Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 06, 2015

05/06 Links Pt1: Amb. Prosor: Radical Islamists are the new Nazis; Abbas is old, Hamas divided

From Ian:

Dore Gold: New “Breaking the Silence” Report Maliciously Defames Israel

The Jerusalem Center recently published an extensive study of Operation Protective Edge entitled The Gaza War 2014: The War Israel Did Not Want and the Disaster It Averted. The book includes a chapter by Lt. Col. (res.) David Benjamin, who served in the IDF Military Advocate General’s Corps (MAG) as Chief Legal Advisor for the Gaza Strip. That chapter, along with other research in the book, shows how the IDF goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties and to comply with international law. The IDF investigates any incident that may involve violation of those rules.
An IDF Fact Finding Assessment Mechanism (FFAM) was set up and activated during Operation Protective Edge. The FFAM, headed by a major-general and composed of operational and legal experts, mostly reservists, began its work about two weeks into the operation. To date, around 100 incidents have been referred by the MAG for examination by the FFAM.
The organization Breaking the Silence recently alleged that testimonies it collected from anonymous Israeli soldiers showed that the IDF employed indiscriminate fire in Gaza that resulted in many Palestinian civilian casualties and widespread destruction.
As in previous cases, Breaking the Silence refuses to provide the names of these witnesses or to make them available to IDF investigators who are charged with investigating all accusations of army wrong-doing. Other NGOs often provide details of their cases, usually from the Palestinian perspective, so that the IDF Military Advocate General’s Corps (MAG) can investigate such incidents.
It is clear that Breaking the Silence is less interested in uncovering the facts and instead seeks to defame the State of Israel.

Israeli Ambassador Prosor Compares Radical Islamists to Nazis on Anniversary of WWII Ending

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor on Tuesday compared Islamic extremists to Nazi forces in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.
“Freedom is once again under attack. The radical Islamists marching across the Middle East and North Africa are every bit as determined and dangerous as the Nazi forces that marched across Europe,” he said. “Seventy-five years ago men, women, and children were rounded up and murdered because of what they believed, where they came from, how they looked, and whom they loved.”
“The same crimes are taking place in the Middle East,” he added.
Prosor listed modern victims of such atrocities, including activists and political opponents, people hanged for their sexual preferences and Christians beheaded for their religious beliefs. He told the UNGA “evil is alive and well – and not just in the Middle East.” He urged the attendees to take action against the malice, saying, “Freedom is worth fighting for. Equality is worth fighting for. Democracy is worth fighting for.”

Prosor at UNGA: 70th Anniversary of the End of WWII

Former UK Cmdr.: UN, Foreign Governments ‘Deliberately’ Twisting Laws of Armed Conflict on Israel

Col. (ret.) Richard Kemp, former commander of the UK’s forces in Afghanistan, was one of the prominent participants at the conference.
Other international contributors included former IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Benny Gantz and former Deputy Chief of US Special Operations Command, Lt.-Gen. (ret.) David Fridovich, among other legal, military and counter-terrorism experts.
Kemp told the Tazpit News Agency that the United Nations, foreign governments and human rights organizations were “deliberately misunderstanding, and misrepresenting, international laws of armed conflict,” specifically referring to the law of proportionality.
“These organizations and governments are portraying Israel as breaking the laws of armed conflict, which according to my knowledge, they’re not,” Kemp contended.
Meanwhile, he continued, those very same bodies were not adequately holding Hamas responsible for their own clear violations, particularly regarding “human shields.”

Maariv has a very disturbing story about how Israel has abandoned the historic Mount of Olives cemetery, the largest and most important Jewish cemetery in the world.

Excerpts:

Isaac Gul died at the age of 89 on the Sabbath before Passover. Born in Afghanistan, "he loved his country" his nephew Yochanan said. "He joined the army, fought bravely during the Six Day War, lived alone, and before he died he had only one request: to be buried on the Mount of Olives."

Two weeks ago, when his nephew came to the Mount of Olives to fill the request of his uncle, he was attacked by a group of Arab rioters with stones and bottles. Windshields were smashed. Gul was miraculously saved. This week, when going to unveil the gravestone thirty days since the death, he was shocked at what he saw. "Everything was destroyed, and there is no gravestone," he said, weeping.

Following this short interview I went the next day on a tour of the Mount with the Jerusalem city council member, Aryeh King. Not to find something I didn't know. To see it with my own eyes. This tour is a must for anyone who wants to understand the incompetence of the State of Israel with the Arab enemy. Not in Iran. Here, at home.

A few hundred meters from the Western Wall, a stone's throw from the Knesset, the Supreme Court and in the middle of the pulsating capital of Israel, the State chose to give up.

Who wants to visit loved ones on the mountain cemetery while risking getting hurt by stones, Molotov cocktails or being lynched by students in local schools. Those who come in will see neglect, dirt, vandalism and countless pictures, each of which, had it occured in a Jewish cemetery in Europe, would be headline news.

Many families prefer, fearing for their safety, not to visit the graves of loved ones any more. A close friend told me about an elderly relative he had who owned a plot at the Mount, and with her death, the family decided to bury her elsewhere. "We had a great fear that whoever comes to visit the place would risk his life," he explained, "or simply nobody will visit the grave".

