Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Matti Friedman has more proof of media bias against Israel

Matti Friedman, former AP reporter who blew the whistle on how Middle East reporters are biased against Israel in two explosive Tablet articles earlier this year, has added more in another must-read article, this time in The Atlantic.

Here are significant excerpts, but still less than half the article:

During the Gaza war this summer, it became clear that one of the most important aspects of the media-saturated conflict between Jews and Arabs is also the least covered: the press itself. The Western press has become less an observer of this conflict than an actor in it, a role with consequences for the millions of people trying to comprehend current events, including policymakers who depend on journalistic accounts to understand a region where they consistently seek, and fail, to productively intervene.

[H]ow precisely does this thought pattern manifest itself in the day-to-day functioning, or malfunctioning, of the press corps? To answer this question, I want to explore the way Western press coverage is shaped by unique circumstances here in Israel and also by flaws affecting the media beyond the confines of this conflict.

I’ll begin with a simple illustration. The above photograph is of a student rally held last November at Al-Quds University, a mainstream Palestinian institution in East Jerusalem. The rally, in support of the armed fundamentalist group Islamic Jihad, featured actors playing dead Israeli soldiers and a row of masked men whose stiff-armed salute was returned by some of the hundreds of students in attendance. Similar rallies have been held periodically at the school.

Such an event at an institution like Al-Quds University, headed at the time by a well-known moderate professor, and with ties to sister institutions in America, indicates something about the winds now blowing in Palestinian society and across the Arab world. The rally is interesting for the visual connection it makes between radical Islam here and elsewhere in the region; a picture like this could help explain why many perfectly rational Israelis fear withdrawing their military from East Jerusalem or the West Bank, even if they loathe the occupation and wish to live in peace with their Palestinian neighbors. The images from the demonstration were, as photo editors like to say, “strong.” The rally had, in other words, all the necessary elements of a powerful news story.

The event took place a short drive from the homes and offices of the hundreds of international journalists who are based in Jerusalem. Journalists were aware of it: The sizable Jerusalem bureau of the Associated Press, for example, which can produce several stories on an average day, was in possession of photos of the event, including the one above, a day later. (The photographs were taken by someone I know who was on campus that day, and I sent them to the bureau myself.) Jerusalem editors decided that the images, and the rally, were not newsworthy...On the day that the AP decided to ignore the rally, November 6, 2013, the same bureau published a report about a pledge from the U.S. State Department to provide a minor funding increase for the Palestinian Authority; that was newsworthy. This is standard. To offer another illustration, the construction of 100 apartments in a Jewish settlement is always news; the smuggling of 100 rockets into Gaza by Hamas is, with rare exceptions, not news at all.

I mention these instances to demonstrate the kind of decisions made regularly in the bureaus of the foreign press covering Israel and the Palestinian territories, and to show the way in which the pipeline of information from this place is not just rusty and leaking, which is the usual state of affairs in the media, but intentionally plugged.

Journalistic decisions are made by people who exist in a particular social milieu, one which, like most social groups, involves a certain uniformity of attitude, behavior, and even dress (the fashion these days, for those interested, is less vests with unnecessary pockets than shirts with unnecessary buttons). These people know each other, meet regularly, exchange information, and closely watch one another’s work. This helps explain why a reader looking at articles written by the half-dozen biggest news providers in the region on a particular day will find that though the pieces are composed and edited by completely different people and organizations, they tend to tell the same story.

...[I]n Israel and the Palestinian territories, foreign activists are a notable feature of the landscape, and international NGOs and numerous arms of the United Nations are among the most powerful players, wielding billions of dollars and employing many thousands of foreign and local employees. Their SUVs dominate sections of East Jerusalem and their expense accounts keep Ramallah afloat. They provide reporters with social circles, romantic partners, and alternative employment—a fact that is more important to reporters now than it has ever been, given the disintegration of many newspapers and the shoestring nature of their Internet successors.

In my time in the press corps, I learned that our relationship with these groups was not journalistic. My colleagues and I did not, that is, seek to analyze or criticize them. For many foreign journalists, these were not targets but sources and friends—fellow members, in a sense, of an informal alliance. This alliance consists of activists and international staffers from the UN and the NGOs; the Western diplomatic corps, particularly in East Jerusalem; and foreign reporters. ... Mingling occurs at places like the lovely Oriental courtyard of the American Colony hotel in East Jerusalem, or at parties held at the British Consulate’s rooftop pool. The dominant characteristic of nearly all of these people is their transience. They arrive from somewhere, spend a while living in a peculiar subculture of expatriates, and then move on.

In these circles, in my experience, a distaste for Israel has come to be something between an acceptable prejudice and a prerequisite for entry. I don’t mean a critical approach to Israeli policies or to the ham-fisted government currently in charge in this country, but a belief that to some extent the Jews of Israel are a symbol of the world’s ills, particularly those connected to nationalism, militarism, colonialism, and racism—an idea quickly becoming one of the central elements of the “progressive” Western zeitgeist, spreading from the European left to American college campuses and intellectuals, including journalists. In this social group, this sentiment is translated into editorial decisions made by individual reporters and editors covering Israel, and this, in turn, gives such thinking the means of mass self-replication.

