Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 02, 2015

Tough to do, but worth it! (ElderToons)

Rev Dr Kenneth Meshoe MP (South African Parliament) on objections to claims of "Israeli Apartheid"

South African MP Rev. Dr. Kenneth Meshoe, a person of color who survived the apartheid regime, explains why he does not believe that Israel can be considered an apartheid state.

He has spoken often about this issue and how Israel is often unfairly attacked and accused of Apartheid by its enemies. Rev Dr Meshoe has fought vocally against misuse of this term and attempting to shed light on the real situation in Israel - that while it is a country with problems like any other, it is a vibrant democracy and a beacon of light in a sea of dictatorships and religious and ethnic oppression in the Middle East.

The Reverend is also the Parliamentary Leader and President of the African Christian Democratic Party as well as the President of DEISI (Defend, Embrace, Invest and Support Israel).

This is happening on Tuesday, 1 PM EST.

(h/t Margie)

Bibi's AIPAC speech (video, text)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at the ‪#AIPAC‬ Policy Conference 2015:

"Thank you. Wow, 16,000 people. Anyone here from California? Florida? New York?

Well, these are the easy ones. How about Colorado? Indiana? I think I got it. Montana? Texas?

You're here in record numbers. You're here from coast to coast, from every part of this great land. And you're here at a critical time. You're here to tell the world that reports of the demise of the Israeli-U.S. relations are not only premature, they're just wrong.

You're here to tell the world that our alliance is stronger than ever.

And because of you, and millions like you, across this great country, it's going to get even stronger in the coming years.

Thank you Bob Cohen, Michael Kassen, Howard Kohr and all the leadership of AIPAC. Thank you for your tireless, dedicated work to strengthen the partnership between Israel and the United States.

I want to thank, most especially, Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans. I deeply appreciate your steadfast support for Israel, year in, year out. You have our boundless gratitude.

I want to welcome President Zeman of the Czech Republic. Mr. President, Israel never forgets its friends. And the Czech people have always been steadfast friends of Israel, the Jewish people, from the days of Thomas Masaryk at the inception of Zionism.

You know, Mr. President, when I entered the Israeli army in 1967, I received a Czech rifle. That was one of the rifles that was given to us by your people in our time of need in 1948. So thank you for being here today.

Also here are two great friends of Israel, former Prime Minister of Spain Jose Maria Aznar and as of last month, former Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird. Thank you both for your unwavering support. You are true champions of Israel, and you are, too, champions of the truth.

I also want to recognize the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, for your genuine friendship, Dan, and for the great job you're doing representing the United States and the State of Israel.

And I want to recognize the two Rons. I want to thank Ambassador Ron Prosor for the exemplary job he's doing at the U.N. in a very difficult forum.

And I want to recognize the other Ron, a man who knows how to take the heat, Israel's ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer. Ron, I couldn't be prouder to have you representing Israel in Washington.

And finally, I want to recognize my wife, Sara, whose courage in the face of adversity is an inspiration to me. Sara divides her time as a child psychologist, as a loving mother, and her public duties as the wife of the prime minister. Sara, I'm so proud to have you here with me today, to have you with me at my side always.

My friends, I bring greetings to you from Jerusalem, our eternal undivided capital.

And I also bring to you news that you may not have heard. You see, I'll be speaking in Congress tomorrow.

You know, never has so much been written about a speech that hasn't been given. And I'm not going to speak today about the content of that speech, but I do want to say a few words about the purpose of that speech.

First, let me clarify what is not the purpose of that speech. My speech is not intended to show any disrespect to President Obama or the esteemed office that he holds. I have great respect for both.

I deeply appreciate all that President Obama has done for Israel, security cooperation, intelligence sharing, support at the U.N., and much more, some things that I, as prime minister of Israel, cannot even divulge to you because it remains in the realm of the confidences that are kept between an American president and an Israeli prime minister. I am deeply grateful for this support, and so should you be.

My speech is also not intended to inject Israel into the American partisan debate. An important reason why our alliance has grown stronger decade after decade is that it has been championed by both parties and so it must remain.

Both Democratic and Republican presidents have worked together with friends from both sides of the aisle in Congress to strengthen Israel and our alliance between our two countries, and working together, they have provided Israel with generous military assistance and missile defense spending. We've seen how important that is just last summer.

Working together, they've made Israel the first free trade partner of America 30 years ago and its first official strategic partner last year.

They've backed Israel in defending itself at war and in our efforts to achieve a durable peace with our neighbors. Working together has made Israel stronger; working together has made our alliance stronger.

And that's why the last thing that anyone who cares about Israel, the last thing that I would want is for Israel to become a partisan issue. And I regret that some people have misperceived my visit here this week as doing that. Israel has always been a bipartisan issue.

Israel should always remain a bipartisan issue.

Ladies and gentlemen, the purpose of my address to Congress tomorrow is to speak up about a potential deal with Iran that could threaten the survival of Israel. Iran is the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Look at that graph. Look at that map. And you see on the wall, it shows Iran training, arming, dispatching terrorists on five continents. Iran envelopes the entire world with its tentacles of terror. This is what Iran is doing now without nuclear weapons. Imagine what Iran would do with nuclear weapons.

And this same Iran vows to annihilate Israel. If it develops nuclear weapons, it would have the means to achieve that goal. We must not let that happen.

And as prime minister of Israel, I have a moral obligation to speak up in the face of these dangers while there's still time to avert them. For 2000 years, my people, the Jewish people, were stateless, defenseless, voiceless. We were utterly powerless against our enemies who swore to destroy us. We suffered relentless persecution and horrific attacks. We could never speak on our own behalf, and we could not defend ourselves.

Well, no more, no more.

The days when the Jewish people are passive in the face of threats to annihilate us, those days are over. Today in our sovereign state of Israel, we defend ourselves. And being able to defend ourselves, we ally with others, most importantly, the United States of America, to defend our common civilization against common threats.

In our part of the world and increasingly, in every part of the world, no one makes alliances with the weak. You seek out those who have strength, those who have resolve, those who have the determination to fight for themselves. That's how alliances are formed.

So we defend ourselves and in so doing, create the basis of a broader alliance.

And today, we are no longer silent; today, we have a voice. And tomorrow, as prime minister of the one and only Jewish state, I plan to use that voice.

