Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, August 13, 2015

08/13 Links Pt1: Netanyahu emulates Churchill in trying to influence US policy to protect Israel

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Netanyahu emulates Churchill in trying to influence US policy to protect Israel

Does President Obama really believe that Israeli leaders are required to remain silent and simply accept the consequences of a deal that puts its population at risk? As Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly said, Israel is not Czechoslovakia, Czechoslovakia too was excluded from the negotiations that led to its dismemberment, but it had no ability to influence the policies of the negotiating nations. Nor did it have the ability to defend itself militarily, as Israel does.
The United States would surely not accept a deal negotiated by other nations that put its citizens at risk. No American leader would remain silent in the face of such a deal. Israel has every right to express its concern about a deal that has crossed not only its own red lines but the red lines originally proposed by President Obama.
President Obama’s attack on Prime Minister Netanyahu for doing exactly what he would be doing if the shoe were on the other foot has encouraged Israel bashers to accuse opponents of the deal of dual loyalty. Nothing could be further from the truth. I and the deal’s other opponents are as loyal to our country as is President Obama and the supporters of the deal. I am a liberal Democrat who opposed the invasion of Iraq and who twice supported President Obama when he ran for president. Many of the deal’s strongest opponents also cannot be accused of being warmongers because we believe that the deal actually increases the likelihood of war.
The President should stop attacking both the domestic and international critics of the deal and engage us on the merits. That is why I have issued a challenge to the Obama Administration to debate its critics on national television. This is a wonderful occasion for Lincoln-Douglas type debates over this important foreign policy issue. At this point in time the majority of Americans are against the deal, as are the majority of both Houses of Congress. The President has the burden of changing the public’s mind. This is, after all, a democracy. And the President should not be empowered to impose his will on the American public based on one-third plus one of one house of Congress, when a majority of Americans have expressed opposition. So let the name calling stop and let the debates begin.

Jpost Editorial: After Abbas

Yasser Arafat was not able to accept the generous offer made by then-prime minister Ehud Barak at the 2000 Camp David summit. Similarly, Abbas has failed on a number of occasions to make any form of concession to Israel.
And Abbas can only blame himself for the situation he faces today. He has done next to nothing during his long term as president to prepare his people for peace.
If anything he has been counterproductive. Official PA media outlets regularly refer to parts of Israel inside the Green Line as “occupied territories.” Palestinian officials – and many Arab MKs – reject the Jewish ties to sites resonating with Jewish history such as the Temple Mount, Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb.
The PLO ’s Hanan Ashrawi, a Christian whose co-religionists are persecuted throughout the Middle East, accused US President Barack Obama of adopting the “discourse of Zionist ideology” simply because Obama acknowledged the Jewish people’s deep roots in the Land of Israel.
Palestinian violence directed at Israelis is practically a daily phenomenon in the form of stone-throwing, firebombs and other deadly attacks – David Bar-Kappara, Danny Gonen and Malachi Rosenfeld were murdered by Palestinians in the last two months.
Yet precious little is heard from Palestinian leaders denouncing this violence. The incitement continues and streets and squares are named after terrorists.
There is little reason to expect this to change when Abbas finally fulfills his often repeated threat to resign. This sad reality may be the real obstacle to any chance of a resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Michael Totten: The Forward's Dispatch from Iran

Regardless, reporters should never take what police state apparatchiks say at face value, but Cohler-Esses does so more than once.
During the course of my conversations with several senior ayatollahs and prominent political and government officials, it became clear that there is high-placed dissent to the official line against Israel. No one had anything warm to say about the Jewish state. But pressed as to whether it was Israel’s policies or its very existence to which they objected, several were adamant: It’s Israel’s policies. Others, notwithstanding their ideological objection to a Jewish state, made it clear they would accept a two-state solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians if the Palestinians were to negotiate one and approve it in a referendum.
You really have to read between the lines on this stuff.
First of all, anyone and everyone in Iran who talks to an American journalist flanked by an official fixer and translator knows that every word they utter will be carefully read by the authorities. That’s as true for people inside the government as it is for people on the street. Authoritarian regimes install fear in everyone, including their own officials. Nobody wants to be purged. So who knows what they privately believe?
Second, political figures even in free countries lie to routinely lie to reporters and say what the intended audience wants to hear. And Iran’s official line right now to Western audiences is that the government is increasingly moderate, reasonable, and flexible. (That’s probably the only reason a reporter from The Forward was given a journalist visa in the first place.)
Anyway, it makes no sense that Iran only objects to Israeli policy. Iranian leaders routinely scream Death to Israel. They also routinely scream Death to America.
Hezbollah in Lebanon likewise shouts Death to Israel and Death to America, and Hezbollah likewise says it’s just objecting to American policies, but come on. The United States government objects to plenty of Mexico’s policies, but not even Donald Trump or Pat Buchanan begins meetings by screaming Death to Mexico or appears at any Death to Mexico rallies.
The United States doesn’t even have Death to Mexico rallies.

