Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, June 20, 2015

06/20 Links: Oren: Why Obama is wrong about Iran being 'rational' on nukes; The "Snap Back" Delusion

From Ian:

Israeli man killed in West Bank terror attack

An Israeli man who was critically injured Friday afternoon in a shooting attack in the West Bank succumbed to his wounds later Friday. He was named as Danny Gonen, 25, from the central city of Lod.
Gonen was shot in the upper body near the settlement of Dolev, northwest of Jerusalem. He was found unconscious and transferred to Tel Hashomer Hospital by IDF helicopter where he died over an hour after the attack.
Gonen was an electrical engineering student and the eldest of five siblings.
A second man, whose identity was not immediately made public, was moderately hurt in the attack and was being treated at Tel Hashomer.
The two men were traveling in their car after visiting a spring near Dolev, when they were flagged down by a Palestinian man, seemingly asking them for assistance. He then pulled a gun out of a bag he was carrying and opened fire on them at point-blank range, mortally wounding Gonen.
“The Palestinian asked for information regarding a nearby spring moments before drawing a gun and shooting the passengers at close range,” according to a statement released by the IDF.

Michael Oren: Why Obama is wrong about Iran being 'rational' on nukes

Simply put: Those in the “rational” camp see a regime that wants to remain in power and achieve regional hegemony and will therefore cooperate, rather than languish under international sanctions that threaten to deny it both. The other side cannot accept that religious fanatics who deny the Holocaust, blame all evil on the Jews and pledge to annihilate the 6 million of them in Israel can be trusted with a nuclear program capable of producing the world's most destructive weapon in a single year.
The rational/irrational dispute was ever-present in the intimate discussions between the United States and Israel on the Iranian nuclear issue during my term as Israel's ambassador to Washington, from 2009 to the end of 2013. I took part in those talks and was impressed by their candor. Experts assessed the progress in Iran's program: the growing number of centrifuges in its expanding underground facilities, the rising stockpile of enriched uranium that could be used in not one but several bombs, and the time that would be required for Iran to “break out” or “sneak out” from international inspectors and become a nuclear power.
Both nations' technical estimates on Iran largely dovetailed. Where the two sides differed was over the nature of the Islamic Republic. The Americans tended to see Iranian leaders as logical actors who understood that the world would never allow them to attain nuclear weapons and would penalize them mercilessly — even militarily — for any attempt to try.
By contrast, most Israelis viewed the ayatollahs as radical jihadists who claimed they took instructions from the Shiite “Hidden Imam,” tortured homosexuals and executed women accused of adultery, and strove to commit genocide against Jews. Israelis could not rule out the possibility that the Iranians would be willing to sacrifice half of their people as martyrs in a war intended to “wipe Israel off the map.”
The Americans tended to see Iranian leaders as logical actors... By contrast, most Israelis viewed the ayatollahs as radical jihadists. -
As famed Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis once observed, “Mutually assured destruction” for the Iranian regime “is not a deterrent — it's an inducement.”

How Obama Opened His Heart to the ‘Muslim World’

And got it stomped on. Israel’s former ambassador to the United States on the president’s naiveté as peacemaker, blinders to terrorism, and alienation of allies.
Yet, tragically perhaps, Obama — and his outreach to the Muslim world — would not be accepted. With the outbreak of the Arab Spring, the vision of a United States at peace with the Muslim Middle East was supplanted by a patchwork of policies — military intervention in Libya, aerial bombing in Iraq, indifference to Syria, and entanglement with Egypt. Drone strikes, many of them personally approved by the president, killed hundreds of terrorists, but also untold numbers of civilians. Indeed, the killing of a Muslim — Osama bin Laden — rather than reconciling with one, remains one of Obama’s most memorable achievements.
Diplomatically, too, Obama’s outreach to Muslims was largely rebuffed. During his term in office, support for America among the peoples of the Middle East — and especially among Turks and Palestinians — reached an all-time nadir. Back in 2007, President Bush succeeded in convening Israeli and Arab leaders, together with the representatives of some 40 states, at the Annapolis peace conference. In May 2015, Obama had difficulty convincing several Arab leaders to attend a Camp David summit on the Iranian issue. The president who pledged to bring Arabs and Israelis together ultimately did so not through peace, but out of their common anxiety over his support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and his determination to reach a nuclear accord with Iran.
Only Iran, in fact, still holds out the promise of sustaining Obama’s initial hopes for a fresh start with Muslims. “[I]f we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion,” he told the New Yorker, “you could see an equilibrium developing between [it and] Sunni … Gulf states.” The assumption that a nuclear deal with Iran will render it “a very successful regional power” capable of healing, rather than inflaming, historic schisms remained central to Obama’s thinking. That assumption was scarcely shared by Sunni Muslims, many of whom watched with deep concern at what they perceived as an emerging U.S.-Iranian alliance.
Six years after offering to “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist,” President Obama has seen that hand repeatedly shunned by Muslims. His speeches no longer recall his Muslim family members, and only his detractors now mention his middle name. And yet, to a remarkable extent, his policies remain unchanged. He still argues forcibly for the right of Muslim women to wear — rather than refuse to wear — the veil and insists on calling “violent extremists” those who kill in Islam’s name. “All of us have a responsibility to refute the notion that groups like ISIL somehow represent Islam,” he declared in February, using an acronym for the Islamic State. The term “Muslim world” is still part of his vocabulary.
Historians will likely look back at Obama’s policy toward Islam with a combination of curiosity and incredulousness. While some may credit the president for his good intentions, others might fault him for being naïve and detached from a complex and increasingly lethal reality. For the Middle East continues to fracture and pose multiple threats to America and its allies. Even if he succeeds in concluding a nuclear deal with Iran, the expansion of the Islamic State and other jihadi movements will underscore the failure of Obama’s outreach to Muslims. The need to engage them — militarily, culturally, philanthropically, and even theologically — will meanwhile mount. The president’s successor, whether Democrat or Republican, will have to grapple with that reality from the moment she or he enters the White House. The first decision should be to recognize that those who kill in Islam’s name are not mere violent extremists but fanatics driven by a specific religion’s zeal. And their victims are anything but random.