I plan to speak about an Iranian regime that is threatening to destroy Israel, that's devouring country after country in the Middle East, that's exporting terror throughout the world and that is developing, as we speak, the capacity to make nuclear weapons, lots of them.

Ladies and gentlemen, Israel and the United States agree that Iran should not have nuclear weapons, but we disagree on the best way to prevent Iran from developing those weapons.

Now, disagreements among allies are only natural from time to time, even among the closest of allies. Because they're important differences between America and Israel.

The United States of America is a large country, one of the largest. Israel is a small country, one of the smallest.

America lives in one of the world's safest neighborhoods. Israel lives in the world's most dangerous neighborhood. America is the strongest power in the world. Israel is strong, but it's much more vulnerable. American leaders worry about the security of their country. Israeli leaders worry about the survival of their country.

You know, I think that encapsulates the difference. I've been prime minister of Israel for nine years. There's not a single day, not one day that I didn't think about the survival of my country and the actions that I take to ensure that survival, not one day.

And because of these differences, America and Israel have had some serious disagreements over the course of our nearly 70-year-old friendship.

Now, it started with the beginning. In 1948, Secretary of State Marshall opposed David Ben-Gurion's intention to declare statehood. That's an understatement. He vehemently opposed it. But Ben-Gurion, understanding what was at stake, went ahead and declared Israel's independence.

In 1967, as an Arab noose was tightening around Israel's neck, the United States warned Prime Minister Levi Eshkol that if Israel acted alone, it would be alone. But Israel did act -- acted alone to defend itself.

In 1981, under the leadership of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Israel destroyed the nuclear reactor at Osirak. The United States criticized Israel and suspended arms transfers for three months.

And in 2002, after the worst wave of Palestinian terror attacks in Israel's history, Prime Minister Sharon launched Operation Defensive Shield. The United States demanded that Israel withdraw its troops immediately, but Sharon continued until the operation was completed.

There's a reason I mention all these. I mention them to make a point. Despite occasional disagreements, the friendship between America and Israel grew stronger and stronger, decade after decade.

And our friendship will weather the current disagreement, as well, to grow even stronger in the future. And I'll tell you why; because we share the same dreams. Because we pray and hope and aspire for that same better world; because the values that unite us are much stronger than the differences that divide us values like liberty, equality, justice, tolerance, compassion.

As our region descends into medieval barbarism, Israel is the one that upholds these values common to us and to you.

As Assad drops bell bombs on his own people, Israeli doctors treat his victims in our hospitals right across the fence in the Golan Heights

As Christians in the Middle East are beheaded and their ancient communities are decimated, Israel's Christian community is growing and thriving, the only one such community in the Middle East.
As women in the region are repressed, enslaved, and raped, women in Israel serve as chief justices, CEOs, fighter pilots, two women chief justices in a row. Well, not in a row, but in succession. That's pretty good.

In a dark, and savage, and desperate Middle East, Israel is a beacon of humanity, of light, and of hope.

Ladies and gentlemen, Israel and the United States will continue to stand together because America and Israel are more than friends. We're like a family. We're practically mishpocha.

Now, disagreements in the family are always uncomfortable, but we must always remember that we are family.

Rooted in a common heritage, upholding common values, sharing a common destiny. And that's the message I came to tell you today. Our alliance is sound. Our friendship is strong. And with your efforts it will get even stronger in the years to come.

Thank you, AIPAC. Thank you, America. God bless you all.

(h/t JH)

03/02 Links Pt1: Col. Kemp: Netanyahu, Churchill and Congress; Hezbollah Flag at Anti-AIPAC protest

From Ian:

Col. Richard Kemp: Netanyahu, Churchill and Congress

There are striking similarities between the objectives of Churchill's speech nearly 75 years ago and Netanyahu's today; both with no less purpose than to avert global conflagration. And, like Churchill's in the 1930s, Netanyahu's is the lone voice among world leaders today.
There is no doubt abut Iran's intent. It has been described as a nuclear Auschwitz. Israel is not the only target of Iranian violence. Iran has long been making good on its promises to mobilize Islamic forces against the US, as well as the UK and other American allies. Attacks directed and supported by Iran have killed an estimated 1,100 American troops in Iraq in recent years. Iran provided direct support to Al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks.
Between 2010 and 2013, Iran either ordered or allowed at least three major terrorist plots against the US and Europe to be planned from its soil. Fortunately, all were foiled.
Iran's ballistic missile program, inexplicably outside the scope of current P5+1 negotiations, brings Europe into Iran's range, and future development will extend Tehran's reach to the US.
It is not yet too late to prevent Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons. In his 1941 speech to Congress, Churchill reminded the American people that five or six years previously it would have been easy to prevent Germany from rearming without bloodshed. But by then it was too late.
This vengeful and volatile regime must not in any circumstances be allowed to gain a nuclear weapons capability, whatever the P5+1 states might consider the short-term economic, political or strategic benefits to themselves of a deal with Tehran.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Danger Ahead for Obama on Iran

On Israel, here’s the promise Obama made that stays with me the most: “I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don’t bluff,” he said. “I also don’t, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are. But I think both the Iranian and the Israeli government recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say.” He went on to say four words that have since become famous: “We’ve got Israel’s back.”
Netanyahu obviously believes that Obama doesn't have his, or Israel's, back. There will be no convincing Netanyahu that Obama is anything but a dangerous adversary. But if a consensus forms in high-level Israeli security circles (where there is a minimum of Obama-related hysterics) that the president has agreed to a weak deal, one that provides a glide path for Iran toward the nuclear threshold, then we will be able to say, fairly, that Obama's promises to Israel were not kept. One of Netanyahu’s most strident critics, Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad intelligence agency, said recently, “A nuclear Iran is a reality that Israel won't be able to come to terms with.”
He went on to say, “Two issues in particular concern me with respect to the talks between the world powers and Iran: What happens if and when the Iranians violate the agreement, and what happens when the period of the agreement comes to an end and they decide to pursue nuclear weapons?”
In the coming weeks, President Obama must provide compelling answers to these questions. (h/t Serious Black)

