Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, March 09, 2016

The Las Vegas debate between J St and RJC is a failure before it begins

Tonight, there will be a much ballyhooed event in Las Vegas:

As described in the Jewish Journal last month:

The Republican Jewish Coalition and J Street are set to put aside their political differences for a brief pause to discuss the U.S.-Israel relationship next month in Las Vegas, according to a news release.In a first-of-its-kind event, J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami and Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks will appear together on March 9th at Temple Beth Sholom to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the relationship between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the policy preferences and beliefs of Jewish Americans, according to the organizers.PBS’ Jon Ralston will serve as moderator.The two organizations were on opposite sides of the aisle in last summer’s debate over the Iran nuclear agreement. J Street and the RJC are also fighting over the control of Congress in 2016, both invested in winning Congressional seats in battleground states across the country. J Street’s PAC has already announced it will spend as much as $3 million in over 100 local races across the country, challenging incumbents who have opposed the deal, while RJC aims to combat J Street race for race, and support the Republican incumbents.

The framing of this event is flawed and it cannot result in anything good for the American Jewish community.

The entire discussion is framed as a Democratic versus Republican discussion. Both Ben Ami and Brooks have a vested interest in keeping the event framed this way - Brooks because he wants to siphon Jews from the Democrats and Ben Ami because he wants to appear as if he is representing the Democratic pro-Israel center.

But this is false. Ben-Ami represents a fringe part of the Democratic Party. His J-Street is funding Democratic candidates who support the disastrous policies of the Obama White House - against Zionist, loyal Democrats who passionately oppose those policies. Where do they fit in this discussion?

Jeremy Ben Ami consistently claims that J-Street, by being for a two-state solution, is representative of the mainstream of American Jewish opinion. But even AIPAC and Bibi Netanyahu support a two-state solution. Ben Ami represents only the far Left view of "Israel is always wrong" - but that fact will not be revealed.

Ben-Ami is way out of the pro-Israel mainstream when he insists on the Green Line as being the start of all negotiations and the presumption that Jews have no rights in Judea and Samaria. (A truly pro-Israel supporter of the two state solution would want to keep as much of Judea and Samaria as possible as a beginning negotiating position and let the parties hammer out the details. Demanding that hundreds of thousands of Jews be ethnically cleansed from their homeland ab initio, and that Israel return to being nine miles wide, is not a pro-Israel position.)

Ben Ami is way out of the pro-Israel mainstream when he insists that Jerusalem be divided and the holy sites given to those who would happily slaughter any Jews who want to visit them.

Ben Ami is way out of the pro-Israel mainstream when his entire organization anti-democracy. J-Street is based on the idea that Israelis don't know what is good for them and that their democratically elected leaders are fanatics who must be taught a lesson about peace from their wise cousins who live thousands of miles away. J Street's entire purpose is to marginalize Israelis and tell the US to pressure Israel (and only Israel) to make more and more concessions for a peace deal while asking nothing from the Palestinians (and giving them veto power over any agreement that doesn't suit them.)

You can support a two-state solution - eliminating the demographic issues and minimizing the security issues - without starting negotiations from a position of giving everything up to begin with. But not according to J-Street.

These issues are what need to be debated with Jeremy Ben Ami - how he is betraying and misrepresenting Jewish American liberal Zionist positions as his own.

But that debate will not occur, because his opponent will happily agree that mainstream Jewish Democrats believe the same extreme positions as Ben Ami.

Look at Jeremy Ben Ami's Twitter feed. You will not find a single time that he has defended Israel. Ever. He has never defended its actions, its army, its leadership, or even its people against the lies and slanders. On the contrary, he has contributed much to the lies and half-truths about Israel. He is not pro-Israel no matter how many times he says he is. That is what must be discussed - how Ben Ami is not pro-Israel nor pro-democracy even from the perspective of liberal Jews.

But Brooks has no incentive to strengthen bipartisan support for Israel. He wants everyone to become Republican. That's his job.

