Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 16, 2015

02/16 Links Pt1: The EU’s new normal: Kill free speech, kill the Jews; Nothing Random Here

From Ian:

Defiant Mother Who Hosted Bat-Mitzva as Terror Struck Copenhagen Synagogue Recounts Harrowing Ordeal – ‘No One Can Tell Me Where I Can Live My Jewish Life’ (INTERVIEW)

Mette Bentow, the mother whose daughter’s bat-mitzva was cut short by the terror attack at the Copenhagen synagogue late last night, sounded a defiant tone in an interview with The Algemeiner on Sunday, in which she recounted her harrowing experiences of the past 24 hours.
“No one can tell me where I can live my Jewish life,” she insisted strongly, even as she admitted, “I don’t know if there will be a Danish Jewish life” for her children to live there.
“We were celebrating the bat-mitzva of our daughter Hannah and due to heightened security in Copenhagen, there were extra security personnel on the ground, both from the Jewish community but also from the police,” Bentow recounted. ”There were armed police officers, which is not a usual sight in Copenhagen.”
“We were having a wonderful party until 20 minutes to one in the morning, when one of the Jewish security guards asked us to go downstairs to the basement, and, after a short while, he took my husband aside, who has a security background, briefed him on what had happened, and gave him a radio. We then proceeded into a security room, a panic room where we were left.”
Bentow said that no gunshots were heard by guests at the party “because we were listening to music, we were dancing and the community center is behind the synagogue itself, so we didn’t hear anything.”

Douglas Murray: How many more terror attacks until we have a serious discussion about offending religions?

Another week and another completely random attack by a gunman hunting down cartoonists before inexplicably heading to the local synagogue. My guess is that events in Copenhagen yesterday have already been put down in many quarters to what President Obama describes as ‘a random bunch of folks’ being targeted by somebody who has ‘misunderstood’ what every Western leader agrees is an entirely peaceful and harmless religious tradition.
As it happens, I know the people who put together the Lars Vilks committee and had a number of friends who were in the room in Copenhagen yesterday when the gunman attacked. One of them wrote a brief account of events for us here yesterday. Of course at a time like this it is appropriate to stress how brave these individuals are. And they most certainly are. But what is more striking to me are two things.
The first is that supporting an artist in 21st century Europe should have become a brave thing to do and that a conversation about free speech in Europe in 2015 should have — and need — substantial police protection. Today’s UK newspapers refer to Vilks as ‘controversial.’ But Vilks wouldn’t be ‘controversial’ if almost the entirety of the Western media and the political and arts establishments had not in recent years abandoned their principles and chosen to avoid mentioning anything negative or worthy of satire in one single religion. The jihadists just want to kill Lars Vilks. It was the Western media and political class that made him ‘controversial’.
And then there is the second point — which is how many attacks like yesterday’s have to happen before there is a semblance of serious discussion around all this? A few years ago when the offices of Charlie Hebdo were firebombed in Paris the French Foreign Minister said about drawing cartoons of Mohammed and thus potentially ‘insulting’ Islam: ‘Is it really sensible or intelligent to pour oil on the fire?’ My reply to which is ‘Who made our societies into this powder-keg apparently able to catch fire at any moment?’

Tom Gross Nothing Random Here

Yesterday evening’s Copenhagen synagogue shooting is yet another attack on Jews as Jews -- just as we have witnessed such attacks at the Toulouse Jewish primary school, the Brussels Jewish museum, the Paris kosher supermarket, the firebombing of the synagogue in the German city of Wuppertal, and at many other places in recent years, from the Jewish communal centres in Mumbai and Casablanca, to the ancient synagogues in Istanbul and Jerba.
Nothing Random Here
Yet only last week President Obama and his spokespeople were suggesting that it was just some kind of “random” accident that Jews were being killed.
The Obama team has consistently demonstrated a willful lack of understanding about the nature of Islamism, about anti-Semitism, and about the intentions of the Islamic revolutionary government in Iran. They seem more interested in disparaging the prime minister of America’s ally Israel than in preventing the regime in Tehran going nuclear – a regime which has already de facto taken control of large swathes of Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. Its terrorist actions outside the Middle East spread to, among other places, Thailand, Bulgaria (where Jewish tourists were blown up in 2012) and Argentina, where 85 people were murdered at the AMIA Jewish centre in Buenos Aires. Only last month an Iranian diplomat in Montevideo was expelled from Uruguay for planting a bomb designed to kill Jews. (This foiled attack was barely reported on outside the Uruguayan and Israeli media.)
As Middle East scholar Bassam Tawil wrote last week: “Does Obama really want his legacy to be, ‘The president who was an even bigger fool than Neville Chamberlain’?”

