Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 19, 2015

"Non-political" UNRWA schools in Lebanon hold rallies supporting "Jerusalem intifada"

UNRWA is officially a non-political organization. As its director said in a 2009 speech:

UNRWA is non-political in nature and orientation. Our mandate rests on humanitarian and human development work and is underpinned by core United Nations precepts of neutrality and impartiality.

Last week, UNRWA students in Lebanon held a rally "supporting the Jerusalem intifada and supporting the Al Aqsa Mosque":

They were saying things like "With our blood and soul we will redeem you, oh Al-Aqsa" and "Million martyrs marching towards Jerusalem."

This rally was ostensibly organized only by the students of an UNRWA school, not the staff, even though it seems unlikely that students themselves could organize such a rally without logistical help from adults.

It also is difficult to conceive that these students that happen to go to an UNRWA school decided on their own to do something that contradicts the supposedly non-political nature of their lessons.

Moreover, this article indicates that a similar rally held yesterday in Lebanon was organized by UNRWA itself.

On Sunday, UNRWA schools in Lebanon organized a rally of solidarity with the Palestinian people and their legitimate struggle for freedom, return and independence, and in condemnation of the "Israeli" aggression and the repeated incursions at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

UNRWA's pretense to be non-political is more and more absurd every day.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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This news is all over Arab media this morning.

The Director of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Omar Kiswani, told the Anatolia news agency that that the number of Jewish "intruders to the Al-Aqsa Mosque" in Jerusalem, has significantly decreased during the last two weeks.

Kiswani said in a statement, "We saw over the past two weeks a clear decline in the number of incursions of the "Al-Aqsa Mosque," and we do not see Israeli political figures among the intruders."

He said that 29 "settlers" "stormed" into the "Al-Aqsa Mosque" Sunday, adding: "There is a decline in their numbers, usually on {Sundays] there are close to 100 invaders."

The subtext is that the Palestinian Arabs who are being killed while trying to stab Jews are being vindicated in that they have managed to scare some Jews from ascending to the Temple Mount during this terror spree in Jerusalem.

When Arabs claim that Israel treats their lives as cheap, remember that they view the lives of their children as far, far cheaper.

Look how much Mahmoud Abbas is trying to calm things down!

You know how the media keeps saying that Mahmoud Abbas is trying to stop the current terror spree from becoming a full-blown intifada?

Here are some photos posted on Fatah's official Facebook page over the past couple of days.

Today, support for an armed uprising:

Yesterday, glorification of an armed uprising:

Yesterday, incitement with a cartoon from an antisemite:

Caption: "Making the life for the occupier as hard as possible is the duty of the occupied. It's anti-colonialism!

Yesterday, a typical call for peace:

Yesterday: Antisemitism and incitement

Saturday, glorifying the firebombing of an Israeli bus which they brag injured the driver:

And, yes, Abbas' Fatah party officially glorifies stabbing Israelis as well:

Abbas is the head of Fatah and he is encouraging violence, not trying to stop it.

Propaganda lesson: How Iran creates news stories from thin air

Iran's Mehr News reports:

Russian jets forced Israeli fighter-bombers to change their course when trying to enter the Syrian airspace.

Russian Aerospace Force warplanes operating in Syria forced Israeli fighter-bombers to change their course when trying to enter the airspace of the Arab nation on espionage missions.

The Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth daily quoted Lebanese diplomatic sources saying that the event took place yesterday after Russian radars detected various Zionist fighters flying close to the Syrian territory.

Now, Mehr News isn't exactly the most reliable news outlet. but it is quoting Yediot Aharonot, and Yediot has some standards.

So what did Yediot say?

Russian forces warned Israel over IAF flights in Russian controlled airspace near the Syrian–Lebanese border area after Israeli jets were detected nearby, according to a report Friday in the Lebanese media outlet As Safir.

The report comes a mere day after Russia announced that it had established a "hotline" with Israel in order to coordinate aerial activity over Lebanon and Syria.

As Safir quoted Lebanese diplomatic officials who were "in the know," as saying that the warning was issued after Russian radar identified Israeli aircraft approaching Russian-controlled airspace two weeks ago.

"Russian aircraft immediately blocked the Israeli jets' path while they flew above the Akkar region in northern Lebanon. The Russians immediately sent a clear warning to the Israelis that entering Syrian airspace would be a pretext for opening fire," the source said.

How would a Lebanese source know what messages are being sent between Russia and Israel?

The answer is in the next paragraph:

According to the paper, which is considered loyal to Hezbollah, the Israeli aircraft quickly heeded the warnings and changed their course.

Iran instructed Hezbollah to "leak" a story to make Zionists afraid of Russia, an Israeli news outlet reported it with somewhat proper skepticism, and Iranian media now uses the Israeli report as proof that it is true.

