Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 18, 2015

01/18 Links: Murray: 'Religion of peace' is not a harmless platitude; Fatah praises killers of 8

From Ian:

Meet the honor brigade, an organized campaign to silence debate on Islam

In 2007, as part of this playbook, the OIC launched the Islamophobia Observatory, a watchdog group based in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, with the goal of documenting slights against the faith. Its first report, released the following year, complained that the artists and publishers of controversial Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad were defiling “sacred symbols of Islam . . . in an insulting, offensive and contemptuous manner.” The honor brigade began calling out academics, writers and others, including former New York police commissioner Ray Kelly and administrators at a Catholic school in Britain that turned away a mother who wouldn’t remove her face veil.
“The OIC invented the anti-‘Islamophobia’ movement,” says Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and a frequent target of the honor brigade. “These countries . . . think they own the Muslim community and all interpretations of Islam.”
Alongside the honor brigade’s official channel, a community of self-styled blasphemy police — from anonymous blogs such as LoonWatch.com and Ikhras.com to a large and disparate cast of social-media activists — arose and began trying to control the debate on Islam. This wider corps throws the label of “Islamophobe” on pundits, journalists and others who dare to talk about extremist ideology in the religion. Their targets are as large as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and as small as me.
The official and unofficial channels work in tandem, harassing, threatening and battling introspective Muslims and non-Muslims everywhere. They bank on an important truth: Islam, as practiced from Malaysia to Morocco, is a shame-based, patriarchal culture that values honor and face-saving from the family to the public square. Which is why the bullying often works to silence critics of Islamic extremism.
“Honor brigades are wound collectors. They are couch jihadis,” Joe Navarro, a former supervisory special agent in the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit, tells me. “They sit around and collect the wounds and injustices inflicted against them to justify what they are doing. Tragedy unites for the moment, but hatred unites for longer.”

Douglas Murray: 'Religion of peace' is not a harmless platitude

This is a problem with Islam — one that Muslims are going to have to work through. They could do so by a process which forces them to take their foundational texts less literally, or by an intellectually acceptable process of cherry-picking verses. Or prominent clerics could unite to declare the extremists non-Muslim. But there isn’t much hope of this happening. Last month, al-Azhar University in Cairo declared that although Isis members are terrorists they cannot be described as heretics.
We have spent 15 years pretending things about Islam, a complex religion with competing interpretations. It is true that most Muslims live their lives peacefully. But a sizeable portion (around 15 per cent and more in most surveys) follow a far more radical version. The remainder are sitting on a religion which is, in many of its current forms, a deeply unstable component. That has always been a problem for reformist Muslims. But the results of ongoing mass immigration to the West at the same time as a worldwide return to Islamic literalism means that this is now a problem for all of us. To stand even a chance of dealing with it, we are going to have to wake up to it and acknowledge it for what it is.

Abbas’ terror-hypocrisy continues - Fatah praises killers of 8

Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas’ Fatah movement continues to glorify killers of Israelis as “heroes” and “Martyrs.”
On Jan. 17, 2002, terrorist Abd Al-Salam Hassouna shot and killed 6 and wounded dozens at a bat-mitzvah celebration in Hadera. Anticipating the anniversary of this “heroic operation” and the killer’s “Martyrdom-death,” Fatah posted a photo of the murderer holding a rifle and praised him and other “Martyrs” as “torches on the path to victory and freedom”:
“With an M16 he opened fire on many Zionists, killed 9 and injured dozens, until his rifle jammed. Our Martyrs are torches on the path to victory and freedom.”
[Facebook, “Fatah - the Main Page,” Jan. 15, 2015]

One of the blogs that I used to follow was known as Fresno Zionism, but the Fresno Zionist made aliyah and is now writing some place within Israel under the blog title Abu Yehuda.

In reference to France's recent snub of Jewish leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, he writes:

This is another chapter in the long and not-so-happy relationship between France and its Jews. When Napoleon offered the Jews emancipation at the beginning of the 19th century, he made demands as well. He decreed that they could live outside of ghettos, removed other restrictions and even made Judaism one of the official religions of France (the others were Catholicism and several forms of Protestantism). In return, he expected that Jews living in France would no longer consider themselves a distinct people. They would be French in every way, Frenchmen and women who practiced Judaism.