How the Ayatollah duped The Forward (and how the NYT plays along)

Here's the New York Times headline:

There you go! A reporter who was accompanied by Iranian agents everywhere he went found no evidence of extremism!

“Though I had to work with a government fixer and translator, I decided which people I wanted to interview and what I would ask them,” Mr.[Larry] Cohler-Esses wrote in the first of two articles from his July reporting trip.

The bigger news is that the Forward reporter was duped because he didn't do his homework. In this section that the NYT also highlighted, Cohler-Esses writes:

During the course of my conversations with several senior ayatollahs and prominent political and government officials, it became clear that there is high-placed dissent to the official line against Israel. No one had anything warm to say about the Jewish state. But pressed as to whether it was Israel’s policies or its very existence to which they objected, several were adamant: It’s Israel’s policies. Others, notwithstanding their ideological objection to a Jewish state, made it clear they would accept a two-state solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians if the Palestinians were to negotiate one and approve it in a referendum.

Almost unbelievably, Kohler-Esses doesn't know what they meant by this "referendum."

It is the Ayatollah's way of fooling gullible Westerners.

This "referendum" that they are referring to would be open to all who identify themselves as Palestinian around the world, at last count some 12 million. Jews could only vote if their ancestors had lived in Ottoman Palestine and they still live in Israel. The "referendum" would then be to decide what to do with the Jews who moved to Israel since 1948. Those millions of Jews don't have a vote. The Ayatollah knows that the results of this "referendum" would be to expel all the Jews who have lived in Israel for less than a century.

"Referendum," when used by Iranians, is a codeword for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. And they admit this freely for people who bother to read their writings.

But there may be an infinitesimal theoretical chance that these "Palestinians" would vote to allow a Jewish state on land that they claim as being stolen from them.

This is what these clerics and officials are saying, and dupes like Larry Cohler-Esses is too ignorant of the facts to understand that he has been made into a fool.

This is explicit in the Ayatollah Khamenei's writings. But the Forward journalist is too enamored of the idea of a moderate Iran that he doesn't even know the basics of how Khamenei wants to destroy Israel - something that his interviewees agree with but were not asked.

So we see clearly how the Forward is duped:

Hossein Kanani Moghaddam, a British-trained civil engineer, has been deeply involved in his government’s nuclear development program — as an environmental designer for civilian generators, he stressed. But his enduring claim to wide fame was that he was the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s top commander during the war against Iraq. A candidate in the 2012 presidential election won by Rouhani, Moghaddam was also, without a doubt, the most fervently anti-Zionist person I met during my seven-day stay in Iran — to the point of anti-Semitism. Moghaddam believes, for example, that “all the world capital, all the investment, the banks, the charities, the economics are under the control of Zionism… 1% of the world is Jewish, but they control all the economy in the world.”

He also believes Jews who have immigrated to Israel from elsewhere should go back to their native land.

Yet when I asked Moghaddam about a two-state solution for Israel and for Palestinians, he replied: “Yes. I’d accept a two-state solution if it were negotiated and put to a referendum, and people in this area chose two separate places. Okay, we will follow them” — so long, he added, as Jerusalem, which he held as holy under Islam, was reserved as a city to be shared by “all the monotheistic religions.”

Without knowing the basic facts of this "referendum," the Forward is claiming that this guy accepts a two-state solution. And one other interviewee sued that same magic word "referendum" as well.

Larry Kohler-Esses also didn't ask these same officials if they support Iran's arming terror groups in the territories. Which Khamenei does, and he has said so repeatedly.

If only Kohler-Esses had bothered reading the Ayatollah Khamenei's tweets, in English, while researching his trip that he had requested two years ago. He could have read this:

Now, was anything these clerics said inconsistent with the Ayatollah's plan to destroy Israel?

This is journalistic malpractice.

