Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 07, 2015

05/07 Links Pt2: Dodging swastikas and Israel hate, Jordan’s secret Jews; Rivlin salutes aid workers

From Ian:

Suggesting that racism is unique to one group of people is itself racist. Racism is the portrayal of one group of people as inferior or superior to other groups. Saying one group is uniquely racist is to portray them as inferior to other groups of people, which fits the definition of racism.
The Israel hating crew is attempting to hijack an internal Israeli matter in order to boost up their racist agenda. Their agenda doesn’t line up with the Ethiopian-Israeli struggle. Ethiopian-Israelis are proud Israelis. The man who was attacked was wearing an IDF uniform at the time he was attacked. At the demonstration, HaTikvah was sung and Israeli flags were common.
The protesters are not on the side of the Israel hate crew. Israel’s haters support a cause that seeks to destroy the state that Ethiopian-Israelis are (judging by them waving Israeli flags at the protests) are proudly a part of. Israel’s haters support a people which 93% of the population is anti-semitic. Israel’s haters support a group whose own charter calls for the death of all Jews worldwide, including the Ethiopian-Israeli community and Jews of all colors around the world. My message to these people: This is not your fight. Stop trying to sugarcoat your intentions and pretend to sympathize with these people when you support a group that openly advocates a genocide of them all.

Ryan Bellerose: Pro-Israel Advocacy: Out With The Old, In With The New

Effective,modern Israel advocacy is the opposite of what many existing organisations want. It is vibrant, unapologetic, boisterous and in-your-face. It is positive and yet unafraid to attack the other side’s hypocrisy. It is not defensive but rather, proactive. Its music festivals, ethnic food, and aggressive messaging target the emotional switches. Its events aren’t at the JCC but at the centre of campus and downtown in the city, not hidden away and preaching to the 15 Jews and 3 evangelicals in the choir. It is inclusive and builds bridges with other minorities, bridges that for too long were ignored because those communities offered no obvious benefit. Now, university students themselves are building these bridges – often with little or no help from existing organisations. They are, in fact, reanimating and redefining advocacy.
Effective speakers are no longer the slick suit-wearing pyramid scheme prophets, but genuine people who have captivating stories. They might not all sound like they attended Oxford like my friend Kaseem Hafiz,a man who at one point hated Jews so much he was considering how to become a terrorist. His awakening led him to become one of the most outspoken of young pro-Israel advocates. This new breed of pro-Israel advocates have something common with him: they all have engaging stories and are compelling speakers. There are people like Dumisani Washington, a tall African American Christian pastor, an incredible Zionist, who also happens to be an awesome dreadlock-wearing musician. I cannot make up these stories! You have guys like Izzy Ezagui, a good-looking American kid from Miami, who is very well-spoken – and who not so incidentally happens to be an incredible warrior who lost an arm in a mortar attack, rehabbed, and rejoined the army. Izzy, though, didn’t simply rejoin the regular army, but the ISRAELI SPECIAL FORCES, in less than a year (yes, with one arm). The average university student can relate to these guys because of their story alone, even if they may not agree with their politics. There’s Chloe Valdary, a young Black woman whose unapologetic advocacy should be the bellwether for any advocate. Chloe, who attended university in New Orleans, just decided one day she didn’t like seeing so much Jew hate and became a force for change. She started a pro-Israel music festival, and she speaks out against the coopting of the social justice movement by people who do not give a damn about social justice but simply stole the language.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali addresses Anti-Semitism on campus at the Boston premiere of Crossing the Line 2

From Rania Khalek in Electronic Intifada:

The similarities in suppression tactics employed by Baltimore and Israeli security forces are no coincidence.

Under the cover of counterterrorism training, nearly every major police agency in the United States has traveled to Israel for lessons in occupation enforcement, including many of the agencies active in Baltimore last week.

In 2002, Baltimore city police officers went to Israel on a junket organized by the neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), where they studied Israeli occupation tactics used against Palestinians, including “crowd control, and coordination with the media,” according to a JINSA press release. “Participants resolved to begin the process of sharing ‘lessons learned’ in Israel with their law enforcement colleagues in the United States,” boasted JINSA.

Baltimore city police returned to Israel for more occupation training in a 2009 trip arranged by the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange.

On a 2007 training session in Israel, Baltimore County police reportedly “received valued lessons from Israeli officials…about gathering human and electronic intelligence” that can “apply to investigations into organized crime and gangs.”

