Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

02/11 Links Pt2: B’Tselem’s casualty figures based on phone interviews; Haaretz's Shrine to Terrorists

From Ian:

B’Tselem’s casualty figures based largely on phone interviews

The UN relies mainly for information on casualties in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) on the NGO Protection Cluster framework which in turn is linked to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the (OCHA-OPT). The OCHA-OPT has in turn appointed three NGOs to provide data on Palestinian casualties: The Israel based B’Tselem and Gaza based Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights and Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), both of which rely heavily on information from the Hamas Ministry of Health in Gaza.
B’Tselem dominates the Palestinian casualty information scene and one should expect that with its international funding and extensive world wide contacts, this organization would observe a rigid standard to maintain credibility in its data collection methodology. Sadly, the opposite is the case. Unfortunately B’Tselem provides the UN and the world with much unverified, inaccurate information.
For example during the recent Gaza conflict B’Tselem relied largely on telephone interviews to provide information that it claims to be reliable. Believe it or not! B’Tselem’s web site declares without embarrassment:

Honest Reporting: Casualties of War

"Israeli officials confirmed that the structure was bombed in airstrikes last week.
The authorities insisted that the building, a weapons storage facility, was a legitimate target and explained that they had conducted detailed surveillance to make sure that no hostages were seen going in or out. But a senior Israeli official who requested anonymity to discuss classified information acknowledged that they had not been able to survey the building around the clock."
When incidents such as the one above are reported, they lead to international condemnations of Israel, accusations of war crimes, and global calls for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. It does not seem to matter that Israel takes great pains to minimize the chances of civilian casualties, often exposing its soldiers to greater risk and reducing the chances of an effective surprise attack. Nor do Israeli claims that certain targets are legitimate matter in the court of global opinion. But we have gotten used to a knee-jerk reaction to condemn Israel no matter what the circumstances.
What is astounding though, is the difference in the reaction when someone else's finger is on the trigger.
The above excerpt appeared in a New York Times article.
I made one change, however.
The original article was about an airstrike by the anti-ISIS coalition. I just took the word "American" out and substituted "Israeli."

Why Does Haaretz Host a Shrine to a Dead Terrorists?

Radical leftist newspaper Haaretz has been embroiled in controversy before, but a new report revealed by the famous Israeli Zionist rapper Yoav Eliasi, better known by his stage name Hatzel, raises serious question marks.
"The following matter left me simply in shock (as much as it is possible to still be shocked by the paper Haaretz...)," wrote Hatzel on Facebook. The shocking discovery: "Haaretz maintained in its basement a locked room that is a kind of temple of pictures praising terrorists."
The room was found by accident by a worker transferring equipment as part of the paper's move to a different building, said Hatzel, who received the report from the worker.
The worker "made a last check and came across a door that was always locked but this time was open, and in the room were dozens of pictures hanging just like a museum to terrorists," wrote Hatzel.
Hatzel noted that among those in the pictures were senior Fatah terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi, who led the faction's Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades during the murderous terror war launched by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 2000, along with "the dead of Al-Aqsa with flowers next to them, pictures of rock throwers and 'IDF crimes.'"

Evidence at terror trial shows bomber was a PA employee even after he blew himself up

From Courthouse News Service, Monday:

In a trial with $1 billion at stake, each tear a juror sheds for the victims of decade-old terror attacks in Israel could exact a heavy price for the Palestinian Authority.
Family members suing Palestinian governing bodies took to the stand last week to share often heartbreaking memories of relatives killed in a spate of attacks against Israeli civilians in the early 2000s, known as the Second Intifada.
During one witness's testimony, a juror "broke into sobs and uttered an expletive," the Palestinian Authority's lawyer Mark Rochon said.
"I don't want to embarrass jurors, and I am very cognizant of the fact that an element of the damages can be powerful emotional testimony, but if someone has a personal experience ... that would affect their ability to be fair, that's something we do need to know about," he added.
Rochon, from the Washington-based firm Miller & Chevalier, suspected that unexpected testimony about "sexual assault issues" caused the juror to weep.
Declining to issue a jury instruction, U.S. District Judge George Daniels commented, "This isn't the first time that I have seen a juror cry or react strongly to the emotional testimony of a particular witness."
Indeed, there were more tears in court later that day from a father recounting how a bomb dashed his plans for reconciliation.
...

