Sunday, November 09, 2014

Coming Out in Favor of a Single State (Mike Lumish)

For many years I advocated for the two-state solution because I believed that Israel could be a democratic state, a Jewish state, or a single state from the river to the sea, but not all three at once.

This is, of course, the common analysis and it is a perfectly reasonable and logical analysis.

Throughout the Clinton years, I believed that the Palestinian-Arabs wanted a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one, but this was before I freed myself from the so-called "Palestinian narrative" or what I have called The Palestinian Colonization of the Jewish Mind.

The obvious problem is that in annexing Judea and Samaria Israel would introduce a large and hostile enemy population as citizens into the country and thereby undermine its ability to maintain itself as the national home of the Jewish people.

So long, therefore, that I understood that the Palestinian-Arabs wanted a state for themselves distinct from their Palestinian-Jewish neighbors, I supported the two-state solution. Once it became clear to me that this is emphatically not what the Arabs want then I gradually came to the conclusion that president Barack Obama was correct. After the failure of the first round of non-negotiations Obama said that the sides needed to want peace.

The problem is both sides do not want peace. The Jewish side mainly wants be left the hell alone to write computer software, litigate against one another, and send Natalie Portman's out into the world.

The Arab side, on the other hand, wants to see Jews either dead or gone from the land that we come from.

Thus there can be no conclusion of hostilities through the implementation of a peaceful, but separate, negotiated coexistence.

The Palestinian-Arabs, unlike the Palestinian-Jews (i.e., Jewish-Israelis), will not accept a two-state solution because that has never been their goal. If they honestly wanted a state for themselves in peace next to the Jews then the local Arab leadership would have accepted the Peel Commission Report of 1937 which called for two states, but they did not.

The map on the right represents what the Jews reluctantly accepted and what the Arab majority emphatically rejected right before the Holocaust.

Even a tiny indefensible strip of land between Tel Aviv and Haifa to be reserved for Jewish autonomy in the face of genocide was too much for Arab-Muslim pride. How dare those dhimmitudenous Jews think that they can rule themselves? How dare they think that they even have any such right?

So, the Arabs turned down Palestinian-Arab autonomy in 1937 and 1947 and 1967 and 2000 and 2008, and I am probably missing a few. In 2000, of course, Arafat rejected Ehud Barak's offer of pretty much everything as Abbas rejected Olmert's offer of pretty much everything eight years later. Both Barack and Olmert offered the Palestinian-Arabs the entirety of Gaza, almost the entirety of Judea and Samaria with land swaps, and much of the eastern section of Jerusalem as a capital.

They turned the Jews down flat, but there is no more than we can possibly offer them.

There comes a point wherein one must take "no" for an answer.

Since it is clearly the case that the Palestinian-Arabs - and the rest of the larger Arab and Muslim worlds - have, decade upon decade, rejected the two-state solution, it now becomes incumbent upon Israel to declare its final borders and remove the IDF to behind those borders. In previous months and years, I have argued that the borders of Israel should be determined by Israeli leadership and it should be, but in previous months and years I stated no preference.

I have now come to the conclusion that the annexation of Judea and Samaria by the state of Israel is probably the best way to go forward.

What has convinced me, aside from persistent Arab rejection of the two-state solution, is the revelation that the numbers of Arabs in Judea and Samaria is significantly lower than the Palestinian Authority reported.

Furthermore, after annexing Judea and Samaria, there is no reason for Israel to give local Arabs automatic full rights to citizenship. A path to citizenship should be available however and any non-Jew in the area should be afforded rights to citizenship once they have demonstrated an inclination toward peaceful co-existence. Given the millennia of hostility toward the Jewish people, such a precondition for non-Jewish citizenship is more than reasonable.

I would offer all resident non-citizens of Israel the opportunity of two to three years of national service and those who complete that national service with a good record should be free to apply for, and receive, full citizenship.

It also must be understood that an Arab state in the small Jewish heartland would, in fact, represent a dagger at the heart of Jewish sovereignty, if not Jewish lives, with the full weight of the Arab and Muslim worlds behind that dagger.

In other words, an Arab state superimposed upon the Jewish highlands will not bring peace. It will merely represent a new phase in the Long Arab War against the Jews. It will represent a phase characterized by Arab advantage and gain at the expense of Jewish possibilities for survival. It will also represent a phase wherein the same malicious voices who disparage and demean the Jews of Israel now will continue to do so by claiming that while the Jews used to persecute the Palestinian-Arabs, now they persecute the Palestinian state, as well. Or such is my prediction.

It is unfortunate, but true, that the Oslo Peace Process has failed.

Barack Obama helped kill it through his dogmatic, racist, and counterproductive insistence on forcing Jews out of our traditional heartland. By insisting upon "total settlement freeze" - and thereby effectively denying Jewish rights to live on traditionally Jewish land - he enforced a policy that was doomed from the start and that gave the Palestinian-Arabs all the excuse that they needed to avoid a peaceful conclusion of hostilities within the two-state paradigm.

