Friday, March 04, 2016

Latest "Apartheid?" poster

From a tweet by Kay Wilson earlier this week, the photo seems to have been taken last year.

Entire series here.

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What a week at EoZ!

This was a very eventful week here at the headquarters of the International Zionist Conspiracy. I published more major scoops this week than most reporters get in a year.

We had two exposes of Amnesty International. In one we showed how they praised an NGO that we showed was antisemitic and supported violence; in the other we showed how Amnesty's annual report spent more time criticizing Israel than any other nation except for Syria.

I documented how a few anti-Israel ideologues easily put together an NGO that is already receiving funding even though it has no website, no reports, no social media presence. The entire purpose of the NGO is to convince the EU to be more anti-Israel.

I exclusively reported on a McGraw-Hill textbook that published the infamous "Map The Lies" anti-Israel propaganda graphic; in only one day McGraw-Hill suspended sales of the book pending review.

Another exclusive story showing how the FBI added a tiny Jewish group to its list of terror groups to teach teens how to be on the lookout for being recruited. This politically correct decision is also a de facto antisemitic decision.

I posted a potentially momentous story (from Israeli media) about Israeli officials visiting Saudi Arabia that went under the radar of the mainstream media.
I wrote about the imaginative counter-protest at Columbia U featuring Pinocchio, and demolished the claims of the anti-Israel crowd that the Zionists were pushing hate speech. Incidentally, I exposed Electronic Intifada and Professor Joseph Massad as likely liars by seemingly knowingly misrepresenting a placard that supports Palestinians as being racist.

I wrote about how a UNRWA-USA spokesperson posted anti-Israel material against UNRWA's mandate, which cause a flurry of excitement at UNRWA as the American staff rushed to hide their social media accounts from similar exposure. It didn't work and I showed how two more of them routinely and publicly supported explicitly anti-Israel causes. At the same time UNRWA's head mentioned me in a Q&A saying that they take all of these allegations seriously. Well, seriously enough to try to hide them.

Plus more posters. And more about UNRWA and the UN.

And many of the other EoZ articles (as well as those from the columnists) were pretty good too.

My most popular post this week wasn't exactly an exclusive, it was just a reproduction of an article that no one noticed about how the Palestinian ambassador to North Korea praised its leaders. That post was shared over 1500 times on Facebook!

I apologize that I didn't get to resume the Hasby awards or the EoZTV webcasts, hopefully next week those will get back on track.

Most of the scoops came from tips from you, my readers. Thanks so much for sending them in!

If you appreciate this unique brand of journalism, please consider making a donation. Not all weeks will be as productive as this one but I want to make sure that every article will teach you something you didn't know.

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03/04 Links Pt1: Phillips: How the West undermines Jewish survival; Clinton, Libya and Israel

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: How the West undermines Jewish survival

At Jewish Book Week in London a few days ago, I took part in a panel discussion about the most pressing questions facing Jews today.
I raised one that has long been bothering me – whether Western secular values were undermining the ability of the Jewish people to survive.
Across the West, there has been a terrifying rise in anti-Jewish feeling. This is fueled by an unprecedented campaign of lies and libels against Israel aimed at destroying it through delegitimization.
This campaign displays the same signature motifs of classic Jew-hatred that go back through the centuries.
But some of its principal leaders are Jews. So Jew-hatred can’t be the whole story.
The core of this problem is the tremendous cultural shift that has taken place in the West. Centered in the intelligentsia, this ditched the Judeo-Christian moral codes underpinning Western civilization in favor of hyper-individualism.
“What is right” was replaced by “what is right for me.”
Feelings replaced authority. There was no longer any such thing as objective truth. Everything was subjective and relative.