Oh, and one other thing: The Forward journalist was allowed to enter Iran literally the week after Quds Day, when thousands of Iranians shout "Death to Israel" in unison in the streets. For some strange reason, his request for a visa was not granted for that day. And he doesn't mention it.

And a quick Google search for "Death to Israel" - even in Hebrew - finds dozens of Iranian websites. Too bad Mr. Kohler-Esses didn't seek out the many people who express their anti-Israel opinions so freely online.

The Forward was duped, and the New York Times takes out even what little context the Forward article had.

From Ammon News:

Jordan holds Israel fully responsible for the continuous desecration and violation of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the subsequent actions that result from it, the Anadolu Agency reported yesterday.

The official Jordanian news agency reported the official spokesman of the government Mohamed Al-Momani as saying: "Any desecration attempt of the noble yards or entrance by the Israelis is considered illegal and hostile actions against Muslims and Islamic sites."

Clearly the Jordanian government doesn't include Israeli Muslims among the "Israelis" that they claim are desecrating the Temple Mount, nor are they saying that Jewish tourists are free to visit. The official position of the Jordanian government is that Jews visiting their holiest site, no matter how respectfully, is inherently a hostile action against Muslims.

Last year Mahmoud Abbas threatened to take legal action against Jews visiting the Temple Mount. I wish he would go to the ICC with such a complaint. Muslim intolerance for other religions would be a great court case.

I showed that harassing or banning Jews from visiting the Temple Mount is a violation of international law here.

"Jews played badminton in Al Aqsa Mosque"

This may be the nuttiest rumor yet about Jews on the Temple Mount.

An antisemitic former Kuwaiti MP tweeted twice about Jews yesterday.

One of his tweets called Jews the most despicable of all people that he claimed were ruining the 'Umma.

His other included this photo which he claimed showed Jews playing sports in the Al Aqsa Mosque.

The Jews not only broke into the third holiest mosque but they defiled it by playing badminton! How low can you get?

This rumor has been around for at least a year, mostly on Twitter and message boards.

The photo actually comes from Turkey. Hurriyet Daily News reported in 2013:

Children who attend Quran classes in Turkey’s Muğla province are now also receiving badminton lessons in the mosques, in accordance with a protocol signed recently between the Religious Affairs Directorate and Sports Directorate.

Offering badminton courses with Quran readings aims to get the children to form a habit of visiting the mosque, according to Anadolu news agency.

A badminton net was put up inside the Milas mosque and the first match went down between the Milas religious official Uğur Kocabaş and badminton trainer Şermin Günaydınoğlu. Lessons will now be offered to all children who attend the summer Quran courses at the mosque, the report said.

Kocabaş said the arrangement allowed “students to be introduced to sports while they learn religion.”

And it isn't only badminton, but also karate and soccer:

"Settlers Declare 'Talmudic War' on Palestinians"

That was the headline in Islam Today.

The article claims that settler rabbis are issuing religious rulings to kill Arabs.

Here is the screenshot of the auto-translated Facebook post for the article.

I don't recall seeing any articles in Arabic about how rabbis condemned the killing of the baby in Duma. Instead, only articles about how Jews support it.

08/12 Links Pt2: Jeremy Corbyn shares a stage with Carlos Latuff; Repulsive racism from Anna Baltzer

From Ian:

Corbyn and the Hamas backer who defends suicide bombs: He'll share stage with extremist... and a 'Holocaust cartoon contest' runner-up

Jeremy Corbyn is to share a stage with supporters of the Palestinian militant group Hamas – including an academic who has defended suicide attacks.
The Labour leadership frontrunner will speak later this month at a London conference hosted by the controversial publication Middle East Monitor.
One speaker will be Palestinian-born Dr Azzam Tamimi, who once told the BBC that ‘sacrificing myself for Palestine is a noble cause... I would do it if I had the opportunity’.
Another is Carlos Latuff, a cartoonist who compares Israel to the Nazis and came second in a Holocaust cartoon competition held by Iran in 2006.
Last night senior Labour MP John Mann, chairman of the all-party parliamentary group against anti-semitism, said: ‘These are not people a would-be Prime Minister should be sharing a platform with – and any contact with them should be to challenge them about their vile views.
‘He should be challenging Tamimi about his view that suicide bombings are in some way noble, and some of Latuff’s cartoons are deeply offensive. This sort of event is not where a would-be Prime Minister should be, it’s hugely inappropriate.’