Obama, however, only deserves a certain percentage of the blame for the failure of the two-state solution, although it should be noted that if he did not absolutely kill it, he helped and it was done on his watch.

The reason that two-states failed is not primarily because of the Americans or the Europeans or the United Nations or, even, the Israelis. The main reason that two-states failed is because the Arabs never wanted it to begin with. They walked out of the United Nations in November of 1948 in order to tell us that Jewish sovereignty on that land is entirely unacceptable to Arab sensibilities.

Such it was then and so it is now.

If they simply will not accept a Palestinian-Arab state in peace next to Israel, then that is what they will not get. It is not up to us. It is up to them.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

Bragging in Arabic about how violent the "non-violent" 1936 protests were

In the past few years, a meme has developed that the 1936 Arab revolt was a shining example of "non-violent resistance."

The lie is easy to debunk (I did it here and here.)

But it is notable that, in Arabic, Palestinians are quite proud of their violence in 1936!

I found this article in the Lebanese Palestinian Teachers website (where most teachers are, surprise, UNRWA teachers) where they claim to reveal "exclusive" photos of the revolt. And they are clearly not showing off any non-violence.

Here are some of their photos, with their captions:

Palestinian resistance attacks a train 1936

British army evacuate Jews from the city of Jerusalem during the outbreak of the revolution in 1936

(The first refugees of the conflict were Jews)

Palestinian fighters during the 1936-1939 Revolution

Palestinian revolution in Jaffa in 1936

Palestinian resistance led by Commander Arif Abdul Razzaq for the years 1936-1939

Palestinian resistance attack Zionism bus in Haifa in July 1936

By the way, their claim that these photos are "exclusive" is a lie -most came from the Library of Congress photo collection online.

Are Muslim women smuggling weapons under their clothing when visiting Temple Mount?

The official PA news agency Wafa has a weekly feature of supposed "incitement and racism in Israeli media."

The latest edition quotes Nadav Shragai of Israel Hayom, October 24, as saying that money from Islamic organizations around the world are funding the northern wing of the Islamist movement, headed by Sheikh Raed Salah. The movement is paid thousands of shekels to hundreds of women and men, specifically to stay on the Temple Mount and stir up trouble. The Al Aqsa Mosque has turned into a storehouse for light weapons, stones, Molotov cocktails and iron bars. The most prevalent weapon in Jerusalem is the fireworks, which Muslims launch directly toward the police, Jews and visitors. Fireworks are purchased with funding from the Fatah and Hamas, and smuggled into the sanctuary through the Muslim women's clothing, since they aren't inspected.

The strange thing is that Shragai didn't say most of that, unless his October 24 article was heavily edited since its original publication. Here is what he really wrote:

An intifada is breaking out in Jerusalem. Wednesday was its 112th day. It may be a (semi) popular movement but it has long not been spontaneous. The disturbances and continuous attacks on Jews in Jerusalem's periphery is organized and funded by elements identified with Fatah and Hamas.

Many of the 900 arrested in this intifada enjoy legal defense funded by the Palestinian Authority. The huge number of incidents, more than 10,000, their wide distribution over Jerusalem's periphery, their nature, the use of "cold weaponry," such as stones, Molotov cocktails and fireworks -- are all reminiscent of the First Intifada.

This time there are no popular resistance committees, but many small organizations that operate on the neighborhood level. They all carry the slogans of a "popular resistance," preached to them by the Palestinian Authority its president, Mahmoud Abbas.

There is of course nothing racist about making such an accusation.

There is no doubt that stones, Molotov cocktails and fireworks are stored somewhere in the Temple Mount, probably in the mosque that Israeli police generally don't enter. We've seen videos of all of these.

The easiest way to get these weapons there is indeed under the clothing of the women, whose mass presence there are also a relatively new phenomenon, usually to harass Jews who are visiting. And it is certainly logical that the northern branch of the Islamic movement gets funding from external sources.

So while all of this makes sense, Shragai didn't say it.

Which brings up the question: could Wafa have written this because it is so well known by insiders to be the truth? By casting them as "racist" could this be an attempt to pre-emptively stop anyone reporting these accusations?

Seems weird, but I can't figure out why else Wafa would make it up.

The REAL status quo on the Temple Mount

Full version of a letter to the editor of the Jerusalem Post:

Everyone is talking about the 'status quo on the Temple Mount', but no one really knows to what status quo they are referring. Logically, the status quo to which we should all be referring is the one which existed between 1967 and 2000.

During those thirty three years, apart from modest clothing, not only were there no limits as to who could visit the Temple Mount, everyone who did visit, after paying an entrance fee to the Wakf and removing shoes, was able to visit the interior of the Dome of the Rock and of the El Aqsa Mosque, excluding during prayer time. Guides were not hindered when giving brief or lengthy explanations while inside.

No one objected if a Christian minister or priest conducted a quiet prayer session or read from the New Testament in a remote corner of the Temple Mount. Nor did anyone object if a guide held up a picture depicting the Jewish Temple, the first or the second, which stood on the Temple Mount before being destroyed by the Babylonians or the Romans.

