Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 02, 2015

NYT interviews a PFLP terrorist without revealing his history

Jodi Rudoren in the New York Times wrote a fairly interesting piece about the challenges that the PA would have in bringing up charges against Israel in the ICC.

One of the "experts" she interviewed, however, has a relevant history that Rudoren didn't bother to research or reveal:

Some experts say any incidents since the court was created are fair game, while others say the court can deal only with matters since the United Nations General Assembly upgraded Palestine’s status to nonmember observer in 2012, or perhaps only after the Palestinian Authority joins the court in March. Shawan Jabarin, director of the human rights group Al Haq, said the Palestinians would submit a request for retroactive jurisdiction to last June 13, to coincide with the period being considered by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s commission of inquiry.

Mr. Jabarin said the commission, with which Israel has refused to cooperate, would provide an initial report in March that could serve as a road map for the Hague court. Separately, his group and others have been documenting allegations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, and are working with the Palestinian Authority to prepare complaints about Israeli settlements.

“The crime is not just the rape and the widespread killing or something like that, but also to transfer civilians and to confiscate land and to destroy property,” Mr. Jabarin said. “It’s a different way of rape, it’s a different way of killing, it’s a different way of destruction.”

Forgetting the absurdity of equating building houses with rape and mass murder, Jabarin knows a little bit about terror.

He was, or is, an operative for the PFLP. And Israel's Supreme Court ruled multiple times that the evidence that he continued his terror activities even while pretending to be a "human rights" activist is overwhelming. From Case 1520/09, March 10, 2009, translated at Terrorism-Info:

1) "This is not the first time the appellant has appealed regarding his desire to leave the country. During previous appeals as well as during this one the Court examined classified material presented by the security authorities. All previous appeals were rejected. On June 6, 2007, the Court found that "[t]he appellant is apparently a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, some of his time spent in directing a human rights organization, and some as an activist in an organization which has no qualms regarding murder and attempted murder, which have no relation whatsoever to rights, quite the opposite, which reject the most basic right of all, without which there are no other rights, that is, the right to life..." On July 7, 2008, the Court found that "there is reliable information that the appellant is a senior activist in the Popular Front terrorist organization."

2) "Today the appellant again seeks to leave the country for the purpose of receiving an award from an organization in Holland. His representative requested that in making our decision we take into consideration the need to achieve a proper balance between the concerns voiced by the security authorities – and regarding which the appellant's representative does not have sufficient information because of the privilege protecting the factual material on the one hand – and the basic right of the appellant to freedom of movement on the other. The overall position of the security authorities, in the appellant's opinion, is a violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. The appellant claims that what must be taken into consideration is the increased right to movement which those who defend human rights should be allowed to enjoy.

3) "...To that end we met in chambers twice, and at each meeting we held thorough, comprehensive deliberations, examining the possibility to provide an immediate answer for security constraints. We found that the material indicating the appellant's involvement in the activities of terrorist groups is genuine and authoritative. Moreover, additional negative material regarding the appellant came to light after his previous appeal was rejected. This negative foundation confirms the position of the security authorities, according to which preventing the appellant from leaving the country was in punishment for his forbidden activity, but rather the result of relevant security considerations. Thus the Court has not found a way to intervene in the decision given not to permit the appellant to leave the country."

(Jabarin was allowed to leave in February 2013 to visit France.)

Combined with yesterday's revelation that Roger Cohen interviewed someone who lied to the new York Times about his brother's terrorist activities, it sure appears that the New York Times is willing to accept the supposed credentials and lie of its Arab interviewees without doing even a modicum of fact-checking.

A lack of skepticism about people who have a long history of lying to the media is a lack of basic journalistic practice. It is a shame that so many respected media outlets like the New York Times uncritically swallow everything they are told by accomplished liars and terrorists.

(h/t NGO Monitor)

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is a designated terrorist organization by the USA, Canada and other countries.

The EU confirmed their designation of the Al Aqsa Brigades as a terror group only this past July.

Yet they are part of Fatah which is headed by PLO head and PA president Mahmoud Abbas.

To be sure, there are offshoots of the group, and no central command. However, one of them this week - on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Fatah's first terror attack - confirmed that they are loyal to Mahmoud Abbas and abide by his decisions.

They are openly recruiting new members, according to this video released in November.

The Al Aqsa Brigades have been known to hold parades even the West Bank openly displaying their weapons, that someone has to pay for - and in the West Bank, the money trail must lead back to Mahmoud Abbas.

Yet for all the hundreds of hours that the US and EU have spent in talks, has anyone ever demanded that Abbas dismantle these terror groups that are loyal to him? Has it ever become a condition for continued aid?

It is one of those issues that everyone knows about yet no one wants to publicize, presumably not to embarrass our wonderful "peace partner" who condones the terrorist group operating under his rule and probably with his funds.

It is touching, how considerate the West is not to openly call out Mahmoud Abbas on his open violation of agreements and his role in keeping a terror organization funded and operational. But it doesn't exactly advance the cause of peace that they pay lip-service to.

Vote for best EoZ post of 2014

The year is over and award season is starting. Here are the nominations for best EoZ post (or series) of the year.

Why HRW is racist

Belgium's new poet laureate not happy I called him an antisemite. Too bad.