But France didn’t live up to Napoleon’s bargain. Anti-Jewish attitudes remained, and when Alfred Dreyfus — an army officer, a French patriot who happened to be Jewish — was falsely accused of treason in 1894, most of the establishment went along with the coverup of the evidence against the real traitor, Ferdinand Esterhazy, and the trumped-up charges and draconian punishment of Dreyfus. The French ‘street’ seethed with anti-Jewish agitation as well. Indeed, the Dreyfus affair was a major motivation for Theodor Herzl’s position that Europe’s Jewish problem would not be solved within its borders.

Every once in awhile I like to point to a fellow blogger that I do not think is getting sufficient attention and Abu Yehuda is definitely among them.

One thing that we both agree upon is the fact that European Jews, particularly French Jews, need to make aliyah if they can. This may sound hypocritical coming from an American Jew in California who has no intention of making aliyah any time soon. The fact is, however, at least for the moment, American Jews and Canadian Jews and, for the most part, Australian Jews are fine. It is European Jewry that we worry about.

I actually worry more about European Jewry than I do about Israeli Jewry, because the latter has steel in its spine.

Middle Eastern Jewry, outside of Israel, is virtually non-existent. There was a time when Middle Eastern Jewry thrived. There was a time when Cairo and Damascus and Baghdad bustled with vibrant Jewish communities, but those days are long gone.

The Arabs chased the Jews from their homes in the Middle East during and after World War II and are now doing precisely the same thing in Europe.

There was, in fact, a terrible pogrom in Baghdad in 1941 which saw Arabs murder 180 Jews after the collapse of the pro-Nazi Iraqi government that year. Prolific author Edwin Black has written a very interesting book on the subject entitled, The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust.

Black is one scholar among others pursuing the connection between Nazi ideology and contemporary Arab-Muslim anti-Semitism. Scholars conducting similar research include Paul Berman (Terror and Liberalism, 2003 and The Flight of the Intellectuals, 2010), Matthias Küntzel (Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, 2007), and Jeffrey Herf (Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, 2009).

The point, however, is that the places where Jews are allowed to live as Jews continues to narrow and France is not among them.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity was a very nice slogan, but it has failed because the French refused to instill European values into their immigrant communities out of respect for the multicultural ideal.

The multicultural ideal, needless to say, is a European value that, due its inherent nature, must conflict with other European values, such as the values of social justice and social harmony.

It is for this reason, or so I suspect, that the French, today, would not know liberty, equality, or fraternity if the three of them urinated on its leg simultaneously while singing "Hatikvah."

Abu Yehuda writes:

The recent anti-Jewish violence — the kidnapping, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, the mob attacks on synagogues, the rape of a woman in her home who was told it was because she was Jewish, the murders at the Jewish school in Toulouse, yesterday’s killing of four Jews at a kosher market, and perhaps most of all, the daily degradation of Jews who are afraid to wear kippot or walk to synagogues, who are cursed, struck and spat on in the streets — has convinced French Jews that the Republic can not or will not protect them.

Hollande apparently is insulted by the fact that they don’t trust the state and him personally, so much so that they appeal to the leader of the Jewish state (Netanyahu was met with cheers (video) when he entered the synagogue) for help and perhaps to provide them with a place of refuge. In addition, he is probably worried about France losing its Jews and the intellectual and financial capital that they represent.

We have just witnessed one of the most ridiculous farces in contemporary European history.

After a series of brutal and related Jihadi murders at a satirical publishing house and a kosher grocery store in Paris, French President Hollande decides to hold a march in opposition to terrorism. Good for him. So, what does he do? He invites one of the world's premier terrorists to attend after requesting that the Jewish representative, Prime Minister Netanyahu, not attend.

{Pure genius.}

I do not know why Netanyahu refused Hollande's request to stay away. It might be because of political rivalries - as Bennett and Lieberman announced their intentions to show - or it might be that it dawned on him that as the Prime Minister of Israel he also represents world Jewry. And, apparently, after Netanyahu announced his intention to come, Hollande - as a matter of balance! - felt the political need to invite a Holocaust denier who raised funds for the Munich Olympic Massacre of 1972 and who is currently in the tenth year of his elected four year term.

Are we to understand that Hollande considers Netanyahu to be on the same moral plain as Mahmoud Abbas? I think that we are. Are we, therefore, not also expected to believe that Hollande thinks that Israel is, herself, on the same moral plain as her Jihadi enemies, such as the head-choppers in the Islamic State? I think that we are, as well. (More or less.)

Islamic terrorism, however, is largely focused on Jews and represents the spear-point of political Islam.

They may love the West, in general, but they have a particular fondness for us.

Does Hollande not understand this?

Does Europe not understand this?

You cannot hold an anti-terrorism rally wherein you invite terrorists to join you in condemning terrorism.

