Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 11, 2015

01/11 Links: Millions rally for unity in France; Hollande honors victims at synagogue

From Ian:

Times of Israel Live Blog: Millions rally for unity in France; Hollande honors victims at synagogue

Some 1.5 million people, including over 50 world leaders, thronged central Paris Sunday afternoon in a massive and historic show of support against terrorism and to honor 17 victims of a series of attacks that rocked France last week. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, attending the rally, announced that the four Jewish victims of an attack on a kosher market Friday would be buried in Israel. Stay tuned to The Times of Israel liveblog for breaking developments.
Bernard-Henri Lévy: France ‘will not be weak anymore’
French-Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy tells CNN that today’s outpouring of people onto the streets is France’s way of saying that it has failed to stand sufficiently firm in the face of Islamic extremism, and that this is now going to change.
The message of the rally, he says, is that “we will not be weak anymore in the face of this jihadism.”

Douglas Murray and Maajid Nawaz [Big Questions] (best part 16:15)

Paris: Grand Mosque Open, Grand Synagogue Closed

It seems the drawings in Charlie Hebdo offended some true believers of Islam, but the mere existence of Jews also offends them. So, apparently, does the existence of Christians, Yazidis, Hindus, Ahmadiyyas; anyone considered a "disbeliever," "infidel" or "not Muslim enough;" other Muslims, such as those blown up on the streets of Asia each week or the unfortunate Muslim policeman, Ahmed Merabet, wounded, then slaughtered at point blank range, on the sidewalk for not being "part of the plan."
In reaction to the murders in Paris, the French capital's Grand Synagogue was closed for the first time since World War II. In fact, synagogues all over Paris were closed. There were no Shabbat services this Saturday, the Jewish day of rest. The stores in the Marais, the Jewish section of Paris, were also shuttered. In light of all the expressed concern about possible anti-Muslim incidents, claims on television, such as on CNN, that "Muslims are the most persecuted people," seemed jarring and wrong.
The Grand Mosque in Paris, like mosques all over the capital, was open for business on Friday, the Muslim day of prayer. Moreover, there was little discernible increased security around the Grand Mosque. It seems French security authorities were less worried about attacks directed at Muslim institutions than were America's media commentators. Perhaps they should have spent just a little time reporting on the anti-Jewish rioting that took place in the heavily Muslim neighborhood of Trappes, a suburb of Paris?

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Lahav Harkov tells us that Israeli firebrand Naftali Bennett has a few words for Israeli parliamentarian Tzipi Livni concerning the recent rebel attack upon the French Occupying Power:

Speaking at the same event, Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett slammed Livni, saying she "talked about the occupation and diplomatic isolation, and I wondered why she didn't get on a plane to Paris to solve their problems? Maybe she can run their negotiations, offer them a diplomatic horizon, tell them there's a solution.
"Offer them to stop the occupation for peace, tell them to apologize for the caricature; that always works," Bennett sarcastically suggested to Livni. "Tell them that you make peace with your enemies, that they have a partner. Maybe they can divide Paris and give it to Muslim fundamentalists." Bennett wondered what else needs to happen for the world to wake up: "Do they not understand that a terrorist who runs over a baby in Jerusalem and a terrorist in Paris are the same, Muslim fundamentalists?"

No, in fact, they do not understand that a terrorist attack in Paris against non-Jews comes from the same ideological well-spring as does a terrorist attack in Jerusalem toward Jews.

Most white western anti-Zionist "liberals" tend to believe that killing Jews in Jerusalem is justified due to the racist, colonialist, imperialist, apartheid nature of the insidious Jewish state.

When a Muslim kills an innocent non-Muslim in Paris that is terrorism.

When a Muslim kills an innocent Jew in Jerusalem that is righteous resistance against the despised Zionist imperialist authority.

In my opinion, Livni deserves Bennett's mockery.

Perhaps the French do need to apologize to the Muslim world for their extreme insensitivity through allowing satirical newspapers, such as Charlie Hebdo, to make fun of the Prophet Muhammad.

{Peace be unto him.}

You can poke fun at Jesus and you can poke fun at Moses, the Easter Bunny, and Barack Obama, but if you say anything about Muhammad you better watch your backside. Not all of these intense, dark-eyed, hawk-nosed, desert deities have much of a sense of humor, after all.

So, yes, the French must apologize not only for their extreme insensitivity toward their Muslim citizenry, but also to Islam, in general. Just as Hillary Clinton stood up before the world and groveled after Jihadis slaughtered Ambassador Chris Stevens and his diplomatic team in Benghazi, Libya - allegedly because some unknown guy with a camcorder in California was mean to the Prophet - so the French need to grovel now.