News laundering.

Israeli restaurant offers 50% off - if Arabs and Jews share the table

The Hummus Bar, a family restaurant in Kfar Vitkin, Israel, has an intifada special.

On their Facebook page they write:

Afraid of Arabs?

Afraid of Jews?

No Arabs with us!

But there are also no Jews...

What we do have are human beings! Our Arab hummus is excellent! Our Jewish falafel is praiseworthy! And refills are free! (I think that is the translation...)

Special: 50% discount on hummus dishes for tables where Arabs and Jews sit together!
Valid Sunday-Thursday.

The restaurant is kosher, which means that it is Halal as well

Except for the Heineken beer they serve.

There are hundreds of comments, some from around the world, and most are positive. But I don't know if anyone has taken the restaurant up on the offer yet.

.@UNRWA "youth ambassador" releases new song glorifying violence as UN plays dumb

UNRWA's "youth ambassador" and former Arab Idol winner Mohammed Assaf has released a music video that shows that he supports violence.

The video includes romantic scenes of rock throwing and firebombs.

The lyrics also indicate that Nazareth is "occupied," meaning that Assaf is singing to destroy Israel, not just end the "occupation."

The headline in Palestine Press Agency about this video says that it shows that Assaf is involved with the "Al Quds uprising."

The UN, when asked about UNRWA employees spreading hate on social media, claims that "it remains to be seen" if the people posting this hate are really employees at UNRWA.

Because, you know, when people say they work at UNRWA, display UNRWA certificates that they received, show photos of their schools and classrooms, it could all be a big Zionist hoax.

UN Watch issued a statement about this:

"This is absurd — the UN is trying to stick its head in the sand,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental organization that monitors the world body.

“We have presented Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with new and unequivocal evidence of at least ten self-described UNRWA officials engaged in racist incitement, so it’s simply outrageous for the world body — which famously makes snap condemnations in situations when it has seen no evidence — to ignore what everyone can see with their own eyes,” said Neuer.

“UN Watch’s report includes archived screenshots as well as live links to antisemitic incitement by UNRWA officials, many of whom post pictures of themselves teaching in UNRWA classrooms,” added Neuer.

WAR CRIME!! ARAB HUMILIATED! (he also shot lots of Jews and killed one) (update)

There was another horrific attack, this time at the Beersheva bus station.

One person was killed and six wounded after two terrorists carried out an attack at the central bus station in Beersheba on Sunday night.

Israel Police said that the two suspects entered the bus station, where one of them fired shots while the other stabbed.

The wounded were brought to Soroka University Medical Center where one person who was initially critically hurt eventually died of his wounds. One person was in critical condition, four were moderately wounded and one was lightly wounded. One of the terrorists was killed while the second terrorist was shot and apprehended.

ABC News producer Nasser Atta tweeted this description of the video below:

The video he linked to also described the scene as "Palestinians wounded are tortured and humiliated by the Israeli army."

This occurs seconds after the attack, and clearly the terrorist is being held in place by a chair to make sure that he cannot get up and kill some more. It is true that one Israeli appears to angrily throw a row of seats at the terrorist.

But Nasser Atta and the Arab who posted the video are far more concerned about the humiliation suffered by this terrorist in his moment of glory than about the actual victims.

The same thing happened with the Arab world angrily sharing video of the child terrorist who was apparently harshly insulted by an Israeli with the camera, heard calling him a "son of a whore" multiple times, right after he stabbed a 12 year old Israeli boy leaving a candy shop on his bike.

Apparently, humiliating Arabs is a war crime. There is nothing worse.

Murdering Israelis is a natural reaction to the humiliation Arabs feel all the time. And here's proof - Israelis are humiliating these intifada heroes!

Nothing shows the difference bwteeen the West and the honor/shame society of the Arab world better than these. It is a world where murdering Jewish kids or old people is honorable, but insulting the murderers is an affront to the entire Palestinian Arab society - at least the majority that wholeheartedly supports the murders.

(UPDATE: Apparently the person beaten in that video was an Eritean who was mistaken as another terrorist.)

10/18 Links: Fatah: Kick the Jews off the Temple Mount; Amnesty Sponsors Blood Libel Promoter

From Ian:

PMW: Fatah: Kick the Jews off the Temple Mount

A cartoon posted today on the “official Facebook page” of Abbas’ Fatah movement shows a Palestinian child kicking a long-nosed, terrified, ultra-orthodox Jew off the Temple Mount. The Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock appear in the background along with the words "leave our skies." A line from a poem by the Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish, calling for all Jews to leave Israel, is posted with the cartoon:
“Leave our country, our land, our sea, our wheat, our salt, our wounds. Everything."
[Official Facebook page of the Fatah Movement, Oct. 18, 2015]
The cartoon joins numerous statements by Palestinian Authority and Fatah officials that Jews should not be allowed on the Temple Mount, which they call the Al-Aqsa Mosque plaza, because it is Islamic and Jews “defile it.” As documented by Palestinian Media Watch, PA Chairman Abbas has stated this several times, including last month:
"The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours... and they have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem."
[Official PA TV, Sept. 16, 2015 and official website of PA Chairman Abbas, Sept. 16, 2015]
Abbas has also justified the current Palestinian violence and attacks as “protection of the holy sites.”

