Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Spinning Hamas to make it look moderate

From Ma'an:

Deputy head of Hamas Mousa Abu Marzouk says the last visit to Gaza by international Quartet envoy Tony Blair came to notify the Hamas movement of a new set of preconditions before the war-torn coastal enclave could be rebuilt.

Blair is now talking about five new preconditions to be imposed on Hamas before Gaza reconstruction and improvement to the living conditions, the official said.

Blair's five new preconditions, says Abu Marzouk, include Palestinian reconciliation, a Palestinian political program based on a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 borders, and confirmation that Hamas is a Palestinian movement seeking to achieve Palestinian goals rather than being part of an Islamic movement with regional dimensions.

He also says Blair wants approval that the two-state solution is a final solution to the conflict and a reassuring message to Egypt that Hamas won't be a base for "terrorism in Sinai" and that it would hold talks with the Egyptian government to "prevent terrorism."

In response to the alleged preconditions, the Hamas official said his movement is a Palestinian, Arab and Islamic resistance movement. Its goals are to achieve the Palestinian people's aspirations of return, freedom and liberation, and its top priorities "at this stage" are reconciliation, ending inter-Palestinian dispute and unity of all the Palestinians wherever they live.

Furthermore, Hamas looks forward to operating within a national Palestinian consensus whose goals are withdrawal of Israeli occupation from the West Bank and Jerusalem and establishment of an independent Palestinian state whose capital is Jerusalem.

Hamas, according to Abu Marzouk, is using all available means to achieve those goals and to have distinguished relations with all Arab countries especially with Egypt.

Palestinian reconciliation has already been accomplished, added Abu Marzouk, confirming that his movement is willing to put into effect every single term of the reconciliation agreement.

The question is, said Abu Marzouk, would Israel accept a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders? Would they accept to evacuate the West Bank settlements and stop seizing lands there? Or is it still looking forward to expanding even beyond the West Bank so as to "devour" the West Bank and impose facts on the ground? he asked sarcastically.

With regard to Hamas' insistence that it doesn't have regional plans, the Hamas official said such an assumption would need evidence that the movement has political programs and agendas in that direction. "Where are such agendas and programs?!" he wondered.

Abu Marzouk also commented on the two-state solution as a final solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and confirmed that Hamas "won't agree to sign" an agreement that "confiscates the rights and aspirations of the Palestinian people."

He finally reiterated that it was indisputable that Hamas cared about Egypt's security and stability and would never intervene in Egyptian internal affairs.

A casual reading of this would make it sound like Hamas accepts a two-state solution, with a vague caveat.

Which is exactly how Hamas wants to appear to Tony Blair.

Hamas media, however, reports that Abu Marzouk explicitly rejected Blair's demands for a two state solution and that he emphasized that point. He said that "the hopes and aspirations and identity and attachment to the land can not be eliminated or changed by the signing of a leader or the approval of a faction," meaning that no agreement will ever stop Palestinian Arabs from trying to destroy Israel. He accuses Blair of trying to force Palestinian Arabs to waive their "rights" to Israel.

His entire statement is here.

And yet there are still plenty of idiots who will point to lying declarations and mentally fill in vague statements to confidently declare that Hamas has accepted the two state solution.

Challenge antisemitism (Deutsche Welle)

A nice op-ed from Deutsche Welle Editor-in-Chief Alexander Kudascheff:

Islamist terrorism has a hold on Europe - a hold of fear. This year, it was France first, now Denmark - and everyone wonders where the terrorists will strike next.

No one doubts they will attack again. But at least the fear of danger and the terrorist threat hasn't diminished or blocked political common sense. Europe presents itself as determined not to be forced to its knees or give up its values. Europe wants to hold fast to the ideal and reality of an open, free society and to resolutely defend freedom of opinion against a closed theocratic system.

This terror targets all of us, but it particularly targets Jews in Europe. It targeted Jews in Paris in a shop that sells kosher food, it hit Jews in a synagogue in Copenhagen. It humiliates them by targeting Jewish graves - for years, Jewish cemeteries have been desecrated across Europe, in particular in France, where tombs were vandalized just this past weekend.

Many will shrug off these news reports, but it is important to stress that these vandals disturb the peace of the dead and offend the feelings of relatives and friends. They vilify people's memory, which is disgusting no matter whether the perpetrators are far-right extremists or Islamists.