The Montgomery County Police Department, which sent dozens of police officers to assist in the Baltimore crackdown, has attended several training sessions in Israel, including one in 2010 and another in 2012, both hosted by Project Interchange.

This is phenomenally stupid on multiple levels.

First of all, the programs that Khalek highlights are not for riot control. One of them mentions a demonstration of "crowd control" during a terror attack - not a training session - but most of the training was for counterterrorism techniques such as intelligence gathering and operations to capture terrorists before they begin their operations; border security, mechanisms to delay terrorists on their way to a target such as checkpoints; and site security - the protection of the restaurants, shopping malls and buses that are the preferred terrorist targets, preventing bombings, securing airports and border crossings and performing mass rescue operations.

Secondly, even if Israel did offer training in riot control, it is up to individual police departments to decide on their techniques. They wouldn't photocopy Israel's manual for riot control. They take the lessons that they like and incorporate them into their own programs. One has to be thoroughly consumed with hate in order to blame Japan if someone kills another with a karate kick. (In fact, I am very surprised that Khalek didn't notice that the Baltimore police offers krav maga seminars. )

(For those interested, here is a blog post from someone who took Baltimore cop riot training in 2000, with a comment from someone who took it in 2008. Nothing about Israel, of course. )

According to Khalek's moronic logic, there is another organization responsible for Baltimore police actions:

The United Nations.

Yes, the UN offers police commander training, and one of the sessions was attended by a major in the Baltimore Police Department. Clearly the UN is culpable for the Baltimore riots.

Do you hear how stupid that sounds?

That is how stupid Rania Khalek's argument, the same argument used by other Israel haters, is.

But it isn't stupidity that animates Khalek's half-baked theories. It is pure hate.

The Electronic Intifada readers who buy this argument, however, are truly stupid.

(h/t Mitchell)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

Earlier this week, Avigdor Lieberman decided, for some reason, that he would not join PM Netanyahu’s coalition (yes, he gave ‘reasons’, but nobody takes them seriously). Coalition negotiations with Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party, the last to get on board, continued until a few hours before the deadline for Netanyahu to present his putative coalition of 61 Knesset members to President Rivlin.

As I make the final update to my post on Thursday morning, the excitement is over. Bennett demanded and got the Justice Ministry portfolio for Ayelet Shaked. There will be a Likud government with 61 mandates, the narrowest possible margin, a government that can be knocked over by the defection of a single member.

There were other possibilities. Netanyahu and Bennett might not have come to agreement, or some other member of the coalition suddenly might have decided to make a new demand despite having signed an agreement. Netanyahu might have chosen to invite Labor’s Herzog into a unity government; given the proper inducements, he would have agreed despite his protestations.

If Netanyahu hadn’t succeeded at the last moment, the President might have given the job of forming the coalition to some other Knesset member, like Herzog, who would probably have had even more trouble than Netanyahu. He might have tried to force a unity government. There is even the possibility that no member of the Knesset could form a coalition, in which case there would have to be new elections.

This is tremendously frustrating. There are big problems — internal and external — that require attention, and the PM and various party leaders who are ministers have spent almost two months negotiating with each other, having meetings (open and secret), hatching plots (Lieberman), etc. This is after the excruciating election campaign that went on from December to March.

I admire PM Netanyahu for being able to carry on at least the most important affairs of state during this protracted period, but this system is dysfunctional. And a 61-member coalition means that it isn’t over — Netanyahu will have to try to broaden the coalition after its inauguration unless he wants even more instability.

The parliamentary system is a good one, because it makes the government highly responsive to the will of the electorate, as expressed by their representatives in the Knesset. An ineffective government can be removed at any time. If only the US had such a system, Obama would be long gone! But the coalition process is problematic.

One suggestion is to simply get rid of the process by appointing as Prime Minister the leader of the party with the greatest number of seats. But this could have unintended consequences, if there are more than two parties in the race. Suppose there were three parties, two on the Right and one on the Left. If the right-wing parties received 39 seats each, and the single left-wing party got 52, the latter would win by a large margin — but the clear preference of the electorate for a right-wing government would be thwarted.

Another possibility would be to elect the Knesset and then have the MKs choose a Prime Minister from among themselves, by majority vote. One problem with this is that it removes the direct connection between the voter and the PM that is important if the people are to have confidence in the PM. Worse, it would produce backroom wheeling-and-dealing similar to what goes on in coalition negotiations, except that there wouldn’t be explicit coalition agreements.

