Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

If you accuse Israel of "genocide" and compare it to ISIS, you are welcome to speak at J-Street!

Guess who is speaking at the annual J-Street conference?

PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat!

Yes, the same Saeb Erekat who recently compared Israel to ISIS.

The same Saeb Erekat who routinely accuses Israel of "genocide."

The same Saeb Erekat who claimed that 96% of those killed in Gaza were civilians.

The same Saeb Erekat who claimed that his family had been in Palestine for 9000 years (they came from Jordan in the 19th century.)

The same Saeb Erekat who compares Mahmoud Abbas to Mother Teresa and Thomas Jefferson.

The same Saeb Erekat who believes that Jews cannot live in "Palestine."

The same Saeb Erekat who once accused Qatar of investing in Jewish settlements.

The same Saeb Erekat who once said "Everybody should be aware that the only threat in the region is Israel’s occupation and not Iran."

Yup - he's a perfect fit for "pro-Israel, pro-peace" J-Street.

(Eric Fingerhut, the president of Hillel International, withdrew from speaking at J Street’s conference when he found out Erekat was a featured speaker.)

US generals criticize Amnesty and HRW in new report on Gaza war

JINSA commissioned several retired generals to assess Operation Protective Edge. Their report stands in stark contrast to the biased reports written by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch.

The generals are:

General Charles Wald, USAF (ret.),

Task Force Chair Former Deputy Commander of United States European Command

Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell IV, USA (ret.)
Former Commander, U.S. Army North

Lieutenant General Richard Natonski, USMC (ret.)
Former Commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Command

Major General Rick Devereaux, USAF (ret.)
Former Director of Operational Planning, Policy, and Strategy - Headquarters Air Force

Major General Mike Jones, USA (ret.)
Former Chief of Staff, U.S. Central Command

The authors know the Laws of Armed Conflict far better than the NGOs do. They recognize Hamas' unique tactics of cynically putting their own civilian population in danger in order to add a public relations dimension to what they call "unrestricted warfare":

In 1999, two Chinese People’s Liberation Army officers asserted that the ability to blend technologies with military actions and political-influence activities, a technique they dubbed “unrestricted warfare,” signifies a new type of war, in which a key principle is “no longer using armed force to compel the enemy to one’s will, but rather, using all means, military and nonmilitary, lethal and non-lethal, to compel the enemy to accept one’s interests.”97 In the 2014 Gaza War,

Hamas appears to have pursued precisely such unrestricted warfare. Their concept of operations aimed to force Israel into making concessions – such as reopening Gaza’s borders – as a result of political pressure. What was novel about Hamas’s approach, however, was where and how they sought to create that pressure. A key vulnerability for liberal democracies, such as the United States or Israel, is their citizens’ aversion to excessive or unjustified casualties. Though voters are willing to support wars – and casualties – that are perceived as legitimately defending the homeland or securing vital national interests, popular support for military operations can decline when these goals begin to be doubted or overshadowed by deaths of civilians from the opposing side and, especially, of their own soldiers. ...

Hamas certainly engaged in such classic irregular warfare, and utilized its enhanced arsenal and conventional military structure to inflict greater casualties among the IDF. Hamas’s infiltration tunnels, dug into Israeli territory, were particularly effective for striking at the rear of IDF formations, fundamentally transforming the location and definition of the “frontline” of the conflict. Hamas’s greater focus, however, was on the exploitation of the presence of civilians in the combat zone. It used unlawful concealment among civilians to constrain and blunt the effectiveness of IDF military operations. It sought to neutralize the IDF’s precision-guided munitions by covering and concealing its leadership and military forces amid and often below civilian infrastructure.99 It utilized its expanded tunnel networks to maneuver and supply its forces while limiting the likelihood of being detected or targeted.100 And it deliberately and unlawfully placed command and control, firing positions and logistical hubs underneath, inside or in immediate proximity to structures it knew the IDF considered specially protected, such as hospitals, schools and mosques, in full knowledge that this would substantially complicate IDF targeting decisions and attack options.101

But Hamas did not just stop with using civilians as a passive defense tactic. Its contribution to unrestricted warfare doctrine was to ensure maximum political pressure would be exerted on Israel by, at best, acting in reckless disregard of civilians’ safety or, at worst, consciously and actively provoking IDF fire on Gazan civilians. It did so in part simply by virtue of embedding itself among the surrounding civilian infrastructure.102 Simultaneously it launched rockets and attacked IDF forces from within or in direct proximity to international safe havens – especially UNRWA facilities – and from civilian buildings, often forcing civilians to congregate in these areas immediately afterward. Further, Hamas reportedly discouraged or actually prevented civilians from leaving buildings after the IDF targeted them with warning communications and munitions.103 Hamas’s strategy for victory depended on incurring civilian casualties among its own people.

The public that Hamas sought to sway with these casualties, however, was not that of its opponent. Rather, its strategy appears to have been to discredit Israel in the international community more broadly, by portraying the IDF’s military operations as indiscriminate and disproportional.104 This would subsequently create pressure from Hamas’s regional supporters and others against Israel to agree to a ceasefire on Hamas’s terms. Most remarkably, Hamas undertook this effort in earnest despite intentionally and egregiously violating the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) through its targeting of Israeli civilians and its exploitation of Gazan civilians to shield its military activities (as we discuss below).105 By shrewdly controlling access to much of the Gaza Strip by media and international organizations, Hamas was also able to portray collateral damage caused by its own strategy and actions as illegal IDF conduct.

