Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

The stupid argument that "Israel kills journalists, too"

There is a certain type of person who, upon hearing that something horrendous happened, reflexively tries to come up with ways to prove that Israel is worse. (When that doesn' t work, they usually fall back to saying that Israel was behind the atrocity to begin with.)

These people, by viewing all world events through their "I hate Israel" glasses, show that they don't give a damn about the lives lost in the original event. No, everything bad that happens must be used, however tenuously, as anti-Israel incitement.

Such haters of Israel - including some Israelis - have been using a new anti-Israel meme, saying that Israel has killed more journalists than the Paris jihadists did at Charlie Hebdo.

This cartoon was published in Haaretz counting 13 "journalists" killed in Gaza compared to 10 killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack::

Do I have to point out the difference between specifically targeting journalists to be killed because what they wrote offends you, and being killed in a war zone?

(There have reportedly been threats against the Haaretz cartoonist that made this sickening equivalence. That is of course wrong, but Internet masses saying they wish someone was dead is not usually a credible threat. If Haaretz staffers feel threatened, then they should go to the police to arrest those who are making the threats. If it is simply the sort of stupidity that Internet users spout every day it is hardly in the same league as the death threats of jihadists.)

The other problem with the equivalence between the journalists killed in Gaza and those murdered by French jihadists is that some of the "journalists" were terrorists themselves.

The cartoon referred to an IFJ count during the Gaza war saying that 13 journalists had been killed so far. They include Izzat Dheir, who was an Islamic Jihad fighter.

They count Abdurrahman Abu Hina, a Hamas member (#875.)

Other journalists that appear on lists of those killed by Israel in Gaza after this IFJ list was published include Abdullah Murtaja:

Other "journalists," like Khaled Riad Mohammed Hamad, weren't journalists in any real sense. They worked for terrorist media outlets, where journalistic ethics are nonexistent - they were propagandists paid by Hamas or Islamic Jihad. If the IFJ wants to consider them part of their profession, that's fine, but it really waters down the definition of "journalist." International law definitely distinguishes between legitimate media and propaganda outlets that could contribute to the war.

Other journalists killed in Gaza were not killed by Israeli bombings. At least three were killed when Gaza "bomb disposal experts" took them to see them work - and they did not distance the journalists far enough, nor did they give them any protective gear, as the munitions exploded. Yet they are also often listed as being killed by Israel by the haters.

UNESCO only counts 8 journalists killed that fit their criteria. Two of them (Simone Camilli and Ali Shehda Abu Afash, a translator) were killed by munitions that exploded while supposedly being disarmed. They counted at least three "journalists" for Hamas media (Khaled Riad Mohammed Hamad, Sameh al-Aryan and Mohamed Daher.) One of the remaining was a driver, not a journalist.

Any objective observer would conclude that there is no possible comparison between Israeli actions and those of the Charlie Hebdo terrorists, and inded such a comparison is obscene.

Haaretz defends the cartoon as "freedom of speech" but real journalists should prize accuracy and honesty over blind, hateful Israel bashing, which is what that cartoon really is. No one should be threatened over its publication, but no responsible media outlet would publish such an inaccurate piece to begin with. Haaretz has the absolute right to publish lies, but its defense of publishing lies indicates that Haaretz is not so much a newspaper as it is dedicated to anti-Israel propaganda itself

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The PLO terror trial that is now underway in New York should be lots of fun if the PLO keeps defending itself like this:

A lawyer for the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority told a jury in an opening statement Tuesday that the groups are not to blame for seven terror attacks in Israel from 2001 to 2004.

Attorney Mark Rochon said the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers and gunmen "acting on their own angry, crazy reasons" and that the organizations are victims of guilt by association.

The $1 billion lawsuit was filed in 2004 over attacks in or near Jerusalem that killed 33 people and wounded hundreds more, including scores of U.S. citizens.

Given that these attacks were happily claimed by Fatah terrorists on the payroll of the PLO, this argument is going to be demolished easily.

Shurat HaDin's head, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner , predicted in December that the PLO would mount this defense:

When asked what possible defense could be offered against such a charge, Darshan-Leitner predicted that the PA will attempt to spin the Second Intifada as a series of "lone wolf" attacks outside their realm of control.

"The PLO's defense would be that it could not control the attacks, the perpetrators of the different attacks, that they were sporadic events which the PLO had no control over [and] did not encourage in any way, and basically that even attacks carried out by Palestinian policemen or Palestinian security officials were wrong and not authorized by the Palestinian Authority," she explained.