The Palestinian Wakf changed the status to what it is today – limited visiting hours; no entry to the Dome of the Rock or El Aqsa; a ban, enforced by the Israeli police, on even carrying a bible in one's bag on to the Temple Mount; absolutely no prayers, which includes moving one's lips and, in some instances, insisting that the women in the group cover their heads.

Every Israeli guide who worked during the afore-mentioned period can confirm that that was the status quo and, if they are still working, can attest to the changes.

We should all be aspiring, nay demanding, a return to those halcyon days.

Beryl Ratzer
The writer is a registered guide and author of A Historical Tour of the Holy Land

I honestly didn't know that so many of the restrictions on the Temple Mount today are from 2000; they are not the "status quo."

It only takes a few years of consistent lies by the Palestinian Muslims to convince the entire world to believe complete fiction.

Kid at BDS rally: "Devious little Zionist plan of world domination"

From a BDS rally in London, November 5 (h/t Daphne Anson):

If teaching children that ~~Jews~~ Zionists have a devious plan for world domination doesn't bother you, you just might be an antisemite.

11/08 Links: Romney hammers Obama as ‘dictatorial’ to friends like Israel, ‘naive’ on Iran

From Ian:

Riots, strike in Kafr Kanna after Arab youth shot dead by police

Riots erupted on Saturday in Kafr Kanna, an Israeli Arab town in the Galilee, a day after police shot a 20-year-old man from the village who later died of his wounds.
Demonstrators on Saturday set tires alight, threw stones and blocked roads in the village as they clashed with police to protest the killing. The village’s regional council also declared a strike in response and demanded a thorough investigation of the incident. Riot police were on the scene.
Police said Kheir a-Din Hamdan tried to stab an officer during an attempt to arrest him in the northern Arab town near Nazareth.
A short, edited surveillance video on the popular Israeli-Arab news website Panet claims to show the incident.
Hamdan is allegedly seen attacking a police van, banging on the windows. An officer gets out and, as Hamdan is seen retreating, is shot. He writhes on the ground, before police drag him into the van. He was taken to hospital where he died of his wounds.

Obama's legacy now depends on the Middle East

On the Palestinian front Obama has already learned that he is no position to make history, having seen his administration’s brave effort to change local hearts yield little but the breaking of the heart of Secretary of State John Kerry.
On the Iranian front, Obama is in for a collision with the new Congress – whose agreement he must secure to lift American sanctions.
An attempt to back a deal in which the goods would be delivered by other nations sanctioning Iran, from Europe to the UN, may yield an agreement, but not a place in history – because a deal with Iran against the will of the American people will not stand. Instead, it will be exposed as a capitulation, with its architects recalled as Chamberlains.
This leaves us with Islamic State.
Here, the die has already been cast. Obama is already in that war, and will likely be drawn deeper into it with full Republican support. Here, somewhere between Baghdad and Nineveh, Obama may find his place in history, providing he finally musters the vision, prudence, poise and resolve that most voters thought his first six years in office lacked.
On this front, the war effort Obama is in the process of launching may generate true victory over a true enemy representing a real problem for the entire world.
Should that happen, the man who took to the podium in Cairo eager to appease the Muslim world, will end up etched in millions of Muslim minds as Enemy No. 1 – a humbled statesman as bewildered as a Halloween pumpkin at October’s snow.

Romney hammers Obama as ‘dictatorial’ to friends like Israel, ‘naive’ on Iran

The Obama administration was in the hotseat at the inaugural Israeli American Council National Conference Friday, facing critiques from former Republican presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney and former Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman.
Friday marked the first-ever national gathering of Israelis living in America. Organizers said that the event sold out weeks in advance, noting that the entire Israeli-American community is currently estimated at over 600,000.
Speaking days after a strong Republican victory in Congressional elections, Romney described his former opponent’s approach to Iran as “naïve” while Lieberman emphasized his disapproval of recent criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by an unnamed administration official who used the term “chickenshit.”
Romney complained that Obama “continues to diminish himself and America and leads bad people to think America can be pushed around.” At the same time, in a criticism of the president’s policies on Israel, he slammed Obama for being “divisive and dictatorial to our friends.”

11/07 Links Pt2: Law Prof. nixed by UNHRC as not "pro-Palestinian"; Abbas hails ‘peace-loving’ Arafat

From Ian:

Hillel Neuer: Georgetown prof: UNHRC ‘killed my candidacy’ for not being ‘partial’ like William Schabas

Georgetown University law professor Christina Cerna said the U.N.’s highest human rights body “killed” her candidacy as its expert on Palestine — despite her selection by a 5-member vetting committee — on account of her not being partial like William Schabas, whom the 47-nation council chose to chair its commission of inquiry on Gaza.
“I was selected as the consensus candidate of the Consultative Committee for the post of UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories earlier this year,” Cerna wrote in a comment on the blog of the European Journal of International Law, “but the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the League of Arab States both officially opposed me, which killed my candidacy.”
“They opposed me… because I had never said anything pro-Palestinian and consequently was not known to be ‘partial’ enough to win their support. The candidate that they officially supported was considered to be partial in their favor.”

