Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 04, 2016

01/04 Links Pt2: Defending Israel to Diaspora Jews at Limmud; The Truth is Not Enough

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The Middle East’s 30 Years’ War just took a turn for the worse

In January 2014, Douglas Murray explained in The Spectator how relations in the Middle East were becoming increasingly tense. With Saudi Arabia having now cut diplomatic relations with Iran, Douglas’s insight seems prescient.
Syria has fallen apart. Major cities in Iraq have fallen to al-Qa’eda. Egypt may have stabilised slightly after a counter-coup. But Lebanon is starting once again to fragment. Beneath all these facts — beneath all the explosions, exhortations and blood — certain themes are emerging.
Some years ago, before the Arab ‘Spring’ ever sprung, I remember asking one top security official about the region. What, I wondered, was their single biggest fear? The answer was striking and precise: ‘That the region will clarify.’ That is a fear which now appears to be coming true.
The Middle East is not simply falling apart. It is taking a different shape, along very clear lines — far older ones than those the western powers rudely imposed on the region nearly a century ago. Across the whole continent those borders are in the process of cracking and breaking. But while that happens the region’s two most ambitious centres of power — the house of Saud and the Ayatollahs in Iran — find themselves fighting each other not just for influence but even, perhaps, for survival.
The way in which what is going on in the Middle East has become a religious war has long been obvious. Just take this radio exchange, caught at the ground level earlier this month, between two foreign fighters in Syria, the first from al-Qa’eda’s Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS], the second from the Free Syrian army [FSA]. ‘You apostate infidels,’ says the first. ‘We’ve declared you to be “apostates”, you heretics. You don’t know Allah or His Prophet, you creature. What kind of Islam do you follow?’ To which the FSA fighter responds, ‘Why did you come here? Go fight Israel, brother.’ Only to be told, ‘Fighting apostates like you people takes precedence over fighting the Jews and the Christians. All imams concur on that.’

Honest Reporting: The Truth is Not Enough

First, and most importantly, we must turn uninterested parties into interested parties. Public education on all aspects of Israel, including those utterly unrelated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is one of the best ways to foster emotional and intellectual connections to Israel. Even better, BDS protests against such efforts to raise awareness about Israel are utterly ineffective. First, they reveal how very petulant the BDS movement is. For example, at Columbia University, where I am a student, pro-boycott groups flyered the campus in protest of an effort to raise awareness of Israel’s humanitarian efforts abroad. Even an uninterested and uneducated party can see how utterly ridiculous such “protests” are. Second, the response of anyone intrigued by public debate or “controversy” over Israel is to Google “Israel.” Here, the truth once more becomes important, and HonestReporting’s efforts pay the greatest dividends. Our hypothetical Googler will undoubtedly stumble across many different articles on Israel, and it is crucial that he or she finds facts, not bias.
Of course, there are some people who will never be reached by educational efforts, but they too can be swayed. Since we can’t bring Israel to the foreground for these people, we must instead bring it into the background, to make it so normal and pedestrian that boycotting or demonizing it becomes outlandish, rather than the default position. Put another way, no store owner would give the time of day to anyone asking for a boycott of say, Portuguese products, no matter how loud the boycotters were. Uninterested parties must see Israel as just a normal highly-developed Western country, before BDS starts its aggressive demonization efforts. BDS wants to make Israel “special;” we must work to keep Israel normal. This is a subtle and difficult effort, which can range from ensuring the widespread availability of products with the “Made in Israel” label, to things as subtle as making sure Hebrew, or an Israeli flag, is featured in any display of flags or languages. As silly and odd as it may sound, this sort of background messaging is perhaps the only way to keep uninterested parties from being swayed by loud lies.
Neither of these two efforts detracts from the fact that, as mentioned before, the truth about Israel is incredibly important. Honesty, accuracy, and fairness in discussions about Israel are essential in protecting the country from the pernicious and persistent efforts to slander and destroy its image, and without the truth, no amount of effort can protect Israel from its enemies. Equally, however, the truth on its own is not enough in a world that largely doesn’t care about a tiny country with a small population. Only by combining the truth with education and normalization can friends of Israel arrest the tide of demonization and slander against the Jewish state.

