Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Did Obama really "halt the progress" of Iran towards nukes?

In President Obama's State of the Union address, he said:

Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran, where, for the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material. Between now and this spring, we have a chance to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that prevents a nuclear-armed Iran; secures America and our allies - including Israel; while avoiding yet another Middle East conflict. There are no guarantees that negotiations will succeed, and I keep all options on the table to prevent a nuclear Iran. But new sanctions passed by this Congress, at this moment in time, will all but guarantee that diplomacy fails - alienating America from its allies; and ensuring that Iran starts up its nuclear program again. It doesn’t make sense. That is why I will veto any new sanctions bill that threatens to undo this progress. The American people expect us to only go to war as a last resort, and I intend to stay true to that wisdom.

The fact is that the interim agreement included loopholes for Iran to continue its quest for nuclear weapons - and the delivery systems for them.

Here's a chart that describes it with footnotes:

[1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/11/23/fact-sheet-first-step-understandings-regarding-islamic-republic-iran-s-n
[2] http://hibbs.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1748/reconverting-irans-u3o8-to-uf6
[3] http://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/analysis-of-status-of-irans-compliance-with-the-joint-plan-of-action/
[4] http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-americans-have-very-clearly-surrendered/
[5] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2015/01/236076.htm
[6] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2015-01/11/c_133911462.htm
[7] http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13931023001531
[8] http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2013-11-27/us-backs-iran-claim-that-some-work-ok-at-arak-site
[9] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/27/us-iran-nuclear-arak-idUSBRE9AQ0U120131127
[10] http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/11/27/uk-iran-nuclear-arak-idUKBRE9AQ0AC20131127
[11] http://freebeacon.com/national-security/white-house-iranian-ballistic-missile-test-not-a-deal-killer/
[12] http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-still-on-track-for-2015-icbm-flight-test/

Obama is also not being honest about the nature of the "new sanctions" being considered in Congress. Josh Block of The Israel project responds (received via email):

Those are ridiculous claims. First, the bill imposes no sanctions on Iran during talks whatsoever. If there is a deal by 6/30 -- a deadline the president set and says will tell us if Iran is willing to make a deal or not -- there are no sanctions.

Second, it is totally counter-intuitive to suggest that Iran will walk away nuclear talks it desperately needs to save its broken economy because of some sanctions that will never come into being if there is an agreement -- which they claim they want.

Like past dire claims -- like central bank sanctions will drive the world into recession or oil prices will soar to $250 a barrel (yes they really said these things) these latest inexplicable claims are worthless and false.

(Chart courtesy TIP)

Of course Abbas is responsible for incitement to terror

One could almost hear the eye-rolls among the intelligentsia in the State Department, EU and Ha'aretz when Netanyahu made his statement about this morning's knife attack on a Tel Aviv bus:

In a statement released by his office, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blames the Palestinian Authority for the stabbing attack.

“The attack in Tel Aviv is the direct result of the poisonous incitement spread by the Palestinian Authority toward the Jews and their state. The same terror tries to harm us in Paris, Brussels, and everywhere.”

This poster was published on the Fatah Facebook page this week with Fatah's official logo:

We began with stones and we will end up with a state
Palestinian National Liberation Movement

This is the "non-violence" that Abbas is instructing his people to perform.

And if you claim that Abbas has nothing to do with the Facebook page of the organization he heads, remember that only a couple of weeks ago when the mainstream media actually noticed one of their posters inciting Arabs to genocide against Jews, Fatah took the poster down..

Abbas doesn't just encourage Facebook posters. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades groups - considered terror organizations - still say they are loyal to Abbas' Fatah party, and still openly parade with their weapons in West Bank cities along with the Fatah flag.

Have you ever heard of any groups that are against violence parading in cities controlled by the PA? Has there ever been a Fatah "peace march?"

