Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, August 09, 2015

If logic can't win the day, Obama has a plan B (ElderToon)

Apparent "honor killing" in Gaza

A 35 year old woman was found dead in central Gaza this morning.

Police reported that the girl found hanged but her head was also bashed in with an ax.

Preliminary investigations indicate that her brother was the murderer.

There are usually dozens of so-called "honor killings' every year in Gaza and the West Bank. Most don't get reported in non-Arabic media.

08/09 Links: Mr. President, Iran is the enemy, not Israel; Kerry Negotiated On Iran’s Behalf

From Ian:

Mr. President, Iran is the enemy, not Israel

It's a shame Obama is making the Iranian nuclear issue personal. Whoever is not with him is against him. Iran is the enemy, Mr. President. Not you. Iran is the enemy -- not Israel. America is still the "Great Satan," Israel is still the "Little Satan" and the ayatollahs still aren't holy. Even the prominent Democratic supporter, Haim Saban, has understood the danger and has joined the opposition.
It is exceedingly rare for Congress to reject an administration decision related to foreign policy. Too recall an instance of the Senate rejecting an agreement, we must go back to the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and the 14 Points plan proposed by one of the greatest American presidents, Woodrow Wilson (also a Democrat, also a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize that same year). That was nearly 100 years ago.
Obama needs to understand that this is not personal. All he has to do is peruse the comments made by supporters of the deal in order to understand why people in Israel, and in America, are very worried. Let's take, for example, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York, who supports the deal. She admits the deal is "not perfect" and believes Iran will continue to lie and continue to get stronger. Could it be that the deal's detractors aren't actually "ignorant," as the president, according to commentators, tried painting them as in his speech at American University? Perhaps they are simply seeing clearly? And if someone is failing to understand why the polls suddenly flipped on Saturday -- it's because people have only just begun discovering the details of the deal. The Americans, for example, were stunned to learn during Secretary of State John Kerry's congressional hearing that he was not versed in the details of the secret deal between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The important thing, however, is that here in Israel there are also those who support the deal. Maybe they know things that Kerry does not?

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: Farewell to the Man Who Launched a Blood Libel

France’s Channel 2 Television man in Jerusalem, the infamous Charles Enderlin, is finally leaving the Holy Land.
As some might say: Baruch Hashem. However, Charles Enderlin was neither fired nor jailed. He remained at his prestigious post for fifteen years. Enderlin claims that he is not retiring, that he will be devoting himself to other projects. His replacement is Franck Genauzeau, a man with no known track record of anti-Semitism.
With Charles Enderlin's departure, there may now be only 999 reporters and NGO activists—maybe more--left in Jerusalem to spin the news according to the Palestinian narrative. Apparently, there are more foreign, reporters and more foreign NGOS on the ground-- especially German and Scandinavian--than in any other city or country on earth.
As my colleague, Tuvia Tenenbom, might say: I guess the world really cares about the Jews—or is it merely overly eager to “catch” Jews making mistakes so that its ongoing anti-Semitism feels justified; the Germans feel less guilty about the European Holocaust; and Muslims can feel righteous for holding onto to their long-simmering genocidal intentions towards the People of the Book, especially Jewish Israel?
Who, really, is Charles Enderlin?
On September 30, 2000, 'twas Enderlin and his Palestinian camera man, Talal Abu Rahma, who launched the Mohammed Al-Dura Blood Libel against Israel--a libel which justified, fanned, and inflamed Arafat’s long-planned Intifada of 2000 which led to thousands of Israeli civilian and soldier deaths, injuries, and disabilities—and to a frenzy of global anti-Semitism against individual Jews and against the Jewish state.

The Truth About Susiya

Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously stated, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” This rebuke is an appropriate response to Alon Ben-Meir’s post, “The Dismantling of Susiya is an Israeli Injustice.”
In his apparent eagerness to condemn the “inhuman action” of demolishing an illegal Arab encampment, and to attack the “moral decadence” of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government, he has created a fictitious scenario that maligns Israel.
Here is the truth.
Fact: The residents of the illegal encampment, which has come to be called “Ancient Arab Susiya,” illegally and systematically put up most of the structures on that “ancient” encampment between 2011 and 2013.
Fact: This case of illegal building has been before the Supreme Court of Israel for close to 15 years, and the claims of these Palestinian squatters have repeatedly been rejected. Ben-Meir fails to mention the extensive litigation before the High Court of Justice. During all of the litigation, the Arab residents have failed to show any proof of valid ownership of the land and even if they did, all land in that area is zoned agricultural land only and they have no rights to build on it. Instead, illegal construction has taken place for the duration of the judicial process, in blatant defiance of court orders.
Arab residents have joined the Susiya encampment knowing full well of pending court orders. It should also be noted that these residents are being assisted by the NGO Rabbis for Human Rights, which, although registered in Israel, is heavily funded by foreign countries including Germany, Spain, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the EU.

