Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 10, 2016

01/10 Links: The Jihad Against Jewish Hebron; Shin Bet busts Hebron Hamas cell; IsraAid in Yorkshire

From Ian:

Police open criminal investigation of far-left Israeli activist

The Israel Police have opened a criminal investigation into a far-left activist who was shown on an investigative journalism TV program last week boasting about how he helps Palestinian security forces find Palestinians who sell land to Jews.
In the hidden camera footage aired by Channel 2’s “Uvda” on Thursday night, Ezra Nawi can be seen boasting about how the Palestinian land owners are tortured and later killed after taken into custody by the Palestinian Authority’s Preventative Security Service.
“Straight away I give their pictures and phone numbers to the Preventive Security Force,” Nawi is heard saying in reference to the Palestinian Authority’s counterintelligence arm. “The Palestinian Authority catches them and kills them. But before it kills them, they get beat up a lot.”
The footage was part of a segment on Uvda about a group of Israelis who posed as far-left activists in order to infiltrate Israeli human rights NGOs working in the West Bank.

Guardian once praised Israeli ‘activist’ who helps kill Palestinians selling land to Jews

In 2009, the Guardian published an official editorial titled ‘In Praise of Ezra Nawi’.
Nawi is a Jewish Israeli ‘human rights activist’ with the group Ta’ayush, a “grassroots movement of Arabs and Jews working to break down the walls of racism and segregation”.
Prior to the editorial, the Guardian had published an op-ed by contributor Neve Gordon which was even effusive in its praise of the “pro-democracy, human rights activist”.
Fast forward to 2016.
Uvda, a respected news magazine on Israel’s Channel 2, just revealed that two Israeli “human rights activists” – including Ezra Nawi – bragged, in an exchange caught on film – that they “entrapped” Palestinians interested in selling land to Jews and subsequently turned them in to the Palestinian Authority.
Remarkably, they turned these Palestinians in even though they acknowledged – in the video secretly recorded by another NGO – that they likely faced torture or murder by the Palestinian secret police.

Haaretz outs IDF hero who infiltrated B'tselem, Ta'ayush

The Haaretz newspaper has exposed the alleged identity of the young man who infiltrated leftist groups as part of an investigative report that was aired on Channel 2 last week.
The man, who was planted in the leftist groups by a group called Ad Kan, recorded the most damning documentary materials aired on the show, by use of a hidden camera. His identity was kept secret on the show, and the IDF, too, refrained from making it public when he was awarded the Chief of Staff's citation for his courage in Operation Protective Edge.
According to the Channel 2 report, the man – who was referred to by the pseudonym "Arik," was the one who asked the IDF to keep his name secret, in order to make it possible for him to continue to infiltrate the leftist groups.
The investigative report has severely damaged the groups' image as being concerned with "human rights," by exposing that senior members of B'tselem and Ta'ayush have been informing on Arabs in Judea and Samaria who wish to sell land to Jews, in the knowledge that this leads to their arrest and torture by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which issues death sentences to people who sell land to Jews.

Deborah Cole, writing in the Times of Israel, tells us:

BERLIN, Germany (AFP) – German leaders expressed shock over dozens of apparently coordinated sexual assaults against women on New Year’s Eve in the western city of Cologne blamed on “Arab-looking men,” but warned against anti-migrant scapegoating.
Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a thorough investigation of the “repugnant” attacks, ranging from groping to at least one reported rape, allegedly committed in a large crowd of revellers during year-end festivities outside the city’s main train station and its famed Gothic cathedral.
Police in Cologne said they had received 90 criminal complaints by Tuesday and quoted witnesses as saying that groups of 20-30 young men “who appeared to be of Arab or North African origin” had surrounded victims, assaulted them and in several cases robbed them.
Germany took in around one million asylum seekers in 2015, many of them fleeing war-ravaged Syria.

But, as she fails to note, most are not fleeing war-ravaged Syria.

One need not be a sociologist to understand that importing millions of young men from a part of the world notorious for misogyny into the Land of the Blondies is likely to result in trouble and it is, in fact, resulting in trouble. Aside from rising rates of anti-Semitism and crime and homelessness in countries like Germany and Sweden there is also the little matter of rape.

They say that Sweden has emerged as the rape capital of Europe. The Swedes must be very proud.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas said the assaults represented “a new dimension of crime that we will have to get to grips with,” adding that they had appeared to be “coordinated.”
Asked by a journalist whether refugees were behind the rampage, Maas said police were still working to identify the attackers.
“This is not about where someone is from but what they did,” he said.
“Making an issue out of it, lumping it together with the refugee issue, is nothing but exploitation. Now is the time to determine the facts and then decide on the necessary consequences.”

Exploitation? I have no idea what this guy is talking about, but he sounds like someone who would be quite comfortable in the Obama administration... where they have turned dissimulation and evasion into a form of art.

Furthermore, this is not a matter of "lumping it together with the refugee issue" because it is an integral part of the immigration issue to begin with. Sweden and Germany have invited huge numbers of people into their countries who despise Jews, dislike Christians, disrespect women, and, outside of the financial benefits, do not even respect their host cultures or the authorities within those cultures.

