Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 22, 2016

02/22 Links Pt2: An Open Letter to the Anti-Israel Left; Stop using apartheid for your own agenda

From Ian:

ECAJ [Australia]: An Open Letter to the Anti-Israel Left

This letter is addressed to that small fraction of the political Left which not only criticises Israeli government policies or practices but also demonises and denigrates Israel at every opportunity and thus denies its legitimacy.
We see you, we hear you, day after day, making your ignorant, bigoted and malicious accusations against Jews and Israel. You claim to be speaking for human rights and for justice, but your words and actions betray you. You are haters, liars and bullies.
You presume to define our Jewish identity to suit your own sensibilities and convenience. You assert that Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism. You say we are only a religious group and deny our 3,500 year old history as both a national and a faith community. In short, you presume to tell us who we are – a liberty you would not dare to take with any other group – and you are wrong.
You say you have nothing against Jews. You say you are only against Zionists. You categorise us into “good Jews” who oppose Israel and “bad Jews” who support Israel. This is your cynical, sinister way of offering acceptance only to those Jews who are so lacking in knowledge or moral fibre that they are willing to embrace your hollow caricature of what it means to be Jewish. You are against the millions of Jews, the overwhelming majority, who are proudly Jewish and support Israel’s right to exist as the State of the Jewish people.

Stop using apartheid for your own agenda

There is a difference between somebody who is exposed and someone who is informed. I recently took part in an educational tour to Israel and Palestine. This was a remarkable exposure trip, co-ordinated by South African Israel Forum.
I am now in a good space to distinguish between the Israeli and Palestinian narratives and I realize that the aim was not to make me (and fellow young leaders) pro-Israel, but rather for us to be more exposed to a narrative that is not often heard in South Africa.
Like many other colonized countries, Israel was liberated in 1948 from the British system. However, from the year of liberation onwards, there have been severe conflicts between Israel and its neighboring countries, and in later years, between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. I was surprised to find that Israel has made peace with most of its former adversaries; however, the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations have proven to be very challenging and complex for both parties.
In summary, “variety is the spice of life,” thus I believe that people should not rely on what is portrayed and projected by the media, because, when it comes to Israel, it presents one-sided information and propaganda. I recommend that other South Africans take the time and make the effort to ensure that they visit Israel and Palestine, or at least make the effort to investigate both sides, before making decisions about Israel.
I decided to write this article because I, personally, will no longer allow other people to use our tragedy, as the survivors of apartheid, for their own agenda.
Knowledge is power and instead of being a victim of misinformation, I intend to be an ambassador of peace in this very complex and difficult conflict.
Your sense of solidarity should be informed. And the problems between Israel and Palestine should never be compared to South African Apartheid; the current conflict is completely different: it is not a racial conflict and from my perspective, it is far more religious than it is political.

Roger Waters in Stable Condition after Gaza Tunnel Collapse (satire)

Famed singer/songwriter/activist/dick Roger Waters is in serious but stable condition after getting caught in the collapse of a tunnel southeast of Gaza City earlier today. The Daily Freier was at the scene when a representative from the Palestinian Red Crescent briefed the assembled press. “It was approximately 3:00 PM when the Zionist Entity and its Egyptian lackeys triggered a cave-in of the tunnel, trapping 3 of our pious and motivated young tunnelers, as well as our bizarre but helpful friend Mister Roger Waters.”
When asked by MSNBC how rescue workers were able to find Mr. Waters, the spokesperson explained. “The tunnel was impassable to humans at this point, so we brought in Farfour the Mouse. He was able to find our friend by homing in on the intense scent of bitter self-righteousness that emanated from his body even when he was unconscious. Incidentally, this was exactly how we found Jimmy Carter after he accidentally wandered into the Sand Dunes last year during Ramadan.”
For his part, Roger Waters was insistent that he had done nothing wrong. “I know that the Zionists and their friends in the press will try to spin this in some negative light, but I was merely in the tunnel for its acoustics. You see, I’m recording a new single “Indigenous Olive Oil Can Flow Through Any Wall”, and I really needed just the right sound. But I think the vibrations from the snare drum may have set off a tremor and destroyed the tunnel.”
When the Daily Freier pointed out that since the tunnels go under the border, that he may have inadvertently stepped into Israel, he got really upset and his catheter fell out.

(h/t Bob K)

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According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of Palestinians working in Israeli settlements jumped significantly in the fourth quarter of 2015, with 26,300 workers compared to 22,100 in the third quarter, or an increase of 19%.

Even more interesting is that the number of Palestinians working for Israelis altogether only increased by 2,000 in the quarter, indicating that the numbers of workers within "Green Line" Israel actually decreased by about 2,200 and the shortfall was more than made up by an increase of workers in the settlements.

This means that about 2.5% of all Palestinian workers are working for and paid by Israeli settlers. Given that the average daily wage for those working for Israelis is more than double those who work domestically in the West Bank (200.6 shekels vs. 93.6 shekels) it means that over 5% of total Palestinian wages are dependent on the settlements!

My back of the envelope calculation is that Palestinians working in settlements contribute $300 million annually to the Palestinian economy.