The cemetery on the Mount of Olives, unique in its essential purpose, is also a piece of history in Israel. According to estimates, more than one hundred thousand Jews are buried there, including rabbis, leaders and cultural figures, intellectuals and men of action. Rabbi Ovadia Bartenura and Rabbi Haim Ben Attar. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and his son Itamar Ben Avi. Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook and Rabbi Isaac Herzog. Yoel Moshe Salomon and the poet Zelda. Henrietta Szold and Zalman Aran. Menachem Begin, Agnon and Uri Zvi Greenberg. Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barazani. The Jewish Quarter fell in battle in the War of Independence and fighters wanted to be buried in this special place.

In many cases, intensive illegal Arabic construction comes to within a couple of meters from the graves themselves. Access to burial plots requires maneuvering between crowded houses of Arab neighborhoods. "Look at all this," King points to a huge compound on the eastern slope of the cemetery. "Go and check the Jerusalem municipality approved master plan, and you will see that all this land is part of the cemetery. You'll find that much of the land occupied here by Arabs is wholly owned by Jews who bought them years ago. "

"Landowners lost their land, and have no ability to do anything," King continues. "The Arabs have taken it all. Almost all of the area's huge building boom occurred in the last 15 years. You can seeee it in the pictures. They build illegally on lands that are part of the cemetery, the land of individual Jewish people, and people do not mess with them."

Not far from us, adjacent to one of the plots, stand two large buildings, 18 apartments in each building. One is already populated. The construction of the second was recently completed. No one is stopping this illegal construction on land that does not belong to them. "You see this mosque", King points out, "it's one of the first buildings that were built here. There is a directive from the municipality's legal adviser that this mosque is a sensitive matter, so you do not destroy mosques. So the mosque remained in place, and what grew around it you see yourself ".

Until recently there were security cameras on poles. Vandals toppled the poles, broke the cameras, and destroyed in ten minutes the entire security system.

Dozens of graves, almost all of those who died in past 30-40 years, are broken and shattered. The tomb of Mordechai Siman-Tov, was opened and filled with waste. A tire was put next to it and set on fire. A nearby gravestone holds is smashed into four large fragments. The last name of Esther is impossible to identify. By the writing that is still intact you can only learn she was "modest woman".

The grave of "our father Yekusiel", what's left of it does not allow us to know which family he belonged. "Women who fear the Lord have much to be praised," according to what remains from the grave of Miriam, daughter of Nathaniel and Rachel. This tomb also had its headstone removed and thrown to the ground. A few meters away lies a pile of broken gravestones some of which are difficult to identify from which grave they were removed. So they lie like a wave of stones, shattered pieces from the stones of Murdoch and Aaron Cohen and Leah Moshaioff Bruriah and Simcha Cohen and many others. A word here, a half word there, letters floating in the air.

I searched on Google this week for reports that appear occasionally on Jewish cemeteries desecrated worldwide. Anti-Semitic rioters vandalized a Jewish cemetery in Morocco. Tombstones were broken and uprooted in a Jewish cemetery in southern New Zealand, a headline from a few weeks earlier. Swastikas painted on the walls of the cemetery in Larissa, Greece. Trees were felled at a Jewish burial place in Chisinau in Moldova. For some reason, when these events occur in the wider world, it shocks us much more. Then we hear of "anti-Semitism rearing its head again," Israeli politicians call for stopping the vandals, and an expert on the history of the Second World War duly shows up to answer the question if Europe isi returning to its past.

And what about us? We are the only country where anti-Semitic actions are not newsworthy. A country where anti-Arab graffiti is a story that draws attention a thousand times greater than desecration of Israel's capital everyday. We worry about antisemitism in Hungary, but with us? We are afraid to speak loudly against it.

The Mount of Olives cemetery is perhaps the only one in Israel that is wide open, in the full sense of the word, around the clock. On the Ras Al-amod there was once placed in a large iron gate, but anyone who wanted to use the path between graves, pulled it up long ago. Currently, the cemetery serves as a shortcut for the Arab residents who want to reach their homes.

Six months ago the Arabs here have desecrated the grave of Rabbi Meir Levin Itcha. Levin, a former leader of Agudath Israel, Minister of Welfare was Israel's first signer of the Declaration of Independence. The grave was broken and open. This week I tried to remember if I heard about this event at the time. I could not.

"38 years ago we started to arrange transportation from the school of Gore Mount of Olives, back and forth all day, free," says David Leventhal, who took over the responsibility for a section. "A lot of people wanted to go to the graves. In recent years, the passenger vehicle is almost empty. No one dares to come. They are attacked." Leventhal tries hard to preserve the place. "The Arabs smashed the graves. They now have a new method. They put a tire or a mattress, light it or throw a Molotov cocktail and run away....I've installed security cameras, and they broke them all. "

Nothing I have written here is new. These acts take place every day. Within the cemetery and beyond. I went through the list of recent attacks this week. Not a day goes by without a few incidents of stone throwing or Molotov cocktails. Sometimes the Jews escape lynching.

I debated whether to ask for a comment from someone for this article, and I decided there was no point. Police say it was the municipality, the municipality will approach the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Ministry of Religious Affairs will say it belongs to the Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, the latter will explain a comprehensive policy is needed, and is responsible for overall policy now busy forming the government. The Prime Minister will continue to talk about a united Jerusalem which is our capital forever. The mayor of Jerusalem he will continue to emphasize that he is the mayor of Jerusalem in all its parts. The President continue to bless us with Good Morning Jerusalem , and no one could refute the bottom line. The State of Israel, through the Government of Israel is not interested in truly being sovereign in Jerusalem.