It's high time Europe remembers that it not only has a Jewish legacy, but as Jewish present, too. Apart from great Jewish personalities in European history like Albert Einstein and Moses Mendelssohn, murderous anti-Semitism also shaped the old continent for a thousand years: during the Crusades in Britain and France, the 1492 expulsion of Jews from Spain and the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews by Nazi Germany.

The history of Jews in Europe is a history of persecution, discrimination, social ostracism and murder.

That is why today, Europeans must defend the Jews if they don't want the exodus of Jews from the continent to continue. Of Europe's roughly two million Jews, only 30,000 emigrate to Israel every year, but many more leave Europe unnoticed, heading for Canada or the US.

Europe is remaining levelheaded even in the face of Islamist terrorism. Hardly any laws have been changed, and there has been no hysteria. Societies are not paralyzed by fear of the invisible threat - not yet. But Europe and the Europeans must get more involved in the fight against anti-Semitism.

Europeans must give Jews in their countries the feeling that as a matter of course, they stand by their side. It's a scandal that many people appear to have got used to police protection for Jewish kindergartens, schools and synagogues.

Politically, it is more than alarming that criticism of Israel (for instance in the Gaza war) often turns out to be nothing but veiled anti-Semitism.

But Europe, and every single European, must stand united against rampant anti-Semitism. Not just in demonstrations and other events, but in everyday life. Do not stand idly by when your neighbor's life is threatened, the Bible says.

We shouldn't stay silent, but raise our voices in anger.

Believe it or not, this editorial was translated into Arabic and published in Egypt's Shorouk News.

02/17 Links Pt2: British artists shun Israel’s ‘blood money’ but accept Britain’s; CIA and Anti-Zionism

From Ian:

Richard Millett: As Jews are murdered why is War On Want handing out fake guns to British students?

With Jews being murdered in France, Belgium and Denmark there’s an ominous feeling that British Jews are awaiting their own round. With that in mind a group of concerned British Jews from Jewish Human Rights Watch protested this morning outside the offices of War On Want in central London.
War On Want is one of Britain’s most respected charities but it is, sadly, now being run by people determined to import the Israeli-Palestinian conflict onto the streets of Britain.
Quite unbelievably, after what has happened this weekend and in Belgium and Paris, War On Want’s current campaign includes handing out fake guns to students to help mark what is sickeningly termed “Israeli Apartheid Week” which begins next week on British university campuses.
Many British Jews are feeling insecure and accuse WOW of helping to spread propaganda and hate against the Jewish State which could well lead to the events of Paris, Belgium and Denmark being repeated in the UK. They are asking: Is War on Want helping to promote a War On Jews?
I questioned John Hilary (see below), WOW’s executive director, about this and other issues as he approached his offices. As you can see Hilary refused to answer my questions about WOW handing out guns to British students, a two-state solution, Israel’s future or the bombing of innocent Israeli civilians by Hamas.

Why, as Jews die, is War On Want handing out fake guns?

Brendan O'Neill: British artists shun Israel’s ‘blood money’ but accept Britain’s

Seven hundred British creatives have signed a pledge saying they will never work in Israel or take the Israeli government’s filthy lucre so long as it continues to wage war in Gaza and kill Palestinians. So why, then, are they happy to take money from the British government, when the British government has in recent years bombed Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and left a trail of destruction and line-up of corpses that make last year’s Israeli clashes in Gaza look like a tea party in comparison? Come on. There must be an answer to this question. What is it? Why shun Israel’s ‘blood money’ but accept Britain’s?
A quick glance at the list of 700 Israel-boycotters reveals numerous people who have built their careers on cash from the coffers of the Iraqi-killing, Afghanistan-repressing British government. There’s Ken Loach, recipient of monies from the government-backed UK Film Council, here chiming in with all the others to say he will ‘accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding from any institutions linked to its government’. So, Ken, why are you happy to accept money from institutions linked to a government that has killed way more people in the Middle East than Israel has?
There’s Mike Leigh, who’s also been funded by the UK Film Council, and who threw a massive hissy fit in 2010 when the Film Council was wound down in its current form and reorganised. Ladies and gentlemen, the principled film-directing doyen of decent Hampsteadites, who makes angry public statements over two things: his implacable, principled refusal to take blood money from the Israeli killing machine and his fury at having his bloody money from the British killing machine taken away from him! What a guy!