Politico: Why We Need to Hear Netanyahu

2. Netanyahu’s speech is the act of a true and courageous friend. All of America’s traditional allies in the Middle East are deeply distrustful of Obama’s outreach to Iran. Allies in Europe and Asia are similarly fearful regarding what they consider to be flagging American resolve in the face of threats from Russia and China. Few allied leaders, however, will express their concerns to the president plainly — even in private — for fear of retribution. When they see the White House treating Netanyahu to a level of hostility usually reserved for adversaries, their trepidation only increases.
Even worse, Obama’s apparent reluctance to stand up to adversaries gives allies incentive to hedge. The case of France is instructive. As our colleague Benjamin Haddad recently argued, elements of the French elite are now saying that the French government would be foolish to take a hard line against Russia and Iran. If Washington is going to fold in the face of pressure from Moscow and Tehran, how can France alone hold the line?
5. The Israeli prime minister’s views are reasonable, if not judicious. His opinions about the proposed Iran deal are not idiosyncratic; they are not exclusively Israeli; nor are they extreme. American observers with substantial reputations and with no ax to grind have themselves begun to express similar doubts about the proposed deal. Citing Henry Kissinger and others, The Washington Post editorial board recently wrote that “a process that began with the goal of eliminating Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons has evolved into a plan to tolerate and temporarily restrict that capability.”
If the president follows through with such a plan without first subjecting its terms to a rigorous debate in Congress, he will be concluding an agreement that is entirely personal in nature. The legitimacy of such a deal would be hotly contested, rendering it inherently unstable, if not dangerous. By helping to force a more thorough examination of the matter, Netanyahu is therefore performing a service to us all. When a president turns a deaf ear to a good friend bearing an inconvenient message, he works against his own interests, whether he realizes it or not.

Look ma! No concrete!

Last week's press release from Oxfam was typical:

Rebuilding the Gaza Strip after last summer's war with Israel will take at least a century at the current rate of progress, Oxfam warned on Thursday.

Israel restricts the flow of steel and concrete into the Palestinian territory because Hamas, the radical Islamist movement, has diverted material of this kind to build tunnels and bunkers.

Only 1,677 lorries carrying construction material were allowed to enter Gaza between November and January. The territory needs about 800,000 lorry-loads to repair the physical damage inflicted during the 50-day war between Hamas and Israel last year. At the current rate, this would take about 119 years.

Oxfam urged Israel to allow the unrestricted inflow of building material.

"Only an end to the blockade of Gaza will ensure that people can rebuild their lives. Families have been living in homes without roofs, walls or windows for the past six months,” said Catherine Essoyan, Oxfam's Regional Director. “Many have just six hours of electricity a day and are without running water.”

That last sentence shows that we need to be skeptical about the rest. The "blockade" is not limiting fuel or electricity to Gaza; it is the ability of Gazans to pay for fuel and the infrastructure. Since Oxfam lies about that, their "119 years" figure is probably just as inaccurate.

And indeed it is. In January alone, 15,000 tons of construction material entered Gaza, and assuming a high 8 tons per truck that's about 1900 trucks in one month, a number that is increasing steadily.

Oxfam claims that only 579 trucks of construction materials entered Gaza in all of January. Yet COGAT says that they sent in 140 trucks of construction material on January 27, 243 on January 28 and 173 on January 29 - about the same number in three days that Oxfam claims Israel allowed in an entire month.

Oxfam is also not mentioning how Hamas itself is diverting building materials to build tunnels today - something they are bragging about to the BBC. Why wouldn't a "human rights" organization complain about Hamas' diversion of these construction materials from Gazan homes?

But while UNRWA is highlighting the Gazans who are homeless and enthusiastically pushing narratives of dead children that they can blame on Israel, some real Gazans are managing to build very nice homes even with the restrictions on building materials.

I had already mentioned beautiful homes (under a 2010 UNRWA program that seems to have been abandoned!) built with limestone and sand.

Now another enterprising Gazan is building what appears to be sturdy homes - out of sandbags and plaster.

I am not seeing a single NGO raising money to help Gazans build homes with materials that are abundant in Gaza.

There are limitations on these homes; they cannot be more than one story high. But no one is spearheading any initiative to import wood into Gaza, from which three story homes can be easily built, and on which there are no Israeli restrictions.

And you will be hard pressed to find an NGO that condemns Hamas for building terror tunnels using materials that could be building new apartment buildings in Gaza City.

The opportunities are there to build thousands of homes today. In six months, not a single NGO has stepped up to help push a solution that some admirable Gazans are doing on their own. Instead they are bleating about "blockade" as if Israel is capriciously punishing Gazans for no reason.

NGOs like Oxfam care less about human lives than they do about demonizing Israel.

"Gaza Man," coming soon for Android and IoS:

Gaza Man is more than just a game! It elevates the morale and the fighting spirit of its users. What the user experiences in the game can be translated from the virtual world of the game into the reality of his life in the Occupied Territories. This way, it helps to keep his will to achieve liberation alive, and helps to instill a deep dedication to the struggle against the occupier.

Gaza Man was designed to be fit for all ages, and to appeal to the dreams and aspirations of its users. During the game, the player is taken into various levels of difficulty, and is required to apply courage and wisdom in facing the obstacles in these levels. It tests his speed, his skills and his intelligence. The creators of the game aim to stimulate the spirit of resistance against injustice in the young generation, and considers Gaza Man to be its first effort towards attaining this goal

Arab news articles say that "The game is one of the most important Arabic productions in terms of programming, production and marketing, to promote the idea of the right of resistance in defense of the rights of the Palestinian people, and a strategy to electronically create a way toward the Liberation of Palestine" .

I wonder if the game shows "the resistance" shooting people who want to leave their homes, building terror tunnels instead of building houses, kidnapping and murdering Israeli teens, shooting rockets that fall on their own people, aiming rockets at Jewish communities, executing alleged "collaborators" on the street to the enthusiasm of children watching, instructing Gazans to lie to Westerners and say that everyone who is killed is a civilian, attacking during humanitarian truces meant to help Gazans get food and shelter, threatening reporters who mention what they are doing, and using hospitals to protect their brave leaders.

Or are they not quite as proud of those real achievements?

This is the must-read article of the day, from The Tower. Excerpts:

For more than five years, the question of who exactly authored the UN’s 2009 Goldstone Report has been an enduring mystery. The report, written under the auspices of South African Judge Richard Goldstone, was a shocking 500-page indictment of Israel that accused its political and military leadership of deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians during the 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, and condemned the Jewish state as a whole for systematic and institutionalized racism, among other atrocities and abominations.

