Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, June 25, 2015

06/25 Links Pt1: Kemp: The U.N.’s Gaza Report Is Flawed and Dangerous; Pal teams named after terrorists

From Ian:

Col. Richard Kemp: The U.N.’s Gaza Report Is Flawed and Dangerous

Judge Davis suggests that the I.D.F.’s use of air, tank and artillery fire in populated areas may constitute a war crime and recommends further international legal restrictions on their use. Yet these same systems were used extensively by American and British forces in similar circumstances in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are often vital in saving the lives of our own soldiers, and their curtailment would jeopardize military effectiveness while handing an advantage to our enemies.
The I.D.F. is not perfect. In the heat of battle and under stress its commanders and soldiers undoubtedly made mistakes. Weapons malfunctioned, intelligence was sometimes wrong and, as with all armies, it has some bad soldiers. Unnecessary deaths resulted, and these should be investigated and the individuals brought to trial if criminal culpability is suspected.
The reason so many civilians died in Gaza last summer was not Israeli tactics or policy. It was Hamas’s strategy. Hamas deliberately positioned its fighters and munitions in civilian areas, knowing that Israel would have no choice but to attack them and that civilian casualties would result. Unable to inflict existential harm on Israel by military means, Hamas sought to cause large numbers of casualties among its own people in order to bring international condemnation and unbearable diplomatic pressure against Israel.
Judge Davis’s report is rife with contradictions. She acknowledges that Israeli military precautions saved lives, yet without foundation accuses “decision makers at the highest levels of the government of Israel” of a policy of deliberately killing civilians. Incredibly, she “regrets” that her commission was unable to verify the use of civilian buildings by “Palestinian armed groups,” yet elsewhere acknowledges Hamas’s widespread use of protected locations, including United Nations schools.
Most worrying, Judge Davis claims to be “fully aware of the need for Israel to address its security concerns” while demanding that it “lift, immediately and unconditionally, the blockade on Gaza.” Along with the report’s endorsement of Hamas’s anti-Israel narrative, this dangerous recommendation would undoubtedly lead to further bloodshed in both Israel and Gaza.

Even when faced with criminal tactics, Israel abided by the laws of armed conflict

In fact, the IDF’s efforts to mitigate civilian casualties went beyond the legal requirements, as attested to by two separate reports of high ranking military experts from democratic countries around the globe, who came to Israel to investigate the last operation. For example, Israel surpassed the practices of militaries of democratic states, in warning Gaza citizens in the vicinity of military targets, and encouraging them to vacate the area prior to its attack. During the conflict, Israel also made extensive humanitarian efforts to alleviate hardship in Gaza, such as delivering humanitarian supplies (food and medical supplies, blankets, fuel and more) and providing medical treatment to wounded Gaza civilians.
The fact that military conflicts involve errors, as well as collateral damage (unintentional harm to civilians who were in the vicinity of legitimate military targets) is sad and regrettable, but nonetheless recognized and accepted in international law.
Israel has established an investigative mechanism in order to scrutinize its activities during the recent operation. As an open democracy, Israel is capable of investigating incidents of concern to determine whether they involved errors, collateral damage, or war crimes. Currently, Israel is examining over 100 incidents and the MAG has opened 19 criminal investigations.
It is important to illuminate the disparity between the reality, and what is often reported. The constant, biased treatment of Israel at the UN does not contribute toward a peaceful settlement of the conflict. It serves only to embolden Hamas and other terrorist groups to intensify their unlawful methods.

Richard Behar: Analysis: New York Times Editorial is Another Hit Job on Israel

Does the New York Times editorial board want Israel to take it seriously? Is the board’s distaste for the country so strong that it has no interest in using the newspaper’s well-earned power and influence to make a real impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Take Tuesday’s editorial, which is among the kinds of low-hanging fruit that Gary Weiss and I will be picking and exposing once the funds are in place for our Mideast Reporter—a multimedia, multilingual investigative reporting enterprise. For now, some batting practice…
The Times editorial concludes: “…Israel has a duty, and should have the desire, to adjust its military policies to avoid civilian casualties and hold those who failed to do so accountable.”
“Should have the desire… to adjust…” Think about that for a moment. What they are saying is that Israel does not have such a desire, and that Israel has not, and does not, adjust its policies.
The editorial was written in support of the recent UN Human Rights Council report that concluded that Israel and Hamas may have committed war crimes during their war last summer. But here is what the editors decided to omit from the editorial:

An article in Jordan's Ad-Dustour on Tuesday praised terror attacks against Israeli Jews and encourages Palestinian Arabs to do more of it.

The article, by Yaser Azaatreh, calls these "heroic operations." The author is especially enamored that the terrorists are incited to hate in schools and universities and mosques to act alone, so that the PA security forces aren't aware of them and might frustrate their desire to kill more Jews. He calls the people behind these attacks "the future Palestinian leadership."

Azaatreh encourages "all factions to make greater efforts in promoting a culture of resistance and uprising in the West Bank."

The Israel Embassy in Amman issued a condemnation, which was spurned by the newspaper and other Jordanian media:

Jordanian journalists angrily rebuked Israel’s enemy embassy in Amman on Thursday after the Israeli mission in the Hashemite kingdom protested the media’s praise of Palestinian attacks.

The row was triggered by a June 24 article in the daily newspaper Al-Dustur glorifying the Palestinian attacks which left one Israeli dead in the West Bank and another Border Police officer wounded by stabbing in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The Israeli embassy protested the article, deeming it “ugly and shameful...incitement to kill Israelis.”

Al-Dustur rejected the embassy’s protestations, calling the Palestinian actions “martyrdom operations in heroic defense of their land and rights.”

This is what peace between Israel and Arab nations looks like, in case you were wondering.