"Zionists trying to hide Canaanite-Palestinian civilization"

How PCUSA twists history to justify their hate of Israel

Muslims terrorize Jewish children on Temple Mount

Without understanding Arab/Muslim honor, you cannot understand the Middle East

An open condemnation of the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir

What reporters need to know during Operation Protective Edge

Review of Hamas violations of international law

The Ken Roth series

Fighting the honor/shame culture to save the world

Latest Amnesty report shows ignorance, bias and excuses Hamas war crimes

The entire bogus history of Palestinian Arab nationalism exposed by a stamp

So go ahead and vote! Click on the appropriate button in this form:

01/01 Links Pt2: New study of UN Resolution 242 could alter views of Israeli-Arab conflict

From Ian:

New study of UN Resolution 242 could alter views of Israeli-Arab conflict

As the UN Security Council and International Criminal Court return to focusing on Israel, a new about-to-be published study reveals new sides to UN Resolution 242, recognized as the key UN resolution relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict which could alter how many reveal the issues in dispute especially as regards to borders.
According to an article by Professor Eugene Kontorovich of Northwestern University to be published soon in the Chicago Journal of International Law, a brand new side has emerged in the unending debate over the meaning of UN Resolution 242 which relates, among other things, to setting Israeli borders and withdrawal from territories conquered in 1967.
Kontorovich's study compares UN Resolution 242 to all 18 other UN Security Council resolutions which dealt with territorial withdrawals and finds that the resolution was unique in its ambiguity as to how much territory Israel needs to withdraw from, with other resolutions being explicit about a full withdrawal.
In the article, Kontorovich writes that there has always been a debate as to whether the phrase in UN Resolution 242 "withdrawal from territories" obligates Israel to withdraw from the entire West Bank and Golan Heights, or merely some portion of them as agreed upon in negotiations.

Mordechai Kedar: Summing Up 2014 in the Middle East

The Palestinians are turning to the international stage, trying with all their might to get a recognized state. The Arab world, distracted by problems such as ISIS, has neither the time or the patience to deal with the Palestinian issue, leading the PA to turn to the world for recognition. European politicians are falling over themselves to recognize a Palestinian state so as to please Muslim voters. Israel may find itself facing a Palestinian state – which will without doubt become a Hamas state – just because some unemployment-frightened European politicians vote for establishing that state on the hills of Judea and Samaria, the birthplace of the Jewish people.
The world is still impressed by the existence of a Palestinian nation, created just recently, partly as a result of the idea of some holier-than-thou Israelis. Jerusalem is considered part of the Palestinian state for one reason only – so as to uproot the holy city from the Jewish entity, knowing full well that without Jerusalem, the entire state will cease to exist. The world must awaken, understand the problem and realize that if Israel falls to Islam, Europe will be next - and not much later.
In summary: the year 2014 was a challenging one for Israel, Europe and the rest of the world. These challenges will only get bigger, crises deepen, disputes spread, Iran will obtain nuclear arms, ISIS will grow, America will not have the first place it held until four years ago and Europe will continue sinking under waves of Islamic immigration that are turning European culture into something that is a far cry from liberal values, openness, modernity and democracy.
The challenges facing the state of Israel are becoming more and more complex. Syria's demise has lessened the threat on Israel, but other threats are on the horizon: Iran and ISIS gaining strength on the one side, Europe and America getting weaker and weaker on the other.
The soon to be elected Israeli leadership will have to give its attention to all of them. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Iconoclast Arab supporter of IDF seeks Knesset seat

The bid by iconoclast Anett Haskia, a 45-year-old hairdresser and mother of three, comes after she gave a series of bombastic television interviews in support of Israel’s military this summer during its war against Hamas in Gaza. Now she is the lone Arab vying for a spot on the Jewish Home party’s list ahead of its January primary.
Arab citizens of Israel, who make up 20 percent of the country’s population, strongly identify with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. They generally oppose Israeli military actions, do not serve in the Israeli army and complain of deep-seated discrimination.
Haskia’s children, however, voluntarily enlisted in the Israeli army — including one son who served in an elite unit in Gaza during the summer war.
“Just because I was born in the Jewish state doesn’t mean a Jew is better than me,” Haskia recently told The Associated Press in Hebrew. “I sent the children to war, and nobody can tell me that I, Anett, the Arab, am second class.” (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Richard Millett: And I only asked why Jews can’t live next to Palestinians on the West Bank….

The panel consisted of Sara Apps, Campaigns Officer for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Martin “tentacles” Linton, chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, Murad Qureshi, a Labour Party Member of the London Mayoral Assembly and, finally, a representative from the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS – UK).
The panel was chaired by Dr. Dibyesh Anand, Head of Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster.
As ever there were repeated calls from the panel for a boycott of Israeli “settlements”. When it came to the Q&A I raised my arm and asked one simple question:
“Isn’t it racist to call for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank especially when considering that 1.7 million Muslim and Christian Arabs reside fairly happily in Israel ?”
Chaos ensued.
I was then referred to as “the enemy” by a man who walked out while giving me a rather unpleasant look. He also said, referring to me, “We are fighting these people”. Here’s the clip:

A number of Arab media outlets published an extended harangue on how evil Jews are.