"It's a very weak defense, because we have thousands of [pieces of] evidence - documents - that prove otherwise, prove that the Palestinian Authority not only controlled the attacks, but wanted to initiate the attacks and set up a policy to carry out attacks, wanted to direct their officials [and] their commanders to perpetrate attacks against Israelis, and incited to carry out attacks."

"I think the Palestinian Authority's argument will not hold," she concluded.

In 2008, the PLO - trying to avoid this trial - argued that the terror attacks were acts of war, not terrorism - the exact opposite of the current claim! If they are acts of war that means that they were centrally controlled and managed by the Palestinian Authority government at the time.

The judge threw out that claim:

[District Judge George] Daniels rejected the PLO's argument that two machine-gun attacks and five bombings were acts of war. The Jerusalem-area incidents killed 33 people and wounded hundreds, including scores of U.S. citizens.

Daniels said the attacks targeted public places - not military or government personnel or interests. Two bombings were on downtown streets; others occurred at a crowded bus stop, a cafeteria at the Hebrew University and a passenger-filled civilian bus.

"The use of bombs in these circumstances indicates an intent to cause far-reaching devastation upon the masses," the Manhattan judge said," with a merciless capability of indiscriminately killing and maiming untold numbers in heavily populated civilian areas.

"Such attacks upon non-combative civilians, who were allegedly simply going about their everyday lives, do not constitute acts of war," he said.

Daniels also said the violence meets the legal definition of international terrorism.

I wonder if the PLO's previous arguments are admissible as evidence in the current trial.

At any rate, this means that according to the PLO's own statements, they are guilty of war crimes by targeting civilians.

No, Israel didn't jail a cartoonist because of his cartoons

On Monday's Daily Show with Jon Stewart, besides the absurd charge by Jimmy Carter that jihadists in France were really motivated by Israeli policies, we saw Stewart accuse Israel of jailing a Palestinian cartoonist because of his work and ironically pointing out that this terrible, freedom hating state was allowed to send Bibi to Paris:

Al Jazeera is such a trustworthy source!

The cartoonist says one story now, and his lawyer said another one at the time.

Mohammad Saba’aneh the cartoonistm who of course can be trusted not to be biased at all, was quoted in Electronic Intifada:

In the end, the focus of the interrogation became a book about Palestinian political prisoners that Saba’aneh’s brother — a member of Hamas — wrote and published. Because several of Saba’aneh’s cartoons were published in his brother’s book, “I was charged with collaboration with Hamas.”

Of course, he says, it was all an excuse to jail him for his cartoons.

But Saba’aneh's lawyer said something quite different at the time he was jailed:

According to his lawyer, Mohammad is accused of accepting money in Jordan for his brother Tamer, a member of Hamas who is currently in an Israeli prison. Mohammad denies this, and claims he handed the money to another person while still in Jordan, because he suspected the funds were linked to Hamas.

So Saba’aneh admitted that he accepted money that he thought was meant to go to Hamas! (And he disingenuously claims that he simply handed the money to someone else. Was that someone else going to give it to Hamas too? How does that make him less guilty?)

Of course, he no longer tells anyone that story, because the idea of his being a martyr for freedom of expression sounds so much better - and makes Israel sound so much worse.

Of course, The Daily Show doesn't claim to be a real news show so it doesn't do corrections - allowing it to have no responsibility for lying about Israel even when it is not joking.

Now BDSers are boycotting Muslims who talk to Israeli Jews

Last June, a brave Muslim woman named Rabia Choudry wrote about her experiences spending a year in Israel at the Sholom Hartman Institute to learn about Israel from an Israeli perspective, in a program specifically geared towards Muslims.

As I mentioned then, many Muslims were aghast at this program. In fact, most of the participants did not go public for fear of how their fellow Muslims would react.

Now, another courageous American Muslim woman, Amanda Quraishi, has just started the same program:

To say that this program has been controversial is an understatement. A stormy public debate that tested (and damaged) many relationships within the American Muslim community took place last summer as members of the first cohort engaged on social media with critics of the program.

I’m well aware that my own decision to be part of MLI and to travel to Israel to engage in dialogue at a zionist institution is enough to classify me as a zionist for many Muslims. I know that there are people I care about who will now consider me untrustworthy. I expect that I will lose opportunities, and risk abuse from strangers online (and perhaps even some I count as friends) who feel qualified to insult me, judge my faith, and say cruel things because of my participation.

I know this will happen because it happened to the people who went before me.

And still, I said yes.

Not because I’m a naive, kumbaya-singing interfaith activist willing to gobble up the hasbara just to earn myself a seat at bigger and better interfaith tables. Not because I will profit from it in any way. (This decision is more of personal & professional liability than anything else I’ve done as an adult). And not because I egotistically think I will have some influence over matters on the ground in Israel and Palestine.