Did Omar Barghouti add a clause to BDS rules to except himself?

Ma'an has an article by Anna Kokko that is, of course, very sympathetic to BDS while saying how difficult it is for Palestinian Arabs to adhere to the boycott fully.

One section, though, is notable:

According to [Omar] Barghouti, a full-scale boycott of everything Israeli is not possible under occupation -- much in the same way that Black South Africans were not able to completely boycott the apartheid regime themselves.

“We can still call on the world to fully isolate Israel,” he says.

Barghouti himself studied at Tel Aviv University, where he was also enrolled as a doctoral student.

In 2009, PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) of whom Barghouti is a founding member, stated that Palestinian citizens of Israel or Palestinians carrying Israeli ID cards have no other possibility than to study in Israeli institutions and as such cannot be asked to join the academic boycott.

The activist declined to give further comments on his choice of university, saying that his personal life was “entirely irrelevant” for the interview.

Barghouti, born in Qatar and raised in Egypt, is no Israeli citizen. There are a number of universities in the West Bank (Al Quds, An Najah, Birzeit) that he could have attended. Of course he had a choice. But his desire to attend Tel Aviv University, despite his insistence that others boycott it, apparently made him put in an exception to the BDS rules just for himself!.

So principled!

I have a feeling that even other BDSers are unhappy at their leader's hypocrisy.

Confederate flag banned from Amazon - but Hamas and Nazi flags still for sale

CNN reported:

America's leading merchants have spoken: The Confederate flag is coming off the shelves.

Walmart, Amazon, eBay and Sears all announced bans on the sale of Confederate flag merchandise, amid an intensifying national debate over the use of the controversial flag.

The announcements are the latest indication that the flag, a symbol of the slave-holding South, has become toxic in the aftermath of a shooting last week at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina. Gov. Nikki Haley announced in a Monday afternoon news conference that she supports removing the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds.

But guess what's still for sale on Amazon?

And this:

(h/t Reuben)

06/24 Links Pt2: UNRWA causes more damage than good; US ready to offer Iran nuclear equipment

From Ian:

Israeli NGO: ‘UNRWA causes more damage than good’

According to a position paper published recently by an Israeli non-partisan NGO, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), is “actively being counterproductive to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
The paper which was published by the independent political think-tank, the Institute for Zionist Strategies (IZS), argues that UNRWA facilities have been used for terrorist activity against civilians, UNRWA employees often are members themselves in terrorist groups, raising sever doubt on UNRWA’s neutrality.
Additionally, the paper claims that UNRWA is financially and politically dependent on the continuation of the status-quo in the conflict and therefore is not motivated by an actual desire to solve the problems of refugees.
The paper was composed and researched by Lt. Col. Nir Naaman, currently a Doctoral Student at Bar-Illan University, for IZS. He cites news articles from the last decade, UN resolutions, national and governmental databases and related academic literature as resources.
Citing instances in which UNRWA was allegedly “caught” turning a blind eye to terrorist activities or even being fully involved in such activities, dating as far back as 1968, when an UNRWA camp was used as a training base for the PLO, then still an official terrorist organization.

US, allies ready to offer Iran nuclear equipment, document reveals

The United States and its allies are willing to offer Iran state-of-the-art nuclear equipment if Tehran agrees to pare down its atomic weapons program as part of a final nuclear agreement, a draft document has revealed.
The confidential paper, obtained by the Associated Press, has dozens of bracketed text where disagreements remain. Technical cooperation is the least controversial issue at the talks, and the number of brackets suggest the sides have a ways to go, not only on that topic but also more contentious disputes, with less than a week until the June 30 deadline for a deal.
However, the scope of the help now being offered in the draft may displease U.S. congressional critics who already argue that Washington has offered too many concessions at the negotiations.
The draft, titled "Civil Nuclear Cooperation," promises to supply Iran with light-water nuclear reactors instead of its nearly completed heavy-water facility at Arak, which would produce enough plutonium for several bombs a year if completed as planned.
Reducing the Arak reactor's plutonium output was one of the main aims of the U.S. and its negotiating partners, along with paring down Iran's ability to produce enriched uranium -- like plutonium, a potential pathway to nuclear arms.

WikiLeaks Saudi cable: Iran sent nuclear equipment to Sudan

Saudi diplomats in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, believed Iran shipped advanced nuclear equipment including centrifuges to Sudan in 2012, according to a document revealed last week by WikiLeaks and said to be a cable from the embassy.
"The embassy's sources advised that Iranian containers arrived this week at Khartoum airport containing sensitive technical equipment in the form of fast centrifuges for enriching uranium, and a second shipment is expected to arrive this week," said the document, dated February 2012 and marked "very secret."
WikiLeaks last week released more than 60,000 cables and documents which it says are official Saudi communications, and plans to release half a million in total. Saudi Arabia said the documents might be faked and has not commented on specific documents.
If the cable is authentic, it does not provide details on the source of the embassy's information or any further evidence of the shipment.
There have been no previous reports of Iran sending nuclear equipment to Sudan, which has no known nuclear program.

During last summer's Gaza war, Hamas took credit for attacking, and threatened to further attack, Israel's nuclear power plant in Dimona:

Hamas remained defiant Thursday, claiming rockets fired at the southern city of Dimona by its military wing the Ezzeddin al-Qassam Brigades showed Israel's weakness.

"It [the rockets fired at Dimona] shows the weakness and vulnerability of the Israeli occupation," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in an early Thursday statement. "Our responses [to Israeli strikes] are still in their early stages."

The Israeli army said Wednesday that three rockets had been fired from the Gaza Strip at Dimona. No casualties were reported.

