The hypocrisy of the Left never fails to amaze me (Edinburgh Fringe edition)

Last year, fir the first time, a group was forced to cancel its show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival because of a group of people protesting its appearance there.

This is the first time that the Fringe, which is dedicated to free speech, kicked out a performing group.

The reason? Because the group was Israeli and accepts funding from the State of Israel.

Here is how the "peace protesters" acted:

On July 30 I watched as members of the public arrived to attend the performance of The City at the Underbelly Cow Barn and witnessed at first hand a level of menace, intimidation and coercion that I had previously thought impossible to witness on the streets of Edinburgh. A 14-year-old girl was yelled at so loudly and at such close quarters that the transfer of spittle from a protestor was evident.

Charlie Wood, director of the Underbelly, said..."The demonstrations pushed the meaning of 'peaceful', they were screaming at children walking past to see another show, saying 'you've got blood on your ticket.'

So of course there is a huge push by free-speech advocates to ensure that a group of thugs cannot repeat their censorship this year, right?

Um, no. Actually, the Left's response to censoring Israelis is to invite Israel's enemies to perform.

A fund-raising campaign founded by the playwright David Greig that arose out of the storm of protest has unveiled a line up of Palestinian artists paid for by £10,000 in public donations.

Greig set up the crowd funding campaign to provide financial aid for shows and artists, notably from Palestine, who otherwise find it hard to come to the Edinburgh festivals.

The initiative, called Welcome to the Fringe, has now unveiled a list of 12 artists supported by the campaign and events at two venues during this year's festival.

Greig was instrumental in setting up the initiative following the controversy that in 2014 engulfed a show called The City by Incubator Theatre.

The company was partially funded by Israel's Ministry of Culture and a series of cultural figures signed a letter urging the Underbelly venue to reconsider staging the show.

Following a furore and an inability to find a new venue, eventually the show was cancelled.

In the aftermath Greig established the funding initiative "to do something positive" and to aid Palestinian - and other - artists.

Because it wasn't quite one-sided enough to just censor Israeli voices - they have to invite Israel's enemies to have an uncensored venue for propaganda. (The Israeli show that was canceled was not political at all, I would be most surprised if the Arab artists being invited are not putting on anti-Israel pieces.)

Here's Grieg's kumbaya spin on his support for censorship for the "largest open access arts festival in the world"

He said: "It dispirits me knowing that my Palestinian theatre making friends are unable to come here and, it dispirits me to think that Israeli theatre makers who are brave enough to reject their government's sponsorship, might be unable to come here as well.

"In the light of all this, I felt the need to do something positive."

One of the many ironies is that Israel is shown to be far more liberal then the screeching Leftists like Grieg. As the Guardian reported at the time:

The company's artistic director, Arik Eshet, said that his government was not funding art for political reasons. "They fund art for art," he said. "It can be against the government, we are not censored. Every group that comes to the Fringe from other countries is unable to come without government help."

Israel doesn't censor Israel's critics - but  Edinburgh Fringe censors Israelis no matter who they are as long as they are guilty of the heinous crime of accepting money from their government. which, incidentally, is a crime that the Edinburgh Festival is also guilty of. .

One more thing. Amnesty International has a big presence at the festival:

We were back at Edinburgh, the world’s biggest arts festival, with a full programme celebrating Freedom of Expression in all its forms.

Freedom of expression has always been a core part of our work and is closely linked to the right to hold opinions and the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

And:...

Amnesty International declared that 2014 had been 'Another amazing year for theatre with a human rights focus at the Fringe' as the organisation announced the winner of its prestigious annual Freedom of Expression Award which is given to an outstanding Fringe production carrying a human rights message.

How did Amnesty, for which freedom of expression is so important, respond to the censorship of a non-political Israeli theatre group?

They were there, they saw it - but they didn't utter a word of protest. Instead, they "celebrated" how much the festival supports freedom of speech!

Clearly only some types of speech.

The hypocrisy is staggering.

(h/t/ Ellis)

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Just a little Arab antisemitism

From Arabi21 news site, blaming the multiple IS bombings in Gaza on...The Jews!

This was tweeted by the former Health Minister in Gaza. You know - the person whose statistics on Gaza casualties were trusted by the world's media.

He's now the "Head of Council on International Relations" in Gaza, which sounds like such a respectable position for an antisemite.

(h/t HadasA)

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07/19 Links: Opening the ‘gates of evil’; What Part of “Death to Israel” Is Confusing?

From Ian:

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Netanyahu: Khamenei's words prove nuclear deal will not stop Iranian terror machine

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that those who thought signing a nuclear deal with Iran would cause the Islamic Republic to temper its extremism were proven wrong over the weekend when Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed to continue opposition to the United States and its Middle East policies.
Speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said, "If anyone thought that excessive concessions to Iran would lead it to change its policies, they received a decisive answer this weekend with the aggressive and adversarial speech by Iran's leader Khamenei."
The prime minister said that "the Iranians are not even trying to hide the fact that they will use the hundreds of millions that they will get from this deal in order to arm their terror machine, and they say outright that they will continue their fight against the United States and its allies, Israel being chief among them."
In a speech at a Tehran mosque Saturday, punctuated by chants of "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," Khamenei said he wanted politicians to examine the agreement to ensure national interests were preserved, as Iran would not allow the disruption of its revolutionary principles or defensive abilities.
An arch conservative with the last word on high matters of state, Khamenei repeatedly used the phrase "whether this text is approved or not," implying the accord has yet to win definitive backing from Iran's fictionalized political establishment.