Brother and sister Yitzhak and Esther Goldberg also recounted how they honored the memory of their father Stuart, who died in the Jan. 29, 2004, suicide bombing of a public bus in Jerusalem.
Esther gave her son her father's Hebrew name, Yechezkel, a fact that she said so disturbed her mother Shifra that, at first, she could only call the boy "baby."
"Her heart is just shattered, and it can never be put back together again," Esther said of her mother.
Yitzhak testified that he still searches through photos of the bombing on every anniversary of the attacks.
"I'm looking to find some more information, or more information than I know," he said.
Lawyers for the families submitted records from the Palestinian Authority's General Intelligence Service allegedly linking their employees Ahmed Salah and Ali Ja'ara to that attack, a spokeswoman said.
Ja'ara was the bomber, and Salah was convicted of aiding it, she added.
The Palestinian Authority's lawyer Rochon contends that the paperwork reflects only his client's massive "social welfare state."

Eleven people were murdered in that bombing.

Here is some of that evidence, showing (translated) PA documents referring to Ali Ja'ara:

Indeed, Ja'ara kept his 2004 salary even after he blew himself up. He was even promoted!

His family is almost certainly still being paid, today, as a reward for his murdering eleven people.

Obama Offers Iran Sudetenland (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Tehran, February 11 - Iranian officials have yet to respond to the latest American proposal in talks over the Islamic Republic's controversial nuclear program, a proposal that offers the central European territory of Sudetenland in exchange for guarantees that Iran will pursue no further development of atomic weapons.
US President Barack Obama made the offer earlier this week amid rising concerns that no deal would be reached by March, when legally mandated sanctions on Iran intensify in the absence of an agreement.

Obama faces conflicting pressures from his own drive to allow Iran to establish regional hegemony and thus, he hopes, to help stabilize the Middle East, and conservative opposition from Republicans and allies of other Middle Eastern states convinced that Iran's ambitions have little to do with Western notions of stability. The offer places Obama in a precarious diplomatic position, as the Sudetenland is part of a third sovereign country, but the Nobel Peace Prize laureate believes it necessary to secure a settlement with Iran.

Reaching a deal has become a priority for the president, partially because he has had little to show for his efforts in the international arena. With less than two years remaining in office, Obama has set ambitious goals for his Mideast policy, including both Iran and the moribund Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, both of which have produced frustration as all three of those parties have been far less accommodating to his desires, for unknown reasons choosing to act in what they see as their own best interests instead of what Obama knows to be best. As Iran dithers and delays, growing ever closer to the nuclear threshold, the Israeli-Palestinian front remains deadlocked amid Palestinian unilateral attempts to force concession on Israel and Israeli political paralysis in the pre-election season. The president thus took inspiration from twentieth-century British statesman Neville Chamberlain, who found the Sudetenland worked once before as inducement to a regional deal when Germany flexed its muscles in the 1930's.

"It's a daring but proven idea," says scholar Ann Schluss. "Chamberlain was able to achieve what he called 'peace in our time' by offering Germany the Sudetenland region in exchange for a declared end to further territorial ambitions in Europe. There's no reason it can't work again, this time with Iran, to much the same result."

Schluss cautioned that making such a deal work would depend on multiple parties, not all of which are interested in an agreement that leaves Iran with the possibility of developing a weapon. "We don't know, for example, how the Saudis will take this, but if all goes well, my assessment is that they, and multiple other states, will also pursue nuclear weapons, and there's nothing that keeps the peace better."

Durban U Tech students council calls to expel Jewish students

From IOL News, South Africa:

Jewish students at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) who supported the State of Israel should be kicked out, the Students Representative Council (SRC) has demanded.

And this applies to students who are sponsored by the Israeli government. The demands, sent to the DUT management, have shocked and angered Jewish organisations.

The vice-chancellor of the university, Professor Ahmed Bawa, said the demand by the SRC and the Progressive Youth Alliance that the DUT deregister all Jewish students “is totally unacceptable”.

The Secretary of the SRC, Mqondisi Duma, said: “As the SRC, we had a meeting and analysed international politics. We took the decision that Jewish students, especially those who do not support the Palestinian struggle, should deregister.”

On Tuesday night, Natan Pollack – the national chairman of the South African Union of Jewish Students – said the suggestion was “deplorable”.

“To discriminate against people because of their religious and political standpoint goes against freedom of speech,” Pollack said.

Chairwoman of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Durban-based Mary Kluk, said she was “appalled” and said it was unacceptable such demands could be made in an academic institution.

I like how they said "especially those who do not support the Palestinian struggle" - although the Jews who are anti-Israel clearly are suspect too.

