Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

06/17 Links Pt1: UNRWA Chief: Hamas Hid Weapons in Facilities; Oren: US-Israel ties ‘in tatters’

From Ian:

UNRWA Chief Admits Hamas Hid Weapons in Facilities

Pierre Krahenbuhl, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, the UN body tasked with aiding "Palestinian refugees," admitted on Wednesday that Hamas terrorists hid weapons at UNRWA facilities during their terror war against Israel last summer.
"We were the ones who found the weapons caches in our facilities during inspections," Krahenbuhl told Yedioth Aharonoth in an interview. "The reason that the whole world knew about it is that we told them."
Krahenbuhl's reference is to at least three separate occasions in which rockets were found at UNRWA facilities. After the first finding of rockets at an UNRWA school, UNRWA workers reportedly called Hamas to come remove them.
Likewise, a booby-trapped UNRWA clinic was detonated, killing three IDF soldiers. Aside from the massive amounts of explosives hidden in the walls of the clinic, it was revealed that it stood on top of dozens of terror tunnels, showing how UNRWA is closely embedded with Hamas.
The UNRWA head continued, saying, "we knew the revelation would lead to harsh responses against us in Israel, but try to imagine what would happen if we weren't the ones who published it. The act of publishing proves we aren't ready to allow it and show restraint."

David Horovitz: Blaming Obama, ex-envoy Oren says aspects of US-Israel ties ‘in tatters’

He said the root of Israel’s problems with Obama lies in three aspects of the president’s abiding worldview: Obama’s “unprecedented support for the Palestinians,” the goal of “reconciling with what Obama calls the Muslim world,” and Obama’s “outreach, reconciling with Iran. From the get-go. You see that right from the beginning. He comes into office going after Iran.”
But the administration is also problematic, Oren added, because it “jettisoned the two core principles of the alliance, which were ‘no surprises’ and ‘no daylight.’ Obama said it: I’m putting daylight. And proceeds to put daylight, public daylight. And then surprises. I was told that with previous administrations,” said Oren, “we were always given advance copies of major policy speeches. The Cairo speech (that Obama delivered in 2009) was twice as long as the First Inaugural Address. It touched on issues that were vital to our security. We never had any preview.”
Given the deterioration in ties, and especially given Obama’s policy on Iran, Oren concluded in the interview that “we’re on our own,” facing what he termed “a broad spectrum of monumental threats all at the same time.” He said this conclusion was inescapable after Obama failed to act against Syria, and that it was at this point that “everyone” in Israel realized that Obama was not serious about his military option on Iran.
Still, Oren tried to put a brave gloss on Israel’s lonely position: “To me that’s a refreshing Zionist moment. We realize we’re on our own,” said Oren. “It’s a different topic, but I have a thing about this regional peace conference with the moderate Arab states that everyone keeps talking about here, certain parties. To me it’s running away from what I believe is an Israeli Zionist responsibility: taking our fate into our own hands. Waiting for the Saudis to somehow bring redemption? I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
Oren concludes the book by urging that bilateral ties be repaired, and says American and Israeli leaders “must restore those three ‘no’s’ — no surprises, no daylight, no public altercations — in their relations.”
Asked toward the end of the interview whether things would be better under a Hillary Clinton presidency, Oren said that Netanyahu had “a rapport” with her, and that “she understands certain things about Israel… She gets it.” Clinton and Republican candidate Jeb Bush both made major campaign speeches this week in which they promised US-Israel ties would improve if they were elected president next year.

From Clooney to Clinton: 20 revelations from Michael Oren’s new book

1. Netanyahu’s take on the Hebrew press: Criticized on all sides in the Israeli media for his 2009 speech at Bar Ilan University in support of a two-state solution, Netanyahu tells Oren, half in jest, “If I walked on the Sea of Galilee, the Israeli papers would write, ‘Bibi can’t swim.'”
3. Kissinger’s bleak assessment of Obama’s approach to the Middle East: Meeting with Henry Kissinger early in his term, Oren finds the ex-secretary of state gloomy over the president’s eagerness to reconcile with Iran. Surely, says Oren, the White House realizes that an “Iran with nuclear capabilities means the end of American hegemony in the Middle East?” Retorts Kissinger: “And what makes you think anybody in the White House still cares about American hegemony in the Middle East?”
4. Oren stunned by Obama’s attitude to the United States: Reading the president’s memoir “Dreams From My Father,” the ambassador says he scoured the book in vain “for some expression of reverence, even respect, for the country its author would someday lead” but finds none. Instead, in Oren’s reading, “the book criticizes Americans for their capitalism and consumer culture, for despoiling their environment and maintaining antiquated power structures.” He notes that Obama accused Americans traveling abroad of exhibiting “ignorance and arrogance” — the very same shortcomings, notes Oren dryly, that the president’s critics assigned to him.
7. Abbas’s no-peace stare: At the suggestion of veteran US official Dennis Ross, Vice President Biden, visiting Israel in 2010, asked Mahmoud Abbas, when he called on the Palestinian Authority president in Ramallah, to “look him in the eye and promise that he could make peace with Israel. Abbas refused.”
8. Closed Gates: Former US defense secretary Robert Gates had “a visceral dislike” of Netanyahu, writes Oren. He’d known Netanyahu since the prime minister was deputy FM, and back then thought him superficial, glib, arrogant and outlandishly ambitious. As an adviser to George H.W. Bush, Gates had gone so far as to recommend that the young Netanyahu be banned from the White House.

Hamas whines over its impotence in the "unity government"

Maan reports:

An attendee of the 15th Fatah Revolutionary Council conference led by President Mahmoud Abbas told Ma'an Tuesday that the council will form an entirely new unity cabinet rather than pursuing efforts to reform the existing government.

Abbas announced that the government would resign within the next 24 hours, several senior Fatah officials attending the conference told AFP, with the new government formation expected to be carried out in a matter of several days.

The announcement comes as Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have struggled to maintain a unity government pieced together in June 2014.

Hamas is upset:

Hamas rejected any unilateral dissolution of the Palestinian unity government on Wednesday, hours before Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah was expected to meet President Mahmoud Abbas to present his government’s resignation and discuss the formation of a new government.