The generals also directly criticize NGOs for their ignorance of the laws of armed conflict:

These statements suggest a concerted strategy on the part of Hamas to exploit misunderstandings of LOAC to gain international condemnation of Israel. Such attempts to move the conflict from the battlefield, where Israel enjoyed military and technological superiority, to the court of international opinion appears to have been part of Hamas’s concept of operations in the 2014 Gaza War. 42 This strategy depended not just on distorting the principles of LOAC to assert claims of unlawful conduct against Israel but also – and more disturbingly – on ensuring Gazan civilian casualties to support Hamas’s assertions of Israeli legal violations.

Unfortunately, it appears to have been a successful strategy. Numerous individuals claiming to be experts in the relationship between law and military operations quickly seemed to accept Hamas’s assertions of unlawful IDF operations. On July 23, 2014, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, stated: “There seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes.” The U.N. Human Rights Council subsequently issued a resolution condemning “in the strongest terms the widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms arising from the Israeli military operations” in Gaza.125 In September, Human Rights Watch issued a report declaring that “three Israeli attacks that damaged Gaza schools housing displaced people caused numerous civilian casualties in violation of the laws of war.”126 And, in November, Amnesty International concluded that the IDF’s “use of large aerial bombs [to attack civilian homes] suggests that these attacks either were intended to cause the complete destruction of the targeted structure or a determination to ensure the killing of targeted individuals without due regard to the killing and destruction to those in their immediate vicinity,” which would constitute “prima facie evidence of serious violations of international humanitarian law.”127

These condemnations were premised on premature, effects-based assessments of military operations, or on the same flawed understandings of the law that Hamas was promoting, while refusing to apply that same law to its own actions. These routine distortions of the actual law applicable to military operations produced a fundamentally false narrative of legal compliance and non-compliance during this conflict, one that misrepresented Israeli attempts to minimize civilian deaths and the legality of their targeting Hamas and other factions engaged in military operations.

Ironically, the authors criticize Israel for going beyond the laws of armed conflict in protecting civilians - which could hurt Western armies in future wars:

An accurate understanding of LOAC is essential to properly and credibly assess the legality of combat operations. Unfortunately, it is poorly understood, allowing it to be easily distorted to present a false narrative that combat operations producing civilian casualties are inherently unlawful. Such distortions are further enabled by the almost instinctive, but legally invalid, tendency to judge military actions based on effects of combat operations.

Effects-based critiques distort this equation by relying on post hoc consequences as the sole indication of LOAC compliance. However, the legal standard for compliance turns on the reasonableness of the attack decision at the time it was made based on available information. For example, a commander may launch an attack on an identified enemy command and control bunker or tunnel, having made good faith efforts to identify all available intelligence related to the target, based on the conclusion that the bunker is used exclusively for military purposes. However, it may turn out that the enemy had encouraged civilians to shelter in the bunker, with the attack producing the effect of civilian casualties. This effect is not sufficient to conclude the law was violated. Instead, as clearly established by LOAC, compliance must be assessed on the totality of the military situation at the time the decision was made.132

In the first instance, it may seem that the appropriate response to such distorted analyses is for militaries to go to even greater lengths – above and beyond LOAC requirements – to demonstrate their respect for innocent life and avoid condemnation. Indeed, such was Israel’s approach the 2014 Gaza War. Based on this Task Force’s observation, however, this is not necessarily an effective response to offset this distortion. What may appear at first glance as a rush to defend civilians actually enables a race to the bottom, empowering those who would exploit efforts to mitigate civilian risk while gutting existing legal principles – all to the detriment of civilians’ safety.

The abusive use of law to gain tactical and strategic advantage by hybrid enemies, and to discredit lawful conduct of professional military forces, must be countered by defending – rather than abandoning – those legal principles. Military restraint beyond the carefully developed and time-tested boundaries of LOAC should be imposed only when it is perceived to produce a tactical, operational or strategic advantage, and not merely in response to anticipated improper invocation of inapposite legal standards. Furthermore, policy-based constraints should be clearly demarked from legal obligations, so that raising standards in one instance does not set a precedent to which a military force will be expected to adhere in the future. Otherwise, any constraints beyond LOAC adopted by one country will submit others to great pressures to conform similarly. Once this becomes entrenched, it will be difficult to walk back. The result of conflating policy and law, and of attempting to apply legal standards other than LOAC to armed conflicts, will not only be a greater danger to national security – as armed forces will become much more limited in their ability to respond to and counteract threats from unconventional adversaries operating among civilian populations – but an increased risk to civilians as well. The application of standards more exacting than LOAC to armed conflicts may produce the perverse effect of incentivizing unconventional adversaries to dress as civilians, hide among civilians, launch operations from civilian areas, use civilians as human shields or even (as Hamas did) deliberately seek to instigate civilian casualties, since any civilian deaths could be considered a legal violation. If such an approach to assessing legality in warfare becomes the norm, the combat power and initiative of military force will be functionally neutered. Even reasonable targeting errors resulting from the inevitable “fog of war” would subject service-members and commanders to criminal responsibility based on distorted legal principles, establish a standard that no military could reasonably meet, delegitimize and constrain the U.S. military, embolden potential adversaries and, therefore, increase the risk to civilian populations unable to defend themselves against terrorist entities.