The incitement to terror and war is constant and thoroughly embedded in Mahmoud Abbas' political party and in the streets of the areas under his control. This is one of the least reported stories in the mainstream media, because no one wants to admit (or believe) that Abbas is just as supportive of terror as Hamas leaders are and that his statements against terror are window dressing for Western ears.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)
.

Free speech, Arab style

Three separate stories within the past day:

A Tunisian military court sentenced blogger Yassine Ayari to a year in prison Tuesday for defaming the military, in a case that has been criticized by human rights groups.

The 33-year-old was arrested on December 25 on his return from Paris, following an initial three-year sentence handed down the previous month in his absence.

Ayari told the court before the new ruling that the charges were a "settling of scores against me for criticizing officers in the army."

He had accused officers and defense ministry officials of financial abuse.

-----------

Kuwait has scrapped the commercial license of leading newspaper al-Watan, which has been highly critical of the government, citing its failure to comply with legally required financial terms.

Al-Watan, owned by a member of the al-Sabah ruling family, said on its website, which was still operating, that it had challenged the decision in court.

An urgent hearing had been set for Wednesday, it said.

The decision was issued late Monday by the ministry of commerce and industry, which said the newspaper had violated minimum capital requirements.

------------

Prominent Shiite activist Nabeel Rajab was Tuesday sentenced to six months in prison after a Bahraini court found him guilty of insulting public institutions in his tweets, a judicial source said.

But Rajab, who was released from custody one month after his arrest on October 1, could stay out of prison on bail if he pays 200 dinars (530 dollars), the source told AFP, citing the court ruling.

Yes, all in one day.

01/20 Links Pt2: Noam Chomsky, Please Shut Up; Two Rabbis Question Anjem Choudry

From Ian:

Noam Chomsky, Please Shut Up

The professor of linguistics at MIT loves the attention he gets from his extreme views on a variety of subjects (none of which, oddly enough, is in linguistics, his actual field of expertise.) And for reasons we cannot quite fathom, the mainstream media love giving space to his ridiculous notions. This time, as the world mourns the horrible terrorist attacks in Paris, CNN gives him a stage to voice his opinion that these cold-blooded murders are really no different that Western military actions in Serbia and Iraq.
But, as always, his favorite target is Israel. Hence his bizarre comparison of the attacks to Israel’s fight against the terrorist group Hamas.
Did Chomsky somehow see a different conflict from his lofty perch at MIT than the rest of us? Or does he really think that the thousands of rockets, the terror tunnels, the murder of the three Israeli teens, and the other terror attacks endorsed by Hamas are inconsequential?
One wonders how close his “examination” was if somewhere in his convoluted thinking he can compare those who were murdered in Paris with those who support murderers in Gaza.
A few years ago, we posted excerpts of an article by Robin Sheppard on Israel’s ban on Chomsky, and how some in the mainstream media embrace his oddball, ranting views.

IsraellyCool: What Happens When Two Rabbis Question Anjem Choudry (Updated)

Including a wonderful riff on the classic line… what has Islam ever done for us! I love Ari & Jeremy! Stop whatever you’re doing and listen to all of this NOW! (Updated to include the FULL show including the discussion after Anjem leaves).
Update: I’ve now listened twice, I posted before I even completed the whole show. I’m going to sort out a time to go on the show with Jeremy and Ari because there is so much to say about Anjem Choudry’s Islam. I’ve always felt that it isn’t for us infidels to define Islam. Islam is defined for us by the actions of its followers. If they don’t impact us, that’s great. But where the actions of Muslims impact directly on the lives of those who do not want to follow Islam, that’s where I’m interested.
It’s not for me (or Barak Obama) to say what is or isn’t real Islam. But when someone professes his faith and clearly explains the actions he will take (if given the chance) toward people who DO NOT want to follow his faith, I think we should listen very carefully.

