Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Bibi Netanyahu's speech at the Great Synagogue, Paris (text, video)

Here is the official translation of the speech Bibi gave on Sunday.

On this day, all citizens of Israel and Jews around the world stand with France and the French people. I greatly appreciate the determined stance of the President of France, Francois Hollande, and Prime Minister Valls against any expression of anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism and against terror. This stance is important to France and it is important to the world.

I wish to convey my condolences to the families of the journalists and police and all those innocent people who were murdered while realizing their most basic rights: freedom of expression, freedom of thought and freedom of belief, even the freedom not to believe. These are the values on which modern France is built and these are values that are worth fighting for.
Today I marched through the streets of Paris, in one line with leaders from around the world, in order to say that terror must end. It is time that we fight against terror together. And I would like to use this opportunity to salute the French security forces who acted with remarkable bravery, as well as to express my appreciation to the Malian, who is a Muslim, who helped save seven Jews.

My dear brothers and sisters, I came here from Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel, to share in your pain over the murders of Francois-Michel, Philippe, Yoav and of Yohan, who bravely tried to grab the terrorist's gun and was fatally wounded. The memory of our four holy brothers will be forever engraved on the hearts of our people.

Unfortunately the people of Israel have experienced this pain. We have experienced it many times because we have been fighting against terror for many years, and like many in Israel, I am personally familiar with the wounds of terror as well as the agony of bereavement. As a soldier, I was wounded in an operation to free hostages who had been kidnapped on a Sabena airplane. My late brother, Yoni, was killed in Entebbe when rescuing the hostages kidnapped on an Air France airplane. For years, the best of our sons and daughters were killed in many terror attacks, and the finest of our fighters fell in heroic battles against terrorism, including just recently during Operation Protective Edge.

Today we bow our heads in memory of the victims in Paris. However, as representatives of an ancient and proud people, we stand tall against evil because we can overcome it. "The more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread" – because truth and justice are on our side. And here is the truth: Our shared enemy is radical Islam, not Islam and not just radicals – radical Islam. This form of Islam has many names: ISIS, Hamas, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, al-Shabab, Hezbollah; but they are all branches from the same poison tree.

Although the various factions of radical Islam are given to local bloody conflicts, including amongst themselves, they all share the same aspiration: To impose a dark tyranny on the world, to return humanity one thousand years to the past. They trample anyone who does not share their path, first and foremost their Muslim brothers, but their greatest hatred is saved for Western culture, that same culture that respects freedom and equal rights – all the things they so despise.

For this reason it is not a coincidence that radical Islam has sought to destroy Israel from the very day it declared its independence: Because Israel is the only Western democracy in the Middle East, because Israel is the only place that is truly safe for Christians, women, minorities, that respects all human rights.

Well, here is another truth: Radical Islam does not hate the West because of Israel. It hates Israel because it is an organic part of the West. It rightly views Israel as an island of Western democracy and tolerance in an ocean of fanaticism and violence that it wishes to impose on the Middle East, Europe and the entire world.

Israel is not under attack because of this or that detail of its policies, but rather because of its very existence and nature. But we are not the only ones under attack. Look around you: The entire world is under attack, the entire world – the Twin Towers in New York, the subways in London and Madrid, tourists in Bali, students at schools in Russia and Pakistan, a hotel in Mumbai, the mall in Nairobi.

A very short path connects the issuing of the fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie, the murder of Theo van Gogh in Holland and the attacks on Jews in Israel and around the world – it is a short distance from this to the murderous attacks in Paris on the office of Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket not far from here. These are not isolated actions and we must see what they have in common. Otherwise we will not be able to fight against terror in methodical and consistent manner.

We must recognize that there is a global network of radical Islam at work – a network of hatred, fanaticism and murder. I believe that this threat will only grow larger when thousands of terrorists come to Europe from the killing fields of the Middle East. The danger will grow much greater and will become a serious threat to humanity at large if radical Islam gains control over nuclear weapons, and therefore we must use all means to prevent Iran from acquiring an atomic weapon. We must support each other in this fateful struggle against radical Islamic fanatics wherever they are.

Israel stands with Europe and Europe must stand with Israel. As the civilized world today stands with France against terror, so must it stand with Israel against terror. It is the exact same terror. Those who slaughtered Jews in the synagogue in Jerusalem and those who slaughtered Jews and journalists in Paris belong to the same murderous terrorist movement. They should be condemned in the same measure and they must be fought in the same manner.

