Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, November 19, 2015

World Council of Churches issues another anti-Israel resolution

The World Council of Churches just had a meeting in Switzerland where they issued a statement of their position on Israel and the Palestinians.

The WCC executive committee, meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, on 13-18 November 2015, accordingly expresses its grave concern at recent developments in Israel and Palestine, involving renewed violent attacks against people of both communities and measures entailing long-term time division of access to Al-Aqsa mosque and affecting access to other holy sites. Such measures further diminish hope in the realization of this vision.

"Renewed violent attacks against people of both communities" - so Arabs stabbing and running their cars over Jews has exactly the same moral weight as Israelis defending themselves from those attacks? Has the IDF been attacking any random Arabs they come across?

"measures entailing long-term time division of access to Al-Aqsa mosque and affecting access to other holy sites" - While I would welcome a fair division and equal access to the Temple Mount (a phrase that the church group chooses to discard i favor of "Al Aqsa Mosque") I cannot find a single statement by the Israeli government that would allow such access. I'd love to know which hours of the day Jews can visit without fear of being screamed at or attacked.

In other words, this paragraph shows that the WCC doesn't give a damn about facts. They are dhimmis, wanting to accept the wildest Arab accusations without proof, so they can issue a supposedly "even-handed" resolution that diminishes Jewish rights.

The one-sided nature of the resolution continues:

Neither the spate of individual violent attacks against Israelis, nor the violent response and extra-judicial killings that have followed, can be condoned. They further undermine hopes for peace, already seriously diminished by the perpetuation of the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, successive restrictions and impositions, growing settlement activity, impunity and the international community’s inadequate response. We are deeply concerned that this heightened sense of hopelessness and frustration risks generating further uncontrolled waves of violence, with tragic consequences for the people of the region.

So the "individual violent attacks" are also Israel's fault, because they come from "hopelessness and frustration." Not a word about how the Palestinian government and its ruling party celebrates the attacks and encourages more. They can find a context for why Arabs stab Jews, but they can find no such context of why Jews might want to do things to avoid being stabbed.

I guess that's because, in the Church's eyes, only Jews have to turn the other cheek.

This is a disgusting resolution, where facts are discarded in favor of the politically correct position that Israel is always to blame. And because of resolutions like these that equate the attackers and the attacked, Arabs feel emboldened to perform further attacks, as we have seen today in Tel Aviv and Gush Etzion.

Of course, this is part of a pattern of lying and anti-Israel incitement from the WCC.

(h/t Arnold)

This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 11 years and over 22,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

Last March I reported that the American Library Association was once again partnering with the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) in the United Arab Emirates, a fair that has a history of featuring antisemitic books.

This year's fair, which just ended, is no exception.

The organizers of the fair deny that they allow such books to be shown as this Gulf News article about the opening of the fair reported:

In his keynote speech, Dr Shaikh Sultan said "the book is the light against ignorance". He added that all books are welcome at SIBF as long as they don't preach hate against anyone.

Here is a photo taken at the Ruslan Publishing House booth at the fair:'

What is that book that has the most copies on the table?

This one:

The ALA's President Sari Feldman gave the opening keynote speech to this fair that features hate - and denies it.

Some members of the ALA have used their status as librarians to vilify Israel and there have been unsuccessful attempts for the ALA to boycott Israel.

The same publishing house that publishes the Protocols also features an "Encyclopedia of Jews, Judaism and Zionism" although I'm not certain it was sold at the fair:

That work has been criticized by other Arabs as to being too pro-Jewish, although the author says that he avoided using the term "Jewish people" because the concept of a Jewish nation is "incompatible with reality."

(h/t Shawarma News)

Headline inversion in The Mirror

From The Mirror (UK):

Yes, Islamophobia is the real issue, while antisemitism is relatively normal. In fact, attacks on Jews create Islamophobia, it appears. Either that or stabbing Jewish teachers is a normal "backlash" after Islamist terror attacks.

The article is not much better:

A Muslim woman was wounded with a box cutter in a race-hate attack following the Paris terrorist atrocities, France's interior minister has said.

Bernard Cazeneuve condemned the assault and another attack on a Jewish teacher as "cowardly" and urged French citizens to remember the "values of the Republic".

I am in no way condoning the attack on the Muslim woman, but the framing here is completely backwards. A backlash against terror attacks is one story; antisemitism that is part of the fabric of a segment of French Muslim society is a much different (and much more important) story. The Mirror is trivializing, and even to a small extent justifying, the antisemitic attack.

(h/t Craig)
.

COGAT says 27,000 Palestinians work in Jewish settlements

COGAT put out its October statistics infographic:

The small print on the bottom is interesting.

In September, the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics said that about 90,000 Palestinian Arabs worked for Israelis within the Green Line and 20,000 worked in settlements. COGAT says far fewer work in Israel - but far more work in settlements, nearly 27,000.

I don't know which is more accurate. But COGAT's figure is awfully specific. It appears that they are counting permits.