PMW: Al-Aqsa preacher: Jews worship the Devil, will be exterminated by Muslims

In his lesson in the Al-Aqsa Mosque this week, Palestinian preacher of Islam Sheikh Khaled Al-Mughrabi taught that Jews are destined to build a Temple outside the area of the Temple Mount, where they will worship the Devil. At the End of Time, Muslims will seek out the Jews everywhere and exterminate them all. The Sheikh also referred to the well-known Hadith foretelling that one day Jews will hide from Muslims, but the rock and the tree will call out: "O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him":
Sheikh Khaled Al-Mughrabi, teaches Islam twice a week in the Al-Aqsa Mosque: "The Children of Israel will be forced - they will not concede - they will be forced to change their plans to build the Temple inside the structure of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and will have to build it outside the Al-Aqsa Mosque... A Temple of heresy to worship the Devil. Why? Because the Anti-Christ won't appear unless this Temple is built and the Devil is worshipped there... [At the End of Days] we will follow the Jews everywhere. They will not escape us. They will not be able to escape us. The rock and tree will speak, according to the Hadith (tradition) of the Prophet [Muhammad]... and it is a reliable promise from the Prophet according to which the tree and the rock will speak and say: 'O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.' The Children of Israel will all be exterminated, the Anti-Christ will be killed and the Muslims will live in comfort for a long time." [Al-Msjed Al-Aqsa YouTube channel, Oct. 16, 2015]

Channel 1's authentic report

But those who watched the Israel Broadcasting Authority's Channel 1 current affairs program, "Yoman," were able to see what is really going on in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An authentic report, presented by journalist Riad Ali, told the story that most clearly illustrates what has been going on here in recent decades and in recent weeks. In the broadcast, Ali went into a village in east Jerusalem and revealed the authentic opinions of Arabs who oppose our right to live in our homeland. We didn't hear them complain about any violation of the status quo on the Temple Mount. Not a word about settlers. No complaints about sewage in the streets or ramshackle roads, and no claims of discrimination in anything related to environmental development -- as the two private TV stations would have us believe.
There was only one crimson thread weaving through the comments again and again: We, the Israelis, have no right to live here. "No, I don't believe so. They should go back to where they came from," was the response from one Arab asked about whether there is room for the Jewish people in his country.
Mohammed Abu Oudah, a Fatah member integrated into Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' system, claimed that he and his family are originally from Al-Barriyya, a village that existed between Ramla and Lod. "I am a refugee here in this camp," he told the reporter, "Of course we want to go back." The yearning to remove us from our homes still fills the hearts of the elderly in Qalandiya, who bequeath their faded memories to the younger generations. "This land will be returned to us in a bloody [struggle]," a man named Hamza said. When asked what would happen if Israel agreed to return to the '67 borders, he replied, "We will agree in principle, but the next generation will demand more." We can only guess that if the reporter were to continue wandering through the Arab villages of east Jerusalem, he would find those dreaming to kill me and my family just to return to Tel Qatra, an ancient hill in northern Gedera -- the town where I live -- which until 1948 was home to the village of Qatra, conquered and destroyed in the War of Independence.

Why is Amnesty International Sponsoring a U.S. Tour for a Palestinian Promoter of the Blood Libel?

In April, Amnesty International came under fire when it rejected, by a vote of 468-461, a resolution calling for the organization to combat anti-Semitism in Britain. This refusal led many to question Amnesty’s commitment to fighting anti-Jewish prejudice. Now, the group’s American arm has added further fuel to the fire by sponsoring a U.S. speaking tour—including a stop in a third-grade classroom—for a Palestinian activist who promotes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
On his website, Bassem Tamimi is described as “an internationally recognized Palestinian human rights activist from the West Bank farming village of Nabi Selah” and “a beacon of hope and an inspiration to all who believe in freedom.” Detained repeatedly by Israeli authorities, Tamimi has been dubbed a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty, which subsequently co-sponsored an American speaking tour for him that began in September. Since then, Tamimi has spoken in 10 states, including multiple stops in New York and California and a plenary appearance at the annual conference of the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation, where he advocated the boycott of Israel.
Tamimi’s tour and its sponsorship by Amnesty have already drawn substantial criticism, given his radical views. In particular, objections were raised when Tamimi was brought in to address third-graders at the Beverly J. Martin School in Ithaca, New York. Luvelle Brown, Ithaca’s superintendent of schools, later denounced Tamimi’s remarks as “politically skewed, inflammatory, and not endorsed by the Ithaca City School District.” Amnesty, however, defended Tamimi’s appearance, dismissing the criticism as a “smear campaign” and “bullying and intimidation.”
But while perhaps that controversy could be chalked up to differences of political opinions, the latest one swirling around Tamimi cannot. On Wednesday, as reported by Cornell’s William Jacobson, Tamimi reposted a viral anti-Semitic meme on his Facebook page, alleging Israelis detain Palestinian children to steal their organs, and that Zionists control the media to suppress this information:

It is unacceptable that Israel maintains prejudicial policies toward Jews at the holiest site to the Jewish people.

Benjamin Netanyahu keeps assuring Barack Obama, and the American Department of State, that Israel intends to maintain the status quo at the Temple Mount.

EOZ columnist, Vic Rosenthal, proprietor of Abu Yehuda, has a few thoughts on the matter.

But the bottom line is that the status quo in Israel toward Jews, and all non-Muslims, in the Old City, on the Temple Mount, is entirely prejudicial. I am not a particularly religious person, but I am offended at the idea that only Muslims are allowed to pray on the holiest place to the Jewish people.

Israeli policy on this question is unethical and unjust toward Jewish people, toward all non-Muslims, and it must change.

It is, in fact, a policy grounded in al-Sharia because Moshe Dayan, who obviously should have known better, made a very big mistake. But now this mistake needs to be corrected.

Understand this:

At one time all the religions in the Middle East were political in the sense that they were total social systems.

Throughout the great majority of human history there was no distinction between the dictates of the faith and any aspect of the life of the individual. The same, of course, was true for Judaism and Christianity until the European Enlightenment of the 17th century. Thankfully, both religions embraced the Separation of Church and State.

Islam has yet do so and, in fact, is moving in the opposite direction. European Muslims - with their screeching and their stomping and their violence and their religiously grounded hatred - do not seem all that different from their Jew-Hating Middle Eastern counterparts.

So as the world burns, my natural question is, "what should Israel do?"

If you look at the scope of Israeli history the general tendency has been to defer to the West.

It was primarily due to the western governments that the United Nations acknowledged the existence of Israel to begin with. Sometimes people will say that the UN created Israel, in order to imply the illegitimacy of the Jewish State. This is false. Israel was created via the blood and sweat and deaths of many thousands of Jewish people - Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Sephardim - who built the necessary infrastructure for the emergence of the state. All the United Nations did was take a vote. It was the Jewish people in the Land of Israel at the end of the 19th century and through the 20th century who did the work and who drained the swamps and who built the roads and who created the schools and developed the political leadership, that made it so that the UN almost had to recognize it.

But the UN did not do the work, nor did they die in the fields. That was Jews. You know who else it was, of course? It was also untold numbers of Arabs who migrated into Israel because of increasing economic possibilities. Israel is the Jewish State, but Arabs helped build it for simple, human, economic reasons. They may have thought of the Jews as the children of swine and orangutans, but they still needed employment for the purpose of feeding their children. Their Koranically-based anti-Jewish racism did not override their basic social need to provide for their families.

This has changed.

The Narrative and the Temple Mount

Due to the Muslim Brotherhood, Yassir Arafat and his heinous side-kick, Mahmoud Abbas - and all their little off-spring like the PLO and Fatah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad - they have succeeded in raising an entire generation of Israeli Arabs who believe that they have a religious-political-moral imperative to stab Jewish people in the neck or run us down with their vehicles. They have been fed on the Narrative of Pure Palestinian Victimhood and thus honestly believe that they every right to take any Jewish life as a matter of social justice.

If we object we are spit upon by ideological morons, mainly in the western-left, who call us racist.

What Israel needs to do is take charge of the situation. If the Israelis back down it will give the Arabs good reason to advance. By handing the Temple Mount over to the Jordanian waqf it gave the Arab world reason to claim it as their own.

As we know, Arab-Muslims do not so much venerate Al-Aqsa as a place of religious contemplation, but as a violent political site in their never-ending hostility toward the Jewish minority in that part of the world.

The very last thing that is needed is maintenance of the status quo.

As Rosenthal writes:

I’ve been thinking about status quos (stati quo?) lately.

There’s the one on the Temple Mount, the absurd one that says that Jews may visit but may not pray. Lately Muslims have been trying to prevent Jews from visiting altogether. When you consider that this is and always has been the holiest site in Judaism, that Muslim colonialists built a triumphal shrine atop the ruins of the Jewish Temple – which those Muslims now say wasn’t really there anyway – the absurdity is even more manifest.