The way that both sides approach the event is described in Jewish Insider:

Matt Brooks: ”When Jeremy and I meet tonight I look forward to a very engaging conversation on what it means to be pro-Israel in today’s climate and how we as a community can be most effective in representing the issues of concern within the Jewish community. There is a big difference in the views and tactics of RJC and J Street and tonight’s conversation will highlight and showcase those differences in a way that the community can discern and choose which is most effective and in the best interest of the Jewish people. This will be a civil discourse but no doubt I’m sure that we’ll see some real fireworks. The stakes are now more important than ever.”

Jeremy Ben-Ami writes… “My case is straightforward, based on data and experience from decades of national elections: Jewish voters support candidates who best reflect the values on which they were raised and policy positions that advance those values. Most Jewish voters support policies that make Israel safer not just against rockets but against some of the more fundamental threats to its future as a democratic Jewish homeland… Looking at the Republican field and particularly the present front-runner, I don’t envy Mr. Brooks — putting the metaphoric football down to yet again make the case that, yes, Charlie Brown, this is the year Jewish Americans will switch their allegiance to the Republican Party.”

So these issues which are vital to be exposed will instead be hidden. The mostly liberal Jewish audience will not be aware that they are being given a false choice between J-Street's disguised anti-Israel positions and those of a party that very possibly will be represented by Donald Trump (a theme that Ben Ami is anxious to hammer tonight.)

We do not need another reason to turn the question for support for Israel into a Republican vs. Democrat issue.

But that is inevitably going to happen tonight, and the losers will be a huge chunk of the American Jewish community who want to support Israel but do not want to vote Republican. And that is way too big a prize to sacrifice on the altar of partisan politics between J Street and the RJC.

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Iran Offers Jews Blood Of Homosexuals For Matzah (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Tehran, March 9 - In the spirit of what it called religious tolerance for the minorities within its borders, the Islamic Republic of Iran announced today that it would supply the Persian Jewish community at no cost with all the blood it needs to prepare unleavened bread for Passover this year, citing the availability of a large number of homosexuals to be executed. Passover begins the night of April 22 this year.

Ayatollah Edwar Davnorweesh of the Isfahan Religious District sent a notice to the leaders of Iran's 9,000-strong Jewish community that the recent uptick in hangings and beheadings of gay men in the country meant that the government was in position of being able to supply hundreds of liters of human blood for purposes of preparing matza, and that the Jews would not need to furtively murder non-Jews this year in order to obtain the liquid.

"Our efforts to purify our land of homosexual scum have afforded us the opportunity to foster religious tolerance and enable others to follow their traditions at the same time," the announcement read. "The alacrity with which our enforcement mechanisms have apprehended, tried, and meted out the appropriate sentence to deviants has enabled us to offer, free of charge, all of the blood we can drain from the criminals' bodies to our cherished Jewish community for purposes of kneading into matza, as everyone knows is their ancient practice."

Davnorweesh promised that given the higher risk of homosexual blood containing HIV, it would be tested before being supplied to matza bakers. He expressed bewilderment that those facilities were not equipped with tanks to hold non-Jewish blood, and offered to provide that equipment as well if necessary.

Jewish leaders have yet to respond to the overture, which may or may not have been extended in good faith, according to analyst Maha Rahl, who studies Jewish-Iranian relations. "It's hard to shake the feeling there's something cynical going on on the part of the regime," she said. "At the same time, it would be unwise for this minority community to reject such a gesture. Their welfare is at the mercy of the Ayatollahs, and getting on the bad side of a newly empowered hardline government may not be the wisest thing when every move by the community is scrutinized for signs that they do not show enough gratitude for not being persecuted more, or, worse, hints of Zionism."

Community officials declined to answer questions regarding the possibility that homosexual blood might be unacceptable under Jewish ritual law.