The recent firebomb attack by "extremist Jewish settlers" resulting in the death of 18-month old Ali Dawabsha, combined with the recent attack on the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem which saw the murder of 16-year old Shira Banki, has Israeli-Jews nervous, sad, and introspective.

Many in the West will tell you that Israeli-Jews are deeply immoral people. The Yishuv, after all, marched on the indigenous Palestinian population in 1948, driving between 600,000 and 700,000 innocent people from their homes and causing al-Nakba (the Catastrophe) which has, in large part, influenced Palestinian culture and politics ever since.

The Zionist Occupation of the Indigenous Palestinian People

Israeli-Jews are deeply racist toward Arabs who they oppress in a great variety of ways.

Jews humiliate the local Arabs by forcing them to go through check-points. Israeli soldiers often use Palestinian children as human shields during military operations. The Israeli-Jews continue settlement expansion and perpetually steal Palestinian land which they crisscross with "Jews Only" roads. While settlers enjoy swimming pools their Palestinian neighbors are robbed of water by the Israeli Occupation Authorities.

The IDF targets journalists and peace activists - even murdering Rachel Corrie, a young American from the Pacific Northwest who fought for Palestinian-Arab rights and dignity. For her troubles she was intentionally run-over by an IDF bulldozer, killing her.

Furthermore, the Security Wall (or Apartheid Wall) separates Palestinians from villages, farms, and ultimately employment, thus serving to further impoverish a people already poverty-stricken due to Zionist aggression.

Given the atrocities and war crimes regularly committed by Israeli-Jews against their Palestinian neighbors, is it any wonder that so many on the Western-Left have concluded that Israeli-Jews are immoral? Is their any wonder that anti-Zionism and the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS) is gaining steam? Furthermore, not only has much of the rest of the world concluded that Israeli-Jews - who represent about half the world's population of Jews - are immoral, but even the Israeli-Jews themselves are starting to believe it.

Crying in the Press

One need only survey some of the current introspection playing out in the Israeli and Jewish press to see that Israelis are losing faith in their own humanity.

In the Israel Hayom newspaper in Israel we see these headlines:

"Thou shalt not kill" by Nadav Shragai in which he is convinced that the murder of the toddler says something about the nature of Israeli-Jews and wherein he fears that the affliction of violence and hatred is now spreading among the Jews.

In "Fighting our inner racist", by Ran Reznick, we learn that homophobia and xenophobia are running amuck among Israeli-Jews.

Media personality and Israeli politician, Yair Lapid's contribution is "We are at war" and he thinks that the enemy comes from within.

In Ha'aretz, hard-left Gideon Levy is convinced that "We all torched the Dawabsheh family".

And, also it must be considered, if the Israeli-Jews are as immoral as even they are coming to believe, what does this tells us about their diaspora Jewish supporters all around the world? Nothing good, I am afraid. If Israeli-Jews are committing atrocities against the local Arabs then diaspora Jews are complicit in willingly supporting such atrocities and are, thereby, themselves morally compromised.

And then there is this:

The Truth

On Sunday in Israel, Imad Abu Sharikh was hospitalized after a severe beating. We read:

Abu Sharikh told police he was heading to the mosque when three "right-wing extremists" attacking him, shouting "filthy Arab, expel all the Arabs!"

The report quickly made the rounds in the Israeli and Palestinian media, along with pictures of a bloodied and battered Abu Sharikh. The claim that he had been the victim of a racist attack by Jews was particularly sensitive, coming just two days after the death of Ali Dawabsha in an attack believed to have been carried out by Jewish extremists Friday.

The leader of the Arab Joint List party MK, Ayman Odeh, rushed to issue a condemnation and blame right-wing "incitement."

There is only one little problem, however. Sharikh lied:

But while Abu Sharikh's wounds were indeed real, his story quickly proved to have been fabricated

Police soon arrested the three suspects - all of whom were Arab residents of the city.

Not only did he lie, he lied specifically to defame Jews in order incite violence against us.

Furthermore, we have no idea who killed Ali Dawabsha. It might have been Jews, but why would we be so quick to rush to judgment without significant evidence? We were told that this was a "price tag" attack and that the word "revenge" was scrawled in Hebrew on a wall of the house. Well, can we think of any reason why a Palestinian-Arab might ever want to commit violence against another Palestinian-Arab? Is it possible that someone else in the Land of Israel may know enough Hebrew to scrawl a few words on a wall, besides a Jew?