It is one thing for Arabs to discriminate against Jews, that is to be expected. It is another thing entirely for the Jewish State of Israel to discriminate against Jews. That is simply unacceptable.

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.

Israeli liberals are slowly waking up - Palestinians don't want peace; they want no Jews

From Daniel Gordis in the New York Daily News:

We have a young language instructor at Shalem College in Jerusalem, where I work. She's a religious Muslim who wears a hijab, lives in one of the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem and is a graduate student at Hebrew University. She's fun and warm, and a great teacher — the students like her a lot.

Late last spring, when things here were quiet, some of the students mentioned to the department chair that as much as they'd spoken with her over the past couple of years, they'd never discussed politics. They were curious what someone like her thought about the conflict in this region, especially now that she was teaching at an unabashedly Zionist college, had come to know so many Jewish students and had developed such warm relationships with them. How does someone like her see things here? How did she think we would one day be able to settle this conflict?

"So ask her," the department chair said. "As long as you speak to her in Arabic (she's on staff to help our students master the language), you can talk about anything you want."

They did. They told her that since they'd never discussed the "situation" (as we metaphorically call it here in Israel), they were curious how she thought we might someday resolve it.

"It's our land," she responded rather matter-of-factly. Stunned, they weren't sure that they'd heard her correctly. So they waited. But that was all she had to say. "It's our land. You're just here for now."

What upset those students more than anything was not that a Palestinian might believe that the Jews are simply the latest wave of Crusaders in this region, and that we, like the Crusaders of old, will one day be forced out. We all know that there are many Palestinians who believe that.

What upset them was that she — an educated woman, getting a graduate degree (which would never happen in a Muslim country) at a world class university (only Israel has those — none of Israel's neighbors has a single highly rated university) and working at a college filled with Jews who admire her, like her and treat her as they would any other colleague — still believes that when it's all over, the situation will get resolved by our being tossed out of here once again.

Even she , who lives a life filled with opportunities that she would never have in an Arab country, still thinks at the end of the day the Jews are nothing but colonialists. And colonialists, she believes, don't last here. The British got rid of the Ottomans, the Jews got rid of the British — and one day, she believes, the Arabs will get rid of the Jews.

That is one of the many reasons that this recent wave of violence, consisting mostly of deadly stabbings carried out by Israeli Arabs (not Palestinians living over the Green Line) and Arab residents of east Jerusalem, has Israelis so unsettled.

Yes, the reality on the ground is frightening. People are being stabbed on the street, on buses, in malls. Those being attacked are elderly men and women and young boys on their bicycles. No one is immune, and unlike the last Intifada, when suicide bombers sought high casualty counts so you felt safe away from crowds, now nowhere feels definitely safe.

But even that is not the most debilitating dimension of this new round of attacks on Jews. What's most sobering is the fact that this new round of violence has made it clear, once again, that this conflict is simply never going to end.

Read the whole thing.

I have had a series of articles over the years describing why peace is impossible. But that idea is so hard to accept by optimistic, can-do westerners, that they simply refuse to see the truth.

Martin Fletcher partly apologizes for MSNBC outrage but doesn't go nearly far enough

MSNBC's Martin Fletcher sort-of partially apologized for the outrageous use of The Map That Lies on the air on Friday. But his comment indicates that he is far from a Middle East expert and really doesn't get what he did - his own words on the air were almost as bad as the map itself.

From Facebook:

I replied on the thread:

The outrage was far more than the first map. The second map is deceptive as the plan wasn't implemented because of Arab hate; the third map calls land that was controlled by Egypt and Jordan "Palestinian" even though no one called it that before 1967; the fourth map doesn't note that it would look almost exactly like the third had they accepted Israeli peace plans.

Moreover, your comments that Israeli settlements are continuously expanding and taking up more and more territory are highly misleading; Israel has approved only a handful of new settlements since Oslo (in response to court rulings) and the amount of actual land the settlements are on has barely budged although far more people live in them.

See here and here.

So no, no excuses for the entire segment and both you and MSNBC must apologize, as well as investigate how notorious anti-Israel propaganda ended up on the air to begin with.

The last point is important; MSNBC staffers grabbed The Map That Lies from an anti-Israel site, edited it to adhere to MSNBC style standards and used it as if it had a shred of legitimacy.

(Edgar Davidson also has a very nice debunking of the map.)

Denouncing PA incitement is denounced by PA as incitement

For years, Palestinian Media Watch has documented hundreds of examples of support for terror, incitement to murder and antisemitism on the official PA TV network.

A couple examples from recent weeks:

It interviewed a relative of a dead terrorist describing his funeral as a "wedding "and the reporter offered condolences on behalf of all Palestinians.
It interviewed an official who said that murdering Jews in Judea and Samaria is a "national duty."

