Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, May 03, 2015

Newest intrafada watch: Salafists vs. Hamas

A Salafist group based in the Gaza Strip has accused Hamas of torturing its supporters in prison and closely watching other supporters in cities and refugee camps across the coastal enclave.

A statement issued on Saturday by the group, which identified itself as the Salafist Trend, warned Hamas of consequences if the group's supporters were not set free.

"Once again we ask the wise people of Gaza to stop the ongoing Hamas criminality and abusive detention of our brothers before it's too late," the statement said.

It added that the Salafist Trend "has details about what is going on inside the detention cells of the interior security service, including names of the criminal interrogators who torture and insult our people."

The statement went on to allege that security officers and undercover agents tasked with watching supporters and ransacking their homes are also known to the group by name.

"Those also won't escape punishment, sooner or later."

Firas Press reports that the reason that Jimmy Carter decided not to go to Gaza was because of threats on his life from extremist Salafist groups.

Last week, for the umpteenth time, Palestinian Arabs repeated the ludicrous claim that Jewish settlers are releasing wild pigs - from trucks - in order to destroy Arab crops.

It is difficult to raise wild boars, but all those hard years of effort are worth it when you release them that one time, hoping that they'll eat some Arab grain and terrorize some Arab kids!

In addition, Algerian newspaper Akhbar El Youm says that rabbis in Israel issued a ruling that Jews are allowed to raise wild pigs in order to be able to deliberately release them to damage Palestinian Arab crops.

They quote self-styled expert on Jewish affairs Dr. Saleh Naamy, who tweeted this "fact" without mentioning the name of the rabbis who supposedly made this ruling.

Naamy is a lecturer at the Islamic University of Gaza.

It turns out that Naamy made the same charge in an article published in Al Jazeera in 2009 - with an equal lack of sources.

Again showing how much that esteemed newspaper cares about facts.

I tweeted Dr. Naamy to ask who gave these rulings. His answer was
Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba, Rabbi Zalman Melamed, "Yitzchok Levanon" as well as "others."

I asked him for links to these "fatwas" but he didn't respond.

If any rabbis would have ever said anything close to this, of course, Haaretz and +972 would be mentioning it every day. Their standards are slightly better than Al Jazeera.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

05/03 Links: Body of missing Israeli found in Nepal; Netanyahu: ‘Not too late’ to thwart bad nuclear deal

From Ian:

Rescue team: Body of missing Israeli found in Nepal

The body of missing Israeli trekker Or Asraf was located in Nepal early Sunday morning, an Israeli relief team announced, over a week after he disappeared following a devastating earthquake.
Relatives, friends and rescuers had held out hope of finding Asraf alive — he was the last unaccounted-for Israeli in the country — but a statement from the ZAKA emergency organization said his body had been located on the Langtang ridge.
“We regret to report that during the morning hours the team located a body identified as Or Asraf’s. The complex rescue operation will likely take place tomorrow morning,” the group stated on its Twitter account.
The Foreign Ministry did not offer official confirmation that Asraf’s body had been found, but did not deny the report.

JPost Editorial: Iran’s chutzpah

Whenever we assume that Iran’s chutzpah can get no more egregious, Tehran’s powers-thatbe spare no effort to prove us wrong.
On the face of it, Iran can claim moral equivalence. But this is a counterfeit claim. Iran and like-minded allies – to say nothing of the powers now negotiating a deal with the ayatollah regime – all know that Israel is as prudent a democracy as exists anywhere. If Israel actually has the bomb, then it has had it for more than 50 years – almost as long as the original “Atomic Club” members. In all that time no wrongful use was made.
Iran is the diametrical opposite to Israel – a regime professing extreme Islamist doomsday theology whose bywords are volatility and unpredictability. There’s no evenhandedness between a self-defending democracy and an expansionist, apocalyptic tyranny.
Moreover, it is outrageous to ignore the variety of WMD deployed in the internecine Arab massacres but speciously concentrate on the Middle East’s one beleaguered democracy. The implication is that democratic Israel can be pressured while autocratic Iran will get away with flagrant obstructionism. The good-guy will be disarmed while fanatic aggressors are armed to the teeth.
The danger is that bona fide democracies seem willing to play along with Iran and misdirect the frustration it foments by spotlighting Israel.

Rowan Dean: Don't worry Israel our MPs are mates with Palestine too

Dear Mr Fooley (or may I call you Luke?)
Just got back from my Labor parliamentary excursion, dividing my time equally between Israel and the Palestinian territories, as you requested. What a trip! My feet hardly touched the ground!
Monday: Arrived at Lod Airport, after circling around to avoid being blasted out of the sky by IS, Hamas, Hezbollah, and a bunch of other peace-loving friends of the Palestinian People's Struggle to Wipe The Perfidious Jew Off The Face Off The Earth Praise Be To Allah. Grabbed some duty-frees and headed into downtown Tel Aviv. Looks just like Surfers Paradise meets Surry Hills. Cool hipsters and hot chicks everywhere. Grabbed a quick beer and a burger, bought some fab new apps and software and …
Oops! Time to go to Palestine. Drove into downtown Ramallah. Looks like Mogadishu meets the Mudgee tip. Litter everywhere. Armed guards and machine gun-wielding Mafiosi types wandering around everywhere, too. Try to grab a quick beer, but, er …
Oops! Gotta get back to Israel. Meet some scientists who invented the smartphone industry, or all the cool stuff like Viber and Waze. Plus they invented all this bionic stuff that helps paraplegics and things that stop crib deaths and things that cure …
Yikes! Gotta get back to Palestine. Meet a bunch of dudes who invented the grievance industry. They explain how Israel has been oppressing them for decades. I ask them in what way exactly and they explain, "by existing".Cripes! Back to Jerusalem. Beautiful old city. Visit the Wailing Wall, which is all that's left of the original 3000-year-old Jewish temple where the dudes in black hats go and nod. Anyone can go but you gotta be careful coz Arab kids like to chuck rocks at you when you're praying.

American political thought is narrow, like a thin blue line.

On one side of that line is the Right and on the other the Left. On one side of that line are Republicans and on the other Democrats.

The Right and the Left in the United States each like to think that they are morally superior to the other.

Republicans and the Right tend to think of Democrats and the Left as weak and stupid and immoral.

Democrats and the Left tend to think of Republicans and the Right as brutish and stupid and immoral.

But both consider the other to be as a dumb as a bag of hammers.

The truth of the matter is that American political thought is largely defined by the preamble to the Constitution of the United States, which reads as follows:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It is the greater good versus individual liberty.

This is what outlines American political conflict.

I would argue that the ongoing slog of American political history is wrapped around this notion of promoting the "general welfare" in tension with the effort to secure the "blessings of liberty."

The inclination on the Left is toward the general welfare or social good. The American Left wants to see those who are held down, lifted up. In the tradition that goes from nineteenth-century abolitionism and progressivism to the New Deal and the Civil Rights Movement to the New Left, what drives the American Left is standing for the underdog and they thereby see themselves as standing within a noble political tradition ongoing into the future, the very political tradition that freed the slaves.

The inclination on the Right is toward individual liberty. The American Right wants to see those who are held down, lifted up. In the tradition that goes from Edmund Burke and European Enlightenment notions of democracy to the anti-slavery movement and the rise of regulatory capitalism and, thus, the American middle class, what drives the American Right is standing for the individual, and her family, and they thereby see themselves as standing within a noble political tradition ongoing into the future, the very political tradition that freed the slaves.

Democrats and the Left tend to be more about the general welfare, while Republicans and the Right tend to be more about the blessings of liberty, but it is not quite so simple due to the fact that libertarians are the joker in the deck.

Democrats and Leftists tend to be social libertarians. That is, they believe that the government should stay the hell out of their bedroom... and that goes double for Gay people.

Republicans and Rightists tend to be economic libertarians. That is, they believe that the government should stay the hell out of their bank statements... and that goes double for the IRS.

But, in a nutshell, that is basically it. The United States has a very narrow political outlook and both sides of that outlook are liberal. American conservatives and American Republicans and American leftists and American Democrats are all liberal. Henry Kissinger famously said, and I paraphrase, that university-academic politics are so nasty because the stakes are so small. What I would suggest is that American politics, in general, are so nasty because the ideological differences between us are so small.