Is it even possible that the culprit was a non-Jew? According to what I read in the media they seem to have largely concluded that they know that the savages were Jewish. Just how do they know this?

I do not know if Jews are innocent of this heinous crime and that is not what I am arguing. What I am arguing is that you do not know either, but if one insists upon laying blame at Jewish feet with virtually no evidence, what does it say about ones inclinations toward Jews? And what does it mean that so many Jews are eager to go along with it?

The Narrative

As for the narrative above concerning Israeli-Jewish crimes against the "innocent indigenous" population, it is pure bullshit, as we say in the United States. It is the "Palestinian Narrative" comprised entirely of wild exaggerations and straight-up lies. It is the kind toxic anti-Zionist / anti-Jewish gibberish that many on the Left, and within academe, love to fling around like confetti.

What is true, however, is that this so-called "Palestinian narrative" of perfect victim-hood is having its intended effect on much of the rest of the world and thereby, inevitably, upon the tiny Jewish population. The Jews are among the most self-reflective people on the planet. This is generally a good thing, but it is not always a good thing. All virtues have their corresponding vices and the corresponding vice of "self-reflection" is paralysis and self-doubt.

The truth of the matter is that most peoples in the world are considerably more savage than are the Jews. I apologize if that sounds self-congratulatory, but one need only take a quick gander at the neighborhood around Israel to determine the truthfulness of the claim. But only the Jews fret to the degree that we do. We are now convincing ourselves, with much encouragement in the Muslim world and the West, to think that the rare acts of political violence by random Jews represents some sort-of terrible stain on the Israeli Jewish soul. There are all sorts-of "well-meaning" people who want to help the Jews overcome our alleged Nazi-like inclinations and they are perfectly happy to smack us over the head with a shovel in order to teach the lesson.

One thing is certain. If the Palestinian-Arabs had one one-hundredth the inclination toward moral self-reflection as do the Jewish people the conflict would have been long over.

Arabs throw molotov cocktails at Jews practically on a daily basis in Israel. Sometimes they throw them at houses, sometimes that throw them at cars, and sometimes they throw them at cops. And sometimes they kill people. When that happens do the Palestinian-Arabs, as a people, publicly choose to reflect upon their misgivings and misunderstandings of others?

I do not think so.

Handing out sweets to children, and dancing in the streets, in order to celebrate the murder of Jews is not the behavior of someone engaged in moral self-reflection.

The Jewish people, however, including most particularly, Israeli Jews, have nothing to apologize for.

If anything, as a people perpetually under siege by a much larger hostile majority, they are the ones who deserve the apologies.

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.

UNRWA's spokesman Chris Gunness issued a press release implicitly blaming Israel for a rise in Gaza's infant mortality rate.

The infant mortality rate in Gaza has risen for the first time in five decades, according to an UNRWA study, and UNRWA’s Health Director says the blockade may be contributing to the trend.

Every five years, UNRWA conducts a survey of infant mortality across the region, and the 2013 results were released this week.

The number of babies dying before the age of one has consistently gone down over the last decades in Gaza, from 127 per 1,000 live births in 1960 to 20.2 in 2008. At the last count, in 2013, it had risen to 22.4 per 1,000 live births.

The rate of neonatal mortality, which is the number of babies that die before four weeks old, has also gone up significantly in Gaza, from 12 per 1,000 live births in 2008 to 20.3 in 2013.

“Infant mortality is one of the best indicators for the health of the community,” said Dr. Akihiro Seita, Director of UNRWA’s health program. “It reflects on the mother and child’s health and in the U.N. Millennium Development Goals it is one of the key indicators.”

“It is hard to know the exact causes behind the increase in both neonatal and infant mortality rates, but I fear it is part of a wider trend. We are very concerned about the impact of the long-term blockade on health facilities, supplies of medicines and bringing equipment in to Gaza,” Dr. Seita said.

Gunness, a former BBC reporter, knows quite well how to frame a story to get the audience to connect the dots in the way he wishes.

Here are the facts:

Israel does not limit medicine to Gaza.
Israel does not block any medical equipment to Gaza.
Gunness cannot point to a single Gaza child who died due to lack of medicine or equipment because of Israeli limits on items into Gaza.

And the facts about Hamas that Gunness does not want you to know:

There is lots of evidence that Hamas steals medicine meant to be distributed to Gazans for free.

Disagreements between Hamas and the PA has led to shortages of medical supplies being sent to Gaza.
When Hamas took power in Gaza it attacked doctors and health care workers who protested hospitals being taken over by the terrorist group.
Hamas has banned doctors from traveling from Gaza to medical conferences.