Nine things Khamenei hates about you

The following are key points from the speech delivered on July 18, 2015, by Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at Eid al-Fitr prayers in Tehran. The full translated text of the speech is available here.
1. Praise for Iranian calls of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America”:
2. Conditional backing for last week’s nuclear deal with the P5+1 powers, and for President Rouhani and the team that negotiated it:
3. A pledge of ongoing support to regional allies, including the Palestinians, against their enemies:
4. No warming of relations with America, and no change in opposition to what America emblemizes:
5. Denial of Hezbollah terrorism, and accusation of Israeli terrorism:
6. Derision of the US government’s account of the nuclear deal:
7. A vow that Obama will never prevail against Iran:
8. Boasting that Iran has forced the West to accept its nuclear industry:
9. America will lose should war break out:

  Steinitz slams Kerry claim that better Iran deal was ‘fantasy’

National Infrastructure Minister Yuval Steinitz on Sunday slammed remarks by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who over the weekend dismissed as “fantasy” the claim — raised by Israel and domestic US critics — that it was possible to have penned a better nuclear deal than the one signed by world powers and Iran last week.
“To the best of our professional assessment, these remarks are baseless,” Steinitz, who is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s point man on the Iranian nuclear threat, told Army Radio on Sunday.
“One can easily think of a better agreement in which, as is the international practice in such cases, Iran must reveal everything it has done in the past and not simply answer questions of procedure, which really ignores the issue,” he said.
Speaking on US television Friday, Kerry insisted that Israel that “will be safer” under the terms of the nuclear deal, and that the concept of a more stringent nuclear deal was unrealistic.

I’ve Read the Nuclear Deal, Mr. President, and It’s Awful

First off it’s worth noting that Energy Secretary and MIT nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz said back in April that to be effective the deal would have to include “anytime, anywhere,” inspections, so Obama’s explanation about why 24 days notice is now good enough fails to convince me.
I want Moniz to explain why he changed his position on this AND why 24 days is now acceptable. I would like Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes to explain why he walked back his comments on requiring “anytime, anywhere” inspections.
And I want a more convincing explanation than negotiator Wendy Sherman’s excuse that the term was just a “rhetorical flourish.” (If that was a rhetorical flourish, I’m curious how many other administration comments about the nuclear deal were rhetorical flourishes.)
But in that paragraph, Obama limits the grounds of questioning the deal to whether the language of the deal is insufficient to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear breakout over the course of the deal.
Here’s where I have problem. Even if the agreement was airtight, and I doubt that it is, there’s a matter of the administration’s behavior during the Joint Plan of Action, which was agreed to in November 2013. The problem is that the Obama administration has acted as “Iran’s attorney” covering for Iran’s violations of the previous agreement.

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The 1980s, the American Left, and Rubik's Bomb (Mike Lumish)

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When I was a college student in the 1980s the American Left opposed nuclear proliferation.

Mainstream, regular Democrats often furrowed their brows at the American nuclear program during the Cold War and many called for a scaling back of the arsenal.

A popular book at the time, among idealistic, politically-inclined peace-loving Jewish left-dwelling Americans, and others, was something called The Hundredth Monkey, by Ken Keyes, Jr.

{Not to be confused with countercultural icon and author Ken Kesey of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest fame.}

The book's thesis was that in order to avoid a nuclear catastrophe the West needed to move beyond a zero-sum paradigm of political confrontation to a paradigm of cooperation, if not friendship, with international rivals.

It was as much a broad psychological analysis of the West, politically, as it was a specific criticism of U.S. nuclear policies.  In the 1980s, during the Reagan years, the American Left was down, but it was not out and it was motivated.  The kinds of students who embraced The Hundredth Monkey were also, just beneath the surface of Reagan's America, embracing feminism and the counterculture.  There was a sense of possibility in the air and nascent conservatives, such as Tucker Carlson - well before he put on his bow tie and got decked by Jon Stewart on Crossfire in 2004 - were still following the Grateful Dead around the country.

Although college students increasingly looked rightward at the time, feminism seemed to be on the rise and young women throughout the country were Taking Back the Night.  Feminists were also starting, in a significant way, to oppose Islamic oppression of women; a trend that reached a height in opposition to the Taliban in the 1990s but that crashed with the Two Towers in 2001.  There was also an interesting debate within American feminism between feminist countercultural libertarians, like Camille Paglia - who would now be considered a right-leaning figure - versus more traditional second-wave feminists, like Gloria Steinem.

There was something of a renaissance of counterculture literature at the time, as well.  Even as conservatism and the Evangelical movement and the Moral Majority were gaining within the mainstream American political landscape, many college students rediscovered Kerouac and the Beats, Richard Brautigan and the hippies.  Writers, and crazy people, like William S. Burroughs, Alan Ginsberg, Alan Watts, John Lilly, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, and many other alternative figures, largely from the 1960s, came to the attention of many young people in my generation... including, yes, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.

In the 1980s there was a saying within certain dope-smoking, poker-playing quarters that "the 90s are going to make the 80s look like the 50s."  The idea, of course, was that we were going back to something that more closely resembled the 1960s.  The hope - at least among young, Left, radically-inclined white kids - was that after the business-oriented, closed-down, shut-up, Reagan 80s we would see a 1960s-style re-awakening of freedom and fun in the 90s.