Caroline Glick: Clinton, Libya and Israel

The messages from Washington ahead of Vice President Joe Biden’s arrival in Israel next week show President Barack Obama’s hostile policies toward Israel will maintained until he leaves office.
In recent weeks, the administration has warned various government ministers that any construction of housing for Jews in Jerusalem will be viewed with hostility by the administration. In contrast, the administration is pressuring Israel to permit construction of homes for Arabs in its capital city and harshly opposes all moves by the government to destroy illegal construction in Arab neighborhoods and in Judea and Samaria.
In other words, it is the Obama administration’s policy to deny Jews our civil and property rights while it demands that Israel not assert its sovereignty over non-Jews.
Whether or not Obama’s anti-Israel policies will survive his tenure in office depends on who succeeds him. If Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is elected to serve as the next president, there is no question that they will survive him.
During her four years as Obama’s secretary of state, Clinton was a full partner in Obama’s hostile policies toward Israel. Moreover, as her internal emails have shown, all of Clinton’s close advisers are hostile to Israel. The good news for Israel is that Clinton’s chances of election are not as great as they seem from the polls.

Watchdog Calls on America’s UN Ambassador to ‘End Silence’ on Anti-Israel Incitement by US-Funded UNRWA Staff

United States Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power’s “strict silence over repeated cases of bigotry and hatred from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is deeply troubling,” the head of an international human rights NGO told The Algemeiner on Thursday.
UN Watch executive director Hillel C. Neuer was expounding on the reason his group issued a public call on Power “to end her silence over continued anti-Israeli incitement from UNRWA… At a time when the United States is giving an astonishing $400 million a year to a UN agency that is supposed to be strictly focused on humanitarian relief.”
Neuer was reacting to what he called “only the latest egregious breach of neutrality by UNRWA-associated officials”: the endorsement on social media of “Israeli Apartheid Week” by the UN body’s US Director of Communications Laila Mokhiber.
According to Neuer, Mokhiber deleted her Twitter account, containing anti-Israel content, after being criticized by followers. Meanwhile, pro-Israel blogger Elder of Ziyon reported on Wednesday that Mokhiber’s Facebook page was still up and running, and “shows plenty of other anti-Israel activity and support for terrorists,” among them Rasmea Odeh.

Of course it is a religious war. Palestinians freely admit it. (In Arabic.)

Earlier today I wrote about how the UN cannot find a way to include Palestinian terrorism among its list of terror attacks that it has condemned.

One reason, no doubt, is that to the UN and much of the world, Palestinian terrorism does not have the obvious ties to Islamism that Boko Haram and ISIS and Al Qaeda do. While of course the UN never mentions Islam in connection to terror, it does speak quote a bit about "violent extremism and radical ideology that lead to terrorism" and to them, the Palestinians are using terrorism as a political tool, not as an expression of extremist ideology. The last thing the UN wants is to call this a religious conflict because that would make it indistinguishable from the other Islamist attacks.

But the Palestinians, among themselves, freely agree that this is a religious conflict.

The Amad.ps website has an article by Suhalia Omar today that says "Arab people conscious of the dangers of Zionism and realize that our struggle with Israel is not a conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, but an eternal battle between Jews and Muslims, a religious conflict manifested in the Holy Qur'an, which listed the Jews' history in detail and which gives them all bad descriptions starting from monkeys and pigs and killers of prophets and breakers of covenants...Arab Muslims are studying this history well and every verse reminds them of the dangers of Judaism, and these are increased when they see with their own eyes own tragedies that befell the Palestinians because of the Israeli occupation. They see how the Palestinian people became refugees homeless after the Jews robbed them of their territory..."

Another story from today in the Arab media talks about a new music video from Miral Ayyad, a teenage Palestinian girl who was a contestant in the Arab children's version of The Voice. The video is called "Enraged" and it encourages a new intifada while it incites the viewers with pictures of Al Aqsa juxtaposed with photos of Jews walking in the Old City.

While the PLO and Saeb Erekat warn the West that Israel is trying to turn this into a religious war, for the Palestinians, it has been that way from the start - in the most recent iteration, with Abbas saying he won't allow Jews to visit Judaism's holiest spot with their "filthy feet."

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Anne Herzberg, of NGO Monitor, attended a talk by UNRWA's commissioner-general Pierre Krähenbühl at Harvard University on Thursday.

At the Q&A, I am told, Hillel Stavis asked about antisemitism on UNRWA websites. Krähenbühl claimed UNRWA takes it very seriously and investigate all allegations about antisemitism "no matter what the source whether they come from UN Watch or Elder of Ziyon. We investigate every one."

