Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, March 03, 2016

ISIL in Jordan, Egypt and...Israel

Jordan's General Intelligent Department (GID), Wednesday said its personnel foiled a terror plot planned by Daesh affiliates to carry out attacks on civil and military targets in the Kingdom.

During the clashes, Captain Rashed Zyoud was killed and five other security personnel as well two civilians were injured .

A statement by the GID revealed that following thorough intelligence , security personnel were able to identify the location of the terrorists, who were hiding in a residential building in the northern city of Irbid.

After they refused to surrender and opened fire from their automatic weapons, a special force dealt with the incident and killed 7 of the armed terrorists, who were wearing explosives belts, and arrested 13 member of the group, the statement added.

Irbid is not far at all from Israel.

From JPost:

An Egyptian military effort to recruit and arm tribal fighters to take on Islamic State militants in the Sinai is failing, according to security sources, Sinai residents and tribal figures.

The military launched the program with much fanfare last year and tribal leaders pledged to provide hundreds of fighters. But the number of fighters in the field is no more than 35, security sources say. The scheme has been hampered by the military's reluctance to provide weapons to local fighters and by attacks by Islamic State, which are scaring off would-be tribal troops.

Also from JPost:

The Shin Bet and the Israel Police in a joint operation recently arrested two Arab-Israeli men who allegedly supported the Islamic State and who are suspected in connection with the execution of a terrorist attack.

The two men, Bahaa Aldin Ziad a 19-year-old man from Yafia and Ahmed Nabil Ahmed Ahmed 21-year-old man from Nazareth were arrested in January and February.

The Shin Bet investigation revealed that in the past months the two prayed at the al-Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem every week. The two decided that on one of their journeys to the mosque they would open fire on Israeli security forces as an act of identification with Islamic State and the desire to carry out jihad in the group's name.

Now, imagine how successful Daesh would be in a Palestinian state that cannot even decide who should run it.

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If Abbas is against terrorism...

This morning there was a march by the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades in the Balata camp, Nablus to show support for Mahmoud Abbas and PA prime minister Rami Hamdallah.

Which brings up the question:

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UNRWA-USA communications director tweets hate for Israel (UPDATE)

(See update below)

Remember how UNRWA pretends to be non-partisan?

UNRWA-USA communications director Laila Mokhiber sent out this tweets showing her support for "Israeli Apartheid Week:"

Not exactly objective, is it?

As soon as Avi Mayer tweeted about it, she protected her account from being seen publicly:

And soon thereafter, it was gone!

And this is a communications director who openly supports hate for Israel! Even though she no longer tweets under her name, she still has her hate and she still has her job.

How long is UNRWA going to keep pretending that it is non-partisan?

UPDATE: Mokhiber's Facebook presence is still online at the moment and it shows plenty of other anti-Israel activity and support for terrorists:

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03/02 Links Pt2: Denying Israel and Judaism’s Collective Memory; BDS Still Targets SodaStream

From Ian:

Honest Reporting: Denying Israel and Judaism’s Collective Memory

The Guardian features a lengthy read by author David Rieff who asks:
What if collective historical memory, as it is actually employed by communities and nations, has led far too often to war rather than peace, to rancour and resentment rather than reconciliation, and the determination to exact revenge for injuries both real and imagined, rather than to commit to the hard work of forgiveness?
What follows is an intellectual discussion on the merits or otherwise of the role of collective historical memory as used by various states and regimes throughout history. Eventually, the example of Israel appears:
Israel offers a florid illustration of how disastrously collective memory can deform a society. The settler movement routinely appeals to a version of biblical history that is as great a distortion of that history as the Islamist fantasy about the supposed continuities between the medieval kingdom of Jerusalem and the modern state of Israel. At the entrance to the settler outpost of Givat Assaf on the West Bank, a placard reads: “We have come back home.” In an interview, Benny Gal, one of the settlement’s leaders, insisted: “On this exact spot, 3,800 years ago, the land of Israel was promised to the Hebrew people.” Shani Simkovitz, the head of the settlement movement’s Gush Etzion Foundation, echoed Gal’s claim: “More than 3,000 years ago, our fathers gave us a land, which is not Rome, it is not New York, but this: the Jewish land.”
Even when it is secular, mainstream Zionist collective memory is often as mystical and as much of a manipulation of history as these views. Consider the simultaneous mythologising and politicisation of archaeology in Israel that has now reached the point where scholarship and state-building have come to seem like two sides of the same coin. Writing in 1981, the Israeli intellectual Amos Elon observed that Israeli archaeologists were “not merely digging for knowledge and objects, but for the reassurance of roots, which they find in the ancient Israelite remains scattered throughout the country”. He added: “The student of nationalism and archaeology will be tempted to take note of the apparent cathartic effects of both disciplines.”
On the contrary, it is Judaism’s extensive collective historical memory that has enabled the Jewish people to survive over thousands of years. Collective memory has not deformed society but enabled the modern state of Israel to thrive and survive precisely due to the strong national identity of its people.