What about direct election of a Prime Minister? Israel tried American-style separate elections for the Knesset and the Prime Minister in 1996 and 1999. This proved unsatisfactory because the elected PM didn’t necessarily have the base needed in the Knesset to form a stable coalition. Other suggestions that detach the PM from the Knesset could bring about the kind of paralysis that has characterized the relationship between the US President and the Congress.

Yet another idea would be to raise the minimum percentage of votes needed to enter the Knesset from the present 3.5% (5 Knesset seats) to a much larger value and then require that each party designate another party that would get its votes if it did not reach the threshold. This would make it more likely that one of the larger parties would get a majority, and simplify coalition negotiations if not. But it would also reduce the representation of minority views in the Knesset, in effect disenfranchising their voters (it could also produce an outcome with two large Jewish parties, each without a majority, and one smaller Arab party holding the balance of power).

Despite the frustration, this isn’t a simple problem, especially since the political propensity is to find ways to exploit unplanned loopholes in any system. Possibly, to paraphrase Churchill’s famous comment on democracy, the coalition system is the worst way to form a government — except for all the others.

05/07 Links Pt1: The Cartoon Wars; A Reset Button for Israel?; How I learned to love the Iranian bomb;

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The Cartoon Wars

Of course, this idea goes to one of the false presumptions of our time: that people on the political left are motivated by good intentions even when they do bad things, while people on the political right are motivated by bad intentions even when they do good things. So a cartoon promoted by Charlie Hebdo may be thought to be provocative in a constructive way, whereas one promoted by AFDI can only be thought if as being provocative in an unconstructive way. Whether people are willing to admit it or not, this is one of the main problems that underlies the reaction to the Texas attack.
Such a distinction is, needless to say, a colossal mistake. When people prefer to focus on the motives of the victims rather than on the motives of the attackers, they will ignore the single most important matter: that an art exhibition, or free speech, has been targeted. The rest is narcissism and slow-learning.
It does not matter if you are right wing or left wing. It does not matter if you are American, Danish, Dutch, Belgian or French, or whether you are from Texas or Copenhagen. These particularities may matter greatly and be endlessly interesting to people in the countries in question. But they matter not a jot to ISIS or their fellow-travellers. What these people are trying to do is to enforce Islamic blasphemy laws across the entire world.
That is all that matters. If we forget this or lose sight of it, not only will we lose free speech, we will lose, period.

Michael Lumish: Say Hello to the Devil

If Pamela Geller is a racist I have yet to see the evidence. What I see is a much maligned woman standing up to the enemies of the Jewish people and to the enemies of the infidel west. What I also see are a whole bunch of moral cowards who defame this woman even as they turn a blind eye to the rise of political Islam throughout the Muslim Middle East.
The rise of political Islam during the Obama administration may be the single most significant geo-political event in world history since the demise of the Soviet Union. The Muslim Middle East is moving from a period of secular-authoritarian nationalism, as exemplified by people such as Gamal Abdel Nasser, to a period of rising theocratic-authoritarianism in the name of Islam. This, it should be emphasized, is not an improvement. On the contrary. While Hosni Mubarack may have been a dictator he, at least, did not believe in some Allah-given right to slaughter Jews and he did not set himself up as an enemy of the United States and the west.
This is what the Muslim Brotherhood has done and it is precisely what Geller opposes.
Of course, it should be something that anyone who believes in secular democracy should oppose, but they don’t. Mainstream media throughout the United States and Europe largely pussy-foot around political Islam despite the fact that it represents everything that the secular west allegedly opposes. Devotees of political Islam (or “radical Islam” or “Islamism”) oppress women, hang Gay people from cranes, and promises the slaughter of the Jewish people and they do so in the name of Allah.
What’s not to like?
Ask Pamela Geller, she’ll have some words.

‘Draw Muhammad’ Winner on Growing Up in Islam and Defeating the Jihad

Breitbart News spoke with Bosch Fawstin, an accomplished artist, cartoonist, and anti-Jihad activist who won first prize at Sunday’s “Draw Muhammad” free speech event in Garland, Texas.
The event came under attack by AK47-weilding jihadists, who were neutralized by a police officer before they could commit mass murder against the free speech art display’s attendees.
Fawstin talked about his unique experience growing up in the Bronx as a Muslim, how his life changed after the 9/11 attacks, and he shared strategies to defeat the global jihadist movement. His artwork is featured throughout the interview.
Breitbart News: You won first prize at the Muhammad Cartoon Contest? What inspired your first-place artwork?
Bosch Fawstin: Quite simply, I wanted to do something different because I’ve been drawing Muhammad for a long time. Ever since the Danish cartoons, and after the Charlie Hebdo attack. Every time something horrific happens. If free speech was under assault, under siege, I drew Muhammad.
This drawing of Muhammad showed him threatening me. He says, angrily, ‘You Can’t Draw Me,” with a sword in his hand. I respond, ‘That’s Why I Draw You.’”

