Friday, August 21, 2015

  • Friday, August 21, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
From CNN:
Hamas believes it has captured Israel's most sophisticated new surveillance technology -- a dolphin spy. That's according to an article in the Palestinian daily al-Quds published Wednesday.

"Israel did not just stop at the bloody attacks against the Gaza Strip," the Arabic-language article reads, "Now it has recruited a watery pet, the dolphin, known for his friendship with humans, to use for operations to kill Qassam Brigade Naval Commandos."

The Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, which controls Gaza, refused to comment on the story to CNN on Thursday.

The article claims Qassam operatives on a training exercise along the beach confiscated camera equipment and spying devices mounted on the back of the dolphin.

"The Israeli security apparatus took advantage of dolphins' love for humans, and how the animals like to play with people on the water, or in the depths of the sea, to reach members of the Qassam's marine unit," the article read.

A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces contacted by CNN declined to comment on the report.
The story doesn't mention that Hamas also claims that the dolphin was carrying a device to shoot arrows at people.

It doesn't mention the long history of Arabs (and Muslims) claiming Israeli animal spies.

In other words - this reporter actually believes that the story is true.


Compare this CNN story with how it was covered in The Evening Standard, The Express, the Washington Post and others. All of them mentioned the previous absurd stories, although some did note that militaries have researched using dolphins for espionage. All of them treated this story as humorous.

Except for CNN.

Even Russia Today provided more context than CNN did.

Who is this reporter for CNN?

Salma Abdelaziz.

In 2008, she interned at The Carter Center.

In 2009, she interned at Amnesty International.

So she has been steeped in a culture of assuming the worst about Israel - and is so brainwashed that she believes this story and wrote it as straight news.

This is the quality of CNN's Middle East reporting.

We've seen similar quality in the past as CNN parroted other Arab propaganda as fact without doing the least amount of fact-checking.

Abdelaziz says she won a Peabody Award for news editing.

(h/t Ian)

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The power of Jewish indignation
Perhaps we should thank Spain’s Rotodom Sunsplash reggae festival organizers. They just provided us with a textbook case both of the nature of today’s anti-Semitism and of how to defeat it.
Last weekend, the festival organizers canceled their invitation to Matisyahu, the American-Jewish reggae artist, because he refused to bow to the organizers’ demand that he publicly support “Palestine.”
Matisyahu was the only known Jew in the festival line-up and the only performer asked to produce such a statement.
Rather than take this lying down, on Monday Matisyahu recounted the episode on his Facebook page, writing, “It was appalling and offensive that as the one publicly Jewish-American artist scheduled for the festival they were trying to coerce me into political statements.”
Matisyahu’s disinvitation prompted a worldwide Jewish outcry. The Foreign Ministry registered a complaint with the Spanish government.
Every major American Jewish organization and several European Jewish organizations condemned the blatant discrimination against Matisyahu.
Melanie Phillips: Israel and the culture wars
The banning of rapper Matisyahu by the Sunsplash reggae festival in Spain – subsequently rescinded after protests – was an “aha!” moment.
After pressure from the Israel-bashing Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, the festival organizers disinvited the singer because he refused to support “the right of Palestinians to have their own state.”
Matisyahu is, however, not an Israeli but a Jewish American. Aha! people exclaimed; now BDS stands exposed as demonstrably anti-Jew.
Well yes; and so too is the wider anti-Israel obsession which shares the unique characteristics of Jew-hatred down the ages: a frenzied agenda of lies and libels, grotesque fantasies of covert global conspiracy and accusations of behavior of which its targets are not only innocent but are in fact the victims.
However, there’s rather more to the demonization of Israel than just Jew-hatred.
Across the Western world old-fashioned liberalism, based on reason and truth, is disappearing. It has been hijacked by hardleft attitudes based on eradicating the difference between right and wrong, truth and lies, tyrant and victim, in favor of the only distinction that matters: the powerless versus the “imperialist” West.
Through that distorted prism, it inverts reality and punishes any who disagree.
This has bent the minds of millions of “progressives” as effectively as the brainwashing by the Spanish Inquisition, Soviet communism or modern-day Islamism. And just as under those closed thought-systems, today’s progressives are inherently unable to perceive how twisted they have become.
Obama played Catch-22 on Iran deal, fumes Israeli expert
The maintenance and intensification of the American sanctions regime imposed on Iran, even in the absence of a tight international sanctions regime, could lead to a better deal than the one reached last month in Vienna, an Israeli expert on arms said.
Emily Landau, head of the arms control and regional security program at the Institute for National Security Studies based at Tel Aviv University, is one of Israel’s most respected expert observers on the Iranian nuclear program. In an interview, she said that the nuclear accord struck between the P5+1 powers and Iran on July 14 was the result of “failed negotiations.”
An adequate deal, she said, would include the dismantling of most of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure; the imposition of “anytime, anywhere” inspections in response to suspicious activities; requiring the regime to answer 12 critical questions posed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding past military nuclear work to the satisfaction of the agency; and explicitly tying sanctions relief to Iran doing so.
But, she stressed, her concerns about the deal also relate to “ambiguous language” in the agreement that could “enable Iran to manipulate the deal in ways they have with past agreements.”
For an hour in her Tel Aviv office, Landau elaborated on the flaws of the deal; on the ongoing debate among American legislators; and on what options will remain if the agreement is rejected.