I asked Mayor Barkat about this a couple of years ago and he assured me that things were safe.

I have a number of relatives buried in the Mount of Olives, including two grandparents and a great-great-grandfather whose gravestone was smashed during Jordanian occupation.

This is scandalous.

(h/t Yenta)

Miss Syria Sarah Nakhle, competing for the title of Miss Arab, expressed her support for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad during a question and answer session.

During an interview with Egyptian TV the brainless beauty queen pointed out that Assad was an opthamologist, and as a doctor he "wouldn't hurt an ant."

She also said "Everyone is asking me whether I am a Sunni or Alawite or Druze and Christian, I am Syrian, and religion is for God and the homeland is for all. "

Miss Syria gave advice for all girls to have confidence in themselves and to be natural beautiful and stay away from cosmetics and skin care and pay attention to healthy eating.

Miss Syria ended up in fourth place in the competition. It is unclear how she was nominated to begin with. (Well, a little unclear.)

(h/t Phil)

From hip-hop artist Lauryn Hill's Facebook page:

Dear Friends and Fans in Israel,
When deciding to play the region, my intention was to perform in both Tel Aviv and Ramallah. Setting up a performance in the Palestinian Territory, at the same time as our show in Israel, proved to be a challenge. I've wanted very much to bring our live performance to this part of the world, but also to be a presence supporting justice and peace. It is very important to me that my presence or message not be misconstrued, or a source of alienation to either my Israeli or my Palestinian fans. For this reason, we have decided to cancel the upcoming performance in Israel, and seek a different strategy to bring my music to ALL of my fans in the region. May healing, equanimity, and the openness necessary for lasting resolution and reconciliation come to this region and its people.
Respectfully,
Ms. Lauryn Hill

The concert was announced in the beginning of March and cancelled on Sunday, three days before it was to be performed.

What Hill didn't say was that she was subject to a huge campaign to bully her into canceling the concert from the BDS crowd.

The excuse that she canceled because of the issue of not being able to perform in Ramallah is obviously a lie. If that was her intent all along, then she wouldn't have announced the Tel Aviv concert until arrangements had been made for the Ramallah concert. Canceling a concert three days beforehand is a political statement whether she likes it or not. And it is a slap in the face of her Israeli fans.

Lauryn Hill didn't have the honesty to say, like Salif Kelta did, that she was threatened by hundreds of haters. Her decision had nothing to do with "peace and justice" or logistics. After all, she performed in Israel in 2007 without worrying about any Ramallah performance.

On the other hand, she didn't publicly embrace boycotting Israel, ,and she tried with this message to say that she still loves her Israeli fans.

The BDS crowd ignores that, and is calling their bullying tactics a victory. It is - because despite her pretense of canceling because she cares about her fans, she really did it to avoid being pilloried by professional haters who don't want peace but want to see the Jewish state destroyed.

She can't have it both ways. Her cancellation is more of a "source of alienation" to her fans than her performance would have been - no one is boycotting the many artists who have braved the threats and performed in Israel. She caved to haters and antisemites and didn't have the honesty to admit it.

With this episode, Lauryn Hill showed herself to be nothing but a coward.

UPDATE: Dionne Warwick, who is performing in Israel this month, had a pointed response to Lauryn Hill:

A statement released to the press read that Ms. Warwick "would never fall victim to the hard pressures of Roger Waters, from Pink Floyd, or other political people who have their views on politics in Israel."

"Waters’ political views are of no concern to Ms. Warwick, as she holds her own unique views on world matters. Art has no boundaries. Ms. Warwick will always honor her contracts," the statement read.

"If Ms. Warwick had an objection to performing in Israel, no offer would have been entertained and no contract would have been signed," the statement concluded.

(h/t cba)

05/05 Links Pt2: “Mondoweiss” is a hate site; The Jihad on Free Speech Comes to Texas; Latma Ep11

From Ian:

“Mondoweiss” is a hate site

Mondweiss is basically one-stop shopping for anti-Israel news. Anything bad that goes on in Israel will be publicized and exaggerated at Mondoweiss. If you want to know the far-left anti-Israel party line on any recent event, Mondoweiss is the place to go.
So in a sense it’s understandable that people with an interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict read Mondoweiss, especially if they share the blog’s anti-Israel politics. I keep up sporadically with Mondoweiss largely because its posts sometimes find their way into my Facebook feed from some of my more left-wing friends.
I hope my Facebook friends and others recognize, however, that whatever Mondoweiss’ value as a news aggregator, it is also a hate site.
Mondoweiss tries to preserve a fine line between hostility to Jews and hostility to Israel, but every once in a while, Weiss reminds us that the blog’s entire existence owes to the fact that he can’t maintain that separation.
The most dramatic example I’ve seen arrived in my Facebook feed last week via a Jewish journalist who passed it along with the comment, “Who thinks like this?”
In the course of a typical (for Weiss) rambling, somewhat incoherent post, titled, “Forgving the Anti-Semites,” Weiss makes the following claims, all of which are either unrelated to Israel or are only tangentially related to Israel–unless you believe that whatever Israel’s sins, they are not the “normal” sins of a nation-state, but somehow inextricably tied to the shortcomings of Jews.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: In Praise of Blasphemy