Many freshly arrived reporters in Israel undergo a rapid socialization in the circles I mentioned. This provides them not only with sources and friendships but with a ready-made framework for their reporting—the tools to distill and warp complex events into a simple narrative in which there is a bad guy who doesn’t want peace and a good guy who does. This is the “Israel story,” and it has the advantage of being an easy story to report. Everyone here answers their cell phone, and everyone knows what to say. You can put your kids in good schools and dine at good restaurants. It’s fine if you’re gay. Your chances of being beheaded on YouTube are slim. Nearly all of the information you need—that is, in most cases, information critical of Israel—is not only easily accessible but has already been reported for you by Israeli journalists or compiled by NGOs. You can claim to be speaking truth to power, having selected the only “power” in the area that poses no threat to your safety.

Confusion over the role of the press explains one of the strangest aspects of coverage here—namely, that while international organizations are among the most powerful actors in the Israel story, they are almost never reported on. Are they bloated, ineffective, or corrupt? Are they helping, or hurting? We don’t know, because these groups are to be quoted, not covered. Journalists cross from places like the BBC to organizations like Oxfam and back. The current spokesman at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, for example, is a former BBC man. A Palestinian woman who participated in protests against Israel and tweeted furiously about Israel a few years ago served at the same time as a spokesperson for a UN office, and was close friends with a few reporters I know. And so forth.

In the aftermath of the three-week Gaza war of 2008-2009, not yet quite understanding the way things work, I spent a week or so writing a story about NGOs like Human Rights Watch, whose work on Israel had just been subject to an unusual public lashing in The New York Times by its own founder, Robert Bernstein.

Editors killed the story.

Around this time, a Jerusalem-based group called NGO Monitor was battling the international organizations condemning Israel after the Gaza conflict, and though the group was very much a pro-Israel outfit and by no means an objective observer, it could have offered some partisan counterpoint in our articles to charges by NGOs that Israel had committed “war crimes.” But the bureau’s explicit orders to reporters were to never quote the group or its director, an American-born professor named Gerald Steinberg. In my time as an AP writer moving through the local conflict, with its myriad lunatics, bigots, and killers, the only person I ever saw subjected to an interview ban was this professor.

The radio and print journalist Mark Lavie, who has reported from the region since 1972, was a colleague of mine at the AP, where he was an editor in the Jerusalem bureau and then in Cairo until his retirement last year. Lavie believes that in the last years of his career, the AP’s Israel operation drifted from its traditional role of careful explanation toward a kind of political activism that both contributed to and fed off growing hostility to Israel worldwide. “The AP is extremely important, and when the AP turned, it turned a lot of the world with it,” Lavie said. “That’s when it became harder for any professional journalist to work here, Jewish or not. I reject the idea that my dissatisfaction had to do with being Jewish or Israeli. It had to do with being a journalist.”

When Hamas’s leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby—and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas. (This happened.) Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff—and the AP wouldn’t report it. (This also happened.) Cameramen waiting outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties and then, at a signal from an official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying. (This too happened; the information comes from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge of these incidents.)

Colford, the AP spokesman, confirmed that armed militants entered the AP’s Gaza office in the early days of the war to complain about a photo showing the location of a rocket launch, though he said that Hamas claimed that the men “did not represent the group.” The AP “does not report many interactions with militias, armies, thugs or governments,” he wrote. “These incidents are part of the challenge of getting out the news—and not themselves news.”

This summer, with Yazidis, Christians, and Kurds falling back before the forces of radical Islam not far away from here, this ideology’s local franchise launched its latest war against the last thriving minority in the Middle East. The Western press corps showed up en masse to cover it. This conflict included rocket barrages across Israel and was deliberately fought from behind Palestinian civilians, many of whom died as a result. Dulled by years of the “Israel story” and inured to its routine omissions, confused about the role they are meant to play, and co-opted by Hamas, reporters described this war as an Israeli onslaught against innocent people. By doing so, this group of intelligent and generally well-meaning professionals ceased to be reliable observers and became instead an amplifier for the propaganda of one of the most intolerant and aggressive forces on earth. And that, as they say, is the story.

Read the whole thing.

Apparent leftist "price tag" attack against synagogue in Tel Aviv

From Arutz-7:

A Tel Aviv synagogue was vandalized Sunday with graffiti reading, “In a place where the Jewish State Bill will be legislated, books will be burned.”

The vandals left a pile of burned books next to the wall that bore the graffiti. The books are not sacred texts.

The attack took place at the The Tel Aviv International Synagogue where Ariel Konstantyn of the Orthodox Zionist Tzohar Rabbis organization, originally of New York, serves as rabbi. Rabbi Konstantyn says the incident has been referred to the police but he views it as a “clear act of anti-Semitism.” According to the rabbi, the timing of the attack and the explicit graffiti seem to indicate that this was perpetrated by radical left-wing activists.

Rabbi Konstantyn expressed his shock saying “It is ironic and shocking that they targeted a synagogue where every perspective is respected and welcomed and where Jews are taught to love each other regardless of their political views.”

The rabbi pointed out that the founding of the International Synagogue was as initiative of the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization as a hub of inclusive outreach to the greater Tel-Aviv community. Over the past few years the synagogue has hosted Shabbat & holiday programs for thousands of Jews from all walks of life and political backgrounds.

Ah, so they burn books as a preventative measure to stop their opponents from burning books, a threat that only exists in their most antisemitic fantasies.

Got it.

But since they are apparently from the Left, we won't be seeing any Reuters or NYT articles on this house of worship being vandalized. Wwe need to be tolerant of the intolerant leftist haters of Judaism, especially the Jews..

I find it interesting that this attack was so well planned that the arsonists had created a stencil ahead of time to leave their little threat.

The Levy Report, fully translated

I have had the legal arguments of the 2012 Levy Report on the legality of the settlements translated but Regavim translated the entire thing.