Jewish-led UK artists’ boycott greeted with derision

Laura Marks, senior vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, alluded to the timing of the boycott letter, calling it “offensive” in an interview with The Times of Israel.
“There is something ironic in the demand for a cultural boycott and the demand not to engage when the attacks in Copenhagen and Paris were made on people who wanted to express themselves,” Marks said.
Marks claimed a cultural boycott of this sort is also “racist.” “As the APPG report makes clear, negative language towards Jews becomes the norm if you don’t challenge it,” she said.
“How do we change attitudes if people want to close down communications? Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and [these artists are effectively] saying that they will continue to work with all sorts of awful regimes and that Israel is the only one they aren’t going to deal with.”
On Monday, an editorial in The Times weighed in, saying, “The egregious campaigns for a cultural boycott of Israel are stoking ugly, atavistic movements in Europe. These need to be confronted by civilized opinion. Israeli governments are fallible but the Jewish state is a force for democracy in a region that is short of it.”
Chairman of Britain’s Zionist Federation Paul Charney was equally dismissive when speaking with The Times of Israel.
“The signed letter says much more about the myopic views of a small clique of navel-gazers then it does about any wider support for boycotts in this country,” said Charney.

ISIS threatens "Rome"

From Time:

The executioner speaks in English and points his knife toward the Mediterranean. “We will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission,” he says.

The video released by the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) on Sunday showing the killings of 21 Egyptian Christian workers, appeared to be directed at the Christian world, the continent of Europe and gloried in its brutality.

It was filmed in Libya on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The video made no reference to the other powers in Libya’s civil war, in which both of the country’s rival governments claim to be combating ISIS.

Unlike the statements of other Islamist groups in the region, the video also made no mention of the Egyptian state, which has cracked down on political Islam since the removal of elected President Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Egypt’s government is also participating in the fight against Islamists in Libya.

Instead, the five-minute film is concerned with more international themes. The targets are not modern states, but rather “Rome” and Christians, who are labeled “the people of the cross, the followers of the hostile Egyptian Church.” The message was phrased in religious terms intended to transcend national boundaries. The video ends with the Mediterranean waves dyed red from the blood of the murdered men.

The spectacular appearance of ISIS on the Mediterranean’s southern shores alarmed European governments. Italy’s Interior Minister Angelino Alfano called for NATO to intervene in Libya. “ISIS is at the door,” he was quoted as saying. “There is no time to waste.” If the country’s conflict is not resolved soon, U.K. special envoy Jonathan Powell declared, Libya risks becoming “Somalia on the Mediterranean.”

From ANSA:

Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni warned Friday that "Italy is under threat from the situation in Libya, 200 nautical miles away". In a television interview, he said it was a grave concern that Islamic State (ISIS) militants may be as closed as Sirte in Libya. Earlier, the Italian government urged citizens to "temporarily leave" Libya as ISIS appeared to be making headway.

This shows that the advice of Graeme Wood in his otherwise excellent article mentioned yesterday, to contain ISIS instead of destroying it, will never work. He writes:

Properly contained, the Islamic State is likely to be its own undoing. No country is its ally, and its ideology ensures that this will remain the case. The land it controls, while expansive, is mostly uninhabited and poor. As it stagnates or slowly shrinks, its claim that it is the engine of God’s will and the agent of apocalypse will weaken, and fewer believers will arrive. And as more reports of misery within it leak out, radical Islamist movements elsewhere will be discredited: No one has tried harder to implement strict Sharia by violence. This is what it looks like.

Perhaps IS can be contained in Syria and Iraq, but when territorial contiguity is unnecessary - as its members in Libya and the Sinai show - then it can always give the appearance of growing. And in Islam, appearances are more important than facts. (This is a byproduct of the honor/shame dynamic.) Other hardline Islamist groups will inevitably decide to join IS for practical reasons: it is a name-brand chain of radical Islam, freeing the other groups from worrying about marketing, recruiting and fundraising.

(h/t Yoel)

The tiny remaining Jewish community in Yemen is getting very close to disappearing altogether after the Houthi takeover of the government.

But once upon a time, Jewish craftsmen in Yemen were highly regarded for their skill.

From National Yemen:

For thousands of years, Jews in Yemen excelled in the manufacture of silver, old wooden windows, doors and boxes, as well as in carving the walls of houses, mosques, and schools, which are considered today relics and historical places.

