Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 12, 2015

Bret Stephens tells it like it is (WSJ)

Regarding the causes of this Palestinian blood fetish, Western news organizations have resorted to familiar tropes. Palestinians have despaired at the results of the peace process—never mind that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas just declared the Oslo Accords null and void. Israeli politicians want to allow Jews to pray atop the Temple Mount—never mind that Benjamin Netanyahu denies it and has barred Israeli politicians from visiting the site. There’s always the hoary “cycle of violence” formula that holds nobody and everybody accountable at one and the same time.

Left out of most of these stories is some sense of what Palestinian leaders have to say. As in these nuggets from a speech Mr. Abbas gave last month: “Al Aqsa Mosque is ours. They [Jews] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet.” And: “We bless every drop of blood spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah.”

Then there is the goading of the Muslim clergy. “Brothers, this is why we recall today what Allah did to the Jews,” one Gaza imam said Friday in a recorded address, translated by the invaluable Middle East Media Research Institute, or Memri. “Today, we realize why the Jews build walls. They do not do this to stop missiles but to prevent the slitting of their throats.”

Then, brandishing a six-inch knife, he added: “My brother in the West Bank: Stab!”

Imagine if a white minister in, say, South Carolina preached this way about African-Americans, knife and all: Would the news media be supine in reporting it? Would we get “both sides” journalism of the kind that is pro forma when it comes to Israelis and Palestinians, with lengthy pieces explaining—and implicitly justifying—the minister’s sundry grievances, his sense that his country has been stolen from him?

And would this be supplemented by the usual fake math of moral opprobrium, which is the stock-in-trade of reporters covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? In the Middle East version, a higher Palestinian death toll suggests greater Israeli culpability. (Perhaps Israeli paramedics should stop treating stabbing victims to help even the score.) In a U.S. version, should the higher incidence of black-on-white crime be cited to “balance” stories about white supremacists?

Didn’t think so.

Treatises have been written about the media’s mind-set when it comes to telling the story of Israel. We’ll leave that aside for now. The significant question is why so many Palestinians have been seized by their present blood lust—by a communal psychosis in which plunging knives into the necks of Jewish women, children, soldiers and civilians is seen as a religious and patriotic duty, a moral fulfillment. Despair at the state of the peace process, or the economy? Please. It’s time to stop furnishing Palestinians with the excuses they barely bother making for themselves.

Above all, it’s time to give hatred its due. We understand its explanatory power when it comes to American slavery, or the Holocaust. We understand it especially when it is the hatred of the powerful against the weak. Yet we fail to see it when the hatred disturbs comforting fictions about all people being basically good, or wanting the same things for their children, or being capable of empathy.

Today in Israel, Palestinians are in the midst of a campaign to knife Jews to death, one at a time. This is psychotic. It is evil. To call it anything less is to serve as an apologist, and an accomplice.

10/12 Links Pt2: The Guardian celebrates Marwan Barghouti; The Ripple Effect of Media Bias

From Ian:

Guardian celebrates Marwan Barghouti, and obfuscates his support for ‘armed resistance’

Note the curious decision by Black to add the hashtag #Intifada, presumably to generate interest in the op-ed among the radical, pro-“resistance” crowd.
Last year, in a UKMW post exploring the likely reaction by the Guardian in the event a new Intifada began, we came to the following conclusion:
There are quite a few factors which lead us to believe that many Guardian reporters and editors will likely lend moral support to the Palestinians in the event they launch another deadly intifada.
Specifically, the paper has shown a clear tendency in the past to license extremist commentators who reject peace and reconciliation with Israel and legitimize (if not justify) Palestinian terrorism. Additionally, their binary moral paradigm in which Palestinians are seen as immutable victims of Israeli oppression further necessitates at least tacit support for the Palestinians’ recourse to violence.
The Guardian’s decision to publish an op-ed by an unrepentant Palestinian terrorists responsible for the murder of several civilians, and the promotion of that piece by their Jerusalem correspondent and Middle East editor, serves as additional evidence that the media group can indeed be expected to provide moral cover for the next coordinated Palestinian onslaught against innocent Jews.

UN official who was hit by rocks says, May Allah forgive them

A senior UN official who was hurt when Palestinians threw rocks at his car wrote on Facebook that “Allah will forgive the rock throwers,” according to a report in the website NRG.
Mounir Kleibo heads the bureau of the International Labor Organization in the Palestinian Territories, a UN agency.
According to NRG, Kleibo’s Facebook profile is bluntly pro-Palestinian, despite his being an official of the UN and as such expected to be impartial.
Kleibo’s cover picture shows the dome of the al-Aqsa Mosque and his profile picture is the word “Shuhada” [“Martyrdom”] on a black background.
In one of his posts, Kleibo wrote that “we mourn not only our shahids but also ourselves, our eyes, our hearts, our consciousness and our humanity.”
In a post published after the stone-throwing attack, and accompanied by photos apparently taken from his hospital bed, Kleibo says he is okay and so is his wife, Tamara, and writes, “May Allah forgive those who throw the rocks at night.”
A Foreign Ministry official tells NRG that “one must regret the fact that the UN did not explicitly condemn all Palestinian stone throwers, who hurt, among others, a senior UN official. One can be even sorrier that the same official, a victim of Palestinian violence, continues praising it on his Facebook page.” (h/t Bob Knot)