In other words, if somehow the PA would make good on its promises to crack down on people working in the settlements, the loss of income would cause an immediate recession and unemployment in the West Bank would soar from 18.5% to 21%.

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02/22 Links Pt1: BDS illegally put Anti-Israel propaganda in 500 London trains; Kerry and the Game of Obfuscation

From Ian:

Hundreds of London tube trains plastered with anti-Israel ads

Millions of Londoners were exposed Monday to a series of anti-Israel posters on the underground network to mark the beginning of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement’s 12th annual Israeli Apartheid Week.
Transport for London, which is responsible for the tube service, said this was “an act of vandalism,” the ads were not authorized and staff members were working to take them down, the Jewish Chronicle reported.
The posters, designed in the style of BBC reports, attacked the UK broadcasting organization [which is frequently criticized for pro-Palestinian leanings] for biased pro-Israel reporting and claimed Israel used British arms to “massacre Palestinians” during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza.
A third poster criticized the global security company G4S for working in Israel, while a fourth, titled “Apartheid is Great….Britain,” alleged that more than 100 UK companies continue to supply military equipment to the Jewish State.
The Jewish Chronicle estimated that the ads appeared in some 500 trains.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Kerry and the Game of Obfuscation

This "intifada" is simply a further phase in a larger plan to destroy Israel. When the plan began officially, with the establishment of the PLO in 1964, there were no "settlements" -- not until after the June 1967 War -- so what exactly were the Palestinians planning to "liberate"?
The current conflict is not about "defending" any mosque from being contaminated by the "filthy feet" of Jews: it is about seeing Israel forced to its knees. Abbas and others seek to reap delicious political fruits from this "intifada."
Here is a novel idea: Kerry could put pressure on the Palestinian and Jordanian leadership to cease anti-Israeli incitement and indoctrination. Now that would be pressure well applied.
Abbas is expected to become a partner in the fight against ISIS and radical Islamist groups. All well and good. Why then is he not expected to stop cheering on and glorifying young Palestinians who attack Jewish Israelis?

Why Israeli Rule of Golan Is Lawful -- and Wise

Israel’s territorial claim arises in part from the principle of “effective occupation,” which provides that territory can be acquired through the exercise of sovereign power on a peaceful and extended basis. Israeli law has applied to the Golan for almost 35 years and Israel has exercised authority in a manner that suits all the residents of the territory.
Moreover, public international law favors stability, order, and peace; it aims to avoid resolutions that expose individuals to death or injury. Accordingly, it should prefer Israeli sovereignty over the Golan to the grim alternatives for the Golan Druze: the tyrannical rule of Shiite Islamist Iran’s puppet Assad, or the tyrannical rule of Islamic State Sunnis.
The international consensus that the Golan belongs to Syria no longer fits the facts and the law. Nor does it coincide with America’s interest in checking the spread of Islamist violence throughout the Middle East and in bolstering a democratic ally. At the first opportunity—unlikely to come before the next president’s inauguration in January 2017—the United States should affirm Israel’s lawful and just exercise of sovereignty over the Golan Heights and urge the international community, particularly U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East, to do the same.

There have been meetings recently between the Israeli and Palestinian finance ministers. But that it about all that the Israeli and PA media agree on.

Times of Israel reports it this way:

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon has met several times with his Palestinian counterpart Shukri Bishara in recent weeks to hammer out a plan for boosting economic assistance to the Palestinians, according to a Sunday report.

Kahlon is now slated to bring a raft of new initiatives to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for approval in the coming days, Channel 10 reported.

The plan is the result of a series of meetings between senior officials in the Israeli and Palestinian finance ministries, over the last several months, despite spiraling street violence. The last bilateral meeting of the finance officials took place last week.

The proposal focuses on both knowledge-intensive industries such as healthcare and high-tech, as well as expanding Israeli-Palestinian economic integration in the construction sector.

Officials in Israel said the measure is intended in part as a gesture to the Obama administration, after Netanyahu promised US President Barack Obama last November to expand efforts to reinvigorate the Palestinian economy.

But it is also seen in Israel as key to tackling lowering tensions in recent months amid the collapse of peace talks and a wave of Palestinian terror attacks since October.

Under the new plan, Palestinian doctors will reportedly be invited to train in Israeli hospitals, especially in medical fields relevant to the recent wave of violence, which has claimed 166 Palestinian lives, about two-thirds of them attackers attempting to kill Israelis at the time of their deaths, and 31 on the Israeli side, including three foreign nationals.

In what may be a significant boost to the Palestinian tech sector, Kahlon is also expected to propose new study and internship opportunities for Palestinian tech entrepreneurs and engineers in Israel’s world-leading high-tech industry.

Palestinian construction companies and contractors will also be allowed to operate in Israel, expanding access to the Israeli market from the current situation in which only Palestinian day laborers are allowed into Israel to work for Israeli companies.

There was no immediate Palestinian confirmation of the initiative.

