Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, May 02, 2015

05/02 Links: Family of missing Israeli: ‘Don’t give up on Or’; Dershowitz wants Israeli citizenship

From Ian:

‘Don’t give up on Or,’ pleads family of Israeli missing in Nepal

Family and friends of the last Israeli missing in Nepal insisted they still hoped to find him alive Saturday, a week after a deadly quake hit the Himalayas, and they urged the public not to give up on him either.
“Rescue teams told us about instances in which they rescued people healthy and whole, even after a month,” Or Asraf’s friends told the Walla news site, as hopes of rescuing more survivors from last week’s earthquake dwindled.
“We’re not giving up and we’re asking everyone — from the teams on the ground to the people at home — not to lose hope and not give up on Asraf.”
Nepal’s government on Saturday ruled out the possibility of finding more survivors buried in the rubble from last weekend’s massive earthquake as it announced the death toll had risen to 6,841. Over 14,000 were injured.

IDF Rescue Dog Searches for Victims in Kathmandu Rubble

A GoPro camera strapped onto an Israeli Army dog revealed first hand the search for survivors of Saturday’s deadly earthquake in Nepal.
In a 30-second clip, posted by the IDF on Facebook, the canine is shown walking across rubble in Kathmandu and through evacuated buildings looking for survivors. The dog sprints past demolished homes and still standing structures where walls are torn apart and personal belongings are scattered across the floor.
The short video provides a glimpse into the extent of the damage wrought by the natural disaster that killed more than 6,000 people, while thousands of others are still unaccounted for.
Aside from searching for survivors, the Israeli Army is also helping to treat wounded Nepalis. Three days after the earthquake, a 260-member IDF delegation, including 127 medical personnel, arrived in Nepal and set up a field hospital to help the injured. The hospital has provided medical care to 246 people since opening on Wednesday morning and doctors have already performed some 15 life-saving surgeries, The Times of Israel reported.

Israel Army Rescue Dog searches for Nepal earthquake survivors

Slain Jerusalemite’s Father: Israel is at War, But We’re in Denial About it

Rabbi Uri Sharki, whose son was run over and killed in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem last month, said “Because we are in the midst of a struggle, we should assume that the [incident] was a terrorist attack until proven otherwise.”
It took five days for the attack that killed Shalom Yochai Sharki to be recognized as a terrorist attack because police had to prove it was not simply a traffic accident.
Sharki sees this hesitation as part of a larger issue that has overtaken Israeli society. He said that he understands that from the perspective of “professional ethnics,” the police have to remain cautious about giving definite answers, “and I also do not want to condemn an innocent man. But the question is, what is the underlying assumption?”
Sharki explained that, for police, an incident is not a terrorist attack unless it is proven to be so afterwards.
“But, it is also possible to operate in the opposite manner: for the starting point to be that this is a terrorist attack, until it is proven otherwise,” said Sharki.

05/01 Links Pt2: Lumish: Progressive-Left Jews and the European Union; Defeating European hypocrisy

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Britain’s nightmare post-election scenario

It never occurs to them that the tsunami of anti-Israel bigotry which has swamped Britain these past 15 years and more has legitimized ever-more brazen expressions of Jew-hatred. On the contrary, people in Britain tend to think that anti-Jew stuff has nothing to do with anti-Israel stuff. Since so many Jews are hostile to Israel or Zionism, they chorus, this can’t possibly be anti-Jew, can it? I suspect that Ed Miliband himself makes precisely this distinction. For the Labor leader, who is himself a Jew, is in effect deeply anti-Israel.
Not that he would characterize his position in this way. Indeed, in this week’s Jewish Chronicle he claims once again to be “a strong friend of Israel.”
This even though he damned Israel’s Gaza war last summer as “wrong and unjustifiable.” Since that war was driven entirely by the need to halt the thousands of attacks intended to murder as many Israelis as possible, Miliband was effectively damning Israel for defending itself.
If this is a “strong friend,” you can’t help wonder what an enemy would do. Miliband says he is committed to providing security for Israel. But how can this possibly square with vilifying it for defending itself? Miliband’s position draws upon the systematic lies and distortions deployed in the campaign of delegitimization intended to bring about the end of Israel. In the Gaza war, for example, Israel’s military strikes achieved a far lower ratio of civilian casualties than any other armed force has ever achieved. Yet in the demonology of the Left, Israelis have been vilified as willful child-killers. It is this monstrous libel to which Miliband effectively subscribes.

Michael Lumish: Progressive-Left Jews and the European Union

The universities throughout Europe and the United States have clearly turned against the Jewish State of Israel as they host their annual “Israel Apartheid Week” celebratory hate-fests. Yale University, in fact, recently cancelled the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA) under exceedingly suspicious circumstances. The University of Pennsylvania hosted a BDS conference last year.
But for whatever reason – reasons which I assume have as much to do with my exceedingly limited powers of persuasion, as much as anything else – I rarely can convince my left-leaning, pro-Israel Jewish friends that it is the left, itself, which has emerged as the greatest threat to the Jewish people in the west today, despite the fact that I, myself, come out of the progressive-left.
The prominent, if not hegemonic, conception of Israel within western-left organizations and venues is the notion that Israel is a racist, imperialist, colonialist, militaristic, apartheid, racist regime. That highly negative and toxic broad-brush represents the (often unspoken) ideological background against which Israel is viewed. The automatic assumption of Jewish guilt and wrong-doing is almost always brought to the conversation as a matter of course.

Andrew Goldman: A civil-rights veteran slams the anti-Israel ‘Jim Crow’ smear

As I know firsthand, all these outrages were committed by white Americans against black Americans in the old South.
As a lawyer for the Council of Federated Organizations, an umbrella group that brought a wide array of civil-rights groups together, I was in there on the ground during the famous “Freedom Summer” of 1964.
We civil-rights workers triumphed when the landmark Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. As we strove to achieve that goal, we never questioned the right of whites to live in the area, unlike the Palestinian leaders who assert that Jews are an alien presence.
We never threatened to drive the whites of the South into the Mississippi Delta, in marked contrast to the bloodthirsty Arab war cry of “driving the Jews” into the Mediterranean Sea.
We didn’t have the support of entire nations who send money and arms to Palestinians and back terrorist attacks, as Arabs in the territories do today.
For that reason, I can no longer be a bystander as the noble legacy of the civil-rights movement is hijacked by a campaign whose goal is the destruction of Israel.
Whatever Israel’s faults, it offers full equality before the law. A visitor will see Arabs and Jews sitting in the same cafes, studying at the same universities and voting in the same elections. That isn’t the Jim Crow South I remember.

From Golden Gate Express:

Kasim Hafeez, a self-proclaimed Muslim Zionist, spoke at the Rosa Park conference center April 16, after being asked to tell his story of transformation by an Israeli awareness group on campus.

Hafeez has spent the last two years speaking as an advocate for Israel. Born and raised in Nottingham, U.K., Hafeez said he was exposed to graphic images that were used to manipulate his community to hate Israel and remembers hearing his father speak of Hitler as a hero.

As a college student, Hafeez said he became more radical and passed out anti-Semitic pamphlets. He said growing up he used to hate Jewish people but now wants to stop hatred altogether.

His transition began after reading a book, “The Case for Israel” by Alan Dershowitz, a retired Harvard law professor. At first, Hafeez said he thought the book was full of lies.

“I believed that my beliefs were 100 percent correct,” Hafeez said. “So I thought, ‘If I buy this book I can just show that what they’re putting out is propaganda, so false and weak and that just reaffirms my own commitment to my own beliefs.”

Kasim Hafeez was invited to speak on campus by SF State Senior Kailee Jordan on behalf of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America and I-Team, a student group who promotes other students to learn more about Israeli culture and history. I-Team is a coalition with SF Hillel, a Jewish student organization who reserved the conference room for Hafeez to speak, according to Jordan.

“I can’t disagree or agree with what (Hafeez) said,” Jordan said. “But I can take it and use it to make my own perspective.”

Kasim said in trying to disprove what he read, he challenged his own beliefs and shifted his views on Zionism. He said he retells his story to inspire others to challenge themselves to research and find their own truth.

After reading various authors, researching for two years and visiting Israel for himself, Hafeez said he concluded that the hatred he felt for the Israeli people was wrong. Meeting people from Israel, experiencing the culture and talking to the people firsthand helped shift his view, he said.

Hafeez said after his trip, he felt a moral obligation to stand up for Israel and share his story.

“For me as a Muslim, I just want to show that what you see in the media isn’t what Islam is,” Hafeez said. “I’m not saying I’m representative of 1.2 billion Muslims, but there are faces within Islam. We need to fight hatred across the board, hatred is poisonous.”

Hafeez said he is still a practicing Muslim and that challenging his beliefs brought him closer to Islam. He said there is some backlash from him retelling his story; his family has disowned him and he has received death threats. Hafeez said the threats do not mean much to him now, although at first he was frightened, he said

.This part is interesting:

Hafeez said there is no official definition of Zionism, but to him a Zionist is somebody that believes in the Jewish people’s right to a homeland.

SF State senior Khidr Subhani, president of the Muslim Student Association, was not in attendance to hear Hafeez speak but said he had a different understanding of the term Zionist. Subhani said he considers a Zionist to be someone who supports the oppression and the subjection of the Palestinian people by the Israeli government.

“I feel like that terminology comes from a personal definition of what those words mean,” Subhani said, “And that includes what Muslim means, and that includes what Zionism means. My understanding of Zionism may be much different than someone else’s, so it’s important to define these terms.”

So if someone says that Islam means the intent to subjugate of the entire world under a death cult, is that definition as valid as Subhani's?

Latest people to "storm al Aqsa" - secular university students!

QPress has another shocking video of secular Jewish university students "storming the al-Aqsa mosque":

A group of Jewish university students and dozens of settlers on Wednesday morning (29/4) stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the Mughrabi Gate under heavy guard of occupation and units of a rapid intervention police force. They toured the mosque, during which they listened to the explanations about the history and features of the alleged Temple and its future site according to their claim.

They aren't thrilled with the thousands of non-Jewish tourists who visit, but they have a special hate for Jews.

05/01 Links Pt1: Glick: The Marshall Islands’ cautionary tale; The Appalling Mr. Zarif

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The Marshall Islands’ cautionary tale

Obama claims that he wishes to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But as we see from his willingness to allow Iran to become a nuclear threshold state while running wild in the Straits of Hormuz, committing mass slaughter in Syria, building an empire that includes Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and threatening its Arab neighbors and Israel, the purpose of the administration’s negotiations with Iran is not to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
The purpose of the negotiations is to build an American-Iranian alliance on Iran’s terms.
So, too, Obama says his goal is to advance the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
But his pressure and hostility toward Israel does nothing to achieve this goal. The goal of a policy of acting with hostility toward Israel is not to promote peace. It is to distance the US from Israel and align America’s Israel policy with Europe’s preternaturally hostile treatment of the Jewish state.
Three days after a ship sailing under their flag was seized by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, citizens of the Marshall Islands discovered that their decision to place their security in America’s hands is no longer the safe bet they thought it was 29 years ago.
Anyone who entertains the belief that Israel will gain diplomatic acceptance or even a respite from American pressure if it makes concessions to the Palestinians is similarly making a high risk gamble.

Sarah Honig: Thanks, but ‘no,’ Joe!

So it’s thanks but ‘no,’ Joe.
We Israelis are capable as no other to take care of ourselves. However, we’re often wary of using the force at our disposal. We’re deterred by our role as the universal killjoy who provokes international displeasure. When the world courted Saddam, we destroyed his nuclear reactor and were roundly condemned for our good deed. Invariably the world seeks to restrain us and rescue the villains – like Tehran’s ayatollahs at the present time.
Superpowers who want to preempt a nuclear Iran or to resolve the Palestinian conflict, need only abstain from appeasing genocidal enemies who bay for our blood – not send troops.
Biden himself could benefit from recalling Begin’s unfazed response to his senatorial temper tantrum of 33 years ago:
“Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”