The Levy Commission Report on the Legal Status of Building in Judea and Samaria

11/30 Links: Prosor: The UN's theater of the absurd; The lion-killer who became an Israeli hero

From Ian:

Ron Prosor: The UN's theater of the absurd

On Nov. 29, 1947, a Saturday night, the entire Yishuv (the Jewish community of pre-state Israel) held its breath. The tiny voice of Brazilian U.N. General Assembly President Osvaldo Aranha blared from the radios in every home. The agenda for the day: Resolution 181 on the end of the British Mandate and the partition plan of Palestine. Holocaust survivors, Jews who were kicked out of Arab lands, the many waves of immigrants to Israel, the pioneers and those who immigrated illegally all cast their lot with the promising institution that would be a magnificent monument to the triumph of good over evil in World War II.
Sixty-seven years after that historical vote -- the U.N.'s shattered dream lies before us. Over the years, it has gone from a monument of victory to a memorial, a remnant of the hope that has vanished. Although it was designed to prevent the reoccurrence of Nazi crimes, the U.N. has become an international arena for Arab criminal bullying. The Arab world attacked the Yishuv only hours after rejecting the outcome of the vote, and it did not stop even after the thunder of the Napoleon cannons subsided at the end of the War of Independence. The unification of Arab and Muslim countries at the U.N. has created the foundation for a 120-state-strong anti-Israel diplomatic cartel.

Douglas Murray: Baroness Warsi's Obsession

What seems odd is this obsession with Israel, with which she has no ties. Yet this Baroness, who claims to be motivated only by moral outrage, is considerably silent on the far worse moral outrages that go on day in and day out in a country with which she does have ties — of which she made a virtue while in office. Yet Baroness Warsi ignores entirely the horrific and continual human rights abuses in her own family's homeland of Pakistan. Whether it is Christians being burned alive or the practice of "bonded labor" (slavery), Warsi appears utterly unconcerned. At present, a Christian mother of four is due to be hanged for blasphemy.
What is far more important is that the obsessions and blind spots of Baroness Warsi are the obsessions and blind spots being taught to a generation.

Elliott Abrams: Business as usual with UNRWA

The Framework concludes this way:‎
"The United States expects to remain an active participant in UNRWA's Advisory ‎Commission, which meets twice per year, and should endeavor to provide advice and ‎guidance to UNRWA through its engagement at meetings of the Advisory Commission. In ‎‎2015, the United States is expected to serve as Vice Chair of the Subcommittee to the ‎Advisory Commission and endeavors to provide leadership and support to the Subcommittee in its capacity as a technical advisory group to the Advisory Commission. The ‎United States and UNRWA should regularly consult bilaterally on policy and program issues ‎identified in this Framework.‎"
Here are some ideas for those regular bilateral consultations in 2015: No more business as ‎usual. Thorough, independent investigations of each rocket incident. An investigation of the ‎health clinic incident. An investigation of the influence of Hamas on UNRWA staff, and ‎through that staff and its union on UNRWA schools and other facilities.‎
There is no possible claim of ignorance. Last summer's war exposed the UNRWA-Hamas ‎ties yet again. In that context it is shocking that the State Department has signed a Framework that ‎mentions none of this, none at all, and says nothing about curing it and preventing ‎recurrence. Shocking -- but, one has to admit, not particularly surprising.‎

The West Supports Terrorism Against Israel Through UNRWA

In the past several months, the corruption of the UNRWA has become more evident than ever, though most of the mainstream media has kept it under wraps. Over the summer, for example, during Operation Protective Edge when Israel fought back against Hamas in Gaza after the terrorism against Jews had reached a boiling point, it was revealed that Hamas rockets were being stored in UNRWA schools. In one case, the rockets had “mysteriously” gone missing after discovery and in another, the UN returned the rockets to Hamas despite publicly condemning the terror group for using the school as an arsenal.
The schools served another purpose for Hamas as rocket launching sites. At one point during the war, when a UNRWA school was bombed and Israel was blamed, it turned out that Hamas had misfired a rocket, which exploded on its own school. The initial media outrage was aimed at Israel, but the subsequent findings against Hamas were not quite so newsworthy.
More recently, UNRWA educators have been caught supporting terror, but this news, uncovered by the “Elder of Ziyon” blogger, has not made it to the mainstream media. More specifically, the contents of the social media accounts of UNRWA school principals demonstrate blatant anti-Semitism and full support of terror against Israel. As “Elder of Ziyon” writes, “Is it a UN principle for principals to support terror?”

Due to never-ending Arab hostility toward Jews in the Middle East I am reading more and more people talking about the possibility of transference. Mainly in the comments of various pro-Israel blogs and news websites, but among some well respected high-profile analysts, as well, the idea of inducing Israeli-Arabs to move out of the area seems to be growing.

This is a natural response to the efforts of Arabs within Israel to the murder of Jews, up to and including ramming babies with automobiles. My sense is that Jewish people around the world, although particularly in Israel, have about had it. From my perspective, Jewish people have a tendency to be rather passive. As a historically persecuted minority our tendency has been to keep our head down so that others do not take a kick at it, But there must come a point wherein even the most intimidated minority is forced to stand up for itself in order to defend its own survival.

The Arabs have pushed the Jews to the point wherein physical coercion looks more and more likely. We are, after all, directly within the midst of the Third Arab Terror War (Intifada) against the Jews of the Middle East and my suspicion is that however much fun the previous two were, that Israeli Jews may no longer be in the mood to take the abuse and they should not have to.