It is refreshing when the person behind the curtain is exposed and all the rhetoric about rights and justice and oppression is shown to be just a smokescreen to cover good, old fashioned hate.

02/11 Links Pt1: Administration Turns Obama Anti-Semitism Gaffe Into Epic Blunder

From Ian:

An Administration With a Blind Spot About Anti-Semitism

President Obama’s recent interview with Vox included an astonishing characterization of one of the most notorious recent terror attacks. As he did in his initial reaction to the assault on a kosher deli in Paris, the president did not call it an act of anti-Semitism or say that those slaughtered were singled out for murder because they were Jews. Even worse, he told Vox that those responsible for the attack on the Hyper Cacher had decided to “randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a Paris deli.” The day after such a glaring misstatement of fact, one might expect the White House to walk back this remark in some way. But, instead, both White House spokesman Josh Earnest and State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki doubled down on the president’s tortured logic in a stunning display of Orwellian doubletalk. Instead of just a president with a blind spot about anti-Semitism that comes out when he is interviewed, it is now clear that the United States has an administration with a blind spot about anti-Semitism.
To have made such a statement once might be just a gaffe. To do it twice revealed that the president has a blind spot about anti-Semitism that somehow prevents him from either admitting that the incident was anti-Semitic or condemning it as an incident in which Jews were targeted. But today we learned that this is not just a rhetorical tic. It is now official U.S. policy to claim that when Islamist murderers go into a kosher deli looking for Jews to kill, they are not targeting Jews or acting out of religious bias.
Earnest ‘s insistence that the Hyper Cacher was not chosen by the terrorists because of the likelihood that it would be filled with Jews shopping for the Sabbath is mind-boggling. So, too, is Psaki’s belief that calling it an act of anti-Semitism is a question so complex that only the local French authorities investigating the crime can know for sure.
Why the adamant refusal to label an unambiguous act of anti-Semitism what it is?

State Dept Doubles Down on Obama Claim That Kosher Deli Attack Was 'Random'

WH Spends 7 Minutes Defending Obama Downplaying Terrorism, Calling Kosher Deli Attack ‘Random’

In a heated back and forth between Karl and Earnest, Karl mentioned the president’s use of the word “random” when discussing the terrorist attack on the Kosher deli in Paris that happened in January. Earnest blamed the media for focusing on the word and said that there were other, non-Jewish people in the deli.
Ed Henry asked whether the Islamic State’s burning of the Jordanian pilot was media hype. Earnest brought up the coalition of 60 members but made no mention as to whether it was media hype.
“The president has succeeded in leveraging the influence of the United States of America, to build this coalition and even to get countries in the region to fly alongside American military air pilots as carrying out air strikes against (Islamic State) targets,” said Earnest.

WH Spends 7 Minutes Defending Obama Downplaying Terrorism, Calling Kosher Deli Attack 'Random'

Administration Turns Obama Anti-Semitism Gaffe Into Epic Blunder

What makes this so bizarre is that it is not — or at least, was not — administration policy to deny the anti-Semitic character of the obviously anti-Semitic attack on Hyper Cache. In the wake of the attack, the State Department called it a “cowardly anti-Semitic assault.” A few weeks ago, an administration statement denounced “Anti-Semitic attacks like the recent terrorist attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris.” Chief of Staff Denis McDonough called the attacks “the latest in a series of very troubling incidents in Europe and around the world that reflect a rising tide of anti-Semitism.” And the administration has spoken forcefully on the general trend of rising anti-Semitism in Europe.
If Earnest and Psaki are to be taken at their word, the Obama administration is no longer willing to identify the attack on a kosher supermarket as anti-Semitic. Conceivably they have changed the administration’s position on the fly in order to avoid admitting that the president misspoke, turning a gaffe into an official line. More likely (following the general rule that one should not attribute to venality that which can be explained by incompetence) they both failed to anticipate the question and tried to bluff their way through with disastrous results.
The administration is already cleaning up its cleanup:

A number of people have been arrested by the Palestinian Authority in recent months for insulting Mahmoud Abbas.

Majdoline Reza Hassouna, an investigative journalist, wrote something about Abbas on her Facebook page last December that caused her to be prosecuted under the law against insulting the leader. (She claimed her Facebook page was hacked.)

Another citizen, Omar Baarat, was imprisoned and then released on bail for $4200 (3000 Jordanian dinars) for the same crime of "insulting the leaders" (literally "prolonging the tongue.") He is awaiting trial.