The rejection comes as senior Fatah officials reported Tuesday night that Abbas announced during a Fatah council meeting that the government would be dissolved and entirely reformed.

"Hamas rejects any one-sided change in the government without the agreement of all parties," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.

"No one told us anything about any decision to change and no one consulted with us about any change in the unity government. Fatah acted on its own in all regards."

Governmental sources told Ma'an that Hamdallah is expected to be assigned to the task of forming a new government that would potentially include the Hamas movement and other PLO factions.

Spokesperson of the national consensus government Ihab Bseiso meanwhile denied reports by Israeli media that forming a new government would not include representatives of Hamas.

Only a few years ago Hamas was the one calling the shots - its Gaza leader flying all over the world acting as heads of state, seemingly unlimited funding from Iran, absolute support from Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

Now Iran has limited its support for Hamas because it wouldn't support Assad in Syria. Egypt treats Hamas as an enemy and Gaza as enemy territory. Hamas is working to prevent rocket attacks on Israel because it cannot afford another war. And instead of defining the agenda of the "unity government" as it did in earlier failed attempts, now it is sidelined and complaining over how no one asks its opinion.

The worst thing you can do to Arabs is not to defeat them but to humiliate them, and being ignored is the ultimate humiliation.

JPost reports:

The police must increase its presence around the the Mount of Olives Cemetery in east Jerusalem, where Jewish visitors are often attacked, MKs and activists said at a Knesset Interior Committee meeting Monday.

Police Kedem District commander Chief Superintendent Chaim Shmueli recommended that a fence be built around the cemetery with gates leading to the graves.

The meeting’s attendees pointed to continued problems of vandalism and rock-throwing, saying that the police is not doing enough.

“Either give [private] security guards more authority or increase the protection,” on the mount, MK Yoav Ben-Tsur said. “It cannot be that in the State of Israel our sovereignty is abandoned.”

MK Yisrael Eichler (United Torah Judaism) said the violence on the Mount of Olives is an attack on Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem and the entire Land of Israel.

MK Abdullah Abu Marouf (Joint List) spoke out against vandalizing graves, calling it “not accepted by anyone in the world; a basic concept in human values.”

The Joint List MK also said the Waqf should have been invited to the meeting.

Why should the Waqf be invited to a meeting about the world's oldest and most venerated Jewish cemetery?

Because, like every single other Jewish heritage site that predates Islam, Muslims claim it as their own.

Al-Haj Mustafa Abu Zahra, "head of the Islamic graves," responded to this story by saying that the Mount of Olives is really an ancient Islamic cemetery known as "Ras al-Amud." It belongs to the Islamic Waqf, he claims. Adding to the absurdity, Abu Zahra added that a hundred years ago, the benevolent Muslims loaned it to Jews - and now they want it back.

The Jews moved the bones of hundreds or thousands of Muslims from the cemetery, and added thousands of its own fake graves to expand their land grab according to this Islamic leader.

Abu Zahra further said how ironic it was that Jews are concerned over these graves when they are destroying ancient Muslim cemeteries to build the Museum of Tolerance. (He didn't mention my discovery that the Supreme Muslim Council had decided in 1945 to build an office park directly on top of the Mamilla cemetery they are referring to. Or that the Mufti of Jerusalem dumped sewage from his hotel into the same cemetery. Or that it is Muslims, not Jews, who have planted fake graves - and been caught doing so.)

The article adds that Jews visiting the graves of their ancestors are the ones who are harassing the peaceful Arab residents of the area.

No lie is too fantastic for Muslims when they are trying to delegitimize Israel and Judaism.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Assuming that this Mondoweiss account of a program at the 92nd St Y is accurate:

At the end of the discussion, [Peter] Beinart challenged the hall filled with 500 mostly older folks (and surely almost all Jews, and paying $40 a head) to include anti-Zionists at the table:

“And the last thing I’ll say and this is the most challenging I think maybe for most people, including for me: Our tent, our Jewish community, our proverbial Seder table, is going to have to include the Jewish kids who are not Zionists, including the Jewish kids who are involved in the BDS movement. Because Jewish kids are overrepresented in the BDS movement. You may find that frightening beyond belief, you may find it terrifying. And I understand why you do, but it’s true.”

Beinart then related an anecdote of a campus meeting of Students for Justice for Palestine where most of the group was Jewish, and continued:

“Every generation hears the voice of Sinai anew. This generation– one way it is hearing it makes us radically uncomfortable. We cannot afford to tell them that they are not welcome in Jewish spaces, because then we alienate them not only from Israel but from being Jews as well. We need to welcome them in, we need to argue with them, we need to challenge them, we need to be challenged by them. We may be entering– I take no pleasure in this, I find it a terrifying reality– We are entering, An era in which there is no longer going to be a Zionist consensus in the U.S. Especially if Israel continues on its current path. We will have to remain a Jewish community in that environment and we will have to be welcoming even to those people on the far left or the far right whose views we find deeply, deeply upsetting.”

Saying that those who are dedicated to destroying the Jewish state are listening to the word of God is beyond obscene..Beinart has lost what little credibility he may have had.

Beyond that, as usual, Beinart is wrong. He claims that by excluding these anti-Israel voices from the Jewish community, we are alienating them from Judaism. He has it exactly backwards - the vast, vast majority of Jews who support BDS are those who have already been estranged from Judaism, and they cynically use their accident of birth to legitimize a fundamentally anti-Jewish position.

Yes, Judaism is Zionist. You cannot meaningfully say "Next Year in Jerusalem" at the "proverbial seder table" while saying that Jews don't have rights to their capital city.

The seder happens to be a perfect way to illustrate how wrong Beinart is. Here is a part of something called "No time to Celebrate - Jews Remember the Nakba Passover Haggadah Supplement, 5768 / 2008":

Yes, they have changed "Next year in Jerusalem" to refer to those who want to see Jerusalem to be ethnically cleansed of Jews. Yeah, let's include them in the "big tent."

These people don't care about Judaism except for how to use it as a weapon. Their claim to Judaism, by doing things like hijacking the idea of a Passover seder, is like Hamas pretending to love human rights - a cynical ploy to fool others, but not a true statement of belief. Their "Judaism" - which is really taking concepts like "social justice" and calling it Judaism - is purely political, and their intent in being taken seriously by the Jewish establishment is to destroy Jewish (and mainstream Zionist) institutions from within.