Defending Israel to Diaspora Jews at Limmud

I spent the last days of 2015 meeting with British Jews in Birmingham. Along with many presenters from different countries and professional fields, I had been invited to participate in a Limmud conference, a multi-annual — and by now multi-continental — Jewish happening.
The topics on my agenda were ostensibly varied: the viability of a two-state solution; flaws in the Israeli political system; Israel-US relations in the wake of the Iran deal; the cause and effect of the knife intifada; and whether antisemitism is sufficient impetus for immigration to Israel. Still, they all came down to basically the same debate — the extent of Israeli culpability in local and global affairs.
The Paris attacks were still fresh in everyone’s mind, and the heightened security in other European capitals was so palpable that it made Israel’s pale in comparison — as reports on the cancellation of public New Year’s Eve celebrations indicated. Nevertheless, the atmosphere at Limmud was upbeat. Attendees spent good money to live in not-so-luxurious conditions at a hotel repurposed to house the dozens of simultaneous lectures, classes, singles’ events and entertainment for both adults and children. This was a crowd of some 2,500 Jews who could have spent the week after Christmas doing anything they chose. And they opted to spend it reinforcing their sense of community and dedication. Impressive doesn’t begin to describe it.
So far so good. Except for the sad specific reason that I and a handful of like-minded people from Israel and abroad were brought there by one of the members of the organizing committee: to serve as the only voice not singing in the predominantly left-wing choir. (h/t Jewess)

B'Tselem volunteers seem to be somewhat less than credible

Commenter Bob Knot looked a little deeper into my story this morning about a Hebron girl who tripped and hurt her mouth, and her father who claimed that she was being chased by a Jewish settler who did nothing to her after she tripped.

He discovered that the father was a B'Tselem volunteer. Here he is with a B'Tselem issued camera, and he has provided B'Tselem with many stories of Hebron.

On Friday, I reported about a B'Tselem volunteer who made wild claims about how Israelis are humiliating Palestinians at checkpoints, but the accompanying video shows no such abuse.

A year ago we showed how a B'Tselem worker who made up facts about an incident he "witnessed" and was proven to be an avid supporter of violence and terror.

And, of course, in 2014 a B'Tselem worker was caught on video denying the Holocaust.

It sounds like B'Tselem doesn't vet its volunteers to ensure that they adhere to the truth-telling and peace-loving standards of the organization.

Or perhaps B'Tselem actively seeks Israel-hating liars to fill its reports and justify its existence to the EU funders who love to throw money at anything that is anti-Israel.

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Here are the best original EoZ posts of 2015, according to commenters (especially AlexandreM.).

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Time chooses Jerusalem as a top city - despite the desires of the US, UN, EU, Arab League...

01/04 Links Pt1: Toameh: Palestinian Leaders Promise a New Year of Violence and Death

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian Leaders Promise a New Year of Violence and Death

Instead of wishing Palestinians a happy and prosperous New Year, both Fatah and Hamas are asking their people to prepare for increased violence and "resistance," including suicide bombings, against Israelis.
Fatah's armed wing used the occasion to issue yet another threat: "We will continue in the path of the martyrs until the liberation of all of Palestine."
Masked Palestinians in Bethlehem attacked several restaurants and halls where New Year's Eve parties were supposed to take place. The assailants, eyewitnesses reported, were affiliated with Abbas's Fatah faction, not Hamas.
Hamas banned Gazans from celebrating New Year's Eve, saying such parties are "in violation of Islamic teachings." Hamas does not want young Palestinians enjoying their time in restaurants and cafes. Instead, Hamas wants them to join its forces, armed and dressed in military fatigues, preparing for jihad against Israel.

PMW: PA TV: Europe created Israel to "get rid of" the corrupt, scheming Jews

As part of this month's 51th anniversary celebrations of the Fatah movement, PA TV rebroadcast a documentary on the history of Fatah. The film entitled "Fatah: Revolution until Victory," includes a section showing a fundamental aspect of Palestinian Authority Antisemitism. The film was previously broadcast on PA TV in 2013 and 2014.
The Fatah film opens with classic demonization of Jews:
"[Europe] suffered a tragedy by providing refuge for the Jews... Faced with the Jews' schemes, Europe could not bear their character traits, monopolies, corruption, and their control and climbing up positions in government." [PA TV, Dec. 31, 201]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that a basic component of PA historical revision is to deny there was any Jewish history in the Land of Israel. To explain why millions of Jews would immigrate to the Israel without a historical connection the PA claims that Zionism was not a Jewish idea but rather a European idea. And it was created by Europeans, not to return Jews to their homeland, but to get rid of the scheming and corrupt Jews who, according to PA ideology, caused Europe so much suffering.
The film explains that England, France, Germany, Austria, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Spain and Italy, all expelled Jews because they suffered from the Jews' presence. Finally, when the Balfour Declaration facilitated the establishment of "a national homeland" for the Jews, Europe supported it because it "saw it as an ideal solution to get rid of them."