The bottom line is that the EU, Germany, and Sweden have made an irreversible blunder and their people are going to pay very seriously, over a very long period of time, for that blunder.

I am not one of those who speaks of an "invasion" of Europe because in the minds of most these travelers, I have little doubt, it is a matter of building a better life in a more generous part of the world or, in the case of some, to run from war. Why they feel it necessary to run all the way to Stockholm or Cologne is not difficult to fathom. I mean, if you had a choice between living in Karachi or Stockholm, which would you choose?

Meanwhile the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which hopes to gain seats in three regional elections in March, seized on the attacks as “a result of unchecked immigration.”
“Here we see the appalling consequences of catastrophic asylum and migration policies on Germany’s everyday reality,” party leader Frauke Petry said.

There is no question but that right-leaning parties throughout Europe are going to benefit politically from the criminal-like negligence of the various mainstream European leaders, such as Angela Merkel. The sad thing is that most Europeans objecting to the opening of the immigrant floodgates are not racist, nor particularly right-wing. European political figures, who are invested in the policy, will encourage people to think upon those who object as "racists" if not "neo-Nazis."

In this way Europe is undermining its liberal, democratic nature going forward.

This is true for two reasons. The first is that the immigrants do not share those liberal, democratic values and seem generally unwilling to assimilate. This means that as they gain greater political power the less liberal and democratic Europe will become. Western feminism is dying because it is trapped between the multicultural imperative and the well-being of European women. Since multiculturalism apparently trumps social justice, those of us raised within an ideologically-multicultural milieu have thrust a sock into the throats of western feminists who might otherwise be inclined to speak out on behalf of their sisters in places like Karachi or Riyadh, not to mention Tehran.

Any who attempt to stand up for the rights of women suffering under Islamic misogyny will inevitably be ostracized from their political peer group with a "right-wing racist" label smacked across their forehead.

The second reason is that it becomes much harder to uphold humanitarian values when faced with people who emphatically do not share such values. How does one hold aloft the banner of humanitarianism toward the very people who wish to rape your daughter? This is not to say, obviously, that all Arab immigrants into Europe condone or commit rape, but certainly enough that it should awaken something in the European heart.

Victims described terrifying scenes in the marauding mob.
Katja L., 28, said she was with three friends outside the station when they encountered a group of “foreign-looking men.”
“Suddenly I felt a hand on my bottom, then on my breasts, then I was groped everywhere,” she told Cologne tabloid Express.
“It was horrible. Although we screamed and flailed about, the guys didn’t stop. I was beside myself and think that I was touched about 100 times across around 200 meters.”

Europe has opened itself to a whole new set of challenges for the coming century. We will see rising rates of crime, rape, and Jihadi acts of terror as European Jews slowly drift away to Israel or Australia or North America.

In the end, I most strongly feel bad for young European women who will be pay the most immediate and direct price for their parents' good intentions. Few people doubt Europe's humanitarian convictions as sincere.

We merely doubt that they will get what they bargained for.

Finally, nobody is going to tell me that opposing the mass migration of a population known to hold anti-Semitic hostility in percentiles ranging from the mid-70s to the mid-90s is racist toward those people.


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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From Herald Scotland:

THE British government is refusing to accept evidence of civilian fatalities in UK air strikes from human rights groups monitoring the results of bombing raids on the ground in Syria and Iraq.

The Ministry of Defence told the Sunday Herald that it will not investigate reports of deaths on the ground in Syria and Iraq - from anyone but UK military personnel, and 'local forces' deemed friendly.

The UK Government is being urged to launch an immediate investigation after independent monitoring group Airwars reported between 72 and 81 civilian deaths in Iraq could be linked to British air strikes.

In the wake of the report, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) insisted there had been “no reports” from Iraq or Syria of civilian casualties as a result of the UK air campaign.

The MoD insisted it would not consider reports from independent monitoring groups, such as Airwars, which collates information from sources including media reports and civilians on the ground in affected areas.

The MoD claims it relies only on evidence from its own internal surveillance - through aerial assessments or information from evaluations carried out by what it calls 'local forces'. A spokeswoman refused to comment further on what it meant by 'local forces'.

Chris Woods, director of Airwars, which describes itself as a not-for-profit transparency project, said he was “shocked” by the admission by the MoD that it ruled out reports by human rights monitoring organisations.

He said Airwars had uncovered huge discrepancies in incidents being reported when it worked with US Central Command (Centcom) last year on compiling a database of civilian casualties of American bombing missions.

“One of the things that troubled us was that we were aware of three times more alleged civilian casualty incidents than Centcom was,” he said. “Their own internal mechanisms were simply missing two out of three alleged cases on the ground and we ended up sharing our data-set with them, simply so they could begin triggering investigative processes for those events they were unaware of."

Israeli policy is for the Military Advocate General to investigate all reports of civilian casualties during wartime - from human rights groups as well as from Palestinian sourses themselves.

But the British apparently believe that they cannot trust information from any non-British source in the first place.

