Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, September 09, 2015

UN blames Israel for charging Palestinians for electricity

From a recent report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development:

Electricity importation: Another source of Palestinian fiscal leakage

Importing electricity from Israel is another source of loss of Palestinian fiscal resources and consumer welfare. When Palestinian electricity distributors (municipalities, village councils and distribution companies) fail to pay the Israel Electric Corporation, Israel deducts from the Palestinian National Authority’s clearance revenue and registers any remaining balances as debt owed to the Corporation, to be deducted from clearance revenue at later dates. Such deductions also cover sewage fees and water imports, and are referred to as net lending. They are deducted by Israel without the consent of or verification by the Authority, in a unilateral, non-transparent and unpredictable manner (World Bank, 2014b).

Can you believe it? Israel insists that it gets paid for electricity, water and other utilities being provided, and it will deduct the money it is owed when the PA refuses to pay - all under existing agreements!

Obviously Israel shouldn't ever charge anything for power until the PA is good and ready to pay on its own. Maybe in 2025, maybe in 2050. But the check is as good as in the mail.

(h/t Irene)

Meretz: Ban Bars From Not Hiring Muslims Who Won't Serve Alcohol (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Jerusalem, September 9 - New legislation brought by the left-wing Meretz Party would outlaw what it calls manifestations of discrimination on the basis of religious belief, making it a crime to refuse to hire a Muslim as a bartender simply because his religion forbids him to serve alcohol.

A bill co-sponsored by Meretz MKs Tamar Zandberg and Ilan Gilon was submitted to the Economic Development Committee today, that would make it a misdemeanor for a caterer, restaurant, liquor store, or bar to discriminate against a Muslim applicant because he may refuse to serve alcoholic beverages. The bill sets a NIS 10,000 fine for a first offense, NIS 20,000 for a repeat offense, and six months' imprisonment or two years' community service for anyone who violates the provision.

Zandberg said she was moved to introduce the bill after realizing that despite years of patronizing establishments in virtually all of North Tel Aviv, she had not once spied a bartender in traditional Muslim garb, and concluded that discrimination must be the root cause of that absence.

"We must take down all barriers to gainful employment for all citizens if we are to claim the mantle of a progressive, democratic society," said Zandberg. "Muslims are not to blame for the strictures of their faith, and it is up to our society to accommodate them in any way we can. A bar owner or manager who sees fit to exclude a person simply because that person's religious observance keeps him from performing all the functions of the position engages in religious discrimination and will be penalized."

Gilon told reporters the original draft of the legislation also included more sweeping provisions, but that they scaled back its contents to make the shifts more manageable. "We intend to reintroduce the other elements in separate pieces of legislation later on," he explained. "For example, while the current proposal does not include anything other than the alcohol issue, by January we will tackle other types f discrimination that are just as troubling in a democracy. By way of illustration, currently there is nothing that prevents law enforcement agencies from banning violent criminals from joining the police force. This is a clear violation of those potential police officers' rights, as it unjustly curtails their employment prospects."

"Additionally, we are looking into the practice among academic institutions of only accepting applicants with a certain level of academic achievement," he said. "That is a gross violation of less-accomplished applicants' rights."

Gilon and Zandberg added that the provision to bar religious discrimination explicitly did not include religious Jews, who should know better than to cling to that outdated, barbaric system.

09/09 Links Pt1: Palestinians have become obsessive “tragedy tourists”; Support for Iran Deal Collapses

From Ian:

Ryan Bellerose: Palestinians have become obsessive “tragedy tourists”

Lets get a few things straight. You do not get to claim a genocide when your population has exploded. As someone whose family has gone through one, I am telling you to cut that s*** out, it’s offensive and it’s annoying.
You did not “go through what Native Americans went through.” Nobody forced you to speak an alien language, worship God in an alien manner and steal your sacred places. As a matter of fact THAT’S WHAT YOU DID. You stole sacred places, forced indigenous people to speak Arabic and worship god as Muslims. So seriously cut that out too.
You did not in fact have a civil rights struggle like black people in America. Black people in America didn’t blow up school buses or pizzerias filled with school kids in order to achieve equal rights, and they damn sure didn’t talk endlessly about pushing white people into the sea.
You are not persecuted like gay people, for something that is beyond your control. Nobody throws you off buildings because you love someone you shouldn’t. So again, cut that out, it’s getting old, especially when some of us are well aware that your society not only hates gay people but actively persecutes them. You are the guys throwing them from buildings.
You do not get to keep stealing stories. You stole the identity of what was known as ‘Palestinian’. Before World War II the term meant Jews. But that’s OK, it’s a colonialist term, and I am sure that my Jewish friends don’t want it. They prefer to be called Jews, Hebrews, Israelites or Israelis, so you can take your colonialist garbage and get lost. (h/t Bob Knot)

Caroline Glick: The Republican fall guys

The ayatollahs will ride their nuclear pact with the Great Satan all the way to a nuclear arsenal and regional hegemony, repeating the cycles of brinksmanship, extortion, respite and brinksmanship that they learned from their North Korean teachers.
Obama won’t walk away from his signature foreign policy. He will devote his energies in his remaining time in office to covering up for Iran. That is why he is breaking the law he signed and refusing to hand over the side deals regarding the farcical nature of UN inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites to Congress.
Moreover, after insisting that the deal is the best way to prevent a holocaust or that it is the only way a Jewish mother can protect the homeland of her people, Democratic lawmakers are not going to rush to acknowledge that they are lying. Now that they’ve signed onto the deal, they own it.
Of course, the Iranians are another story. While the Democrats will not abandon the deal no matter what, the Iranians signed the deal in order to abandon it the minute it outlives its usefulness. And that works just fine for the Democrats.
The Democrats know that the Iranians will use any step the Republicans take to try to enforce the deal’s verification regime or condition sanctions relief on Iranian abidance by the deal’s restrictions on its nuclear activities as an excuse to walk away from the deal. They also know the Iranians will remain in the deal as long as it is useful to them.
Since the Iranians intend to hide their nuclear activities, the Democrats assume Tehran will stay in until it is financially and militarily ready to escalate its nuclear activities.
The Democrats believe that timetable will extend well beyond the lifespan of the Obama administration.
Whenever the Iranians leave, they can be depended on to blame US for their decision to vacate their signature. And the Democrats in turn will blame the Republicans for pushing the Iranians over the edge.
You have to give credit to the administration and its Iranian chums. At least they are consistent. They have constructed an agreement that gives them both what they care about most. Iran, as always, wants to dominate the region and develop the means to destroy Israel and its Arab adversaries at will. The administration, as always, wants to blame the Republicans.
Israel and the Arabs understand the game that is being played. It is time for the Republicans to get wise to it.