Daphne Anson: 'Twas Da Joos What Did It, Suggests Gorgeous George

Well, well, well! Here's Gorgeous George, speaking on Iran's satellite propaganda channel Press TV a few days ago (8 October), proving that behind those icy baby blues is a sense of humour and a vivid imagination!
I mean, he'd hardly be likely to advance a blood libel, would he?
(Incidentally, George, it's "Western Wall" not "Wailing Wall," the latter being considered an offensive term.)

Weeds on "Islam's third holiest site," circa 1960

Over the years I have documented how much the "third holiest site in Islam" was in disrepair before any Jews were on the scene.

Like this photo showing lots of overgrown weeds around the Dome of the Rock in 1901:

And I found video and photos from the 1954 showing the same thing:

I also made a video comparing how the ground of the Temple Mount was filled with weeds when it was Judenrein, compared to the floor of the Kotel in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Now, reader Irene found more recent photos from 1960 showing the same weeds and neglect by Jordan for the holy site, both outside the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque:

No one willing to sacrifice their lives for "Al Aqsa" then. In fact, few Muslims seemed very interested in visiting it to begin with.

And this is when it was under Muslim rule, when there were no restrictions whatsoever on access by the devout West Bank Jordanians, or the East Bankers for that matter. Saudis and Yemenis could visit if they wanted. The only people who couldn't visit were Jews.

But the Muslims treated this holy site with contempt. King Hussein did fix up the Dome of the Rock and he re-gilded it, but that wasn't because of huge crowds that were coming - it was to attract more Muslim tourists who otherwise couldn't be bothered to visit.

Only when Jews arrived on the scene did this become one of the most important issues in the world. Only when Jews want to quietly visit the site do many Muslims decide that they must go into a murderous rage. Only when Jews tell the world that this was a Jewish site that was usurped by Muslims do the Muslims decide that perhaps they care about it after all.

Funny how that happens.

Terror on the Road to Tekoa (Estee Hart)

Today Estee Hart starts her new column for EoZ. Welcome!

Imagine waking up on a beautiful, cool October morning after the holidays here in Israel. You walk your daughter to school, kiss your husband goodbye, and proceed to the trempiyada here in Tekoa Israel. The Trempiyada as we Israelis call it is the bus stop and area where residents of my settlement hitch to various cities and towns in Israel; mainly Jerusalem and surrounding municipalities.

On a good day, I immediately get rides going to my ulpan in Beit Haam near Nachla'ot. Wednesday was just an ordinary day or so we thought. Once in the car with the lovely young couple, we proceeded to drive on the road Palestinians share with us. I say that because it's our country, and they should thank us and G-d for letting them use our roads.

Anyone who has driven these roads knows about the big red signs that forbid us from entering Area A of the PA Authority designated as Judenrein (Jew-free). We came upon a Palestinian car carrying four men. The driver attempted to pass them, however, they slowed down purposely and proceeded to start road blocking us from passing. If the driver went left, the PA licensed plate car went left, if we veered to the right, they went to the right. Silence descended upon all of us. I could feel tension rising in all of us. The blocking, slowing down brought me to visions of being ambushed. I really thought it was going to be a disaster if we didn't swerve away from this car.

In a matter of minutes, three lives could have been gone if this smart, young woman did not take the opportunity when there was no oncoming traffic in the opposite lane. Hashem gave us a way out, and it wasn't my time. In a matter of seconds a son, daughter, sister, mother, wife, brother, husband could have lost their lives at the hands of four Palestinian Arabs.

Fast forward five and a half hours later on the same road: I tremp back to Tekoa from the Har Homa bus stop, and I am always lucky to get a ride with a Tekoa resident who knows me. Passing by Beit Sahour, we saw rocks the size of boulders, concrete used for building and knew a car had been attacked. It happened at approximately 9:00 am in the morning. Minutes after we passed by this Palestinian village. It could have been me. It could have been anyone living in Tekoa and the surrounding settlements in Gush Etzion.

It was a 40 year old mother whose car was pelted with these weapons, dragged out of her car. They kicked, punched, and almost abducted her. If it wasn't for the bravery of Josh Hasten firing a warning shot into the air forcing these barbarians to disperse, there is no telling what would have happen to my fellow Tekoan resident.

Over fourteen stabbings in three days. The first would-be suicide bomber of the season, a brave police officer who risked his life to divert what could have been an untimely tragedy for all of us in our great Jewish homeland.

The world is silent. The UN is furiously coming up with recycled resolutions. Mogherini is useless in demanding a Palestinian State all so she can remain relevant in a continent that has no use for her EU position. John Kerry is morally equating the conflict.