German Opposition Party Cancels Event Featuring American Anti-Semite Max Blumenthal

The leader of the main opposition party in Germany, the far-left Die Linke (“The Left,”) has shut down a forthcoming party seminar at the German parliament featuring Max Blumenthal, an American writer of Jewish origin whose visceral attacks on Israel are widely regarded as anti-Semitic.
Gregor Gysi, the Jewish leader of Die Linke – a successor organization to the former ruling Communist Party in East Germany, and the largest opposition bloc to the governing Christian Democrat/Social Democrat coalition, with 64 parliamentary seats – told the daily Berliner Morgenpost that “the event will not take place.” Gysi reached his decision after Benjamin Weinthal, a Berlin-based journalist who writes for the Jewish and general press, presented him with evidence of Blumenthal’s anti-Semitic activities and writings. (h/t Gastwirt)

Palestinian hate song: “Run over the baby”

A duo of Palestinian singers are provoking Israelis during this tense time by releasing a song in the social media that encourages hit and run terror attacks. “Run over the two month old baby”, they sing. “For Al-Aqsa we will run over settlers”
Propaganda by music: a duo of Palestinian singers joins the animosity and publishes an anti-Israeli song calling for more hit and run terror attacks against Israelis.
“Run over the two month old baby – that is how we get them”, the song by Anas Garadat and Abu Khayad says. “For Al-Aqsa we will run over settlers. Run over settlers. Make the road become a trap, Allah will help you. The whole Arab nation calls you – bless you Akari Ibrahim (The terrorists behind the attack last Wednesday), run over run over!” (h/t Alexi)

Why are these rabbis wearing keffiyehs?

Well, this is a strange sight.

Here's a hint:

Yes, those are Jordanian police.

At this point you may be forgiven for thinking, "WTF?"

Every seven years, the Torah commands that land that belongs to Jews in Israel not be sowed or harvested. This mitzvah is known as shmitah. When modern religious Zionists started farming, they came up with a legal fiction/loophole of selling the land to a non-Jew to be able to continue to work the land and sell the produce.

This year is a shmittah year.

In more recent decades, many haredi Jews decided they didn't want to use this loophole any more, so they essentially do not farm - or buy - produce of Israel during this year.

These rabbis struck agreements with dozens of Jordanian farmers to buy produce from them this year. They have been going there every month or so to inspect the crops. But the Jordanian authorities as well as Israeli police told them, for their own safety, not to walk around the kingdom looking like rabbis, especially with the Muslim Brotherhood being active in the kingdom. Wearing the keffiyeh makes them look a bit like village elders, so it is a reasonable disguise.

Arab newspapers picked up on this story around Rosh Hashanah, but Israel's Kikar HaShabbat had a story on it this week that was picked up by more Arab media.

This is controversial in Israel as well. Here's an article by an American haredi spokesperson explaining their side of the story.

11/07 Links Pt1: Palestinians' Car Intifada and Obama's Peace Process; 2nd death from rail attack

From Ian:

Second death from Jerusalem light rail attack as hurt teen succumbs to wounds

A 17-year-old who was critically injured in a terror attack at the Jerusalem light rail this week succumbed to his wounds on Friday, raising the death toll from the attack to two, Hadassah University Medical Center said.
Shalom Aharon Baadani will be laid to rest Friday at Jerusalem's Givat Shaul cemetery.
A second Israeli was still in serious condition, the hospital added. (h/t Bob Knot)

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians' "Car Intifada" and Obama's Peace Process

Even worse, Palestinian activists are busy organizing online campaigns urging and encouraging Palestinians to launch terror attacks on Israelis. It is hard to see how Abbas can return to the negotiating table while many Palestinians, at his behest, are busy thinking about how to kill more Israelis.
The Obama Administration would do well to understand that it is a waste of time to talk about any peace process when Palestinian leaders and activists are openly glorifying those who use their vehicles to kill Israelis.
The Obama Administration is talking about reviving the peace process while Abbas is telling his people that Jews are "desecrating" the holy sites in Jerusalem and praising an assassin as a "hero" and "martyr."
It is not enough for Kerry to listen to what Abbas or Erekat are telling him in English. Instead, Kerry and Obama must also start listening to what Palestinian leaders and activists are telling their people in Arabic.
Moreover, it would also be a good idea for Obama and Kerry to go online and view the most recent Palestinian campaigns that encourage and applaud terror attacks on Israelis. Perhaps then they will understand that as long as the incitement continues, there is no chance — zero — for the success of any peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