Dr. Mustafa Yusuf Leddawi, who lives in Gaza, uses the holiday season to say that Jewish rabbis hate Christmas and Christians. How can it be any other way, since Jews persecuted and crucified Jesus? Not only that, but he informs us that Jews tortured early Christians with iron combs, ripped out their limbs, gouged out their eyes and cut off their tongues?

Christians, we are told, know about how much Jews hate them, and about how Jews murder their children to get blood for their matzoh. Even today, Jews are stopping Christians from getting to Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas!

There are root causes, of course.

"Jews today are not happy and elated, but they angry and disgruntled and envious and disgusted, and Christians of all denominations know it," Leddawi says. "Jews do not give up their habits, they do not like the goodness of others, nor hopefulness in others."

But some Jews are happy during Christmas season. These are the greedy Jewish businessmen who take advantage of this holiday to earn more money, and sell a lot of products, and take advantage of tourist traffic, renting out their Jew hotels, and promoting their Jew goods, and increasing the income of their airlines, greedy and insatiable, and with their greedy monopolies, and seamy exploitation and ill-treatment of gentiles, reflecting their ugly habits which has caused enlightened Europeans who suffered under these Jews and complained of their behavior, and have tasted the bitterness of Jewish treachery.

Unfortunately some Christians have been brainwashed not to hate Jews, but most Christians are aware of how evil Jews are, and "the Palestinians are hoping to win these honest Christians over to their cause, and to stand by their side, and to support their steadfastness, and support the resistance, as we believe [that Jesus] was the first Palestinian fedayeen, who called to resist injustice to counter the aggression and called for he who does not have a weapon to sell his cloak and buy a sword.

One of the media outlets that published this hate is based in Sweden.
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UPDATE: Bob Knot identified him as a Hamas representative in Lebanon and Syria, see the comments.

Writing in Al Riyadh, Fahd Amir Ahmadi fondly recalls his trip to Mecca as a child to perform Hajj.

During the long bus trip he needed reading material and he chose to read Mein Kampf, with Hitlers photo and the swastika on the cover, causing an Indian Muslim colleague of his father on the bus to smile.

Not that Ahmadi is unaware of the racism in the book. In fact, he points out that it is ironic how popular the book is among many in Third world countries, even though they had no place in Hitler's worldview as non-Aryans. But, he insists, it is still an important book to read to understand Nazi poitical philosophy, just as the works of Karl Marx and Mao Zedong and Adam Smith are important.

Clearly, this liberal Saudi is against censorship. Although I don't know how he would feel about allowing children to watch Exodus: Gods and Kings or Noah, two of the movies censored this year in the Arab world.

As a humorous postscript, Ahmadi adds that he read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on the return trip. He doesn't have anything negative to say about that book.

01/01 Links Pt1: J Street laments failure of Palestinian UN bid; The PA should fear the ICC

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Palestinian interests

Most important, the Jewish state was led by an honest, selfless political leadership with a vision of the Jewish people living in freedom as a sovereign, self-sufficient people in its historical homeland. Thanks to a combination of meticulous planning and ambitious goals and against tremendous odds, Israel has become an amazing success story. Few, if any, other nations born into the 20th century as a third-world countries have risen to be on par with the most developed Western nations as Israel has, with one of the world’s most innovative economies and most vibrant democracies that protects freedom of the press, gay rights, religious rights and women’s rights.
Those countries in the UN Security Council that voted in favor of the Palestinian motion – France and Luxembourg particularly – should ask themselves if they want to bring into being a corrupt Palestinian state in which basic human rights are trampled and the institutions capable of protecting them are nonexistent.
Palestinians have received hundreds of billions of dollars in aid, which, if used properly, could have laid the foundation for a stable, free Palestinian state-in-the-making that would have broken with the direction taken by the 21 existing Arab states.
Perhaps it is still not too late. But by pushing for the creation of yet another failed Arab state that would become an existential threat to a thriving, successful liberal democracy – the only in the Middle East – France, Luxembourg and the other countries that voted in favor of Tuesday’s proposal (such as those luminaries of human rights China and Russia) are not just working against the interests of Israel, they are working against the interests of the Palestinian people.

J Street laments failure of Palestinian UN bid

The US liberal Jewish group J Street said Wednesday that the failure of an attempt to pass a UN Security Council resolution aimed at establishing a timetable for a Palestinian state lay with the international community and the US for not drafting a text with broader appeal.
In Tuesday’s vote the Palestinians were unable to muster the support of nine out of the 15 Security Council members, with eight voting in favor, two opposing and five abstaining.
“It was the failure of the United States and the international community to take a positive step toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict diplomatically by crafting a resolution that could have gained broad international consensus,” J Street said in a statement.
The group stressed that it had not taken a stance on the validity of the draft in the form in which it was submitted but noted “alternative drafts did a better job of balancing Israeli and Palestinian concerns, particularly around security.”