I am going to participate in this program at one of the most influential Jewish institutions in the world for two very important reasons:

First, I have voluntarily worked as an interfaith activist in a local, state and national capacity for more than a decade. Interfaith work is not (contrary to popular belief) about getting people to agree on everything. Rather, it’s about getting people comfortable with being uncomfortable together so that real conversations about big issues can begin to happen.

...The second reason I’m going is because I believe in engagement as a way of life.

One of the things that contributed to me embracing Islam was the life story of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) as a statesman and diplomat. Muhammad didn’t live in a bubble. He and his minority community of early Muslims lived side-by-side with different tribes and religions, some of whom were very hostile to the Muslims. Yet he consistently, proactively sought to make peace with them, the very people who attempted to kill him. Muhammad’s humility and cool-headedness in the face of oppression and outright aggression influenced me as I formed my own Muslim identity. This has been the touchstone for how I engage as part of a Muslim minority in this country for fifteen years, and it has served me well.

As a lover of peace and an equal-opportunity humanitarian my soul is burdened by the conflict and deep injustices I see in the world. I often feel simultaneously terrified, helpless and angry at the suffering I see happening all over this planet. But I have come to realize that those who are guilty of perpetuating the violence and conflict are often doing so out of fear, helplessness and anger themselves.

There are no simple answers, but I do know one thing: if there is a way to peace it lies in loosening the knots, not in making them tighter. The answers we seek to the biggest problems of the human family lie in seeing beyond political and religious affiliations–at least long enough to view the reflections of our own humanity even within those we hate and fear the most.

I have been invited to engage. I feel compelled to say yes.

Naturally, Quraishi is being slammed by many other Muslims, and she discusses her distress a bit in her blog that is describing her experiences in Israel.

No matter how earnest the Quraishis and the Choudrys of the world are, there are still far more simple-minded haters who can't stand this "normalization" with the "Zionist enemy." So now the BDS movement is not only boycotting Israel, but they are boycotting their fellow Muslims who have the audacity to think for themselves.

They are calling an initiative to have a dialogue between serious Jewish Zionists and thinking Muslims "Faithwashing."

We as organizations and individuals committed to Palestinian self-determination call on the Muslim community in North America to eschew any and all participation, facilitation, or any form of legitimization for the Muslim Leadership Initiative of the Shalom Hartman Institute and its representatives or advocates.

Just a few months following Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, which killed 2,200 Palestinians, and during this time when activists worldwide are working to strengthen campaigns to hold Israel accountable for its continued denial of Palestinian rights through tactics such as boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), it is distressing to learn that Muslim American chaplains, journalists, academics, and cultural workers are being approached and a small yet growing number are participating in an initiative that is a clear propaganda attempt by the Israeli organization Hartman to “influence the North American Muslim community in reassessing its preconceived notions of Judaism and Israel.” MLI participants are ignoring Palestinian calls to isolate Israel and are taking part in a program sponsored by an organization involved in efforts to thwart BDS.

...We pledge to not give a platform to any MLI participant to speak about their experiences at our community centers, places of worship, and campuses and call on a complete boycott of MLI.

When will they extend the boycott to any mosque or school who allows a MLI participant to speak?

Some of the rabid critics of Muslims who think for themselves are going nuts. They are trying desperately to "out:" the Muslims who go on the trip - something that can endanger them when they come back home.

Here is a video showing how fearful some of the participants are of being filmed, and later on a male participant who does identify himself (he's a lawyer) tells the person making the video that he is quite wrong about what "all Palestinians" want, since he's spoken to them. He comes across as far more reasonable than the videographer claiming that the Hartman Institute is supposedly "Islamophobic."

There are lots of articles in American Muslim media about how to deal with these people who actually want to engage in real dialogue with Israeli Jews in order to understand them.

Terrible, isn't it?

01/13 Links Pt2: The True Face of Hamas’ Hypocrisy; Which side are you on?