Caroline Glick: Terror decentral

Since UNRWA schools operating in Jerusalem engage in anti-Semitic indoctrination, Jerusalem municipal authorities must give them the choice of using Israeli textbooks or shutting down. If Israel wishes to assert its sovereignty, UNRWA schools would be a good place to start. Beyond that, preachers in mosques who incite murder and call for the destruction of Israel should be arrested.
As for the PA’s communications networks, all of the radio and television signals operating in the PA come from the Israeli electromagnetic spectrum. It is time to shut them down. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Wednesday, Abbas is directly inciting the murderous attacks on Jerusalem through the PA media organs. The way to protect Jerusalem is to remove him and his Hamas partners from the airwaves.
There has been a lot of talk over the years about providing positive and negative incentives to convince the Palestinians not to engage in terrorism.
But now is not the time for incentives. The population mobilized through incitement has become too fanatical to engage with reason.
The terrorists who take the wheel and run over pedestrians know that they will more than likely never come home. And they don’t care.
They certainly don’t care that Israel will destroy their homes. And they also certainly won’t be impressed by discounted mortgages if they integrate into Israeli society.
In the long term, it is imperative that Israel provide incentives to both the Jerusalem Arabs and the Palestinians to integrate peacefully with Israeli society. But before the government can seriously engage in this task, it needs to destroy the triggers of this terrorist onslaught. It is not enough to complain about Palestinian indoctrination and incitement. It is time for Israel to end them.

Palestinian leadership incites more terror. Should Fatah be declared a terrorist organisation?

Amid growing calls in Israel and beyond for Fatah, the leading faction inside the Palestine Liberation Organisation, to be declared internationally as a terrorist group, new evidience has emerged of Fatah, lead by "moderate" Palestinian leader Mahmpud Abbas, inciting the murder of Israelis in Jerusalem.
This comes during ongoing tension over the rights of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, one of Judaism's holiest sites. Palestinians reject that right and a man was murdered earlier this week when he and several others were deliberately run over by terrorists. Another car attack killed a woman and her baby daughter in October.
On Thursday, watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) revealed that the Fatah leadership was inciting more such attacks on social media.

Rabbi Sacks' speech to the House of Lords

Last week, during a debate in the House of Lords, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks laid out his analysis of modern antisemitism and secularism and why Islamism is hijacking Islam. I'm not thrilled with his conflating Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but for the audience he has, this is pretty good.

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Risby, for initiating this important debate. And at the outset I declare an interest. I am a Jew. Israel is therefore for me the place where my people were born almost four thousand years ago, the place to which Abraham and Sarah travelled, where Amos voiced his vision of social justice and Isaiah dreamed of a world at peace, where David composed the Psalms and Solomon built the Temple – and this had consequences not only for Jews but also for Christians and Muslims, who claim Abraham as their ancestor in faith, and whose God they take as their own.

This had tragic repercussions throughout the Middle Ages, because Christians and Muslims claimed, each in their own way, to have replaced Jews as the people of God and thus as heirs to the Holy Land. The otherwise saintly Augustine declared that Jews were cursed with the fate of Cain, destined to be restless wanderers on earth without a home. Islam held that any land that ever came under Muslim rule was henceforth and forever Dar Al Islam, that is, land that rightly belongs to the Umma, the Muslim people, any other rule being illegitimate. On both of these theologies, Jews had no right to their ancestral home.

A half-century ago, these theologies would have been considered irrelevant. The West had moved on. After a century of religious wars following the Reformation, it recognised the need for the secularisation of power. This allowed the United Nations, in the Partition vote of 1947, to grant Jews the right to a nation state of the own after two thousand years of exile and persecution. Eventually there were peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan and an intensive process with the Palestinians. When power is secularised, peace is possible.

Today, though, the Middle East and parts of Asia and Africa are undergoing a seismic shift in precisely the opposite direction. People are de-secularising. They feel betrayed by secular nationalist governments that failed to deliver prosperity and national pride. They consider the national boundaries imposed by colonial powers to be artificial and obsolete. They are uninspired by the secular culture of the West with its maximum of choice and minimum of meaning. And they have come to believe that salvation lies in a return to the Islam that that bestrode the narrow world like a colossus for the better part of a thousand years.

And though their faith is hostile to modernity, they sometimes understand modernity better than its own creators in the West. They know that because of the Internet, YouTube and the social media, communication, indeed politics itself, has gone global, and they also know that the great monotheisms are the most powerful global communities in the world, far broader and deeper in their reach than any nation state. And the religious radicals are offering young people the chance to fight and die for their faith, winning glory on earth and immortality in heaven. They have started recruiting in the West and they have only just begun.

But when ancient theologies are used for modern political ends, they speak a very dangerous language indeed. So for example, Hamas and Hizbollah, both self-defined as religious movements, refuse to recognise the legitimacy of the state of Israel within any boundaries whatsoever and seek only its complete destruction.

The Islamists also know that the only way they can win the sympathy of the West is by demonising Israel. They know you can’t win support for Isis, Boko Haram or Islamic Jihad, but if you can blame Israel you will gain the support of academics, unions and the media and you will distract attention from the massacres in Syria and Iraq, the slow descent of other countries into chaos, and the ethnic cleansing of Christians throughout the region.