Only when the international community fights our shared enemy in a uniform manner will we know that we are on the path to victory. I promise you: Israel will continue to fight against terror. Israel will continue to defend itself and we know that when we defend ourselves, we defend the entire civilized world.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, Jews of France, I would like to say to you what I say to our Jewish brothers and sisters from all countries: You have the full right to live in safety and tranquility as citizens with equal rights wherever you wish, including here in France. But Jews of our time have been blessed with another right, a right that did not exist for previous generations of Jews: The right to join their Jewish brothers and sisters in our historic homeland, the Land of Israel; the right to live in our free country, the one and only Jewish state, the State of Israel; the right to stand tall and proud at the walls of Zion, our eternal capital of Jerusalem.

Any Jew who wishes to immigrate to Israel will be welcomed with open arms and warm and accepting hearts. They will not arrive in a foreign land but rather the land of our forefathers. God willing, they will come and many of you will come to our home. Am Yisrael Chai.

Here's the video.

(h/t Yoel)

(h/t Esther)

From The New York Times:

Around 9:10 on Monday evening, laughter and a round of applause broke out among the surviving staff members of Charlie Hebdo, followed shortly by cries — joyous if ironic — of “Allahu akbar!”

The group was cheering Rénald Luzier, a cartoonist known as Luz, who on the umpteenth try had produced what the editors thought was the perfect cover image for the most anticipated issue ever of this scrappy, iconoclastic weekly, which will appear on Wednesday. It showed the Prophet Muhammad holding a sign saying, “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”), with the words “All is forgiven” in French above it on a green background.

“Habemus a front page,” Gérard Biard, one of the paper’s top editors, said with a smile, emerging from the staff’s makeshift newsroom and deploying the phrase used to announce a new pope. To find the right image, he said: “We asked ourselves: ‘What do we want to say? What should we say? And in what way?’ About the subject, unfortunately, we had no doubt.”

But the cowards at the NYT aren't publishing the cover photo.

This time around, many media are publishing the cover, which makes the contrast between who is and who isn't very stark. Here's a quick survey of which news outlets did and did not publish a still image of the Charlie Hebdo cover in web stories that were primarily about the cover (BBC showed it in a video, but not on the webpage, for example, so they are still on the "censored"list.)

Media that did not publish the cover image in their Web stories:

~~Fox News~~ (on their front page now)

Media that did publish the cover image:

Guardian (with warning)

Sydney Morning herald (with warning)

USA Today

Wall Street Journal

Washington Post

(This is not meant to be exhaustive and I will not be updating it, sorry.)

To write an article about the cover image and not publish it is nothing but pure cowardice. It shows that fear of Islamists is far more important to these outlets than actually publishing the news.

I guess the slogan "Je suis Charlie" only goes so far for the media that is covering the story. But the image is certainly being published in places that never published Mohammed cartoons before, which is at least one positive outcome for freedom of the press.

Hamas accuses Israel of being behind Paris attacks, threatens to kill all French immigrants to Israel

First Hamas apparently removed all praise for the terrorist attacks in France from its websites.

Then it "condemned" those attacks:

Hamas on Saturday condemned the deadly attacks by Islamic terrorists in France this week, saying there was no "justification for killing innocents."

This after the Palestinian Islamist group and ruler of the Gaza Strip, classified as a terror organization by Israel and most Western countries, removed praise for the attacks from all official Hamas websites.

Now comes the inevitable conclusion to this line of propaganda.

On Monday, Hamas' Refugee Affairs Department slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's call for French Jews to immigrate to Israel in the wake of the bloody terrorist incidents in Paris. And it then accused the the Netanyahu government of being responsible for the recent events of Paris, "especially the process of hostage-taking in the Jewish restaurant."

The statement concluded by saying that all Jewish immigrants to Israel will become targets of the "Palestinian resistance."

So in the course of three days, Hamas went from pretending that they were against killing innocent civilians to threatening to murder every single French man, woman or child who immigrates to Israel.

Why did Belgium refuse to play Israel in the 1958 World Cup qualifiers? (UPDATE)

1958 was a very weird year for World Cup soccer.

In the aftermath of the Suez crisis, Israel had no opponents in the World Cup qualifying rounds within the Africa/Asia group to which it belonged.

First Turkey refused to play Israel. Then Indonesia requested that they play Israel in a neutral country, and FIFA refused, so Indonesia forfeited.

Finally, Sudan forfeited rather than play Israel in the finals .