06/19 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: Israel’s great opportunity; Husseini's Anti-Semitic Legacy

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israel’s great opportunity

On the other hand, even in their weakness the Druse present Israel with a great opportunity.
By helping them we can signal to others – for instance the Kurds – that we can be trusted.
Israel can help the Druse without spending too much time coordinating its steps with the US, because the Druse have no great regional significance. Given our own Druse community, our moral duty and national interest in ensuring their survival is self-evident.
Unlike the Druse, the Kurds are viewed as pivotal regional actors for the US and for other regional powers. Today, the greatest obstacle preventing Israel and the Kurds from working in alliance against common foes is the Obama administration. Under the administration, the strategic assumption of US Middle East policy is that the US should strengthen and curry favor with Iran.
Iran fears an independent Kurdistan in Iraq and Syria because of the likely impact such a state will have on Iran’s large Kurdish minority.
Consequently, the US is refusing to directly arm the Kurds in their war against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Yet in spite of America’s denial of support, the Kurds are pushing forward in their campaign against Islamic State. This week they cut off Islamic State’s supply chains from Turkey to the terrorist group’s capital in Raqqa by taking control over Tel Abayid close to the Turkish border.
If a year and a half from now a new administration in Washington changes the US’s regional policy, and if, during this period, Israel manages to form and maintain an alliance with the Druse, the Kurds will recognize that Israel is willing to do the hard work of building and maintaining alliances again.

Hajj Amin Husseini's Anti-Semitic Legacy

The implications of the mufti's claim that the Jews were successful in killing Muhammad despite God's warning imply that Jews possess the power to defy God's will. Such a blasphemous thought would be worse than Christian accusation of deicide. Jesus overcame death, and by his suffering, death and resurrection brought salvation to his community of believers; however, Muhammad not only remained dead but also failed to appoint his successor due to the rapid progression of his illness and his sudden, untimely demise. Consequently, the umma was split by different claimants to authority, and the dispute eventually led to the fiercest internecine strife in the history of early Islam, known as the fitna.
While the mufti's Palestinian successors would not tire of reiterating this story (as late as November 2013, Palestinian Authority minister of religious affairs Mahmoud Habbash claimed that Yasser Arafat was poisoned by the Jews just as they had poisoned the Prophet Muhammad to death), most contemporary Islamic scholars have a different understanding of this hazardous theology; inasmuch, the accusation that the Jews killed the Prophet has largely faded as a theological theme with mainstream Islamic commentary viewing the Jews, along the Qur'anic derision, as "adh-dhilla wa-l-maskan," translated by Yehoshafat Harkabi as "humiliation and wretchedness." Bernard Lewis further explained:
The outstanding characteristic, therefore, of the Jews as seen and as treated in the classical Islamic world is their unimportance. ... For Muslims, he might be hostile, cunning, and vindictive, but he was weak and ineffectual—an object of ridicule, not fear. This image of weakness and insignificance could only be confirmed by the subsequent history of Jewish life in Muslim lands.
Departing from this conventional view, the mufti did not interpret contemporary events as a new historical phenomenon to which Muslims should respond in a new, ad hoc manner. Instead, he traced Jewish accomplishments of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and the alleged Jewish power and ambitions, to supposed Jewish activities at the time of Muhammad. In doing so, he created a precedent, later followed by prominent Islamic actors in the Middle East and elsewhere, particularly after Israel's stunning military victories over its Arab adversaries. Thus Hamas accuses the Jews of "wiping out the Islamic caliphate" by starting World War I and of starting the French and the communist revolutions, establishing "clandestine organizations" and financial power so as to colonize, exploit, and corrupt countries. Likewise, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Muhammad accused Jews of ruling the world by proxy. Attributing such gargantuan accomplishments to the Jews, many of them at the expense of Muslims, presents a theological innovation with an immediate political consequence. Linking early Islamic with medieval Christian depictions of Jews results in their portrayal as "a demonic entity," thus making their "extermination legitimate."

Richard Behar: When Hitler Keeps Me Awake

I received a request from an award-winning journalist to connect on LinkedIn. He is Islamabad-based, and he describes himself as South Asian Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Post, and a contributor for Al Jazeera, Gulf News and Deutsche Welle. He is also, according to a bio, working for a group called the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong, and he serves as the president of a group called Consortium for Press Freedom (CPF). He defines himself as an expert on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Naturally, I was curious about his accomplishments as a reporter— they include a prestigious journalism honor in 2012 from Syracuse University called the “Mirror Award”—so I spent a few minutes last night exploring him on the Internet. Wish I hadn’t, because what I found kept me dead-awake for hours ruminating about relatives of mine (including foster grandparents) who were murdered in Nazi death camps.
See, the reporter who wants to LinkIn with me, Malik Ayub Khan Sumbal, tweeted something last summer (August 2nd) that feels to me like a kick in the face—only worse; far, far, far worse: “Let me #‎Salute to #‎Hitler # Gaza #‎jews #‎Israel #‎jewish.” Below it: A poster of Hitler that read “LET ME SALUTE TO HITLER THE GREAT. He said ‘I would have killed all the jews of the world, but I kept some to show the world why I killed them.’”

