceptable. However, three Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinian rockets, while an overwhelming majority of the 1,600 Palestinians killed have been civilians, including more than 330 children. The need for international judicial proceedings to investigate and end these violations of international law should be taken very seriously.

That's it.

Carter and Robinson spin a tale of fantasy:

Only by recognizing its legitimacy as a political actor — one that represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people — can the West begin to provide the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons. Ever since the internationally monitored 2006 elections that brought Hamas to power in Palestine, the West's approach has manifestly contributed to the opposite result.

Hamas killing hundreds of Fatah members in 2006 as it seized full control of Gaza seems to indicate otherwise!

Unity between Fatah and Hamas is currently stronger than it has been for many years. As Elders, we believe this is one of the most encouraging developments in recent years and welcome it warmly.

The very first act Hamas did after "unity" was to brutally kidnap and murder three Israeli boys. And it was done deliberately in the West Bank in order for Hamas to assert itself there - not to accept the PA's cooperation with Israel but to impose Hamas terror specifically where it had been largely suppressed by the PA.

Make no mistake - if the kidnapping would have been successful and Hamas held a child hostage, the entire Palestinian Arab population would have cheered, and Carter's op-ed today would be to justify that as legitimate "resistance" even as he would offer to negotiate Israel's capitulation to terror.

Worst of all, and the biggest indication of Carter's and Robinson's utter depravity in tacitly supporting terror, is what they refuse to say about Hamas as they mercilessly blame Israel for everything.

They don't mention the many other Hamas war crimes besides rockets, like holding Gazans and the media as human shields, firing rockets from the vicinity of hospitals and schools and hotels.

They don't mention Hamas' using the war as a reason to kill and maim its political enemies in Fatah.

They don't mention Hamas' repeated attempts to take Israelis hostage.

They don't mention Hamas' attempts at nuclear terrorism, nor their targeting civilian airports.

Worst of all, they don't mention Hamas extensive terror tunnel network that reached into the midst of Israeli communities - terror tunnels that cost millions of diverted Western aid dollars, whose entire purpose was to perform one or many mega-terror attacks against innocent civilians. The entire goal of the ground war is ignored, as if Israel just felt like killing Gaza civilians for fun.

In the name of "peace" and "humanitarianism," Carter and Robinson are tacitly encouraging and supporting Hamas terror. And now they are trying as hard as possible to ensure that Hamas gains politically for their terror.

They are truly beneath contempt.

Chris Gunness lies again - UNRWA schools are anything but liberal

I just saw Chris Gunness on Fox News trying to defend himself from charges that jihadist concepts are being taught in UNRWA schools.

The show first showed clips from this video:

There's another video here.

Then Gunness went on, claimed that the person behind it - David Bedein - has no credibility and that these shots weren't taken at UNRWA schools.

Given a choice of believing Gunness or Bedein, I trust Bedein hands down. (I've spoken to him on the phone and corresponded with him via email.)

The reason I know Gunness is lying is because I did my own research project in 2012. I visited the websites of UNRWA schools in Gaza - all with the "unrwa.ps" domain - and looked to see what sort of materials were there.

I found that the UNRWA school system in Gaza was hardly secular. They had job postings for "religious instruction" teachers.

School websites had articles extolling the virtues of martyrdom.

A poem at the website of a central school site talked about how Zionists raped Palestine and how the author will return to Jaffa:

Palestine should know I adore madness
Jaffa, I should know I'll come back to it
Let him know it's the crazy sons of Zion
With their thought of raping Palestine
The land of Canaan will be only to those who love her
Those who are occupied by people who do not
The land of Isra and Mi'raj cradle of the prophets
The land of jihad and martyrdom

There are stories of young men who asked their parents for permission to wage jihad and who died heroically.

As I noted then then, all of these examples directly contradict what UNRWA's stated educational standards are, which include the idea that they are "tolerant and open minded, upholding human values and religious tolerance."

Are Palestinian Christians forced to attend mandatory Quran classes run by UNRWA? Should the UN be in the Islamic education business? How much of UNRWA's budget goes towards "religious education?" Are Western donors to UNRWA even aware that they are funding these lessons of jihad and martyrdom?

Guess what happened when I publicized this on my blog? Within a couple of weeks, every single one of these school websites were taken down. No acknowledgement, no apology, no relluctant press releases about how UNRWA has failed its mission.

Instead, Chris Gunness engineered a coverup.