  • Friday, August 21, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
Electronic Intifada writes about a typhoid outbreak near Yarmouk, Syria, where Palestinian Arabs are concentrated. And it concludes (and tweets):

"None of this would be happening to Palestinians in Syria if they were allowed to return to Palestine" http://t.co/wRQXDWDCCc

“None of this would be happening to Palestinians in Syria if they were allowed to return to Palestine. The world doesn’t dare to mention that.”

OK, let's mention it.

In January 2013, AP reported:

Abbas said he asked U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon last month to seek Israeli permission to bring Palestinians caught in Syria's civil war to the Palestinian territories. The request came after fighting between Syrian troops and rebel fighters in Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. About half of the camp's 150,000 residents have fled, according to a U.N. aid agency.

Abbas told a group of Egyptian journalists in Cairo late Wednesday that Ban contacted Israel on his behalf.

Abbas said Ban was told Israel "agreed to the return of those refugees to Gaza and the West Bank, but on condition that each refugee ... sign a statement that he doesn't have the right of return (to Israel)."

"So we rejected that and said it's better they die in Syria than give up their right of return," Abbas told the group. Some of his comments were published Thursday by the Palestinian news website Sama.
Abbas has bragged that he rejected Israel's offer to save hundreds of lives because of a principle that has no basis in law or logic.

Electronic Intifada doesn't dare to mention that.



  • Friday, August 21, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
AP reports:

Israel's ambassador is urging the U.N.'s internal watchdog to investigate the head of a U.N. agency for misconduct, accusing her of "modern day anti-Semitism." Last year, he tried unsuccessfully to get Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to suspend Rima Khalaf.

Ambassador Ron Prosor met Carmen Lapointe, the head of the Office of Internal Oversight Services, late last month and called for a disciplinary hearing against Khalaf, a Jordanian who heads the Beirut-based U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, which promotes economic and social development in 17 Arab countries.

A letter from the ambassador to Lapointe obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press said "Ms. Khalaf has abused her position in order to promote an anti-Israel agenda, in a flagrant violation of U.N. obligations and principles."

Prosor gave a series of examples including her support for the June 29 "illegal and provocative attempt" to break Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, a July 7 reference which he said equated "terrorism with a fight for 'justice'," and what he called "a hate fueled report" on Arab integration in March 2014 "that once again promotes anti-Israel incitement by blaming Israel for shortcomings in the Arab world."

"Ms. Khalaf's outrageous criticism against the state of Israel and the discrediting of its government undermine the integrity of the United Nations and amount to serious misconduct, by U.N. standards," Prosor said in the July 27 letter. "I call on you to initiate an urgent investigation into this matter."
Some more details from Arutz-7:
The issues with Khalaf are not new. Last year, Prosor asked UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to fire Khalaf, after she indirectly compared Israel with Nazi Germany, and blamed Israel for all of the Arab world's problems in the area of development.

Ban spoke with Khalaf about the matter but did not fire her.

Several weeks ago, Khalaf again made provocative statements against Israel.

She expressed support for the hostile “flotilla” that sought to breach Israel's maritime blockade on Gaza in June, and said the move was legitimate. She compared the Israeli response to an act of terror, saying: “The Israeli response to the flotilla is like the violent abductions carried out by pirates at sea, in the air and on land, which the world does not hesitate to call terror.”

At another event, which took place at the UN HQ in New York, she said that “terror activities” constitute “a war for justice.”

“In Palestine,” she said in the July speech, “international indifference not only allowed the Israeli occupation to keep on grinding for half a century, but spread instability in the region. This eroded the faith in global justice and pushed some people to take justice into their own hands.”
Last year, Khalaf's agency issued a series of 181 tweets/posts for the "International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People." Many of their "facts" were anything but.. For example, #2:



The linked article has a footnote that links to a UN report which in turn links to an Israeli NGO report  that further links to Israeli Freedom of Information disclosures that show that the people referred to here are mostly Arabs who left the region for seven years and didn't check back in with Israeli authorities (all of this was before the 1994 Oslo accords)  and therefore lost their residency status. They were not "expelled" in any sense of the word and the UN document linked does not use that word at all.

