Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 05, 2015

The PLO wants the Temple Mount "status quo" from the 19th century

On Monday, quoting the official Palestinian Authority news service, I showed that the "status quo" that the Palestinian Arabs insist on for the Temple Mount is one where there are no Jews allowed whatsoever.

I surmised that the "status quo" they insisted on was from 1949, the beginning of the Transjordanian occupation of the Old City.

I was wrong. The PLO Negotiations Affairs Department informs us that the "status quo" that they insist on is much earlier than that:

The Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound is a holy site comprised of 144 dunums of land1, which includes the two mosques (the Dome of the Rock and Al-Qibli) as well as open areas for prayers around them. The Status Quo of Religious Sites which mandates prayer rights, right to access, and excavation and maintenance regulations, dates back to the Ottoman Period. However since 1967, Israel, the occupying power, has effectively changed Al-Aqsa’s Status Quo through several policies, including terror attacks, the destruction of the ancient Minbar (prayer platform) of Salah ad-Deen al Ayyubi (1969), several military raids and storming of the compound, including the one led by former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon (2000), illegal and unauthorized excavations, destruction of 20 Islamic graves to make room for the “Jewish Biblical Garden” (2014), as well as systematic closures over the Holy Site.

The entire document is filled with lies, but here are a couple to note from just this short section.

"The destruction of the ancient Minbar (prayer platform) of Salah ad-Deen al Ayyubi (1969)" refers to the arson at the Al Aqsa Mosque done by a mentally ill Christian. Only rabid conspiracy theorists blame Israel. And here, the PLO does also.

"illegal and unauthorized excavations" - since Israel does not excavate on the Temple Mount (but the Waqf does and has destroyed uncountable priceless artifacts), this means that the PLO is declaring the entire area around the Mount to be part of Al Aqsa. This is confirmed by their assertion of "destruction of 20 Islamic graves to make room for the 'Jewish Biblical Garden'" - the graves were both new and many were fake, placed near the walls of the Mount illegally, but they were not on the Mount itself.

Which means that the PLO is saying that they also want the Ottoman "status quo" to apply to areas adjacent to the Temple Mount, including the Western Wall.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)

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The "Proto-Islamic" era

Normally I don't waste my time with Twitter trolls, but this exchange last week was especially interesting:

@dunn_martin @elderofziyon @Ostrov_A The Menorah was used in the proto-Islamic Temple
— Disgusted Muslimah (@DisgustedMoslem) October 28, 2015

@elderofziyon @dunn_martin Talmudists need to stop appropriating proto-Islamic regalia and symbols. #StopTalmudism #CulturalAppropriation
— Disgusted Muslimah (@DisgustedMoslem) October 28, 2015

Hey @DisgustedMoslem, I would love to see a link to all the proto-Islamic regalia and symbols. What years cover that period? @dunn_martin
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) October 28, 2015

Muslim coin with Menorah

The term "proto-Islamic" was new to me, so I was wondering exactly what time period this period covers. So I checked it out.

Abraham is indeed the patriarch of the Jews but he is also the patriarch of the Muslims, as in Quranic Muslims. In the Quran, it is stated that Abraham was a Muslim.

Islam is not the name of a religion founded by Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad merely restored Islam to the world. Islam existed before Muhammad. Islam is an Arabic word that means Worship The One God.

Adam is the founder of Proto-Islam, the informal Islam which we are all born with. When Abraham came, Proto-Islam became two, namely Universal Monotheism (Hinduism) which is described in the Quran as the Sabaean faith, and Abrahamic Islam, the religion of Abraham.

Abraham acknowledged both Abrahamic Islam and Universal Monotheism as valid and correct.

Abraham, also called the Friend of God, was the prophet who received the formal Islam from God. This formal Islam, later revived by Muhammad, was a distinct community, with its mission of doing good to the ends of the Earth.

If everyone since Adam was proto-Islamic, then it is hard to argue that Islam came after other religions.

A somewhat more scholarly source - a book synopsis at the National Endowment for the Humanities site from Oxford Islamic Studies Online - identifies "proto-Islam" as being founded by Abraham:

Abraham, one of the many Old Testament figures that appear in the Qurʿān as a prophet of the Biblical tradition, assumes an outstanding role in Islam because of his association with (proto-)Islam, an uncorrupted form of Biblical monotheism that preceded the foundations of Judaism and Christianity.

...As the founder of proto-Islam, Abraham is connected closely with the Prophet Muḥammad. Abraham is the name of the Prophet's son, who did not survive, by his wife Mary the Copt. Abraham also appears prominently in most versions of the legend of the Prophet Muḥammad's Night Journey and Ascension to Heaven (al-isrāʿ wa al-miʿrāj), along with Moses and Jesus; the Prophet meets with him either in Jerusalem or in the sixth or seventh heaven, and in some traditional reports (ḥadīths) Muḥammad refers to Abraham as his father. A number of ḥadīth reports stress the close physical resemblance between Muḥammad and Abraham; he is reported to have stated, “I saw Abraham; I look like his son.”

Scholars of Judaism would recognize that last hadith as a theft from the Talmudic passage that says that God made Isaac resemble Abraham so that no one could doubt the boy's parentage.