Netanyahu: The Palestinians have more to fear from the ICC than Israel

Netanyahu, in his initial reaction to the move, said the Palestinian Authority, which is in a unity government with Hamas, should be more concerned about the ICC than Israel. Netanyahu said that Israel would respond – though he did not give any indication of how it would do so – and would defend the soldiers of the IDF, which he called “the most moral soldiers in the world.”
By contrast, Netanyahu said Hamas was an avowed terrorist organization that – like Islamic State – commits war crimes. “We will rebuff this additional effort to impose a diktat on us, just as we rebuffed Palestinian efforts in the UN Security Council,” he said.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman was more blunt in his response, saying that even a “deaf, blind and mute judge” knows that the Palestinians are responsible for the “indiscriminate murder of men, women, children and babies for the last 100 years.”
Abbas can sign onto all the treaties he wants to, Liberman said in a Facebook post, “the only ones committing war crimes in this conflict are the Palestinians themselves.”

'Abbas Only Able to Go to ICC as a Defendant'

Ministers and MKs have strongly condemned Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's application to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) Wednesday, with many remarking that it is the Palestinian Arabs, not the Israelis, who are liable to be found guilty of war crimes.
"Abbas, a leading inciter of terror and a long-time Holocaust denier, would only be able to come to the ICC as a defendant," Jewish Home Chairman and Economics Minister Naftali Bennett stated. "Someone with terrorism spread on his head should not come out into the sunshine."
Tekuma Chairman and Housing Minister Uri Ariel (Jewish Home) added, "it's time to dispel the Palestinian lie and to declare - loud and clear - that the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel."
"Judea and Samaria are not occupied territories, and it is Israel's right and duty to continue building there and in Jerusalem," Ariel continued. "Freezing construction only encourages Arab greed, while building, on the other hand, proves that we have returned to our country to stay."

Abbas' choice of which conventions to sign says volumes

While the headlines announce that Mahmoud Abbas signed the Rome Statute today in order to be able to join the International Criminal Court, we can learn a lot about the PLO's real goals from some of the other statutes that he is said to gave signed on Wednesday.

They include the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II), plus a Convention on the Safety of UN and Other Personnel.

It appears that these specific conventions, protocols and treaties were chosen for one reason only: to attack Israel diplomatically by bringing up accusation upon accusation, using the procedures around these treaties for the PLO's narrow political aim of demonizing Israel.

This is exactly what the PLO did with the previous groups it joined or has proxies doing its bidding. It has pushed UNESCO into introducing anti-Israel resolutions, and has even used UNESCO to erase Jewish history, irreversibly politicizing that organization. Its Arab League partners have turned the UN Human Rights Council into a joke with its obsession with Israel.

Based on this list, it seems clear that the PLO is planning to accuse Israel of war crimes, of nuclear proliferation, of endangering UN employees, and of using prohibited weapons, effectively hijacking the agendas of organizations and groups that don't have the political will to fight back for fear of how Arab nations might retaliate.

One can only imagine how thrilled the many people who have worked for years to create these protocols and treaties are to know that their hard work is about to be subverted by the PLO. Since the committees behind these treaties never thought about how their official rules and procedures could be used to subvert the purposes of these treaties, they don't have any defenses against being hijacked.

This is the fruit of rewarding terrorists. While Fatah is today celebrating the 50th anniversary of their first terror attack, the government it heads is using diplomatic terrorism using the legitimacy that nations conferred upon it - to avoid being blackmailed by terror and the oil weapon.

Abbas' signing these treaties is an exact diplomatic equivalent of what the Palestinians have been doing since 1948: doing nothing to build a state but doing everything to destroy one.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv, Grant Rumley)

Haaretz' Gideon Levy says he loves Israel - with a catch

From Gideon Levy in Ha'aretz:

Here comes the new Israeli, a man’s man; with a tiny skullcap, service in an elite army unit, high-tech, English and a swimming pool, with the coolest and most up-to-date message: “Stop apologizing, we love Israel” (rhymes in Hebrew); the poster is already in evidence on several balconies.

On Monday night, at a meeting convened by Ayelet Shaked (Habayit Hayehudi), the most successful politician in Israel at present explained: “This election is between those who apologize and those who are proud ... those who are objective and those who are in favor of the State of Israel.” Drum roll.

Well, [Habayit Hayehudi chairman] Naftali Bennett, I apologize and I love Israel (of course not your Israel and not the present Israel); I’m objective and I’m in favor of (a just) State of Israel; I apologize and I’m proud.

Levy has an interesting definition of "love."

Let's see how he might apply it to his Swedish girlfriend whom he starred with in a reality TV show a couple of years ago:

Clueless Roger Cohen in Gaza unwittingly interviews a Hamas terrorist's brother

Roger Cohen once again shows that he is way out of his depth in his latest clueless New York Times op-ed.

This paragraph is intended to be a showcase for his astuteness yet it reveals the opposite:

Nobody wants to talk about Gaza because it reeks of failure — the failure of Israeli withdrawal; the failure of a long-ago election that ushered Hamas to power; the failure to achieve the Palestinian unity necessary for serious peace talks; the failure to prevent repetitive war; the failure of the Arab Spring that led to that sealed Egyptian border; the failure to be coherent about Hamas (negotiated with by Israel to end the war and to secure the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit but otherwise viewed as a terrorist group with which negotiation is impossible); the failure to offer decency to 1.8 million trapped human beings.

Nobody wants to talk about Gaza?

