Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 21, 2015

12/21 Links Pt2: Bernard-Henri Lévy Calls for ‘Muslim Nostra Aetate; Death knell for NPT

From Ian:

In United Nations Address, French Philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy Calls for ‘Muslim Nostra Aetate’

Famed French philosopher and humanitarian Bernard-Henri Lévy last week called on the Muslim world to formulate its own version of the famed Nostra Aetate declaration by Pope Paul VI in 1965.
The document, which denounced antisemitism and effectively absolved Jews for the death of Jesus, amounted to a historic reset of Catholic-Jewish relations and also outlined the Church’s modern attitude to other world faiths.
Speaking at an event at the United Nations on Wednesday, co-hosted by the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC) and the Nuncio of the Vatican to the UN, Lévy said, “I would say, with all possible humility and respect, that it would be so great, it would make such a difference, it would be such a revolution, maybe a revolution as big as was the revolution of Nostra Aetate, if there were tomorrow, or in 10 years, but tomorrow would be better, a Nostra Aetate inside the Muslim world.”

Why Im Tirtzu launched its campaign

In the past week grass-roots Israeli Zionist NGO Im Tirtzu launched a campaign designed to highlight the connection between some 20 Israeli NGOs which regularly attack the State of Israel and its core institutions, such as the IDF, with allegations including war crimes, crimes against humanity, apartheid, etc., and the foreign governments, mostly in Europe, that are directly or indirectly funding them.
We believe it is important to delineate the compelling reasons for calling the public’s attention to what we believe is a destructive state of affairs that impinges on Israeli sovereignty, allowing foreign governments to use local NGOs to further their own anti-Israeli agendas.
We live in increasingly perilous times for Israel and Jews throughout the world. In Israel, we have been subject to an unrelenting series of vicious, random, murderous terror attacks with the common thread their being directed at Jews qua Jews. In other words, it is a racist-based terror wave motivated by anti-Semitism, pure and simple.
At the same time, many of the NGOs highlighted in the campaign report are actively seeking to neutralize efforts to stop terrorists, deter further attacks and protect the people of Israel.
Despite the ritualistic incantation of Never Again, it is no secret that it has once again become open season on Jews throughout the world. The cynical fig leaf of anti-Zionism has been stripped to expose unvarnished anti-Semitism in its pure and virulent essence. In many quarters, anti-Semitism has become not only acceptable, but a desirable response to “Palestinian oppression” and every other ill, even racial tensions in the US.

Fred Maroun: No morals and no excuses: The Arabs living in the West

Anti-Semitism has reached nauseating levels, and while some Western politicians recognize this, they have done little to address the problem. The world is highly biased against the one and only Jewish state, non-Israeli Jews are increasingly victims of violence, and Israeli Jews are under threat from multiple fronts while the criminals attacking their civilians are called a “resistance” movement.
A terrorist attack on French civilians raised the world’s ire, but almost daily stabbings of Israeli civilians over weeks and months go practically unnoticed. In fact, Jews are blamed for defending themselves. We live in an age of heightened human rights awareness, but human rights abuses against Jews are considered unimportant.
There are three parties mainly responsible for this anti-Semitism:
- The Arabs who refused to accept the 1947 UN partition plan, fought over a dozen wars trying to destroy Israel, and continue to promote hatred against Jews.
- The Muslims who blindly support anti-Zionism while using Israel as an excuse for their own crimes.
- The modern West that has allowed anti-Semitism to disguise itself as anti-Zionism and infect its universities and much of its media and political class.

It is an annual event - clueless journalists reporting that, somehow, Israel is discriminating against Christians in areas that are so terrible that Muslims are happily filling the vacuum.

This year's first such report comes from USA Today:

After 2,000 years, Christians disappearing from Gaza

Despite the packed pews at Gaza’s Church of St. Porphyrius just weeks before Christmas, Christianity is not booming here. Rather, the worshipers at the 1,600-year-old shrine believe they may be the last group of Christians in Gaza, where they have lived and prayed since the birth of Jesus.

The ongoing Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip and the highest unemployment rate in the world are prompting Christians to leave the besieged area in droves, some using the holiday season to their advantage.

Although Israel rarely grants permits to leave the Palestinian territory, dozens of Christians are allowed to visit Bethlehem and Jerusalem during Easter and Christmas, and some take the opportunity to never return home so they can start a new life elsewhere.

“People might think we’re leaving because of Hamas, but no it’s because of ... (Israeli) policies on Gaza,” Jaber Jilder, an official with the Greek Orthodox Church said, referring to the militant group that governs Gaza and is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and others.

Let's parse that bolded sentence. Israel supposedly doesn't let Palestinians leave (which is false) but the Gazan Christians who are being particularly discriminated against by Israel are deciding to live in a different territory under Israeli control. Hmmm.

The Christian population in the West Bank has also been on the decline for similar reasons, said George Abueed, a Palestinian-Christian from Bethlehem.

"Palestinian Christians ... receive no tolerance or mercy from the Israeli occupation. Their land has been confiscated, their houses have been destroyed, and they have been subjected to daily humiliation on checkpoints when they travel," he said. "Same discriminatory measures for everyone. Christians and Muslims."

Um, then why are only the Christians fleeing? And if everyone suffers the same, how is it discrimination?

USA Today's reporter doesn't think about such simple questions. If the Christian Gazans who have been leaving since the beginning of Palestinian Authority rule say that it is because of Israel, then it must be true.

Forget reports about Muslim intimidation of and attacks on Christians in Bethlehem and Gaza. Forget about Christians from Gaza - when not talking to Western media - bitterly upset over Muslims kidnapping them.