Ryan Bellerose: Ryan’s Ark: Building A Better Boat

Last night Kasim Hafeez came and spread his message of hope and truth to Calgary. If you haven’t heard him speak, you do not know what you are missing.
I think his message is important: to understand that “muslim Zionists” are not as rare as you may think, but they are often silenced. It is important to support the moderate people who speak up because they are often hit from both sides, and most importantly to reach out to anyone who is willing to talk honestly and openly and to not waste time with those who are not.
I am rarely as impressed with someone as I was with Kaz. We went for supper beforehand and chatted about the state of advocacy in general, and his insights were brilliant. But I’m biased because at some point I felt like I was talking to myself.

After Sodastream: Another Israeli company is advertising in the Super Bowl

After last year's smash hit Sodastream ad, another Israeli company - Wix - is preparing a Super Bowl ad this year with 30-second spot in the fourth quarter.

Wix allows anyone to make attractive websites. Here is how they describe their Super Bowl plans:

While we can’t give away too much… we certainly can’t keep all the details to ourselves. The ingredients go a little something like this: it’s 5 parts NFL legends, another five parts quirky small businesses (to be revealed soon), one part TV star (can you guess who?) and some laughs thrown in for good measure.

We don’t mean to name drop but Brett Favre, Terrell Owens, Emmitt Smith, Larry Allen and Franco Harris just happen to be our new BFFs. They also just happen to be proud owners of brand new businesses that just may surprise you.

We could go on and on, but we think we’ll just let Terrell Owens and his friend Matty Matheson give you a taste of what they’re baking:

OK, the message isn't exactly as clear as Scarlett Johansson's

Will there be a groundswell of BDSers going crazy over Wix this year? Well, ask Cornell University Students for Justice in Palestine, who proudly use the Israeli technology in Wix - and hilariously justify it.

I also found a number of other BDS sites and anti-Israel sites who rely on Wix for their webpages.

Good old BDS hypocrites. They hate everything to do with Israel - until they want to use it themselves.

2015 Hasby Award: Best English Language Pro-Israel Media Outlet

This year's nominations for Best English Language Pro-Israel Outlet are:

Algemeiner

Israel HaYom

Jewish Press

Tablet

JPost

Israel21c

Mosaic Magazine

YNet

Arutz7

(Previous winners: Times of Israel and The Tower)

And the winner of the Hasby Award goes to....

01/20 Links Pt1: UN, EU Think Oslo Accords Bind Only Israel; Fighting Hamas and The Hague

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Iran and Hezbollah

Imagine that the sword-rattling speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah that aired Friday on Lebanon TV was backed up by an Iranian patron with an atomic bomb.
Nasrallah bragged about Hezbollah’s ability to strike every inch of Israel with advanced, long-distance rockets that were not in its possession back in 2006. What if these missiles were placed under Iran’s nuclear umbrella? Iran with a nuclear-weapon capability would radically change Israel’s military calculations. Operations like the one carried out on Sunday would have to be reconsidered in light of a whole new set of dangers. Even if Iran never used a nuclear weapon, the very fact that it had one would transform its international status.
Even a country like North Korea, that has a tiny, failed economy and a starved population, gains the attention of the world solely because it has a nuclear weapon. In the case of Iran, not only would possessing nuclear arms mean power – it would mean the empowerment of madmen like Assad, who used chemical weapons against his own people, and Nasrallah, who dragged Lebanon into a pointless war with Israel.
Israel’s reputed air strike in Syria and the potential for fallout is a diversion from the real challenge: preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.