The Palestinian media reported this completely differently. It says that Bishara denies the report about any discussion of cooperation in high-tech or allowing Palestinian construction companies to work in Israel. He claimed that the meetings were entirely about Israel paying money that is reportedly owed to the PA and adjustments to the costs of energy and tariffs that Israel charges the PA.

The idea of cooperation and normalization with Israel is kryptonite to the Palestinian leadership even as they know that their power and their people's livelihoods depend on such cooperation. But instead of telling their people the truth that Israel is here to stay and they need to work together, they tell them that Israel is their implacable foe and the only thing that is worth negotiating with Israel is its capitulation to their demands and eventual surrender. But under the radar they work together. (Which mirrors how much of the Arab world deals with Israel.)

The divergence between what Palestinians are being told by their leaders and the truth is getting only wider, and that is a major reason for the current wave of attacks. When the only information the people get about Israel is incitement, all they will want to do is kill Jews. Which means that any economic cooperation must be tied to a significant reduction in incitement in official PA and Fatah media. Otherwise, bringing in workers who have been fed a steady diet of antisemitism is going to result in more terror attacks, not less.

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It is raining in Gaza, and you know what that means.

Rumors started spreading in Palestinian social media that Israeli officials formally told their Palestinian counterparts that they plan to open up those dams that don't exist so Gaza can be flooded. As usual, these rumors were accepted as fact.

The mayor of Deir al-Balah issued a statement that there is fear that Israel already opened up those dams, because that is the only possible explanation for flooding during rains.

The director of civil defense in Gaza says that he was informed that Israel planned to open dams of its reservoirs if they filled up, and that he was in touch with the Red Cross to keep tabs on the matter.

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Palestinians fear irrelevance more than anything else

There is nothing that upsets Palestinian Arabs more than the idea that they are really not the center of the universe.

Their "nakba" is trivial next to what is happening in Syria. Their "Gaza genocide" is nothing compared to the number of Arabs killed by fellow Arabs in Libya and Yemen. The worst things to happen to Palestinians in the past two years - the horrific death of the Dawabshe baby and the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir - happens every single day in Iraq.

They used to enjoy worldwide coverage as if they were the most important people on Earth.

Using Time magazine covers as a barometer, the Gaza wars of 2014 and 2012 (as far as I can tell) did not make the cover of Time; the 2009 war only made the cover in its European edition. The last time Palestinians were on the cover of Time, in a sense, in the US is arguably ten years ago.

Like children, they can't stand that they are no longer the center of attention. They feel that they are the main victims of the Arab Spring - because it showed how little they matter in the Arab world, let alone to the world at large.

And like children, Palestinians will do anything they can - from meaningless symbolic stunts to threatening and igniting violence, their equivalent of a temper tantrum - to get the attention they crave.

Their entire strategy is based on fooling the world into believing that they hold the key to world peace and that as long as they cannot get their demands, the world will forever be held hostage to the prospect of new outbreaks of Arab violence.

That prospect is happening without them. Egypt fighting in the Sinai, and Libya's bloodshed, and Lebanon's periodic flareups, and Syria's multiple warring factions, and Saudi Arabia's bombing Yemen, and Iraq's disintegration have nothing to do with them.

But they cannot even imagine changing tactics - to, say, compromise for peace and move on with their lives.

The latest pathetic example of Palestinians trolling for attention comes from the Wafa news agency, in a story that will be rightly ignored by the world.

Saeb Erekat, speaking in Amman, said that Palestinians are in the forefront of battling ISIS-type religious extremism. No real evidence is offered, and none exists. If ISIS is where the news is, Erekat wants to make it look like the PLO is part of the fight against them.

The contrary is closer to the truth.The PLO is in talks yet again to unify with the Hamas terror group, which admittedly fights against Salafi-type extremism in Gaza that threatens its rule but which also seems to be helping ISIS in the Sinai, if Egypt is to be believed.

But Erekat also says in his little talk that the Palestinians are fighting another form of terrorism. Of course, he is referring to Israel. And his examples are - drumroll, please - Khdeir and Dawabshe, two events that sickened Israelis as intensely as the daily stabbing and shootings of Jews are celebrated by Erekat's people.

Erekat ended off his talk with the main theme that Palestinians desperately want the world to believe again:

Our struggle is not religious but political, and therefore we say to the world, if you really wanted to fight terrorism and defeat Daash, be aware that it will not be in isolation from draining the swamp of the Israeli occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state on the '67 borders and Jerusalem as its capital.

There you have it. As long as there isn't a Palestinian state, groups like ISIS will be beheading civilians, according to Palestinian officials. It is almost like they want extremist Muslims to do unspeakable acts just so they can pretend to be relevant.

This isn't the only example of the PLO's tone-deafness. Look at the last two press releases from the PLO's Negotiations Affairs Department. One is a bitter complaint that the EU had the audacity to refer to stabbing random Jews to death as terror attacks and that it didn't 'include the mantra of "1967 borders" in a statement. Another is an extended whine about British legal guidance against public institutions boycotting Israeli products.

Both these press releases were roundly ignored by the world.