So, sorry, UNRWA, but I don't believe a word Gunness is saying about how UNRWA schools in Gaza are so liberal and teach human rights and peace and tolerance. I saw the lessons that the schools were showing to the world in Arabic. And it proves that Chris Gunness is a liar.

08/05 Links Pt2: The Moral Psychosis of Demonstrating for Hamas; War Cost Gaza $5B

From Ian:

The Moral Psychosis of Demonstrating for Hamas

In fact, the continual pattern of violence in the Arab world against Israel agitates liberals greatly, and makes them condemn Israel, not its foes, for having inspired Arab rage, with the assumption that only peoples with justifiable grievances are moved to violent ends to solve their woes.
This explains why the Left has regularly glossed over terroristic behavior on the part of Islamists—Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, the Al Aqsa Brigades, or others—and has romanticized this violence as “resistance.” This rationalization, that violence is an acceptable, if not expected, component of seeking social justice—that is, that the inherent “violence” of imperialism, colonialism, or capitalism will be met by the same violence as the oppressed attempt to throw off their oppressors—is exactly the style of self-defeating rationality that in this age has proven to be an intractable part of the so-called War on Terror.
Abetted by the Arab world, which has also perennially defined Israelis as European interlopers with no legitimate connection to the Levant, Israel-haters are now willing to sacrifice the very survival of the Jewish state because they feel that false charge of racism and apartheid against Israel is more incompatible with their fervent belief in a perfectible world than the rejectionist and genocidal efforts of the Arab world which, in fact have necessitated Israeli security measures—the separation wall, indeed, the occupation itself—all of which, ironically, are pointed to as indications of exactly how racist Israel’s behavior actually is against the Palestinians.
In fact, observed Harvard’s Ruth Wisse, the more hostile the Arab foes of Israel became, the more difficult it has become for liberals to absolve Israel for creating the very violent urges that emerged to eliminate it. “By blaming Israel for Arab complaints,” she wrote, “liberals anticipate a reasonable, pacific solution to the conflict . . . The democratic Jewish state is subject to ‘rational’ persuasion; not so the Arabs. The more determinedly, and by Western standards, irrationally, Arab governments and their agents pursue their anti-Israel campaign . . . the more desperately the liberal imagination tries to blame the Jews for incurring Arab displeasure.”

2006 Flashback: When Hollywood Had the Courage to Stand Up for Israel

Back in 2006, a mere 8 years ago, many of those sitting in silence today were as full-throated in their support for Israel as they were in their condemnation of Hamas. This is from a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times published in August of 2006:
We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas," the ad reads.
"If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die.
"We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs."
A who's who of Hollywood heavyweights joined Kidman on the ad.
The actors listed included: Michael Douglas, Dennis Hopper, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Danny De Vito, Don Johnson, James Woods, Kelly Preston, Patricia Heaton and William Hurt.
Directors Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Michael Mann, Dick Donner and Sam Raimi also signed their names.
Other Hollywood powerplayers supporting the ad included Sumner Redstone, the chairman and majority owner of Paramount Pictures, and billionaire mogul, Haim Saban.

Chloes Valdary: On the clever word bending of SJP

Often times people in the SJP camp like to ask you loaded questions which force you to accept their premise. It would be like if a Klansman asked you, “do you deny that blacks are ruining our country, raping white women, and changing the fabric of America?” Or if a Nazi asked you, “do you deny that Jewish interlopers are ruining Germany, murdering German children and stealing money from us?”
Beginning with the term “Do you deny” forces you to accept the premise, whether you answer “Yes,” or “No.”
So SJP might ask, “you deny Israel occupies the WB, has a siege on Gaza, an apartheid wall runs across the land & is bombing Gaza now?”
This is a dilemma. You cannot answer Yes because to answer yes means you are denying “reality.” You cannot answer No because to answer no means you are accepting “reality.”
You reject the premise by refusing to answer the question in a roundabout way:
“I will not be party to the rejection of my own dignity and self-worth as a Jew/Zionist by engaging in discourse tinged with racism and denial of Jewish indigenous rights, and which masks bigotry in hippy faux-human rights language which in truth you care nothing about.”

In recent weeks there have been a lot of journalists trying very hard to paste together any ridiculous bits of information they could find in order to pretend that the kidnappings and murders of the three Israeli teens were not Hamas' responsibility.

Oh, well:

Israel has confirmed that the funding for the June kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers Naftali Frankel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah—which set off a chain of events that led to the current war in Gaza—was provided by Hamas.