That's just one example of how anti-Israel UN-ESCWA is. There's lots more:


"In spite of the occupation"? Every university in the territories opened up after 1967!  (And one college that became a university in 2007 was founded in 1930 by a Jewish philanthropist.)

And here this UN agency twists Israeli humanitarianism into proof of Israeli evil:


How exactly 15,000 people were allowed to leave the "prison" of Gaza is not quite explained.

This is a UN agency that is going out of its way to propagate anti-Israel lies. No doubt Ms. Khalaf had a lot to do with this initiative.

And the UN can lie with impunity as long as the target is Israel.

We are almost finished with the one-year anniversary of Operation Protective Edge, but amnesty International still has a few lies up its sleeve.

It tweeted:




Soon afterwards, Amnesty-USA-Israel/OPT tweeted this:




When you check out this incident in Amnesty's Gaza Platform, you see that unlike most incidents, this is one that Amnesty investigated themselves, rather than copying from PCHR and Al Mezan.

Here's how they describe it:

On Wednesday 20 August 2014, at approximately 5am, an Israeli aircraft dropped a large aerial bomb on the al-Louh family’s two-storey home in the al-Hikr neighbourhood in southern Deir al-Balah. The home of Ra’fat Mustafa Mahmoud al-Louh and his family was completely destroyed and the adjacent home of his father, Mustafa Mahmoud al-Louh, was severely damaged. The two houses are separated by a narrow walkway only a couple of metres wide and share a zinc roof. Ra’fat al-Louh, his heavily pregnant wife, Nabeela Eid al-Louh, and their three children, Mustafa, Maysara and Farah, were all killed in the attack. Ra’fat’s younger brother, Ahmad, who worked with him selling vegetables and was staying in his home, was also killed in the attack. Another brother, Mohammad, was killed when the asbestos roof and walls collapsed on him as he was sleeping in his bedroom in the adjacent house of his father, Mustafa Mahmoud al-Louh, who, along with another son, Mu’min, and his daughter Wafa’ sustained serious injuries. Iman Yunis al-Louh, 18, a niece of Ra’fat’s, died the following day of the injuries she sustained in the attack.

...All witnesses who gave statements said that none of the family members was involved with armed groups.

Ra’fat’s brother Mu’min al-Louh said: “Earlier Ra’fat had gone out with a torch to investigate a rocket that he thought had gone up from the olive fields east of our house. He thought a rocket had fallen on the house. They probably thought that Ra’fat had shot the rocket from the field and thought he was from the resistance.”

... The names of the killed family members are mentioned as “civilians” in the news reporting on the websites of Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades and Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades.
So Amnesty investigated - they sent out a field worker, they interviewed family members and they all said that there were no members of militant groups in the family, and Amnesty looked at the terror websites at some point and saw that the casualties were listed as "civilian."

It took me literally one minute to Google the name of Mohammed Mustafa al-Louh, and I saw this "martyr's poster" on a fan page that was put up for him.



The "fans" didn't put up his photo with the gun in August. They waited until October 3. Hamas themselves hid many of their members as "mujahideen" for several weeks after the fighting.

But his family members were all buried in Hamas flags, indicating a connection between the family and Hamas. Mohammed was buried wearing a Hamas headband..

And Amnesty documented elsewhere in that same report that sometimes family members lie. (The Al Bayoumi family swore that no one on their building jihadists, bur neighbors said that there were four terrorists who had a command center there.)

Now, how come I could find this in no time and Amnesty could not do something as simple as Googling the Arabic name of the dead who were of military age?

Because Amnesty's "research" is limited to confirming their existing biases, not honestly uncovering the truth.

It is an astonishing coincidence that for practically every example of family houses bombed that Amnesty tweeted, I found at least one militant among the dead. What are the odds that this could happen when Amnesty maintains that Israel's attacks were random and indiscriminate?