I noted last year in a similar AFP article that the Christians who want to blame Israel for their woes proudly use their names, but those who mention attacks and intimidation by Muslims prefer anonymity when talking to reporters. Obviously, Christians who are frightened of their wonderful Muslim neighbors are going to go public with the politically correct story of everything being Israel's fault. This is a consistent pattern with articles about Christians in Gaza that bother to look slightly beneath the platitudes.

But this reporter didn't even bother to look for those who might tell the truth. Because when you have an agenda, why spend time trying to derail it?

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.

For the last week, repeated attempts to contact Monica Awad and Catherine Weibel of UNICEF in Beit Hanina in the Shuafat section of East Jerusalem have failed. They have evaded every email and messsage I have left them. I was hoping for a peaceful and professional dialogue with them, but they have shut the door. Par for the course for UN organizations who are inclined to lazily blame settlements for why Palestinian children turn to instead of documenting the historical timeline of how a majority of the Oslo generations have resorted to terrorism.

On UNICEF State of Palestine’s appeal page we find the following:

In the West Bank, the existence and expansion including in East Jerusalem, illegal under international law, have been a primary driver of protection threats against children. Seizure of land for settlement building and future expansion has contributed to children’s physical insecurity, as well as to families’ loss of land, resources, assets and livelihood. It has increased children’s exposure to violence, risk of detention, forced displacement and impeded access to services, including education. The situation threatens children’s security and psychosocial well-being and negatively impacts the fabric of family and community life. Violence and disruption to social services and protection systems also undermine the ability of parents to care for and protect the children.

The above paragraph sounds like something written by Max Blumenthal but more polished.

Let’s break this down to what they’re really trying to convey:

Jewish existence in Judea and Samaria drives Palestinians to become neurotic therefore making them unable to do day to day tasks. The seizure of land for settlement building is a complete fabrication. Palestinians can build wherever they want in Area A of the Palestinian Authority. In many cases, they begin building homes and stop in the middle of construction. The building sits uncompleted and uninhabited. Anyone who drives through this area can see a number of homes half built. They don’t require the permits and permission to build. Israelis need the required permits to build in Judea and Samaria from the Israel Land Authority.

Future expansion of settlements does not contribute to Palestinian children's physical insecurity. Living under Abbas/Hamas rule dictatorship, indoctrination of antisemitism and the constant barrage of anti Israel propaganda on Palestinian television brainwashes children to commit acts of violence against Israelis; Jewish and Arab citizens are targets.

Families’ loss of land, resources, assets and livelihood are only lost when a Palestinian family member engages in an act of terror. The law is very clear; anyone who engages in an act of terror will have their home demolished and in some cases their residency status revoked.

This is a classic case of blaming the victim; if only Jews did not exist in Israel, Palestinians wouldn’t have to resort to violence to achieve social justice. Forced displacement is caused by Palestinian terrorists ruining their families' chance at a better life.

Palestinian children have access to education. You can see them walking home from school in Beit Sahour every day. It’s the type of education they are receiving that comes into question. Until I gain answers from Monica Awad, we can assume the textbooks continue to call for killing Jews in Algebra class.

Resources: Building material, food products and basic necessities are exported to Area A from Israel on a daily basis. I frequently see trucks with Palestinian licence plates delivering items to Area A so the Palestinian economy and commerce with Israel can remain “business as usual.”

Risk of detention: If you throw rocks at soldiers, Israeli cars and harm us, you will be arrested. Another clear attempt at blaming victims of terror. The poor rock throwing teen just can’t be held responsible for his actions because Jewish existence is making his or her life miserable.

Security and psychosocial well-being negatively impacting the fabric of family and community life: I’m interpreting this as a cover up for Palestinian mothers encouraging their sons and daughters to stab Jews. It should be made clear that the reason for why there is lack of stable family life and community is the corruption in leadership stemming back to the days Yassir Arafat created the Palestinian Authority, doing nothing to enable job creation, building villas for his cronies, handing billions to his wife and Abbas continuing those policies today. Arafat’s failures led Palestinians to run into the arms of Hamas in the last elections. The demise of the Palestinian Authority is happening before our eyes.

UNICEF, are you aware that an estimate of 200-250 Palestinians ready to die in exchange for murdering Jews is the current number? Furthermore, can you explain how more than 130 attacks against Israelis have taken place in this current intifada. This number includes those who have been arrested. UNICEF’s inability and failure to report that this wave of violence against Jews is by their own free will since October.

This puts the number at approximately three terrorists a day in Israel making this a deeply surreal and dangerous situation for all Israeli citizens. UNICEF is literally revising the truth by its failure to post the statistics associated to Jewish victims of terror. UNICEF claims they exist to help all children in every country. If that is the case, why are they conveniently blacking out on the children who have been stabbed, the baby boy who had his leg amputated by a car ramming attack?

So many times in our Israeli media, mothers of neutralized terrorists praise their childrens’ violent behavior while weeping over how much they are missed. In many instances, it is the Palestinian mothers enabling the violence and creating an atmosphere of driving their own children to insanity. Teaching them to hate and kill at a very young age shows these parents love death more than their own children.

Monica Awad, I cleared your name in Part I of my series on UNICEF when Middle East Monitor lied in your interview them. You have been given every opportunity to clear the record honestly. The least you can do is give me the time to create a positive discussion. Instead, you are cowardly running from my phone calls and emails. This makes you look complicit in enabling Hamas and Abbas in incitement against Israel. Until then, you’re failing these children.

12/21 Links Pt1: Shame On The Liberals Who Rationalise Terror; Negotiate with the Islamic State?