The New York Times search engine estimates that Gaza was mentioned in its pages 9,500 times in 2014, ten times the number of, say, the Central African Republic which is in the middle of a devastating civil war - and a place that Roger Cohen would never consider visiting, when going into Gaza for a day is so much easier.

The failure of the Israeli withdrawal? But Cohen wants Israel to do a similar withdrawal from the West Bank!

But most ignorant is his characterization of negotiations with Hamas. Israel didn't directly negotiate with Hamas over Shalit just as Israel did not directly negotiate with Hamas over the many cease fire agreements over the summer that Hamas broke. But beyond that, Hamas' leadership, quite explicitly and nearly daily, calls to utterly destroy Israel. Cohen even admits this in his next paragraph.

Just what exactly is Israel supposed to directly negotiate with Hamas over - the timeframe of its destruction?

He goes on:

My Gaza road ended at the Shuhadaa al Shejaeya Secondary School for boys. ...Hasan al-Zeyada, a psychologist, showed me around. He lost six close relatives, including his mother and three brothers, in an Israeli airstrike on July 20. Of the students at the school, he said that they had no need to be taught history: “They have lived it. They can teach it to me.”

Hasan al-Zeyada's house was almost certainly a terrorist base and his brother Omar was a Hamas terrorist.

Here is screenshot from Omar Ziyada's martyr video:

Here's a Hamas "martyr" poster of Mohammed Mahmoud al-Maqadma who was killed in the same airstrike:

Two unrelated Hamas terrorists being killed in the same house indicates that they weren't exactly having tea there. The Zeyada house was being used as a control center or weapons depot.

And as we've documented, two of Zeyada's other siblings enthusiastically posted his "martyr video" on their Facebook pages, showing that they knew quite well that he was a Hamas terrorist. which means that Hasan knew this as well.

But this same Hasan lied and told the same New York Times that none of his relatives were militants!

This is the third time the NYT is uncritically quoting Hasan Zeyada. Not once did they check out any of this publicly available information about his Hamas brother, which casts considerable doubt over Hasan's own believability.

If Roger Cohen were a journalist, he would have done a little research, perhaps asked Hasan about why he lied to Cohen's own newspaper. Maybe probe him as to what else he knows about Hamas activities in Gaza during the war.

But Cohen is no journalist. He doesn't travel to Gaza in order to investigate anything; He goes to Gaza to confirm the myths that have been in his head beforehand and ignore everything else. He wants to be duped by the people he interviews, because that way he pretends to have more evidence to support his ignorant theories about Israel and Gaza.

(h/t Ronald, EBoZ)

Red Klotz died this year at 93

Last night I went to a Harlem Globetrotters game. It was enjoyable, although they did not seem to be quite as skilled as the Globetrotters I had seen on TV decades ago when they had Curly Neal and Meadowlark Lemon. There was some excellent passing and alley-oops, but not too much of the trick shots or dazzling dribbling that I recall seeing as a kid.

But I also watched their opponents, the team that always loses, the Washington Generals.

During this year's tour, the shtick is that the Generals have regrouped and are thirsting for revenge, wanting to recapture the glory of their last win, in 1971. It is called the "Washington Generals Revenge Tour."

Of course, the Generals lost. That's what they are meant to do. They are booed when they are introduced, and in this particular show, they openly "cheated" and lost (of course) anyway.

But I was interested in their history, and the history of the Generals has an interesting tie to US Jewish sports history.

The original owner of the Washington Generals was Louis Herman "Red" Klotz, Klotz was an early basketball star in Philadelphia high schools and colleges, winning player of the year in 1939 and 1940. He was part of the Baltimore Bullets championship team in 1948, making him - at 5'7" - the shortest player ever to win an NBA championship.

Afterwards, Klotz bought one of the original basketball teams, the Philadelphia Sphas. of the now defunct American Basketball Association.

"SPHA" was an acronym for South Philadelphia Hebrew Association. Their original uniforms even had those initials in Hebrew!

In the late 1920s and 1930s, the Sphas were the best basketball team in the world.

The original owner and coach, Eddie Gottlieb, sold the Sphas so he could buy the Philadelphia Warriors in the new NBA, and the ABL became a minor league.

In the early 1950s, the Sphas played the Globetrotters a couple of times:

[Klotz] won many games with the Sphas, and one day on the ballroom at the old Broadwood Hotel in Philadelphia they beat the Harlem Globetrotters in a straight up game. The great Goose Tatum, the first clown prince of basketball, the man who invented the skyhook, met Klotz at half-court and said in a threatening voice: “That will never happen again.” And the next time they played, the Sphas won again. And that is about the time when Globetrotters owner Abe Saperstein approached Klotz and asked him to put together a team that would play the Globetrotters night after night all over the country, all over the world. Of course, there would be an understanding. People were coming, after all, to see the World Famous Harlem Globetrotters. It was one of those moments in a man’s life. Red Klotz loved to play basketball. He loved to coach basketball. And he loved to win. The Globetrotters would give him a chance to do the first two.

“We’ll give you a run for your money,” Red Klotz said to Saperstein.

“I’m counting on it,” Saperstein said in return.

Klotz then borrowed some cash to buy a Green De Soto — the Green Hornet, they would all call it — and he began his life as a player, owner, coach, driver, psychiatrist, motivator and inspirational leader for a team he decided to name after Dwight D. Eisenhower: The Washington Generals.