Apparently, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked noted that the official TV station of Israel's "peace partner" was inciting people to murder Jews, and she demanded that it be shut down.

The PA's response:

The Palestinian presidency Thursday denounced statements made by the newly-appointed justice minister, ‏Ayelet Shaked, in which she incited against the official TV station ‘Palestine’ and demanded its immediate closure.

In an official statement, the presidency called on the Israeli government to put an end to the stream of daily official incitement, the latest of which was the call to shut down the TV station.

Yes, pointing out incitement is condemned as incitement itself!

It gets even better:

The presidency further urged the Israeli government to put an end to all acts that could lead to increased violence and tension.

See that? Israel says to the PA, "Stop being violent." The PA answers, "Stop doing things we don't like that makes us violent."

They want Israel to stop doing everything that they find offensive, because that's what makes them violent - and therefore Israel is responsible for the murderous actions of the Arabs!

The demand is pure blackmail - do what we want or we cannot stop our people from naturally wanting to kill you.

The sick mentality of the Palestinian Arab leadership is clear from this article that they translated themselves to English.

All of their statements boil down to one rule: Palestinians have rights without responsibilities, Israelis have responsibilities without rights.

10/17 Links: Palestinian leaders have established an incubator to raise children as terrorists

From Ian:

Jeffrey Goldberg: The Paranoid, Supremacist Roots of the Stabbing Intifada

In September of 1928, a group of Jewish residents of Jerusalem placed a bench in front of the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, for the comfort of elderly worshipers. They also brought with them a wooden partition, to separate the sexes during prayer. Jerusalem’s Muslim leaders treated the introduction of furniture into the alleyway in front of the Wall as a provocation, part of a Jewish conspiracy to slowly take control of the entire Temple Mount.
Many of the leaders of Palestine’s Muslims believed—or claimed to believe—that Jews had manufactured a set of historical and theological connections to the Western Wall and to the Mount, the site of the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, in order to advance the Zionist project. This belief defied Muslim history—the Dome of the Rock was built by Jerusalem’s Arab conquerors on the site of the Second Jewish Temple in order to venerate its memory (the site had previously been defiled by Jerusalem’s Christian rulers as a kind of rebuke to Judaism, the despised mother religion of Christianity). Jews themselves consider the Mount itself to be the holiest site in their faith. The Western Wall, a large retaining wall from the Second Temple period, is sacred only by proxy.
The spiritual leader of Palestine’s Muslims, the mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, incited Arabs in Palestine against their Jewish neighbors by arguing that Islam itself was under threat. (Husseini would later become one of Hitler’s most important Muslim allies.) Jews in British-occupied Palestine responded to Muslim invective by demanding more access to the Wall, sometimes holding demonstrations at the holy site. By the next year, violence directed against Jews by their neighbors had become more common: Arab rioters took the lives of 133 Jews that summer; British forces killed 116 Arabs in their attempt to subdue the riots. In Hebron, a devastating pogrom was launched against the city’s ancient Jewish community after Muslim officials distributed fabricated photographs of a damaged Dome of the Rock, and spread the rumor that Jews had attacked the shrine.
The current “stabbing Intifada” now taking place in Israel—a quasi-uprising in which young Palestinians have been trying, and occasionally succeeding, to kill Jews with knives—is prompted in good part by the same set of manipulated emotions that sparked the anti-Jewish riots of the 1920s: a deeply felt desire on the part of Palestinians to “protect” the Temple Mount from Jews.

Amb. Danon: “Palestinian leaders have established an incubator to raise children as terrorists”

Amit Heumann, Israel's Legal Adviser addresses UN on the Rule of Law

MSNBC shows - and accepts! - The Map That Lies

I have in the past comprehensively debunked The Map That Lies, the ubiquitous piece of lying propaganda that Israel haters like to use to push their agenda, truth be damned.

That map was shown Friday on MSNBC - and it was even discussed, by no less than their experienced correspondent martin Fletcher, as if it had validity!

Kate: If you look at the map, we have a map that shows historically the areas that used to be Palestine in 1946 and then the UN plan there and then as it shrunk down to basically Gaza and the West Bank, right, and then present. So what does that show you, Martin, that the area where> Palestinians are living, has it grown increasingly smaller?

Martin Fletcher: Well absolutely, of course, this is what it’s all about. It’s all about the land and what this map shows you. I must say it’s pretty shocking when you present it in this way. What it clearly shows is that if there’s no peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israel, more of those green areas, more of that Palestinian land will be eaten up by Jewish settlements. Although right now there is a freeze on settlements by Israel because there’s so much international pressure, the Palestinians say if we don’t have peace soon we won’t have a Palestine left.

Kate: And the Israelis say, we have every right to be in all of these areas.

