Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 07, 2016

This visit to Temple Mount upset Arabs even more than usual

Every day in the Arab media there are breathless stories about how a few dozen Jews had the audacity to ascend to their holiest site, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

But today the Arab media is claiming that a Jew managed to perform a wedding on the Temple Mount!

Fatah spokesman Raafat Alian warned that "the presence of settlers' feet for the wedding of their children inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque is a dangerous phenomenon that threatens to escalate tensions on the Mosque."

Alian said in a press release Monday that such a move is considered a new violation to be added to a series of violations of occupation against the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Other Palestinian officials are tripping over each other to condemn the "wedding."

What really happened?

Last Tuesday, Elyashiv Gopstein visited the Har HaBayit before his scheduled wedding that evening.

He is the son of Bentzi Gopstein, an activist for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount.

That's all that happened.

The Palestinians are so anxious to create crises over the Temple Mount that they take non-events and blow them up to become huge "violations".

You can watch the video of the visit: nothing happened. The only singing and dancing occurred after they left the holy spot.

Dozens of Arab media outlets are reporting on this "wedding." Do not be surprised when Jordan and the Arab League issue condemnations.

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.

03/07 Links Pt1: Palestinian incitement watchdog back on YouTube; '73 plot to assassinate Golda Meir

From Ian:

How the US foiled a Black September plot to assassinate Golda Meir

The Black September terrorist organization hatched a plot to assassinate then-prime minister Golda Meir during a visit to New York, a former National Security Analyst told a radio talk show on Sunday.
In 2009, news reports revealed that the plot by the group, an offshoot of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was uncovered by the NSA.
James J. Welsh, who was an NSA analyst of Palestinian communications, told weekend US talk show host and Breitbart Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein that Black September built three car bombs that it planned to detonate in three separate New York locations during Meir's trip to the city on March 4, 1973.
According to Welsh, one of the bombs was placed in El Al's cargo terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport. The other bombs were placed at locations in Manhattan.
“That could have been a really terrible situation had Golda Meir’s motorcade been passing by one of the vehicles parked alongside outside the airport,” Welsh told Klein.
“And then of course if she had visited over there in downtown New York, where those could have been detonated if the first bomb hadn’t succeeded.”
Welsh told Klein that it was "another intelligence agency that the US works with" – and not the NSA – that intercepted messages "from the Iraqi United Nations office to the Iraqi embassy in Washington."
These messages contained very specific details about the plot, including the precise locations of the bombs.

Carlos the Jackal says Switzerland protected the PLO

Carlos the Jackal, the Marxist guerrilla who became a symbol of Cold War anti-imperialism, has told a newspaper that he moved freely through Switzerland in the 1970s under a "non-aggression pact" between the government and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
He felt so safe that he flew to Zurich rather than Vienna airport on his way to neighboring Austria for his most spectacular coup: the kidnapping of oil ministers at OPEC headquarters in 1975, he told the Neue Zuercher Zeitung (NZZ) in a telephone interview from his prison in France.
His comments, published on Monday, seem sure to inflame a debate about whether Swiss authorities secretly agreed to turn a blind eye to PLO activity in the 1970s and give it diplomatic support in exchange for an end to attacks on Swiss targets.

Palestinian incitement watchdog back on YouTube

Less than a day after it was summarily kicked off YouTube, an Israeli media watchdog that reports on Palestinian incitement was back on the video platform on Monday.
The account of Palestinian Media Watch was closed on Sunday for violating YouTube’s terms of service, which include a prohibition on hate speech.
On Thursday, the organization posted a video showing a Palestinian girl reading a poem on official Palestinian Authority TV calling for “war that will smash the oppressor and destroy the Zionist’s soul.”
“I want to personally thank everyone who reached out to PMW and to YouTube,” the organization’s director, Itamar Marcus, said in a statement Monday, adding that “the cumulative effect of individual actions can make a difference.”
PMW said Sunday that the closure of its account was “a blow to the war on terror,” claiming “PMW’s exposure of Palestinian incitement and hate speech is recognized and used by parliaments and governments around the world.”