Thursday, August 20, 2015

From Ian:

Amnesty found biased in series of reports you probably have not read
Anonymous blogger, Elder of Ziyon, the internet’s Mike Royko has been uncovering and reporting a pattern of bias and seemingly intentional misinformation by Amnesty International. Some of the reporting has been factual correction caused by Amnesty for being at minimum far too credulous with reportage from Gaza such as this article from July 10th, “@Amnesty says this house had no terrorists. Wrong again.” Amnesty accepts Tawfiq Abu Jame’s claim their house was no involved in the fighting but was bombed anyhow but B’Tselem, an NGO and frequent critic of Israel reported that Ahmad Sahoud was living there and listed as a Hamas Operative. The original post appears to no longer be on the B’Tselem website but the family is listed here, but an archive of the site shows the listing of the Abu Jame’ family as reported by Eder of Ziyon here. To my untrained eye, the dropping off of the Abu Jame family by B’Tselem looks like collusion with Amnesty International to remove an embarrassing fact from the B’Tselem website.
In a July 31st Article, “Amnesty ignores Amnesty's own research in anti-Israel tweets” noted that while Amnesty accused Israel of attacking a house without warning, neighbors reported to Amnesty that Hamas was using the empty apartment “for some time prior to the attack” and then the Elder of Ziyon further noted,
As we have shown, under international law, an attack on a communications hub in Serbia that was only knocked out for a single day was not considered a violation of the laws of armed conflict even though the number of fatalities were higher than this instance. Amnesty's claim of "clearly disproportionate" is flatly wrong. The entire reason Israel did not give warning in this case - as opposed to hundreds of other cases - was obviously because this was a high-value military target.
Phyllis Chesler: Why Worry About Yazidis when You can Focus on Palestinian "Refugees"
Even as the Western intelligentsia continue to focus upon the fake and inflated refugee crisis among Palestinians, the world’s real refugee crisis– Christians and Yazidis persecuted by ISIS– has become both overwhelming and hidden in plain sight.
There may be sixty million refugees and “internally displaced people” in all, primarily from Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Congo, and other countries. Nine and a half million“refugees” and “internally displaced people” are Syrians. Some now live in refugee camps in Jordan, Israel (where they are also treated in hospitals), Lebanon, Iraq, and on the Syrian-Turkish border.
Half are children. Most of the children are no longer in school; worse, unvaccinated, they remain in deadly danger of contracting polio and measles in addition to other camp related diseases such as dysentery. Families are destitute and cannot afford the emergency surgeries that will save young lives, limbs, or eyes.
One young Yazidi girl, “Dilleen”, has been suffering from retinal blastoma which, according to her advocate, Gulie Khalaf, “has moved to her other eye and, without surgery, will move to her brain. She is unable to see from either eye.” Surgeons will perform the operation in Dohuk and her advocates are trying to raise money for it.
Many children are also starving and at best, severely undernourished. “Lucky” young Muslim virgin girls are being given in marriage to much older Muslim men in Jordan and the Gulf States in the hope that they will be fed and cared for. “Unlucky” Christian and Yazidi girls and women are being kidnapped and used as sex slaves by ISIS–something these barbarians view as an Islamic religious right.
British tourist under attack for expressing love for Israel
Emma Carter, 34, from London fell utterly in love with Israel and its people during her first visit to the Holy Land. She took to social media to share her new found passion for Israel, but found herself under attack by her friends. It got so bad that she had to close her Facebook account altogether.
Carter's good friend, Dafna Endoditch-Rau, a young Jew who lives in the British capital, decided to celebrate her 40th birthday in Tel Aviv and invited her to join her for the trip.
"I was worried about visiting Israel and I hesitated quite a bit before I agreed," Carter said. "As an Englishwoman, all I knew about Israel were the wars in Gaza. But Dafna told me that I would be safer in Israel than in London, and I decided to go and see the country for myself."
Twenty-four hours is all it took for Carter to fall in love with Israel. She said she clicked with Tel Aviv on the very first night.
"Everything I saw was completely different from the way Israel is portrayed in the media," she recounted. "Tel Aviv is a vibrant and liberal city, people here are kind, and the welcome I have received here was more incredible than any other place I have ever visited in the world. Strangers invited me to visit their homes. Israelis are warm and inviting, not aggressive or bad as described in the news."
Carter ended her post with a recommendation to her friends: "I've just finished spending an amazing day in a country the BBC describes as barbaric just to pander to Muslim viewers. I recommend you place a question mark next to any piece of news, especially when you are watching a news network financed by the government."
When Carter wrote the post, she never could have imagined the wave of opposition it would provoke. Within a short amount of time, a couple of her Facebook friends started to attack her: "Israel murders innocent Palestinian children and steals their land," wrote one of them. Another added: "You're justifying an apartheid state."
A little while later Carter even received a message from Facebook, in which she was told that her post was described as offensive. An hour later she received another message with the same information. (h/t Yoel)

  • Thursday, August 20, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon

An op-ed by Salman Mohammed Buhairi in Al Riyadh looks at the death of the baby in Duma - and finds the real villain is Judaism itself.
In fact this crime is a result of the Jewish religion which urges racism, extremism and killing Gentiles who are not Jews; rabbis urge them to kill non-Jews, and to loot their money and their wives and engage in usury as in the story of The Merchant of Venice, as well as theft and adultery and murder and lying and breaking covenants These are all taboo among themselves; they God's chosen people, but with the non-Jews are things permissible."

