Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 14, 2015

May a robot light Chanukah candles?

Technion just released this video for the last day of Chanukah:

Another way to light the Hanukkah candlesHope you had a great Hanukkah. Computer Science students in Prof. Ron Kimmel's lab taught their robot to light the Hanukkah candles this year.
Posted by Technion Live - Technion ~ Israel Institute of Technology on Sunday, December 13, 2015

In this case, the robot is set up to mimic the actions of the human, and is not acting on its own, to light the candles.

So would this be halachically acceptable? (Assuming that the human and the robot light the candles in the correct order, that is!)

Is the robot like a utensil - for example, like a long stick to reach the candles but still considered under the control of the human, or are its actions too far removed from the human's movements to qualify?

If a robot was built that could perform the actions based on specific or general human instruction, would the answer be different?

Bot Mitzvah from Futurama

Robots are a fascinating issue in Jewish law. There was some controversy last year when a rabbi seemed to suggest to CNN and JTA that a robot that could pass a Turing test could potentially be counted in a minyan [prayer quorum] (he later clarified that he was saying no such thing.)

I recently read an emotional science fiction story about a Jewish scientist/widower who built a humanoid robot to replace his dying daughter by electronically replicating her brain. In the end, the replacement (who looked and acted exactly like a human) lit Shabbat candles.

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.

Jihadist left note saying that he is going to Paradise after stabbing Jews

Many Westerners try very hard to distinguish between the Muslims who stab Israeli Jews and the Muslims who perform terror attacks in the rest of the world.

The Arabs in Israel aren't motivated by jihad or Islamism, they say - unlike Islamists in Europe or the US.

A couple of days ago,this video was released showing a horrific attack by an Arab against two Israelis last Wednesday in Hebron.

It turns out that he left a note for his parents before his attack:

In the name of Allah the Compassionate and Merciful

"Think not of those who are killed in the Way of Allah as dead. Nay, they are alive, with their Lord, and they have provision."

By Allah, I yearned for Paradise, don’t be sad, I only set out (to stab) in order to support and elevate the Word of Allah and in order to take revenge for the martyrs. Don’t be sad, don’t be sad, we will meet in Paradise, your son is a martyr Allah willing, we will meet in Paradise, Allah Akbar, praise be to Allah

(ineligible word) Allah be praised

Allah Akbar

The Lion of Allah (?)

Abd Al-Rahman Maswada

Hamas, also a jihadist group that people like to pretend has nothing in common with the groups that are sending jihadists to Europe, issued a martyr's poster for Maswada.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Haaretz-NIF conference proves how craven they are

Some interesting things occurred at the "HaaretzQ" conference in New York yesterday.

It was sponsored by an assortment of leftist Israeli and non-Israeli organizations, many of which claim to be fervently Zionist.

As can be expected, the speakers ranged from the liberal to the loony Israeli Left and PA. Unhinged self-hating Haaretz columnists like Amira Hass and Gideon Levy were featured.

Roger Waters, the washed-up former member of an influential 1970s band, attended and was treated like, well, a rock star. Why would someone who actively boycotts Israel appear at a conference sponsored by an Israeli newspaper? The reason is obvious.

The most emblematic event that occurred at the conference was when Saeb Erekat, the PA's liar-in-chief, appeared.

Erekat refused to ascend to the stage if an Israeli flag was visible at a conference that is about Israel. So HaaretzQ organizers obediently removed the flag so they could bask in the presence of someone who can't stand Israel.

This was not mentioned by Haaretz in its own coverage of the event.

Another anecdote from the conference was that Ayman Odeh, who is revered by the Israeli Left as a man of peace and tolerance, appeared for his speech.

MK Ayman Odeh gets the biggest standing ovation of the day, he's the official rock star of #HaaretzQ
— Allison K. Sommer (@AllisonKSommer) December 13, 2015

Unlike Haaretz, Odeh has pride - he refused last week to speak to a major American Jewish organization because it shares an office building with the Jewish Agency, a Zionist organization that he regards as racist even though it helps Arabs as well.