Since the explosion that rocked Hamas' security HQ earlier this week, there have been a number of other explosions in Gaza, although no one has been killed.

El Badil reports on a number of explosions and other incidents in the last couple of days. A young man was injured when an object exploded. Hamas found and dismantled two bombs in cars on Monday night. Another explosion occurred near a school on Monday.

Last night, there was a large explosion near the Al Nour mosque in central Gaza.

It is widely believed that Salafist groups in Gaza are responsible for this. They threatened Hamas last Saturday. Hamas responded by cracking down on the group and even reportedly destroyed a mosque, something that the Western media didn't think was as newsworthy as someone drawing cartoons.

From TOI yesterday:

A senior Fatah official said Wednesday that the Palestinian Authority planned to appeal the decision to close the French inquiry into the death of Yasser Arafat over concerns investigators had concealed information.

In an interview on Palestinian public radio, Tawfik Tirawi said that French prosecutors contacted Palestinian officials last month requesting that, should their inquiry determine that the former president was poisoned — as the Palestinians claim — the PA would not execute anyone who may be implicated in the assassination.

Tirawi, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee who heads the official Palestinian investigation commission into Arafat’s death, claimed that the French request “indicated that the there is a secret the French want to cover up,” Israel Radio reported.

On Tuesday, a panel of French judges reexamining Arafat’s death concluded their investigation, and sent their findings to the prosecutor, who has three months to prepare submissions on whether to dismiss the case or put it forward to court.

French experts “maintain that the polonium-210 and lead-210 found in Arafat’s grave and in the samples are of an environmental nature,” Nanterre prosecutor Catherine Denis said last month.

If the French - who seem to have been handpicked by the PLO to investigate, along with Russia and the Swiss - don't corroborate the PLO's official line that Arafat was murdered, then they must be in on the conspiracy!

The Russian scientists came to the same conclusion as the French.

Suha Arafat also weighed in, denouncing the French report and saying that the French scientists cannot explain the circumstances of Arafat's death. She also expressed shock at how quickly the French are deciding to end the investigation, saying that it should continue - and keep her in the headlines - until it finds the results that she would be happy with.

Suha's lawyer said long ago that they will ignore the Russian and French reports because they don't say what she wants them to say.

Besides the fondness for conspiracy theories, the story shows an important fact: Palestinian Arabs will disregard facts when they don't fit their narrative. The narrative is all-important, and facts are fungible, whose only purpose is to be used selectively.

You will rarely find a Palestinian Arab official say "sorry, I was wrong." You won't find a Palestinian "new historian" writing a book about the events of 1948 that contradicts the "Naqba" narrative. You won't find newspaper articles that call into question the sacred cows of Palestinian myth, from the "refugees" to Arafat's death.

It is difficult for the West to understand a mindset where facts themselves are regarded as optional and where their story is more important than history. Surely, we think, they must admit that 2+2=4, right?

In the honor/shame culture, appearances are more important than facts. How you are viewed trumps how you really are. So many of these bizarre incidents, including conspiracy theories, can be explained by understanding the honor/shame mentality and culture.

It is fundamental to understanding the Middle East.

PLO terrorist Jibril Rajoub keeps lobbying to kick Israel out of FIFA (poster)

Jibril Rajoub, the Fatah terrorist who now heads the Palestine Football Association and Palestine Olympic Committee, continues to do everything he can to expel Israel from FIFA.

This week, he took South African minister Tokyo Sexwale on a tour of Hebron, trying to go into the Jewish-designated section of the Cave of the Patriarchs and confronting Israeli soldiers with Sexwale for photo-ops.

Mahmoud Abbas joined the fun, telling Sexwale that it was time to "show the red card" to Israel.

The peaceful and spot-loving Rajoub last year said that a friendly soccer match between Jewish and Arab children a "crime against humanity."

This moderate Fatah official also once called for a nuclear bomb to be dropped on Israel, and he called the idea of a minute of silence in memory of Israeli Olympic athletes slaughtered by Palestinian terrorists to be "racist."

Here is a poster I made of a recent photo of Jibril Rajoub: Perhaps FIFA should see exactly who is behind the campaign to suspend Israel.