Not to say that there isn't a problem with young people.. Beinart exaggerates it - there is far more pro-Israel sentiment among college students than he pretends - but there is a problem, and the problem is that too many people don't raise their kids to feel like they are part of the Jewish people.

The sad fact is that most American Jews know little about Judaism and Israel. The issue needs to be addressed early on, with dynamic education programs that start when the kids are young, with camps and trips and accurate education about Judaism and Zionism.

If the older people listening to Beinart are concerned about their grandkids, they should be putting their money into education for pre-teens and teens as well as into programs that counter the anti-Israel lies on college campuses.

The Haggadah - the real one, that is - has explicit instructions on how to deal with "the wicked son." We are not told to love him and listen respectfully to his views. On the contrary, we are told to recognize his true intention to weaken us and to publicly shame him for his efforts to hurt his people under the pretense of simply asking innocent questions., Judaism - real Judaism, that is - does not say to have a "big tent" to accept all viewpoints as having equal validity. It tells usto recognize evil and to fight it.

Jews who support BDS certainly are analogous to the wicked son. And Peter Beinart, by praising those who want to pervert Judaism in order to destroy Israel, may very well have crossed the line to that category as well.

06/16 Links Pt2: The Bigotry of Our Time; Kay Wilson's revenge

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The Bigotry of Our Time

The letters page of The Guardian in the UK is regularly filled with letters, jointly signed by "correct-thinking" people who hope that in so doing, they will give themselves both a little puff of publicity and simultaneously signal their loyalty to all modern virtues
Their opinions on Israeli counter-terrorism strategy may be those of a group of teachers, the unemployed and two extreme-left filmmakers, but it is Israel they are against, so of course the letter is of note. So much so, that it received an accompanying news story in the print edition of the paper. This gave a further quote from Ken Loach, who said: "The boycott campaign specifically says this is not a campaign against individual film-makers, it is a call for a boycott when the state of Israel invests money or is promoting the event. I'd be the last person to want to censor an individual voice."
One doubts, in fact, that Loach would be the last. He is always among the first. The letter -- and the surrounding furore -- is simply the latest in a series of attempts to make Israeli and indeed Jewish culture "forbidden." In London, we have had Israeli orchestras, theatre companies and even string quartets howled down by mobs during performances, and Israeli-performed shows cancelled because the venues hosting them just do not want the bother. Last year, the Tricycle Theatre in London refused to proceed with a festival of "Jewish" culture because a tiny proportion of the festival's funding was coming from the Israeli embassy in London.
The campaign is obviously organized. The same names crop up again and again. Little, if any, rigour is paid to whether the signatories of such letters even do what they say do, or have opinions worthy of any note. Beneath the barely-built veneer of "professionals objecting to something in their own profession," is just the same tiny number of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish obsessives. A sprinkling of "as a Jew" Jews, like Margolyes, help, of course. But the aim is clear. These people, step by step, want to make every expression of Israeli and Jewish cultural life subject to their idea of how a nation under constant threat of terrorist bombardment should behave. They denounce Israel as a militaristic society and then attempt to outlaw every non-militaristic cultural and artistic expression from that society.
It is the bigotry of our time. And if unchecked, it will lead in the same direction as it historically has done. Thankfully, although few people have seen the films of those self-important Guardian letter signatories, we have all seen this larger, historical film -- and it is not one that decent people would like to see repeated.

Fascist Demonstrators to Burn Talmud at London Rally in Jewish Neighborhood

The extreme right-wing organizers of a Saturday protest in a predominantly Jewish London neighborhood plan to burn Israeli flags and even a copy of the Jewish Oral Law, or Talmud, the UK’s Jewish Chronicle reported on Tuesday.
Right-wing activist Joshua Bonehill-Paine called on demonstrators through his website to bring Israeli flags to the July 4 demonstration in the mostly Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green to “dismember … by hand,” which apparently sidesteps the legal complications of burning national flags.
“This will be a show of solidarity by English people who recognize that Israel is a corrupt state which is responsible for horrific war crimes,” wrote Bonehill-Paine.
Additionally, the activist said there would be a private meeting held before the demonstration in which copies of the Talmud could be burned “in recognition of its racist Anti-White [sic] teachings.” (h/t Alexi)

5/28/2015: Police Chief Asks UK Jews for Help to Stop Anti-Semitic Rally

A British police chief has requested London's Jewish community to provide proof an extremist rally being planned for July 4 in Golders Green will be anti-Semitic, so authorities can shut it down.
According to a Jewish Chronicle report, Barnet borough commander Adrian Usher claimed that if there was evidence the rally is “motivated by antisemitism, then that is clearly against the law and we will take robust action.”

Kay Wilson's revenge

A ferocious attack by terror-minded Palestinian Arabs on a pair of defenseless women hiking in the hills near Jerusalem on December 18, 2010 is the prelude to an extraordinary recent talk recorded on video as a TEDx event.
Speaking to an audience in Beer Sheva on the campus of Ben Gurion University of the Negev on May 13, 2015, Kay Wilson passionately and articulately walks her audience through the before, the during and the after of being murdered - and surviving. She shares what it means to witness her friend and companion butchered right beside her, and to identify the killers - who must have thought they had gotten away with their barbarism - and watch them convicted.
There are societies all over the world where a person who undergoes what she did becomes twisted, vicious and bent on revenge. Even if her own website [Let My People Giggle] had been given a different name, it would be clear that hatefulness is not what Kay embodies.
But in a way, standing up in front of audiences, as she now does, and projecting a message of optimism and humanity is an act of revenge.

Rockets being shot from/to civilian areas in Ukraine doesn't seem to bother anyone

Hmmm....

Donetsk (Ukraine) (AFP) - Several hundred Ukrainians in the country's war-torn east demanded Monday that pro-Russian insurgents remove scores of rocket launchers from crowded city neighbourhoods and stop provoking government fire on their homes.

Districts around Donetsk and Lugansk -- capital of a neighbouring separatist region -- have witnessed the return of intense fighting that has claimed more than 50 lives this month.