Jews were keen to sculpt the Star of David, a Jewish symbol, in all their works. At the same time, people were also keen to buy things that had the Star of David because it indicated quality Jewish work.

However, because of spreading sectarianism, racism, and hatred between peoples, non-Jews in general avoid things with the Star of David because of its association with Israel.

Whether people today love the Star of David or not, it is sculpted in many old doors, walls, and jewelry in old Sana’a. Tourists and businessmen pay thousands of riyals to buy jewelry and other works by the Jews.

Ahmed, 47 and a craftsman in old Sana’a, said that anything in a Jewish craftsperson’s hand was transformed into a masterpiece, especially silver and gold pieces, textiles, and architecture.

“In addition, Jews were responsible and accurate in their time with customers. Despite people at time considering craftsmen from the lower class, many preferred Jewish works and praised their performances. They were called Industry Men in Yemen,” he added.

According to Ahmed, until recently when most Jews left Yemen, craftsmen were sculpting the Star of David or any symbols in order to convince people their work was Jewish.

He explained that the traditional industries of Yemen’s Jews developed with time and place where they inherited their jobs for each other and watched modern industries that were brought from abroad through Aden and the Turks.

“All this creativity and magnificent sense came from the Jews under difficult circumstances faced by Yemen economically, politically, and socially before the revolution,” said Ahmed.

According to old families in Sana’a, any village or neighborhood inhabited by Jews was turned into workshops for industries and crafts of all kinds.

The emigration of Jews from Yemen led to the deterioration of the Yemeni economy and the extinction of many crafts.

02/17 Links Pt1: As Anti-Semitism returns, Obama remains ignorant; LATMA with English Subs!

From Ian:

Toddler injured in 2013 attack in critical condition

A 4-year-old girl seriously injured in a 2013 rock-throwing terror attack is fighting for her life, doctors said Tuesday.
Adele Bitton was readmitted to the Schneider’s Children’s Hospital in Petah Tikva earlier this week for pneumonia and on Tuesday, doctors said her condition was critical.
Bitton suffered a traumatic brain injury in March 2013 when Palestinians threw rocks at a car she was in near the West Bank settlement of Ariel, and has been largely unresponsive since then.
Medical staff at the hospital said Bitton’s condition deteriorated after developing respiratory complications from the lung infection. She was transferred to the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit where doctors are working to save her life.
Speaking to Channel 2 News, Bitton’s parents urged the public to pray for their daughter’s recovery, and said they were hoping for the same miracle that saved her life two years ago.

UPDATE: Toddler injured in 2013 attack dies of pneumonia

A 4-year-old girl seriously injured in a 2013 rock-throwing terror attack died on Tuesday afternoon from complications from pneumonia, a Petah Tikva hospital said.
“With great sadness we announce the passing of Adele Bitton, who passed away this evening despite doctors’ efforts to save her. We send our condolences to the family,” the Schneider’s Children’s Hospital said in a statement.
Medical staff at the hospital said Bitton’s condition deteriorated after developing respiratory complications from a lung infection. She was transferred to the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit Tuesday where doctors attempted to save her.

As anti-Semitism makes a comeback, Obama remains ignorant

The hostility of the intellectual elites to Israel encourages these terrorists as they plot further evil. The men of evil understand that only the Americans stand in their way of realizing the dream of the worldwide caliphate, and when the leader of the Americans isn’t even sure who the enemy is they rightly figure they have little to worry about.
The 8,000 Jews in Denmark deal with anti-Semitism every day, and the Danish government, full of the usual Scandinavian piety about its wonderfulness, grants millions of kroner to activists who disguise their hatred of Jews, and lecture the Israelis about how they deal with the real-world threats to Israeli survival.
The good news is that France, which has had a habit of sleepwalking through history, seems to have pinched itself awake. Since the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket attacks even the densest Frenchman can see that the Islamic radicals have him in their gunsights along with everyone else who doesn’t bow to Allah in the way of the 9th century. Prime Minister Manuel Valls has ordered the isolation of Muslim jihadis in prisons, increased spending on intelligence agencies and according security forces greater authority to monitor terrorist suspects on the Internet.
Mr. Obama wants more authority, too, but nobody in Congress can figure out why. He already has more authority than he’s willing to use. He could take to heart the admonition of Theodore Roosevelt: “I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.” So do we all.