The court document in that case is shown here.

Jordan has a similar law, Article 195 of the Jordanian penal code, which may be the basis for the PA's law. It prohibits insulting the king or queen or other officials, including with cartoons or graphics.

Because this shows Abbas to be more of a petty dictator than a Western-style enlightened peacemaker, these stories rarely make it to the mainstream media.

Here's an exception that proves the rule: when a similar case came to light in 2013 and the "insulter" was jailed, Abbas then pardoned the offender, pretending to care about freedom of speech. The New York Times happily printed that part of the story showing how Abbas was so kind to his enemy.

The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has pardoned a Palestinian journalist whose one-year prison sentence for insulting him on Facebook was upheld by a West Bank appeals court on Thursday, the president’s legal adviser said in a statement....The president’s legal adviser said that Mr. Abbas respected freedom of opinion and expression and that he had not personally filed a complaint against the journalist.

But there has been no followup from the NYT as to why people are still being prosecuted under that law, today, under that wonderfully progressive permanent president.

Here are the reported violations of freedom of expression by the PA in December alone that the mainstream media won't touch:

The Preventive Security arrested Baha’ Al-Jayyousi from Tulkarem on 2/12 for vilifying important personalities on Facebook. The Preventive Security also arrested Al-Quds University media student Islam Za’al on 3/12 for allegedly publishing inciting news against the Palestinian authority on Facebook.

A unit of the Preventive Security forces stormed the house of Al-Quds University media student Amer Abu Hlayel and searched it on 5/12, before they left an arrest order to his family for his writings on Facebook. The Preventive Security forces also committed violations against a number of journalists: they summoned the freelance journalist Ameer Abu Aram and interrogated him on 9/12; they also raided the house of Wattan TV cameraman Mohammad Awad to arrest him (but his family did not allow them in) on 10/12; they filed a complaint to the General Prosecution in Nablus against Al-Quds TV producer and Al-Safir newspaper correspondent Majdolin Hassoune and interrogated her for her writings on Facebook, accusing her of vilifying VIPs on 14/12.

The Preventive Security also arrested Wattan correspondent Aysar Barghouthi in his house in Kafr Ain, north Ramallah, on 28/12. Four men assaulted the freelance journalist Muath Amleh and beat him after he received two threats for his writings against the Qabalan municipality on 29/12. The Preventive Security Forces summoned Ahrar Al-Asra center journalist and human rights activist Mahmoud Milhim on 3/12 but he did not go to their headquarters. On 12/12 the Palestinian Security forces prevented Al-Aqsa TV correspondent Ala’ Al-Titi and his colleague the cameraman Mahmoud Abu Yousif from covering a festival organized by Hamas in Hebron. They detained Al-Titi after bringing him to the Intelligence service headquarters. On the same day the Preventive Security forces seized the ID of Al-Jazeera net correspondent Awad Rjoub while he was heading to cover the same Hamas festival and they tried to prevent him from covering. On 14/12 Quds Press agency correspondent Zaid Abu Arra received a summons from the director of the Preventive Security by phone telling him that they were going to arrest him, and on 21/12 the Preventive Security forces summoned Al-Quds University media student Qutaiba Hamdan, detained him, interrogated him and beat him.

Iraqi media are reporting that militants have seized a major synagogue in Amara.

The militants are said to have cut off all the streets leading to the synagogue and prevented journalists from filming or writing any reports relating to the subject. Reports say that the terrorists destroyed the bulk of the temple, claiming that that the synagogue will become the headquarters of the militants in southern Iraq.

There are fewer than ten Jews remaining in Iraq, the end of a community that was over 2500 years old.

From Courthouse News Service:

One of the most recognized participants in Mideast peace process, Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi testified that she met with the late Yasser Arafat "hundreds of times" during the wave of violence known as the Second Intifada.

They spoke often those days about trying to stop the terrorist attacks that the Palestinian Authority stands accused of perpetrating, Ashrawi told a New York jury on Tuesday.

...Several family members of the victims of these attacks, represented the Israeli legal organization Shurat Ha'Din - which has been involved in several similar lawsuits - allege that the more mainstream Palestinian governing bodies encouraged the violence through personnel, payments and propaganda.

They submitted internal Palestinian Authority records appearing to link employees to bombings, pictures of Arafat and his successor embracing militant leaders, and financial papers of so-called "martyr payments" to incarcerated attackers and their families.