The answer to that riddle—which involves a radical Marxist law professor who held the equivalent of a general’s rank in the global lawfare movement against Israel, and more broadly, the UN department that selected her—has additional importance today because of the controversy swirling over the upcoming sequel to the Goldstone Report dealing with 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, which will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva on March 23.

Understanding who wrote the 2009 report—and how the establishment behind it remains in place—constitutes a direct rebuttal to the latest campaign by HRC backers and activist groups to salvage the reputation and legitimacy of the Goldstone II commission of inquiry into alleged Israeli war crimes.

[W]hat no one has understood or appreciated until now is the decisive role in the “process”—to use the words of the current HRC president—played by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
To understand the OHCHR, one must understand the close relationship between two distinct but closely related UN entities. One is the 47-nation Human Rights Council, a political body heavily influenced by the vote-trading power and petrodollars of the Arab and Islamic states. It meets regularly three times a year for month-long sessions.

At the Arab states’ initiative, and with varying degrees of complicity by the EU and others, half of the resolutions passed by the HRC condemn Israel; there is a special agenda item against Israel at every HRC meeting; and the HRC has produced more emergency sessions and inquiries against Israel than any other country in the world.

The OHCHR is based nearby in Geneva. It is a thousand-strong bureaucracy that serves the council by carrying out its investigations, writing requested reports, staffing the council sessions, and acting year-round as its secretariat. From 2008 until this summer, the office was headed by High Commissioner Navi Pillay, who famously said that “the Israeli Government treats international law with perpetual disdain.”

Those who work in the OHCHR see themselves as an independent and neutral agency of the UN dedicated to promoting and protecting human rights. ....

From time to time, some OHCHR bureaucrats act on the margins, and only in small ways, to try to resist the more absurd and harmful dictates they receive from the political body. Yet when it comes to Israel, the position of the OHCHR under Navi Pillay has been more in line with the HRC than ever before. The most inflammatory and vitriolic notes from Arab speeches delivered to the council find their echo in the reports drafted by European nationals working for the OHCHR, many of whom are graduates of British universities and come from organizations like Amnesty International. If that weren’t enough, their work is subject to the scrutiny and constant pressure exerted by the 56-nation Islamic bloc.

Something that is vital to understand about UN commissions of inquiry is that, in practice, their commissioners don’t write the resulting report. The secretariat does. To be sure, some commissioners may provide directions and revisions—and it is clear that Schabas would have been more hands-on than others—but the bulk of the work is performed by a professional staff that can be comprised of human rights officers, forensics experts, and lawyers. As a result of this, chief-of-staff Marotta had the power to oversee the entire [Goldstone] project.

Thus, through [Francesca ] Marotta, senior officials within the OHCHR would have had the ability to exercise influence over the report—officials like Mona Rishmawi, a Palestinian lawyer who, prior to joining the OHCHR, had written articles comparing Israelis to Nazis.

The role of Marotta and the OHCHR was known at the time, if not fully appreciated. What a probe by UN Watch has now revealed, however, is that outside staff recruited by OHCHR included some of the most radical anti-Israel activists in the world.

One of the known staff members was Sareta Ashraph, whose job, as she described it, was to assist in the investigations, conduct interviews with victims and witnesses, and gather exhibits. Ashraph has also revealed that she was “responsible for drafting several chapters of the final report.”

When it comes to Israel, Ashraph is, to put it mildly, less than impartial. She was and remains a member of Amnesty International, one of the leading groups accusing Israel of war crimes in 2009, and which pushed for and defended the UN inquiry. She was the main organizer of a London lecture on behalf of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, featuring anti-Israel lawfare activists Raji Sourani (head of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights) and Daniel Machover. She also worked in the West Bank on “investigations of allegations of violations of international humanitarian law following ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ in 2002.”

What has not been known until now is that the other key figure on the staff was, through her substantial anti-Israel publications, activism, and leadership role in waging lawfare, exponentially more problematic—someone whose life’s dream was to prosecute Israelis for war crimes and who devoted several years of her life to making this dream come true.

Grietje Baars [is]a Dutch-born law professor who teaches in London. In contrast to Ashraph, who in the immediate aftermath of the report wrote in detail about her role in the Goldstone Report, Baars took pains to obscure her participation.

It is easy to see why. If people knew who Baars was and her role in the report, there would have been justified outrage at OHCHR for selecting her.

The world has the right to know the identities and roles of people involved in writing Goldstone II, to prevent a repeated of the biased staffers of Goldstone I.

[W]hen OHCHR hired her to work on the Goldstone Report, they must have known about Baars’ scholarship. They must have known that she was a self-described Marxist whose doctoral thesis was “a radical Marxist critique of law and capitalism,” and that her academic focus included “anti-occupation struggles and their intersection with other solidarity/liberation struggles” such as “anti-capitalism, anarchism, animal, and queer liberation.”

OHCHR would certainly have known of Baars’ prominent advocacy scholarship against Israel, such as her 2007 law journal article in the Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, entitled “Corrie et al. v Caterpillar: Litigating Corporate Complicity in Israeli Violations of International Law in the US Courts.” The article analyzes case law and suggests best practices regarding Palestinian lawfare efforts against Israel and the movement to boycott companies doing business with Israel, with numerous comparisons to the Nuremberg trials against the Nazis. Publications by Baars subsequent to her time on the Goldstone Report have also accused Israel of “war crimes, crimes against humanity, and grave breaches.”

But OHCHR must also have known that Baars was much more than a scholar: She was a hardcore anti-Israel activist who has risen to become a leading figure in the global lawfare movement—a worldwide campaign to erode Israel’s international standing through the misuse of the language and mechanisms of international law, with the goal of blunting Israel’s ability to defend itself by putting the country on notice that any measures taken against terrorists based among civilians will be put under an international microscope.

By 2009, Baars already had a disturbing track record of extreme hostility against Israel. Because of the sensitive nature of her position, OHCHR must have examined her resume and conducted a basic Google search, all of which would have revealed her prejudice and made it clear that prosecuting Israelis in international courts was essentially her life’s dream. In other words, that she was the very opposite of the impartial, neutral, and objective member of the secretariat envisioned under the UN Charter.

An email Baars sent to her activist colleagues as the Gaza conflict unfolded in December 2008—the war she would later investigate for the Goldstone Commission—preemptively declared that Israel was conducting a “massacre” in the territory and ranted about Israeli “lies we have to fight.”