From The Jewish News (UK):

Southampton University Law School is to host a major international conference on the “legality, validity and legitimacy” of Israel “given the urgent need to respond to persistent Palestinian suffering.”

For three days in April, academics will flock to discuss the “problems associated with the creation and nature of the Jewish state itself and the status of Jerusalem.”

The conference will explore “the relatedness of the suffering and injustice in Palestine to the foundation and protection of a state of such nature,” asking what role international law should play in the situation.

Event literature says the subject is a “marginalised debate” needing a “legal analysis of the manner by which the State of Israel came into existence as well as what kind of state it is”.

Organised by Prof. Oren Ben-Dor, a former Israeli who has previously called Israel an “arrogant self-righteous Zionist entity,” the event promises “public debate without partisanship.”

Nah, no partisanship in a conference that "debates" whether a single state has a right to exist.

The conference literature shows that it isn't necessarily demonizing Israel out, oh no.

This conference seeks to analyse the challenge posed to international law by the Jewish State of Israel and the whole of historic Palestine – the area to the west side of River Jordan that includes both what is now the State of Israel and the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.

I wish someone would show me a map of historic Palestine that fits those boundaries that is more than 100 years old. Really, there's an entire university filled with scholars there, one of them must have seen a map of this historic land once upon a time, right?

For its initial existence, the State of Israel has depended on a unilateral declaration of statehood in addition to both the expulsion (some would say the ethnic cleansing) of large numbers of non-Jewish Palestinian Arabs in 1947-49 and the prevention of their return. Furthermore, the Jewish nature of the state has profoundly affected the economic, constitutional, political and social life of those non-Jewish Arabs who were allowed to stay.

Yes, let's frame the conference by insisting on producing lies that underpin the entire debate - and then hold a "non-partisan" debate!

Given the urgency of responding to – indeed the urgent responsibility to answer for and to avert - the persistent suffering in historic Palestine, it is time to give a scholarly, academic platform to the exploration of pervasive disagreements regarding the legitimacy in international law of the Jewish State and the status of Jerusalem.

Nope, still don't see any partisanship here. Perfectly scholarly and impartial.

The conference and the book of its proceedings will be dedicated to Henry Cattan (1906-1992), a leading Palestinian international lawyer, indeed a legal prophet, who long ago mounted a challenge to the validity of the state of Israel and the legal and moral authority of those institutions that brought it about.

Still can't find any bias here.

[D]ebates will ensue as to whether there is any ground to hold the State of Israel as exceptional in comparison with other unjust regimes...

Everything looks perfectly non-partisan.

By the way, guess who the other "unjust regimes" are? The United States and Australia!

To sum up: we have a conference that pretends to question whether Israel has the right to exist altogether, a question never asked of other states, Its conclusions are foregone. It frames its "debate" based on obvious lies. It pretends to be impartial when its own words prove that the entire conference is based not on scholarship but on pure hate with a shiny surface of pseudo-scholarship.

And no one in academia (outside of "Zionists" who are of course not nearly as impartial as these professors pretend to be) seems even slightly embarrassed by this sham.

Terrorist mother lovingly prepares her son for killing Jews (photo essay)

This photo essay from Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades website shows a mother preparing her son's uniform and weapon to avenge other terror members of their family killed by Israel.

Some 365 refugees from Syria's Yarmouk camp, including many of Palestinian ancestry, who reached Cyprus by boat last year, had been staying in a refugee camp near Nicosia.

Earlier this month, Cyprus closed the camp.

The government offered them 500 euros for each adult, 200 euros for each child and a temporary tourist visa.

Kokkinotrimithia camp was a temporary one that was supported by EU funds, and the migrants were supposed to have been processed by December 26th. They were given an extension until 17th January for humanitarian reasons but then the camp was finally shut down on February 3rd, said Mr. Hadjimichail. The refugees had been taken at least 15 times to the ministry in order to decide their status, he said. Two-thirds of the refugees had been processed, with a significant number moved to Kofinou refugee asylum centre and the rest leaving the island, according to the official. The remainder will have to apply for asylum, for resident's permits or stay in Cyprus illegally, he said.

Neither the interior ministry nor the civil defence organisations know where the migrants have gone or how to contact them.

The refugees were essentially left on the streets. Many are now staying in a church in Strovolos.

Here are real refugees, not the fake ones in UNRWA camps. They need clothing and food and shelter.