All of these facts can contribute to Gaza's infant mortality rate since UNRWA's last survey. But you wouldn't know any of them from Chris Gunness, who will never condemn Hamas if he can avoid it.

Chris Gunness is issuing anti-Israel propaganda - and covering up Hamas crimes.

So far the only news outlets I've seen that published this are IMEMC - which published it in Gunness' name - and the Daily Star Lebanon.

Interestingly, UNRWA does not include this in its own press release section.

Something rotten in the Scotland Sunday Herald

Another one-sided anti-Israel article in the Scotland Sunday Herald, entitled "Something is rotten in the State of Israel."

For too long now the true horrors of what Palestinians endure has been glossed over, covered up or cynically justified by an Israeli state that has now lost what moral compass it ever possessed.

Palestinians were understandably outraged over the arson attack. Most Israelis were horrified, as was much of the world.

The Israeli author David Grossman - who some years ago I had the pleasure of spending time with in Edinburgh - summed up the feeling of many ordinary Israelis when he wrote in the daily newspaper Haaretz, that “I cannot get this baby, Ali Dawabsheh, out of my mind ... Who is the person or persons capable of doing this? They, or their friends, continue to walk among us this morning.”

Grossman is right in saying that such monsters walk among ordinary Israelis.

Many would go further and say these disseminators of hatred have done so for some time. Their ranks too have gone unchallenged by an Israeli government fearful of forfeiting support in helping its politicians get elected.

Those disseminators we are talking about of course are Jewish extremists and nationalists, many with links to the country’s settler movement.

Along the way this dark, fanatical and sometimes underground force have become terrorists in a land where that epithet is usually only reserved for Palestinians. In the headlong pursuit of their bigoted goals they are succeeding in crushing underfoot the very soul of the Jewish state they so stridently and violently seek to uphold.

I wrote a response:

No one is saying that the crime wasn't horrific. No one is saying that the murderers should not be severely punished. No one is saying that there isn't a problem with extreme right wing Jews.

However, there is something else that no one is saying.

When Arabs are behind similar atrocities against Jews in Israel - for example, the slaughter of the Fogel family, where an infant was decapitated, or the sniper who targeted another infant in her stroller in Hebron - the terrorists are not vilified by the Palestinian leadership. There is no soul searching among Arabs. On the contrary, all too often the murderers are hailed as heroes. Mahmoud Abbas has literally embraced the most heinous of murderers.

There have been too many terrible crimes on both sides. Yet the daily incitement and praise for terrorists in Arab media, on Palestinian TV and newspapers, is not covered in newspapers like the Herald. Public squares and football tournaments are routinely named after terrorists.

Jews in Israel reacted as one in horror at this attack. sad to say, Arabs have not ever truly denounced any similarly sickening Arab terror attack outside of perfunctory condemnations by officials who were pressured by America. The Arab media has never reacted with revulsion.

So while it is easy to say that there is something rotten in the state of Israel, there is something far more rotten in the Palestinian territories - but the news media does not want to talk about that. The polls that show majority support for specific terror attacks after the fact do not get coverage in the West.

And that absence of coverage is, effectively, condoning the explicit support for terror that is endemic in Palestinian society.

There is something rotten going on, but it is not from an Israel that fights against its own terrorists. It is from Palestinian society that embraces theirs.

Keep in mind that the perpetrators have not been found. The more I look at this story the less sense it makes that Jews burned the house (the location, the graffiti, the effort necessary.)

But even assuming that Jewish terrorists were behind it is simply irresponsible and borderline antisemitic to tar all settlers, or religious Jews, with this crime. And that is exactly what this article is doing.

PA's official liar claims Jewish settlers tried to burn a house - on the Sabbath

Last week I noted that the Palestinian Authority pays Ghassan Daghlas to lie about Jewish settlers.

He is still going strong, with more allegations that are, as usual, not corroborated with a single photo.

Daghlas claimed that Jewish settlers tried to burn down an Arab house southeast of Taybeh, on Saturday morning.

Saturday is of course the Sabbath and no religious Jew would light a fire then, let alone travel to an Arab village.

Daghlas added a new wrinkle on the story. He claims that the liquid used in the firebomb only intensified when villagers tried to pour water onto it. Jewish chemists are presumably working on better firebomb materials right now.

Another version of Daghlas' story says that this incident happened Friday night - still the Sabbath - and that on Saturday morning the settlers burned an olive tree grove, again with no corroboration.

But these stories are carried widely in Arabic media.