It's nice to know that they read me. Maybe he should tell his staff at UNRWA USA to stop blocking me on Twitter so they can act faster when I show how anti-Israel their staff is.

You see, UNRWA USA lists 5 staff members on its webpage. I've already shown how two of them would support anti-Israel causes on social media. Four of them have already hidden their Twitter accounts and they are trying to stop people like me from seeing their Facebook pages, but..everyone leaves a trail.

Here's number 3, Lena Badr Abdelhamid, showing her desire to boycott Israel:

Now we have proven that more than half of the staff of UNRWA-USA is explicitly anti-Israel - when UNRWA claims that it is non-partisan and takes great pains to keep it that way.

If the majority of UNRWA's American staff is this anti-Israel, how can we expect its staff in the Middle East to be anything else?

So, Pierre, you have a little more to investigate. Will you uphold UNRWA's mandate or will you protect your staff that violates it? Are you beholden to the UN's stated principles or to protecting your friends?

You know, your pals that you took with you on your trip to Jerusalem last week?

(h/t Bob Knot)

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UN cannot find a single terror attack against Israel

Here is a screenshot of the "UN response to acts of terrorism" webpage:

The page lists 37 terror attacks acknowledged and condemned by the UN since November 2015. These attacks took place in 19 different countries:

Afghanistan
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Chad
Egypt
France
Indonesia
Iraq
Lebanon
Libya
Mali
Nigeria
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
Somalia
Syria
Tunisia
Turkey

But one country that has experienced a wave of terror in that exact timeframe is not mentioned.

It is hard to escape the message being given by the UN. To that organization, stabbings and bombings and knifings and car rammings and shootings of innocent Israelis is not terrorism. And if it is not terrorism, then it must be a form of freedom fighting.

Ban Ki Moon sort of implied that attacks against Israelis is terrorism in the New York Times, but as this list shows, he has not once issued a statement condemning them from the UN.

Arnold Roth has much more.

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In @AliAbunimah's world, photos of smiling Arabs are hate speech and Pinocchio is antisemitic

Electronic Intifada has an article that is so stupid, so inane, and so laughably false that the article alone should discredit the site forever.

Written by Ali Abunimah himself, its headline is "Students say pro-Israel group spreads hate at Columbia University."

And more:

Most of the article is spent trying to draw lines between pro-Israel students at Columbia and a variety of imagined crimes, like supporting Jabotinsky's Zionism, singing while in the IDF or having photos taken with Sheldon Adelson. That's stupid enough, but let's just look at what these specific Columbia students (and one professor), not to mention Ali Abunimah himself, calls "hate" and "racist" and, unbelievably, "anti-Semitic."

Shezza Abboushi Dallal, a member of Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), told The Electronic Intifada that her group wrote to Melinda Aquino, the associate dean for multicultural affairs, to express concern at Students Supporting Israel’s display of “heavily racist and reductive imagery” in a prominent campus location.

“This is not free exercise of political speech, but blatant incitement – not only against Palestinians, but Arabs and Muslims,” Abboushi Dallal, a fourth-year student at Barnard College, Columbia’s sister institution, added.

OK...let's see what she is referring to.

Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad saw the Students Supporting Israel displays on Tuesday and described them to The Electronic Intifada.

“As I was walking to class, I spotted two large placards on College Walk facing Columbia’s Low Library – the university’s administration building where the president’s and the provost’s offices are located,” Massad said.

“One had the headline ‘Jewish Refugees’ printed on it in large letters with a large picture under it showing what appeared to be Jewish refugees from the mid or late 1940s, and next to it another placard with the heading ‘Palestinians’ under which appeared two hooded men getting ready to execute a third.”

“I was shocked by these racist depictions,” Massad stated. “There seemed to be other smaller script and smaller photographs below the large pictures on both placards, but I could not make them out.”

Massad believes the juxtaposed displays were supposed to send a message that Jews are always only sympathetic victims while Palestinians are murderous savages.