The world is sick of being blackmailed with lies like the idea that world peace is linked to giving in to all Palestinian demands. The Arab world long ago realized that Palestinians are nothing but an irritation that wastes resources and time, and for years they have only paid lip service to this supposedly central cause. They want the Palestinians to finally accept peace, shut up and move on with their lives.

The West is slowly catching up with that viewpoint, as the thesis of "linkage" that was so popular a few years ago has died a timely death for everyone outside Ramallah.

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J-Street's curious stance on Soviet refuseniks

J-Street sent an email to its supporters about three members of Congress that they want to replace, and mentioning credentials of those they want instead.

What’s better than unseating one Congressman who voted to block the Iran deal? Unseating three.

And what’s even better than that? Replacing them with three pro-diplomacy women with strong ties to the Jewish community.

Replace Carlos Curbelo with J Street endorsee Annette Taddeo in South Florida (FL-26).
Replace Bruce Poliquin with Emily Cain in the largest district east of the Mississippi (ME-2).
And send Mike Coffman packing by electing Morgan Carroll in Denver (CO-6).

This is real. The DCCC just added all three of these endorsees to their "Red-to-Blue" program, meaning their numbers are showing a high chance of these seats flipping. Given that Obama carried each district in 2012, we're liking the odds too.

We're also loving the candidates. It's not just that they support the Iran agreement while their opponents tried (or are still trying) to sabotage it. Morgan Carroll lived on a Kibbutz and traveled to the Soviet Union with her mother to support Refuseniks. And, if elected, Annette Taddeo would be the first Hispanic Jewish Member of Congress.

According to J-Street, supporting Soviet refuseniks is a great metric for establishing one's Jewish bona-fides.

But there is something a little jarring about using that fact to help elect a woman who stands for what most former Soviet Jews in Israel would bitterly oppose.

Natan Sharansky, the most famous of all refuseniks, has passionately campaigned against the Iran deal.

Ida Nudel was against the disengagement from Gaza.

Yuli Edelstein is a member of Likud and against a Palestinian state that could endanger Israel.

Perhaps Morgan Carroll could give a little more respect to the actual opinions of the people she and her mother fought to free, rather than spit in their faces by supporting giving hundreds of billions of dollars to those who want to destroy the nation that these people risked their lives to live in.

To J-Street, the refuseniks are not heroes to be emulated, but pawns to be used to gain political points.

Carroll's opponent, Mike Coffman, on the other hand, has unquestioned pro-Israel credentials. He was part of a rally supporting Israel during the 2014 Gaza war.

J-Street was nowhere to be found at that rally as far as I can tell.

He has said, "Being a supporter of Israel in Congress means that I will fight those who believe that Israel should return to its ‘67 borders. Only Israel can determine what borders it needs for its own security and the United States should never dictate to Israel what its security requirements are.”

J-Street disagrees.

There is one thing that is unquestioningly Jewish about J Street, though. It has the chutzpah to claim that those who want to go around Israel's democratically elected leaders are "pro-Israel" and those who support them are anti-Israel.

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Goywashing

From JPost:

The Jewish Agency is seriously interested in increasing its involvement in the Israeli Arab community and in working with Druze and Bedouins, representatives of the representatives of the board of governors of the Zionist organization were told during the opening of their tri-annual gathering in Tel Aviv on Sunday.the jewish Agency is ser

Agency representatives announced that while as recently as five years ago they did not employ any Druze or Arab workers, today there are seventy five on the payroll and around ten million Shekels are allocated to programs among the non-Jewish minority groups in Israel.

“As a Zionist I believe that this is important for the future of our democracy,” Agency chairman Natan Sharansky announced, addressing board members during a session on the subject.

“It is so important nowadays to strengthen our society,” he asserted, calling the work currently being done only “the beginning.”

Faiz Suad, one of the director’s of the Agency’s Project Ten in Kibbutz Harduf and the surrounding Bedouin villages, said that he initially believed that the Jewish Agency only existed for Israel’s Jews and that when it began operating in his village, sending “young Jewish people all over the world to volunteer in Arab communities” it was “very special.”

Branded as the Agency's “Global Tikkun Olam initiative,” Ten sends Jewish youth to work in vulnerable communities around the world and in Israel.

According to Suad, who is himself a Bedouin, the program not only has helped to strengthen bonds between Jews and Arabs but has even helped to bring many of the participants closer to their own Jewish identity, recalling one young woman from Hungary who only celebrated Hannukah for the first time during her time in a local village.

As they learn to embrace their Jewish identity they also help the local Arab youth learn English and give them skills that will help them advance in life, he said.

Safi, a 35 year old Druze reserve IDF officer said that he believes that the opening up of programs for minority youths are “good for Israeli society because when you act for minorities it gives the message that is a democratic and tolerant and open society, creates a rapprochement and brings people together.”

Many young Druze, he said, are desirous of further integrating into Israeli society, realizing the benefits to be gained for further integration and cooperation.

Just remember, Israeli Jews help Arabs in order to distract the world from how much they can't stand Arabs.

It all makes sense when your worldview is to hate first and fit facts into your hate afterwards.

The Jewish Agency's Project Ten includes programs to help people worldwide.