Providing a starkly different view, Ashrawi told the jury that she "tried to appeal to everyone to stop the violence" as "morally abhorrent," in town meetings and public statements.

...On cross-examination, Yalowitz emphasized - and Ashrawi agreed - that none of these events excused killing innocent civilians.

In a steady stream of questions, Yalowitz asked whether harboring, paying, glorifying and providing safe harbor to terrorists was "morally unacceptable."

Ashrawi answered each time that it was.

Ashrawi is on the record as justifying terror.

In 2000, she said “In a sense, the army of occupation and the settlers have become legitimate and select targets of Palestinian resistance.”

Ashrawi's NGO, Miftah, has praised female terrorists as shining examples of Palestinian Arab feminism - and it still has articles on its site that praise female terrorists such as Dalal Mughrabi as recently as 2013. Other articles justify suicide bombings of Israeli civilians.

The idea that Ashrawi discussed with Arafat how to stop the suicide attacks that he ordered is absurd..

But lying is not new for Ashrawi. For example, she has said that the Israeli soldiers who were lynched in Ramallah in 2000 were really part of "death squads" and that the PA policemen who were involved in lynching them were really trying to protect them.

One year ago, Israeli authorities demolished a synagogue for building code violations. "Rights groups" were silent.

On February 12, 2014, Jerusalem authorities demolished a building for violating building codes.

It was a synagogue.

The synagogue itself, run by Rabbi Avital Maimon, wasn't illegal, but a balcony built above it was too large, and that balcony was on top of the synagogue roof. So the synagogue was destroyed, even as members of the city council tried frantically to delay the demolition to find a solution.

Jews bitterly complained that dozens of illegally built mosques are left untouched in Jerusalem because of "tolerance" but this Jewish house of worship was destroyed.

The story didn't make it into the English-language press.

Because it was only a synagogue that was destroyed, not an Arab house..

I looked at the archives of the site "Rabbis for Human Rights" for February 2014, and could not find a single article about the demolition of a synagogue, even while they have dozens of articles about Israel demolishing illegally built Arab homes.

The impression that these "rabbis" want to give is that Israel only destroys Arab homes, and that Israel's assertions that the buildings are built illegally is a lie.

This story shows that they are the ones who are lying. And the fact that they did not want to publish a word to defend a synagogue being demolished shows that they aren't rabbis in any real sense of the word.

This unreported story proves that Israeli authorities will demolish buildings that violate building codes no matter who the owner is.

The fact that it was unreported shows that there are many people who do not want the truth that might disrupt their anti-Israel memes to be revealed.

02/10 Links Pt2: Jews are Indigenous: Why Israel Advocacy Fails; French Exodus Underway

From Ian:

Jews are Indigenous: Why Israel Advocacy Fails

So why do those who care about indigenous rights not support a native people’s right to live on its ancestral lands?
Both liberal and conservative Israel advocacy organizations in America are doing it wrong. Every time they portray Israel as a Western country, identify Jews (even indirectly) as white people while simultaneously referring to our ancient national culture as a “religion” or speak in a mannerism which would suggest we are anything but an indigenous people, they are reinforcing the bizarre but successful anti-Israel narrative depicting us as Western European colonialists in a foreign land. Since the hasbara industry has collectively been identifying us in this fashion for years we shouldn’t be surprised when we are told to “go back to Europe.” When all of the largest Jewish American Israel advocacy groups, whether right or left, insist on this false Western presentation of our people it not only weakens our position, it also destroys the possibility of ever truly integrating into the region and making peace with our neighbors. A Western country does not belong in the Middle East and the inclination of the other peoples of the region to oppose such a state is instinctive.
Gay rights, women’s rights and Western-style democracy are also not going to do the trick as all three are irrelevant to the core issue at hand, and true indigenous status easily trumps all three in the minds of even the most progressive young activists. Even if such topics may help gain the support of many American liberals, focusing on these issues bolsters the narrative that we are foreign to the Middle East, ultimately falsifying our people’s true historic narrative and further alienating the other Semitic peoples from us (those we are actually destined to live with). It is also time to throw away the (somewhat arrogant and very much irrelevant to the point of discussion) “we are the good guys because we are more civilized/produce better technology/have more Nobel prizes than you” rhetoric and go back to the authentic definition of Zionism as an indigenous people’s liberation movement, with our inherent connection to our land based on indigenous rights, the correction of historic injustices and the universal rights of all native peoples.
In other words, it all comes down to self-identification. It is ultimately up to Diaspora Jews to make a decision. You are either native to Eretz Yisrael, the ancestral homeland of the people you are part of, to which your people’s language, customs, and traditions are indigenous and to which your people aspired and sacrificed to return for thousands of years; or you are indigenous to the place in which you were born in only because Assyrian, Babylonian, and Roman imperialists invaded your people’s homeland some centuries back. You are either part of a Semitic people, a proud and ancient Middle Eastern nation with a rich treasured past and a collective meaningful future, or you choose to willingly give in to subtle Western social constructs pressuring you to discard your people’s authentic self-definition and identify as white people, part of the Euro-Western nations, history and ethos with the only thing distinguishing you being some kind of different “religion.” I know where I stand.