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03/09 Links Pt1: Jaffa terror victim was US Army vet, MBA student; Fatah celebrates murder of American

From Ian:

Avni: Terror shouldn’t be rewarded

Making sense of death is a near-impossible task. But with more than four months having passed since the brutal murder of my father, Richard Lakin, a dual citizen of both Israel and the United States, some things have become clear to me.
Firstly, the evil of terrorism does not discriminate, striking down the very best of people.
Secondly, terror does not occur in a vacuum. More than 30 Israelis have been killed during the latest wave of violence, almost half murdered by Palestinians aged 20 or under — children who have been indoctrinated to kill through poisonous incitement.
Thirdly, and perhaps most unequivocally, my father’s treasured values of coexistence, equality and peace must not be allowed to perish with him.
You would be hard-pressed to find a greater advocate for peace and coexistence than my father. As a young man in Connecticut, he pioneered the integration of the school at which he served as principal, and marched alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights struggle.
Our family has been following the terrible events of the past few months closely. With every attack we relive the nightmare and ask ourselves the same question: What causes a teenager to grab a knife and butcher an innocent civilian? As my father well understood, people are not born with hate, it is inculcated.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas must shoulder much of the blame. He has shamelessly endorsed the actions of countless terrorists, praising their “martyrdom.” He even made a condolence call to the family of Bahaa Allyan, one of the two young terrorists who murdered my father.
Last month I wrote to President Obama, urging him to condemn Abbas’ visit to the parents of the terrorist who murdered my father, and to call upon Abbas to curtail the wanton incitement that is fueling this wave of terror. I know that Vice President Joe Biden, who will be visiting Israel soon, shares the same values as my father. I am sure that he too will take the simple message of my father’s book, “Teaching As an Act of Love,” and convey it to President Abbas: “Every child is a miracle,” a miracle that should be nurtured with love, not hatred.

Jaffa terror victim was US Army vet, Vanderbilt student

The American tourist killed in Tuesday’s terror attack in Tel Aviv was identified as 29-year-old Taylor Force, a graduate student at Vanderbilt University, the school said in a statement.
Force, a Lubbock, Texas native, was killed and at least 10 people were injured Tuesday evening when a Palestinian man carried out a stabbing spree in Jaffa. Five of the injured were described as being in critical condition.
The attack was the third of the day; two policemen were badly hurt in a Jerusalem shooting earlier, and a 40-year-old father-of-five was stabbed repeatedly and moderately injured in an attack in Petah Tikva before managing to stab his assailant with his own knife.
Force was a US army veteran, according to his LinkedIn profile and an article published on a business school review website. He graduated from West Point Military Academy in 2009 and served as a field artillery officer from 2009-2014 at Fort Hood. A veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, he was in Israel on a school program.
Force’s wife was severely injured in the attack, according to Zaki Heller, spokesperson for the Magen David Adom ambulance service.
“It is with extreme sadness that I write to inform you that Taylor Force, a student at our Owen Graduate School of Management, was fatally wounded March 8 in a stabbing attack while on an Owen school trip to Tel Aviv, Israel,” the Nashville, Tennessee university said in a statement. “All other Vanderbilt students, faculty and staff on the trip are safe.”
“This horrific act of violence has robbed our Vanderbilt family of a young hopeful life and all of the bright promise that he held for bettering our greater world,” school Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos wrote. “Taylor’s family and his friends and colleagues have our deepest sympathy and utmost support.”

Fatah celebrates murder of American tourist

Fatah and the Palestinian Authority celebrated yesterday’s murder of Taylor Force, an American tourist who was visiting Israel with Vanderbilt University. Fatah’s official Facebook page posted a drawing of a knife held over the PA map of “Palestine” that includes all of Israel and the PA areas.
Text on arm: “The heroic Martyr (Shahid)”
Text on map is name of Taylor Force’s murderer: “Bashar Masalha”
[Official Fatah Facebook page, March 9, 2016]
Palestinian terrorist Masalha ran through the streets of Tel Aviv-Jaffa yesterday stabbing every civilian he passed, killing Force and injuring 11.
Official PA TV coined the American and other victims “settlers.” The PA often calls all Israeli cities - "occupied" - and all Israelis - “settlers” - a category of people they have claimed that international law gives them the right to murder. By calling the American a “settler” - even though he is not Israeli and was in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, official PA TV news is putting the blame on the victim.
PA TV likewise honored the killer calling him a “Shahid” - an Islamic Martyr:

PA TV News: American terror victim is “settler,” his Palestinian killer is holy “Martyr”

An NGO that deserves no donations - but gets plenty anyway

We have discussed "Defense for Children International-Palestine" before. They have consistently called terrorists "innocent children," counting children killed by Hamas rockets as victims of Israel, and coaxing children to make up the most lurid anti-Israel stories they can for their reports which often then get picked up by mainstream media.