PMW: Abbas' description of Jewish history as "delusional myths" echoed on PA TV

A narrator on official PA TV stated that the "so-called Temple" is a "myth" and that stories about Jewish history in Jerusalem are "delusions and legends." This historical revision exemplifies the Palestinian Authority's policy of denying Jewish history in Jerusalem and denying the existence of the Temple.
PA TV narrator: "The story of the Temple is nothing but a collection of legends and myths for political reasons. They [Jews] have set Palestine and Jerusalem as their goal, and have used the myths in the service of their declared goals of occupation and imperialism. In the spirit of the delusions and legends, they try to get rid of the Al-Aqsa [Mosque] and establish their so-called 'Temple' - the greatest crime and forgery in history." [Official PA TV, Aug. 1, 2015]
This ideology and the use of such expressions come from the top PA echelons. Palestinian Media Watch documented that PA Chairman Abbas, in a speech to leaders of Muslim countries, defined Jewish history in Jerusalem as a "delusional myth" and claimed that Israel is trying to invent a Jewish history "by brute force":

Another UNRWA worker mocks religious Jews being murdered

UNRWA worker Hassan Alaer likes Hamas, as his Facebook page shows.

But he really hates Jews, and he likes to make fun of terror attacks on them,

Here's one that's even worse:

Will UNRWA discipline him? Not if they tolerate antisemitism from its own spokesperson.

I tweeted these cartoons to all UNRWA accounts on Sunday asking them to contact me if they want to find out the name of the employee who posted this, and I haven't heard any response. The assertion that UNRWA takes these kinds of reports seriously has been shown to be a sham.

Unless UNRWA's donors speak up and insist on full transparency for UNRWA's processes on how they deal with the scores of examples of such hate that I've uncovered, this sham will continue.

You can take action: UN Watch has published a form to send emails to major officials asking to investigate these types of posts.

I have so many examples that I cannot even post them all. I started tweeting some additional ones, like this.

It is embarrassingly easy to find @UNRWA teachers who post #Hamas propaganda on Facebook https://t.co/ORD36Q0KGJ pic.twitter.com/43fIgSLNgE
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) September 8, 2015

Netherlands textbook is blatantly anti-Israel

Likud.nl has complained to the publisher of a Dutch textbook that is filled with anti-Israel inaccuracies and invective, while pretending to be fair.

The first 20 pages of the text is online but the worst stuff is later on.

The organization identified some 41 errors, distortions and omissions. Some of the more notable ones:

Chapter 2 about the founding of Israel is called "Born of injustice, founded on injustice." The publisher claims that they are referring to the Holocaust. This is absurd.

"From the times of the patriarch Abraham (around 2000 BC) until Roman times Jews inhabited the land of Palestine." (Page 22) Besides the issue of calling the Land of Israel "Palestine," the book does not admit that Jews lived in Eretz Yisroel continuously since then. The publisher refused to correct that.

"The British government was urgently shy in the war for money. Jewish banking houses would be willing to favorable loan conditions as the government made a gesture to the Jewish people. "(Reasons for the Balfour Declaration, page 23).

This is one of four reasons given for the Balfour Declaration - Jewish money. Yet the book doesn't mention the main reason - that it was universally recognized that Jews were a nation, and that their homeland was historic Israel and Judea, and that they should be able to live there as a nation.

"The [Balfour Declaration] contained two irreconcilable promises:. On the one hand the establishment of a Jewish national home and on the other preserving the rights of the 'non-Jewish communities" (page 23)
There is no contradiction between the two unless you assume a priori that Jews cannot treat non-Jews' rights. If that is the case then neither can any other nation offer civil rights to minorities in an acceptable manner.

"In 1936 a civil war broke out in Palestine between Jews and Arabs." (Page 24)
It just "broke out!" No one at fault! The role of the Mufti is not mentioned. The murderous riots of 1929 (and earlier) are not mentioned.

I believe that the same publisher, Feniks (Phoenix,) wrote this timeline of Middle East history that shows the bias of the book (autotranslated)


70	Failed rebellion of the Jews against the Romans
! 869	Opening Suez Canal
1880	Begin Automotive
1882-1956	British occupation of Egypt. Egypt becomes British protectorate
1897	Establishment in Basel of the Zionist world organization with the aim of international legal recognition Jewish National home in Palestine
1908	Young Turks staged a coup.
1909	Founding British Petroleum (BP)
1909	Sultan Abdul Hamid II is deposed and replaced by a military triumvirate
1915	April: deportation of Armenians into the Syrian desert Genocide with 600,000 to 1 million victims.
1915	Mac Mahan Papers: The British High Commissioner in Egypt gives to the Arab prince Hussein Ibn Ali, the promise that he could establish an independent kingdom on the Arabian peninsula and into Syria and Iraq
1916	Sykes-Picot treaty. France and England shared the secret area in the Middle East.
1917	Balfour declaration: November 2nd. British Foreign Minister stated that the British Government was sympathetic to the establishment and Jewish National home in Palestine. In exchange for financial support from the banking house Rothschild
1919	Establishment League
1920	Treaty of Sevres, Arabs no independence
1920-1948	British mandate over Palestine
1920	Founding of the Haganah: Jewish defense force
1921	Establishment Jewish Agency, Jewish forerunner Government
1921	Transjordan is loosened by the British from Palestine
1923	Treaty of Lausanne which the boundaries of modern Turkey were recognized
1923	Exclamation secular state by Kemal Ataturk Turkey
1930	Establishment Mapai party, akin to the Histradoet
1935	Assumption in Nazi Germany of the Neurenburger laws, which all civil rights were taken away from the Jews.
1936	Outright civil war in Palestine between Jews and Arabs.
1942	Wannsee Conference (January), where the Nazis decided on the "final solution of the Jewish question."
1945	Establishment Arab League to promote Arab unity.
1945-1946	Nuremberg trials: Here the Nazis by the Allies sufferers were brought before a special court.
1946	Syria independence
1947	On November 29 the United Nations General Assembly is in favor of the partition of Palestine into a Jewish - and a Palestinian part.
1948	(April) Extremist Jews committed in the village of Deir Yassin massacre of 254 Arab residents
1948	(May 14) Establishment by David Ben Gurion of the independent Jewish state of Israel.
1948	(May 15) British Mandate of Palestine leave.
1948-1949	Revolutionary War between Israel and its Arab neighbors which Israel conquered West Jerusalem and the Negev Desert.
1948-1951	Doubling Israel's population of 650,000 to 1.3 million