JCPA: The Attack in the Golan Exposes Iran's Growing Presence along Israel's Borders

In an official statement, Hizbullah threatened that its response “would be painful and unexpected.” Hizbullah’s media outlet, al-Manar, reported: “Tel Aviv is playing with fire which would threaten the security of the whole Middle East.” Unidentified sources quoted by the Lebanese daily al-Safir, assessed that the response would be “controlled and would stop short of an escalation leading to an all-out war.” In parallel, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Muhammad Zarif condemned the operation attributed to Israel but he refrained to issuing a concrete threat against Israel.
Ayatollah Mahari, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s personal representative, called upon the world and its religious authorities — including the Sunni center of al-Azhar — to condemn the attack against “the heroes of Hizbullah.” Mahari stressed that the attack exposed Israel’s failure to thwart the Iranian achievements in the nuclear negotiations by means of a provocation against Tehran. Mahari expressed his hope that Hizbullah would respond wisely. Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the Iranian National Security Council, promised that Hizbullah would respond at a convenient time and place.
The fact that at least three high-ranking IRGC officers were killed in the attack highlights once more that Iran perceives Syria and Lebanon as Tehran’s first line of defense against Israel. Iran has repeatedly demonstrated its steadfastness towards Syria and Hizbullah as it enjoys the strategic-military and political benefits arising from maintaining its ongoing radical military and political presence in Syria. Assistance to Syria and Hizbullah and an active ground presence in both countries are seen as additional expressions of Iran’s national defense doctrine. This is meant to distance the Iranian homeland from any threat and to conduct the campaign against Israel and the West in areas distant from Iran’s borders.

Slain Iranian was planning Hezbollah missile base — report

The Iranian general who was killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike near the border with the Golan Heights on Sunday was a ballistic missile expert who was visiting Syria as part of a project to set up a missile base near the border with Israel, according to a Tuesday report.
General Mohammed Ali Allahdadi, whom Tehran acknowledged was killed in an Israeli missile strike near the Syrian city of Quneitra along with several Hezbollah fighters, was tasked with building four new Hezbollah missile bases near the Israel-Syria frontier, the London-based Times reported.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps claimed that Allahdadi was ostensibly dispatched to Syria “provide military advice to Syrian government and nation in their war with Takfirist and Salafist (radical Sunni) terrorists, and provided valuable analysis and advice in neutralizing the plots of this Zionist-backed conspiracy in the Syrian soil.”

Karen Armstrong is a historian and "religion expert" who is a consistent apologist for radical Islam, and a frequent guest on TV programs. She has a lucrative career speaking and writing about religion.

In a recent interview, she makes this outrageous claim:

We’re piling all the violence of the 21st Century on the back of religion, sending it away, saying we have nothing to do with religion. While we still have to deal with the political situation. The supermarket attack in Paris was about Palestine, about Isis. It had nothing to do with antisemitism; many of them are Semites themselves. But they attempt to conquer Palestine and we’re not talking about that. We’re too implicated and we don’t know what to do with it.

Are the kosher-consumer French Jews guilty because they support Jews living in their historic homeland, or because most of them will end up moving to Israel because of these types of attacks on their stores and schools and synagogues that have nothing to do with anyone hating Jews?

OK, maybe the "they" in that sentence referred only to Jews in general, or unnamed "Zionists." Her use of the incredibly stupid "they are semites themselves" argument shows that Armstrong has no intellectual honesty whatsoever.

Who knows what goes through her mind as she tries to justify widespread Arab antisemitism and incitement (as I have documented time and time again)? Clearly, Armstrong doesn't care about the human rights of Jews to make a statement like this.

When you use "scholarship" to consistently justify terrorism and tear down others, then it isn't scholarship.

(h/t Yair Rosenberg)

An article by Dr. Azh Ahmed Heikal in Al Wafd starts with Shakespearean antisemitism and then goes downhill from there.

The Shylock character in «The Merchant of Venice» by William Shakespeare is the finest embodiment of the Jewish character, which reflects his greed and hatred and desire for bloody revenge better than any other...

The famous comedy shows how Europe dealt with the Jews until they reached Hitler's alleged Holocaust in World War II but there was a [real] Holocaust when global Zionism united in the land of Palestine, claiming it was the Promised Land. Zionism managed to penetrate the world economy and media in European countries, in the US and through US policies in banks and the stock exchange and satellite channels owned by the largest Zionist families who act like Shylock to cut the flesh of innocent people and shed blood, a triumphant and euphoric endeavor under the glare of all international and global organizations that have passed laws to prevent and punish anyone who dares to refute the Holocaust deny it as if it was a holy book. There is woe and punishment, war and imprisonment for anyone thinking anything bad or rude in words or hints of any Shylock or any Jewish Zionist from near or far ...