DCI-P is a pure propaganda organization that calls itself a human rights NGO.

The latest example comes from a new report where DCI-P pretends to document the deaths of 41 children since October 1. (The article and report are not yet on their English site as of this writing.)

Not once does the news release mention that any of these teens were involved in terror attacks at the time they were killed.

To issue reports that say that Israel is killing innocent children in cold blood without even deigning to mention a single word about what they were doing at the time is a travesty and a slander.

The report lists Fuad and Nihad Waked, killed while attacking people and killing Tuvia Weissman at a supermarket, as victims.

At the exact same time that Palestinians are lauding them as heroes.

But DCI-P claims to support human rights for children. From looking at its website it appears that 90% of what it does is document often imaginary Israeli crimes and the other 10% is some vague activities on "teaching children about their rights." Apparently that claim is enough to prompt it to be funded by:

1. Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation (ICCO and KerkinActie) Netherlands
2. Bread for the World – Germany
3. Save the Children International
4. Stichting Kinderpostzegels Nederlands (SKN) – Netherlands
5. ARCI Cultura e Sviluppo – Italy
6. Mundubat - Spain
7. Broederlijk Delen - Belgium
8. United Nation Development Programme -UNDP
9. Swiss Interchurches Aid- HEKS
10. World Vision
11. The United Methodist Church
12. The United Church of Canada
13. Temporary International Presence in Hebron – TIPH.
14. UNICEF
15. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
16. Solidarity Fund
17. French Consulate
18. Open Society
19. MANARA
20. Geneva Kantoon
21. Human Rights and International humanitarian law Secretariat

Either these donors just like to throw money at any organization that claims to be supporting children, or they share a special hate for Israel. If they read any of DCI-P's reports with the slightest bit of skepticism, they know the truth.

We know that DCI-P has nothing to do with truth or accuracy. They are a bunch of liars who have learned that people will believe anything as long as it is "documented" with bogus evidence and half-truths, sprinkled with lies that they coach children to say.

DCI-P is not pro-children. It's main purpose is to create bogus reports to encourage more terrorism by children.

But what about the funders? Are they dupes - or is their hate for Israel so strong that they believe that the stream of lies out of DCI-P is worth more than other actual charities that really do help children?

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Palestinian media calls killing of stabber with his own knife "Jewish terrorism"

FrontPage described the remarkable scene yesterday:

Israelis have fought Muslim Jihadis trying to stab them with umbrellas and selfie sticks, not to mention good old-fashioned guns. Yonatan Ezriyahav, an Orthodox Jewish man, took the knife he had been stabbed with and turned it against the terrorist.

The Muslim attacker stabbed the Orthodox man in the neck. He managed to grip, pulled the knife from his body and lunged for the perpetrator and stabbed him several times in the body including the stabbing him directly in the neck. then he sat down and, according to bystanders said: "I killed a man who tried to kill me."

Palestinian Press Agency, which is mostly aligned with Fatah reports on this story with the headline "This is Jewish terrorism: Shocking Video: Israelis beating and stabbing to death a Palestinian youth."

Hebrew sites published a video in which a young Palestinian who stabbed a Jew is left to bleed to death without giving him any medical assistance.

According to eyewitnesses, the Israelis beat the young man and stabbed him to death.

And it appears in the video the Israelis are wishing death to the young man and demanding not to resuscitate him with ugly insults.

So a video that shows Israelis angry at a man who almost managed to murder a Jew is being used to incite Palestinians to murder more Jews.

Or, as Western media likes to say, a "cycle of violence."

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From TOI:

Iran on Wednesday test-fired two ballistic missiles, which an Iranian news agency said had the phrase “Israel must be wiped out” written on them in Hebrew. An Iranian commander said the test was designed to demonstrate to Israel, whose destruction Iran seeks, that it is within Iranian missile range.

Phrases threatening Israel have been emblazoned on missiles fired before by Iran, but this test came after the country signed a nuclear deal with world powers, including America. Hard-liners in Iran’s military have fired rockets and missiles despite US objections since the deal, as well as shown underground missile bases on state television.