Or, perhaps Paris should be divided in order to make a capital for an Islamist state in that part of the world.

Arabs and Muslims have lived in France for centuries and deserve a state for themselves in peace next to the French state. The ethnically "French" have no exclusive claim to the land that they occupy and by any measure of human justice need to end the occupation of Islamic and Arab lands in Europe. France, after all, has been the home to any number of people aside from the exclusively "French." Over the centuries the place that we call "France" has been the home of Romans, Greeks, Franks, Celts, Carthaginians, Arabs, Africans... and even Jews.

The "we got here first" argument holds no water.

France is a major part of the European imperialist infrastructure that dominates and controls people of color throughout the world and therefore deserves no special privileges or considerations. Crusading white European powers, such as France, deserve a commupence due to centuries of racist abuse of indigenous peoples everywhere, most particularly within France itself.

France needs to be a state for all its peoples and so long as France defines itself exclusively as French then it can expect the kind of understandable response from the indigenous population that we just saw in Paris.

The indigenous Arabs are persecuted by the racist French government which keeps them in poverty and in separate and entirely unequal economic and educational systems throughout the country, so what would the French expect?

For example, French government intransigence in insisting that the French language exclusively be the official language of the French state just screams white, western privilege and is a well-understood insult to other native peoples throughout the country, such as the Basque. The Israelis, for an alternative humanist perspective, are not nearly so xenophobic and therefore have institutionalized Arabic as one of the official languages of Israel and France must do likewise if it wishes to be considered among the fair and civilized nations of the world.

The French, it must be further understood, are guilty of centuries of foreign oppression in places like Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and even India; not to mention Syria, Lebanon and parts of Turkey, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

France recently voted at the United Nations, over the objections of the Jewish people worldwide, for the creation of a 23rd Arab state to be imposed directly upon the heartland of the Jewish people in Judea and Samaria.

If the French wish to be free of Arab-Muslim resistance toward the French occupation of Muslim lands in Europe then it must end that occupation.

Until it does so, France will never know peace and therefore a French version of J Street is necessary.

We'll call it F Street and, much like F Troop, it will be the necessary moral French equivalent of J Street.

What we need is for progressives to tell the French people and the French government what they must do in order to make peace with the native population. What I recommend is that we finance a series of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to monitor French settler behavior, and the behavior of the French government, toward the native Arab population.

There will be no peace until there is justice toward the Arab-Palestinian population of France and there shouldn't be.

No Justice.

No peace.

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.

Hamas announces military training camps for 15 year olds

The Hamas al Qassam Brigades announced that it open up registration for military camps for children aged 15 and up throughout the Gaza strip on January 20.

The camps will be called "Vanguard of the Liberation."

Hamas doesn't try to hide that it is training children to be armed terrorists. The announcement states that "the camps will include military drills and skills, shooting live ammunition, scouting skills and sermons, as well as courses in civil defense and first aid."

Kids can register for the camps "at the nearest mosque or the nearest Qassam Brigades military site." Since the army sites are sprinkled liberally throughout residential areas, that makes it much easier to find a place to register.

Here's the flyer announcing the camps:

This is the third year of the camps. Here are some photos from last year's graduation ceremony (a full video is here.).

Terror booster Mahmoud Abbas uses massacres for PR while Fatah instructs people "don't show sympathy for Paris Islamists"

One of the world's biggest boosters of terrorism is going to Paris to pretend to be against terrorism:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to take part in a rally in the French capital Sunday against terrorism and in solidarity with the victims of the recent Paris attacks, as well as to stress the peaceful nature of the Islamic faith.

His participation comes a day after he called French President Francois Hollande to express his outrage and condemnation of the attacks, which left 16 civilians dead.

Abbas told Hollande Saturday that the Palestinian people and leadership would remain supportive of France against "this terrorism which has no religion," official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Abbas expressed his condemnation and strong opposition to any "terror attack" that hurts innocent citizens, regardless of whether the victims are Christians, Jews, Muslims, or followers of any other religion or creed.

"Human life is sacred and God has created us all," he reportedly said.

for anyone who follows Abbas' statements, this is meaningless. His definition of "terrorism" is quite different from that of any normal human being.

Last week his top aide Saeb Erekat called Jews building houses "terrorism" and equated it to ISIS beheading civilians.

Abbas himself has justified the history of Palestinian Arab terror in his latest UN speech.

Abbas has gone out of his way to meet a child killer.

In the past 18 months Abbas has publicly embraced people who murdered Israeli civilians, some in the most heinous ways.

In September he praised a terrorist who targeted children at a circus.

Abbas has praised the mastermind behind the Munich Olympics massacre and was involved in its funding.

His Fatah platform claims that terrorism against Israelis is legal under international law.