Repulsive racism from Anna Baltzer

Meet Ilana Kaufman, a self described "black, gay professional Jew"
From the Forward, Ilana writes
I’m about as mainstream as we come. My family lights Sabbath candles and belongs to a synagogue. My daughter goes to religious school and Jewish summer camp. I even grow etrogs in my backyard. My community is mostly Jewish — and many, many are black like me.
Ilana is the JCRC San Francisco Bay Area’s Public Affairs and Civic Engagement Director. She reflects the diversity of the Bay area, and of the larger Jewish community
Its just one of many reasons that Anna Baltzer's (aka Anna Piller aka Anna Nardie) quip about the "white supremacy" of the Jewish Community Relations Council is so repugnant. Anna is the head of the extremist US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation - a group that denies Jewish ties to the land of Israel.
In her thoughtless, senseless and racist attack on the JCRC, Anna belittles and marginalizes the contributions of all Jews of color, including Ilana Kaufman.

Douglas MurrayWill Britain Pass the Choudary Test?

If there was a single flaw in the British Prime Minister's recent speech on countering extremism in the UK, it might be encapsulated in the name "Anjem Choudary." His speech went into terrific detail on the significance of tacking radicalism through the education system, the Charity Commission, the broadcasting license authority and numerous other means. But it failed the Choudary test.
That test is: What do you do about a British-born man who is qualified to work but appears never to have done so, and who instead spends his time taking his "dole" money and using it to fund a lifestyle devoted solely to preaching against the state?
The problem is not quite as straightforward as some commentators make out. The fact that Choudary is British-born and a British citizen makes it legally impossible for Britain to withdraw his citizenship or otherwise render him "stateless." He has a young family who cannot be allowed to starve on the streets, even if he could. These are admittedly late liberalism problems, but they are problems nonetheless.
On the other hand, what the state has allowed from Choudary in recent years looks more like a late Weimar problem. Choudary is not merely a blowhard pseudo-cleric with perhaps never more than a hundred followers at any one time -- although this is certainly the part of his persona that has garnered most attention. Indeed, his attention-seeking is perhaps the only first-rate skill he has. For instance, there was the time he claimed he was planning a "March for Sharia" through the centre of London, culminating at the gates of Buckingham Palace with a demand that the Queen submit to Islam. Having garnered the publicity he desired, Choudary cancelled his march not because there was a fairly measly counter-demo (of which this author was a part) but because his "March for Sharia" would have been unlikely to gather more than a few dozen attendees, and would most likely have descended into a "stroll inviting ridicule," at best.

Israel’s statement on The Rise of Global Genocidal Antisemitism

Israel’s Counselor on Human Rights, Nelly Shiloh, spoke today at the UN on The Rise of Global Genocidal Antisemitism

The good dhimmis of Amnesty and UNRWA

Yesterday I mentioned that the ICRC offices in Jerusalem were attacked by "Palestinian activists" yet no one said anything bad about the attackers.

Actually, Amnesty USA retweeted about the incident, supporting calling the attackers "steadfast:"

When given a choice to support the International Committee of the Red Cross or criminals, Amnesty backs the criminals.

This isn't the only protest against an NGO being praised by NGOs. Here is UNRWA's Chris Gunness sympathizing with people protesting UNRWA!

Understandable anger: Education is a right. "West Bank Refugees Block Roads in Protest of UNRWA Crisis" http://t.co/M0ar41B7IK RT
— Chris Gunness (@ChrisGunness) August 11, 2015

You see, if only we were nicer to the Arabs who keep demanding more and more even from those who are trying to help them, then everything would be OK.

Gunness followed up with another tweet that also implies that throwing more and more money at a welfare society will keep them happy:

Mass #Gaza protests. When I said @UNRWA = a regional stabilizer & our funding crisis had big implications I meant it http://t.co/e8YDe7DGrA
— Chris Gunness (@ChrisGunness) August 12, 2015

Gunness is cynically supporting the protests because the more publicity they get, the more Western governments will be scared that Arabs will do something violent - since that is the default opinion of Arabs among the "progressive" bigots who claim to support them.

So we have Arabs who know that when they act violently they will be supported by the very people they are attacking. They know that threats of escalating violence are a form of blackmail that consistently works. And the NGOs happily go along with this infantilization of Arab people because their entire funding structure depends on telling the world that Arab threats and violence are completely justified. The Palestinians, in turn, take this support as evidence that they have a "right" to more and more free Western support, and they are emboldened to keep the threats of violence as their main negotiating tactic.