Baars sent the email after receiving a purportedly leaked copy of guidelines for pro-Israel spokespeople responding to questions about the incursion. “These are the lies we have to fight to end the massacre in Gaza,” her email says. “This has been leaked from sources in Washington DC. Please study this and prepare a response as defiantly yet respectfully as you can do. This is easy to trash, but do so in a civil manner please. Outrage is our weapon, but respect is our salvation.”

Beyond what it says about the credibility of the Goldstone Report, Baars’ involvement raises serious questions about the impartiality of OHCHR, which filled the inquiry’s secretariat with a mixture of its own staffers and outside hires. Why has it refused to reveal the make-up of the secretariat, leaving the public in the dark except for a few names that have inadvertently leaked out?

There seems no question that Goldstone was duped. He never suspected that OHCHR, the UN agency in charge of providing him with professional staff support, had quietly embedded one of the world’s top anti-Israel lawfare strategists into the team. After all, only four years before, Goldstone had worked on another UN inquiry on the oil-for-food program. In that case, he was supported by a highly professional staff based in New York, with most if not all of them lawyers and experts hired from the outside. Goldstone assumed the Gaza inquiry would be the same.

But it was not the same. The culture of the Geneva-based OHCHR secretariat is known to be far more anti-American, anti-colonial, and anti-Israel than the one in New York. In his naiveté, Goldstone was blind to the prejudice and political agenda of his own bureaucracy. Indeed, there is not the slightest indication that Goldstone had any knowledge of Baars’ extremist activism. But OHCHR knew—and that is why they hired her.

What do we know so far about the actual staff members of Goldstone II? As in 2009, OHCHR refuses to respect the principle of transparency by revealing who is on the staff, even though this is common practice elsewhere, such as in the UN’s 2005 oil-for-food report.

I have seen this bias with my own eyes. When I met with the Schabas Commission on September 17, 2014 to personally hand them a written demand for Schabas’ recusal, there were only two staff members in the room, both of them from OHCHR’s Arab section, known as Middle East and North Africa: One was Frej Fenniche, a Tunisian who was a spokesman for the UN’s notoriously anti-Semitic Durban conference on racism in 2001. The other was Sara Hammood, a former spokesperson for the UN’s most anti-Israel committee. Hamood also worked as a “policy advisor on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory” for Oxfam Novib, where she wrote one-sided reports and joined others in critical statements against Israel. This was the initial staff of OHCHR, who were presumably involved in hiring the others.

The current staff—Schabas has mentioned that it is composed of “a dozen specialists”—includes Karin Lucke, OHCHR’s former coordinator of the Arab region team, and now listed as working for the UN in New York. Amnesty notes that the current team includes the OHCHR staff from “Geneva, Ramallah, and the Gaza Strip.” According to Geneva sources familiar with the probe, a number of the staff members are from the Arab world.
In summary, there is every reason to suspect that OHCHR has manipulated the staffing for Goldstone II just as it did in 2009.

Kuwait paper makes up story of Obama threatening to shoot down Israeli planes

Seriously, the news media needs to shape up.

Newsmax:

President Barack Obama threatened to shoot down Israeli planes in 2014 if they were sent to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, according to reports attributed to a Kuwaiti newspaper.

FoxNews quoting TruthRevolt:

A Kuwaiti newspaper is reporting that President Obama, angered at Israeli plans to strike Iran nuclear facilities in 2014, threatened to shoot down Israeli planes before they could reach their targets.
The paper, Al Jarida, cites only anonymous sources and just a handful of other publications have followed the story. But according to israelnationalnews.com, the Arabic newspaper quoted "well-placed" sources as saying Benjamin Netanyahu and two top aides "had decided to carry out air strikes against Iran's nuclear program after consultations with top security commanders."

Daily Caller, JTA, Jewish Press, Breitbart, Arutz-7....

Al Jarida has a long history of making up absurd scoops.

Last year they pretended to have an exclusive interview with Egypt's Sisi immediately after he was elected president, which was immediately denied - why would Sis choose a Kuwaiti paper for his first post-election interview?

As I wrote in 2012:

Now, if you were a high-ranking Israeli official, and you wanted to leak a spectacular news story, would you go to a Kuwaiti newspaper? Or would you call up Ha'aretz or the New York Times?

There have been dozens of "scoops" in Kuwaiti newspapers over the years, often about Hezbollah or the PLO. None of them that I remember have ever panned out. (Al Jarida reported that a Shalit deal was imminent - in 2009; that Israel was ready to bomb Iran - also in 2009; Israel was planning a series of assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas figures - in 2008. There are many more.)

The idea that Kuwaiti reporters have better connections in Israel or Lebanon or the territories than local media strains credulity.

I understand that news media want to sell papers, but they should do at least a basic sanity check on items like this. Whatever happened to getting two independent sources?

Articles like these encourage unsavory reporters (and, of course, unethical bloggers) to make things up or to bypass even the most elementary fact checking when breathlessly reporting scoops from anonymous sources. While there will always be unethical bloggers and reporters, it is the responsibility of the more respected media to do a modicum of verification before reporting a story like this - or, at the very least, to inform readers that Al Jarida has a track record of being spectacularly wrong in its scoops.

At least the Washington Times decided to be slightly skeptical about the report and reports the White House's denial.

But, seriously, why does the media - both left and right - have such low ethical standards?

Canada pulls funding from Miftah after Ashrawi insults Baird

From Embassy News (Canada):

Canada has terminated a funding agreement for a project aimed at training women to participate in municipal politics in the West Bank following critical comments directed at John Baird by the founder of a Palestinian NGO.

The Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development signed a $27,000 contribution agreement with a Ramallah-based NGO known as MIFTAH on Jan. 13, 2015 for the organization to provide training for women involved in municipal politics in the West Bank.

One week later, then-foreign minister John Baird arrived in Israel for what would be his final Mideast tour before his sudden resignation on Feb. 3. During his visit, Mr. Baird reiterated the Harper government’s position that the Palestinian Authority was making “a huge mistake” and crossing “a red line” by pursuing war crimes charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court.

Mr. Baird’s comments were publicly criticized by Hanan Ashrawi, MIFTAH’s founder and a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s executive committee, who accused him of “adopting an arrogant tone.”