{It did not happen.}

When William Jefferson Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush in the general election of 1992 many of us breathed a sigh of relief.  From a cultural standpoint the Clinton presidency seemed to promise considerably more elbow-room than did the previous twelve years of conservative Reagan-Bush.  And although, of course, the 1990s were nothing like the 1960s, there was at least a sense among many on the Left that the country was taking steps in a direction that suggested cultural openness and international cooperation under Bill Clinton.

80s conservatism was over.  The economy was booming.  The computer revolution was taking hold and new technologies, such as cell phone technology, were introduced to the general population.  Computers were everywhere and people were yammering at one another on email, prior to text messaging and twitter.  Pat Buchanan called for a "Culture War," Clinton had illicit sex in the Oval Office, and Jerry Falwell thought that the world was coming to an end because of Gay people.

However, if in the 1980s and 1990s the American Left opposed nuclear proliferation and zero-sum political stances, today it has embraced both.

The American Left, and the Obama administration, support an Iranian Jihadi bomb and a zero-sum effort against the Jews of the Middle East.

They may have opposed nuclear proliferation in the United States during the middle-end of the twentieth-century, but they definitely favor Iranian nuclear proliferation under the Ayatollahs in the beginning of the twenty-first-century.  They opposed a zero-sum resolution in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, but often favor a zero-sum resolution in the Long Arab War Against the Jews.

Phases of the Long Arab War Against the Jews in the Middle East: 

Phase 1, 1920 - 1947: Riots and Massacres

Phase 2, November 1947 - April 1948: The Civil War in Palestinr

Phase 3, 1948 - 1973: Conventional Warfare

Phase 4, 1964 - Present: The Terror War

Phase 5, 1975 - Present: The Delegitimization Effort

The Arab war in the Middle East against the Jewish minority is a zero-sum conflict.

The hostile Arab majority outnumber the beseiged Jews by a factor of 60 to 70 to 1.  The extent to which the western-left accepts anti-Semitic anti-Zionism as part of its larger coalition is the extent to which it accepts zero-sum resolutions to problems.  There is no amicable compromise between the anti-Zionist Left and the Jewish people.  Anti-Zionism represents the Arab-Muslim effort to undermine and eliminate Israel and BDS is its western-left outpost.

So long as "liberals" and Democrats provide venues for anti-Semitic anti-Zionists of the type that promote BDS, then they are engaging in a zero-sum aggression against the Jewish people as a whole.  So long as "liberals" and Democrats enable an Iranian nuclear weapons program, then they are twisting a Rubik's Bomb that quite possibly will go off in their faces... and ours, as well.

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Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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Amnesty International: Garbage in, garbage out

We have been discussing Amnesty International's "Gaza Platform," a slick online app that is meant to do only one thing: demonize Israel by using bad data.

Underlying the Gaza Platform is a database. Databases are great, because they allow one to slice and dice data in multiple ways and often reveal surprising patterns. But there is an old computer adage that is as true today as it was when it was coined in 1963: "Garbage in, garbage out."

We have already shown that Amnesty's Gaza Platform relies on the real-time reporting of PCHR and Al Mezan, and we have shown in many cases where people categorized as "civilian" by these biased organizations in the hours after an attack were later proven to be militants.

The Gaza Platform doesn't only use this flawed data as a basis for its individual reports of "civilians" who wear uniforms and shoot guns. It also uses this data to populate its database. Eventually, Amnesty will release reports using statistics that come from this database.

If you look at Amnesty's database fields describing attacks that even PCHR and Al Mezan could not deny were against militants, you find that the creators of this tool added entirely new layers of bias how they populate the database.

Here's an example. Event 3069 says:

At approximately 09:25 (August 2, 2014), an Israeli warplane launched a missile at a house in Jabalya, where members of a Palestinian armed groups were hiding. The house was destroyed and 2 members of the group were killed.

OK, seems a straightforward case of Israel attacking armed militants hiding in a house. But Amnesty has a series of database fields that they created to do further analysis on incidents. Here are the categories and how they are populated for this attack:

children_killed_min	0
total_wounded_min	0
civilian_wounded_min	0
target_type	Residential
mode_of_firing	Air Strike
structural_damage	Destroyed
sources	PCHR
media_available	Report
warning_before_strike	Unknown
knock_on_roof_strike	N
strike_on_first_responders	Unknown
IDF_investigation	Unknown

Amnesty's very choice of categories, and how they choose to fill them out, is biased.

The "Target type" is called "residential." The Structural Damage was called "destroyed." There was no "knock on roof" warning before Israel attacked the terrorists. But when Amnesty compiles the data for the inevitable report that this will create, this incident will be counted as an Israeli attack on a residential house with no warning.

Here's an even worse example, incident #2465:

At approximately 01:30 on Wednesday, 23 July 2014, Israeli warplanes bombarded the vicinity of al-Birk Mosque in Beit Lahia. As a result, 2 members of a Palestinian armed group were killed: Ussama Bahjat Mohammed Rajab, 22; and Mohammed Dawod ‘abdul Latif Hammouda, 23. A third one was also wounded.

How is it categorized?

target_type	Religious
mode_of_firing	Air Strike
structural_damage	Damaged

By consciously categorizing even IDF attacks on known militants as attacks on houses and mosques, Amnesty is lying with statistics. 

Amnesty stacked the deck so that any research done using these figures cannot possibly determine how many IDF attacks were against legitimate targets, because only in rare cases will they admit that the "mosque" or "school" or "refugee camp" that the militants were hiding in was a military target!