It is a self-justifying cycle that works great for the NGOs seeking more cash and for the Arabs who demand it.

And the idea that Arabs should be encouraged to act like responsible adults is utterly foreign to these players.

The irony is that all of this freeloading is the exact opposite of the traditional Muslim idea of dignity. The honor/shame mentality has advantages as well as disadvantages, but one of its better features is that it is traditionally dishonorable to take handouts. But the new circumstances, of perpetual refugeehood and victimhood, turns this admirable Muslim quality into a farce, where it is now dignified to demand handouts and an insult to honor to have to work to support one's family. If there is any Muslim complaining about this, however, I haven't seen it, probably because the shame of Jews in Israel is far worse than the shame of retaining victimhood status to eventually remove that source of shame.

(h/t Vandoren)

Secret Addendum To Iran Deal Just Obama's Kenya Birth Certificate (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Vienna, August 12 - Hotel staffers cleaning up after the nuclear negotiations between Iran the p5+1 world powers last month came across what appears to be a secret element of the deal that emerged, in the form of a document that attests to the birth of Barack Hussein Obama in a Kenya hospital in 1961.

Congress and the Obama administration have clashed over the existence and content of any secret side agreements that are part of the deal, known as the JCPOA, which would remove sanctions from the Islamic Republic in exchange for various concessions in the country's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Skeptics of the deal especially have leveled vocal criticism of Secretary of State John Kerry and the White House for allegedly concealing from the American public what could be crucial information that would allow Congress to vote for or against the agreement with all the pertinent information in hand. Kerry and other administration representatives at first denied the existence of such side agreements, but at least two are known to exist. The Vienna document appears to add to the list, and its implications go far beyond the terms of the deal itself, affecting the legitimacy of the agreement as it potentially affects the legality of the Obama presidency. American Constitutional law mandates that the president be born in the United States; Obama has previously produced a birth certificate issued in Hawaii.

According to hotel employee Orly Taitz, the document in question is printed in English and Swahili, and registers the birth of Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. to Barack Obama and Ann Dunham at Mombasa State Hospital, August 4, 1961. Taitz said she discovered the certificate among papers accidentally left in the hallway outside the conference rooms where the negotiations took place, and that representatives of the various parties to the negotiations had denied ownership of the certificate. Attached to the certificate, which a reporter was allowed to see but not photograph, were several ages of terms under which the birth document would remain confidential among the parties to the talks.

Kerry and White House spokespeople were quick to deny the authenticity both of the certificate and its relevance to the JCPOA. "The American people got tired quite a long time ago with efforts to challenge the president's bona fide American birth," said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. "The so-called 'Vienna document' is a hoax, and neither it nor anything resembling it played any part in the negotiations or deal with Tehran."

Secretary Kerry sounded a similar note, accusing deal opponents of orchestrating the revelation. "The president has warned that the opponents of this deal will stop at nothing, even risking war, to undermine this eminently responsible agreement," he said. "Various moneyed interest are clearly behind this, and we all know whom I'm talking about."

08/12 Links Pt1: Glick: Anti-peace administration; Goldberg: Why Iran’s Anti-Semitism Matters

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The anti-peace administration

In his briefing with Israeli reporters, the high-level US official rejected the importance of the détente between Israel and its Arab neighbors because he claimed the Arabs have not changed their position regarding their view of a final peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
But this is also nonsense. To be sure, the official position of the Saudis and the UAE is still the so-called Arab peace initiative from 2002 which stipulates that the Arabs will only normalize relations with Israel after it has ceded Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan and allowed millions of foreign-born Arabs to freely immigrate to the shrunken Jewish state. In other words, their official position is that they will only have normal relations with Israel after Israel destroys itself.
But their official position is no longer their actual position. Their actual position is to view Israel as a strategic ally.
The senior official told the Israeli reporters that in order to show that “their primary security concern is Iran,” then as far as the Arabs are concerned, “resolving some of the other issues in the region, including the Palestinian issue should be in their interest. We would like to see them more invested in moving the process forward.”
In the real world, there is no peace process. And the Palestinian factions are fighting over who gets to have better relations with Iran. Monday we learned that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas wishes to visit Iran in the coming months in the hopes of getting the money that until recently was enjoyed by his Hamas rivals.
Hamas for its part is desperate to show Tehran that it remains a loyal client. So today, no Palestinian faction shares the joint Israeli-Saudi-Egyptian interest in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear armed regional hegemon.
The administration showed its hand in that briefing with the Israeli reporters last week. For all their talk about Middle East peace, Obama and his advisors are not at all interested in achieving it or of noticing when it has been achieved.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Why Iran’s Anti-Semitism Matters