The Jewish Agency’s Project TEN is a global tikkun olam program that harnesses the energy and passion of young Jewish adults.

Project TEN is a unique service-learning framework. Project TEN brings together young Jews from around the world and Israel to volunteer with vulnerable populations around the world while learning about Jewish values and practices. Together, Israelis and their peers from Jewish communities all over the world spend three months working and learning together in onsite service projects in vulnerable communities.

Project TEN puts into practice the Jewish values that speak directly to social justice, sustainable development, and leadership – while providing critical assistance to communities in Hyderabad, India; Gondar, Ethiopia; Kiryat Shmona, Israel; and Oaxaca, Mexico.

See how they pretend to be liberal by talking about social justice and sustainable development and helping vulnerable communities?

And there is this:

Volunteer projects include teaching English and soft skills to Arab and Jewish children at local schools, working at the Beit Elisha Center for special needs adults, building new permanent, ecologically-conscious building facilities in the forest, working at the organic Gan HaBayit (Home Garden), and volunteering with at-risk youth at the Tuvia boarding school in Harduf.

The rich curriculum includes studying Hebrew and Arabic, sessions on Peoplehood and Tzedek (justice), the Jewish year cycle, and Israeli society, as well as a comprehensive workshop on social entrepreneurship, which will teach you how to map a local need and develop a professional plan, vision and budget to address it. Each cohort will have 1-2 free weekends a month, and will spend several weekends traveling and camping together all over the region, including participation in an Arab-Jewish theatre workshop.

The program is a personal journey, an opportunity to explore your connection with humanity, the Jewish people and the earth, to deepen compassion and empathy, and to truly explore the personal and religious questions underlying volunteer work with people in need as well as our relationships with people often seen as “the other.” This program presents opportunities to develop as a person, as a Jew and as a community leader and to clarify your personal beliefs and commitments.

Amazing how the evil right-wing Zionists are happy to ask volunteers to help Arabs while the liberal anti-Zionists will never, ever, want to expose their bright-eyed volunteers to speak to Jews who are proud Zionists.

It is almost like the people who pretend to be liberal are anything but, and those they accuse of bigotry are also anything but.

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02/21 Links: The dangerous hope of Two-Staters; Syrian refugee creates website to thank Israelis

From Ian:

A few questions the Independent could have asked Roger Waters

What’s the role of a journalist while conducting an interview about a charged political topic? In the UK, it seems that the accuracy clause of the Editors’ Code likely demands that questionable claims be challenged, or some minimal context provided to readers.
Yet, in an “exclusive” interview published at the Independent, Paul Gallagher allows famed rock star Roger Waters to level several misleading and inaccurate claims against Israel and its supporters without even suggesting that his views are in dispute.
Waters’ first claim unchallenged by Gallagher: His 2006 concert in Israel (at Neve Shalom, an Arab/Israeli peace village) was segregated, and attended by “Israeli Jews only”.
How Gallagher could have responded:
But, there is no racial or religious segregation in Israel. Further, the country’s population is 25% non-Jewish. As 50,000 people attended that show, are you really claiming that the entire audience was Jewish? No Christians or Muslims attended? How did you arrive at this conclusion?
Waters’ second claim unchallenged by Gallagher: there are “40 to 50 discriminatory laws” against non-Jews in Israel.
How Gallagher could have responded:
Can you name some of these discriminatory laws? How do you respond to media critics who refuted this very allegation?

IsraellyCool: Roger Waters Attacks Israel While Praising The “Humane” Palestinian Civilization

Waters rambles on about Israeli apartheid, which as I have posted about on many occasions, is an outright lie. He then compares it to the amazing thing that is palestinian society.
Waters likened Israeli treatment of Palestinians to apartheid South Africa. “The way apartheid South Africa treated its black population, pretending they had some kind of autonomy, was a lie,” he said.
“Just as it is a lie now that there is any possibility under the current status quo of Palestinians achieving self-determination and achieving, at least, a rule of law where they can live and raise their children and start their own industries. This is an ancient, brilliant, artistic and very humane civilisation that is being destroyed in front of our eyes.”
Yes, he said that. About a society that brought us the airline hijacking, a society that incites murder against Jewish civilians, a society that names streets after terrorists, a society of modesty police, honor killings and the murder of “collaborators.”
Meanwhile, Israeli society in which Arabs have more rights than anywhere else in the Middle East, in which homosexuals are not persecuted, in which there is religious freedom for all – that is what attracts his ire.
Roger Waters is accused of being antisemitic because all signs point towards it. And his statements in this piece only serve to make this clearer to me.