06/19 Links Pt1: Israeli man killed in West Bank terror attack; Hamas War Crimes in Gaza

From Ian:

Israeli man killed in West Bank terror attack

An Israeli man who was critically injured Friday afternoon in a shooting attack in the West Bank succumbed to his wounds.
The 25-year-old was shot in the upper body near the settlement of Dolev, northwest of Jerusalem. He was found unconscious and transferred to Tel Hashomer Hospital by IDF helicopter where he died over an hour after the attack.
A second man was moderately hurt in the attack and was also being treated at Tel Hashomer.
A large deployment of soldiers aided by Israel Police were currently searching for at least one shooter.
The two men in their mid-20s were traveling in their car after visiting a spring near Dolev, when they were flagged down by a Palestinian man, seemingly asking them for help, and shot at point-blank range.
IDF spokesman Peter Lerner said a “Palestinian approached a vehicle that was in the area and asked them to stop… and shot the two from close range.”

Jordan may not extradite alleged mastermind of ’82 terror attack on Jewish restaurant

France reportedly could have a difficult time extraditing the alleged organizer of a deadly 1982 terrorist attack who was arrested in Jordan earlier this month.
An unidentified Jordanian source “close to the case” told the French news agency AFP on Thursday that his country rarely extradites its citizens, choosing instead to try them in “specialized Jordanian courts.”
Zuhair Mohamad Hassan Khalid al-Abassi, aka “Amjad Atta,” one of three suspects in the attack for whom France issued an international arrest warrant earlier this year, was arrested on June 1. The attack was under the auspices of the Abu Nidal Organization, a Palestinian terrorist group.
Abassi, 62 and of Palestinian origin, is today “an aging man who works in the construction sector,” the Jordanian source told AFP. The source added that al-Abassi appeared in court without a lawyer and was ordered to surrender his passport before being released on bail.
According to AFP, Abassi was detained in the city of Zarqa, 18 miles northeast of Amman, the capital.

Sarah Honig: Mahmoud Abbas’s careless candor

The upshot of the misnamed “Arab Spring” – as some uncool Israelis had the temerity to warn from the outset – is that the bogus nationalities of the Arab sphere disintegrate chaotically before our eyes.
If anyone can lay claim to utmost mastery of the thriving arts of history-forging it’s the Jordanians. Their entire state, nationhood and very identity are a sham. Had the international community not been sympathetically predisposed to lap up the lie, Jordan obviously couldn’t pull it off. Its wholesale deceit hinges on a world contentedly complicit in hoodwinking itself – to no small measure because it’s loath to overcome its congenital Jew-aversion.
So the deceit blithely thrives in a world so eager to be deceived. The recent-vintage Jordanian and Palestinian pseudo-ethnicities are presented as bona fide nationalities. Moreover, it’s brazenly asserted that they are dissimilar and deserve self-determination in separate homelands.
This cock-and-bull contention begat the image of the stateless Palestinians – aggrieved indigenous inhabitants, striving desperately to throw off the yoke of foreign (Jewish) occupation. It serves as the perfect purportedly principled pretext to chop off another chunk of what pitifully remains from the originally designated Jewish homeland.
This is Abbas’s outright aim and he’s on the whole an unquestionably successful liar – not least because the international community is eager to lap up any lie about Jews. The dysfunctional family of nations probably wouldn’t care that he fleetingly forgot to prop up his own gargantuan con. However, we Israelis cannot but care that our purportedly trustworthy peace-partner barely remembers which outrageous lie he told last.
In his own version of Lincoln’s remark, Mark Twain – another American immortal – quipped that “if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” That means that Abbas has to remember everything, all the time and that’s not easy – as his careless candor shows.

Hamas detains journalists who accidentally saw Hamas kick civilians out of a shelter. Media silent.

Hazem Balousha is a Gaza-based journalist who has written for The Guardian and The Washington Post.

According to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, on Wednesday Balousha and two other journalists, an Australian and a Brit, were detained by Hamas because they happened to be near a UNRWA school shelter that was being forcibly evacuated by Hamas police (which would be a story itself in any other universe.)

The foreign journalists were released after about an hour but Balousha was transferred to a police station where he remained a bit longer.

The journalists tried to explain that they were trying to film a story about the anniversary of "Israel's aggression" in 2014, not to film the Hamas police forcing out innocent people who have nowhere to live. (UNRWA officially closed the shelters this week.)

The Hamas police insulted the reporters and treated them with contempt.

In fact, one person who was at a UNRWA shelter tried to commit suicide when the apartment his family had been promised was given to another family with better connections at UNRWA.

There has not been a word about this detention of Western reporters in Western media. The Guardian and Washington Post have not covered the story of their own reporter.

So not only does the world media refuse to report on Hamas abuses of Gazans, they even refuse to report when their own journalists are arrested.

The only conclusion one can make is that Hamas controls the media in Gaza with threats.

Every report from Gaza that doesn't mention that the reporters are intimidated by Hamas is a betrayal of journalistic standards.

Michael Oren, in his new book "Ally" (which I hope to read over Shabbat), describes an outrageous anecdote. Mahmoud Abbas wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, where, Oren says, "“Abbas suggested that the Arabs had accepted the U.N.’s Partition Plan in 1947 while Israel rejected it.” He then describes a phone conversation with the opinion editor of the NYT, Andrew Rosenthal:

“When I write for the Times, fact checkers examine every word I write,” I began. “Did anybody check whether Abbas has his facts exactly backward?”
“That’s your opinion,” Rosenthal replied.
“I’m an historian, Andy, and there are opinions and there are facts. That the Arabs rejected partition and the Jews accepted it is an irrefutable fact.”
“In your view.”
“Tell me, on June 6, 1944, did the Allied forces land or did they not land on Normandy Beach.”
Rosenthal, the son of a Pulitzer Prize-winning Times reporter and famed executive editor, replied, “Some might say so.”