As I documented, every part of that map is a lie. Here is my debunking, originally written in 2011:

This map is a lie.

The first panel of the traditional version of this map has the biggest lie:

While I presume that the white sections are indeed the land that was privately owned by Jews, the land in green was not privately owned by Arabs.

Only a tiny percentage of land in Palestine was privately owned. The various categories of land ownership included:

Mulk: privately owned in the Western sense.

Miri: Land owned by the government (originally the Ottoman crown) and suitable for agricultural use. Individuals could purchase a deed to cultivate this land and pay a tithe to the government. Ownership could be transferred only with the approval of the state. Miri rights could be transferred to heirs, and the land could be sub-let to tenants. If the owner died without an heir or the land was not cultivated for three years, the land would revert to the state.

Mahlul: Uncultivated Miri lands that would revert to the state, in theory after three years.

Mawat (or Mewat): So-called “dead”, unreclaimed land. It constituted about 50 to 60% of the land in Palestine. It belonged to the government. ...If the land had been cultivated with permission, it would be registered, at least under the Mandate, free of charge.

By the early 1940s Jews owned about one third of Mulk land in Palestine and Arabs about two-thirds. The vast majority of the total land, however, belonged to the government, meaning that when the state of Israel was established, it became legally Israel's. (I believe that about 77% of the land was owned by the government, assuming 6 million dunams of private land as shown in this invaluable webpage on the topic from which I got much of this information.)

To say that the green areas were "Palestinian" land is simply a lie.

In the case of this version of the map, the lie is even worse, as the implication is that pre-1948 Palestine was an entirely Arab country with no Jews and no Jewish land ownership. Of course, before 1948 the word "Palestinian" more often than not referred to Palestinian Jews, not Palestinian Arabs. For example, the Palestine exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair was entirely Jewish, the Palestine Orchestra was entirely Jewish, the Palestine soccer team was almost entirely Jewish, and so forth.

Now the next one:

While this is a somewhat accurate representation of the partition plan (with the notable exception of Jerusalem, which was meant to be an international city,), it has nothing to do with land ownership. The entire purpose of this map is to make it appear that Israel has been grabbing Arab land consistently, to serve as a bridge between maps 1 and 3. What is not said, of course, is that Israel accepted the partition and the Arabs did not, so as a result Israel in 1949 looked like it does in map 3.

Map 3 is still a lie, however, because in no way was the green land "Palestinian" at that time. Gaza was administered by Egypt and the West Bank annexed by Jordan. No one at the time spoke about a Palestinian Arab state on the areas controlled by Arab states - only in Israel.

In other words, this progression of maps is a series of lies meant to push a bigger lie, and it is tragic that a lot of people believe them to be the truth.

Here is a small attempt on my side to show a more accurate picture of Israel's giving land it controlled up for peace since 1967:

This map shows that Israel gave up control of the Sinai, Gaza, Southern Lebanon and much of the West Bank over the years. Rather than falsely accusing Israel as a land-grabbing rogue state, it accurately shows Israel as perhaps the only state in history that has voluntarily given up more than two-thirds of the areas it controls in exchange for nothing more than a paper agreement - or sometimes not even that. All at the risk of serious security concerns for her people, no less.

This is all because Israel wants, desperately, to live in real peace with her neighbors. This desire is not reciprocated by those neighbors, unfortunately.

The real map shows the truth of Israel's incredible concessions in the often vain hope for peace.

UPDATE here.

10/16 Links Pt2: Phillips: Jewish blood stains many hands; If Jews behaved like Arabs; Fisking J-Street

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Jewish blood stains many hands

Predictably, the Western media ignored the hundreds of attacks on Israeli Jews these past few weeks. It waited until Israel started killing terrorists. Then it sprang into action to portray the Israelis as brutal oppressors driving helpless Palestinians to desperate measures.
In American and British newspapers, on CNN and the BBC, the focus was on the Palestinians who had been killed with their Israeli victims added as an afterthought.
The New York Times excelled itself in its twisted anti-Israel reporting by peddling an absurd theory – which every expert dismisses as utter rubbish – that the “explosive historical question” was whether the two Jewish Temples had ever stood on the Temple Mount at all.
On BBC TV’s Newsnight, presenter Evan Davies tried to insist that measures Israel was taking to deter further murderous attacks were “reprisals” – in other words, revenge attacks. Then he suggested that the most likely reason why these young, “post-Oslo” Arabs believed Israelis should be killed was that they had been “provoked” by Israel’s behavior.
Such remarks betray total ignorance of the Arab pogroms against Jews, the frenzied butchery and the very same incitement and lies about al-Aksa that have being going on in the Land of Israel for almost a century.
Even more important than the malice of the media is the part played in Arab incitement by Israel’s supposed friends and allies.