To have this supporter of terror pretend to march in solidarity against terror is an insult to the victims and an insult to France.

Meanwhile, his Fatah party is so concerned that some Palestinians might praise the attacks on Jews in Paris that their European spokesperson went out of his way to warn people not to express "understanding" of the Paris attacks on Palestinian TV.

The reason? Because they don't want to make the climate of Europe more uncomfortable for Muslims and Arabs.

(autotranslated)

(h/t Yoel)

UPDATE: see Palestinian Media Watch.

Just last week, five terrorists, who in total recently killed 10 Israelis, were included on a list of "Martyrs of 2014" who "ascended" to Heaven, published in the bi-weekly Al-Asima distributed with the official Palestinian Authority daily.

The terrorists on the list, who were called "Shahids" (Martyrs) and thereby achieve the highest status possible in Islam, included the synagogue murderers who recently killed 5, three terrorists who killed 5 by running them over with cars and an excavator and the terrorist who attempted to assassinate Rabbi Yehuda Glick. See descriptions of their attacks below.

Another article described the terrorists as having died while "carrying out Martyrdom-seeking (Istish'had) operations."

In July of 2010, after the death of Hezbollah spiritual leader Muhammad Hussein Fadl-Allāh, I was the first to report about CNN correspondent Octavia Nasr tweeting about the death of Hezbollah spiritual leader Muhammad Hussein Fadl-Allāh, saying that he was "one of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot."

Within 80 hours, Nasr was gone from CNN. An internal CNN memo said "we believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward" because of her one tweet.

Now, compare that with the entire series of offensive tweets that CNN anchor Jim Clancy spewed out last Wednesday night. He lashed out at anyone who pointed out his obvious mistake of claiming that none of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons made fun of Mohammmed, claiming that anyone who showed him to be wrong was part of a "Hasbara team," that pro-Israel tweeters like me are part of an anti-Muslim public relations campaign and implying that being pro-Israel meant being against human rights. He seemed to think that an anti-semitic tweeter was really a false-flag pro-Israel tweeter. He also used the offensive term "cripple."

By Thursday morning, Clancy seems to have realized that his possibly drunken tweetfest was not the smartest idea, and he deleted many of his tweets, although not before they were saved. But he continues to block anyone who even refers to his offensive tweets; judging from Twitter it appears that scores of people were blocked.

Since then, the story of Clancy's meltdown has been in Breitbart News, the Washington Free Beacon, MediaLite, Newsbusters, Algemiener, Israel National News, Honest Reporting and other media sites.

Yet we have heard only silence from CNN.

Clancy exhibited shockingly unprofessional behavior that was borderline antisemitic and blatantly anti-Israel. This by itself disqualifies him from reporting on any Middle East topic. CNN is clearly aware of the criticism, and for every hour that it remains silent, it gives the impression of supporting an old-boys network rather than caring one whit about professionalism and objectivity.

01/10 Links: The siege in a kosher shop in Paris proves why Israel needs to exist; #JeSuisJuif

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The siege in a kosher shop in Paris proves why Israel needs to exist

As I write a siege is ongoing in a Kosher shop in Paris. In France, Belgium and across Europe in recent years, Jews have repeatedly been the targets of Islamist attack. They always are. Last year saw the largest upsurge of anti-Semitic hate crime on record even in the UK.
But it is the continent that has seen the worst and growing litany of attacks. In 2012 Mohamed Merah killed three Jewish children and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse. In May last year three people were shot dead by an Islamist gunman at the Jewish museum in Brussels.
During the twentieth century Judaism on the continent of Europe was almost wiped out. In twenty-first century Europe the remaining Jews are once again the target. But from a different type of fascism and from a population who came to Europe since the Holocaust. In the last few years France has seen a larger exodus of Jews moving to Israel than any other country.
There are two questions we really need to consider at such a time. The first is, ‘Why do they always target the Jews?’. In 2008 when Mumbai was attacked, the Islamic terrorists rampaged through that great Indian city. But they specially sought out the tiny Chabad house in Mumbai and there they slaughtered the young rabbi and his wife. It is the same story everywhere. And of course the sort of people who gun down cartoonists for exercising their right to free expression will be the same people who will target Jews.
The second question is this: How dare so many Europeans still wonder why Israel needs to exist. Today Israel is the world’s only really safe haven for Jews who live in a world which cannot keep them safe, even when it wants to.