The word "rare" is important here as well. On some occasions, Amnesty will admit that the target was "military." This way they are paving the way for how they will lie with statistics.

Since in a tiny minority of cases Amnesty will admit that the target of an airstrike was undoubtedly military, this will allow the forthcoming "research" to say, in a very definitive sounding way, what percentage of attacks were on schools, mosques, farms and, rarely, militant sites.

In fact, here is a detail of the Gaza Platform's chart on the subject of (what they pretend) the "targets" were:

Out of some 2700 attacks in this sham of a database, only about 200 are categorized as "military targets" by Amnesty. The rest are, by implication, attacks on civilians.

These are only some of the outrageous lies that populate the database that powers the "Gaza Platform."

Garbage in, garbage out - yet this garbage will be used as authoritative data since it came from a purportedly saintly human rights NGO.

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IS attacks Hamas, Islamic Jihad in Gaza - so now they are no longer "Islamic extremists"

From Ma'an:

Five car bombs were detonated simultaneously in the center of Gaza City and in its southern neighborhood of Sheikh Radwan Sunday morning leaving two Palestinians injured.

Graffiti on a wall near the bombings read "Daesh," the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group (IS), although no group has taken official responsibility for the attacks.

Three of the cars were reportedly owned by members of Hamas, while the other two were owned by members of the Islamic Jihad.

Shrapnel from the blasts hit residential houses, shattering windows and injuring two people who were transferred to a local hospital.

No deaths were reported.

Hamas officials have opened an investigation on the explosions.

Since last summer's devastating war in Gaza, there have been growing signs of internal unrest between Hamas security forces and other militant groups, with a string of small-scale explosions.

Many of the more recent attacks are believed to be the work of fringe Salafist groups that have made a name for themselves as unafraid to challenge Hamas, seeking to outbid them in the fight against Israel and the defense of Islam.

There have also been attacks claimed by groups purporting to be from an IS branch in Gaza, although such claims have so far been largely discredited by online militant forums.

Other Arabic media reports six cars blown up.

According to White House thinking, this means we should start allying ourselves with, and maybe arming, Hamas and Islamic Jihad who are bitterly opposed to the more extreme terrorists of IS.

That logic worked for Iran, right?

The President studiously avoids saying that he is against Islamist radicals, but rather opposed to vague "violent extremism."  In the thinking of today's diplomats, pundits and journalists, extremism is not am objective term - something is only extreme where then is nothing more extreme. So Israeli "extremists" are those who want to walk around peacefully on a holy site while Arabs who murder Jews and fire rockets at civilians are "moderates."

If a new Islamist group would appear that is even more reprehensible than IS,  then IS will no longer be "extremist." This is part of how Hamas and Islamic Jihad have gained legitimacy. The PLO is now talking to Islamic Jihad as a potential partner without causing any angst in the West. "Human Rights" NGOs have no problem with their employees openly admiring Islamic terrorists.  You will not find any description of Hamas or Islamic Jihad as being terrorists in the mainstream media even when they take credit for and applaud terror attacks, today, on Jewish civilians.

IS is doing the other terror groups a favor by attacking them.

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The funniest thing Ayatollah Khamenei said this week

From  Iran's Mehr News:

Iranian Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, addressing a number of Iranian officials, ambassadors of Islamic countries to Tehran and people from all walks of life on Saturday, ... further reiterated that the Islamic Republic is of the firm opinion that regional countries including Iraq, Syria, Bahrain and Lebanon must decide for themselves without any foreign interference in their internal affairs.

Yes, the four countries that Iran interferes with most in are the ones that Iran says should have no foreign interference.

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07/18 Links: Iran Deal: The Great Bamboozle Festival; ICC Channels the Queen of Hearts on Israel

From Ian:

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The ICC Channels the Queen of Hearts on Israel

If the International Criminal Court ever had any pretensions of being a serious legal institution, they were effectively demolished by yesterday’s ruling overturning Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s decision not to investigate Israel’s botched raid on a 2010 flotilla to Gaza. Reading the ruling feels like falling down the rabbit hole straight into the Queen of Hearts’ courtroom, for many reasons. But here’s the one I found most astonishing: In a 27-page document devoted almost entirely to discussing whether the alleged Israeli crimes were grave enough to merit the court’s attention, not once did the majority judges mention one the most salient facts of the case: that flotilla passengers had attacked the Israeli soldiers with “fists, knives, chains, wooden clubs, iron rods, and slingshots with metal and glass projectiles,” causing nine soldiers serious injuries.
That fact appeared only in Judge Peter Kovacs’ dissent. Anyone reading the majority decision would conclude that the soldiers opened fire no reason whatsoever.
This is not a minor detail; it was central to Bensouda’s decision to close the case. She noted that the soldiers opened fire, ultimately killing 10 passengers, aboard only one of the flotilla’s seven ships – the one where passengers attacked them. That strongly indicates there was no deliberate plan to kill civilians; rather, the soldiers intended to peacefully intercept all the vessels, and the killings were the unpremeditated result of a chaotic combat situation that unexpectedly developed aboard one ship. Or in her words, “none of the information available suggests […] the intended object of the attack was the civilian passengers on board these vessels.”
The majority judges, however, dismiss that conclusion, asserting that the lack of casualties aboard the other ships doesn’t preclude the possibility that soldiers intended from the outset to kill the Mavi Marmara’s passengers. They then offer a string of wild suppositions to explain why soldiers might have wanted to perpetrate a massacre aboard that ship but not the others. Perhaps, they suggest gravely, it’s because the Mavi Marmara carried the most passengers. Or, perhaps because it carried no humanitarian aid. In any event, the soldiers clearly used more violence against the Mavi Marmara than against other ships that also refused their orders to halt, so “It is reasonable to consider these circumstances as possibly explaining that the Mavi Marmara was treated by the IDF differently from the other vessels of the flotilla from the outset.”

