Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Amnesty outdoes Hamas in calling Gazans "civilians"

Amnesty International's Gaza Platform allows one to see, quite easily, that its database is worthless.

Here is the sum total of the number of people Amnesty says it has documented as being killed in their "research" and how many of them are civilian.

Amnesty is claiming that they have documentation from PCHR and Al Mezan of 1,991 deaths, of whom 1,667 are civilian - and only 324 militants.

Yet Amnesty knows this is a lie. They themselves tweet the (still wrong) UN figures as authoritative:

That's 205 people that this "research tool" claims as civilian who are actually militants, even according to the UN!

That is one large discrepancy, made even larger by the fact that Amnesty was only able to document 1991 deaths (although some of them are duplicates). In the end, the UN says that 65% of the casualties were civilian (out of 2251 total) while Amnesty's tool bizarrely claims 84%!

Even more incredible is that Hamas has admitted that 400 of their members were killed. Islamic Jihad admitted 135 more. That's 200 more militants admitted killed than Amnesty's application confidently reports. (Both those numbers are way too low.) The Gaza Platform is more biased in its casualty figures than terror groups are.

The reality, as documented by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, is that (based on their latest figures) about 51% of those killed were civilian, a spectacularly low number for urban fighting where the terrorists hide in and fight from civilian houses and mosques and schools.

This is yet more proof, as if more were needed, that the Gaza Platform is based on flawed, biased data.

07/20 Links Pt2: Hamas-linked UK group celebrated kidnapping of teens, today set to win UN status

From Ian:

UN Watch: Hamas-linked UK group celebrated kidnapping of teens, today set to win UN status

UN Watch revealed today that the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC), a Hamas-linked group vying to win UN status today, celebrated the Hamas kidnapping of three Israeli teens, cheered Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, and threatened “punishment” for PLO President and Hamas rival Mahmoud Abbas.
Tweets from the official account of Tarek Hamoud, executive director of the London-based PRC, include:
1. PRC Cheers Hamas Kidnapping of Israeli Teens
Above: On July 14, 2014, two days after the Hamas kidnapping of three Israeli teens, PRC posted this symbol of three fingers to cheer the abduction of the boys who were later discovered to have been murdered.
A group that celebrates kidnappings violates the peace and human rights principles of the UN Charter and should not be granted NGO status.
[UPDATE: PRC chief Tarek Hamoud has just deleted this tweet today after this blog post was published.]

PMW: PA honors murderers of civilians

Palestinian Authority heroes:
The synagogue murderers
(Two terrorists who murdered 4 worshippers in a synagogue and a policeman, 2014)
Rabbi Yehuda Glick's shooter
(Terrorist who tried to assassinate the rabbi, 2014)
Terrorist who participated in kidnapping and killing
(1993)
The Savoy Hotel terrorists
(Eight terrorists who took hostages and killed 7, 1975)
The Palestinian Authority continues to present murderers as heroes to the Palestinian public. One of the two killers who murdered four worshippers in a synagogue with butcher's knives and guns and later a policeman last November in West Jerusalem, was honored as a "Martyr" in recent reports in the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida and WAFA, the official PA news agency. The attack was referred to as "the synagogue operation":
"Large and reinforced occupation army forces invaded Jabel Mukaber today [July 1, 2015] after 3 a.m., and evacuated the home of Martyr (Shahid) Uday Abu Jamal (one of those who carried out the synagogue operation in November last year) [parenthesis in source] where the Martyr's father, mother, three brothers and sister reside." [WAFA (the official PA news agency), July 1, 2015]
Official PA TV also presented this killer in a sympathetic light, stating that his children were "served pain to drink" by Israel since their father, the killer, was "assassinated." PA TV did not mention that the "assassination" occurred as Abu Jamal was murdering innocent people praying in a synagogue:

Isis or al-Qa’eda? The Arab states have chosen the devil they know

Things are now moving fast. A relationship is evolving and formal talks between the Arab states and al-Qa’eda may soon take place without the West at the table. It’s a strategic decision: the Arabs regard an extremist victory in Syria as inevitable so they have decided to go with al-Qa’eda as the lesser of the two evils — especially if that evil is willing to resist Iran. Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, since he came to the throne in January, has pursued a far more aggressive policy toward Iran and Syria. For the US and Europe it will be extremely difficult in terms of domestic politics and national security to strike a relationship with al-Qa’eda, but ultimately that may be the only choice, especially if the West’s Arab allies are going ahead.
Just a few years ago, the ‘war on terror’ was defined as extinguishing al-Qa’eda. Now, for many of our Arab allies, it means shoring up al-Qa’eda and praying that they’re not as bad as had once been believed. One thing in all this murky double-dealing is clear: the US and Britain are paying a bitter price for refusing to remove Assad when they genuinely had the chance four years ago. Acting has its risks, but failing to act has its consequences too — as we will all now find out.