American friends, especially PEN Club writers, please read, right now, Caroline Fourest's new book, Eloge du blasphème (In Praise of Blasphemy, Grasset 2015), if you wish to understand:
1. why Charlie Hebdo was and is more respectful to Muslims than the idiots who think they are honoring Islam by killing;
2. that the real provocateurs were not the cartoonists themselves but those who waved the cartoons under the noses of Muslims who otherwise would not have seen them, thereby stirring up demonstrations that served, here, to draw attention from their own infamy; there, to appropriate the mantle of true defender of the prophet; or, on other occasions, to apply pressure in one or another international negotiation (for example, on nuclear power);
3. that the cover Charlie Hebdo ran after the killing, the cover depicting the prophet with a tear in his eye and the caption "All is forgiven," was the most peaceful, elegant, and conciliatory message conceivable and that those who asserted otherwise were inflammatory cynics; (h/t Alexi)

Latma: We'll be the Judge, episode 11

The eleventh episode of the Israeli satire program "We'll be the Judge," from the creators of Latma's Tribal Update, Israel Channel 1, April 30, 2015.

PA dumps evil Zionist flour

From Ma'an:

Flour imported from Israel will come under strict restrictions imposed by the Palestinian Ministry of National Economyto ensure the product meets standards set by the Palestine Standards Institution.

Israeli flour that isn't enriched with the vitamins and nutrients required by PSI would be banned in the Palestinian market, the ministry said in a statement Tuesday.

"Legal procedures will be taken against merchants who have flour which does not meet the required specifications," the statement said, adding that the move was taken to protect Palestinian consumers.

The statement added that inspectors in cooperation with the Ministry of Health discovered stockpiled flour which failed to meet the required specifications.

The flour has been confiscated and dumped and legal procedures were taken against the owners, according to the statement.

Ah, so Israeli flour is not up to Palestinian quality standards. And it is so dangerous, it must be dumped and not, for example, shipped to starving Palestinians in Yarmouk.

Because, they care.

In case you are interested in Palestinian flour standards, the best I could find was this document from 2005.

(h/t PTWatch)

In last Tuesday’s column I quoted part of Baron Davies of Llandinam’s speech in the House of Lords on 10 March 1942 condemning, inter alia, the Palestine Censor’s ludicrous savage cuts to an eminent Jerusalem-based Church of Scotland minister’s Christmas message intended for the Palestine Post in 1940. Also speaking in that debate was a firm friend to Jewry and the Yishuv, the recently ennobled Baron Wedgwood of Barlaston (1872-1943), better known to history as Colonel Josiah Wedgwood MP. This member of the famous pottery family was a genuine philosemite – I won’t belabour that point here, since I hope to address the issue of philosemitism in a subsequent column or columns and to discuss him as an exemplar. Suffice it to say, for our purposes here, that in his book The Seventh Dominion (1928) he advocated an independent Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan as an integral part of the British Commonwealth, and that he supported the Zionist cause through thick and thin. On 9 June 1942, during the course of a pro-Jewish speech laden – to quote the Jewish Chronicle of 12 June – with “deep emotion,” he told the House of Lords that it had been “years” since any speech of his had been reported in Palestine. He added that a recent broadcast he made to America had been censored despite British assurances to the contrary. Furthermore, an official Mandate Administration radio program for the Arabs had advised that he and Baron Davies were not genuine bluebloods but social upstarts who had been created peers for party reasons.

Also deeply troubled by the behaviour of the Palestine Censor was Lewis Bernstein Namier (1888-1960), the distinguished Polish-born Professor of Modern History at Manchester University, who was a convinced Zionist. In a letter to the staunchly pro-Zionist Manchester Guardian early in April 1942, he complained that the Censor had deleted the following concluding paragraph from a leading article in the Palestine Post (27 February 1942) about the Struma tragedy:

“It is yet too early and the shock too fresh for responsibility to be allotted and the guilt to be established. But that there must be an inquiry goes without saying. That is one of the most established traditions of the Empire under whose protection we live. Catastrophes such as these have led more than once in British history to far-reaching decisions. But whatever investigation is conducted, whatever action taken, one thing is certain: This must never happen again.”

Namier wondered whether the similar sentiments regarding the Struma expressed by British Colonial Secretary Viscount Cranborne (1893-1973; later the 5^th Marquess of Salisbury) had been cut by the Censor, and wrote of the excised passage:

“Surely this is legitimate comment and, indeed, remarkably restrained in the circumstances.”

Meanwhile, the Manchester Guardian, in a leader about the same incident, observed that the Palestine Censor appeared to be encroaching on new territory in his evident desire not to offend the Arabs:

“This particular exercise, if it is confirmed, would mean that the censorship was protecting the Administration not only from criticism but even from possible or implied criticism, for the passage does not impute responsibility from anyone.”