IDF Reservists Debunk ‘Breaking the Silence’ Tantrums, Offer Grownup Approach to Irregularities [video]

Deri’s organization Reservists in the Front has shifted gears in recent weeks, and he and his partners have been making the rounds among past and present decision makers and high ranking military officers, pushing a program that mixes long-term evaluation of the IDF role in various areas, as well reporting real problems on the ground.
According to reserve officer Shachar Debi, even when leftwing groups report events truthfully, they do it in a way that turns those events into a paradigm of what the IDF is about, rather than keeping them in proportion to everything the IDF is doing right while dealing with its never-ending mission of protecting civilians against countless enemy attacks. “This kind of conflict exists the world over,” Debi said, “and the IDF behavior can set an example for others — it shouldn’t be dragged to the negative place those NGOs are taking it.”
The new group is interested in coming to terms with the challenge faced by a squad of soldiers who are being attacked by a raging 14-year-old girl brandishing a sharp scissors. “Our challenge is to deal in a practical, real and purposeful way with complex situations and not to commit the sin of oversimplification of either ‘everything is wonderful,’ or ‘everything is terrible,” Shlomo Peled, a reserve officer in special force Sayeret Matkal, told Channel 10.
On Tuesday, March 1, the new group will hold its first large-scale conference in Rishpon, Israel, with President Reuven Rivlin as honorary keynote speaker. The conference will debate ethical and moral issues related to the war against Terror.

PreOccupiedTerritory: NGOs That Badmouth IDF Obviously More Patriotic Than You (satire)

Non-governmental organizations that make it their business to paint Israeli security forces in the most negative light possible not only occupy a higher moral plane than you, sources reported today, but also demonstrate a more worthy form of patriotism than yours.
Groups that monitor IDF interactions with Palestinians, and that publicize incidents that depict Israeli soldiers in a way calculated to portray them as brutal or inhumane have always shown that their ethical sensibilities lie far above yours. However, the new reports also indicate that those groups have greater love for their country than you do, since they are even willing to flat-out accuse Israel of crimes based on partial or tendentious evidence in an effort to get the IDF to improve itself, whereas you, pathetically, do not demand that the country you claim to love live up to idealized notions of how its army should behave.
The reports give short shrift to the tired notion that IDF soldiers perform critical security tasks day in and day out, preventing terrorist attacks and apprehending people suspected of involvement in terrorism, instead nobly insisting that the military be defined by its treatment of the Palestinians as demonstrated only by selected incidents specifically chosen for the negative impression those incidents convey. Such an approach, according to the reports, are manifestly the only way the country will ever, ever change its ways, which are just leading to disaster, don’t you know. This attitude contrasts markedly with your naive, obsolete sensibilities, which would show appreciation to the IDF for its constant, continuous operations that allow you and the people running the NGOs to live relatively normal lives unmolested by would-be stabbers, suicide bombers, gunmen, or homicidal drivers who wish you harm for being Israeli. You Neanderthal.

Every once in awhile an honest anti-Semite drops by to say hello at Israel Thrives. The image to your left is the avatar of one Noor al Haqiqa.

Somehow or other Noor came across a piece that I wrote a little over two years ago entitled, Ryan Bellerose and the Indigenous Question and, lo, these 25 months later she decides to respond in the comments.

Normally it is not a great idea to "punch down" as news media people say, but it this case I feel compelled.

Our friend writes:

Everyone is all worried about this yidiot's this and that and no one speaks of the total idiocy of the concept that the Jews are comparable to Native Americans.

Wanna buy into the victim myth much? This kid bought that cruddy line hook, line and sinker. He has been talmudicized, poor boy.

Anyone who knows the true story of the creation of Israel and the reason for its existence, recognizes a flaw in the fact that this discussion is even taking place.

It is a diversion from the truth of the matter. The Jews of Israel and their supporters around the world are committing genocide and being allowed to get away with it. THAT is the crux of the matter, not some silly young deluded athlete of limited education and abilities who thinks he "understands" .... someone twanged his "fellow victim" sensibilities and set him loose... meanwhile he should learn REAL history, not what he might have been told in school.

Noor runs a peculiar little radically racist blog called Snippets And Snappits, which is a very cute name for a place wherein she encourages violence against Jews as a matter of "social justice."

Noor, very clearly, is a hard-line, anti-Jewish racist.

For example, this is an image found on the front page of her blog:

I absolutely love out-and-out racists like Noor because they are honest and, therefore, much easier to deal with than the insidious progressive-left variety who pretend to be anti-racist.

And then there is this:

So, Noor would have the world believe that the Jews, via the State of Israel, are controlling the US government. This is classic stuff, the kind of thing that the Nazis believed. It is the sprinkling of anti-Semitic magical-fairy-confetti that genocidal dreams are conjured from.

Just as the Nazis, in their malevolent hallucinations, believed that the tiny percentage of Jews in Germany (a grand total of 1 percent of the total population) were behind the scenes, nefariously pulling the strings so that Germany lost World War I - the Stab in the Back theory - so Noor seems to believe that the Jewish State of Israel is behind the scenes, nefariously pulling the strings of Washington, D.C. to the detriment of everyone but those subhuman Jews.

In any case, let's go through Noor's comment above bit-by-bit and see what we can see.

The comment is divided into four unlovely little paragraphs.

In the first she refers to Ryan Bellerose as a "yidiot." I have honestly never come across that usage before. It obviously implies "Jewish idiot." The general nastiness of anti-Semitic anti-Zionists is often hard to fathom. In this case, of course, Bellerose is neither Jewish nor an idiot, but "yidiot" is cute. It conveys racial hatred in a snippity-snappity kind of way.