From Tablet:

In the ancient Jewish village of Huqoq, located in the Lower Galilee, a set of mosaics that allegedly depict Alexander the Great meeting with a Jewish priest have been unearthed during an excavation of the remains of a synagogue that dates back to the 5th century. If the mosaic has been identified correctly, the discovery will apparently be the first ever depiction of a non-Biblical scene to be found inside a synagogue, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday.

The team of archaeologists come from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and are led by Arts and Sciences Professor Jodi Magness, and co-directed by the Israel Antiquities Authority. According to a statement on the UNC-Chapel Hill website, Magness’s team has been digging at the ancient synagogue each summer since 2012. In 2013 and 2014, the team across a mosaic in the synagogue’s that

depicts three horizontal registers (strips) containing human and animal figures, including elephants. The top register, which is the largest, shows a meeting between two men, who perhaps are intended to represent Alexander the Great and a Jewish high priest. It was the first time a non-biblical story had been found decorating any ancient synagogue.

Tablet doesn't mention the actual Talmudic story of Alexander and the High Priest (and neither does the Daily Mail that reported this last week). Here it is:

[Shimon HaTzaddik, or Simeon the Just] was the “Kohen Gadol,” the High Priest of the Jewish People, during the reign of Alexander the Great, the world-conquering Greek Emperor. Yoma 69a presents a dramatic account of a confrontation between Shimon and Alexander. Alexander stood at the Gates of Jerusalem, with evil intentions regarding it, that caused the city’s inhabitants to tremble with fear. Shimon donned the “Bigdei Lavan,” the White Garments that he wore on Yom Kippur when he entered the Holy of Holies, and went out to meet Alexander.

When the great Emperor saw Shimon HaTzaddik, he dismounted and prostrated himself on the ground before Shimon. When his generals, very puzzled, asked him why he was bowing to the Jew, he replied that every night before a victory, he would see in a dream a figure that looked exactly like the Jewish High Priest, who would advise him on tactics to use the following day. And that advice had never failed him.

Shimon HaTzaddik took Alexander the Great on a tour of the Temple. Alexander, very impressed, requested that a marble image of himself be placed in the Temple. Shimon demurred, saying that it was forbidden for the Jews to have images, and certainly not in the Temple. He suggested an alternative way of memorializing the occasion of the Emperor’s visit to the Holy City of the Jews. That would be that all male babies born that year would receive the name “Alexander.” The Emperor liked the idea, and that is how the name “Alexander” became part of the set of names conferred upon Jewish male babies.

Alexander is still used as a Jewish name today.

"Gangs of Jewish settlers resumed storming Al Aqsa Mosque"

This is how the "moderate" Arab media reports Jews peacefully walking in their most sacred spot and Muslims intimidating and harassing them.

From the official Palestinian Authority Wafa news agency:

Gangs of Jewish settlers resumed storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Monday through the Mughrabi Gate along with special occupation police units.

The raids come the day after Al-Aqsa had been closed to settlers for a period of 13 days: the last ten days of Ramadan and the three days of Eid al-Fitr because of the intense and the large presence of worshipers of pure open minds.

According to our correspondent the raids were done with small groups carrying out provocative tours in the holy mosque, amid shouts of protest from worshipers.