From Ian:

Nick Cohen: Shame On The Liberals Who Rationalise Terror

John Kerry’s liberalism, and the liberalism of millions like him, ignores Chesterton’s warning not to be so open-minded that your brains fall out. Kerry wanted to understand radical Islam and to seek the root causes of its apparently psychopathic violence. Not for him the knee-jerk condemnations of a red-state redneck. When Kerry applied his nuanced and expensively educated mind to the corpses in the magazine office, he discovered that the dead had provoked their own murders. The assassins had, well, if not quite legitimate reasons, then certainly a “rationale” which explained why they were “really angry because of this and that”.
Charlie Hebdo mocked the prophet Muhammad, Islamic State and Boko Haram. Its editor Stéphane Charbonnier (aka Charb), the cartoonists and columnists who wrote for him, and the police officers who died protecting their freedom (and ours) knew the risks and paid the price. They went looking for trouble and we should not be shocked that they found it.
All the rest of us had to do was to moderate our behaviour. If we were careful not to make terrorists “really angry” about “this and that”, we would be safe.
Perhaps I am being too kind to Kerry. But I assume even he must have had one doubt buzzing around his empty head like a dazed bluebottle. An associate of the Islamist gang that pumped bullets into the staff of Charlie Hebdo also took hostages at the Hypercacher supermarket at Porte de Vincennes in the 20th arrondissement. There he murdered Philippe Braham, a sales executive, Yohan Cohen, a student, Yoav Hattab, another student, and François-Michel Saada, a pensioner. The dead had provided no “rationale” and created no “particular sense of wrong”. They were ordinary citizens, shopping for food, as we all do.
But when Kerry and those like him looked at their bodies closely perhaps they noticed that appearances deceived. They were not like the rest of us, after all. Hypercacher was a kosher supermarket and the dead were Jews. Few people were prepared to say what they were thinking openly, but a BBC reporter, Tim Willcox, showed no restraint. A Jewish woman in the crowd near the crime scene told him, “The situation is going back to the days of 1930s in Europe. Jews are the target now.” Willcox could not let the suggestion that Jews were innocent victims go unchallenged. “Many critics of Israel’s policy would suggest that Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands,” he said, interrupting her.
If you were a Jew, it was Israel’s fault that you were murdered, and possibly your fault too for not trying to pass as a gentile, or avoiding synagogues, and Jewish shops and restaurants, or changing your name and ditching your kippah.

WaPo Ed: Iran provokes the world as Obama does nothing

IRAN IS following through on the nuclear deal it struck with a U.S.-led coalition in an utterly predictable way: It is racing to fulfill those parts of the accord that will allow it to collect $100 billion in frozen funds and end sanctions on its oil exports and banking system, while expanding its belligerent and illegal activities in other areas — and daring the West to respond.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration’s response to these provocations has also been familiar. It is doing its best to downplay them — and thereby encouraging Tehran to press for still-greater advantage.
We’ve pointed out how the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has unjustly sentenced Post correspondent Jason Rezaian to prison and arrested two businessmen with U.S. citizenship or residence since signing the nuclear accord. There have been no penalties for those outrageous violations of human rights. Now a United Nations panel has determined that Iran test-fired a nuclear-capable missile on Oct. 10 with a range of at least 600 miles, in violation of a U.N. resolution that prohibits such launches. Moreover, it appears likely that a second missile launch occurred on Nov. 21, also in violation of Security Council Resolution 1929.
The U.S. response? “We are now actively considering the appropriate consequences to that launch in October,” State Department official Stephen Mull testified at a Senate committee hearing Thursday. In other words, there have so far been none — other than a speech by the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations blaming the Security Council for the lack of action. As for the second missile launch, the administration claims to be investigating it, though it likely has in its possession the intelligence necessary to make a judgment.
It’s not hard to guess the reasons for this fecklessness. President Obama is reluctant to do anything that might derail the nuclear deal before Iran carries out its commitments, including uninstalling thousands of centrifuges and diluting or removing tons of enriched uranium. The same logic prompted him to tolerate Iran’s malign interventions in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, along with the arrest of Mr. Rezaian, while the pact was under negotiation.

Negotiate with the Islamic State?

Call it the diplomatic delusion. Last June, I asked rhetorically who might be the first Western official or academic to suggest serious negotiation with the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh). After all, whatever the outrages a terrorist group commits, time seems to legitimize its tactics in the minds of career diplomats or Track II activists who view dialogue with near religious conviction.
Once upon a time, it was unthinkable to negotiate with Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Yasir Arafat. After all, Arafat (who was actually born in Cairo and not in Jerusalem, as he often claimed) was an unrepentant terrorist responsible for numerous terrorist attacks and the kidnapping and execution of Cleo Noel, the US Ambassador to Sudan. In Years of Upheaval, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger noted, “Before 1973, the PLO rarely intruded into international negotiations. In the 1972 communiqué ending Nixon’s Moscow summit, there was no reference to Palestinians, much less to the PLO… The idea of a Palestinian state run by the PLO was not a subject for serious discourse.” And yet, just six years later, Carter confidant and UN Ambassador Andrew Young was talking to the PLO and, less than a decade after that, diplomats like Robert Oakley and Dennis Ross were advocating talking to the PLO about just that. The PLO might look moderate in juxtaposition to Hamas and the Islamic State. Even after the 1993 Oslo Accords, however, its actions did not show that it had internalized the change of attitude that diplomats claimed to see, and that was used to justify talks.
Then there’s Hamas. In 2003, Richard Haass, at the time director of policy planning at the State Department, dismissed any notion of talking to Hamas. “There are some groups out there you can negotiate with. You have to decide whether there are terms you can live with,” he explained. “But groups like Hamas … have political agendas that I would suggest are beyond negotiation. And for them… there’s got to be an intelligence, a law enforcement, and a military answer.” Just three years later, however, he suddenly began to push for engagement with Hamas. It is a philosophy which Secretary of State John Kerry—perhaps the most politically radical man to ever hold that post — apparently agreed. Less than a month after President Obama’s presidency began, Kerry — at the time, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — traveled to the Gaza Strip that was at the time run by Hamas. “This administration is different from the previous administration. We believe Hamas’s message is reaching its destination,” Ahmed Yousef, Hamas’s chief political advisor in the Gaza Strip, commented.