“Imagine if a pro-Palestinian group on campus would put up a poster with the heading ‘Jews’ and under it would show two Israeli soldiers killing, torturing and beating up Palestinian children, as the only visible picture and text from a distance,” Massad said.

“Such a poster would be rightfully condemned as an outright anti-Semitic picture of Jews who would be reduced to the criminal Israeli soldiers in the picture,” he added. “I am shocked that such racism can be depicted on campus by pro-Israel groups without a swift official response.”

Here are the placards Massad was talking about.

There is a large photo on top of the "Palestinians" poster that Massad could not possibly have missed - showing Palestinian kids smiling and happy! And it says "Palestinians deserve better from their leadership."

Then again, Joseph Massad is known to be a liar. Which makes him a great person for Ali Abunimah to quote for the article - even though a photo of the same "Palestinians" poster is shown on the top of the EI article with the smiling children clearly visible!

I bet Massad did read signs and chose to criticize how they supposedly look from a distance just to find something negative to say. The truth is that the sign was not in the least anti-Palestinian - it was pro-Palestinian.

Oh, and Ali Abunimah knows this. Because his photo of the Zionist display that heads his article came from the same source that my photo above came from.

OK, what's next?

This photo and caption:

Smiling Israeli soldiers are hate speech, according to Electronic Intifada!

There must be more though, right?

Massad said that as he walked – at a distance – past the other side of the Students Supporting Israel stand, he could see many other smaller placards and another large one, headlined “Israeli Arabs.”

It depicted “a large picture of an old Palestinian peasant man with his keffiyeh [traditional checkered scarf] on his head grinning, which immediately brought to my mind racist depictions of happy African American slaves in pro-Ku Klux Klan propaganda.”

Not only are smiling Israelis hate speech, but smiling Arabs are hate speech as well!

One can only imagine the pain that BDSers were forced to endure to see such examples of happy Israelis of all colors and backgrounds!

One of the posters compares Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionism, the most violent and radical school of Zionism, today followed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, with Eldridge Cleaver, an early leader of the Black Panther Party.

Not an analogy I would make, but this isn't hate speech, except in the bizarre minds of people whose entire existence is based on hate.

Any other examples of hate spread by the evil Zionists?

Ah, one more:

The largest and perhaps most bizarre element of the Students Supporting Israel display was a large blow-up doll of Pinocchio.

Massad said that the doll “struck me as most odd given the anti-Semitic echoes of the Pinocchio figure.”

“As a Jewish person I’ve been brought up with the idea that Pinocchio is an anti-Semitic trope,” JVP’s Kalikoff said.

“This idea of a character whose nose grows with the lies he speaks uses an anti-Semitic caricature,” she added, noting that anti-Semitic propaganda has historically depicted Jews as liars with grotesquely large noses. “I would say it’s an explicitly and overtly anti-Semitic image to parade on College Walk.”

As a Jewish person who is sensitive to antisemitism, a friendly and naive marionette whose nose grows when he tells a lie does not strike me as antisemitic.

I actually looked this up to see if any major writer seriously considered Pinocchio to be an antisemitic stereotype. No one does. However, the character of Stromboli, who captures Pinocchio - money hungry, big nose, and evil - is often assumed to be a caricature of a Jew.

Joseph Massad needs to say this because he actually claims that Zionists are antisemites. Which is rich coming from someone who equates Jewish nationalism - and only Jewish nationalism - with racism.

Which is de facto antisemitic.

There were other placards there like this one, but they weren't mentioned in the article:

Awful, I know.

To sum it up, here is every example of "racism" and "hate" that the Electronic Intifada crowd found at Columbia's Zionist display:

A large sign that has a prominent, impossible-to-miss photo of happy Palestinian kids that says they deserve better than having leaders like Hamas.
Photos of happy Israeli citizens, including soldiers.
Photos of happy Israeli Arab citizens.

And Pinocchio is antisemitic, so their objection to his presence was to protect the poor defenseless Jews from hate speech by the evil Zionists.

This is on a site that gets quoted by the media as if it has an ounce of credibility.

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03/03 Links Pt2: What is a ‘pro Palestinian’?; The Leftist Fascists Take Over College Campuses

From Ian:

David Collier: What is a ‘pro Palestinian’?