(h/t Ellis Simpson)

Weaponizing parkour against Israel

UNRWA's Chris Gunness tweeted:

""#Siege" deprives #Gaza #parkour team of international competition" https://t.co/N8jo975hAq RT pic.twitter.com/FqLCw3TDD7
— Chris Gunness (@ChrisGunness) January 9, 2016

The article he links to shows how every news story about Gazans must adhere to a strictly anti-Israel narrative - and how even ordinary Palestinians know what they can and cannot say to the media in order to enforce the single-minded desire to demonize Israel at every opportunity.

Invitations to take part in international competitions and events soon followed. “Unfortunately, the strict Israeli siege prevents us from accepting them,” lamented Lubbad. Last November, two members of Three Run Gaza parkour team qualified to take part in a championship in Qatar; they couldn’t get out of Gaza in order to take part.

As Mohamed Lubbad puts it, “All of our dreams end on the doorstep of the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip.”

Notice what is missing?

Any mention of Egypt.

Egypt's restrictions on Gazan travel is an order of magnitude worse than Israel's - even though Egypt is a neighboring, purportedly friendly Arab nation.

But mentioning Egypt would water down the anti-Israel nature of the article, which is of course what this article is really about - not parkour, not sport, not freedom of movement, but criticism of Israel.

Lubbad knows that Egypt's restrictions on travel are worse than Israel's, but he won't dare mention it - proving that he is less interested in his sport than he is in weaponizing it against Israel.

And this purposeful misuse of human interest stories is why UNRWA's Chris Gunness chooses to tweet them, and never anything negative about Egypt or how other Arab nations mistreat Palestinians.

01/09 Links: Limmud vs. Tuvia Tenenbom; Leftism Absent Morality in Israel; BDS Targets Your Kids

From Ian:

Limmud vs. Tuvia Tenenbom: Which One is the Liberal?

“Yes, all voices are welcome, so long as they are critical of Israel,” is how Tuvia Tenenbom, journalist, dramatist and best-selling author, described the Limmud Conference in Birmingham, England on Dec. 27 – 31, 2015.
Tenenbom, author of “Catch the Jew,” sat through several days, but not all, of the recent conference. Tenenbom was supposed to be there for the entire conference, he was a speaker, but after being disinvited from the fourth session in which he was supposed to appear, and after enduring scathingly hostile verbal attacks from audience members and former Limmud officials, Tenenbom had enough.
That’s what Tenenbom says.
What Keith Kahn-Harris says is quite different and he’s the organizer and leader of the session from which Tenenbom was dropped, and he’s the one who told Tenenbom he was disinvited.
According to Kahn-Harris, it was his decision alone to drop Tenenbom from the final panel and it was “not an ideological decision from someone ideologically opposed to Tuvia Tenenbom.” Instead, Kahn-Harris said he dropped Tenenbom from the session because he had invited four participants but only really wanted three – and he “left it to the [time of the] conference” to decide whom to cut.
Why did it make any difference whether there were three or four people on the session? Kahn-Harris spoke with the JewishPress.com by telephone on Thursday, Jan. 7 to discuss that topic.
The session in controversy was scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 30, at 5:40 p.m. The title of the session was “JNEB: Jewish nightmares, exasperations and broiguses.” According to Kahn-Harris, that session was “not like a regular Limmud session, it wasn’t ‘a panel’ it was to be a darker version of JDOV, a space for negativity and evil and I needed to drop one because there are only three people on the JDOV sessions.”

Leftism Absent Morality in Israel

There’s more, and the scandal also allegedly involved B’Tselem, a frequent interlocutor for the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem and a favorite resource of groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Frequent American commentators like Peter Beinart have also served on the B’Tselem advisory board.
Activists and human rights activists can complain about entrapment and the deception that led to the tapes, if accurate, seeing the light of day but there should also be a moral reckoning: Palestinians and Israelis should be encouraged to strike compromises — working out among themselves who farms where and swapping land when necessary. While anti-settlement activists might promote a narrative of illegal Israeli land grabs, much more frequent is commerce — the buying and selling of land and other products. To discourage the selling of land to Jews (or to Muslims or to Christians for that matter) is problematic and to complain about the refusal to sell to members of one religion while facilitating the murder of those who sell to another is hypocritical and morally incomprehensible.
Let us hope that B’Tselem, J-Street, Human Rights Watch, and other organizations who have become deeply involved in monitoring and passing judgment on the dispute between Israel and Palestinians will make clear that Nawi’s actions are unacceptable and cannot be rationalized in any way. Nawi might look at himself as a left-wing human rights activist, but if the report outlined by Ha’aretz is true, he is no different than the terrorist or death squad commander torturing an unarmed farmer or pulling the trigger to murder him in front of his family.