They are thus repeating the very failure of the regimes they have risen against, who for fifty years suppressed dissent by demonising Israel as the cause of everything wrong in the Arab or Islamic world. When you blame others for your failures you not only harm them, you harm yourself and your people. To be free, you have to let go of hate. And if you let hate speech infect the West, as has already happened in some of our campuses, prisons and even schools, then our freedom too will be at risk.

My Lords, I and the vast majority of the Jewish community, care deeply about the future of the Palestinians. We want Palestinian children, no less than Israeli children, to have a future of peace, prosperity, freedom and hope. Which is why we oppose those who teach Palestinian children to hate those with whom they will one day have to live; who take money given for humanitarian aid and use it to buy weapons and dig tunnels to take the region back to a dark age of barbarism.

More generally we say in the name of the God of Abraham, the Almighty, merciful and compassionate God, that the religion in whose name atrocities are being carried out, innocent people butchered and beheaded, children treated as slaves, civilians turned into human shields, and young people into weapons of self-destruction, is not the Islam that once earned the admiration of the world, nor is its God the God of Abraham. It was Nietzsche not the prophets who worshipped the will to power. It was Machiavelli not sacred scripture who taught that it is better to be feared than to be loved.

Every religion must wrestle with its dark angels, and so today must we: Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. For we are all children of Abraham and it will only be when we make space for one another as brothers and sisters that we will redeem the world from darkness and walk together in the light of God.

I only noticed this speech because the Israel-haters are frothing at the mouth about it.

AFP captioned this as "Jewish extremists"

I just did a Google News search on the terms "Jewish extremists" and "Muslim extremists," looking for actual actions that reports say these two groups are doing (as opposed to just saying that there is a growing danger of Muslim extremism, for example.)

The only story in the past month that highlighted an action by "Muslim extremists" was from two Christian news outlets, saying that they killed 31 people in Nigeria. I did not see any stories about ISIS atrocities being ascribed to "Muslim extremists."

But the term "Jewish extremists" is all over the place. What horrendous crimes are they doing? Well, they are protesting - not burning a single tire or throwing a single rock.

They are visiting Judaism's holiest place - without raising their voices or going near any Muslim worshipers.

(Reuters' Noah Browning claims that "Jewish extremists" killed an Arab teenager in July. The murderers were not religious at all. So that's just libel.)

That's it.

Jewish extremists walk around. Muslim extremists almost don't do anything, although they are a concern, perhaps because people know that they behead people and rape women - but those specific acts are ascribed to named groups, almost never to "Muslim extremists."

The only reason that Jewish "extremists: are called that are because Muslims are so extreme as to not want to allow Jews to have any civil or political rights. Because Muslims are so angry at Jewish people asserting their own human rights, they call those Jews "extremists" and the epithet spreads to the mainstream.

Language matters, and the media bias against Jews - not just Israel, but Jews - is the reason why Jews are so easily called extreme while Muslims or Christians or Hindus rarely are, even when they do the most heinous crimes.

US Joint Chiefs chairman schools Amnesty and HRW in international law

Yesterday, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a lecture at the Carnegie Council for Ethics. He was asked by an audience member to comment on IDF's ethics during Operation protective Edge, and here was his answer:

I actually do think that Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties. In fact, about 3 months ago we sent, we asked [IDF Chief of Staff] Benny [Gantz] if we could send a lessons learned team – one of the things we do better than anybody I think is learn – and we sent a team of senior officers and non-commissioned officers over to work with the IDF to get the lessons from that particular operation in Gaza. To include the measures they took to prevent civilian casualties and what they did with tunneling, because Hamas had become very nearly a subterranean society. And so, that caused the IDF some significant challenges. But they did some extraordinary things to try to limit civilian casualties to include calling out, making it known that they were going to destroy a particular structure. Even developed some techniques, they call it roof knocking, to have something knock on the roof, they would display leaflets to warn citizens and population to move away from where these tunnels. But look in this kind of conflict, where you are held to a standard that your enemy is not held to, you’re going to be criticized for civilian casualties. So I think if Benny were sitting here right now he would say to you we did everything we could and now we’ve learned from that mission and we think there are some other things we could do in the future and we will do those. The IDF is not interested in creating civilian casualties they’re interested in stopping the shooting of rockets and missiles, out of the Gaza Strip and in to Israel, and its an incredibly difficult environment, and I can say to you with confidence that I think that … they acted responsible.

This came right after Amnesty released an incredibly biased report charging Israel with war crimes, claiming that Israel violated the principles of distinction and proportionality when fighting in Gaza, because, they say, the military targets Israel was aiming at - if there were any - were not valuable enough targets given the number of people who were killed and injured. But Amnesty made that determination without any military expertise and without even knowing what the military targets were - nothing in their 50 page report mentioned anything about tunnels, weapons bunkers or rocket launchers, which would clearly be military targets.