All the NGOs who pretend to care about Palestinian Arabs were silent when they became homeless again two weeks ago.

If only they could find a way to blame Jews for their plight, then the money would pour in to help these people.

Top Ten Results of Palestinian Investigation into NC Murders

From Reuters:

The Palestinian government on Saturday condemned as "terrorism" the killings of three young Palestinian-Americans in North Carolina and called on U.S. authorities to include its investigators in the probe.

Police have charged a neighbor with Tuesday's shooting in the town of Chapel Hill of Deah Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Abu-Salha, 19, saying the incident followed a dispute over parking.

But investigators said they were also looking into whether the suspect, Craig Stephen Hicks, was motivated by hatred toward the victims because they were Muslim.

Branding Hicks "an American extremist and hateful racist", the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said the incident suggested a rise in dangerous discrimination against American Muslims.

"We consider it a serious indication of the growth of racism and religious extremism which is a direct threat to the lives of hundreds of thousands of American citizens who follow the Islamic faith," the ministry said in a statement.

It called for "a serious investigation and the involvement of Palestinian investigators to clarify the circumstances of these assassinations and premeditated murders" in Chapel Hill.

Really? Palestinian Authority "experts" want to investigate the murders?

Given their track record of investigations, that would be interesting indeed.

Here are the top ten findings likely to be discovered by "objective" Palestinian Authority investigators:

The bullets were made out of depleted uranium
The apartment complex is an illegal settlement for all non-Muslims who live there
Hicks blanketed the area with white phosphorus
Four Korans were stepped on and burned and spat upon during the murders
Trained wild boars and dogs attacked the victims
Mohammed cartoons were posted on street signs outside the victims' apartment
The parking space had belonged to the victims for 8000 years
Hicks is, of course, really a Jew and a Zionist

And he owns a bank, two newspapers and a Hollywood studio

Two words: Polonium poisoning

10 hours of walking in Paris as a Jew (video)

(h/t Yenta)

Reuters has an article about how many countries, particularly Muslim countries but also China, are not allowing "Fifty Shades of Grey" to be screened.

It then includes this:

It is unclear whether "Fifty Shades" will be shown in India or throughout the Middle East. Only Lebanon is scheduled to show it.

According to IMDB, the movie opened in Israel along with most of the rest of the world.

As is often the case, Reuters is saying that Israel is not part of the Middle East.

This subtly feeds into the myth that Israel doesn't belong where it is, that it is an anomaly that needs to be removed.

Just some more every day anti-Israel media bias.

Sums it up nicely, no?

(h/t David R)

02/15 Links: Netanyahu to European Jews: Terror attacks in Europe will continue, Israel is your home

From Ian:

2 dead in Copenhagen shootings; one victim was Jewish guard outside synagogue bat mitzva

The first attack, in broad daylight on Saturday, targeted a cafe attended by Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who has been threatened with death for his cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. Also attending a debate at the cafe was French ambassador Francois Zimeray who praised Denmark's support for freedom of speech following the January attack in Paris on the weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo that killed a dozen people.
Witnesses said that barely had the envoy finished an introduction to the meeting, when up to 40 shots rang out, outside the venue, as an attacker tried to shoot inside. Police said they considered Vilks, the main speaker, to have been the target. A 55-year-old man died as a result of that shooting, police said early on Sunday. Police said earlier the victim was a 40-year-old man.
Hours later, during the night, shots were fired at a synagogue in another part of the city, about a half hour walk away from the cafe.
A man was shot in the head, and was later confirmed to have died. Two police officers were wounded. It was later reported that the victim, a Jewish community member in his 30s, was guarding outside a bat mitzva celebration at the synagogue, according to Denmark's BT newspaper. It was reported that 80 people were attending the celebration at the time.
“We had contacted the police after the shooting at Café Krudttønden to have them present at the bat-mitzva, but unfortunately this happened anyway," Copenhagen Jewish community leader Dan Rosenberg Asmussen told Denmark's TV 2 News, as reported in The Guardian. “I dare not think about what would have happened if (the killer) had access to the congregation."

PMW: Abbas' Fatah threatens rocket attacks and "the end of Israel"

Last week, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party posted three images glorifying the use of violence against Israel on its official Facebook page. The above image showing rockets being launched appeared with the text:
"We have more [rockets], Zionists!"
[Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page," Feb. 9, 2015]
Another image also showed a Fatah fighter with a rocket and others firing weapons.
A third poster showed a man firing an automatic rifle, with the text:
"The end of Israel, the liberation of Palestine"
[Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page," Feb. 9, 2015]
Names such as "the Path of the Storm" or "the Rage of the Storm" also appeared on the posters and refer to Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel during the 2014 Gaza war. This reference to the recent war, coupled with the words "the end of Israel," implies that Fatah is threatening to renew such attacks.