Which sums it up nicely. Arabs who hate Israel have pride in their hate, and Haaretz and its fans care more about respecting Arab hate than about their own country. They cannot tolerate Israel, but they have nothing but tolerance for Arab intolerance.

Haaretz, the New Israel Fund, J-Street and the other sponsors who claim to be Zionist showed that their pride in Israel is non-existent and that their opinions are as far from the Israeli mainstream as possible.

No wonder then that President Obama, who addressed the conference remotely, said that he relies on this island of self-hate for his views about Israel.

PA indicts Hamas cartoonist for superimposing PA flag on a donkey

I've mentioned Hamas cartoonist Bahaa Yassin, who has caused controversy with his anti-PA cartoons (no one minds his antisemitism.)

Now, Yassin apparently placed this on his Facebook page:

General Prosecutor's Office in Ramallah issued an indictment against Yassin, based on a complaint filed by two people (who are probable Fatah lackeys). They say that he violated Article 197 of the Penal Code, contempt for the national emblem and the flag of any Arab League country, which can be punished by between 6 months and 3 years in prison.

Yassin, who lives in Gaza, does not seem too worried.

Chanukah Video Night 8: Ash Soular inspired by Adele, plus the year's most popular Chanukah video

Bonus: You knew I had to post this eventually. 1.6 million views and counting.

PCRP's Jew-hating leader is also a scam artist

Recent posts have been discussing the antisemitism of Dr Gamal Abdel Nasser Mohammed Abu Nahel, head of the Palestinian Commission for Refugees.

Dr. Nahel is also involved with another sketchy NGO, something called the "National Research Center - Gaza." He seems to run the Facebook page of this organization of which he is vice president.

On that page, Dr. Nahel published last July this photo of an award he claims he received from Fatah leadership:

"Awarded by Palestinian National Liberation Movement – Fatah to the fighter brother Dr. Jamal Abu Nahl as an appreciation and honoring of his devoted efforts to serve the Movement (Fatah) and its sons

May you keep (serving)"

This is an obvious Photoshop. Here's the original image:

Wow, an antisemite and a liar? Who would have thought? What's next - maybe he doesn't have a doctorate either!

There are plenty of photos of Dr. Nahel meeting delegations on both pages so he is not lying about his positions with these organizations.

Quality control is so difficult for NGOs that insist on telling others what to do and how to behave.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

12/13 Links: Stabbing attempt in Kiryat Arba, terrorist shot; How to Beat Islamic State

From Ian:

Defense experts back IDF’s 2014 Gaza campaign, claim critics are invoking wrong set of laws

Armies of the world would be rendered far less effective if they were forced to operate under the same restrictions as the IDF during last summer’s Gaza campaign, a group of former military and defense leaders from nine countries claim in a new report released Friday.
Following a months-long investigation into the 50-day conflict, the High Level Military Group — made up of retired generals and defense officials from Germany, Colombia, India, Spain, Australia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Italy — found that Israel not only abided by the laws of armed conflict, but far surpassed their requirements, despite damning reports by the UN and non-governmental organizations that accused the IDF of potential war crimes.
The group had already defended Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip earlier this year, submitting their preliminary findings to the UN Human Rights Commission’s probe into the operation, but the group’s final 80-page report goes far beyond their initial assessment.
“Our findings were diametrically opposed to the UN report,” Col. Richard Kemp, one of the document’s authors and the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, told The Times of Israel on Thursday, blasting the lack of military expertise by the United Nations commission that investigated the conflict. “The UN report was done too quickly and was done by the wrong people.”