Or did the Talmud steal it from proto-Islam - before Mohammed was born?

Over the past 24 hours, at least three news services have written articles about Egypt's flooding of Gaza smuggling tunnels.

IBT, Andalou and especially Reuters all came out with stories about the topic. All of them played up how ordinary Gazans are suffering from Egypt's decision. All of them downplay the fact that the tunnels are used to smuggle in - and, according to Egypt, out - weapons for jihadist terror groups.

The cluster is not coincidental. It means that Hamas is pulling the strings behind media coverage in Gaza, in this case to pressure Egypt to stop destroying their weapons imports and tax revenue from smuggling commercial goods.

Of course, the media won't report how they are being used as puppets.

Andalou talks about new sinkholes and landslides from the tunnel destruction:

Major landslide late Tuesday in the southern border area between the blockaded Gaza Strip and Egypt resulted in a major sinkhole after the Egyptian army pumped seawater into the strip’s tunnels for around two months, the Gaza Ministry of Interior said.

Palestinian security and civil defense teams rushed to the area to protect civilians at risk, the ministry added.

A number of tunnels had collapsed south of Rafah, causing a sudden landslide, a Palestinian national security source told Anadolu Agency, adding that this is the fourth time the area suffers from landslides and sinkholes.

Blockaded by Israel since 2007, Gaza used to receive much-needed supplies through the network of smuggling tunnels on its border with Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Reuters also manages to blame Israel in an article about how Egypt is acting:

Local residents say that at the peak of the tunnel business, after Hamas Islamists seized the Gaza Strip in 2007 and Israel tightened a closure of its crossings into the enclave, nearly 2,500 underground passages snaked under the border with Egypt.

The direction of traffic was mainly into Gaza. Commercial goods - and weapons smuggled in separate tunnels controlled by Hamas and other militant factions - flowed in defiance of what Palestinians and many of their supporters decried as neighboring Israel's siege.

Yet none of the articles mentions that Egypt is the Gaza neighbor that has hermetically sealed the sector, with practically zero imports, zero exports and almost no people traveling across Rafah, while Israel allows thousands of trucks of goods and thousands of people to cross between Israel and Egypt every week.

Reuters does finally mention a little truth:

At one point an estimated 22,000 Palestinians worked in the tunnel "industry". However, it shrank markedly in 2010 after Israel, under international pressure to ease restrictions on commercial imports into Gaza, allowed more goods in through its overland crossings.

Then this September, battling an insurgency in northern Sinai, Egypt decided to shut down the tunnels once and for all. Determined to halt what it said was an arms flow in the opposite direction, from Gaza to the militants, it cleared the area on its side of the border and began pumping water into the underground maze, collapsing the land.

Tunnel-builders said Egypt has pumped in water several times since September, and that over the course of a few weeks had done more damage to the network, which once accounted for an estimated 30 percent of Gaza's imports, than Israeli bombing had caused over the past two decades.

Now, the diggers said, fewer than 20 tunnels remain for commercial goods, with easy-to-smuggle cigarettes the main contraband. No one can, or will, say how many weapons tunnels remain - a secret that is guarded by Hamas and other armed groups, which last fought a war with Israel in 2014.

But Reuters' main focus is the environmental damage:

What is left is an environmental mess, residents and local officials said, with the sea water polluting underground drinking reserves. The overflow has reached streets and homes within 100 meters (yards) of the border fence. Vast puddles and mud are everywhere.

"One cubic meter of sea water pollutes 40 cubic meters of underground water," said Tamer al-Sleibi, water department director in the Palestinian Environment Quality Authority in Gaza, who is concerned about long-term environmental damage.

Egypt's campaign, he said, could weaken the foundations of homes already on shaky ground due to tunnel-building and make land unfit for agriculture in areas near the frontier. There is also a health risk as the water turns stagnant, allowing mosquitoes and other disease carriers to breed.

The fact that thousands of rockets whose components were smuggled in those tunnels have been shot at Israeli civilians is just not worth mentioning.

Hamas has largely succeeded in manipulating the media. You know - the reporters who pretend to be so fiercely independent but who instead jump when a terror group tells them to.

.@UNRWA worker shows how much he wants to live in peace

The cover image of the Facebook page of UNRWA staff nurse Adnan Hammash:

HERE WE WILL STAY

In Lidda, in Ramle, in the Galilee

We shall remain.

Like a Wall on your Chest

And in your Throat

Like a Shard of Glass, a Cactus Thorn

And in your Eyes

A Sandstorm

Notice that the places named are all inside the Green Line.

Meaning that this UNRWA worker believes that Arabs will keep attacking Jews as long as Jews remain in power in Israel.

Nothing to do with Al Aqsa or "occupation" or "settlements."

It all has to do with Jews.