Douglas Murray: Iran Deal: The Great Bamboozle Festival

What exactly is it that the Obama administration thinks has changed about the leadership of Iran? Of all the questions which remain unanswered in the wake of the P5+1 deal with Iran, this one is perhaps the most unanswered of all.
There must, after all, be something that a Western leader sees when an attempt is made to "normalize" relations with a rogue regime -- what Richard Nixon saw in the Chinese Communist Party that persuaded him that an unfreezing of relations was possible, or what Margaret Thatcher saw in the eyes of Mikhail Gorbachev, which persuaded her that here was a counterpart who could finally be trusted.
After all, the outward signs with Iran would seem to remain unpromising. Last Friday in Tehran, just as the P5+1 were wrapping up their deal with the Iranians, the streets of Iran were playing host to "Al-Quds Day." This, in the Iranian calendar, is the day, inaugurated by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, when anti-Israel and anti-American activity come to the fore even more than usual. Encouraged by the regime, tens of thousands of Iranians march in the streets calling for the end of Israel and "Death to America". Not only Israeli and American flags were burned -- British flags were also torched, in a touching reminder that Iran is the only country that still believes Britain runs the world.
The latest in a long line of "moderate" Iranian leaders, President Hassan Rouhani, turned up at one of these parades himself to see the Israeli and American flags being burned. Did he intervene? Did he explain to the crowd that they had got the wrong memo -- that America is now our friend and that they ought at least to concentrate their energies on the mass-burning of Stars of David? No, he took part as usual, and the crowds reacted as usual.

Jon Karl Challenges White House’s Claim of ’99 Percent’ World Community Support on Iran Nuclear Deal

During Friday’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Josh Earnest consistently said that 99 percent of the world community supported the nuclear deal with Iran.
That figure did not sit right with ABC’s Jon Karl. Karl questioned Earnest on the number and how the White House got to it.
“Well, I guess if you look at the population of the countries that are represented in this particular agreement, the vast majority–the 99 percent of the world, is on the side of the United States and international partners in implementing this agreement,” Earnest said.
Karl continued to push on the number and asked if the White House had done the math on the number of U.S. allies in the Middle East that were mostly directly affected by the nuclear deal.
While Earnest did not provide the exact formula that the White House used to get the 99 percent, he did give a readout from Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir’s visit to Camp David about how Saudi Arabia supported the discussions between the P5+1 and Iran.
When asked if the Saudis supported the nuclear deal, Earnest said that he would let each country speak for themselves.
As Karl ran down the list of U.S. allies in the region Earnest deflected on each one except for Israel. Earnest noted that Israel was the most vocal on being against the nuclear deal.

Jon Karl challenges White House's claim of '99 percent' world support on Iran deal

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07/17 Links Pt2: The NGO Campaign to Destroy Israel; Hamas wins a seat on a UN committee

From Ian:

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The NGO Campaign to Destroy Israel

When an NGO receives a sizeable portion of its budget from governments, it is no longer a non-governmental organization. And when such funding to NGOs is provided by allied states such as the U.S. or the UK, or international unions such as the EU, it constitutes disproportionate interference by external governments in the internal affairs of another democratic state.
"NGOs are meant to represent civil society, not the interests of foreign governments. Israeli NGOs that receive foreign government funding benefit from the misleading image of being 'non-governmental,' non-political, and based in 'civil society'" — NGO Monitor.
NGO Monitor research reveals that a number of funders made their grants conditional on the NGO obtaining a minimum number of negative "testimonies." It should be clear that a wide range of church organizations, human rights NGOs, and a number of European governments are engaged in an extremely one-sided enterprise to bring about the defamation and destruction of the Jewish state. All of these NGOs have much the same political agenda of defaming, pressuring and undermining Israel; and using human rights issues to promote a steadily negative view of the country, its government, its laws, and its defence forces.
Many never criticize the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, nor do they turn their attentions to the desperate state of human rights in states such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, China, Russia and Lebanon, among others. NGOs are being well paid to urge total changes in the constitutions of other nations, and in the total abolition of another nation's right to exist at all. No other country in the world would stand for it; why should Israel?

Undercover Jew

Book Review: Catch The Jew!, by Tuvia Tenenbom
If you want to understand why there is no peace in the Holy Land despite the best efforts of the Obama administration and the billion-dollar European “peace and human rights” industry, you owe it to yourself to read Catch the Jew! by Tuvia Tenenbom. This myth-shattering book became an instant bestseller in Israel last year, yet, Germany aside, it has largely been ignored in American and European media outlets and by the reigning Middle East punditocracy. Ostensibly, Tenenbom’s book is disdained because the author lacks the academic or journalistic credentials to be taken seriously as a commentator on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Though he speaks both Arabic and Hebrew, Tenenbom possesses no professional expertise on the modern Middle East, nor has he had any previous journalistic experience covering Israel and the Palestinian territories.
So much for academic and journalistic credentials, then. In this volume full of personal observations, revealing interviews, and Swiftian satire, Tenenbom offers deeper insights into the fundamental realities of the Middle East conflict and the pathologies of the Palestinian national movement than decades of reporting by media outlets such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, and Israel’s Haaretz. No fair-minded person can come away from this book without wondering why such citadels of contemporary liberal journalism have neglected to inform their readers of the scam being conducted in the region by self-styled human-rights activists and their taxpayer-funded European NGOs—not to mention that this massive international intervention actually makes it even more difficult to achieve a peaceful solution to the conflict.