Furthermore, opposing terrorism is only meaningful if one means the rising movement for political Islam (or radical Islam or Islamfascism) or whatever terminology one prefers. You cannot fight some amorphous thing known as "terrorism," but what you can do is oppose a political movement.

Just as Democrats oppose Republicans in the United States, so western liberals must oppose political Islam... except, perhaps, in somewhat more strenuous terms.

The march in Paris was a hypocritical farce because the west is tied up in moral knots about Islam.

What we must make clear is that the enemy is not Muslims. In fact, the primary victims of political Islam are Muslims. The enemy is a prominent political movement throughout the Middle East, derived from the Muslim Brotherhood in 1920s Cairo and from earlier trends within the faith. The Brotherhood, however, is the father organization of any number of groups operating throughout the world, including both Hamas and Qaeda, if not the Islamic State, itself.

We may not want to take the fight to the enemy, but there is no question that the enemy is taking the fight to us.

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.

An interesting detail in a UN Security Council briefing by the Assistant Secretary General last Thursday:

I also encourage the Egyptian authorities to re-open the Rafah crossing while taking into account Egypt’s legitimate security concerns. Humanitarian concerns are growing with around 17,000 registered people, including patients, waiting to exit Gaza, in addition to 37,000 others who wish to exit Gaza.

I knew that a couple of thousand people would normally gather at the Rafah crossing on the rare days it was open.I had no idea that some 54,000 Gazans were actively trying to cross into Egypt.

The weekly OCHA-OPT report indicates that many of the 37,000 others who want to leave desire to go to Mecca for pilgrimage.

The Rafah crossing has been closed since December 21. (It is scheduled to open on Tuesday for three days.) I have yet to see any human rights organization refer to this closure as "collective punishment" unless it was positioned as some sort of collusion with Israel.

"Jews twice as rich as all Arab nations combined"

Kuwait's Al Rai has a new "study,"which was immediately reproduced in many other Arabic media, claiming Jews are twice as rich as all the Arab states combined.

It claimed that "the estimated wealth of the wealthiest 3 million American and Israeli Jews are estimated at more than $6 trillion concentrated mainly in the United States,[which is] more than twice the gross domestic product of all Arab countries, which the World Bank in 2013 estimated at 2.8 trillion dollars. The study shows that some of the wealthy Jews are committed to supporting Israel as a Jewish state financially by increasing donations, investments and supporting the Jewish youth in Israel and outside Israel, in addition to the economic expansion of Jewish power to most parts of the world thanks to investment in intelligence, innovation and creativity."

I have no idea how they calculated the $6 trillion. If it is true, it means that the richest 3 million Jews are worth an average of $2 million each. That's Jews, not Jewish households.

At any rate, the comparison is apples to oranges. GDP is the value of all goods and services produced within a nation in a given year, it does not reflect total assets that the people of that nation have. So, for example, Saudi Arabia by itself has $2.3 trillion in foreign assets alone. Clearly Saudi Arabia alone has more assets than $6 trillion if you include domestic assets.

Many of the other statistics in the article came from this YNet article about wealthy Jews in America,

Here are two of the photos that accompanied the article (along with one of Sheldon Adelson):

Because we all look alike!

Gaza graffiti on French cultural center: "God damn you, worshipers of the cross" (updated)

AFP in English reported:

Protest graffiti was sprayed outside the French cultural centre in Gaza before dawn Saturday following the publication of a new cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed by satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

“You will go to hell, French journalists,” read one of the slogans daubed on the walls of the cultural centre compound, which has been closed since it was damaged in a fire last October.

“Anything but the prophet,” read another.

But the Arabic AFP article includes one more graffitum that did not make it into the English version.

It said "God damn you, O worshipers of the cross."

Now, why would AFP choose to self-censor the most incendiary statement from its English articles? Instead of the graffiti being merely against the Charlie Hebdo magazine, it was really against Christianity altogether!

UPDATE: Bob Knot found the original AFP video footage. I think this is the relevant graffitum:

The Guardian's Freudian slip

Yesterday, The Guardian wrote a story with this headline:

I tweeted:

Deep down, even The Guardian knows that Israel is home for all Jews - otherwise why use the word "returning"? pic.twitter.com/jwWUvckopD
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 16, 2015

Within an hour of my tweet, the headline changed:

This change was not necessarily a result of my tweet, as Guardian readers had already tweeted the newspaper about this issue with their usual disregard for facts::

@guardian "Returning" …something wrong with that headline…..just like 90% "returned" from E Europe, US and SA?
— H Gethings (@GethingsH) January 16, 2015

And some Guardian followers of course proudly tweeted their antisemitism:

@guardian They're done destroying France?
— Patrick (@paddylongshanks) January 16, 2015

One of the fundamental differences between the Jewish and Palestinian Arab narratives in the Middle East is that while the Western world (and even the Koran) admits that the Jews are a people, the Palestinian Arab political leadership reject that idea because, as the PLO says in a memo, "recognition of the Jewish people and their right of self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people’s claim to all of Historic Palestine.