High Level Military Group report contradicts UK media narrative on #Gaza War

If you were to base your conclusions about the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas solely on reports in the British media, you’d possibly believe that not only did the IDF fail to take adequate precautions to avoid civilian casualties, but that it may have even targeted Palestinian children.
So one-sided was the coverage, and so lacking in necessary context when reporting on civilian deaths, that the vast moral asymmetry between Hamas fighters who cynically placed their own civilians in harm’s way and the IDF who took unprecedented measures to minimize civilian deaths eluded most observers.
Those who have, until now, rejected such Israeli ‘claims’ as merely representing propaganda will have a difficult time dismissing a new 80 page report by international military experts which concluded that Western armies would be rendered far less effective if “forced to operate under the same restrictions as the IDF”.
The months-long investigation into the war by the High Level Military Group (HLMG), made up of retired generals and defense officials from nine countries, concluded that Israel not only abided by the laws of armed conflict, but far surpassed their requirements.
Israel’s “knock on the roof” technique, telephone calls and leaflets dropped warning non-combatants to leave the area of impending attacks and missions canceled due to possible civilian casualties represented a far higher level of restraint than other Western armies, the report concluded.

Col. Richard Kemp: Royals must be allowed to pay respects in Israel

Letter published in The Sunday Telegraph, 13 December 2015.
SIR – Your article “The Royals and a long line of snubs to Israel” raises a troubling problem, and one that must be urgently resolved for reasons that go beyond the political.
The ban on royal visits to Israel dates back to the end of the British mandate and the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, which humiliated the Foreign Office, frustrating its carefully crafted plans over three decades to deny the Jewish homeland that had been promised by the Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, in 1917.
The reason was a desire to appease and inveigle the Arab countries, all of which opposed the creation of the Jewish state, in order to gain influence over them and their oil. Also tied up in this in the late Thirties was the legitimate intent to prevent an Arab alliance with the Nazis, which failed.
The Foreign Office continues to harbour a deep-seated resentment towards Israel, refusing to allow a royal visit until the Jewish state changes its policies.
In two years we will see the centenary of the liberation by British forces under General Allenby of the Holy City of Jerusalem. A total of 16,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers died in the Palestine Campaign – the second largest theatre of operations of the First World War.
Will the Foreign Office prevent royal attendance at the centenary commemoration of the war in Palestine? Will it allow its grudge against Israel to deny British soldiers who fell fighting for the Crown there an equal honour to that bestowed on their comrades in arms at Gallipoli this year, when both the Prince of Wales and Prince Harry were present?

It needs to be understood that the United States has no intention, whatsoever, of fighting political Islam (or "radical Islam" or "Islamism") and will likely not do so anytime in the near future.

On the contrary, the foremost Islamist force in the world is the country of Iran and the United States has switched sides from opposing Iranian Islamist ideology, and expansionism, to supporting it as an alternative to Pax Americana. This means that the United States, particularly under the current administration, is morphing into an enemy of the Jewish State of Israel and, thus, into an enemy of the Jewish people.

Current polling demonstrates American hostility toward Israel is growing, particularly among Democrats and "progressives." In fact, recent polling for the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings demonstrates that a full 49 percent of Democrats believe that Israel has too much influence over American politics.

Unless things change significantly with the new American administration in 2016 - which is unlikely short of a Cruz or Rubio presidential win - we are going to see more of the same hostility toward Israel that Barack Obama massaged and smoothed over for the next Democratic presidency.

Do not be swayed by sweet words from Hillary Clinton. As an agent of Obama, she defended Hamas against Israeli-Jewish retaliation for the years of bombings against S'derot and Ashkelon. She enforced the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, despite the fact that they prevented Christian Copts from voting at the point of a rifle. And she attacked Israel merely for building housing for Jews within the Jewish homeland.

Left / Right

Obama, of course, is not the first American president to be hostile toward either the Jewish people or the Jewish State, but he is the first to combine that hostility with open support for political Islam, an anti-Semitic genocidal political movement.

Everything is in flux at the moment and Angela Merkel, along with the idiots in Sweden and the EU, have turned Europe into a tinderbox.

