Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

05/12 Links Pt2: Holland To Restore Shoah Survivor's Pension; International Hummus Day!

From Ian:

Holland To Restore Shoah Survivor's Pension, Issue New Rules for Others Living in West Bank

The spokesperson said that the woman shouldn’t be penalized since she didn’t know the consequences of her actions, but said that her government would “soon publish a modified policy regarding pension beneficiaries in the territories occupied by Israel.” She indicated that the policy would only apply to new cases.
The Dutch foreign minister was one of 16 EU foreign ministers who last month signed a letter to Federica Mogherini, the new EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, “urging her to move swiftly to ensure the labeling of settlement products.”
The report last week of the 90-year-old survivor prompted former Labour MK Colette Avital, who heads an organization that supports Holocaust survivors, to say, “It is hard to accept such harassment of survivors, whose welfare needs to be sacrosanct in the eyes of the Dutch authorities.”

When the ICRC Feels It Must Apologize for Telling the Truth

The ICRC has produced its share of Israel-haters, but De Maio certainly isn’t one of them. Not only does he realize that Israel isn’t the Great Satan it’s generally portrayed as by “human rights” activists, but he’s even willing to say so occasionally – which makes him far braver than many of his colleagues. Yet even this braver-than-average member of the human rights community feels so intimidated that whenever he does say something positive about Israel, he feels the need to apologize. So you get astounding statements like this tweet from last November: “It may seem provocative, but I would contend that humanitarian access in Israel & OT is, comparatively, outstandingly good.”
The mind simply boggles. It’s “provocative” to state the simple fact that Israel, like any Western democracy, allows humanitarian aid groups relatively unfettered access? In his next tweet, De Maio added, “I can think of no other context where we operate worldwide where access for humanitarian organizations is as good as it is here.” Yet if that’s the truth, why should it be “provocative” to say so? Shouldn’t it be as natural for human rights organizations to praise countries for enabling their access as it is to criticize them for not doing so?
But of course, when it comes to Israel, it isn’t. After all, in the “human rights” community to which De Maio belongs, the loudest voices are people like Human Rights Watch director Ken Roth, who famously criticized Israel last month for sending the world’s largest medical team, 30 percent of all foreign medical personnel, to help victims of Nepal’s earthquake. In a world where “human rights activists” slam Israel even for providing humanitarian relief – though Roth has yet to explain how he thinks the world would be a better place had Israel failed to do so – it’s clearly not a given to praise it for enabling humanitarian access. So De Maio apologizes for telling the truth. And untold numbers of his less courageous colleagues choose the easier route of not telling it at all.
Nor is it Israel alone that pays the price for their silence – something else De Maio understands quite well. “Why is there so much more focus on Israel than on Syria [and] other places where many more civilians are dying?” he demanded in December. “In other ongoing wars, more civilians die in one week than in Israeli wars in a full year.” Yet even the braver-than-average De Maio made that statement at a conference in Israel, the one place it’s relatively “safe” to say such things. And untold numbers of his less courageous colleagues will never say it at all.

Ben-Dror Yemini: Using Bedouin issue as an anti-Israel propaganda tool

The discussion of the Bedouin issue is legitimate. Different countries have dealt in different ways with the recognition of native populations' rights. The Scandinavians had the Sami people (the Lapps), the Australians had the Aboriginal people and the Americans had the Indians. Each democratic state adopted its own solution.
One thing is clear: The arrangement offered by Israel is probably the most generous and decent arrangement, compared to other countries. Israel is offering every Bedouin family in one of the unrecognized communities generous solutions, which include both a piece of land and infrastructures.
But the coalition of incitement and deception – which includes Adalah, Balad, rights movements and the Islamic Movement – is unhappy with these solutions. This coalition also has the Haaretz newspaper, which is fanning the flames, at its service.
It should be clarified that there is a huge difference between a critical stance against the state's conduct and major deception, which has one result: Lies and incitement. There is no need to mention that the coalition of incitement and deception chose the second option – not a battle for the Bedouins, but another opportunity for an anti-Israel campaign.

How This Jordanian Arab Became an Ardent Zionist

Abe Haak, an Arab born in Irbid, Jordan and raised to hate Israel, has undergone an incredible transformation over the past 37 years. He has now become an ardent Arab Zionist.
His parents back in Jordan don't know how far he has wandered. But they will soon, as he 'comes out' for Israel and expands his speaking engagements.
An adjunct instructor in Arabic and in Arab journalism, Haak has residences in both Minnesota and New York, where he teaches at NYU. He studied international studies in Vienna, Austria, and is married to a German Lutheran woman, who is raising their child as a Christian.
“I am unaffiliated - I am a seeker, not a believer,” Haak told the Jewish Review during an extensive interview following his appearance at the University at Buffalo last week. It was sponsored by the Paul Dosberg Foundation and Stand With Us, which helps Jewish students deal with anti-Zionism on college campuses.
“I have not arrived at a doctrine that I can announce that I believe in at this point,” he continued. “But I believe I see God's works in the world, and Israel is one of those works. The rebirth of the State of Israel is one of the greatest miracles I have seen. It is not only a spiritual miracle, it is a physical miracle.”
After moving to America as a teenage, Haak had not met an Israeli until attending a Christmas party with friends at the University of Chicago in 1977.