(h/t Bob Knot)

05/06 Links Pt2: Anti-Semitism Goes to School; BDS Is An Anti-Indigenous, Pro-Colonial Movement

From Ian:

Anti-Semitism Goes to School

War differs from other forms of human interaction in dividing us into those for and those against. The organization of politics against the Jews constitutes an unusual form of warfare in that all the aggression is on one side and all the hunger for resolution on the other. The desperation or “pessimism” that is generated by this genuinely irrational barrage has tempted some Jews to hold other Jews responsible, preposterously, for the suffering of Palestinian Arabs. Anti-Semitism thrives on the “hopeful” idea that if Jews are responsible for a crisis, it can be easily solved by the Jews’ transformation, or elimination. Some Jews, seduced by this irrationality, help to stoke its fires.
When the current enemies of the Jews first chose the universities as a primary battleground in America, they met little or no opposition from liberal administrators or faculty, including Jewish faculty. Anti-Semitism, after all, is just an idea—is it not?—and ideas, which is what universities traffic in, can be the springboard for the best of human endeavors. Indeed they can; but they are also the springboard for the worst, and not even God can help those who fail to distinguish between the two. Anti-Semitism, among the very worst of human inventions, has by now thoroughly corroded Arab societies and with great force and determination is making its way back into Europe. Can America prove exceptional by recognizing the threat and fighting it off?

BDS Is An Anti-Indigenous, Pro-Colonial Movement

First and foremost, as I have alluded to in my opening paragraph, BDS is neither about human rights or co-existence. The goal from the outset has always been to dissolve Israel and replace it with an Arab Palestinian state, thereby restoring the country to Arab colonial domination. Barghouti himself made this clear when he openly boasted of his desire to “euthanize” Israel, and that the outcome of BDS would not be a two state solution, but “a Palestine next to a Palestine.”
Other prominent BDS supporters, such as As’ad Abu Khalil, were even more candid, saying that “justice and freedom” for Palestinians is “incompatible with the existence of the State of Israel.” And what would happen to the Jews in such a state? Only time can answer that question, but given the obscenely high rates of antisemitism throughout the Arab world, it is safe to say that deportations and massacres (against Jews) are far more likely than anything resembling peaceful co-existence. This, however, is of no concern to the BDS movement or its sympathizers.
Second, although the dominant narrative in Israel/Palestine discourse is that Palestinian Arabs are the “true” indigenous occupants of the Holy Land, a cursory glance at the history of the region paints a very different picture. Palestinian Arabs, as their name directly implies, are a subgroup of the larger Arab nation whose origins lie in the Hejaz province of what is now Saudi Arabia. Their presence in the Levant largely dates back to the 7th century AD, when Arabian armies colonized a significant portion of the Middle East and nearly all of North Africa. And even though today’s Palestinians share a considerable amount of genetic material with diaspora Jews, indigenous status is lost when one fully adopts the mantle of the colonizer. Throughout their conquests, Arabs have oppressed, subsumed, and eliminated countless indigenous cultures while imposing their own via brute force. Israel was just one of the many regions that came under Arab colonial rule, and Jews (at least those who remained after the earlier Roman occupation) were just one of the many indigenous peoples they subjugated. The Dome of the Rock was deliberately built on the site of the fallen Temple, and was intended to be a symbol of humiliation to the Jews.

"Courage: The Reason I'm an Israeli-Arab Diplomat Not a Palestinian Refugee"

Israeli-Arab diplomat George Deek weaves together his family history, his childhood and his hopes for the future, bringing the audience at the StandWithUs UK Annual Event to their feet.

Seventh Fatah Congress planned for August

Arab media are reporting that Mahmoud Abbas plans to schedule the seventh Fatah Congress sometime this summer.

The sixth Fatah Congress was held in August, 2009. It was marred by public disagreements and insults, as factions that represented Mahmoud Dahlan, Mahmoud Abbas and the Al Aqsa Brigades all jostled for political gain. Abbas and the old Arafat loyalists did everything they could to marginalize the "new guard" who organized the first intifada in 1989.

When the Central Committee decided not to issue a written report but only to present it orally, chaos broke out and Mahmoud Abbas instructed his bodyguards to eject members of the Congress.

In the end, a new Fatah Platform was issued. In it, Fatah made very clear that it still supported terrorism despite the lies its members tell the media in English. Here is what I wrote about it last year:

The main strategic goals are "Liberating the homeland, ending its settler occupation and attaining the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people." Note that these are separate goals - the "homeland" is all of British Mandate Palestine while the "occupation" is the areas Israel gained in 1967 and the "inalienable rights" include the "right to return."