It is against PA law to work for Jews in the territories. But if these numbers are accurate, then we can estimate that about 6% of the West Bank economy comes from people who work in the settlements (assuming double the average salary.)

11/18 Links Pt2: Glick: EU waging a trade war against Israel; Murray: A Society Ripe for Submission

From Ian:

US terror victims hold banks liable for Iranian terror funds

Legal rights organization Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center has sent warning letters to eleven banks believed to maintain frozen accounts for Iran, they announced Wednesday, advising them that the funds are still restrained for the benefit of terror victims who hold unsatisfied judgments against the Islamic Republic.
The letters caution the American branches of the foreign banks that the funds in the accounts may not be transferred despite the anticipated lifting of financial sanctions by the Obama Administration.
The accounts are believed to hold up to $100-150 billion in frozen oil revenues currently restrained under the sanction regulations in overseas banks.
“You are hereby warned that all accounts maintained by your financial institution at any of its branches in the name of Iran, the Central Bank of Iran, the Naftiran Intertrade Company, the National Iranian Oil Company, the National Iranian Tanker Company or any other agency or instrumentality of Iran are restrained and subject to a lien in favor of my clients under United States law," the letter states.
Although Iran negotiated to have sanctions lifted and funds returned, the accounts in fact have now been blocked by virtue of a “Citation to Discover Assets” (“Citation”) which was issued against Iran on October 26, 2015 in the Rubin v. The Islamic Republic of Iran case in the federal district court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Glick: EU is waging a trade war against Israel

Senior contributing editor to The Jerusalem Post Caroline B. Glick accused the European Union on Wednesday of waging a secret trade war against Israel.
Glick, speaking at The Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Jerusalem, outlined a series of steps she recommends Israel take to counter the "discrimination" of the recent EU decision to label products produced in West Bank settlements.
"Today we are in the middle of Europe's trade war against Israel," she said. "It's never acknowledged, it's hidden by lies about international law, lies about consumer protection and lies about human rights."
But, Glick added, "the war itself is a breach of international law, it doesn't protect consumers and it harms human rights." The EU's recent decision in regard to settlement products is "illegal under international law. Under the WTO [World Trade Organization] treaties it is illegal to introduce technical barriers to trade among trading nations."
The EU, she said, should either leave the WTO or apply this policy equally to other places in "the same legal situation" as Israel. For example, she said, it should insist that products produced in Western Sahara are labeled as "Moroccan settlement products made in Western Sahara."

Israel cheapens memory of Holocaust by likening settlement labels to Nazi boycott, EU envoy says

EU ambassador Lars Faaborg-Andersen hit back against comparisons of the EU's labeling of settlement products to the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses, saying that even when disagreeing, it was necessary not to “confuse fact with fiction.”
“Talk of a European boycott just does not stand up to a reality check,” he said at the Jerusalem Post's Diplomatic Conference. “Let me say loud and clear: Europe is not boycotting Israel, and Europe is not boycotting settlements.”
His comments came after a number of speakers, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, blasted the EU for its directive to label products from the settlements.
=said that the EU opposes boycotts and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and that products from the settlements will continue to enter the EU markets.
Faaborg-Andersen said that the EU has been “accused of a variety of sins” in recent days from the highest echelons of the Israeli government, including anti-Semitism, hypocrisy, rewarding terrorism and destroying Palestinian jobs.
“I've been shocked to hear claims of anti-Semitism and historical comparisons or analogies to the persecution of Jews in Germany in the 30s and 40s,” he said. “In my mind this is a distortion of history and belittlement of the crimes of the Nazis, and the memory of their victims.”

UNRWA, Hamas Hoping For Harsh Winter To Highlight Palestinian Misery (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Gaza City, November 18 - United Nations and Hamas officials confirmed today that both organizations want this coming winter to be especially cold and wet, so that the consequent suffering of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is intense enough to be used effectively in international publicity and fundraising.

A spokesman for the UN agency that provides aid to Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, told reporters the organization was looking forward to what forecasters predict will be another harsh rainy season. "We anticipate that if this coming winter is as rainy, possibly snowy, and frigid as the last few have been, we ought to come out of it with some dynamite images and stories of heartbreaking misery," said Chris Gunness. "Donors love that. They just eat it up. So if we want to keep this operation well funded, and not have to find an actual peaceful solution for Palestinian refugees the way the UN does for every single other kind of refugee, we're counting on some good flooding, hypothermia, homelessness, and possibly even a cholera outbreak or something, to give the story that post-calamity feel and really tug at the heartstrings."

"Wait, is that hypothermia or hyperthermia? I always get mixed up."

A Hamas official expressed similar sentiments. "We rely on, and engineer, continued Palestinian misery to use a political and propaganda weapon," explained Mahmoud al-Zahar. "Our continued diversion of materials from reconstruction of people's destroyed homes to build up our tunnel and bunker network is more than just a way for our forces to get their hands on those precious supplies; it also serves the purpose of keeping thousands of people rendered homeless in the last war out of permanent housing, people whose suffering is pure gold when it comes to generating international sympathy for us and making Israel look bad regardless of Israeli behavior one way or the other."