(h/t Bob K for correction)

08/08 Links: Crossing a Line to Sell a Deal; I am a Zionist because I am an Arab

From Ian:

Crossing a Line to Sell a Deal

As heated as the arguments between us can get, we can all agree that all of these positions, and their many variants, are entirely within the bounds of legitimate political debate—and that none of them are evidence of anyone’s intent either to rush America to war or to obliterate the State of Israel.
What we increasingly can’t stomach—and feel obliged to speak out about right now—is the use of Jew-baiting and other blatant and retrograde forms of racial and ethnic prejudice as tools to sell a political deal, or to smear those who oppose it. Accusing Senator Schumer of loyalty to a foreign government is bigotry, pure and simple. Accusing Senators and Congressmen whose misgivings about the Iran deal are shared by a majority of the U.S. electorate of being agents of a foreign power, or of selling their votes to shadowy lobbyists, or of acting contrary to the best interests of the United States, is the kind of naked appeal to bigotry and prejudice that would be familiar in the politics of the pre-Civil Rights Era South.
This use of anti-Jewish incitement as a political tool is a sickening new development in American political discourse, and we have heard too much of it lately—some coming, ominously, from our own White House and its representatives. Let’s not mince words: Murmuring about “money” and “lobbying” and “foreign interests” who seek to drag America into war is a direct attempt to play the dual-loyalty card. It’s the kind of dark, nasty stuff we might expect to hear at a white power rally, not from the President of the United States—and it’s gotten so blatant that even many of us who are generally sympathetic to the administration, and even this deal, have been shaken by it.
We do not accept the idea that Senator Schumer or anyone else is a fair target for racist incitement, anymore than we accept the idea that the basic norms of political discourse in this country do not apply to Jews. Whatever one feels about the merits of the Iran deal, sales techniques that call into question the patriotism of American Jews are examples of bigotry—no matter who does it. On this question, we should all stand in defense of Senator Schumer.

Amnesty UK’s Campaigns Chief In Hot Water Yet Again Over Anti-Israel Tweets

The Israeli Embassy has lodged a complaint with Amnesty UK after one of its senior directors launched into an anti-Israel tirade on Twitter. This is not the first time that the staff member, Kristyan Benedict, has been criticised for his views, which in the past have been investigated for anti-Semitism.
Eitan Na’eh, charge d’affaires at the embassy sent a letter to Amnesty UK director Kate Allen after Benedict, who works as campaigns manager for Amnesty UK, tweeted repeatedly about the arson attack on a Palestinian home in the village of Douma last week which resulted in the death of 18-month-old Ali Dawabshe, the Jewish Chronicle has reported.
One of the tweets accused the Israeli government of “getting away with murder”.
Mr Benedict has form on this matter. Last year he used the hashtag #JSIL, sometimes used by extreme anti-Israeli groups to draw parallels between Israel and ISIS.
In 2012, Amnesty International’s disciplinary panel cleared Mr Benedict of anti-Semitism after he tweeted: “Louise Ellman, Robert Halfon and Luciana Berger walk into a bar…each orders a round of B52s … #Gaza” When fellow twitter users pointed out that he had named only Jewish Members of Parliament, he responded that it the tweet was “a giggle” and “light-hearted,” adding: “apols to those who booed.”
Amnesty ruled that “the tweet in question was ill-advised and had the potential to be offensive and inflammatory but was not racist or anti-Semitic.” The incident came a year after Mr Benedict was forced to apologise by Amnesty’s disciplinary council after he threatened to “smack” a pro-Israel activist.

I am a Zionist because I am an Arab

I am sometimes asked how despite being an Arab, I support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. My answer is that I support Israel because I am an Arab.
Israeli Arab and Muslim Sarah Zoabi said, “I want to say to all the Arabs of Israel to wake up. We live in paradise. Comparing us to other countries, to Arab countries – we live in paradise.” Sadly, we cannot all live in Israel, and even if we could, unless we change ourselves first, Israel would become one more failed Arab state.
Palestinian-Jordanian Mudar Zahran argues that we need Israel for strategic reasons, concluding that “if the day were to come when Israel falls, Jordan, Egypt and many others would fall, too, and ‎Westerners would be begging Iran for oil.‎ We can hate Israel as much as we like, but we must realize that without it, we too would be ‎gone.‎” While I agree with Zahran, Israel has no obligation to defend the whole Arab world while we Arabs keep demonizing her.
The reason I support Israel is because I want good things to happen not only in Israel but in the whole Middle East. Israel is a role model that we can emulate. Unlike fake “pro-Palestinian” activists, I want an end to hate, violence, oppression, destruction, and deaths.