BDS Has a New Target: Your Kids

Framing Israel: The Distortions of the New Boycott-Driven School Curriculum
Education is important. What shapes our youth shapes the future, and so we need to craft our school curricula carefully. So it is worth carefully deconstructing the troubling new K-12 curriculum, Reframing Israel, produced by Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman. The curriculum was introduced at the beginning of the school year, and Zimmerman claims that more than 10 Hebrew schools have already adopted it. The stated goal of Reframing Israel is “teaching Jewish kids to think critically about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” But is this the actual impact of the curriculum?
The answer is no.
First, it is crucial to note that the main author and the majority of contributors to Reframing Israel are part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. This includes the writer of the curriculum’s “historical overview of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
This is deeply problematic, because while BDS sells itself as a movement for justice and human rights, its ultimate goal is the elimination of Israel and the violation of Jewish rights to self-determination. According to recent polls, only four percent of American Jews strongly support BDS, and the overwhelming majority see the denial of Israel’s right to exist as racism. Members of the Jewish community are of course free to support anything they choose, but responsible parents and educators should take BDS’s agenda into account when thinking about the goals and biases of Reframing Israel.
At first glance the curriculum appears well-balanced, filled with pride-building activities like learning Hebrew songs and creative exercises aimed at building understanding of both Israeli and Palestinian narratives. The educational method is also well thought out, encouraging students to actively engage with diverse points of view instead of expecting them to “passively accept the information.” These aspects of Reframing Israel could indeed help Jewish kids think critically about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It is therefore disturbing that when digging a little deeper into the material, the message becomes overwhelmingly anti-Israel and pro-BDS. This is particularly apparent in the “Historical Overview” and “Key Terms” sections, which guide the majority of the curriculum.

The American Historical Association is holding its 130th annual meeting in Atlanta this weekend, and the Israel haters tried to hijack the event with an anti-Israel resolution.

It was soundly defeated, 111 to 51.

As far as I can tell, this was the only resolution that was being voted on during the meeting.

Of course, the haters will probably try again next year.

Assaf

From JPost:

PA president Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday appointed Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf as General Supervisor of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) and the official news agency Wafa.

The two institutions are considered the PA’s most significant media outlets and serve as a mouthpiece for the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah.

PBC consists of Palestine TV and the Sawt Falastine (Voice of Palestine) radio station.

The appointment of Assaf came days after Palestine TV aired ran a 45-minute interview with senior Fatah official Jibril Rajoub in which he implicitly criticized Abbas and the top brass of the PA.

Rajoub said that Palestinians were suffering from a “moral and leadership crisis.” He also praised the Palestinians involved in attacks against Israelis over the past three months.

Following the interview, Abbas and some of his aides expressed outrage with Palestine TV for providing Rajoub with a platform to sound his criticism of the PA leadership.

The appointment of Assaf is seen by top Fatah officials as part of Abbas’s effort to tighten his grip on the PA’s official media outlets and silence his critics.

Well, well.

Even pro-Fatah media outlets are disgusted at this blatant attempt by Abbas to control the press.

01/08 Links Pt2: Obama Admin Living in a Foreign Policy 'Fantasy World'; Awarding polemics

From Ian:

Reporter Calls Out Obama Admin for Living in Foreign Policy 'Fantasy World'

Discussing North Korea's recent claim that it tested a nuclear weapon, Lee posed this question to State Department spokesman John Kirby:
“Every time this happens, we hear from people in this administration, and other governments as well, that we will not accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state. And yet it is. You also say this about other things too. You say you will never accept Crimea as a part of Russia. And yet it is. Isn’t it time to recognize these things for what they are and not live in this illusion or fantasy where you pretend that things are, are not?”
Kirby astonishingly responds that "The short answer is no."
"It's preferable to live in a fantasy world?" Lee counters.
Kirby stumbled for a long awkward stretch before finally saying, "At this level of foreign policy, you know, you... you have to make choices. And uh, you don't have to accept everything, even at face value."
"You have to accept reality," Lee interjected.
"No. We're not going to accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state. We're not going to recognize that. We are, however, going to deal with -"

AP’s Lee Calls Out Obama Administration For Living In A Fantasyland Of Their Foreign Policy Failures

Melanie Phillips: Turning enemies into friends and friends into foes

Last Tuesday, Iran unveiled a new underground missile depot, with state television showing Emad precision- guided missiles weapons that the US says are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Like its ballistic missile tests last October and November, these violate UN Security Council resolutions.
For this and other flagrant breaches of trust, the Obama administration has done nothing. Having suggested it would implement sanctions against the bodies it held responsible for aiding the missile program, it promptly retreated after a reported intervention by the State Department following Iranian objections.
Iran is confident that Obama will lift sanctions whatever the regime may do, since if Iran walks away from the nuclear deal this would strip away the figleaf of progress and destroy Obama’s presumed legacy. Consequently, the only binding part of this non-deal deal has become the lifting of sanctions. Obama has effectively become Iran’s hostage.
As a simultaneous consequence of this farce, the US has also lost its leverage over Saudi Arabia which almost certainly will now seek to develop or buy nuclear weapons of its own. To defuse this powder keg, the US should now cancel the Iranian nuclear deal. This would start to rein in Iran and bring Saudi Arabia down from the tree up which it has climbed.
It is said that Obama thought strengthening Shia Iran would produce a regional balance of power with Sunni Saudi Arabia, and usher in an era of peace and stability. Instead, he has pushed Iran and Saudi Arabia to the brink of war with each other, ushered in a nuclear arms race between the two and brought the world much closer to the edge of the apocalypse.