I couldn't find any images that showed the phrase written on the missiles, but this news is prominent in Iran's state media.

There were two other stories about these missile tests in Iranian media that were not picked up by Western wire services.

Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Brigadier General Hossein Salami said that Hezbollah possesses more than one hundred thousand missiles Iran has tens of times that number of missiles - over a million of them, of various sizes and types, ready to be launched at the "enemy" at any moment from any point in the country from underground silos.

He added that "we convey all our expertise and our operational, scientific and tactical and strategic achievements to our brothers in the Islamic world and the resistance front against the United States and Israel and their regional allies."

In addition, IRGC Brigadier General Amir Ali Haji Zadeh said Iranian missiles are available "to the peoples of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and all the oppressed of the world," saying that the missiles constitute a threat to anyone who wants to launch an attack on the oppressed Muslim peoples.

"The work of the evil Zionist regime is completely clear to us, and the range of over 2,000 km for our missiles allows us to face this entity from a distance," he added.

President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry assured critics that sanctions will remain in place against Iran's ballistic missile program even after the nuclear deal:

Obama said last July:

As I said yesterday, even with this deal, we will continue to have profound differences with Iran: its support of terrorism, its use of proxies to destabilize parts of the Middle East. Therefore, the multilateral arms embargo on Iran will remain in place for an additional five years, and restrictions on ballistic missile technology will remain for eight years.

In addition, the United States will maintain our own sanctions related to Iran's support for terrorism, its ballistic missile program, its human rights violations, and we'll continue our unprecedented security cooperation with Israel and continue to deepen our partnerships with the Gulf states.

Kerry was more specific on Face the Nation a few days later:

Secretary Kerry, you're allowing as a part of this deal a terrorist nation to get both conventional arms and ballistic missiles. Why is that a good idea and why is that a part of this?

KERRY: Actually, we're not.

There is a limit on their ability to do so. Under the arms embargo, arms control, there will be limit of five years, and under the missile, in eight years, and the reason that we're only able to limit them to the five and eight, which is quite extraordinary that we got that, was that three of the nations negotiating thought they shouldn't have any and were ready to hold out to do that.

And we said under no circumstances. We have to have those. And they add on to additional mechanisms that we have to hold them accountable on arms and missiles. We have the missile control technology regime. We have other missile restraints on them. We also have other U.N. resolutions that prevent them from moving arms to the Houthi, prevents them from moving arms to the Shia, prevents them from -- to the Shia militia in Iraq, prevents them from moving arms to Hezbollah.

So, we have an ability way beyond, nothing to do with this agreement, to continue to enforce those issues.

How's that strategy working out?

Meanwhile, the amount of information about of Iran's nuclear program under the "unprecedented" inspections regime has been significantly reduced, according to reports.

But don't worry - the world is a safer place with Iran developing missile technology unhindered, with the ability to hide its nuclear weapons program.

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.@UNRWA starts its cover-up, and the @StateDept covers up for UNRWA

Today, AP's Matt Lee followed up in asking the State Department spokesperson John Kirby about whether they have any comment on the article I wrote yesterday about UNRWA inciting kids to become "martyrs" in "defending al-Aqsa."

The response was tepid, filled with wishy washy diplomatic cover for UNRWA and insisting that UNRWA takes these things seriously.

"Our blood and souls we will sacrifice for you, oh Al-Aqsa"

If UNRWA takes them seriously, then why am I still finding things every few months? Why aren't they policing themselves?

UNRWA today told the Gaza City school I reported on to take down the Facebook timeline entries from October 20, 2015, when the incitement ceremony was held. Many of the photos are still up (and won't be tomorrow after UNRWA reads this.) UNRWA did the least amount possible. They just covered up the easily visible parts but didn't uproot the problem. If UNRWA was really as serious about incitement and antisemitism as the State Department alleges, this wouldn't be a game of whack-a-mole - they would be publicly denouncing this incitement and announcing a plan to stop it once and for all. They would be doing what I'm doing to pro-actively find these issues before someone else does.

But they never did that and they never will, as long as their donors like the US government keep giving them cover as if specific UNRWA teachers are bad apples but UNRWA has no problems at its schools in general. I've uncovered enough institutionalized antisemitism at UNRWA schools based on their own social media sites to know better, and the State Department knows better as well.