It makes genocidal hatred toward the Jewish people, and disparagement of our friends, fun!

As for the Jewish people being comparable to Native-Americans, it just means that both are the indigenous people in their respective parts of the world. Just as Bellerose and the Metis stand up for the rights of the indigenous in Canada, so Jewish people stand up for our own indigenous rights in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, the Land of Israel.

In the second paragraph she comforts herself with Holocaust denial through the notion of a Jewish "victim myth."

Two-thousand years of persecutions and expulsions and pogroms and dhimmi status in Arab lands and the Inquisition and the Holocaust and the constant Arab-Muslim hostility and violence and war against the Jews of the Middle East, yet to this compassionate genius it's all just a myth.

The slaughter of much of my own family by the Nazis during Operation Barbarossa in the town of Medzhybizh, western Ukraine, in the summer and fall of 1942, was apparently also a myth. As Hitler's troops were marching on the Soviet Union, the Jews of Medzhybizh were crowded into hastily fashioned ghettos, forced to road building, and then once the road building was done they were made to dig trenches, remove themselves into those trenches, and then they were shot-dead by Nazi soldiers.

Fortunately, my grandparents on my father's side had the foresight to get the hell out of there in-between the wars, but according to those like Noor al Haqiqa my family history was nothing but a myth. Jewish history, in other words, is nothing but a myth, a shadow, conjured by nefarious Jews in order to subjugate the pastoral Arabs who, we are told, want nothing more than to tend their Sacred Olive Groves in peace... even as they send their children out into the streets of Israel with their knives.

In her vague third paragraph she refers to "the true story of the creation of Israel" without giving us the slightest indication of what she means by that, although I feel reasonable certain that whatever it is, it is both false and malicious.

Finally, in her fourth and final paragraph she brings it all home by accusing the Jewish people of committing genocide.

Holocaust inversion.

According to our friend Noor, the Holocaust is a myth, but the Jews are committing an actual genocide against the perfectly innocent Arab population.

We tend to get caught up in the fights against BDS or Obama's strategically moronic empowerment of American and Jewish enemies, such as Iran, or the ongoing construction of hatred toward Jews by the Palestinian-Arab leadership, but every now and again it is not a bad idea to put a spot-light on classic anti-Jewish race hate.

It used to be that Jewish westerners primarily associated violent anti-Semitism with people who tended to have names more like Gunter.

Today anti-Semitism, in its most obvious and forthright forms, tend to come from people with names more like Noor al Haqiqa.

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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More antisemitic and inciting cartoons from Arab media

I just came across another Palestinian Arab news site named omamh.net, and it has a large editorial cartoon section. Here are some that demonize and incite to murder Jews:

Balfour promise/Promise of Allah

"Cemetery of the invaders"

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Harvard Law School "Justice for Palestine" wrote at The Harvard Law Record:

We have a confession to make. We, Harvard Law School’s Justice for Palestine (JFP), are the organization responsible for the highly controversial pizza order that cost the law school (and its students) an annual $250,000 in funding for student activities.

For the uninitiated, the “Milbank Tweed Student Conference Fund” (or Milbank Fund, named after the multinational law firm that endowed it), was established in 2012 to support the activities of student-run organizations at Harvard Law School. The Dean of Students office allocates the funds through an open application process. As part of the arrangement, Milbank Fund recipients are required to recognize the contribution by ensuring that all promotional materials for Milbank-funded programming include at least one reference indicating Milbank as a headlining sponsor.

At the start of this semester, HLS announced, without explanation, the sudden termination of the Milbank Fund. We are writing today so that the record may reflect that the termination of the Milbank Fund is, in fact, completely our fault.

In our defense, we couldn’t have possibly foreseen how our actions would come to affect the rest of the campus community. On the eve of our first-ever Milbank-sponsored speaker event, titled “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack”, the only thing we were really concerned about was what type of food to order for our fellow classmates. Like many others, we are an organization that recognizes the value of quality food as a major key to the success of any lunch talk.

So we ordered pizza—about $500 worth. We made sure to get a little something for everyone, because inclusivity! We got some margheritas for the traditional, buffalo chicken for the carnivorous, and of course, some formaggio for our colleagues with a more refined palate. The pizza was delicious, and for that, we must take a moment to sincerely thank Milbank for its generous contributions.

Even though we had only used Milbank’s money for the pizza (our speakers, two civil rights attorneys and an undergraduate student, graciously offered their time at no additional cost to the school), we held up our end of the deal by including, in all promotional e-mails and at the bottom of the event’s official Facebook page, some iteration of the following sentence: “This event is brought to you by the generous support of Milbank LLP.”

Between bites of Milbank-funded formaggio, event attendees listened as speakers discussed the widespread suppression of Palestinian rights advocacy in the United States. One of the cases highlighted was that of Steven Salaita, an academic whose tenure position at the University of Illinois was revoked after he tweeted criticism of Israel’s 2014 aerial bombardment over Gaza. Salaita’s lawyers later discovered that the university had caved in to significant pressure from donors who had threatened to pull their donations if the university insisted on retaining him.