"

A person cannot return to a place that he or she had never lived in, but a member of a people or of a nation can. The Guardian was implicitly admitting that the Jews do have a historic right to live in their historic lands - and of course that is not a message that The Guardian wants to tell the world.

It took much less time for the Guardian to respond to this issue than it usually takes for the newspaper to correct its usual anti-Israel mistakes. That in itself is noteworthy.

01/17 Links: The anti-Semitic derangement; Jimmy Carter Needs History & Geography Lessons

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: The problem with Islam

Any debate on Islam in Muslim countries and among Muslim communities in the West is like stepping into a minefield. When it comes to the media outlets and academe, for the most part, the subject of Islam sparks a convoluted and apologetic discourse; on the social networks, on the other hand, the discourse it prompts is a racist one.
The thing is there's a problem. It's hissing and bubbling. Many Muslims realize there's a problem. The Egyptian president spoke recently of "a need to effect a substantial change in Islam." And in 2004, Abdulrahman al-Rashed, the former general manager of the al-Arabiya television news channel, said: "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims."
The problem is not a handful of Jihadists involved in terrorism. The problem is that the Muslim world in recent years has produced most of the high-casualty conflicts across the globe. The Muslim world struggles to embrace universal values, such as the status of women. And the problem extends to the free world. Entire neighborhoods in Europe are becoming "no-go zones" for veteran residents, and the police too in some cases.
Rotterdam Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb stated that the major problem was resistance to integration. The percentage of social misfits and individuals opposed to integration is higher among the Muslim communities than among the other minorities. In addition, many of the world's Muslims, even those who live in the West, want to see Sharia law in effect, not only for themselves, but also forcibly for others. They are basically saying in the clearest of terms: We have come here to impose our values on you.

The anti-Semitic derangement

Anti-Semitism is commonly regarded as a variety of racism, but the prolific English historian Paul Johnson suggests that it should be seen as a kind of intellectual disease, fundamentally irrational and highly infectious. It exerts great self-destructive force, Johnson wrote in a notable 2005 essay, severely harming countries and societies that engage in it. In a pattern that has recurred so predictably that he dubbed it a “historical law,” nations that make Jewish life untenable condemn themselves to decline and weakness.
For example, Spain’s expulsion of the Jews in the 1490s, and its subsequent witchhunt of the converted “New Christians” who remained behind, meant a loss of Spanish financial and managerial talent at the very moment the New World was being opened up to lucrative colonization. That had “a profoundly deleterious impact,” Johnson argued, “plunging the hitherto vigorous Spanish economy into inflation and long-term decline, and the government into repeated bankruptcy.” More than 500 years later, Spain — where, incidentally, Valls was born and lived until his teens — still regrets that self-inflicted wound, and has looked for ways to rectify it.
Johnson pointed out other prominent examples of the phenomenon. Czarist Russia’s persecution of Jews, reinforced by the encouragement of brutal pogroms, fueled a massive migration of Jews to the West, especially to Britain and the United States; those countries’ cultural and entrepreneurial gain was Russia’s debilitating loss. Germany’s descent into demonic Jew-hatred under the Nazis ended in devastating military defeat, followed by a decades-long Cold War rupture and the end of German renown as Europe’s intellectual center. The Arab world, steeped in anti-Semitism and obsessed with the Jewish state, squandered vast oil riches “on weapons of war and propaganda,” wrote Johnson. “In their flight from reason, they have failed to modernize or civilize their societies, to introduce democracy, or to consolidate the rule of law.” Arab culture once led the world in learning, innovation, and pluralism. Today it is a world leader in almost nothing, save fratricidal violence and Islamist fanaticism.
France’s Jews are leaving, and that bodes ill for the society making them unwelcome. The prime minister put his finger on it: If there is no Jewish future in France, if the anti-Semitic cancer has metastasized so alarmingly that tens of thousands of French Jews are ready to flee, then France will indeed no longer be France. It will be something darker and more deformed, wrecked by an injury it inflicted on itself.