Analysts note that the increasing reliance on nature to produce Palestinian misery in Gaza helps save Hamas resources in its war against Israel. "Conserving military resources is even more important now that Egypt has destroyed or shut down so many of the smuggling tunnels under the border at Rafah," said Jordanian commentator Malik Kiwals. "If the weather cooperates and just slams Gaza this winter, Hamas won't have to fire volleys of precious rockets at Israeli civilians to provoke retaliation resulting in death and destruction. They can just let Mother Nature do the job, and use the rockets later."

Gunness said that last year at this time his agency had considered taking active steps to increase suffering in Gaza but that was rendered unnecessary when sudden flooding occurred and international media immediately and uncritically parroted local sources accusing Israel of opening dams to cause the deluge. "Apparently there are no Israeli dams in the area," he chuckled. "Who knew?"

11/18 Links Pt1: Fatah: Murdering Israelis is Palestinian "right"; Kerry: Hebdo attack had a 'rationale'

From Ian:

PMW: Fatah official: Murdering Israelis is Palestinian "right"

Fatah Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen participated in a rally honoring Palestinian terrorist murderer Muhannad Halabi, and “saluted the soul of [the] Martyr, who detonated the Jerusalem intifada,” Ma’an news agency reported. The Fatah official supported the murders committed by Halabi and the other recent shooting and stabbing murders, saying that Palestinian young men have the “right” to cause “Israeli women to cry”:
“It is the right of our young men to cause Israeli women to cry like our women are crying, even though our women make sounds of joy after their sons’ and husbands’ deaths as Martyrs.” [Ma'an, independent Palestinian news agency, Nov. 14, 2015]
Palestinian society continues to give special honor to Halabi, more than the other murderers of the current terror campaign, because he carried out the first “successful” stabbing attack. He murdered two Israeli men who were walking with their wives in Jerusalem, and his attack was then copied by dozens of other terrorists. According to Muhaisen, who spoke at a rally in Halabi’s honor, Halabi “detonated the Jerusalem intifada.” The rally itself “turned into a national wedding,” the news agency reported. This is a reference to the Islamic belief that "Martyrs" for Allah are wedded to 72 Virgins in Paradise.
At the rally, PLO Central Committee Member and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) member Omar Shehadeh stated that Halabi “represents an example and role model for generations of young.” [Ma'an, independent Palestinian news agency, Nov. 14, 2015]. PLO Executive Committee member and Deputy Secretary-General of the DFLP Qais Abd Al-Karim called terrorist Halabi a “hero,” expressed “pride” in him and talked about Palestinian “loyalty to [his] blood.”

Douglas Murray: Why are the Gulf states bankrolling IS barbarians?

Speaking at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, Cameron said: “It is not good enough to say simply that Islam is a religion of peace and then to deny any connection between Islam and the extremists. Because these extremists are self-identifying as Muslims.”
In telling this truth the PM is following the example of Sajid Javid, who said the same thing after January’s Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris.
Many people of Muslim background, like Javid, know what vicious and fanatical foes we are all up against.
It has taken 14 years, since 9/11, to get Western leaders to the point where they are willing to say this. But it is important. Unless we understand what drives the terrorists we cannot defeat them.
As the fallout from Paris shows, there is support for IS in Europe. Britain is not exempt — more British Muslims have gone to fight for IS than serve in our British Armed Forces. This swamp of support must also be tackled.
Even if IS are crushed there are many other groups with the same aims. Before anyone had heard of IS there was al-Qaeda. Before al-Qaeda, there were others.
The problem is the ideology. As are those “friends” in the Middle East who back it.

Douglas Murray - Spectator PodCast - The Paris attacks and what happens next (best bit 7:20)

John Kerry Offers “Rationale” for Charlie Hebdo Terror Attack

Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to justify the terror attacks earlier this year on the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo during remarks in Paris Tuesday, saying that there was a “rationale” behind the murders of 11 cartoonists and journalists.
Kerry contrasted that massacre with the recent wave of terror attacks last week, in which 129 people have died. “There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that,” he said while speaking at the American embassy in Paris. “There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, okay, they’re really angry because of this and that. This Friday was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn’t to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people. It was to attack everything that we do stand for.”
The terrorists who committed the Charlie Hebdo attack were reportedly upset by the magazine’s disrespectful portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad. Following the attack, no top U.S. dignitaries appeared at a major rally in Paris to support free speech and stand up against terror. (h/t Yenta Press)

Gaza-based Felesteen reports that Gazans are now creating knife and dagger-based theme parties and weddings in order to celebrate the wave of terror attacks across Israel over the past six weeks.

At weddings and other parties, children are wearing military uniforms while young men are displaying daggers and knives. Singers are rhapsodizing about the "heroes" who stab Jews and call for more attacks.