PMW: Antisemitic hate speech on PA TV

Mahmoud Abbas' official Palestinian Authority TV continues to disseminate Antisemitic hate speech. Recently, PA TV broadcast a young girl reciting a story which taught that treachery is an inherent part of the nature of the Jews. The girl recited that Jews and Arabs used to be friends but that "the foreigners came to expel us." She then added that this was not surprising because "treachery has been their nature from the days of Moses until today":
“This home was our father’s home, and the foreigners came to expel us. Long ago we were dear friends. Yona [the Jew] helped Fatima [the Arab] with the laundry and Fatima boiled milk for her, and lit the fire for her on the Sabbath. It does not surprise us [that they expelled us]. Treachery has been their nature from the days of Moses until today. May Allah turn back every oppressor’s scheme. Say Amen with me.” [Official PA TV, Dec. 24, 2015]
Palestinian Media Watch has reported frequently on PA sponsored Antisemitism even coming right from top of PA leadership. Abbas’ advisor taught in a sermon, televised on PA TV, that Jews represent "evil", and that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is "Allah's project vs. Satan's project."

Palestine Press Agency reports that 70 Gazans are being diagnosed with cancer every month. West Bank Arabs are also getting more cancer, with an increase of 40% in cancer diagnoses between 2010 and 2014.

While the article mentions that things like the high rate of smoking among Palestinians (22% of all adults) and the use of chemical pesticides in farms may account for some of this increase, it spends three paragraphs saying that Israel could be to blame for much of it.

Because Israel is accused of using depleted uranium in the recent wars in Gaza.

In 2009, the IAEA said that it would investigate claims that Israel used DU in the first Gaza war. Israel said it would cooperate with the investigation. I cannot find any results.

One NGO claimed to have found evidence of a ridiculous 75,000 kg of DU dropped in Gaza. That study was released by the impartial sounding "Action of Citizens for the total Dismantling of Nukes" and paid for by the Arab Commission on Human Rights. The study itself is a joke and provides no evidence at all. Which tells you a lot more about how NGOs can create whatever they are asked for rather than a reflection of any facts.

I've also investigated a report that Israel used DU in a Syria airstrike, and found that the claims were simply made up.

Yet Arabs keep making the accusation, and over time it gains currency among the usual haters and no one actually does any investigations.

Why Israel's alleged use of DU in Gaza would increase cancer among Arabs in the West Bank is just one of those mysteries that another NGO will need to find a reason for. Perhaps they will discover that Jews are poisoning the wells.

Hold the presses! An Arab girl tripped and fell! Jews to blame!

The most read story in English at Ma'an comes from last Tuesday, with the headline "7-year-old chased by notorious Israeli settler in Hebron."

A Palestinian father living in Hebron’s Old City told Ma’an that his 7-year-old daughter was injured while being chased by notorious Israeli extremist Baruch Marzel on Monday.

Raed Abu Irmeileh said that he had to take his daughter, Dana, to the Hebron Governmental Hospital “after she had fallen to the ground while being chased by Baruch Marzel near the Ibrahimi mosque.”

Irmeileh told Ma’an that Israeli forces present in the area did not stop Marzel from chasing his children, and assaulted his 10-year-old son Hutasem as well as two brothers Nabil, 14, and Farhat Nader al-Rajabi, 10.

An Israeli army spokesperson did not have immediate information on the incidents.

Ma'an Arabic had a follow up on the horrible details of the story. Dana and her sister were shopping when Marzel allegedly screamed at them. Dana, frightened, ran away and tripped and fell. Her father Raed heard her screams and ran out of his house to see her on the ground, her lip bloodied, surrounded by Israeli soldiers and Marzel.

The father took the girl to an ambulance which whisked her to the hospital, where her injuries are detailed:

Dr. Khalil Pope, specialist in Ear Nose and Throat surgery, described the status of the girl child as moderate and said that the wound caused by the assault led to a simple cut between the her upper gum and upper lip. The area needs to be treated for a period of ten days and there should be follow-up visits for the next two months.

The followup story does not mention anything about her brothers who were supposedly "assaulted" by Marzel.

If Marzel was chasing her, why didn't he do anything once he caught her?

So, here is what seems to have really happened: A girl fell down in Hebron and hurt her mouth. Soldiers and one Jew went over to see why she was screaming. Her father (or maybe she) made up a story about being chased by the scary Jew. The father, knowing that there are ambulances every few meters in Hebron just waiting to whisk away any injured Palestinian, grabs her and sends her to the hospital for an injury that school nurses handle thousands of times every day.

And this is an international incident because it happened in Hebron..

Here are Dana's injuries immediately after the incident:

Here is the girl getting lots of attention for the incident:

And here she is, several hours later, with her sister who witnessed the traumatic event but didn't run:

Ma'an isn't the only news outlet to cover this important story. Tanzim news agency also had an exclusive picture of the girl in the ambulance:

A Norwegian newspaper featured the article. Mondoweiss did, too.