Douglas Murray - Tracking Terror [Fox News]

Douglas Murray - Obama and Charlie Hebdo

01/16 Links Pt2: Kontorovich: ICC’s undermines its own independence with Palestine inquiry

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: ICC’s undermines its own independence with Palestine inquiry

The ICC’s Prosecutor announced today the opening of a “preliminary examination” into “the Situation in Palestine.” This means she will consider, on jurisdictional, evidentiary and policy grounds whether to open an investigation into crimes that may have been committed during this summer’s Gaza conflict. Opening such an investigation is a fairly standard step after receiving a declaration of acceptance of jurisdiction under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute, and would not normally warrant much notice (other preliminary investigations also involve alleged crimes by the U.S. in Afghanistan and the U.K. in Iraq, though precious few Americans or British are aware of this).
But this decision of the prosecutor is quite different, and extremely significant. The decision to open the inquiry involved the prosecutor determining that the Palestinian Authority is in fact a “state,” a necessary precondition to jurisdiction under the Rome Statute, the Court’s constitutive treaty.
The ICC has never accepted jurisdiction over what is clearly at most a “marginal” state – one that is not a U.N. member, that has not ever claimed to govern any territory, and whose recognition by other states is limited (for example, the U.S., Canada and most Western European states do not recognize the existence of a Palestinian state). This is clearly dramatically different from anything the Court has done before.
But the prosecutor did not actually determine the Palestine qualifies as a “state” under the well-established legal definitions of the term. Rather, she said that the U.N. General Assembly’s vote in 2012 to call Palestine a “non-member state” is dispositive of the question. In short, she substituted the determination of the General Assembly for her own. The GA is not a judicial body, but a political one. Its determinations are political, not legal. (It also has no power under the U.N. Charter, to create or recognize states.)

ICC prosecutor opens probe into alleged Israeli war crimes

The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor on Friday opened an initial probe to see if war crimes have been committed against Palestinians, including during last year’s Gaza conflict.
“Today the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda opened a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine,” her office said in a statement, adding it may lead to a full-blown investigation.
Her decision comes after the Palestinians formally joined the ICC earlier this month allowing it to lodge war crimes and crimes against humanity complaints against Israel as of April 2014.
At the same time, the Palestinians also recognized the ICC’s jurisdiction retroactively, to cover the period during last summer’s war in Gaza that killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians and 72 Israelis.
“A preliminary examination is not an investigation but a process of examining the information available in order to reach a fully informed determination on whether there is a reasonable basis to proceed with a (full) investigation,” Bensouda said.

FM calls to dismantle ICC after launch of ‘war crimes’ probe

Liberman charged it was a “scandalous decision whose only goal is to try and harm Israel’s right to defend itself against terror.”
He said the decision was “solely motivated by political anti-Israel considerations,” and that Israel would not tolerate it, adding that he would recommend against cooperating with the probe.
“Israel will act in the international sphere to bring about the dismantling of this court which represents hypocrisy and gives impetus to terror,” Liberman continued in a statement released to the press.
Netanyahu also blasted the decision, accusing the ICC of being “part of the problem.”
“It’s scandalous that mere days after terrorists massacred Jews in France, the ICC prosecutor opens a probe against the Jewish state. And this is because we defend our citizens from Hamas, a terror group that signed a unity pact with the Palestinian Authority and war criminals who fired thousands of rockets at Israeli citizens,” charged the prime minister.
“Unfortunately, this makes the court part of the problem and not part of the solution,” he continued.

Filipinos burn fake Charlie Hebdo poster saying it is a Zionist conspiracy

From Naharnet/AFP:

Muslims marched in Middle East cities Friday to protest the publication of a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed by French magazine Charlie Hebdo, as Qatar warned the image would "fuel hatred".

The largest rally was in Jordan, where around 2,500 protesters took to the streets of the capital Amman amid tightened security, while demonstrations also took place in east Jerusalem and Khartoum.

The crowd, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood and youth groups, set off from the Al-Husseini mosque in central Amman holding banners that read "insulting the prophet is global terrorism".

Jordan's opposition Islamic Action Front party, the political wing of the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has branded the publication of the cartoon as "an attack on Muslims across the world".

King Abdullah II, who last weekend joined world leaders on an anti-terror solidarity march in Paris, on Thursday said the latest issue of Charlie Hebdo was "irresponsible and reckless".

A protest against the cartoon in Tehran was canceled, with no official reason given, as senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ali Movahedi Kermani told worshipers its publication amounted to "savagery".