Al Monitor has an article about how Gazans are embracing supposedly ancient "Palestinian" breads:

A number of passersby stopped outside Skafi Bakery in central Gaza City, where Mohsen Skafi, 19, was creating large, thin circular shapes by quickly tossing and flipping dough before baking them on a saj oven. "Saj" bread, cooked on a convex metal plate heated over a fire, is part of Palestinian heritage. This type of bread is also known as "markouk" or "shrak" in the Gaza Strip.

Skafi's customer Abu Ahmed Rashid told Al-Monitor, “The good thing about saj bread is that it is not made in the bakeries’ corridors and rooms in the back, as the other types of bread. Rather it is made in special areas at the entrance of a bakery or on the sidewalk. The baker’s skills of rapidly flipping the dough between his hands without ruining it encourages people to buy it.”

Rashid said that his family eats saj bread instead of regular bread with all of their meals as a way to celebrate their Palestinian heritage.

...Housewife Samah Amoudi was among the customers waiting to buy taboon bread from Qayed. She told Al-Monitor, “What makes me buy the bread is the unforgettable taste. This is why I buy it every day.”

She said, “Taboon bread is part of the few heritage items that we are still fighting to preserve in Gaza. It tells us that ancient life in Gaza used to be beautiful.”

Then we hear from the "expert:"

Nasser al-Yafawi, an expert on Palestinian history and heritage, spoke to Al-Monitor on the re-emergence of taboon and saj bread in Palestine. He said, “The Palestinian bread was first made with the emergence of the Natufian civilization in Palestine, nearly 10,000 years ago, when people used to place black stones inside a fire pit called 'malleh.' Once the fire was extinguished, the milled wheat mixed with small pieces of vegetables such as tomatoes and celery was placed on the hot stones. A few moments later, it would turn into bread.”

There is no evidence of celery being used as food before the 9th century BCE, some 7000 years after this "expert" claims that it was incorporated into ancient "Palestinian bread."

Tomatoes were not introduced to the Middle East until the 19th century!

And, of course, most Palestinian Arabs are not descended from Natufians or Canaanites or Jebusites or any of the other nations they claim. They are, after all, Arabs - from Arabia (and many from elsewhere.) Their eating this bread shows how they are trying to take over a culture, not how they celebrate their own.

(h/t Amichai)

"Moderate" Fatah celebrates Samir Kuntar

It isn't only Hamas and Hezbollah that were fans of arch-terrorist Samir Kuntar.

Fatah's official Facebook page includes a video clip of Kuntar giving a speech in Lebanon saying "I returned today from Palestine but believe me ..I am prepared to go back to Palestine!"

The commenters are saying things like "Allah rest his soul."

لقد عدتُ اليوم من فلسطين.. لكن صدقوني.. لم أعد إلّا لكي أعود إلى فلسطين .. #سمير_القنطار
Posted by ‎حركة التحرير الوطني الفلسطيني " فتح "/الصفحة الرسمية‎ on Sunday, December 20, 2015

By the way, Kuntar isn't the only child-killer that Mahmoud Abbas went out of his way to meet. Here is another one.

The real reason Jordan bans religious Jews from entering

A couple of weeks ago:

The Foreign Ministry is investigating several incidents in which Jordanian authorities have denied entry to the country for observant Jews, with the latest incident coming Wednesday evening, when Jews who were wearing kippot and other religious garb were told they could not enter the country.

In the wake of the incident, the Jordanian ambassador to Israel was asked to provide explanations at the Foreign Ministry Thursday.

The family attempted to enter Jordan through the border crossing from Eilat to Aqaba, with the intention of spending a few hours on the Jordanian side of the border in the southern vacation destination. But at the border they were told that if they wanted to enter Jordan they needed to remove their Jewish religious garb.

The family agreed not to wear kippot or other religious symbols while they were in Jordan, but the soldiers demanded that they surrender those items before crossing the border.

The incident echoed others in the recent past in which Jordan has refused entry to religious Jews who were carrying tefillin (phylacteries) with them. They were told that they had to leave them at the border if they wanted to enter the country. In the past Jordan has said that the reason was that they were afraid of unrest.

The official reason that Jordan gives is that this is for the safety of the Jews themselves, because they cannot guarantee that angry Arabs would attack any identifiable Jews. But that doesn't explain the confiscation of tefillin or talitot, which would not be worn in public but rather while praying in hotel rooms.

The real reason for the effective ban on religious Jews to Jordan is revealed in this article from Al Khaleej.

Note the wording "Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land" - Arabs don't object

Jordanians accuse Jews of trying to take over parts of Jordan as sections of that country were part of ancient Israel, and apparently they believe that only religious Jews are trying to implement this scheme.

Residents of Petra and other sites claim that Jews visit the area to furtively bury forged items - manuscripts, coins and the like - that would prove Jewish history there.

Locals also are suspicious of Jewish tourists who stay for days camping in the mountains.