IDF hospital in Nepal treats over 200, search resumes for Or Asraf

The Israeli field hospital in Nepal has treated over 200 patients since opening its doors Wednesday morning, with medical staff performing several complicated surgeries on wounded victims of Saturday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake and doctors delivering three babies so far.
According to a statement released by the Foreign Ministry, 246 people were received at the IDF field hospital where doctors performed some 15 life-saving surgeries. Israeli medical staff were also assisting in local Nepalese hospitals, primarily in surgical departments, the ministry said.
Over 250 doctors and rescue personnel were part of an IDF delegation that arrived Tuesday in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, in the wake of Saturday’s earthquake that devastated large swaths of the mountainous country.
The Israeli group — the second largest in manpower of any international aid team after India — set up the field hospital with 60 beds, including an obstetrics department, and was operating in coordination with the local army hospital.
In Israel on Friday, 150 Nepalese agriculture students at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee held a ceremony to commemorate their countrymen and women who died in the earthquake, Israel Radio reported. The ceremony was attended by the Nepalese ambassador to Israel and college staff. Several of the students have not yet been able to make contact with their families in Nepal since the natural disaster hit, according to the report.

Vice President Joe Biden spoke at the Washington Institute last night, where he strongly defended the White House's negotiating posture with Iran.

The tone of the speech was markedly different from previous communications from the administration. In the past, even when signing the Iran Sanctions Act, the White House has said things like "Iran can prove that its intentions are peaceful."

In this speech, Biden sais about as explicitly as can be that Iran's intentions are to build a nuclear weapon.

Iran, Biden argued, “has already paved its path” to a bomb and could build up to eight nuclear warheads in two to three months.

There is a big difference between the Cold War-style "trust but verify" model of negotiations and one where one side assumes, ab initio, that the other side is deceptive and is actively seeking to do the opposite of what the agreement is meant to accomplish.

If we are saying that we don't trust Iran at all, then any agreement that doesn't include comprehensive inspections anywhere in Iran that a secret facility may be built is useless. And Iran has a track record of building secret nuclear facilities.

Iran's president has bragged that he broke previous nuclear agreements. Yet the current framework agreement still has gigantic loopholes on weaponization and verification.

Worse, the White House knew that Iran was that close to a nuclear weapon for a long time, but insisted publicly that it was over a year away. That piece of information changes everything as to how negotiations should be conducted.

But from what we can see, the US kept the "trust but verify" mentality when negotiating with a party that is known to lie and hide its nuclear weapons program.

Biden may have made a good speech, but he showed that we have been deceived by Washington as much as Washington has been deceived by Iran.

Egyptian cleric: Jews are a "malignant tumor" with a "dark history" who "must be eradicated"

More love from the religion of peace, from Egyptian cleric Saad Yusuf Abu Aziz in Al-Zawiya Al-Gharbiya Mosque in Ghamrin.

If past history is any guide, the visceral disgust and outraged reactions from peaceful Muslims in reaction to this naked hate and antisemitism should come, just about....never.

Gaza getting solar energy? Plus more Gaza news you won't read anywhere else

The Palestinian Authority Energy and Natural Resources Authority (PENRA) announced recently that it has gotten approval for a project to provide Gaza with 30 MW of power from solar energy.

The equipment is supposed to be in Gaza in the next three months, with 6 months to implement the project.

This would be a significant boost to Gaza's energy. The Gaza Power Plant has been providing about 60 megawatts and the israeli power lines another 120 MW and Egypt about 22 MW. Given that Gaza is not really the most crowded place on Earth, and in fact has lots of empty spaces not suitable for farming, this seems like a no-brainer.

In other Gaza news:

The number of trucks going through Kerem Shalom every day continues to increase. They have now been averaging 700-750 trucks approved (usually, about 100 or more don't show up after approval, because the Gaza buyers changed their minds.) (The linked Maan article implies that Israel closed the crossing during all of Passover, which isn't true - I believe it was only closed a single day from the holiday.)

Today, Israel is opening up the Kerem Shalom crossing - normally closed on Fridays - to pump more fuel into Gaza. There was a problem with the pipelines in Gaza that limited fuel to the power plant, causing blackouts, and that has now been fixed so this is meant to bring reserves back up.

According to Hamas' rival Fatah, Hamas started to impose a 5 shekel tax on every Gaza fisherman Thursday- and as a result no one went fishing.