“‘The red line’ is the impunity that Israel enjoys for its violations and the fact that Israel is enabled by apologists like John Baird to persist with the support of self-appointed advocates who become complicit in these war crimes,” Ms. Ashrawi fired back in a PLO press release on Jan. 20.

On Jan. 27, MIFTAH says it received a call from Sidney Fisher, head of the political section for Canada’s Representative Office to the Palestinian Authority, requesting that Ms. Ashrawi give the representative a personal tour of the project.

“She asked me if I could ask Dr. Ashrawi to accompany the representative of Canada [Katherine Verrier-Fréchette] to an activity that was being implemented in northern Palestine—Nablus,” Lily Feidy, MIFTAH’s chief executive officer, told Embassy in a recent phone interview. “Dr. Ashrawi told me that she was going to be away. I informed Sidney. She then asked me if Dr. Ashrawi can write a letter thanking the Canada Fund for this small grant.”

Ms. Feidy said that it’s never been her organization’s policy to write letters of thanks to individual donors. Instead, she writes a letter of recognition in her capacity as CEO that addresses all donors once a project has concluded. She said Ms. Ashrawi refused to write the letter on the grounds that it was not her responsibility as a member of the organization’s board. Two days later, on Jan. 29, Ms. Fisher called MIFTAH to inform them that funding agreement was over.

“Further to our telephone conversation, this is to confirm that MIFTAH's contribution agreement with [DFATD], dated 13 January 2015, is hereby terminated. All aspects of the project that have been completed by MIFTAH to the satisfaction of DFATD prior to termination will be paid for by DFATD in accordance with the contribution agreement,” Ms. Fisher wrote in a Feb. 4 email obtained by Embassy.

Ms. Feidy said MIFTAH will receive about $10,000 of the funding to cover costs incurred before the agreement was terminated. The project had to be temporarily discontinued until she secured funding to cover the $17,000 shortfall.

The funding was made available through the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives, a $14-million fund that provides support for short-term, small-scale projects aimed at democratic, economic and social development abroad.

Canada has partnered with MIFTAH on development projects in the past. Last year, MIFTAH received funding for a similar project aimed at training women for participation in municipal councils in the West Bank.

According to Foreign Affairs, the agreement with MIFTAH was terminated because the organization failed to meet its terms and conditions. Foreign Affairs spokesperson François Lasalle denied that the decision was made because of Ms. Ashrawi’s criticism of Mr. Baird.

“The termination of this one project was based solely on the decision by Dr. Ashrawi, as chairperson of the board, to not adhere to the provisions of the agreement, by refusing to acknowledge Canada’s contribution to the project,” Mr. Lasalle said in an email. “The remaining funds will be used to support another Palestinian project.”

Embassy obtained a copy of the contribution agreement from MIFTAH and found no mention of mandatory letters of thanks. ...The copy seen by Embassy stipulates that MIFTAH was to publicize Canada’s contribution to the project by using promotional materials such as logos, emblems and stickers provided by the department. MIFTAH was also required to acknowledge Canada’s contribution in any public references to the project, such as speeches, press releases and advertising.

The agreement as presented contains no mention of Ms. Ashrawi or of a personalized letter of recognition addressed to Canada. It does give Foreign Affairs the option of terminating or suspending the contribution agreement at the department’s discretion.

Soon after Foreign Affairs terminated the agreement, Ms. Ashrawi again blasted the Canadian government, and Mr. Baird in particular, for engaging in what she described as “political blackmail.”

“The Palestinians and their institutions are not up for sale, and should not be subjected to extortion. Canada’s decision to end the co-operation agreement is a blatant attempt to extract political concessions in return for economic support for projects,” she stated in another PLO press release on Feb. 5.

Ms. Feidy said she agreed with the accusation that Canada was attempting to “blackmail” the organization.

“It was conditional. They’d give us the money if she [wrote the letter]. That wasn’t right. I’d call it blackmail, definitely. If it wasn’t blackmail, why stop the funding?” she said.

It is hard to tell exactly what happened, but apparently Ashrawi mentioned the project in a speech without mentioning Canada as Miftah was contractually obligated to do.

It is still unusual to see a country pull funding from a Palestinian Arab NGO when Miftah did far worse (engaging in the blood libel and support for terror) its funders were anxious to let the incidents blow over so they could resume their funding.

(h/t Zelig)

After waiting for months to enter Gaza with a convoy of humanitarian items through Egypt, a French charity ended up going through - Israel.

The coordinator of the Baraka Foundation, Rami Abu Sultan, told a news conference Sunday morning: "The convoy arrived several months ago in Egypt to enter the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing, and remained in Port Said for several months without being allowed to access to the Gaza Strip because of the continued closure of the crossing...The convoy stayed in Egypt for more than three months when it decide to change the convoy path where it was transferred to Jordan, and replaced all the medicines and food that had expired. We then entered into the West Bank, in preparation for entry into the Gaza Strip."

The aid is said to be worth €300,000.

The news article said that the goods went through the Erez crossing, but I have never heard of goods going through Erez, only people. Probably the goods went through Beit Hanoun and then the Baraka people went through Erez to meet up with their donations again.

The convoy contains medical equipment, medicines, food parcels, heaters, solar chargers and clothing, according to the foundation.

The items will be delivered to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, which is known to take donated aid and then sell them to gain more cash for Hamas.

03/01 Links: Lumish: Give ‘Em Hell, Bibi!; The propaganda agents for Hamas; LATMA Ep4 !

From Ian:

Michael Lumish: Give ‘Em Hell, Bibi!

The reason that Obama is going to allow Iranian nuclear break-out capacity is because the US administration is endeavoring to turn the Islamist state into a regional strategic partner. It is also for this reason that the Obama administration is comfortable with Iranian expansion into Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon, if not Iraq.
This is entirely unacceptable to the people of Israel – left, right, and center – and the Sunnis throughout the region are, for the most part, no happier about any of this than are the Jews. The only people who seem comfortable with Iranian nukes are Barack Obama and the Iranians, themselves.
If Obama gets his way, we will see an arms race throughout the Middle East with virtually every significant player scrambling to kick-start their own nuclear programs. There is certainly no possible way that Egypt will allow a nuclear armed Shia Iran without Cairo gaining that capacity, as well.
What is necessary is for the American people to make it clear to the Obama administration that we stand not only with the people of Israel, but with people the world over – most particularly in the Middle East – who understand that a nuclear-weaponized Iran is potentially disastrous enough that as a basic matter of common sense it must be prevented.
Obama is not up to this job, because his heart is clearly not in it. Obama the community organizer is comfortable with Iranian nukes.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the commando, clearly is not.
I say, give ‘em hell, Bibi.
Just tell ‘em the truth and they’ll think it’s hell.