Ezzeddin al-Qassam Brigades claimed responsibility for striking Dimona, which houses Israel's nuclear reactor, for the first time.

In a statement, the group said it had fired three M75 rockets at Dimona, which is located nearly 65 kilometers from Gaza.

This is nuclear terrorism.

The 2005 UN International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism defines acts that fall under that designation, Article 2:

1. Any person commits an offence within the meaning of this Convention if that person unlawfully and intentionally:
...
(b) Uses in any way radioactive material or a device, or uses or damages a nuclear facility in a manner which releases or risks the release of radioactive material:
(i) With the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury; or
(ii) With the intent to cause substantial damage to property or to the environment; or
(iii) With the intent to compel a natural or legal person, an international organization or a State to do or refrain from doing an act.
2. Any person also commits an offence if that person:
(a) Threatens, under circumstances which indicate the credibility of the threat, to commit an offence as set forth in paragraph 1 (b) of the present article...

Just another international law that Hamas violated that the UNHRC couldn't mention.

UPDATE: Here's Hamas' video of the rockets aimed at Dimona:

(h/t Bob K)

Next UN Probe Of Israel To Save Time By Just Reprinting Der Stürmer (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Geneva, June 24 - The research team that released a report of its investigation into Israeli and Palestinian combat conduct during last summer's war in and around the Gaza Strip is now saying that although they found the work gratifying and important, next time they are called upon to produce such a report they will save significant time, effort, and money by simply reprinting old issues of the Nazi tabloid Der Stürmer.

The tabloid, which was published more or less regularly between 1923 and 1945, except when wartime paper shortages disrupted production, helped the Nazi Party cement its hold on the sensibilities of the working class by reinvigorating and cultivating the crudest antisemitic tropes of medieval Europe. With hundreds of issues available, the all-but-inevitable report on any upcoming renewal of Israel-Hamas hostilities will thus prove much easier to prepare, says Schabas-Davis Commission head Mary McGowan Davis.

"With the fighting erupting again every couple of years, Human Rights Council research teams charged with finding evidence of Israeli war crimes are going to have their work cut out for them," said Davis. "Interviewing thousands of Palestinians, collating reams of Hamas-provided casualty statistics, finding just the right emotive excerpts to include in a report, dismissing Israeli efforts to minimize civilian casualties - all that takes a lot of time and energy. While it feels worthwhile to undermine the legitimacy of Jewish self-defense, our team realized only belatedly that we were reinventing the wheel."

Davis pointed to several archived issues of the Nazi tabloid as illustration. "It's all there: wholesale libel, ignoring context, misusing Jewish sources, accepting outlandish, uncorroborated anecdotes as fact, and just repeating the Big Lie, all in service of justifying attacks on Jews and promoting an atmosphere that questions any Jewish right to exist, let alone to defend themselves. We spent months and months conducting biased interviews, selectively quoting various sources, and uncritically recording propaganda for later parroting, when all we had to do to achieve the same result was take the existing Nazi, er, literature and adapt it to the Gaza context. Would have taken half the time."

"Some people think of the UN as big jobs racket," said former commission head William Schabas. "But that's not really the case. Select agencies of the organization fit that description, such as UNRWA. But in general it's important to apply budgetary sensitivity to our work, and recycling the antisemitic content of Der Stürmer instead of duplicating Julius Striecher's tireless efforts against international Jewry would go a long way toward streamlining the Human Rights Council's operations."

Schabas also noted some concerns over use of the Nazi material, but does not anticipate any unresolvable difficulties. "Striecher was convicted of crimes against humanity at Nüremberg for his role in fostering the atmosphere in which the Final Solution was possible, so some of our colleagues have expressed reservations at this idea," he explained. "But international law has changed, and there is no serious worry that this could come back to haunt us."

06/24 Links Pt1: UN report denies Israel's right of self-defense, advocates arrest of Israelis instead

From Ian:

Anne Bayefsky: UN report denies Israel's right of self-defense, advocates arrest of Israelis instead

Arrest Benjamin Netanyahu and any other “suspected” Israeli war criminals wherever and whenever you can get your hands on them. That is the shocking bottom line of a scandalous report released today from the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The report emanates from a board of inquiry the Council created in the midst of the 2014 Gaza war. In legalese, the call to arrest Israelis either for trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC), or before any court in any country that the U.N. labels “fair,” reads like this:
The board “calls upon the international community … to support actively the work of the International Criminal Court in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory; to exercise universal jurisdiction to try international crimes in national courts; and to comply with extradition requests pertaining to suspects of such crimes to countries where they would face a fair trial.”
To be fair, the U.N. report says this could apply to both parties. In other words, the democratic state of Israel, with a moral and legal obligation to defend its citizens, and the Palestinian attackers bent on genocide are moral equals. Throughout the 183-page tome, the U.N. council “experts” play the old “cycle of violence” trick, otherwise known as “it all started when you hit me back.”
An infamous photo from the Third Reich shows eminent Jewish lawyer Michael Siegel, beaten and bloodied after going to police headquarters on behalf of a Jewish client who had been sent to Dachau, forced to walk through the streets of Munich with a sign around his neck saying: “I am a Jew, but I will never again complain to the police.”

Lawfare Blog: What to Make of the UN's Special Commission Report on Gaza?