11/04 Links Pt2: Dershowitz: Debating against BDS - and winning; Beware of friends bearing boycotts

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Debating against BDS - and winning

BDS sends a false message to the Palestinian street: namely, that international economic and political pressure can force Israel to capitulate to all Palestinian demands.
BDS opposes any effort at negotiation that isn’t premised on the recognition that Israel is an apartheid state. Indeed, many of its leaders refuse to recognize the right for Israel to exist as a nation-state for the Jewish people. In so doing, they are empowering radicals on both sides of the issue who have no desire to see a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Many liberal activists such as Mr. Tatchell—whose advocacy on behalf of LGBT rights I greatly admire—have made common cause with BDS, hoping to pressure Israel to end the occupation, and afford greater self-determination to Palestinians in the West Bank. They seem to believe that a movement advocating non-violent tactics is necessarily the best way to achieve a lasting peace. But BDS is radically opposed to any negotiated settlement, and has increasingly begun to regroup bigots of all stripes who feel comfortable with the language used by its leaders, such Mr. Barghouti.
Mr. Tatchell and many pro-BDS academics also feel that Israel has committed human rights violations both in the occupation of the West Bank, and in its prosecution of the armed conflicts in Gaza. During the course of the debate I issued the following challenge to the audience and to my opponent: name a single country in the history of the world, faced with threats comparable to those faced by Israel, that has a better record of human rights, compliance with the rule of law and seeking to minimize civilian casualties.
I invited audience members to shout out the name of a country. Complete silence. Finally someone shouted "Iceland", and everyone laughed. When the best is treated as the worst, in the way the BDS movement singles out Israel for accusation, the finger of blame must be pointed at the accusers rather than the accused. In the end, the case against BDS won not because of the comparative skill of the debaters but because I was able to expose the moral weakness of the BDS movement itself.

Douglas Murray: Britain's New Racism

This effect -- the Corbynization of British politics -- has already had one notable effect. Last week Sir Gerald Kaufmann, a man with a track record of anti-Semitic comments, said something crazed even by his own high standards. Speaking at an event organized by the Hamas-affiliated "Palestine Return Centre" in Parliament, Kaufman claimed that the Conservative party had been influenced by "Jewish money." Asked why the UK government had allegedly become more pro-Israel in recent years he said, "It's Jewish money, Jewish donations to the Conservative Party -- as in the general election in May -- support from the Jewish Chronicle, all of those things bias the Conservatives."
What Kaufman said next is in some ways even more extraordinary. He claimed that the Palestinians "are living a repressed life, and are liable to be shot at any time. In the last few days alone the Israelis have murdered 52 Palestinians and nobody pays attention and this government doesn't care." He went on to claim that the recent stabbing attacks on Israeli citizens had been fabricated by the Israeli government in order to allow it to "execute Palestinians."
There have already been complaints about this statement from other MPs, including other Labour MPs. But what can be expected of the Labour leadership? Jeremy Corbyn is an old friend and ally of Kaufman's. They have shared anti-Israel platforms for years. However, whereas ordinarily a party leader would discipline an MP for such outrageous and false claims, nothing has happened -- nor will happen -- to Kaufman. It is a failure that should bring shame on the party. Even the Liberal Democrats managed eventually to withdraw the whip from their Baroness Jenny 'Boom' Tonge, who has repeatedly spread blood-libels about Israel. But Kaufman is part of Corbyn's Parliamentary base, and the kind of people who lap this sort of thing up are part of Jeremy Corbyn's wider base in the country. What is a leader like him to do?
This, then, is one of the already jolting effects of the Corbyn leadership. Wholly predictably, it has begun to mainstream anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories, and it has encumbered the political left with few defences to the accusation that it is they who now harbour the proponents of the greatest racism of our time. Is it too much to hope that an alliance of Jews and non-Jews of every imaginable political stripe will push back to ensure this does not happen?

Israeli academic shouted down in lecture at University of Minnesota

On Tuesday afternoon an Israeli academic was shouted down by two dozen protesters as he tried to begin a lecture before about 100 students and faculty at the University of Minnesota. The speaker was Moshe Halbertal, a professor at NYU Law School and a professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at Hebrew University. He was invited to deliver the Dewey Lecture in the Philosophy of Law, which is organized annually by the law school. That the freedom to present a lecture is threatened in this way at a public university is appalling, calling not only for punishment of violations but for a clear statement by university officials defending the free exchange of ideas.
The lecture, which I attended, was delayed half an hour as one by one the protesters stood up to shout denunciations of Israel and were escorted from the hall by university police. One young woman came screaming back into the lecture after having been ejected. Outside the hall, the protesters chanted so loudly that it was difficult to hear Halbertal, much less to concentrate on what he was saying, until 45 minutes after the lecture was to have begun.
The protests were apparently organized by a group calling itself the “Anti-War Committee,” which bragged on its Twitter feed about having disrupted the lecture and complained that the protesters’ “free speech” rights were violated when a few were arrested. It appears that no law students were involved, but many of the demonstrators were college-aged and the protest was endorsed by a group called Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a university group. According to its Facebook page, SJP “promotes justice, human rights, liberation, and self-determination for the Palestinian people.”
The lecture was entitled, “Protecting Civilians: Moral Challenges of Asymmetric Warfare.” The talk did not directly address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though Halbertal drew in part on his experience helping to draft the Israeli army’s code of ethics. When he was finally able to speak, Halbertal argued that in fighting “asymmetric wars” (typically, wars between professional militaries and insurgencies or resistance movements) professional combatants should err on the side of protecting noncombatants from casualties, even when they thereby increase risks to themselves or to their cause. (h/t Zvi)