Human rights under PA, Hamas rule the worst in years

From AP via Daily Star Lebanon:

OCCUPIED RAMALLAH: A leading Palestinian advocacy group says human rights for people living in the Palestinian territories are at their "worst" in years.

The annual report by the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights said hundreds of people were tortured by authorities in Gaza, ruled by the Islamic militant group Hamas, and in the West Bank, governed by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

It says several people died in Hamas detention and one died while incarcerated in the West Bank. It also says Hamas took 16 prisoners from their jail cells and killed them during the war with Israel last year.

Commission chief Ahmad Harb said other violations include bans on peaceful gatherings. He said rights violations "increased in volume" over the past four years.

Kudos to AP for reporting what is generally unreported.

And brickbats to practically every major subscriber to AP for not bothering to choose this story.

I found this in very few sources; a few Israeli papers and this Lebanese one, plus some generic news aggregators. But when stories about Israel are instantly reproduced in thousands of news sites within minutes, it is very telling that something like this gets all but ignored.

Also, it is interesting that while the original AP story uses a dateline of "Ramallah," the Daily Star says "Occupied Ramallah." I wonder if AP allows subscribers to change their datelines for political purposes.

(h/t Yenta Press)

Al Aqsa preacher says to fight all infidels who don't convert or pay jizya

From MEMRI:

In an Al-Aqsa Mosque address, posted on the Internet on May 1, Sheik 'Issam Amira said that polytheist enemies should be given three options: "They must convert to Islam, or pay the jizya poll tax, or else, you should seek the help of Allah and fight them." "You should fight them even if they do not fight you," Amira stressed.

Following are excerpts:

Issam Amira: Today, our honorable Islamic scholars talk about defensive Jihad. "Fight for the sake of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress, for Allah does not like transgressors." In other words, you should always be polite, never go against anyone, and never point your weapon at anyone, unless someone attacks you. In all other cases, everything must be peaceful. No!

When you face a polytheist enemy, you should give him three options: They must convert to Islam, or pay the jizya poll tax, or else, you should seek the help of Allah and fight them. You should fight them even if they do not fight you. Seek the help of Allah, and fight them. Let the scholars hear this: You should seek the help of Allah and fight them. Only when they fight you? No! When they refuse to convert to Islam, and refuse to pay the jizya. In such a case, it is meaningless [to let them] keep enjoying their life in this world, eating from the sustenance bestowed by Allah, yet disbelieving in Him. No! against their will, we shall subjugate them to the rule of Allah, without forcing them to convert to Islam.

Of course, there was an immediate outcry and denunciations from the moderate Muslims upon hearing about this.

Just kidding!

Amira once taught in UNRWA schools. He became involved with Hizb ut-Tahrir and now preaches at a mosque in Beit Safafa, but often preaches at Al Aqsa.

“Yesterday we heard the Leader of the [Labour] Opposition [Harold Wilson], its spokesman on foreign affairs, and the leader of the Liberal Party [Jeremy Thorpe] urging our government [prime minister Edward Heath’s Conservative one] to supply arms to Israel, when the Israeli Army is fighting 125 miles inside Egypt and over 20 miles inside Syria,” R.G. Cookson, FRS, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Southampton – apparently an ideological antecedent to today’s monstrous regiment of anti-Israel academics – wrote from his Winchester home to The Times newspaper in October 1973 during the Yom Kippur War. “When will they think Israel has conquered enough territory – or do they support the Zionist ideal of a state stretching from the Euphrates to the Nile?”

At the London headquarters of the very proper and rather patrician Anglo-Jewish Association, a body steeped historically in anti-Zionist or at least non-Zionist sentiment, its Council, anxious to avoid the accusation of “dual loyalties,” chose its words carefully in arguing the opposing view in the same venerable publication. The eleven men and one woman settled upon the following text:

“We … express our distress at the violation of the ceasefire by Egypt and Syria.

With our sympathy for Israel reinforced by a shared historical experience, we believe that this onslaught sustained by Soviet equipment must inevitably damage the strategic interests of Britain, the country of our allegiance.

We therefore call on His Majesty’s Government not to persist in an embargo on arms for Israel which will inevitably and unfairly injure Israel in her struggle to survive.”

It bore the signatures of Victor Lucas (businessman and multi-faceted communal heavyweight), (Sir) Leon Bagrit (industrialist), (Sir) Isaiah Berlin (political philosopher), Maurice Edelman (MP, Labour), (Sir) Louis Gluckstein (ex-MP, Conservative), Toby Jessel (MP, Conservative), David Kessler (Jewish Chronicle proprietor), Ewen Montagu (judge and famous wartime intelligence officer), Frances Rubens (wife of prominent Judaica expert Alfred Rubens), Neville Sandelson (MP, Labour), Harold Sebag-Montefiore (Greater London Council official and judge), and Harold Soref (MP, Conservative).