Therefore, proper adherence to LOAC entails stringent observance of LOAC requirements and imposition of additional policy-based constraints only when they serve the interests of mission accomplishment. The United States and its allies should devote resources to countering existing misunderstandings of LOAC. When restraint is exercised for reasons other than legal obligations, the United States should also explain its motivations and reasoning, lest it contribute to further misunderstanding of LOAC requirements.

Amnesty, HRW and the UN make pronouncements about the laws of armed conflict without actually knowing those laws. And by distorting the law, they ironically end up endangering more civilians.

Which is a strategy that Hamas embraces.

Here is the entire report.

2014 Gaza Assessment Report

(h/t Richard Landes)

Hamas blames Israel for attacks against Egyptian soldiers in Sinai

On Monday, three Egyptian soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb.

This happened soon after Egypt opened up the Rafah crossing with Gaza for only the fourth time since October.

This alarmed Hamas leaders, who did not want Egypt to blame them for the bomb and close the crossing early.

So Moussa Abu Marzouk, Hamas leader who lives in Cairo, blamed Israel for the bomb, saying that they are the ones who gain from killing Egyptian soldiers because attacks like that often prompts Egypt to close the crossings.

"Malicious hands are behind every terrorist incident in the Sinai," he wrote on his Facebook page. "I do not rule out here the hands of the Zionists for these acts, starting from the death of Egyptian soldiers in the operation in Rafah In August 2012 until the attack today."

He claimed that Hamas could not have been behind the attack saying (from personal knowledge, no doubt) that terror attacks take time to plan and since Egypt only announced the opening of the crossing on Saturday, there wasn't enough time for Hamas to plan and implement such an attack.

It is funny seeing Hamas bounce back and forth between insulting Egypt for its anti-Hamas stance and begging Egypt for mercy.

03/09 Links Pt2: My Schabas Dinner; Phillips: European leaders silent on jihadi Jew hate

From Ian:

Btselem’s Poor Methodology and Credibility

In January 2003, the Israeli human rights organization Btselem, which receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from its sponsor The New Israel Fund, posted on its official website the testimony of Bilal Murtada Muhammad Hafnawi, a 16-year-old high school student from Nablus who accused the Israeli Border Police of extreme brutal behavior against him and his friend, Khaled Hashash.
In his testimony, which was taken by phone by Btselem’s field researcher, Ali Draghmeh, Hafnawi argued that Border Police operatives beat him severely with no reason for a prolonged period of time.
Btselem considered Hafnawi’s account indisputable facts. The damning title of the Btselem report reads, “Nablus: Border Police officers beat medical personnel, preventing medical treatment, January 2003.” Btselem did not post any comment of the Police Internal Investigations Department referring to this case or any updates on Bilal Hafnawi that might be relevant to evaluate his credibility.
Btselem described Hafnawi as “a high school student,” and added no further information about him or his political affiliation and connection to terrorist organizations.
During the years 2002-3, Hafnawi the “high school student,” as portrayed by Btselem, was in fact an operative of the Hamas terrorist organization. A year later he changed allegiance to the terrorist organization Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades (Fatah). During this time Hafnawi threw on three occasions Molotov cocktails at military vehicles and a tank, possessed an M-16 assault rifle that was used by senior operatives of al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and facilitated the manufacturing of IEDs and pipe bombs in his home.
Hafnawi joined the al-Qaeda network in Jordan in 2005, and participated in the planning of a double mass-murder attack in Jerusalem. He was convicted on security charges and served eight years in prison.
This case illustrates once again Btselem’s flawed research methodology and its one-sided and anti-Israeli approach, which cast a dark shadow on its credibility.

My Schabas Dinner

“You really do? The last time we tried to outlaw war was the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and that didn’t go very well.”
“We outlawed it,” Schabas replied. “The Kellogg-Briand pact was the beginning. And then the Nuremberg trial. And the Charter of the United Nations. And it’s prevented global war.”
Attributing the failure thus far of World War III to launch to the niceties of the U.N. Charter and not, say, to the terrors of Mutually Assured Destruction, is the hallmark of a Model U.N. participant, not a serious scholar of global history. Neither the U.N. Charter nor the countless other treaties and legal instruments devised after World War II did anything to prevent the proliferation of incredibly bloody conflicts across the Third World (Korea, Vietnam, Angola, etc.) that functioned as Cold War proxy battles, nor the many small wars that have collectively claimed the lives of millions (Rwanda, Sudan, the Balkans, etc.) since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Budapest Memorandum has not stopped Russia from waging war on Ukraine. U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1559, 1680 and 1701 have not led to Hezbollah’s disarmament. The Convention on the Rights of the Child has not stopped Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and a host of other nations—all signatories to the document—from exploiting children as soldiers.
Later in the evening, Schabas was asked to address a problem inherent in the practice of international law, specifically as it applies to Israel and its adversaries—namely that the latter groups, in their conduct as belligerents, make no pretensions whatsoever to abide by any norms, legal or moral. “I think that they have their own rule book,” Schabas replied.
“What is it?” someone else at the table asked.
“I don’t know what it is exactly. I think everybody involved in combat plays by rules. They just disagree about what the rules are and we may not agree with the rules that they’re playing by … I don’t know that the Hezbollah fighter faced with a school filled with children is going to say, ‘let’s go and kill them.’ ”
It is all well and good that William Schabas recused himself from an enterprise that was corrupt from the beginning. But the explanations cited for his unsuitability are comparatively minor and tawdry next to the fact that he is a fool.

Book Review: A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide

Historian David Cesarani hails Alon Confino’s triumphant demonstration that anti-Jewish policies are within the realms of comprehension and that it is possible to find the words to explain them accessibly, two qualities we badly need today.
At a time when we are told that a ‘wave of anti-Semitism’ is sweeping Europe and that Jews face a threat comparable to the menace of the 1930s, it is good to be reminded of what Nazi anti-Semitism was like and what it was about. Alon Confino’s subtle and elegantly written study obliges us to confront the ways in which the Nazis imagined the Jews and the emotions which these fantasies stirred in the minds of ordinary German people. Confino boldly rejects the interpretations of Nazism that currently dominate scholarship, asserting that these offer a rather too comforting explanation. He argues that Nazi anti-Jewish policy cannot be reduced to racism, and certainly not to perverted scientific thinking. Rather, ideas of race and scientific practices were warped to provide the right answers to a pre-determined ‘Jewish question’. Nor did the persecution of the Jews represent a ‘radicalisation’ of anti-Semitism or metastasise due to the brutalisation of a regime and a people that were in a virtually constant state of imagined or real warfare. On the contrary, the Nazis drew on traditions of Jew-hatred and the violence they practiced evoked patterns which were rooted in the German past and in Christianity. Crucially, Confino situates Nazi anti-Semitism within the Christian tradition of anti-Judaism. Although many scholars (and theological apologists) have maintained that National Socialism was anti-religious, Confino states that, ’Their aim was not to eradicate Christianity but to eradicate Christianity’s Jewish roots; not to replace Christianity with racism but to blend the two.’

Israel's economy is doing quite well, thank you

From The Marker:

Treasury officials are preparing bullish new estimates for economic growth this year as data coming in for the final part of 2014 and early 2015 show growth rebounding at a faster pace than anyone predicted just a few months earlier.

A final estimate is still being calculated, but Finance Ministry officials said they are now expecting Israel’s gross domestic product to expand 3.5% this year. That would mean a much faster pace of growth than the 2.8% officials were talking about last summer when they provided the first estimate ahead of the 2015 budget.

Behind the new optimism is preliminary data for the fourth quarter of 2014, which showed GDP surging ahead at a 7.2% annual rate, it fastest since the first quarter of 2008. That raised growth for all of 2014 to 2.9%.

Meantime, Israel’s unemployment rate fell to 5.9% last year from 6.2% in 2013 even as the percentage of the working age population grew to a very high 64.2%. The economy bounced back quickly from the effect of last summer’s Gaza war while a weaker shekel has been spurring higher exports, mainly to North America and Asia.

Cisco and other high tech legends are bullish on Israel:

With the opening of Amazon’s research and development center in Israel this year, each of these Internet giants [Apple, Google, Facebook] now has an R&D presence in the country. But it is the veteran technology company Cisco that most varied activity here. In addition to an R&D center that employs about 1,800 workers, it established in 1998, Cisco has acquired 10 Israeli startups for a total of more than $1.5 billion. In addition, it has invested in close to 25 others, not including its acquisition of NDS – which was long past the startup stage when Cisco bought it and had changed hands several times before the acquisition – for $5 billion three years ago.

Intel also chose Israeli technology for 3D chips.

Trade with China is growing exponentially:

Trade between Israel and China has been steadily increasing in the last three years, with trade doubling between 2010 and 2014. Trade in 2010 was about $5 billion, with Israeli exports to China amounting to $1 billion. 2014 fared better than 2013. In 2014, trade value approached $11 billion and I think Israeli exports to China accounted for nearly 30 percent of that amount. While it's a positive development it's nothing compared to the potential of the Chinese market. China also invested $300 million in Israeli high technology in 2014.

Even Ha'aretz' business column says that Palestinian boycotts of Israeli goods are only hurting themselves.

In Europe and America, politically engaged college students, performance artists and cooperative-grocery-store activists – the kind of people who form the core of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS, movement – may find it personally gratifying to swear off Israel. It costs them nothing: none are likely to have ever knowingly bought an Israeli product, held shares in an Israeli company or been invited to Israel to perform or exhibit. They can take the politically correct stand by signing a petition or voting on a resolution at no personal cost.

That’s not the case for the Palestinians, who depend on Israel for goods, services and employment. By one estimate, 70% of the processed food Palestinians consume comes from Israel, so boycotting even some products entails a huge personal sacrifice.

And to what avail? Only about 3% of Israeli food sales come from the West Bank, and most of that is for basic, low-margin products. The CEOs of Israeli food companies won’t be lobbying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to transfer the Palestinian tax receipts he has frozen, which is the ostensible reason for the boycott.

Evil IDF soldiers play soccer with oppressed Palestinian kids (video)

From IMRA:

IDF soldiers on patrol engage in a pick-up soccer game with Palestinian youths

But...but...

(h/t @HummusNotWar)

03/09 Links Pt1: Bibi: Bar Ilan Speech is Dead; Hamas offers long-term calm in for end of blockade

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinians Want... Peace?

The latest PLO and Fatah campaign is not directed only against settlement products. Rather, it is targeting anything made in Israel, as a part of an "anti-normalization" movement, whose goal is to thwart any encounters between Israelis and Palestinians, including peace conferences.
While some Israelis, Americans and Europeans are talking about the need to revive the peace process after the March 17 elections in Israel, the Palestinians are clearly moving in a different direction.
"We are headed for confrontation with Israel." — Mahmoud Aloul, senior Fatah official.
The Palestinian Authority's strategy now is to intensify its campaign to isolate and delegitimize Israel in the international community, and promote all forms of boycotts of Israelis and Israeli goods; to force Israel to make concessions through international pressure and through campaigns of boycott and divestment.
These campaigns are further radicalizing Palestinians, driving many of them into the open arms of radical groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
If Abbas is interested in returning to the negotiating table (as he sometimes declares he is), then he needs to prepare his people for that and not incite them even more against Israel.
Those who are opposed to the presence of Israeli products in their villages and cities will be the first to oppose the resumption of peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis.

JCPA: Is the PLO Threat to End Security Coordination with Israel an Empty Threat?

It is now clear that Abbas’ threats are empty; they were an attempt to pressure Israel to free the frozen tax revenues. The PLO Central Committee’s decision was also aimed at containing popular rage over the freezing of the revenues and at showing that the PA is not prepared to submit passively to the Israeli sanction.
In reality, Abbas knows that ending security coordination with Israel will harm the Palestinians most of all. Just a few months ago, Israel rescued Abbas’ rule when the Israel Security Agency (Shabak) apprehended an extensive Hamas network in Judea and Samaria that had planned to destabilize the PA with a series of attacks.
The security coordination is an inseparable part of the Oslo agreement signed by Israel and the PLO in 1993. Although the PA has violated numerous clauses of the agreement, so far it is refraining from violating this particular clause.
Fatah sources claim that the large-scale exercise conducted by the IDF in Judea and Samaria a few days before the PLO Central Committee met in Ramallah was meant to signal to the Palestinians that Israel will not hesitate to reconquer all of the West Bank if it needs to do so.
An escalation of the conflict between Israel and the PA has been deferred for now. Nevertheless, the Palestinians have not withdrawn their application to join the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

Hamas offers long-term calm in exchange for end of blockade

Hamas recently sent a series of messages to Israel indicating interest in a long-term ceasefire lasting for several years, in exchange for an end to the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip, sources told The Times of Israel.
Senior Hamas officials met with Western diplomats about the ceasefire, and also reached a number of understandings about the character of the ceasefire, also known as a tahdiyya.
During the talks, Hamas officials emphasized that they were willing to agree on a ceasefire of at least five years (though some sources said the offer was for 15 years), during which time all military activities “above and below ground” from both parties would end. At the same time, the blockade on Gaza would be removed, including restrictions on exports, and Israel would allow the construction of a seaport and an airport.
The Western diplomats included Swiss Consul Paul Garnier, who has become the key figure in maintaining contacts with Hamas.
Garnier visited Gaza a month ago, and met with several Hamas leaders, including Moussa Abu Marzouk, Bassem Naim, Ghazi Hamid, and others.
Garnier presented these conditions to senior EU officials who are in touch with Israeli leaders.

The inevitable Hamas retraction
Hamas denies it offered Israel a temporary ceasefire

Human rights leader pushes antisemitic conspiracy theory

An evil Zionist rabbi, intent to bend the world to his will, secretly manipulates a demented Holocaust survivor to unwillingly make public statements in favor of Israel for his own nefarious purposes.

The plot of a bad neo-Nazi comic book?

No, the reality that exists in the mind of former B'Tselem head Jessica Montell:

Commenting on Rogel Alpher's absurd Haaretz piece, instead of pointing out how idiotic it was, she took it seriously and tweeted in response::

Isn't it interesting that a person who tries to present herself to the world as a paragon of morality is so willing to use social media to push what sounds a great deal like a traditional antisemitic conspiracy theory?

I would love to know where she "heard" this from. It would be instructive to know who her friends are.

Look at that hair!

This may not be the most offensive Haaretz column ever written, but it very possibly is the most idiotic.

From Rogel Alpher in Haaretz:

I saw you during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech in Congress, Elie Wiesel. You were there, in the gallery, next to Sara Netanyahu. Your appearance was impressive and powerful, leaving its mark on everyone who saw it.

...Your thin, elderly body hardly filled the suit you wore for the occasion. It is obvious you are accustomed to such suits. They are your natural clothing. Their touch is familiar to your skin. You looked like you were completely in your element when Netanyahu pointed you out – the most famous Holocaust survivor today, a Nobel laureate, an admired author – to illustrate his commitment to stopping the fulfillment of the Iranian threat to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. Never again, and all that Holocaust jazz. You stood and thanked all the members of Congress, who gave you a standing ovation. You sat down, but they would not stop.