Protesters shout down Israeli Professor at U. Minnesota law school

Leora Eisenberg, a high school student who wanted to attend the lecture, posted on Facebook:
So, you think BDS wants peace?
I was lost. I needed to get a lecture by noted Jewish-Israeli lecturer and philosopher Moshe Halbertal on the ethics of war. I had just come from school. I knew I’d be the youngest in the audience, and I was okay with that. I’ve always been precocious, especially for Israel.
I saw one lame protester in front of the building. So, one person showed up to protest the “apartheid regime.” Carry on. Protest. You have your rights.
As I came into the building, I heard some really loud chanting. I mean, really loud. And as a Russian-Israeli Jew, I know loud. I didn’t realize it was in front of the lecture hall. I couldn’t actually get in.
Because if I did, they would probably physically assault me. They championed their slogans of peace… right? (“Hey hey, ho ho, they occupation has got to go!”) But they also had at least three police officers standing in front of the doors and brandished (fake) blood-covered babies and made some vaguely anti-Semitic slurs. (all while holding signs proclaiming that Zionism is not Judaism)
I was afraid to go in. And when I finally could (through the secret back door), I was shaking too hard to focus. At one point, a BDS protester burst in, started screaming and was escorted back out by the cops– at which point, I heard the protesters drift off (and finally be taken outside).
So, you still think BDS wants peace?
Think again. I didn’t realize peaceniks make 17-year-olds girls scared to go to lectures on foreign policy. I didn’t realize peaceniks could be so violent.

Ayatollah Khamenei explains it all (ElderToons)

From AP:

The slogan "Death to America" is not aimed at the American people, but rather American policies, Iran's supreme leader said in comments reported on his official website Tuesday.

Khamenei says the "aim of the slogan is not death to American people. The slogan means death to U.S. policies and arrogance." The slogan has "strong support" In Iran, he said.

Ah, but what about that other phrase?

.@UNRWA Maintains Neutrality On How To Destroy Israel (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Jerusalem, November 4 - In keeping with the organization's mandated policy of not taking sides in political disputes, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) clarified today that the agency has no official position on how the destruction of the world's only Jewish state will be accomplished.

Spokesman Chris Gunness stressed to reporters today that contrary to recent reports of UNRWA employees violating the neutrality required of them by celebrating the murder of Jews, the agency enforces a strict code of ethics under which no specific avenue for causing the demise of the State of Israel and killing its Jewish inhabitants is shown favor or disfavor.

"You might have been hearing about teachers at UNRWA schools, or other UNRWA functionaries, allegedly violating our organization's neutrality policy," said Gunness at a press conference. "But those reports are either malicious distortions or erroneous renderings. This agency does not, and had not in the past, allowed its employees to express exclusive preference for any particular method of bringing about the end of Israel and massacring all Jews who reside there." Gunness explained that Facebook posts and other evidence that appeared to show UNRWA employees glorifying stabbing, vehicular homicide, shooting, or rockets were in fact merely metaphorical devices for conveying the purpose and goals of the organization and the population it serves, rather than a violation of neutrality regarding how best to rid historical Palestine of the usurper rapist ape-pig Jews and any pretensions they may have to sovereignty.

"I guarantee that none of the supposed violations of neutrality by UNRWA teachers, for example, stands up to scrutiny" challenged Gunness. "For neutrality to be breached, you would have to prove that the person who made the allegedly non-neutral post, or who shared an allegedly non-neutral image, is actually trying to say that the specific kind of violence being invoked is preferred over others. That's just nonsense. No UNRWA personnel are irresponsible enough to think, let alone say, that stabbing every single Jew is the only acceptable path toward bloody redemption of the homeland from the Khazar invader. Every single one of our employees has been vetted, and we have determined to our satisfaction that nary a one would object to, say, nuking Israel out of existence, or poisoning the whole country's water supply with anthrax, instead of stabbing all the Jews or running them over."

"So please stop giving coverage to these alleged violations of neutrality," he asked reporters. "This is a non story."

11/04 Links Pt1: How a Blood Libel against Israel Is Born; PA names soccer tournament after terrorist

From Ian:

JCPA: How a Blood Libel against Israel Is Born

On Friday, October 30, the primetime show The Agenda on Ontario’s TVO network, with anchorman Steve Paikin, explored the question of whether the Palestinian violence marks the beginning of the Third Intifada.
Two interviewees were asked to give their assessment: Yoni Goldstein, editor of the weekly Canadian Jewish News, and Khaled Elgindy, a fellow of the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy and former adviser to the Palestinian Authority on permanent-settlement issues from 2004 to 2009.
Elgindy presented a distorted picture of the situation that pins full responsibility for the Palestinian violence on Israel. He asserted that a new intifada would probably be a better option for all of the sides, because it would be organized and would seek clear-cut objectives. In other words, Elgindy implied that a wider outbreak of violence, which would wreak numerous civilian deaths like the Al-Aqsa Intifada that began in September 2000, would be better than the current level of Palestinian violence, which so far has not succeeded to kill large numbers of Israelis.
Elgindy went on to say:
I would disagree that the Israeli response has been effective. It’s not been effective. It’s been very repressive, and it has been almost as random in its violence as the knifing attacks except far more deadly in terms of the number of Palestinian casualties….
Israel has arrested hundreds of Palestinians basically just mass arrests rounding people up. It has shot into crowds of unarmed protestors. There is a sort of ‘shoot to kill’ policy that appears to be the main rules of engagement for Israeli security forces where they shoot first and ask questions later. And we saw just the other day, the Israeli police conducted an investigation into a Palestinian woman who was shot in the city of Afula and they found in fact that she wasn’t carrying any weapon. That the initial report that she had a knife was false and that she was simply executed for no reason.
To put it mildly, Khaled was not speaking the truth. There have been no cases whatsoever of Israeli security forces shooting into innocent crowds. The casualties among the Palestinians stem from the multitude of terror attacks against Jews, of which there have been many hundreds just in the last month. The arrests being made are not random, but are responses to violent activity or to intelligence information. Israeli open-fire orders do not allow shooting to kill except in life-threatening cases, such as the use of firearms, firebombs, knives and potentially lethal stonings.
The blood libel against Israel has reached a peak with the description of the incident where the woman in Afula was shot. The facts are entirely different from those Elgindy presents in his version.
The female attacker was not Palestinian, but rather an Israeli Arab residing in Nazareth named Asra Awad. She was not “executed,” but rather moderately wounded in her lower extremities by the gunfire and treated in a hospital.

PMW: Palestinian football tournament named after murderer ‎who stabbed two to death last month

Terrorist Muhannad Halabi murdered two Israeli civilians and wounded the wife and infant of one of them, in a stabbing attack in the Old City of Jerusalem in October. Now, the Yasser Arafat Youth Center in Jenin has named a football tournament after the murderer.
Headline: "Bal'a Club wins the Martyr Halabi cup for football"
"The Martyr Yasser Arafat Youth Center (Al-Attara - Jenin) succeeded in organizing the first football tournament named after Martyr (Shahid) Muhannad Halabi, which took place on its football fields. The final game was played by the Yasser Arafat Youth Center and Bal'a, which rightly won the title." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 2, 2015]
Palestinian Media Watch has reported on official PA gestures in honor of this murderer. A PA municipality named a street after him and the mayor said, "This is the least we can do for Martyr Halabi." Abbas' Fatah movement brought soil from the Al-Aqsa Mosque to his grave. Private institutions and people have also honored terrorist Halabi, with the PA Bar Association awarding him an honorary law degree and parents in Gaza naming their newborn son after the murderer.
It is not surprising that private institutions and organizations like the Jenin youth club decide to honor murderers who have killed Israelis. Glorification of terrorist murderers is a practice repeatedly carried out by the PA and Fatah, as documented by PMW.

Sudanese Man Attempts to Murder Israeli on Ethiopian Airlines Flight

A Sudanese man was arrested by Ethiopian authorities for attacking an Israeli man on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from N’Djamena to Addis Ababa last week, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Tuesday.
A 54-year-old Israeli man, identified as Arik and an employee for an Israeli communications company that operates in Africa, was on the flight with the intent to get on another flight to Israel after landing in Addis Ababa.
“About 20 minutes before the plane started its descent the passenger sitting behind me identified me as Israeli and Jewish,” Arik told the newspaper.
“He came up behind my seat and started to choke me with a lot of force,” he continued, “and at first I couldn’t get my voice out and call for help. He hit me over the head with a metal tray and shouted ‘Allah akbar’ and ‘I will slaughter the Jew.’ Only after a few seconds, just before I was about to lose consciousness, did I manage to call out and a flight attendant who saw what was happening summoned her colleagues.”
Most of the other passengers chose not to get involved, with the exception of one Lebanese passenger who assisted the crew in stopping the attack, Arik said. (h/t Yenta Press)

Orthodox Jewish Man Stabbed in Brooklyn; Victim in Stable Condition (VIDEO)

An off-duty volunteer for Brooklyn-based Jewish ambulance service Hatzalah was stabbed in the back on Tuesday night while walking in Crown Heights, local blogs reported.
The victim, identified as 34-year-old Dovid Katz, was treated on the scene by his colleagues and then rushed to the nearby Kings County Hospital, where he was reported to be in stable condition, sources said.
According to the report, he did not see the attacker, who approached from behind and then quickly fled the scene following the assault. One witness cited by a local blog described the assailant as an “African-American male wearing a hoodie,” but noted that “this has not been confirmed.” The attacker is still at large.
Local website Crownheights.info warned local residents, “Please beware of your surroundings and be extra cautious when going outside until the assailant is apprehended.”
A leader of the largely Chabad Chasidic local Jewish community also called on residents to be on guard.

Ma'an published a report from the Shabaka NGO. Excerpts:

In January 2013, the Jordanian government announced a non-entry policy for Palestinian refugees. Since then, those Palestinians who had been able to cross into Jordan (usually relying on forged documents or smugglers) have lived in fear of being arrested and deported back to Syria. Furthermore, Palestinians who fled to Jordan cannot legally live in the refugee camps established for Syrians, but at the same time, cannot legally work to earn money to rent housing outside of camps. The one exception is Cyber City, which is more of a detention center than a refugee camp, and where Jordanian authorities have been transferring Palestinians who are in the country clandestinely since April 2012. Palestinians are confined to Cyber City unless they decide to return to Syria.