..They urge the hatred and aggression against non-Jews, and this is evident in their curriculum for children and young people, especially against the Arabs in Israel, and creating a culture of terrorism and genocide, racism and colonization which instilled in the hearts of children and the Israeli street and Jewish communities in the world, and hatred of Arabs, racism and the sanctification of terrorism in the curriculum.

Zionism exploited the September 11 attacks to demand a change in education curricula in Arab and Islamic countries and change the books of religious education, and delete some of the verses and the hadith which it alleges calls for terrorism and hatred and to the destruction of Israel, and funny that Israel does not see in their curricula and religious beliefs of Judaism their own urge to instill hatred and contempt for Arabs and Muslims, starting from the preliminary Children middle and high schools and Israeli universities, schools, and in Hebrew children's literature, novels, songs, poems, stories, that describe Arabs as lying and malicious and stupid and backward.

Jews reverse the facts, and focus on the description of Arabs as terrorists and say that they are killers and animal-like predators, while the Jews describe their courage and excellence, boldness but instilling in them the ideas of racism and concepts meant to raise the myths and lies and ambitions of Zionism to the status of religious holiness, and the Hebrew literature to install awareness in children and adults that Arab Palestine is their home and their Promised Land, and they are the legacy of their ancestors from time immemorial; they highlight stories in Hebrew literature saying the Arab face is ugly and frightening, and hunchbacked and laughable and stupid and lice-infested.

They distort the image of the Arab and Muslim rights to sow hatred towards them ..the textbooks in Israel play a key role in deepening the culture of conflict with the Arabs and the sanctification of practice of terrorism and genocidal settlements, colonization and destruction towards them.

The textbooks stress the importance of the use of force because the Arabs understand only the language of force, and focus the curriculum on the Book of Joshua, which is full of murder and genocide, which is the source of Zionist terrorism and the first school of terrorist ideas in human history, and the source of contemporary Zionism is faith-based terrorism and racism.
I only published excerpts and edited it for clarity, but the entire article was three very long run-on sentences.

From Ian:

Half of Jerusalem Arabs want to be Israelis
A slim majority of Palestinians living in Jerusalem would prefer Israeli citizenship to being citizens of a Palestinian state, a poll conducted by a Palestinian research institute indicates.
Just over half, or 52 percent, of respondents told pollsters they would prefer “Israeli citizenship with equal rights,” while 42% prefer to be Palestinian citizens when a Palestinian state is established, Channel 2 reported Wednesday.
The figure is far higher than in polls conducted in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. In Gaza, just 4% said they preferred Israeli citizenship; in the West Bank, just 12%.
The poll was conducted by a research institute headed by Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki located in Beit Sahur.
The figure marks a spike in desire for Israeli citizenship. A similar poll in 2010 found just one-third of East Jerusalem Arabs preferred Israeli citizenship to Palestinian.
Mordechai Kedar: Islamic State is Heading for Lebanon Next
This week, it became known that Islamic State's weapons engineers have begun filling katyusha rockets with chlorine gas. This became clear when one of the rockets exploded near its launching pad and the gas it gave off killed the fighters who had launched it. This does not come as a surprise – two weeks ago the first reports surfaced claiming that Islamic State is using mustard gas in rockets and missiles. The gas supplies may have been taken from Syrian army supply depots in Alspira and Aleppo and it is quite possible that Syrian army deserters know how to use them. Only a month ago, an attempt by persons connected to Islamic State to pour barrels of poison into the Kosovo capital Pristina's reservoirs was foiled and its perpetrators captured, preventing the deaths of the 200,000 residents of that city. Can Islamic State wage a chemical war? It seems likely.
In northern Syria, with its Kurdish majority, a new women's unit of Assyrian Christians has been formed and has been provided with intensive military training in preparation for all types of warfare. This unit will be sent to fight Islamic State bearing in mind that Islamic State fighters believe that if they are killed by a woman they will not receive the reward awaiting them in Paradise. As a result, as soon as they know they are surrounded by women's army units, they usually flee. This is why the Kurdish women fighters shout loudly and bloodcurdlingly when they think they are approaching a place that has Islamic State forces. It seems likely that the Assyrian women will do the same, using psychological warfare against Islamic State. For its part, Islamic State continues its own psychological warfare by spreading horrendous videos showing the butchering of its enemies; selling the daughters of infidels as slaves is also intended to demoralize its opponents.
In conclusion: Islamic State is engaging in biological warfare, chemical warfare and psychological warfare, another reason to define it as a terror state and not just a terror organization. Before its fighters get their hands on radioactive materials which they will use unhesitatingly against their enemies, it might be a good idea to remember that every hospital trashcan contains radioactive materials from its x-ray department and putting together a "dirty bomb" using these materials is really easy. May G-d help us all.
IDF rejects NYT Friedman’s comparison of Gaza war to Assad’s Syria massacre
Is Israel prepared to play by the same bloody rules as Syria’s regime and “crazily” disregard international rules to maintain its hold in the region?
Veteran New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman last week asserted that this disregard is Israel’s core military strategy. The Israeli security establishment, for its part, says his claim amounts to what US Vice President Joe Biden calls “malarkey,” and does not reflect IDF policy.
In his column, “If I Were an Israeli Looking at the Iran Deal,” Friedman wrote Israel is prepared to play by what he called “Hama rules” (– not Hamas rules, as some read it).
Hama is a city in western Syria, where then-Syrian president Hafez Assad had his forces massacre tens of thousands of civilians in 1982 in order to put down a Muslim Brotherhood uprising. The nearly month-long slaughter remains one of the bloodiest cases in history of an Arab government attacking its own people.
In effect, Friedman was casually and off-handedly alleging that Israel conducts itself in conflict in the same way that Bashar Assad’s father and predecessor carried out a 27-day bloodbath, with the Syrian army deliberately mowing down women and children.
While the term itself comes from Friedman’s book “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” in his new article he offered no history of the event or explanation for the comparison, apparently assuming the reader would understand the context.
Despite the damning nature of the accusation, IDF officials took the comment with an almost bored sense of “heard it before,” before giving a quick, rehearsed dismissal of the claim that Israel deliberately targets civilians.
“It’s dramatic and it’s ludicrous,” an IDF official said of Friedman’s comparison, “but essentially he just misses the mark.”