We'll be the Judge, episode 2

The second episode of the Israeli satire program "We'll be the Judge," from the creators of Latma's Tribal Update, Israel Channel 1, February 12, 2015. (h/t Ronin0948)

Throughout the years, Palestinian Arabs and their apologists have justified all of their acts of violence as "natural reactions" to things Israel does.

So it is no surprise that they are now pre-emptively justifying violence that they are planning to do as reactions:

Palestinian officials say the Israeli prime minister's plan to visit the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron is a "time bomb" that could drag the area into more violence and disorder.

Hebron's mayor, Kamel Hmeid, called upon the foreign ministers of six member countries in the Temporary International Presence in Hebron to hold an emergency meeting to protect residents from Benjamin Netanyahu's plans.

The visit to the Ibrahimi mosque, known to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs, will take place March 3, one week before the Israeli Knesset elections and close to the anniversary of the massacre in which 29 Palestinians were killed and dozens were injured when an Israeli settler opened fire at worshipers.

A Palestinian security source told Ma'an that "Netanyahu lit the wick of a big bomb in Hebron, and we do not know when or where it will explode."

"Residents of Hebron are preparing to commemorate the 21st memory of the Ibrahimi Mosque's massacre on Friday between the H1 and H2 parts of the Hebron," he added.

"Clashes with Israeli soldiers will surely erupt on contact points following the marches."

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added: "We expressed our fears of this visit to the Israeli side and we hold them responsible for the consequences."

Now, no one is saying that the Arabs of Hebron cannot hold peaceful demonstrations against Bibi.

However, this is not what they are planning. They are planning violence, and using that threat to try to stop Jews from visiting the second-holiest Jewish shrine.

I would be happier if Netanyahu visited Hebron more often and emphasized to the world its importance to Jews, rather than try to turn it into an elections stunt. This visit doesn't feel sincere. It very possibly will backfire on him in Israel.

Still, threats of violence are considered normal and indeed part of the fabric of PalArab society. It is something that is hardly worth mentioning anymore. And that, perhaps more than anything else, is what ends up hurting the Palestinian Arabs themselves - they proudly brag that they cannot act like adults, and the world treats them that way.

Saudi preacher proves the Earth doesn't rotate (video)

"We Muslims also have theories and brains!"

Fanatical Israel-hater Richard Falk interviews another Israel-hater, William Schabas, as they commiserate over how unfair it is that Schabas' bias derailed his heading his pulpit to demonize Israel.

Schabas proves his unsuitability by pretending that his hiding of his financial deal with the PLO is no problem, and that its exposure is the real crime:

Falk: Were you not aware when you were approached that these issues of supposed ‘conflict of interest’ would be used to challenge your credibility in a defamatory manner? Was the decisive factor the unanticipated response of the President of the Human Rights Council to the contention about your consultancy with the PLO on Palestinian statehood?

Schabas: There had been calls for me to resign from the moment I accepted the mandate in early August 2014. I did not ignore them but I concluded that they were not substantial. I do not think that I was biased or that there was a reasonable apprehension of bias. The allegation about the legal opinion I delivered to the PLO in October 2012 only emerged in late January. It seems the Israeli ambassador raised this informally with the President of the Human Rights Council who then drew it to my attention and asked me to explain, which I did. Subsequently, Israel made a formal complaint. The President proposed that legal advice from the United Nations in New York be requested in order to determine the procedure to follow in examining the complaint. The five-member Bureau of the Council agreed to this. Within minutes of its decision, I submitted my resignation.

There was no "allegation," Schabas admits that he was paid by the PLO for legal work. He says it "only emerged in late January" - which means that he knowingly withheld that information. And he argues that he is the wronged party here.

But this part of the interview is far more damning:

Falk: In retrospect, do you find any substance to the charges of bias or conflict of interest? How can one be both an expert on this subject-matter and not have some pre-existing opinions? Should not the proper test be one of professionalism and objectivity with respect to the evidence and applicable law? For instance, would a person who had been critical of Nazism or apartheid be rendered unfit to investigate allegations of crimes against humanity or racism?

Schabas: ...Your reference to a person with views on Nazism is of interest because this was precisely the argument raised by Eichmann against the Israeli judges. There was never any suggestion that the three judges, all of them German Jews, did not have strong views about the Holocaust. It was assumed that they did. How could that not be the case? The Supreme Court of Israel ruled that professional judges would set aside their opinions and judge in an impartial manner.