Awarding polemics

Olof Palme was a charismatic and well-spoken Social Democrat who became prime minister of Sweden in 1969. Palme was known for being both anti-American and anti-capitalist; and throughout his political career he fostered a close relationship to the Palestine Liberation Organization and became a personal friend of Yasir Arafat's, whom he invited to Sweden for numerous official visits. During Palme's time as prime minister, Swedish foreign policy was laced with a staunch anti-Zionism, and from then on, the Swedish government has given generous Swedish aid to the PLO.
After Palme's death in 1986, an award was created in his name, and every year the Olof Palme Prize, and the accompanying $75,000, is given to someone who is said to have done good work for human rights and democracy in the world. This year, the Palme Prize was awarded to Israeli journalist Gideon Levy and Palestinian Lutheran Bishop Mitri Raheb, for their "fight against occupation and violence," according to the jury.
Levy is a journalist at the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, and his attacks on Israel and the IDF are often published in Swedish media as a representation of middle-of-the-road sanity. Raheb is a pastor in the Lutheran church in Bethlehem who is known for preaching the so-called "replacement theology," wherein Christianity is believed to have replaced Judaism, making the Jewish faith -- and its claim to the Jewish homeland -- obsolete. Raheb is known across the world for his hate-propaganda toward Israel and the fact the he preaches a theology that nullifies any Jewish religious or historic heritage, including that of the land of Israel. These two men are being honored for their "courageous and indefatigable fight against occupation and violence, and for a future Middle East characterized by peaceful coexistence and equality for all," as the Olof Palme Memorial Fund phrased it in a statement released on Thursday. (h/t Yenta Press)

An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by Saree Makdisi, a UCLA professor, starts this way:

Why Israel's schools merit a U.S. boycott

At its annual convention this week, the Modern Language Assn., which represents 26,000 language and literature scholars, will become the latest academic body to consider the merits of adopting a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. This follows endorsements of such a boycott by the Assn. for Asian American Studies, the American Studies Assn. and, most recently, the American Anthropological Assn., which voted 1,040 to 136 to endorse a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions at its November annual meeting in Denver; the AAA's entire membership will soon vote on the resolution, which is expected to pass.

The justification for an academic boycott — which targets institutions, not individual scholars — stems from the peculiar relationship between Israel's educational system and its broader structures of racism.

The United Nations' Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination points out with alarm that Israel maintains two separate educational systems for its citizens — one for Jewish children and another for the children of the Palestinian minority — a structure that reinforces the profound segregation of Israeli society in everything from matters of citizenship and marriage to housing rights.

Here's the first indication of falsehood. Israel teaches Arabic language, culture and history in Arab schools and Jewish culture and history in Jewish schools. If Arabs were forced to go to Jewish-majority schools, you can be sure that Makdisi would be saying that Israel must be boycotted for destroying Arab culture.

According to official Israeli data cited by the human rights organization Adalah, by the turn of the 21st century Israel was investing three times as much on a per capita basis in the education of a Jewish as opposed to that of a Palestinian citizen.

The consequences are obvious: Schools for Palestinians in Israel are overcrowded and poorly equipped, lacking in libraries, labs, arts facilities and recreational space in comparison with schools for Jewish students. Palestinian children often have to travel greater distances than their Jewish peers to get to school, thanks to a state ban on the construction of schools in certain Palestinian towns (for example, according to Adalah, there is not a single high school in the Palestinian communities of theNegev desert in southern Israel).

These naked forms of discrimination extend into the university system as well. “The hurdles Palestinian Arab students face from kindergarten to university function like a series of sieves with sequentially finer holes,” Human Rights Watch points out. “At each stage, the education system filters out a higher proportion of Palestinian Arab students than Jewish students.”

Only one problem. This pseudo-academic is using statistics and quotes that are from one and a half decades ago.

He sort of admits it, by calling a 1999 study "the turn of the 21st century," a sly way to make it sound modern. But what has happened since then?

Haaretz notes that from 1999-2010, when science teachers in Jewish schools plummeted:

In Arab schools, however, the picture was different, with the number of computer science teachers rising by 50%. The Arab sector also saw a rise of 165% in instructors teaching technology classes and a 171% increase in the number teaching mathematics, the report found.

The number of physics teachers in Arab schools grew by 25%, those teaching chemistry by 44% and in biology by 81.7%.

There are still gaps but Israel has poured lots of money into the Arab school sector since the gaps were first reported. But Makdisi wants to boycott Israel first, and doesn't want the facts to get into the way. So he wants an academic boycott in 2016 based on statistics from 2000.

Even the Human Rights Watch article he quotes is from 2001!

But what about these damning figures that he quotes that are more recent?

About a quarter of Israeli schoolchildren are Palestinian. But as a recent study by the Assn. for the Advancement of Civic Equity points out, the higher you go in the system, the lower the number of Palestinian students. As of 2012, according to data published by the Israeli Council for Higher Education, Palestinians constituted only 11% of bachelor's degree students, 7% of master's students, and barely 3% of PhD students. A mere 2.7% of the faculty in Israeli universities are Palestinian, and the percentage of Palestinians in administration is even lower.