From Ian:

IDF Blog: The True Face of Hamas’ Hypocrisy

Hamas has been advocating violence and hatred since it’s founding in 1987. The organization has executed horrific terror attacks, and continues to glorify martyrdom and indoctrinate youth, encouraging them to become terrorists. Yet, following the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, Hamas suddenly decided to condemn violence, stating that, “differences of opinion and thought cannot justify murder.”
On Wednesday, January 7, twelve people were murdered by terrorists at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices in Paris. The terror attack shocked France and the international community as a brutal offense on freedom and democracy. Many leaders around the world sent their condolences to the French people and condemned the violence and terrorism they have faced.
Surprisingly, one of the organizations to condemn the attack was Hamas. On Saturday, January 10, the terror organization released a statement in French and Arabic saying that Hamas “condemns the attack against Charlie Hebdo magazine and insists on the fact that differences of opinion and thought cannot justify murder.”
This statement is proof of Hamas’ blunt hypocrisy and double standard. Only a few months ago the terror organization celebrated the death of Israeli civilians and praised the terrorists who performed the attacks.
On November 18, 2014, terrorists murdered five Israeli civilians in a synagogue in Har Nof, Jerusalem. The terrorists entered the synagogue during morning prayers and attacked the men with a rifle and a knife. Hamas’ reaction to this attack was far from condemnation.
Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas spokesman, called the attack a “heroic action.”

Which side are you on?

David Singer: Mapping The Truth Erases A Long-running Fiction.

The US State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs has featured a map on its website – which both rejects and corrects the misleading use of the terms “1967 boundaries” and “1967 borders” – which have never existed in relation to any territorial subdivision between Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
As the accompanying map makes clear:
There was a 1950 armistice line that separated Israel from the Gaza Strip
There was a 1949 armistice line that separated Israel from the West Bank.
The use of dishonest and untruthful verbiage such as “boundaries” and “borders” has been a major factor in causing what now appears to have led to an irretrievable breakdown in negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) designed to create a second Arab State in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan.
Absent from this State Department map is there any mention of these aberrant terms.
Instead the map seeks to present an honest and accurate position of the current territorial relationship that exists between Israel, the West Bank (“Judea and Samaria”) and Gaza.

Israeli companies vie for DoD anti-terror technology prize

From Israel's MIT Forum:

Terrorism is a constantly evolving worldwide threat. As terrorists become more sophisticated, so too must the tools for detecting, preventing, and defeating them. This is creating major opportunities for technology companies.

The MIT Enterprise Forum of Israel & the US Department of Defense are pleased to present the 2015 Combating Terrorism Technology $100K Startup Challenge and Conference.

This event will help startups, from any technology domain, identify opportunities to apply their skills and technologies to the effort to combat terrorism, and understand how to do so profitably and successfully.

The event has two components:

The $100K Startup Challenge: Forty three technology startups entered the first round of the challenge. Of these, eight have reached the finals. The 8 finalists will present live in “Shark Tank” format at the conference. A panel of International judges will select the winning startup which will receive a $100,000 check courtesy of the US Defense Department. The prize will be presented by a special VIP guest of honor.

The conference: Leading experts from Israel and abroad will discuss terrorism trends, the critical role that Israeli technology companies can play in addressing these trends, and the “how to's” of what it takes to succeed in this area.

Startup Finalists:
Forty three startups entered the contest. Eight were chosen as finalists based on their breakthrough technologies. They will compete live for the $100K prize:

This sounds like a really fun way to spend a day.

2015 Hasby Award - Best Pro-Israel Media Outlet/Writer (not exclusive to Israel)

The nominees for Best Pro-Israel Media Outlet/Writer (not exclusive to Israel) are:

Douglas Murray

Gatestone Institute

Charles Krauthammer

Walter Russell Mead

Bret Stephens (WSJ)

Legal Insurrection

Daniel Greenfield

Colonel Richard Kemp

Brendan O'Neil

SunNews Media (Canada)

This is again a very difficult category to decide. All the nominees are worth reading, and I strongly recommend that you do so.

And the Hasby Award winner is...

01/13 Links Pt1: Jews, Not Cartoonists, are Islam's Real Enemy; Carter blames Israel for everything

From Ian:

David Horovitz: The death-cult ideology that France prefers not to name

Islamist jihad cannot and will not be defeated if it is not honestly acknowledged. The enemies of freedom will not be picked out at border crossings, tracked on the internet, targeted, thwarted and ultimately marginalized if insistent self-defeating political correctness means those enemies are not even named.
Does anybody seriously believe, for instance, that France is about to launch a crackdown on Islamist groupings at its higher-education institutions, or devote serious resources to investigating potential incitement at local mosques? Are France and the rest of Europe about to introduce passenger profiling at EU entry points, in the way that Israel does? Is the EU set to sanction Turkey for facilitating the flow of radicalized European Muslims to and from the Islamic State terror group in Syria and Iraq?
Not terribly likely, is it, when the French president declares that “these terrorists and fanatics have nothing to do with the Islamic religion”? Not terribly likely, is it, when the French president, reportedly, didn’t want his day of dignified identification with the victims of terrorism spoiled by the presence of those, like Netanyahu, who might distract from the solemn harmony and focus furious attention, instead, on the specific cause, that great big elephant stuck in among the masses in central Paris: Islamic extremism?
Three and a half million people took to the streets of France on Sunday in a show of solidarity for the latest fatalities of a ruthless ideology. But they couldn’t bring themselves to call that death-cult by its name.
Do the last few days of Islamist murder in France constitute a watershed moment for one of the Diaspora’s largest communities? The beginning of the end? I rather think so.
A watershed moment in the Western battle against Islamic extremism? I fear not.