08/07 Links Pt2: To Hamas, destroying Israel justifies sacrificing their people

From Ian:

'To Hamas, destroying Israel justifies sacrificing their people'

It is not the first time that Edelstein, now the commander of the main training base in Zeelim and possibly soon be promoted to the general staff, has given an interview to Israel Hayom. Last time was during the lull between 2012's Operation Pillar of Defense and 2014's Gaza operation. This week he wanted to revisit that conversation.
At that time, there were attacks on Israel from Gaza almost every day. Between the two operations, there were nearly 300 attacks, dozens them in the first year. In the year after Protective Edge, he says, there have only been eight attacks. Last time it wasn't clear whether Hamas was instigating the attacks or only turning a blind eye while other groups did. This time it is very clear: Hamas is not interested in any terrorism coming out of Gaza.
But the picture is more complicated than that. Edelstein describes it as a "battle over narratives."
"Beyond the fact that we have to combat terrorism -- literally prevent terrorist attacks -- there is a war underway, and it is over legitimacy," he says. "At the highest level, the war is over their desire to destroy the State of Israel. To them, this objective justifies everything, mainly sacrificing their own population."

MEMRI: Israeli Druze Intellectual: The Israel That The Arabs Call 'A False Entity' Is The Region's Most Stable, Advanced Country

"Uttering the name 'Israel' has not been easy for Arabs, from their leaders to their mouthpieces to their intellectuals. Israel's name is sometimes written in scare quotes, as part of the attempt to ignore the reality that writers see on the ground. Dealing with this reality has become a kind of rhetorical contest in Arab discourse; some have not settled for using scare quotes but have gone so far as to ban mention of that name in Arab writing, replacing it with the term 'the state of gangs.' Later, the Arab rhetoric became even more impassioned, and to this series [of epithets] was added a new term – 'the false entity.' All this arrogant stubbornness in Arab discourse is not ended, and continues to this day, with the addition of such epithets as 'the deviant state' or 'the artificial state.'
"In this context, it should be mentioned that when the state of Israel was established, the number of Arab states could be counted on the fingers of two hands, but that now the region has hatched a substantial number of fledgling Arab countries that are also artificial, and counting them requires the digits of both hands and feet, perhaps even more. Does it not stand to reason that all the countries of this region, and, in fact, all countries of the modern world, are artificial?
"Thus, while the propagators of this Arab discourse kept their heads buried in the sand, Israel continued to deepen its roots in the region – while on the other side, the [Arab] discourse aimed at arousing emotions and at mobilizing [these emotions] to serve those who silence common sense in the minds of people continued. In fact, the discourse on Palestine... was obviously no more than a tool used by the Arab leaders to avoid [admitting] that these Arab entities are just as false... And so the years passed, and here we are some seven decades later, during which we were born, grew up, and got old on this plot of land, and what do we see around us? Undoubtedly, any Arab with a smidgen of understanding finds himself facing the same questions: 'Where are the states of the gangs – and where are the false entities?'

Douglas Murray: Here’s more evidence that the left might be screwed

Friends of mine who still call themselves ‘liberals’ or ‘leftists’ occasionally confide in me that they think the left might be screwed. Depending on how I feel on that particular day I tend to reply either that (a) they must stay and fight their political corner and make the left decent again or (b) one day they will realise that this is because the left is wrong.
Anyhow – evidence for the (b) answer seems to grow by the day. The Labour leadership race aside, consider the Guardian newspaper, which is a pretty good weathervane for what has gone wrong with the left. In the last fortnight the paper has interviewed two prominent British Muslims. One is the UK head of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamist organisation which is banned in many countries. The other interview is with someone who used to be in Hizb ut-Tahrir but who now opposes the Islamist mindset and has spent recent years arguing against the extremists and for moderation and tolerance within the Islamic faith.
Now here is a test. Which of the two do you think got a fawning interview, relaying his thoughts with barely a whisper of dissent? And which do you think got the full-on Guardian hatchet-job treatment with endless ‘anonymous sources’ smearing the subject of the interview? If you have taken the most pessimistic route to the answer then you will have got it right. The head of the extremist group got the full open arms and legs treatment, while the reformer got the hatchet job.
Perhaps the left really is just screwed.

In new project, pro-Israel voices opt for satire over polemic

Presenting Israel’s case to the world is a difficult endeavor, especially now when the country finds itself increasingly isolated diplomatically and culturally.
A new online initiative takes a different approach to Israel advocacy, however, striving to explain Israel’s case through satirical caricatures rather than emphatic argumentation.
Using Israeli cartoonists who volunteered their creative talents to the cause, The Israeli Cartoon Project has already garnered over 7,000 fans since its Facebook launch in June.
Asaf Finkelstein, 38, said the initiative was born out of a deep sense of frustration over the British Student Union’s vote to boycott Israel, and a statement by the CEO of mobile giant Orange, Stephane Richard, that he would pull his company out of Israel “tomorrow” were he not bound by contracts.