The United States is not Europe and it sure as hell is not the Middle East.

In Europe they have significant political differences. There is communism on the Left and fascism on the Right. There is hard-line left-wing socialism and there is hard-line right-wing conservatism, although most people are somewhere in-between. In the United States almost everyone is in-between.

We are all liberals. From Ronald Reagan to Eleanor Roosevelt, we are all liberals.

Black-White, Left-Right, This-That, we are all liberals.

The word "free" is popular on both sides of the aisle. We believe in a free press and freedom of speech. We believe in freedom of religion. We believe in the free exchange of goods and ideas.

Left-Right, This-That, we believe in the freedom of the individual to pursue his or her individual life, liberty, and happiness so long as the individual remains within the law.

And this leads me to Baltimore.

Any political party or political movement or political individual that sides with rioters against the cops is making a very big mistake because there is nothing the least little bit liberal about Molotov cocktails and violence in the streets.

Those kids from Baltimore and the local neighborhoods may have had a pretty fun time for a couple of nights, but the adults need to take charge because Lord of the Flies does not for a democracy make.

From an electoral perspective most Americans are going to stand with the cops.

Standing up for the violent children in Baltimore is like standing up for the Occupy Whatever Movement from 2011 or promoting Cindy Sheehan for Vice President or paying San Francisco State University instructors to promote terrorism.

It is pure stupidity.

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.

Swedish police criticized for including Palestinian flag on list of terrorist symbols

In light of several Swedish teenagers becoming radicalized and traveling to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS, Swedish police recently distributed a list of terrorist logos to high school principals so they could be on the lookout for early signs of potential trouble among their student populations.

A controversy has erupted because one of the terror logos listed, that of the Abu Nidal Organization, uses the PLO flag as its logo.

Jonas Hysing, director of the National Tactical Council that shared the list with the schools, noted that it was not uncommon for terror organizations to use symbols that have been used in other ways, for example ISIS using Mohammed's creed.

Green Party member Niclas Persson is the mayor of Orebro, one of the towns that distributed the list to school principals. He said "It is important that this is accurate. The material is of course designed to warn us if an organization's symbol is being used. The biggest problem is linking the Palestinian freedom struggle with terrorism. It's very unfortunate."

Jonas Hysing said "It is possible that we add some text that the symbols are often used in multiple ways. But the symbol is used by a designated terrorist organization, and it is up to the Swedish police to inform their employees about it."

The list of logos came from the US National Counterterrorism Center. However, their list of logos are not comprehensive - they list 52 terror groups and only 40 logos.

Among all the hand-wringing over how unfortunate it is that the PLO flag is listed under Abu Nidal Organization, no one in Sweden seems to upset that two flags over is the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which Mahmoud Abbas apparently has no problem with even though they are part of the Fatah party that he heads. He claimed that it was dismantled years ago, but they are still alive and kicking and publicly walking around the West Bank with masks and weapons.

And the PLO flag, as well.

Palestinian Arabs don't blink when their flag is associated with terror groups. Which means that the inclusion of the Palestinian flag in a list of symbols for teachers and law enforcement to look out for as an indication of potential terror activity is quite appropriate, despite the politically correct crowd.

After all, when you see a PLO flag in Europe, 90% of the time it is meant to call for the destruction of Israel, not for any "pro-Palestinian" reason.

Jimmy Carter praises Hamas leader as peacemaker [poster]

From Times of Israel:

Former US president Jimmy Carter called Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal a strong proponent of the peace process Saturday, and said he wasn’t meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because it would be “a waste of time.”

Ah, Jimmy. Is there any Israel-hating terrorist you don't love?

Meshal quote from MEMRI.

Work accidents! Candy time!

From Ma'an:

Hamas' military wing Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades said that one of their fighters died in a tunnel collapse on Saturday in the northern Gaza Strip.

In a statement the Brigades identified the fighter as Nihad Awad Khleif, 30, from Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip.

And:

The Islamic Jihad on Saturday announced the death of a gunman from the group's military wing in the northern Gaza Strip.

The group said in a statement that Nasim Khalil Naim was killed during a "Jihadist mission," without giving further details.

Hand out the candy!

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.