In Tunis, worshipers at El-Fath mosque interrupted prayer leader Noureddine Khadmi as he delivered a sermon saying: "We are all against insults made against our prophet but it is not a reason to kill".

Charlie Hebdo journalists "deserved to be killed because they insulted our prophet many times," the worshipers cried out.

Saudi Arabia's top religious body, the Council of Senior Ulema, also criticized the publication of Mohammed cartoons that it said "have nothing to do with the freedom of creativity or thought".

Its secretary general Fahd al-Majid warned that publishing such images would only "serve extremists who are in search of excuses for killing and terrorism".

Qatar condemned the publication:

Qatar warned Friday that publishing cartoons of Prophet Mohammed would "fuel hatred and anger", as a leading Muslim body called for peaceful protests against French weekly Charlie Hebdo.

Qatar "condemned the reprinting by French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and other European press of pictures offensive to Prophet Mohammed," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

"Freedom of speech does not mean insulting others, hurting their feelings, and mocking their religious beliefs and idols," said the statement published by the official QNA news agency.

"These disgraceful actions are in the interest of nobody and will only fuel hatred and anger," it warned, describing them as a "violation of human values of peaceful coexistence, tolerance, justice, and respect among people."

RT adds:

Pakistani police fired tear gas and used water cannons on protesters in Karachi, with AFP photo journalist injured in the protests.

Earlier on, dozens of Pakistani lawmakers marched near the country’s parliament in Islamabad, calling for "death to blasphemers."

"All political parties are with us… All Muslim countries should condemn these blasphemous cartoons," Pakistani Religious Affairs Minister Sardar Yousaf said, NBC reported.

Egypt’s top religious institution, the Al Azhar mosque, has expressed its outrage at the magazine’s new cartoon, describing it as a “blatant challenge to the feelings of Muslims who had sympathized with this newspaper,” AP reported.

Muslims in Aleppo on Thursday marched through the southwestern Syrian city, burning a “Je suis Charlie” poster.

Protesters in the Philippines marched in the southern town of Marawi, burning images of the magazine’s new cover.

"It's been a great (hic) run."

The respected CNN anchor who insulted me on Twitter during an epic and bizarre meltdown is now gone. Buh-bye!

From AdWeek:

CNN confirms longtime correspondent Jim Clancy has left the network after nearly 34 years. Clancy made the announcement to colleagues in an email obtained by TVNewser, calling CNN “one of the greatest news organizations in the world” and “a family to my own family.”

The timing of Clancy’s announcement comes just days after the veteran journalist had an extended debate via Twitter over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

In a statement to TVNewser, a CNN spokesperson “Jim Clancy is no longer with CNN. We thank him for more than three decades of distinguished service, and wish him nothing but the best.”

To be honest, I'd have preferred a real apology that indicated that he understood what he was saying and regretted it. And CNN should have issued a statement on how they will ensure that people with such obvious bias are not hired in the future to as journalists.

By doing it this way, CNN can pretend he left to "spend more time with his family" or whatever, instead of owning up to the fact that some journalists at CNN are anything but objective and forthrightly addressing the issue.

This is the second CNN personality that I've been involved in losing their job.

01/16 Links Pt1: Are Jews Safe in Europe?; Stop Comparing Anti-Islamic and Anti-Semitic Cartoons

From Ian:

Are Jews Safe in Europe?

There are three lessons from the explosion of European anti-Semitism.
First, hatred of Israel can no longer be separated from loathing of Jews. Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are one and the same. The hard-core anti-Israel protests that engulfed Europe showed that the demonstrators aimed to dismantle the Jewish state because of its Jewishness. Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called contemporary anti-Semitism "pretend criticism of Israel," an "expression of Jew-hatred at pro-Palestinian demonstrations."
The second lesson is that mere opprobrium from European leaders is insufficient. To their credit, the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and Italy last summer condemned "the anti-Semitic rhetoric and hostility toward Jews [and] attacks on people of the Jewish faith and synagogues." But rhetoric is not enough.
So the third lesson is the need for a zero-tolerance policy toward violent anti-Semitic rallies. And Europe should immediately adopt the U.S. State Department's definition of modern anti-Semitism, which includes anti-Zionism/Israelism. Finally, terrorist entities like Hezbollah and other jihadi networks should be banned. In sharp contrast to the United States, Europe allows Hezbollah's so-called political wing to operate and recruit within the 28-member European Union. Worse, with Europe striking Hamas from its terrorist list, there has been an active attempt to legitimize Islamist groups.
Change must ultimately start at the grassroots, turning anti-Semites and their political and religious movements into pariahs.
Absent this change, the safety of Jews, as well as European democracy, will continue to be jeopardized.