Fadi Abu Jabb, 27, wore military trousers on the eve of his wedding while placing a dagger at his waist during a bachelor party, whose attendees loved the idea. Throughout hours of the party, Fadi's friends and relatives who shared his joy by dancing with their own knives, to show their support for terror attacks in Jerusalem.

Fadi said that the military uniform was his fiancee's idea, and that this party was meant to show that all Palestinian people support "armed resistance" and car rammings and stabbings and shootings in the West Bank and Jerusalem. He prayed for God to bless him and give him the ability to set up a jihadist family to be part of the Palestine Liberation Army, Allah willing.

In a similar scene, at the wedding party of Murad Hussein there were songs associated with the stabbings. 12 children in keffiyehs performed. They put on a comic play showing Palestinians attacking a group of Jews causing them to flee even though they had submachine guns, to the amusement of the audience.

Majed Nofal, a tailor in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northern Gaza City, says, "There is a big demand for the purchase of military clothing by citizens, who wear them during special events such as parties and weddings." He also provides military clothing for women who wear them at their own parties as well.

From the UN News Centre:

In shadow of Beirut and Paris terror attacks, UN Security Council discusses root causes of conflict

The United Nations Security Council held an already scheduled debate on conflict prevention today amid added urgency fuelled by last week’s terrorist attacks in Beirut and Paris, with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressing that counter-terrorism must also tackle such root causes as bad governance, injustice and exclusion.

“Today’s violent conflicts and violent extremism are often rooted in a mix of exclusion, inequality, mismanagement of natural resources, corruption, oppression, governance failures, and the frustration and alienation that accompany a lack of jobs and opportunities,” he said at the opening of the Council’s day-long debate on ‘Security, development and the root causes of conflicts.’

But not radical Islam.

Turning to the most recent terrorist attacks in Paris, Beirut and Baghdad, last month’s apparent bombing of a Russian plane over Egypt, and the mounting threat from Da’esh [also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL], which controls large swathes of Syria and Iraq, Mr. Ban warned against taking reprisals against Muslims.

“No grievance or cause can justify such acts,” he said of the terrorist attacks. But, he added: “I am especially concerned about reprisals or further discrimination against Muslims, in particular Muslim refugees and migrants. This would just exacerbate the alienation on which terrorists feed.”

Yes, the UN is more concerned about a possible - and mostly mythical - backlash against Muslims than they are about Islamic terror itself.

So what would solve the problem of Islamist terrorism? Glad you asked:

He laid out four principles for preventing conflict and terrorism, stressing the crucial importance of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which calls for achieving peaceful and inclusive societies that provide access to justice and build accountable institutions.

If only ISIS and Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah and Al Qaeda felt more included in the world community and had access to justice, we wouldn't have any of these problems.

Of course, their definition of justice is to kill the infidels.

.@UNRWA wants you to know....

A tweet from UNRWA:

Did you know that #Palestine #refugees are the largest refugee population in the world? pic.twitter.com/fI4bJ5Atdf
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) November 18, 2015

Now, why could that be?

The main reason is because UNRWA has no mechanism to remove people from its "refugee" rolls. They can become citizens of other countries; they could be living in "Palestine" itself, they could be fourth generation - but as long as their ancestors (may have) lived in Palestine for a two year period from 1946-1948 and left their home, they are refugees - and their descendants remain "refugees" forever.

UNHRC refugees must prove that they fit the definition of refugee in every generation. UNRWA refugees cannot avoid being called "refugees."

A chart that I once published, I believe from Mida translated from a Norwegian blog, shows this in stark terms. The blog, called Tarud's Blog, translated the article into English and it is worth reading.

UNRWA's tweet is celebrating its ineffectiveness in helping solve the issue.

Head of the agency Pierre Krähenbühl recently tweeted about how he managed to scrounge up the funding to keep UNRWA going this year.

4. Expressed gratitude to donors & hosts for formidable support in overcoming our 2015 funding shortfall. Allowed to open schools on time.
— Pierre Krähenbühl (@PKraehenbuehl) November 16, 2015

5. Now major task ahead to avoid ever facing same crisis again. We have already brought initial 2016 shortfall down from 135 to 81 M usd.
— Pierre Krähenbühl (@PKraehenbuehl) November 16, 2015

6. Will resolutely combine internal measures w/ active outreach to donors to ensure financial stability. Also seek to broaden donor base.
— Pierre Krähenbühl (@PKraehenbuehl) November 16, 2015

But as the chart shows, you cannot put a band-aid on the funding issue. UNRWA itself will implode in a few years if it does not change its definition of "refugee" to exclude those who are not refugees by any stretch of the imagination.

Hamas seeking rapprochement with Iran

File photo

Palestine Press Agency notes that Hamas leaders sent notes of condolence to Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah in the wake of last week's bombings in Lebanon.

This is not an isolated communication; Hamas and Hezbollah have held a number of meetings recently in order to try to get Hamas back in the good graces of Iran.