Americans for Peace Now were so moved by this story that they published it in their daily news bulletin.

Now Dana has learned a lesson: If you hurt yourself, nothing fun happens. But if you blame Jews for getting a small cut, you get rewarded with international attention and newspaper articles written about you. Photographers ask you to pose for photos and you become famous.

This isn't a story about Jewish abuses in Hebron. It is a story about how anything that can be blamed on Jews will be magnified and distorted beyond recognition in pursuit of the narrative of Palestinian victimhood.

On at least ten occasions since 2007, PA president Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to dismantle the Palestinian Authority if Israel did not accede to various demands.

In virtually every case, the threat was delivered to a Western media outlet, and it caused headlines about how terrible it would be for Israel and therefore Israel should do everything Abbas demands in order to forestall such a terrible situation.

During Abbas' December 31 speech on the 51st anniversary of Fatah's first terror attack, however, Abbas made clear that he never had any intention to dismantle the PA.

Towards the end of the speech, he said "For those who are betting on the collapse of the Authority, it is not on the table. [The PA] is one of the gains and achievements of our people on the road to rebuilding our national institutions based on the rule of law, national identity, and independence."

In other words, Abbas has proven what we knew all along: he uses threats to try to get what he wants rather than by negotiating like an actual leader.

Abbas proved his inability to lead in another section of the speech as well.

He cemented his desire to ensure that there would never be any territorial compromise with Israel. Instead of saying that the government might have to make painful decisions for peace, as every Israeli leader has admitted, Abbas gave his people veto power over any agreement, saying that "all crucial decisions concerning the future of our land and our people, the permanent national rights in our land and our Christian and Islamic holy spaces, will be subject to a referendum, as well as a vote by the National Council, because our people who have given enormous sacrifices are the owners of the state and the source of authority."

This would mean, for example, that any peace plan that allows Jews to remain in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem or that gives Jews rights over the Western Wall would be subject to veto by people who have been taught since birth (by the Palestinian leadership) that Jews have no history or rights in the land.

Abbas further praised the "innocent martyrs" of the current wave of attacks against Jews in his speech on the terror anniversary.

This speech was virtually unreported in the West. It was not translated by the official PA news agency into English. Al Jazeera featured it in its Arabic edition but not in English.

Abbas' intransigence has once again been swept under the rug because the truth just doesn't jive with the carefully constructed meme of him as a man of peace. While Netanyahu's words are parsed and dissected endlessly by Israeli and Western media to prove their assumption that he is a racist warmonger, Abbas' words ensuring that there can never be peace with Israel and praising terrorists are simply ignored by the media, by "peace" NGOs - and by every government in the world save one.

Jordanians still struggling to figure out how to ban land sales to Jews

All of Jordan seems to be obsessed with the idea that Jews might buy land in Petra.

Here are auto-translated Arabic headlines from three different news articles from Sunday.

Assabeel:

Watan:

Ammon News:

Not "Zionists." Not Israelis. They want to make sure that they can ban Jews from buying the land, but they don't want the law to say "Jews" so they are trying various formulations like not selling to "non-Arabs."

As we've mentioned, they fear that Jews are going to buy the land and then claim it as part of the ancient Jewish homeland (which indeed, it is, but no one I am aware of is serious about claiming it.)

From the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a great description of why territorial compromise is dangerous to Israel. This argument gets ignored by people who believe that somehow the PLO can be trusted to secure Israel from today's violent jihadists.

01/03 Links: UN Media Centre Ignores Murdered Israelis; BDS Discredits Itself

From Ian:

Bernard Lewis (1976): The Return of Islam

From the foregoing, certain general conclusions emerge. Islam is still the most effective form of consensus in Muslim countries, the basic group identity among the masses. This will be increasingly effective as the regimes become more genuinely popular. One can already see the contrast between the present regimes and those of the small, alienated, Western-educated elite which governed until a few decades ago. As regimes come closer to the populace, even if their verbiage is left-wing and ideological, they become more Islamic. Under the Ba’thist regime in Syria, more mosques were built in the three years after the Jaysh al-Sha’b incident than in the previous thirty.
Islam is a very powerful but still an undirected force in politics. As a possible factor in international politics, the present prognosis is not very favorable. There have been many attempts at a pan-Islamic policy, none of which has made much progress. One reason for their lack of success is that those who have made the attempt have been so unconvincing. This still leaves the possibility of a more convincing leadership, and there is ample evidence in virtually all Muslim countries of the deep yearning for such a leadership and a readiness to respond to it. The lack of an educated modern leadership has so far restricted the scope of Islam and inhibited religious movements from being serious contenders for power. But it is already very effective as a limiting factor and may yet become a powerful domestic political force if the right kind of leadership emerges.
In the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967, an ominous phrase was sometimes heard, “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.” The Saturday people have proved unexpectedly recalcitrant, and recent events in Lebanon indicate that the priorities may have been reversed. Fundamentally, the same issue arises in both Palestine and Lebanon, though the circumstances that complicate the two situations are very different. The basic question is this: Is a resurgent Islam prepared to tolerate a non-Islamic enclave, whether Jewish in Israel or Christian in Lebanon, in the heart of the Islamic world? The current fascination among Muslims with the history of the Crusades, the vast literature on the subject, both academic and popular, and the repeated inferences drawn from the final extinction of the Crusading principalities throw some light on attitudes in this matter. Islam from its inception is a religion of power, and in the Muslim world view it is right and proper that power should be wielded by Muslims and Muslims alone. Others may receive the tolerance, even the benevolence, of the Muslim state, provided that they clearly recognize Muslim supremacy. That Muslims should rule over non-Muslims is right and normal. That non-Muslims should rule over Muslims is an offense against the laws of God and nature, and this is true whether in Kashmir, Palestine, Lebanon, or Cyprus. Here again, it must be recalled that Islam is not conceived as a religion in the limited Western sense but as a community, a loyalty, and a way of life—and that the Islamic community is still recovering from the traumatic era when Muslim governments and empires were overthrown and Muslim peoples forcibly subjected to alien, infidel rule. Both the Saturday people and the Sunday people are now suffering the consequences.

Ben-Dror Yemini: The enlightened and the benighted

Jewish terrorism encouraging Arab terrorism?
The video from the "wedding of hate" was aired on Wednesday's news broadcast. The very next morning, it was a political commentator on Israel Radio - public radio - who thought he still has a chance to spew out his political views. "In my humble opinion," he said, "Arab terrorism encourages Jewish terrorism." He is of course against Jewish terrorism. He's only explaining it and helping understand it. There's no need to provide explanations or to try to understand it, not the Jewish underground of the early 80s, Baruch Goldstein in the 90s, or the "price tag" hooligans in recent years. An understanding of this kind is more suitable for Baruch Marzel, not a political commentator on public radio.
The truth is that the commentator said something completely different: "Jewish terrorism encourages Arab terrorism." And that's interesting. Because support for Jewish terrorism is next to nonexistent. Yes, there are several hundreds of hooligans from the extreme right wing in Israel, and it's safe to assume they have several thousands of supporters, and if we exaggerate, we'll reach something that is less than one percent of the population. Compared to that, Palestinian support of the current wave of terrorism - meaning, slaughtering Jews with knives - is at 67 percent. Even Mahmoud Abbas stresses this is a "justified popular unrest." When a Jew is murdered in a terror attack, candy is being handed out on the Palestinian street. However, when a Palestinian child is murdered by a Jew, and this happens on average once every few years, 99 percent of Israelis are shocked, condemn it, and are feeling remorse. So saying Jewish terrorism encourages Arab terrorism is like saying an ant can carry an elephant.
But damn the facts. When the comment "Jewish terrorism encourages Arab terrorism" is said, it is seen as coming from among the enlightened, the thinkers, and the progressives. But when the opposite it said, that "Arab terrorism encourages Jewish terrorism," it is seen as coming from among the benighted. Both of these statements are benighted. Not just on the right, on the left as well.

BDS Discredits Itself

The boycott, divestment, sanctions movement has taken a special interest in Malaysia.
That’s not surprising since Malaysia is an aggressive violator of rights. Its Sedition Law permits the government to intimidate its critics, and for this and other reasons it’s press is rated “not free” by Freedom House. Anwar Ibrahim, a leader of the opposition, is serving a jail term for sodomy, “a charge seen as politically motivated,” according to Freedom House. Anti-Semitism is rampant and has received official encouragement. Freedom House also reports discrimination against homosexuals (“same-sex sexual relations are punishable by up to twenty years in prison”), Shiite Muslims (last year 114 Shiites were arrested while attending a religious ceremony), and women. Since BDS is eager to distinguish its attacks on Israel from attacks on Jews, and to define itself as part of a human rights movement, it is refreshing that it has turned its attention to Malaysia.
Sorry, my mistake. The Palestinian BDS National Committee does mention Malaysia prominently in its list of seven major achievements for 2014. But it mentions Malaysia only because a BDS coalition has been established there, as well as in Egypt. The penetration of BDS into anti-Semitic countries with poor human rights records is, from the standpoint of the BDS movement, an exciting sign of its growing international reach.
This is no anomaly. Prominent BDS activists, Ali Abunimah and Anna Baltzer, showed up and spoke at the “BDS for Justice” conference in Kuala Lumpur in September 2015. In her thirty plus minute address, Baltzer had nothing to say about Malaysia’s repression of its own citizens but did have the poor taste to complain before her Malaysian audience of the “state repression” BDS activists supposedly encounter in the U.S. Of course, since Baltzer was speaking at a Malaysian university, and Malaysia, according to the U.S. State Department, restricts academic freedom, “particularly the expression of unapproved political views,” Baltzer couldn’t say anything without risking the punishment of her hosts. Did I mention that one of the reasons BDS deems Israel, whose universities remain centers of dissent, deserving of boycott is its supposed indifference to academic freedom?