Why are Palestinian Christians Fleeing?

The Palestinian Authority—the government created by the PLO to manage the West Bank and Gaza—is, by its own constitution, an Islamic state that embodies the principles of shari’a. Christians living under the PA are “accorded sanctity and respect,” but, as is the case under all shari’a-based systems, Christians are relegated to the status of second class citizens. Of course, it is illegal to convert from Islam to Christianity. Let’s not even mention the fact that sale of land to Jews is a crime punishable by death.
Discrimination against Christians under the Palestinian Authority isn’t just legal—it’s also social. Living as a Christian, one is constantly reminded that he or she is not a member of the majority culture.
Shortly after taking power in the West Bank, Yasser Arafat ensured that Bethlehem and a few other cities would always have Christian mayors. However, he also pursued policies that encouraged Muslim immigration into those same cities and thereby changed the demography from the bottom up.
I’ve spoken to numerous Palestinian Christians who describe how Muslim terrorists would commandeer Christian homes and use them to direct sniper fire on Israeli soldiers. Others speak of systematic discrimination in hiring, housing, and education. Of course, all of these conversations take place in private meetings and hushed tones. Christians in Bethlehem rarely interact with Muslims beyond the marketplace, and are, in fact, very much afraid. But in public, Palestinian Christians speak like Hanan Nasrallah—equating their situation with their Muslim neighbors and lauding the happy coexistence between the two groups.
They don’t have a choice. They are hostages inside their own city.
[The Jesuit magazine] America would have us believe that Israel is forcing Palestinian Christians to flee Bethlehem because of the wall it built to stop terrorism. In reality, Christians are fleeing for the same reason they are fleeing Iraq, Egypt, and Syria: the rise of Islamic intolerance and violence against anyone who denies the revelation of Muhammad.
Palestinian Christians don’t like the wall, it’s true. But their main problem is that they are stuck living on the wrong side of it. It is not surprising that many Palestinian Christians call for a “one state solution” that will tear down the wall and reintegrate them with the Jewish state. Until that happens, however, many are choosing to leave.
America didn’t go far enough in its analysis, stopping—like most news outlets—just soon enough to blame Israel for everything. American Christians who want to know the truth need to dig deeper, especially if they are truly concerned about the fate of their Palestinian brothers and sisters.

Hillary Emails: How to Demote AIPAC to its Proper Place

The previously secret emails of former U.S. secretary of state and current favorite to be the Democratic contender for the U.S. president Hillary Rodham Clinton are a bonanza for those seeking to discern her non-public face and those of her closest advisers with respect to Israel.
With more than 30,000 emails released, drip, drip, drip since December, 2014, there’s a lot to plow through.
But one omnipresent correspondent of Clinton’s, her former advisor Sidney Blumenthal, stands out as he harps away at two issues close to his heart: one, Israel, the object of deep hostility, and the other, his son Max, a source of immense pride. That one’s son is a source of pride to a father is neither surprising nor shameful. But most of what Blumenthal promotes about his son Max is the never-ending fusillade of hate screeds written by the son in frequently obscure outlets which are directed at the other Blumenthal obsession: Israel.
In the batch released over the weekend, several Blumenthal emails attacks on Israel stand out in particular. One offers advice to Clinton on how to make both the Jewish State and the largest American pro-Israel organization, AIPAC, bend to her will.

From DW:

It's Friday morning. In about an hour, the Boucherie de l'Argonne will be closed. The Muslims working here will head to afternoon prayers. The Jews will prepare for Shabbat. A practical accommodation for staff sharing similar roots and cultural references.

"We work well together," says Philippe Zribi, a Tunisian-born Jew whose family runs the butcher's store.

The Zribis have installed a prayer room for their Muslim employees. They sometimes lunch together. Conversations are sprinkled with the Arabic from their homelands.

In a city still recovering from last year's deadly Islamist attacks, where national news is regularly peppered with reports of anti-Semitism, the Argonne store tucked next to an abandoned railroad track offers another, more positive face of interfaith relations.

It also reflects the melting pot that defines the 19th arrondissement of northeastern Paris, whose 200,000 residents represent no less than 120 nationalities, local officials say. A district where streets are lined with Chinese grocery stores, African restaurants and Turkish carry-outs; where Pakistanis and Egyptians hawk French carrots and Tunisian oranges at outdoor markets.