In another leader quoted in the Jewish Chronicle (10 April 1942), the Manchester Guardian stated that the Palestine Censor had obfuscated the political situation in the Middle East. That leader went on:

05/05 Links Pt1: Matti Friedman on the Breaking the Silence report; The Facts on the Security Fence

From Ian:

IDF Blog: Setting the Facts Straight on the Security Fence

The security fence serves one purpose and one purpose only: to prevent terrorists from carrying out deadly attacks on Israeli civilians. Since the construction of the fence began, there has been a significant decrease in the number of attacks originating in Judea and Samaria.
During the Second Intifada (2000-2005), terrorists from Judea and Samaria executed horrific attacks including shootings, suicide attacks, and bombings. The violence proved to be most fatal between 2001 and 2004, when 984 Israelis were murdered. As a direct response to the attacks, the IDF began construction of the security fence.
The security fence proved to be a highly effective measure for reducing terror attacks. The graphs below demonstrate how terror has decreased since its construction.
1. The security fence has reduced suicide attacks to zero.
2. Just 5% of the security fence is made of concrete. The concrete areas, which are built near roads to prevent shooting attacks, have proven very effective.

Matti Friedman on the Breaking the Silence report

3. Breaking the Silence is described as an organization of Israeli veterans trying to expose Israelis to the nature of service in the occupied territories, in order to have a political impact on Israeli society. That's what it was a long time ago, and it once had an important role to play. But now it's something else. Today, like B’Tselem and others, it's a group funded in large part by European money which serves mainly to provide international reporters with the lurid examples of Israeli malfeasance that they crave. They are not speaking to Israelis, but are rather exploiting Israelis' uniquely talkative and transparent nature in order to defame them.
There is actually a fairly straightforward solution to this problem. Any group genuinely fighting for the character of Israeli society should do so in Hebrew, which is the language that Israelis speak. If you're expending a great deal of energy and money translating your materials into English and speaking to foreign reporters, as we’re seeing Breaking the Silence do right now, I think it's fair to ask what, exactly, you're up to. How is speaking to the international press supposed to swing Israelis in your direction? Of course it has the opposite effect.
As long as this state of affairs continues, Israelis will be correct in identifying this group and its sister organizations as people paid by foreigners to say things that a lot of foreigners want to hear Israelis say. And Israelis will continue to live without the strong left that we need – one that comes from Israel, is part of Israel, and is concerned with bettering our society, not with posturing for an audience abroad whose hostile obsession with us has nothing to do with us at all.

NGO Monitor: Negative Testimony from ‘Breaking the Silence’ Meets Quota for Grant Makers

IDF veterans who provided negative testimony for the leftist NGO “Breaking the Silence” may not realize they are also participating in an effort by the group to fulfill a funding quota for bad stuff against Israel.
According to a report by the NGO Monitor, a number of grant-making agencies who provide funding to leftist organizations in Israel have made their patronage contingent upon the groups’ abilities to obtain a minimum number of negative “testimonies.”
“This contradicts Breaking the Silence” declarations and thus turns it into an organization that represents its foreign donors’ interest, severely damaging the NGO’s reliability and its ability to analyze complicated combat situations,” said the report.
One example is the foreign leftist Oxfam group, which signed an agreement with Breaking the Silence, according to the NGO Monitor watchdog organization.
According to that agreement, the Monitor reported, BTS was to conduct interviews with “as many” soldiers as possible who would testify regarding [Israeli] “immoral actions] that violate human rights.

An example of how twisted Palestinian Arab media are

The International Middle East Media Center is employs Palestinian Arab journalists in order to push anti-Israel propaganda in English. It is apparently associated with Alison Weir's "If Americans Knew" organization through which Americans can give tax deductible donations to IMEMC.

Here's one article that shows how incompetent and nutty these Palestinian "journalists" are:

Greater Israel is a term used, historically, to define the so-called "natural" or desired borders of Israel in the eyes of radical Israeli nationalists.

Founding father of the modern Israeli colonial movement, Theodore Herzl, described the area of the proposed Jewish state as stretching “from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” According to Rabbi Fischmann, the so-called Promised Land extends "from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates" and "includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”

Herzl did use that phrase in his diaries as a proposed negotiating position with the Ottoman Empire.

But who is "Rabbi Fischmann"?

It turns out that he was Rabbi Yehuda Leib Fishman, later known as Yehuda Leib Maimon, a founder of the Mizrachi religious Zionist movement in America. He gave testimony to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, and he was answering a question from an Indian representative:

Sir ABDUR RAHMAN (India) : Rabbi Fishman, I do not know the Bible, I do not pretend to know it, but I should like to get information from you, your point of view, and I hope you will enlighten me as to what you have to say in regard to a few matters which I will put to you.

Rabbi Fishman, what was "the Promised Land"?

RABBI FISHMAN: The Promised Land was quite a large one, from the river of Egypt, up to the Euphrates.

The rabbi was answering a history question, not saying what he wanted the borders of Israel to be.

In fact, Rabbi Fishman did not even think it was realistic to have a Jewish state in all of British Mandate Palestine!

Not exactly a proponent of "Greater Israel!"

(The dual quotes of Herzl and "Rabbi Fischmann" are all over anti-Israel websites, showing that not a single anti-Israel activist bothers to check quotes before blindly copying and pasting.)

IMEMC then reveals how crazy its writers are:, and now out of touch the Arab world is to reality:

From this context, the current crisis in the Middle East, including the war on Syria and Iraq (as well as any proposed "humanitarian intervention" by Western powers) has often been perceived by geopolitical analysts to be merely a part of a process for Israeli territorial expansion, via proxy war and any number of destabilization methods affecting vital Arab interests.

Yes, the Palestinian intelligentsia believe that Jews are behind a worldwide conspiracy to foment civil wars in Syria and Iraq in order for Israel to grab those lands.