This comparison is obscene. Eichamann's lawyer didn't accuse the judges of partiality based on any specific statements any of them made about Eichmann or the Holocaust - he just said that they were biased because they were Jews.

Furthermore, the Israeli justice system has rules and legal procedures to help ensure impartiality during a trial. There is a framework in place. The Eichmann trial was public so anyone could see if the judges were acting unprofessionally. Eichmann had a lawyer and any bias during the trial would be public record.

But for the UNHRC commissions of inquiry, Schabas makes his own rules. His "trial" - which is what it is - is conducted in secret. Israel doesn't have a lawyer defending it in the UNHRC commission. The entire process is a black box selected facts and accusations enter and a report is the result. We have no idea what evidence is accepted and what is dismissed, which testimony is considered reliable and which is belittled. There is every opportunity for members of the commission to inject bias in every step of the process. Their protests that they can "set aside" their biases are meaningless because there are no checks and balances.

It is most telling that both Falk and Schabas enthusiastically embrace a false equivalence of Israel and Nazi war criminals. Schabas doesn't even inject the mildest caveat that there is no comparison between the two.

Which tells you all you need to know about his utter unsuitability to chair a supposedly impartial commission.

(h/t Anne)

Important article in The Atlantic: "What ISIS Really Wants"

Graeme Wood at The Atlantic has written a 10,000 word article that describes in detail the underlying ideological and religious thinking behind IS. He says, correctly, that unless the West understands it, there is no way to defeat it.

But as you read it, you see that outside of military annihilation, there is no way to defeat it anyway (although Wood thinks that containment can work over time, causing new recruits to become disillusioned at the failure of the caliphate to continuously expand.)

One major point is that their leaders are not crazy. Their beliefs are consistent and if you are willing to listen to them, they will tell you their strategy and tactics.

The ideological purity of the Islamic State has one compensating virtue: it allows us to predict some of the group’s actions. Osama bin Laden was seldom predictable. He ended his first television interview cryptically. CNN’s Peter Arnett asked him, “What are your future plans?” Bin Laden replied, “You’ll see them and hear about them in the media, God willing.” By contrast, the Islamic State boasts openly about its plans—not all of them, but enough so that by listening carefully, we can deduce how it intends to govern and expand.

In London, Choudary and his students provided detailed descriptions of how the Islamic State must conduct its foreign policy, now that it is a caliphate. It has already taken up what Islamic law refers to as “offensive jihad,” the forcible expansion into countries that are ruled by non-Muslims. “Hitherto, we were just defending ourselves,” Choudary said; without a caliphate, offensive jihad is an inapplicable concept. But the waging of war to expand the caliphate is an essential duty of the caliph.

Choudary took pains to present the laws of war under which the Islamic State operates as policies of mercy rather than of brutality. He told me the state has an obligation to terrorize its enemies—a holy order to scare the shit out of them with beheadings and crucifixions and enslavement of women and children, because doing so hastens victory and avoids prolonged conflict.

Choudary’s colleague Abu Baraa explained that Islamic law permits only temporary peace treaties, lasting no longer than a decade. Similarly, accepting any border is anathema, as stated by the Prophet and echoed in the Islamic State’s propaganda videos. If the caliph consents to a longer-term peace or permanent border, he will be in error. Temporary peace treaties are renewable, but may not be applied to all enemies at once: the caliph must wage jihad at least once a year. He may not rest, or he will fall into a state of sin.

Another, which I believe that Wood downplays, is that IS cannot be stopped by religious arguments - because their entire point is to bring Islam back to the 7th century, back to Mohammed's own practices. And any Muslim who argues that Mohammed's methods don't apply nowadays cannot win an argument against IS:

It would be facile, even exculpatory, to call the problem of the Islamic State “a problem with Islam.” The religion allows many interpretations, and Islamic State supporters are morally on the hook for the one they choose. And yet simply denouncing the Islamic State as un-Islamic can be counterproductive, especially if those who hear the message have read the holy texts and seen the endorsement of many of the caliphate’s practices written plainly within them.

Muslims can say that slavery is not legitimate now, and that crucifixion is wrong at this historical juncture. Many say precisely this. But they cannot condemn slavery or crucifixion outright without contradicting the Koran and the example of the Prophet. “The only principled ground that the Islamic State’s opponents could take is to say that certain core texts and traditional teachings of Islam are no longer valid,” Bernard Haykel says. That really would be an act of apostasy.