Perhaps most frustratingly, even the IDF’s efforts to protect civilians are apparently grounds for incrimination. On page 63, the Commission notes that “according to official Israeli sources, the IDF abandoned air strikes when the presence of civilians was detected.” This Israeli claim is taken at face value, but not for the purposes one might think. Rather than reflecting a policy of minimizing civilian casualties, for the Commission, this information simply demonstrates that “the IDF had the capacity to determine the civilian nature” of its targets and victims. And given the number of civilian deaths, the Commission’s conclusion was that Israel had frequently and unjustifiably failed to deploy this capacity—thus violating its obligation to use all “feasible” means to reduce civilian damage.
Our point here is not to defend Israeli conduct in any of these specific situations. It is merely to suggest that the commission has drawn a set of conclusions it cannot possibly draw with rigor, and it has done so using standards that are very difficult to defend.
But don’t take our word for it. The commission all but admits that it lacked the information to draw the conclusions it drew. In an interview with Haaretz’s Barak Ravid, the Commission’s chairperson Mary McGowan Davis had this to say:
I certainly think it would have been different if Israel had cooperated… We could have met with Israeli victims and seen where rockets landed, talked with commanders, watched videos and visited Gaza. We talked to a lot of witnesses but of course an investigation needs to be as close to the scene as possible and it would have looked different.
McGowan Davis clearly intended this comment as a criticism of the Israeli government’s non-cooperation with the investigation. But she’s actually admitting, apparently unawares, that the material with which the Commission was working was simply insufficient to its task.
What does one say about a report whose author forthrightly admits that, had she had real information, “it would have looked different”?

Volokh Conspiracy: Is it “OK to drop a one-ton bomb in the middle of a neighborhood” if you’re at war and that’s where enemy forces are located?

Mary McGowan Davis, who headed the U.N. commission that investigated last summer’s Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, tells Ha’aretz (paywall): “We wanted to make a strong stand that the whole use of explosive weapons in densely populated neighborhoods is problematic and that the policy needs to change…. Because it is not OK to drop a one-ton bomb in the middle of a neighborhood.”
Of course, one shouldn’t gratuitously drop a one-ton bomb or any bomb in the middle of a neighborhood. But Davis’s critique doesn’t seem limited to gratuitous bombings, but includes the bombing of military targets located in civilian neighborhoods.
If the rule was “you may never bomb [use “explosive weapons”] in a residential neighborhood if civilian casualties may result, regardless of the value of the military target,” it’s pretty obvious what would happen — enemy forces would simply plant themselves in residential neighborhoods knowing they would be immune from attack.
So, for example, Hamas could launch all the missiles it wanted at Israel from the middle of Gaza City, and use apartment buildings, schools, etc. as staging grounds and headquarters, and Israel would be helpless to respond.

Chairman of Joint Chiefs: "Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit civilian casualties"

Israel went to "extraordinary lengths" to limit civilian casualties during the conflict in Gaza earlier this year, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said yesterday.
Israel dropped leaflets and did "roof-knocking, to have something knock on the roof" to warn civilians to move out of the area, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey said during a forum at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York.

Peter Beinart has joined the chorus of hysterical voices slamming Michael Oren for his recent interviews and book.

Beinart says that it is Oren, not President Obama, who is naive.

Let's fact-check Beinart:

Let’s start with a few quotes from Oren’s recent media blitz. In a recent interview at New York’s 92nd Street Y, Oren declared that American Jews must oppose an Iran deal that “everybody in the Knesset agrees is emphatically bad.”

Everybody? Thirteen of the Knesset’s 120 seats are held by Palestinian citizens of Israel (often called “Arab Israelis” by American and Israeli Jews). Earlier this year, they were elected on a platform calling “for nuclear disarmament in the Middle East, including Israel.”

These Palestinian Knesset members, in other words, don’t think Obama’s nuclear diplomacy is too soft on Iran. They think it’s too soft on Israel, whose hundreds of nuclear weapons they consider as grave a threat to regional peace as Iran’s nuclear program. With a single phrase, Oren makes them disappear.

If the 13 Arab Knesset members are against nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, how does Beinart conclude that they support a deal which from all indications will give Iran a path to nuclear weapons?

I don't know if Oren's statement is 100% true, but Beinart has no proof for his dismissal of it, and his supposed proof is knowingly deceptive since it doesn't prove anything one way or the other.

Let’s take another example. In an interview with the Jewish Journal’s Shmuel Rosner, Oren recently called Israel “one of the few democracies in the world that have never known a second of non-democratic governance.” This statement makes sense only if Palestinians didn't exist. If they do, then Israel’s Palestinian citizens lived under military law until 1966. And to this day, millions of West Bank Palestinians live under Israeli control but lack citizenship and the right to vote for the government that dominates their existence. In other words, they’ve been living under “non-democratic governance” every second of their lives.

It is true that Arabs in Israel were under military rule until 1966. It is also true that they could vote. So while there was discrimination, it was still democracy.

No state in the world allows non-citizens to vote. If Israel is not a democracy, then neither is the US, where millions of actual citizens cannot vote.

Oren is correct, Beinart is wrong.

But these factual errors only hint at Oren’s true detachment. His deepest naivete stems from his assumption that Israel can maintain the status quo indefinitely because Palestinians will submit indefinitely to their lack of basic rights.

Beinart does not give a source for this statement. Certainly nothing in Oren's book even hinted at this. Beinart is wrong.

Oren rests this contention on two assumptions. The first is that Palestinians don’t have it so bad. In the West Bank, he wrote in February, “More than 90% of the Palestinian population enjoys de facto sovereignty. Israeli soldiers don’t patrol the major Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Jericho and Bethlehem, and are largely absent from other towns.”

De facto sovereignty? West Bank Palestinians live as permanent non-citizens under military law. The government of Israel – a government for which they cannot vote – controls the air space above them, the borders around them and the natural resources below. They are crammed into an archipelago of cities and towns, which cannot expand because Israel controls virtually all the land in between, land it doles out to settlers who, unlike Palestinians, enjoy full citizenship rights.