...Pictures of Netanyahu Prime Minister of the global Jewish state of Israel, wearing a yarmulke and his fellow Jews, who have declared a war against Semitism and Islam and Islamists who are the real enemies of the Jews and humanity while Jews are peaceful always ..
As the Holocaust was a gateway to more blood on the land of the Arabs, the Charlie incident will be an excuse to Western intervention in the Arab world after the Arab Spring has failed and the growing influence and power of religious militias, which appeared even give Israel the political justification and legal cover in the creation of the Jewish religious state in the occupied Arab Jerusalem under international cover...

This is only a sample. But even this doesn't go quite as far as Palestinian Arab Hisham Munawar in Al Quds, who goes through an elaborate conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the terror attacks in France to begin with.

As usual, the enlightened Western intelligentsia is silent about the unbridled antisemitism and incitement that comes out of the Arab world, incitement that directly leads to murders of Jews in Paris and Toulouse and elsewhere. It is how Arabs are expected to act, and they happily live up to those expectations.

A few years ago the Arab world was a little embarrassed to be publicly antisemitic, even in Arabic. They paid lip service to pretending that they hated only Zionists, not Jews, in their media.

Those days are long gone, and that is partially because "human rights" groups don't give a damn about real antisemitism and incitement that results in the slaughter of Jews.

But if you can find any condemnation by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch of Arab antisemitic incitement, by all means, share it with me.

I was on Voice of Israel today on the Yishai Fleisher show, which airs 9 AM EST/4 PM Israel time.

It was taped yesterday.

I talked about the Jim Clancy story as well as some general topics on news blogging and how the West misunderstands the Arab world.

Here is the extended interview.

Pallywood in Hebron: Elderly Arab woman cries on cue for cameras (UPDATE)

So heartbreaking! From the Christian Peacemaking Team in Hebron:

Today Israeli forces welded Aamal Hashem Dundes front doors shut. Living in a rented apartment across the street, her family had owned these two houses for centuries on Shuhada Street, most of which is closed to Palestinians.

Aamal sat on a chair, at times crying, as she, her daughter, Palestinian residents, activists and journalists, and internationals from CPT and ISM questioned the soldiers who were carrying out the illegal act. At one point she picked up her chair and sat in front of her house in an act of resistance, before she was forced to move.
Soldiers soon began pushing the crowd back across the street and away from the houses, violently shoving a CPTer who was taking photographs. Meanwhile, settlers were allowed to stand close and antagonize the crowd.

Aamal has high blood pressure and diabetes, and after fainting was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Aamal asked that a CPTer accompany her in the ambulance, but the IDF prevented the CPT from joining Aamal. By 1:30, the soldiers had finished welding the doors shut, and a few remained with a settler, who was seemingly in a jovial mood.

From Algemeiner:

In a striking illustration of the belief held by many Israelis of slanted, pro-Palestinian media reporting, footage uploaded on Monday by the 0404 News site shows a Arab mother in Hebron bursting into tears on cue for a group of press photographers as soldiers seal up the door of a nearby home.

Two weeks ago, Palestinians hurled two firebombs at Israelis living in nearby Beit Hadassah from within the nearby abandoned building, which had been unoccupied for several years due to a military order, according to the Srugim website.

One of the flaming devices ignited the exterior of a mobile home where Jews were living. The residents of the structure were lucky, however, and there were no injuries in the attack, which caused only minor damage.

However, when an IDF team on Monday came to seal off the entrance of the previously unoccupied building, a group of pro-Palestinian foreign and Israeli agitators quickly arrived – including the woman and her daughter – and began to harass the welding crew.