The meeting was ending, and I did not have a chance to follow up with another question that has been nagging at me, which is this: Why does it seem to a growing number of people (I count Chuck Schumer in this group) that an administration professing—honestly, from what I can tell—to understand Jewish anxieties about the consequences of anti-Semitism in the Middle East does not appear to understand that the way some of its advocates outside government are framing the Iran-deal fight—as one between Jewish special interests, on the one hand, and the entire rest of the world, on the other—may empower actual anti-Semites not only in the Middle East, but at home as well?
Again, it seems to me that a plausible case could be made that this deal, as John Kerry has enthusiastically argued, is actually in Israel’s best interests—not only when compared to the alternative, but especially when compared to the alternative—and that the administration can make great hay out of the pro-Israel argument, and counter arguments that blame Israel’s well-meaning supporters in the United States for political difficulties surrounding the deal. I suspect that opponents of the deal in the American Jewish community are wrong in their views, but this does not make them warmongers, in the way Charles Lindbergh once understood Jews to be warmongers.
I know a number of things from my email traffic relating to this issue. The first is that, believe it or not, there are non-Jews who are worried about the Iran deal (more worried than I am, certainly). The second is that Jewish supporters of the Obama administration are beginning to feel scapegoated; the third is that supporters of the deal appear to be as sure of their position as those who supported the Iraq War (yours truly among them) were of theirs.
This last point is particularly interesting to me: The deal negotiated by John Kerry and his team may very well prevent Iran from gaining possession of a nuclear weapon for a very long time—and rejection of the deal now by Congress is unlikely to lead to a good outcome—but the risks here are huge: The administration, and supporters of the deal, are mortgaging the future to a regime labeled by Kerry’s State Department as the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and a regime that seeks the physical elimination of a fellow member-state of the United Nations and a close ally of the United States as well. Given that there is so much risk and uncertainty in what the United States is doing, it would be useful for the administration to make absolutely clear that it understands the nature of the regime with which it is dealing.

Michael Bloomberg: Supporters of Iran Nuclear Deal are “Resorting to Intimidation and Demonization”

The approach by advocates of the nuclear deal with Iran has been “disappointing” due to supporters “resorting to intimidation and demonization, while also grossly overstating their case,” former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote in an editorial Monday for Bloomberg News.
Last week, President Barack Obama said that it was not a difficult decision to endorse the agreement. I couldn’t disagree more. This is an extraordinarily difficult decision, and the president’s case would be more compelling if he stopped minimizing the agreement’s weaknesses and exaggerating its benefits. If he believes that the deal “permanently prohibits Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” as he said in his speech at American University last Wednesday, then he should take another look at the agreement, whose restrictions end suddenly after 15 years, with some of the constraints on uranium enrichment melting away after just 10.
Overstating the case for the agreement belies the gravity of the issue and does more to breed distrust than win support. Smearing critics is even less effective. In his speech, the president suggested that critics of the deal are the same people who argued for the war in Iraq. The message wasn’t very subtle: Those who oppose the agreement are warmongers. (Of course, those who voted for the Iraq War resolution in 2002 include Obama’s vice president and secretary of state.) …
The White House’s behavior is especially disappointing given the way the negotiations unfolded. Every negotiation comes with give-and-take. This one was no exception. Significant concessions were made at the last moment, including on ballistic missiles and arms. These were surprising changes and they come with large implications that require careful scrutiny.

This morning, the Gaza NGO Safety Office sent out an SMS saying "Overnight, Pal. ops. fired 2 rockets toward the Green Line; both rockets dropped short and landed in the Pal. terr. "

Their latest bi-weekly report says:

During the period of reference Gaza witnessed a substantial increase in the number of rockets. From the 12 rockets fired between 30JUL-03AUG, six were launched from North Gaza; five others were fired from the Middle Area and a last one was fired from Rafah. Furthermore, from the total number of occurrences, ten rockets dropped short, one rocket exploded at the launching site; and a last one dropped on the Israeli side of the Green Line.