What makes sovereignty? There are different definitions. Wikipedia lists four:

domestic sovereignty – actual control over a state exercised by an authority organized within this state,[6]

interdependence sovereignty – actual control of movement across state's borders, assuming the borders exist,[6]

international legal sovereignty – formal recognition by other sovereign states,[6]

Westphalian sovereignty – lack of other authority over state than the domestic authority (examples of such other authorities could be a non-domestic church, a non-domestic political organization, or any other external agent).[6]

The PA fits under three of these definitions. Hamas has three as well, although a different set. Beinart's assertions that control of airspace, for example, is a prerequisite to sovereignty is fiction.

Oren is right, Beinart is wrong.

The second assumption is that Palestinians will submit because if they don’t, Israel will respond with overwhelming force.

Beinart again does not give a quote where Oren says this, and again Oren says no such thing in his book or interviews. Beinart is making it up.

For Netanyahu and Oren, this is what passes for realism: Pretend that Palestinians will be happy living under occupation, and bludgeon into submission those who aren’t. It’s the same kind of “realism” that people throughout history have used to justify denying others basic rights. And it rests on the contention that the oppressed will accept forms of servitude that we never would, either because their aspirations are lower or because their spirits can be more easily crushed.

Again, fiction. However, it is notable that Mahmoud Abbas has said explicitly that Palestinians don't have such bad lives:

" I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," he said. "Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life."

Beinart claims that Oren is naive, but it si Beinart who is proven in this article alone not only to be naive but knowingly deceptive and even a liar.

Iran issues new list of nuclear "red lines"

Iran's Supreme Leader has published a convenient list of his "red lines" for a nuclear deal.

They include:

No long-term restrictions
Continuation of R&D and construction during limits
Immediate removal of economic, financial and banking sanctions with signing of deal and other sanctions gradually by a reasonable timetable
Not stipulating for implementation of Iran commitments in lifting sanctions
IAEA verification for any step is not accepted
No unconventional inspection, interrogation or military site inspections
Time frames of 15 or 25 years for some topics not accepted

Will the White House push back, or spin this as if it doesn't contradict what they have been saying for years?

I think we have already seen the answer to that question.

I can't wait to see how J-Street will try to spin this, though, in light of their new website. Someone should ask Jeremy Ben mi what he considers a red line beyond which the US must not accept a deal. His evasion should be funny to watch.

UNHRC report didn't mention Hamas threatening Israeli civilians - a war crime

Rule 2 of ICRC's Customary IHL is "Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited." It quotes Article 51(2) of Additional Protocol I prohibits “acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population.”

During last summer's Gaza war, Hamas explicitly threatened Israelis. They sent a SMS message to many Israeli phones:

Your government claimed yesterday that it stopped the battle, but without our consent and meeting our conditions - and it thought we were rash enough to [agree to a] cease-fire. On the contrary, we hurried to strike anywhere in Israel - from Dimona to Haifa - and we made you hide in shelters like mice. . .

Again, we warn you - if your government does not agree to all of our conditions, then all of Israel will legally remain open to our weapons fire.

Izz - Eddine al-Qassam Brigades

Hamas also released Hebrew langiage videos explicitly threatening Israeli civilians.

But the UNHRC Davis report doesn't mention any of this. The only messages that they mention from Hamas to Israel are those that they interpret as possible "warnings" to Israeli civilians to seek shelter:

Airlines were warned in advance of the possible targeting of the airport, providing them with the time to suspend flights. Warning civilians in Tel Aviv that a rocket would be fired in the direction of the city at 9 p.m. provided the opportunity for residents to seek shelter. Warning civilians to evacuate communities located in the vicinity of the Green Line could also realistically be acted upon because -- unlike in Gaza -- residents could flee to other areas of Israel less exposed to threats, in great part due to the existence of the Iron Dome system.

Of course, these warnings were threats. When Hamas said they would shoot rockets at the airport, their intent was to shut down Ben Gurion and isolate Israel from the world, not to save lives.

Other "warnings" of theirs never materialized, so the purpose was to terrorize, not to save lives.

In other words, Hamas' threats that are violations of international law were, when noted, regarded as possible mitigation to violations of international law by the David commission!

(h/t Bob K for graphics)

Egypt's Morality Police arrest a man for gay text chat

From Egypt Independent:

A Syrian refugee was sentenced to one year in prison on Tuesday on an array of charges related to sexual debauchery after an officer from the Morality Police set up a fake gay hookup date online.

The undercover police officer, who was posing as a gay man on social media, chatted with the refugee, arranged to meet him and arrested the man as soon as he arrived on location. The officer later submitted all information, including chat history, to public prosecution, which was used to convict the man.

While in custody, the defendant was forced to undergo an anal examination, a controversial practice that authorities claim can prove whether the client engages in anal sex. Many international rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch, and health specialists have denounced the examinations as medically baseless and amounting to torture.

Though the forensic doctor said the anal examination showed no evidence of gay sex, the defendant was convicted nonetheless for charges including “inciting debauchery”, “solicitation to commit immoral acts in public”, “habitual debauchery” and “debauchery”.

“The case contained lots of null procedures, like the arrest itself,” the defendant's lawyer Ahmed Hossam told Egypt Independent. “There wasn’t a crime in the first place. The crime was in the imagination of the officer himself. No debauchery happened. Second, sending personal messages is unconstitutional? Searching an innocent person isn’t allowed according to criminal procedure code in Egypt.”

The undercover officer kept pressuring his client to meet after he bailed multiple times, which Hossam argued shows clear entrapment on the officer’s part.

Hossam immediately filed a court appeal on Tuesday, to be held on July 8, and hopes the judge will see the faults in the state’s case against his defendant. “Practically speaking, the conservative sides play an important role in this cases,” he says. “It’s not about legal reasoning and facts in this case. Society considers the LGBT community sinners and... forgoes professionalism to satisfy their urge to punish them.”