Our military; the brave, young men and woman of the Israel Defense Forces are doing everything humanely possible to keep us safe from harm. My brothers and sisters, I beg you, now is the time no matter where you are in Israel, stop when you see a chayal or chayelet and thank them for putting their lives on the line so that we and our children can live.

10/12 Links Pt1: Palestinian parents celebrate terrorist children's Martyrdom, PA promotes it

From Ian:

PMW: Palestinian parents celebrate terrorist children's Martyrdom-death, PA promotes it

Amid the current Palestinian riots and wave of terror attacks, Palestinian Authority and Fatah officials continue to praise terrorist murderers as "Martyrs" and "heroes." Some also encourage Shahada - seeking death as Martyrs for Allah. Becoming a Martyr (Shahid) represents the highest religious achievement that can be attained by a Muslim.
Shortly after the murders of 4 Israeli civilians in two separate attacks on Oct. 1 and 3, Fatah Central Committee member Mahmoud Al-Aloul addressed Palestinian youth on his Facebook page. He encouraged them to "rise up against the enemies," calling the youth "potential Martyrs for the beloved Palestine":
"#Resist_boycott_rise up (literally "make intifada") #General_mobilization_Fatah's_Shabiba [student movement]
More resistance and escalation against the occupation everywhere. Let us make the country a hell for the enemies and tell them clearly, in a way that will split the sky - resist, boycott, advance, rise up, for our land is forbidden to the enemies, and all the members of the Shabiba (i.e., Fatah youth and student movement) are potential Martyrs for the beloved Palestine."
[Fatah Central Committee member Mahmoud Al-Aloul's Facebook page, Oct. 5, 2015]
In another post, Al-Aloul stated that "whoever loves the Shahada (seeking Martyrdom) is not afraid of the settler herds." He ended with the following words of encouragement: "and #let's_continue_the_attacks" [Fatah Central Committee member Mahmoud Al-Aloul's Facebook page, Oct. 5, 2015]

MEMRI: Fatah Officials, Palestinian Social Media, Palestinian Authority Dailies Encourage Continued Violence

Fatah seems to be speaking in two voices regarding the violent events of the last few days, which have been described variously as "an intifada," a "popular awakening," the "Al-Aqsa Rage" events, etc. Alongside statements by PA President Mahmoud 'Abbas expressing a desire to avoid escalation and continue the security coordination with Israel, the Palestinian media has been publishing statements by PA officials, especially Fatah officials, as well as op-eds, that advocate continuing the violence. Some described the stabbings as acts of self-defense and others called to maintain a high level of tension and conflict. In some cases, PA spokesmen even chose to deny that violent attacks have taken place, claiming that Israel was falsely accusing Palestinians of terrorism in order to justify their killing. For example, commenting on the attempted car bomb attack at the Al-Za'im checkpoint on October 11, Palestinian Authority (PA) security services spokesman 'Adnan Al-Damiri said that the vehicle had caught fire due to an electric malfunction. The PA daily Al-Ayyam claimed that "Israel concocted a false and deceptive story about an alleged [attempted] bombing, as it has done on numerous occasions in the past." Following the death of Mustafa Al-Khatib, who was killed on October 12 as he attempted to knife a soldier in Jerusalem, the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida stated that "the occupation forces usually accuse Palestinians of attempted knifings in order to justify shooting at them and killing them."
Additionally, a delegation of Fatah officials, including figures close to Palestinian President Mahmoud 'Abbas, paid a condolence visit to the family of a terrorist who was killed after he murdered two Israelis in Jerusalem's Old City. An investigative article in the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reviewed reactions by Palestinians on social media who expressed joy at the killing of Jews.

Video: Palestinians Asked 'Is Stabbing Israelis Heroic?

As part of his "The Ask Project," in which viewers are encouraged to field questions for him to ask random Palestinians or Israelis, amateur documentary maker Gil Corey-Shuster asked a random selection of Arabs in Hevron the following question: "Do you view stabbing Israeli soldiers and civilians as heroic?"
The answers were overwhelmingly supportive, with only one interviewee making any distinction between soldiers or civilians. Even that respondent however said that Israeli civilians who carry private weapons for self-defense are legitimate targets because "if he had the chance he would use his gun and shoot" Arabs.
The most commonly given justification for stabbing attacks was Palestinians' own sense of grievance against Israel - but when asked if according to that logic Israelis who lost loved ones could legitimately attack Palestinians, all responded in the negative.
Just one Palestinian man, a shopkeeper, said he did not support such attacks and in fact expressed his outright opposition to them.

Palestinians: Is stabbing soldiers and civilians heroic? (h/t IsraellyCool)

.@UNRWA worker changes Facebook "Like" icon into a stabbing knife

Here is the Facebook profile icon for UNRWA worker Sohaib Fayyad, who lives in Khan Younis:

Fayyad, who is linking to lots of anti-Israel videos from Shehab News Agency and others, is clearly advocating that Arabs stab Jews.