Ben-Dror Yemini: The forces of darkness are winning

The City of Light suffered a painful terrorist attack this week. It wasn't just another terror attack; it was a terror attack aimed at the very heart and values of the free world. It was a terror attack on freedom of speech and the status of women. It wasn't a terror attack perpetrated in protest against discrimination.
It wasn't a terror attack for the sake of the rights of the Muslims. It wasn't a terror attack against unemployment or alienation. The Jihadists aren't fighting for a better world. They are fighting against anyone and anything different from them. They're fighting to establish a dark Islamic entity.
The problem is the battle is lost. They are winning. Almost a decade and a half ago, the world suffered a jarring experience – the large-scale terror attacks in the United States. There have been other large-scale terror attacks in the West too, in Madrid and London. And what has emerged since? A lot. A whole lot.

David Brooks: I Am Not Charlie Hebdo

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.
Public reaction to the attack in Paris has revealed that there are a lot of people who are quick to lionize those who offend the views of Islamist terrorists in France but who are a lot less tolerant toward those who offend their own views at home.
Just look at all the people who have overreacted to campus micro-aggressions. The University of Illinois fired a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality. The University of Kansas suspended a professor for writing a harsh tweet against the N.R.A. Vanderbilt University derecognized a Christian group that insisted that it be led by Christians.
Americans may laud Charlie Hebdo for being brave enough to publish cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad, but, if Ayaan Hirsi Ali is invited to campus, there are often calls to deny her a podium.

Phyllis Chesler: #Je Suis Juif (I am a Jew)

At least four, possibly five French Jewish hostages, probably women who were shopping for the Sabbath, were killed by Jihadists before the French police stormed the kosher supermarket. The male and female pair of jihadists were demanding the freedom of the Charlie Hebdo jihadists.
Simultaneously, the police also stormed the building in north Paris where the Charlie Hebdo jihadists were holding a hostage; they apparently freed that hostage and killed the terrorists.
I am launching a #Je Suis Juif hashtag, not only in honor of these latest Jewish victims, but in honor of all the Jewish victims whose deaths have met with the hashtag world’s indifference.

The heroic Muslim employee of HyperCacher, and the victims

From HuffPo:

Lassana Bathily, a Muslim employee at Paris Kosher grocery store Hyper Cacher, saved several people by hiding them in a walk-in freezer when a gunman laid siege to his workplace on Friday.

Amedy Coulibaly burst into the market and opened fire, killing 4 people. He took several shoppers hostage and threatened to kill them if police stormed the printing shop where Cherif and Said Kouachi, who killed 12 people in an attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo earlier in the week, were holed up in a village to the north.

Bathily, identified by French media as a "Malian Muslim," helped several customers to safety as the chaos unfolded. "I went down to the freezer, I opened the door, there were several people who went in with me. I turned off the light and the freezer," Bathily, 24, told French network BFMTV. "I brought them inside and I told them to stay calm here, I'm going to go out. When they got out, they thanked me."

It's unclear exactly how many people Bathily managed to hide inside the freezer in the store's basement. City councillor Malik Yettou said that six people and a baby escaped the gunman by hiding there, while BFMTV put the number at about 15.

Bathily told BFMTV that he managed to get out of the store through the freight elevator. When he encountered police, they seemed to initially mistake him for one of the terrorists. "They told me, get down on the ground, hands over your head," he said. "They cuffed me and held me for an hour and a half as if I was with them." He said that he then helped police with his knowledge of the floor plan of the store.

Also:

The four victims killed in the terror attack on a kosher shop in the French capital were all Jews, the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities said.

CRIF identified the victims of the attack Friday as Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham, Yohan Cohen and Francois-Michel Saada.

“These French citizens were struck down in a cold-blooded manner and mercilessly because they were Jews,” read the CRIF statement sent out on Saturday.

Hattab, was the son of the chief rabbi of Tunis.

According to testimonies of people who survived the attack on the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket, the four people who were killed during the incident were shot in the early stages of the seven-hour standoff, which ended when police stormed the shop and killed the hostage taker — a 32-year-old man identified as Amedy Coulibaly.

And:

Cohen was the grandson of a famous Jewish-Tunisian singer, Doukha who died last month. His parents, of Algerian and Tunisian descent, immigrated to Sarcells, a Jewish neighborhood of Paris, in the 1960s.

He was a fan of rap music, according to his Facebook page, and had recently published an image bearing the popular “Je Suis Charlie” slogan, in honor of the 12 people massacred on Wednesday at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris by two terrorist brothers who, it later turned out, were working together with the gunman of the market attack.

Cohen is believed to have been the first victim of Coulibaly, who started his siege of the market under a hail of gunfire, according to an account on JSSnews. Reports still differ but it seems Barham and Saada were also shot and killed during the take-over or shortly after the siege began

Saada leaves behind two children, both of whom live in Israel. “He was a remarkable husband and father, a man who lived his life for his family,” an unnamed friend told AFP.