That upsurge followed more than three months of relative calm that came in the wake of a truce agreement brokered in the Belarussian capital Minsk with the direct involvement of the leaders of Germany and France.

Donetsk residents from a neighbourhood near the airport that insurgents managed to seize after months of some of the war's heaviest clashes in January, accused the insurgents of using them as human shields.

"You are hiding behind our backs," some residents chanted. Others simply shouted "Shame!"

"It has been impossible to live in these conditions for the past year," said a young woman who wanted to be identified only as Lena for fear of retribution from the insurgents.

"We have hardly been able to leave our basements for the past two weeks," said fellow demonstrator Irina. "They have left us to our fates."

The event received no mention on the Donetsk insurgents' official news site. They have previously described videos showing rockets being launched from children's playgrounds and apartment courtyards as fake.

It seems clear that rockets are being shot from civilian areas - and the government is shooting back.

Because there isn't much choice in dealing with terrorists who use civilians as human shields.

Reports even say that the point of shooting the Grad rockets is to draw fire so they can blame civilian casualties on the government.

Isn't it interesting that this is receiving so little coverage?

(h/t Jeff K)

"When you educate people to boycott only Israel, when you tell them that all Israelis are responsible for human-rights abuses, when you mobilise a global campaign to say that Israel is uniquely racist, and when this campaign becomes central to progressive politics globally, you are, whether you know it or not, incubating anti-Semitic ways of thinking. When ears are closed to concern about anti-Semitism on the basis that such concern is a marker of secret support for Israeli human rights abuses, then you know there is a problem."

So observed London academic and left-leaning Zionist Dr David Hirsh on his well-known website (http://www.engageonline.org.uk) in 2011, in an article entitled “No such thing as a victimless boycott”.

Australians Associate Professor Philip Mendes and Dr Nick Dyrenfurth, both of Monash University and both with a number of books to their credit, are cast in similar mould to Dr Hirsh. They are on the mainstream left of the political spectrum – Philip Mendes is, incidentally, the undisputed, much-published authority on the Jewish Left in Australia and has told its story warts and all, while Nick Dyrenfurth has written about the Australian Labor Party (ALP), for which he once worked as an adviser and speechwriter. Manifestly not uncritical of Israeli government policy, they are firmly committed to Israel’s right to exist within just and secure borders, and under no illusions regarding the sinister nature and aims of the BDS movement. Their new book, Boycotting Israel is Wrong: The progressive path to peace between Palestinians and Israelis (NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, 2015) is the first book written by political “progressives” that unequivocally condemns the excrescence that is the BDS weapon while at the same time offering a prescription for a solution to a seemingly intractable conflict.

Last Thursday, at its Melbourne launch introduced by Michael Borowick, assistant secretary to the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), around 100 people including the indefatigably pro-Israel ALP federal MP Michael Danby and yours truly, heard ALP federal MP and Shadow Justice Minister David Feeney speak enthusiastically in favour of the book and its thesis. Pointing out that being anti-Israel is fast becoming the litmus test of being a loyal political leftist, and observing that the experience of partition was not unique to former mandate Palestine, he blamed the Palestinian leaders’ persistent rejection of solutions offered by Israel for the Palestinians’ plight, and queried why so many on the Green Left movement and in the left-wing factions of the ALP demonise the Middle East region’s sole democracy, Israel, when what should concern progressives is the oppression of and atrocities against women and minorities that characterises so much of the Middle East. Denouncing the antisemitism of the BDS movement, he also denounced the current trend for unilateral recognition of a hitherto non-existent Palestinian State: likening such recognition to a cul-de-sac that is no thoroughfare to peace. Such a peace, entailing a two-state solution, can only be achieved through negotiation and compromise (including the division of Jerusalem), Feeney argued, adding that while it is true that Palestinian nationalism is a comparatively late phenomenon, it should not be dismissed as invalid on those grounds, for not all modern states – Pakistan for instance – are rooted in an ages-long sense of nationhood. It is vital, he concluded, for the mainstream left, based on such considerations, to present the case for Israel and not allow support for Israel to be misrepresented exclusively as a feature of the political right.

Since Feeney’s speech essentially reflected the sentiments of the book, Philip Mendes decided to dispense with the speech he intended to give – which he had given at the Sydney launch the previous day – and spoke relatively briefly.

‘Why would anybody write a book about the BDS movement?” Mendes had said earlier. “For me personally, it’s all been a bit of a political catharsis. For much of the 1980s and indeed 1990s, I was part of a tiny minority of a few dozen Australian Jews – barely a minyan – who favoured recognizing Palestinian national rights alongside the State of Israel via a two-state solution.

But even in those days, there were anti-Zionist fundamentalists on the far Left who demanded absolute justice for Palestinians even if this meant Israelis were denied any national rights….

By any reasonable judgement, the month of March 2002 had been a particularly horrific episode in the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During that awful period, there were eight separate suicide attacks by Palestinian Islamic terrorists on Israeli civilians resulting in the deaths of no less than 63 people and many hundreds injured. The final straw was the attack on the Passover Seder in Netanya’s Park Hotel which killed 30 people and injured 140. This attack provoked the Israeli invasion of the leading West Bank cities known as Operation Defensive Shield in an attempt to destroy the terror networks, and stop the carnage.

Yet it was precisely at this point that the international campaign for a boycott of Israel commenced. Two UK academics Steven and Hilary Rose proposed a boycott of all Israeli academics and academic institutions. Their initiative was copied in May 2002 by two Australian academics John Docker and Ghassan Hage. Their boycott petition, which was signed by 90 Australian academics, was based on the binary opposites of good and bad nations stereotyping the Israelis as evil oppressors, and the Palestinians as defenceless and innocent victims.