His main profile image shows rock throwing as well, associating it with the colors of the PLO flagm happily proclaiming that "the intifada has begun":

Sounds like he is right in the mainstream of other UNRWA employees that we have been uncovering for months now - gleefully supporting violence against Jews.

Yesterday I reported on two other apparent UNRWA employees, both teachers, who also chose romantic allusions to violence as their Facebook profiles pictures. By any sane measure, given UNRWA's stated neutrality aims, people who literally define themselves by violence - as seen by their choice of profile pictures on Facebook - must be fired. It is the cyberspace equivalent of a teacher in the US deciding to place a tattoo of a notorious violent gang on his or her face.

But UNRWA will do nothing besides asking the workers to remove the images, because it could jeopardize their funding. Which, after all the high and mighty rhetoric about upholding the UN's ideals, is all they really care about.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Fatah poster praising Badran for his act

Sure, he tried to stab some Israelis. But he was such a sweet child!

Disgusting reporting from The Independent (UK):

Ishaq Badran was described simply as a “terrorist” after stabbing an Israeli near the Damascus Gate in occupied East Jerusalem on Saturday.

But in the mourners’ circle at his home in the city’s Kufr Aqab area, a more complex picture emerged of the 16-year-old, and what has caused others to take part in a wave of stabbings that has shaken Israel and threatens to turn into an all-out Palestinian uprising.

Ishaq, a student at an Israeli vocational school who was shot dead by Israeli police, was lauded as a “hero” and “martyr” by the mourners. He was, said those gathered at his home, simply acting to defend Islam’s third holiest site, the Aqsa mosque, situated on an area revered by Jews as the Temple Mount.

As dates, a traditional mourning food, were passed around, Ishaq’s close friends described him as an introverted, polite teen who liked weight-lifting and swimming. The oldest of six children, he prayed regularly and encouraged his friends to join him, friends said. He was not affiliated with any Palestinian faction or organisation, something he had in common with other Palestinians carrying out recent attacks seemingly of their own free will.

“I was surprised. I did not expect it,” said his father, Qassim Badran. “My son always obeyed me. Every time I’d say don’t go to any areas of trouble he would say: ‘Yes.’”

Mr Badran said that his son had been deeply upset by reports that a settler had stripped the hijab off a Muslim woman in the Old City of Jerusalem last Wednesday. The reports, which could not be independently confirmed, soon spread on Palestinian social media. “He spoke to his mother about this and cried,” Mr Badran told The Independent. “He was crying, saying: ‘No one is defending these women’.” The woman was shot as she tried to stab an Israeli man, according to Israeli police.

A friend of Ishaq’s, aged 13, said he was “extremely upset” when he saw him on Thursday and Friday last week. “We were looking at pictures of martyrs. He said that Fadi Aloun was killed in cold blood,” he said, referring to a Palestinian shot by Israeli police on 3 October for what Palestinians believe was no reason. Israeli police say he was killed after he stabbed an Israeli.

They also looked at phone pictures of Mohanad Halabi, a 19-year-old who killed two Israelis in a separate stabbing attack on 3 October. “Both of us were talking of what a heroic act Mohanad did. Ishaq mentioned what happened to the woman with the hijab and said that had we done this to a Jewish lady they would have killed us.”

What is the "more complex picture" that has emerged from this "reporting" that indicates that Badran was not a terrorist?

A young man decided "seemingly of his own free will" to murder Jews.

Which means that, yes, he is a terrorist.

He is a terrorist even though he lifted weights.

He is a terrorist even though he liked to swim.

He is a terrorist even though he liked to pray.

He is a terrorist even though he was respectful to his parents.

None of those other facts makes his actions any less heinous. Every would-be murderer in the world has other interests and hobbies, every serial killer had a mother and father, every depraved criminal had a side of himself that loved children or animals or collecting stamps. It does not excuse their actions - except for Palestinian Arab terrorists whose attempts to murder Jews must be placed into "context."

There is one other thing that we learn from this article - that incitement is deadly.

It wasn't only social media that reported that a woman stabber last week had her hijab removed by a "settler." It was the mainstream Arab press, as I reported at the time.

There are literally no journalistic standards in Palestinian Arab media. Multiply this by the thousands of bigots and haters on social media, the rumors that have swirled after every attack become "facts" in the minds of young people who feel they must avenge the baseless lies.

Arab incitement is what ended up killing Ishaq Badran. And Arab incitement is the least-reported story - one ignored by not only the media but by politicians and so-called "human rights" organizations.

Their refusal to mention the incitement results in more deaths.

Lies about the Temple Mount, lies about Israeli defensive actions, lies about the Jewish communities across the Green Line, antisemitic lies, and hundreds of lies that are promulgated every day in Arab media and Palestinian officials, are the engine of the violence. Combined with the honor/shame dynamic of Arab society and you have a surefire recipe for terror attacks. How can self-respecting people act otherwise when they are brainwashed by a daily avalanche of incitement and hate and lies?