With an estimated 30,000-40,000 Jews living in the 19th - France has no official figures based on ethnicity or religion - the district is also one of the largest Jewish neighborhoods in Europe, according to local Deputy Mayor Mahor Chiche. It also hosts a sizeable Muslim population that mostly hails from North and sub-Saharan Africa. "We have a real mix, a patchwork of communities," said Chiche, who is in charge of community relations in the 19th.

Other French have reached bleaker conclusions. Across the country, anti-Muslim acts tripled last year from 2014 to nearly 400, while anti-Jewish acts were double that number, according to Interior Ministry statistics. Since a Kurdish teen attacked a kippa-wearing teacher in Marseille last month, some Jews have opted to remove their skullcap and keep a low profile.

"I remain pretty pessimistic," said Sammy Ghozlan, who heads the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, a watchdog group near Paris. Like many others, he blames the attacks on young Muslims and, to a lesser degree, the far right.

The Argonne butchery offers another example of relations that work. The store's kosher certification also draws Muslims, butcher Zribi says. "Their biggest concern is for the meat to be properly drained of the blood," he says of a custom that is also observed under Halal butchery practices.

A native of Sfax, in southern Tunisia, Zribi moved to Paris as a toddler in the 1960s, his family joining the waves of North African Jews leaving their homelands after independence. In the 1980s, his father opened the story which Zribi helps to run with a brother.

For butcher Mostafa Makhoukh, a Muslim from Oujda, Morocco, the Argonne store where he has worked for 18 years is now "family."

"Working with Jews isn't a problem," agrees another Muslim butcher, Abdel Haq, who also comes from Oujda. "We lived with Jews in Morocco." They join Zribi in blaming today's tensions on a generation growing up in France without the strict upbringing of their childhood.

The butchers are seeing the fallout. Increasingly, Jewish customers are dropping by to say goodbye, joining the thousands of French Jews who have headed to Israel in recent years. "They don't feel secure here anymore," says Zribi, who is staying put.

Yet if anything, last year's terrorist attacks, especially November's indiscriminate assault on Paris nightspots, has drawn Argonne's staff closer together.

Zribi lost two Italian friends. Haq, the Muslim butcher, says he lost nobody, but remains shaken by the killings.

"The only lesson I can offer is not to be afraid of the other person," he said. "If I find myself next to a Jew at a cafe, we'll talk. We have to go toward the other."

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Inexplicably, Those Who Vowed To Leave If Bibi Elected Still Here (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Tel Aviv, March 2 - A survey of personalities who proclaimed their solemn intention to depart from Israel and take up residence elsewhere in the event that incumbent Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu won reelection last March found that nearly one year later, those individuals have yet to make arrangements for departure.

Several prominent media figures on the political left and numerous less well known Israelis of similar political leanings made a dramatic show of declaring plans to leave the country if the electorate again made what they called the suicidal mistake of returning Netanyahu for another term as premier. Netanyahu won a convincing victory last March 17, defying polls and frustrating the left for the third time since 2009. As the anniversary of the episode approaches, reporters embarked on an assignment to determine where the various righteous leftists had moved. They have so far failed to find evidence that any have departed as vowed, and journalists are at a loss to account for the gap between the pronouncements and the reality.

"I could understand if some of the people who made that declaration were simply being melodramatic," said political journalist Hanan Crystal. "But the group included such figures of integrity and honesty as [Haaretz columnist] Rogel Alpher, and he hasn't so much as looked at apartment rental postings in Europe. There's something going on here, but we haven't figured out what just yet. Is it the crumbling economy - Bibi's fault, of course - preventing people from moving elsewhere? That's backwards. A bad economy should accelerate emigration. Is it the supposedly creeping fascism? Also backwards. We're missing something here."

Crystal said the dichotomy between the pronouncements and the subsequent behavior has had an impact beyond mere puzzlement. "There were actual economic consequences to this," he continued. "If all the people who vowed to leave if Netanyahu got reelected had actually made good on that promise, we could have gone a long way toward remedying the ongoing housing crisis. We're talking a large number of residences suddenly opening up primarily in the Tel Aviv area, which is where all the jobs are, but where young families can't afford to live. These people not leaving the country as they declared they would is proving to be irresponsible in more ways than one."

All the individuals contacted by PreOccupied Territory who had made such pronouncements on Facebook declined to offer substantive comment, explaining that they were not in the habit of justifying themselves to the Stasi.

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Yesterday I reported that a college textbook called "Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World" included the infamous "Map that Lies" propaganda poster as fact.