So Gaza terror groups are bombarding Gaza with rockets. 11 out of 12 attempts to shoot rockets to Israel ended up with the rockets exploding in Gaza.

No injuries were reported, probably thanks to the buffer zone Israel enforces. But in the past we have seen many rockets causing death and injury in Gaza. And, besides one incident, no reporters mentioned a single injury or death from the hundreds of Hamas rockets that fell in Gaza last year during Operation Protective Edge.

All of those other deaths are being blamed on Israel.

Today's Pallywood production (update)

A Jew and his son were walking in the Old City of Jerusalem.

An Arab says something to (or possibly spits at) them as they pass by.

The man, insulted, turns around and shoves the Arab twice.

Police separate the two.

Then the Arab starts his act.

He swoons and falls to the ground, pretending to faint.

Police try to pick him up but he keeps his knees on his stomach (while supposedly unconscious) so he can not be forced to stand.

So they carry him off.

Now the Arab headlines can say 'Settlers assault Christian man who said' Allahu Akbar. '"

(Ht / Bob Knot)

UPDATE : Bob K found another angle where it Appears the police held the Arab's throat for two seconds.

# Video | settlers assaulted a young man in front of the door of the chain and the occupation forces showered beat him Mmy led to loss of consciousness and taken to Ospy.tsoar Sabreen slaves
Posted by Holy network news on Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Amnesty-USA tells a whopper

I just found out about a specific Amnesty-USA Twitter account dedicated to nothing besides Israel and the the "occupied Palestinian territories."

Amnesty International USA team on Israel/OPT/State of Palestine: Edith Garwood, Country Specialist, and Alicia Koutsoulieris, Case Coordinator.

When Amnesty came out with the Gaza Platform, this Twitter exchange occurred between Yitzchak Goodman and AI-USA:

This is as baldfaced a lie as is possible, since I documented many "civilians" in Amnesty's Gaza Platform who weren't civilian. Such as Zakariya Alaa Subhi al-Batsh and six of his relatives in the same house, all of whom were militants and all of whom Amnesty called civilian:

Or Ibrahim Jamal Nasser, reported by Amnesty to be a 13-year old boy:

But maybe AIUSA just wasn't aware of these people. So I tweeted them last night:

OK, @IOTPA, here's one. Let me know when you correct it. Clock starts now. @yitzgood @amnesty pic.twitter.com/zDd77FrrIc
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) August 12, 2015

And here are a couple more to add to their list of corrections that must be made that I took from the Meir Amit Center that I verified the Gaza Platform calls "civilian.":

Hey, Amnesty says that they correct errors. Let's see if they are telling the truth.

Even though I proved that they count fewer terrorists killed than even Hamas does.

Antisemitism on the Temple Mount (video)

This is a 12 minute video - even with edits - showing a mob of Muslims following around a small group of haredi Jews visiting the Temple Mount.

The Jews act quietly and respectfully. But the fact that they are visibly religious seems to make the Muslims even more upset.

The entire time the Jews are being harassed and screamed at, simply because they are Jewish. The Muslims aren't there for prayer or for reflection or even to play ball - their entire lives are focused on trying to prevent Jews from walking around in peace..

But good luck finding any Western media outlet describing this accurately as what it is: pure Muslim antisemitism.

The good news is that haredi Jews are starting to visit the Temple Mount. It isn't only knitted-kipah Jews any more.

08/11 Links Pt2: US intervenes in lawsuit over Palestinian terror attacks; Wistrich's last essay

From Ian:

Wistrich takes aim at ‘anti-Zionist mythology’ of left in posthumous essay

In his final essay, Wistrich went on the attack against what he saw as one of the most pernicious dogmas of Israel’s critics, firmly rejecting any comparisons between the Jewish state and European colonialist regimes.
“Jews who arrived in British Mandated Palestine manifestly did not come in order to destroy or displace the Palestinian Arab ‘nation’—contrary to the myth propagated by the pro-Palestine radical left, until today,” he wrote, asserting that economic modernization spurred by Jewish national revival turned Palestine into a land “attracting substantial Arab immigration.”
According to Wistrich, there were around six hundred thousand Arabs in the entire British Mandated Territory in the early 1920s, rising to well over a million by 1940, “hardly an example of colonial dispossession of the ‘indigenous’ population.”
Most Palestinian Arabs during the Mandatory period were “either immigrants from neighboring Arab lands or descendants of immigrants who had arrived since the late nineteenth century,” he added.
“Not only were they not Palestinian ‘natives,’ but at the time of the Balfour Declaration there was no clear or distinct concept of a Palestinian Arab nation. The left-wing narrative, especially since 1967, has consistently sidelined such inconvenient realities, replacing them with ideological fictions,” he asserted.
Wistrich wrote that he believed Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War to be a turning point for much of the liberal and democratic left in their approach to Israel, with the state’s image turning into that of an occupier which “began to erode an unwritten taboo against open antisemitism since the Shoah.”
“A much harsher anti-Israel rhetoric” emerged both on the right and the left, including “an increasingly aggressive and vituperative anti-Zionism” on the part of radical “progressives.”