07/20 Links Pt1: UNSC approves Iran deal; Iran Deal Empowers Enemies of Peace

From Ian:

UN Security Council unanimously approves Iran deal

The UN Security Council on Monday unanimously adopted a resolution endorsing the Iran nuclear deal and paving the way to lifting longstanding sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
The 15-0 approval of the Iran nuclear deal clears one of the largest hurdles for the landmark pact, which will now go before the US Congress where it may face an uphill battle for confirmation.
The UN vote came shortly after the European Union approved the nuclear deal, okaying the pact between the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany and Iran that lifts punishing economic sanctions on Tehran in exchange for temporary curbs on nuclear activity.
Ambassadors from the so-called P5+1 touted the deal in a Security Council debate following the vote.
US Ambassador Samantha Power said the nuclear deal doesn’t change the United States’ “profound concern about human rights violations committed by the Iranian government or about the instability Iran fuels beyond its nuclear program, from its support for terrorist proxies to repeated threats against Israel to its other destabilizing activities in the region.”
She urged Iran to release three “unjustly imprisoned” Americans and to determine the whereabouts of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who vanished in 2007.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards: UN resolution endorsing nuclear deal crosses Iran's red lines

A UN Security Council resolution endorsing Iran's nuclear deal that passed on Monday is unacceptable, the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Mohammed Ali Jafari was quoted as saying by the semi-official Tasnim News Agency.
"Some parts of the draft have clearly crossed the Islamic republic's red lines, especially in Iran's military capabilities. We will never accept it," he was quoted as saying shortly before the resolution was passed in New York.

Watch: Obama Eerily Echoes Clinton's Failed North Korea Deal Sound byte comparison shows

Not only has it been revealed that some of the very same American negotiators that sealed then-US President Bill Clinton's failed nuclear deal with North Korea in 1994 worked on President Barack Obama's similar deal with Iran signed last Tuesday - now it appears Obama even got the same speech writers.
The Washington Free Beacon on Monday released a compilation of public statements made by both presidents defending their respective deals, with an uncanny similarity noticeable between the two that would seem to bode ill for the Iran deal, given that Clinton's failed deal led North Korea to conduct its first nuclear test in 2006.
Clinton tried to get the Communist rogue state of North Korea to give up its nuclear program by giving it oil, nuclear technology and sanctions relief. Pyongyang took the benefits and ran all the way to a nuclear bomb, with Chinese experts warning it will have 40 nuclear weapons by next year.
As a result of the Clinton deal, North Korea was able to export nuclear technology to Syria and Iran as well.

From the San Francisco Examiner:

A San Francisco-based Arabic community group could be excluded from helping to create Arabic-language curriculum it championed to the school district earlier this year because of alleged discriminatory comments the organization and its leader made about Jews.

Last May, the Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution for the San Francisco Unified School District to explore implementing Arabic- and Vietnamese-language pathways programs for kindergarten through 12th-grade students, beginning in the 2017-18 school year.

The resolution also called for the district to work with the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, among other community groups, to develop “culturally appropriate professional development opportunities” for teachers at certain schools. Incorporating community input is standard practice for the SFUSD when creating new curriculum.

But language used by AROC to allegedly “push a radical Anti-Israel and Anti-Zionist agenda in San Francisco,” according to a June 17 letter from the Jewish Community Relations Council to school district leaders, has prompted local Jewish community leaders to urge the SFUSD to eliminate the group from the resolution.

“We fully support implementing language pathways in Vietnamese and Arabic. [The opposition] is of this group that has been named in the resolution [and] made these really ugly and divisive statements,” said Jeremy Russell, a spokesman for the Jewish council.

District officials have not confirmed whether the Arab group will remain listed as a resource in the resolution, and the Board of Education in the coming weeks intends to collectively respond to community concerns regarding the resolution.

“We are reviewing that,” Board President Emily Murase said of continuing to work with AROC. “A lot of information came to us after the resolution was passed. We’re in the process of evaluating partners. We want to do it in a very deliberate, thoughtful way.”

In the letter from the Jewish council to Superintendent Richard Carranza and Murase, examples of such discriminatory comments include a Tweet by @AROCBayArea on Dec. 15 saying: “Help us kick Zionism out of the Bay Area. Donate today.”

Other comments highlighted in the letter were purportedly made by Lara Kiswani, the group’s executive director, at a Nov. 12 forum on how organized labor can help Palestine: “Bringing down Israel really will benefit everyone in the world, and everyone in society”; “As long as you continue to be on that side, I’m going to continue to hate you.”

“Any group that espouses hatred really should not be a partner for the school district,” Russell said.

The Arabic group considers the Jewish council’s attempt to remove the group from the resolution to be little more than an intimidation tactic.