Sharona Schwartz of The Blaze contacted the company:

The McGraw-Hill Education book publisher said Wednesday that it would temporarily stop selling one of its college world politics textbooks so that it could review a previously discredited series of maps about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was included in its pages.

In October, MSNBC apologized for airing the nearly identical four-map graphic, which it later called “completely wrong.”

The publisher’s decision came after pro-Israel blogger Elder of Ziyon reported Tuesday that the map series appeared on page 123 of McGraw-Hill’s college textbook “Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World.”

The graphic purports to show how Israel has taken Palestinian land over five decades.

“Pending a review, we are placing a hold on sales of the book,” Catherine Mathis, chief communications officer for McGraw-Hill Education, told TheBlaze via email in response to a request for comment.

I am quoted in the article.

“I was shocked and astonished to see this deceptive and false graphic being used in the textbook. Up until now, it had only been used in anti-Israel propaganda,” blogger Elder of Ziyon told TheBlaze via email. “The authors edited the graphic to make it even worse, referring to each successive panel as a ‘stage’ as if the Jews have been planning to dispossess Arabs for over seventy years.”

A search of college syllabi online shows that the book has been used in courses at Northwestern Oklahoma State University, University of Indianapolis, Western Illinois University, George Washington University School of Business and Marshall University.

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03/02 Links Pt1: PA TV kids poem: “To war that will… destroy the Zionist's soul”

From Ian:

PA TV kids poem: “To war that will… destroy the Zionist's soul”

A poem that directs Palestinian children to seek “war that will smash the oppressor and destroy the Zionist's soul” was chanted recently by a young girl on the PA TV program Children’s Talk. The PA TV host responded with excited applause and praise.
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that PA TV has broadcast several children reciting this same poem calling to “destroy the Zionist's soul” in the past:
Minas: “I am a Palestinian, my name is Palestinian
I’ve etched my name on all the town squares...
Saladin (i.e., Muslim conqueror of Jerusalem), calls to me from the depths of my heart
All my Arabness calls me to vengeance and liberation...
Thousands of prisoners and thousands who are jailed
call to this great nation and call to the millions
They say: To Jerusalem, the [first] direction of prayer in the faith [Islam]
To war that will smash the oppressor and destroy the Zionist's soul
and raise the Palestinian banner in the world’s sky
and strengthen my word that goes on: Palestinian, Palestinian, Palestinian."
Official PA TV host: “Superb, superb. Bravo, bravo, bravo. You are very talented.” [Official PA TV, Feb. 19, 2016]

Edgy campaign seeks ICC war crimes case against Palestinian Authority TV

Oprah Winfrey isn’t giving away a car to her studio audience in the video; rather, she’s making a bold, bizarre call for violence that isn’t suitable for daytime TV, or any TV for that matter.
“America, kill Muslims”, Winfrey says, before she’s replaced by Kevin Spacey’s Congressman Francis Underwood from “House of Cards”, who leans into the camera and says “as soon as I get to the presidency I will kill Muslims and nobody can stop me”.
The dubbing is good enough, but truth be told the statements are part of a new campaign by the Israeli NGO Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center that is meant to highlight the incitement on Palestinian TV as part of a criminal complaint to be filed to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
“Of course American TV would never really call of the murder of Muslims, but Palestinian TV incites for the murder of innocent Jews every single day,” the NGO says in the video accompanying the campaign, before presenting a series of clips from Palestinians TV calling for the murder of Jews.
Shurat Hadin said in a statement on Wednesday that they intend to collect thousands of signatures which can be submitted to the ICC as part of a criminal complaint against the heads of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation Riad al-Hassan and Ahmed Assaf.
“In the recent wave of terror attacks many of the terrorists launched their attacks after they watched programming which called very clearly for the killing of Jews,” Shurat Hadin said in the statement.

The Things American TV Would Never Say About Muslims!

The Peace Process that Matters

I just returned from a few weeks in America, where the only thing from Israel that makes the news is the ongoing Palestinian violence. So it was a pleasant surprise to come home and discover that the peace process is actually progressing quite nicely. I don’t, of course, mean the one the West is fixated on, the consistently fruitless and currently nonexistent “peace process” with the Palestinians. I mean the far more important process of creeping normalization with the rest of the Arab world, which will not only improve Israel’s long-term security, but is probably essential for any progress on the Palestinian track.
As the Jerusalem Post reported last week, Israel is becoming an increasingly important player in the Arab world’s trade with Europe. Until a few years ago, the main overland route for this trade was through Syria. But with the Syrian civil war having made that impossible, a growing proportion now comes by ferry from Turkey to Haifa, then trucks across Israel to Jordan. This route is cheaper than the other main alternative, which involves shipping from Europe to Egypt.
Last year, some 13,000 trucks used the Israel route, up more than 25 percent from the previous year. And next month, a new shipping line between Turkey and Israel is slated to be inaugurated, enabling another 150 trucks per month. Israel’s Sheikh Hussein border crossing with Jordan is being expanded to handle the increase.
All this obviously benefits Israel’s economy, since Israel collects duties on every truckload. More importantly, however, it means that Israel – for virtually the first time since its establishment in 1948 – is playing a useful role in the broader regional economy rather than being largely isolated from it. And the more Israel’s Arab neighbors benefit from Israel’s stability, the more they will have an interest in trying to maintain that stability rather than disrupting it.