The Islamic State’s ideology exerts powerful sway over a certain subset of the population. Life’s hypocrisies and inconsistencies vanish in its face. Musa Cerantonio and the Salafis I met in London are unstumpable: no question I posed left them stuttering. They lectured me garrulously and, if one accepts their premises, convincingly. To call them un-Islamic appears, to me, to invite them into an argument that they would win. If they had been froth-spewing maniacs, I might be able to predict that their movement would burn out as the psychopaths detonated themselves or became drone-splats, one by one. But these men spoke with an academic precision that put me in mind of a good graduate seminar. I even enjoyed their company, and that frightened me as much as anything else.

The author underplays the appeal of a non-hypocritical Islam, when Islam itself has no theological alternative to believing that Mohammed was the perfect prophet and example to mankind. Young people who embrace Islam will be far more likely to choose the strain that is the most internally consistent, and as it stands, that is IS.

Wood brings a single counterexample of Salafis, who also believe in Islamic purity with the same fervor, but also believe that the time to bring in that era is not yet here:

There is, however, another strand of Islam that offers a hard-line alternative to the Islamic State—just as uncompromising, but with opposite conclusions. This strand has proved appealing to many Muslims cursed or blessed with a psychological longing to see every jot and tittle of the holy texts implemented as they were in the earliest days of Islam. Islamic State supporters know how to react to Muslims who ignore parts of the Koran: with takfir and ridicule. But they also know that some other Muslims read the Koran as assiduously as they do, and pose a real ideological threat.

Baghdadi is Salafi. The term Salafi has been villainized, in part because authentic villains have ridden into battle waving the Salafi banner. But most Salafis are not jihadists, and most adhere to sects that reject the Islamic State. They are, as Haykel notes, committed to expanding Dar al-Islam, the land of Islam, even, perhaps, with the implementation of monstrous practices such as slavery and amputation—but at some future point. Their first priority is personal purification and religious observance, and they believe anything that thwarts those goals—such as causing war or unrest that would disrupt lives and prayer and scholarship—is forbidden.

But these types of Salafists are unlikely to be dragged into an theological battle with IS, because it would ultimately become a political battle and these "quiet" Salafis are not equipped to fight on that battlefield.

This is an important article, well worth reading.

02/16 Links Pt2: Prosor: Behind the Curtain at the Theater of the Absurd; J Street Needs to Stop Lying

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinians' EU-Funded Campaign Against Israel

Abbas and his "moderate" Fatah faction have not only failed to prepare their people for peace with Israel; they continue to whip up anti-Israel sentiment among Palestinians and other Arabs. If Abbas and Fatah have already determined that many Israelis are "war criminals" who also poisoned Yasser Arafat, how can they ever return to any negotiating table with Israel? How will they then justify to their people that they agreed to resume peace talks with "war criminals?"
Fatah's anti-Israel incitement and campaign to delegitimize and isolate Israel has made it unsafe even for Palestinian children to play soccer with Israelis. Under the current circumstances, it has also become dangerous for Israeli peace activists to visit Ramallah and meet Palestinian colleagues.
The EU leaders who met with Abbas last week are either unaware of the anti-Israel incitement by his Fatah faction or simply prefer to bury their heads in the sand. In both cases, the EU is not helping advance the cause of peace in the Middle East. On the contrary, the EU continues to turn a blind eye to this anti-Israel campaign, and is generously funding it through dozens of NGOs in the Palestinian territories.

Indyk: Get ready for UNSC resolution proposed not by Palestinians, but int'l community

If a government emerges after the election that does not launch a diplomatic initiative or opposes a Palestinian state, Israel will likely face a UN Security Council resolution proposed by all permanent members designed to “lay out the principles of a two state solution,” Martin Indyk said Monday.
Indyk, who was the US special envoy to last year's failed Israeli-Palestinian talks, said at the annual Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) conference in Tel Aviv that he expected this alternative would be “against Israel's will.'
Indyk, currently vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, has been involved in the diplomatic process since the Oslo period. After he stepped down over the summer following the collapse of the negotiations, he did little to hide his position that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was largely responsible for the breakdown of the talks.
“If there is a government in Israel after these elections that decides to pursue a two state solution, then there is a way forward,” Indyk said. “It begins with coordinating an initiative with the United States. And then, together with the US, looking to Egypt and Jordan and the resurrection of the Arab peace initiative, to find a way to provide the Palestinians both with an Egyptian-Jordanian anchor, and the political cover of the Arab peace initiative.”
Indyk said that in this arrangement there would have to be a “freeze for a freeze:” an Israeli freeze of settlement activity, and a freeze of Palestinian international activity against Israel.