According to the report, Hamas wants to rejoin the so-called "axis of resistance" that includes Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and other organizations loyal to to Iran.

Sources said that Tehran has in recent months renewed material support to Hamas' al-Qassam Brigades and sent some weapons and missiles through the Sinai despite the Egyptian campaign in the region to prevent smuggling operations and the closure of the tunnels completely.

There are indications that relations between Hamas and Iran are still rocky, with Hamas not supporting the Shiite groups fighting in Yemen.

11/17 Links Pt2: Shin Bet: October Worst for Terrorism in 9 Years; Majority of Pals support 3rd intifada

From Ian:

Matti Friedman: Book Review Winning the War of Words: Essays on Zionism and Israel

In my favourite piece here Wilf recounts a conversation with a Lebanese colleague, a Christian, who tells her, ‘We miss you’, meaning not that he misses her personally but that the Arab world misses the nearly one million Jews pushed out of the lands of Islam in the 20th century. From our vantage point in 2015 it seems that what happened to the Jews of the Middle East was only the first fissure in the regional landscape, only the first erasure of an ancient regional minority; others have followed and are following, the Christians among them, without a state of their own to flee to. ‘It is never really about the Jews,’ Wilf writes. ‘That is why it never ends with them. Hatred of Jews is about those who hate – not about those who are hated.’
That analysis, with which I must agree, is why I have my doubts about another of Wilf’s observations about intellectual efforts on behalf of Israel: ‘while victory in this battle, as in others, is not likely to be swift, with the proper resources, organization, and determination it is within reach.’ I don’t think this is the case, just as I don’t think that eloquent explanations in the 1920s could have convinced Germans that Jewish bankers were not manipulating the financial markets for their own devious gain, or that skilful essays or speeches could have countered the idea in capitalist countries that Bolshevism was a Jewish plot. No ‘war of words’, however skilful, can defeat the anti-Jewish obsession that crops up with unfortunate regularity in world history, of which today’s anti-Israel fixation is merely the most recent incarnation. Explanations of Israel’s complexities in the real world will have a limited effect not just because they are necessarily complicated, but because the Israel obsession – in the manner of obsessions – isn’t really about Israel at all, or about the real world. These pathologies can perhaps be tempered on the margins but cannot be made to go away.
An involvement with the Jewish state ‘is not for the fainthearted,’ Wilf writes: the country never promised to make it easy for anyone and indeed has never done so, like ‘a high-maintenance girlfriend,’ at once impossible and irresistible. ‘In return for never-ending efforts to woo her, not a trace of gratitude is to be offered – barely an appreciative smile.’ Wilf seems tough enough to keep it up nonetheless. Her efforts are crucial, and there is no reason to expect them to be less necessary or easier anytime soon.

“Zionism is Racism” Ideology Lives on at the United Nations

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said at the event commemorating Chaim Herzog’s speech denouncing the “Zionism Is Racism” resolution that the “reputation of the United Nations was badly damaged by the adoption of resolution 3379, in and beyond Israel and the wider Jewish community.” He noted how Mr. Herzog had spoken up “forcefully in defense of Zionism, the Jewish national movement.”
Yet on the same day he made his remarks in recognition of the moral strength of Mr. Herzog’s “defense of Zionism, the Jewish national movement,” Ban Ki-moon nominated an individual to serve as the new United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who showed hostility to Israel in his previous position as Commissioner-General of UNRWA. Filippo Grandi, Ban Ki-moon’s nominee, has advocated policies that would completely undermine the continued viability of a Jewish state.
“A bid for statehood does not in and of itself address the plight of the refugees,” Grandi said back in 2011. “There is no doubt in my mind that there can be no just and durable peace in the Middle East unless some five million refugees are brought out of their 63-year state of dispossession and exile.”
Less than one-sixth of this five million figure had actually experienced “dispossession” – which often was the result of a voluntary choice. Using the five million “refugee” figure, Grandi was advocating that all of these Palestinians classified as “refugees” before Palestinian independence would retain that classification even after the creation of an independent Palestinian state and the achievement of complete Palestinian self-determination. In other words, these five million Palestinians would get to choose whether to stay in the new state of Palestine or relocate to the adjoining state of Israel en masse and potentially destroy Israeli self-determination to remain a Jewish state.
In sum, while the evening commemorating Chaim Herzog’s historic speech was filled with stirring words recognizing Zionism as a positive and legitimate expression of self-determination for the Jewish people, business-as-usual at the United Nations continues to support the Palestinians’ victimhood narrative wrapped up in lies and rejectionism.

No truth to Gaza ship warrants of arrest – South African police

South African authorities have not issued warrants of arrest against officers in the Israeli military in connection with the so-called “Freedom Flotilla” of ships attempting to break a blockade in the Gaza strip region in 2010.
This is contrary to claims earlier on Tuesday by the Media Review Network (MRN) and BDS South Africa.
National police spokesman‚ Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi‚ denied the MRN claims.
"There is no truth to this. No arrest warrants have been issued for any of the people mentioned‚” he said. “We have checked with our Interpol and our Crimes Against The State officials and they deny any such thing."