But the Independent will not cover that story. The Independent, and virtually all Western media, will not accept the notion that their compatriots in Arab media are not only willing but anxious to make up facts - like the "ripping off hijab" lie or the "she only had an electrical fire in her car" lie or the ever popular "they opened fire for no reason" lie.

Westerners cannot wrap their heads around an entire society that was built on myths and lies combined with honoring murderers. The media cannot be bothered to research the facts for themselves, thinking that both sides must have some basis for their claims and the truth must be somewhere in between.

Media like The Independent are partially responsible by giving credence to the lies, and by not reporting on the fact that one side's claims are so often spurious that each one should be reported only with a disclaimer. Articles like this feed into the myth of Ishaq Badran's heroism, not his terrorism.

The Arab media lies. The Western media abets the lies by reporting the ones they want to believe and ignoring the ones that are too over the top for any sane person to swallow.

These lies have consequences - and often, the consequences are fatal.

Palestinian Arab media are happily pushing for a violent intifada in Arabic - but in English they are pretending that there are no attacks, and that Israelis are attacking them without any provocation.

The latest example comes from this morning's attack near Lion's Gate, as reported in TOI:

A man attempted to stab a police officer and was shot and killed in Jerusalem’s Old City Monday morning, the latest incident in a spate of terror attacks that have rocked the capital and the rest of Israel over the last two weeks.

Police said there were no injuries in the attempted attack and the attacker was pronounced dead at the scene.

The incident occurred near the Lions’ Gate entrance to the Old City, the site of two previous stabbing attacks, including one that left two people dead over a week ago.

A police spokesperson said the attacker, an Arab man, approached the area from a cemetery to the north and was asked to take his hands out of his pockets by police, who suspected something was amiss.

The man then took a knife out of his pocket and tried to stab a police officer. The officer was wearing a protective vest and was not injured.

“The officers quickly shot the attacker,” the spokesperson said.

Palestine News Network denies everything, using those famous anonymous "eyewitnesses" whose credibilty is nearly always close to zero:

A Palestinian youth on Monday morning has been executed by Israeli occupation police forces, under claims that he tried to initiate a stab operative near Lion’s Gate (Bab Al-Asbat) in the old city of Jerusalem.

Eyewitnesses at the scene confirmed that the man did not initiate any stabbing attempts, saying that he was passing in his vehicle through the old city’s narrow street, when the police stopped him, and opened fire on him for no apparent reason.

Other eyewitnesses said that he was taking out his mobile phone from his pocket, when IOF shot him.

In Arabic, however, PNN highlights photos of Arab women bravely brandishing knives.

Meanwhile, video was released showing an Arab stabbing Israeli police on Saturday, another event that PNN had tried to cast doubt on:

Amnesty International would say that the officers were "heavily protected" and had nothing to fear from a man stabbing them in the head. Perhaps they should have called up Amnesty during the attack to ask advice on the optimal method to save the life of a man desperately trying to kill them.

Muslims upset that Wikipedia has a "Temple Mount" entry in English

There have been a few articles this weekend from angry Muslims who realized that the non-Arabic Wikipedia entries on The Temple Mount are called "The Temple Mount" - and that it mentions anything besides Islamic legends about the area.

Someone seems to have started a rumor that the page has only recently been renamed "Temple Mount" and that it was formerly entitled The Noble Sanctuary or Al Haram al Sharif. The Jews, of course, are the culprits.

Dr. Aida Al-Najjar of Jordan swallowed this rumor whole, and rails againat those Jews, saying "Not only did the Zionists to kill all the Palestinians in cold blood, they also reinforce what they are doing by feigning objectivity and science concerning the conflict over al-Aqsa mosque....Wikipedia's information is based on incorrect and unscientific and inaccurate Jewish myths for distribution in foreign languages. As can be seen, Zionism replaced "the Haram al-Sharif" with "the Temple Mount." This indicates that [Wikipedia] is working in order to please the Jews who rely on their networks and contribute to change the facts.

Other articles say that the Wikipedia entry in English only refers to the sanctity of the place from the Jewish perspective while the text does not mention its religious significance for Muslims, except for one sentence that says that Jerusalem is the third holiest site in Islam, and it was the site of Mohammed's trip to heaven.

A quick perusal of the actual Wikipedia entry on the Temple Mount shows that this is quite a lie.