“We see this recent development consistent with the way that JCRC operates on a regular basis where they ignore the impact their actions have on children,” Kiswani wrote in an email to the San Francisco Examiner. “They are literally willing to take educational opportunities away from children in order to feed their need to defend the state of Israel.”

J-Weekly amplified AROC's hate:

The organization also helped lead a Block the Boat campaign in 2014, which twice sought to prevent the Oakland offloading of a cargo ship partially owned by an Israeli company, succeeding the second time. Referring to that campaign, the AROC website proclaimed that “business with the racist, exclusionary, Zionist state of Israel, which works alongside local and federal law enforcement to repress our communities, will not go unchallenged.”

Last December, AROC tweeted the message “Help us kick Zionism out of the Bay Area.”

The JCRC is as liberal an organization as you can find. It does not take a stand on the Iranian nuclear deal. It does not mention Israel on its homepage, and its activism for Israel seems limited to being against BDS. It participates in multifaith Iftar dinners. In no way, shape or form can you call this organization anti-Arab or anti-Muslim. It explicitly supports the idea of Arabic instruction in San Francisco schools.

The AROC, on the other hand, is highly political and anti-Israel. Its response to the JCRC letter is shrill, and it reveals that AROC fully intended to use this curriculum to poison the minds of children against Israel:

Who is JCRC? They are a well-financed group that furthers the interests of the apartheid state of Israel. Their objective is to challenge Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions work in the San Francisco Bay Area. Wherever they see an organization successfully supporting the Palestinian struggle for liberation, they attack.

Now, they are attacking both AROC and the opportunity for children in San Francisco to learn Arabic language and culture.

JCRC is attempting to convince the San Francisco Board of Education to revote on a resolution that the board passed unanimously on May 26, listing AROC and the Vietnamese Youth Development Center as community partners who championed the campaign to implement Arabic and Vietnamese language pathways in SFUSD. This initiative, born of an inspiring community effort, would expand the opportunity of Arabs and Vietnamese to have their languages and cultures better represented in the schools they attend.

What does JCRC really want? They want to discredit AROC because of our impactful work in support of Palestinian rights, and they want control of the Arabic pathway process so they can ensure there are no cultural elements to the curriculum that could “threaten” their conservative agenda.

Don’t let JCRC undermine Arab culture in our city to advance their harmful agenda.

This screed by AROC proves the JCRC is correct and that AROC is a most unsuitable partner for the San Francisco Board of Education.

If AROC only cared about Arabic language study, they would happily withdraw their name from the resolution, which would ensure Arabic language would be taught without controversy. But their claim that the JCRC is attempting to "ensure there are no cultural elements to the curriculum that could 'threaten' their conservative agenda" shows that this is indeed AROC's aim - to add their idea of "culture" to the public school system.

And to AROC, "culture" is to attack Israel and support terrorism.

Their tweets routinely refer to Israel as practicing "apartheid" and "genocide." They were active in supporting Palestinian terrorist Rasmeah Odeh.

Their idea of "culture" is to hijack Valentine's Day and turn it into a radical anti-Israel event called "Revolution is Love."

Just imagine what they plan to do in public schools under the guise of "culture."

AROC damns itself with its own words and actions.

(h/t JW)

Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture Team Members are Biased as Hell

(written by Bob Knot, edited by EoZ)

As we've seen over the past couple of weeks, Amnesty International is at the forefront of a coordinated political warfare against the state of Israel by numerous NGOs who want to see Israel investigated and brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged “war crimes”.

Amnesty’s current campaign started almost as soon as Israel responded to the massive rocket and missile attacks from Gaza with air strikes and ground invasion, accusing Israel of “war crimes” in Gaza during and a short while after last year’s war in Gaza and even calling for UN and international investigation against Israel for violations of international humanitarian law and promoting arms embargo on Israel .

Amnesty teamed up with Forensic Architecture to create what I called the “ bash Israel app ”, recycling provably wrong information by the biased Gaza based Al Mezan and Palestinian Center for Human Rights .

To put it simply, the “Gaza Platform” was created to make up for the lack of credibility on the part of the Arab political NGOs and for the lack of evidence to support the “war crimes” allegations.

That is also the case with the “Forensic” team; there is nothing such as fact-finding methodologies or technical tests in their scope of work, it is just a bombastic name and the end product is just an online data visualization app fed with unreliable data sources.