From the Kuwait News Agency KUNA:

Speaking at the New America think-tank to shed light on the status of Palestinian refugees, Pierre Krahenbuhl said there is "clear and indisputable" evidence that the Israeli blockade, which came into force in 2007, has caused an "intolerable situation" for 1.8 million people living in one of the most crowded places on earth.

Organ failure among children and the "increasing rate of suicide" among the population is not natural in society, he said, but rather a "man-made situation." He added: "If there is one thing in short supply -- it is hope."

I cannot find any other reports on his talk, which did indeed happen yesterday, so perhaps the context is skewed by the not too reliable KUNA, but it sounds like Krahenbuhl is blaming Israel for Gaza children suffering from organ failure.

I have not seen any statistics on organ failure among Gaza children being any higher than anywhere else. Israeli hospitals treat many Gaza children and train Gaza doctors. As I documented last week, one Gaza child's death from kidney failure died because of inter-Palestinian politics while Israel was ready to treat her.

Israel does not block medicines or medical equipment. It does not block doctors from going to Gaza. It routinely allows Gaza children to leave to obtain care not only in Israel but in PA hospitals and abroad as well. It does not limit food into Gaza either. So what exactly is Israel doing to cause this alleged wave of organ failures?

It appears that UNRWA is engaging in another anti-Israel slander.

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Yesterday, Rabbi Yehuda Glick returned to visiting the Temple Mount after being banned for over a year because of false charges against him.

Media coverage of the event tells you a lot about the Israeli left, the Israeli police, the Arab world and the mainstream media.

Haaretz writes:

Right-wing activist Yehuda Glick entered the Temple Mount complex in Jerusalem Tuesday morning after some 18 months during which he was forbidden from entry.

The move from Glick comes after he was acquitted last week in the Jerusalem Magistrate's court on charges of assaulting a Palestinian woman on the Temple Mount. The acquittal included a lifting of his ban from the controversial holy site.

The state withdrew its indictment filed against Glick after inconsistencies arose in the testimony of the complainant and witnesses.

In an attempt to keep a ban from the Temple Mount in place, police argued in court that Glick's return to the holy site would likely present a danger to the public and that an attempt on his life in 2014 had increased the threat.

Glick ascended to the Temple Mount at 7:30 A.M. in coordination with police. A few dozen Palestinians were present upon his entrance but the visit passed without incident.

So someone who wants equal access to the Temple Mount is "right wing."

And the Israeli police believe that an Arab trying to assassinate you should be a reason to take away your rights.

Anadolu Agency (Turkey):

The Israeli authorities allowed extremist Jewish rabbi Yehuda Glick to visit the Al-Aqsa compound for the first time since he was banned from the flashpoint site in 2014.

Glick leads Israel’s extremist "Temple Mount" movement, which calls for building a Jewish temple where the iconic Al-Aqsa Mosque currently stands.

No, he doesn't call for that.
Middle East Monitor:

Radical right-wing Rabbi Yehuda Glick was escorted under armed protection into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, days after an Israeli court lifted an order banning him from entering the Muslim holy site, Ma’an reported.

The director of the compound, Sheikh Omar Al-Kiswani, told Ma’an that Glick and his escorts entered the area via the Mughrabi Gate, in a move likely to provoke unrest.

“When an extremist like Glick storms Al-Aqsa Mosque, this stirs up troubles and provokes Muslims. We hold the Israeli police responsible for that,” Al-Kiswani said.

He added that the Palestinian Ministry of Endowment “denounces and opposes the entry of any [Israeli] settlers into Al-Aqsa Mosque."

AFP:

Israeli religious hardliner Yehuda Glick visited the Al-Aqsa mosque compound Tuesday for the first time since a Palestinian tried to kill him over his campaign to boost the Jewish presence at the highly sensitive site.

Palestine News Network:

Israeli right-winger Yehuda Glick, known as the head of the Temple Mount Faithful group, was escorted – together with other settlers – under Israeli armed protection into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, in Jerusalem, days after an Israeli court lifted an order barring him entry to the Islamic holy site.