(h/t Irene)

04/30 Links Pt2: Israel Does Not Owe Its Existence to the United Nations; Roger Waters, Bully

From Ian:

Israel Does Not Owe Its Existence to the United Nations

Contrary to what many believe, the UN 1947 partition plan did not set the legal groundwork for the creation of the state of Israel. Rather, Eugene Kontorovich explains, Israel was created “despite the UN.” Kontorovich also discusses the potential impact of future UN resolutions. (Interview by Yishai Fleisher; audio, 25 minutes).

UN announces “review” of bookstore after protest over books targeting Jews and Israel

The head of the United Nations European Headquarters in Geneva has initiated a review of its concession arrangement with the bookstore operating next to the Human Rights Council in response to allegations over book displays that deliberately target Jews and Israel.
The world body announced the action in response to a March 26th protest by UN Watch, a non-governmental human rights monitoring group in Geneva, over the bookstore’s display of a series of books such as “How I Stopped Being a Jew,” which accuses the Jewish religion of being “genocidal.” The controversy was reported in a major Israeli newspaper article.
“We welcome this prompt action by the United Nations, which is founded on the principles of equality and tolerance,” said UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer.
“At a time when Jews across Europe are being targeted by violent attacks and incitement, it is deeply distressing that the UN Headquarters in Europe would promote books on ‘how to stop being a Jew.’ It’s impossible to miss that no other books in the shop target or even criticize any other religious or ethnic group,” he added.

The Hallelu Foundation (with Hebrew subs)

Arabs suspicious that soccer star giving new son a "Jewish name"

What happens when you mix a culture that is crazy about soccer with one that is certifiably insane about Jews?

From Metro-UK:

It’s official: there will be another Messi arriving on the planet very soon.

Lionel Messi confirmed he will become a father for the second time after the Barcelona star uploaded a picture of his pregnant girlfriend, Antonella Roccuzzo, onto Instagram on Thursday to confirm the news.

In the photo, the 27-year-old’s son young Thiago was seen kissing Roccuzzo’s stomach alongside the words ‘Waiting for you baby! We love you’.

The news comes after rumours began spreading that Messi was expecting another child and, in particular, a second son following a report in Argentine outlet Clarin.

The publication claimed the boy will be called Benjamin and could be born at the end of the year.

Algeria's Echorouk sports site noticed immediately that Benjamin is also the name of the prime minister of Israel!

Its headline is "Messi chose a Jewish name for his new son."

In case you don't get the point, the story is illustrated with this photo of Messi visiting the Kotel a couple of years ago, right next to rabbi who looks particularly Jewy.

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

Alex, the son of anti-Zionist billionaire George Soros, is starting a Jewish political action committee:

Bend the Arc PAC will back progressive candidates by making direct contributions to their campaign committees. It will focus on issues such as income inequality, marriage equality, social justice and immigration reform.

Alex Soros explained that

There’s an opportunity to launch something that actually speaks to what the American Jewish community cares the most about and to show the narrative of what the real American Jewish experience is.

But what’s the point of creating yet another ‘progressive’ PAC? Why specifically target Jews when there is no specifically Jewish issue that it is concerned with? The answer lies in what it is not concerned with:

Hadar Susskind, who has previously worked for other Jewish organizations including J Street, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, will serve as director of Bend the Arc PAC…

“We don’t touch any foreign policy stuff,” he said. “One of the reasons behind doing this is that [the other Jewish groups] aren’t really representing the views of the American Jewish community…” [my emphasis]

Does that sound familiar? It’s J Street without Israel! This PAC will undoubtedly fund the very same candidates that the J Street PAC does. But J Street has been losing its appeal, as the Obama Administration’s anti-Israel policies have begun to make even some ‘progressive’ Jews uncomfortable.

Since Roosevelt’s presidency, American Jews have leaned left because of their concern about social issues, as exemplified by the civil rights movement. Reform Jews have even been criticized for acting as though Judaism was synonymous with liberal politics. Most, however, strongly supported Israel — and so did most Democratic politicians. With the advent of Obama, that is no longer the case, and liberal Jews are caught in the middle.