There is an intolerable ease in the applause you receive. It is automatic. Applauding you is the easiest, safest thing to do. And how they applauded. You sat down and stood up, modestly, to receive their overflowing esteem. You gave Netanyahu your symbolic and moral support. It is obvious you are well aware of who you are. You are Elie Wiesel. You are 86 years old. And for you, I count for nothing.

What were you doing there, Elie Wiesel? Netanyahu is my prime minister. You are not an Israeli citizen. You do not live here. The Iranian threat to destroy Israel does not apply to you. You are a Jew who lives in America. This is not your problem. By what right did you stand there, using your reputation and your prestige, to try and influence the members of Congress to accept Netanyahu’s position on an issue that has nothing to do with you?

If Israel’s future is so important to you, if the fate of Jerusalem matters so much to you, why do you not live here? Do you think that you and I have some shared fate because we are both Jews? Think again. Everything that happens to me here in Israel does not happen to you there in New York. Where do you get the right to interfere in my affairs? You have some nerve.

Rogel Alpher has created a new moral rule for the world.

Genocide in Darfur? Beheadings by ISIS? Girls kidnapped by Boko Haram? Don't speak out about it, unless you live in Nigeria or Iraq or the Sudan. Otherwise, you are a hypocritical blowhard.

Sorry, Peter Beinart. In Alpher's world, you have no right to write a column for Haaretz anymore, you damned American.

In Alpher's world, Wiesel has no right to speak out in support of Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, Argentina's Desaparecidos, Cambodian refugees, and Kurds. That's almost as heinous a crime as Wiesel's speaking out in defense of Israel Jews!

What chutzpah for a person who survived the genocide of six million Jews to speak out against the potential genocide of six million more Jews! What a hypocrite!

The ironic thing is that Alpher has said that he is so sick of Israel that he will move out - but meanwhile, his opinion of the people he is abandoning is far more important than that of those who identify with and care about them.

Hilariously, the longest paragraph in Alpher's nonsensical piece is about Elie Wiesel's hair. I kid you not.

It is impossible to ignore your white hair, visible from afar, parted by a deep gulf on the slope of your high forehead and dividing into airy stalks of a fluttering, almost youthful, forelock with something Parisian about it. The professorial hairdo of an esteemed intellectual, the kind that characterizes a creative, instinctive and turbulent sort of person. You carry it with open self-awareness, a bit like a preening peacock, a hallmark of the icon you have become. It flew over your elongated head, your beneficent and wise eyes. The feeling was that your very hair carried something of the victory of the human spirit. That is how the hair of a distinguished humanist looks.

This photo of Alpher may explain his obsession with the hair of an 86-year old man.

This is the sort of serious thought that is esteemed by Haaretz and its shrinking readership.

Hamas video threatens Jewish civilians

Hamas released a new video yesterday, with the title "You will have no security, even in your dreams."

It shows a stereotypical haredi Jew who has a nightmare about being run over by a Hamas terrorist and wakes up, terrified.

Hamas' Felesteen site adds that "According to Israeli reports, hundreds of soldiers and settlers needed 'psychological help' after the recent aggression on the Gaza Strip, due to stress and anxiety." It claims, improbably, that the video is aimed only at the "settlers" who live near Gaza.

Hamas is freely admitting to threatening and targeting Jews.

Nah, nothing antisemitic about that.

EU praises Israel, slams PA and Arabs on Gaza reconstruction

This was unexpected:

The five largest European Union members - Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Spain - protested to the Palestinian Authority last week that it was not doing enough to rebuild the Gaza Strip, according to European diplomats and senior Israeli Foreign Ministry officials.

Envoys from the five nations met last Thursday with Alon Ushpiz, a senior diplomat in the Foreign Ministry, for talks focused mainly on the situation in Gaza. During the meeting, which took place at the Foreign Ministry office in Jerusalem, the European representatives surprisingly praised Israel's actions over the past few months to promote reconstruction in Gaza and ease the humanitarian crisis in the Strip.

The Europeans complimented Israel's cooperation with the reconstruction apparatus that the United Nations is operating, Israel's doubling of the water supply to Gaza and the ease on export restrictions from the Gaza Strip to Israel, the West Bank and abroad. The European representatives also requested to increase the scale and pace of transferring goods from Israel to the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Gaza.

The diplomats mentioned they had also met with the PA leadership in Ramallah, the Egyptian leadership in Cairo and a number of Arab governments.

According to a senior official in the Foreign Ministry, the European diplomats remarked the consuls general of their nations held a meeting with senior PA officials several days earlier, in which they conveyed a sharp protest to the PA leadership over the lack of sufficient cooperation in everything regarding reconstruction in Gaza.

A European diplomat familiar with the details of the meetings confirmed that such protest was conveyed. He spoke on condition of anonymity. "They conveyed an unequivocal message that the PA can do more to promote reconstruction in the Strip, and that continued internal political squabbling between Fatah and Hamas are adversely affecting the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the pace and scope of reconstruction," the European diplomat said.

The European diplomat said that in a meeting between representatives of the five EU states and senior officials from the Egyptian foreign ministry in Cairo, the Europeans expressed concern that Egypt is not assisting the reconstruction process in Gaza and is continuing to close the Rafah crossing for extended periods of time.