Ron Prosor: Behind the Curtain at the Theater of the Absurd

As Israel's ambassador to the United Nations (UN), I have a front row seat to the world's foremost theater of the absurd. This fall, the UN will celebrate its 70thanniversary. In honor of New York's longest running production, I offer here a synopsis of the most recent drama and a special glimpse behind-the-scenes.
In Act I, the despots seized control of the General Assembly. The very nations undermining international peace were elected to the UN bodies responsible for maintaining global security.
In Act II, the world's most notorious human rights abusers commandeered the Human Rights Council. My stomach has churned as I have listened to the mass-murdering dictatorships that jail journalists and persecute political opponents cynically pontificate about the virtues of a free press and the sanctity of free and fair elections.
Now it seems we have arrived at the curtain call. The world's terrorists have been invited onstage and given a starring role.

Israeli Ambassador Warns: Hamas Rearming, Rapidly

Prosor also wrote that the terrorist organization is actively restoring its terror tunnels designed to target Israeli civilians, urging the global community to act quickly to prevent another outburst of hostilities.
Hamas "is preparing to attack through rearming, rebuilding its terrorist infrastructure and clarifying its commitment to war against Israel," Prosor warned in the letter. "Hamas is working around the clock to restore its weapons manufacturing capabilities and its military capabilities. It is determined to attack Israel from land, air and sea."
Prosor referred in part to Hamas "test launches" of rockets off the Gaza coast last month.
"Rather than rebuild Gaza, Hamas is busy boosting its terrorist infrastructure," he warned. "Over the past two months, it shot some 90 rockets into the Mediterranean Sea."
Hamas "has worked tirelessly to rebuild its terror tunnels," Prosor warns. "These tunnels are used for infiltration into Israel and to attack Israeli civilians."

17 "journalists" killed in Gaza: 8 members of terror groups, 2 not killed by Israel, zero real journalists targeted

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center released its English report on the purported 17 journalists killed in Gaza last summer, and describes each of the circumstances.

The examination revealed that almost half (eight out of 17) were names of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist operatives, or were journalists who worked for the Hamas media.

More than one third (six) of the media personnel on the list were killed while reporting from the battlefield

At least two of the media personnel on the list were not killed by the IDF. They were an Italian AP photojournalist and his translator, who were killed during one of the ceasefires while covering Gaza police engineers defusing unexploded ordnance in a location where there were no IDF soldiers (and Israel was not held responsible for their deaths). It is possible that others on the list were not killed by the IDF but the ITIC cannot prove it (that would necessitate thorough examinations of the events on the ground and comparisons with Palestinian reports in each case).

The findings of the examination indicate that the Palestinian list of 17 journalists killed during Operation Protective Edge was manipulative: it integrated names of civilians with names of terrorist operatives who served in information and media capacities. It incorporated the names of those who did in fact cover the fighting as correspondents and those who were killed randomly and were not serving as correspondents. It integrated those who were killed by the IDF in error with those in whose deaths the IDF had no involvement whatsoever. The objective was to give credence to the false claim that Israel deliberately killed a large number of media personnel and therefore was guilty of "crimes" for which the Palestinians demand the "murderers" be tried in international criminal courts. Manipulating the list of Palestinian journalists killed in Operation Protective Edge is another example of Hamas-led Palestinian tactics of deceit and fraud (as proved by the ITIC's findings of the examination of the lists of Palestinian fatalities). Thus, distorting the truth about the Palestinians killed in Operation Protective Edge has become a propaganda weapon in the Palestinian political, propaganda and legal war being waged against the State of Israel.

What else is new?

Here is the Hamas "journalist" that we've discussed before, Abdullah Murtaja.

Time for the 2015 series of"Apartheid Week?" posters!

My "Apartheid?" poster series has been viewed over 180,000 times .

Send your ideas to me for this year's series. Here's the first:

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.