As for Lebanon, the authorities began requiring as of the end of 2013 that Palestinians from Syria apply for a visa before entering the country. And as of May 2014, Lebanese authorities were only allowing Syria-registered Palestinian refugees entry into the country if they had the documents needed to travel to a third country, limiting their stay in Lebanon to a maximum of nine hours. In May 2014, restrictions were placed on the ability of Palestinians from Syria to legally renew their residency papers. As a result, the majority of Palestinians from Syria who are currently in Lebanon live under the threat of arrest and deportation to Syria.

In Egypt, the government does not allow Palestinian refugees to register with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). At the same time, Egypt falls outside of the area of operation of the UNRWA. Consequently, there is currently no UN agency responsible for the protection and assistance of Palestinian refugees in Egypt. Additionally, it has become all but impossible for Palestinians from Syria to get visas to Egypt. Because Palestinians (unlike other refugees in Egypt) cannot register with UNHCR, they cannot get residency permits, receive food vouchers, medical assistance, or any other services provided by UNHCR. Palestinians can currently apply for a one-month visa to travel to Egypt, but they also need to get clearance from Egyptian security services, a clearance that is rarely granted. Palestinians fleeing Syria for Egypt have been subjected to arbitrary arrest, prolonged detention or deportation to a third country, and collective expulsion by Egyptian authorities.

...The situation of Palestinians from Syria who are already inside Turkey is also far from ideal: Because Turkey is not part of UNRWA’s area of operations, Palestinians in Turkey do not have access to the agency’s assistance. Normally, these Palestinians would fall under UNHCR’s mandate. However, UNHCR services, which are distributed through the Turkish government, are not reaching Palestinian refugees, whose legal status in Turkey remains unclear. Part of the problem is that the Turkish government does not allow UNHCR to perform refugee status determination on its soil.

A Separate and Unequal Legal Status

Palestinian refugees maintain a separate legal status from other categories of refugees. This separate status is enforced through an exclusion clause in article 1(D) of the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees that states that the convention does not apply to persons who are already being assisted by another UN organ or agency. At the time of the signing of the 1951 convention, Palestinian refugees were already receiving services from UNRWA and the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine and were thus excluded from UNHCR’s mandate. However, if interpreted correctly, article 1 (D) also means that Palestinians who are located outside of UNRWA’s normal areas of operation or who are unable to access UNRWA assistance immediately fall under the mandate of UNHCR.

It is worth recalling that the exclusion of Palestinian refugees from UNHCR’s mandate was pushed by Arab states, who feared that absorbing Palestinians with other categories of refugees would harm the right of return as a primary solution for Palestinians who were expelled or fled from their homes in 1948. However, as has been noted in Badil’s publication Al-Majdal, this exclusion has also contributed to the “construction of a separate and unique category of ‘Palestine’ refugees and therewith created an environment in which discriminatory policies can flourish”. Indeed, it is clear from the examples above that Palestinians fleeing the conflict have seen their mobility and access to international protection curtailed in part because of their Palestinian identity and separate legal status.

Furthermore, Arab states often justify their discriminatory policies against Palestinians in the name of protecting the Palestinian right of return. In an interview with the newspaper al-Hayat, Jordan’s prime minister Abdalah Ensour justified Jordan’s restrictive policies toward Palestinians fleeing Syria by explaining that allowing Palestinians from Syria into Jordan would absolve Israel of its responsibility toward Palestinian refugees.

He ended his explanation by saying that “Our Palestinian Brothers have the right to return to their country of origin. They should stay in Syria until the end of the crisis”. Similarly, the Lebanese government has generally justified its denial of basic rights (such as the right to work or to own property) to Palestinians on its soil as a form of support for the Palestinian right of return that is predicated on the non-integration of Palestinians into Lebanese society. The current hardships faced by Palestinians from Syria who are in Lebanon or those trying to reach Lebanon cannot be divorced from Lebanon’s pre-existing policies toward Palestinians on its soil.

Isn't it remarkable that in a world where the Palestinian issue takes up so much of the United Nations' time and so much of the media's attention, practically no one is talking about how Arab nations are treating their Palestinian brethren?

Terrorist mom is very proud - and now her dead son is being used for blood libel (update)

Rusaila Shamasneh is very proud of her dead terrorist son.

On October 12, Muhammad Nazmi Shamasneh, 22, from the village of Qatana, got on a bus near the entrance to Jerusalem. He stabbed a 19 year-old IDF soldier, inflicting minor injuries, and tried to grab his weapon. He was shot and killed by police.

His body was released for burial, and now his mother Rusaila is celebrating his death.

"I am sad only because I was not with my son" at the moment of his death to join him in martyrdom, "but I am very happy for the death of my son for Jerusalem and proud of that," she said.

She insisted that all the visitors to her house act joyful at the "wedding" of her son.