Since the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s new military-backed regime has stepped up its arrests of local LGBTQ community members. Approximately 200 people have been arrested on charges related to sexual deviance after October 2013, according to Dalia Abd Elhameed from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).

I didn't realize that Egypt had "morality police" but a search on that website, as well as searching for terms like "debauchery," finds they are quite active in looking for LGBTs in Egypt.

06/23 Links Pt2: Lumish: The Jewish Ghetto in Hebron; Flotilla of illusions

From Ian:

Michael Lumish: The Jewish Ghetto in Hebron

The city of Hebron (or Hevron) is among the most ancient of Jewish cities and is the home of the Tomb of the Patriarchs where Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah are said to be buried.
Today Jews inhabit about 3 percent of this old Jewish town and the Arab residents very definitely do not want them there.
My friend Yosef, of Love of the Land, alerted us to this:
Jews peacefully confronted this racial and religious persecution, showing their objection by leaving their ghetto which comprises approximately 3-percent of the city to walk quietly through the marketplace. They were faced with threats, physical and verbal intimidation, followed by stones -- for no other reason than that they dared to cross the line in protest of apartheid. Israeli residents then left the market as the hostile population chanted Allah Hu Akbar, pushing against the gate which protects the Jewish population from their neighbors. Stun grenades afterward were necessary to scatter the threatening mob.
The video below is a production of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and therefore in its opening blurb suggests that Jews walking through Hebron represent some sort-of assault on the great Arab majority in that city. Those Jews were protected by Jewish soldiers, which is why the video focuses on soldiers.
At about the 40 second mark the Arabs start chanting "Alahu Akbar! Alahu Akbar!" which, given recent history - if not ancient history - is essentially a call for violence.

Establishing a Palestinian Islamist State

The United Nations' verdict of guilty to Israel, in its "Schabas Report," issued yesterday, was written even before the trial began.
Only the wide-eyed West still does not believe that Mahmoud Abbas is telling the truth when he assures the Palestinians of his intent to destroy Israel.
All public opinion polls in the Palestinian Authority (PA) indicate that if elections were held today, Hamas -- whose only openly-stated reason for existing is to destroy Israel -- would win in a landslide, as in 2006. Gaza has already been lost to Hamas and perhaps soon to ISIS. All evidence reveals that to establish a Palestinian state now would turn it into an Islamist terrorist entity.
Abbas thought that forming a Unity Government with Hamas would give the PA a unified front with which to harvest more money and diplomatic concessions from Europe. But last summer, Abbas was informed of a Hamas murder plot against him.

Jewish Home revives bill limiting foreign funds for left-wing groups

Knesset member Yinon Magal (Jewish Home) on Tuesday presented a new version of a controversial bill aiming to limit foreign funding for organizations that support the prosecution of IDF officers in international courts or campaign for boycotts of Israeli institutions or products.
The proposed legislation stipulates that Israeli non-government organizations receiving funding from foreign governments of over $50,000 will pay a 37 percent tax on the contribution, the Walla news site reported. The bill also adds that Israeli government ministries and the army must avoid collaboration with such NGOs.
“It is important to remember that the law is supposed to maintain our identity as a sovereign state that acts according to the will of the majority and not the agendas of foreign governments or on behalf of organizations that spend tens of millions in order to tarnish our reputation,” Magal said, according to Walla.
The bill, Magel continued, aimed to “make it difficult for those organizations that voluntarily serve the perceptions of foreign governments, those organizations that submit information to the haters of Israel, who make a fortune from tattling on settlers and IDF soldiers and slander Israel’s name in the world.”

Uri Ariel Cancels National Service Volunteers for Leftwing NGOs

It’s turning into a banner day for Bayit Yehudi in the Knesset as they take on the leftwing NGOs.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Uri Ariel (Bayit Yehudi), who is also in charge of Sherut Leumi (National Service), instructed the managing director of the Sherut Leumi Authority Sar-Shalom Gerbi to cancel all national service programs for NGOs who acted against IDF soldiers, according to a report in Srugim.
Ariel’s decision came in response to the UN’s Schabes anti-Israel report that relied on reports and testimony from dozens of leftwing NGOs.
Ariel explained that the whole point of National Service is to serve the state of Israel and its citizens. He explained he will not allow a situation where Israel finances programs that act against Israel’s own soldiers.

J-Street is assuming that people are idiots.

They just came out with a "hail Mary" website meant to convince everyone that the deal being negotiated with Iran is wonderful. It is very slick, filled with animations, and it claims to debunk the major 8 arguments against the deal.

It fails miserably.

J-Street says:

Opponents of this agreement say Iran will cheat their way to a nuclear weapon.

Not without us knowing in time to stop them. That's why this deal is so important: by subjecting Iran to the most intrusive inspections regime in history, it leaves nothing to trust.

Inspections at all nuclear sites. 24/7/365 monitoring. Tracking every ounce of uranium. It all adds up to unprecedented assurance that Iran cannot cheat their way to a weapon undetected

No. Iran has not agreed anytime/anywhere inspections of its military sites, and never will. But they are critically important.

We have heard many assertions by Iranian officials since the P5+1/Iran framework was reached that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors will not be allowed into military sites in Iran. The blanket assertion seems to suggest that this could be the case even when the IAEA has evidence of undeclared nuclear activities at these sites. Some Iranian officials have even asserted that no country would ever let inspectors into their military sites. But what kind of agreement would that be? What better place to hide a covert centrifuge plant or a plant to develop the nuclear weapon itself?

J-Street says:

Opponents of this agreement say Iran must admit to all its past nuclear-weapons related research.