Under international law, who decides whether a military object can be targeted when it is being hidden among civilians?

The answer is: not Amnesty or HRW.

As my links above show, under international law as noted by the ICRC, the decision as to whether something is a valid military target, as well as the decision as to whether the expected collateral damage is justified by the value of the target, is based on what a reasonable military commander would do with the information he has at the moment of the attack.

In order to find that the commander has committed a war crime, the bar is set quite high. ICRC commentary on art 85 of the Additional Protocol states:

The accused must have acted consciously and with intent, i.e., with his mind on the act and its consequences, and willing the ("criminal intent" or "malice aforethought"); this encompasses the concepts of "wrongful intent" or "recklessness"....

It is also the military commander who can decide proportionality. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia determined who can make that decision:

The answers to these questions are not simple. It may be necessary to resolve them on a case by case basis, and the answers may differ depending on the background and values of the decision maker. It is unlikely that a human rights lawyer and an experienced combat commander would assign the same relative values to military advantage and to injury to non-combatants. … It is suggested that the determination of relative values must be that of the “reasonable military commander”. [Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee established to review NATO bombings in Yugoslavia para. 50-1]

General Dempsey is a reasonable military commander. Unlike Amnesty and HRW, he knows what international law requires. He feels not only that Israel acted in an exemplary manner, but that US forces could learn from Israel how to deal with these new kinds of terrorist tactics that so cynically use the civilian population for their purposes. He sent people to Israel to talk to their soldiers and understand the issues.

If the US military had even the slightest indication that Israel was violating international law, they would not be sending their own experts to learn from Israel's experiences.

Real-life international law, as ICRC documentation shows, comes very often from the military manuals of nations. Those manuals are written so that military commanders know what they may or may not do under the laws of armed conflict. They are written for the real world, not for the make believe world of Amnesty and Human Rights Watch where all military activity is considered evil by default.

General Dempsey knows more international law than the entire staffs of Amnesty and Human Rights Watch combined. So do IDF commanders. They know that decisions need to be made in the field, sometimes with limited information, to protect not only civilians on the enemy side but also one's own soldiers and one's own civilians - two factors that do not come into play in the deeply flawed reports that HRW and Amnesty release.

The more one researches what real human rights law is, the more one sees how utterly ignorant and indeed malicious the "human rights" organizations are.

The PLO says "Jump!," CNN asks "how high?"

I mentioned earlier today that the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department demanded that journalists stop referring to the Temple Mount with that name, using some bizarre logic that comes down to "it is our territory so we get to name it what we wish." (Much of my post was satirical, but that part is real.)

The PLO document is laughable. It not only erases all of Jewish history, but it erases Christian history and changes Muslim history as well:

[T]he Mosque has been under exclusive Muslim sovereignty and control since the construction of the Dome of the Rock in 692 CE.

Which pre-dates...the Al Aqsa Mosque first built in 705 CE. But they don't want to call it "The Mount" because, well, that's what Jews and Christians call it.

And for about 100 years, the Temple Mount was controlled by the Crusaders.

But no matter how much the PLO lies, important people listen to them - like the people at CNN.

Check out CNN's headlines over the past few days:

October 31:

Israel partially reopens access to Temple Mount

November 1:

Temple Mount: Holy site for Jews, Muslims

November 3:

Temple Mount crisis fuels unrest in volatile Jerusalem

The PLO's letter was written November 5.

November 5:

Israeli police, Palestinian protesters clash at Jerusalem holy site

The URL says "Temple-Mount-Clashes," indicating that the headline may have been changed from its original wording.

November 6:

Clashes at Jerusalem holy site; van slams into pedestrians

The articles themselves still say variants of "the compound called the Temple Mount by Jews and Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, by Muslims."

Are the headline changes coincidental - or is CNN caving to demands by a group that wants to erase Jewish and Christian history?

At the very least, CNN should be transparent about the reason for the sudden change in how they refer to the Temple Mount in headlines.

11/06 Links Pt2: Benjamin Netanyahu: ‘They try to rewrite history'; Massacre on J Street

From Ian:

Benjamin Netanyahu: ‘They try to rewrite history': Full text of Netanyahu’s speech on 19th Rabin anniversary