Besides owning and coaching the Generals, Red Klotz was also a player. He would willingly allow the Globetrotters to make a fool out of him. But he always took his role seriously.

There are rules for being a Washington General (to use their most general name).

1. The Generals are allowed — expected, even — to play completely legit on offense. There are no limitations. If they can beat the Globetrotters defense, they can score every single time down the court.

2. The Generals are allowed to play defense as hard as they want when the Globetrotters are not in one of their reams. For about 40% of every Globetrotters game, the basketball is straight up.

3. When the Globetrotters DO go into one of their reams, it is the Generals’ responsibility to play the stooge and make the Globetrotters look as good as possible. They are expected to play their roles with gusto and verve. Red Klotz had his pants pulled down thousands of times — he would always take pants duty first few games of every tour to give the other players time to settle in. He always tried to look as shocked and embarrassed as possible. In his mind, Red often said, his job was to play Ginger Rogers to the Globetrotters’ Fred Astaire, that is to do everything the Globetrotters did with the same joy and expertise but to do it going backward.

Then there was that now legendary game in January, 1971, in Martin, Tennessee - the last game the Generals ever won (possibly under the name the New Jersey Reds; they had a number of different team names even as they never had a home game).

Klotz’s place was not in the paint. He was a shooter, still is a shooter, and on that day in Tennessee he started to make a few long jumpers. Eddie Mahar, a shooting guard from Brooklyn, made a few shots. Sam Sawyer, a forward from Atlantic City and someone who would become one of Klotz’s closest friends, worked hard inside. The Globetrotters seemed weary or uninterested. And nobody noticed the scoreboard.

Nobody noticed, that is, except for Red Klotz.

The game stayed close. The Globetrotters did not do as much show as usual that day in Martin, Tenn. The great dribbler Curly Neal wasn’t playing — he apparently had an injury of some sort — and the showman Meadowlark Lemon seemed to Klotz and others to be in a bit of of a fog. So they played basketball. In the fourth quarter, the New Jersey Reds got hot. Every one of their shots seemed to drop. The Globetrotters kept missing. This much everyone agrees upon. The score tightened.

The Globetrotters could have gone into their show at any point, scored every time down the floor, and put an end to the drama. The Reds would not have been able to do a thing to stop it. But for reasons that were never revealed, and perhaps never quite understood, the Globetrotters played the final minutes straight up. There were 3,600 people in the stands that day, and not one of them was quite sure what was happening. The players themselves were not quite sure what they were doing. Maybe the monotony had simply crumbled their resolve. Maybe they all just wanted something different, something that was unlike the day before and the day before that and the day before that. Whatever, the game grew close.

And then … well, nobody would ever seem to remember the details. In one version of the story, the Reds built a startling 12 point lead in the final minutes and the Globetrotters had to stage a furious comeback. In another, the game was tied at the end of regulation and went into overtime. Fairy tales, you know, have different endings in different parts of the world. The only thing anyone seems certain about is that the Globetrotters led 99-98 with scant seconds left when Red Klotz got the ball about 25 feet away from the basket and fired one of those two-handed set shots that had made him the best in the city and won him the girl and carried him through a war and landed him the childhood dream of traveling around the world. It went in of course, like it went in when he was 12 years old. The Reds led 100-99.

There were, according to the newspapers, three seconds on the clock. The timekeepers stalled the clock long enough for Meadowlark Lemon to take the game-winning shot, a hook shot, the sort he had made about as many times as Red Klotz’s set shot. The buzzer sounded. The ball bounced away. The New Jersey Reds or Washington Generals or International All-Stars or whatever you would like to call them had won the game. It was, mathematically, the greatest upset in the history of sport. Red Klotz and his team ran off the court in triumph. The crowd’s reaction was some mix of shock and uncertainty. In time, Red Klotz would remember them booing (“It was like killing Santa Claus,” he would say many, many times), and certainly most did boo. But in the days afterward, when he talked to the small-town reporters who asked, he would remember that some people cheered too.

Klotz was 50 years old when he made that game-winning shot.

He died this past July, at the age of 93, and I hadn't seen his name in any of the lists of notable people we lost this year. But while he holds the record for the most basketball games lost, he knew exactly what he was doing.

12/31 Links Pt2: CAMERA's Top Ten Media Mangles for 2014; Lydda '48: The Dog That Didn’t Bark

From Ian:

CAMERA's Top Ten MidEast Media Mangles for 2014

1. Hate-Indoctrination and Incitement Ignored
No issue was more glaringly and indefensibly neglected by most of the media than theoften grotesque demonizing of Israel and the Jewish peopleby the Palestinians and the wider Muslim/Arab world. Instead of reporting the hate-indoctrination prominently and continuously for what it is -- a central driving force for violence and fundamental threat to peace -- media outlets such as The New York Times typically ignored the phenomenon orcharacterized it as merely an accusation by Israelis rather than an objective reality.
Few instances of such media malpractice were as blatant as The Times' censoring of Secretary of State John Kerry's strong denunciation of incitement as the cause of the massacre of Jews at prayer in Jerusalem's Har Nof synagogue. Kerry's emphatic statement was first included in an online version of the New York Times story but later entirely excised by the time the printedaccount reached readers.