Kirby's quote about how neutrality is vital to UNRWA sounds like it was written by Chris Gunness, not the US government. It is so obviously false as to make the rest of the statement a joke.

Here is today's State Department briefing discussing my scoop. I superimposed the evidence from UNRWA school webpages that show that there is nothing "alleged" about this: UNRWA schools are literally teaching children to kill themselves attacking Jews to stop them from visiting the Temple Mount.

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03/08 Links Pt2: In New Low, Scholars Defend Medieval Blood Libel Charges Against Israel

From Ian:

In New Low, Scholars Defend Medieval Blood Libel Charges Against Israel

Leave it to the Middle East studies establishment to defend the vilest forms of conspiratorial anti-Semitic rhetoric, provided it’s in service of demonizing Israel. Jasbir Puar, the Rutgers University women’s and gender studies professor and Israel-boycott advocate who, in a controversial February 3 lecture at Vassar College, charged the IDF with the organ harvesting, deliberate maiming, and stunting of “Palestinian bodies,” can certainly count on support from its ranks.
Notorious Israel-bashers such as Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University), Joel Beinin (Stanford University), and Steven Salaita (American University of Beirut) are among the signatories to an open letter to Vassar College President Catharine Bond Hill defending Puar against an alleged campaign of “vilification and hatred” following her inflammatory lecture. Unlike the vast majority of academic jargon-filled apologias for bigotry that populate the lecture circuit, Puar’s talk was widely covered and rightly condemned by a disgusted public. In evoking “hate mail and other threats” against Puar, the authors allude to the specter of death threats — whether real or imagined — a time-honored tradition among academics unaccustomed to the twin horrors of criticism and accountability.
The letter inveighs against the particular evils of a February 17 Wall Street Journal op-ed by Mark G. Yudof, former University of California president, and Ken Waltzer, professor emeritus of history at Michigan State University, titled, “Majoring in Anti-Semitism at Vassar.” Yudof and Waltzer had the temerity to point out the obvious: by accusing Israel of extracting organs from Palestinians for medical research, Puar was “updating the medieval blood libel against Jews.”
In the face of such censure, and unable to silence Puar’s critics, the letter’s authors urge President Hill to take the drastic action of writing “a letter to the Wall Street Journal … condemning in no uncertain terms the unjustifiable attack on Vassar and on Professor Puar.” Take that, free speech!

NYTs: An Anti-Semitism of the Left

The rise of the leftist Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of Britain’s opposition Labour Party appears to have empowered a far left for whom support of the Palestinians is uncritical and for whom, in the words of Alan Johnson, a British political theorist, “that which the demonological Jew once was, demonological Israel now is.”
Corbyn is no anti-Semite. But he has called Hamas and Hezbollah agents of “long-term peace and social justice and political justice in the whole region,” and once invited to Parliament a Palestinian Islamist, Raed Salah, who has suggested Jews were absent from the World Trade Center on 9/11. Corbyn called him an “honored citizen.” The “Corbynistas” on British campuses extol their fight against the “racist colonization of Palestine,” as one Oxford student, James Elliott, put it. Elliott was narrowly defeated last month in a bid to become youth representative on Labour’s national executive committee.
What is striking about the anti-Zionism derangement syndrome that spills over into anti-Semitism is its ahistorical nature. It denies the long Jewish presence in, and bond with, the Holy Land. It disregards the fundamental link between murderous European anti-Semitism and the decision of surviving Jews to embrace Zionism in the conviction that only a Jewish homeland could keep them safe. It dismisses the legal basis for the modern Jewish state in United Nations Resolution 181 of 1947. This was not “colonialism” but the post-Holocaust will of the world: Arab armies went to war against it and lost.
As Simon Schama, the historian, put it last month in The Financial Times, the Israel of 1948 came into being as a result of the “centuries-long dehumanization of the Jews.”
The Jewish state was needed. History had demonstrated that. That is why I am a Zionist — now a dirty word in Europe.