The one truly moderate Palestinian Arab politician (video)

We've previously discussed Mohammed Dajani Daoudi, the Arab professor who is seemingly the only public official under PA rule who is willing to truly accept Jews as having equal rights to living in the land as Arabs do.

He heads the tiny Wasatia party.

He took students to Auschwitz under withering criticism. He got expelled from his union He was forced to resign. His car was set on fire earlier this year.

Here he discusses his journey and his trip to Auschwitz.

From Hurriyet Daily News:

Locals in the central Turkish province of Malatya have been relieved to learn a UFO they spotted in the skies was not actually transporting evil Martians, but however voiced concern over possible espionage as it carried an Israeli flag.

The balloon, which fell into a house’s garden in Malatya’s Hekimhan district, read the touristic-sounding remark “Welcome to Israel,” Cihan News Agency reported on Aug. 6.

According to the report gendarmerie forces seized the balloon, as some locals complained Israel might have been using it to spy on them.

Moments before the balloon landed, it had triggered a brief round of UFO excitement. A local named Ersin Evren even filmed the balloon’s slow descent.

It is time for some enterprising Israeli to make hundreds of custom mylar balloons saying "Israel Spy Balloon" in English, Arabic, Turkish and Farsi, release them and see what happens.

UPDATE: Video! (h/t Bob K)

08/07 Links Pt1: Chuck Schumer: Why I will vote against Iran deal; Glick: Obama’s enemies list

From Ian:

Sen Chuck Schumer: Why I will vote against Iran deal

Admittedly, no one can tell with certainty which way Iran will go. It is true that Iran has a large number of people who want their government to decrease its isolation from the world and focus on economic advancement at home. But it is also true that this desire has been evident in Iran for thirty-five years, yet the Iranian leaders have held a tight and undiminished grip on Iran, successfully maintaining their brutal, theocratic dictatorship with little threat. Who’s to say this dictatorship will not prevail for another ten, twenty, or thirty years?
To me, the very real risk that Iran will not moderate and will, instead, use the agreement to pursue its nefarious goals is too great.
Therefore, I will vote to disapprove the agreement, not because I believe war is a viable or desirable option, nor to challenge the path of diplomacy. It is because I believe Iran will not change, and under this agreement it will be able to achieve its dual goals of eliminating sanctions while ultimately retaining its nuclear and non-nuclear power. Better to keep U.S. sanctions in place, strengthen them, enforce secondary sanctions on other nations, and pursue the hard-trodden path of diplomacy once more, difficult as it may be.
For all of these reasons, I believe the vote to disapprove is the right one.

Caroline Glick: Obama’s enemies list

In President Barack Obama’s defense of his nuclear deal with Iran Wednesday, he said there are only two types of people who will oppose his deal – Republican partisans and Israel- firsters – that is, traitors.
At American University, Obama castigated Republican lawmakers as the moral equivalent of Iranian jihadists saying, “Those [Iranian] hard-liners chanting ‘Death to America’ who have been most opposed to the deal... are making common cause with the Republican Caucus.”
He then turned his attention to Israel.
Obama explained that whether or not you believe the deal endangers Israel boils down to whom you trust more – him or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And, he explained, he can be trusted to protect Israel better than Netanyahu can because “[I] have been a stalwart friend of Israel throughout my career.”
The truth is that it shouldn’t much matter to US lawmakers whether Obama or Netanyahu has it right about Israel. Israel isn’t a party to the deal and isn’t bound by it. If Israel decides it needs to act on its own, it will.
The US, on the other side, will be bound by the deal if Congress fails to kill it next month.

Melanie Phillips: The West’s deadly culture of unreason

The most frightening aspect of this anti-Israel ideology is the way it takes over the mind so that those in its grip are intrinsically unable to recognize their own irrationality.
Accordingly, the BBC really does think that its anti-Israel position and wider knee-jerk leftism represent the political center-ground. So those who actually occupy the center-ground and who uphold truth against lies are dismissed as extreme or “rightwing” – and so cannot ever have truth on their side.
Since this mind-bending left-wing prism is the default position amongst the intelligentsia in Britain and the Democratic Party in the US, Israel and its supporters are in the nightmarish situation of being the only people telling the truth about what is happening – and yet being disbelieved or smeared simply because it is they who are saying it.
In the US, Israel is engaged in a desperate struggle to alert American legislators to the awful truth that their president has empowered the world’s principal terror regime and is making a nuclear war much more likely.
In Britain, it finds itself up against a general culture of unreason. Much nevertheless can still be done if Israel develops a coherent strategy to combat this culture. But to do that, it has to be prepared to delegitimize the delegitimizers and hold their feet publicly to the fire – even when they are ostensible allies.
And that will take a shift of perception that Israel has not yet quite made.