Pro Palestinian?
So what is ‘pro-Palestinian’ and what is the ‘Palestinian cause’? Is being ‘pro-Palestinian’ and supporting the ‘Palestinian cause’ the same thing? Given the current ‘Palestinian’ strategy is to internationalise the conflict and more importantly engage activists on university campuses throughout the west, isn’t it critical that we understand just what people mean when they say ‘pro-Palestinian’?
To address this, I think it only proper to start with Bassem Eid. Bassem is a Palestinian who spent his life fighting human rights abuses, working for B’tselem, and eventually setting up his own human rights movement. As someone who cares deeply about human rights abuses against Palestinians, Bassem is shouted down by activists for highlighting the BDS movement as ‘harming’ Palestinians. Only last week he cancelled a lecture in Chicago following a threat of disruption. This clearly indicates that the two issues are not the same. The pushing of the ‘Palestinian cause’ and wanting human rights for Palestinians can be (and perhaps almost always are) opposing forces.
Next I will move on to Norman Finkelstein. Finkelstein has been at the forefront of ‘pro-Palestinian’ commentary for decades. Because of his position and as recognition of his influence as an ‘anti-Israeli’,, he was banned from entering Israel for 10 years. He is highly critical of BDS and calls ita cult that will not succeed because it is trying to deceive the public about its true aims. He points out those aims are clearly to destroy Israel.

Ben Shapiro: The Leftist Fascists Take Over College Campuses

When the speech ended, I asked security if I, along with the other students, could go out to confront the protesters. The campus police told me they couldn't guarantee my safety or that of any of those listening to me if we chose to walk outside. Instead, they'd have to spirit me away through a separate building with a large coterie of armed and uniformed police, stuff me into the back of a van, and then escort me from campus with motorcycles flashing their lights.
This is America in 2016, on a state-funded university campus.
And it shouldn't be surprising.
We have spent two generations turning college campuses from places to learn job skills to places to indoctrinate leftism and inculcate an intolerant view of the world that insists on silencing opposition. We have made campuses a fascist "safe space" on behalf of the left. Anyone who disagrees must be shut down, or threatened or hurt.
It's not just college campuses, either. We've entered an era of politics in which baseless feelings count more than facts, in which political correctness means firing those with different viewpoints, in which government actors insist that they can police negative thoughts. We're on the edge of freedom's end, and many Americans don't even see it.
They would have had they been at CSULA that day. And they will soon enough if they don't stand up for their rights today.

MEMRI: Jordanian Writer: The Arabs Lag Behind In All Areas – As The World Moves Forward

On January 6, 2016, Jordanian journalist, writer, and political analyst Jihad Al-Mansi wrote in the Jordanian daily Al-Ghad, under the title "Careful, The Car Is In Reverse!", about what he termed Arab society's position at the bottom of global rankings in science, culture, human and women's rights, and the war on corruption. He added that it lags behind the rest of the quickly advancing world which "has overtaken us by centuries, perhaps millennia."
Calling on the Arabs to wake up, take responsibility for their situation and stop blaming others for their problems, he said that instead they should invest their financial and human resources in advancing future generations, because it is no longer possible to rectify the situation of the current generation.
Following are excerpts from his article:
"The world is developing, in the philosophical, scientific, social, creative, educational, and cultural sense; it is on the verge of breaking free of backward gender-driven thinking...
"This is taking place in countries far from our Arab region. There, they are developing scientifically and culturally, competing for the top position in all human indices. At the same time, we, in this region of the world, remain at the bottom of these indices – and some of our countries are absent from them altogether.

Another @UNRWAUSA worker shows her hate for Israel (before hiding it) (UPDATE)

Yesterday, I reported that UNRWA-USA communications director Laila Mokhiber took down her Twitter account after it was found to have anti-Israel posts that violate UNRWA's standards.

It appears that nearly all of UNRWA-USA workers have now made their Twitter feeds private, frightened by what others would have discovered that would embarrass their already embarrassing agency.

But not before I took some screenshots from the feed of one of them.