Soros has come along with a brilliant solution to their dilemma: be progressive, but don’t think about Israel.

Bend the Arc will be able to funnel Jewish contributions to the left-wing politicians that support and will continue the administration’s policies, including its anti-Israel ones. But because it won’t “touch any foreign policy stuff” none of those hard questions about Hamas and Iran need come up. Jewish progressives will be able to donate to it with the clearest of consciences, with warm and fuzzy feelings about gay marriage and immigrant rights, without any nagging doubts that perhaps they are betraying their people.

The traditionally liberal Jews who have been forced to choose between their progressive domestic agenda and their love for Israel will now have a home.

And it won’t be a lightning rod for criticism by Zionist Jews the way J Street was. Anyone who opposes Bend the Arc can be dismissed as a right-wing ideologue, or even a Republican.

Finally, it is a diversionary tactic. It will work to focus the Jewish community on domestic issues. The less any American, Jewish or otherwise, thinks about the radically anti-Israel and anti-American policies of the Obama wing of the Democratic Party, the better it will be for them.

I doubt that any of the Democratic presidential candidates — yes, I expect challenges to Hillary — will explicitly campaign on the foreign policy record of the Obama Administration (it’s too gruesome), but I do expect that at least one will embody the same philosophy of helping America’s enemies and hurting its friends.

And you can bet that that candidate will be the favorite of Bend the Arc.

04/30 Links Pt1: IDF field hospital in Nepal treats nearly 100, delivers baby, Treats 'Miracle' Survivor

From Ian:

On first day, IDF field hospital in Nepal treats nearly 100, delivers baby

Israel’s field hospital in earthquake-hit Nepal began operating Wednesday morning, with staff treating nearly 100 patients and delivering their first baby — a boy — on the first day, according to an IDF spokesperson
Among the patients were some 30 Israeli nationals. Most were suffering from dehydration and were soon released to their hotels.
Over 250 doctors and rescue personnel were part of an IDF delegation that landed Tuesday in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, in the wake of Saturday’s magnitude-7.8 earthquake that devastated large swaths of the mountainous country, killing at least 5,000 and leaving some 8,000 wounded and tens of thousands seeking shelter and food.
The Israeli group set up the field hospital with 60 beds, including an obstetrics department, and was operating in coordination with the local army hospital.

Ethiopian Doctor Who Lit Yom Ha’Atzmaut Torch Heads IDF Team in Nepal

Israel’s first Ethiopian doctor, who lit one of the traditional torches on Yom Ha’Atzmaut give years ago, is leading the IDF medical team in Nepal.
Dr. Avi Yitzchak made Aliyah in the early 1990s in the Operation Shlomo airlift and has become a symbol of success for the Ethiopian community.
He arrived in Nepal five days ago, when he said there was absolutely nothing in the realm of first aid, and decided where to set up a field hospital, which went into operation immediately.
“We began accepting patients from the Nepalese army hospital that was not able to function well, especially in the field of surgery,” said Yitzchak, who specialized in surgery when he studied medicine at Soroka Hospital at Ben Gurion University.
“We are receiving citizens of Nepal with medical problems that the Nepalese army hospital cannot treat beaus they accept only soldiers and their families,” Dr. Yitzchak said from Katmandu.
When not in the army, Dr. Yitzhak works as a surgeon at Soroka.

Israel doesn’t care what you think

To Whom It May Concern,
If I hear one more time on Facebook, Twitter, et al that Israel’s field hospital in Nepal is somehow connected to the conflict with the Palestinians, I’m going to permanently block the person saying so on the grounds that they’re stupid.
Here’s the thing: Israel is an entire country, with all the complicated impulses and competing agendas of any human society. It is perfectly capable of being involved in two completely different things at once, of being angelic in one arena and terrible in another, just like every other country. The IDF doesn’t go to Nepal to avoid the Palestinian issue. It goes because Israelis have honed emergency medicine into an art form, and because the IDF has never quite shed its founding culture of adventurousness, and, above all, because there are people out there who desperately need help.
Those who see in every good news from Israel “hasbara” (propaganda) are missing the single most important fact you can know about Israel — that it isn’t a political campaign begging for your vote. It is a nation. With two million schoolchildren, dozens of cities, its own cinema scene and a language spoken nowhere else in the world. It doesn’t go away if it loses some imaginary popularity contest. And as with any human society, it offers an endless stream of failures and successes that will let you “prove” any narrative you want. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Mahmoud Abbas is responsible for thousands of Syrian Palestinian deaths

The Action Group for Palestinians in Syria now count 2,771 Palestinians killed since the start of the Syrian civil war. 100 were killed in March alone.