There are two things that I would like to see friends of Israel promote this year; the first is acknowledging the futility of any possible negotiated conclusion of hostilities between Israel and Palestinian-Arabs and the second is clearly articulating that although Israel remains a close ally with much of the West, it will also, as a matter of basic common sense and national well-being, pursue mutually-beneficial relations elsewhere.

Acknowledging the Futility of a Negotiated Conclusion of Hostilities

Anyone who is not hostile to Jews should acknowledge that the effort ulimately was pointless, because the Arabs do not want a negotiated conclusion of hostilities via a two-state-solution (TSS).

2016 should be the year that we finally bury Oslo and TSS.

I was a proponent of TSS ever since Clinton stood on the White House lawn with Yitzhak Rabin and that grinning terrorist, Yasser Arafat.

But those days are long gone. It is now time for Jewish people and the Israeli government to make it exceedingly clear to our frenemies that this particular phase of the Long Arab War Against the Jews is concluded.

It is a matter of learning from the past. We tried to settle things with the Palestinian-Arabs by offering them the entirety of Gaza, something close to all of Judea and Samaria outside of Israel "proper," with the eastern section ofJerusalem as a Palestinian-Arab capital, but that is not what they want. If the Arabs felt the need for another bloody Arab-Muslim theocratic-dictatorship they could have had that long ago. They could have accepted any number of offers thatcame their way since the Peel Commission, but they did not.

Instead they chose to sacrifice their own children because they honestly believe that any bit of land that at any time came under Muslim domination must, for theocratic reasons, remain under Muslim domination. This is basic Islamic doctrine and there is little that we can do about it.

In countries where Muslims dominate they will only accept Jews and Christians as dhimmis. This should not be a controversial statement because it could not be more clear. Anyone who cares about the well-being of the Jewish people, not to mention the Christians of the Middle East, and who has followed the conflict over the previous decades knows this in their bones because the Arabs have been good teachers. They simply will not accept free Jews in the Middle East. They do not even accept Jews as a people.

From a human rights perspective Israel treats Israeli-Arabs better than Arabs treat themselves. Nonetheless, they constantly scream to the heavens that their misery is the fault of an exceedingly generous, and long persecuted, people. They even managed to convince westerners that the source of Arab misery is the Jewish state.

This is unjust in itself, but what makes it morally insidious is that these westerners frame their hatred for Jewish autonomy and independence in the language of "social justice." Western children in the universities want to claimthat they are part of the lineage represented by Martin Luther King, Jr., despite the fact the MLK, himself, was a friend of Israel and despite the fact that Israeli Jews offer more social justice to their enemies than any people have ever done throughout human history.

So the question, as always, is what is to be done?

My growing inclination has been for Israeli unilateralism. Israel should declareits final borders, remove the IDF to behind those borders, and toss the keys over its shoulder.

In any case, Ted Belman is correct.

There is no diplomatic solution.

East Asia, India, and Friends

The people of North America are generally friendly toward the State of Israel.

It is hackneyed to say so, but we do share similar values. The Israeli government and the governments of the West are democratic and liberal. The hostile Arab-Muslim dictatorships that surround Israel are not. This being the case, Israel should endeavor to maintain good diplomatic, scholarly, and economic relationships with the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Nonetheless, Israel must diversify its economic relations. Europe, for reasons that should be entirely obvious, is becoming increasingly hostile to the Jewish state. The United States is starting along a similar path, but is maybe a decadeor two behind.

Thankfully, the non-Muslim parts of the Asian Pacific Rim have no particular history of anti-Semitism. Furthermore, this is the most economically aggressive section of the world today. In the coming decades China will really flex her financial muscle, you can be sure.

Given these circumstances it is wise for Israel to look eastward.

India is increasingly friendly and that, too, is for obvious reasons. For over acentury the West has longed for China to open its markets to western goods, but that has not really happened, at least in part because China has been a poor country.

This is changing, the USA is not the only show in town, and the Israelis know it.

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.