Dr. Salah al-Khalid, an "Islamic thinker," said in an interview that "the Jews have great ambitions on Jordanian territory, based on their alleged religious texts, and they can not forget or abandon them; they are part of their religion and faith."

Khalidi said that a religious Zionist youth group has a song they sings about their ambitions on both sides of the Jordan river.

He added that Jews visit Mount Nebo, considered the place of the tomb of Moses, and say "This is an Israeli land inside Jordan."

So it is a little more than antisemitism. They are afraid of Jews claiming the land in the name of religion.

Now Israel is responsible for potential deaths from cancer, heart disease (update)

From Ma'an:

Palestinian prisoner Bassam Ameen al-Sayeh, 43, from the occupied West Bank city of Nablus is in serious health condition and "may die at any moment," the Palestinian Minister of Prisoner Affairs said Saturday.

Issa Qaraqe told Ma'an that al-Sayah is being held in a medical clinic inside of the Ramla prison and suffers from both cancer and heart disease. The prisoner has recently had difficulty breathing, Qaraqe added.

The minister urged Israel to release al-Sayah due to his poor health, holding Israel responsible for the detainee's life.

Al-Salah was detained on Oct. 8, 2015 and sentenced to 20 years in Israeli prison.

So Israel is responsible for the health of someone with apparently terminal conditions. They must really respect Israel's medical expertise!

Naturally, they also accuse Israel of torturing him. Last month Palestine Information Center said:

Rights groups have raised alarm bells over the exacerbated health status of prisoner Bassem Ameen al-Sayeh, who has been fighting for his life in the Israeli prison clinic of al-Ramla.

The prisoners’ media office said quoting other sources that prisoner Bassem fell into a one-day coma in Petah Tikva investigation center and that he lost his consciousness again due to the harsh physical torture perpetrated by the investigation officers.

Cancer-stricken inmate Bassem has also been diagnosed with cardiovascular disorders and stomachaches inflicted by the harsh psycho-physical pressure he has been subjected to in the early investigation stages, during which he has often been tied up to investigation chairs for over 20 hours.

The detainee was quoted as speaking out against the threats and frequent blackmails made by the Israeli wardens in an attempt to force confession.

If he was sentenced in October, why are the Israelis trying to force his confession in November?

I have not yet been able to find out what he is being imprisoned for.

UPDATE: This hero that the PA wants released was part of the cell responsible for the murder of Eitam and Naama Henkin.

From The Forward:

For foreign journalists in the Holy Land, the festive season usually arrives with a missive: an email invitation to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s annual Christmas dinner.

The event is an opportunity for Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the PLO, to spread Christmas cheer, toast the New Year, and make predictions about 2016 over plates of maqluba, a Palestinian chicken-and-rice dish.

Erekat said he had nothing against Jews, calling Judaism “one of God’s great religions,” but he warned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau was quickly turning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a religious war.

Then he brought up another group of religious warriors: the Islamic State. Erekat’s proposal for beating the group was simple: “The first thing we need to do to defeat ISIS is to end this occupation.”

“Two-thousand sixteen will mark how this region will go for the next part of the 84 years remaining in this century,” he said in conclusion. “Do we enter in the vehicles of democracy and peace or do we enter it in the vehicles of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi” — the head of the Islamic State — “and Benjamin Netanyahu?”

Just to ensure that everyone knows that Saeb Erekat's record of lies remains at 100%, the current stabbing spree is completely religiously motivated - the youthful stabbers all say they are "defending Al Aqsa" from Jewish visitors. It is the Palestinians who are turning this into a religious war.

As far as a comparison of which people support ISIS more, in a recent Pew poll, 94% of Israelis had a "very unfavorable" view of ISIS, while only 69% of Palestinians felt that way. All of the Israelis who had a favorable view of ISIS were Arabs.

And it is funny that Erekat is calling Israel undemocratic, since he has not been elected to his current position and his boss is entering the 11th year of his four year term leading a government that lost its last election.

12/20 Links: Smadar Haran, whose family Kuntar killed, hails ‘justice’; Making the case for Israel

From Ian:

Smadar Haran, whose family Kuntar killed, hails ‘justice’

A Lebanese Druze, Kuntar became infamous for a brutal 1979 raid from Lebanon in which he and several accomplices kidnapped an Israeli family from Nahariya, then smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl, Einat Haran, with his rifle butt and stones, killing her.
Three other Israelis, including her father, Danny Haran, were killed in the attack. Kuntar was 16 at the time, and a member of the Palestine Liberation Front.
“They called me at 4 a.m, I woke up and thought about the years that passed, how historic justice had been made,” Smadar Haran told Army Radio.
During the attack, Smadar Haran hid from Kuntar with her two-year-old daughter Yael, but accidentally smothered her to death in an effort to silence her cries.
Roni Haran, the brother of Danny Haran, told the Ynet news website he “waited for this moment for seven years, since Kuntar was released from prison.”
“Samir Kuntar never regretted his actions, and there is a small consolation in this [his assassination], although it doesn’t take away the pain,” he said.
“I hope that this gets the message across that whoever murders Jews in Israel and in the world will end up like Samir Kuntar and the Munich murderers [of Israeli athletes],” Haran added. “As it stands, in the Middle East, this seems like the only language they understand.”
Reports said that Kuntar, who was targeted in a residential building in a suburb of Damascus late Saturday night, was assassinated not as revenge for his past actions, but rather because he was planning fresh attacks against Israel. Syrian media said that among the dead was also Farhan Shaalan, a commander in the Syrian anti-Israel resistance group founded by Kuntar and others. Those reports said that senior Hezbollah members were also present in the building at the time of the attack.