Melanie Phillips: Melanie Phillips: Jews, Not Cartoonists, are Islam's Real Enemy

Even now, people are still not joining up the dots. The massacre at Charlie Hebdo gave rise to claims that the French magazine was responsible for the attack by publishing cartoons insulting Islam. This predictable canard was appallingly confounded two days later by the slaughter at a Jewish grocery store in Paris, where shoppers were taken hostage and murdered by members of the same al-Qaeda gang, one of whom said he had specifically targeted Jews.
French Jews have been under sustained onslaught from Muslims for years. In January 2006, 23-year-old Ilan Halimi was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in Paris by Islamic radicals. In 2012, four people, including three children, were murdered at a Jewish school in Toulouse.
Muslims repeatedly single out French Jews for stabbings, fire-bombings, robbery, rape and vandalism. Yet in the west all this has been largely ignored. Why is freedom of expression deemed more important than Jewish lives?
The French have been slow to address this rampant Jew-hatred. Until his original act was finally banned last year, the stand-up Muslim comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala wowed French audiences despite inciting anti-Jewish hatred.
The decades-long targeting of French Jews has barely been reported in the British or western media, which subscribe instead to the mantra that the main evil is “Islamophobia”. They ignore the fact that, rooted in Islamic doctrine and appropriating obscene Nazi motifs, demonic Jew-hatred pours daily out of the Muslim world.

Ben-Dror Yemini: West's anti-Israel propaganda encourages terror

The West's progressive circles have been waging an incitement campaign against Israel and Zionism for several years now. Many of the West's media outlets define what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in general, and in Gaza in particular, as genocide, crimes against humanity and an intentional murder of children and civilians.
Blatant statements against Zionism, Jews and Israel, which usually include blatant and intimidating lies, are considered part of the circle of enlightenment and progress. They are given a platform in newspapers which are considered to be serious.
In the Independent newspaper, Israel was labeled as "a community of child killers." According to the Newsweek website, Jews endanger world peace.
The average Muslim viewer asks himself, rightfully, how are Western countries letting this crime go on. Why aren't there much more sanctions against Israel? Why is the United States bombing the Islamic State rather than Israel? Why are economic ties between Israel and Western countries only growing stronger?
Considering the lies being presented in many of the leading media outlets about these unstoppable crimes, these questions are correct.

Jimmy Carter Blames Recent Terror Attacks On ‘Palestinian Problem’

When in doubt, blame Israel — at least that seems to be the habit of America’s least respected former president.
In the wake of the Islamist terror attacks in France against cartoonists and Jews, former President Jimmy Carter’s first reaction was to pin the motivation for such terrorism on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Appearing on “The Daily Show” Monday, Carter was asked by host Jon Stewart whether the violence the world saw on the streets of Paris was actually fueled by something else other than Islamic extremism.
“Well, one of the origins for it is the Palestinian problem,” Carter replied. “And this aggravates people who are affiliated in any way with the Arab people who live in the West Bank and Gaza, what they are doing now — what’s being done to them. So I think that’s part of it.”
Carter didn’t explain how solving the Israeli-Palestinian issue would in any way resolve the violent conflicts currently engulfing the Arab world, including the Syrian civil war, the Islamic State’s takeover of part of Iraq and its brutal implementation of Islamic law, and the conflict between the Egyptian government and the Muslim Brotherhood, just to name a few. Nor did he detail how the “Palestinian problem” helps explain why three French Muslims murdered innocent French Jews buying groceries for the coming Sabbath and cartoonists preparing the next issue of their paper.

Hamas students proudly pretend to murder praying Jews

Hamas claimed on Saturday that there is "no justification for killing innocents."

Too bad that they didn't mention that by their definition, Jews are never innocents.

From the Hamas student bloc at Al Quds University, translated by Palestinian Media Watch, we have what is probably meant to be a re-enactment of the Har Nof massacre, showing proud Muslims murdering praying Jews.

Will this be reported as widely as Hamas' fake "condemnation" of terror?

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.