Given the millions of Arab-Muslims flowing from the Middle East and North Africa into Europe, what we will see is a heavy increase in violent Jihadi activity throughout the continent and the UK - more bombings, stabbings, and murderous rage against the "infidel" - along with a slow, steady decline of the rights of women, Gay people, and the steady decline of what little Jewish population is left.

I would honestly encourage all European Jews, if they can, to move to friendlier locales, preferably in Israel, but for the moment North America and Australia are relatively safe havens, despite San Bernardino.

American "progressives" and Democrats, however, are turning against the Jewish people which accounts for the latest poll revealing that fully 30 percent of Americans support sanctions against Israel and, therefore, support the hostile Arab majority in the Middle East against the besieged Jewish minority in that part of the world.

Just as Obama sent US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to Israel in order to defend Hamas from Israeli retaliation during Operation Cast Lead, so Obama sends current Secretary of State, John Kerry, to harangue Israel about Jews who want to live in Judea and Samaria, the homeland of the Jewish people.

The Obama administration, thus, has learned nothing.

I assumed that a former president of the Harvard Law Review might be open to changing political views given additional information and alternating circumstances over time, but I was wrong.

It was clear as early as 2009 that the Obama administration was, intentionally or not, hell-bent on wrecking whatever potential may have been left in the Oslo "peace process." By demanding that Jews be allowed to live in certain places, but not others, it forced Palestinian-Arab dictator, Mahmoud Abbas, to agree because he cannot, for his life, be seen as softer on Jews than the American president. In fact, I wrote about this in a piece published in December of that year entitled, The End of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process.

Thus Obama threw a monkey-wrench into Oslo and then, as is Obama's tendency, blamed Israel for his own mistakes.


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

NYT notices incitement can kill - everyone but today's Jews

Today's New York Times has an op-ed by Sara Lipton about what we can learn from medieval Christian antisemitism:

DO harsh words lead to violent acts? At a moment when hate speech seems to be proliferating, it’s a question worth asking.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch recently expressed worry that heated anti-Muslim political rhetoric would spark an increase in attacks against Muslims. Some claim that last month’s mass shooting in Colorado Springs was provoked by Carly Fiorina’s assertion that Planned Parenthood was “harvesting baby parts”; Mrs. Fiorina countered that language could not be held responsible for the deeds of a “deranged” man. Similar debates have been occasioned by the beating of a homeless Hispanic man in Boston, allegedly inspired by Donald J. Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric, and by the shooting deaths of police officers in California, Texas and Illinois, which some have attributed to anti-police sentiment expressed at Black Lives Matter protests.

No historian can claim to have insight into the motives of living individuals. But history does show that a heightening of rhetoric against a certain group can incite violence against that group, even when no violence is called for. When a group is labeled hostile and brutal, its members are more likely to be treated with hostility and brutality. Visual images are particularly powerful, spurring actions that may well be unintended by the images’ creators.

The experience of Jews in medieval Europe offers a sobering example. ...

Ferocious anti-Jewish rhetoric began to permeate sermons, plays and polemical texts. Jews were labeled demonic and greedy. In one diatribe, the head of the most influential monastery in Christendom thundered at the Jews: “Why are you not called brute animals? Why not beasts?” Images began to portray Jews as hooknosed caricatures of evil.

The first records of large-scale anti-Jewish violence coincide with this rhetorical shift.

...Some may well have been insane. But sane or deranged, they did not pick their victims in a vacuum. It was repeated and dehumanizing excoriation that led those medieval Christians to attack people who had long been their neighbors.

Today’s purveyors of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-police and anti-abortion rhetoric and imagery may not for a moment intend to provoke violence against Muslims, immigrants, police officers and health care providers. But in the light of history, they should not be shocked when that violence comes to pass.

Yet the most direct example of incitement directly causing people to attack Jews at this moment - Palestinian media antisemitism and making "martyrs" into heroes - is ignored.