Hamas is set to win a seat at the United Nations table

Is Hamas joining the United Nations? Well, not directly — at least not yet — but through the back door, unless the members of the Economic and Social Council wake up.
On Monday, the 54 member states in ECOSOC (including the United States, Germany and United Kingdom) are scheduled to take the vote on the application of Palestinian Return Centre for accreditation as a non-governmental organization in the UN system.
This campaign is led by Sudan — a notorious terror state led by Omar al-Bashir, who’s wanted for genocide. If the PRC application is granted, the group’s leaders would receive open access to UN facilities in New York, Geneva and elsewhere, as well as the right to participate in committee meetings (including at the Human Rights Council).
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has had a close affiliation with the PRC, which is based in London and active throughout Europe, for many years, including appearing as the keynote speaker at the organization’s annual conference in Milan in 2009. On June 1, after the PRC passed the preliminary vote in the NGO committee of ECOSOC, Haniyeh’s office warmly congratulated the PRC leadership.

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Israel haters try to co-opt promise to Children of Israel

Seen in a Whole Foods:

This comes from "Palestine Free Trade" and "Canaan Free Trade" which heavily use this slogan:

The original source for the phrase is in Exodus chapter 3:

And the Lord said, "I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of their slave drivers, for I know their pains. I have descended to rescue them from the hand[s] of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land, to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivvites, and the Jebusites. And now, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression that the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now come, and I will send you to Pharaoh, and take My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt."

People who hate Israel are co-opting a promise made to the Children of Israel to inherit the land that the Arabs want exclusively for themselves.


(h/t Alyssa Kaplan)

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One year ago: Muslims moving rockets into a mosque

On July 18, 2014, the Washington Post reported:

The ground assault came hours after a short break in the fighting. Residents rushed outside their homes to take advantage of a five-hour “humanitarian truce” between Israel and Hamas requested by the United Nations. It was a brief respite on a day that began with mortar fire from Gaza and ended with the ground assault.

During the lull, a group of men at a mosque in northern Gaza said they had returned to clean up the green glass from windows shattered in the previous day’s bombardment. But they could be seen moving small rockets into the mosque.

That part of the report was deleted hours later. Hamas threats against reporters caused many examples of self-censorship, which the media of course barely covered until after the war.

Here is another event from the Gaza war that Amnesty doesn't want you to know about. Because they aren't interested in violations of humanitarian law, they are interested in blaming Israel for imaginary violations of human rights law.

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07/17 Links Pt1: The ICC declares war on Israel; Glick: Obama’s age of nuclear chaos

From Ian:

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The ICC declares war on Israel

The Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court, for the first time in its history, has ordered the ICC Prosecutor to pursue an investigation she has decided to close. The Chamber ruled that the Prosecutor was wrong to close the preliminary investigation into war crimes charges against Israel for crimes allegedly committed in boarding the Mavi Marmara and other vessels during the flotilla incident of 2010.
The ruling of the Pre-Trial Chamber is remarkable.
It holds that the Prosecutor should have taken into account facts and actions that are outside the jurisdiction of the court in deciding whether to bring charges.
It holds that the Prosecutor should assume the truth of even the wildest accusations in deciding whether to bring charges; in other words, there should be an irrebuttable presumption of guilt in the preliminary investigation stage.
And most shockingly, it holds that crimes have sufficient gravity to interest the court, even if they have very few actual victims, as long as they are widely covered by the media, and are subject to a lot of political activity at the UN.
Needless to say, none of these holdings are accompanied by any citation to precedent. That’s because they are without any precedent. (h/t Yenta Press)

The Pre-Trial Chamber’s Dangerous Comoros Review Decision

It will be the rare situation indeed that does not satisfy Art. 53(1)(a) and Art. 53(1)(b). How many non-frivolous referrals do not contain allegations of at least one crime within the Court’s jurisdiction? And how many situations will fail gravity analysis in light of the PTC’s insistence that a situation involving only low-level perpetrators and less than a dozen deaths is grave enough for a formal investigation? If allowed to stand, then, the PTC’s decision will force the OTP to either open formal investigations into literally dozens of situations (including all of the current situations it is preliminarily examining) or decline to investigate specifically on the basis of interests of justice — the one criterion, according to the PTC, where it maintains considerable discretion. Given the OTP’s evident resource limitations, that is not really a choice.
And therein lies true danger of the PTC’s Comoros decision. Recall what I said earlier: when the OTP declines to open a formal investigation because a situation does not include a crime within the Court’s jurisdiction or because the situation is not adequately grave, the PTC can only request the OTP reconsider its decision not to investigate. The current decision is an example. But when the OTP declines to open a formal investigation because such an investigation would not be in the interests of justice, the PTC can demand the OTP reconsider. In practice, then, the Comoros decision will force the OTP to decline to open investigations on the one ground that is always subject to “hard” review by the PTC.
Put more simply: if the Comoros decision is allowed to stand, the PTC will have given itself final say over all OTP decisions not to open a formal investigation into a situation. That is fundamentally incompatible with the Rome Statute’s guarantee of prosecutorial independence, and it is not acceptable.

