Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, August 15, 2015

08/15 Links: ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape; Bin Laden’s son calls for attacks on American Jews

From Ian:

In second attack Saturday, Israeli policeman stabbed in West Bank

A Border Police officer was lightly wounded on Saturday when stabbed by a Palestinian man near Tapuah Junction in the northern West Bank.
Troops were conducting a routine security check on a Palestinian man at the Beita Junction, near the West Bank village of Hawara, when he pulled out a knife and stabbed one of the officers in the back, a Border Police spokesman said.
Troops at the scene opened fire on the attacker, named by the Palestinian Ma’an news agency as Rafik Kamal al-Taj, a 16-year-old resident of Beita, near Hawara. He was critically wounded and later died of his wounds. A Channel 2 report earlier named the attacker as Ahmed Kamal al-Taj
The spokesman said the injured officer received medical treatment at the scene before being transferred hospital.
The attack came hours after an Israel Defense Forces soldier was lightly wounded in a knife attack by a Palestinian man at the Ofer checkpoint in the West Bank, north of Jerusalem.
The attacker was shot and wounded at the scene.

US Jewish groups on alert after bin Laden’s son calls for attacks

The national Jewish community’s security arm has asked Jewish institutions to be on the alert after Osama Bin Laden’s son called for attacks on Jewish American interests.
The Secure Community Network alert said Friday that Hamza bin Laden, who has ambitions to lead al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization founded by his father, posted an audio message calling “for the targeting of Jewish American interests globally.”
“Hamza also reportedly called for attacks on Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv,” the alert said.
The alert by SCN, an arm of Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said the audio message was confirmed by “reliable sources” in law enforcement and was recorded sometime before June 15.
“While there is no information at this time to suggest a credible or imminent threat as it relates to this call for attacks, terrorist leaders and organizations have stepped up their calls for lone wolf attacks across the globe,” said the alert, noting recent attacks on Garland, Texas and Chattanooga, Tennessee, apparently carried out by unaffiliated individuals spurred by extremist Islamist calls for violence.

Denis MacEoin: Islamophobia: Fact or Fiction?

According to [Edward] Said, Westerners, by virtue of not being Muslims, have always falsified and distorted their writings about Islam and Muslims. Said claimed to see deeply-ingrained prejudice in the works of French, British, Russian and other Orientalist scholars and writers. To him, Orientalism was (and is) a tool of the colonial powers, assisting their mission supposedly to administer and subdue the peoples of the East. Since former colonies have achieved independence, he contends that the former imperialists still exert pressure on the ex-colonies in order to control them. Israel is regarded by most Marxists, socialists, and even many liberals as an entity created to colonize the Arab Middle East and is often condemned, even by people who are supposedly educated and should know better, in abrasive terms as a malign extension of the West.
Perhaps the best-known sentence in Said's book is: "[S]ince the time of Homer every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric." As Bernard Lewis has been heard to remark, "If that were true, the only reports of marine biology would have to be by fish." But for Said and his followers, the world is divided between Western guilt and Eastern victimhood.
What is missing from Said's work is any attempt to deal with the long history of Islamic empires, the conquest of, and permanent rule over, non-Muslim states and peoples, and the often distorted ways in which Muslim writers have sought to interpret and explain Christian, Jewish, Hindu and other worlds. Said leaves us with the impression that all prejudice is only on the part of the West.
Said continues to have admirers, most in academic departments of English or multicultural studies, but as time passes, more and more scholars are calling his views into question. Writers such as Bernard Lewis, Ibn Warraq, Efraim Karsh, and Robert Irwin have exposed a string of faults in Said's narrative, from factual errors to staggering bias.
Despite his bias, distortion of facts, and openly documented deceptions, many of Said's followers, who are unwilling or unable to do their own work, see him as an intellectual to students and teachers who adhere to an anti-establishment, anti-Western, and socialist world view.

ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape

The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution. Interviews with 21 women and girls who recently escaped the Islamic State, as well as an examination of the group’s official communications, illuminate how the practice has been enshrined in the group’s core tenets.

The trade in Yazidi women and girls has created a persistent infrastructure, with a network of warehouses where the victims are held, viewing rooms where they are inspected and marketed, and a dedicated fleet of buses used to transport them.
A total of 5,270 Yazidis were abducted last year, and at least 3,144 are still being held, according to community leaders. To handle them, the Islamic State has developed a detailed bureaucracy of sex slavery, including sales contracts notarized by the ISIS-run Islamic courts. And the practice has become an established recruiting tool to lure men from deeply conservative Muslim societies, where casual sex is taboo and dating is forbidden.
A growing body of internal policy memos and theological discussions has established guidelines for slavery, including a lengthy how-to manual issued by the Islamic State Research and Fatwa Department just last month. Repeatedly, the ISIS leadership has emphasized a narrow and selective reading of the Quran and other religious rulings to not only justify violence, but also to elevate and celebrate each sexual assault as spiritually beneficial, even virtuous.
“Every time that he came to rape me, he would pray,” said F, a 15-year-old girl who was captured on the shoulder of Mount Sinjar one year ago and was sold to an Iraqi fighter in his 20s. Like some others interviewed by The New York Times, she wanted to be identified only by her first initial because of the shame associated with rape.
“He kept telling me this is ibadah,” she said, using a term from Islamic scripture meaning worship.

08/14 Links Pt2: Obama Admin Moves to Block Restitution for U.S. Terror Victims

From Ian:

Obama Admin Moves to Block Restitution for U.S. Terror Victims

Ron Gould, a plaintiff in the case, told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview that there was no reason for the Obama administration to intervene.
“There was really no reason for them to even get involved,” said Gould, whose daughter Shayna was shot in the chest and nearly killed by Palestinian terrorists. “For the Obama administration to stick their fingers where they don’t belong is unconscionable.”
The PA “still seems to have the money to pay the families of the terrorists on an ongoing basis,” Gould said. “They do have the money to pay the piper for losing the court case.”
Shayna Gould welcomed the administration’s filing in the case, saying it reaffirms the rights of terror victims to have a fair day in court.
However, she called the argument that the PA could be bankrupted as a result of the suit “ironic, considering they pay terrorists on a monthly basis.”
Shayna Gould said the PA had been hinting that the U.S. government would get involved for quite some time
“It was a fear. It was a huge fear,” she said, adding that the PA should be forced to finally pay up.
“They, with pride, give money and rank of the highest honor to terrorists and people who commit murder,” Gould said. “Does that sound like clipping coupons and saving pennies?”
“I have to deal with [the impact of their violence] in my life on a constant basis,” Gould added, explaining that she deals with physical pain on a daily basis since the attack. “There is no limit to our suffering.”
Jewish human rights group B’nai B’rith was also critical of the administration’s intervention.
“There needs to be a price paid for committing acts of terror and the means available to prosecute those responsible,” the group said in a release. “While the victims’ families cannot bring their loved ones back, they can go to the courts to achieve redress.”

Obama Stands With Terrorists Against Terror Victims

You might call it a new low, but as with a lot of "lows," the Clintons were there first.
Alisa Flatow was a New Jersey college student murdered in a bus bombing in 1995. When the Flatow Amendment that would hold Iran accountable came up, President Clinton’s Secretary of State threatened to shut down the government if the amendment wasn’t dropped.
When Congress stood up to Clinton, he instead threw in a signing statement claiming that allowing terror victims to collect judgments against Iran “would encroach on my authority under the Constitution to ‘receive Ambassadors and other public ministers.’"
The Clinton administration fought the Flatows every step of the way to protect Iranian properties in the United States. It dispatched fourteen lawyers to fight the family’s lawsuit. When a US company was sending money to Iran, Clinton blocked efforts by terror victims to seize the money. He even blocked attempts to seize the New York building owned by the Alavi Foundation, Iran’s arm in the United States.
The Alavi Foundation would later become a donor to the Clinton Foundation.
Congress stood up to Clinton over Iran. It’s time for Congress to stand up to Obama and end funding for PLO terrorism once and for all with no loopholes, excuses or waivers.

Trivializing ‘terror’

Hysterical attempts to equate ideologically driven crimes by fringe Jewish extremists with Arab/Muslim terrorism are substantively wrong and strategically detrimental.
They reflect neither moral merit nor pragmatic prudence.
They fly in the face of common sense, rational self-interest – and the truth. It will not mitigate the censure of Israel’s detractors. To the contrary, it will be seized upon to justify – and intensify – it.
It diverts the focus of attention from real existential threats to Israel’s survival and blunts the effort against the Iranian deal.
But perhaps worst of all, by obfuscating what should be a razor-sharp distinction between a society that condemns murder and societies that commend it, between a country that castigates murderers and countries that celebrate them, it gravely undermines Israel’s claim to the moral high ground, crucial in its fight for its international legitimacy and its rightful place in the community of nations.
That, then, is the trouble with trivializing “terror.”

"Honor killing" in Gaza - by her twin brother

From PCHR, referring almost certainly to the incident I mentioned last Sunday:

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 23:30 on Saturday, 08 August 2011, the body of Kh. K. (32), from al-Zawaida village in the central Gaza City, was brought to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah .

The Palestinian Police went to the crime scene in al-Zawaida village, and found the victim's body with signs of strangulation. After that, the police arrested the victim's brother (H.K.), 32. The body of (KH.K) was transferred to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah then referred to the Forensic Medicine Department at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which reported that the victim was strangled to death.

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, the Attorney General is questioning the victim's brother for the victim's killing on the ground of the so-called “family honor.”

If both the brother and sister were 32, then they were (almost certainly) twins.

Al-Monitor recently had a convoluted story that shows how utterly corrupt the PA is:

The Palestinian scene is still reeling from the latest Palestinian Authority (PA) corruption case. In November 2014, Venezuela — under President Nicolas Maduro — decided to provide 1,000 scholarships for Palestinian medical students following the Israeli war on Gaza.

The Palestinian Foreign and Education Ministries and the Palestinian Embassy in Venezuela manipulated the dispersal of scholarships in a scandal Palestinians fear will negatively affect Palestinian-Venezuelan relations. The news broke on July 13, when the Venezuelan authorities decided to deport dozens of Palestinian students.

Palestinians found out about all of this when 25 Palestinian students who reside in Jordan arrived back to the kingdom after being deported. They protested Venezuela’s decision in front of the Venezuelan Embassy in Amman in July.

Some students behaved disgracefully at the Latin American School of Medicine in Caracas. Some brought their hookahs to school, while other attended class wearing pajamas and complained about the university housing. Some students also wrote offensive slogans against late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on the university walls, causing outrage in Venezuela.

The scandal prompted some Palestinian media outlets to accuse Palestinian officials of choosing students unfairly, as some of those awarded the scholarships had connections to PA employees.

The Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education had shared the requirements for the Venezuelan scholarships on July 19. These included a grade point average of 80% or above for high school students specializing in the science field and took into account the geographical distribution of Palestinian students in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and in Arab countries, and the candidates' financial status.

Al-Monitor found difficulties in reaching Palestinian students in Venezuela, but one student contacted who wished to remain anonymous revealed his disappointments with the scholarship.

“I was surprised that the courses were limited to Spanish-language [classes] and [included an] introduction to the socialist revolution in Venezuela,” he said, adding that the professors proposed a curriculum that focused on social health instead of medicine, raising his concern that “[Palestinian] education was not compatible with international standards for medical studies.”

On July 23, the assistant undersecretary at the Palestinian Education Ministry, Anwar Zakaria, admitted that some of the scholarship recipients were studying literature and not science, and some went to Venezuela in order to work or use Venezuela as a crossing into other countries. Zakaria added that some students even had grade averages below 80%.

The Venezuelan opposition used this scandal to its advantage when it attacked the president July 21. Although Venezuela is one of the PA’s biggest supporters, the PA fumbled in its poor management of a dossier that was supposed to be strictly educational.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki tried to resolve the crisis. In a statement to Maan News on July 17, he said the corruption scandal was a fabricated story aimed at tarnishing the relationship between Venezuela and Palestine. At the same time, Maliki recognized that some students selected were not eligible for the Venezuelan scholarships.

A senior official at the Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “The main reason behind the scandal is that several parties were overseeing the selection of students to be granted scholarships, such as the Ministry of Higher Education, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Palestinian embassies abroad. Other reasons include a great level of favoritism, interference and corruption. Meanwhile, Gaza students are deprived of foreign scholarships, which the PA takes advantage of to further manipulate the selection process.”

The official added, “The Palestinian Embassy in Venezuela played its part in giving scholarships to those who do not deserve it. The selection process is not objective, but rather based on favoritism as some work their influence, such as the leaders of the PLO’s Executive Committee, members of Fatah’s Central Committee and the office of President Mahmoud Abbas.”

The Palestine Press news agency, which is affiliated with Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan, revealed July 17 that Venezuela’s conditions for the scholarships required that students have a high school average GPA of over 80%; be specialized in sciences, not literature; and hail from poor families. But, according to sources speaking to Palestine Press, the poor students fell victim to the PA’s manipulations, as the scholarships were sold to failing students for $7,000 each.

The scandal is yet another setback joining other difficulties already facing Palestinian students, thousands of whom dream of winning scholarships abroad and escaping the financial burden of attending university in Palestine.

On July 19, Gazan writer Mohammed Abu Mahadi spoke bitterly about the personal experience of his nephew Amjad Abu Mahadi, who graduated from high school with a GPA of 93%, but did not win a Venezuelan scholarship, while those with lower averages were able to get them. He accused the Palestinian ambassador to Caracas, Linda Sobeh, of being responsible for the injustice suffered by students.

On July 23, Al-Monitor attended a solidarity march in Gaza, where dozens of students turned out to hold the PA responsible for the Venezuelan scholarships scandal. The students demanded an end to what they described as chaos. They also requested that an investigative committee be formed to hold accountable those responsible for the scholarship scandal and fix the relations with Venezuela.

At a time when Palestinians expect the PA to help them, the scholarship scandal is another indication that the government will not fulfill this duty. It will rather take advantage of the aid and financial grants offered to the Palestinians to fill its officials’ bank accounts at the expense of hundreds of thousands of underprivileged people in the Palestinian territories.

08/14 Links Pt1: Glick: American Jewry’s fateful hour; Iran's false promise not to pursue nukes

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: American Jewry’s fateful hour

American Jewry is being tested today as never before. The future of the community is tied up in the results of the test.
If the Jews of America are able to mount a successful, forceful and sustained opposition to President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, which allows the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism to become a nuclear-armed state and provides it with $150 billion up front, then the community will survive politically to fight another day.
If the communal leadership and its members fail to fight, American Jews will find themselves communally disenfranchised.
On the face of it, there is no reason this fight should have been anything more than a hopeless – but relatively insignificant – ordeal. Given that all Obama needs to do to secure the implementation of his nuclear pact with the mullahs is secure the support of a one-third minority in one house of Congress, he might have been expected to go easy on his opponents since they have so little chance of defeating him.
Instead, Obama has decided to demolish them. He has presented them with two options – capitulate or be destroyed.
Consider Hillary Clinton’s behavior.
On Tuesday the Democratic presidential front-runner and former secretary of state ratcheted up her statements of support for Obama’s nuclear pact with the ayatollahs. Speaking to supporters in New Hampshire, Clinton said, “I’m hoping that the agreement is finally approved and I’m telling you if it’s not, all bets are off.”
On its face, Clinton’s mounting support for the deal makes little sense. True, her principal rival for the Democratic nomination, socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, announced his support. But this deal will probably not be an issue by the time Democrats begin voting in their primaries.
On the other hand, the deal is not popular among either the general public or key Democratic donors. According to a poll taken this week by Monmouth University, only 27 percent of the general population and only 43 percent of Democrats want Congress to support the deal.

Tzipi Hotovely: Iran's false promise not to pursue nukes

“A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down,” Arnold Glasow said.
In opposing the Iran deal, Israel has been accused of not pointing towards a better alternative and even of being against a diplomatic solution entirely. Aside from wronging Israel, these claims obscure what needs to be done to truly prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
As the country with the most at stake, Israel favors a diplomatic solution more than anyone. But this does not mean that any diplomatic outcome is satisfactory. A diplomatic "non-solution" is worse than maintaining — and augmenting — the existing sanctions regime for the very reason that it will prevent a genuine diplomatic resolution, by releasing Iran from the only pressure that could bring it about.
The initial positions of the international community — which were largely conceded — suggest what an acceptable deal might look like. Such an agreement would insist, among other things, on the complete suspension of enrichment and dismantlement of related infrastructure, and on Iran’s acceptance of ‘anytime-anywhere’ inspections of all of its nuclear and military facilities, to reliably verify this suspension.
If Iran were not led by an aggressive regime inspired by a violent ideology, openly committed to eliminating Israel, heavily invested in fomenting insurrection throughout the Middle East and revealed to be pursuing military know-how relevant only to the use of nuclear weapons, its nuclear program could be assessed like that of other countries.
But it is all of those things, making a mockery of its assertion that “under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons”, as appears in the text of the agreement.
It goes without saying that Israel is not alone in understanding this to be an outright lie.

PodCast: Dersh Makes His Case

Jay’s guest is Alan Dershowitz, the famed lawyer and Harvard Law prof. His latest book is “The Case Against the Iran Deal: How Can We Stop Iran From Getting Nukes?”
Naturally, Jay talks with him about Iran – and the deal, and Obama, and Chuck Schumer, and Netanyahu, and so on. They also talk about presidential elections, past and present.
Did you know that Ted Cruz was a student of Dershowitz’s? He was. The professor has some interesting things to say about that. He and Jay also talk about O.J. Simpson, anti-Semitism, the Second Amendment, pornography, Cuba, Supreme Court justices, and more – including the loneliness of Dersh’s kind of liberal.
Thousands over the years have paid tuition to hear him. You get him for free.

Danny Danon tapped as Israel's UN ambassador - my 2012 interview

From JPost:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also holds the Foreign Minister post, announced on Friday that he was appointing Minister of Science Technology and Space Danny Danon to be Israel's next ambassador to the UN.

"Danon has agreed to take on an important challenge that I proposed for him. The United Nations is an important forum right now and I am sure that Danny will represent the truth with full force in the international arena," Netanyahu said.

Danon thanked Netanyahu for giving him the trust to represent Israel during what he called a "challenging period."

"I will do everything to advance Israel's just positions," Danon said.

The Zionist Union responded to Danon's appointment by saying "Houston we have a problem," in reference to his current post as Science Technology and Space Minister.

"The appointment of Space Minister Danon as ambassador to the UN is another nail in the coffin that Bibi is putting in Israel's foreign relations. The Prime Minister is acting to find jobs for Likudniks instead of the strategic leader that Israel needs," a statement released by the party read.

I am a big fan of outgoing ambassador Ron Prosor, and Danon is much more hawkish. Prosor, at least publicly, used humor as his main weapon to get Israel's point across. Danon would probably be, as one Twitter user said, "Israel's John Bolton."

Much of a diplomat's job is to work behind the scenes and establish good relationships with other diplomats. From the outside, we can't know how effective anyone is in one-to-one relationships based on their public statements.

I extensively interviewed Danon in 2012 before the US elections as he was publicizing his book. He deflected my questions about Israeli strategy towards Iran, sticking to talking points.

In part 2, he attacks the two state solution, and defends his idea of integrating Gaza into Egypt and the West Bank into Jordan. He also discusses the Arab Spring, the legal case Israel has for the West Bank and the Likud platform being against a two-state solution.

While I agree with most of Danon's political views, I'm not certain that this is the best role for him - unless Israel starts backing up his positions across the board. Someone who clearly is against a two-state solution would have a hard time convincing other diplomats of Israel's official support for it.

Of course, all diplomats must subsume their own opinions to their role, but when someone is as outspoken as Danon, any message he gives would have a huge handicap in the international community before he opens his mouth. I don't know if he can overcome that and be effective, at least to Western nations.

Not to mention the allegations that he is a reptilian shapeshifter. (I love the Internet!)

From military site Foxtrot Alpha:

Foxtrot Alpha’s contacts in Europe have noticed some interesting movements heading west out of the Middle East. Apparently, five Israeli Air Force F-15C/Ds and five F-15Is, along with five Jordanian Air Fore F-16s, have been dragged across the Mediterranean to Lajes Field by Israeli Air Force KC-707 Tankers. The jets are on their way to participate in Red Flag 15-4 at Nellis AFB.

“Departing Israel on the morning of August 9th was a flight of Israeli Air Force KC-707 tankers accompanied by 5 Ra’am F-15 Eagles. It marked the beginning of a long flight to Nellis AFB, Nevada, where the Israeli AF will be part of Red Flag 15-4. IAF 101 flight made the 7 hr+ flight supported by other IAF tankers already prepositioned in Spain to meet the thirsty jets and get them to Lajes Field, their transit airfield. This would be the first of three legs before finally making it to Nellis. IAF 101 with Ceetah (Cheetah) flight of five Eagles safely arrived on the Atlantic staging post late in the afternoon.

This was nothing out of the ordinary except that the next day the Israeli AF supported two flights of fast jets on the same track to Lajes. The first flight consisted of Israeli F-15s and the second flight was made of IAF 707s and Royal Jordanian Air Force F-16 Vipers, also on their way to Red Flag. It was all ‘cats’ again, with the five ‘Lion’ flight of Eagles flying half an hour before the ‘Tiger’ flight of five RJAF F-16s.’’

Lajes Field, which is located in the central Atlantic Ocean, is a common stop-over for military aircraft traversing between the U.S. and Europe and beyond.

Although Israel and Jordan are security partners, having Jordanian F-16s ferried around the world by Israeli tanker aircraft, and alongside IAF F-15s, seems to indicate a new level of military cooperation operation between the two nations. This development comes shortly after the news that Israel has donated AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters to Jordan to be used for border security and against ISIS threats.

The inclusion of Jordanian Air Force F-16s in exercise Red Flag comes as the country’s air force is locked in an ongoing battle against ISIS in Syria and as many in Washington call for increased military support for their anti-ISIS campaign. Jordan relies on a force of second-hand F-16s, some of which are upgraded to Mid-Life Update standard. Still, a lack of targeting pods and precision guided munitions has hampered their efforts against ISIS. With Israel now retiring some of its older F-16 force, it will be interesting to see if some of those aircraft end up in Jordanian hands.

Israel and Jordan’s participation in Red Flag has not yet been formerly announced, but we will keep you posted as to how the exercise progresses in the coming weeks.

The same site has a very interesting article on how Israel repurposed its F-15 fighters into multi-role bombers.

As my readers know, I've spent a lot of time over the past 5 weeks tearing apart Amnesty's Gaza Platform, as especially their many tweets to commemorate the one year anniversary of various events that they claimed proved Israeli war crimes.

I answered virtually every one of their accusations with real facts about how the targets were legitimate under the laws of armed conflict, but I never saw their Twitter account respond to any of my facts.

But over the past couple of days, Amnesty started an entirely new Twitter initiative - to support Amnesty's position to decriminalize prostitution.

People are tweeting to Amnesty, and Amnesty is answering them by the score. I count about 40 replies to questions and comments.

So it is clear that Amnesty reads what is tweeted to them. It is clear that Amnesty chose to ignore my points about Gaza "civilians' who were terrorists, and about the many errors and biases in the Gaza Platform, and about the deceit behind their Gaza tweets.

Which means that the reason Amnesty didn't respond is because they know they are wrong, but their desire to demonize Israel is far more important to them than the truth.

Oh, and Amnesty USA has not responded to my challenge. They said that proof that civilians were really militants, in the form of photos of them in uniform, would result in corrections to the Gaza Platform, so I provided one.

Since then they tweeted other items but ignored me.

For the exact same reason mentioned above.

They know I'm right. They read my tweets, And they don't want the world to know that they are hypocrites.

08/13 Links Pt2: When Prime Ministers took out hijackers; EU funds wasted on Amnesty’s CSI tool

From Ian:

When the prime ministers took down the hijackers

Before Operation Thunderbolt in Entebbe there was Operation Isotope.
On May 8, 1972, four Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Belgian Sabena Airlines’ flight 571 as it flew from Vienna to Tel Aviv.
The plane landed in what was then known as Lod Airport, now Ben Gurion International. A 30-hour standoff between the hijackers and the Israeli government followed, before members of the crack Sayeret Matkal unit stormed the plane and took down the terrorists, killing two and capturing two.
Some 43 years later, Keshet Broadcasting has created a new film about the episode, with interviews from those who took part on both sides of the kidnapping, archival footage and modern dramatizations of the events.
The operation was led by former prime minister Ehud Barak, who commanded Sayeret Matkal at the time. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a team leader in the unit, was injured by friendly fire in the assault.
Though the film will not be broadcast in Israel until September 8, it premiered Tuesday evening in Jerusalem’s Cinema City, with many of the individuals who took part in the operation on hand, including Barak, Netanyahu, and then-transportation minister Shimon Peres.

Jimmy Carter: Two-state solution is dead, Israel to blame

Former US president Jimmy Carter said that the two-state solution has “zero chance” of being realized today, and blamed this on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a wide-ranging interview with Prospect Magazine Thursday.
Carter accused Netanyahu of adopting a “one-state solution,” and lamented that the “US had withdrawn” from making further efforts. He further accused the Jewish state of denying Palestinians equal rights, but stopped short of labeling Israel an apartheid state, a term he utilized in his 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
“These are the worst prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians for years. At this moment, there is zero chance of the two-state solution,” Carter said.
Carter, who served as US president from 1977 to 1981, said he believes that Netanyahu has no intention of pursuing peace, and lamented that “They [Palestinians] will never get equal rights [to Israeli Jews, in a one-state solution].”
Netanyahu “does not now and has never sincerely believed in a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine,” Carter added. He noted that when he visited Israel and the West Bank in April, he did not bother to contact Netanyahu for a meeting, on the grounds that “it would be a waste of time to ask” — expecting that the request would be rebuffed as were previous ones.
The former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner gave the interview ahead of the launch of his new book, A Full Life: Reflections at 90, and shortly after he announced Wednesday that he has been diagnosed with cancer. He will turn 91 in October.

NGO Monitor: EU research funds wasted on Amnesty’s Hollywood-style CSI adventure

In July 2015, amid great fanfare, including a media blitz and later a press-conference in Jerusalem, Amnesty International and the UK-based Forensic Architecture project launched their “Gaza Platform.” The stated objective was to shed “new light on violations of international law committed” in last summer’s bitter war.
This pseudo-scientific exercise repeated Amnesty’s standard political bias and was immediately exposed as factually inaccurate – terrorists were identified as civilian health care workers; a “journalist” doubled as a Hamas operative, etc.. The major investment in graphics and public relations not withstanding, the impact of the “Gaza forensics architecture project” was largely and justifiably non-existent. The claim that computerized maps and “eyewitness testimony” gathered by NGOs in Gaza could somehow determine whether war crimes were committed is clearly untenable. (Under international law, this would require examination of the intentions of Israeli military officials, and determining the presence or absence of Hamas terrorists and their weapons at the time and location of each attack. “Forensic architecture” can do neither.)
However, on one issue, the implications are significant – the amount of European taxpayer money that was wasted on this Hollywood-style exercise in pseudo-science. Apparently persuaded by buzz-words and the promise of hi-tech graphics, the EU framework known as the European Research Council (ERC) paid the bills. An initial grant of €1.2 million was provided for the 2011-2015 period to Eyal Weizman, the “principle investigator”. An additional €150,000 came from the ERC in 2014 for a “Media Aggregation and Plotting Platform” (MAPP), ostensibly to give human rights organizations “a highly efficient research and advocacy tool.”
To qualify for this grant, Forensic Architecture is listed as a research project at the University of London (Goldsmiths), explained vaguely as “a field of practice and as an analytical method for probing the political and social histories inscribed in spatial artefacts and in built environments.” The Forensic Architecture website, however, is not hosted by the University, suggesting a very limited connection.

Dr. Jamal Abu Nahel, vice president of the National Center for Research in Gaza and a lecturer at Al Azhar University, has a fun article in various Arabic publications That starts off with:

World Zionists are terrorists and thugs, murderers and criminals; they killed the prophets and messengers throughout history and times, and who were responsible for the Second World War, and betrayed the Tsars of Russia, the Romanovs, and they were behind the the massacres in the Crusades, and the massacres of indigenous people in Australia and the Americas; they were behind the massacres in Palestine, Egypt, and southern Lebanon, and the Golan Heights, and they planned out the bloody Arab Spring, and all these disasters and massacres were done by the Zionist criminals through their control of the economy and global capital and the media and by sex and prostitution, and through rumors, and defeatism, and through the control of the governments.

That's just the intro. Nahel goes on to say that the Jews are doing everything mentioned in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion - but they are trying very, very hard to stop everyone from reading this book, by buying all the copies and burning them.

By the way, the famous forgery is widely available by Googling for it on the search engine that Jews created.

Dr. Jamal Abu Nahel's Facebook are, enriching another Jew, is here .

(H / t Shawarma News)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

Israel’s Independence wasn’t a foregone conclusion in 1948. Embargoed by the US and Britain, Israel was able to buy arms from Czechoslovakia, both before and after the communist coup in February, until Soviet policy changed at the end of 1948. What if Stalin had shut off the spigot in February? Would the Jews have succeeded in repelling the Arab armies?

Let’s suppose they hadn’t. What would an alternative universe without Israel be like?

***

In the alternate universe, southern Palestine and much of the coast was captured by the Egyptian Army, which rolled northward almost unopposed after its conquest of Kibbutz Negba. The British-officered Arab Legion and Iraqi irregulars drove west from Jerusalem, cutting the country in two at Kfar Saba, and attacking Tel Aviv from the north as the Egyptians approached from the south. Syrian troops captured the Galilee and moved toward Haifa.

In order to prevent a certain bloodbath, Ben-Gurion appealed to the UN Security Council, which passed a resolution in emergency session ‘temporarily’ dividing the country into zones administered by Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Britain. Protected Jewish enclaves were established within the zones, but the IDF was forced to give up its arms and the Jewish communities were subject to the authority of the occupying powers.

Most Jews quickly fled to the British sector, since the Arab authorities didn’t try very hard to control the reprisals by local Arabs against the Jewish population. The general feeling was that the Jews had started the war and should suffer the consequences. Those that had foreign passports and could flee, did. The British, having learned from experience, treated the Jews in their zone with a very firm hand, so as not to allow any resistance to develop. Membership in ‘terrorist’ organizations – any Jewish nationalist group – was punishable by death. Jews were not allowed to have weapons of any kind, and any organization thought of as ‘nationalist’ was outlawed.

Ben-Gurion was exiled to the US, where he was given a teaching job and watched carefully by the FBI, who considered him a communist sympathizer. Menachem Begin was killed ‘accidentally’ when the British raided an illegal meeting of the banned Herut party in Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of Jewish “displaced persons” remained in camps in Europe. The camps took thirty years to empty out, with only trickles of refugees being taken in by Western nations. Some went to the Soviet Union where they were likely to be swallowed up by the gulag or murdered because of their dangerous Western experiences (Stalin treated his own returning POWs similarly). Others returned to their home towns in Eastern Europe, often to be met with pogroms when the people who had taken over their property preferred not to give it back.

Pogroms also flared in Arab countries, as Jewish communities were punished for their alleged support for the ‘rebels’ in Palestine. Many had their property confiscated, and some were expelled. But where could they go?

The world simply had an excess of Jews that nobody wanted. The British or the Arabs would not allow any to enter their parts of Palestine, of course, even if there had been work and food for them there. In the US, there were voices calling for the country to take some of the refugees, but there was great opposition as well. After all, the country had not wanted to accept those trying to escape from Hitler! Now that they were not in danger of being exterminated, there was even less interest.

In fact, there was a significant rise in anti-Jewish feeling in America. Nobody likes a victim, especially if they feel that perhaps they were partly responsible for his victimization. But maybe the Jews were responsible for their own plight? Why did the Germans go to such lengths to hurt them if they weren’t in some sense a problem? And now they were always whining and begging for help. We have enough Jews, people said. Who needs more?

After the war, there had been a trend to open up American society to minorities. Returning soldiers and sailors had fought for their country, and wouldn’t accept discrimination any more. Even attitudes toward African and Asian Americans were changing, although it would take much longer for them than for the Italians, Irish and Poles.

But Jews – that was something else. They were a beaten people, and many felt that they had it coming to them. Nobody wanted them living in their neighborhood or going to school with their children. The anti-Jewish attitudes impinged on all Jews, even ones whose families had been in America for several generations.

Psychologically, Jews were damaged. Many were ashamed of being Jewish and tried (or succeeded) to assimilate. Judaism was mostly a religion of old people. There were attempts to start Jewish youth organizations, but the kids didn’t see the point. It was just bad luck that they were Jewish. They were bored with the stories of Jewish greatness thousands of years ago; Jews had tried to come back to their homeland not so long ago, and nothing came of it but more hatred and slaughter. They saw on TV and in their own lives what being Jewish meant.

When black Americans finally were able to struggle for their civil rights in the alternate universe, they didn’t have Jewish support. The Jews had their own problems, and they didn’t have the self-confidence or self-respect to fight for the rights of others.

Postwar Europe and Britain were suffering economically. There were shortages of everything – food, housing, fuel, you name it. There was no sympathy for Jews, foreigners who didn’t belong anywhere, who were scrambling around trying to take food out of the mouths of legitimate French or English people. Many felt that they were the cause of the war that had wrecked their lives. So naturally every so often there would be a riot and some Jews would be beaten up, robbed or worse.

There were several organizations devoted to helping Jewish refugees, but they disliked and distrusted each other. Wealthy Jews, although they didn’t admit it, often despised the poor ones that they blamed for antisemitism. There was no one who spoke for the Jews, and no one that Jews could look up to for guidance.

Middle Eastern countries lined themselves up with the East or West in the cold war. Minor wars were common, despite the fact that there was no Israeli-Palestinian conflict – there were no ‘Palestinians’, of course. Refugees were usually Jews, and whenever there was a conflict they got the worst of it. When there were upheavals in the Mideast or Africa, Jewish populations often found themselves on the wrong side, even becoming victims of genocide in places like Yemen and Ethiopia. But nobody in the West was interested in getting involved in yet another Jewish disaster. Pogroms were unexceptional almost everywhere Jews remained.

A large population of Jews had existed in the Soviet Union. The government policy of repression of Judaism was successful; there was no one to bring them books or ritual objects, few synagogues, and little by little, as the older generation died off, so did Judaism. What remained was that people with Jewish-sounding names were still called “zhid” and denied good jobs or places at good universities. When the Soviet Union collapsed and there was violence and disorder, the Jews were victimized by all sides.

By 1960, the British were finally gone for good from Palestine, having been replaced in their zone by an American-backed UN administration, and the Arab occupied areas were annexed by their rulers. There was little organized Jewish opposition, and the minority of Jews that were left in the UN zone had to be protected by the American draftees who were stationed there and who served as 'advisers' in the multiple wars of the Middle East. At almost any time, there were conflicts between Sunni and Shiite, or Christian and Muslim, as well as the blocs aligned with the US or the Soviets. There were literally tens of terrorist militias operating in the always violent and chaotic region.

By the beginning of the 21^st century there were only about 3 million people in the world that called themselves Jews, and few synagogues or other Jewish institutions. The twin plagues of genocide and assimilation ensured that the Jewish people that survived two painful exiles from its homeland would not survive a third.

***

Of course, this is all a bad dream. In the real universe, Czechoslovakia sold us arms, and the outnumbered defenders of Kibbutz Negba stopped the Egyptian tanks cold. The DP camps were emptied. Mizrachi Jews found refuge. The Jews of Yemen and Ethiopia were rescued. Soviet Jews were able to emigrate. And antisemitism was almost just a memory. The state of Israel is thriving, and has given the world numerous advances in culture, medicine and science since 1948.

But something else is happening now. A coalition against the Jewish state, a true “Axis of Evil” is forming, starting in Iran, passing through Europe and reaching Washington. As the Jewish state is threatened, diaspora Jews are also feeling the cold wind of Jew-hatred, not dead but just in suspended animation for all these years. The way these phenomena feed each other is striking.

This isn’t just about the Jewish people. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls recently said that France wouldn’t be France without its Jews. Well, neither would America and, in fact, neither would Western civilization. The contributions of the Jewish people and their state go far beyond the scientific products of the Technion and the Weizmann Institute, and the countless high-tech startups. There is a spiritual and moral contribution that has been flowing since biblical times.

If the West loses Israel, it will lose a big part of its soul.

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.