Richard Behar: I Don’t Trust the AP’s Report on Civilian Deaths in Gaza and Neither Should You

The Israel-hostile Associated Press is at it again. Note this article from Friday alleging that IDF air strikes on Gazan houses killed mostly civilians during last summer’s war against Hamas. The article—entitled “AP Exclusive: Israeli house strikes killed mostly civilians”—was penned by Karin Laub, Fares Akram and Mohammed Daraghmeh.
Have a read, and then consider this:
1. First, given what I revealed about AP’s civilian casualty reporting DURING the war—in my “Media Intifada exposé at Forbes.com—I simply have no faith in their examination now of these 247 airstrikes. I simply don’t trust them, and nor should you. They violated their responsibilities to readers during the war, and have never come forward to acknowledge that their prior journalism was sloppy and improper (or worse). In that prior reporting, AP and other major media outlets (including the New York Times and Reuters) simply parroted the Hamas claim that most of the war dead were civilians. Sometimes they attributed it to the UN, which received its figures from Hamas. Why did this matter? Because every time a major media outlet reported that “a majority” or “a vast majority” or the “overwhelming number” of casualties were civilians, it reverberated around the globe like a missile—fueling anti-Israel and general anti-Semitic sentiment (and violence against Jews in Europe and elsewhere).
So what was AP’s methodology for its current “examination” of the 247 airstrikes on houses? We’ll never know, because the wire service doesn’t tell us. What specific problems did they encounter that might have skewed or affected their research? We’ll never know, because AP doesn’t tell us those anecdotes.

In a recent piece entitled, The Pathos of Jewish anti-Zionism, I referenced Obama administration support for the Muslim Brotherhood and wondered aloud how any Jewish person could possibly stand behind a president of the United States that offered moral, military, and financial support to an organization devoted to a genocidally anti-Semitic worldview and the restoration of the Caliphate?

The truth of the matter is that Jewish support for Barack Obama, given Obama's callous indifference toward anti-Semitism and support for the Muslim Brotherhood, is perhaps the greatest failure of American Jewry in many decades. I have been considering how this happened for a number of years and have come to the conclusion that many American Jewish supporters of Barack Obama simply refuse to acknowledge Obama's support for the Brotherhood as support for the Brotherhood.

Just as Jewish Obama supporters do not care about his indifference toward rising levels of violent Muslim immigrant anti-Semitism in Europe, so they do not care about his support for the rise of political Islam, which he refuses to even so much as name.

This is, in my view, a dangerous failure to acknowledge that which is obvious, but I am very much hoping that there is now sufficient evidence wherein the obvious simply becomes undeniable.

Khaled Abu Toameh has an article for the Gatestone Institute entitled, U.S. Seen in Middle East as Ally of Terrorists. In this article he argues that given Obama's support for the Muslim Brotherhood many Egyptians see the administration as an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood.

{Shocking, I know.}

He writes:

While the Egyptian government has been waging war on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic radical groups, the U.S. Administration and some Europeans are continuing to hamper efforts to combat terrorism.

Many Egyptians and moderate Arabs and Muslims were shocked to hear that the U.S. State Department recently hosted a Muslim Brotherhood delegation.

And, indeed, the U.S. State Department did, in fact, recently host a Muslim Brotherhood delegation thereby incurring the anger of the Egyptian government, but given Obama's disrespect for allies - and dislike of Israel - this is hardly surprising.

Lori Lowenthal Marcus, writing in the Jewish Press tells us:

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shokry said the explanation given by the State Department for meeting with former Muslim Brotherhood party leaders was “not understandable.”

Shoukry was responding to U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki’s statements during the daily briefing that a meeting by the delegation of former Freedom and Justice Party (Muslim Brotherhood’s political party) members with U.S. State department officials, arranged and paid for by Georgetown University was “routine.”

The primary acts of Obama administration support for the Brotherhood consist of such "routine" recognitions. By hosting the Brotherhood, they recognize it and thus legitimize it. It is hard to imagine that anyone would think that when Obama administration officials legitimize an Islamist organization this somehow does not constitute support for that organization and, therefore, political Islam, more generally.