Yet it would be foolish to sacrifice knowing what Iran is doing now and in future just to insist that it admit all it did wrong in past.

This deal ensures that we’ll know what Iran is up to now and going forward--and give us ample time to stop it--because Iran will be subject to the most intrusive inspections regime in history

This is wrong too. As summarized by Omri Ceren from the TIP mailing list:

(1) No way to have a reliable breakout estimate without PMD resolution - That information could also shape the world’s understanding of a crucial question: Iran’s “breakout time,” or the amount of time it would take Tehran to dash to a bomb if it chose to do so, said Olli Heinonen, a former IAEA deputy director now with the Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. “You need to know how far they got,” Heinonen said.
(2) No way to have a reliable verification regime without PMD resolution - On Tuesday, Kerry hinted at why the U.S. might be satisfied with such an outcome. U.S. intelligence, he implied, paints a clear enough picture of Iran’s weapons research to make Iranian cooperation unnecessary. “We have absolute knowledge with respect to the certain military activities they were engaged in,” Kerry said. But that statement was quickly challenged by critics of the talks. “I know of no American intelligence officer who would ever use that description to characterize what we know and do not know,” former CIA director Michael Hayden wrote in the Washington Times.
(3) Lets Iran cement its 'we did nothing wrong' narrative, kneecaping the IAEA and gutting the nonproliferation regime - Some experts said the issue is as much political as it is religious, however: Iran appears determined never to concede that it did anything to warrant punitive international sanctions, and to maintain its posture as a victim of western aggression. “Our program always has been — and always will be — exclusively peaceful,” insisted Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in April. Evidence of military research, Sadjadpour said, “can be explained away as an elaborate Mossad-CIA conspiracy.”

J-Street says:

Opponents of the agreement say that it lifts sanctions on Iran in exchange for little or nothing but promises.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Sanctions only lift when the international inspectors, part of the most intrusive program in history, verify that Iran is complying with the deal.

And if Iran is found to be violating the agreement? Sanctions snap right back into place.

Are they freaking kidding? Yes, of course they are. They know this is garbage, and they even say so in answer to a later concern:

Opponents of this agreement say the United States should impose tougher sanctions and insist on a “better deal.”

However, new US sanctions would actually result in less pressure on Iran to concessions, not more.

If Congress rejects a deal that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, we will be blamed, not Iran. China, Russian and other countries would resume their business with Iran, collapsing the tough sanctions regime, while Iran could kick out inspectors and resume concerning activities, paving the way for it to develop a bomb.

So if we can't trust Russia and China to back up the US if Congress rejects a deal, why does J-Street believe that they will snap back sanctions if Iran cheats?

Opponents of this agreement say it only lasts for 10 or 15 years.

They're wrong: after rolling back Iran's nuclear program, this deal keeps in place permanent enhanced inspections to prevent it from acquiring a bomb.

That’s a far better result than the mere two to four years experts say a military strike would set back Iran’s nuclear program.

See above - Iran will always be able to build a bomb in a secret military facility. After all, Fordow was a secret military facility that, under this deal would not be discovered by the IAEA!

J-Street says:

Opponents of the agreement argue that this deal allows Iran to still engage in some nuclear research and development.

In fact, this deal severely restricts Iran’s nuclear R&D, including by prohibiting the testing of advanced centrifuges using uranium. It also drags Iran’s R&D program out into the light of day, subjecting it to the most intrusive inspections and verification regime in history.

Iran will be able to build advanced centrifuges, as long as it tests them with non-nuclear materials. So the research is hard;y being limited at all.

And when J-Street says (repeatedly) that the deal subjects Iran to "the most intrusive inspections and verification regime in history" that is meaningless, because if the inspections aren't enough to stop a bomb, then who cares how they compare to others? As we've shown, they will not stop inspections of sites Iran deems to be military.

In recent weeks there has been serious skepticism of the Iran deal, not from right-wing critics but from mainstream media who are watching incredulously as successive State Department briefings turn into fiascoes of the government abandoning red lines to make a deal. But J-Street, supposedly pro-Israel, shows not the slightest skepticism about the chances that the deal could provide Iran with a pathway to a nuclear weapon. So exactly what is J-Street's position?

The answer is that J-Street will always ensure that its policies are identical to those of the White House, even when the White House changes its policies. If President Obama declared tomorrow that the US is giving nuclear bombs to Iran. J-Street would back him 100%. Because the entire organization is built around a symbiotic relationship with the White House where they back Obama in return for providing him with "Jewish" cover for his anti-Israel actions.

If you’re a visitor to London this Northern Hemisphere summer (here in Australia we’re beset by winter) and find yourself, as is not unlikely, admiring the great edifice, packed with tombs of kings and queens, that is Westminster Abbey, cast your mind back to the Middle Ages – not a hard thing to do in that environment – when the Jews, useful to the Crown as moneylenders, were the chattels of successive kings, to be protected or persecuted as those kings pleased.

When William the Conqueror’s great-grandson, the Crusader Richard Coeur de Lion, was crowned at the Abbey in 1189, representatives of Anglo-Jewry, barred from the holy ceremony itself, appeared at the subsequent banquet with gifts for the king they were set upon, beaten, and flung from the premises. Pogrom-like rioting ensued, in which Jews were killed and property destroyed, and the following March, while Richard was overseas on a Crusade, there was the infamous massacre at Clifford’s Tower in York.