Lydda 1948: The Dog That Didn’t Bark

In his July 2014 Mosaic essay, Martin Kramer dismantled Ari Shavit’s assertion that “Zionism carrie[d] out a massacre” at Lydda in 1948 – a claim Shavit has spread not only in his book, My Promised Land, but in his New Yorker article, “Lydda, 1948: A City, a Massacre, and the Middle East Today.” Kramer recently presented his findings to an Israeli audience that included Lydda veterans and others intimately familiar with the 1948 war – who expressed surprise and anger at Shavit’s allegation. This post provides still another reason to doubt Shavit’s claim: in 1948, The New York Times covered the April “massacre” at Deir Yassin and the later operation at Lydda – but reported no “massacre” at Lydda. And for the reasons set forth below, it is virtually certain that the Times would have reported it if it had occurred at Lydda.
Currivan and his editors would have considered a Lydda “massacre” the following day “news fit to print” – to put it mildly. But Currivan’s next report on Lydda, datelined July 12 (published on July 13) reported the capture of Lydda and Ramleh “on this all-important front” and noted that Lydda “had offered considerable resistance at first and suffered heavy casualties as a result.” Currivan’s succeeding report, datelined July 13 (published July 14) reported “the complete capture of Lydda,” with the exception of a holdout of Arab fighters at the police station, and noted that Arab civilians had suddenly departed Lydda after its capture. In none of his reports did Currivan report anything remotely approaching a “massacre.”
This is the journalistic equivalent of the non-barking dog: (1) the Lydda operation occurred three months after Deir Yassin, which the Times had covered; (2) Lydda was a significant strategic site; (3) the Times had an experienced war correspondent covering the Lydda operation; and yet (4) the Times reported no “massacre” there. A massacre at Lydda would have been a major development and important news. But there was no bark from the Times.

Lies and Falestine

A while ago I came across a paper written by Jeremy R. Hammond entitled “The Myth of the U.N. Creation of Israel.” In his diatribe he begins his bitter prolonged discourse based on the assumption, purveyed by those ever so sad losers of Nachba fame, that there was an entity, a “country” if you may, called “Palestine”. So allow me to debunk the false claim of a existence of a country whose sole inhabitants were “unjustly” usurped of “their” land known as “Falestine”.
Here are true historical facts.
The word ‘Palestinian’ is never found in Scripture. The term ‘Palestine’ is used four times in the King James Version (Exodus 15:14) Philistia (פְּלָשֶׁת); Isaiah 14:29, 31 (O Philistia) but never as synonymous with either the land of Canaan or the land of Israel. The Hebrew word is פְּלִשְׁתִּים, Plištim and referred to a small region also known as Philistia (Psalms 60:10, 87:4, 108:10), the land of the Pelishtee, or Philistines. It occurs 286 times in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew bible (of which 152 times in Samuel 1), whereas in the Greek Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible, the equivalent term phylistiim occurs only 12 times, with the remaining 269 references instead using the term “allophylos” (“of another tribe”).
“In the New Testament, the term Palestine is never used. The term Israel is primarily used to refer to the people of Israel, rather than the Land. However, in at least two passages, Israel is used to refer to the Land: (Matt. 2:20-21)

Look how peacefully Abbas' Fatah party views Israel

This was on Fatah's Facebook page today:

The text is "We remain on your skulls." I am told that the first word, "baqiya," is often associated with ISIS.

This reminds me of a political cartoon published in Syria during the Six Day War, entitled "The Barricades of Tel Aviv:"

I've seen some people argue that the Fateh Facebook page isn't "official." I have no way of knowing who posts to the page, but I can tell you one thing: not a single fan of that Facebook page, out of 130,000 "Likes," objected to this image, nor to the many other equally militaristic images on the site.

There was another interesting picture posted there, as a bit of nostalgia. Since tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of Fatah's first terror attack, someone dug up a poster celebrating the fifth anniversary:

Then, everyone knew that "occupation" wasn't the issue - Jews having their own country was the issue. And that is just as obvious looking at this latest poster, even if the entire West chooses to be blind on that topic.

Finding offensive pictures like these are not proof that the entire society approves of violence. You can find equally offensive graphics that are racist and anti-Muslim.

The difference is that that there is immediate revulsion and condemnation when it happens in the West. And there is net to none when it happens in Palestinian territories of Arab countries.

But the complete lack of pushback for these images - the almost total lack of Arabs complaining that these are offensive and disgusting - does reveal a lot about Arab society in general and Palestinian Arab society in particular.

(h/t David G, Grant Rumley)

EU To Fund New Echo Chamber For Anti-Israel Academics, Activists (PreOccupied territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page. And congratulate them on making the big time!

Brussels, December 31 - Officials at the European Commission have approved a grant to underwrite the design and manufacture of a better-insulated echo chamber for politicians, activists, and academics who oppose Israel. EC spokesman Wyrol Yessmen told representatives of several anti-Israel organizations today that the Commission had approved their application, and that work on the design and production could begin within weeks.