According to Toameh, a number of Egyptian columnists, along with the Egyptian government, have been highly vocal in their condemnation of Obama administration support for the Brotherhood. One of these is Mohamed Salmawi. Toameh writes:

"The U.S. Administration says it is combating these groups at home while it is supporting them abroad," Salmawi wrote. "This meeting has grave indications because it shows that Washington has not abandoned its policy of double standards toward Islamic terrorism.

Salmawi also took issue with the U.S. Administration for turning a blind eye to the hypocrisy and double talk of the Muslim Brotherhood. "One of the leaders of Muslim Brotherhood, for example, told the world that he welcomes the Jews of Israel," he added. "But this same leader announced in front of the Egyptian people that they should march in the millions to liberate Jerusalem from the occupation of the Jews. [Ousted President] Mohamed Morsi, before his election, described these Jews as descendants of apes and pigs. In English, the Muslim Brotherhood says one thing and in Arabic something completely different."

So, yes, the Obama administration does, in fact, support the Muslim Brotherhood despite the fact that the Brotherhood has called for the conquest of Jerusalem and, yet, American Jews still backed Barack Obama by about 70 percent in the last election.

The public legitimization of the Brotherhood, which Obama initially undertook during the famous (or infamous) 2009 Cairo speech, was perhaps the first public example of this "routine" legitimization. Despite the wishes of former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, the Obama administration insisted upon Muslim Brotherhood attendance. This suggested that political Islam is, for Barack Obama, a legitimate political movement in need of courting and cooperation.

The Brotherhood came to power in Egypt with the significant assistance of the Obama administration. Obama demanded that Mubarak step down knowing full well that the Brotherhood was waiting in the wings. When the Brotherhood came to power in a fraudulent election wherein Christians were sometimes prevented from voting at the point of a rifle, Obama still sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Cairo to ensure a smooth transition to an Islamist government. Then, once in power, the Obama administration supplied this heinous genocidal regime with both financial assistance and heavy weaponry.

Our friend Alexi, however, has the raised the distinction between supporting a country and supporting a particular regime. This is an important distinction to address and Alexi was absolutely right to raise the question. The fact of the matter is that when Obama sent cash and Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter jets to Egypt he was giving that cash and weaponry to a regime that called for the conquest of Jerusalem. It was the Brotherhood, not the Egyptian people, that received and then allocated these resources. Those resources did not in any real way represent support for the Egyptian people, but were a means of bolstering the strength and prestige of the Islamist regime in Cairo.

Some people might argue that none of this was meant as support for the Brotherhood, per se, but actually represented support for the democratic forces sweeping the Middle East during the joyous Arab Spring.

The problem is that there were no democratic forces sweeping the Middle East during the misnamed "Arab Spring," unless you think of democracy as consisting of one man, one vote, one time. Supporting democracy by supporting the Brotherhood would be akin to supporting democracy by supporting Adolph Hitler. The Brotherhood has an exceedingly long track record of terrorism and Jew hatred. One of the founders of the organization, Sayid Qutb, even wrote a little book entitled, "Our Struggle with the Jews" which Richard Cohen describes in the Washington Post as "a work of unabashed, breathtakingly stupid anti-Semitism, one of the reasons the New York Review of Books recently characterized Qutb's views 'as extreme as Hitler's.'"

And, in fact, the Brotherhood supported the Nazis during World War II and gave refuge for many of them afterward, including the brutal Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who spent much of the war years as a guest of the German government in Berlin.

The real problem here is that Obama's Middle East policy, and particularly his policy toward political Islam, is entirely incoherent. Obama seems to think that he can pick and choose which Islamists to support, which to ignore, and which to oppose, all based strictly on political considerations.

So, for example, Obama opposes al-Qaeda, but Obama had to oppose al-Qaeda due to the fact of 9/11.

The Brotherhood, as is well-known, however, is the parent organization of both al-Qaeda and Hamas, yet Obama certainly does not oppose the Brotherhood. This, needless to say, raises the obvious question, how can one oppose a political organization with a revolting ideology, like al-Qaeda, while supporting its parent organization that holds to essentially the identical ideology?

The reason for this is because Obama is not in opposition to political Islam.

In fact, he cannot even bring himself to breathe the words "political Islam" or "radical Islam" or "Islamism," thus demonstrating political cowardice in the face of a real threat.

Finally, one cannot defeat an enemy without defining it, naming it, understanding it, and gaining public support for the effort.

This Obama refuses to do.

So many years after 9/11 - and as we see the spread of political Islam along with the attendant head-chopping, the genocide of minorities like the Yazidi, the burying of children alive, the burning of caged human beings doused with gasoline, and other such interesting examples of al-Sharia jurisprudence - one must wonder why?

Why is this president shielding political Islam from its richly deserved comeuppance and why did he tell us that the rise of this vile movement was something akin to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s?

Standing before the United Nations on May 19. 2011, Obama said this:

There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat.

If Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive to hear those words, he would never stop retching.

I know I haven't.

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.

Those days are gone

Earlier this month, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar told Hezbollah TV that Hamas is ready to re-establish relationships with Iran.

It is clearly eager to resume the level of monetary support that it used to have before the Syrian war when Hamas sided with the Sunni Arabs against the Bashar Assad.

Following that, Hamas "political" leader Khaled Meshal announced that he would be visiting Iran later this month to help this rapprochement. This caused anger among many Hamas supporters who are horrified by Iran and Syria's murder of hundreds of thousands and there was talk that this could lead to a split in Hamas.

Last week, Iran's Revolutionary Guards published a withering attack on Hamas' new desire for re-establishing relations as they were in the past. Writing in IRGC website Tabnak, former IRGC leadercurrent Secretary General of the Expediency Council Mohsen Rezai said,"Khaled Meshaal and Hamas leaders stood and lined up two years ago, along with international terrorists in Syria, demanding the destruction of the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and we see them now trying to set the terms for the return of relations between Hamas and Iran, and if Iran does not have any conditions!..."Hamas today is not in a position to set conditions for the return of the course of their relationship with Tehran, and Iran is not in the habit to rely on any party after they revealed their true mettle."

Now comes the news that Meshal has "postponed" his visit to Tehran indefinitely. Besides Iran's antipathy, sources said that Hamas didn't want to endanger its relations with the new Saudi king who might be upset at Hamas cozying up to its enemy.

Iran has kept its relationship with Islamic Jihad in Gaza, still providing plenty of cash. It is not out of the question that Iran is grooming that terror group to take over Gaza from a weakened Hamas as part of its larger strategy to become the Muslim superpower.

J-Street conference has a Republican keynote: James "F**k the Jews" Baker (update)

Who says J-Street is slavishly pro-Democrat? It's more than willing to hear Republican voices, as long as they have a reputation for hating Jews and Israel!

Here's the top of J-Street's speakers' list for its upcoming conference:

And according to the Jerusalem Post's Lahav Harkov, James Baker is the keynote speaker.

Baker is of course infamous for reportedly saying in private conversation, while George HW Bush's secretary of state, "F**k the Jews, they didn't vote for us anyway."

But his antipathy towards Israel is well documented. He wanted the US to punish Israel for destroying Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. He hated Netanyahu as early as 1990, barring him from entering the State Department's building. And last but not least, he co-wrote the Iraq Study Group's 2006 paper that recommended (among other things) that the US tilt its foreign policy away from Israel and towards Syria and Iran, advice that President Obama seems to have taken to heart.

So who says that J-Street isn't bipartisan? It loves anti-Israel, antisemitic Republicans too!

UPDATE: right on cue, J-street's founder is crowing about how bipartisan he is:

Very excited to have one of pre-eminent Republican statesmen of our time. Bipartisanship, as you know, is essential @JeffreyGoldberg
— Jeremy Ben-Ami (@JeremyBenAmi) February 13, 2015

US declassifies only the Israel portion of 1987 report on allies' nuclear weapons capabilities

From Courthouse News Service:

In the midst of controversy over the Israeli prime minister's plans to address Congress next month, a researcher has won the release of a decades-old Defense Department report detailing the U.S. government's extensive help to Israel in that nation's development of a nuclear bomb.

The 1987 report, "Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations," compares the key Israeli facilities developing nuclear weapons to Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories, the principal U.S. laboratories that developed the bomb for the United States.

The tightly held report notes that the Israelis are "developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level."

The release comes after Grant Smith, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy filed filed a FOIA request last year and followed with a lawsuit in September seeking to compel release of the report.

From looking at the actual report, unless I'm missing something, it doesn't say anything about US aiding Israel's nuclear weapons research. On the contrary: the report is meant to evaluate the progress of conventional and nuclear weapons research in selected countries to see how their technology could help the US:

A. PURPOSE OF THIS REPORT
This report describes in scientific terms the technological details of basic research and development program thrusts in Israel and selected European allied nations with possible applications to U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) programs, both tactical and strategic. The report is organized to provide a comprehensive critical assessment of technologies relevant to the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) initiatives, Nunn Amendment programs and Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Organization (SDIO) programs.

The report avoids an analysis of policy issues and problems arlsmg from technology transfer, security and SDI allied participation. It concentrates instead only on technology facets of allied programs and seeks to provide a benchmark against similar kinds of technology already in development in U.S. industry and government laboratories.