Ben-Dror Yemini: The propaganda agents for Hamas

Norway will host a conference during the week ahead on Jews under Islamic rule. A read through the lecture program reveals that the central line of the conference will be that the Jews lived wonderful lives under Muslim rule, until the Zionists came along, snatched them from their Muslim health resort, and enslaved them in Israel. I may be selling some of the participants short; perhaps someone there will have something of value to say. It's been known to happen on occasion – even in the academe.
The thing is, the main guest from Israel, the great expert on the history of the Jews under Muslim rule, who is also a great expert on the situation of the Arab Jews under the rule of the Zionists, who is also the great expert on the situation of the Muslims under Jewish rule, is – hold on to your hats – Gideon Levy.
For the most part, Jews lived under Muslim rule as subjects of inferior status. Now and then there were periods, during a part of the Golden Age for example, in which Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life flourished.
When the Christians expelled the Jews from Spain, the Ottoman sultan was the one who invited them to settle in his empire. The colonial era saw another period of flourishing Jewish life under Muslim rule. These periods, however, were the exception.
Some academics have managed to turn the tables. They glorify the periods of coexistence. They hide the pogroms, the decrees, the abuse and the oppression. And they certainly hide the Jewish Nakba. The Jews didn't suffer from abuse and oppression because of Zionism. To the contrary. They became Zionists because of the abuse and oppression. But manipulating the facts will triumph once again – under the patronage of Gideon Levy and so-called academic freedom.

LATMA: We'll be the Judge, episode 4

Dabiq is the official recruiting magazine of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and they publish in a number of languages, including English.

Dabiq # 1 re-established the Caliphate in the minds and hearts of the believers.

Let us look at how they express their ideology in Dabiq # 2.

"It is either the Islamic State or the Flood" issue number 2 dramatically declares.

What the organization claims to want is an all-out war with "Rome" and the "jews."

{The lower case J is obviously not a typo. It is a childish way for a crude and barbaric people to demean imaginary enemies.}

And they want war to happen as soon as possible on the Plains of Dabiq in northeastern Syria, because one of the holy hadiths proclaimed it so:

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The Last Hour would not come until the Romans would land at al-A'maq or in Dabiq.

At the close of this piece I will briefly give my views on how this horrendous madness relates, and does not relate, to either Muslims or Islam.

The first thing that I want to note about Dabiq # 2 is that the cover art is very good. It is exceedingly slick and attractive in a way that I would generally associate with either western or far eastern magazines.

This is a polished bit of media and it is published both on-line and in paper format.

One thing to be said about the Islamic State is that - their hatred toward everyone non-Muslim aside - they are not racist. I suspect that they would even accept me, were I to repent and make a perfect Muslim example of myself in the ways that they require... which would undoubtedly be non-stop fun, 24/7.

They do not care where you come from or what color your skin is. The only thing that they care about is the intensity of your Koranically-based worship and your willingness to fight.

The spark has been lit here in Iraq,

and its heat will continue to intensify – by Allah’s permission

– until it burns the crusader armies in Dabiq. - Abu Mus’ab az-Zarqawi

They want war. One of the primary questions that we need to ask ourselves is, should they get it?

The foreword to Dibaq # 2 also stresses the primary objective of recruiting as many Muslims as possible.

The first priority is to perform hijrah from wherever you are to the Islamic State, from darul-kufr to darul-Islam. Rush to perform it as Musa (‘alayhis-salam) rushed to his Lord, saying, {And I hastened to You, my Lord, that You be pleased} [Taha: 84]. Rush to the shade of the Islamic State with your parents, siblings, spouses, and children. There are homes here for you and your families.

As mentioned in my review of Dibaq # 1, the Islamic State seems to believe in social welfare. Just as Hamas was elected in part because they seemed to care more about social programs than did Fatah, so the Islamic State stresses this kind of thing, as well, and I see no reason to doubt their sincerity.

As Graeme Wood writes in The Atlantic:

The Islamic State may have medieval-style punishments for moral crimes (lashes for boozing or fornication, stoning for adultery), but its social-welfare program is, at least in some aspects, progressive to a degree that would please an MSNBC pundit.

It then segues into an argument in opposition to democracy because:

This ideology teaches that no one has the right, regardless of whom he may be, to impose any creed or set of morals on anyone else even if that creed or set of morals is the truth revealed by Allah.

But the metaphor of The Flood is at the forefront of this issue.

Part 4: The Flood is a Refutation of the Pacifists

Had the proponents of choice contemplated all this, they would have realized that the flood was a clear sign of the falseness of giving choice between truth and falsehood in da’wah. For the flood was the result and consequence of opposing the truth, and evidence that anyone who rejected the truth would be punished in the dunya before the Hereafter and would not have any choice in that regards.

The publication is written in a deeply religious language that someone unfamiliar with the terminologies of Islam might find a tad difficult to follow, but the primary themes are obvious.

They want Muslims to join them. They demand obedience and they anticipate war in an eschatological End-of Days scenario.

They are also not particularly fond of either Jewish people or the Jewish State of Israel... because Jews are the Eternal Cosmic Enemy.

The Fight Against the PKK

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) apparently represent what little may be available in terms of civil society in that part of the world and, therefore, are an enemy of the Islamic State:

Approximately ten years ago in neighbouring Sham, the marxist Kurds in the north founded a political opposition party called the PYD (Democratic Union Party), which shares the kufri ideology of Ocalan and is seen as being a Syrian front for the PKK...

The Islamic State did not hesitate to wage war against the communist murtaddin of the PKK/YPG, while simultaneously continuing their fight against the nusayri regime and the sahwat.

This is instructive because it clearly demonstrates that, at least for the moment, the Islamic State is primarily focused on the near enemy. If they are to establish the Caliphate then they need to expand. They are not like Qaeda, which can easily go underground. They are significantly more ambitious than that. If they are to establish the Caliphate they need legitimacy within the greater Muslim world and, in terms of crude power, that means they need increasing numbers and expanding territory.