Smadar Haran Kaiser (2003): The World Should Know What He Did to My Family

Abu Abbas, the former head of a Palestinian terrorist group who was captured in Iraq on April 15, is infamous for masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. But there are probably few who remember why Abbas's terrorists held the ship and its 400-plus passengers hostage for two days. It was to gain the release of a Lebanese terrorist named Samir Kuntar, who is locked up in an Israeli prison for life. Kuntar's name is all but unknown to the world. But I know it well. Because almost a quarter of a century ago, Kuntar murdered my family.
It was a murder of unimaginable cruelty, crueler even than the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, the American tourist who was shot on the Achille Lauro and dumped overboard in his wheelchair. Kuntar's mission against my family, which never made world headlines, was also masterminded by Abu Abbas. And my wish now is that this terrorist leader should be prosecuted in the United States, so that the world may know of all his terrorist acts, not the least of which is what he did to my family on April 22, 1979.

JCPA: Hizbullah’s Golan Heights Front Loses its Leader

Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese Druze, was killed on December 20, 2015 in an air raid on a building in Jaramana, outside of Damascus. Kuntar was a senior Hizbullah terrorist who was establishing a new front against Israel on the Syrian Golan Heights with Iranian, Syrian and Hizbullah assistance. In 1979, Kuntar led a brutal Palestinian Liberation Front terrorist attack in northern Israel in which he pummeled a four-year-old to death before shooting her father. He sat in Israeli prison until he was exchanged in 2008 for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers held by Hizbullah in Lebanon.
The following article, written in May 2015, puts Kuntar’s activities into context.
Following Israel’s airstrike against an Iranian general and Hizbullah commanders who were surveying the Golan front near Kuneitra on January 18, 2015, there was an assessment that the military infrastructure built by Iran and Hizbullah had been exposed and dismantled.
The failed attempt by four terrorists to infiltrate the northern Golan Heights on April 25, 2015 to plant explosive devices proves that the assessment was mistaken. Moreover, the attempt revealed Hizbullah’s efforts to recruit fighters from Druze villages in the areas controlled by the Syrian army. Hizbullah activities among the Druze are led by Samir Kuntar, who succeeded in recruiting and uniting Druze activists, some residents of Majdal Shams (in the Israeli-controlled Golan), to carry out military acts against Israel.

It is always a pleasure to discover a writer / thinker whose thoughts can serve as a sort-of baseline, or measure, of one's own.

Neuroscientist / Philosopher Sam Harris is just such a guy.

His first book is a 2004 offering entitled, The End of Faith. His most recent isIslam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue, co-written with British Muslim reformer, Maajid Nawaz.

For most of his career Harris wrote about the intersection between faith, rationality, and cognition from the perspective of a mystically-inclined atheistneuroscientist.

{To those of you who may wonder how one can be both an atheist and mystically-inclined one need only point to the example of Mahayana Buddhism.}

In recent years, however, he has focused on the rise of political Islam and the theocratic-ideological roots of that heinous head-chopping movement. His interlocutor, Nawaz, is a Muslim reformer and former Islamist. Both men overcame their ideological differences in order to find common ground and both serve as a model on how to speak with those with whom we may have serious disagreements.

I want to emphasize two aspects of Harris' thinking that very much caught my attention and that I take simply to be commonsense... but important and often overlooked commonsense. These are the link between behavior and belief and the significance of intention as an ethical matter and oneof predicting likely future behavior. Harris relates both to political Islam and the ongoing siege of the Jews in the Middle East.

The Link Between Behavior and Belief

Academics, politicians, and journalists have been searching high-and-low for thereasons why Jihadis rammed two commercial jets into the World Trade Center, killing around three thousand innocent people on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent rise of political Islam throughout the Middle East and Europe following the so-called "Arab Spring."

The answers put forth by the purveyors of public opinion generally center aroundsocio-economic factors and the history of western and American imperialism in the Middle East.

In this way the West tends to blame itself for the violence against it.

What Harris suggests is that if we want to understand the rise of political Islam then we must listen to what they have to say about themselves. What he, therefore, argues is that there is a direct and obvious line between belief and behavior.

Belief drives behavior.

Thus if we listen to what the Islamists say about themselves it becomes clear that they are primarily driven by a fundamentalist, Salafist, seventh-century vision of Islamic dominance and the restoration of the Caliphate under al-Sharia and all the head-chopping that entails.

This does not mean that political or socio-economic factors should be dismissed.

What this does mean - despite Barack Obama's admonishments otherwise - is that the reasons for the rise of the Jihad are directly connected to Islamic primary sources, i.e., the Qur'an and the hadiths.

Chomksy and the Significance of Intention

Harris, like numerous others before him, recently clashed with MIT linguist and left political icon, Noam Chomsky.

Harris approached Chomsky in the hope that, as with his conversation with Nawaz,they could explore the political and ideological differences between them, within the academic tradition of collegiality, and thereby lay-out in a coherentmanner their differences for you and I to consider.

This was not to be and Harris published the email conversation between the two of them as a lesson on the difficulty of speaking entrapped within what I call "ideological blinkertude."

What struck me most about the conversation, however, was Harris' focus on the ethical significance of intention.

Chomsky is, essentially, a peddler of the moral equivalency canard. He hassuggested that there is no greater source of terrorism in the world outside of Washington D.C.

In support of his thesis he notes Bill Clinton's 1998 bombing of the l-Shifa pharmaceutical plantin Sudan and suggests that the negative effects on Sudanese society were at least as bad, and probably far worse, than anything that the United States suffered after 9/11.