“Did you see?! He [a waiting photographer] asked her to cry during the photography, and she cried [on cue] – I can’t believe this,” one shocked Israeli man said, as he himself filmed the scene from behind the press gang, dubbed by some observers as “fauxtography.”

“And here’s her daughter instructing her to ‘cry, cry’ … she’s laughing as she tells her mother to cry,” the Israeli viewer noted with astonishment.

“Just take a look at this scene!” he exclaimed. “She [the daughter's] laughing as she tells her mother to cry,” as a photographer goes for a closeup shot.

Spokesmen for the ancient contested city’s Jewish residents said the incident was an glaring example of a trend by extreme left-wing squatters to take over such structures.

We report, you decide.

(h/t Bob Knot)

UPDATE: The final edited video product, courtesy PalMedia, with tight shots of the woman as well as pictures of her being placed into the ambulance that she obviously doesn't need.

Even in this video, at one point she looks up from her "crying" as if to ask "Is that good enough?"

The marketplace of ideas, Turkish Islamist style

One group wants free speech, the other wants the right to attack the first group. It is all very even-handed..

A group of Islamists at Ankara University have clashed with another group of students who were commemorating both the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack and the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was killed eight years ago.

Both groups gathered at Ankara University’s Cebeci campus on Jan. 19. According to the Doğan News Agency, stones and bottles were thrown after one of the groups attempted to release a press statement in favor of the Charlie Hebdo victims and Dink.

Police dispersed the groups by using tear gas.

The students, who had announced the Jan. 19 demonstration earlier through Ankara University’s Facebook page, were threatened by Islamist students on the same platform. Referring to the students who had pinned posters that said “Je Suis Charlie” and “We Are All Hrant,” an Islamist student had written on Facebook that the campus “would see unprecedented violence” if the posters were not taken down.

"If you peacefully rally for free speech, then we have the right to violently attack you."

I shouldn't make fun of the hateful, violent Islamists like this. It might be considered Islamophobic.

01/19 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Not afraid? What planet are you on?; Miss Israel Responds

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Not afraid? What planet are you on?

Apparently, civilisation is saved! Some 3 million people took to the streets of Paris last Sunday to declare "Je suis Charlie" and that they would fight off the threat to freedom just like the French resistance. "We are not afraid," shouted the crowd.
Oh, but they are. If anyone really thinks the Paris march means Europe is now going to save itself, they are living on a different planet. Virtually nobody is Charlie, because virtually nobody will publish a condemnation of Islam. Some papers gingerly reproduced this week's cover of Charlie Hebdo with its cartoon of a tearful Mohammed holding a "Je suis Charlie" sign. Others refused, out of fear.
Virtually no mainstream media has analysed, let alone condemned, the threatening doctrines and assumptions in Islamic religion and culture. They are not going to start now.
Yes, it was heartening that so many turned out to protest their attachment to freedom of speech. But surely, the real issue is barbaric slaughter?
True, the demonstrators also mourned the slain police officers and Jewish shoppers. But if all 17 victims had been Jews gunned down in that kosher deli, does anyone really think 3 million would have marched through Paris declaring "Je suis Juif"?

Micahel Lumish How does it feel to be targeted for genocide?

When I take a gander at a place like Daily Kos, which simply represents typical left-leaning blog space, it indicates a disinclination to actually focus on the murderers in favor of focusing on the crimes of the murdered. They cannot very well blame the Jews at the kosher grocery for being Jewish, so they generally ignore that aspect, or twist it into something to do with Israel in order to place blame on the victims. Generally, however, they simply leave the Jews out of it and place the blame for Jihadi aggression on western “racism” of the type allegedly published in Charlie Hebdo.
It is for this reason that while almost the entirety of Paris was claiming “Je suis Charlie” many Kossacks were insisting “I am not Charlie.” Rather than condemning the source of the Parisian attacks, which is political Islam, the western left generally prefers to blame other westerners who they consider politically incorrect or not sufficiently progressive to avoid the wrath of justifiably angry Jihadis.
In any case, how does it feel to be targeted for genocide?
Not only do many of our supposed allies actually think that the Jewish people deserve whatever beating we get, but they even refuse to acknowledge the reality and vitality of the political movement doing the genocidal threatening and beating.
It is truly a remarkable thing to see the leadership of many tens or hundreds of millions of people literally screech for the blood of the Jews and then see our western “friends” either blame Israel or simply turn their backs.