The Obama strategy seems to be denying them their primary objective, which is war with the infidel West. The wisdom of this approach is up to each of us to decide for ourselves... although I feel reasonably certain that Bill O'Reilly does not approve.

Much of Dabiq # 2 is concerned with infighting within political Islam in that part of the world and would be entirely opaque to even relatively sophisticated westerners.

Thus we have passages like this:

After this mubahalah, a number of issues quickly came to light. First of which, some of the stories that ashShami used to claim that the Islamic State resisted Allah’s Shari’ah were shown to be fabrications and distortions, especially the claim that the Islamic State had asked adh-Dhawahiri to arbitrate between itself and the Jawlani rebels. Allah decreed that adh-Dhawahiri himself would negate ash-Shami in a speech (sadly his negation and speech themselves were also distortions of reality).

What any of that might mean is beyond the comprehension of anyone (specialists aside) who is not part of this exceedingly interesting, and remarkably vicious, subculture.

They are, by the way, not nearly the fan of Turkish president Erdogan that Barack Obama is:

When the secularist “Islamists” of Turkey won the recent elections, Islamic Front leaders congratulated the Erdogan secularists upon their renewed apostasy.

Understanding The Hikmah* in Allah’s Actions
* Arabic for "wisdom."

Ibnul-Qayyim (rahimahullah) said, “I will mention a debate that occurred between me and some jews. I said to one of them – after he had denied the prophethood of the Prophet, ‘Your denial of his prophethood entails slandering the Lord of the universe, belittling Him, and attributing to Him the worst of all blemishes.

The Islamic State's primary objective is an apocalyptic war with the West, but Koranically-based hatred toward Jewish people is likewise central to this exceedingly ideologically-driven movement.

In the Words of the Enemy

As in issue number one, Dabiq # 2 devotes a segment to what American and western politicians have to say about the organization. There is no doubt but that they care very much about what we think and they are not big fans of "crusader" Senator, John McCain... but, then again, neither are most of my friends.

However, they acknowledge something that should be obvious. George W. Bush toppled the power structure in Iraq and when Obama withdrew U.S. forces this lead to the power vacuum necessary for the Islamic State to fill.

McCain said this:

I come to the floor this morning with great sorrow and great concern and even deep alarm about the events that are transpiring rapidly in Iraq. ISIS the most extreme, Islamist organization – radical terrorist organization – now controls at least 1/3 of Iraqi territory and is rapidly gaining more. The areas of Fallujah, Mosul, Tikrit, they are on the outsides of Samarra… with these victories ISIS controls a swath of territory that stretches from the Syrian-Turkish frontier in the north, down the Euphrates river, all the way down to the Iraqi city of Fallujah just forty miles west of Baghdad.

The writers of Dabiq # 2 do not comment on McCain's words. They simply note them, but one gets the sense that they have considerable satisfaction in the fact that we in the West have taken notice of them.

Part of the reason that the Islamic State is as cruel as it is - aside from whatever psycho-sexual sado-masochistic gratification that the individual may gain from raping prepubescent children - is because they want our attention. There is an obvious reason that they film and edit their atrocities to music.

They very much want to say "hello" because they want us to come visit.

In the final pages of issue number two, they celebrate stoning adulterous women to death and caring for orphan children. It is an entirely bizarre juxtaposition between unimaginable cruelty and social welfare programs. It is not clear from the text, but one must wonder if the child being cared for by the Islamic State is not the son of the woman they just pelted to death with rocks?

As for the question of whether or not the Islamic State is Islamic, the answer is that it certainly is. As Wood put it, it is very Islamic. But that does not mean that ISIS represents Muslims, as a whole. Islam is a rather large thing. It is 1.5 billion people who think about themselves and their religion in a complex variety of ways. This type of violent and apocalyptic uber-fundamentalist Islam comes directly out of the religious tradition, but does so according to political circumstances on the ground.

That they are Islamic, however, is undeniable to anyone who would take a little time to go through Dabiq.

When Obama denies this, he is lying... but for the best of reasons, I am sure.

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.

Hamas shaken by Egyptian terror decision, so it celebrates terror

Hamas is very shaken up by this news:

The Cairo Court for Urgent Matters on Saturday ruled Hamas a terrorist organisation, a month after the group's military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, was also designated a terror group by the same court.
The verdict resulted from two separate private suits filed by Samir Sabry and Ashraf Said, both lawyers, against the de facto rulers of the Gaza Strip.

The relationship between Egypt's authorities and the Islamist group has soured since the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestinian sister organisation.

Egypt has accused Hamas of meddling into its internal affairs and supporting Islamist insurgents in Sinai, accusations that the group has repeatedly denied.

The court's reasoning on Saturday for designating Hamas a terrorist organisation mirrored its January Al-Qassam ruling.

In January, the court said that Al-Qassam's and Hamas' "support and financing of terrorist attacks in Egypt show that they have swayed from their original cause of fighting the Israeli occupation."

In recent months, the Egyptian government has been strengthening penalties for acts of terrorism in its penal code.

Last week, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has also signed a sweeping new anti-terrorism legislation to counter "Terrorist Entities".

Hamas wasted no time to stage rallies for their captive Gaza population, carefully stage-managing the signs that people would hold.

Yet even those signs celebrated Hamas terror, showing masked terrorists shooting rockets at Israeli civilians!

Hamas media started its counteroffensive, insulting Egypt and also celebrating Hamas terrorism.

They are also calling this "collective punishment" for Gazans.

Egyptians don't seem to be concerned about this in the least.

A tribute to a legendary actor is not the time to boost your own ego.

Pundits noticed that President Obama's statement on the death of Leonard Nimoy was also self-complimentary:

President Barack Obama offered his condolences — including a witty, backhanded reference to himself — after the death of actor Leonard Nimoy.

“Long before being nerdy was cool, there was Leonard Nimoy. And of course, Leonard was Spock,” Obama said in a statement. “Cool, logical, big-eared and level-headed.”

“I loved Spock,” said Obama, who is often ribbed for the size of his ears and for his no-drama demeanor.

Of course, the Spock character didn't have Obama's big ears. He had pointy ears.

I would hardly characterize someone who has spent much of the last month plotting revenge against the leader of an ally for planning to accept an invitation to speak in front of Congress as "level-headed" and "logical."

But even if you are a fan of Obama, his using the occasion of Nimoy's death for self-aggrandizement is very inappropriate.