Ironically enough, a very similar sequence of events would unfold at Harvard Law School in the aftermath of our event. The very next day, the Dean of Students office—citing a flood of angry phone calls and emails received from Milbank executives and other off-campus parties over the previous 24 hours—asked an organizer of the event to disassociate from Milbank in all past and future Justice for Palestine programming.[1] As a start, the organizer was asked to immediately remove the reference to Milbank’s “generous support” from JFP’s Facebook event page.

After acknowledging that they recognized the irony in asking a student to retroactively edit the description for an event that was about free speech and its exceptions, the Dean of Students administrators proceeded to make it very clear that our cooperation would be greatly appreciated. Even though the event had already passed, it was evident that the administration was feeling tremendous pressure to do something, anything, to appease Milbank.

In exchange for a written guarantee that JFP’s future funding (be it from Milbank or any other source) would not be adversely affected, we agreed to remove the sentence from the Facebook event page. Though that guarantee was promised to us, we never got it.

Turns out, that’s because our request was directly incompatible with what Milbank was demanding. Administrators would later reveal that Milbank had gone so far as to demand that JFP’s Milbank funding be rescinded completely. According to Dean Minow, this was not a demand her administration could honor, so Milbank decided to pull out all of its annual $250,000 in student activity funding as a result of her administration’s “principled stance” in support of our right to speak openly and honestly about Palestine.

We are grateful to Dean Minow and the law school administration for refusing to buckle under intense anti-Palestinian pressure. We are also disappointed, though not particularly surprised, that at Harvard Law School, too, there exists such an exception to free speech when it comes to Palestine. Frankly, this whole ordeal should not have happened, and it is absurd that students will have to bear the (quite serious) consequences of our pizza order.

Of course, in its reaction to our event, Milbank has only proven the point we were trying to make that day.

It should come as no surprise that the "Justice for Palestine" group has fudged the facts.

Milbank did not pull $250,000 in funding for student activities, as this press release from Harvard clarifies:

Milbank has not terminated its five-year gift or its support for the Law School. Milbank was never involved in decisions about which events to fund or not to fund. The Law School and Milbank are committed to freedom of speech and they do not decide which events to fund based on point of view.

The firm has decided there are other ways its support could be used at HLS to avoid creating any misimpressions that the firm endorses the viewpoints expressed by any particular student organization or journal. The Law School is able to fund student conferences with other resources, and the Law School has continued to maintain the same level of funding to support student activities. We are grateful for the many terrific speakers, conferences, and events led by our thoughtful and creative students, and we look forward to many more to come. We have an exceptionally strong relationship with Milbank, which has acted appropriately and with the highest integrity in all respects. We look forward to continuing that strong relationship in the future, and to discussing with Milbank how best to deploy its gift to further the Law School’s mission.

Student groups seeking funds for conferences and speakers are invited to confer with the Dean of Students office and can receive advice about how to ensure the best quality of programming and to secure funding.

Milbank wrote a letter to NGO Monitor that described their problem with how the "Justice for Palestine" group acted, saying "The sponsoring student organization, without consulting Milbank, included a reference on the group’s Facebook page that created a false impression that Milbank endorsed the views expressed by group. "

The central thesis of the J4P article is that they were required to place the phrase “This event is brought to you by the generous support of Milbank LLP" on all flyers and announcements about the event. I am not so sure that is true. I could not find any mention of that specific phrase outside articles about this one event last year. Instead, I found variations of "through the generosity of the Milbank Tweed Student Conference Fund..." There is a difference between an event being "brought to you by" which implies being part of the organization of the event and "through the generosity of" which implies nothing more than funding. This would tend to support Milbank's claim that the J4P organization tried to misuse its name to imply support for their views.

Not surprisingly, the J4P's false version of events have been reproduced without any skepticism by Mondoweiss, Glenn Greenwald and many others.

Finally, J4P's assertion that withdrawing funding for some campus activities is an example of "an exception to free speech" is ridiculous. Free speech does not mean that all speech must be funded. (If it was, then I am still waiting for checks from all organizations that sponsor pro-Palestinian speech and websites to generously fund EoZ as well.)

(h/t Yenta)

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Iran subtly threatens Turkey, drawing link between Ankara bombing and "Zionist policy"

This article from Iran's Mehr News sounds like a backhanded threat:

Iranian senior MP, pointing to the terrorist blast in Ankara, said Turkey’s continued support for the Zionist movement is detrimental to the country’s security.

Noting Turkey follows wrong policies in the region, Head of Parliament National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said Iran favors lasting security in Turkey, as a neighbor and an Islamic country.

He added that Turkey's policy in the region, which is playing with fire, would strengthen and train terrorists and provide arms to them.

He expressed regret over the recent terrorist blast in Turkey’s capital city and noted the continuation of the policy of strengthening Zionists poses a threat to the security of the countries which support terrorism.

The explosion occurred during evening rush hour in the heart of Ankara on Wednesday, in an area close to where military headquarters and parliament are located, killing at least 28 people and wounding dozens others.

"We really don't want to see anything bad happen to you. It would be a shame if there more more of these unfortunate incidents."

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