Critics of Israel have for years complained that they have been unable to insulate themselves completely from information or opinions that do not dovetail with their preconceived negative view of Israel, despite surrounding themselves with like-minded colleagues, blocking social media contact by opponents, and similar strategies to maintain a monolithic, self-congratulatory circle of anti-Zionists. The existing echo chamber was effective in stroking the egos of the personalities inside it, according to the organizations, but its ability to remove all dissenting viewpoints and facts contradictory to their position was less than satisfactory.

To eliminate the penetration of poisonous notions that Israel and its policies might represent positive phenomena, a group of activists, academics, and politicians formed an organization called Progressive Rights and Education Activists Combating Hard Teachings Opposing True, Honest Ethnic Cleansing of Hebrew Occupation in Indigenous Regions (PREACHTOTHECHOIR). PREACHTOTHECHOIR applied for European Commission funding earlier this year as the fighting in and around the Gaza Strip raged and organization members came to realize how difficult it was with their current resources to completely drown out or shout down people or groups who insist on justifying Israeli self-defense and legitimacy.

A more effective echo chamber, argued the proposal, would further European values by allowing critics and enemies of Israel to proceed unimpeded in their quest to pursue the removal of Jews as a significant presence from the map, a quintessentially European endeavor. "The danger posed by dissenting voices can be eliminated by preventing those voices from reaching our ears," wrote linguistics professor Noam Chomsky, in his letter of recommendation supporting the proposal.

PREACHTOTHECHOIR intends to contract with an engineer to develop the chamber. As the appropriate engineering field is acoustics, the proposal naturally mentions as its preferred candidate Professor Arthur Butz of Northwestern University, whose expertise is electrical engineering, completely unrelated to acoustics, but who has used his laurels as an "engineer" to lend credence to his 1976 book denying the Holocaust, in which expertise in electrical engineering is similarly irrelevant.

12/31 Links Pt1: Israel calls Palestinian actions at UN ‘embarrassing’; Honor Killings in Gaza

From Ian:

UN Security Council rejects unilateral Palestinian statehood bid

The resolution needed nine votes in favor (out of 15) to pass. It fell one vote short, obtaining eight votes in favor (Russia, China, France, Jordan, Chad, Luxembourg, Argentina and Chile), two against (the United States and Australia), and five abstentions (Britain, Rwanda, Nigeria, Lithuania and South Korea). However, even if the resolution had passed, the U.S. would have vetoed it.
Before the vote, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with the leaders of three of the nations that ended up abstaining, including Rwanda and Nigeria, and asked them to not vote in favor of the Palestinian resolution.
On Wednesday morning, Netanyahu said, "I want to express appreciation and thanks to the U.S. and Australia, and also special appreciation to the president of Rwanda, my friend Paul Kagame, and the president of Nigeria, my friend Goodluck Jonathan. I spoke with both of them. They personally promised me they would not support this resolution. They stood by their word, and that is what decided this battle. This was very important for the State of Israel."
After Tuesday's vote, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power said, "In recent years, no government has invested more in the effort to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace than the United States. Peace, however difficult it may be to forge, is too important to give up on.
"Regrettably, instead of giving voice to the aspirations of both Palestinians and Israelis, this text [the Palestinian resolution] addresses the concerns of only one side. It is deeply imbalanced and contains many elements that are not conducive to negotiations between the parties, including unconstructive deadlines that take no account of Israel's legitimate security concerns.
"We must proceed responsibly, not take actions that would risk a downward spiral. We voted against this resolution not because we are comfortable with the status quo. We voted against it because we know what everyone here knows as well -- peace will come from hard choices and compromises that must be made at the negotiating table. Today's staged confrontation in the U.N. Security Council will not bring the parties closer to achieving a two-state solution."

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Palestinians Opposed Abbas's Statehood Bid

The widespread opposition among Palestinians to Abbas's statehood bid at the Security Council is a clear sign that many Palestinians remain opposed to any form of concessions to Israel. It is also an indication of fierce opposition among Palestinians to the resumption of peace talks with Israel.
Those who opposed the Palestinian resolution also argue that Abbas should have gone instead to the International Criminal Court to file "war crimes" charges against Israel. For many Palestinians, punishing Israel should take priority over any peaceful establishment of a Palestinian state.
But the opposition to the resolution, which envisaged a two-state solution, also shows that many Palestinians continue to believe that violence, and not diplomacy, will bring them closer to achieving their goals.
As Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar put it, "This Palestinian resolution is catastrophic and has no future on the land of Palestine. The future belongs to the resistance. We will continue to work to liberate all the land and achieve the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Hamas will not accept anything less than all the lands that were occupied in 1948."

Israel calls Palestinian actions at UN ‘embarrassing’

The Security Council on Tuesday rejected a resolution on Palestinian statehood, with the Palestinians failing to get the minimum nine “yes” votes (required for either adoption by the 15-member council or to prompt a possible veto by one of the five permanent members): Eight voted for the resolution and two voted against, with five abstentions.
“The Palestinians seek — and find — every opportunity to avoid direct negotiations and to walk circumventing paths,” Israel Nitzan of the Israeli mission to the UN said in a short statement. “We’ve become accustomed to their political maneuvers. But today they surpassed themselves by going all the way to the Security Council to make a mockery of it with embarrassing resolutions.
“We have news for the Palestinians – the way to achieve statehood is not paved with provocations,” he said.