FIFA was not happy about this so they created a rule that no one could qualify to the World Cup tournament without playing at least one qualifying game.

They drew lots among teams that had been eliminated in the finals of the European qualifiers to see which lucky team would get a second chance to go to the World Cup by playing Israel.(I'm not sure how they decided that only European teams would have a second chance.)

In the end, Wales was Israel's opponent, and it handily defeated Israel for its one and only World Cup appearance, and the only time that all four UK teams (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) qualified.

I'm more interested in something that happened before Wales was chosen as Israel's opponent.

Wikipedia says, without citation:

So a special play-off was created between Israel and the runner-up of one of the UEFA Groups, where the teams played against each other on a home-and-away basis, with the winner qualifying. After Belgium refused, Wales, the runner-up of UEFA Group 4, was the team drawn from the UEFA group runners-up.

Why would Belgium refuse a second chance at World Cup glory?

This story is corroborated by the BBC:

With Fifa unwilling to allow a team into the World Cup finals without playing a match, Jimmy Murphy's Wales - who had finished behind Czechoslovakia in their qualification group - went into the so-called lucky losers' draw with eight other European runners-up to play off against Israel.

Legend has it the Jules Rimet trophy was used for the draw.

Belgium were actually pulled out first - but passed up the opportunity to play.

And from this football site:

Wales were initially eliminated by Czechoslovakia, but after Sudan refused to play Israel for political reasons in their two team group, FIFA decreed Israel could not simply get a bye into the tournament without playing a game. Lots were drawn among the European runners up to find them an opponent, Belgium turning down the opportunity, Wales coming out next. They took on the Israelis and won 2-0 home and away.

Was Belgium so anti-Israel that they refused what would have probably been a shoo-in chance to reach the World Cup?

I can't find anything more on this, if anyone knows more details there might be a fascinating story here.

UPDATE: Allan Draycott points to an article, and adds a theory, that seems more plausible than blaming anti-Israel sentiment.

Things were a lot different in 1958 than today. For one thing, countries had pride. People respected the rules. And the idea of "wild cards" in sports was, as far as I can tell, non-existent.

Here is the additional information:

After failing to qualify from the qualifying stage, Wales benefited from a brilliant bit of international bickering. Belgium were due to play Israel in a qualifying match but promptly refused, and Uruguay (in true hot-blooded Latin-American fashion) refused to accept what they considered a ‘charitable entry’ into the competition. Wales had no such compunctions though, and duly accepted the invitation with open arms after being drawn as the next ‘lucky losers’.

Uruguay, which I was unaware of, turned down the chance for a World Cup berth because they wanted to earn it fair and square. To them, getting in through the backdoor was not an honorable way to enter the championship.

Now, Draycott points out that Belgium and France were very tight friends. France was Israel's greatest ally at the time. Anti-Zionism seems to be unlikely as a reason for Belgium's bailing.

(Update: Ahron Shapiro emailed me with a number of clips showing very close relationships between Belgium and Israel in 1957 and 1958.)

FIFA created the rule that a team must play at least one qualifying game (unless they are the host) for Israel, and only for Israel.

If you care about sportsmanship, one of the worst things you can witness is to see a team refuse to play another. The penalty for doing that, of course, is to lose the game. But when practically every team in a group decides to shun a team, therefore spreading the unsportsmanlike conduct through an entire continent, what would be the most appropriate response?

If you care about sports, it might be to punish the entire grouping by allowing the team they are trying to shun to reach the World Cup.

FIFA, by creating a rule that applied only to Israel, was changing the rules during the game, so to speak. This must have been somewhat controversial. The rule made it appear that the forfeits really weren't losses for the forfeiters, because the team they lost to didn't gain anything. And it is quite possible that Belgium refused to play along with this facade that was meant to make all those forfeits meaningless and that would retroactively reward the Muslim nations for their actions.

So maybe, just maybe, Belgium decided not to be part of this farce in order to tell FIFA that Israel already earned the right to play by the disgraceful behavior of the other Asian teams and they had no right to take that away with an unprecedented playoff.