Nada El-Eryan, grants officer at UNRWA USA, is another UNRWA worker in America who proudly shows how anti-Israel she is.

Tweeting under the handle "nadabrain" she has written or retweeted:

Nada does not mention UNRWA as her employer on Twitter, and she says that what she tweets are not the views of her unnamed employer.

But she does describe herself as a "Palestinian American activist" which pretty much shows how she cannot be considered objective.

Her timeline also makes it clear she works for UNRWA even if she doesn't want to say so explicitly.

My coworkers celebrate birthdays in the best ways ever! I ❤️ Pierre Krahenbuhl! Thank you to everyone… https://t.co/h7wW95lifW
— Nada E. (@nadabrain) July 20, 2015

If Laila Mokhiber was forced to close her Twitter account by supporting "Israeli Apartheid Week," then Nada El-Eryan has shown that she is equally partisan while celebrating her association with UNRWA on Twitter. And this is directly against UNRWA's stated mandate.

By the way, UNRWA-USA 's Twitter account has a public list of 74 (!) Twitter accounts for chapters of the anti-Israel "Students for Justice in Palestine."

A very strong indication of where UNRWA's sympathies lie.

(h/t JethroSteve)

UPDATE: Bob Knot did his Facebook magic again on Nada El-Eryan. Check out all of these anti-Israel groups and events she supports:

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Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

We complain a lot about Israel’s continuing defeats in the information arena. Why is it that a country that is so good at technology and commerce, a people that gave birth to two great religions, a culture that enjoys perhaps the world’s best ratio of happiness to adversity, can lose over and over in the battle for hearts and minds, especially those of young people?

Why does almost the entire world agree that ‘settlements are illegal’ and expect us to pick up and leave? How can there even be an organization called “Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism?” Why do Israel-hating professors indoctrinate students to believe that we are monsters? Why is the al-Dura libel still believed? Why is the phony ‘Palestinian’ narrative becoming the conventional wisdom about the establishment of our state? Why does Israel come in second only to North Korea as the country that most UK residents “feel especially unfavourable towards?”

Why, when Israel fights a defensive war, are we invariably accused of war crimes despite the fact that military experts consistently say that the IDF does more than any other army in history to protect the civilian population? Why is Arab terrorism against us minimized in the media, while negative stories are amplified? Why is social media suffused with anti-Israel content?

Orwell’s “Two Minutes Hate” has been replicated in “Israel apartheid week” observances in universities around the world, with the Jew of Nations replacing the Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein, and in various UN-sponsored Hates throughout the year.

Yes, there are lots of reasons for the above – Jew hatred, and oil money are two of them – and there are also some bright spots, but the sheer volume of negative feelings toward us is remarkable, and we are making very little headway in opposing it. And the reason is simple: we don’t have a clue about influencing opinion.

We just don’t get it, which is why we often do exactly the opposite of what we should.

Humans are driven by emotions, not reason, although they often come up with rational arguments to justify their emotional decisions. It is also the case that the emotional drivers may sometimes seem perverse. But they are what they are, created by evolutionary forces in the history of the human race (see Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion).

If we want to get people on our side, to identify with us emotionally – and that’s what we want, not abstract ‘justice’ or any other rational concept – then we need to pull the right strings. The Arabs and their friends have been doing it for years, which is why they are so far ahead today.

One of the most important drivers is – as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump understand – that folks want to go with the winner. The rational mind thinks that ‘how you play the game’ matters, but the subconscious driver agrees with Vince Lombardi: winning is theonly thing.

So what have we done? We’ve engaged in Holocaust education, which often consists of talking about how we let the Germans stuff us into gas chambers. The object seems to be to make people feel sorry for us, the ultimate losers. But it doesn’t make people want to be on our side; it makes them want to get as far away from us as possible. For our enemies, it gives them ideas and serves as ‘snuff porn’.

What we should emphasize about the Holocaust are such things as the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, hanging Eichmann and even ‘morally wrong’ behaviors like Jewish terrorism against Germans after the war. We shouldn’t dwell on our pain, but rather stress that anyone who hurts our people will pay a price; our response will be disproportionate, even brutal.