Songs promoting violence on PA TV: “Where is the Arab rage?” “I'm coming towards you, my enemy"

Editor of Arabic translation of "Protocols" delighted to see book at Cairo Airport shop

Mansour Abdelhakim, an author and editor of an edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (and the Masonic schemes of the Islamic world), was delighted when he spied his book being sold at a shop in the Cairo International Airport.

This is the new 8th edition of the book, introduced at the Cairo Book Fair last month:

Yes, we all know that the book is popular in the Arab world, but it is still jarring to see it - with its antisemitic motifs - on display prominently at an airport.

And still, people claim that antisemitism has nothing to do with Arab anti-Zionism.

(h/t Shawarma News)

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.

UNRWA school holds ceremony supporting stabbing Jews (updates)

On October 20, as Israelis were being stabbed and run over daily by Palestinians, the UNRWA Gaza City camp school "A" held a ceremony supporting the stabbings and car rammings.

Remember, even though the West characterizes the terror attacks as being prompted by general frustration at the "occupation," the Palestinian narrative has always been that the terror spree was purely meant to defend the Al Aqsa mosque from Jewish infiltration. The timing of this ceremony was specifically to support the wave of terror that was then reaching its height.

Here are some of the signs that the UNRWA students were proudly holding:

“We will live like flying hawks, and we will die like steadfast lions, and all of us for the Palestinian homeland”

“We heed your call, oh Al-Aqsa, our blood and souls we will sacrifice for you, oh Al-Aqsa”

“Jerusalem is our honor and glory, let us sacrifice for her our souls and all that is dear to us”

“My soul is a sacrifice for you, oh Al-Aqsa, Jerusalem is in our hearts, Al-Aqsa is in danger, everybody rise in order to save Jerusalem, let us join hands in order to liberate and save Jerusalem”

“Our eyes are on Jerusalem, we will perish and it will never be worthless”

“We heed your call, oh Al-Aqsa, our blood and souls we will sacrifice for you, oh Al-Aqsa”

“(We) are masters and not slaves, we are the ones from among whom a shahid is born everyday”

“If the Jews are the wind, the revolution is tornadoes”

[Left poster] “How can the light appear, if our blood would not be its fuel, and how could we regain Al-Aqsa if we would not be its soldiers”

This is not UNRWA teachers expressing their support for terror on Facebook, as bad as that is. This is UNRWA itself teaching its students to support stabbing Jews - and encouraging them to die in the process.

This is beyond disgusting. It is proof positive that despite UNRWA's denials, its schools are being used as a platform to teach hate and violence.

There is no oversight, there are no checks and balances, and the only reason we know about it is because all members of this particular school - principals, teachers and staff - were proud enough of teaching hate that they held a public ceremony celebrating and encouraging terror and putting it on Facebook. If this is what some UNRWA schools publish publicly, who knows what kinds of hate and antisemitism are being taught behind closed doors?

UNRWA pretends that it takes reports about abuses like this seriously. Its commissioner general said this last week, referring to me specifically. if that is true, then we should expect UNRWA to publicly denounce this ceremony and make a pledge to its donors to take specific, audited steps to ensure that things like this can never recur.

But history shows that this will never happen. The pages will be silently removed (I have made copies on public Internet archives) and UNRWA will stay silent. I have already shown institutional antisemitism at UNRWA schools and the organization has simply removed the evidence without admitting any wrongdoing.

UNRWA head Pierre Krähenbühl might claim to take these reports seriously, but all that means is that he will do everything possible to cover it up.

That is, unless the public, the media and the donors demand answers.

The pattern is clear. UNRWA employs anti-semites and terror supporters. Its schools teach hate. It shows no interest in solving the problem, only in covering them up. The time has come to demand that UNRWA face consequences for supporting and encouraging its students to commit terror acts.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

UPDATE: Matt Lee of AP asked the State Department spox to comment. They will check out this story and get back to him.

UPDATE 2: This was not an isolated case. UNRWA schools in Lebanon also held ceremonies to support the terror spree at the same time, officially and unofficially.

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.

Houthis force Jewish children to fight in Yemen, one killed

On Friday, Jewish 17-year old Aaron Albouha was killed in fighting with the Houthis against Saudi Arabian forces in Yemen. He was killed in the southern region of Najran.

Albouha's family, which had managed to escape Yemen for the US, were shocked to learn of his death, Arab media is reporting.

According to reports, the Houthis are forcing the few remaining Jews in Yemen, even children, to fight with them - and they are placing them on the front lines as cannon fodder.

Albouha is not the first Jew to be killed while being forced to fight for the Houthis. Jacob Ahamim was killed about a week ago at the Yemen/Saudi Arabia border.

The Iranian-backed Houthi slogan and logo says "God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Damn the Jews, Power to Islam."

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.

FULL VICTORY: McGraw-Hill rules politics textbook is wrong, will destroy all copies and issue refunds

Last week I exposed a college textbook, "Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World", that included The Map That Lies anti-Israel propaganda picture.

A number of people wrote to complain to the publisher, McGraw Hill, and to its credit, within a day the company said that they put all sales on hold pending review.

That review has apparently been completed over the weekend, and the book is being pulled from distribution and existing copies destroyed.. Mark Jacobs received this reply from the company on Sunday evening:

Thank you for your query about the map in Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World. As soon as we learned about the concerns with it, we placed sales of the book on hold and immediately initiated an academic review. The review determined that the map did not meet our academic standards. We have informed the authors and we are no longer selling the book. All existing inventory will be destroyed. We apologize and will refund payment to anyone who returns the book.

Kind Regards,
Paula O | Customer Service Representative | Customer Service
School Education, Higher Education, Professional
McGraw-Hill Education | 860 Taylor Station Road Blacklick, OH 43004

At the moment, the book is still on sale at many textbook and bookseller sites, although it was pulled immediately from the McGraw-Hill website. But I assume that is an issue of logistics.

Kudos to McGraw-Hill for working to resolve this quickly and professionally. They took this very seriously and really went above and beyond to reach an accurate conclusion and make this decision - on a weekend!

Send your thanks to McGraw-Hill customer service hep_customer-service@mheducation.com and to their Twitter account @mhhighered and @mheducation.

I am very happy that this blog was able to make a difference. If only all media would be as responsive as McGraw-Hill has been to being shown that they are disseminating inaccurate anti-Israel information.

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.

Ahmad Raissouni, vice president of International Union of Muslim Scholars, says Moroccan Jews who chose to emigrate to Israel are "traitors" and "criminals."

Raissouni, in an article on his official website, said that the Moroccan Jews who have left their country of Morocco and immigrated to Israel have taken part of their national homeland with them and had "betrayed their country of origin." If I am understanding correctly, he also accused them of making Israel look lik it is kind to them, another unforgivable crime.

Moreover, Raissouni said that Moroccan Jews in Israel had "betrayed the pro-Palestinian cause of the Moroccan people."

Raissouni praised the Moroccan Jews who have not left Morocco. He also said that it was possible that some of the Jews who moved to Israel were deceived by Zionists about the facts, and they would be welcome back to Morocco.

After he called them traitors.

One media outlet covering the story helpfully added that some of the Moroccan Jews in Israel carry weapons in order to kill Palestinians.

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.

The fallout in Iranian media after the Gulf Cooperation Council declared Hizballah a terrorist organization is fascinating.

Their only weapon is to call the Saudi-led group "Zionist." And that insult just doesn't do what it used to do:

A senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says allies of the Zionists have dubbed Lebanon’s resistance movement, Hezbollah, a terrorist organization.

“Those who have created a crisis in Syria and stood by the Zionists as their allies in different wars name Lebanon’s Hezbollah [a] terrorist [organization],” senior adviser to Leader’s representative to the IRGC, Brigadier General Yadollah Javani, said on Saturday.

On Wednesday, the six-nation [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council issued a statement labeling Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The bloc, comprising Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait, however, did not provide any evidence for its allegations.

Javani said the Arab bloc’s groundless accusation against the resistance group is a self-harming act and a strategic mistake that would discredit the council.

He emphasized that Hezbollah is a popular movement which has been formed to confront the Israeli regime, defend Lebanon’s territorial integrity and protect rights of Muslim nations.

The IRGC commander said the [P]GCC move to declare Hezbollah a terrorist body clearly shows that the Arab bloc is following in the footsteps of the Zionists, adding that their act is in line with fulfilling the demands of the United States.

They try to make it look like most of the Arab world objects to the GCC declaration, and fail big time:

Algeria refused to classify the movement as a terrorist organization. Palestinian resistance movement, Islamic Jihad, also praised Hezbollah as a resistance movement which has a history in the struggle against the Zionist entity as well as in supporting the Palestinian cause. Iran, Syria and Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah movement have also slammed the move by the [P]GCC.

There were also condemnations of the move by Hizballah's second in command by from Iran's foreign minister Zarif.

When the average Arab who opposes Iranian meddling in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq reads these over the top reactions, they probably think that being Zionist isn't such a bad thing compared to being a supporter of Iran,

(Iranian media is also reporting that "unnamed American officials" are warning Hizballah that Israel is planning to attack Lebanon.)

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.

03/06 Links: PMW YouTube acc "terminated" for exposing PA hate; Confronting Tamimi at Berkeley

From Ian:

PMW YouTube account "terminated" for exposing PA hate speech

Dear PMW subscribers,
Following Palestinian Media Watch's release of a video on Thursday in which a Palestinian girl read a poem on official PA TV calling for "war that will smash the oppressor and destroy the Zionist's soul," YouTube "terminated" PMW's account for violating their "terms of service," which includes hate speech. The terminated account, https://www.youtube.com/user/palwatch/, contains nearly all of PMW's videos.
We urge anyone with contacts at Google or YouTube to contact them and request that PMW's account be reinstated. Others can send a message to YouTube by clicking the "Send feedback" link at the bottom of YouTube's homepage.
It is outrageous that YouTube closed PMW's account, which is a blow to the war on terror. This is particularly dangerous now while Israel is fighting a war against Palestinian terror. PMW documentation on PMW's YouTube account shows the PA and Fatah leaders' support and promotion of the terror.
PMW's exposure of Palestinian incitement and hate speech is recognized and used by parliaments and governments around the world. On Friday, a 25-minute debate took place in Swedish Parliament in which the PA's support for the current terror was discussed, and the proof was based entirely on PMW documentation - most of which is no longer accessible on PMW's YouTube account.
PMW is urging YouTube to immediately reinstate PMW's account and all PMW videos, and is calling to our subscribers to help put pressure on Google.

Confronting Bassem Tamimi at UC Berkeley

Some Jews, apparently are tired of being a "model minority".
Bassem Tamini, an anti-Israel activist from Nabi Saleh may be best known as the man who takes his young children to anti-Israel riots, in hopes of creating a viral photo op. He's the dad of the notorious pre-pubescent "Shirley Temper", budding star of ubiquitous Pallywood productions.
Tamimi took his dog and pony show on the road last autumn, promoted widely by the usual suspects. He had several Bay area appearances, soliciting donations. (only cash- no checks)
On Oct 2 Tamimi spoke in small classroom in UC Berkeley's Wheeler Hall, sparsely attended by several dozen people.
Showing astonishing bravery, a young man entered the classroom and confronted Tamini about his history of terror, antisemitism and even murder. It was a move straight from the playbook of the Israel haters. (h/t Bob Knot)

How Israel will win the public diplomacy war

It is rare for a newspaper column to read as a “how to” manual. But in this case, I have no choice – frustration has reached an all-time high.
We know that if Israel laid down its arms it would be destroyed, while if Hamas would drop its arms, and the Palestinian Authority would stop the incitement, there would be peace in Israel. We know that Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East, and the only country in the region that provides equal rights for all people regardless of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation.
And yet, despite this, data presented to me at a recent meeting with one of the top polling companies in the United States shows that we are failing to convey this reality.
In the poll conducted just two weeks ago, only 39 percent of US college students said that they believe that Israel is a civilized, Western country; only 31% of them believe Israel is a democratic country; and as a result of not telling our story properly, a mere 28% of college students believe that the United States should side with Israel in the current conflict.
This is an all-time low.
But it gets worse: 21% believe that the US should side with the Palestinians! Furthermore, among a category of people labeled as “opinion elite” in the US, 38% believe that Israel is a racist country, 48% say that Israel is responsible for human rights abuses, and 45% believe Israel is practicing apartheid on Palestinian land.
Only 67% of those “opinion elite” in the US believe that Israel wants peace with its neighbors. (In Canada that number drops to 43% and in the United Kingdom it’s 36%); 46% believe that Israeli “occupation” results in more terrorism in the US; and 19% believe that boycotts against Israel are justified.
And finally, given all of the above, it is not surprising to learn that 17% of Jewish college students refuse to advocate for Israel.

Cinnamon Stillwell, in a recent piece entitled SFSU's Defafening Silence on Partnership with Palestinian University, reminds us that San Francisco State University is among the most racist universities on the planet.

She writes:

Late last year, during the ongoing frenzy of violence directed at Israelis known as the “stabbing intifada,” 20-year-old Maram Hassoneh was killed in her second attempted knife attack on IDF soldiers manning a checkpoint. Hassoneh, a devout Muslim, was a top English student at An-Najah University in the West Bank city of Nablus. Described by Hamas as “greenhouse for martyrs,” An-Najah may very well be San Francisco State University (SFSU)’s first academic partner in the Arab and Muslim world.

Under the leadership of Rabab Abdulhadi, director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED) and a founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, SFSU reportedly established a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with An-Najah in 2014. Though there is no official corroboration of the relationship other than a recommendation in the All-University Committee on International Programs annual report (which Abdulhadi touted on Facebook), An-Najah claimed in a statement at its website last year that the MOU was signed on September 10, 2014, while a 2015 Xpress Magazine interview with Abdulhadi presented it as a fait accompli.

I wrote about this in a piece from April of last year entitled, San Francisco State Partners with Violently Anti-Jewish Arab University. An-Najah is perhaps the most viciously racist college campus in the world and this is who SFSU chooses to partner with?

It is a disgrace and an insult to every Jew on that campus and any Jewish person, or friend of Jewish people, who ever gave a dime in donations to that school.

Here is a little tid-bit that Stillwell was kind enough to leave out of her piece. The grotesque shrine "celebrating" the Sbarro massacre at An-Najah University.

This 2001 video is only about a minute and a half long, but if you watch it you will see where people entering the exhibit wiped their feet on the Israeli and American flags. There is also an image of Ariel Sharon with blood dripping from his mouth. Whatever else this video might demonstrate it is certainly not a memorial for the innocent dead.

It is the glorification of the spilling of Jewish blood and the destruction of Jewish lives.

One question to ask yourself is, how is it that of all the colleges and universities throughout the Arab-Muslim world this is the one that SFSU chooses to partner with? It might be that professors like Rabab Abdulhadi - "the director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED) and a founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel" - believe that SFSU could be a moderating influence upon a university that verges on the violently psychopathic. It might be that SFSU is simply trying to do good in a highly naive Obama sort-of way.

Or, maybe not.

It could also be that the SFSU administration concurs with An-Najah University's anti-Zionism.

SFSU put up a mural of the famous anti-Semitic anti-Zionist Edward Said just around the corner from Malcolm X Plaza on that campus. Given this glorification of the deceased anti-Zionist professor out of Columbia University the only conclusion that one can come to is that the SFSU administration looks in favor upon Said's work and is, therefore, highly sympathetic with the movement to strip Jewish people of the means for self-determination and self-defense.

In either case, SFSU is very definitely not friendly territory for Jewish people, however much the Jewish Studies Department might strenuously disagree.

From a personal perspective, as an alumnus with a Master's Degree in American History from that university, it seems to me that SFSU is trying to have things both ways. They want to remain true to their radical roots, but at the same time they want inclusivity and multiculturalism to define their academic culture. The problem is that the radical Left today, and there are few more radically-left universities in the United States than SFSU, is exceedingly hostile toward Israel and, thus, necessarily, hostile toward Jews, in general.

They will insist otherwise, but the slop-over is inevitable and already happening.

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.

Lawsuit alleges conspiracy to legitimize Judaism and Israel in Grand Egyptian Museum

The president of Egypt, the heads of antiquities authority and cultural authorities and and others responsible for a major Egyptian museum under construction are being sued for allegedly showing Egypt's allegiance to Israel and Jews.

When completed, the Grand Egyptian Museum is going to be one of the largest museums in the world.

In what must be one of the most bizarre lawsuits in history, the plaintiff Ahmed Mohamed Mohamed Awad has listed charges that point to the idea that the museum is a Trojan horse meant to tell visitors and Egyptians that ancient Egyptian civilization was really built by Jews and that the Egyptians are under the control of Israel.

Here are the major charges in the lawsuit:

Those who planned the architecture wanted to change the “identity of the characteristics of ancient and modern Egyptian civilization”.
Through its architecture, those who planned the museum wanted to legitimize “the Sons of Israel” on Egyptian soil and the Jews’ (false) claim that they were the ones who built the ancient Egyptian civilization.
The architecture confirms the (false) Jewish claims about the existence of Solomon’s Temple beneath the Al-Aqsa mosque, in order to continue with its destruction, in order to reach their alleged Temple and thus confirm their historic right to their presence on the conquered Palestinian lands.
The wall of one of the corners that points towards Cairo, if extended, would reach the Wailing Wall and another wall reaches the oldest Jewish cemetery in the world (which is in Cairo). The cemetery is important historically for the Sons of Israel because it confirms their presence in Egypt since the beginning of the ninth century BC.
The museum’s location, its design and its measurements make its horizontal angles reach the center of the Wailing Wall and Yad Vashem.
Ditto the second stage of the construction, which was photographed using Google Earth, one of the walls “undoubtedly” points toward the Wailing Wall and the cemetery.
Those who planned the museum deliberately planned it so that one of the angles between two walls is 27 degrees which somehow confirms a claim made by some studies that the Jews built the largest pyramid, because one of the passages inside the pyramid goes upwards in 27 degrees as well, and it’s exactly the number of the degrees that point from the pyramid to the Wailing Wall, anti-clockwise (whatever that means.)
The decorations on the two main facades of the museum leave the impression that they appear to show the Star of David.
There is a complicated explanation (consisting of five points) of how the museum’s design represents the Exodus of Jews from Egypt, after allegedly building the Egyptian civilization:
The statue of Ramses II, who is associated by the Jews with the Exodus, will be placed, according to the plan, in a way that it will face towards the Wailing Wall.
The same is true for the statues of all the great ancient kings of Egypt.
The museum is divided into 6 inner spaces with 7 walls that represent the Menorah, which in turn represents God’s eye that protected the Jews at the time of the Exodus.
The planners intended to place palm trees in front of the museum, although these palms hide the museum. These palm trees are supposed to represent the seventy palm trees that the Jews found on their way to the Promised Land that sustained them.
The architectural design resembles or matches that of the Holocaust museums in Berlin and Jerusalem, a Jewish cultural center in San Francisco and Solomon’s Temple. This architectural design is meant to confirm the presence of the Sons of Israel in ancient Egypt and their Exodus from the area of the Giza pyramids.

It seems that the court ruled to stop the building until an “expert” checks the above mentioned claims, and 2,000 Egyptian pounds were paid to some “expert/s” to check them.

This is not the first time that Awad has attempted to stop the construction of this museum, which started in 2002. In 2012, perhaps when the lawsuit was initiated, he mentioned most of these charges and also alleged that the architect was Jewish and had studied under other Jews who had designed the "Holocaust museum" in Israel.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

03/05 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]