Thomas Friedman wrote in a NYT op-ed last week:
If I were an Israeli grocer, just following this deal on the radio, I’d hate it for enshrining Iran’s right to enrich uranium, since Iran regularly cheated its way to expanding that capability, even though it had signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. After all, Iran holds “death to Israel” marches and in 2006 sponsored a conference to promote denial of the Holocaust. Moreover, Iran’s proxy, the Lebanese Shiite militia, Hezbollah, in 2006, started an unprovoked war with Israel, and when Israel retaliated against Hezbollah military and civilian targets, Hezbollah fired thousands of Iranian-supplied rockets all across Israel. No — no matter the safeguards — I as an Israeli grocer would reject this deal from my gut.
An Israeli grocer responds:
"You tell Friedman that this grocer was a military officer, who knows how to fight a war, and that I fought with my head and not my gut. You tell Friedman that as a 'makolet' owner, I know that I will give credit to a customer who pays his bills, but will demand money up front from someone who has a record of cheating. And you tell Friedman that as a kind person, I will give charity to a person who is economically suffering, but if it's obvious that the poor person will spend the money on drugs, I'd prefer to bring him into my grocery and give him some basic foods for free, but I would not just give him money to spend as he wishes on dangerous things. You tell Friedman that I think these negotiators could have used some Israeli grocers at the negotiating table with Iran."
Friedman's arrogance, ignorance and condescension, all revealed in one paragraph.

(h/t Norman)
  • Thursday, August 20, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Iran's Mehr News:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Thursday referred to mosque as the house of the nation which should avoid party orientations.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony of the international conference on World Mosque Day, President Rouhani described mosques as places to discuss major social, political issues, regional and international developments, problems of the Islamic world and the risks the arrogance imposes on the Muslim world not a place for political parties.[1]

August 21 marks the anniversary of the 1969 al-Aqsa Mosque fire, the origins of which are still being disputed [2] over 40 years after the incident occurred. The day is titled World Mosque Day in remembrance of the event.

Commemorating the occasion, President Rouhani asserted that the bitter memory of the 1969 al-Aqsa Mosque fire would not be forgotten.

Rouhani underlined that al-Aqsa Mosque fire demonstrates the true nature of usurper Zionist regime and calls for awareness and consciousness of Muslims to preserve the Muslim identity.[3]

“The incident indicates that the Zionist regime not only continues to murder and rape innocent women and children, but it also has no respect for a mosque [4], the first Qibla of Muslims and a land that is completely respected by other religions as well,” President Rouhani said.

[1]  Does this mean that Iran is against raising the Hamas flag at Al Aqsa Mosque?

[2] There is no dispute that the attack was done by a deranged Christian from Australia, but if Rouhani admits that then there isn't much reason left for World Mosque Day.