I've read this plenty of times, but it is rare to see this insanity in English.

From the World Bulletin (Turkey):

Morocco has backtracked an earlier invitation extended to the former Israeli president Shimon Peres to pop in the Kingdom to attend the Clinton Global Initiative's First Middle East and Africa Conference set to kick off on May 5 in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh.

Morocco rescinded the invitation it had dispatched earlier to the notorious former Israeli PM Shimon Peres after his projected stopover stirred up a hornet's nest among the Kingdom’s pro-Palestine activists and organizations.

Earlier, on Friday, a series of protest rallies staged in observance of the International May Day also voiced firm rebuff of Peres’s stopover.

Additionally, according to new360, Hamas government agencies in Gaza had written to Moroccan officials asking that the infamous Israeli politician be blocked from entering Morocco.

The Moroccan government has not responded to any of the calls to arrest or deport Peres. It was noted on Sunday that his invitation had been rescinded and he would not be attending the conference.

ANSAMed, however, reports that Peres is the one who decided not to go:

RABAT, MAY 4 - Former Israeli president Shimon Peres will not be going to Marrakesh despite an invitation from the Clinton Foundation to speak at a conference on the Middle East and Africa. The decision was made after polemics following the announcement that he was to have taken part tomorrow.

Since the nation of Morocco isn't who invited Peres to begin with, it seems that the Turkish version of the story is not correct.

Peres is not Avigdor Lieberman. He is passionately dedicated to peace, whether you agree with him or not. Yet no one in the Arab world is coming to his defense. On the contrary - the only voices one can find in Arabic media were those calling for him to be dis-invited at the very least, and arrested and jailed should he step foot in Morocco.

Interestingly, even though the Clinton Foundation issues press releases every day, it has not mentioned this story. No regrets, no gentle scolding that it is antithetical to peace - nothing. One would think that if the Clinton Foundation is as dedicated to peace as possible, it would have done everything possible to allow Peres to attend.

Could it be because the Clinton Foundation has accepted some $40 million from Arab countries since it started? Arab countries give far more to the Clinton Foundation than to other NGOs doing similar work.

There will be no peace as long as there is no pressure on Arab governments to act in a peaceful way. If they truly wanted to see a peaceful two state solution they would welcome Shimon Peres anywhere he wanted to go.

And a strong condemnation by Bill Clinton on how Shimon Peres is treated by the Arab world would do more for peace than any number of conferences.

Survey shows European Muslims are much more antisemitic than non-Muslims (update)

A new paper was released by ISGAP, "Antisemitic Attitudes among Muslims in Europe: A Survey Review" by Günther Jikeli.

It proves that European Muslims are more antisemitic than any other group, even extreme rightists. .

Most of the data comes from a comprehensive survey in France, although other data indicates that the attitudes are the same throughout Europe.

The other major finding was that the more religious Muslims are, the more antisemitic they are:

Muslims were also far more likely to believe more antisemitic statements than non-Muslims, even on the political fringes:

It isn't only France:

In Brussels, 2,837 students in 32 Dutch-speaking high schools were polled. About half of the Muslim respondents agreed with the following statements:

(1) “Jews want to dominate everything” (total, 31.4 percent; Muslims, 56.8 percent; non-Muslims, 10.5 percent).

(2) “Most Jews think they are better than others” (total, 29.9 percent; Muslims, 47.1 percent; non-Muslims, 12.9 percent).

(3) “If you do business with Jews, you should be extra careful” (total, 28.6 percent; Muslims, 47.5 percent; non-Muslims, 12.9 percent).

(4) “Jews incite to war and blame others” (total, 28.4 percent; Muslims, 53.7 percent; non-Muslims, 7.7 percent).

The antisemitic attitudes were unrelated to low educational level or social disadvantage.
Mark Elchardus confirmed the findings two years later in 2013 with a study of 863 students from Ghent and Antwerp, including 346 Muslim students. While 45 to 50 percent of Muslim students revealed antisemitic attitudes, “only” about 10 percent of non-Muslims did so.

So many in the West want to claim that Muslims only hate Jews because of Israel. These surveys indicate that the opposite is the case: they hate Israel because they hate Jews.

And yet none of the "human rights" activists are considering going into Muslim communities to be more tolerant of Jews. Because Muslims are expected to be haters, and the "progressives" don't expect them to act any differently.

Here is a video of the author talking about the study:

Wiesenthal Center complains about incitement to Jew-hatred on Goal.com Arabic site

A month ago, I reported that Goal.com's Arabic site included anti-Israel rhetoric.

Now the Simon Wiesenthal Center has noticed:

In a letter to the UEFA (Union of European Football Association) President, Michel Platini, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, drew attention to " the constant incitement and offence against the State of Israel on the Arabic site of Goal.com, a web site that prides itself in having a global constituency of over 64 million fans".

The letter listed:

- "a classic example (see photo and caption, upper case for emphasis, reads in translation 'Saturday 28 March 2015, Sammy Ofer Stadium, Haifa, THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES Wales decided to enter the 2016 UEFA Cup Finals, for the first time ever, after defeating the ZIONIST ENTITY TEAM of the City of Haifa in the OCCUPIED TERRITORIES with three straight goals). This was the first ZIONIST loss in the play-offs...'"