Clinton claimed that the plant was manufacturing chemical weapons and had ties with al-Qaeda, which is why it needed to be taken out. Chomksy claims thatthe attack was a wanton act of retaliation for the US embassy bombing that left 200 dead in that same country, that sameyear.

What Harris argues is that the difference is one of intention and that intentionmatters. The people who flew those commercial jets into the World Trade Center intended to kill as many innocent people as possible. Clinton, if we can believe his own stated intentions, did not desire to aimlessly murder people, but to prevent the creation of chemical weaponry in Sudan coming directly on the heels of the embassy bombing.

Harris, I would argue, is quite correct.

Intention does matter both for ethical reasons and because it indicates how the actor is likely to behave in the future.

Chomsky may argue that the "road to hell is paved with good intentions," and he is undoubtedly correct, but from an ethical perspective intention still matters and, as Harris points out, it demonstrates the likely behavior of the individualor the group going forward.

Will the Real Racist Please Stand Up?

I first became aware of Harris when Ben Affleck decided to get into his face on Bill Maher's Real Time a few months ago:

Essentially, all Harris said, quite rightly, is that criticisms of the doctrinesof Islam get immediately conflated, on the progressive-left, with bigotry or "racism" toward Muslims as people.

Then, not surprisingly, the well-meaning Ben Affleck rushed forward to do precisely that.

Affleck is an intelligent guy - as I am sure that Matt Damon can attest- but he is wrong to conflate criticisms of Islamic doctrine, or criticisms of political Islam, with bigotry towards Muslims, in general.

In fact, without realizing it, Affleck slipped into the very bigotry that he claims to find "gross."

Anyone who thinks that criticism of political Islam (or radical Islam or Islamism) is the same as bigotry toward Muslims, in general, is unwittingly suggesting that all Muslims are essentially Jihadis.

Now that is bigotry.

Ben Affleck is a serious guy, a significant artist, writer, producer, actor, andan intelligent man with a heart in the right place.

But he is simply wrong on this matter.

I very much hope that upon reflection he gives Harris the consideration that hiswork deserves.

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.

Reuters calls child-murderer Kuntar a "martyr" - without scare-quotes (update)

Here is how Reuters reports the death of child-murderer Samir Kuntar:

Lebanese militant Samir Qantar killed in Israeli raid: Hezbollah group

Lebanese militant leader Samir Qantar was killed in an Israeli strike that hit a building in the Damascus district of Jaramana in the early hours on Sunday, the Lebanese Hezbollah group and Syrian government loyalists said.

The powerful Lebanese Hezbollah group said Qantar was martyred in an Israeli aerial raid on a residential district of the Syrian capital Damascus but gave no details.

An Israeli cabinet minister welcomed on Sunday the killing of Qantar but stopped short of confirming allegations that Israel was responsible.

Israel released Qantar, a Druze, in 2008 as part of a prisoner swap with the Lebanese Shi'ite Hezbollah group and he is believed to have joined the group since.

He was welcomed as a hero in Beirut and he married a Lebanese Shi'ite woman from a Hezbollah family.

Reuters doesn't even put the word "martyred" in scare-quotes. Obviously its reporter, Mariam Karouny, agrees with the characterization of Kuntar as a "martyr" and Reuters' copy-editors did not disagree (or notice.)

Nor does this Reuters article mention once why Kuntar was in Israeli prison to begin with. He's just a Hezbollah "militant."

CNN at least mentions his terror attacks, even if it also called him a "militant."

Belgium's De Reactie called him a "militant" but mentioned that he was part of a terror cell in 1979.

Germany's Die Welt and Belgium's De Morgen called him an "extremist."

Denmark's Avisen leads by describing Kuntar as "one of the most hated people in Israel."

Svenka Dagbladet (Sweden) mentions that he was convicted for murdering three people but does not elaborate.

AFP calls him a "senior Hezbolah figure" but mentions his terror attack in the first paragraph.

All of these are far better than the disgusting Reuters coverage.

Surprisingly, the best non-Israeli coverage of his death comes from The Inside Korea, whose headline is "Israeli rockets kill notorious terrorist Samir Quntar in Damascus."

(h/t Yenta)

UPDATE: Reuters now put "martyred" in quotes. It was done within an hour of this post.

Reports: arch-terrorist Samir Kuntar finally killed in Israeli airstrike

JPost says:

A number of rockets hit a building in the Damascus district of Jaramana causing several casualties, Syria's state media said early on Sunday. It blamed "terrorist groups."

However, government loyalists on social media said the explosions were an Israeli strike believed to have killed Lebanese militant Samir Kuntar, who is reviled in Israel for a 1979 attack that killed four people.

Israel released Kuntar in 2008 as part of a prisoner swap with the Lebanese Shi'ite Hezbollah group.

Some Syrian government loyalists said he was in the building at the time of the attack but his fate was unclear.

It was not immediately possible to confirm the reports.

Author Hassan Hassan says he hears it is true:

Reliable reports Samir Kuntar was indeed killed in an Israeli attack in Jaramanah, in Damascus, earlier today.
— Hassan Hassan (@hxhassan) December 20, 2015

His brother confirms it:

بعزة وإباء ننعي استشهاد القائد المجاهد #سمير_القنطار ولنا فخر انضمامنا الى قافلة عوائل الشهداء بعد ٣٠ عاما من الصبر في قافلة عوائل الاسرى
— Bassam Alkantar (@balkantar) December 20, 2015

RT does as well:

URGENT:Local media say Hezbollah leader #Kuntar's body found under rubble in Damascus #Syria https://t.co/imWHsvLfMr pic.twitter.com/j3UPxdy3X8
— RT (@RT_com) December 20, 2015

Kuntar was falsely rumored to have been killed before.