Thus some people talk about the necessity of financially inducing Arabs to leave the Land of Israel, while others even discuss the possibility of using armed force to push them out of Jewish lives. I just want to take a brief moment in order to suggest what a terrible idea forced transference is and I have to assume that most Jews who care about Israel are in opposition to any such policy. The first reason that such a thing needs to be opposed is because it violates Jewish ethics. Any policy of forced transference would mean that untold numbers of perfectly innocent people would be dragged from their homes and placed within internment camps in preparation for deportation... to G-d Knows Where.

Polling indicates that the Israeli-Arab population despises Jews and looks fondly upon violence toward us. Nonetheless, not all Arabs of Israel hate Jews and not all want to see violence against us. To push such people out of their homes would be highly unethical and therefore entirely unJewish.

To my ear the previous sentence sounds a bit too vacuous, a bit too obvious, but maybe it needs to be said, anyway. While World War II gives us plenty of historical precedents for population transference, any such move would, in truth, be a moral and practical non-starter... if I may steal another man's line.

Also, of course, the rest of the world community might have a thing or two to say about any such operation. Vicious left-wing anti-Semites already tend to think of Jews as Nazis. Can you imagine what people around the world will say once they start processing images of the IDF pushing old Arab women and young children into deportation camps? If you think that they hate us already and it cannot get much worse, I suspect that you should think again.

The western-left despises Jewish self-defense which they interpret as a form of aggression. Prior to the strangely named Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, the Gazans shot thousands of rockets into southern Israel, ruining communities and lives. The rest of the world did not notice, nor did they care. It was only when Israel finally stood up to undermine Hamas's terrorist infrastructure and destroy those Jihadi kidnapping tunnels that people throughout the world leaped out of their chairs and denounced the Jews of Israel for committing a "genocide" against the perfectly innocent, bunny-like "indigenous" population.

If the Jews were to push the Arabs out of Israel, Europe would go entirely nuts. If you think that BDS is an annoyance now wait until the boost it gets from any Israeli policy of forced transference. The Europeans, who are already generally unfriendly toward Israel, would take harsh measures against what would be perceived as a fascistic Israeli policy. Some might think that due to economic reasons, or reasons to do with scientific exchange and trade, that the Europeans and the rest of the world would gripe, but shortly get over it. That might be the case, but I would not count on it and it would make for a terrible gamble.

As a poker player, I would not make that bet.

This, however, does not mean that there are not forceful measures that Israel can take in order make Arab hatred toward Jews unpleasant for the Arabs, themselves.

This is what my friend Caroline Glick has to say:

Rather than destroy their homes, Israel should adopt the US anti-narcotics policy of asset seizure.
All assets directly or indirectly tied to terrorists, including their homes and any other structure where they planned their crimes, and all remittances to them, should be seized and transferred to their victims, to do with what they will.
If Israel hands over the homes of the synagogue butchers to the 24 orphans of Rabbi Moshe Twersky, Rabbi Kalman Levine, Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky and Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, not only will justice be served. The children’s inheritance of the homes of their fathers’ killers will send a clear and demoralizing message to other would-be killers.
Not only will their atrocities fail to remove the Jews from Israel. Every terrorist will contribute to the Zionist project by donating his home to the Jewish settlement enterprise.

There are any number of creative measures that Israel can take short of housing destruction or forced transference to show the Arabs that the government means business and will simply not allow this kind of violence toward the Jewish people in the Jewish State. Seizing assets is one way of showing Israeli-Arabs that if they seek violence toward Jews their family will pay a major price for it.

Another thing that must be done is liberalizing Israeli policy toward the Temple Mount.

That the Arabs have intimidated the Jews into giving up sovereignty of our holiest site is galling, counterproductive, and should not be tolerated. All people should be allowed free and equal access to the Mount and all people - not just Muslims - should be allowed to pray there. Jews and Christians and Rastafarians and Rosicrucians and Hindus and Buddhists and Taoists and NeoPagans and the Bahai and the Sikhs, and any and all heathens, should all be allowed equal access to the site with Muslims and all must be allowed to pray there.

Anything else represents deference to Arab-Muslim race-hatred toward Jews and others right in the heart of Jerusalem.

And, needless to say, rock throwing and other attempts at murder should be met with ferocity. I may be opposed to home demolitions and forced transference of a hostile population, but I also very much believe in Jewish self-defense.

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.

The misery of Jews of Morocco, 1805

Today is Israel's national day of commemorating Jewish refugees from Arab lands and Iran.

Muslims like to pretend that they treated Jews in their lands well throughout history. As we have shown a number of times, that is not at all true. In some cases the Jews were treated reasonably, in others they were treated horribly.

Ali Bey al Abbasi was a pseudonym of a European traveler who disguised himself as a Muslim prince in order to explore the Muslim world from Morocco to Mecca between 1803 and 1807.

Here is his account of the Jews of Morocco, from Travels of Ali Bey: In Morocco, Tripoli, Cyprus, Egypt, Arabia, Syria and Turkey : Between the Years 1803 and 1807:

THE Jews in Morocco are in the most abject state of slavery; but at Tangier it is remarkable that they live intermingled with the Moors, without having any separate quarter, which is the case in all other places where the Mahometan religion prevails. This distinction occasions perpetual disagreements; it excites disputes, in which, if the Jew is wrong, the Moor takes his own satisfaction; and if the Jew is right, he lodges a complaint with the judge, who always decides in favour of the Mussulman. This shocking partiality in the dispensation of justice between individuals of different sects begins from the cradle; so that a Mussulman child will insult and strike a Jew, whatever be his age and infirmities, without his being allowed to complain, or even to defend himself. This inequality prevails even among the children of these different religions; so that I have seen the Mahometan children amuse themselves with beating little Jews, without these daring to defend themselves.