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Palestinians celebrate Tel Aviv terror with antisemitic cartoons

Here are some cartoons and photos going around Palestinian Arab social media in response to the New Year's Tel Aviv attack:

"How good it is to snipe two heads!" (pun on an Arab expression)

"Heroic Tel Aviv operation"

If 2015 was the year of the knife, many are now calling for 2016 to be the year of the bullets:

And here is a barber and his customer making an image of Arafat to mark 2016 (I originally thought it was the shooter)

But as more Arabs start shooting Jews, no Western "experts" will look at these as incitement. Just like they won't look at a Ma'an column today that is very proud of how the Tel Aviv terrorist murdered Jews as encouragement for more shooting attacks.

No, the "experts" will ignore the cartoons and articles praising terrorism (and the absence of any Palestinian media condemning Arab terrorism) and say this is all part of a "cycle of violence."

(h/t Ibn Boutros, Shai Alfasi)

The official PA news agency Wafa reports that residents of a village west of Jenin are complaining about wild boars that are running through their town, frightening their children.

They say that the Israelis released the boars through an iron gate in the separation barrier - or, in Wafa's words, the "wall of annexation and racial expansion."

The residents further say that the pigs are a threat to their lives and to their crops, besides the fear of the spread of swine flu.

They appealed to human rights organizations to stop the supposed Israeli practices of herding wild boars through the gate.

Many other Palestinian media outlets picked up this story.

Previously, Mahmoud Abbas himself had made the same accusations, along with the charge that Israeli residents raise wild dogs just to attack Palestinians. No reporter has ever asked him about this, just like reporters don't ask him a lot of questions that they would ask any Western politician who would say and do what Abbas does.

In the past, Palestinians have also accused Jews of not only releasing these boars but of actually raising them for no other purpose except to attack Palestinians. (The Talmud explicitly forbids Jews from raising swine, beyond all other non-kosher animals.)

The wild boar story, which has been around for many years, shows how the Palestinian media - especially its official media - have no regard for facts, and are dedicated to blaming all of their problems on the Jews.

Windsurfing officials incensed that Israel was effectively banned from Malaysian competition

From SurferToday:

Two Israeli windsurfers were refused immigration visas and were unable to compete in the 45th Youth Sailing World Championships in Langkawi, Malaysia.

Yoav Omer and Noy Drihan had won the Men's Under 19 and Women's Under 17 and Under 19 divisions at the RS:X Youth World Championships, in July 2015, but the Malaysian Government decided they were not welcome in the country.

Malaysia considers that Israeli has illegally occupied Palestine, and the diplomatic connections between both nations are inexistent. However, and according to the rules of World Sailing - the world's governing body for the sport of sailing - the organising host must ensure that all national sailing authorities can send their teams to participate on equal terms.

"We will raise this matter in World Sailing Committees and Council to ensure that World Sailing can and will enforce necessary actions in time, so we can hold the organising host of World Sailing Events responsible to the terms under which they were appointed," stated Hans Natorp, president of the Danish Sailing Association.

"It is furthermore our recommendation to the World Sailing Executive Committee to recognise that the participation at the 2015 ISAF Youth Sailing World Championship is non-representative and, therefore, consider, if the events status as an official world championship should be revoked."

As a result, Omer and Drihan were not able to defend their leading ranking positions. A healthy rivalry has censored for political reasons.

"We have three concerns. The first is for our sport. US Sailing believes that sailors of all nations are entitled to equal opportunity to compete. Our second concern is for all athletes. US Sailing feels strongly that sports and politics should not mix, and that athletes should not be used for political gain," adds Bruce J. Burton, president of US Sailing.

"Our third concern is for regattas going forward, specifically the ones that our athletes will participate in and those we host in the U.S. World Sailing must ensure that similar MNA breakdowns will not occur for every scheduled event on the World Sailing schedule."

SurferToday has decided not to publish the overall results of the 45th Youth Sailing World Championships, held in Langkawi, Malaysia. SurferToday believes that sport and politics don't mix - athletes of all regions of the world should never be banned from competition.

Sail World, another magazine, and New Zealand's sailing association are also incensed:

Sail World editor Richard Gladwell says the decision is outdated.

"They've used the tactics that we saw in the apartheid era to keep the All Blacks or the Maori out of rugby teams by basically putting visa restrictions on them."

Malaysia [drew] up a list of conditions for the Israelis to be considered for visas. It included no flying of the Israeli flag, no national emblem on their sails and no playing of the Israeli national anthem if they won a medal.

"Of course these conditions haven't been put on any other countries," Gladwell said.

"Imagine the uproar if New Zealand had these sorts of conditions and we had to go there as honorary Australians or something like that. It's just a completely unacceptable situation."

Yachting New Zealand's chief executive David Abercrombie said the Kiwi sailing organisation wanted to take action against the discrimination.