1949	Truce between Israel and its Arab neighbors. File Lines were recognized as the borders of the new state of Israel. Gaza came under Egyptian administration. West Bank of the Jordan came under the management of Trans-Jordan. In 1950 lijfde King Abdullah in this at Jordan.
1952	Military coup in Egypt. King Farouk was deposed and Egypt became a republic under the leadership of Gamal Abdul Nasser
1956	Suez Canal war. France Britain and Israel occupied the Sinai desert and the area around the Suez Canal after Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. The two superpowers adopted strict action now and England, France and Israel had to withdraw their troops.
1958	Coup in Iraq. Royal family murdered. Iraq became a republic
1963	Coup in Syria by the Baath Party
1967	Six Day War in June. Israel managed to turn off the air forces of Egypt and Syria before it attacked Israel. Within six days, Israel won the war and occupied the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai and the West Bank including East Jerusalem.
1968	Saddam Hussein's grip, backed by the Baath Party, in power.

1970	After the death of Nasser Anwar Sadat became the new President of Egypt
1970	Hafez al-Assad of Syria leader
1973	October War / Yom Kippur War. During the Jewish holiday attacked the Egyptian - and the Syrian army invaded Israel. A big shock in Israel.Egypt won the psychological war.
1973	Oil Boycott proclaimed by OPEC.
1979	Signing of the Camp David agreement between the US, Egypt and Israel.The Sinai was returned to Egypt, they recognized each other and the Palestinians were given limited self-government.
1981	President Sadat of Egypt was assassinated. He was picked by President Mubarak follow.
1980-1988	War between Iraq and Iran.
1990	(August) Iraq within Kuwait. First Gulf War creates and will last until March 1991.
1990	Operation Desert Storm. Allied action to liberate Kuwait.
1995	Rabbin is murdered during a peace rally by a Jewish extremist
2003	(March 20) Initial Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Nothing about the Jewish kingdoms, Nothing about Jews moving to Israel during the 19th century. Nothing about Arab terror attacks against Jews or Palestinian airplane hijackings or Munich or Entebbe or the intifadas or even Oslo.

And the parts I highlighted are completely wrong.

When textbooks push lies, how can anyone expect the next generation to be able to look at Israel in a fair manner?

(h/t Het Vrije Volk)

UNRWA's Chris Gunness crosses into explicit antisemitism. He must be fired - NOW.

This is as blatant as it gets.

UNRWA's Chris Gunness just tweeted two separate articles from the antisemitic hate site Mondoweiss. In both cases his tweets have a single purpose: to denigrate Jews.

Not Zionists - Jews.

The first one was this:

His link is to Mondoweiss:

But the article, from JTA, was against the fringe of Jews who blamed Carter's cancer on his political positions. It quotes a leading Orthodox Rabbi in opposing such noxious views:

“Carter is not the only one dying from cancer. People in my own family were victims; pious and holy individuals I knew personally were targets of agonizing final ailments. But the Torah taught us not to dare make judgments based on equating someone’s suffering with sin and be guilty of the crime of the friends of Job.”

The article concludes by mocking those Jews (and Christians) who make such claims:

One can only guess how those who believe Jimmy Carter’s cancer is divine retribution are explaining the 90-plus years he has lived in relatively good health, trotting around the globe, selling books and maintaining a position of great influence.

Mondoweiss, of course, misrepresents the article by 180 degrees. JTA was exposing something ugly in a tiny outlier of the Jewish community and mocking it, and the Mondoweiss hate site pretended that JTA and JPost were supporting the ridiculous claims.

Gunness went further, and pretended that "leading newspaper" The Jerusalem Post - which he had called to boycott in the past - was reporting as news that Carter's cancer is retribution from God. The former BBC reporter didn't even bother reading the original source: he relied on hate site Mondoweiss to misrepresent the article. Anyone reading the Mondoweiss article would believe that Jews in general and Jewish publications hold these views.

This is antisemitism, pushed by Chris Gunness.

Gunness then apparently decided that Mondoweiss is the type of site that he can get all of his news from when looking for reasons to attack Jews. Again, not Zionist - Jews.

He dug up a Mondoweiss article that was over a year old:

What happened was this: The Times of Israel allowed bloggers to post pretty much whatever they wanted, without editorial oversight. One guy posted a highly offensive article saying that sometimes genocide is allowed under Jewish law. Both TOI and the 5 Towns Jewish Times, where it was also published, took down the article as soon as they realized what it said, and apologized for not overseeing the online publishing process better. They all agree that the article was noxious. even the author apologized within hours of the event.

Mondoweiss reprinted the article that practically all Jews including Orthodox Jews find reprehensible, with the explanation that it is "representative of part of the discourse in the American Jewish community" - in other words, purely to smear Jews.

Gunness decided today that this year old antisemitic slander is worth publicizing, because Gunness obviously believes that Jews are the problem and he, like his heroes at Mondoweiss, must shine a light on how ugly they are.

But Gunness goes further. Mondoweiss at least admits that the outlets removed the stories in very short order, and apologized. Gunness' tweets are meant to make his followers believe that these viewpoints - and every community has offensive fringe viewpoints - are widely held by religious Jews. And he is attackign the Times of Israel which acted quickly and responsibly to fix its flawed processes that allowed bloggers to post without editor oversight.