If true, Kuntar's death is way overdue. He is known for murdering Danny Haran in front of his daughter Einat and then smashing her head on a rock, killing her. He was released in a prisoner swap.

Mahmoud Abbas was very happy with Kuntar's release and went out if his way to meet Kuntar in Lebanon because child-murderers are heroes for the Palestinian cause.

May he rot in hell.

12/19 Links: The Left's Muslim Replacement Theology for Jews; Elliott Abrams: 2016 Predictions

From Ian:

The Left's Muslim Replacement Theology for Jews

Muslims are the new Jews; time to get rid of the old Jews.
Muslims are the new Jews. You can find this offensive claim repeated everywhere in the media. The Jews, a small ethnic minority of millions that was stateless for thousands of years, are a terrible analogy for a global Muslim population of 1.6 billion and around 50 countries that do not comprise a single ethnicity or race. Comparing the two makes as much sense as comparing the Finns to all of Asia.
The only thing the Muslims and the Jews have ever had in common is that the former conquered, persecuted and enslaved the latter. Any religious similarities are the product of Muslim cultural appropriation of Jewish beliefs and any cultural similarities are the result of Muslim colonization.
Comparing Jews to Muslims makes as much sense as comparing Jews to Nazis. But the media began making the argument that the Jews are the new Nazis from the very moment that the stateless Jews got their first state since Rome and its allied Arab invaders had destroyed the last one.
In this twisted historical revisionism, the Jews, a beleaguered minority hanging on to a country slightly bigger than Fiji, who have spent the last 40 years cutting pieces off their small slice of the world to hand over to the region’s massive Muslim majority in the hopes of being left alone, are the new Nazis.

Gil Troy: Fair and balanced

A pro-Israel activist was invited recently to teach teens about Israel at a “liberal” – non-Orthodox – synagogue. Good educators know the importance of building a tent big enough politically to welcome a range of perspectives without reducing Israel to a political problem or politicizing the basic facts so many students don’t know. The challenge grew when the rabbi intervened, saying: “I expect you to present BDS fairly.”
“What,” this activist asked me, “should I do?” We knew what the rabbi meant. In this age of delegitimization, this Jewish leader wanted to make the case for boycotting Israel to the synagogue’s teens, presenting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions as a fair, legitimate option.
It’s astonishing. If gays, feminists and African-Americans don’t invite homophobes, sexists and racists to present their enemies “fairly,” why should we? This was not even a request to present the Palestinian side – which has educational value – but to justify the boycotters, rooted in anti-Semitism, championing anti-Zionism, often demanding Israel’s destruction.
We need to understand how we stumbled into this pathetic state, wherein Jewish leaders urge us to disrespect ourselves and our story.
It starts with the loony Left’s identity politics and anti-“racism” obsession. Identity politics’ essentialist approach reduces people to their skin colors and ethnicities while labeling them “privileged” or “oppressed.” The privileged are automatically racist, even when biological differences are irrelevant. The oppressed are always right, even when they are violent or wrong.

Elliott Abrams: Predictions for 2016

The survey results are worth noting on several counts. Eight of the top eleven items revolve around troubles in the Middle East, including the top item: Syria. Problems in Egypt, Libya, and Turkey rose from moderate to high priorities. But I am struck by the second and third items, which concern the United States: fears of a terrorist or cyber attack on the homeland.
Here are the top items of concern:
• the intensification of the civil war in Syria;
• a mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or a treaty ally;
• a highly disruptive cyberattack on critical U.S. infrastructure;
• a severe crisis with or in North Korea;
• political instability in EU countries stemming from the influx of refugees and migrants;
• continued political fracturing of Libya;
• heightened tensions between Israelis and Palestinians;
• intensified political violence in Turkey;
• increased political instability in Egypt;
• increased violence and instability in Afghanistan; and
• continued fracturing of Iraq due to territorial gains by the self-proclaimed Islamic State and ongoing Sunni-Shia sectarian violence.
Take a look at the entire text. Not exactly Christmas cheer, but as always the survey concentrates the mind on what we are likely to face very soon.

From Al Arabiya:

A United Nations team of war crimes investigators will not probe air strikes by foreign countries in Syria, its chairman said on Wednesday, despite concerns that some attacks by foreign militaries could have violated the laws of war.

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria is not intended to investigate air strikes in Syria by foreign nations, Chairman Paulo Pinheiro said.

“It is not our mandate to investigate the behavior of powers involved in the crisis of Syria,” Pinheiro told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.

It would not probe potential cases of violations of international human rights law involving nations conducting military strikes in Syria, he said.

“There is no possibility that we will investigate the American air strikes or French or British or Russian,” he said.

The decision reflected a desire not to meddle into the affairs of powers outside Syria as well as limited means at the group’s disposal, Pinheiro added.

Some observers have cited instances that disproportionately hit civilians and civil infrastructure, and Pinheiro and his three co-commissioners have repeatedly cautioned powers to follow the laws of war.

"Besides," UN officials would have loved to add, "we all know that there is only one Western nation that we hold to any standards whatsoever. And even when that nation exceeds all standards that we set for ourselves, we find them guilty anyway!"

I love the "limited means" argument. The UN holds meetings practically every week all over the world to denounce Israel (we mentioned one in Jakarta last week), it has multiple committees and groups dedicated to nothing else but demonizing Israel, yet they can't scrape the money together to investigate any other nations that are far worse in their wartime activities. Funny, that.

(h/t Gilbert)