Caroline Glick: The answer to French anti-Semitism

January 16 is the nine-year anniversary of the beginning of the Ilan Halimi disaster.
On January 16, 2006, Sorour Arbabzadeh, the seductress from the Muslim anti-Jewish kidnapping gang led by Youssouf Fofana, entered the cellphone store where Halimi worked and set the honey trap.
Four days later, Halimi met Arbabzadeh for a drink at a working class bar and agreed to walk her home. She walked him straight into an ambush. Her comrades beat him, bound him and threw him into the trunk of their car.
They brought Halimi to a slum apartment and tortured him for 24 days and 24 nights before dumping him, handcuffed, naked, stabbed and suffering from third degree burns over two-thirds of his body, at a railway siding in Paris.
He died a few hours later in the hospital.
In an impassioned address to the French parliament on Tuesday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls gave a stirring denunciation of anti-Semitism, and demanded that his people stop treating it as someone else’s problem.
In his words, “Since Ilan Halimi in 2006... anti-Semitic acts in France have grown to an intolerable degree. The words, the insults, the gestures, the shameful attacks... did not produce the national outrage that our Jewish compatriots expected.”
Valls insisted that France needs to protect its Jewish community, lest France itself be destroyed.
Valls words were uplifting. But it is hard to see how they change the basic reality that the Jews of France face.
When all is said and done, it is their necks on the line while humanity’s conscience is merely troubled.

Sarah Honig: 'Charlie' makes them laugh

The inclination, subliminally or otherwise, to isolate Jews in a separate classification is pervasive.
The assumption that the bad guys aren’t primarily after non-Jews even offers a sense of semi-safety to the presumably uninvolved onlookers.
The segregation of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel terror into a different category is abetted by the two-faced denunciation of the Paris bloodshed by Mahmoud Abbas and his on-and-off Hamas partners in Gaza. They enable terror on a grand scale, but then deny culpability.
They pro forma condemn carnage but endorse, glorify and bankroll the perpetrators.
Sanctimonious pen-warriors don’t take Abbas or Hamas to task for their wrongdoing and blatant deception. Europe’s media further adds insult to injury by helping disseminate the false analogy between the demonized and dehumanized Jews of Hitler’s Germany to Europe’s Muslims who claim to be equally as collectively demonized.
Disagreeable as it surely is to tar any group collectively, there’s too much cynical PR profit in drawing this parallel for it to be taken at face value. Comparing Holocaust- era Judeophobia to Islamophobia is not only spurious but colossally galling.
For one thing, Jews never engaged in terror against Germans.
If anything, they regarded themselves as German patriots.
Then comes the minor matter of Arabs having been among the most vociferous promoters of Judeophobia in Nazi times. They still are to this day.
But Europe’s self-acclaimed pen-warriors are loath to take note, expose the chutzpah and sincerely fight against mega-hypocrisy. With rare exceptions, they are nothing like the gallant guardians of their own conceited portrayals. Their syrupy catchphrases in the end give succor to the implacable enemies of us all. “Je suis Charlie” makes the jihadists laugh.

Ambassador Prosor in UNSC: The Situation in the Middle East

Latest hilarious "proof" of Palestine

A tweet by "History of Palestine":

A rare image of a map of Palestine in the New York Tribune on June 17 of 1917. #Retweet pic.twitter.com/ALZnMGDGVX
— History of Palestine (@MatarMalak) January 16, 2015

Guess what on the caption was cropped out of this map that supposedly proves that Palestine was a state?

The New Judea!

The map wasn't describing an existing state - it was describing and anticipating a new Jewish state!

(If it was describing "historic Palestine" as defined now by Palestinian Arabs, then where is the Negev?)

The ancient, as well as potentially modern, Jewish state was commonly referred to as "Palestine" in English-language media for hundreds of years before 1948. Here's just one of many maps of "Palestine" from the 1800s that shows its divisions into the sections for the twelve tribes of Israel:

The idea of an Arab state of Palestine is less than 100 years old. The Israel-haters pretend that the Palestine referred to for hundreds of years previously, that was universally associated almost exclusively with Jews, is identical to the "Palestine" that they claim exists now. I recently showed how they do this by claiming a link to the Jewish Palestine soccer club of 1934.