WSJ Book Review Takes on "Holocaust Syndrome"

Author and former AP reporter and editor Matti Friedman has previously, like CAMERA, drawn attention to the inaccuracies in media coverage of Israel. Now, in a sharp and funny book review in The Wall Street Journal, Friedman turns his gaze to “non-fiction” inaccuracies. In a review of Padraig O’Malley’s “The Two-State Delusion,” Friedman points out:
More work should have gone into ensuring accuracy. The author asserts, for example, that Israel’s military victory in 1967 resulted from “massive U.S. assistance,” when there wasn’t massive U.S. military assistance before 1967. (France was then the main arms supplier; the planes that won the war were Mirages and Mystères.) We learn that Ariel Sharon was an agriculture minister in 1971 and that this has something to do with the genesis of the settlements; he wasn’t, and it doesn’t. The author describes Israeli soldiers carrying their Uzis “nonchalantly,” which is a nice touch. But no Israeli soldiers carry the Uzi, which was deemed obsolete after the 1973 war and removed from frontline service after that. The word “homeland” is quoted pointedly from the Balfour Declaration of 1917, where that word doesn’t appear. Would it have been too much trouble to check the text? It’s a single sentence.
The sub-headline of the review is “The idea that a collective memory of the Holocaust renders Jewish judgment defective is somehow acceptable these days,” a point Friedman illuminates with this passage:
The “bonding, primal element” of the Jewish psyche, we learn, is the Holocaust. Israelis are in thrall to weapons because of the Holocaust; they are obtuse to the suffering of others because of the Holocaust; and in general they are sort of crazy because of the Holocaust. Actually, half of the Jewish population in Israel has roots in the Islamic world. Their families were displaced by Muslims, not Nazis. Israelis think many of their neighbors are out to destroy Israel not because of the Holocaust, but because many of their neighbors say they are out to destroy Israel. Israel’s actions in the Middle East, in other words, have to do with its experience in the Middle East. The country’s objective success against long odds would have to indicate that at least some of its decisions have been reality-based, if not quite reasonable.
The idea that a collective memory renders Jewish judgment defective seems to be something acceptable to say aloud these days in connection with Israel, which is why I’ve dwelled on it. It’s important to point out not only that this observation is wrong, but that it is a patronizing ethnic smear. I don’t like the careless generalizations in Mr. O’Malley’s book or his shaky grasp of the facts. But I don’t think they have anything to do with the potato famine.
The entire review, unlike the book apparently, is worth reading.

PROOF: EU is funding anti-Israel organizations, violating international law

Israel and the EU established diplomatic relations in 1959. TheRebel.media recently sat down with the Ambassador of the EU to Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, to discuss this complicated relationship.
Because Israel is a democracy, the EU is far more critical of them than of other Middle Eastern countries.
This double standard extends to EU NGOs pushing anti-Israel "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" campaigns, even though the Ambassador insists that the EU is against BDS.
According to Israeli officials, the EU is acting illegally (and violating its own signed agreements) by funding unauthorized Palestinian buildings in areas placed under Israel control by international law, including the West Bank.
Investigative journalist Ben-Dror Yemini says "Israel should tell the EU, 'enough.'"
He says that the EU's official statements about Israel often contradict their real world actions.
Igal Hecht presents a number of examples of this.

EU violating international law in relations with Israel

Islamic Jihad has announced that it will open summer camps for 6000 children tomorrow.

The purpose of the "camps" is explicit - to create the next generation of mujahadeen. The name of this year's camps are "youthfulness victory."

If there are children under 15 in these camps, then Islamic Jihad is violating international law by recruiting them. Not that "human rights" NGOs will say anything against it.

In other Islamic Jihad news, one of its military leaders now claims that their rockets can reach all parts of "Palestine."