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah again shows how peaceful they are

You know how Mahmoud Abbas claims that he is against a violent intifada?

The message on the official Fatah Facebook page says something quite different.

Here is a video from Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades that was posted on Fatah's Facebook page. Aspiring members of the terror group graduated on the anniversary of Yasir Arafat's death and they made this video celebrating Arab violence:

Some scenes are of special significance.

They proudly show rocket manufacturing::

A number of times they show themselves practicing kidnapping Israeli soldiers:

And they have conference rooms, too.

Where they no doubt plan for the "two state solution" - Fatah-land and Hamastan.

On announcing his intention to step down next year as the managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Mark Scott informed his staff, inter alia: “Can I add how pleased I am with our commitment to the main priority this year, serving the nation as the independent home of Australian conversations, culture and stories? On television, we have broadcast remarkable dramas, documentaries and comedies. Our radio services continue to connect millions of Australians each day … In news, we are breaking stories of significance every week; stories with great impact …”

The ABC, founded on 1932, is Australia’s counterpart to the BBC and similarly publicly funded – not by a license fee like the BBC but by an allocated budget funded by taxpayers. Currently, it rakes in well over one billion Australian dollars annually. Commercial broadcasters, who provide their own funds via advertising, can be as biased as they wish on topical issues, but, like the BBC, the ABC is formally obligated to be scrupulously objective. It’s required to “maintain an independent service for the broadcasting of news and information,” “to ensure that the gathering and presentation of news and information is accurate and impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism,” and, in news and current affairs, to enable viewers to “make up their own minds” via a “diversity of perspectives”.

Yet, like the BBC, the ABC constantly flouts the obligations on which its public funding ostensible depends, in order to present a left-liberal agenda, and to hawk, especially, a favourite core of issues, one of which is asylum and “refugee” migration. Rarely does the ABC present an alternative view on this issue to that of the Green Left; it interviews with astonishing regularity Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, an arch-critic of “refugee” detention and “turning back the boats,” giving her a great deal of air time – a courtesy it seldom accords to politicians or activists of the opposing viewpoint.

Some of its top presenters supplement their generous salaries by sounding off in newspaper columns on issues of the day, thus revealing the personal political standpoints that they are meant to conceal in the interests of perceived even-handedness, and which undermines their pretensions to objectivity. As with the BBC, an arrogant thumb-our-noses-at-the-guidelines attitude together with a left-liberal perspective is, if not pervasive throughout the Corporation, then certainly widely palpable. Take, for instance, the veteran political presenter Barrie Cassidy. He recently blogged a puerile, mocking personal attack on conservatively-inclined prime minister Tony Abbot soon after the latter lost his position in a tawdry coup: ‘…This week Tony Abbott broke free of the shackles and exposed his creed: a fundamental rejection of negotiation and compromise, and a refusal to allow compassion to get in the way of a nation's self-interest… He urged Europe to study Australia's experience, turning boats around and denying entry at the borders. "It will require some force," he declared. Fight. Fight. Fight. Even against desperate refugees…’

The ABC ethos that accepts that everyone seeking illegal entry into this country is a genuine “refugee” is also part of the BBC’s. It’s broadcast and tweeted constantly by these Tweedledums and Tweedledees. The BBC’s Matthew Price has been one industrious propagandist to this effect. So has the BBC’s man in Sydney, Jon Donnison, who makes snide tweets about Australia’s asylum policy (and Britain’s) every chance he gets, as well as making highly partisan tweets relating to Gaza and the West Bank, where he was previously based, and where his heart apparently resides.

Each week the ABC’s flagship current affairs show Q&A, the broadcaster’s equivalent to the BBC’s Question Time, packs its panel with leftists, with just a token sprinkling of proponents of the other side. Among regular panellists are two leftist Jews highly critical of Israel: elderly Viennese-born feminist Eva Cox, and Louise Adler, a member of Alternative Australian Jewish Voices. Dr Adler heads Melbourne University Press, which under her aegis has published Antony Loewenstein’s My Israel Question and London University Professor Jacqueline Rose’s Out of Zion. Perhaps needless to say, the ABC has given publicity to both books and their authors.