A statement by Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage said that the rabbi and the settlers stormed the compound entering through Al-Magharbeh gate, provocatively toured the yard and performed their Talmudic rituals.

He is not head of Temple Mount Faithful.

Petra News Agency (Jordan):

Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs Hayel Daoud voiced Jordan's full rejection of the Israeli raids on Islamic holy sites in Palestine, mainly against the Al Aqsa Mosque/ Haram Al Sharif.

The minister said in a statement, a copy of which was obtained by Petra, that any violation of Al Aqsa Mosque/ haram Al Sharif by Israelis whether politicians or extremists, is totally rejected by Jordan and should by immediately stopped by Israeli authorities.

He said that Al Aqsa Mosque is under Hashemite custodianship, noting that such provocative acts by some Israeli extremists should not continue.

The minister condemned the storming of the Haram Al Sharif compound Monday morning by Israeli Rabbi Yehuda Glick and a group of settlers, who made suspicious tour and performed provocative Talmudic rituals.

Jordan, he added fully rejects such measures, and warned of changing the status quo by Israel in violation of the international humanitarian law.

مجددًا .. المتطرف يهودا غليك يقتحم الأقصى قبل قليل في استفزاز جديد لـ مشاعر المسلمين pic.twitter.com/6w4oQPQxJy
— وكالة شهاب للأنباء (@ShehabAgency) March 1, 2016

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Yesterday, in response to "Israel Apartheid Week" activities at Columbia by Students for Justice in Palestine (“SJP”) and Jewish Voice for Peace (“JVP”), the groups Artists 4 Israel and Students Supporting Israel put up a counter demonstration with a huge inflated Pinocchio opposite the "Apartheid Wall."

The BDSers were not amused.

Here is the account from Craig Dershowitz of Artists4Israel:

The Pinocchio had the intended effect of drawing attention to the A4I & SSI area where students were abe to read information explaining Israel’s diversity, arts culture and attempts at peaceful coexistence with their neighbors even while suffering from terrorism and hate. Many other students lined up to take pictures with this childhood icon and hold an Israeli flag expressing their support for Israel’s right to exist in peace and safety.

Seeing the overwhelming response to Pinocchio, SJP and JVP began working furiously to have it removed so that their lies could continue uncontested. At first they pulled the SSI students over to say the Pinocchio was offensive, too massive and caused too much student participation. JVP members even made the ridiculous claim that Pinocchio’s large nose was anti-Semitic.

When approached by Artists 4 Israel’s Project Manager with his phone recording it, they retreated and returned with the Student Government Chairman and Vice Chairman. These two positions happen to be held by students who are also members of SJP!

They now had a new story and said that it had to be taken down before “three big security guards come by and force you to”. Their justifications for this limit on free speech was that the Pinocchio did not fit under the “large structure” approval and that it was unsafe. They feared what would happen if a balloon fell down!

The students with Pinocchio, in a sign of good faith, removed Pinocchio and agreed to a meeting at 4pm EST to discuss the issue further and receive “proper” permission to host it the next day. They attempted to bury the students under massive paperwork by requesting a number of extraneous items and information. The students still provided it all and, as of 10:19pm EST is still awaiting a decision. The SJP led Student Government has effectively silenced the Jewish and pro-Israel students for today and tomorrow.

You can see video of both displays here:

The Columbia student paper wrote a ridiculous article against the Pinocchio:

In response this week’s mock apartheid wall as a part of this year’s Israeli Apartheid Week, Students Supporting Israel (SSI) constructed a Pinocchio display on College Walk directly across from the mock wall. This follows Israeli Apartheid flyer vandalization earlier this week. A tipster sent us the photo below of the display as of early this afternoon. The display is believed to be an $800 blow-up doll.

According to a source, SSI was recently formed by a GS student and only has a handful of active members. They may be considered the “right-wing fringe” for the pro-Israel movement. Please note that SSI is not affiliated with Aryeh, Hillel, or other pro-Israel groups on campus.

The founder of SSI responded:

1) The pinnochio was donated by a friend of Rudy's, who runs Artists for Israel. The banners were loaned to us by StandWithUs. Yes, we got it for FREE. All of it.

2) Implicitly accusing us of vandalizing the fliers is libel and warrants legal action if the accusation isn't taken down. We had nothing to do with the ApartheidDivest poster vandalism. In fact, I didn't even know about it until I read this article. SSI firmly believes in free speech, which is why we never shouted down any anti-Israel speaker or CUAD demonstration no matter how hateful or full of lies we found it. I'm sure the security camera footage can confirm our innocence. So yeah, framing us isn't going to work here.