Many of them could have been saved if it wasn't for the deep desire by Arabs to destroy Israel - and a conscious decision by "leader" Mahmoud Abbas.

In January 2013, Mahmoud Abbas bragged that he chose to let the Palestinians die rather than enter his territories.

Abbas told a group of Egyptian journalists in Cairo late Wednesday that Ban contacted Israel on his behalf.

Abbas said Ban was told Israel "agreed to the return of those refugees to Gaza and the West Bank, but on condition that each refugee ... sign a statement that he doesn't have the right of return (to Israel)."

"So we rejected that and said it's better they die in Syria than give up their right of return," Abbas told the group.

Abbas said this in Arabic, without any shame. Because his audience knows that the real purpose of the "right to return" is to destroy the Jewish state, and has nothing to do with "Palestinian rights."

Since the Yarmouk crisis escalated in recent weeks with ISIS taking over part of the camp, the Arab world and the media have shone a small spotlight on the area where so many Palestinian Arabs have been living. But they won't say anything about how Abbas had the chance to save them, and probably still can.

The Action Group for Palestinians in Syria is an offshoot of the Palestinian Return Centre. The major NGO dedicated to helping Palestinians subscrines to the same twisted, sickening philosophy that Mahmoud Abbas does - they only want to save them if they remain useful pawns to destroy Israel.

We have heard nothing negative about this outrageous statement by Mahmoud Abbas from Amnesty International, Oxfam or Human Rights Watch. In fact, those groups purposefully misinterpret international law to justify Abbas' contention that there is a legal "right to return" for Palestinians - and their own antipathy towards Israel ensure that they will not disagree with Abbas' perverted morality that it is better for Palestinians to die than to give up a "right" that is literally nonexistent and that was created for the sole purpose of destroying Israel. (UN resolution 194 deliberately does not call it a "right" and the UN itself interpreted the resolution far more narrowly than Israel haters do today.)

It is scandalous that Mahmoud Abbas has not been called out for his despicable words that sealed the death sentence for thousands. And the silence from "human rights" organizations speaks volumes about their real desire to save lives when their pet Palestinians literally and explicitly prefer to see their people die.

In December 2013, the European Court of Auditors released a report on their direct financial support to the Palestinian Authority.

Among the findings of the audit (which found billions of euros of support missing) was that thousands of PA workers were being paid to do nothing.

[T]he audit found indications that in Gaza a considerable number of civil servants were receiving salaries, partly funded by Pegase DFS, because they were eligible for support by virtue of being on the PA payroll but who were not going to work due to the political situation in Gaza (see paragraph 6). Out of 10 Gaza beneficiaries selected by the audit for interviews, three stated that they were not working, while one was absent. The audit also found that the State Audit and Administra-tive Control Bureau was obliged, in accordance with PA regulations, to pay salaries for its 90 staff members in Gaza, all of whom are unable to work. These findings are consistent with estimates based on data from interviews provided in a 2010 evaluation of Pegase contracted by the Commission which indicated that 22% and 24 % respectively of the staff employed by the PA Ministries of Health and Education in Gaza were not working at the time.

The EU is now making noises that the gravy train is over.

A European diplomat said the European Union informed the Palestinian Authority in a recent communication that Europe would not be able to continue financial support for the salaries of staff in the Gaza Strip while they aren't actually working. The diplomat, who preferred not to be named, told a local Arab newspaper that "it has become extremely difficult for the EU to continue to justify contributing to the payment of staff salaries in the Gaza Strip in the absence of a solution to this issue as these employees did not attend to their work since 2007".