Gerald Steinberg: Can Mogherini Repair EU-Israel Relations?

The need for a radical change in the EU approach was recently highlighted by Dennis Ross, the primary American expert on Arab-Israeli peace efforts. Ross pointedly criticized the counterproductive role of Europe through fervent support for the unilateral Palestinian statehood strategy, and for the obsessive focus on condemning Israel. Instead, Ross called on Europe to “focus on how to raise the cost of saying no or not acting at all when there is an offer on the table, rather than backing the Palestinians as they seek to avoid mutual concessions with their UN and ICC gambits.” Mogherini should heed Ross, and start to map out these changes.
Indeed, the EU’s role in the Palestinian campaign to “bring Israel to the dock” at the International Criminal Court (ICC) is another destructive policy. This strategy did not suddenly arise out of Palestinian “frustration” at the failure of the peace talks, the setback at the UN Security Council, or other recent events, and many European pundits speculated. Rather, this line of attack was explicitly adopted during the negotiations of the Rome Statute that led to the establishment of the ICC, and has been moving steadily since then. In 1997, towards the end of this process, the members of the Arab League pushed through language that stretched the definition of war crimes to cover issues related to occupation and population transfers. The purpose was clearly to prepare the grounds for exploiting the ICC for “legal warfare” (lawfare) to target Israel. At the time, Europe could have opposed this maneuver to single-out Israel, but Brussels as well as the EU member states went along.
Since then, this lawfare has been joined by a powerful army of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), largely funded by Europe. While the NGO allocation processes in the European Union under frameworks such as the EU Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) remain top-secret and exempted from Freedom of Information laws (another sore point in relations with Israel), the annual total for anti-Israel campaigning related to lawfare and demonization of Israel is estimated at approximately 100 million Euros.

Amer Abdel Moneim, an Egyptian journalist, weighed in on Facebook about the Jim Clancy story, and his opinion was picked up on at least one news site.

The story is described this way:

Journalist Amer Abdel Moneim writes on the resignation of Jim Clancy, anchor of CNN after he commented on the attack against Charlie Hebdo and he accused the Zionist entity of being behind the publication of cartoons of the Messenger of Allah bless him, stressing that the Jews and their Masonic constituencies are behind wars and strife on Islam.

Abdel Moneim wrote on Facebook today: that the US TV station expelled the broadcaster, because the Zionist hegemony over the money, media and politics imposed a state of fear that prevents them from talking, and he dared to speak.

He added that the role of the Jews is destructive not only in Europe and America , but in Muslim countries as well. Manipulative Masonic rulers created a religious war, pointing out that the Jews are the ones who have the media in our country, and they make the politicians and media haters to their own nations and their religion, and there are hidden business and political links to implement the Jewish agendas.

He continued, saying that the Muslims are waging a constant battle with the Jews until the Day of Resurrection, and the Jewish hatred and hostility against Islam and the Prophet Muhammad is eternal, it is important for Muslims to understand who the enemy is and what the nature of the battle is and the facts about the conflict so as not to fall into the trap of Jewish Freemason cunning.

He might have nailed Clancy's point of view perfectly!

In 2010 video, Jim Clancy says Twitter reveals one's true personality

There are some great parts in this 2010 interview of Jim Clancy, but here I edited the best part:

"I think more personality does come out in the social media, and in many ways, that's a good thing."

Thanks for revealing yours, Jim!

(h/t Ian)