Rocket fired at Israel lands in south; no injuries reported

A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel Friday afternoon landed in open territory north of the Kissufim crossing with the Palestinian enclave in southern Israel.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage. IDF forces were scanning the area to locate the precise impact site.
Two more rockets were also launched in the volley, landing on the Gazan side, according to Hebrew media reports.
“A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit southern Israel,” a statement from the Israeli army said. “No injuries reported.”
On Thursday night, two rockets were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip falling short of the border and landing in the Palestinian enclave.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility from Gaza for either of the volleys.

Ma'an reported earlier today:

Israeli authorities on Friday prevented Gaza's Ittihad al-Shujaiyeh football team from leaving the besieged enclave to face West Bank rivals Ahli al-Khalil in the second leg of a cup game, a spokesperson for the club said.

The Gaza-based team was scheduled to leave the coastal territory together with Hebron's Ahli al-Khalil after having played an historic game a day earlier at the Yarmouk stadium.

But four of the players and three of the team's staff were refused travel permits, spokesperson Alaa Shamali said.

For once, it actually updated the story with part of the truth:

But the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories Unit (COGAT) said in a statement that it had coordinated travel permission for 37 players from Ittihad al-Shujaiyeh and had required four players to attend a preliminary inquiry and so arranged their crossing a day earlier.

Palestinian Football Association President Jibril Rajoub canceled their permission to cross, COGAT's statement added, saying that coordination was once again arranged for Friday but canceled by the Palestinian official.

"Palestinians are giving a cynical use to sports, damaging only the Palestinian public," the Israeli statement said.

Reuters adds:

Israeli authorities said they had allowed 33 of 37 players to cross but wanted to ask further questions of the remaining four. They were invited for screening on both Thursday and Friday but refused, an Israeli border affairs spokeswoman said.

“They will be allowed to cross on Sunday after questions,” spokeswoman Hadar Horen said. The border is closed on Saturdays.

Jibril Rajoub, whose only interest in sports is to use it to demonize Israel, canceled the trip - and postponed the match - in order to get news headlines saying that Israel blocked them from leaving!

5000 killed in Syria every month

From AFP:

More than 240,000 people, including 12,000 children, have been killed in Syria's conflict which broke out in March 2011, a monitoring group said Thursday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it has documented the deaths of 240,381 people, up from its tally of 230,618 announced on June 9.

The fate of 30,000 people who have gone missing in Syria, including 20,000 said to be held in Syrian jails, was not documented in the toll.

That means that every month some 5000 Syrians are killed. You must have missed the headlines.

Time for NGOs to spring into action and write more reports condemning Israel, where Jews living in their historic homeland is the source for all problems worldwide.

Amnesty's Twitter obsession with Israel by the numbers, part 2

Yesterday I noted that 46 out of 100 Amnesty International's previous tweets as of Wednesday were about Israel.

Interestingly, since I mentioned that, there have been more tweets than usual, none about Israel or Gaza. Apparently Amnesty is starting to realize that their obsession with Israeli actions from a year ago using false data looks bad.

Well, it looks really bad when you see it graphically.

Here is the past month of tweets from @AmnestyOnline, the official Amnesty International Twitter account, and how many times various words/topics occurred:

About 10,000 Syrians were killed in the past two months- but Syria was only mentioned four times.

Saudi Arabia continues to bomb Yemen, killing civilians. Barely a blip.

If I would include only tweets from Amnesty itself, and not retweets from others, the numbers would be even more lopsided.

The only other one-year anniversary I saw them tweet was a retweet about the abduction of the Yazidi girls that caused a stir a year ago. But Amnesty's website didn't mark the anniversary. Instead, it launched two separate major anti-Israel projects - Gaza Platform and "Black Friday" accompanied with press events.

Remember that Amnesty recently excluded antisemitism as a topic of their concern because they simply didn't have the resources. But for bashing Israel they can find all the money they want.

The donors to Amnesty should be aware of how their charity dollars are being spent. If they think that Amnesty is working hard to eliminate injustice throughout the world, then they need to ask why Israeli actions from a year ago are so disproportionately targeted compared to every current crisis on the planet.

(UPDATE: I was double-counting some of the Gaza and Israel tweets, so I combined them and recounted in a more accurate manner.)