US bill seeks to link massive EU trade pact with BDS rejection

A new Congressional bill will seek to battle efforts to boycott Israel by linking rejection of BDS to a trade agreement being negotiated with the European Union, the largest free trade deal in history.
The Israel Trade and Commercial Enhancement Act, which will be officially submitted Tuesday afternoon in Washington, enjoys bipartisan sponsorship which backers hope will help it advance quickly through Congress.
Representatives Peter Roskam (R-IL) and Juan Vargas (D-CA) co-sponsored the bipartisan legislation, which they say will “leverage ongoing trade negotiations to discourage prospective US trade partners from engaging in economic discrimination against Israel.”
The bill, which has been worked on for over six months, does not authorize any sort of federal response to domestic BDS initiatives, but rather would use free trade negotiations to discourage foreign and international institutions from supporting initiatives to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel.

Church of England Bans Anti-Zionist Vicar From Speaking, Writing on Middle East Issues

In an encouraging sign that the Anglican Church is starting to recognize the intimate relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, a rabidly anti-Israel Church of England vicar has been ordered to stop speaking and writing about the Middle East or risk losing his job.
Dr. Stephen Sizer, the vicar of Christ Church in Virginia Water, located in the affluent southern region of Surrey, has a long track record of offensive, often antisemitic statements about Israel. As recently as last October, Sizer traveled to Iran for a conference that brought together Holocaust deniers and conspiracy theorists from around the world. While in Tehran, Sizer ominously declared, “Those who criticize this kind of conference must think very carefully of the consequences of their words for Jews and Christians in countries like Iran.”
Because of these and similar statements, Sizer signed a reconciliation agreement in 2012 with the Board of Deputies of British Jews in which he undertook to have his online activism moderated. But last month, Sizer took to Facebook to promote an article entitled “9/11: Israel did it” and reportedly wrote: “Is this antisemitic? It raises so many questions.”
As a direct consequence, Sizer’s immediate superior, the Rt Revd Andrew Watson, Bishop of Guildford, announced today that he had given the vicar an ultimatum: stop your activism over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or lose your parish.

Good news! We aren't apes and pigs; only our ancestors were!

From MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from an address by Algerian cleric Chemseddine el Djazairi, which aired on Ennahar TV on February 8, 2015:

Chemseddine el Djazairi: A viewer asks: What is your position about the prevalent belief that contemporary Jews are of the seed of those who were transformed into apes and pigs? This belief is not true. Contemporary Jews are of the seed of Adam, not of the apes and pigs, because the line of those transformed into apes and pigs was severed.
[…]
A Jew who rebelled so much against God that he was thus transformed – how is this the fault of his children or grandchildren? Perhaps their descendents will convert to Islam, and know that there is no god but Allah. This is in keeping with Islamic law as well as with logic. Those who were transformed are extinct. None exist anymore.
[…]
This transformation is true. Some nations were transformed by Allah into apes and pigs. However, they have no descendents. Get it?

I see a slight inconsistency here; first he ways that today's Jews are not descendants of the apes and pigs, but later he says that the children and grandchildren of the apes and pigs were not transformed. Apparently the apes and pigs could not have human children after the transformation but their existing progeny (if they weren't pig-worthy) remained human.

So when people say that Jews are the "descendants of apes and pigs," they are still speaking accurately according to this moderate cleric.

Good information to have.

The Jews and Arabs of Palestine, 1852

Here's another in an occasional series of contemporaneous writings from the 19th century and earlier showing that the supposed tolerance that Muslims had of Jews is a myth.

From Remarks on the present condition and future prospects of the Jews in Palestine, by Arthur George Harper Hollingsworth, 1852:

The population in Palestine is composed of Arabs, who roam about the plains, or lurk in the mountain fastnesses as robbers and strangers, having no settled home, and without any fixed attachment to the land. In many of the ruined cities and villages there exists also, a limited number of Christian families, uncivilized, and not knowing correctly from what race they derive their origin. Poor, and without influence, they tremblingly hold their miserable possessions from year to year, without security, and without wealth, in a land which they confess is not their own. ...