"They told the Egyptians that we need their cooperation to help bridge the gaps between Fatah and Hamas, and that they are delaying the reconstruction process," the EU diplomat said. At the same time, it is hard to see the Egyptians responding positively in light of the fact that just last week the state court ruled that Hamas is a terrorist organization.

Likewise, diplomats from the five EU powers held talks with a number of Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar, to complain that those countries have yet to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars pledged for Gaza reconstruction, further delaying resolution to the crisis.

"There is positive movement on the Israeli side in everything regarding Gaza," the EU diplomat said. "While you always need more, the Israelis are removing hurdles and assisting reconstruction. At the same time, reconstruction is still stuck because of the internal fights on the Palestinian side, Egyptian behavior and failure to deliver funds pledged by the Arab states. We fear that if nothing will move on Gaza reconstruction, we will find ourselves facing another round of violence in Gaza."

it is 100% accurate, but still unexpected.

Today's Jewish/Zionist conspiracies in the Arab press

Egypt's Masr-Alyoum says that French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy is behind all of the "Arab Spring" revolutions which he staged as a precursor to Israel taking over the Middle East from the Nile to the Euphrates. Apparently, the purpose of the revolutions is to break up Arab states so they will be weaker and easier for Israel to dominate.

Iraq Akhbar gives 20 proofs that Israel and Iran are the best of friends and cooperating against Arab nations. For example, they quote Yediot as saying that Israel has some $30 billion invested in Iran. And Iranian Jews are closely tied to the Iranian chief rabbi who is very close to the rulers. And American and Canadian Iranian Jews are the heads of major energy and banking firms as well as prominent politicians. And Iran is more holy to Jews than Israel because Queen Esther's tomb is there.

Al Watan Voice, on the other hand, says that Iran's enemy ISIS is inspired by Jewish scripture when they destroy Muslim shrines. Even beheadings are from the Torah, we are told. And Israel is the one nation that benefits from ISIS crimes.

Kuwaiti intellectual Fajer Al-Saeed is pleased that a tweet of hers from last year, where she said "ISIS burns 1,800-year-old church in Mosul. Islam is innocent of ISIS, Those are the actions of the Jews" has caused Jews to call her antisemitic.

The Wikipedia page about Elder of Ziyon has been suggested for "speedy deletion," a special category that bypasses normal discussion. The reason is that someone named "Gouncbeatduke" wrote that "It is an anonymous blog, Wikipedia has no other anonymous blogs with articles. It is anonymous because it is full of illegal Hate speech, Anti-Arabism, and Islamophobia. It is a very bad first choice for an anonymous blog to include in Wikipedia, Wikipedia is promoting illegal Hate speech with this article."

Apparently the page has been vandalized by anti-Israel Wiki editors for months.

The only part of the page left is a reference to a Mondoweiss article that attacked a single article of mine out of over 20,000, a critique which made a couple of valid points that I immediately addressed and I answered the other points.

(Of course, I have shown many times that Mondoweiss articles were filled with pro-terror nonsense and antisemitism, but no one is pointing out the irony of a lying hate site accusing me of inaccuracy.)

The official reason given for deleting the entry is that the article does not give any reasons why this blog is notable. However, this is after they deleted the parts of the entry that explained why it is notable!

Reputation

According to the The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles the blog "serves as a watchdog against anti-Zionism."^[8]

The American Zionist Movement has described Elder as "perhaps the most quoted blogger in the area of Middle East politics".^[9] The blog has a high rank on Technorati.^[10]

The blog has been widely cited by many news organizations, including James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal,^[11] Israel HaYom,^[12] the Washington Times,^[13] and Tablet Magazine.^[14]

The blog has been mentioned on CNN, Fox News, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Blog posts have been cross-published in Algemeiner Journal and Jewish Press.

In April 2013 the blog published a scoop revealing that writers for MIFTAH, a nonprofit founded in 1998 by Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi were repeating a centuries-old smear over the Passover holiday on their Arabic Web site, accusing Jews of using Christian blood to prepare the Passover matzoh,^[15] causing Algemeiner Journal to name the blog as one of its Jewish 100.^[16]

On September 13, 2013 The Jerusalem Report published the article Battle of the Bloggers, which called Elder of Ziyon "perhaps the most influential" pro-Israel blog.^[17]

The history page shows how desperate the haters are to discredit me.

Any Wikipedia editors who want to ensure that there is a modicum of respectability at that site are encouraged to do the right thing.

(h/t Reuven)

UPDATE: It is back to how it was, not sure how long that will last though.

PA using "Women's Day" to support terrorists

From Ma'an:

Marking International Women's Day, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society released a statement dedicated to 20 Palestinian women serving in Israel jails.

The statement highlighted Lina al-Jarbouni who has been in Israeli custody since 2002. Al-Jarbouni has played a major role defending the rights of Palestinian women in Israeli jails, acting as a representative in talks with the Israeli prison service, said the statement.

Al-Jarbouni was born in 1974 in the town of Arraba in Galilee, which Israel occupied in 1948. She finished high school but never had the chance to realize her dream of studying nursing when she was detained by Israeli forces on April 18, 2002. Originally sentenced to 17 years, the sentence was lowered to 15 after her lawyer appealed the court decision. She has been in Hasharon prison ever since.