I went to the website of the Israeli Council for Higher Education, and discovered another way that this "academic" is willing to lie with statistics. Indeed, in the 2011-2 academic year, only 11.8% of all university students were Arab. Yet that number went up to 12.4% in 2013, 13.1% in 2014 and 14.1% in 2015 - indicating that the money that Israel put in Arab public schools has paid off. In fact, since 1999, the number of Arab university students has increased by 50%.

Clearly the problem was identified and is being addressed from way before anyone ever heard of BDS. Which shows that BDS advocates are first and foremost anti-Israel and only afterwards do they try to muster up facts to support their own racism.

Beyond that, the idea that Israel universities must be punished because the Arab education sector has been historically underfunded makes absolutely no sense. I am not aware of any studies showing that Israeli universities discriminate against Arabs. By boycotting the very institutions that Arabs need to attend to gain equality in the next generation, the BDSers are trying to perpetuate the problem, not solve it.

It is amazing that UCLA allows an academic with such sloppy and dishonest research methods to be employed.

And it is more than disappointing that the Los Angeles Times published this without doing the basic fact checks that took me about 15 minutes to complete.

(h/t GLR)

01/08 Links Pt1: Tel Aviv gunman killed in northern Israel; PA, Hamas, Responsible for Torture

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Responsible for Torture

For the mainstream media and human rights organizations, human rights violations are news only when they come with a "made in Israel" sticker on them.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has used international aid funds to build prisons and detention centers in the West Bank where torture has become the norm.
Dr. Ammar Dwaik, Director General of the Independent Commission for Human Rights, a Palestinian group, revealed that his group received 782 complaints regarding torture -- 168 in the West Bank and 614 in the Gaza Strip.
Both Hamas and the PA each fears that in a free election it could lose some of its power. Why hold an election if you are not sure about the results?
Needed desperately: scrutiny of Palestinian society by international media and human rights groups -- beginning with Palestinian prisons. Anyone stepping up?

How not to help Palestinian children

Quite perversely, the PA nurtures an environment where children learn that attacking Israelis is somehow a noble cause. Palestinian youths grow up in streets bearing the names of Palestinian killers, and attend football stadia named after terrorist murderers. Terror groups instil hatred by indoctrinating children to achieve their political goals, whilst recruiting from amongst the young. Terrorists impress upon these malleable children their murderous and twisted ideology.
We must ask questions of the Israeli government on this issue and encourage them to make further improvements and where, as much as possible, ensure that the judicial system in the West Bank, mirrors that of the civilian system in Israel. Those are legitimate questions to ask and ones that will be willingly acknowledged in democratic Israel.
It is also important, however, to take an active role in encouraging Palestinian society to promote positive role models for children. Too many of those who take part in this debate have nothing to say on these issues, they never mention Palestinian incitement, and they refuse to hold the PA to account for its failings.
So long as advocates continue to ignore these issues, they are not helping Palestinian children. These children will just continue to be subjected to a poisonous stream of incitement and hate that manifests itself in 13 and 15 year old Palestinians walking the streets of Jerusalem with knives intent on stabbing innocent Israelis. This is an ideology that teaches children that if they die trying to killing innocent Israelis then they will be heroes, and possibly honoured with a school in their name! If those who claim to care about Palestinian youth really want to help then they must start asking tough and searching questions of the Palestinians, just as they do of Israel. Simply relying on the binary ‘Israel bad, Palestinians victims’ narrative risks condemning the next generation of Palestinians to a further cycle of hate and violence.

Tel Aviv gunman shot and killed in northern Israel

Nashat Milhem, the gunman who killed three Israelis last week in Tel Aviv, was shot and killed by Israeli forces in an exchange of fire in northern Israel on Friday afternoon.
He was located near his home in the Arara area. Initial reports said he had been “neutralized.” It was later confirmed that he had been killed.
Milhem was tracked down to the building where he was hiding out, and attempted to flee. During the chase, he opened fire on the forces, and was shot dead, Israeli security officials said.
Channel 2 reported that the Israeli forces, from an elite police unit, had sought to capture him alive, but were fired upon by Milhem, who was using the same weapon he used for last Friday’s shootings.
Channel 2 said he was tracked down to a building where his family had lived in the past.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and other Israeli leaders praised the security forces for the operation.

Muslim states pledge big, give little to Gaza

The Wall Street Journal had a very good article about rebuilding Gaza last week:

Less than two months after the latest Israel-Hamas war ended in late August 2014 with both sides claiming victory, foreign donors met in Cairo and pledged $3.5 billion in reconstruction aid for Gaza. Gulf Arab states, where pro-Palestinian public sentiment is strong, promised more than half the amount, or $1.9 billion.

To date, however, $1.2 billion of the $3.5 billion has been delivered, with Gulf states dispensing only about $170 million. Like other donors, Gulf governments have attached conditions on how their aid money is spent, according to Palestinian, United Nations and World Bank officials.

“Donors have different requirements and priorities,” said Bashir Rayyes, who coordinates the Gaza aid effort for the United Nations and reports to the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank.

Chief among these differences is their views about Gaza’s rulers. While Qatar supports Hamas, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have grown more aggressive in recent years in their opposition to Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups across the region.