Barham’s children go to a Jewish school, near the site where a policewoman was gunned down by Coulibaly on Thursday.

Hattab, one of seven children to parents living in Tunisia, was a university student living alone in Paris. He is reported to be the son of the chief rabbi of Tunis.

According to reports, Hattab was the market customer who managed to snatch one of Coulibaly’s weapons, turning it on him before realizing it was jammed. Coulibaly then executed him on the spot, according to a witness who spoke to Le Point.

01/09 Links Pt2: Leila Khaled to star at SA BDS hate fest; Hamas, PA Step Up Human Rights Violations

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas, Palestinian Authority Step Up Human Rights Violations

It would be a good idea if the international community and media stopped turning a blind eye to the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority [PA].
Abbas wants the world to support the creation of a dictatorship where people are arrested and intimidated for expressing their views in public. He is also asking the world to support a Palestinian state where Hamas is torturing Palestinians.
While the PA is accusing Hamas of human rights violations, its security forces in the West Bank continue to crack down on freedom of expression. In recent weeks, Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank have arrested more than 25 university students on charges of criticizing Palestinian leaders in Ramallah.
"You can still see the bruises on their bodies. They were subjected to harsh torture." — Hisham Sakallah, Palestinian writer, on Hamas interrogators beating Fatah officials with plastic hoses.

Countering punch-drunk Palestinians

The Palestinians have come to believe that they can demand the sky and conduct diplomatic war against Israel with impunity. It’s time to disabuse them of these notions through determined Israeli action. And it’s time to reeducate Palestinian leaders and the global community as to the terms to a negotiated settlement that Israel can live with.
You see, the Palestinians long ago took a decision to reject the two-state solution as Israelis and most Western policy-makers envision it.
The Palestinian state that Israelis might be able to support in Judea, Samaria and Gaza cannot threaten Israel’s security – meaning that it must be truly demilitarized, cannot form hostile foreign alliances, will dismantle the Hamas army and hand over its weaponry, agree to Israeli monitors on all its external borders, and accept a permanent Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley to prevent the emergence of another radical Islamic bastion on Israel’s eastern border. (Sinai-stan, Hama-stan, Hezbollah- stan and Syria-stan are already more than enough for Israel to handle.) The Palestinian state that Israelis might be able to support in Judea, Samaria and Gaza must be a reasonable neighbor and willing to compromise – meaning that will not contain any large Israeli settlement blocs, cannot control and destroy Jerusalem, and must share its airspace, natural resources, and historical and religious sites with Israel.
The Palestinian state that Israelis can envision, if at all, in Judea, Samaria and Gaza has to agree to a permanent end to the conflict and all claims on Israel – meaning that it renounces the right of return, inculcates reconciliation and not anti-Semitism on its airwaves and in its schools, recognizes Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish People, and does not seek to criminalize Israeli leaders in international forums.
BUT TODAY’S punch-drunk Palestinian leadership does not want the constricted West Bank state that Israel can countenance.

Notorious Palestinian plane hijacker to promote BDS in South Africa

Infamous Palestinian plane hijacker Leila Khaled will be visiting South Africa next month as a guest of the local chapter of the international Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions movement and Muslim organizations.
BDS South Africa is known for its high-profile, anti-Israel stunts. Last November, It was prevented by court order from protesting outside branches of the Woolworths department store chain. In one of the protests, activists from the Congress of South African Students placed a pig's head in the kosher section of a Cape Town branch.
Born in Haifa in 1944, Khaled joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine at a young age and shot to global prominence with a series of hijackings in 1969 and 1970. (h/t Alexi)

The “Nonviolence” of the BDS Movement

However that may be, Khaled reveals to anyone who cares to listen exactly how she understands the role of BDS. BDS “of course, on the international level [is] very effective. But it doesn’t liberate, it doesn’t liberate land. If there’s BDS all over the world, and the people are not resisting, there will be no change.” In apartheid South Africa, she claims, boycotts “helped the people who were holding arms. But if they were not holding arms it may have affected them politically, but it would not have liberated, not on the ground.” BDS is a way of supporting an armed resistance. As Khaled sees it, BDS is the propaganda arm of groups like her own PFLP.
Rather than distancing themselves from Khaled and the terrorist organization for which she continues to labor, the purportedly nonviolent BDS-South Africa celebrates what they plainly regard as her praiseworthy legacy. Rather than denying that they happily march arm in arm with the likes of PFLP, they quote approvingly an unnamed source that calls Khaled the “poster girl of the Palestinian struggle,” and invite us to dine with her.
You might almost think that they are auditioning for the role—of propagandists to ease the way for the people with guns—Khaled has assigned them.