Rusaila then went to the roof of her building and shot celebratory gunfire in joy at her son's death.

But the Paleesinian Authority is not done with trying to get propaganda value from Muhammad Nazmi Shamasneh.

From JPost:

Israel harvested the corneas from one of the bodies of a terrorist responsible for an attack at the entrance to Jerusalem last month, according to reports by Palestinian media.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health issued an official statement, claiming to have made the discovery at the morgue where the body was being housed.

The attack took place on October 12 on bus line 185. A terrorist sitting in the back of the bus stabbed a soldier, called out "Allahu akbar," and attempted to steal the soldier's weapon.

Yes, this is the same guy. Since he was not successful in murdering any Jews, now he is being used to create a blood libel.

It is the Palestinian way of recycling.

(h/t Ian)

UPDATE: More fun from the necromom. (h/t Bob K)

Those Israelis, humiliating an innocent young man (video)

Anti-Israel activists have been spreading this video they say of Israeli soldiers wantonly attacking a young man because he refused to humiliate himself by taking off his pants.

#WatchIsraeli Occupation Forces (IOF) brutally attack unarmed Palestinian young man for his refusal to take off his trousers2 November 2015, Occupied Jerusalem, Palestine#شاهد جنود الاحتلال يهاجمون شابا فلسطينيا أعزلا بوحشية ويعتقلونه على الرغم من رفع يديه وملابسه في القدس المحتلة#Zionist #False_Gods #Kabalah #Vodo_State_of_Israel #Gang #apartheid #Palestine #SaveAlAqsa #EndIsraeliOccupation#اعدام_طفل_فلسطيني #المسجد_الأقصى_يشتعل
Posted by Shehab News Agency on Monday, November 2, 2015

What cruelty! What brutality!Just taking a random Arab and forcing him to be humiliated like that!

A short time earlier, here is what this upstanding young man did. He attacked a tour guide by pummeling her on her head with a bottle.

But hitting a Jew on the head with a bottle is legal resistance against tyranny. Humiliating an Arab is a war crime. Those are the rules, as interpreted by today's top arbiters of morality and international law.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)

Another Gaza store with a stabbing mannequin

From Reuters:

A mannequin holding a knife displaying a jacket that reads "stab" (L) is seen outside a clothes shop in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip November 3, 2015. The shop owner said the display was made in support of Palestinians committing stabbing attacks against Israelis.

This is besides the other one I showed on Sunday, which as Israellycool discovered, was outside a shop named "Hitler."

(h/t UK Media Watch)

11/03 Links Pt2: PA and Fatah: Israel had "no right" to be created; Amnesty's true mission

From Ian:

PA and Fatah: Israel had "no right" to be created
From Palestinian Media Watch:

On the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917, the PA and Fatah repeated their claim that Israel has "no right" to be created and attacked the declaration, calling it "ominous".
The Balfour Declaration was a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Rothschild stating that "His Majesty's government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" and is seen as the basis for later international commitments to establish the State of Israel.
Abbas' Fatah movement posted the picture above of Balfour engulfed in flames, accompanied by the text:
"We will not forget the ominous promise, the Balfour Promise (i.e., Declaration) given by those with no ownership to those with no right"
[Official Facebook page of the Fatah Movement, Nov. 1, 2015]
The official spokesman of the PA National Security Forces, Adnan Al-Damiri, posted similar statements:
Text on photo:
"We will not forget the ominous promise, the Balfour Promise made by those who have no ownership to those who have no right. Nov. 2, 1917" [Facebook page of PA National Security Forces, Adnan Al-Damiri, Nov. 2, 2015]

Balfour Declaration Anniversary Erases Jewish Connection to Holy Land

It’s hardly surprising that the myth of an existing historical Palestinian state that was ‘colonized’ by European Jews continues to circulate if this is the sort of lazy historical background being fed to media consumers.
- Nowhere in the article does it mention that Palestine, as it was known as then, was a part of the Ottoman Empire and there had never existed an independent Palestinian state.
- Nowhere in the article does it mention that indigenous Jewish communities had lived in the Land of Israel going back over 3,000 years and there existed a continuous and uninterrupted Jewish religious and national connection to that land.
- The article mistakenly writes that the Balfour Declaration gave instructions “to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.” In fact, the Declaration supported a Jewish homeland, and not necessarily a state. The Balfour Declaration was but one step on the way to the fulfillment of the Zionist program of restoring Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish people’s ancient homeland.
- Indeed, to talk of Palestinians in those days referred to both Jewish and Arab residents of the land. When the Daily Mail refers to “without prejudicing the Palestinian communities already there,” it is not clearly stating just who those communities are, instead working on the presumption that Palestinian communities were Palestinian Arabs.
- This is compounded by the statement that “The Palestinians are furious that their land has technically been promised to the Jewish people.” In 1917 at the time of the Balfour Declaration, there was no national Palestinian identity – the non-Jewish residents of the land considered themselves to be part of the wider Arab nation and Arab nationalists sought an independent Arab state not in Palestine per se but as part of the Ottoman Arab Middle East as a whole.
- So it was not at that time “their land” that the Palestinians are allegedly furious that it had been promised to the Jewish people.
By missing out any historical context, the Daily Mail has erased legitimate Jewish rights that existed even before the Balfour Declaration and has constructed a Palestinian national identity that did not exist in 1917. (Note: this does not mean that a Palestinian identity did not emerge in later years.)