01/12 Links Pt2: The fruits of cowardice and appeasement; Europe must sober up

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Jews and France

As French philosopher and scholar of anti-Semitism Alain Finkielkraut noted in an interview with Army Radio on Sunday, the French intelligentsia sees Jews as “in some ways responsible for what is happening to them, because of Israel’s so-called racism and because Jews identify with Israel.”
The willingness on the part of the French intelligentsia to blame Israeli policies for attacks directed against French Jews, says Finkielkraut, goes hand in hand with a tendency to blame “Islamophobia” for triggering Muslim-inspired violence against French society, like the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
Valls, Finkielkraut, and many others in France – including an estimated million who joined in the “march of freedom” in the streets of Paris on Sunday, many of whom Muslims – understand the fate of the Jews in France and elsewhere is intimately linked to the “soul” of Western civilization.
An unequivocal and uncompromising reaffirmation of the French Republic’s values – things like freedom of the press, women’s rights, free scientific inquiry, and human rights – is the best answer to the violently reactionary, anti-Semitic offensive launched by radical Islam. Upholding France’s ideals against radical Islam will not only be good for the Jews – it will be good for all of French society.

Ben-Dror Yemini: France's Jews are under double attack

France is under attack, and the Jewish community is under a double attack. The French are starting to feel like foreigners in their country, and for the Jews it's a double foreignness. They are already accustomed to an anti-Semitic right, whose finest hour was the Dreyfus affair.
Dark people on the left, usually anti-Zionists, operate alongside the anti-Semitic right, and in the past summer's protests they marched alongside Hamas-supporting jihadists.
There are millions of French people, including decent and law-abiding Muslims – but the jihadists, even if there are only few of them, are far from being defeated.
France has its concerns. The Jews have more concerns. The events of the past week served as a milestone for France. Many Jews feel this is a milestone ahead of the end of the road in France.

Isi Leibler: The fruits of cowardice and appeasement

Jews have reassumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the frontline, confronting Islamic extremism, but has received scant support. Indeed, until recently Western governments ignored the carnage in Syria, Iraq, and other countries, preferring to concentrate on condemning Israeli housing construction in the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem and regarding Israel as the major lubricant to Islamic extremism. French support of the Palestinian Authority application to the U.N. Security Council on Dec. 30, obviously designed to curry favor with local Muslims, did not deter terrorists from committing their massacres in Paris a week later.
For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the anti-Semitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying. Robert Wistrich, the world's leading scholar on anti-Semitism, says that anti-Semitism in France is now in an irreversible "advanced stage of disease." There were a series of anti-Semitic murders in France and Belgium preceding the latest Paris massacre, but they failed to raise the same level of outrage as the Charlie Hebdo murders. There were no popular campaigns saying "Je suis Juif." Indeed there seemed to be greater concern about "Islamophobia" than the targeted Jewish victims.
Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue to behave like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall.
For Jews, the Zionist vision has once again been tragically vindicated.

Arab newspaper clarifies that "resistance" is another word for Jew-hatred

A couple of years ago a video surfaced that showed a gang of Arab youths, some quite young but others that seem to be adult, harassing two young hareidi Jewish men who are just trying to walk home from prayers.

As the gang members laugh and jeer, they throw snowballs and one snatches the black hat that one of the religious Jews is wearing.

(As a result of the video, nine Arabs were arrested for the attack.)

Arab newspaper Vetogate just reproduced a slightly different angle of the video, shown above.

And it praises the harassers, calling them "resistance" and saying that they were "bravely throwing [snowballs] at a group of Jewish pedestrians in the street."

Now you know that there is no such thing as Arab antisemitism. If an Arab attacks a Jew who is just minding his own business, it isn't really an attack - it is all "resistance" which they claim is permitted, or even mandated, under international law.

01/12 Links Pt1: Solidarity with journalists, not Jews; Is Abbas, Honoring the Victims or Terrorists?

From Ian:

Maps of Paris Jewish Schools Found in Terrorist’s Car

It has been revealed that terrorist Amedy Coulibaya, who murdered four people in a kosher supermarket in Paris on Friday, may have planned to attack a Jewish school just one day earlier.
Maps with the locations of Jewish schools on them were found in his car.
On Thursday, Coulibaya shot and murdered a female police officer who was responding to a car accident. Investigators now suspect that he had been planning to attack a Jewish school located a short distance beyond the site of the crash.
The policewoman’s death had caused confusion, as it was not clear why Coulibaya would have traveled from his own neighborhood to the district of Mountrouge to shoot a random police officer.
“Everyone thinks he was on his way to the school,” an employee at a bakery near the site of the shooting told the British Guardian.
In 2012, a terrorist attacked a Jewish school in Toulouse, murdering four people. The victims were a father and his two young sons, and an 8-year-0ld girl.