The discussions behind the page show some pathetic attempts by Muslims to erase history. For example, it indicates that many people tried to change the name of the article. Here is one comment:

"please change Temple Mount to AL-aksa mosque because its disrespectful to the feelings of one billion muslims in the whole world, and tha Temple Mount is just a myth in the heads of zionests "

Another would-be editor referenced the absurd NYT article from last week as evidence that no Temple ever existed:

The article discusses the religious presumption of the existence of the first and second temples on the Temple Mount as a given and a considerable amount of space is dedicated to discussing the numerous archeological digs which have taken place in order to try to locate some evidence of the existence of the temples on the Mount, however, the article does not state that so far no compelling evidence has been located to prove that the Temple Mount is the actual location of the destroyed temples, assuming that they ever actually existed, since we are talking about something that has disappeared more than 2000 years ago. There is ample independent reporting of the lack of concrete evidence of the existence of remains of the temple on the Temple Mount, see for example http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/world/middleeast/historical-certainty-proves-elusive-at-jerusalems-holiest-place.html?_r=0 and http://www.haaretz.com/life/archaeology/.premium-1.627324

The Arabic entry for Al Haram al Qudsi a-Sharif has no such issues. It doesn't mention the Temples, or even Judaism. There is no controversy in its pages. The entire entry is a straight reading of the myth of Mohammed and his flying donkey, and then goes in detail on the various structures there today.

The thing is, in a few years the French Wikipedia entry will likely resemble the Arabic one, and the English one may follow soon after.

.@UNRWA teacher celebrates the music of stabbing Jews (update)

This cartoon gained some notoriety over the weekend for its romanticizing the wave of stabbings by Arabs of Jews in Israel recently:

UNRWA teacher Hiba Miari of Lebanon wasted no time to make this "artwork" her Facebook profile image.

Will UNRWA discipline her, as they promise to for the many cases like these that I uncover, or will they just silently have the pages removed and cover up the incident, as they have been?

One thing is for sure: UNRWA is reading this blog and often acting on what I find. They know that they condone this kind of incitement and only reactive to my research, rather than pro-actively working to root out the problem themselves.

Did they send a memo to their staff warning them on how to conduct themselves on Facebook? Did they discipline any of the other teachers or schools that I showed were pushing the worst kinds of terror apologetics and antisemitism?

I have plenty more examples in the queue, and I'm finding more all the time. If UNRWA really cared, they could find them before I do.

But they don't care.

UPDATE: Another UNRWA teacher from Khan Younis also uses this as her profile picture.

10/11 Links: Abbas justifies murder as protection of holy sites; Jeremiah Wright: Jesus was a Palestinian

From Ian:

PMW: Abbas justifies violence and murder as “protection of holy sites”‎

After ongoing Palestinian riots, which have including shootings, stabbings, and rock and Molotov cocktail throwing - as well as the murder of 4 Israeli civilians - Abbas last week justified it all as legitimate defense of holy sites:
"The Palestinian side did not attack and did not do anything against the Israelis. If they [Israelis] think that the [Palestinian] people in Jerusalem are protecting themselves, that is our right. We have to protect our holy sites." [Official PA TV, Oct. 6, 2015 and Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 7, 2015]
Abbas then attacked Israel's defense measures against Palestinian terror:
"The Israeli government is escalating its strong offensive against the Palestinian people everywhere... Honestly, we do not know what the reason is for this."

After Palestinians murder 4 Israelis Abbas says “the Palestinian side did not attack”

MUST WATCH: This Is how the Palestinians Raise their Children (h/t Yoel)

In the past weeks, Israelis suffer from hundreds of terror attacks: stab attacks, firebombs, rock-throwing - all as the outcome of ongoing Palestinian incitement on social media and TV. Imagine if this was you. Imagine if this was happening somewhere else. IMAGINE.
SHARE THIS VIDEO. SPREAD THE WORD. SAY 'NO' TO HATE.

Jeremiah Wright: 'Jesus was a Palestinian'

The controversial religious leader Jeremiah Wright compared Native Americans to Palestinians at the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March on the National Mall on Saturday, going so far as to assert that “Jesus was a Palestinian."
Wright, who once served as pastor to President Obama, was one of several hours' worth of speakers in Washington, D.C., for an event called “Justice or Else!” that sought to channel the energy of the Black Lives Matter movement. Wright placed the event in historical context.
“The same issue is being fought today and has been fought since 1948, and historians are carried back to the 19th century… when the original people, the Palestinians — and please remember, Jesus was a Palestinian — the Palestinian people had the Europeans come and take their country,” Wright said.
He said African-Americans in the United States have much in common with Palestinians in Israel.
“The youth in Ferguson and the youth in Palestine have united together to remind us that the dots need to be connected,” Wright said. “And what Dr. King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, has implications for us as we stand beside our Palestinian brothers and sisters, who have been done one of the most egregious injustices in the 20th and 21st centuries.”
Wright, who was the reverend of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which the president attended intermittently from 1988 to 2008, also accused Israel of being an apartheid state. (h/t Jewess)

Throughout the twentieth-century the New York Times was never a friend or ally to the Jewish people, nor is it a friend or ally to the Jewish people today.

During World War II, the Times buried the Holocaust deep within its pages and, as far as I am concerned, it will never live down that criminal negligence, that crime against the six million dead, and neither will its owner and publisher, at the time, Arthur Hays Sulzberger.