Although derided in less squeamishly and more overtly pro-Israel quarters as fustily cautious in its wording, the AJA’s statement was a welcome addition to the robust Jewish communal protest against the Heath government’s embargo – which although imposed upon all combatants in the war was in practice disadvantageous only to Israel, and extended even to a ban on supplying spare parts for that country’s British-made Centurion tanks.

Meanwhile the usual anti-Israel propaganda was at work on other fronts, for example in an obnoxious letter to The Times (19 October) by Sir Kennedy Trevaskis (1915-90), a Foreign Office Arabist who, as his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography regarding the Aden phase of his diplomatic career notes, “was back in an environment, essentially Muslim, where his experience, personal qualities, and sympathies were at home”. In short, a typical member of the Foreign Office “Camel Corps” that is still going strong today: consider Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Sir Oliver Miles, Sir Vincent Fearn, Frances Guy, James Watt, and many others.

Trevaskis’s jaundiced claptrap, with, among other points, its nasty reference to “immigrants from Europe” displacing the “indigenous” inhabitants, was ably refuted by D. M. (David Malcolm) Lewis of Christ Church, Oxford, whose letter appeared in The Times of 22 October. Lewis – subsequently Professor of Ancient History at Oxford, and well versed in Jewish, Persian and Greek antiquity – wrote, inter alia:

“I must say that Sir Kennedy Trevaskis does not inspire much confidence in the command of the facts enjoyed by British Arabists. I can attach very little precise meaning to his assertion that nine-tenths of the indigenous population of Israel has been expelled from its home …. Apart from the Israeli-born Jewish population, the total of Jewish immigrants to Israel from Asia and Africa between 1948 and 1970 was 723,073. The vast majority of these came from Arab lands, leaving their homes and possessions of centuries behind them. No doubt this fact would be more clearly recognised if they had been left in refugee camps.”

He added:

“I certainly have sympathy for Palestinians, but we should nevertheless realise that part of what has gone on in the Middle East in the past 25 years has been a massive exchange of populations. If philhellenes were still agitating for the return of the Greek population of Asia Minor, they would universally be regarded as stupid and dangerous.”

I’ll continue this issue of British reactions to Israel during the Yom Kippur War in my next column, but right now I want to draw attention to what the British Labour MP Richard Crossman, a staunch and enduring friend of Israel, had to say regarding the issue of the arms embargo. For in so doing so he made a withering indictment of Foreign Office Arabism which appears as relevant today as it did then. His op-ed in The Times (17 October 1973), under the heading “Arabists hold all the cards at the FO” – which had prompted Trevaskis’s sour little outburst commending the Arabist outlook – commenced:

‘The official British attitude to the Arab-Israeli War is odious – but not more odious than usual. Ever since in the mid-1920s the Foreign Office discovered that in backing Zionism, Lloyd George had acquired not a Jewish goldmine but a political liability, the Foreign Office has been politely anti-Zionist. Every time an Arab-Jewish crisis breaks out, the officials concerned work out a policy which can be shown in legal terms to be strictly fair to the Jewish side but which also provides some undercover material advantage to “our friends the Arabs”.

It was absurd to hope that in this crisis the Foreign Office would suddenly acquire a genuine impartiality between Jew and Arab, and a sense that a commitment to the Jews should be honoured even when it pays to get rid of it. No – the policy which evolved within a matter of hours was one which in legal terms would be strictly fair but in military terms would be of enormous benefit to the Arabs.’

In order to achieve that aim, he continued, the Foreign Office had advised Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home that three things were necessary. First, that Sir Alec “should send a telegram to [Britain’s] representative at the [UN] Security Council making sure that at the very first session he should propose a ceasefire though there was not the slightest chance of anybody paying attention”. Second, that Sir Alec should state publicly, as he duly did, that “as the proponent of a ceasefire, Britain must impose on herself a quite unusually severe form of neutrality”. Third, that “having made this statement, he should coolly assert that this new and severe neutrality required a total embargo on arms to both sides”.

The effect, Crossman went on, “is to deny to the six Arab states we have been supplying with arms a small amount of the superfluity of ultramodern weapons systems they have been acquiring from us, among others. For many months they will not feel it, and if they do the Russians will fill the gap”. In sharp contrast, however,

“The arms embargo we have imposed on Israel is of an entirely different dimension. For many years we have divided with the Americans the responsibility for providing a very large part of the armaments used by the Israeli army. The navy has come to rely on us for certain kinds of vessels – submarines, frigates, torpedo boats. Even more important, we have become a main purveyor to the army of a vast amount of military hardware – a huge list with, right at the top, artillery, armoured cars, and tanks plus spares and ammunition.