3) I have no idea how anyone construes us as right wing extremists. We don't take a side on the one/two state solution issue, and we believe firmly in coexistence which is the opposite of the right wing (Kahanist) stance on Israel. I think it makes us inclusive, not extremist. We have done nothing this semester to show that we are extremist, come to our events or visit us at our setup this week and see for yourself.

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03/01 Links Pt2: The BDS Movement Isn’t Working; The country BDS doesn’t want Oscar winners to see

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Time to draw lines and defend them

Everyone – including Ahmadinejad – has a right to voice their position on the issue. Moreover, Bollinger indicated through his action, America’s greatest universities have a duty to confer legitimacy and grant a prestigious venue to Ahmadinejad to air his genocidal position.
After Columbia gave legitimacy to a man who seeks to murder every Jew, how could anyone object to anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate groups merely insisting that the US end all assistance and support for Israel? How could it be illegitimate to blame Israel for the suffering of the Palestinians? How could it be illegitimate to teach Jewish kindergarteners that there is something intrinsically hurtful about the map of the Jewish state when a Jewish university president invited a man who called for that state to be wiped of the map to speak to his students? Last week Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan held a “top secret” conference for Jewish leaders from around the world to develop strategies and action plans to fight BDS.
Pollster Frank Luntz reportedly shared with the 150 conference participants the dismal results of a survey he had taken of American Jewish university students.
According to Luntz, only 42 percent of American Jewish students surveyed said that Israel wants peace.
A mere 31% of the students believe that Israel is a democracy.
According to media accounts, the Strategic Affairs Ministry set out what its experts believe is the sort of language pro-Israel activists should use to counter BDS propaganda. The language, participants were told, should be inclusive, not condemnatory.
For instance, people opposing BDS should say, “Boycotts divide people, and that’s part of the problem, not the solution.”
On the other hand, it would be a big mistake to say, “The BDS movement is not about legitimate criticism. It’s about making Israel illegitimate.”
It’s hard to escape the sense that in advocating these slogans, the government has missed the point, and the boat.
You can’t engage people who believe you are evil.

The BDS Movement Isn’t Working

The BDS movement in the United States seeks, as it does in other nations, to make Israel into a pariah state. How is it doing? The most recent Gallup report, which includes its 2016 results as well as some numbers from prior years, is one indication that BDS is failing here.
In 2005, when the most recent wave of boycott activity commenced, Gallup asked survey respondents: “In the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or with the Palestinians? 52 percent sympathized more with Israel, 18 percent more with the Palestinians. More than ten years of relentless campaigning against Israel later, and 62 percent sympathize more with Israel, 15 percent more with the Palestinians.
What about Democratic support for Israel? As is well known, there has been a growing gap between Republicans and Democrats on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, Democrats are not only an audience for BDS but also an audience for the Obama administration’s complaints about the present administration in Israel. Yet the gap was greater in 2005 than it is today and at 53 percent, the percentage of Democrats who sympathize more with Israel than with the Palestinians is much better than the 41 percent recorded in 2005.
But the young have been special targets of the BDS movement, treated every year to Israel apartheid week, struggles against Zionist hummus, and divestment campaigns. Indeed, young people have been less sympathetic than older people to Israel in the recent past. Nonetheless, this year, 54 percent reported sympathizing more with Israel; 23 percent sympathized more with the Palestinians. In 2005, 51 percent reported sympathizing more with Israel. It’s true that sympathy with the Palestinians was considerably lower in that age group in 2005, in the neighborhood of 17 percent. But it had been at 29 percent just a year before. In short, the BDSers have not been able to budge opinion among the young so far.
What if we ask the question a different way? Gallup also asks whether respondents view Israel favorably or unfavorably. This year, 71 percent of American surveyed viewed Israel favorably or very favorably. In 2005 that number was 69 percent. Although Israel’s favorability ratings are off of their 25 year high — 79 percent viewed Israel favorably during the first Persian Gulf War — they are otherwise about the highest they have been during the past 25 years.