The Jews are obliged, by order of the Government, to wear a particular dress» composed of large drawers, of a tunic, which descends to their knees, Of a kind of burnous or cloak thrown on one side, slippers, and a very small cap; every part of their dress is black except the shirt, of which the sleeves are extremely wide, open, and hanging down very low.

When a Jew passes before a mosque, he is obliged to take off his slippers, or sandals; he must do the same when he passes before the house of the Kaid, the Kadi, or of any Mussulman of distinction. At Fez ami in some other towns they are obliged to walk barefoot.

When they meet a Mussulman of high rank they are obliged to turn away hastily to a certain distance on the left of the road, to leave their sandals on the ground several paces off, and to put themselves into a most humble posture, their body intirely bent forward, till the Mussulman has passed to a great distance; if they hesitate to do this, or to dismount from their horse when they meet a Mahometan, they are severely punished. I have often been obliged to restrain my soldiers or servants from beating these poor wretches, when they were not active enough in placing themselves in the humble attitude prescribed on them by the Mahometan tyranny.

Notwithstanding these inconveniencies, the Jews carry on a considerable trade at Morocco, and have even several times farmed the custom-house; but it happens almost always that in the end they are plundered by the Moors, or by the Government. On my arrival, I had two Jews amongst my servants: when I saw that they were so ill treated and vexed in different ways, I asked them why they did not go to another country; they answered me, that they could not do so because they were slaves of the sultan.

Jordanian MP: "I hate the Jews, I hate the Jews, I hate the Jews"

But don't call him antisemitic! That would be Islamophobic!

From MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from a show featuring Jordanian MPs discussing parliament's moment of silence in memory of terrorists who attacked a Jerusalem Synagogue, which aired on Roya TV on November 26, 2014:

MP Khalil Attieh: By Allah, it is an honor to incite against the Jews. It is a great accomplishment to provoke and incense them. Let us continue with similar decisions, because this is what the Jordanian people want. Our people in Palestine expect us to support them, and to recite Koranic verses for the souls of their martyrs. This is the very least we can do for the sake of those heroes, who defend the honor of the Arab nation.
[…]
MP Bassam Al-Manaseer, chairman of the Arab and International Affairs Parliamentary Committee: Are we going to call the French who fought the Nazi occupation "terrorists"? If so, we are all terrorists. If what we did in parliament is considered incitement, just because we stood by the Palestinian people, then we welcome the policy of incitement. I thank brother Khalil Attiah for his heroic position. That is the very least that he can do for our people in Palestine.

MP Khalil Attieh: This position is supported by all.

Moderator: The [Israeli] ambassador said that you use anti-Israel sentiment as a means to serve your own personal interests…

MP Khalil Attieh: As my colleague said, if this is terrorism, we are terrorists. Indeed, I make use of the hatred of the Jews, as all Arabs should, because the Jews respect neither treaties nor human beings. They respect nothing. That accursed ambassador did me a great honor by saying that I hate the Jews. Yes, I hate the Jews. I hate the Jews. I hate the Jews.

What have the Jews ever given us? They do not respect Jordanian custodianship [of the Al-Aqsa Mosque]. They do not respect treaties. They kill our people. They prevent worshippers from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque. They destroy homes and seize control over everything. This is the least we could have done. Thank God that we got them mad.
[…]
Hating the Jews is a great honor for me and it makes me walk with my head high, because they are worthy of hatred. They are not decent people. Any man of honor should hate the Jews.
[…]
[Parliament should debate] the statements of [the Israeli ambassador], that pig, the descendent of apes and pigs, who tried to drive a wedge between the parliament and the king. We should hold a debate, and if the government refuses to expel the Israeli ambassador, we should hand in our vote of no confidence in the government.

Today's "storming Al Aqsa" video

Ma'an reports, in English:

A group of Jewish Israelis entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound early Sunday, witnesses told Ma'an.

Witnesses said that about 50 right-wing Israelis stormed the compound through the Moroccan Gate and tried to provoke Muslim worshipers, who responded by chanting "Allahu akbar," or "God is the greatest."

The Israelis exited the compound through the Chain Gate and proceeded to perform Jewish rituals, the witnesses said.

The Arabic version called the visitors "49 extremists."

Here's video of the "provocation" from two separate Facebook accounts.

I have looked at dozens of videos taken by Arabs on the Temple Mount and have yet to see any Jewish visitor behave in any provocative manner.

Oh, I forgot: the fact that they are Jewish is provocative to begin with!

And in case you still have the slightest, tiniest doubt that the complaints against Jews visiting the Temple Mount is motivated by anything but old fashioned Jew-hatred, here is a cartoon I saw floating around Arabic social media:

The saga of the Israeli "Arab Idol" contestant

Last Saturday, one of the two contestants for "Arab Idol" who have Israeli citizenship lost the competition when she gathered the lowest number of votes:

Manal Mousa, an Israeli contestant on the Arab world's premier singing competition, was eliminated on Saturday's live-performance episodes.

The judges of Arab Idol were shocked by Mousa's elimination, and she thanked them graciously for their support before turning to her political message. "I want to pass a message for the yellow journalism that fought me – I am Palestinian and Palestinian blood flows through me."