Britain may have suppressed "masterpiece" 1945 Holocaust film so as not to help Zionists

From The Guardian:

“In the spring of 1945,” says the narrator, over bucolic springtime shots of the German countryside, “the allies advancing into the heart of Germany came to Bergen-Belsen. Neat and tidy orchards, well-stocked farms lined the wayside, and the British soldier did not fail to admire the place and its inhabitants. At least, until he began to feel a smell …”

So begins a British film about the Holocaust that was abandoned and shelved for 70 years because it was deemed too politically sensitive. The smell came from the dead, their bodies burned or rotting; or from malnourished, often disease-ridden prisoners in the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, near all those thriving German farms.

As allied troops liberated such camps across what had been German-occupied Europe, the British Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (who later founded Granada Television) was commissioned to make a documentary that would provide incontrovertible evidence of the Nazis’ crimes.

Bernstein assembled a remarkable team, including the future Labour cabinet minister Richard Crossman, who wrote the film’s lyrical script, and Alfred Hitchcock, who flew in from Hollywood to advise Bernstein on its structure. They set to work on a documentary entitled German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. As they worked, reels of film kept arriving, sent by British, American and Soviet combat and newsreel cameramen from 11 camps, including Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. As well as the dead, the footage showed starved survivors and human remains in ovens.

...Now, 70 years on, director and anthropologist André Singer has made a documentary called Night Will Fall, to be screened on Channel 4 later this month, telling the extraordinary story of filming the camps and the fate of Bernstein’s project.

...Singer also interviews another illustrious Holocaust survivor, a Croatian named Branko Lustig. He was a child in Belsen, so sick at the time of liberation that when he heard a strange noise he thought he’d arrived in heaven to a chorus of angels’ trumpets. In reality, they were the bagpipes played by Scottish soldiers.

Many years later, Steven Spielberg chose Lustig, by then a film-maker, to be a producer for Schindler’s List. Lustig has a theory about why British authorities suppressed Bernstein’s film. “At this time, the Brits had enough problems with the Jews.” By that, no doubt, he means that Britain was dealing with Zionists agitating for a Jewish homeland in the British mandate of Palestine – and seeing the full extent of Jewish suffering would only inflame them.

Singer says he’s already had flak for including Lustig’s theory. “Why the film was scuppered is not very well documented,” he says. “But Branko may well have a point.” Singer points out that in 1945, the incoming Labour government’s foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, was anti-Zionist and unsympathetic to the foundation of a Jewish state. But he concedes there is no strong proof. “The only documentary evidence we have is a memo from the Foreign Office saying that screening such an ‘atrocity film’ would not be a good idea.”

Lustig's theory, if it could be proven, would be a bombshell.

Britain suppressing a hugely important Holocaust documentary because it didn't want to help the Jews who were trying to rebuild their nation after the Holocaust? Sadly, the idea is not far-fetched.

01/09 Links Pt1: 4 hostages killed in kosher grocery; Charlie Hebdo terrorists also killed

From Ian:

Times of Israel Live Blog: Four hostages said killed in Paris kosher grocery, gunman dead; Charlie Hebdo terrorist brothers also killed

France is facing a terrorist onslaught. Two days after gunmen killed 12 in an assault at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the suspects were shot dead by French security forces on Friday afternoon and the hostage they were holding was freed. Security forces almost simultaneously stormed the kosher grocery where another gunmen was holding hostages. Initial reports said he was also killed; the fate of the hostages was not immediately clear. The Times of Israel is liveblogging developments:
18:58 At least 4 hostages dead at kosher market in Paris
At least four hostages at the Kosher supermarket siege in northeastern Paris are dead, a police source tells Reuters.
18:45 ‘Charlie Hebdo suspects came out firing on security forces’
The Kouachi brothers, suspected in the Charlie Hebdo attack that killed 12 people, came out of the printing shop north-east of Paris where they were holding one hostage, guns blazing, a source tells AFP.
French commandos killed the two as they stormed the shop.
18:36 Gunman at kosher market killed in police assault
The gunman at the kosher grocery store in Paris is said to have been killed in a police assault to free the hostages, according to Le Monde.
18:34 Charlie Hebdo terrorist brothers dead, hostage freed
A French police official confirms the two suspects in the Charlie Hebdo massacre have been killed.
The hostage they were holding has been freed, the police also say.
The two brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, killed 12 people in an assault on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine on Wednesday, and a massive manhunt had been mounted to catch them.
They were holed up in a building in the Dammartin-en-Goele, north-east of Paris.

