J Street U Slammed for Insensitive Post Following Murder of Baby
J Street U, the campus arm of the George Soros-founded organization which claims to be pro-Israel, is garnering negative attention after an insensitive post following the murder of a Jewish baby in Jerusalem on Wednesday.Netanyahu decries world’s ‘flaccid response’ to Abbas
Rather than simply express sympathy with the family of the murdered three-month-old, who was killed in a Hamas-endorsed attack, J Street U felt it was necessary to editorialize. "In Jerusalem, a baby has been killed and 8 wounded by a terrorist from the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, the same neighborhood where last week new Jewish settlers moved in," the group wrote on its page.
"In Jerusalem, a baby has been killed and 8 wounded by a terrorist from"That's just a wrong post, in so many different levels. Allowing the blood of anyone who lives where you don't want them to live. So it's ok to kill any settler in the West Bank? J (S)treet- your mind is just twisted," Hen Mazzig on StandWithUs commented on the post. "That's from an Israeli leftist."
the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, the same neighborhood where last week new Jewish settlers moved in."
Michael Dickson, StandWithUs' Israel Director joined Mazzig in chastising the campus group. "And in one line, you express no remorse for the 3 month old victim, you blame Jews for the murder of a Jewish baby and expose your amoral mindset," he wrote. "A disgusting justification of terror; you should feel ashamed."
“Are you saying the "settlers" are responsible for what happened?” asked Lori Lowenthal Marcus of the Jewish Press. “That really is the soft bigotry of low (no?) expectations.”
Jewish Voice for Peace, a rapidly anti-Israel organization, proved wiser than J Street and elected to simply pretend the incident never happened on its Facebook feed. Hours later, J Street U linked to a two-sentence-long statement from its parent organization condemning the attack.
The day after an East Jerusalem man with ties to Hamas drove his car onto a light rail platform, killing a three-month-old baby and wounding eight, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at the international community for failing to criticize Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians accept US request to delay Security Council bid for statehood
The Palestinian leader “both glorifies the murderers and also embraces the organization to which the terrorists belong, Hamas,” Netanyahu said during a briefing with security officials in Jerusalem’s national police headquarters. “And faced with these actions of the Authority chairman, we find only a flaccid [response] internationally. [World leaders] are unwilling to say two words, even one word of criticism of him [Abbas]. We do not share this weakness. We will stand firmly for our rights and obligations to defend our capital.”
“The attack in Jerusalem is supported by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas,” Netanyahu said, in an apparent reference to the praise that the terrorist, Abdel Rahman Al-Shaludi, received Thursday from a Jerusalem branch of Abbas’s Fatah organization.
The London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat reported on Thursday that the Palestinian Authority has agreed to delay by two months its plan to seek a Security Council resolution calling for an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines within three years.
The paper quoted Palestinian sources in Ramallah as saying that the PA leadership will give US Secretary of State John Kerry a two-month window to present his own plan for peace. The sources said that the PA leadership was nevertheless determined to proceed with the Security Council bid.
The sources also told the newspaper that the PA leadership is prepared to return to the negotiations with Israel but not according to “old mechanisms.”
The Palestinians are now conditioning the resumption of the talks on Israel presenting a map with its borders and a full cessation of settlement construction during the talks, according to the report.
Kerry said on Wednesday that current relations between Israel and the Palestinians were "unsustainable" and that the United States was conscious of the urgency of the situation.