Quite deliberately, the Americans left this side of the job to us. As a result, when the Russians began to pour arms into the Arab side and the Americans began to redress the balance, our high-minded statement that in pursuance of our policy of trying to obtain a truce we must at once embargo all kinds of British arms exports to Israel meant that the deadly imbalance as regards this aspect of the war would not be rectified. The spare parts and ammunition for the armoured divisions in the desert are not to be sent: Sir Alec Douglas-Home, with the strict impartiality which has inspired British foreign policy in the Middle East for 50 years, has imposed an arms embargo which leaves the Arabs almost unaffected while it stabs the Jews in the back.”

Not that Sir Alec had acted very differently from a Labour Foreign Secretary in the circumstances, conceded Crossman, although more of an objection would have been made had Michael Stewart, let alone George Brown, held that portfolio. “Whatever politician is in charge of Britain’s Middle East policy, the Foreign Office is unbeatable.”

“We have had real Foreign Secretaries whose presence in that august office made a real difference to British policy in other parts of the world,” Crossman observed.

‘But in this one area, a tight little group composed of the officials at home and the ambassadors abroad, has always managed to impose its will on the politicians. These, of course, are the “Arabists” who monopolize the Middle Eastern department and regard the Middle Eastern embassies as theirs by right. Lesser mortals can be sent to an area where the language is new. An Arabist can hope that once he has been through his special linguistic training and established his special pro-Arab reliability, he can spend a lifetime either sitting at an Arab desk in the Foreign Office or sitting in a British Embassy in an Arab state.’

Crossman recalled that, when he was a minister in Harold Wilson’s government, he had witnessed “the Arabists’ techniques”. Denis Healey, the Secretary of State for Defence, Crossman explained,

“was going into business in a big way as an arms merchant trying to cut his ministry’s cost by upping its sales. It was the time when the Chieftain tank was being developed. The Centurion was marketed as the best tank in the world and the Chieftain as one better. The Arabs were biting and the Israelis began to show an interest. So a long dialogue took place in the course of which two prototypes were sent out for testing and development by the Israeli army, which had had much more battle experience than ours.

My Israeli friends were proud of the new example of Anglo-Israeli cooperation and certain they would get the contract. I was sure they wouldn’t, and tried to show them that Britain is not the right place to buy military hardware, since in any Jewish-Arab crisis, when the Arab pressure was applied we would let Israel down whatever promises we had made.”

He attempted to persuade the Israelis to buy their artillery from Sweden. He warned them that in reality they stood no chance of obtaining Chieftain tanks, since as soon as news leaked that such a deal with Britain was in the offing, the UK’s Arabist diplomats would unleash their mischief on the government, claiming that British embassies in the Middle East were in danger of being torched by angry demonstrators – and, consequently, the Israelis would be out of the running.

“Of course, I was right,” his op-ed concluded.

“But what I did not foresee was this total arms embargo in the first week of a war. But I should have known. One of the rules of the unique kind of strip poker they play is that a British Arabist is entitled to have an extra ace up his sleeve.”

Daphne Anson is an Australian who under her real name has authored and co-authored several books and many articles on historical topics including Jewish ones. She blogs under an alias in order to separate her professional identity from her blogging one.

05/12 Links Pt1: Kontorovich: A Tale of two blockades; Palestinian Authority's "Crimes of High Treason"

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: A Tale of two blockades

In Gothenburg, Sweden, a ship has set sail to run Israel’s blockade of Gaza, in a reprise of a now common activist tactic. At the same time, an Iranian ship has set sail from Bander Abbas to relieve the Saudi coalition’s blockade of Yemen, which has half the country on the brink of starvation.
Both blockades arise in what much of the international community regards as “non-international armed conflict” (NIAC). [The reasoning for both characterizations as NIACs is quite strained, in my view.]
In a new post at OpinioJuris, I discuss the legality of the Saudi blockade, showing that much previously neglected state practice supports the use of blockades in NIACs. Indeed, the only time it has been argued that such actions are illegal is in relation to the Gaza blockade. But the international community’s acceptance of the Yemen blockade (though not necessarily the particulars of its administration) shows that any potential anti-blockade norm has failed to materialize.
One wonders whether the new Gaza flotilla will meet a different response from the international community, now that it has remembered that blockade is legal. One also wonders whether the Yemen blockade, which by Oxfam’s description of it has turned it into what one would elsewhere call “the world’s largest open air prison” will manage to get half the international attention as the Gaza one.