But The Forward responds, saying:

There are three big problems with Oren’s account. The first, and most important, is that nowhere in his piece of May 17, 2011 does Abbas assert that “the Arabs had accepted the U.N.’s Partition Plan in 1947 while Israel rejected it.” Check it out yourself at this link.

Michael Oren didn't say that Abbas wrote those words; he says that Abbas suggested it.

The Forward is doing what they accuse Oren of doing - fabricating the facts.

Did Abbas suggest that Arabs accepted the partition? Indirectly, but yes. Here are the paragraphs in question:

It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued. ...Minutes after the State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948, the United States granted it recognition. Our Palestinian state, however, remains a promise unfulfilled.

This is about as accurate as an biographical op-ed describing the difficult life of the author, orphaned at an early age, neglecting to mention that he had in fact killed his parents (to paraphrase the old joke.)

Abbas is indeed implying that the only reason there is no Palestinian state is because of actions by Israel and inactions by the West- without mentioning that if the Arab world accepted a Palestinian state, they could have created one in 1949. In fact, you will be hard pressed to find any Palestinian Arabs who ever insisted on Jordan ceding the annexed West Bank to become a separate state. (Egypt created a puppet government with no power for Gaza, but it was a joke. The PLO founding charter explicitly excluded Gaza and the West Bank from any consideration of being part of a Palestinian state, which was meant to be only Israel.)

So the indirect implication is that the Palestinians wanted a state and the world denied them this state. No - the Palestinians wanted Israel destroyed and seethed when they failed at doing so.

Which also happens to be the situation today, although saying that out loud is not acceptable discourse for the New York Times.

Besides the false implications, Abbas also is more directly lying in these paragraphs:

Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs - No, there were no expulsions in the months after the partition plan was voted on. There were numerous terror attacks on Jews starting only hours after the vote. The Haganah stayed on the defensive for months while Arabs attacked Jews.

to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel - There were a few expulsions later on in the war, but not enough to alter the demographic character of Israel. The vast majority of Palestinian Arabs fled and were not forced out (a lie that Abbas repeats in his opening paragraph about his own flight from Safed.)

and Arab armies intervened - No, they attacked to destroy Israel. They didn't give a damn about Palestinian Arabs.

Our Palestinian state, however, remains a promise unfulfilled. - As Abbas himself says, the partition plan rejected by his people was a recommendation, not a promise. There was no promise.

I fisked Abbas' op-ed at the time calling him out on his lies, as did Daled Amos. Jeffrey Goldberg also called out Abbas for his false implications.

Oren's objections were to the ahistoric nature of the op-ed, and moreover, to the double standard of how closely the NYT scrutinizes op-eds by Zionists compared to how much latitude they give to the anti-Israel crowd. I have documented the lack of fact checking enough times here, so in that dimension Oren is 100% correct.

(h/t EBoZ)

UNRWA lies, saying Gaza #3 on number of kids killed in 2014

UNRWA tweeted a lie:

Where did they get this from?

Apparently, they used the recent UN report on "Children in Armed Conflict."

Only one problem: The UN report only includes numbers when they are verified; if they have no idea they won't even bother to give an estimate.

So for example, the UN says about Syria:

197. Indiscriminate attacks launched in civilian populated areas continued to cause widespread killing and maiming. The United Nations verified the killing of 368 children (184 boys, 66 girls, 118 gender unknown) by Syrian Government forces (221), ISIL/ANF (44), FSA-affiliated groups (24), international coalition airstrikes (4) and unknown parties (75). ...Actual numbers are believed to be much higher.

That is an understatement. The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights counted 3,501 children killed in Syria - seven times the number who died in Gaza in 2014. Many of them were, no doubt, of Palestinian ancestry.

UNRWA doesn't care about them.

What about other conflicts? AP counted 5000 civilians killed in the Central African Republic between December 2013 and September 2014. There is no doubt that more than 10% are children as most were killed in vicious massacres of entire villages. Yet the UN doesn't have verified numbers, so they only reported the 146 documented cases, a small fraction of the actual number of deaths. As AP wrote:

Both life and death often go unrecorded in Central African Republic, a country of about 4.6 million that has long teetered on the edge of anarchy. Nobody knows just how many people have died in the grinding ethnic violence, and even the AP tally is almost certainly a fraction of the real toll.

The AP counted bodies and gathered numbers from dozens of survivors, priests, imams, human rights groups and local Red Cross workers, including those in a vast, remote swath of the west that makes up a third of the country. Many deaths here were not officially counted because the region is still dangerous and can barely be reached in torrential rains. Others were left out by overwhelmed aid workers but registered at mosques and at private Christian funerals.

The U.N. is not recording civilian deaths on its own, unlike in Iraq or Afghanistan, for example.

The Boko Haram insurgency killed over 11,000 civilians in 2014, but since there is no specific count of children, the UN doesn't estimate how many are under 18.

In South Sudan, where 50,000 and 100,000 have been killed, but no one is counting:

The International Crisis Group (ICG), a conflict think-tank, estimates at least 50,000 people have already died but it admits the true figure could even be double that. It also says the failure to count the dead is a scandal -- both as a dishonour to the victims and as something that has kept the country's suffering off the international radar.

"It's shocking that in 2014, in a country with one of the largest UN peacekeeping missions in the world, tens of thousands of people can be killed and no one can even begin to confirm the death toll," ICG researcher Casie Copeland told AFP.

"Surely more can be done to understand whether the figure is closer to 50,000 or 100,000?"

Other conflicts which had a higher death toll than Gaza, and probably a higher death toll of children, include Ukraine, Libya and Darfur, and possibly Pakistan.

So, yes, this tweet by a UN agency is a flat-out lie.

It also shows that the UN, by avoiding even giving an estimate of actual numbers of children killed in 2014, is contributing to the problem because they are effectively cheapening the lives of children in areas of the worst conflicts where it is too dangerous for observers to go.

(h/t Judge Dan)

Ma'an claims 1.1 million Gazans were driven out of Israel

Ma'an reports that UNRWA is closing its shelters for displaced Gazans, saying that they can take care of all of them by paying their rent.

It then says, "About 300,000 Palestinians whose homes were destroyed by Israeli forces have been staying temporarily in over 90 sheltering centers run by UNRWA since August 2014."

Did UNRWA find space for 300,000 people? "Have been" means that they are still currently displaced.

The answer is no. UNRWA did house 300,000 at the end of the war, but the number of total displaced has gone down to 100,000 by May.

Ma'an's background lies get much more absurd in the next paragraph:

Prior to the war, UNRWA already struggled to meet the needs of Palestinians living in eight refugee camps throughout the Gaza Strip, where 1.1 million of the 1.5 Palestinian million residents are refugees driven from present-day Israel.

1.1 million Gazans were driven from Israel? That's an amazing fact, since there were barely 1.1 million Arabs in Palestine in 1947 altogether!

This is what happens when you create a new definition of "refugee" that is at odds with reality. Ma'an needs to pretend that they are refugees so therefore it needs to pretend, presumably, that every Gazan "refugee" is over 67 years old.

06/18 Links Pt2: Michael Douglas: BDS is ‘Anti-Peace Movement’; The Terminator voices Waze

From Ian:

For Pro-Israel Advocates, It’s Time to Start Playing Offense

Victories aren’t usually depressing, but recent headlines about Israel include those such as: “Israel Left Off U.N. List of Parties That Kill, Injure Kids,” “Palestinians Abandon Bid to Ban Israel From FIFA,” and a couple of headlines about failed motions for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on college campuses. Surely all of these “victories” are better than the corresponding defeats. But still, we can and should do better.
The problem with these victories is that they reflect a much deeper problem in the strategy of pro-Israel advocates. We tend to play defense far more than offense. Some psychologists might enjoy explaining just why Jews, in general, might prefer this approach, but it’s something we must overcome. What’s wrong with this strategy was beautifully laid out in Ze’ev Maghen’s famous piece, “How to Fight Anti-Semitism.”
“A man calls you a pig,” he writes. “Do you walk around with a sign explaining that, in fact, you are not a pig? Do you hand out leaflets expostulating… upon the manifold differences between you and a pig?”
Of course not. For to do this is already to cede the crucial first move to your enemy. It’s to allow that your pig-hood is even a legitimate question in the first place.
Playing defense grants the possible legitimacy of the attacks on us.
It’s time for us to go on offense.

The Biggest Mistakes Pro Israel Advocates Make #9: How To Avoid Seeming Holier Than Thou

We need to end religious-based arguments once and for all. Not only are they detrimental, but they are misleading, as the true nature of Zionism is purely secular.
That being said, I think that if you weave in the religious argument with the indigenous argument (i.e. that the Jewish religion arose from the Jewish culture, which had its genesis in the land of Israel) it can bolster it. That being said, arguing entirely from a religious standpoint is, in my opinion, completely futile.
Even if we may believe religious Zionist arguments, we should avoid them at all costs as they convince nobody but those who are already convinced, and they do more harm than no argument at all among secular people.
So what arguments can we use instead?
1) Israel is the indigenous homeland of the Jewish People. Cite archaeology rather than the bible. If archaeology proves the bible, you can use that evidence as the basis for any biblical claims you might make.
2) The Arabs as colonizers (turn their “settler colonialism” argument on its side)
4) Continuous Jewish presence in the land of Israel (also the fact that there has only been a Jewish state on that land, everything else was a colony of some larger colonialist entity).

PMW: Antisemitic Sheikh praises PMW for exposure of his hate speech

"Allah puts them [PMW] at our service," says Antisemitic teacher of Islam Sheikh Khaled Al-Mughrabi about Palestinian Media Watch, after PMW subtitled his hate speech and uploaded the videos to YouTube and PMW's website.
"The fact that this group [PMW] chose to come uninvited to our lesson, and follows our lessons and publicizes them all over the world and puts them on its websites in all the countries of the world - since they chose this - first, praise Allah for this, Allah puts them [PMW] at our service... They themselves chose to expose their true self, which Allah exposed." [Al-Msjed Al-Aqsa YouTube channel, June 16, 2015]
Earlier this month, the Sheikh defended his blood libel about Jews using the blood of non-Jewish children for making Passover matzah bread, presenting it as "advice" to Jews and an attempt to "save them from Hell."
Now, too, he explains that his previous teachings are "the truth" about the Jews "as Allah has exposed it." He even explains that he breaks this truth to Jews "gently", whereas to his Muslim audience he speaks "about them as they really are":

European Court of Human Rights ruling proves Gaza isn't occupied

From Marko Milanovic at the blog of the European Journal of International Law:

Yesterday the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights delivered judgments in two blockbuster cases regarding the aftermath of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan: Chiragov and Others v. Armenia and Sargsyan v. Azerbaijan. These are very rich judgments raising many important issues, and I will be writing up more detailed comments shortly. But I first had to share one particular little nugget: the Court has (implicitly!) decided that Israel is not the occupying power in Gaza. How so, you ask?
...In fact, when it ratified the European Convention Azerbaijan made the following declaration (para. 93 of the judgment):

The Republic of Azerbaijan declares that it is unable to guarantee the application of the provisions of the Convention in the territories occupied by the Republic of Armenia until these territories are liberated from that occupation.