You can read the entire 1917 article here or click on the thumbnail to the right. It was written months before the Balfour Declaration and was advocating a new Jewish state in the area that was then called Palestine.

Here's the last paragraph of the article that idiotic Israel-haters are using as "proof" that an Arab Palestinian state existed in June 1917:

(h/t/ @dlp6666 )

From Ma'an:

Hamas-affiliated parliament members in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday reactivated the coastal enclave's parliament, which had been suspended since a unity deal between Fatah and Hamas was agreed upon in April.

The convening of the session, which was attended exclusively by Hamas legislators, represents a major eruption of tensions within the Palestinian coalition government and presents yet another hurdle for officials trying to hold the agreement together.

Deputy speaker of the Gaza parliament Ahmad Bahar delivered a speech at the beginning of the session in which he warned of a possible "blowup" in the Gaza Strip as a result of the delay in reconstruction, the ongoing crippling Israeli siege, and the Palestinian Authority's failure to pay monthly salaries to civil servants employed under the former Hamas government.

Bahar also criticized the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas for his participation in the recent Paris rally against terrorism in his speech.

Abbas, he said, should have instead invited the world leaders to "confront Israel's terrorism."

The Fatah movement, on the other hand, considered the parliament session in Gaza a unilateral move by the Hamas bloc and a negative step back from reconciliation.

Fatah-affiliated lawmaker Faisal Abu Shahla told Ma'an reporter that holding a session without any of the other factions present indicates that "partnership according to Hamas means that Hamas can do whatever it wants and whenever it wants and all others should only be supportive."

Abu Shahla slammed the criticism against president Abbas at the parliament, adding: "President Abbas is an elected president, so how could he be attacked and accused at the Palestinian parliament!"

The "elected" Mahmoud Abbas just started the 11th year of his four year term.

I also love that Fatah is upset over "unilateral moves" and accuses its opponent to "do whatever it wants and whenever it wants and all others should only be supportive." Hamas had a good teacher.

Meanwhile, Hamas is now blaming Abbas for the "siege" of Gaza!

Palestinian MP Fathi Hammad said Wednesday that the unity government and President Mahmoud Abbas are part of the siege on Gaza and an obstacle for reconstruction of the war-torn territory.

Hammad, a Hamas official, told Ma'an that the unity government must be held accountable for promising to hold elections within six months.

He also accused the unity government of failing to stand beside the people of Gaza and warned that the ongoing blockade could lead to a "popular explosion."

They sound like they are ready to accept the responsibilities of statehood, don't they?

The cartoonist that the PLO assassinated

Another meme that has been spreading by Israel haters after the Charlie Hebdo murders is the lie that Israel had assassinated famed Palestinian Arab cartoonist Naji al-Ali in 1987.

As evidence, they point to the fact that Israeli diplomats were deported from the UK after the incident.

As usual, they aren't telling the whole truth. All evidence indicates that Naji al-Ali was killed by the PLO. Britain never said Israel was behind the assassination - they were upset that the Mossad knew that the PLO was going to assassinate al-Ali and did not inform British intelligence.

Believe it or not, Electronic Intifada has a reasonable description of what happened:

On Wednesday July 22 1987 at five in the afternoon, Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali parked his car in southwest London, and walked a few meters towards the offices of the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas where he worked. He was shot in the head by a gunman, dressed in a denim jacket, who walked calmly away down Draycott, near Sloane Square and vanished.

After five weeks in a coma on a life support machine at St Stephen’s hospital and the neurosurgical department of Charing Cross hospital in London, Naji al-Ali died at 5am on Saturday, August 30, 1987 at the age of 49.

A friend of Naji al-Ali was quoted saying that he had been warned his life was in danger in a telephone call from a senior member of the PLO in Tunis. The telephone call, two weeks before the murder, came after the publication of a cartoon attacking a female friend of PLO leader Yasser Arafat. “The cartoon was famous in the Arab community,” the friend said. The caller said: “You must correct your attitude.”

“Don’t say anything against the honest people, otherwise we will have business to sort you out,” the caller continued. Naji al-Ali ignored the warning and published a cartoon lampooning Arafat and his henchmen on 24 June.

Ten months after Naji al-Ali was shot, Scotland Yard arrested a Palestinian student who turned out to be a Mossad agent. Under interrogation, the Jerusalem-born man, Ismail Suwan, said that his superiors in Tel Aviv had been briefed well in advance of the plot to kill the cartoonist.

By refusing to pass on the relevant information to their British counterparts, Mossad earned the displeasure of Britain, which retaliated by expelling two Israeli diplomats from London.