Even putting aside the question of whether this petition may have been interpreted as supporting the Palestinian perpetrators of suicide bombings rather than the Israeli victims, the philosophical intent was obvious. The Australian BDS movement did not endorse the national and human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians, and did not seek to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace and reconciliation via a two-state solution. Rather, its concern was the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

As we note in our book ... the BDS movement’s extremist agenda has not changed since 2002. The major local manifestations include:

The Max Brenner chocolate shop protests led by angry far Left extremists from the Socialist Alternative group who urge the restoration of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea which means the elimination of the State of Israel;
The Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney whose Director Jake Lynch ironically boycotted the visiting Israeli peace academic Dan Avnon. Lynch has publicly argued that Jewish financial pressure was responsible for the ALP switching leaders from Kevin Rudd to Julia Gillard in June 2010.
The NSW Branch of the Australian Greens which voted in December 2010 “to boycott Israeli goods, trading and military arrangements, and sporting, cultural and academic events as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel’s occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory, the siege of Gaza and imprisonment of 1.5 million people and Israel’s institution of a system of apartheid”, later resulting in the embarrassing Marrickville Council BDS saga during the 2011 state election.
The Victorian Trades Hall Council which hosted a BDS Conference in October 2010 with the American BDS activist Anna Baltzer, who favours the abolition of the State of Israel, as the key-note speaker.
The Sydney University Staff for a BDS who construct Israelis as monolithically evil oppressors whilst its powerful supporters around the world allegedly bully and threaten any who challenge its hegemony.

The common theme here is that the BDS movement is not concerned with ending the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank, or challenging specific Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. Rather the sole aim is to paint Israel as an allegedly racist and colonialist state which has no right to exist, and to transform Israel into an international pariah similar to South Africa under the former apartheid regime.

In doing so, the movement also demonises any pro-Israel Jews elsewhere, whatever their varied views on conflict, as the political enemy, and openly use the language of bigotry and xenophobia to hit their target. This has been particularly apparent during the recent and continuing debate over Jake Lynch’s role in the aggressive disruption of Colonel Richard Kemp’s talk at Sydney University. Lynch’s supporters have constructed the debate as an apocalyptic battle between allegedly brave supporters of justice for the Palestinians versus powerful Jewish pro-Israel lobby groups.

For example, Professor Stuart Rees, Lynch’s predecessor at CPACS and founder of the Sydney Peace Foundation, has accused pro-Israel groups of engaging in intimidation, verbal battering, venom, hate mail and death threats. He refers to the alleged “financial and political power” of these groups, and yet oddly denies any link between anti-Semitism and the extremist BDS movement. He should also note that Palestinian BDS activists have actually been physically breaking up Israeli-Palestinian peace conferences in Jerusalem and elsewhere.

Nick Riemer and David Brophy from the Sydney University Staff for a BDS group raise the furphy of a powerful pro-Israel lobby allegedly threatening the jobs of University Staff involved in pro-Palestine activism, but provide no names or evidence as to which groups or individuals are involved in what they call a “witchhunt”. Their argument suggests a bizarre misrepresentation of the combative interest group politics associated with the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hardliners from both sides (what we have identified as the Greater Palestine and Greater Israel groups) tend to use shrill and aggressive bullying tactics in promoting their beliefs, and seeking to discredit those with whom they disagree. Everything that we have heard from a wide range of academic colleagues at the University of Sydney would suggest that the Sydney Staff for BDS group are active sinners as much as being sinned against in this regard.

And finally back to Jake Lynch who laughably claims that he is neither antisemitic nor even anti-Israel despite supporting the global BDS agenda for the elimination of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of its Jewish population.

But Lynch is confident that he can call on five self-denying Australian Jews to support his argument, all of whom happen to also be supporters of the extremist BDS movement.

So he prioritizes the views of this tiny minority against the will and rights of the great majority of the other 120,000 Australian Jews who detest his views. Obviously when they taught the most basic community development principle at Sydney University – start where the community is – Lynch was absent from class.

To conclude, the BDS movement has clearly become a major source of intolerance in Australian society as has also been the case in the UK and USA.’

Needless to say, not all of Elder’s readers will agree with the authors’ solution to the conflict, as outlined in the book’s final chapter. But they will surely applaud the main tenets of this highly cogent work, with its helpful appendices, its copious notes, and its long and impressive bibliography.

Not the least appealing aspect of the book is the fact that, as seen in their long rant against it on the ABC’s “The Drum” website, two of the mainstays of the Australian BDS movement, Riemer and Brophy – both mentioned in Mendes’s address quoted above – are raging about it in an article (http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2015/05/08/4232595.htm) entitled “Right to Boycott”. Enjoy!

06/16 Links Pt1: Instead of investigating IDF, UN should probe itself; UNRWA is Counterproductive

From Ian:

UN-believable:Israeli Organizations Working Against Israel at the UN

Im Tirtzu’s latest report reveals how three Israeli organizations, which have consultant status at the Economic-Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC), have been acting against the State of Israel and promoting the delegitimization of Israel in the international community. The groups have also been calling for an inquiry into IDF actions in Gaza.
Because the status conferred upon the organizations is a very prestigious one, as far as non-governmental organizations go, they are able to advise UN institutions on human rights, and can influence formulation of positions and resolutions adopted by the various UN bodies.
The groups – Adalah, Itijah, and the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions – use their access to UN organizations to accuse Israel and the IDF of war crimes, violations of international law related to combat and human rights, torture of Palestinians, and other crimes.
Im Tirtzu said that all three organizations have enjoyed funding from the New Israel Fund (NIF), among other sources, and Adalah receives money from the NIF to this day.

UNRWA in the Gaza Strip is Counterproductive

It must have come as a great shock to the so-called international community that in June 2015 the so-called refugees, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip protested that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was giving resources they deserved to other Palestinians.
The Gaza Palestinians demanded of UNRWA that it not cut the funds allocated to them, nor transfer those resources to the Palestinians who remained in the Yarmouk refugee camp in south Damascus, despite the fact 150,000 had fled the camp because of the Syrian War They also demanded that the international community, implicitly the U.S. and the EU, provide extra funding for their needs.
Perhaps because of this protest, Robert Turner, Director of UNRWA in Gaza, without reason or explanation, announced his intention to leave his position in mid July 2015. He has held that position since May 2012. His resignation might have been a cause of regret if he had not continued to refer, inaccurately, to the Gaza Strip as “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” He seems unaware that since 2007 it has been ruled by the terrorist group Hamas. He has always been a true naïve believer in the self-serving fallacious Palestinian Narrative of Victimhood.
Sometimes people in power do speak truth, or part of it, to the rest of us. On June 2, 2015, commemorating more than 65 years since UNRWA was established, the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon remarked that it was “never meant to exist for this long.” Ban regards it as a political failure.