PM slams ICC demand to reopen probe into Mavi Marmara raid

Netanyahu said the Israel Navy commandos involved acted in self-defense, on a mission to maintain an internationally backed naval blockade. The ICC judges’ move was “motivated by cynical politics,” he claimed. Israel’s soldiers, he added, would “continue to keep Israel safe,” and Israel would “continue to protect them in the international arena.
“At a time when [Bashar] Assad in Syria is slaughtering tens of thousands of his own people, when Iran is executing hundreds and Hamas in Gaza is using children as human shields, the court chooses to deal with Israel for cynical political reasons,” he charged.
“Against this hypocrisy, our soldiers will continue to protect us in the field and we will defend them in the international arena,” he said.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon termed the move hypocritical and scandalous.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) said the ICC judges making the demand had been mobilized by Palestinian “incitement.”
“It’s very puzzling to me why the International Criminal Court would decide to open a probe into soldiers who defended themselves against brutal attacks by terrorists aboard the Marmara,” she said in a statement to the press.
“There are Palestinian actors who are trying all the time to incite international bodies against Israel. I hope those same bodies will be able to identify the incitement and not help it along,” she went on.

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Congress is irrelevant - UNSC to vote to accept Iran deal on Monday

From Arutz-7:

In a diplomatic blitzkrieg, the Obama Administration has set this coming Monday at 9 a.m. EST for a vote at the UN Security Council (UNSC) in New York on the adoption of the Iran nuclear deal, which was announced by the world’s leading powers and the Islamic Republic of Iran in Vienna on Tuesday.

A terse announcement by the New Zealand delegation which assumed the monthly rotating UNSC’s Presidency for July revealed the vote session.

“The Iran JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) resolution is now under silence and its adoption has been scheduled for Monday 20 July at 9 a.m.,” read the announcement on the Iran deal vote.

Here is the tweet from the New Zealand delegation:

#UNSC scheduled to vote on #JCPOA #IranDeal resolution on Monday 20 July at 9am. #NonProliferation #Iran #NZprez

— NZ Mission to the UN (@NZUN) July 17, 2015

A Turkish reporter tweeted it with the words "under silence:"

"The #Iran JCPOA resolution is now under silence and its adoption has been scheduled for Monday 20 July at 9am" #UNSC #UN #nuclear #IranDeal

— kahraman haliscelik (@turkishreporter) July 17, 2015

A7 says:

From the New Zealand statement’s use of the diplomatic jargon of “under silence,” it appears the UNSC may employ a rarely used “under silence” procedure in such an important vote at the UNSC.

In an “under silence” adoption procedure, instead of the UNSC holding a normal positive vote, the motion that is set for adoption “under silence” is deemed automatically adopted unless a party specifically objects to the motion. This “under silence” procedure would put the onus on Israel to be the first, and possibly the only, objector to the UNSC’s adoption of the Iran deal.

In the established handbook on diplomacy, G. R. Berridge’s “Diplomacy: Theory and Practice,” the “under silence” procedure is described as being used by the majority where “a proposal with strong support is deemed to have been agreed unless any member raises an objection to it before a precise deadline: silence signifies assent – or, at least, acquiescence. This procedure relies on a member in a minority fearing that raising an objection will expose it to the charge of obstructiveness and, thereby, the perils of isolation.”

So, applying Berridge’s analysis to the “under silence” adoption of the JCPOA at the UNSC, the Obama Administration’s use of the “under silence” procedure would appear to be an attempt to scare Israel into “fearing that raising an objection [to the Iranian nuclear deal] will expose it [Israel] to the charge of obstructiveness and perils of isolation.”

Contrariwise, Israel’s failure to raise an objection would be seen as “assent - or, at least, acquiescence.” To make matters worse for Israel, with Israel’s objection, the UN Security Council would likely then unanimously vote 15-0 for the Iranian deal.

If true, this is absolutely outrageous - a controversial vote is being rigged to marginalize, and indeed demonize, anyone who objects. Meaning, Israel.

But the bigger issue is that this UNSC vote makes any Congressional action against the JCPOA almost meaningless. As Charles Krauthammer notes in a must-read article:

The action now shifts to Congress. The debate is being hailed as momentous. It is not. It’s irrelevant.

Congress won’t get to vote on the deal until September. But Obama is taking the agreement to the U.N. Security Council for approval within days . Approval there will cancel all previous U.N. resolutions outlawing and sanctioning Iran’s nuclear activities.

Meaning: Whatever Congress ultimately does, it won’t matter because the legal underpinning for the entire international sanctions regime against Iran will have been dismantled at the Security Council. Ten years of painstakingly constructed international sanctions will vanish overnight, irretrievably.

Even if Congress rejects the agreement, do you think the Europeans, the Chinese or the Russians will reinstate sanctions? The result: The United States is left isolated while the rest of the world does thriving business with Iran.

The rest of his column is even more devastating.