She had made a number of anti-Israel statements during her competition:

Mousa, a 27-year-old resident of Deir Al-Assad in northern Israel, set off massive shockwaves with her statements during her time on Arab Idol, as she took to Facebook to demonstrate her pro-Palestinian credentials.

Mousa called Khair Hamdan, the Kafr Kanna who was killed by Israeli police officers, a "martyr" and encouraged protests and demonstrations across the Arab sector. "Palestine is revolting, Israeli Arabs are revolting, Kafr Kanna is revolting," she wrote.

But it seems that one reason she lost is because Arabs were starting rumors that she was pro-Israel!

After Israel's Arabic spokesman Avichai Adraee noted that Israel allowed the two Israeli contestants to travel to Lebanon to compete in the show. This apparent "support" by Israel for the contestants seems to have started a number of rumors, including that she was in the Israeli army, or that her father was in the IDF.

This was the "yellow journalism" she was referring to.

As "evidence" of her family's pro-Israel credentials, a video surfaced of her sister Sabrin auditioning for an Israeli talent show program.

Even though Sabrin sang a classic Arab tune, that fact that she was on the show at all, speaking Hebrew with the judges, and otherwise acting like a person who doesn't hate Israel seems to have turned the Arab voters against Manal by association.

The subtext of many of Manal's critics is that all Arab citizens of Israel as traitors to the Palestinian Arab cause, something which would seem to be a bit contradictory with the idea of "return." Until you realize that "return" is meant to destroy Israel, not to solve any "refugee" problem. As long as Israel exists, Israeli Arabs are considered to be collaborators with the Zionist enemy.

So far, I have not seen the same kind of backlash against the remaining Israeli Arab in the competition, Haitham Khailily.

From Ma'an:

A Palestinian police officer was shot and killed by Egyptian soldiers on Friday after he unwittingly drove his car into a military ambush, Palestinian police in the Sinai told Ma'an.

Imad Fayyad Abdallah, 38, was shot dead near the town of Sheikh Zuweid in the northern Sinai Peninsula.

He had driven his car into an area when Egyptian soldiers had set up an ambush targeting militant groups active in the area, and he failed to stop after warning shots were fired in the air, Palestinian police told Ma'an.

When he attempted to turn his car around to avoid the ambush, meanwhile, Egyptian soldiers opened fire, striking him in the head.

This brings up a number of points.

1. It goes without saying that no Palestinian Arabs will protest this killing even though anyone killed under similar circumstances by Israel would be the subject of numerous outraged protests, op-eds and UN speeches.

2. Egyptian media is, as far as I can tell, silent on this incident. In general, Egypt's media is under a gag order against reporting any civilians or innocents being killed in the protracted campaign against Islamists in the Sinai. However, sometimes, civilians are killed.

3. The story says that the source for this story was "Palestinian police" in the Sinai, besides the victim.

Al Moslim says that Abdallah was member of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah. Wattan TV said that he lived in El Arish, Egypt with his wife and three children, but that he was a colonel in the PA's Preventive Security Force.

Why are there Palestinian police in the Sinai?

UPDATE: It appears that Abdallah was one of many Fatah members, probably loyal to strongman Mohammed Dahlan, who fled Gaza when Hamas took over in 2007. (h/t Bob Knot)

11/29 Links: Abbas: Palestinians will never recognize Israel as Jewish state; Is CAIR a Terror Group?

From Ian:

Stand With Us: StandWithUs Pro-Israel Ads On TriMet in Portland Begin November 26, 2014

For the third time in three years, StandWithUs (SWU) is placing pro-Israel ads on TriMet buses to counter anti-Israel ad campaigns. Beginning November 26, two different StandWithUs ads are on 17 buses running on the same routes and for at least the same four-week duration as the anti-Israel ones.
SWU, an international Israel education organization with a Northwest regional office in Seattle, also countered similar ads on Portland light rail and buses in 2012 and 2013.
One StandWithUs bus ad shows that the Palestinians have said "NO" to Israel's peace offers and territorial compromises since 1937. The other StandWithUs bus ad shows a Palestinian and Israeli boy hugging, juxtaposed with an Israeli transit bus blown apart by a suicide bombing, with the words: "Say NO to Palestinian War Crimes," and reminds viewers that Israel needs a partner for peace. The ads direct viewers to www.sayyestopeace.org to learn more.
These SWU ads counter anti-Israel ads placed by The Seattle Mideast Awareness campaign (SeaMAC), Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights, and Jewish Voice for Peace - Portland, which accused Israel of war crimes and implied that US tax dollars are being used to support apartheid.

Isi Leibler: Coping with religiously inspired terrorism

This latest escalation of incitement is yet another extension of the hatred against Jews ‎inculcated among the Arabs but which accelerated after the Oslo accords. Yasser Arafat and ‎then Abbas have effectively brainwashed generations of Arabs -- from kindergarten age on -- into ‎fanatically hating Jews and sanctifying as "martyrs" those willing to sacrifice their lives and gain ‎paradise by killing them. ‎
The Palestinians have, in fact, been molded into a criminal society adopting a culture of death ‎only comparable to the Nazis who, once in power, also brainwashed Germans into committing ‎barbaric crimes. And those, including Jews, who morally equate this monstrous society with ‎Israel because the Jewish state like any country also includes deviants and degenerates, are ‎making obscene analogies.‎
Every level of Israeli society, from the leadership to the media and down to the man in the ‎street, reacts with shock, horror, disgust and condemnation against our deviants. Contrast this ‎to the public display, not merely in Gaza but also in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Nablus, as ‎Palestinians celebrated the most recent horror their "martyrs" had inflicted on Jews praying in ‎a synagogue. ‎

Daniel Pipes: Is CAIR a Terror Group?