History’s Role in the War on Jews

For those who know little about what happens to Jews when they don’t have power, the creation of Israel and its continued importance doesn’t resonate. If you judge Israel solely by a measure of whether it is uniformly perfect as opposed to the context of a war with Palestinians who will not recognize its legitimacy no matter where its borders are drawn, you may be inclined to view it as worthy of being as branded a pariah state. The calls for economic warfare being voiced by groups like Jewish Voices for Peace or for its dismantling by that group’s leftist allies can be seductive when you not only don’t understand that Jews have rights to the country but also that when Jews are left powerless and at the mercy of other peoples, the result is, as Schama notes, a legacy of horror.
The point here is that those who wish to speak up for Israel need to understand that it is only historical ignorance and willful blindness that can cause us to fail to notice that those who wish to deny Jews the rights to statehood and self-defense — rights that are not denied any other people — are engaging in an act of bias that is indistinguishable from anti-Semitism. While academic anti-Zionists see themselves as promoting a point of view that is distinct from those who are killing Jews in the streets of Paris or Jerusalem, they are, in effect, attempting to provide the killers with a moral legitimacy they don’t deserve.
As Schama observes, in the end, Zionism is the “prize whipping boy” of intellectual in the post-colonial era in search of a scapegoat. Such crusades, he says, always require a villain, and we know who will always play that role in the European imagination. If we are to ensure that this same contagion of hate doesn’t spread any further in the United States, it will take not merely a generation armed with the facts and historical knowledge needed to answer the false charges of the Israel-haters. It will also require the moral courage to oppose the intellectual fashions of our day that will enable us to stand up to the intellectual anti-Zionists call them by their right name: anti-Semites.

Israeli media reported this, but for some reason the Western media didn't pick this fairly momentous story.

Luckily, we have Hizballah's Al Manar:

Israeli channel 10 reported that a senior Israeli delegation visited the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in the last few weeks.

The Israeli channel meanwhile, said that the delegation was headed by a prominent Israeli official.Moshe Yaalon and Turki al-Faisal shake hands

The visit was not the first one to the Kingdom, but the Israeli Military Censor prohibits the reports talking about such visits, according to Channel 10.

King Salman Bin Abdulaziz and the Saudi princes are not ashamed by the Israeli ties. However, they prefer they remain confidential, the report added.

Meanwhile, the Israeli channel 10 quoted Saudi officials as saying during the meetings that they are not interested in solving the Palestinian cause. However they want the Zionist entity to stand by Saudi against Iran.

I couldn't find it on Channel 10 but it was reported here. (h/t Yoel) And, of course, in Iran.

If this is true, it is awesome. If it is not true, the fact that it is being reported by Iranian proxies is awesome anyway.

And either way, it supports the old joke of why Jews read antisemitic newspapers - because they are filled with good news!

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Harold Benjamin Soref was a British businessman, polemicist, and politician notable for his forcefully expressed right-wing views. “Pudgy, grumpy, brisk, Jewish” is how the journalist Andrew Roth, in Parliamentary Profiles, summed him up. It was an apt description.

Born in London on 18 December 1916, Harold Soref was the youngest child and only son (there were also two daughters) of Romanian-born Rhodesian pioneer Paul Soref, co-founder of Soref Brothers, South African shippers, and the former Zelma Goodman, English-born of German-Jewish ancestry. Brought up in leafy Hampstead, Harold attended the Hall School (a local preparatory school) before going on to one of Britain’s best-known public schools, St Paul’s School, where he was a day boy. There, with right-wing political sensibilities that awakened early, he was president of the Chesterton Society – the writer G.K. Chesterton, who died in 1936, was a former pupil of the school – and editor of its magazine. In 1934 Soref attended Oswald Mosley’s Olympia Rally as a standard bearer for the Junior Imperial League. When, however, he heckled an antisemitic speaker he was manhandled by Blackshirt thugs, and evicted.

During the Second World War he served briefly in the Royal Scots and then in the Intelligence Corps, based for much of the time in southern Africa, a region he grew to know exceedingly well: although his paternal grandparents had remained in Romania his father had family members in Bulawayo.

Soref read history at Queen’s College, Oxford, but did not stay the course, so did not obtain a degree. Nevertheless, a deep interest in history was innately ingrained in him, and he went on to contribute a number of well-researched and well-written articles on aspects of Anglo-Jewish history to various periodicals, and was very much involved, in 1956, in the commemorative celebrations of the resettlement of Jews in England. He was a close friend of the great Anglo-Jewish historian Cecil Roth.

From 1947 until 1951 he edited the Anglo-Jewish Association’s organ The Jewish Monthly. The AJA, to give the Association its accepted abbreviation, consisted of latter day “Englishmen of the Mosaic persuasion” and their attitude to political Zionism reflected that fact. Some of what Soref wrote during his years as editor now sounds reprehensible – perverse is perhaps a better word – but, with another future MP, Neville Sandelson, he visited Israel soon after its foundation, had pro-Zionist relatives, and to his credit eventually adopted a pro-Israel position. His initial opposition to the Zionist cause had as much to do with perceptions that the Jewish State would be an instrument of the Soviet Union as with his old-fashioned fears of the spectre of “dual loyalties” and all that that entailed for the comfort and status of Diaspora communities like his own.