Samuels noted that: " 'Zionist entity' is deemed as denying the legitimacy of the State of Israel and the very right to sovereignty of the Jewish people".
See photo and Arabic caption:https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLJRM-NxfkcuVZ9OSZbvW5T6wqWfj1Uzjm1Cgip10fv9IJsFFSlYlFqUxgrfQK5P6le_I6F5y1Dpx96Sz6a5B24-5D4ZnEHP6cknWh4QTy11s4qD1e7oxElkQfRdm9kmMn9l7_ng/s1600/goal1.png- "Another article celebrated how the 'OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES ZIONIST TEAMS, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Hapoel Tel Aviv and Hapoel Beersheba' were unable to play in the summer of 2014 due to 'Palestinian Hamas shelling'.”

Samuels added "calling Haifa, Tel Aviv and Beersheba OCCUPIED TERRITORIES, in effect deletes all of Israel from the map".

- "Another recounts how Bosnian striker, Edin Dzeko, will not participate in the UEFA Euro 2016 qualifier against 'THE ZIONIST ENEMY' in 'THE ARAB CITY OF JERUSALEM'."

The Centre argued that "this language violates Goal.com's on-line Terms of Message and Content Use which forbids any expression that is:

- 5.7.2 is threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, offensive, pornographic, profane, sexually explicit or indecent
- 5.7.3 [that] promotes violence
- 5.7.4 [that] promotes discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age
- 5.7.10 [that] will be likely to harass, upset, embarrass or alarm any other person".

The letter pointed to "an example of how far such words can reach, occurring this Friday, 1 May, when Raja Casablanca F.C. President, Mohamed Boudrika protested violence on the pitch by the Algerian Wikaf Stef team, to epithets from their Club President, Hassan Hammar, calling the Moroccan team “Jews Jews!".
See:http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2015/05/157477/raja-president-terrorized-algeria-algerian-police/

Samuels claimed that "multiple appeals to Goal.com London headquarters have remained unanswered," continuing, "a similar complaint to pan-European sports network, EUROSPORT, resulted in immediate action.

It will be interesting to see if Goal.com responds to this.

05/04 Links Pt2: Kemp: Media Encourage Terrorists to Use Human Shields; Halimi memorial vandalized

From Ian:

Col. Kemp: Media Encourage Terrorists to Use Human Shields in War

Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, told a legal conference that the Western media have encouraged terrorists to use human shields in war by focusing attention on civilian casualties in such a way that Western military forces were effectively deterred from responding to terrorist attacks. He suggested that legal doctrines might need to be adjusted in order to remove the operational advantage human shields provide terrorists.
The West’s collective failure to innovate to confront the tactical problems posed by human shields, Kemp said, “has had the effect of making them more effective, and encouraging their use.”
“I’m not in any way advocating the unlawful slaughter of civilians on the battlefield,” Kemp added. However, there needed to be creative legal and operational thinking about how to prevent civilians from being used, willingly or unwillingly, to help terrorists win asymmetric conflicts against superior military forces, he said.
For example, the doctrine of proportionality might need to be expanded to consider overall military objectives, not just short-term objectives of specific attacks, he suggested.
The problem with focusing on specific attacks is that the calculation–weighing the military objective against the risk to civilians–would often discourage attacks against terrorist targets, which in turn would ensure that terrorist groups would use human shields again in the future.

Memorial to slain French Jew Halimi vandalized

French authorities said vandals damaged a memorial plaque honoring a young French Jewish man tortured and killed in 2006.
The incident targeting the monument to Ilan Halimi came amid heightened religious tensions in France, after radical Islamic gunmen attacked a Paris kosher market and newspaper Charlie Hebdo in January.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a statement Sunday that prosecutors have opened an investigation into the damage to the monument in the Paris suburb of Bagneux.
Halimi’s death stunned many in France, especially in the Jewish community, Europe’s largest. Driven in part by anti-Semitism, a gang held him captive for weeks and tortured him, then left him naked and handcuffed near railroad tracks. The 23-year-old Halimi died en route to the hospital.
On Friday, French anti-Semitism watchdog group BNVCA reported that two Jewish men were attacked in Paris in the middle of the day by a pro-Palestinian gang, leaving them slightly injured.
The men, in the early 20s, were attacked by a gang of about 40 people, identified as being members of Gaza Firm, a pro-Palestinian group, and involved in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

Jewish Group ‘Outraged’ After Plaque Honoring Paris Murder Victim Desecrated

A major Jewish group expressed shock on Sunday after vandals in Paris desecrated a plague in memory of Ilan Halimi, a French Jew who was kidnapped in 2006, tortured and ultimately killed.
“Outrage!” the American Jewish Committee (AJC) wrote on Twitter, adding, “1st they tortured & killed Ilan Halimi, a French Jew, in ’06. Now the plaque in his memory has been destroyed in a Paris suburb.”
The memorial plague was found smashed on Saturday night in Bagneux, a southern suburb of Paris, and has since been removed for repairs, according to French daily Le Figaro. The vandals have yet to be identified.
Bagneux mayor Marie-Hélène Amiable on Sunday said she was “extremely shocked” by the incident and described the vandalism as “outrageous” and “unacceptable.”