Why would Gunness bring this episode up now, stripped of context, if not to publicize his hate for Jews via Mondoweiss' bile?

Mondoweiss' antisemitism is clear. No less an anti-Zionist icon as MJ Rosenberg says it explicitly. it has been documented in The Atlantic. David Bernstein in a Washington Post Volokh Conspiracy blog gives many more examples.

And this hate site is now Chris Gunness' favorite place to link to, based on his last week of tweets.

In both these stories the Jewish community, including the Orthodox Jewish community, immediately responded forcefully against the odious views of a tiny minority.

In both these stories Chris Gunness of UNRWA twists the facts to make it appear that Jews are evil and that fringe viewpoints are mainstream.

This is antisemitism by any definition.

The online petition to investigate Gunness should go from 1000 signatures to 100,000 based on this explicit hate being promulgated not by Palestinian Arab employees of UNRWA but by a former BBC reporter who is UNRWA's public face. His hypocrisy is stunning and his hate is nauseating.

There is absolutely no excuse for a UN employee to act this way

Chris Gunness must be fired immediately.

UPDATE: Gunness deleted the tweets without apology.

09/08 Links Pt2: It Is Disgraceful to Compare European Migrants to Holocaust Victims

From Ian:

It Is Disgraceful to Compare European Migrants to Holocaust Victims

If we are to believe Robert Frolich, Hungary’s chief rabbi, we’re witnessing scenes not seen in Europe since the Holocaust. “It was horrifying when I saw those images [of migrants in Europe],” Frolich told The New York Times. “It reminded me of Auschwitz.”
What were those images? Thousands of migrants had entered the Czech Republic illegally, and police had written numbers on the arms of some with markers, to help keep track of them. This simple procedure reminded the rabbi of the tattooing of concentration camp inmates marked for death. Meanwhile, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and France have been erecting flimsy razor-wire fences in a desperate and unsuccessful bid to keep out illegal immigrants who have been pouring across their borders en masse for weeks and months.
Another outrage caused Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch’s Jewish executive director, to trot out his own Holocaust comparison. “Certainly those images of the trains can’t help but conjure up nightmares of the Holocaust,” he pontificated.
Roth was referring the trains carrying thousands of migrants from their points of illegal entry in sovereign nations like Hungary towards Germany, via Austria, where they had insisted on going, and where they would be housed in relative comfort – not shuffled off to their deaths in concentration camps.
“They tell them that the train was going to Austria and then take them to a camp instead,” Frolich chimed in. “[I]t is very similar to what happened to Jews in the 1940s.”
Is it? Such gratuitous comparisons to the fate of Jewish Holocaust victims are not only fatuous; they are disgraceful – especially coming from a rabbi and a human rights activist, both of whom should know better. It was the migrants themselves who had insisted on getting on those trains in the first place. When Hungarian authorities in Budapest tried to stop them, the asylum-seekers came close to rioting.

IsraellyCool: We Can’t Compare Syrian Refugees And Jews Fleeing Nazis

Since the moment we saw those pictures of that little boy washed up on the beach, there has been a clamouring noise from too many people keen to relate the current refugee crisis to the plight of the Jews in Nazi Europe. Let’s overlook the hundreds of thousands already murdered in Syria’s civil war.
So I was just wondering if I could ask something of all those people quick to claim that Syrian refugees are the new 1930’s Jews.
For those Jews who managed to escape Nazi Germany, where were the refugee camps, like the ones in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan today hosting 4,088,099 registered refugees (6th Sept). Because I’ve never heard anyone mention them. I’m sure a lot of Jews must have been saved in those camps.
As far as I know, in 1939 there were precisely zero Jewish countries and zero safe and secure refugee camps. I suspect if there had been a Jewish country or even a refugee camp it would have taken in some refugees. Worse: the major nations of the world, especially Britain, blocked Jews from reaching safety and sent them back to be murdered by Hitler.
There are 23 Arab countries and a somewhere north of 60 Muslim countries and beyond the immediate neighbours housing huge UNHCR camps, they are doing almost nothing to help and are certainly not offering to permanently settle refugees as the nations of Europe are being called upon to do.
To punch emotional buttons and compare people who are fleeing safe and secure (if desperately unpleasant and hopeless) refugee camps with the 6 million murdered Jews is really, really dark.

Douglas Murray: Where is the ‘Ummah’ now?

I have just returned from a trip abroad to find Britain and Europe in a state of madness. I will not reflect on any connections between these events. But perhaps a reader could enlighten me as to why in recent days Britain and Europe appear to have decided that Syria’s refugees are entirely ‘our’ responsibility. Other than a generalised sense that we are all human beings, Europeans are about as far down the list of those responsible as it is possible to be.
Neither this country nor any of our European allies have made any significant intervention in Syria’s civil war. So why should Hungarians and Slovakians, Austrians and Poles be expected to bear such a significant responsibility for this?
Whenever Britain or America or Israel do have any involvement in any Islamic country we hear a very great deal about the ‘Ummah’. The OIC and the Arab League, for instance, never miss an opportunity to talk about the brotherhood and unity of the Islamic nation and how much any ‘hurt’ or offence to any part of this entity hurts and offends the whole.
Well Iran and Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Turkey and almost every other Muslim country in the Middle East have been involving themselves in the Syrian civil war for four years now. Many have sent fully-equipped armies of their own to fight intra-Islamic rivalries in the homeland of the Syrian peoples. And yet it is Europeans who are falling for the idea that because of this, it is our responsibility – not theirs – to pay for the mess they have created.
Well it seems to me that at the very least we should ask these countries ‘Where is your “Ummah” now?’ Sure, Jordan and Lebanon are grudgingly having to cope with plenty of refugees from Syria. But not one of the Gulf States – not one – has a resettlement programme for a single Syrian refugee.

From Now Lebanon (August 18):

In July 2014, Hezbollah buried a 16-year-old fighter, Muhammad Ali Hussein Awada, who had been killed fighting Syrian opposition militants in the mountainous Lebanese-Syrian border zone. The revelation of his age, observers noted at the time, implied the Party of God – straining to hold larger swathes of territory with fewer men – had abandoned its former requirement that all fighters sent into live combat be at least 18 years of age.