Writes Zeddy Lawrence, editor of the Australian Jewish News, in the current issue of that paper (http://www.jewishnews.net.au/abc-must-tackle-bias/50538):

‘Earlier this year, the corporation’s editorial integrity became a matter of public concern after Zaky Mallah was allowed to ask a question on the broadcaster’s flagship Q&A program. But for members of the Jewish community, the ABC’s editorial integrity was already in doubt, with a number of reports from Israel not only exhibiting a distinct lack of balance, but in some cases reflecting individual journalists’ personal political opinions. Readers will no doubt recall February 2014’s Four Corners episode in which the IDF was accused of targeting Palestinian children for arrest in the middle of the night, assaulting them while in detention and forcing confessions from them. The report omitted key facts about the cases it highlighted, relied on unverified allegations from sources with questionable credibility that were subsequently repudiated, failed to give context and, moreover, quoted negative UNICEF findings about the IDF, without mentioning more recent UNICEF findings that actually noted significant improvements in the IDF’s operations.
Fast-forward to July 2014 and the war with Hamas, and there were numerous cases where the ABC’s focus was on Israel’s targeted airstrikes rather than the rockets being fired indiscriminately at Israeli cities from Gaza. In one instance, seemingly oblivious to Hamas’s tactics of using human shields and the IDF’s warnings to civilians to evacuate ahead of strikes, the ABC’s Sarah Ferguson asked Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev: “Do you take enough care to avoid those casualties, ‘cause it appears the answer is no?”
In the past year alone, the ABC has featured no fewer than 20 times in our Media Week column from AIJAC [the Australian Jewish Public Affairs Council], with the same problems noted in each instance. Whether discussing subsequent investigations into the war, house demolitions, the blockade of Gaza, the Jewish connection to Jerusalem or other issues, there’s a lack of context, a lack of balance, the omission of relevant facts, interviewees with a clear agenda, and little, if any, official Israeli responses or explanations of the matters under discussion. Throw into the mix, a two-part documentary this July produced by a prominent BDS activist that effectively accused Israel of apartheid, and even included claims that Jerusalem was “being ethnically cleansed” and that the Jewish State was “imposed” and “artificial”, and the ABC appears to be acting, in some cases, as a pro-Palestinian propaganda mouthpiece.’

As mentioned on my own blog in March, the ABC’s then newly-appointed exclusive Jerusalem-based Middle East correspondent, young Sophie McNeill, was appointed to that post despite – or maybe because of – a history of pro-Palestinian activism (a remarkable state of affairs discussed by a concerned Ahron Shapiro here http://www.jwire.com.au/should-the-abc-have-given-advocacy-journalist-sophie-mcneill-the-keys-to-its-jerusalem-bureau-asks-ahron-shapiro/). In an interview she gave in 2011, Ms McNeill, who has credited Robert Fisk’s Hidden Histories with inspiring her to be a journalist, said: "If you just try to frame stories from the point of view of the people who are really suffering in a situation, be it in Lebanon, if you’re hanging out in a Palestinian refugee camp, [or] in Gaza … One of the saddest things I’ve seen in my whole life is spending some time filming in a children’s cancer ward in Gaza. I just think if you just – if you look at a situation and you just – yeah, I guess just try to spend time with the people who are – who really don t have any power and it is hard, you know, for them to have a voice. Then that’s, yeah, that’s the kind of journalism I want to do.... Everyone knew what was happening in Gaza ... you saw all the horrific videos ... a lot of people died ... there are no excuses any more..."

There have been a number of instances in which Ms McNeill’s subsequent reporting and tweeting has chagrined or indeed outraged the Australian Jewish community, overwhelmingly pro-Israel as it is, as well as numerous fair-minded non-Jewish commentators. Late last month, in a segment on the ABC’s 7.30 current affairs program, Ms McNeill informed viewers that, “after they tried to board a school bus south of Jerusalem,” two Palestinians were shot by Israeli security forces. What she failed to reveal was the crucial information that the two had just knifed someone, were armed, and were intent on attacking schoolchildren on that bus. Ms McNeill also told, hardly objectively, of a dead sixteen-year old Palestinian student who had been fatally shot at a checkpoint: “Israeli soldiers say that this friendly, gifted student tried to stab them, so they shot her dead”. There was lachrymose footage of the girl’s empty desk at school as Ms McNeill described her, in the opinion of relatives, as “so affectionate … very talented …” and, in the opinion of friends, as a “martyr … dying for Palestine”. Neglecting to tell of the incitement to violence caused by circulating canards that Israel was denying Palestinians access to their holy site in Jerusalem, Ms McNeill put her own spin on things by asserting that “Tensions are being fuelled by the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land”.