Hassam Qawasameh, a Palestinian man arrested on July 11 in connection with the abduction, admitted that the orders and financing of the kidnapping came from Gaza. Paul Hirschson, deputy spokesperson for international media at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, tweeted the news this afternoon after an Israeli gag order was lifted.

Hirschson confirmed by phone that Qawasameh was arrested three weeks ago in connection with the kidnapping, and that Qawasameh admitted the Hamas connection under interrogation.

Ynet reports that money from Hamas operatives in Gaza was used to purchase weapons used in the attack, as well as the plot of land in which the bodies were buried.

Today’s confirmation refutes speculation from various news outlets last week that Hamas wasn’t behind the kidnapping, and that the kidnappers were operating as a “lone cell.”

JPost adds:

In addition, Hussam assisted Marwan in concealing the bodies by burying them on land he had bought in recent months.

Next, Hussam was attempting to flee the area and disappear across the Jordanian border with false documents subsequent to the bodies being found, when he was caught back in mid-July.

The state said that the evidence it had was at the level of near certainty, after interrogating Hussam.

Now, one must wonder, what would make some journalists want so badly to exonerate Hamas from a terror attack?

08/05 Links Pt1: Indian TV Films Hamas Firing Rockets Next To Hotel; Hannity Special from Israel

From Ian:

Smoking Rocket: NDTV Films Hamas Firing Rocket From Next To Hotel

India’s NDTV has caught Hamasholes setting up a launch site and then firing rockets from right next to their hotel.
But unlike others who may not have wanted the word to get out, the NDTV crew kept the cameras rolling, and reported it truthfully. (h/t Yisroel)

On Hamas Imagery, New Delhi Television Shows West How It's Done

While most of the mainstream Western media hasn't provided even one still photograph of a Hamas fighter, an Indian television station gets the goods. New Delhi Television broadcast and posted online intriguing video of Hamas assembling a launch site and firing a rocket from just outside a Gaza hotel in a crowded civilian neighborhood. The footage was only shared after the NDTV team was out of Gaza and safe from Hamas retaliation.

NDTV Shows How Hamas Assembles & Fires Rockets

Pat Condell Hypocrisy over Gaza

Col. Richard Kemp on Israel vs Hamas in Gaza

Sami Abu Lashin is a major figure of the Fatah Al Aqsa Brigades in Gaza.

Here is a video of him giving a speech at a Fatah rally, and here is a video he uploaded showing him posing with weapons as well as a photo (that is probably Photoshopped) of him with Arafat.

He is part of the Mohammed Dahlan-leaning faction of Fatah in Gaza.

On July 28, Hamas security placed Lashin under "house arrest" - and shot him in the legs in order to keep him in his house.

We know Hamas has shot some suspected "collaborators" in the legs for their "house arrest." But Lashin does not appear to be a collaborator, he has extensive anti-Israel material on his Facebook page yet is not pro-Hamas.

One of his Fatah friends expressed frustration that Hamas and Islamic Jihad were not including Fatah in their strategy sessions during the war, even though Fatah has taken credit for hundreds of rockets towards Israel.

Hamas used the war as cover to go after its political enemies. Knowing that Israel would give warnings to people to leave their houses, they used the excuse of "house arrest" and collaboration to enforce their desire to keep Fatah members in their houses, to be killed. This way they achieve two goals: indirectly killing their enemies and being able to blame Israel for killing Gazans who were unable to leave their homes!

The Western media is utterly silent about the level of depravity of Hamas in Gaza.

"May Allah curse them" - Gazans hate Hamas, but most are are afraid to say so

From CBN:

Catholic News reports:

The bombings are not the only thing worrying the small Christian community in Gaza, Father Hernandez said.

Hamas is very strong in Gaza, he said, "and that makes people afraid that if the conflict continues for a long time -- which it looks it will if someone does not come and stop it -- there will be popular reaction against the Christians, as they have seen happen in other conflicts in the region."

"When (the militants) see they are threatened and are going to lose, they usually go against the weaker segment of the population," the priest said.

In addition, he said, before Operation Protective Edge began, an extremist Islamic group active in Iraq and Syria had demonstrated in Gaza.

"So you can see up to what level of fanaticism there is here, and people know that and (people) are afraid," he said.

Father Hernandez described as a "cocktail" of very extreme forces present in Gaza and said the tiny Christian population was worried because of what they have seen happen to Christian communities in Syria and Iraq.

(h/t Irene)

2000 years of mourning for the Temple

Monday night and Tuesday is Tisha B'Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year where we mourn the loss of both Temples. I will not be posting until Tuesday afternoon.