No, to the NYT, Jews aren't victims of incitement now, and there is no need to report about it. No, today's real victims of incitement are Muslims, immigrants, police and Planned Parenthood.

The article is even worse than this. Lipton, trying hard to relate the anti-Jewish bigotry of the Middle Ages into an object lesson for today, is exonerating Christian leaders by saying that they were against violence - just like Republican presidential candidates say that they aren't responsible for violence today:

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Jews were massacred in towns where they had peacefully resided for generations. At no point did Christian authorities promote or consent to the violence. Christian theology, which applied the Psalm verse “Slay them not” to Jews, and insisted that Jews were not to be killed for their religion, had not changed. Clerics were at a loss to explain the attacks. A churchman from a nearby town attributed the massacres to “some error of mind.”....For the rest of the Middle Ages, this pattern was repeated: Preaching about the crusades, proclamations of Jewish “enmity” or unsubstantiated anti-Jewish accusations were followed by outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence, which the same shocked authorities that had aroused Christians’ passions were then unable to restrain. We see this in the Rhineland during the Second Crusade (1146), in England during the Third Crusade (1190), in Franconia in 1298, in many locales following the Black Death in 1348, and in Iberia in 1391. Sometimes the perpetrators were zealous holy warriors, sometimes they were opportunistic business rivals, sometimes they were parents grieving for children lost to accident or crime, or fearful of the ravages of a new disease.

No. The Christian leaders directly incited against Jews. Clerics were the ones who linked the Black Death with the Jews. Christian cathedrals and venerated artwork showed Jews (Synagoga) as defeated by the enlightened Christians (Ecclesia).

This image of the blindfolded Synagoga, holding a lamb's head, looking away from the crucifixion, came from a 12th century psalter:

Other representations of Synagoga, particularly in the Late Middle Ages, present a more contemptible figure. For example, in a fifteenth-century portrayal of the crucifixion, Ecclesia holds a chalice to receive the blood from the pierced heart of Jesus, whereas Synagoga turns away from him, in the clasp of a devil who rides atop her neck and blinds her to the Christ by covering her eyes. The association with the devil evokes a malevolent Synagoga. ... Many [Medieval Christians] would have viewed the figures of Synagoga and Ecclesia, and thereby absorbed a dangerous lesson: Judaism no longer has reason to exist.

You cannot separate these hateful images from the Church the way Lipton tries to.

Moreover:

The Holy Friday liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Byzantine Catholics uses the expression "impious and transgressing people",[39] but the strongest expressions are in the Holy Thursday liturgy, which includes the same chant, after the eleventh Gospel reading, but also speaks of "the murderers of God, the lawless nation of the Jews",[40] and, referring to "the assembly of the Jews", prays: "But give them, Lord, their reward, because they devised vain things against Thee."

Yeah, deicide. Was that made up by "opportunistic business rivals"?

Sara Lipton, in her zeal to find an analogy to today's Republicans, manages to downplay official Christian antisemitism as well as ignore today's endemic Arab antisemitism.

Which makes this a perfect article for the New York Times.

(h/t EBoZ)

Maariv reports that Hamas, desperate to create a prisoner swap with the remains of Oron Shaul who was killed in Gaza, have fabricated a letter supposedly from him to his parents asking why they have forgotten about him.

Hamas has been trying to ransom his remains since the Gaza war.

Oron's parents, Herzl and Zahava, will hold a press conference today about this.

Israeli military experts are unanimous that the letter is forged but Oron's parents are pressuring Israel to do something to get his remains and Hamas is sickeningly trying to attack their weak spot.

The letter itself is clearly a forgery just based on its topics, which happen to be exactly congruent with what Hamas wants. It says things like "I want freedom from captivity, but the feeling you have forgotten me and you do not care about me fills my heart with fear and distress. What makes me feel worse is that I think you are abandoning me for many years as the government did with the soldier Gilad Shalit.