Body of Israeli hiker Asraf retrieved in Nepal

Israeli rescue teams on Monday morning retrieved the body of the 22-year-old Israeli hiker who was killed in Nepal’s devastating earthquake over a week earlier.
Or Asraf’s remains were airlifted from a remote village in the Langtang village to Kathmandu, and will be flown Tuesday to Israel.
A member of the Israeli team that found his remains, Oren Morgan, told Israel Radio that several European hikers were also killed in the area.
He said evidence collected during the search for Asraf was handed over to the UN base in Nepal in order to form a better understanding of what happened to hikers from around the world who were declared missing following the earthquake.
Asraf, 22, was the only Israeli fatality from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake, which flattened villages and killed over 7,000, according to Nepalese authorities.

Soldier describes how immoral Hamas is

Looking at more of the "Breaking the Silence" testimonies, here's an example where the leftist group is trying hard to pretend that the IDF is doing something immoral - but in fact it is Hamas that is trying to get the IDF to kill civilians.

There was this mentally handicapped girl in the neighborhood, apparently, and the fact that shots were fired near her feet only made her laugh (earlier in his testimony the soldier described a practice of shooting near people’s feet in order to get them to distance themselves from the forces). She would keep getting closer and it was clear to everyone that she was mentally handicapped, so no one shot at her. No one knew how to deal with this situation. She wandered around the areas of the advance guard company and some other company – I assume she just wanted to return home, I assume she ran away from her parents, I don’t think they would have sent her there. It is possible that she was being taken advantage of – perhaps it was a show, I don’t know. I thought to myself that it was a show, and I admit that I really, really wanted to shoot her in the knees because I was convinced it was one. I was sure she was being sent by Hamas to test our alertness, to test our limits, to figure out how we respond to civilians.

Later they also let loose a flock of sheep on us, seven or ten of whom had bombs tied to their bellies from below.

I don’t know if I was right or wrong, but I was convinced that this girl was a test. Eventually, enough people fired shots near her feet for her to apparently get the message that ‘OK, maybe I shouldn’t be here,’ and she turned and walked away.

The reason this happened is that earlier that day we heard about an old man who went in the direction of a house held by a different force; [the soldiers] didn’t really know what to do so they went up to him. This guy, 70 or 80 years old, turned out to be booby-trapped from head to toe. From that moment on the protocol was very, very clear: shoot toward the feet. And if they don’t go away, shoot to kill.

Here we see that the IDF soldiers held their fire even though there was a very real chance that the girl was booby-trapped, that Hamas had booby trapped sheep, and that Hamas had booby-trapped an old man.

But what is the headline that Breaking the Silence uses for this story?

“I really, really wanted to shoot her in the knees”

This shows quite clearly that BTS is not interested in showing the truth about the IDF, but that they are fishing for dirt to make it look bad.

In other cases the BTS interviewer tried very hard to get the soldier to denounce IDF's rules of engagement:

There were cases in which families were apparently killed by fighter jet strikes. How do you explain that?
A lot of houses were hit, and some of those houses were also shared by occupants aside from [Hamas] militants. I think most of the families that were hurt were in cases like Shuja’iyya, (the testifier is referring to the artillery shot in the aftermath of the event in which seven IDF soldiers were killed when their APC was hit by a rocket) where the threshold for opening fire was more lax because forces were in immediate danger.

But the forces were operating in neighborhoods that were supposed to be uninhabited.
‘Supposed to be’ is one thing, but in reality there were people in there sometimes. In the urban areas of Rafah and Khuza’a, every other house was marked as ‘active’ (being used by militants). It was a real hornet’s nest in there, and they took down those houses systematically. ‘Roof knocking’ (a method by which a small missile is fired on the roof of a building as a warning shot to its residents that it is about to be struck) followed by a boom, ‘roof knocking,’ a boom. Despite the fact that no one was ‘supposed to be’ in there.

Showing that the IDF still tried to warn residents even in areas thatthey shouldn't have been and that they were under active fire from Hamas!

But there are means of confirming that there aren’t any people [in the houses], so how did it happen that they got killed anyway?
We can’t know everything. We did everything we could in order to know. If the family had no phone and a ‘roof knocking’ was conducted, and after a few minutes no one came out, then the assumption was that there was no one there.

You were working under the assumption that once a ‘roof knocking’ was conducted everyone leaves the building immediately, and if nobody leaves it means there was no one inside?
People who are willing to sacrifice themselves, there’s nothing you can do. We have no way of knowing if there were people in there who decided not to get out.

But the bomb was dropped on the house?
Yes.

And say after a ‘roof knocking’ 10 people go up on the roof of the house?
Then you don’t strike the house.

And what if after a ‘roof knocking’ 10 people stay inside the living room?
If people were inside the house I didn’t know about it. But I don’t think that was taken into consideration [over whether or not to bomb the house].

Is it a requirement to make sure no civilians are in a structure before it’s attacked by a fighter jet?
It’s not obligatory. Say the target was [Hamas’] deputy battalion commander in Shuja’iyya, an attack would be launched if the number of civilians wasn’t too high. By too high, I mean a two-digit number.

Everything this soldier says isperfectly legal in the laws of armed conflict. What else could soldiers do to determine if civilians are in the house after leaflets, phone calls and roof-knocking? Should they ring the doorbell and ask politely to speak to the head of the household?

These examples show that Breaking the Silence is not a human rights organization. Its entire purpose is to demonize the IDF, to make it look bad even when it does nothing remotely wrong.

If only real reporters who know something about real wars would read these and write about it.