Eugene Kontorovich: Libya’s shelling of Cook Islands ship gives New Zealand its own Maersk Tigris moment

The Libyan Navy has attacked a civilian ship off that country’s coast, as it was apparently bringing supplies for an Islamist rival militia, which Turkey has been accused of backing. The Turkish-owned ship was shelled from the shore and then attacked from the air. It caught fire and was towed to port, with at least one crew-member killed.
Some quick observations:
1) The vessel was flagged out of the Cook Islands, a Pacific nation with much the same defense relationship with New Zealand as the Marshall Islands have with the U.S. While under the former relationship, the Cooks must formally ask for assistance, it is unlikely that Wellington would brave the Barbary Coast to release the captured vessel.
It is quite a historical moment when the security benefits of being a New Zealand protectorate are indistinguishable from those of being an American protectorate.
2. It is unclear from news accounts if the ship was in territorial waters, but given the resulting loss of life, this is a matter of international note. One wonders how long it will be before the U.N. creates special commissions to investigate, as has been its past response to the violent loss of life on Turkish vessels.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian Authority's "Crimes of High Treason"

Hamas is at least being honest about its intentions to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamist state. But the Palestinian Authority leadership in the West Bank continues to deceive not only its people, but also the international community, with regards to the refugee problem.
By sponsoring, funding and encouraging Palestinians to take to the streets to "mourn" the establishment of Israel and remain committed to the "right of return," Abbas and his officials in Ramallah are not being honest with their people. They are undoubtedly afraid of telling their people that Israel would never allow millions of Palestinians into its borders. They are even more afraid of admitting to the refugees that Arab and Palestinian leaders have been lying to them since 1948 by asking them to stay in their camps because one day they will return to non-existent villages and homes.
If and when the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks ever resume, PA leaders will not be able to make any concessions on the refugee issue. They will not because they know that their people would not accept any kind of concessions on this matter. Once again, the PA leaders will have only themselves to blame for having radicalized their people over the years to a point where Palestinians consider any concessions to Israel as a "crime of high treason." This stance not only applies to the refugee issue, but also to other matters, such as the two-state-solution, the status of Jerusalem and the future borders of a Palestinian state. Neither Abbas nor any future Palestinian leader will be able to reach a compromise with Israel when the Palestinian Authority itself continues to promote such anti-Israel sentiments.

Palestinians really hate not being the center of attention

The Camp David summit between the US and six Gulf states plans to address "the integration of ballistic missile defense architecture, more military exercises to address maritime, counterterrorism, air and missile defense challenges and government infrastructure against cyber hackers."

Obviously even if the official agenda didn't mention it, Iran will also be a major topic. The participants will make sure of that.

Poor Saeb Erekat. Among all the articles written about this summit and its political implications fo rthe entire Middle East, no one is talking about Palestinian Arabs. And his job is to make sure that the world always keeps the Palestinian issue front and center.

So Erekat issued a press release:

Executive Committee of the PLO member Saeb Erekat confirmed that the Palestinian issue will be present at the Camp David summit, which will bring together US President Barack Obama and the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Erekat stressed in a statement "that the Palestinian issue in all its aspects is the central issue of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and all Arab countries," stressing that ending the Israeli occupation and establishing a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem is the key to security and stability in the Middle East.

Funny how none of the Arab leaders mentioned the word "Palestinian" in relation to this summit. In terms of priorites, it is dead last.

Erekat, acting in the same fashion that we have seen the Palestinian Arab leadership use so often, is like a toddler at a dinner party interrupting his mother's conversation by saying "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"

Unlike the Palestinian issue, he US relationship with Israel is cause for concern among the Gulf states:

To quote the informal and unattributable words of a prominent Arab diplomat recently: “We always suspected that the United States would sell us out to Iran, but we thought we had a safety net with Israel. The Americans, we thought, would not sell Israel out, but now we see that they are selling us all out together.”

Last week:

Washington on Thursday called Israel’s approval of building 900 apartment units in a Jewish neighborhood of East Jerusalem “damaging and inconsistent” with its commitment to a two-state solution.
The condemnation of the move by the State Department came less than a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the formation of a new governing coalition.

“This is a disappointing development, and we’re concerned about it just as a new Israeli government has been announced,” US State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said at a press briefing. “Israel’s leaders have asserted that they remain committed to a two-state solution, and we need to see that commitment in the actions of… the Israeli government.”

Rathke said that the US government would “continue to make our position clear that we view this as illegitimate.”

Of course, the EU piled on:

Israel's determination to continue its settlement policy despite the urging of the international community, not only threatens the viability of the two state solution but also seriously calls into question its commitment to a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians.

A simple look at where the construction is planned shows that in no way, shape or form does building at Ramat Shlomo hurt the two state solution.

Here is Peace Now's map of the planned construction at Ramat Shlomo, in red, when 1500 units were planned:

Here is the same area from satellite:

The new construction is on the southern end of Ramat Shlomo, towards the Jewish neighborhoods of Sanhedria, Har Hotzvim and Ramat Eshkol - that are mostly within the Green Line.

In other words, there is no possible way that the land that is being built on would ever, in any universe, not remain in Israeli territory. Not under any peace plan ever promoted by any serious group. Never.

Even the far left Geneva Initiative, one of whose members was PA minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, included major Jewish neighborhoods much further to the north than Ramat Shlomo as remaining in Israel:

When the US and EU say that Israel cannot build anything at all for Jews in Jerusalem who live in areas that everyone agrees would be part of Israel forever, they are saying that Jerusalem must remain static and unchanging They are also saying that the rules for Israeli Jews are different than for Israeli Arabs, who have moved into Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and whose additional construction approval do not get condemned by the EU or US.