IsraellyCool: Phillips Talks To Poller, Dyer & Murray On France, Terror And Islam

This morning I’m passing on not one, not two but three great interviews by Melanie Phillips from her show yesterday on Voice of Israel. The whole show is a must listen but it’s split into three segments. First up is Nidra Poller, a US journalist who’s lived in France for many years. Then retired US Naval Intelligence Officer Cmdr Jennifer Dyer who wrote a devastating piece about the Jihadi tactics used in Paris. Finally it’s British stalwart, Douglas Murray whose interview with Sky News we featured a few days ago.

Douglas Murray and Melanie Phillips - Charlie Hebdo

Douglas Murray - Intelligence Agencies and Terror [Fox News]

BBC Reporter at Paris Rally: “Palestinians Suffer at Jewish Hands”

Barely had the French Jewish community time to get their heads around the appalling terror attack on a Paris kosher supermarket when the BBC’s Tim Willcox interviewed a Jewish woman at the January 11 solidarity rally in Paris. Interrupting her, Willcox says:
"Many critics of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well."
Note that Willcox specifically says “Jewish” rather than “Israeli,” thus effectively holding French Jewry (and all Jews) responsible for the actions of Israel.
“Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel” is included in the European Union’s Working Definition of Anti-Semitism while the U.S. State Department says: “Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, the state of Israel, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.“
And for good measure, Willcox, when he fails to get his interviewee to agree with his offensive logic, adds:
"But you understand; everything is seen from different perspectives."
This isn’t the first time that Tim Willcox has demonstrated disturbing behavior when it comes to Jews. As BBC Watch explains, Willcox promoted the “Jewish lobby” trope on a BBC broadcast as recently as November 2014.
Tim Willcox’s inference that the Middle East conflict can in any way explain or justify an attack on Jews in France or anywhere else in the world is simply appalling.

"Palestinians suffered hugely at Jewish hands" -- BBC's Tim Wilcox to scared Jewish lady in Paris:

Adham Mohammed Ashour, a soccer player for the Egyptian team Al Borsaidy, has complained at how he and his teammates were treated during a match on Saturday.

Citing how is opponents, Al Ahly, acted, Ashour says that they refused to shake the hands of the Borsaidy players. Also some soccer etiquette when team member is injured, to have a player from the opposing team come to the field to check up on him, was ignored, and there were some other slights to the Borsaidy team's honor.

In the end, Ashour says, his team was treated as badly as if they were Jews.

But....I thought that Jews were treated well in the Arab world? Wasn't he complimenting his opponents? For some strange reason, it seems like he is saying that it is normal in the Arab world to treat Jews like dirt!

There have been lots of reactions to his accusations

The owner of the club fined Ashour because he wasn't allowed to speak to the media.

The captain of the Ahly club strenuously denied that they treated the Borsaidy club like Jews.

None of the reactions included people who pointed out that Jews are treated as honored members of Arab society. Even if there are Egyptian pop songs written by people who work for American companies warning that Jews will always cheat you.

Last Thursday, schools throughout France observed a moment of silence in memory of the people murdered at Charlie Hebdo.

But in Muslim neighborhoods, teachers faced an uphill battle to get the students to observe any respect for the dead.

In an elementary school in Seine-Saint-Denis, no less than 80% of students in one class refused the minute of silence. The teacher ended convincing half of them.

Some students tried to explain their decision to the teachers. "But you do not understand the Prophet, they should not be allowed to draw him...He is above man ", said a sixth grader to his teacher. Another student said, "They had it coming. You reap what you sow. " In another class with 26 college students, eight rejected the decision to declare a day of national mourning. On Facebook, a teacher says she was greeted at 8:00 by "I support those who killed them ..."

A 14 year old said that not all 12 people deserved to be killed, but the one who drew Mohammed did.

A fake bomb, with the message "I am not Charlie," was found in one school.

Another teacher tweeted that a student told him his mother said the victims had it coming. He wasn't sure how he could override Mommy.

Other cases were reported in the media as well. The French Ministry of Education issued a press release that the vast majority of schools held the moment of silence without incident, and that there were only problems at 70 out of 64,000 schools, and that those cases were taken very seriously.

(h/t Ben Ivel)

The Jenin Magistrate Court has announced that under Palestinian Authority law, the Oslo agreements are no longer in force.