We who follow the Islamist movement fell off our collective chair on Nov. 15 when the news came that the United Arab Emirates' ministerial cabinet had listed the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as one of 83 proscribed terrorist organizations, up there with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS.
This came as a surprise because the UAE authorities themselves have a record of promoting Islamism; because CAIR has a history of raising funds in the UAE; and because the UAE embassy in Washington had previously praised CAIR.
On reflection, however, the listing makes sense for, in recent years, the Islamist movement has gravely fractured. Sunnis fight Shi'is; advocates of violence struggle against those working within the system; modernizers do battle against those trying to return to the seventh century; and monarchists confront republicans.
This last divide concerns us here. After decades of working closely with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and its related institutions, the Persian Gulf monarchies (with the single, striking exception of Qatar) have come to see the MB complex of institutions as a threat to their existence. The Saudi, Emirati, Kuwaiti, and Bahraini rulers now view politicians like Mohamed Morsi of Egypt as their enemies, as they do Hamas and its progeny – including CAIR.

11/28 Links Pt2: What about the Jewish Nakba?; The Truth About Israel’s Jewish State Law

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: What about the Jewish Nakba?

Let's set the record straight. The disintegration of the empires, beginning with the Ottoman, through to the Austro-Hungarian, and on to the British, intensified the demand on the part of various peoples for self-determination – no more multi-ethnic states under imperial rule, but nations with a sense of independent identity instead. Some would call it an imaginary heritage, but that's not important.
The result was huge waves of population transfers, beginning in 1912 and through to the years following World War II. Around 52 million people underwent the experience, including tens of millions in the period after the war.
Millions of Germans, Hungarians, Poles, Ukrainians, Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians, Indians, Pakistanis and more and more were forced to leave their birthplaces to make way for national entities, old and new. One would be hard pressed to find a single conflict during the period in question that did not end without a population exchange.
The population exchanges between Greece and Turkey also served as a backdrop for the commission's decision. At the time, this was the position held by statesmen, scholars and intellectuals. Furthermore, in 1930, the Permanent Court of International Justice, the highest international judicial instance at the time, approved population transfers by force when it ruled that the purpose of mass population transfers was to "more effectively aid the process of pacification of the Near East."(h/t Elder of Lobby)

When the Mayflower docked in Haifa

Nineteen-year-old Brooklyn, New York, native Philip Levine had the same ecstatic reaction as countless other American Jews on November 29, 1947. That was the day the United Nations voted to partition British Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state — the Jewish leadership accepting and surrounding Arab countries rejecting the decision.
“It was shortly after the Jewish holidays and we were all glued to the television listening one by one as they counted the votes,” Levine, now 86, recalled from his home in Jerusalem.
“When it was finalized we all exploded with joy and began contacting former US servicemen asking for binoculars, uniforms, and even guns that could be collected and sent to Palestine because we knew war was imminent,” he said.
Weeks later Levine realized he had to do more and volunteered his services to a Jewish organization called Land and Labor for Palestine.
Land and Labor’s mission was ostensibly to send American Jews to kibbutzim where they would replace the local workforce who were called up to the army. However, from the moment Levine signed up he wasn’t trying to fool anyone.

Talking ‘Turkey’ to President Obama

In my Thanksgiving dream, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to visit St. Louis and the local community of Ferguson to try to help restore calm.
“We call on both sides to show restraint,” said Netanyahu, sending a copy of his message to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.
“We hope that America can live up to its democratic ideals,” said the Israeli foreign ministry spokesman (in my dream). It was clear he was enjoying the irony of throwing the State Department’s words back at it.
“We hope that American security officials will use minimum force and not commit any hate crimes or war crimes,” declared (in my dream) Labor Party leader Yitzhak Herzog, perhaps remembering how Barack Obama spoke about Israel’s use of force against terrorists firing rockets at Israeli cities a few months ago.
“We call on U.S. law enforcement to institute a full and open investigation of the use of deadly force,” wrote Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett in a separate letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
But this was only a dream.

The Truth About Israel’s Jewish State Law

The law is often bashed from an American standpoint as being out of tune with Western values. Former Israeli Education Minister Yuli Tamir claimed it was the opposite of the U.S. Constitution, while Avital Burg at The Forward mocked the bill by noting that if it existed in the U.S. it would read “Protestant values will serve as inspiration to lawmakers and judges.”
But what these voices miss is that many states in the world enshrine in law various aspects of their national and religious identity. Michael Freund writes at The Jerusalem Post, that “in Great Britain the Queen is required to be a member of the Anglican Church” and in Denmark the Lutheran Church is guaranteed state support. Israel’s nation state law, and Israel’s existing character as an overwhelmingly Jewish state with Jewish symbols, are similar to most other countries, such as Greece, Bulgaria, Ireland, Croatia, Iran, Japan, or Malaysia. Israel may be out of step with American conceptions of liberal democracy but not necessarily with the rest of the world.
There is a cartoon going around the web showing David Ben-Gurion reading the Declaration of Independence and someone shouting “fascist” at him, mocking how people are calling the nation state bill “fascist.” Israel’s Declaration of Independence, that critics of the law claim strikes a “balance” between Jewish and democratic, actually uses the word “Jew” twenty-four times. It never uses the word democratic. It does speak of the “natural right of the Jews to be masters of their own fate” and”right of the Jewish people to a national rebirth” and “right of the Jewish people to rebuild its national home.” The declaration’s has one paragraph devoted to the “complete equality of all its inhabitants” and says that the state will provide those inhabitants freedom “as envisioned by the prophets of Israel.” Those criticizing the Jewish nation state bill as out of step with Israel’s declaration of independence or original view of Zionism evidently didn’t read the declaration.