This is not helpful to "peace." It just signals to Israel that it is alone, and that its opponents have bought the extreme anti-Israel positions of the Palestinians, and that their rules are particularly against Jews.

Which in turn makes Israel less likely to negotiate over other areas, since the third parties that want to be part of the solution have already signaled their extreme bias against any Jews - and only Jews - living in any part of Jerusalem that happen to live across what was meant to be a temporary armistice line.

Who wants to negotiate their own destruction? Who wants to negotiate under the friendly auspices of people who have loudly announced their bias against you?

Arab writer admits Arabs must take their share or responsibility for "Nakba"

Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar has an article by Majed Kayali that is highly unusual in the Arab world.

While it of course blames Israel for the "nakba" in 1948, this is the first time I've seen an Arab columnist admit that Arabs must take some responsibility for the Palestinian Arab situation today.

Excerpts:

Since the beginning we have regarded the Nakba as the product of a Zionist colonial act, and this is true, but it is not the whole story, or does not explain the truth of what happened.

In particular, the Nakba didn't happen suddenly, but it came within the framework of a series of events and developments, related to the establishment of the Zionist movement, and directing Jewish immigration to Palestine, and the establishment of the nuclei of political, military and economic and educational entities to Israel, before 1948.

The talk about the Nakba raises the question year after year, as to how the Arab reality not only could not do anything for the Palestinians, but for that very reason the Nakba continues. With all due respect to talk about the centrality of the question of Palestine, the love of Palestine, this has not translated in a practical way that makes it easier for the Palestinians, who have been the subject of all kinds of discrimination and extortion and being used in the Arab world.

In addition to all the above, the Arab system is responsible for preventing Palestinians from statehood. Arabs aborted the "All-Palestine Government" [puppet government in Gaza in the 1950s], and they annexed their land, which did not fall under Israeli control, namely the West Bank and Gaza.

Under the Arab system, Palestinian refugees have no rights, no power, under the pretext of maintaining their unity.

So you can not talk about the Nakba without a critical review of history, because history is written recounted a particular story, focused on the creation of Israel, and history is withholding of stories on the responsibility of Arab nations for the Nakba, within which they facilitated the migration of Jews from Arab countries to Palestine / Israel to the extent that this State doubled its population within three years, and 80 percent of Jewish immigrants came from Arab countries.

UNRWA spokesman pathetically trolls for compliments (update)

I missed this bizarre tweet from UNRWA PR flack Chris Gunness:

He is trying to pretend he has a sense of humor about his crying on air last year and by making that bad Photoshop* from an old TV show, but his desire to have people tell him that they like him is real.

And pathetic.

But if Gunness really wants to insert himself in a TV show, here's one that might work:

UPDATE: Gunness didn't make the first poster above; it was done at Israellycool.

05/11 Links Pt2: Behind Breaking the Silence; St. George was a Palestinian?; The Holy Land in 4K

From Ian:

Swedish trawler leaves for Gaza in attempt to break naval blockade

A trawler left its port in Sweden to travel some 5,000 nautical miles in order to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The boat, named Marianne of Gothenburg and purchased jointly by Ship to Gaza Sweden and Ship to Gaza Norway, left on its journey on Sunday evening. It is the first ship in the Freedom Flotilla III to leave for Gaza, according to the website of Ship to Gaza Sweden.
The Marianne will stop at ports in Helsingborg, Malmö and Copenhagen, as well as other ports that will be announced later, according to the website.
The boat does not have room for a significant cargo, but will be carrying solar panels and medical equipment, according to the organization.
It is carrying five crew members and eight passengers. Among the passengers are: Israeli-born Swedish citizen Dror Feiler, a musician and spokesperson of Ship to Gaza; Henry Ascher, a professor of Public Health and pediatrician; Lennart Berggren, a filmmaker; Maria Svensson, pro. tem. spokesperson of the Feministiskt initiative; and Mikael Karlsson, chairperson of Ship to Gaza Sweden.

Swedish deputy PM compares migrant crisis to Holocaust, apologizes

Sweden’s deputy prime minister has apologized for comparing the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean to the horrors of the Holocaust.
In a televised party leader debate Sunday, Asa Romson deplored the desperate situation of migrants trying to make the perilous and often deadly crossing to Europe, saying “we are … turning the Mediterranean into the new Auschwitz.”
Critics, including Jewish leaders, called the comparison to the Nazi death camp misguided and offensive. About 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed in Auschwitz during World War II.
Romson, who represents the Green Party, apologized Monday on Twitter, saying “It was wrong to make the comparison with Auschwitz.”

Swedish expo on WWII White Bus rescue mission made Judenfrei

An exhibition on Sweden and Denmark’s “White Bus” operation to rescue people from concentration camps at the end of World War Two has been vandalised, officials said Saturday, with the perpetrators cutting out a large chunk of text concerning the Jews who were saved.
“They have consciously cut out the part that concerns the Jews, nothing else was touched,” Reverend Mikael Ringlander, one of the organisers, said of the attack that occurred overnight to Saturday.
“We held a ceremony in the synagogue yesterday. It must have angered someone,” he said, adding the incident has been reported to police
The weekend exhibition in Gothenburg had been staged to mark 70 years since Sweden’s Red Cross together with the Danish government in the spring of 1945 sent hundreds of buses to German-occupied territories to rescue people imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.