Note the reference to the concept of belligerent occupation. Immediately after this paragraph, the Court makes the following observations, under the heading ‘relevant international law’ (para. 94):

Article 42 of the Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, The Hague, 18 October 1907 (hereafter “the 1907 Hague Regulations”) defines belligerent occupation as follows:

“Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.”

Accordingly, occupation within the meaning of the 1907 Hague Regulations exists when a state exercises actual authority over the territory, or part of the territory, of an enemy state(1) . The requirement of actual authority is widely considered to be synonymous to that of effective control.

Military occupation is considered to exist in a territory, or part of a territory, if the following elements can be demonstrated: the presence of foreign troops, which are in a position to exercise effective control without the consent of the sovereign. According to widespread expert opinion physical presence of foreign troops is a sine qua non requirement of occupation(2) , i.e. occupation is not conceivable without “boots on the ground” therefore forces exercising naval or air control through a naval or air blockade do not suffice(3) .

And in the case of Sargsyan v. Azerbaijan the court reiterates:

144. The Court notes that under international law (in particular Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations) a territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of a hostile army, “actual authority” being widely considered as translating to effective control and requiring such elements as presence of foreign troops, which are in a position to exercise effective control without the consent of the sovereign (see paragraph 94 above). On the basis of all the material before it and having regard to the above establishment of facts, the Court finds that Gulistan is not occupied by or under the effective control of foreign forces as this would require a presence of foreign troops in Gulistan.

The court interprets the 1907 Hague Convention accurately (the Geneva Conventions do not define occupation; the Hague is the source for that.)

The blog author notes something that shows the real truth of how international law is applied to Israel differently than any other state:

I also very much doubt that the judges were really aware of the implications a categorical statement such as the one made here will have on the whole Gaza debate. If they were, I imagine that they would have avoided it like the plague.

if judges are supposed to be impartial, then why would they have acted differently if they realized this applies to Gaza?

The answer is that the supposedly impartial system of international law is in fact biased against Israel, and the author of this piece knows this quite well.

(h/t YMedad)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. — Mark Twain

…in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility. … the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. — Adolf Hitler

From the 1960s, inversion of truth and reality has been one the most favored propaganda methods of Israel’s adversaries. One of its most frequent expressions has been the accusation that the Jewish people, victims of the Nazis, have now become the new Nazis, aggressors and oppressors of the Palestinian Arabs. — Dr. Joel Fishman (2007)

The big lie and concomitant reality inversion has been a fabulously successful propaganda strategy for our enemies. One common inversion is to accuse Israel of the very crimes and intentions of their Arab enemies. So Zionism is equated to racism, Israel is accused of being an apartheid state, and Israelis are said to be trying to commit ‘genocide’ against the Palestinian Arabs.

And of course there is my personal favorite, “the IDF deliberately targets children,” an accusation reminiscent of the medieval blood libels:

If there ever was an inversion, this is it. No better example can be given than the recent murder of five members of the Fogel family, where one of the perpetrators returned to the house to kill a crying baby, and one said that they would have killed two other children if they had known they were present. There was the recent murder of a child when an antitank missile was fired directly at a yellow school bus. And there have been any number of ‘actions’ like the Ma’alot massacre, the Bus of Blood, the attack on the nursery at Misgav Am, etc., in which the victims were primarily children. — Vic Rosenthal (2011)

There are several reasons this technique works so well. As Mark Twain noted, it’s easy and quick to spread a lie; but refuting one effectively requires time and research, which in itself can be challenged. The paradigm case of the lie that won’t die is the accusation that IDF soldiers shot young Mohammad al-Dura in 2000, as ‘documented’ by the original ‘Pallywood’ video. Even after it was definitively proven that fire from the Israeli position could not have hit al-Dura, it remains a worldwide article of faith that this is the correct interpretation.

Hitler, who incidentally was accusing the Jews of lying in the quoted passage — and thus inverting reality — seems to have understood the technique well. In addition to the credibility a lie gets from its audaciousness, he observed that even when a lie has been refuted, “traces” remain, perhaps a propensity to believe similar lies.

There is also the “when there’s smoke, there’s fire” effect. Anti-Israel propagandists don’t just tell one lie, they tell hundreds. When one is refuted, others pop up. Someone who isn’t aware of the strategy might easily think “there has to be something behind all this.” There is, but it is an orchestrated campaign of lies.

And then we have what I call the “divorce court fallacy.” If the two sides have diametrically opposed positions, an observer is tempted to think that the truth must lie somewhere in the middle. But this is not the case if one side is audaciously lying and the other is telling the truth (or close to it).

All of these explanations in part account for the success of the big lie, but there is one other factor that is particularly important when the big lies are being told about the Jews and their state: the antisemitic prejudice that lurks just below the surface in so many minds, not excluding Jewish ones. A recent example of this phenomenon was the failure of NPR interviewer Diane Rehm and her producer to notice the absurdity of the suggestion that Sen. Bernie Sanders was a “dual citizen” of the US and Israel, or that the websites on which they ‘checked’ it were less than reliable.

One approach that Israel’s supporters have employed is to respond reactively and try to refute the lies, sometimes — as in the case of al-Dura — with too little and too late. This is necessary, but not sufficient. As we’ve seen, the big lie technique is resistant to the defensive approach. Sometimes attempts at refutation only help spread the original libel.

Another has been to ignore them, and to divert attention to the attractive aspects of the country, the economy, science and technology, liberalism, democracy, beaches, music, etc. While there is nothing wrong with doing this, it is also completely ineffective against the dark, poisonous weaponized falsehoods disseminated against us.

Much better to go on the offensive. To attack our enemies as the true murderers of children, the aspirants to the title of the greatest killers of Jews since Hitler, the oppressors of women and gays, the invaders and thieves, the ones whose ‘culture’ consists of incitement and whose heroes are terrorists.