Amnesty's true mission

Amnesty International's conclusions on the situation here in Israel are always bizarrely perverse. The latest is no different: "Israeli forces have carried out a series of unlawful killings of Palestinians using intentional lethal force without justification ... based on the findings of an ongoing research trip to the West Bank, including east Jerusalem. ... The organization has documented in depth at least four incidents in which Palestinians were deliberately shot dead by Israeli forces when they posed no imminent threat to life, in what appear to have been extrajudicial executions. ... Since Oct. 1, Israeli forces have killed more than 30 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Israel either after stabbings were carried out or the Israeli authorities allege stabbing attacks were intended.
"There is mounting evidence that, as tensions have risen dramatically, in some cases Israeli forces appear to have ripped up the rule book and resorted to extreme and unlawful measures. They seem increasingly prone to using lethal force against anyone they perceive as posing a threat, without ensuring that the threat is real," Amnesty International wrote in a press release on Oct. 27.
As blogger Elder of Ziyon has already exposed, Amnesty's "in-depth documentation" is based on lies. This is the most egregious element of Amnesty's attempt to insert itself into the situation.

"Jews always split Muslim societies"

From Egypt's Misr5:

Jews are always working with the rule of divide and conquer, that is, they create differences between people in one country and in different countries around them so that they are the masters. Jews have walked this path a long time ago, even before the advent of Islam.

In Yathrib "Medina" (communities of Jews were supplying both sides of a war with money and weapons to perpetuate the war between them, and so the war lasted nearly 120 years.

This is the dirty role played by Jews in general...

Even now Jews are behind the strife in Syria, and in Yemen, as well as in Iraq, in Libya. In Egypt it is no secret that they control the money and the media, and this way they caused many cracks in Egyptian society...

Allah says, "Hold on to Allah and be not divided among yourselves ...".

The cartoon was not drawn for this article but it was used as the illustration to symbolize Jews tearing Muslim and Christian Arabs apart.

South African Israel-hater Suraya Dadoo. tweeted an article to me she wrote defending Hamas:

She writes, among other things:

Throughout the four-day visit to South Africa, Misha’al spoke at length about an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza, based on 1967 borders, with the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees. Hamas had committed itself to a just political solution – not merely a “two-state solution” where a Palestinian ‘mini-state’ has its major cities cut off from each other, its government unable to control its own water resources, develop its agriculture, or manage its trade with neighbouring states.

In a joint statement, Mary Kluk and Ben Swartz of the SAZF and SAJBD again invoked the Hamas Charter, claiming that “the core ideology of Hamas is underpinned by a rabid hatred of the Jewish people.” Yet, on the day the statement was issued, Misha’al was scheduled to meet progressive Jewish groups in Johannesburg.

“The problem is not Judaism or Jews, it is the occupation,” Misha’al said repeatedly during interviews.

According to Misha’al, the Hamas Charter is no longer a true expression of the movement’s overall vision, and does not reflect the current thinking of the movement. Hamas does not even use the Charter on its website and uses its election manifesto, and more recent documents, to describe its overall vision and objectives. For Israel’s apologists, however, Hamas has not gone far enough, and they demand that the movement formally abrogates the Charter.

Therefore, she writes, Israel should really negotiate with Hamas. (She pretends that Hamas would actually negotiate with Israel!)

So I went to the Hamas website to see their new, improved and moderate position filled with liberal ideas.

They wrote a press release to mark the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration yesterday. (Not in English, of course.)

The Hamas movement on this painful anniversary emphasizes the following:

First - The Balfour Declaration is unjust and void and unacceptable...

Second - The imposition of such an entity as a fait accompli by force through the expulsion of our people from their land can not change the facts of history and geography, because our people hold the steady and sacred rights and refuse to compromise at all costs.

Thirdly - we affirm our commitment to use the resistance in all its forms, especially the armed resistance as a strategic option is able to deter the occupation and recover the usurped rights and liberate the land and holy places and Al Aqsa and liberating the prisoners.

Fourthly - emphasize the need to enhance the uprising through a unified national consensus in the face of the Zionist attack on Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Fifthly - we call on the leaders of Arab and Islamic countries and all the Liberals in the world to bear the historical responsibility to help our people for liberation from occupation, providing support to our people and pressure the occupation to force them to stop the aggression against our people and leave our land and our holy places.

Sixth - we call upon the international community, especially the international organizations to act to protect Palestinian refugees everywhere, securing a decent life for them in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and to spare them the horrors of internal wars.

Seventh - We applaud the masses of our people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and in Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa and our prisoners in Israeli jails, to trigger resistance in every inch of the land of Palestine in defense of the land, honor and sanctities.

Hamas, as always, makes it clear that their goal is the destruction of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from the land. And terrorism is their strategic method to accomplish that.

This is not a new message. Hamas has been remarkably consistent. Yet there are a lot of people who want to try to fool the world into believing that Hamas is not a terror group, despite its own explicit words.