This report highlights technologies that could materially aid the DOD in drawing together the alliance in joint programs to provide synergism from technologies on both sides of the Atlantic.

The researchers were especially interested in technologies that would aid the US in its SDI ("Star Wars") program of the 1980s.

Only 129 of the 386 pages were released, with anything not having to do with Israel (specifically, the programs of France, Italy, West Germany and "Other NATO Countries") still censored. The person who requested the report under the Freedom of Information Act agreed to that redaction, because his one and only purpose was to attack Israel

The RT.com and PressTV versions of the stories falsely highlight the supposed help the US gave Israel in building a hydrogen bomb.

Here is the key page in regards to Israel's nuclear capabilities in 1987:

The report clearly states that Israel, while on its way to having the ability to build hydrogen bombs, did not have the capability at the time of the report. And, again, I see nothing in the report that indicates (contrary to the bombastic statements of the people who sought to release this report) that the US aided Israel in any way on nuclear weapons technology.

It is curious that the report was released so soon before the controversial Netanyahu visit to Congress, something that is noted in the Courthouse News article as well.

(h/t David M)

02/14 Links: Friends of firebomb victim to UN: Why Don't you condemn the burners of children

From Ian:

Friends of 11-year-old firebomb victim to UN: Condemn burners of children

Hundreds of friends of Ayala Shapira, the 11-year-old girl who was seriously wounded after a Molotov cocktail was hurled at the car in which she and her father were traveling in the West Bank last December, urged United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon in a letter to issue a harsh “condemnation against burners of children”. The letter was sent to the UN Headquarters in New York, and to date, a response has yet to be received.
Shapira, who sustained third degree burns in the attack on December 25, 2014, remains sedated and on a respirator. In the letter sent to Ban, the AMIT Lehava Ulpana students, who go to school with Shapira, called on the UN to “speak out against these terrorists”.
The letter detailed the attack on their friend: “Ayala, a descendant of Holocaust survivors…had just been coming back from a program for gifted students in mathematics and was on her way to celebrate a friend’s Bat Mitzvah,” they wrote. “Her life was cut short. A Molotov cocktail enflamed the car and Ayala was caught on fire. She was pulled out of the burning car by her father and is still hospitalized, sedated and intubated.”
The students voiced their surprise at the fact that neither the United Nations nor the Secretary-General issued a condemnation of the incident. “Ignoring this violence means tacit support of this heinous act,” they noted, adding that “it is our right to travel safely on the roads and go to classes and celebrations without fear of terrorists and murderers who seek to destroy us.”

Palestinians want role in probing 'terrorist' killings of Chapel Hill Muslims

The Palestinian Authority on Saturday condemned as "terrorism" the killings of three young Palestinian-Americans in North Carolina and called on US authorities to include its investigators in the probe.
Police have charged a neighbor with Tuesday's shooting in the town of Chapel Hill of Deah Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Abu-Salha, 19, saying the incident followed a dispute over parking.
But investigators said they were also looking into whether the suspect, Craig Stephen Hicks, was motivated by hatred toward the victims because they were Muslim.
Branding Hicks "an American extremist and hateful racist," the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said the incident suggested a rise in dangerous discrimination against American Muslims.
"We consider it a serious indication of the growth of racism and religious extremism which is a direct threat to the lives of hundreds of thousands of American citizens who follow the Islamic faith," the ministry said in a statement.
It called for "a serious investigation and the involvement of Palestinian investigators to clarify the circumstances of these assassinations and premeditated murders" in Chapel Hill.

Michael Lumish: Palestinian Authority Condemns Chapel Hill Terrorism, Demands Role in Investigation

I had no idea that the victims were of Israeli or Jordanian Arab descent.
It's interesting to me that after the Jihadi attack at the Boston Marathon, Obama said that we must not rush to judgment nor leap to conclusions about the nature of this violence. And, of course, after Nidal Hasan slaughtered thirteen soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, while screaming "Alahu Akbar" the Obama administration referred to it as "work place violence."
And, needless to say, Obama recently suggested that the Islamist slaughter of 4 Jews at the Parisian kosher market was a random act of violence, thereby veiling the anti-Semitic nature of the attack. It is in order to create obscurity that Obama refers to Islamist violence as "violent extremism."
However, after this shooting, with no meaningful evidence that the victims were killed for either their faith or ethnicity, Obama tells us:
"No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship."
Obama's sympathies depend upon who the victims are and who the perpetrators are.
Obama is, thus, a racist.
He clearly prefers and respects some ethnic and religious groups over others.