Little wonder that an excellent article in the Brisbane Courier-Mail by Rowan Dean expressed revulsion at a segment on the ABC’s 7.30 current affairs program, in which Sophie McNeill, expressed revulsion at the segment for portrayed the murderous young Palestinians concerned ‘almost as heroes, engaged in some noble struggle …. Even the segment’s title – “Meet the young generation of Palestinians behind the third intifada” – was a disgrace, sounding like some hip, funky show … Throughout eight turgid minutes, the show failed to point the finger of blame where it belongs: at those political and religious predators in the West Bank and Gaza who for a generation have tutored and groomed young Palestinians to desire to murder Jews. Muslim clerics in Palestinian mosques have been urging their followers in recent weeks to go out and hack Jews to death in the name of Allah. For the Islamist, the “cause” of “liberating” Palestine is just another facet of jihadist terrorism, the goal being the genocide of all nonbelievers, particularly Jews…’ Instead, there was ‘funky rap music, “cool” interviews, sentimental claptrap about an empty desk at a girl’s school and so on’.
Over the years, examples of ABC bias against Israel have been itemised by AIJAC and, where sufficiently egregious to warrant it, officially protested by the ECAJ. But as the ECAJ’s executive director, Peter Wertheim, has recently written, “Even when our complaints have been upheld, corrective action by the ABC has been half-hearted or slow to occur”. However, a media survey undertaken in June shows that, in Mr Wertheim’s words, “although ABC radio and television remain the nation’s most trusted sources of news and current affairs, trust levels have fallen significantly in the last five years and the ABC’s lead over commercial broadcasters and newspapers has narrowed markedly”. Thus, he continues, “For its own sake, the ABC needs a new system of oversight to guarantee its integrity. Its internal complaints unit is not independent of the organisation, nor is it sufficiently insulated from the influence of those who work there.” (To those familiar with the in-house complaints procedure at the BBC, where a functionary called Fraser Stele appears to be the sole arbiter of what does and does not constitute bias, that will sound depressingly familiar.)
Mr Wertheim goes on: “We need a completely independent ombudsman outside the ABC, appointed on a cross-partisan basis by Parliament through a public selection process, to monitor public broadcasting, assess complaints about news, current affairs programs and documentaries and report regularly to the Australian people.” Amen to that.

As Zeddy Lawrence points out: “Let us be quite clear, we are not calling for Israel, its government or its army to be declared sacrosanct or off limits. We merely want factual, balanced and fair reporting that is not skewed by the prejudices of particular reporters or that panders to popular or propaganda-driven misconceptions of the reality on the ground. To that end, in appointing the new managing director, we urge the ABC board to consider not just how well the potential candidates can manage the corporation from a business perspective, but whether they have what it takes to confront and weed out the bias, and uphold the standards of balance and impartiality that we expect our national broadcaster to embody.”

11/17 Links Pt1: First, They Came for the Jews; France and Israel: Obama’s Double Standard

From Ian:

First, They Came for the Jews

The last time Islamic State terrorists rampaged through Paris back in January, one of their principal targets was the Jews. The other two parties attacked, Charlie Hebdo and the police, may have instantiated, respectively, unbridled free expression and the law upon which Western civilization relies, but the Jews, who were attacked in the mundanity of a kosher supermarket, represented something just as profound.
The prosperity of the Jews is taken as an affront to radical Islam, as it was to Christianity in bygone eras. But the Jews represent something to Europe, too. Manuel Valls, the French Prime Minister, acknowledged this when he declared in an impassioned speech in Parliament following the attacks that “when the Jews of France are attacked, France is attacked, the conscience of humanity is attacked.” And in an interview just prior to the attacks, he already declaimed that if the Jews leave, “France will no longer be France.”
Some Europeans may disagree with Valls and find themselves not hugely bothered that the Jews are attacked for being Jews. But, following the attacks in Paris last week, it should at least be obvious to them that the Jews are in one respect just being attacked first: European Jews are the canary in the coal mine. Years of anti-Semitic assaults in France – leading to the exodus of French Jewry to which Valls was referring in the interview – preceded the January attacks. But whereas those January attacks deliberately targeted the Jews and, with the exception of Charlie Hebdo and the police, largely ignored everyone else, the attacks in Paris this past Friday did not discriminate. The terrorists, so far as we know, were not after free speech or authority as such, but everyone. Europeans should, therefore, be more concerned when their Jews are attacked, because first they come for the Jews, and then they come for everybody else.

Col Kemp: Islamic State could attack Britain any time – and the impact would be catastrophic

Ex-Cobra Intelligence Group Chairman also believes a stronger military presence in the UK is becoming an increasingly necessary deterrent
As they did in Paris on Friday , Islamic State terrorists could attack the UK at any time.
Are we ready?
Our intelligence services do a superb job and have disrupted many attacks planned against us by Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State . Many jihadists are in jail. But their challenge is enormous.
Andrew Parker , Director General of MI5, recently warned that there are over 3,000 Islamist extremists willing to carry out attacks in the UK.
Few attacks are conducted by terrorists who are completely unknown to our intelligence services. It appears some of those involved in the Paris attacks were on the radar screen of French intelligence.

Caroline Glick: Radical Islam – the invisible enemy

As the cleaning crews were mopping the dried blood from the stage and the seats of the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, a depressing act appeared on stage in distant Iowa.
Saturday night the three contenders for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination took to the stage in Iowa for a debate. The moderator asked them whether they would be willing to use the term “radical Islam” to describe the ideology motivating Islamic terrorists to massacre innocents. All refused.
Like her former boss, US President Barack Obama, former secretary of state and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton not only refused to accept the relevance of the term. Clinton refused to acknowledge what radical Islam stands for.
She merely noted some of what it rejects.
In her words, “I think this kind of barbarism and nihilism, it’s very hard to understand, other than the lust for power, the rejection of modernity, the total disregard for human rights, freedom, or any other value that we know and respect.”
Her opponents agreed with her.