UN Watch: "Why is the U.N. Rewarding the Perpetrators?" — Hillel Neuer blasts election of Iran & Saudi Arabia

Arab media over the past day have reported a bizarre story claiming that former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking in Israel, said that the Jewish state should be exclusively for Jews and the Palestinian state exclusively for Arabs.

The story is wholly fictional. In fact, Sarkozy said in 2011 that the idea of a "Jewish state" is "silly."

But while researching it I found something that Sarkozy said last week in Israel at the Herzliya conference that explains the mindframe that causes Arabs to make up stories like that.

Sarkozy said that humanity owes a debt to the Jewish people for their persecution over the centuries, which culminated in the Holocaust. “The silence of the nations while the crimes were committed is a blemish on the conscience of humanity, he said. “We all failed and have a debt toward the Jewish people, and it continues to exist.” He said that the “only way to do something about it” is to always ensure the security of the Jewish people.

“Mankind has not yet understood that the fate of the Jews is always the forerunner of what will happen to others,” he said. “Fighting for the security of Jews and Israel is fighting for all those who make a difference in the world, and this is my profound conviction.'’

Sarkozy mentioned that there exist schools in France where teachers cannot teach about the Holocaust.

“It’s true there are schools in France where you cannot teach the Holocaust,” he said. But he insisted that France ‘’is not an anti-Semitic country.’’

Without saying this explicitly, Sarkozy is saying that French schools in Muslim neighborhoods - seemingly state schools where the curriculum is set nationally - refuse to teach an important part of 20th century history because they are antisemitic.

It is the same antisemitism that causes Muslims and Arabs to make up stories that Israel is planning to ethnically cleanse Israel of Arabs.

CNN bias, definitively explained

Last month, CNN - under the headline "Israeli settlers reportedly chop down 800 Palestinian olive trees" - parroted absurd Palestinian allegations without bothering to do a modicum of fact checking. (The story also quoted another false story that 175 "right wing Jewish extremists" went to the Al Aqsa Mosque.)

Under a firestorm of criticism, the author of the article Don Melvin insisted that there was nothing wrong with the story, saying that he was clear what the source of the reports were. Even yesterday on Twitter he kept at it:

@Johnny_Simson @HonestReporting One only puts the source first, before the allegation, when the source ismost important thing to understand.
— Don Melvin (@Don_Melvin) June 15, 2015

This is incredibly disingenuous. Generations of news consumers are conditioned to believe official sources that are quoted by the media if there is no indication that the source itself is suspect, and CNN did no exert any effort to uncover the actual facts of the report, leaving the readers with no context that could indicate that the story in the official PA news agency was false. On the contrary, they continued to quote Wafa quoting B'Tselem that indeed settlers do terrible things, confirming the false story in the minds of the readers.

CNN endowed the Wafa news agency with the same gravitas it would give a think tank or a human rights organization issuing a report.

CNN did not say a word to indicate that the reports were false, and Melvin knows very well how the stories would be understood by his audience. I would bet that Melvin, who is based in London, believed the stories himself so much that he did not think they were worth checking, and now he is spinning his gullibility behind his quoting a known lying source as if the audience would know that the source is trash beforehand.

Today, there is another story in the official PA news agency Wafa. It is similar to stories they have run dozens of times before, claiming that Jewish settlers are raising and releasing thousands of wild boars annually in order to destroy Palestinian crops. In this case, the article says that Jews in Ariel are jealous of the beautiful lands that their Arab neighbors in Salfit are using to plant figs, grapes, berries, olives.

The article says that the Jews come with truckfuls of wild boars at night and release them in the Arab fields.

If CNN is to be consistent, they should report this story from the official PA news agency accusing settlers of crimes as well. They won't. Because if they report it as straight as they reported the lies about the olive trees, even people who were raised on a diet of anti-Israel propaganda would think it is absurd that Jews would be raising vicious, wild (and unkosher) animals and somehow place them into trucks (!) for no reason except to terrorize Arabs.

The olive tree/"Jewish extremist" story, on the other hand, seemed plausible to causal readers. This is exactly why CNN's defense of the story is indefensible.

From a pure question of newsworthiness, the wild boar story is far more relevant - because Mahmoud Abbas himself has publicly made the same accusations. A real news organization would hold a politician to higher standards and go after him for saying such absurd lies. But Abbas is untouchable in the mainstream media, and no one at CNN will ever ask him a single difficult question.(I have a long list of such questions that not a single reporter ever asked Abbas.)

This, ladies and gentlemen, is media bias. The choice of stories that are left unreported are just as important as those that are reported. Treating one national leader with kid gloves while mercilessly attacking others is clear proof of bias.

Deep down, Don Melvin (and any real journalist) knows that everything I am writing is true. His reporting on the olive trees and "storming Jews" may have been technically true in that is attributed the source but its style was highly irresponsible because readers would not know the source is suspect. CNN's lack of reporting over the years of the other absurd accusations against Jewish settlers is a clear indication that, to CNN and the other mainstream media, the only news formula that matters is "West Bank Arabs are good. Jewish settlers are evil."

Anything that can challenge that meme is simply to be ignored, because the meme is the story at CNN, and "reporting" is only meant to support the meme, not to uncover the truth.

Yesterday I tweeted Melvin with an article I wrote last September, showing a litany of news stories in a single week that I covered but that were ignored by the media, asking "Is This Newsworthy?" and asking him to answer. Of course, he didn't respond. And neither did any other reporter I asked at the time. Because they know that the bias is there and they can[t admit it without making themselves look bad.

There are plenty of stories that fit any definition of newsworthiness that are ignored, while others that adhere to pre-existing biases are trumpeted, because the narrative the media wants to push is more important than facts.

Times of Israel reports:

Leading members of Gaza-based terrorist group Hamas convened in Qatar over the past several days to discuss a proposal for a long-term ceasefire with Israel, the Palestinian Al-Quds newspaper reported Monday.

According to Palestinian officials quoted by the paper, Hamas representative Moussa Abu Marzouk went to the Qatari capital of Doha on Saturday in the hopes of finalizing a three-to-five year truce with the Jewish state.