One dead, two hurt in attack on Copenhagen free speech event

One man was killed and three policemen wounded Saturday in a shooting at a Copenhagen cafe where a meeting about freedom of speech was being held, organized by Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who has faced numerous threats for caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad in 2007, local media reported.
Copenhagen police confirmed that a 40-year-old man was killed and three officers were injured, and that two suspected gunmen fled the scene in a dark Volkswagen Polo and were at large.
The TV2 channel said Saturday there were some 30 bullet holes in the window of the Krudttoenden cafe and said at least two people were taken away on stretchers, including a uniformed police officer.
“I heard someone firing with an automatic weapon and someone shouting. Police returned the fire and I hid behind the bar. I felt surreal, like in a movie,” Niels Ivar Larsen, one of the speakers at the event, told the TV2 channel. (h/t Bob Knot)

02/13 Links Pt2: Bassem Eid: We Palestinians hold the key to a better future; A New Latma

From Ian:

Bassem Eid: We Palestinians hold the key to a better future

I am a proud Palestinian who grew up in a refugee camp and raised a large family. I want peace and prosperity for my people. I want an end to the misery and the destruction.
After 66 years of mistakes and missed opportunities, it is time for us Palestinians to create the conditions for peace and to work for a better future. It is time that we stopped pretending that we can destroy Israel or drive the Jews into the sea. It is time that we stopped listening to Muslim radicals or Arab regimes that use us to continue a pointless, destructive, and immoral war with Israel.
Our sad state of affairs
Let’s be realistic. We Palestinians are not doing well.
In Gaza, our schools are controlled by Muslim fanatics who indoctrinate our children, and Hamas uses our civilians as human shields in a losing battle against Israel. Hamas maintains power through violence, and it ensures that money is spent on its arsenal rather than on making the Palestinians’ lives better. While President Abbas is quick to denounce Israel whenever it attacks Hamas, he has absolutely no ability to stop Hamas from provoking Israel.
In the West Bank, while Abbas has been incapable of stopping the construction of Israeli settlements, the only good jobs are with Israeli companies, and the BDS (Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment) movement is doing its best to take those jobs away from us. Abbas runs a corrupt dictatorship that uses international funds to consolidate its own administration rather than to develop the Palestinian economy.

Right-Wing Satire Latma Regains Its Magic in Week 2 on TV

Hakol Shafit, the Channel 1 TV show of right-wing satire Latma, was greeted with mixed reviews last Thursday when it debuted and broke the leftist monopoly on television satire - while it still is getting some skeptical criticism over some weaker skits, the show's second airing seems to have recaptured the magic that originally gained Latma a devoted following.
The show begins with a poke at US President Barack Obama's anti-Israel stance and his entrenched opposition to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's planned Congress speech next month.
Obama can be seen, in a take-off on Martin Luther's famous "I have a dream" speech about freedom, saying "I have a dream that the Israelis will withdraw and return to the '67 borders - 1567. I have a dream that in Palestine a binational state will arise, comprised of the two nations, the Palestinians and the Bedouins. I have a dream that Jews of Israel will finally be able to live in peace in their homes in the Slovakian hills, in Polish valleys and villages in Libya."
Addressing Iran, which Netanyahu plans to warn about in his speech, Obama continues "I have a dream that Iran will stop developing nuclear weapons and start producing them already. Come on, how much time can you give to development?"

'Half of names of Gaza journalist casualties are terror operatives, or members of Hamas media'

Almost half the names that appear on a Palestinian list of journalists killed during last summer’s conflict with Israel actually belong to Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives and members of Hamas media outlets who were involved in Gazan terrorist organizations, a new report has found.
The Tel Aviv-based Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center said it conducted an in-depth study of the list of names, which was published by the Hamas-run Gaza Information Office in Gaza a week after hostilities ended in August 2014. The list also was circulated by the Palestinian Journalists’ Union, which, according to the center, is controlled by Hamas in Gaza.
“The study, not yet complete, found that eight out of the 17 names were operatives who belonged to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, or who worked in Hamas media outlets,” the report, published Thursday, stated.
“The Palestinian Journalists Union and the Gazan branch of the Information Office tried to hide the military-terrorist identity of the terror operatives, and present them as journalists in every way,” it added.
It went on to categorize three levels of ties between some of the “journalists” and Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Two terrorists, who were active in the military wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, belonged to the “highest level,” the report said. This means that they were armed and uniformed, and carried out public relations missions in Hamas and Islamic Jihad combat units.