England’s sovereign for much of the thirteenth century (1216-72) was Richard’s nephew King Henry III, whose bones, unlike those of Richard, who was buried in France, rest in the Abbey. His long reign was not a happy one for the Jews of England. From 1218 Jews were forced to wear a distinguishing badge – representing the Tablets of the Law, the earliest instance of compulsory badge-wearing in Europe. Missionary efforts intensified amid a climate of deepening intolerance (whereas in the previous century several Christians had adopted Judaism without reprisal, in 1222 an Oxford deacon who did so and wed a Jewish wife was burned at the stake), constructing new synagogues was prohibited, and so on. Moreover, wealthy Jews were compelled to contribute large sums towards Henry’s enthusiastic rebuilding of Westminster Abbey that began in 1244-45.

When Henry hatched his plan for refurbishing the Abbey, Aaron of York, the country’s richest financier, who was constantly fleeced by the king through levies and fines, was compelled to donate a large sum towards the shrine of King Edward the Confessor in the Abbey “for the salvation of the king and queen and their children”. When the rebuilding started, the twice-widowed financier Licoricia (who was fated, much later, to be a murder victim along with her Christian servant, Alice) was fleeced of over £2500 and Moses of Hereford of £3000. Elias le Eveske, who was at that time archpresbyter – Anglo-Jewry’s officially-recognised communal leader – was forced to donate a silver-gilt chalice. And other Jewish individuals had to defray the cost of the Abbey’s internal embellishments.

To add insult to injury, the Torah Scrolls used by the justices of the Jews for administering oaths were compulsorily sold off in order to pay for new liturgical vestments for the Abbey’s clergy and other ritual items

And all this didn't save the community from rapine and persecution, either under Henry or his son Edward I, who following draconian legislation against them expelled them from the country in 1290, warning that any who remained would be put to death.

However, in the interval between the Expulsion of 1290 and the formal Readmission of Jews by Oliver Cromwell in 1656, a tremendous change occurred in England and Wales that had significant implications for Anglo-Jewry. This was, of course, the Reformation, which, inter alia, abolished the cults of English boys supposedly ritualistically murdered by Jews and consequently venerated as martyrs by the Church: William of Norwich (d. 1144; focus of the first blood libel in medieval Europe), Robert of Bury St Edmunds (d.1181) and, in particular, Little St Hugh (d.1255), whose shrine at Lincoln Cathedral had been a popular place of pilgrimage.

Crucially, King Henry VIII had the Bible translated into English (and Welsh), making its contents accessible for the first time to ordinary men and women in his realms, and commanding a copy to be placed in every parish. Thus people hearing the scriptures read in the vernacular became aware that the Roman governor Pontius Pilate had ordered the crucifixion of Jesus – and the Jews-killed-Christ canard was compromised as a result. (It seems, at least from anecdotal evidence, that it was comparatively infrequently invoked by members of the Church of England and other Protestant denominations.)

But it was the beautiful language of the translation of the Bible produced in 1611 with the authorisation of King James I that endeared the Scriptures to large swathes of the Protestant public, thus consolidating what Henry had begun.

Thus the country embarked on what the nineteenth-century English biologist T.H. Huxley (quoted in Barbara W. Tuchman, Bible and Sword (1956), p. 81) called “the national epic of Britain,” so closely did British men and women identify with the story of Israel.

The nineteenth-century writer Leigh Hunt exemplified such people. During his London boyhood he loved to visit the Great Synagogue in Duke’s Place – he had acquired a smattering of Hebrew – and would later write that whenever he saw “a Rabbi in the street, he seemed to me a man coming, not from Bishopsgate of Saffron Hill, but out of the remoteness of time”. Similarly, the Anglican priest Father Ignatius, an early gentile Zionist who also visited the Great Synagogue as a boy and continued to visit synagogues in adulthood, wrote: “Whenever I met a Jewish old clo’ man, I could not forbear from taking my hat off to him, and rendering him the homage which I felt due to a representative of the aristocratic race of humanity.” And J.E. Budgett Meakin, an Evangelical and orientalist who wrote sympathetically of Jews in the Near East, declared that if he could choose his ethnicity “it would most assuredly be that of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”.

David Lloyd George, during whose prime ministership the Balfour Declaration was adopted, who was brought up in the Welsh chapel-going tradition, recalled (Jewish Chronicle Supplement, 29 May 1925:

“I was brought up in a school where I was taught far more about the history of the Jews than about the history of my own land. I could tell you all the Kings of Israel. But I doubt whether I could have named half a dozen of the Kings of England and not more of the Kings of Wales… On five days a week in the day school and … in our Sunday schools, we were thoroughly versed in the history of the Hebrews.”

In previous columns regarding British policy during the Mandate era I’ve mentioned at some length the pro-Jewish, pro-Zionist Colonel Josiah Wedgwood. He reflected this sort of philosemitism when he stated in his book The Seventh Dominion (1928), pp. 119-21:

“The Anglo-Saxon, more than any other race, wants to sympathise with the Jews … no doubt we understand the Jew better than can those to whom the Old Testament is not familiar from infancy. To the foreigner the word Jew is a hissing in the street; to us the word suggests Solomon and Moses and a thousand cradle stories. So often have we used their names for our own children that they now seem to be our fathers, especially our Puritan forefathers … Towards such a people one has a feeling almost of awe, they are so well known.”

It almost goes without saying that many a Bible reader must have identified with Israel against Pharoah and Haman, and would by extension identify with the Yishuv and with the State of Israel against their foes.

Once upon a time Scripture lessons were part and parcel of every British boy and girl’s state school education. Those days have gone, swept away by secularism and political correctness and the evident demands of a multicultural society. Also, since the twentieth-century regular church-going in England has been in decline, though not to such an extent among Catholics, whose numbers have been in recent years been bolstered by immigration from Poland.

The bottom line is that few British people are familiar with the Old Testament Scriptures any more, and, in Britain though not, it seems, in the United States, the scriptural fount of support for Jews and Israel’s cause has, regrettably, been fading.