The Arab and Christian populations diminish every year. Poverty, distress, insecurity, robbery, and disease continue to weaken the inhabitants of this fine country. Ruins fall upon ruins; solitudes increase in the deserted vallies. The land mourneth for its inhabitants. ...

Amongst the scattered and feeble population of this once happy country, is found, however, an increasing number of poor Jews; some of their most learned men reside in the holy cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, and Tiberias. Their synagogues are still in existence. Jews frequently arrive in Palestine from every nation in Europe, and remain there for many years'; and others die with the satisfaction of mingling their remains with their forefathers’ dust, which fills every valley, and is found in every cave.

This Jewish population is poor beyond any adequate word ; it is degraded in its social and political condition, to a state of misery, so great, that it possesses no rights. It can shew no wealth even if possessed of it, because to display riches would secure robbery from the Mahometan population, the Turkish officials, or the Bedouin Arab. These Jews live chiefly on alm, collected from the nation in all parts of the world. There is no people more charitable, though that charity is generally exclusive, than the Jew. This money is precarious in .its amount, frequently tardy in its arrival, always uncertain when it may be received, lost sometimes in its passage, and accompanied ever by the degradation of receiving a distant and unsettled charity, supporting a wretchedly impoverished and famishing people. No advancement is made by the Jew of Palestine, in trafficking, in commerce, in farming, in the possession of settled houses or lands. There alone, where he ought to be first, he is last; and where in all other countries a Jew thrives and increases in wealth, in that one he is spiritless from oppression, and without energy, because without hope of Protection. He creeps along that soil, where his forefathers proudly strode in the fulncss of a wonderful prosperity, as an alien, an outcast, a creature less than a dog, and below the oppressed Christian beggar in his own ancestral plains and cities. No harvest ripens for his hand, for he cannot tell whether he will be permitted to gather it. Land occupied by a Jew is exposed to robbery and waste. A most peevish jealousy exists against the landed prosperity, or commercial wealth, or trading advancement of the Jew. Hindrances exist to the settlement of a British Christian in that country, but a thousand petty obstructions are created to prevent the establishment of a Jew on waste land, or to the purchase and rental of land by a Jew. “

...Agricultural pursuits are attended with much hazard, for, in the vicinity of the Jordan there are many Arabs, who support themselves chiefly by plunder. ...What security exists, that a Jewish _ emigrant settling in Palestine, could receive a fair remuneration for his capital and labour? None whatever. He might toil, but his harvests would be reaped by others; the Arab robber can rush in and carry off his flocks and herds. If he appeals for redress to the nearest Pasha, the taint of his Jewish blood fills the air, and darkens the brows of his oppressors ; if he turns to his neighbour Christian, he encounters prejudice and spite ; if he claims a Turkish guard, he is insolently repulsed and scorned. How can he bring his capital into such a country, when that fugitive possession flies from places where the sword is drawn to snatch it from the owner’s hands and not protect it ?

,,,Now, how is this poor, despised, and powerless child of Abraham to obtain redress, or make his voice heard at the Sublime Porte? The more numerous the cases of oppression, (and they are many), the more clamorous their appeals for justice, the more unwillingly will the government of the Sultan,—partly from inherent and increasing weakness, partly from disinclination,—act on the side of the Jew. They despise them as an execrated race ; they hate them as the literal descendants of the original possessors of the country. ...

02/10 Links Pt1: Obama Calls Terror Attack on Paris Jews ‘Random’ Shooting; More Election Interference

From Ian:

Obama Calls Terror Attack on Paris Jews ‘Random’ Shooting

President Barack Obama has called the terror attack on Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris last month an act of random violence, rather than a terror attack or an antisemitic attack.
Obama’s remark appears in an interview with Matt Yglesias of Vox.com. The president calls the attackers “violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.” He elides past the religion of the attackers or the victims in an attack that claimed four innocent lives.
Obama was responding to a sympathetic question by Yglesias about whether “the media sometimes overstates the level of alarm people should have about terrorism and this kind of chaos, as opposed to a longer-term problem of climate change and epidemic disease.” While stating that Americans were right to be concerned, Obama agreed that the media had overstated the problem of terror because of a general tendency towards sensational reporting: “If it bleeds, it leads, right?”
The White House came under unusually intense criticism when President Obama declined to attend a major anti-terror rally in Paris that followed the attack on the kosher supermarket and an earlier attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper. Obama’s remarks parallel those of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who infamously suggested the Benghazi terror attack may have happened when “guys outside for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans.”