"Mom, I started feeling cold and I am afraid that the winter will be as bad as it was last year. Is your heart not upset that I should be away from you all this time? Mom, do you agree you are being played as a political pawn? Do you agree with the false promises our government gives? We were promised by the army that we would return to our and our mothers alive and well, but they left me, went and did nothing for me so far. I discovered that I was not coming back until their prisoners be released. "

Hamas media is delighted that the story is getting out there, hoping for pressure on Israel to release more terrorists in a swap.

Sources close to the family say that they are distraught over this development.

NYT highlights Islamophobia, ignores antisemitism in US

From the New York Times:

The director of social media outreach for a university, Ms. [Heba] Macksoud was shopping on the Friday morning of Sept. 25, and as usual she was wearing her head scarf, her hijab. She was about 90 minutes into the two-hour trawl, working her way down the detergent aisle, thinking ahead to the adjacent corridor of frozen foods, a working parent’s ever-important source of ready-to-heat pizza and French fries.

At the end of the aisle, Ms. Macksoud noticed a couple of middle-age white men talking. One in particular caught her eye with his beer belly, tattooed forearms and large golden cross. As she neared him, she heard the word “Bible.” When she passed him, he said in a raised voice: “not like the Quran those Muslims read.” He included an obscenity to describe Ms. Macksoud and 1.6 billion coreligionists.

Ms. Macksoud grew up on Staten Island, competing in soccer and track, and liked to think that she had that outer-boroughs bravado. Instead of firing back, though, she answered with forced calm: “You didn’t have to say that.”

Surface composure aside, she was shaken. Her flesh felt as if it were quivering. Her mind went so blank she made a wrong turn, and instead of heading into frozen foods, she was adrift and searching for Ms. Yu. “She was shocked and angry,” Ms. Yu recalled the other day. “More in a kind of disbelief that something like this could happen to her.”

Indeed, nothing before ever had. Even after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when Ms. Macksoud began wearing the hijab as her personal way of reclaiming Islam from jihadists, nobody had ever said a word to her. No one objected even when she was working for MTV in Times Square and her building was evacuated during a failed car bombing by a militant Muslim in May 2010.

But in the United States of 2015 — weeks before the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. — someone had insulted and implicitly threatened her in her favorite ShopRite. It felt to her as if all the toxic language of the Republican presidential campaign, with its various forms of Islamophobia, had infiltrated even a store she cherished for its commitment to diversity.

So a woman wearing a hijab runs into a couple of bigots at a local store in September and this is the first time she experienced anti-Muslim bigotry in this country in 14 years. (And the NYT blames Republicans, naturally.)

Now, between the incident at the Shop-Rite and the New York Times' long description of this example of Islamophobia, something else happened in the New York metropolitan area. In Manhattan, in fact, and only a week ago, as the local CBS station reported:

Hate crime detectives are investigating after a menorah was knocked over two nights in a row at an Upper East Side park.

Police believe the menorah at Carl Schurz Park was toppled on purpose both Saturday and Sunday nights.

The menorah is in a section of the park near the water and it didn’t appear that there were security cameras nearby, WCBS 880’s Marla Diamond reported.

“There’s no way it came down by accident, it kind of sat on a platform and clearly somebody pushed it over,” Alex Goldstein, who lives in the area, told 1010 WINS.

How did the New York Times cover these two cases of blatant antisemitism in New York City?

It didn't.

Over 20 paragraphs were dedicated to the case of bigotry against a Muslim, and not one for a hate crime against an entire Jewish community in New York City.

I can imagine that American Jewish readers of this blog have experienced antisemitic incidents that are at least as bad as the one that happened to Ms. Macksoud. Antisemitic hate crimes far outnumber anti-Muslim hate crimes.