The truce proposal, which is backed by both Qatar and Turkey, is based on an outline formulated by UN special envoy to the Middle East Nikolay Mladenov, according to the Israeli NRG news site.

The report added that Abu Marzouk held a series of meetings in Qatar with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal as well as other senior officials in the organization.

The truce proposal reportedly includes a clause regarding the establishment of a seaport in Gaza, NRG reported. The port, according to the proposal, will be subject to Israeli or international supervision.

A Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan confirmed that Hamas will respond to some unspecified truce proposal today.

Fatah is not thrilled. Fatah-leaning Palestine Press Agency characterizes the story as "Informed sources in the Hamas movement inside and outside Palestine say there is a consensus within the movement for an agreement with Israel instead of an agreement with the Palestinian Authority."

The official Wafa news agency of the PA gives a lukewarm reaction to the news - and revealed the PA's long-standing fears of a separate Hamastan in Gaza:

Official spokesman for the Presidency, Nabil Abu Rdainah, commenting on what is being talked about to reach a truce in the Gaza Strip, said that it would be important, if it is not at the expense of the unity of the land and the state and the people, and not a precursor for the acceptance of a state with provisional borders, which would leave a devastating impact on the Palestinian people and their cause and independence.

He added in a statement to 'Wafa', on Tuesday, that any truce should aim to alleviate the suffering of our people, and not to be at the expense of the Palestinian national consensus.

The idea of a seaport under international supervision is interesting. It effectively would make a seaport a replacement for the Rafah crossing, which used to be manned by a European contingent EUBAM-Rafah (with cameras to Israel) to monitor that no weapons or terrorists crossed the border. That agreement was with the PA.

It is an indication of Hamas' weakness that they would even consider such a plan, when they have been dead-set against any Israeli involvement in the Rafah crossing.

From a legal perspective I don't know if this plan would affect the legal position of Israel's' sea blockade of Gaza. I believe it wouldn't, because legal sea blockades can include inspections of ships and allow ships with aid to pass through to the blockaded ports.

06/15 Links Pt2: You can’t win a PR war, fighting on the enemy’s side; 24 Days in the Life of Ilan Halimi

From Ian:

You can’t win a PR war by fighting on the enemy’s side

I can’t think of another conflict in history where one side devoted so much time and energy to selling the world the other side’s narrative rather than its own. And then, after two decades of actively supporting the two most important Palestinians claims against it, Israel actually wonders why the world views it as the villain.
Claim number one is that the West Bank and Gaza are “occupied Palestinian territory.” This is a crucial issue, because if Israel is just a thief occupying stolen Palestinian land, then it has no right to retain any of this land or set any conditions on its return, and deserves opprobrium for even daring to pose such demands. In contrast, if Israel has a valid claim to these lands, then it’s being laudably generous in offering the Palestinians a state there and has every right to impose conditions on this generosity, like retaining certain areas or demanding specific security arrangements.
Official Israeli spokesmen don’t back this Palestinian claim in so many words. But they do talk constantly about the Palestinians’ “right” to establish a state in these lands, while talking only sporadically about Israel’s own legal and historical rights there. And needless to say, Palestinians don’t return the favor: They talk constantly about their own rights and never about Israel’s rights.
Moreover, Israel’s talk of Palestinian “rights” actually undermines the credibility of its own claims. After all, if Israel truly has the best legal claim to the land, why would Palestinians have any right to a state there? So by declaring that Palestinians do have such a right, Israeli spokesmen imply that even Israel doesn’t quite believe its own claim.
Thus for most of world, deciding who really owns the land becomes a no-brainer: The Palestinian claim looks much stronger. After all, both sides agree unequivocally that the Palestinians have rights there, so that must be true. In contrast, Israel asserts its own claims only half-heartedly, while Palestinians deny them outright; hence Israel’s claims seem dubious.
Or in other words, Palestinians are fighting the PR war full-time on their own behalf, while Israel is fighting only part-time for itself, and part-time for the enemy. And needless to say, that’s no way to win a war.

A Murder in Paris: 24 Days in the Life of Ilan Halimi

I remember hearing about Ilan’s story. I read about this beautiful young man in Paris, targeted by a gang for kidnapping, torture and murder because he was Jewish. I was horrified to hear what happened to Ilan. As I became more familiar with the barbarity he was subjected to, an unsettling feeling came over me as I read about the details and wondered, was this a forewarning of things to come? I had no idea that 9 years later I would be writing about what happened to Ilan Halimi after viewing the chilling & heartbreaking film, 24 Days, directed by the French Algerian born Alexandre Arcady.
Keeping us on the edge of our seats, the film brilliantly chronicles how a French Jewish Moroccan family in Paris lived for three weeks while their beloved son and brother was being held, gagged, beaten and abused for ransom by an Islamist gang.

Eugene Kontorovich: Sudan’s Bashir is the Palestinians’ and Pretoria’s favorite genocidal tyrant

The free pass given to Bashir is another in a series of major blows to the credibility of the ICC – and in this case, the Security Council. If member states like South Africa do not take the Court seriously in cases that do not even involve its own nationals, it is hard to expect non-members to do so.
While refusing treaty obligations to arrest the world’s leading genocidaire – known of course for his campaign against black Africans in Darfur – might seem unconscionable, Bashir has his defenders.
Among them is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who vocally opposes the ICC process against Bashir. “We must also take a decisive stance of solidarity alongside fraternal Sudan and President Omar al-Bashir,” Abbas has said. He has has also expressed his “solidarity” with the Sudanese despot, and categorically rejected enforcement of the ICC warrant.
The Palestinian Authority is not alone in this – the entire Arab League backs Bashir against the ICC. But what makes the PA’s position on Bashir even more outrageous is that they have actually purported to join the ICC, and seek to invoke its jurisdiction against Israeli officials. The only other Arab League members to join the ICC are Comoros, Djibouti, and Jordan, which has distanced itself from the Bashir policy, unlike the PA.
Thus even as the Palestinians got the ICC to bend its rules about statehood to join, they were advocating the defiance of the Court’s writ in the single most important and grave kind of case, genocide cases initiated by the Security Council. In short, the Palestinians seek to exempt genocidaires from the Court’s jurisdiction while pushing for it to prosecute Israelis for allowing Jews to live in Jerusalem. The PA is involved in the trivialization and corruption of the Court from both ends.
The international community tolerates this hypocrisy, and the Bashir debacle is among the consequences.