And that brings us to the Forensic Architecture team members:

Eyal Weizman is the project’s Principal Investigator.

Weizman is a former board member of B’Tselem. His anti-Israel agenda is well documented in a 2013 IsraCampus op-ed and in Goldsmiths College - Eyal Weizman Attacks Israel with 'Forensic Architecture' .

Weizman also signed a petition during Operation Cast Lead (2009), “ calling for the UN Security Council and the EU to impose sanctions on Israel ”. He is a signatory for “ Jews for Justice for Palestinians ” and for a Pro-Hamas Petition in the Jew-hating Counterpunch Magazine as well:

We the undersigned watch with horror yet another ruthless and criminal Israeli assault on the defenceless [Sic] people of the Gaza Strip. The assassination of the Hamas’ military commander, Ahmad al-Jabari, by Israel was intended to disrupt any chance for a permanent cease fire between the two sides and caused the current cycle of violence. For the last five years al-Jabari had been responsible for limiting rocket attacks on Israel.

.
And just in case anyone has doubt about his bias, Weizmann supports the BDS movement as well; Weizman is one of 65 academics, cultural and political figures backing the RIBA’s stance on the motion calling for the suspension of Israeli architects from the International Architects Union (UIA) .

Other examples of his anti-Israel political agenda can be found by his speaking at conferences ":
"Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine" and "The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories."

Francesco Sebregondi is the Project Coordinator.

His tweets and re-tweets from organizations such as "Free Gaza Movement", " Al-Haq", “Breaking the Silence”, "Electronic Intifada", "Palestine Solidarity Campaign", "Yesh Din", and "Palestine Legal" demonstrate his heavy bias against Israel. Some examples of the lies that he disseminates on Twitter and the animosity towards Israel that he stirs up include:

Palestine Shrinking Expanding Israel | new interactive visualisation https://t.co/A3y8S1gSqD
— Francesco Sebregondi (@FSBRG) May 15, 2015

Jacob Burns is the Research and Campaign Assistant at @Amnestyonline.

His Twitter profile is at https://twitter.com/JacobTBurns, an Instagram one is at https://instagram.com/jacobtburns. He “supports the Palestinian struggle for justice” as evident from a piece he published on anti-Israel Website Mondoweiss .

Jacob, just like his colleague, tweets and re-tweets the “Palestinian” narrative. Apparently, when it comes to Israel, fact-checking and giving audience to the Israeli side is not needed,

His bias against Israel is manifested in some of the photos he uploaded to Instagram, the captions are telling. To him, Palestinians have houses, Jews have colonies:

Because they are "colonists":

Jerusalem, of course, is not in Israel but in "Palestine" according to this "researcher":

And Jews asking for equal rights are a "source of tension" for this human rights advocate:

Apparently, this “great” researcher never heard of the Cave of the Patriarchs or maybe he believes that Jews have no connection to Hebron and have no right to pray there?

Impartial he is not and he seems to be suffering from an ICC for Israel obsession too. On 4 May 2015, he tweeted tens if not over a hundred “Breaking the Silence” “testimonies”.

I found this tweet of his unintentionally ironic and typical of Burns' bias:

Prompt & transparent investigation needed into killing of #Jenin man. IDF says he was throwing bomb, but initial reports often wrong in past
— Jacob Burns (@JacobTBurns) June 10, 2015

The entire Gaza Platform that he is working on is based on initial reports from biased sources that in many cases have been proven wrong!

These are the people who were behind Amnesty's Gaza Platform. They have an agenda, and it has nothing to do with objectivity.

I had thought that Forensic Architecture wrote the code for this tool. They didn't - it was written by a group called Tekja Data Visualization. So Amnesty didn't choose Forensics Architecture for its coding skills - they chose Forensic Architecture for their ability to come up with new, innovative ways to demonize Israel.

Watch John Kerry deceive interviewer about Iran

\

It takes about two seconds of thought to realize that there is no way on Earth to stop Iran from transferring money to Hezbollah or the Houthis.

And if you look at the UNSC resolutions against Iran, not one of them discusses transferring money.

Kerry lied in his answer, and his lie reveals that Iran will get a windfall that will help fund Assad, Hezbollah and worldwide terror.

(h/t Mike A)

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)

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)

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

From Ian:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.