The platform makes it very clear that Fatah still subscribes to "armed resistance" as a "right":" "The Palestinian people’s right to practice armed resistance against the military occupation of their land remains a constant right confirmed by international law and international legality."

Unintentionally proving how tenuous Palestinian peoplehood is, the platform tries to shore it up by saying"The Palestinians are a genuine people with a clear identity and clear affiliation to their homeland. They maintained their attachment to this identity and to their homeland through their national struggle for almost a century."

Two of their tactics include:

Boycotting Israeli products at home and abroad through popular movement, particularly those goods for which there is local substitute. Performing new forms of civil disobedience against the occupation and launching an international campaign to boycott Israel, its products, and its institutions benefiting from the experience of South Africa against Apartheid....

Restoring our direct and strong relations with the Israeli peace camp, and revitalizing our joint action for a just peace, without mingling it with normalization with Israel, which is rejected while occupation continues.

It also calls to strengthen the culture of terror:

Continued commitment to the culture of struggle, and the permanent readiness to engage in resisting the occupation, and sacrifice for the homeland. Continuous education through regular organizational meetings and training courses. The issuing of Fatah circulars, to continue mobilizing the cadres of the movement and masses with the heritage of the Palestinian armed struggle. Celebrating our battles, and commemorating the history of our struggle and the permanent readiness to sacrifice.

Every single thing that is incompatible with true peace is enshrined in this platform. These are not negotiable positions, according to this document.

I am certain that neither John Kerry nor President Obama, nor Thomas Friedman nor any supposed mainstream media "expert" ever read this.

In fact, practically no one in the West has read this platform, although Mahmoud Abbas has been acting entirely consistently with it. I translated some of it when it was released, but this official English translation seems to have been released over a year later. I found it at the Palestinian Press Office of Denmark.

This is essential reading in order to understand the strategy of the PLO and Mahmoud Abbas.

Fatah Political Platform by Eldad Tzioni

Rabbis: Avoid Gharqad Wood In Lag BaOmer Bonfires (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Jerusalem, May 6 - In advance of the minor festival of Lag BaOmer that begins Wednesday night, Israel's Chief Rabbinate issued a warning not to use the wood of the gharqad bush in the customary bonfires, as the gharqad is needed to protect Jews from righteous Muslims.

Lag BaOmer, or the thirty-third day of the Omer period between Passover and Shavuot, marks a break in the quasi-mournful practices that characterize the Omer. The day is traditionally accepted as the anniversary of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai's passing, whose parting gift to the world was the teachings appearing the foremost work of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar. "Zohar" means "glow" or "radiance," and the radiance of Rabbi Shimon's revelatory teachings is symbolized by bonfires.

Additionally, Lag BaOmer is also celebrated as the day a devastating plague on the disciples of Rabbi Akiva - the teacher of Rabbi Shimon - ended, ushering in a period of renewed growth in Jewish lore. The bonfire represents, among other ideas, the energy and life that persists even in the driest, deadest wood. Zionist youth movements adopted the Lag BaOmer bonfire as an expression of the renewal they sought to bring to Jewry through the resettlement of the land. Tens of thousands of such bonfires take place every Lag BaOmer, many of them continuing into the morning, with many tons of twigs, fallen branches, scrap lumber, and old furniture fueling the pyres.

However, Muslim tradition foretells that at the end of days, when Muslims finally rise up to eliminate the Jews, the latter will hide behind trees and bushes. All but the gharqad will call out to the Muslim pursuers that Jews are hiding behind them, because the gharqad "is the tree of the Jews." To ensure that such plants remain to hide behind when the time comes, the Rabbinate issued the customary annual instructions that include avoiding the burning of gharqad wood.

"First, the most important part of this celebration is fire safety and precautions," read the announcement. "Please follow the directions and orders of local police, fire and park officials. Second, certain species of tree are protected, and must not be used as fuel for bonfires. Among them is the gharqad, which we must preserve for the End of Days."

Gharqad is a thorny, flowering shrub, and its branches would be an unlikely choice for bonfire fuel. Nevertheless, says Judaism authority Ali Abunimah, the Rabbis saw fit to warn Israelis not to use it because of their fundamental insecurity about their faith. "The truth will always out, and the truth here is that even the religious leaders of the Zionists know their project is a sham and doesn't represent real Judaism," he explained.

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.