"Saudis attacking Houthis because Saud family is Jewish"

Syria-based DamPress has an article saying that the entire reason Saudi Arabia is attacking the Houthis in Yemen is to defend Jews.

The article is called "A war for Israel" by Ali Abboud.

The cartoon says "Jerusalem is that way!" as the Saudi fighter goes towards Yemen. (The words on the garment are a derogatory reference to the Saudi royal family.)

According to the article, the Saudi leaders know that Houthi slogan, "God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Damn the Jews, Power to Islam." The phrase that makes them upset is "Damn the Jews."

Abboud says that without understanding this "fact," one cannot explain why the Saudis are bombing the Houthis.

According to this article, Israel is most concerned that a Houthi-dominated Yemen would close the Mandeb Strait between the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, so the Saudis are defending Israel from that possibility.

Why is Saudi Arabia so concerned over Israel? Not because they are Zionist.

It is because, you see, the Saudi royal family is really Jewish!

Jews who were fleeing persecution ended up in the Gulf and pretended to be Arabs, according to his version of the legend. They prayed with Muslims and buried their dead in Muslim cemeteries.

But those crafty Jews, who took over Arabia, created the Wahhabi faith in order to destroy Islam from within.

This idea that the al-Saud family is really Jewish has been around for a long time.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Gulf leaders snub Obama, but no one calls it an "insult"

From AP:

It is not just the Saudi king who will be skipping the Camp David summit of U.S. and allied Arab leaders. Most Gulf heads of state won't be there.

The absences will put a damper on talks that are designed to reassure key Arab allies, and almost certainly reflect dissatisfaction among leaders of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council with Washington's handling of Iran and what they expect to get out of the meeting.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced late on Sunday that newly installed King Salman will not be attending. The ostensible reason was because the upcoming summit on Thursday coincides with a humanitarian cease-fire in the conflict in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is fighting Shiite rebels known as Houthis.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who is also interior minister, will lead the Saudi delegation and the king's son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is defense minister, will also attend.

President Barack Obama had planned to meet King Salman one-on-one a day before the gathering of leaders at the presidential retreat but the White House did not take his decision to skip the summit as a sign of any substantial disagreement with the United States.

Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, a professor of political science at Emirates University, said Gulf leaders were staying away from the Camp David gathering to signal their displeasure over the nuclear talks.

"I don't think they have a deep respect, a deep trust for Obama and his promises. There is a fundamental difference between his vision of post-nuclear-deal Iran and their vision," he said. "They think Iran is a destabilizing force and will remain so, probably even more, if the sanctions are lifted. ... They're just not seeing things eye to eye."

I have yet to read a single commentary saying that a coordinated snub of the President of the United States is an "insult," or that it is "increasing tensions."

But in the same article:

Netanyahu has been an outspoken critic of the deal, raising tensions with the White House.

Israel expressing its opinion on Iran is couched in terms of how terrible and ungratefully Netanyahu is acting towards the US. But oil-rich Arab states don't have to worry about anyone saying anything bad about them in the media.

05/11 Links Pt1: PA honors terrorists who lynched Israelis; Venezuela: Israel trafficked babies in Nepal

From Ian:

PMW: PA honors 3 terrorists who lynched two Israeli reservists

Last week, Palestinian Authority Member of Parliament and Director of the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake visited the families of three of the terrorists who took part in the lynching and murder of two Israeli reservists in 2000. Karake honored these murderers by giving their families "plaques of honor." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 9, 2015]
Karake has stated that Palestinians have an unequivocal right to "resistance" and "struggle" - PA euphemisms for violence against Israel. He calls the murderers of Israelis "heroes."
On Oct. 12, 2000, a Palestinian mob brutally murdered and mutilated the bodies of two Israeli reservists who had accidentally entered Ramallah. A well-known picture from the gruesome murder showed a Palestinian raising his bloodied hands heroically, showing the crowd his hands covered in the blood of his victims. The bodies of the two Israelis were thrown out of the window, and the mob dragged them through the streets of Ramallah. (Photo credit: Agence France Presse)

Israeli aid to Nepal covered for baby trafficking, Spanish-language TV claims

Israel used its humanitarian aid mission to Nepal as a cover for trafficking 25 Nepalese babies, two Spanish-language networks reported.
Iranian HispanTV and Venezuela’s Telesur networks broadcast the reports. Telesur is the national public television channel in Venezuela, which is rebroadcast throughout Latin America on other public television networks.
HispanTV broadcast the original report, which quotes an unnamed NGO as stating that “Israel uses humanitarian help as a cover for trafficking of 25 babies in Nepal.” Telesur picked up the report last week.
The report stated, correctly, that of the 25 babies that were taken to Israel, “15 of them were born through Tammuz, an Israeli surrogacy company which provides services to Israeli couples unable to bear children, particularly homosexual couples.” The other babies also reportedly were born to surrogate mothers for Israeli parents.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the report.
“The ‘Tehran-Caracas axis’ even perverts humanitarian aid to victims of natural disasters such as the Nepal earthquake, just as they had accused the Israeli medical mission of harvesting body parts in the Haiti catastrophe,” said Dr. Shimon Samuels, director for International Relations of the Wiesenthal Center. “Through these Spanish-language television satellites, Iran foments anti-Semitism across the Americas, just as it sponsors global terrorism, slanders the Holocaust and pursues its nuclear program.