With the blessing of Hamas, Qatar has an office in Gaza from which it employs contractors and local workers to carry out road, school and home reconstruction. It has spent only a fraction of the $1 billion it pledged in Cairo, instead disbursing funds it promised to Gaza after the previous Israel-Hamas war in 2012.

Ahmad Abu Rass, who heads the office, said Doha won’t shell out more cash in Gaza until other donors step up efforts to fulfill their pledges. A half-hearted aid effort only sows more despair among Gazans and sets the stage for another round of fighting, making any aid a wasted investment, he said.

I ran the numbers from the World Bank (as of last August.) Counting only states for which information was available, Muslim states pledged $2.168 billion, of which only $270 million was paid, 12.5%. Non-Muslim nations had pledged $1.242 billion and paid $960 million, over 77%.

The article ends off this way:

Abdelraziq Harara, 53, was one of the lucky ones, though. He was one of the first 1,000 Gazans promised help to rebuild his home when Qatar finally started distributing aid three months ago. The $50,000 to reconstruct his home was delivered in four installments.

When his 65-year-old brother Jihad visited the same ministry of public works office in Gaza City, he was promised funds—eventually. Last month, he was told Kuwait would supply the money but arrangements for the payments were still being made with the Palestinian Authority.

As Qatar’s maroon-and-white flag flew above a completed house nearby, Jihad said he had no control over what country aided him or why. He just hoped the money would come soon.

“If the Israelis built the house, I’d fly the Israeli flag.”

Wouldn't it be great if Israel took him up on that offer?

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh celebrated the current wave of attacks against Jews a rally in Khan Younis before thousands of supporters on Thursday.

He noted two anniversaries - one, today, is the 100th day of the "intifada," and the recent 20th anniversary of Israel's killing of Yahya Ayyash, Hamas' chief bombmaker known as "the Engineer."

Hamas says that the official beginning of the current uprising was the murder of Eitam and Na'ama Henkin.

The popular leader said that Hamas still has some surprises planned for attacks on Israel. He may have been referring to the plot to assassinate Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu that was announced today, but there are almost certainly many other such plots as Hamas struggles to appear as the leader of the uprising.

Haniyeh again explicitly reiterated what Hamas apologists in the West deny - that Hamas will accept nothing less than the complete destruction of Israel from the river to the sea. He stressed that Hamas not happy only controlling the Gaza Strip but is fighting to liberate all of "Palestine," starting with Jerusalem.

Hamas media released a video, with heroic music, to celebrate the 100 days of terror.

"It catches them and kills them"

From Arutz 7and The Jewish Press:

A group of nationalist activists has succeeded in infiltrating radical leftist groups, and exposed how extreme leftist activist Ezra Nawi passes information on Palestinian Arabs interested in selling land to Jews and has them executed by the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The PA has long outlawed the sale of land to Jews in Judea and Samaria, and has made no secret of its position of executing Arab sellers. Nawi admitted he knew that by passing the Arabs' names to the PA he was handing them a death sentence.

The expose regarding Nawi's role in it all was revealed by Channel 2 on Thursday.

In recent months intrepid right-wing activists managed to have planted agents infiltrate the radical leftist circles and follow Nawi's activities on the ground, without him being aware. One of the agents was even able to get very close to Nawi.

The planted agent managed to record Nawi giving testimony as to how he takes the names of Palestinians who want to sell land to Jews and hands them over to the PA Security Forces, fully aware of the bitter fate in store for them.
One of the activists taped Nawi’s bragging about how he turns in to the Palestinian security forces Arabs who plan to sell land to Jews, with full awareness of their fate after they are caught. “I hand them directly to the Palestinian security service,” Nawi boasts on the tape.

When asked what happens once Palestinian police lays its hands on the sellers, Nawi says, “It catches them, kills them.” He then added with a vicious smile, “First Zubur, then Gazanga.” Zubur is an Arabic word used in Hebrew to describe hazing—humiliation and physical torment. The Gazanga part is not a known word, but implies, in the context of the tape, the demise of the victim.

Israelis are up in arms about the report which can be seen here.

עובדה - תחקיר השמאל הקיצוני
עובדה - תחקיר השמאל הקיצוני
Posted by NirOz on Thursday, January 7, 2016

The leftist "human rights" organization B'Tselem is not too upset at the idea of an Israeli handing over Arabs to be tortured and executed. Instead, it attacked the report on their Hebrew Facebook page, even justifying the actions of the informers, saying that "this is the only legitimate channel for Palestinians" to protect their land from being sold to Jews "given the fact that the Israeli authorities refrain from protecting the Palestinian landowners in the takeover by settlers on their land." B'Tselem adds "Of course, B'Tselem is completely against torture and executions before or after legal proceedings, under any circumstances, whether it is done in the cellars of the Shabak or the Palestinian Authority." Yet it is more upset over legitimate, legal sales of land to Jews than it is over the fate for those who facilitate those sales.