At least 6 people held captive at kosher market in Paris

Fresh shooting broke out in eastern Paris on Friday, as an armed man took at least six people hostage at a kosher grocery store, among them women and children.
The gunman has threatened to kill the hostage if French authorities launch an assault on the Charlie Hebdo killers, who were holding at least one person hostage near Paris, police said Friday.
French lawmaker Meyer Habib told Army Radio Friday that the hostages at the grocery store include “a family with kids, there shopping for Shabbat.”
Some reports in the local media indicated earlier that two people were killed in the attack on Hypercacher Alimentation Générale in Paris’s Porte de Vincennes area, but authorities did not confirm the deaths.

Paris shooting: The 12 victims

The 12 people killed in the terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo included a prominent economist and some of France’s leading cartoonists. These are the victims:
Stephane Charbonnier, 47, known professionally as Charb
Bernard Maris, 68
Jean Cabut, 76
Georges Wolinski, 80
Cartoonist Bernard Verlhac
Phillipe Honore, or Honore, 73
Michel Renaud, a former journalist who was visiting the office as a guest of Cabut.
Mustapha Ourrad, a copy editor at the magazine.
Elsa Cayat, an analyst and columnist at the magazine.
Frederic Boisseau, a building maintenance worker.
Franck Brinsolaro, a 49-year-old policeman who was head of Charb’s security detail.
Merabet Ahmad, a 42-year-old police officer and French Muslim.

Some tweets about the Paris kosher grocery hostage situation

In case you haven't been watching the news:

At least two people have been killed in a shooting at a kosher grocery in Porte de Vincennes, eastern Paris according to a police officer at the scene who spoke to the BBC.

However, there were conflicting reports and Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, has denied that there are any casualties at this stage.

France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor earlier confirmed that an armed man had taken at least five people hostage in the grocery, which is called Hyper Cacher. Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported that police have blocked off the roads near the shop, and have surrounded the building. Nearby schools have been put into lockdown.

I'm not going to liveblog the horrible events going on in Paris at this moment. But here are some tweets I wrote, or retweeted, or responded to that have been getting attention:

Google streetview of Hypercacher supermarket pic.twitter.com/CntRl17Qx0
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 9, 2015

. @KenRoth and @HRW call to "guard against backlash against French Muslims." When will they demand protection for French Jews?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 9, 2015

I hope the media doesn't publish photos of kosher food to further inflame the situation @JeffreyGoldberg
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 9, 2015

For the security and safety of customers and employees, supermarkets must stop selling kosher food #MediaLogic h/t @TheAnorak
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 9, 2015

Will @AliAbunimah say that kugel and challah may have driven Muslims to murder? pic.twitter.com/09ZaA56igz
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 9, 2015

@elderofziyon @Yair_Rosenberg:Jews existing and keeping kosher offends the terrorists' sensibilities. They should have been less provocative
— Diana Muir Appelbaum (@DMAppelbaum) January 9, 2015

No, @clancycnn thinks that all news coverage of the hostage situation is "hasbara" @CygnusA81 @TheAnorak
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 9, 2015

Also see this from MEMRI:

UPDATE: From early reports, it looks like both hostage situations ended as well as could be hoped.

Official PA news believes the "exploding toothpaste" story

The official PA Wafa news agency "reports":

At least 135 Palestinian prisoners, held in Israeli jails, have been killed since 1967 due to torture or live fire shooting, according to a report published by the Prisoners' Center for Studies, a local group concerned with the issue of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons.

Whereas 72 prisoners were killed as a result of extreme torture, 74 others were deliberately shot dead by Israeli live fire after their apprehension, the report uncovered. Seven other prisoners, however, were killed after being treated with excessive force by the Israeli authorities.

Recent reports indicated that the Israel Prison Service had attempted to get rid of two prisoners, identified as Bashir Hroub and Haitham Salhia, by infusing poison into the Hroub's own toothpaste and into a cup of coffee for Salhia.

The center's chairman, Rafat Hamdona, said such attempts, as well as the killing of prisoners, is in contradiction with Article 85 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which stipulates that prisoners' lives are to be protected.

While this article in English says that the toothpaste was poisoned, in Arabic it says "explosive toothpaste." I reported on that accusation earlier this week.

Since the Prisoners' Center believes that Israel tries (and fails) at assassinating prisoners under its full control with James Bond-type methods - and they said that explicitly in their report - it becomes clear that the methodology of these "prisoners rights" organizations are, to put it mildly, subpar.

And they are only one of the many such organizations that encourage prisoners to make wild accusations so they can write up reports using thee lies and attract more funding. Addameer and the Palestinian Ministry of Detainee Affairs and other organizations regularly pop up and issue bogus statistics. But even Addameer never said anything close to what this Al Arsa organization claims. Instead of saying that they were killed by gunshots, Addameer says that many were killed by "medical neglect." That organization apparently counts every death from illness or natural causes as "medical neglect."