Having served 13 years in Israeli custody, the statement added, she suffered from severe cholecystitis, but the Israeli prison service "neglected" her, and she had to wait a year before she could have choleycystectomy, according to the prisoner's society.

Her family had hoped she would be released in 2011 as part of the Shalit prisoner swap deal between Hamas and Israel.

From reading this article, you would have no idea that Lina al-Jarbouni did anything wrong at all. In fact, she has been a poster child for supposed Israeli crimes, as this poster shows:

Who is Lina Al Jarbouni really? Is she just a random Arab that Israel decided to jail for fun? Is she a "political prisoner"?

No, Jarbouni is a terrorist.

Al Jarbouni is an Israeli Arab who was a member of Islamic Jihad, where she helped senior members of the group carry out terror attacks against Israeli citizens. She provided Israeli identity cards for the other terrorists, rented an apartment for them, managed communications in planning an attack, gave covering fire to the murderers, and provided access to bank accounts.

But she's a sister! And a daughter! So by default, she must be pure, if you believe the propagandists.

Like Rasmea Odeh in the US, if you are a female terrorist who has been involved in killing Jews, you are a heroine to many people who pretend to be "peace activists."

If you support terrorists like Odeh and Jarbouni, you are not interested in peace.

03/08 Links: PA praises terrorists of the 60's; Obama’s Main Achievement: Iran in Iraq

From Ian:

PMW Palestinian terrorists of the 60s - Palestinian heroes of today

A man who attacked an Israeli plane in 1968 and a woman who placed a bomb in a movie theater in Jerusalem in 1967 are today's Palestinian heroes according to the Palestinian Authority and Fatah.
In 1968, PFLP terrorist Mahmoud Muhammad Issa Al-Naarani carried out an attack on an Israeli El-Al airplane at the airport in Athens with an accomplice. One passenger was killed and a stewardess seriously wounded. When terrorist Al-Naarani recently died, Fatah posted an obituary on its Facebook page, calling him a "hero":
Similarly, official PA TV recently honored Fatima Barnawi as "a role model and example and a pioneer of sacrifice." Barnawi placed a bomb in a movie theater in Jerusalem in 1967 that failed to explode. She was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released in 1977 after serving 10 years. In February, she was honored in Egypt. PA TV broadcast from the event, referring to Barnawi as "an honor to the world's female fighters" and "an honor for the [Palestinian] cause... a positive symbol of the Palestinian woman."

PA TV honors terrorist who attempted to place a bomb in a movie theater

Obama’s Main Achievement: Iran in Iraq

The president’s apologists may blame this on George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq in the first place as well as his kicking the can down the road on Iran’s nuclear program. There’s some truth to that but Bush left Obama a war that was already won by the 2007 U.S. surge. Bush may have laid the groundwork for the current mess. But its shape and the scale of the disaster is Obama’s responsibility.
Iranian influence among fellow Shiites in Iraq is nothing new. But the scale of the current effort and the open nature of the way Iran’s forces are now flexing their muscles — even in the Tikrit region where Sunnis dominate — demonstrates that the rise of ISIS was not the only negative consequence of President Obama’s decision to completely pull U.S. forces out of Iraq when negotiations about their staying got sticky. That enabled him to brag during the 2012 presidential campaign that he had “ended” the Iraq War (the same campaign where he pledged Iran would not be allowed to keep a nuclear program) but neither ISIS nor Iran got that memo. The war continues but the difference is that instead of an Iraq influenced by the U.S., it is now Iran that is the dominant force.
The same is true throughout the region. President Obama spent years dithering about the collapse of Syria even while demanding that Bashar Assad give up power and enunciating “red lines” about the use of chemical weapons. But while he stalled, moderate rebels withered, ISIS grew and Iran’s ally Assad stayed in Damascus, bucked up by Iranian help and troops supplied by Tehran’s Hezbollah auxiliaries.
So when the Saudis look at a potential deal that will allow Iran to keep its nuclear infrastructure and ultimately expire in ten years, they know that it is directly connected to America’s apparent decision to acquiesce to Iranian dominance in Iraq and elsewhere in the region.

'Netanyahu never agreed to '67 borders or dividing Jerusalem'

Dennis Ross, the man allegedly behind the "concessions document" published by Yedioth Ahronoth over the weekend, told Israel Hayom that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "never agreed to Israeli withdrawal to 1967 borders, dividing Jerusalem or the right of return."
The document, which the Likud party claims is part of an orchestrated campaign to topple the current leadership, purports to have been presented in August 2013 and appears to detail the framework for peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, suggesting a willingness by the Netanyahu-led government to make dramatic concessions.
According to Ross, the American diplomat who mediated the talks between Israeli negotiator Isaac Molho and Palestinian negotiator Hussein Agha, which included the document in question, "I always felt the best way to [negotiate] would be in a brainstorming set of discussions that could be informal. To that end, starting before I left the administration and continuing after I left, I worked with two long-time friends of mine, Isaac Molho and Hussein Agha, with the aim of coming up with a U.S. proposal for a framework. The idea was that both sides would agree to negotiate using the U.S. proposal, while making clear that they had reservations about provisions that ran counter to their positions."