Yitzhak Rabin said it shortly before his murder, the prime minister tells the Knesset: ‘Jerusalem was ours, it is ours and it will remain so forever’
Distinguished guests, over the past several months, and especially over the past several days, we have witnessed a campaign of wild incitement against the State of Israel led by Abu Mazen and his Hamas partners. Hamas terrorists carry out terror attacks and Abu Mazen sends them condolence letters. Well, I wish to convey my condolences from here to the family of Officer Jedan Assad of the Border Police, and wishes for a speedy recovery to the injured.
This front of hatred is directed at all of us. It seeks to run over all of us. When faced with this front, there are some people who try to find the guilty among us. Instead we must stand together and say clearly and without apology: Unified Jerusalem is our capital and it will remain so. We are in a battle for Jerusalem. It may be a prolonged battle. I am certain we will be victorious. For some people, the issue of Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem is an instrument of political struggle. Our presence in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years, is called a provocation. They simply want to uproot us from here. They try to rewrite history, deny our brave affinity for Jerusalem and claim that we are trying to change the status quo on the Temple Mount, spread lies that we want to harm or destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque or change the prayer arrangements for Muslims on the Mount.
There is no greater falsehood than this. This is slander from extremists and it must be viewed against the backdrop of what is happening today in the Middle East. Various parties in the region that are contaminated by terror or who aspire to establish an Islamic caliphate in some version or another, they are the first to fan the flames of incitement. And the most absurd thing is that they complain about Israel? The only country that, out of principle, methodically protects the ritual sites of all the religions – they complain about us? I mean, who is protecting and who is destroying? We saw this in the past in Afghanistan when the Taliban destroyed holy sites and we see it today in Syria and Iraq when ISIS fanatics destroy mosques wholesale. In these countries, any place holy to other religions or even to different sects faces the same fate – destruction.

Massacre on J Street

Political candidates backed by the controversial Middle East advocacy group J Street were trounced at the polls on Tuesday, with J Street’s endorsees losing in almost every competitive race.
J Street scrambled to save face on Wednesday after two candidates that the group described as must-wins were defeated by their Republican opponents.
While J Street spread its money across 92 races around the country—the majority of them uncompetitive contests—J Street candidates locked in tight races were repudiated by voters.
Analysts say this is further proof that voters are increasingly likely to embrace more hawkish pro-Israel candidates over the dovish views characteristic of J Street and its allies in the Obama administration.
Democrats Mark Udall (Colo.) and Bruce Braley (Iowa), both of whom lost yesterday, received repeated endorsements and cash from J Street, which claimed that both candidates would counter “dangerous, neoconservative ideas” in the Senate. (h/t MtTB)

West has succumbed to madness over Israel, Phillips says

The West has succumbed to madness when it comes to Israel, declared British journalist, author and commentator Melanie Phillips at a recent lecture at Adath Israel Congregation co-sponsored by StandWithUs. This madness takes the form of demonizing Israel despite the fact that the country occupies the moral high ground in the fight against Islamic terrorism.
Phillips opened her remarks with a joke.
“I feel at home here,” she said. “The weather, the objective media, the acts of terrorism.”
However, the global situation is no laughing matter.
“Israel and the Jewish people are under an attack of delegitimization,” Phillips said. “The rest of the world is falling for Muslim rhetoric. The puzzle is that people are falling for this.”
During this summer’s Operation Protective Edge, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rallies took place across the globe. “People in Canada and Britain bought into Hamas falsehoods,” Phillips asserted. “They accepted the claims pumped out by the media as unchallenged fact. It wasn’t surprising that there were demonstrations against Israel after seeing pictures of dead Palestinian babies.
“You would think that political leaders would have the decency to stop this,” Phillips remarked. “On the contrary, virtually nothing was said.”

Ha'aretz' anti-religious math

Antisemites like to pretend that kosher certification is a "kosher tax" that hard-working gentiles have to pay against their will for their food to fund nefarious Jewish and Zionist causes.

Ha'aretz apparently does, too.

Israeli hotel rooms are among the more expensive in the world, according to various economic indexes. The first reason is that the cost of living in Israel is sky-high, and the hotels pay about the same for cottage cheese and electricity as everyone else. The second reason is that unlike hotels anywhere else, hotels have to be kosher. And being certified kosher is expensive.

The writer then goes through many of the time consuming kashrut issues, like checking for bugs in leafy vegetables. But these are done by the kosher inspectors, who are paid to be there anyway.

Here are all the costs mentioned in the article:

Aside from the inspector, hotels pay an annual fee for their kashrut stamp of approval. This costs 7,250 shekels (just under $2,000) a year for hotels with more than 250 rooms. Lior Avi, CEO of the Isrotel chain, says the company spends around $3 million shekels a year (some $800,000) on inspectors alone for their 17 hotels, not including the fee.

OK, let's do the math.

17 hotels paying $800,000 annually comes out to $47,000 per hotel; add the certification fee and we are at about $50,000. If each hotel has 250 rooms, that comes out to $200 per room per year, or, at a low 55% occupancy rate, about a dollar per room per night.

The only other expense mentioned is that the kosher supervisor brings his family on Shabbat and holidays and they get a free room. At most, this adds about another 50 cents per night per room to the hotels expenses.

The additional sets of dishes and cutlery for dairy and meat are not annual expenses, but there is no way they add more than 20 cents more per room per night if they are replaced every five years. The cost of Passover dishes are certainly paid for by the exorbitant increase in hotel fees during that holiday.

So Ha'aretz is blaming Jewish dietary laws for what would account, at the very most, $2 extra per room per night in hotel expenses.

Now, how much would Israeli hotels lose in business if they decide not to be kosher? A lot more than that.

How is this Ha'aretz article any different from the antisemitic canard of kosher taxes?