I once compared the mortality rates for Palestinian Arab prisoners since 1967 with those of the larger Palestinian population, and found that Palestinians are far less likely to die in Israeli custody than if they were free.

It is one thing for a random NGO to pop up and issue fake statistics. But when the PA publicizes them, then we see that the government itself has no compunction about making the most insane accusations.

Yet the Western media will never report on the pattern of lies and the complete untrustworthiness of Palestinian Arab officials. Instead, they will put them on TV and not even ask about their history of incitement and falsehoods.

(h/t Bob Knot)

From Ma'an:

Top PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat has called the ongoing expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank "terrorism," even making comparisons between Israel and the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria.

"There is no difference between the terrorism practiced by the group led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Israel's terrorism," he said, referencing the leader of the IS group during a speech at a festival celebrating the Prophet Muhammad's birthday in Jericho on Monday.

He added that "ending settlement activities is a prerequisite for eliminating terrorism."

Funny. I don't think there is any difference between Saeb Erekat and Joseph Goebbels.

There has been nearly zero physical expansion of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria in over 25 years. Moreover, when the argument suits him, Saeb Erekat himself admits that the settlements take up only 1.1% of the areas Palestinians want for a state.

Hebron man swims in ice water to express "solidarity" with suffering Syrians, Gazans

61-year old Ishaq Ayesh Abu Mayala decided to show his solidarity with Gazans and Syrians who are without shelter this winter by taking a swim in a small pool of ice water.

Reading a bit further into the reporting, we find out that Abu Mayala does this for fun all the time. But this particular swim was in solidarity with the poor Arabs of Gaza and Syria.

One other thing about this wonderful example of solidarity: None of the news stories I have read about it mentions the name of any charity that he is asking people to give money to. Nor do the stories say that he got sponsors for this event, a stunt that he would have done anyway.

This stunt was perhaps more symbolic than Abu Mayala intended.

Because he acted the way that Palestinian leaders act - valuing symbol over substance, preferring stunts over useful actions.

Just like his leaders, he did not help a single person - but he got a lot of publicity, which is all that really matters when you value symbols over substance..

01/08 Links Pt2: Official PA paper: Attempted murder is Palestinian “pride”; BDS is a failure

From Ian:

PMW: Attempted murder is Palestinian “pride,”‎ according to PA daily

On Dec. 25, 2014 a Palestinian terrorist stabbed two Israeli soldiers who were on a routine patrol in the Old City of Jerusalem, causing them light injuries. The stabbing was caught on a security video and was posted on the internet.
The bi-weekly supplement to the official Palestinian Authority daily, Al-Asima, published an article that glorified the terrorist who attempted the murder and expressed hope that this will be a precedent for future attacks against “the Zionists”:
"These kinds of confrontations which frighten the enemy are excellent Palestinian examples of willpower and determination to win... The video of the Palestinian storming and stabbing of Zionists serves as a school... Now, every Palestinian raises his hand holding a knife together with this young Palestinian, and stabs the Zionists."

Amb. Alan Baker: UN Approves PA for ICC

There is no doubt that the 2012 UN General Assembly Palestinian upgrade resolution was nothing more than a political expression of opinion by those states voting in favor. It was not a legal determination and could not create a Palestinian state, nor could it serve as a legal basis for determining that the Palestinians are a state, or for a depositary’s accepting them as such.
The same goes for the ICC prosecutor. Since the previous 2012 refusal by the former prosecutor to accept the 2009 Palestinian attempt to join the court, nothing has changed legally and therefore the court should not accept the Palestinians now only on the strength of the political upgrade resolution.
In view of the above, the acceptance by the Secretary General of the Palestinian request is legally flawed and was determined under false pretenses – “false” because there exists no sovereign Palestinian state, and “pretenses” because of the pretension by the Secretary General as if such a state exists when he is fully aware that there is no legal basis for this.
In light of the above, the Secretary General must revoke his communication and respond to the Palestinian request that after due examination, since they are not a sovereign state, they cannot, pursuant to the provisions of Art. 126(2) of the ICC statute, accede thereto.

US says Palestinians ineligible to join ICC

The spokesperson for the US State Department said Wednesday that the Obama administration does not consider the Palestinians eligible to join the International Criminal Court, as Palestine is not a sovereign state.
In a press briefing, Jen Psaki clarified the Washington’s position on Palestinian moves for membership in the ICC.
“The United States does not believe that the state of Palestine qualifies as a sovereign state and does not recognize it as such and does not believe that it is eligible to accede to the Rome Statute,” Psaki said. She noted that there are “legal aspects” to the issue that needed to be looked at.