As I was growing up, Gentile neighbors stole my kipah and they threw pennies at me and my friends ("cheap Jew.") The Sukkah I put up on my college campus was destroyed. A car salesman told me he wasn't trying to "Jew me down." It never even occurred to me to report these incidents to authorities or newspapers. It happened, I regarded the antisemites as idiots, and I moved on.

But if this is newsworthy, then certainly American readers of this blog have experienced other incidents of antisemitism.

Feel free to put your personal experiences of antisemitism in America in the comments - things that were never in the news. I'll make a post about it.

And then we can see if the New York Times considers them as newsworthy as the story of Ms. Macksoud.

(h/t Ronald)

12/12 Links: Intellectual State of Emergency; The penny finally drops for John Kerry

From Ian:

Intellectual State of Emergency

The Occupied Territories of Progressive Thought
Who are today's racists?
A "March for Dignity" recently assembled outraged "anti-racists," who shouted insults in the name of universal love.
It was in the name of anti-racism that the progressives chanted "death to Jews" at the UN's Durban conference against racism in 2001.
Every week, the Place de la République has seen the roaring processions of the Sheikh Yassin Collective, inciting the hatred of Jews. Did anyone even care?
These "progressives" were strangely silent while a quarter of a million people were killed in Syria, while Yazidi women were sold into slavery, or when a new Caliph ordered the massacre of thousands in the name of Allah, or the mutilation and murder of Christians who refused to convert. Is that kind of behavior nothing more than bad taste?
Today the new virus of prejudice has two faces: brandishing a knife and trying to appear as innocent as a lamb.
The suffering of the Arabs, of the Palestinians and of the suburban youth is real, but will be alleviated only if there is first a critical examination of the delusional views on what is causing it. Neither the Jews nor Israel are at the root of this suffering.

Ben-Dror Yemini: The penny finally drops for John Kerry

John Kerry has been spewing out quite a bit of nonsense over the past two years. This column has not let him off easy. But his latest statement, for a change, belongs to a different department. He claimed Israel must decide whether it was a Jewish state, or a binational state. About 70 percent of Israelis prefer a Jewish state. It includes at least a third of Likud voters. This is the national and Zionist interest, regardless of the Palestinian position, and Israel should beware of perpetuating the existing situation and slipping into becoming a binational state only because of Palestinian intransigence.
Kerry's critics should also take note: The very use of the words "Jewish state" is a testament to the fact the speaker, even if he can be annoying at times, is a friend of Israel. Israel's haters on campuses, not just in the US, treat anyone who supports this basic concept as a colonial leper and a borderline fascist. And the fact that Kerry supports the Jewish state, and objects to Israel slipping into becoming a binational state, is commendable.
After Kerry expressed his vision of a Jewish state, Israel's embassies all over the world received a new position paper from the Foreign Ministry about the settlements. According to international law, the new document stipulates, the settlements are legal. Let's assume every word there is true. And let's assume Jews are allowed to settle in the very heart of Hebron and in upper Nablus. So what? Will this "legality" prevent the catastrophe of a binational state? And what exactly does it mean? After all, if we are talking about just one entity, then why is it that only Jews are allowed to settle in the midst of the Arab population? Arabs are also allowed to settle in the midst of the Jewish population.