Golda Meir did the right thing when she ordered the Mossad to kill everyone connected with the Munich massacre. Displaying weakness is asking for more abuse; strength is both a deterrent and attractive. We want to be admired for our strength, toughness and success, not pitied.

Which brings us to Gaza. We fought the last few wars (this in itself is a problem) trying our best to avoid hurting civilians. Some say the next war will see every combat soldier accompanied by a lawyer to ensure that we are not charged with war crimes. There has been criticism that our concern impairs the fighting efficiency of the IDF. Indeed it does, but that’s not the only problem: it projects weakness. And they’ll charge us with war crimes anyway. So next time, let’s just concentrate on crushing Hamas.

The same applies to fighting terrorism. It seems to me that someone like Saadi Ali Abu Hammad, who viciously attacked a security guard at the Ma’ale Adumim mall last week, should be killed on the spot, not imprisoned. Such a statement may seem shocking, because it goes against our commitment to a rule of law. But even if there weren’t practical considerations – do we want the terrorist to collect a salary from the PA until he is freed as ransom for a kidnap victim? – there are the psychological implications. Our message should be that trying to murder Jews is intolerable, not something for teenagers to do after school, like shoplifting.

On the political level, PM Netanyahu continues to say that “Israel desires peace.” Of course it does, but emphasizing this projects weakness. Who begs for peace? The side losing the war. What the PM should be saying is that we intend to protect the Land of Israel and all its inhabitants, and anyone who threatens us will be destroyed. Not just defeated, but crushed. Wiped off the map. Erased from memory like Amalek.

But wait, don’t the Arabs try to make themselves out to be victims? Don’t they accuse us of brutality? Yes they do, but at the same time they strike out at us – they claim to be striking back – with extreme savagery. This savagery is the vehicle for message that they are sending to the world, which is that they are strong, they are so committed to their cause that they are prepared to die for it, and ultimately they will win. And our response is to tell them that we will sit down and negotiate with them at any time, even while they are stabbing us! No. We should respond to terrorism with expulsions and expropriation of land.

We need to change our messaging and also our behavior. This won’t be easy for us, accustomed as we are to trying to put on a polite, Western mask. Our Prime Minister, who courageously faced live fire as a soldier, nevertheless has trouble facing a hostile American president.

We don’t need to tell the world that we have beautiful women, nice beaches, lots of tech companies and gay pride parades (there actually was such a campaign). That will have zero effect. Rather, with our actions and words, we should pursue respect, project strength, even provoke fear – and certainly not pity.

Thanks to the paradoxical nature of the human brain, it may get us friendship and understanding in the end.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

03/03 Links Pt1: What a Palestinian State Looks Like; Israel’s ‘Ghost Warriors’ Combating Terror

From Ian:

What a Palestinian State Looks Like

When European nations and even some American Jews proclaim their support for Palestinian statehood, one must always ask which state are they talking about? Is it the demilitarized one that is prepared to live in peace with Israel that everyone fantasizes about? Or will it resemble the only Palestinian Arab state that has ever existed — the one that has transformed Gaza into an Islamist tyranny in which even the leaders of the group can be purged with impunity.
We may not have much sympathy for Mahmoud Ishtiwi, whose secret private life might have been revealed because of charges of embezzlement. But, like others who refused to conform to Hamas theocratic dictates, there was only one fate possible for him in the Palestinian state. The nature of Palestinian society may not justify Israel holding onto territory that might be traded for peace if an end to the conflict was possible, which is unfortunately not the case with either Fatah or Hamas. But so long as Palestinians are oppressed by theocrats whose priority is a terrorist war to destroy Israel, more Israeli withdrawals are out of the question.
Yet far from being tangential to the question of theoretical land-for-peace deals, there is very little chance of the Palestinians ever embracing coexistence and ending their century-long war against Zionism so long as they are lead by the sort of group that would execute a gay man for the crime of being gay.
As a lively and free democratic country, Israel’s reputation doesn’t need to be pinkwashed because of the freedom that gays enjoy there. But those crying for Palestinian freedom should start by campaigning to free the Palestinian people from their gay-killing Hamas tyrants before worrying about Israel’s actions. Until they do, those claiming that human rights are only an issue if the topic can be used against Israel should be labeled as hypocrites and liars.