We’ve been far too tolerant of the presumptive needs of the Palestinian Arabs, who actually have only one overriding want, which is that we will disappear and leave the land to them.

Let’s explain to the world that there was no ‘Palestinian’ civilization here, ever; that the ‘Palestinians’ suddenly turned nationalistic when it became the best way to oppose the Jews; that the Palestinian leadership worked with the Nazis and reveres them still; and that the culture they’ve built since the days of al-Husseini is sick and evil.

The Palestinian Arabs do not respect our culture, they do not respect our history, and they do not respect the truth. They don’t give a centimeter on their absurd demands, and they don’t stop inciting their youth to murder. Why should we show respect to them?

This isn’t a job for bloggers. It isn’t even for arbitrary members of the Knesset or particular newspaper writers. It should be made clear to the world that this is the official position of the Israeli government and Prime Minister.

Are we afraid that the Europeans will boycott us if we tell the truth? I have news: the only way to get them to not boycott us will be to give up and die. Then some of them, perhaps, will feel sorry for us as they do for the murdered victims of the Holocaust (although, truth be told, a considerable number of Europeans believe that the fewer Jews, the better).

Are we afraid of Barack Obama, a true believer in the Palestinian cause? What will he do, help Iran get nuclear weapons? Are we afraid of the UN? Will they issue another report to buttress the big lies of of our enemies?

In addition to taking an offensive role in the military and diplomatic spheres, we should take it in propaganda as well. Being the nice guy of the Middle East hasn’t worked for us. It’s time to stop.

06/18 Links Pt1: IDF is a moral army fighting in an immoral neighborhood; Kerry’s absolute idiocy

From Ian:

'IDF is a moral army fighting in an immoral neighborhood'

Israel Defense Forces Capt. (res.) Matan Katzman spoke Wednesday before the Human Rights Subcommittee of the European Parliament in an effort to counter recent testimony by Breaking the Silence, an organization dedicated to exposing alleged wrongdoings by the Israeli army.
"The IDF is a moral army fighting in an immoral neighborhood," said Katzman, who serves in the Givati Brigade and was speaking on behalf of StandWithUs, an educational organization for Israel advocacy, and the My Truth initiative, which gathers IDF soldier testimonies.
Katzman co-founded My Truth with fellow soldier Avichai Shorshan in response to a damning report released by Breaking the Silence about IDF conduct during last summer's Gaza conflict. When the group sought to export their testimony to European audiences, the My Truth organizers felt something needed to be done about the unfair portrayal of the IDF.
"Behind every Israeli soldier there is a human being, a human being that has to go out and defend his country, although he faces the complexities of war," Katzman said to the EU subcommittee.

Describing Operation Protective Edge, Katzman said,"During last summer's war, the Israeli army aborted and cancelled multiple missions from air and from ground in cases where Palestinian civilians were present, or we even thought they were present.

"Our policy is so concrete and clear that Hamas is an expert on it and uses it to their advantage. They place snipers in schools and hospitals, they stock weapons in homes. U.N.-funded medical clinics are used to booby-trap and to harm soldiers."

Israeli Soldier Testifies to EU Human Rights Committee

Good Enough for the EU: Hungary to Build Anti-Migrant 'Wall'

In Israel, the security fence has done an effective job of keeping Palestinian Authority Arab terrorists outside of Israeli communities – and other countries are learning from Israel's success. The latest is Hungary which, although it does not have the problem of Serbian terrorists sneaking over the border to carry out terror attacks in Hungarian supermarkets and coffee shops, is building 16 foot (4 meter) high fence anyway – to keep job-seekers from Serbia out.
Hungary is part of the Eurozone, and is signed onto the visa-free Schengen program – and thus provides an excellent gateway for workers from Serbia, which is not a part of the Schengen zone, to enter Europe and look for work in the more affluent areas of central and western Europe.
Tens of thousands of migrant workers filter through the border with Serbia each year, and the EU – and Hungary – have had enough, according to Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, who at a press conference in Budapest Wednesday said that “immigration is one of the most serious problems facing the European Union today.” To prevent the migrants from coming in, he said, Hungary would build a fence with a four meter fence stretching for 175 kilometers (110 miles).
Hungary isn't the only EU country building an anti-immigration fence. Bulgaria has is building one along its border with Turkey to workers from the Arab world. In recent months, Turkey has taken in millions of refugees from Turkey and Iraq. Although most of them are restricted to border areas, reports say that thousands have managed to infiltrate the rest of the country, with many attempting to enter neighboring Bulgaria in order to find work in the EU.

New video exposes provocation leading up to IDF soldiers beating Palestinian man

A new video posted Tuesday exposed the full scope of events, including provocations, leading up to an incident on Friday in which four soldiers struck and verbally assaulted a Palestinian man during a violent disturbance in the village of Jalazun.
The unsettling video shows individuals, as well as those with press vests, repeatedly approaching the group of Kfir Brigade soldiers even after being repeatedly told to leave. Swarms of press photographers followed the soldiers constantly, waiting to catch the perfect moment, as firebombs are hurled at the soldiers.
The 10-minute-long video, posted by a group calling itself the International Solidarity Movement, shows this back-and-forth of provocations which culminated in a man being beaten. The much shorter video circulated by Palestinian media shortly after the incident, showed only the beating itself, without context.
An army investigation concluded on Sunday said that the situation occurred in the course of a lengthy violent disturbance that lasted for several hours, during which rioters hurled firebombs and large rocks at soldiers. A platoon commander was injured by a rock thrown at his face and suffered a suspected eye socket bone fracture.
The Palestinian man seen in the video approached the soldiers and attempted to create a provocation, the investigation found. “After ignoring calls by soldiers to stop, and grabbing the weapon of one of the commanders, commanders decided to utilize force to arrest him,” the army said.