How Not to Promote Coexistence

It is no secret that neither Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, nor the members of his government and the political parties that make up his coalition, are particularly popular with either the U.S. government or the American media. The same can be said for much of the American Jewish community that tends to see Netanyahu’s views on the peace process — which represent the consensus of the Israeli electorate — as being at odds with the political liberalism that most of them espouse. But there is one member of the Knesset, who is pretty popular in the United States. Ayman Odeh, the head of the Joint List of Arab political parties in Israel’s parliament, received a hero’s welcome in the media this week when he arrived for a visit to the United States.
The New York Times embraced Odeh as a voice for “a more inclusive Israeli democracy” as well as “the creation of a Palestinian state.” But Odeh was embraced for more than positions that are odds with those of Netanyahu. Odeh was treated as a tribune for a downtrodden Israeli Arab minority that is finally making its voice heard in the Jewish state. He was also taken at face value when he claimed the fact that his alliance gained a piddling 10,000 Jewish votes (out of 4.2 million that were cast in March) as proof that “Arabs and Jews refuse to be enemies.”
But an incident involving a meeting of Jewish organizational leaders to which he was invited told us more about Odeh’s real agenda and the charges that were made against Netanyahu for racism earlier this year than the platitudes he spun for the Times. Though Jewish groups have been as eager to celebrate Odeh and the Joint List as proof of the reality of Israeli democracy and have exhibited no reluctance to hear his views on the issues, he had some interesting conditions for such meetings. He refused to even set foot in the offices of groups that are dedicated to supporting Israel’s existence and helping Jews immigrate there.
That’s what happened when he was invited to a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Rather than seize the opportunity to influence the umbrella group that, along with AIPAC, represents those organizations concerned with Israel, Odeh said he wouldn’t go into their offices since doing so would compromise his integrity and principles.

The curious thing about the discourse on the Arab-Israeli conflict, in general and Israeli-Palestinian one, in particular, is that it does not matter how utterly unhinged what you have to say is, as long as you declare that you support the two-state principle. Once you utter the “magic password,” you are immediately welcomed into “polite society,” embraced by the “enlightened, erudite” bonton, and invited to participate in prestigious events to expound on your “progressive perspectives” – no matter how deluded/detached from reality they may be.
Intellectual inbreeding?
The recent Saban Forum in Washington provided prime examples of this pernicious perversity in what is, with a few exceptions, a cozy “Democratophilic” environment for intellectual inbreeding.
Take, for instance, the key note address by US Secretary of State John Kerry, never accused of being the sharpest knife in the drawer. Kerry addressed the esteemed Forum on December 5, focusing on the nuclear agreement with Iran and, of course, the pressing imperative for a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On Iran, Kerry declared “... we aren’t making any assumptions about Iran’s future policies because we base our policy on observable facts, on actions that we can see...”
Strangely enough, this pronouncement was not received by hoots of derisive laughter or howls of indignant protest.
Not making any “assumptions,” Mr. Secretary?? Basing policy on observable facts, are we? Really? One can only wonder how closely you are, in fact, following the “observable facts.” I guess you must have missed the one about Iran’s November 21 “ballistic missile test in breach of two United Nations Security Council resolutions.” The missile, a “liquid-fueled missile with a 1,900-km. range... was capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.” (Reuters, December 8)

Even Muslim Scholars Agree: Jerusalem Is Jewish

Twice more this pattern repeated itself in later centuries, including during the 12th-century Crusades. Jerusalem briefly became the focus of jihad and religious longing – all because then-Muslim leader Salah a-Din needed to inflame his warriors against the Christian Crusaders.
The same thing is now happening once again. Until 100 years ago, Jerusalem remained way in the background for the Muslim world, but when Jews began returning to their homeland, Muslims again awoke and “remembered” the holy city as a pinnacle of its religious aspirations. Again, however, its interests are simply to rid the Middle East of Israel – as statements by current PA and Hamas leaders indicate.
It’s noteworthy that when the PLO was founded in 1964, its original charter did not even mention Jerusalem.
As Prof. Ziedan has told his Egyptian listeners, angering many Muslims in the process: “The religious aspect of the [Israeli-Arab] conflict is nonsense…. The only reason why Muslims insist on the sanctity of Jerusalem is simply politics.”
On a related note, just last week the Israel Antiquities Authority announced the unearthing of further evidence of Jewish history in Jerusalem – from many centuries before the founding of Islam. An impression of the royal seal of the biblical King Hezekiah, who reigned between 727–698 BCE, was discovered at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount. On it is ancient Hebrew script reading, “Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz, king of Judah.” Other artifacts with Hebrew names were found together with it.