Since then, evidence of Hezbollah sending children – defined by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as all people under 18 – to the frontlines of the war in Syria has mounted steadily. The pro-Hezbollah website SouthLebanon.org, which publicizes funerals of the militia's fighters killed "in confrontation with the mercenaries of disbelief and Wahhabism" – a reference to Sunni militants – has to date published photos of over two dozen "mujahideen martyrs" who appear likely to have been under 18 (see above image).

When the case of one obviously juvenile fatality, that of 15-year-old Mashhoor Shams al-Din, came to light in April 2015, the Party issued a statement denying he was killed fighting in Syria, claiming instead that he succumbed to a "saddening accident" in south Lebanon. Syrian opposition activists had asserted he was killed fighting in Syria's Qalamoun region; the same place 16-year-old Awada was killed the previous year.

Besides violating international law, this indicates that Hezbollah needs to recruit children to keep its Syria adventure from collapsing.

Then again, now that Russia seems poised to help Syria's regime and Iran will be flush with cash to pay Hezbollah terrorists, this might change.

This year, as I’m hardly the first blogger to point out, has seen the centenary of the Leo Frank Affair. For anyone unfamiliar with that grim episode in American history, let’s have a brief recap of events. Leo Frank was the Texas-born (1884) Brooklyn-raised son of German Jewish parents. A graduate of Cornell University, he lived in Georgia from 1908 and married a girl from a prominent Atlanta Jewish family. He was president of the local B’nai B’rith branch.

By occupation, Frank was superintendent of his uncle’s pencil-manufacturing factory, where on 26 April 1915 a fourteen-year-old employee, Mary Phagan, was found strangled in the basement. Many recent attacks on females in Atlanta, including eighteen murders, sat unresolved in police files, and with this latest outrage there was mounting pressure on police to make an early arrest. The black nightwatchman who found Mary’s body having been cleared of suspicion, attention then turned to Frank, whose manner at the best of times was inclined to be tense and shifty and whose conduct under questioning gave the impression of guilt. He had been one of the few people in the factory on that fatal Saturday when Mary had come to collect her wages, and was unable to supply a convincing alibi for himself in relation to the surmised time of her death.

Standing trial amid a climate of mob hostility, he was found guilty in August 1915 on the unsafe, well-rehearsed evidence of the man who was almost certainly the actual killer – a black sweeper at the factory who was a convicted thief – and sentenced to hang. A lengthy appeals procedure ensued, and although Leonard Roan, the judge in the case, rejected a request for a new trial Georgia’s governor, convinced that there had been serious overlooked discrepancies in the prosecution testimony, signed a commutation order for the death sentence. For this the governor was widely reviled. An angry crowd that attacked his residence had to be repelled by state troopers. And not long afterwards, on 17 August 1915, vigilantes abducted Leo Frank from gaol and hanged him from a tree near Mary’s home.

Very early on in the case Atlanta Jews requested the president of the American Jewish Committee, distinguished constitutional lawyer Louis B. Marshall, to intervene in the ‘American “Dreyfus” case’ that had emerged in their city. Other Jewish leaders in the North were similarly approached. All moved cautiously, reluctant to be thought to support the cause of Jews convicted of felonies. And when, during the appeals procedure, they did get involved and a fund to meet Frank’s legal costs were involved, many Georgians furiously assumed that wealthy northern Jews were attempting to buy a guilty man’s acquittal. Nevertheless, Judge Leonard Roan’s denial of a fresh trial prompted tens – indeed hundreds – of thousands of people in and outside Georgia to sign petitions pleading for the death sentence to be commuted. Among the local petitioners were members of the prosecution’s legal team, as well as noted legal authorities in Georgia uneasy about the evidence on which Frank was convicted, some bluntly stating their belief in his innocence. A New York petition garnered 800, 000 signatures; a Chicago one 600,000. Among the many celebrated and public figures across America demanding a retrial was, curiously, Henry Ford, later to be infamous for propagating antisemitism in his Dearborn Independent. Pleas for Frank’s life rang out from newspaper editorials, correspondence columns, professional associations, women’s groups, and Christian pulpits, as well as from eleven state governors to their Georgian counterpart. At a number of public rallies non-Jewish speakers claimed antisemitism as a factor in Frank’s conviction: “The outcries of the mob … were not against Frank – it was a cry against the Jew” thundered one ever-reliable philosemitic crusader, Madison Peters.

While it was extraordinary for a court in the South to convict a white person, Jew or non-Jew, on the testimony of a black person, the role of antisemitism in the Affair should probably not be exaggerated – at any rate in the early stages. Jews had been long-established in Georgia; five Jews sat on the grand jury that indicted Frank; although there were rumblings about East European immigration to Atlanta and its impact on blue collar workers’ wages, the rumblings were not specifically about Jews. Frank’s status as an employer and industrialist from the North, and as a perceived exploiter of cheap female labour, seems to have been a more significant element in prejudice about him than his Jewishness. True, “damned Jew” was a term bandied around during the case, but had he been Italian the term “damned Guinney” would, as one observer noted, probably have substituted. Yet the Leo Frank Affair occurred at a time of heightened social antisemitism in the United States – indeed, at a time when, as with the Dreyfus (1899-1907) and Beilis (1913) Affairs, Social Darwinist assumptions about the inequality of races had gained ground, even in the United States, as evidenced by Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race (1916) – and aroused a great deal of fear among American Jews.

Defending Leo Frank, the socialist New York Call explained: ‘It is not because this man is a Jew … that we interest ourselves in his behalf, but because of the dubious character of the “justice” meted out to him’. Socialists were likely to hold ambivalent feelings towards Jews, all too often exhibiting what has been dubbed, by one historian, “rich Jew antisemitism” with their depiction of Jews as plutocrats or their perception of all Jews as rich. I strongly suspect that this attitude is alive and well in some of today’s Corbynistas in Britain. Indeed, even at best, leftist support for Jews seems predicated on the proviso that Jews must be victims to merit sympathy rather than to be admired for any traits in their ethos and culture which may be deemed worthy. I will return to, and enlarge upon, this theme in a subsequent post on the typology of philosemitism and won’t discuss it further here, except to say that it’s reflected in a description that the British nineteenth-century Liberal statesman William Ewart Gladstone wrote in 1896 about himself, declaring that he was “strongly anti-anti-Semitism”.

Alas, these days, we are apt to find that some elements seem not even that. Witness the reluctance of leftist elements within the British Labour Party unequivocally to distance themselves from Israel’s existential enemies and from Holocaust Deniers. Witness the current decision of New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione not to prosecute for racist vilification under the terms of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act Ismail al-Wahwah, head of the Caliphate-seeking Hizb ut Tahrir Australia, who on videos offered in evidence reportedly described the Jew as “the most evil creature of Allah” and declared “Moral corruption is linked to the Jews… the ember of Jihad against the Jews will continue to burn. Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews … tomorrow you Jews will see what will become of you – an eye for an eye, blood for blood, destruction for destruction. There is only one solution for this cancerous tumour: it must be uprooted and thrown back to where it came from.” (Apparently – despite the phrasing! – the speaker claims he was speaking only of the State of Israel, and Scipione believes that there is insufficient evidence to mount a case against him!).

09/08 Links Pt1: How bad is the Iran deal? Let’s count the ways; When will the Left wake up?

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Does It Really Matter Who the Next Palestinian President Is?

It is hard to understand why some Westerners believe that Abbas's departure could boost the prospects of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. To many Palestinians, it is clear that the PLO or Fatah official who replaces Abbas will not be able to make any concessions to Israel. Any Palestinian leader who dares to make the slightest concession to Israel will be denounced as a traitor and will be lucky if he stays in power or stays alive.
The West needs to understand that no Palestinian leader is authorized to make concessions to Israel for the sake of peace. Neither the PLO nor the Fatah leaderships would ever approve of such concessions. And, of course, Hamas also will never accept any peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, except one that leads to the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic empire in the region.
Saeb Erekat has been negotiating with Israel for the past two decades and his position has never changed. Like Arafat and Abbas, he too will never sign a peace agreement with Israel that does not include 100% of the territories captured by Israel in 1967. Erekat is not authorized to make any concessions on Jerusalem or the "right of return" for Palestinians to their former homes inside Israel.
Abbas's successor will undoubtedly declare that he intends to follow in the footsteps of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas may go, but his legacy, like that of Arafat, will not.

How bad is the Iran deal? Let’s count the ways

A fatwa that doesn’t exist, a wish list that no one signed, a resolution that contradicts the wish list, a protocol that no one has seen…
These are the elements with which President Obama claims he has concocted a strategy to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions and stop it exporting murder and mayhem.
Supposedly issued by Iran’s “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, the fatwa declares nuclear weapons as “illicit” (haram) in Islam.
Obama cites it as “proof” that Iran does not intend to build a bomb. The president has never said he has seen the fatwa, which, in any case, would have no legal or religious weight.
However, those who refer to the fatwa, including some mullahs, always credit Obama as the source of their information. In the 18th century, Mullah Sadra liked to say that “you will see only if you believe.” He has a disciple in Obama.

Samantha Power sides with the oppressor

The United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power recently wrote a piece for Politico arguing the Congress not reject the nuclear deal with Iran.
In short she argued that rejecting the deal would leave the United States, not Iran isolated and the ability of the United States would be greatly compromised in its ability to influence outcomes globally.
What makes Power’s plea so inexplicable is her record. As Claudia Rosett explained back in July:
Thirteen years ago, Samantha Power made a name for herself with her Pulitzer prize-winning book, “‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide.” In this book, she explored the history of America’s reluctance to intervene to stop or prevent genocides. Prescribing American intervention as justified on grounds both “moral” and in service of “enlightened self-interest,” Power asked how something so clear in retrospect as the need to stop genocide could “become so muddled at the time by rationalization, institutional constraints, and a lack of imagination.”
In her argument for making the nuclear deal with Iran, one word from Power was missing, “Syria.”
Power, following her area of expertise, has been very vocal about the terrible carnage inflicted by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on his country. In August she blasted the regime for its use of barrel bombs and threatened to hold Assad and members of his government responsible for the use of chemical weapons.
But given the way the United States has acted in reaction to Assad’s crossing of a “red line” two years ago with a chemical weapons attack, these words are empty. After suggesting that he would use military force in response to the atrocity, President Barack Obama suddenly chose not too.

UNRWA teacher calls for violent uprising, with specific instructions

Chris Gunness of UNRWA said that his organization takes reports ofviolations of neutrality by its staff very seriously. But it is not difficult to find postings by UNRWA teachers that violate those standards.

And there is no indication that UNRWA is doing anything beyond lip service.

Today's example comes from UNRWA teacher Mohamed Elayan, of Jordan.

He wants to see Arabs in the West Bank start a new intifada. And not a peaceful one, either.

The (West) Bank is rising up for Gaza

A call for every honorable patriot in the (West) Bank of honor: let us shake [intifada] for the blood that is being spilt in Gaza, and let our blood unite and our souls embrace in the heavens, let us set out every day to defend our umma (nation) and fight the soldiers of the enemy everywhere.

Places of confrontations:

In black letters it lists Jerusalem, Ramallah, Jenin, Qalqiliya, Hebron, Nablus, Betlehem, and Tul Karem.

Underneath each are specific places to attack, for example, the places mentioned for Ramallah are: Ni’ilin, the Ofer gate (the entrance to the Ofer Prison), the Atarot checkpoint, Bi’ilin, Nabi Saleh,, Qalandiya checkpoint ans Sinjil.

This UNRWA teacher is handing out a lesson plan for war.

Last April, entertainer Pharrell Williams announced he will partner with Woolworth's in South Africa:

Woolworths chief executive Ian Moir announced on Thursday that the retailer is collaborating on the “Are you With Us?” campaign with US musician, producer and philanthropist Pharrell Williams across a series of sustainability-focused projects.

The campaign has four layers: pure entertainment, showcasing young talent, fundraising for education, and driving sustainable fashion.

The global superstar will be putting on a private concert for 5 000 Woolworths customers. Woolworths W Rewards, Credit and MySchool cardholders could win a ticket to an exclusive, one-night-only performance in September.

Moir expressed his desire for Williams to spend some time at some of the country’s schools who are recipients of the funds generated when customers swipe their MySchool cards. It ties in with the “Sing with Us” initiative, where school singing groups will be given the opportunity to perform live alongside Williams during his one-night-only concert. Entrants will be shortlisted and chosen personally by the musician.

Williams and MySchool will also be calling on customers to help the brand raise R100-million for schools in need across the country through swiping their MySchool MyVillage MyPlanet cards.

The brand will also be collaborating with Bionic Yarn, a company with creates fabric out of recycled plastic waste, to create a range of limited edition, sustainable T-shirts. According to the press statement, design students are invited to create and submit designs for these T-shirts from which Williams will select his favourite designs, which will then be produced and sold at Woolworths stores. Winners will each receive R25 000 in prize money.

Education, recycling, and helping young entertainers? Who can be against this?

BDSers. that's who.

Apparently Woolworth's sells some Israeli goods. And that is enough to make the BDS crowd livid.

To make matters worse, Williams is playing a concert in Israel in coming weeks.

Now, BDS South Africa has turned Woolworth's into the enemy.

This scene was apparently done throughout stores last weekend:

A GROUP of Young Communist League (YCL) members ambushed Woolworths Shelly Beach on Saturday morning in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement and the “Boycott Woolworths” campaign.

The global campaign is aimed at increasing economic and political pressure on Israel to comply with the goals by the movement - the end of Israeli occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land, total equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and respect for the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

The group entered Woolworths Shelly Beach as normal shoppers, filled their trolleys and then headed to the tills where they told cashiers they refuse to pay for items that are made in Israel.

Fortunately, the Woolworths manager and security personnel acted fast and asked them to leave.

They plan to make the biggest protest against an artist in South African history when he gives his free concert. All the good he is doing is meaningless next to his peripheral involvement with Israel.

That's crazy. But it is only the beginning.

Here's another example of how much South Africa hates Israel:

From Eyewitness News (South Africa):

The African National Congress (ANC) is reported to be reviewing South Africa's dual citizenship policy in a bid to stop South African citizens from taking up arms for the Israeli military.

The Sunday Times newspaper is reporting that ANC also wants to crackdown on private sector ties with Israel.

However, this move would also affect others, who hold dual citizenship with countries besides the Jewish state.

The issue to ban dual citizenship was apparently discussed at the ruling party’s July lekgotla and will come up again next month at its national general council.

The head of the ANC'd National Executive Committee on International Relations, Obed Bapela, told the newspaper that they were assessing whether the world still needs the model of dual citizenship.

Immigration lawyers are however opposed to the idea saying it smacks of political grandstanding.

The proposition has also drawn sharp criticism from the South African Jewish Board of Deputies which has accused the ANC of becoming openly hostile to South Africa/Jewish citizens.

Because a tiny minority of South Africans hold dual citizenship with Israel, the ANC wants to abolish dual citizenship altogether.

How crazy is that?

Now, one of the leading BDS advocates in SA has abandoned all pretense of opposing violence:

We already know that hate is irrational.And there is no hate more irrational than antisemitism, even when it is disguised as "anti-Zionism."

Recipe for an anti-Israel slander (Independent-UK edition)

First, take a non-peer reviewed report that makes wild claims that are not substantiated by facts.

As Israellycool reported last month:

On the 4th of August a pseudo-scientific study about infant mortality in Gaza (in 2013) was published in an open access journal.

Her team’s study has many problems (which is probably why it wasn’t submitted to any kind of prestigious journal) but the biggest one can be found in these two statements, first from the “discussion” section and then from the “conclusion”:

Discussion: However, post-neonatal mortality rate declined significantly and the infant mortality rate was only slightly higher. These estimates are based on small numbers of deaths, and the confidence intervals are wide, so the infant mortality rate could in fact be stable or continuing to decline.

Conclusion: In conclusion, we have estimated that, for the first time in five decades, the mortality rate has increased among Palestine refugee newborns in Gaza, and this may reflect inadequate neo-natal care in hospitals.

That’s pretty clear. They didn’t have enough data to reach the conclusion they did.

Now, even with this conclusion not supported by the facts, look at what the paper offers as the reason for the supposed increase in mortality rate: inadequate neo-natal care in Gaza hospitals, nothing to do with Israel.

Second, have a lying UN organization issue a press release that exaggerates and misreports what the report says - and blames Israel:

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

Third, bask in the coverage this press release gets when no one actually looks at the source.

Fourth, wait a few weeks and then write an op-ed for The Independent to that adds to the lies even more:

Israel’s blockade is a likely contributor to the trend of rising infant mortality in Gaza. For the people of Gaza, being held under Israeli siege for nearly ten years now has meant the denial of proper access to the essentials of life, including medicines, food, water, electricity for heating, lighting and cooking.

...Western lobbyists are right to call for the EU to impose immediate sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel until it ends the blockade of Gaza. If Israel isn’t willing of its own accord to give those children a chance at survival, it must be forced to do so.

The link that she gives for Israel's supposedly denying access to food and medicine and water says no such thing - because Israel doesn't restrict food or medicine of water to Gaza, nor does it restrict fuel, as long as someone pays for it. She simply lied and then linked to something that she knows few will check.

Moreover, even if there was an increase in infant mortality, the most likely cause is - Hamas! Hamas replaced hospital administrators and staff with Hamas loyalists. Hamas has attacked doctors who protested those moves. Hamas reportedly routinely stole medicines sent to Gaza from NGOs and sold them for profit. Hamas has stopped doctors from traveling to medical conferences even after Israel gave them permission to do so.

There you have it: an entire recipe for slander. And it is one that we have seen variants of many times before.

09/07 Links Pt2: Under cover of darkness – the Jewish anti-Semite; Who gains from BDS?

From Ian:

Under cover of darkness – the Jewish anti-Semite

Shortly after the start of the 2nd intifada, when Ariel Sharon’s footsteps on Temple Mount were being blamed for every other Palestinian home conveniently possessing an illegal weapon, my love affair with online forums began in earnest. It was an interesting time, and experience soon taught me the difference between those that ‘know’ and those that ‘think’.
Despite the anonymity that forums provide, online sentiments were still far more guarded then than they are now (although it didn’t seem that way at the time), and if you truly felt the need to face a barrage of blatant anti-Semitism, then outlets such as Stormfront or Icke were the place to be. I remember spending months reading posts about the scientific ‘proof’ that Auschwitz didn’t contain gas chambers. I think the most absurd argument I was ever involved in, was with a proud ‘denier’ regarding the death count from the Warsaw Ghetto; these people are fanatics to the extreme and there is no limit to the conspiracies they wish to create. Those discussions are not for the faint hearted.
However absurd it might sound, there is a comfort in the familiarity of arguing against the easily identifiable form of classic anti-Semitism; these people after all, wear their hatred like a badge. The poison they carry is clearly labelled, and unlike other sources and forms of anti-Semitism, it is neither dressed up nor marketed as treacle syrup. There is also near universal condemnation, and if a Jew stands up to a modern day Nazi, he is likely to find a fair number of different groups on his side. Fascism is the comfort zone of the argument on anti-Semitism; but what then of anti-Semitism outside of the comfort zone, anti-Semitism disguised as something it is not, anti-Semitism being sold as treacle syrup?
Having set up camp in opposition to the University of Southampton’s support of Oren Ben Dor’s proposed conference earlier this year, I developed a solid fascination with the writings of those like Ben Dor; people in the UK, who were born in Israel and who for whatever reason adamantly oppose all things Zionist. Whilst I was always aware of them, it is over the last few months that I have become far more acquainted with their positions, and people such as Atzmon, Pappe & Ben Dor have hardly a piece published on Israel, Jews or Zionism that I have not recently read. Along with Jewish non-Israelis like Blumenthal, their written output is craved by and disseminated on every anti -Zionist and anti-Semitic outlet on the web; Pro-Palestinian sites use them to fight the pro-Israeli message, whilst anti-Semitic sites market them as Jewish whistle blowers exposing the global Jewish conspiracy.

Hamas and New Israel Fund Bigwigs Back U.K.’s Labour Contender Jeremy Corbyn

Clearly, a Corbyn-led U.K. would not be friendly to the Jewish state.
One of the very few members of the U.K. Jewish community proudly standing with Corbyn is Rhea Wolfson, who serves as the campaign manager for the Young Labour Party. According to her Linkedin profile, she also serves as Communications and Outreach Manager at New Israel Fund U.K.. Indeed, her photo is prominently featured on NIF’s U.K. website. Wolfson says Corbyn “offers something different,” commenting that his “straight talk” has swayed her.
This is not surprising. Corbyn’s views on a boycott of Israel precisely mirror the position of the NIF. He recently remarked, “Is it right that we should be supplying arms in that situation? Is it right that we should be importing goods made in illegal settlements across the West Bank? Wouldn’t a stronger message be to those Israelis who want to live in peace with the Palestinians – and there are very many people in Israel that do, we recognize that – that the process of some economic measures might be helpful?”
Hamas also praised Corbyn. In an article in The Telegraph this weekend, Hamas Deputy Foreign Minister Ghazi Hamad said, “I find that [Corbyn] has very good sympathy and support for the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian struggle and he is frankly against the occupation, against the racist policy of Israel, against settlements.”
In 2010, the Knesset pursued an investigation into the New Israel Fund. At the time, Yisrael Hasson, MK from the centrist Kadima party and former deputy director of the Shin Bet security services, implied that the NIF could be receiving funds from Israel’s sworn enemies. During that period, he was quoted in the Israeli media saying, “If I were Al-Qaeda, I wouldn’t think twice, I would give to them.”
Birds of a feather flock together.

The Tamimi masterclass on media manipulation

Bassem Tamimi’s version was of course vague enough to allow both of them to fill in details and dramatize as needed when they were asked a few days later how their son had broken his arm. Bassem Tamimi chose to come up with the frightening scenario of a tank ploughing through the village, forcing his son to flee in panic; whereas his wife felt the need to invent the very different scenario of an IDF attack on the house, because she wanted to justify her insistence that it was best for her children to be sent out to confront soldiers.
Both obviously counted on the credulity of the reporters and didn’t expect to be asked for any evidence. Their son had a cast on his arm – who would doubt that in some way or other, a vicious act of the brutal “IOF” was to blame? One can only wonder how often the Tamimis have played the same game without being caught as liars.
But worse than their lies and their shameless manipulation of the media – which, after all, love to be fed the kind of stories the Tamimis are eager to provide – is their ruthless exploitation of their children. It emerged in the comments responding to Nariman Tamimi’s post that this was already the second time that her son Mohammad had broken his arm, presumably under similar circumstances. But when a concerned friend suggested it was “enough” and time to stop, Nariman Tamimi defiantly responded “Either victory or martyrdom.” It is a terrible thing to say, but given the way the Tamimis have exploited their children so far, it seems not unthinkable that they might ultimately consider the “martyrdom” of one of them a “victory.”
And make no mistake: the “victory” for which the Tamimis are fighting is not the peaceful co-existence of the Jewish State of Israel and an Arab-Muslim Palestinian state. In various interviews published on sites that oppose Israel’s existence as a Jewish state – such as the “hate-site” Mondoweiss and The Electronic Intifada (from where an interview conducted by the notorious Max Blumenthal was even cross-posted on the website of the Al-Qassam Brigades), Bassem Tamimi has indicated that he is a determined proponent of the so-called “one-state-solution” that would absorb the world’s only Jewish state into yet another Arab-Muslim majority state.

#FreeDolphinFromHamas rally a spectacular success in Berlin

I mentioned that a rally was planned for last Friday in Alexanderplatz, Berlin, in order to call attention to the plight of the Mossad dolphin captured by Hamas.

The photos of the rally are great.

"Antidolphinism is not OK"

"Dolphin are people too!"

"Freedom for our comrades-in-fins" (h/t Jerry)

This seems to have gotten far more people to march than any BDS rally I've ever seen. And they had police protection too - which is funny but also very sad.