The diplomat said, "The objective of direct financial assistance provided by the European Union to the Palestinian Authority is to enable them to provide basic services to citizens and enable them to continue their performance...In the absence of the ability to achieve this we have said to the Palestinian Authority that the European Union will not be able to provide open support to pay Palestinian Authority salaries to those who are not enrolled in their jobs."

"We can not defend to our parliaments the payment of salaries to employees who are not working."

The diplomat said that the return of thousands of employees in Gaza to their jobs in the education and health sectors could be done very quickly, especially in light of the urgent need in Gaza for employees in these fields. The solution to this issue must come quickly, he said.

Why did it take 16 months for the EU to even have this conversation with the PA?

It is interesting that even after the latest pretense of unity between Hamas and Fatah, the Fatah workers in Gaza are still not doing their jobs even in health and education. This shows yet again that Hamas cares far less about Gazans than it does about its own political desires.

Why doesn't anyone compare Baltimore to Hamas police? (update)

Now that police beatings are in the headlines again, it is fashionable for so-called progressives to equate the police with Israeli soldiers - as if Israeli police and soldiers are the quintessential example of police brutality.

From The Guardian:

David Simon, the creator of The Wire, has again weighed in on unrest in his adopted city of Baltimore, turning his frustration from the protesters to the “army of occupation” of the city’s police.

“They were collecting bodies, treating corner folk and citizens alike as an Israeli patrol would treat Gaza, or as the Afrikaners would have treated Soweto back in the day. They’re an army of occupation. And once it’s that, then everybody’s the enemy.

I will bet anything that the lowest private in the IDF in Gaza last summer would act with more restraint towards those trying to kill him than David Simon would. I would also bet that the same private knows more about international law and the laws of armed conflict in protecting civilians than David Simon does.

To use Israel as the standard of brutality is not only an obscene slander, but it shows how successful anti-Israel propaganda is, and how open and susceptible otherwise intelligent people are to being manipulated by the haters.

Even more absurd is that the standard for treating Gazan civilians like subhumans comes not from Israel - but from those Israel was fighting..

This AFP report from yesterday will get about 1/10th of one percent of the coverage that stories about Israel do:

Police in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip beat and arrested protesters on Wednesday at a youth rally in the north of the besieged coastal territory, an AFP correspondent said.

More than 400 demonstrators gathered in Shujaiyeh, a neighborhood in eastern Gaza City that was razed during a July-August war between Hamas and Israel, urging reconstruction and calling for an end to intra-Palestinian division.

This undated video shows how much restraint Hamas shows towards civilians in Gaza.

It is not easy to find videos like this on YouTube in English. And coverage of daily Hamas brutality is minuscule compared to the much exaggerated, out of context and often fictional stories of Israeli law enforcement brutality.

Meanwhile, videos showing Israeli police helping Arabs - videos that completely destroy the lazy assumptions that journalists and writers like Simon make - are even more rare: This is not a coincidence. Journalists are lazy in accepting the fiction of widespread Israeli brutality, and anything that shows that to be false is naturally going to be buried because it is too hard to explain the reality to readers compared to reporting-by-meme.

This video shows an army patrol reviving an Arab in Hebron whose heart stopped after he was electrocuted.

Clearly, these soldiers are frantically trying to save the life of someone that David Simon thinks they passionately loathe.

People like Simon are well meaning - and are literally clueless that they are being brainwashed every day by an army of anti-Israel activists and a complicit media that discards even the appearance of objectivity while willing to accept and repeat the narrative of hate without question.

But when David Simon writes his own analysis for the public, he has the same responsibility as any journalist to get his facts right. His being exposed to lies for decades is not an excuse to skip fact-checking.

The irony is that much of the audience for these lazy reporters want to know the truth, even if Simon doesn't. There is a reason that the most popular video I've ever uploaded, with 400,000 views, shows IDF soldiers acting kindly towards Arab children.

(h/t Alexi, Ian)

UPDATE: Simon changed the text in his original article from Gaza to the West Bank. I suppose I could link to more videos of Israeli patrols playing soccer with Palestinian youths, but clearly he stands by his account of how Israel treats Arabs like dirt, and that turns him from someone who one could assume was duped by the media into someone who is doing the duping.