Severin Hochberg, in a 2006 review of Laurel Leff's Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper, for the Oxford University journal of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, tells us:

"Leff's grim conclusion is that the mass murder of the Jews was simply not an important enough story for the New York Times. This, in turn, was partly because it was not an important enough story for the Allied governments or the Western public. Another crucial factor in the decision to minimize the plight of the Jews, according to Leff, was the personal influence of the New York Times' publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Sulzberger believed that the Jews were not a "people," much less a race, and that they should not be treated differently from anybody else, even when clearly targeted for annihilation. His obsessive need to deflect accusations that the Times was a "Jewish" newspaper influenced coverage of Jewish persecution and ultimately mass murder." (My emphasis.)

Little seems to have changed over at the Gray Lady or "the newspaper of record."

Many of you will recall that the Times recently published a "Jew Tracker" showing which Jewish politicians did, and which did not, support Obama's Iran non-treaty that gives that government - a government that perpetually calls for the murder of Israeli-Jews and all Americans -150 billion dollars and the ability to shortly gain nuclear weaponry.

To my astonishment the conservative Washington Free Beacon, under the byline of Adam Kredo, claims to have attained emails between senior New York Times editor, Greg Brock, and a pro-Jewish reader and critic who slammed the paper for running this vile material before public pressure forced them to remove it.

{This fiasco by the Times, by the way, raises the odor of the Rototom Sunsplash festival in Spain where public pressure likewise forced the Reggae event to accept Matisyahu simply as a performer, not a Jewish performer under some enforced BDS obligation to answer for the alleged crimes of the Jewish state.}

According to the Washington Free Beacon a reader / critic of the Times wrote editor Brock the following and called the inclusion of the Jewish list "stupid":

Are you so ignorant that you don’t understand the historical significance of what you’re doing? Are you so tone deaf? Why don’t you include addresses so that people’s homes can be attacked?...

My parents were Holocaust survivors and the first thing the Nazis wanted to know is: where are the Jews? This merely furthers the classic anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty.

Greg Brock fired back with:

But it would be helpful if you did your homework. You’ll find that we are in excellent journalistic company. I just wish the Times had thought of it sooner so we do not appear to be copying others.

Do you ever read the Jewish press—some of the finest journalism around, in my humble opinion. If you search online right now, you will see that these publications have been keeping a running count of the voting position of Jewish senators and representatives for weeks.

To which the reader / critic responded:

Do you understand that dual loyalty is a classic anti-Semitic trope? Do you understand that the accusation that Jews are voting against their national interests and for their faith-based communal interest is a call to violence? Somehow, the sensitivity you show to racial issues is lost when your target is Jewish.

Do you understand that you’re creating a hostile environment for Jews whether they agree with the NYTimes editorial position or not?” asked the reader, who further described the post as “stupid” and offensive.

It is difficult to fathom the kind of outrageous stupidity that it takes to single out Jewish politicians for public derogation when no other ethnic group is treated with such malice. It was not so long ago that the New York Times was, in fact, considered the paper of record. When I was kid we received it in our box on a daily basis and my father would spend half of Sunday perusing the massive tome that they put out every weekend.

But those days are long dead.

The Times, it should be noted, was not the only significant publication that believed that singling out Jewish politicians for disgust was reasonable. Joshua Keating over at Slate liked the idea, although he acknowledged the crudity of it. He wrote:

It seems willfully obtuse to pretend that the position of the Israeli government and the views of at least a prominent faction of the American Jewish community aren’t a factor in this debate.

That does not sound entirely unreasonable, now does it?

However, I will look forward to the day when the New York Times tracks black politicians, as black people, or Latino politicians, as Latinos, or Gays as Gays, as they do Jews as Jews.

Until we begin to see that perhaps Greg Brock might consider not bickering with thoughtful readers over a prejudicial, bigoted, and yes, stupid, NYT policy.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

Biased @Amnesty report says IDF soldiers aren't in real danger from firebombs and boulders

Amnesty International issued a report on the situation in Israel. 6 paragraphs mentioned attacks on Israelis - and 21 paragraphs attacked Israel for defending its citizens from those attacks.

This section of the report was particularly absurd:

While Palestinian demonstrators have thrown rocks and firebombs towards Israeli forces in many demonstrations, and there are reports that Palestinians have shot at Israeli forces in isolated cases, Israeli military and police forces are heavily protected and must ensure that all use of force is strictly necessary and proportionate, and that firearms must only be used to protect against the imminent threat of death or serious injury.

The rest of the report shows that Amnesty does not consider a single case of Israeli use of force to be justified. Because the Israeli forces have magic "protection" that stop firebombs and knives and stones and sometimes bullets from being dangerous.

For example:

The Israeli military said that there had been a violent demonstration in which rocks and firebombs were thrown at Israeli forces, and that troops had used riot dispersal means before opening fire at three Palestinians who were throwing firebombs, but did not release information to suggest that the lives of Israeli troops had been in danger.

Yes, Amnesty really said that even though the IDF explained in detail that the terrorists had not responded to the exact kind of non-lethal weapons that Amnesty insists the IDF use, and they were still throwing firebombs at them, that is not enough information for Amnesty to decide that the IDF acted properly.