‘If It Bleeds, It Leads’: Obama Says Media ‘Overstates’ Terror Threat

Why Obama Thinks All Muslim Terror Attacks Are 'Random'

Randomly shoot “a bunch of folks” in a deli in Paris? No mention of anti-Semitism from the president here. By this measure, Nazis randomly broke the windows of a bunch of folks in delis in Germany right around 1938.
But that’s the point: Were Obama to face up to the real problem of anti-Semitism globally, he would have to stop isolating Israel, given that global isolation of Israel is a manifestation of the same anti-Semitism that ended with the murders of Jews in a Paris deli. Were Obama to lump together the Jews and the victims of Charlie Hebdo, he could no longer plausibly claim that Israeli settlement policy spurs Islamic murder — as it turns out, the victims of Charlie Hebdo and those in the kosher supermarket had nothing to do with Israeli settlements. They have to do, instead, with radical Islam.
Instead, Obama prefers to see the murders as random, unforeseeable events.
Obama’s casual dismissal of anti-Semitic murder isn’t out of character. Obama often dismisses Islamic evil with a wave of the hand, a bothersome but random circumstance. Less than two weeks after the murder of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, in Benghazi, Libya, Obama described the terrorist attacks leading to their deaths as “bumps in the road”:

‘There’s Nothing Random About the Threats Against Jewish Targets:’ US Jewish Leader Chides Obama Over Paris Terror Comments

Cooper, who is currently in Paris for talks with French Jewish leaders and government officials, added: “We’re talking about an explosion of antisemitism on this continent, and a convergence of antisemitic hate with terrorism. As we know, many Jews left France last year, well before the January attacks. Here in France, people in authority, especially the leaders of the country, have their eyes wide open to the nature of this problem and the seriousness of the situation. There’s nothing ‘random’ about the threats against Jewish targets, which is why the government has put 10,000 troops on the ground to protect the Jewish community.”
One tweet reacting to Obama’s interview declared, “POTUS in interview calls terrorist shootings at Paris Jewish deli random. Mr. President, antisemitism isn’t random,” a sentiment that was widely shared in similar comments.
Obama also insinuated that the threats to security and freedom emanating from the Middle East had been exaggerated over the past decade. “You know, the strategy that was crafted in Washington didn’t always match up with the actual threats that were out there,” he claimed, in yet another swipe at the previous George W. Bush Administration.

Video: Gaza kids play in a real tunnel

Gaza kids pretending to be Hamas tunnel fighters:

And when the tunnel collapses, they can play martyr!

(h/t Bob Knot)

From Doyle McManus in the LA Times:

The Houthis, Shiite Muslim rebels who announced that they were taking control of Yemen's government last week, don't seem much like natural allies of the United States.

One of their favorite slogans is “Death to America, death to Israel, damn the Jews.” U.S. officials say they've received money, weapons and training from Iran. An Iranian official boasted recently that thanks to the Houthis, Yemen's capital is now “in the hands of Iran,” along with those of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Should we be worried that the enemy of our enemy Al Qaeda is also friends with our other enemies -- adversaries, anyway -- in Tehran?
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And yet, last week, Obama administration officials were scrambling to contact Houthi leaders and assure them that the United States doesn't consider them an enemy. “We're talking with everybody,” an official told me — “everybody who will talk with us.” The Houthis' top leaders haven't been willing to meet so far, but the Americans are working on it.

Why so much eagerness for a working relationship with a group that wants less U.S. influence in its homeland, not more? Because the Houthis and their allies are now in charge in Yemen, one of the main battlegrounds in the long U.S. war against Al Qaeda. And the Houthis hate Al Qaeda.

US foreign policy seems to be that anyone who screams "Death to America" the loudest is a potential ally who must be cultivated.

Hey, Iran also says "death to America" - and look what great buddies they are!

The poor Saudis and Egyptians and other Arab nations who have tried for decades to be closer to the US are treated like enemies. (Except when Egypt was briefly ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood, another group who hates America and who Obama loves back.)

When the leader of the free world chooses to ignore explicit statements of hate for his country and instead rely on wishful thinking for his foreign policy decisions to treat avowed enemies as potential partners, we have a serious problem.