UNRWA has frozen and cut back some of its programs because Arab countries have not paid their pledges - but some Palestinians see a much more nefarious reason.

Political economic expert Dr. Adel Samara says that the reduction of services is "an international political conspiracy hatched in secret to liquidate the Palestinian cause."

He astutely notes that ""Arab and European countries have trillions of dollars," asking why they cannot spare more of their money for giving Palestinian Arabs and their descendants welfare for eternity.

He concludes that the real reason for the budget shortfall is a concerted effort by the entire world to eliminate the Palestinian cause issues such as the right of return and self-determination.

Ali Huweidi, writing for Middle East Monitor, insists that the UNRWA budget should come from the central UN budget, rather than from voluntary contributions from individual nations. This scheme reveals some interesting facts.

The regular UN budget for 2012-2013 was about $5 billion. UNRWA's budget alone is about $2 billion.

Which means that the UN couldn't possibly fund UNRWA for a month, let alone permanently.

It also means that UNRWA donors are paying 40% as much to keep the Palestinian Arab "refugee" issue artificially alive than they are to cover the UN's programs in the entire rest of the world.

Huweidi's idea to force nations to increase their UN payments by 40% would ensure the collapse of UNRWA - or of the UN.

Maybe it's not such a bad idea!

"My Jew-hatred is copyrighted!"

“Jews actually intend to conquer the world... by palmediawatch

From Palestinian Media Watch:

A Palestinian teacher from the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is situated on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, taught in his lesson on May 29, 2015, that the reason Europeans expelled Jews and the reason the Nazis burnt Jews in the Holocaust, was because Jews use the blood of non-Jewish children to make matzah bread for Passover. According to Sheikh Khaled Al-Mughrabi, “they were burned in Germany because of these things.”

Palestinian Media Watch’s exposure of his blood libel generated international condemnation and 8,000 views on YouTube in just three days. In order to have PMW’s video removed from YouTube, the Al-Aqsa lecturer charged that PMW had violated his copyright. YouTube, following US law, removed PMW’s subtitled video that exposed his hate speech.

PMW has since sent a “counter-notification” to Sheikh Khaled Al-Mughrabi via YouTube, arguing that the video of his hate speech was “Fair Use” of the material - since “Fair Use” permits the use of a work “for purposes such as: private study, research, criticism, review, journalistic reporting, quotation, or instruction and examination by an educational institution.” [Israel Copyright Act 2007, emphasis added]

YouTube is supposed to reinstate the PMW video in 10 days unless Sheikh Al-Mughrabi decides to take his claim of copyright violation to court and sue PMW.

It is also noteworthy that in order to hide his hate speech, the Sheikh made the video of his lesson on YouTube “private” after PMW’s exposure so it could no longer be seen by the general public.

That's a slightly new wrinkle on lawfare. Often MEMRI videos are attacked (and indeed MEMRI's YouTube channel is now down) because of complaints about copyrights of Arab TV shows but this is the first time I've seen someone who uploaded his own video to YouTube claim afterwards that no one else could watch it.

06/15 Links Pt1: Ten Ways Israel Is Treated Differently; Report Reveals Hamas War Crimes

From Ian:

Ten Ways Israel Is Treated Differently

It’s appalling to see how Israel is treated by a totally different standard than other countries in the international system. Of course, Israel deserves scrutiny, as does every other nation. But it also merits equal treatment — nothing more, nothing less.
First, Israel is the only UN member state whose very right to exist is under constant challenge.
Notwithstanding the fact that Israel embodies an age-old connection with the Jewish people as repeatedly cited in the most widely read book in the world, the Bible, that it was created based on the 1947 recommendation of the UN, and that it has been a member of the world body since 1949, there’s a relentless chorus of nations, institutions, and individuals denying Israel’s very political legitimacy.
No one would dare question the right to exist of many other countries whose basis for legitimacy is infinitely more questionable than Israel’s, including those that were created by brute force, occupation, or distant mapmakers. Just look around at how many nations fit those categories, including, by the way, quite a few Arab countries. Why, then, is it open hunting season only on Israel? Could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that it’s the only Jewish-majority country in the world?
Second, Israel is the only UN member state that’s been targeted for annihilation by another UN member state.
Think about it. The leadership of Iran, together with Iran-funded proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, has repeatedly called for wiping Israel off the map. Is there any other country facing the threat of genocidal destruction?

Honest Reporting: 3 Media Angles to Beware Ahead of the Schabas Report’s Release

Fallout from the William Schabas report could reach the International Criminal Court, where Palestinians are already pushing to put Israeli leaders on trial. Repercussions may reach the UN, where a French initiative on Palestinian statehood will top the agenda after the June 30 deadline on Iranian nuclear talks.
The worst case scenario? A chain reaction of headlines demonizing Israel while the report undermines its moral standing and its ability to fight terror. Should the report make Palestinian victimhood more resonant. efforts to isolate Israel would increase.
Here are three media angles to beware ahead of the Schabas report’s release.
1. The Halo Effect
The halo effect refers to the ability of our impression of people, institutions, or brands to influence our feelings and thoughts about their character. This applies to reporters too, who report what they hear from respectable personalities, government officials, or international organizations without question or independent verification. Will reporters paint the UNHRC and its investigators as apolitical and unbiased?
2. Disproportionate Force
More Palestinians died during the war than Israelis, a point reinforced by a steady stream of context-free daily infographics. But does that mean the IDF fought disproportionately?
3. Moral Equivalence
Hamas and Israel fought a war with each other. Both sides had domestic and international audiences to account for, both sides had spokespeople making their cases in the media, and both sides had dead to bury and wounds to lick. But that’s where superficial parallels end.
The war began with the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers, escalated under barrages of rockets, and continued despite repeated cease fire offers to Hamas.

Open your eyes about Gaza

Hamas violently took control of Gaza in 2007. What have they been doing since? Oppressing the Gazan population and investing billions in terrorism against Israel's civilian population. Some people choose to close their eyes to the reality on the ground. What about you?