One wonders what else the IDF could do to prove it acted properly, and one immediately knows the answer - nothing. Amnesty is looking for evidence of guilt, not fact-finding.

Besides this, the report shows the usual extreme anti-Israel bias. It makes numerous specific demands from Israeli authorities. Just a few of the many examples:

Israeli actions to apprehend and bring to justice those responsible for such attacks must comply with international law; there is no justification for arbitrary arrests, or for torture or other ill-treatment during arrest or detention.

Amnesty International calls on the Israeli authorities to publicly disclose the current openfire regulations for Israeli police and military forces, including those being applied in East Jerusalem. The Israeli authorities must urgently issue directives clarifying that Israeli army and police personnel can only use live fire, including .22 ammunition, when strictly unavoidable to protect against the imminent threat of death or serious injury, and that all use of force must be absolutely necessary, strictly proportionate to a legitimate aim, and in full compliance with international human rights standards.

As the occupying power, Israel is also bound by the Fourth Geneva Convention, and is prohibited from imposing measures in the name of security – including restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the OPT – that are arbitrary, discriminatory or amount to collective punishment.

Israeli forces must protect Palestinian civilians and their property from settler attacks, and end the impunity for such attacks by addressing the systematic failures in investigating them.

But the report does not ask Fatah or Hamas to do a single thing to stop terror or incitement. There are no demands. The word "must":, used liberally when insisting on what Israel must do, is completely absent in regard to the PA.

Even though Amnesty reported that a Fatah-linked group took responsibility for the murder of the Henkins, it doesn't ask Fatah's leader Mahmoud Abbas to lift a finger to stop terror.

It gives specific numbers of alleged attacks by Israel reported by biased sources, but it doesn't mention that far moreattacks on Israelis have been recorded - 440 as of Friday. No indication is given that Amnesty even tried to find such a statistic..

The real purpose of the report is to slam Israel yet again. Listing a few attacks on Jews is a fig-leaf to put on top of another hit-job.

Not putting any responsibility on the PA and Hamas shows that Amnesty really has no problem with how they encourage terrorism against Jews.

TOI reports:

A policeman was lightly injured Sunday morning when a Palestinian woman detonated explosives in her car near Ma’ale Adumim, east of Jerusalem.

The attacker was severely injured by the explosion and was evacuated to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem neighborhood for treatment.

Police said officers noticed a “suspicious vehicle” driven by a woman toward a checkpoint en route to Jerusalem and signaled to her to stop. The woman then yelled “Allahu Akbar” and detonated a bomb in her car, a police statement said.

Army Radio reported the wounded officer is a traffic policeman who pulled over the bomber in her car for driving in a lane specified for public transport and carpooling.

The car was was bearing Israeli, rather than Palestinian, license plates, the report said. Police found a gas canister in the vehicle and said that the woman had intended to carry out a bombing in Jerusalem.

Initial reports pointed to a possible suicide bombing, saying that the woman had died in the attack. Police later said the woman exited her car just before the bomb went off, indicating that it may not have been a suicide bombing attempt.

JPost adds:

"It is feared that a terror cell stands behind the Sunday morning explosion near Ma'aleh Adumim and it's possible that there will be more attempts to execute terrorist attacks using explosives," a military source told The Jerusalem Post's sister publication Ma'ariv.

The source questioned the sophistication of the cell however.

"The explosive device was small and unprofessional and the terrorist was not trained," he explained.

An investigation of the incident revealed that there were gas canisters in the suspect's car that were meant to explode and cause much greater damage.

She was sent to carry out the attack and the explosive was prepared for her, but the execution of the attack demonstrates that the terror cell was not organized or trained.

The source said the suspect is known to security forces and officials were checking which organization she belonged to.

Palestinian Arab media are denying the story, claiming based on "eyewitnesses" that the woman had an electrical problem with her car and it started an internal fire and that the police wouldn't let her (and her child, not mentioned in any Israeli media) leave the car. She screamed "allahu akbar" in fear, according to this version of the story.

Another Arab story claims that according to other "eyewitnesses" is that Israeli forces shot at the car for no reason.

The terrorist's name is Isra Djabaas, which happens to be the same surname as the person responsible for an attack with an excavator tractor in 2014 in Jerusalem that killed one.

Official Palestinian incitement continues

Fatah denied being part of a press release using its logo by the "General Command of the Third Palestinian Intifada".

But there is still plenty of incitement from official Fatah and PA channels.

Abbas Zaki, member of Fatah's Central Committee, stressed that Fatah has never abandoned the option of armed terror ("resistance") but said that it requires a consensus and unity.

Zaki told Anatolia News Agency, "Today, we defend ourselves...some with a stone and some with a knife."

Zaki also said that while there is no official sanction for an uprising, he praised the stabbers and stoners by saying that the attackers are "young men..(who) are driven by their consciousness and oppression in which they live."

More direct incitement to throw stones comes from the cartoonist at official PA daily Al Hayat al Jadida: