Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, March 06, 2016

Hamas ties to Islamic State now undeniable

Since ISIS burst onto the scene, Israel's leaders have made the case that Hamas and ISIS are two sides of the same coin.

And critics have disparaged the idea vehemently, pointing out that Hamas was acting against extremist jihadist groups in Gaza.

Egyptian sources have been warning about Hamas for years, and the nation declared Hamas to be a terrorist group last year. Again, Hamas' defenders dismissed the idea, pointing out that Hamas has denied any ties and wants to maintain a close relationship with Egypt.

Recent events have shown that not only are Hamas and ISIS two sides of the same coin - they are actively cooperating.

TOI reports:

The Egyptian soldiers stationed on the border of the Gaza Strip have encountered this sight more than once in the past few weeks: Hamas-owned bulldozers and tractors appear and begin excavations on the border with the Sinai Peninsula.

Despite promises to Cairo that Hamas is not engaged in the smuggling trade with the Islamic State’s Sinai affiliate, the bulldozers are digging tunnels in broad daylight, to the astonishment of the Egyptians, to boost the smuggling from and to Sinai that has recently been compromised.

These bulldozers approach the border, and then abruptly disappear underground, according to sources in the Gaza Strip. Several seconds later, they exit the tunnels, loaded with dirt, and unload it not far from the excavation site.

And even if Cairo gave the workers the benefit of the doubt and thought they could be working without the knowledge of Hamas, the sight of them taking “coffee breaks” at Hamas security positions, right in front of the Egyptian soldiers’ eyes, dispels any notion that the Strip’s rulers aren’t behind what’s going on.

The heavy digging shows the cooperation between the terror group and the IS group is seemingly only getting stronger. Hamas continues to dig tunnels into Sinai, using its heavy machinery. At the same time, the Sinai branch of the Islamic State and Hamas are trying to build a permanent and organized channel to evacuate the wounded IS fighters into Gaza. This is on top of sending Gazan fighters to Sinai, as was recently reported by The Times of Israel.

Sources in the Gaza Strip said that last week, one of the Islamic State’s primary smugglers in Sinai, Ibrahim Abu al-Kariya, a Bedouin resident of Sinai, visited the Strip. His goal was to meet with senior officials in Hamas’ armed wing to facilitate the evacuations of the wounded, through the tunnels, in a more orderly fashion.

The IS fighters do not have access to medical care in the peninsula, since the Egyptian government and security forces control the hospitals, hence their need for hospitalization in Gaza.

Hamas’s military wing, under the leadership of Muhammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar, accompany them from the moment they enter the Strip, hospitalize them under assumed identities, and take care of their every need. Moreover, al-Kariya coordinates the transfer of fighters – most of whom identify with Salafists, but at least some of whom were Hamas fighters until recently.

In the past month, two former Hamas members went from the Strip to Sinai, Mohammed Sami and Mahmoud Zinet. The two are allegedly aligned with the Salafists, such that Hamas can renounce them if need be. Yet they went to Sinai with their former commanders’ knowledge.

Al-Kariya is responsible for smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip, and in exchange, he receives money, weapons manufactured in Gaza, and the military know-how of those former Hamas fighters who went to fight in Sinai. Hamas is fully aware of this phenomenon, according to the sources in Gaza, and they view the cooperation with the jihadists as critical to their interests.

This is in stark contrast to the view of the political wing, which opposes it and demanded that they end this collaboration.

Last week came confirmation of the relationship between Hamas and ISIS from a leaked internal ISIS letter, reported by MEMRI;

On February 24, 2016, a letter from an Islamic State (ISIS) fighter to ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was posted on social media. In it, the fighter strongly protests the close ties and cooperation between ISIS's Sinai province and Hamas, particularly Hamas's military wing.

This letter is the first confirmation of ties between the two organizations that comes from ISIS itself, and a unique firsthand account of the nature of these ties. It appears that the document was not meant for circulation outside ISIS, and to have been leaked by Al-Qaeda supporters.

The letter ... explains the areas in which the groups collaborate: ISIS fighters in Sinai are smuggling weapons into Gaza for Hamas; Hamas is producing weapons and explosive devices for ISIS Sinai; Hamas is providing logistical assistance to ISIS Sinai, including communications systems and hospitalization for its wounded fighters in Gaza; and ISIS Sinai officials are visiting Gaza and dining at the homes of Hamas government and military wing officials.

The Washington Institute reported on specific cooperation between the groups last December:

Over the past two years, IS Sinai helped Hamas move weapons from Iran and Libya through the peninsula, taking a generous cut from each shipment. Hamas relies on Bedouin guides to avoid detection by the Egyptian army and reach the few tunnels that have survived Cairo's aggressive flooding and closure campaign. In this manner, IS Sinai acquired the advanced Kornet antitank missiles it has used to sink an Egyptian patrol boat off the coast of al-Arish and destroy several tanks and armored carriers stationed in the peninsula's northeastern sector. Hamas has also provided training to some IS Sinai fighters and assisted with the group's media campaign and online postings.

One of the main Hamas officials involved in this activity is Ayman Nofal, former commander of the IDQB's Central District Brigade. Prior to his 2008 arrest by Egyptian authorities, he was in charge of developing Hamas's system of safe houses and collaborators among the Bedouins. He managed to escape from a Cairo prison in 2011 during the riots accompanying the Arab Spring and soon resumed his work in Sinai.

All these reports make clear that it is the military wing of Hamas that is actively working with ISIS, and it is the political wing that is issuing statements denying any such cooperation.

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PLO switches from against BDS to pro-BDS

Last month:

The Paris City Council adopted two nonbinding resolutions condemning attempts to boycott Israel, which are illegal in France.

The two resolutions, one submitted by the Socialist-led coalition of Mayor Anne Hidalgo and the other by center-right members of the City Council, were adopted Tuesday, according to the French-language Muslim news website saphirnews.com.

One of the resolutions said the City of Paris “opposes publicly all attempts to isolate Israel from the collective of nations,” and also reaffirmed the city’s “commitment to the promotion of a peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israel conflict.”

Both resolutions named the BDS movement specifically, stating that the city objects to its goals.

So the PLO trotted out Saeb Erekat to issue his denunciation of the move:

The Palestinians accuse the Paris municipality of attacking freedom of expression and promoting Israel’s settlement policy after the assembly recently adopted two resolutions condemning attempts to boycott Israel.

“Condemning a legitimate and non-violent movement against apartheid racist policies… actively supports the ongoing colonization enterprise,” writes senior PLO official Saeb Erekat to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

I found this mentioned in a couple of French articles...and that was it.

Western media is starting to get as sick of Palestinian whining as Arab governments are.

However, there is something newsworthy about Erekat's pathetic complaints.

As recently as 2014, the Palestinian Authority was against BDS and Abbas said this explicitly in 2013, saying he supported boycotts of products made by Jews in the territories but not boycotts of Israel within the 1949 lines. BDS activists said that the PA should be put on trial for opposing BDS!

Since then, the PLO has changed its strategy to be even more hawkish - yet no Western media report on this.

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03/05 Links: What the Anti-Israel Boycotters are Saying When They Think We’re Not Listening

From Ian:

David Collier: What the Anti-Israel Boycotters are Saying When They Think We’re Not Listening

How does a person decide to support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel? As someone who understands the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, supporting Israel seems to be the natural position to take. Shared values of democracy, freedom, and tolerance make backing Israel an easy decision. And yet, we now see ostensibly freedom-loving movements throughout the West turn their backs on the only state in the Middle East where the existence of these very movements is tolerated.
It is true that there are issues of democracy and freedom between Israel and the Arabs. It is possible to argue that refugees exist in squalor, that Palestinian children have died, that the conflict seems endless, and that Israel is the stronger party. But none of these suggest that Israel is the cause of the conflict, nor that it is in Israel’s hands to provide a solution. In fact, as a democratic state with a market economy that seeks foreign investment, Israel has strong motivation to avoid conflict and war. History has taught us that such nations tend to seek peace at almost any cost.
But this means nothing to supporters of BDS, because the movement is entirely based on the manipulation and distortion of the truth. If you engage with BDS supporters and directly challenge them, their response is usually little more than an illogical pack of lies. If someone you know is thinking about supporting BDS, why is it so hard to “show them the truth”?
The simple answer is that BDS is a movement that has reached its verdict beforehand. It does not ask if Israel is guilty. Instead, it seeks to determine the correct punishment for a “criminal” that is already condemned. So when you respond to a potential BDS supporter with facts, you are simply irrelevant to them. It is like bringing evidence to a sentencing hearing that should have been presented during the trial itself. You are simply too late.
Recently, I have heard more than my fair share of lies about Jews and lies about Israel. However, what is different about the recent events I have witnessed is that I have seen how these lies are created.

U.S. Enabling Bias at UNHRC

The hypocrisy stems from the fact that members of the UNHRC’s governing council contain some of the world’s most egregious human rights abusers. Most of the countries that were mentioned in Blinken’s address as violators of human rights are also part of the council. That means that rather than investigate Russia, China, Cuba or Saudi Arabia, to name just a few of the worst offenders, the council exists to protect them from scrutiny. Hypocrisy isn’t just an ever-present element of life at the UNHRC. It is its engine.
That means that rather than act as a watchdog for human rights or even a driving force for helping the oppressed peoples of the world the UNHRC is instead essentially the diplomatic bodyguard for dictators.
But there is one issue that the UNHRC works hard to promote: the plight of the Palestinians. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it tries to promote peace with Israel or an end to terrorism. Instead, it supports terror campaigns against the Jewish state. It devotes a disproportionate amount of its time creating resolutions and setting up committees and writing reports aimed at delegitimizing the Jewish state’s right of self-defense. Its reports on the last two wars fought between Israel and Hamas over the latter’s terror attacks have been travesties that didn’t even bother with a pretense of objectivity. They solely condemned Israel while ignoring Hamas’ firing of thousands of rockets at Israeli cities, its use of terror tunnels to kidnap and murder Israelis or its use of the population of Gaza as human shields.
At the same time that it works overtime attacking Israel, the UNHRC hasn’t done much that is effective about a real human rights catastrophe next door in Syria where hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions made refugees. To the contrary, as with most UN efforts, it has failed the people of Syria.
The argument for staying in the UNHRC has always been that the U.S. could accomplish more by staying in it than by boycotting it. But the systematic bias against the one Jewish state on the planet is not an exception to an otherwise fine record but actually key to understanding why it does little to advance human rights. By diverting the UN’s attention to an embattled democracy that tries to save the lives even of its foes, the UNHRC does more to harm that cause than to help it. Moreover, by giving it the imprimatur of U.S. participation, the administration has legitimized the very anti-Semitism that it says it wishes to oppose.
Among the priorities of the next president ought to be a revisiting of the decision to stay in the UNHRC. The argument for staying in was always unpersuasive. But the longer the U.S. sits alongside human rights abusers on this council, the more it will be complicit in the problem.

Political correctness, not terrorism, is the biggest threat to the west, says terror expert

“We are where France and the UK were 10 years ago.”
Mass sexual assaults by migrants from Muslim countries in European cities on New Year’s Eve have resulted in Europe’s political leadership toughening their stance on immigration. “It’s nothing new,” said Thomas Quiggin, terrorism and security expert. “It’s been going on for awhile, but fearful of being called racists, nobody talks about it and it’s just now coming out.” Government officials and the mainstream press have tried to cover up the “Taharrush”, a practice of encircling, groping and sometimes raping women.
But in Cologne alone so many attackers -approximately 1000 migrant men, and the number of complainants, 1,075, forced public acknowledgement of the problem.
Barely reported, even before the migrant flood, crime was rampant among asylum seekers, ranging from sexual assaults, a disproportionate number of rapes to purse snatches, 90 percent of them by males in their 20’s from North Africa or the Balkans.
From 2003 on, in Rotherham, England, everyone know that a gang of Muslim men were sexually enslaving mostly white girls, 11-15, but nobody would talk, terrified of being accused of racism. The one city councillor, a Pakistani Muslim who wanted to expose them ,was shut down and ostracized “Nobody wanted to rock the multi-cultural boat,” Quiggin said.
There are no-go zones in France and England where non Muslims do not enter. Europeans are protesting that their countries have changed and they don’t feel safe. France, Quiggin reported, has 10,000 soldiers posted permanently on the streets.
With Canada’ s rash promise of bringing in 50,000 Syrian migrants, whose security is impossible to screen adequately, could we be the Europe of 10 years ago, posed Quiggin. The US Senate in homeland security hearings in December, raised questions about Canada’s plan, informed by intelligence agencies that there are jihadists planted among the migrants.

03/04 Links Pt2: Anti-Semitism in Europe ‘The devil that never dies’; BDS Connection To Terrorism

From Ian:

Anti-Semitism in Europe: ‘The devil that never dies’

The paragraph, read out loud by one of the world’s foremost scholars of the Holocaust, chilled the audience.
“Contaminated by the monstrous and rooted ‘certitude’ that in this catastrophic and absurd world there exists a people chosen by God … the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner,” read Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, at a Georgetown University conference Monday (Feb. 29) on anti-Semitism in Europe.
“Israel seizes hold of the terrible words of God in Deuteronomy: ‘Vengeance is mine, and I will be repaid,'” he continued. “Israel in short is a racist state by virtue of Judaism’s monstrous doctrines, racist not just against the Palestinians but against the entire world.”
Goldhagen stopped reading.
“Now, if I told you that these were the words of a Hamas leader, or any number of Middle Eastern political officials, or movement leaders, you wouldn’t be very surprised,” he said. “But these were the words of Jose Saramago, the Nobel Prize-winning author, as published in 2002 in El Pais, the paper of record of Spain.”
This diatribe against the Jews, printed in one of Europe’s leading mainstream newspapers, came before the most recent spike in anti-Semitism across the continent, the subject of the daylong conference sponsored by Georgetown University’s new Center for Jewish Civilization.

Lessons in Anti-Semitism with Max Blumenthal

Last Wednesday I had the misfortune of attending a presentation by the notorious American journalist Max Blumenthal. Hosted and organized by the Toronto Public Library, together with PEN Canada and a shady anti-Israeli organization called Independent Jewish Voices, the event was supposed to promote free speech and understanding of different points of view. In his introduction, the president of PEN even mentioned by name two Bangladeshi secular bloggers who received numerous threats and eventually were hacked to death by Muslim extremists.
However, the presentation itself had more to do with defending the views of the Muslim murderers. It was puzzling that of all authors in the world the organizers picked as a keynote speaker Max Blumenthal, a man whose views hardly advance free speech. To add insult to the injury, the organizers and especially the representative of the library, stated in the beginning that no photography and recording were allowed during the event, which defied its purpose. They obviously couldn’t grasp the irony of having a free speech event that must be kept secret. But when you consider the views of Blumenthal and the fact that the format was a conversation with Olivia Ward from the Toronto Star, Canada’s most biased lefty newspaper, it wasn’t surprising that they tried to prevent the public from learning more about the discussion.

Daphne Anson: A Traveller in Eurabia

Canadian broadcaster Ezra Levant recently went to some of those countries of northern Europe that are rapidly becoming hell-holes for Jews (as well as for women and girls), thanks to "cultural enrichment".
Look, if you can bear to, at what he found. [3 episodes, Malmo, Cologne]

SPECIAL REPORT: Does Ezra's fact-finding trip to Europe reveal Canada's future?

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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