(h/t Yenta)

UPDATE: More details from Haaretz:

The footage of Nawi was captured by a right-wing activist who reportedly became his close acquaintance. In the footage, Nawi, who is unaware of being recorded, is heard telling of four Palestinian landowners who contacted him, thinking he was also involved in the land trade.
"I give their photos and their phone numbers immediately to the [Palestinian] Preventive Security Force," Nawi says in the recording. "The Authority catches them and kills them. But before they kill them they beat them up."
In another recording, Nawi is heard telling about a Palestinian who "made deals with the settlers." The Palestinian, Nawi says, let the settlers till his uncles' lands in return for farming other lands. Nawi goes on to say that he handed the Palestinian's name over to the Palestinian security services, and that the Palestinian later "suffered a stroke."
The investigative report also shows Nawi and a Palestinian member of B'Tselem plotting to meet a Palestinian land broker with the alleged intent of turning him in to the Palestinian security services. In footage documenting the meeting with the land owner, Nawi says he is interested in buying lands near the settlements. Nawi collects documents from the land broker and tries to schedule another meeting, allegedly with the intent of notifying Palestinian agents and setting up an ambush.

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"Electronic Intifada" founder Ali Abunimah refers to attackers as "martyrs" in Arabic

A tweet that says it all:

In Arabic, @AliAbunimah says that Pal'ns who were killed while allegedly attempting to stab IDF soldiers are martyrs pic.twitter.com/hzTKjNxUSL
— Nurit Baytch (@NuritBaytch) January 7, 2016

The article he links to does not have that headline, even though it refers to the dead as "martyrs" within the article. But to Abunimah, would-be murderers are heroes.

Ironically, Abunimah is referred to as a "journalist." He has written op-eds for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and many other mainstream media outlets.

And he is a cheerleader for terrorists.

Then again, his blog refers to terrorists as "martyrs" quite often. Google estimates the use of that term some 900 times in the site, many referring to would-be murderers.

01/07 Links Pt2: A great legal victory; European Union Drowns In Sea of Inconsistencies

From Ian:

A great legal victory

The most important part of winning the five-year legal battle over the exclusion of Ariel University from participating in the 2010 Solar Decathlon Europe competition is the message it sends -- one cannot bar via illegal or immoral pretexts Israeli universities, including those located in Judea and Samaria, from participating in international contests and conferences.
Generally, it is not difficult to create academic cooperation between Israeli researchers and their international colleagues. This is true at Ariel University, where researchers academically collaborate with colleagues from dozens of universities worldwide, including in the U.S., Europe and the Far East.
The problems stem from the pressure certain governments put on universities and other academic institutions to avoid becoming involved in cooperative academic projects with Ariel University and other Israeli institutions. This pressure is often the result of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which seeks to boycott Israeli activities in the realms of science, industry and agriculture, among others.
The danger here is that BDS pressure will prompt universities and academic institutions that initially had no reservations cooperating with Israeli bodies to be deterred from pursuing joint academic efforts with them.
The event in Spain demonstrated the danger Israel faces. The Technical University of Madrid, which organized the 2010 Solar Decathlon competition, had invited Ariel University to enter the contest, knowing the university was located in Samaria and having no reservations about it.

David Singer: David Singer: European Union Drowns In Sea of Inconsistencies

The European Union (EU) has concluded an unhappy 2015 with the introduction of racist and discriminatory labelling laws for Jewish goods and products originating from Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and East Jerusalem.
EU members Hungary, Greece and the Czech Republic have rejected these laws which have also been condemned in a bipartisan resolution presented to the US Congress.
The EU's Ambassador to Israel – Lars Faaborg-Andersen – has attempted to justify these labelling laws as being simply an expression of the EU's longstanding view that such designated territories are not part of Israel.
He omitted to state that EU policy will never support any part of these disputed territories becoming part of the State of Israel because the EU claims that Jewish settlement there since 1967 is illegal in international law.
However there is no binding legal decision in any Court that substantiates this EU claim.

IsraellyCool: Facebook Doesn’t Let Israelis Learn Truth About Jews

Here’s what’s going on. A number of years ago people reported a page on Facebook called “Jewish Ritual Murder”. It was also know as “The Truth About Jews”. It consistently ran the classical old blood libel that Jews, ordered by their Torah, kill non-Jews (especially children) and use their blood for various invented rituals.
Well this Facebook community did appear to go away. Certainly if you’re in Australia or in Israel, you can’t see their page. But if you’re in most of the Arab world you can. So how is this deception by Facebook helping anyone, when the people most likely to be incited to go out and stab a Jew can still see the lies, while those most likely to report it can’t see it? I don’t know.
Yesterday’s big video from Shurat Ha’Din has caused a stir for sure. My problem with all this is that policing hate speech vs incitement vs allowed criticism of religion is a very fraught area. All we’re learning from this, I believe, is that it can’t be done online and that the standards companies like Facebook have set for themselves can’t be met equitably. Unfortunately we’re getting into a trap where the speech deemed offensive by those who chop heads off, is censored whereas lies about Jews stay up because Jews don’t go on killing sprees about lies.
A quick note: blocking content by IP address to exclude it from certain geographies is not a perfect science. It is possible that some connections in Israel will see the community and Israellycool’s Aussie Dave can see this community from his internet connection without using the proxy service I used. Feel free to tell me in the comments if you can see this page or not.