Looking at the question of whether the PA court system has any jurisdiction to try Jews who are alleged to commit crimes over the Green Line, the Jenin Magistrate Court Judge Ahmed al-Ashqar ruled that the Oslo Accords were only meant to be temporary and that they envisioned a final agreement within five years. No agreement since then has extended the agreements, explicitly or implicitly, according to the court. Combined with "Palestine" being considered a state by many international actors and bodies, the court ruled that statehood has created a new reality that supersedes Oslo, and that the PA institutions working for a fully sovereign state under occupation.

There is an inconsistency there that the decision seems to paper over. If the "State of Palestine" is indeed under belligerent occupation, then under international law Israel can replace the justice system in the territories. Yet this decision says "the mandate of the Palestinian courts derives from the right of the Palestinian people of the sovereign in the exercise of his powers in the state and at home through three powers under Article 2 of the Amended Basic Law for the year 2003, including the judiciary, which by courts of different types and grades, which pronounce judgments on behalf of the Palestinian Arab people." If they are under occupation, the only rights the court system would have would be the rights that the occupier allows. And the occupier has not said that the provisions under the Oslo accords has been abrogated.

Arab experts interviewed were ecstatic, saying that this ruling gives Palestinian Arabs the right to prosecute any Jews in the disputed territories, or seemingly any Israeli who crosses the Green Line, who they consider a criminal.

Of course, if Oslo is abrogated, then it means that Israel's obligations under the accords have ended as well.

(h/t Bob Knot)

Jews are being murdered in France, so naturally the NYT is worried about - Muslims

Three children and a teacher are gunned down in a Jewish school in Toulouse
Synagogues are firebombed as protesters chant "Death to the Jews"
Jewish businesses are attacked during riots
A fire is started in a synagogue as swastikas are painted on its walls
Another synagogue was besieged by a crazed antisemitic mob while worshipers barricaded themselves inside
Four Jews are murdered at a kosher supermarket by someone who admitted he was targeting Jews

So which French community is the New York Times concerned about for its safety and well-being?

I imagine it isn't fun to worry about pigs heads in mosques or about "potential" backlashes to your community. But Muslims in France are not being murdered because they are Muslim..

Jews are being murdered because they are Jews..

When the media cares more about the people who share the religion of the terrorists than the people whose religious group is being systematically targeted, there is a big problem.

(h/t Ron)

Every once in a while some genius decides that showing a photo of an old coin or stamp or poster that says "Palestine" on it is proof that there was an Arab state called Palestine in the first half of the 20th century.

One example is on the official page of the Palestine Football Association.

Arabs are excited that the "Palestine" team is playing in the Asia Cup so there are lots of articles about that team. But the "History" page of the PFA says that "Palestine" participated in the World Cup tournament in 1934 and 1938!

This claim has been going on for a while, and for last year's World Cup in Brazil, FIFA put out a statement within its statistical guide.

Under "Palestine" it says:

* The modern Palestine, an Arab state, has no connection with the Palestine (then a British mandate) delegations that played in the qualifying games for 1934 & 1938 under the name of Hitachduth Eretz Yisraelit Lakadur Regel.

Under Israel it says:

* A Jewish delegation from Palestine (then a British mandate) played at the qualifying games for 1934 & 1938. It was the first Jewish national team, and as such the forerunner of Israel. Was relocated from Asia’s to Europe’s group in 1954.

It also has some other interesting trivia:

In their first ever preliminary tournament back in 1962, Ethiopia decided to play both of their home and away matches in Israel for security reasons. The African team lost both qualifiers by one goal (1-0 and 3-2)

There were some other interesting facts about the history of the Israeli team and the teams that refused to play them - before 1967 - but I'll leave that for another time.

Two parades on Fatah's Facebook page

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party's Facebook page shows photos of two parades today.

One shows Mahmoud Abbas as he fools the world into thinking that he is against the sort of attacks on Jews as happened on Friday in Paris.

The other parade was from Saida, Lebanon in 1982. An Israeli pilot was downed over Lebanon and Abbas' Fatah group gleefully dragged his body through the streets.

As of this writing, the second photo has far more "Likes" than the first.

2015 Hasby Award - Best Pro-Israel Tweeter

The nominees for Hasby Awards Best Pro-Israel Tweeter are:

Arsen Ostrovsky

Margie in Tel Aviv

CiFWatch

William Daroff

Hen Mazzig

Anarcho-Zionist

Brian of London

NotAntiSemitic

Tal Ofer

This is an incredibly tough category to decide. Every one of these nominees is exceptional. I urge you to follow all of these tweeters.

The 2015 Hasby Award for Best Pro-Israel Tweeter goes to...