Here is a (Christian) description of how Jews mourned the Temple in the 19th as well as the first and fifth centuries, from Recent Discoveries on the Temple Hill at Jerusalem by James King, 1884.

According to this account, Jews were still allowed to visit the Temple Mount until the Muslim invasion.

The congregation at the Wailing Place is one of the most solemn gatherings left to the Jewish Church, and, as the writer gazed at the motley concourse, he experienced a feeling of sorrow that the remnants of the chosen race should be heartlessly thrust outside the sacred enclosure of their fathers' holy Temple by men of an alien race and an alien creed. Many of the elders, seated on the ground with their backs against the wall on the west side of the area, and with their faces turned towards the Eternal House, read out of their well-thumbed Hebrew books passages from the prophetic writings, such as "Be not wroth very sore, O Lord, neither remember iniquity for ever; behold, see, we beseech Thee, we are all Thy people. Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised Thee, is burned up with fire, and all our pleasant things are laid waste. Wilt Thou refrain Thyself for these things, O Lord? Wilt Thou hold Thy peace, and afflict us very sore

About four o'clock a Rabbin stood up, facing the Sanctuary wall, and, resting his book against the stone, read aloud from the Jewish lamentation service a kind of litany. After each petition the assembly responded in a peculiar buzzing tone, rocking their bodies to and fro, after the manner of their fathers. The following litany of eight petitions is often rehearsed :—

The Rabbin reads aloud— All the people respond—

For the place that lies desolate: We sit in solitude and mourn.For the place that is destroyed: We sit in solitude and mourn.For the walls that are overthrown: We sit in solitude and mourn.For our majesty that is departed: We sit in solitude and mourn.For our great men who lie dead: We sit in solitude and mourn.For the precious stones that are buried: We sit in solitude and mourn.For the priests who have stumbled: We sit in solitude and mourn.
For our kings who have despised Him: We sit in solitude and mourn.

Another litany, written after the manner of an antiphonal psalm, is often repeated. It consists of five petitions, offered up on behalf of Zion; and, in response to each petition, the assembly offer up a petition for Jerusalem:—

The Rabbin prays thus :—

We pray Thee have mercy on Zion:
Haste! haste! Redeemer of Zion:
May beauty and majesty surround
Zion:May the kingdom soon return to
Zion:May peace and joy abide with Zion:

The people answer—

Gather the children of Jerusalem.
Speak to the heart of Jerusalem.
Ah! turn Thyself mercifully to Jerusalem.
Comfort those who mourn over Jerusalem.
And the Branch of Jesse spring up at Jerusalem.

The following is an account of a visit to the Wailing Place by Dr. Frankl, a Jew, who visited the Holy City:—

"The Jews have a firman from the Sultan, which, in return for a small tax, ensures them the right of entrance to the Wailing Place for all time to come. The road conducted us to several streets, till, entering a narrow crooked lane, we reached the wall, which has been often described. There can be no doubt but the lower part of it is a real memorial of the days of Solomon, which, in the language of Flavius Josephus, is immovable for all time. Its cyclopic proportions produce the conviction that it will last as long as the strong places of the earth. Before we reached the wall we heard a sort of howling melody—a passionate shrieking—a heart-rending wailing, like a chorus, from which the words came sounding forth, 'How long yet, O God?' Several hundreds of Jews, in Turkish and Polish costumes, were assembled, and, with their faces turned towards the wall, were bending and bowing as they offered up the evening prayer. He who led their devotions was a young man in a Polish talar, who seemed to be worn out with passion and disease. The words were those of the well-known Mincha prayer, but drawled, torn, shrieked, and mumbled in such a way that the piercing sound resembled rather the raging frenzy of chained madmen, or the roaring of a cataract, than the worship of rational beings. At a considerable distance from the men stood about a hundred women, all in long white robes, the folds of which covered the head and the whole figure—like white doves, which, weary of flight, had perched upon the ruins. When it was their turn to offer up the usual passages of the prayer, they joined the men's tumultuous chorus, and raised their arms aloft, which with their white robes looked like wings with which they were about to soar aloft into the open sky; and then they struck their foreheads on the square stones of the wall of the Temple. Meanwhile, if the leader of their prayers grew weary, and leaned his head against the wall in silent tears, for a moment there was a death-like silence. I happened to be near him, and I could mark the sincerity of his agitated soul. He gave a rapid glance at me, and, without stopping short in his prayer, said to me, 'Mokam Kodesh,' i.e., 'Holy place,' and pointed to my covered feet. My guide had forgotten to inform me that I must take off my shoes. I now did so, and was drawn into the vortex of raging sorrow and lamentation."