Col. Richard Kemp: Palestinian and Western Leaders: Blood on Their Hands

Secretary Kerry's comments will encourage the continuation of violence and lead to further deaths of both Israelis and Palestinians. His explanation for the widespread knifings, suicide bombings, shootings, arson, firebombings, vehicle attacks and lethal rock-throwing is either naive or mendacious; perhaps both.
Kerry asserts that the frustrations of Israeli settlement activity are responsible for the Palestinians' murderous behaviour. The reality is that this new wave of killings is a continuation of the aggression against Jews that has been going on in the territory of Palestine for many decades -- since long before 1948 and pre-dating the first Israeli settlements in the West Bank that Kerry falsely brands as illegal.
The violence is motivated by the same racist and sectarian zeal that drives the Islamic State and numerous Arab governments and jihadist groups that have sought to eradicate the presence of "infidels," whether Jews, Christians or Yazidis, from land that they consider the exclusive preserve of Muslims.
Palestinian children are taught that Jews are descended from apes and pigs and must be killed before their "filthy feet" desecrate the holy places of Islam -- in the words of President Abbas.
Secretary Kerry, the UN, and the EU should be discouraging further violence by condemnation and by meaningful threats of sanction against the Palestinian Authority leadership. The international community has encouraged Hamas's illegal use of human shields and berated Israel for defending itself and for inflicting civilian casualties, which were in reality the unavoidable consequence of Hamas's unprovoked aggression and its way of fighting from within private houses, schools, hospitals and mosques.
This encouragement of Hamas violence, especially the effectiveness of its human shield strategy, did not go unnoticed by other Islamist terrorist groups. That is also what Hizballah wants: the wholesale deaths of their own people as a trigger for unbearable international pressure against Israel.

Fred Maroun: Are Israeli Jews too nice?

In a 2004 Haaretz interview, left-wing historian Benny Morris who had previously been the darling of anti-Zionists expressed the opinion that Israel’s founders had been naïve. As Morris put it, “It was a mistake to think that it would be possible to establish a tranquil state here that lives in harmony with its surroundings.”
I think that Israel’s founders were not naïve, but they took the high road even though the Arab attackers had no such ethics. Yet, if Jews behaved like Arabs, today’s Israel would have been very different.
If Jews behaved like Arabs
If Jews behaved like Arabs, after her victory in 1948, Israel would have expelled all Arab residents (although some Arabs were expelled, this was not an official policy, and the vast majority of Arabs who wished to stay were able to do so). Since Arab states were expelling Jewish citizens, such an action by Israel would have seemed natural, and today’s Israel would not have had Arab members of parliament in Israel’s Knesset attacking Israel’s legitimacy and defending Palestinian terrorists.
If Jews behaved like Arabs, after her victory in 1967 and the annexation of East Jerusalem, Israel would have expelled all Arab residents from East Jerusalem. This would have almost been expected since Jordan had in 1948 expelled all Jews from East Jerusalem even though they were at that point a majority. In fact, if Jews behaved like Arabs, Israel would also have annexed the West Bank and Gaza and expelled all their Arab residents. (h/t Cliff)

In the tent pissing in: Fisking J-Street’s Alan Elsner’s Op-Ed on Jerusalem Violence

CNN published an op-ed by Alan Eisner. It’s logic is quintessential (cookie cutter) J-Street logic. Good insight into how Western audiences tragically misread the situation here. I first experienced Elsner at a conference on BDS at University of Baltimore Law School. Feeling a bit defensive, he at one point said, “Look, do you want us in the tent pissing out, or outside the tent, pissing in.” To which someone from the audience called out, “We’re afraid you’ll be in the tent pissing in.” And here we go.
He triumphally blames Israel for the violence. It’s as if, to paraphrase the venerable Jeremiah Wright, “Israel’s karma is coming home to roost.”
Both sides must realize that they have no choice other than to negotiate a just end to this conflict, and that can only come through a two-state solution.
Huh? Even the far left peaceniks in Israel have realized that this liberal take on the problem is not shared by the Palestinians.
Without the ability to exercise their right to self-determination, Palestinians will continue to resist with whatever means they have at their disposal.
This is pure Palestinian propaganda. There’s nothing here about Palestinians getting serious about making the kinds of compromises that a “two-state” solution – whose logic is oh so obvious to Elsner and so many other right-thinking folks in liberal democracies. It’s basically a free pass to “resist” by any means (including stabbing 13-year old boys) until Israel makes the concessions that J-Street demands.
This is not to justify these meaningless and horrific knife attacks.
Ooops. Sorry. I guess I misunderstood. He’s about to denounce these acts and get at why they are completely unacceptable, and how he, as a liberal with strong moral standards, cannot remain sympathetic to their cause as long as they resort to such depraved means of “resistance.”