[3] Isn't it interesting that Iran is worried about a billion Muslims losing their identity. Something is behind this, and it is worth researching.

[4] The construct of "not only X, but Y" means that according to Rouhani, Jews walking around the Temple Mount is a worse crime than raping babies.

What does this say about Rouhani's morality?

Remember - he is a "moderate."

Israel's Channel 10 has reported on my findings that many UNRWA teachers have been posting antisemitic, pro-terror and even pro-Nazi photos and posters on Facebook.

Arutz-7 summarized the Hebrew report:

Teachers working at United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Lebanon and Jordan have received no disciplinary action for supporting anti-Semitism and terrorism on social media, the Elder of Zion [sic] blog has revealed in an ongoing investigative report.

According to the blog's findings, the teachers often published Facebook posts against the Jewish state and in support of terrorist activity. Even a director of one of UNRWA's schools was complicit, praising a terror attack carried out in 1978.

Other questionable uploads include a picture from Oday Al Masri, an UNRWA teacher in Jenin, featuring a swastika.

The organization responded by telling teachers to tone down the hate-fueled posts, concerned more with its reputation than the terrorism and anti-Semitism its employees were promoting.

In response, several teachers removed their affiliation with UNRWA on their Facebook accounts and/or changed their privacy settings. Several pages, as well as an UNRWA teacher's group featuring jihadist videos, were also taken down.

However, no teachers have been dismissed or even reprimanded for their actions.

In light of Elder of Ziyon's recent update to the scandal, a UNRWA spokesman told Channel 10 that if the reports prove credible, the organization would see the guilty parties were punished.

"If there are any charges, and if this is true, then it's a very big issue and we'll take care of it. If there is a suspected breach of neutrality on the part of employees, we will investigate and take significant steps, including dismissal," the spokesman claimed.
Chris Gunness - the spokesperson here - is lying, as he always does.

We know that UNRWA is aware of my reports about this from last year, and that they pressured teachers to remove their posts or to stop identifying themselves as UNRWA employees. There is no other explanation as to why so many of the posts disappeared right after I would write about them. But now that Israeli media picked up on the story, Gunness is pretending that UNRWA will "investigate and take significant steps, including dismissal."

If there had been any disciplinary action, Gunness would have said so. And if any teacher would have been fired for posting antisemitism on Facvebook, there would have been protests in the UNRWA schools - after all, there was a teacher's strike when UNRWA once tried to suspend a single Hamas member.

So of course UNRWA is aware of this and has ignored it, hoping that no one from the media would contact them.

There is some deja vu here, because in 2013 I also revealed an UNRWA dean of education posting Hitler quotes on his Facebook page. The Washington Free Beacon contacted Chris Gunness who responded very similarly.  And he knows very well that most reporters will not follow up to find out if what exactly UNRWA did to fix the problem.

In that case, as now, the Hitler poster was taken down but the dean still has his job.

In other words, this is another example of an UNRWA coverup of how its teachers regularly flout its own written standards. Gunness and his bosses are not interested in solving the problem, they spend their efforts into getting reporters to go away.

I did speak to the reporter about my findings of antisemitism in UNRWA's own websites, but he decided not to include that.

Here is the video of the Hebrew report, including a short audio clip from me:



Arutz-7's video is here:



Wednesday, August 19, 2015

From Ian:

UN to let Iran inspect its own alleged nuclear activity site
Iran, in an unusual arrangement, will be allowed to use its own experts to inspect a site it allegedly used to develop nuclear arms under a secret agreement with the UN agency that normally carries out such work, according to a document seen by The Associated Press.
The revelation is sure to roil American and Israeli critics of the main Iran deal signed by the US, Iran and five world powers in July. Those critics have complained that the deal is built on trust of the Iranians, a claim the US has denied.
The investigation of the Parchin nuclear site by the International Atomic Energy Agency is linked to a broader probe of allegations that Iran has worked on atomic weapons. That investigation is part of the overarching nuclear deal.
The Parchin deal is a separate, side agreement worked out between the IAEA and Iran. The United States and the five other world powers that signed the Iran nuclear deal were not party to this agreement but were briefed on it by the IAEA and endorsed it as part of the larger package. (h/t djcelts)
Why is the Red Cross holding seminars for Hamas?
This past Sunday, The New York Times ran a story encapsulating all that is wrong with the Western world’s approach to extremist Islamic fundamentalism.
In a report appearing in its first section, the paper revealed a startling bit of news: “Red Cross offers workshops in international law to Hamas.”
That’s right. The global institution, which claims that it works “to prevent suffering by promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles,” is busying conducting seminars for terrorists in Gaza on how they can be, umm, more humanitarian when attacking Israel.
What’s next? Teaching table manners to the Taliban? The Times article goes on to describe the three-day seminar that the Red Cross conducted for Hamas last month. It included role-playing and case studies, noting that “one exercise involved an armed group firing on an invading tank from the garden of a civilian home near a hospital.” How educational! Mamadou Sow, head of Red Cross operations in Gaza, breezily noted to the Times that earlier this year, when he presented Hamas leadership with a critique of their conduct during last summer’s Gaza war, they “welcomed it” and “indicated that they are a learning organization.”
The article does not indicate whether Sow was able to maintain a straight face while uttering such inanity.
But lest you suspect that Hamas’ indiscriminate firing of thousands of rockets at Israel may indicate that it is somewhat indifferent to the value of human life, Red Cross leaders went out of their way to stress that “they have seen an increasing commitment from Hamas leaders and linemen alike” to respect international humanitarian law.
Huckabee: Israel has more of a connection to Shiloh than Americans have to Manhattan
Republican presidential candidate made no apologies Wednesday at a Jerusalem press conference for holding a fundraiser a day earlier in the West Bank settlement of Shiloh.
"I would happily go to Shiloh anytime" he said.
"I think it is very important that as Americans we show support for Israelis in their capacity to build their neighborhoods in their own country."
Huckabee, who stressed he did not see Judea and Samaria as occupied, said Israel - - with a 3500 year historic tie to Shiloh -- has more of a connection to lands in Judea and Samaria than Americans have to Manhattan, which goes back only 400 years.
"I feel like it is the right thing to stand with Israel in making sure they have the right to secure their homeland with safe and defendable borders, he said.
"It is interesting to me that our government has put more pressure on the Israeli government to stop building bedrooms in their own neighborhoods, than on Iran to stop building bombs."

From JPost:
Hamas announced on Wednesday that underwater "frogmen" commandos operating just off the coast of the Gaza Strip managed to stop a dolphin that it claims was spying for Israel.

Officials in the Palestinian Islamist organization say that the dolphin was equipped with a surveillance device.

Hamas said that its naval commandos managed to track the dolphin weeks ago.
Dolphins now join the club of animals that Israel-haters claim are trained in espionage or vandalism.


I once made a comic for their exciting adventures.


I need to come out with new editions.











  • Wednesday, August 19, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory

Check out their Facebook page.


Plains, Georgia, August 19 - Former US President Jimmy Carter announced last week that he has been diagnosed with metastatic cancer, and, in a follow-up announcement today, added that he would be traveling to the Gaza Strip to receive medical care so as to ensure that no Jewish doctors are involved in his treatment.

Carter underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in his liver, but his doctors discovered that the cancer had spread to other parts of his body, and that a cure was unlikely at this stage. Undaunted, the former chief executive decided to fight the disease anyway, choosing his therapeutic path based on what he knows of medical care around the world. Carter settled on Gaza as the ideal location for the treatment once he determined that the coastal enclave boasts the resources to provide treatment, because Israel allows unlimited medical supplies into the territory, while at the same time guarantees that no Jewish hands will be involved in his care, in keeping with his stance on pressuring Jews through boycotts in order to wrest concessions from Israel.

A Carter spokesman told reporters that the former president would depart late next week for a series of innovative treatments only available in Gaza. "Mr. Carter's good friend is a Norwegian physician who has spent quite a bit of time in Gaza, and assured him that the place is teeming with radioactive fragments from Israel's profligate use of depleted uranium artillery and ground-attack shells," said the spokesman, referring to Dr. Mads Gilbert. "According to the doctor that radiation places Gazans at risk for elevated levels of cancer, but in this case it might be of help in treating the disease," he added.

The spokesman, Goober Nobel, said that the anticipated treatment regimen will include elements of the former resident's late sister Ruth Carter Stapleton's faith-healing practice, but that those heavily Christian elements will have to be discreetly practiced in Islamic Gaza. "In keeping with Dr. Gilbert's example, Mr. Carter will push aside his own Western sensibilities to accommodate his hosts' convictions, if necessary," he explained. That would entail suppressing both overt displays of Christian faith and any sense of honesty or consistency.

Shifa Hospital Chief of Surgery Dr. Nakba ibn Itbach stated, “We will excise this outsider, this invader and foreign usurper of all that is holy. We will bring it to its knees so that it will crawl to all of its brothers and sisters and call them out to the open where we will lay them low with stones. For on that day they will call out to us, ‘Ye men of faith, elevate us through enjoining us in death as holy martyrs to the cause.’” He declined to elaborate on the medical specifics of the procedure to which he referred.

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