The Jewish Sabbath begins on Friday evening at sunset, therefore, when the sun was sinking low in the western sky, the worshippers at the Wailing Place sometimes chant in Hebrew a plaintive hymn, known as the Wailing Song. The melody is thought to date from the time of Ezra, and, consequently, is accounted to be amongst the oldest pieces of music extant. The following is a translation of the hymn :—

He is great, He is good.
He'll build His Temple speedily.
In great haste, in great haste,
In our own day speedily.
Lord, build, Lord, build,
Build Thy Temple speedily.

He will save, He will save,
He'll save His Israel speedily.
At this time, now, O Lord,
In our own day speedily.
Lord, save, Lord, save,
Save Thine Israel speedily.

Lord, bring back, Lord, bring back,
Bring back Thy people speedily;
O restore to their land,
To their Salem speedily.
Bring back to Thee, bring back to Thee,
To their Saviour, speedily.

How long the Jews have assembled for lamentation at the Wailing Place cannot be determined with certainty, although there is historical evidence to prove that they have assembled to mourn over their lost glory and desolate Temple since the time of the Apostles. After the merciless destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 A.D., the priestly families fled to Tiberias, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee; and the great men of the Jewish nation found homes in Egypt, Cyprus, and other places, while only the poor and the officiating priests remained in the Holy City. Slowly Jerusalem rose from her ashes, and for sixty years enjoyed such peace as comes after the maddened din of warfare. During that period the Jews bewailed their downfall, and nobody interfered with the poor inhabitants of the city. At length, after sixty years' freedom from accursed warfare, a mighty insurrection arose among the Jews against the oppressive yoke of Rome. The insurgents were headed by Bar Cochaba, the Son of a Star, the last and greatest of the false Messiahs. After three years of warfare and butchery, Bar Cochaba, with sword in hand, fell down slain on the walls of Beth-er, near Bethlehem, and forthwith the domination of the Romans was restored. The Emperor Hadrian, filled with wrath at the insurrection, again destroyed Jerusalem, and drove the Jews from their hallowed city. He fixed a Roman colony on Zion, built a heathen temple on Moriah, on the site of the sacred edifice of the Jews, and dedicated it to Capitoline Jupiter. When the colony had increased in size, he bestowed upon the new city the name of ^Elia Capitolina, combining with his own family title of ^Elius the name of Jupiter of the Capitol, the guardian deity of the colony. Christians and pagans were permitted to reside there, but the Jews were forbidden to enter the city on pain of death ; and this stern decree remained in force in the days of Tertullian, about a century afterwards. About the middle of the fourth century, however, the Jews were permitted to dwell in the neighbourhood, and once a year—on the anniversary of the capture of Jerusalem—they were allowed to enter the Temple enclosure, that they might approach the lapis pertusus, or perforated stone, and anoint it with oil. "There," says an ancient, writer "they make lamentations with groans, and rend their garments, and so retire."

Jerome, the eminent Latin Father, who founded a convent at Bethlehem, and for thirty years led an ascetic life in the Holy Land, when commenting, about 400 A.D., on Zephaniah i. 14, "The mighty man shall cry there bitterly," draws a vivid picture of the wretched crowds of Jews who in his day assembled at the Wailing Place, by the west wall of the Temple, to bemoan the loss of their ancestral greatness.

On the ninth of the month Ab, might be seen the aged and decrepit of both sexes, with tattered garments and dishevelled hair, who met to weep over the downfall of Jerusalem, and purchased permission of the soldiery to prolong their lamentations, el miles mercedem postulat tit illis flere plus liceat. The perforated stone, called lapis pertusus, is probably the Sakkra or sacred rock of Moriah, originally the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, and now covered with the elegant sanctuary called Kubbet es-Sakhra, or Dome of the Rock.

After the Moslem occupation of Jerusalem in the seventh century, the lapis pertusus, or sacred rock of Moriah, was invested with a sanctity second only to the Kaaba of Mecca. This sanctity was afterwards extended to the whole of the top of Moriah, and, consequently, the heretic Jews were driven outside the Temple enclosure. In course of time, however, they approached the outer walls, and there continued to celebrate their lamentation service. Thus for above twelve centuries have the Jews assembled outside the walls of their ancient Temple; but it would be difficult, with our present knowledge, to prove that the present Wailing Place has been the identical spot of lamentation throughout the many generations that have lived and died since the Moslem occupation of Jerusalem under Khalif Omar in 637 A.D.