"I really believe that World Sailing have to step in here and make a stance because Malaysia or Lankawai haven't adhered to the rules set by World Sailing for holding an event of this nature."

Now Malaysia is also causing problems for Israel's table tennis team:

The next storm involving Israel, Malaysia and sport is already brewing, with the blue-and-white table tennis squad still waiting to receive visas for the World Table Tennis Championships to be held in Kuala Lumpur in February.

The Israeli association has been working with its Malaysian equivalent over recent months to solve the matter, but the issue has yet to be resolved.

When an opposition politicians in Malaysia criticized the decision to ban the athletes, the response was...interesting:

Veteran opposition leader Lim Kit Siang said the Democratic Action Party (DAP) intends to sue a "senior political leader" for claiming it was offered RM1.2 billion (S$393.5 million) by Israel in exchange for building a naval base in Malaysia for use by Tel Aviv, should it win the general election.

The claim was made last week by Mr Mohd Zuhdi Marzuki, research director at an institute owned by Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS). The accusation of ties between the Chinese-based DAP and Israel, which has no diplomatic ties with Muslim-majority Malaysia, comes at a sensitive time for the party.

Last week, a DAP Perak leader was widely chided for condemning the government after it denied visas to two Israeli athletes due to take part in an international sailing event in Langkawi.

If you want to see real life examples of Israel Derangement Syndrome, Malaysia is a perfect place to start.

(h/t Charles)

The West Should Stop Apologizing for the Middle East

Review: Efraim Karsh, ‘The Tail Wags the Dog: International Politics and the Middle East’
If there is one proposition on which there is a consensus among Middle East experts—from academia to the media, and to politicians who echo them both—it is that the “root cause” of present problems in the region are the Western imperialists who imposed their will on its hapless indigenous peoples. According to this narrative, Western powers had been nibbling at the margins of the Ottoman Empire and seized on the opportunity offered by its siding with Germany in World War I. Secret agreements between imperialist powers determined new political boundaries without regard to the needs or interests of those who lived in the region, or to any promises made in the past.
As he did in his 1999 Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in Middle East (written with his wife Inari), Efraim Karsh, professor emeritus of Middle East Studies at Kings College, London and currently professor at Bar Ilan University, again turns the conventional wisdom on its head. He writes that Britain, France, and Russia begged the Ottoman Empire to stay out of World War I, promising to ensure the Empire’s survival if it did. Moreover, Karsh insists “the depiction of Muslims as hapless victims of the aggressive encroachments of others, too dim to be accountable for their own fate, is not only completely unfounded but the inverse of the truth.”
The Western powers did play an important role, but the process “was nothing like the caricature portrayed by the standard historiography,” where Europeans and Americans sat at a table creating states. Rather, as the book’s title indicates, the tail often wagged the dog, with the resultant map and rulers, “the aggregate outcome of intense pushing and shoving … in which the local actors, despite their marked inferiority to the great powers, often had the upper hand.”

Tel Aviv shooting suspect identified as Nashat Milhem

Police on Saturday identified the suspected gunman in Friday’s shooting attack in Tel Aviv as Nashat Milhem, a 29-year-old resident of Arara, a village in Wadi Ara in northern Israel.
Security forces have known the identity of the suspect since Friday, but a gag order had prevented him from being named until Saturday evening.
Milhem, an Israeli Arab who was jailed for five years for a 2007 attack on a soldier, is suspected of shooting and killing two people and wounding seven more in Friday’s attack in central Tel Aviv. He was still on the loose on Saturday evening.
Haaretz reported an internal conflict within the security establishment over the decision to release Milhem’s name. While police pushed for its publication, believing revealing the suspect’s name and an up-to-date photo could help efforts to apprehend him, the Shin Bet internal security service prefered to continue working in a clandestine manner. Eventually it was decided to go forward with the publication.

Condition of 2 critically injured in TA attack improves

The condition of two victims critically injured in Friday’s deadly shooting attack in Tel Aviv slightly improved Saturday after one underwent emergency surgery for a bullet wound to the head, and the other for stomach injuries sustained in the incident. Two Israelis were killed in the attack.
One of the injured individuals, Ido Lazan, was treated at the Ichilov Hospital and, though still in serious condition, his life was no longer considered to be in danger. The second injured man, whose name was not published, remained hospitalized in Ichilov as well.
Five others were wounded in the attack, three in moderate condition and two with light injuries. The three people who sustained moderate wounds were taken to Tel Hashomer Hospital in Ramat Gan, Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva and Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service. All were said to have improved late Friday. The two who were lightly injured were released from the hospital by Saturday evening.
Two Israelis, Alon Bakal, 26, who was the manager of the Simta Bar targeted in the attack and Shimon Raimi, 30, from Ofakim, were killed in the attack.