The game is rigged. The Obama administration is hell-bent on putting moderate lipstick on the Iranian terror-supporting pig. All that the president has said in the past few years, about how serious he takes Iranian cheating and how all options are on the table and how the US red lines will not be crossed,  is revealed to be a huge smokescreen. The very few increased controls revealed in the agreement are more than offset by the legitimacy and cash the deal gives Iran, instantly erasing the leverage - both financial and political - built up over years of sanctions. Iran is now an honored member of the world community, while the Gulf nations and Israel are holding the bag.

The naysayers, who have been vilified by the Obama-worshipers, have been proven right. But it is too late.

UPDATE: Omri Ceren at The Israel Project summarizes how this action undermines the Corker bill:

Remember how we got here. The March 9 Cotton letter, signed by 47 Senators, declared that without Congressional buy-in any deal with Iran would not be binding on future presidents [8]. Iranian FM Zarif responded with a temper tantrum in which he revealed that the parties intended to fast-track an UNSCR that would make Congress irrelevant and tie the hands of future presidents: "I wish to enlighten the authors that if the next administration revokes any agreement with the stroke of a pen, as they boast, it will have simply committed a blatant violation of international law"[9]. That created a firestorm of criticism from the Hill [10]. Zarif doubled down from the stage at NYU: "within a few days after [an agreement] we will have a resolution in the security council ... which will be mandatory for all member states, whether Senator Cotton likes it or not" [11].And so Congress responded with the Corker legislation. 98 Senators and 400 Representatives passed the bill with the intention of preventing the Obama administration from immediately going to the U.N. after an agreement and making good on Zarif's boast. President Obama signed the bill. Now the administration is doing exactly what the legislation was designed to prohibit.

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Even more bias revealed in Amnesty's "Gaza Platform"

Amnesty continues to tweet about supposed Israeli war crimes that happened last year. And the group continues to show how biased it is.

Its latest tweet is about the Gaza beach incident where four boys unfortunately were killed:

Wounded boy carried as 4 children on Gaza beach killed by Israeli missile: http://t.co/65rNI3jQUD #50Days4Gaza pic.twitter.com/XDGnKYZfzL

— AmnestyInternational (@AmnestyOnline) July 16, 2015

As usual, their link to their Gaza Platform does not go to the specific incident. The platform does not seem to include a way to link to specific events altogether, which is a major shortcoming for something that is meant to be a useful research tool.

In order to preclude the charge of bias, the Gaza Platform includes, in some cases, a link to Israel's investigation of the same incident.

However, the creators of this expensive piece of anti-Israel software apparently never tested that feature. Because every link to an Israeli investigation is broken and causes a nearly incomprehensible error message.

Isn't that interesting? A professional platform, ostensibly for research purposes, with sophisticated features, just happens to break when one attempts to use it to find the other side of the story. The coders didn't bother to test part of their platform that just happens to contradict the entire point of the platform.

But that isn't the only issue. While Amnesty's'platform integrates the words of two biased, anti-Israel sources (Al Mezan and PCHR) directly into the platform, even if the links to the Israeli response worked, they raised the bar considerably for reading them because the platform forces people who want to read the other side of the story to jump through hoops - to download a PDF file and to find the specific incident within that document.

They hand-feed the anti-Israel propaganda, but they make Israel's response difficult or impossible to read.

But it is even worse. Al Mezan and PCHR wrote their reports in real time and could not, even if they wanted to, determine who is a civilian and who is a militant. All of the information available to researchers in the platform was written within a day of the incidents, so any new facts that have been uncovered since then - facts that almost always put the IDF in a better light - are ignored. (Amnesty is not the only organization that did this, of course - the UN did the same.)

There is a year's worth of research, some done by me but most of it formally documented by the Meir Amit ITIC, that is being consciously ignored by Amnesty and the Gaza platform.  The Davis Commission included data from the Meir Amit center in its report - but Amnesty decided that they didn't want the world to see that there was another side to the story.

Moreover, the Israeli Military Advocate General has access to crucial information that is unavailable to Amnesty's chosen sources, information that directly relates to the legal issue of whether war crimes were committed. Amnesty decided first that Israel was guilty of war crimes, and only then created a product that was written specifically to prove it.

Amnesty's claims of being fair and impartial have been torn to shreds by their commitment to this one-sided project and 50 days of demonizing Israel on their social media accounts.

Next week we will look at the people Amnesty chose to write this example of data propaganda masquerading as an unbiased research tool. And you won't be surprised to learn that the people behind it weren't chosen for their technical skills, but for their hate for Israel.

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Hamas isn't the only terror group that the PLO wants to unify with

From Ma'an:

A delegation of independent political figures met with members of the Islamic Jihad Movement in the Gaza Strip on Thursday to continue reconciliation talks among Palestinian factions.
The delegation was headed by Yasser al-Wadiya, member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership, who updated Islamic Jihad's leaders on the results of his latest visit to Egypt to work on the ongoing process of national reconciliation.

The PLO executive committee appointed a committee to consult all Palestinian factions on reforming a new government in mid-June, and it was widely expected that the new government would see factional leaders replace the current government's independent technocrats.

Islamic Jihad and Hamas are not PLO members but are allegedly included in talks.

There are plenty of people throughout the years that have tried to rehabilitate Hamas' image, claiming that it now runs a (shadow) government and it is more practical and pragmatic and not solely fixated on terror, despite daily statements calling for genocide against Jewish Israelis.

But Islamic Jihad cannot be considered anything but a terror group. And the "moderate" PLO is considering them as legitimate as any other political party.

Which tells you all you need to know about the PLO. Too bad the rest of the world closes its eyes to that small fact.

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