JCPA: Palestinian Authority Funding to Terrorists and their Families

Blood Money Incitement
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is responsible for one more nefarious form of incitement to attack Jews – paying large bounties to the attackers and their families. An attacker can go out to commit murder assured that if he is arrested he will receive a monthly salary; if he is killed, his family will receive a monthly pension; and if his family home is destroyed, the family will receive a very generous award to rebuild their home.
Rather than being deterred by the harsh consequence of their terrorist attack at Israel’s hand, the perpetrators are actually encouraged and incentivized by the Palestinian leadership. According to one study published by the Gatestone Institute, “Terrorists in prison receive higher average salary than PA civil servants and military personnel.”
An Israeli government 2014 memorandum, citing official PA budgetary reports, noted that $75.5 million had been paid out in stipends to convicted terrorists and their families in 2012.
The instructions for compensation payments come from the highest levels of the Palestinian Authority, according to the Al-Araby Al-Jadeed website in February 2014: “The Jerusalem Martyrs’ families and the National ‎Campaign to Return the Bodies of the ‎Martyrs confirmed that ‎President Mahmoud Abbas promised to ‎compensate the Jerusalem Martyrs’ ‎families for their homes, which the ‎occupation forces demolished or ‎damaged.”

Guy Bechor: Meanwhile in Syria, the pseudo-ceasefire

The Americans are not talking about any violations of the 'cessation of hostilities' in Syria, because to them, there aren't any. Europe pays the price of Washington's failed foreign policies, while Israel stands firm.
The Americans' delusional foreign policy is not just in Syria but also in Iraq. Just recently, Obama was boasting that ISIS was retreating and had weakened. So how come ISIS managed to commit a serious attack 10 kilometers from the international airport in Baghdad, the lifeline of the Shiite Iraqi regime? Not to mention the way ISIS is fooling Iraqi soldiers in Ramadi and other cities, succeefully killing hundreds of people every month in attacks. The Iraqi army hesitates to directly fight ISIS, which continues to grow in strength and draw Sunnis into its fold.
Where were the Americans in the battles on Sunday? According to Iraqi reports (which were also sort of delusional) ISIS retreated, but it is also remains everywhere in the western and northern part of the country. Even the US understands that its bombings don’t really help. Will Obama put American boots on the ground? I doubt it. That is why the Americans are stuck with no way out in Iraq as well, despite their many attempts.
They overthrew Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Qaddafi, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and Ali Abdullah Saleh because of their delusions. Took down the leaders and caused a storm.
And they didn't just do this in Syria and Iraq, but also in Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Tunis, and among the Sunnis in the land of Israel (who used to be called "Palestinians"). Was it not John Kerry who tried to reach a peace agreement here two years ago and failed? Then, like today, this was a policy of delusions.
Just like there can be no arrangement with the mass murderer Assad, there can be no arrangement with Abbas' gang, and now it's Europe’s turn to pay the price of this foreign policy. The only country that remains with its feet firmly on the ground and did not capitulate to the imaginary reality produced by the West - was Israel.

From Al Jazeera:

Member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, known as the GCC, have classified Lebanese movement Hezbollah as a "terrorist" organisation, citing "hostile actions" by the armed group.

GCC Secretary General Abdullatif al-Zayani said on Wednesday that the six Gulf monarchies undertook the move because "the [Hezbollah] militia recruited young people [from the Gulf] for terrorist acts".

Hezbollah, a Shia political organisation with an armed wing, fights in neighbouring Syria to support the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Sunni-dominated GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Gulf nations have taken a series of measures against Hezbollah since Saudi Arabia last month halted a $4bn programme funding French military supplies to Beirut.

But the EU only considers Hizballah's "military wing" to be terrorist, not the entire organization as the GCC apparently does.

The Sunnis know what the EU refuses to believe - that there is no difference between Hizballah's "military" and "political" wings. And it is past time for the EU to act on that fact.

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