Palestine Press Agency (Fatah-leaning) has an article about the inhumane conditions in Hamas prisons and detention centers in Gaza.

According to the article, Hamas prison cells meant for 20 people routinely have as many as 80.

In the summer, temperatures can go past 40 degrees C (104F) with no ventilation.

Prisoners with deadly contagious diseases are herded next to others. There are no doctors available, ever.

Prisons are also filled with bugs because of how filthy they are.

And, of course, some prisoners are tortured and killed. The Independent Commission for Human Rights documented 21 cases of Hamas prisoners who died last year, most of them executed. They also received 996 complaints about torture in 2014.

Too bad Gaza doesn't have any internationally funded "pro-Palestinian" NGOs around who are interested in documenting these issues and publicizing them. It would be nice if Amnesty, HRW and Oxfam showed interest in the issue of prison conditions in Gaza. (HRW did once issue a report on Hamas torture, in 2012.)

This story from 2012 received very little attention in Western media, although independent Palestinian media has been all over it again lately:

The Palestinian Authority has plans to use an international human rights organization as a front for intelligence gathering and discrediting Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, according to documents leaked to a number of Palestinian news websites over the weekend.

The documents also appeared on the PA’s official news agency Wafa, but were quickly removed under the pretext that they are “fabrications.”

The agency claimed that hackers infiltrated its website and posted the documents.

Earlier, the agency announced that the PA has decided to establish a commission of inquiry to look into the documents out of fear that the case could embarrass the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah. Later, however, the agency removed the report, again claiming that it had been planted on its website by hackers.

There was no way to verify the authenticity of the leaked documents.

According to the documents, the PA’s General Intelligence Service in the West Bank is planning to use the Global Network for Rights and Development as a front for espionage activities.

GNRD was established in Geneva in 2008 with the aim of enhancing and supporting human rights and development by adopting new, creative strategies and policies to achieve lasting change.

The documents are said to be part of a “classified report” prepared by the PA’s General Department of Palestinian External Security.

The plan envisages using GNRD as a front for the establishment of an “effective and credible international human rights group that would be based in Geneva and whose goal would be to defend Palestinian causes” and collect information.

The cost of the project is estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars.

The report points out the important role of NGOs’ in shaping public opinion and affecting decision-making worldwide.

“These NGOs have a green card to enter any place in the world and operate freely under various pretexts,” the report said. “But we in Palestine are lacking many elements of power.”

The report claimed that many Western countries, including France, Britain and the US, have been using human rights organizations as a “striking arm” to affect policies around the world and remove governments from power. The report referred specifically to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and claims that they are funded and backed by Britain and the US, respectively.

The report recommended that the PA set up a similar “striking arm” that would operate out of Geneva and have representation in at least 50 countries. It said that the main mission would be to gather intelligence with the help of Western nationals.

The Global Network for Rights and Development is already a fake human rights organization. Brian Whitaker at Al-Bab has an impressive series of articles exposing them.

GNRD has connections with the United Arab Emirates and portrays the UAE's human rights policies in an undeservedly favourable light.

Its founder and president, Loai Deeb, previously set up a fake university in Norway which closed under threats of legal action from the Norwegian authorities.

Deeb also uses hundreds of fake Twitter accounts to promote himself and his activities.

GNRD's "High Commissioner for Europe" is a discredited Belgian politician with a conviction for electoral malpractice.

Last Friday, however, new questions arose about the activities of Deeb's strange human rights organisation. It emerged that GNRD was at the centre of a money-laundering investigation launched by the Norwegian authorities and that Deeb had been arrested. The amount of money involved is said to be $13 million.

Stavanger university has now decided that GNRD does not "meet the requirements" for partnership and has cancelled the agreement.

Universities were not the only institutions fooled by GNRD. Others include the United Nations, the European Parliament and the African Union. Even before the money-laundering case (which has yet to be tested in court) there were plenty of reasons to stay well clear of Deeb and GNRD.

In the seven years since it was founded, GNRD has made a particular point of trying to associate itself with other organisations and institutions. Sometimes there were formal agreements and a signing ceremony which was photographed for GNRD's website. Developing these ties helped to build an air of credibility.

Many of its ties, though, were much less formal but GNRD exaggerated their importance. It spent a lot of time "participating" in activities organised by other groups – which often required nothing more than attending a conference or meeting and posting a report of it on the GNRD website. Again, this helped to build credibility by association and, through the website posts, created an impression of GNRD as a busy, active organisation even when it wasn't actually doing very much.

GNRD's website carries the logos of 27 "collaborators and sponsors" (scroll down to the bottom of this page). They look impressive but the names are difficult to read – which is perhaps just as well because two of them are businesses owned by Loai Deeb. They also include two hotel companies and a travel agent (presumably used by GNRD) and several NGOs in Latin America which GNRD staff have reported meeting on their travels. Almun (the Arab League Model United Nations) is included too – apparently because GNRD attended one of its events in Cairo last year.

This "human rights NGO" is a scam - a scam that has fooled the EU, the UN and many NGOs.

The founder, Loai Deeb, is a Palestinian who now lives in Norway.

The idea that Abbas could have wanted to effectively rent out this fake organization, run by a Palestinian, which had already collaborated with known human rights NGOs and governments, is plausible indeed. It seems far-fetched that such an elaborate plan could have been fabricated by Abbas' enemies, but the idea that Abbas would want to use a human rights organization that can travel the world without scrutiny as an espionage operation - as well as another venue to bash Israel - is not too implausible.

UPDATE: I misread the date of the JPost article; it was 2012, not this year.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)