Hamas newspaper: "No such thing as an Israeli civilian"

Felesteen, a Hamas newspaper, has an article looking at international condemnations of the Jerusalem synagogue slaughter, and describing how they are all wrong and that every Jew in Israel is in fact a military target.

The article does not distinguish between Jews living on either side of the Green Line. It says that Jews have had mandatory army service since 1948 and therefore they are all considered valid targets.

After going through a series of increasingly bogus arguments that every Israeli Jew should be killed because of what they have done to Arabs and olive trees, the article concludes:

Certainly President Obama and his advisers are not ignorant of these facts, and they know full well that it is the legitimate rights internationally for the peoples of the occupied territory to resist the occupiers in every way including the use of arms. But the US president is committed to the strategy adopted since President Wilson in 1919 as Israel is an asset that serves the interests of the major powers and the United States. Obama's predecessors have committed to defend them and protect them and enable them to perform their function to serve US national interests in the Arab world, despite exceeding international laws and norms.

It then goes on to blame Abbas for not being adequately amenable to terror attacks against Jewish civilians.

During the Gaza war, former general Giora Eiland wrote an op-ed in YNet saying that there is no such thing as innocent civilians in Gaza. He was broadly criticized, and rightly - the Geneva Conventions defines who is a civilian and who is not, and he cannot redefine it no matter what war crimes Hamas commits.

I somehow doubt that the many "human rights" activists who slammed Eiland will ever say a word about Hamas when it says the same thing about Israelis.

11/28 Links Pt1: Sick: BDS spreads photoshop of Concentration Camp inmates with anti-Israel signs

From Ian:

Sick: BDS groups spreads photoshop of Concentration Camp inmates holding anti-Israel signs

We are dealing with some really sick minds when it comes to the proponents of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement propaganda machine.
The latest is from a group with over 91,000 Facebook fans, called “I Acknowledge Apartheid Exists.”
That phrase is an integral part of the BDS movement, which falsely seeks to portray Israel as the equivalent of apartheid South Africa. That claim of Apartheid status was the founding propaganda principle of the BDS movement, which was started at the anti-Semitic 2001 Durban conference.
The group has posted a photoshop of Nazi concentration camp inmates holding anti-Israel signs, on its Facebook page. It’s unclear if the group created it, or is just promoting it.
The image is being spread by others as well, such as the Central NY Committee for Justice in Palestine:
To compare, as they often do, Israel’s response to Hamas and Islamic Jihad rocket fire from Gaza to the systematic industrialized extermination of Europe’s Jewish population not only is grossly inaccurate, it reflects a commitment to demonizing and dehumanizing Israel beyond a political or military dispute.
This propaganda reflects the evil and sick nature of the people behind the BDS movement. While I’m all in favor of dialogue, I don’t know how you try to reason with people like that, who have lost all touch with reality and truth.

Caroline Glick: The storm over the teacup

The Right, like the majority of the public that supports it and votes for it, recognizes that the greatest danger to Israel’s democratic system and status as a Jewish state is the radicalized legal system. But today the Right lacks the power to pass the legislation required to curb the power of Israel’s unelected legal rulers.
Rather than doing the hard work of running a continuous, relentless campaign to accrue the requisite power to reform the system, politicians on the Right have embraced an unnecessary bill that will do nothing to protect Israel's future.
On the other hand, their counterparts on the Left have shown that the Israeli Left is today largely indistinguishable from the international Left which rejects Israel’s right to exist and rejects the Jewish people’s right to sovereignty and freedom in its homeland. With Haaretz acting as the conduit between the BDS movement and government ministers, politicians on the Left have become unmoored from the basic requirements of national life.
In other words, the current maelstrom over the draft Nation State bill shows that Israel’s political Right is far weaker than it needs to be and that Israel’s political Left is far more destructive than it ought to be.

Mordechai Kedar: A Western Tourist Hasn't a Chance in a Persian Bazaar

The Iranian bazaar was a resounding success, and the Western tourist – who doesn't know the rules – lost once again: he paid the price of granting the Iranians more time and did not get the merchandise he wanted, because he does not have an agreement and it is not certain that he will ever get one as Iran will have the bomb before then – in another seven months.
The West does not understand the most basic fact: there is only one thing that can pressure Iran and the West is not willing to do it: that is, threatening the continuation of Ayatollah rule. The West has never used that card to get its way, so why should the Ayatollahs pay for an agreement that they do not want?
Worst of all is that there were those that warned the Western powers that they would fall into the Iranian bazaar's pit. One of them was Binyamin Netanyahu, even before he became Prime Minister of Israel. Harold Rhode wrote about it clearly and so did the writer of this article. The problem with those who negotiated with the Iranians is that they thought they knew how Iranians behave, believed the lies of the consummate liars, and the deceptions of the professional deceivers.
History will sadly ridicule the story of how a wayward and stubborn country could pull the wool over the eyes of intelligent and well educated, powerful negotiators who were psychologically incapable of using their power, and ensnare them in a Persian bazaar trap where only someone who learns the rules can survive.