Radical Offshoot of Human Rights Watch Sends Strike Team to Nepal to Assassinate Victims Saved by Israel (satire)

After Human Rights Watch’s head Kenneth Roth tweeted condemnation of Israel for constructing a 60 bed field hospital in Nepal, sources tell The Israeli Daily (TID) that a radical offshoot of the organization called ‘No Jewish Human Rights Watch’ has dispatched a strike team to hunt down those Nepalese who accepted Israel’s offer of life saving assistance.
“Defending human rights requires shedding blood,” wrote NJHRC’s leader, Sub Commander Fred. “Usually that’s Jewish blood, so nobody really cares, but this situation requires more direct action. We must make an example of those selfish Nepalese traitors who chose Zionist aid over death.”
While Roth did not defend NJHRC’s tactics, he understood their passion. “For some, it just isn’t enough that we focus so much of our attention on the tiny Jewish State, even while hundreds of thousands of Syrians are murdered and Iran jails reporters brave enough to criticize their regime. But could we focus even more on Israel? Probably. Fred’s methods may be wrong, but his heart is always in the right place.”
This is the first time NJHRC has threatened direction violent action. Israeli security officer, Major Chaim Shitz, however, voiced no concern. “Once those guys realize that they can’t get a soy latte in Nepal, we’re pretty sure they’ll scurry back to Berkeley.”

Al Jazeera reports that the Egyptian army blew up three mosques on Saturday night in Rafah.

The mosques were in the buffer zone that Egypt is building to curb illegal smuggling tunnels to Gaza. Clearly, the Egyptian government believed that Hamas would have no problem using mosques as entrances to the tunnels to smuggle weapons - in either direction.

What? You mean you didn't hear about the destruction of three mosques? Funny how that happens.

While Al Jazeera says that this caused a furor, I am not seeing anything about it in other media. Egypt has jailed some Al Jazeera journalists, and AJ is not a fan of the regime, so it likes to make it look bad.

Arab towns surrounded by Jewish communities have 0% unemployment

Mas-ha, Qarawat Bani Hassan and Biddya are three Arab towns that, according to the conventional wisdom, should be suffering more than most due to the suffocating presence of Jewish settlements surrounding them.

Here is a detail of B'Tselem's map showing the towns as islands of Arab brown among a sea of Jewish blue areas.

Yet today there is an Arabic article in Safa that says that the towns have a zero percent unemployment rate.

The article characterizes the issue as how the towns manage to thrive even though the evil Israelis built their evil apartheid wall (the dotted lines are for barriers that have not been built.)

The towns were commercial centers before the second intifada, and it appears that they used to get lots of Jewish customers to department stores lining their main street during the peaceful Oslo period when blowing up Jews only happened several times a year.

But when the suicide bombings became bad, they lost customers so the town leaders decided to re-orient their economy around manufacturing. Now they are filled with factories making glass, furniture and other goods.

This has caused their land prices to increase tenfold, from 10,000 Jordanian dinars per dunam to 100,000 dinars.

The new manufacturing sites are attracting Arabs from all over the West Bank, and factory owners cannot keep up with the demand for skilled workers. They claim that their wages are comparable to those of Arab workers in Jewish settlements, between 4000-7000 shekels a month.

Here's the kicker.

The business leaders of Qarawat Bani Hassan complain that the Palestinian Authority is doing nothing to help them. On the contrary, they say that they are taxed heavily by the PA and that they get literally nothing in return.

In fact, they say that the PA looks at them suspiciously. One business owner says that the Ministry of Finance considers successful businessmen to be thieves, sometimes accuse him of tax evasion, and at other times of money laundering.

The only people who seem threatened by the towns' success are the kleptocrats of the Palestinian Authority, and perhaps the NGOs who have little power over using these towns as propaganda against Israel (although they try.)

The story of Mas-ha, Qarawat Bani Hassan and Biddya shows that it isn't settlements that are ruining the economy under PA rule. It is PA rule itself, where jobs are used as political favors and corruption is the norm, where innovation is punished and laziness rewarded.

It also shows that the entire PA strategy isn't for helping their people but instead to do everything they can to demonize and diminish Israel on the world stage.

The people don't matter. "Winning" their zero sum game with Israel is the obsession of the PA, and the people who are abandoned are forced to do what they can in spite of their corrupt leaders.