AFP Celebrates Murder: On International Women’s Day

Today, on International Women’s Day, the Agence France Presse (AFP) wire service published an article celebrating the wives of convicted Palestinian terrorists. Not all terrorists of course, only those who attack Israelis.
"Jailed Palestinians' wives caught between pride, struggle"
AFP starts by explaining that, “More than 7,000 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, with around 600 serving life sentences.” In a startling example of unashamed media bias, AFP makes no mention of why those prisoners are held, the terror that many have committed, or the number of lives they have claimed.
AFP says nothing of the Israeli victims or their families, nor does it mention that the Palestinian Authority government pays incarcerated terrorists sums far beyond what they could earn while free, thus creating a strong economic incentive to kill Israelis.
AFP goes on to make an emotionally charged case study of one Ahed Abu Golmi, mentioning only at the end of the article that he went to prison because of his role in the 2001 assassination of Rehavam Ze’evi, the Israeli Minister of Tourism. (Is there any country in the world where assassinating a government minister wouldn’t land the assassin in prison?) Not surprisingly, the article does not bother to interview, or even mention, Ze’evi’s family: he was survived by his wife Yael and their five children.

Muslims at the Kotel. No riots.

A friend of EoZ visited the Western Wall last Friday, and saw there a tour group of Muslims from Turkey.

He took some photos:

No chants. No threats. No riots. No reaction, really, from the Jews worshiping there.

Yet only a few meters away we see Muslims get upset at the very idea of Jews visiting the area of the Al Aqsa Mosque, and each visit generates headlines in Arab media.

The differences are striking, but this is not something that would get mentioned in the media.

(h/t Harris)

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Item One: An article under the above heading, carried by a provincial Scottish newspaper, the Dumfries and Galloway Standard (25 February 1939) observed:

‘The term “Anti-Semitism” should, on the face of it, mean opposition to Semites in general. The Arabs are as Semitic as the Jews, both claiming descent from Abraham, and thus from Shem. But our pure-blooded Nordic does not seem to have any quarrel with the Bedouin. What is usually meant by the word is a hostile attitude on the part of Aryans towards Jews, both socially and commercially. For lack of a more exact term we shall have to use it in this narrow sense….’

(The article then gave examples from across the centuries, dating back to Biblical times, of antipathy towards Jews.)

Item Two. On 29 January 2014 in the heavily Orthodox Jewish district of Stamford Hill, in London, a certain Mr Rashal Miah indulged in a spate of road rage against the Orthodox Jewish driver of a school bus filled with young children. To quote from tweets by the Jewish self-help/neighbourhood watch organisation Shomrim, which assisted the victim, Miah – at the wheel of a Mercedes – “was on the wrong side of the road attempting to overtake congested traffic” when the bus driver asked him to reverse his vehicle. ‘Mr Miah exited his car … and said “Shut the f**k up, you f**king Jew, I will slit your throat.”’ Miah ‘referred to the victim as “Yehudi” (Jew) and said “I’m going to kill all Jews.”’

Two years later, and Uber driver Miah’s got his come-uppance.

“I hope it doesn’t indicate some underlying prejudice. If this was the other way round and Muslims were being insulted I have a good feeling you would feel strongly. You need to understand that before you open your mouth.” With these words, it’s reported elsewhere, a Crown Court judge last week rebuked Miah before passing sentence on him: a 26-week prison term, suspended, plus 15 days of anger management classes and 100 hours of community service.

The bus driver was satisfied with the verdict, Shomrim tweeting: ‘Victim: "I welcome the sentence, it sends out a strong message to anti-semites that Prejudice and Bigotry is not acceptable"’.

Item Three. The current issue (4 March 2016) of the Australian Jewish News reports:

‘Holocaust denial reared its ugly head on campus on the first day of the new university semester on Monday. Flyers claiming that “Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense, if not sheer fraud” were placed on hundreds of cars in the University of Melbourne’s University Square carpark. The flyer said that the Holocaust was “the greatest swindle of all time” and that “in war, truth is the first casualty” before pointing people to an Australian website that is rife with Holocaust denial content…

B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich [who’s an academic at the university, by the way] said that the flyers are “utterly sickening”, “repugnant” and “nothing more than anti-Semitic tracts” that sought to target and poison the minds of students on the first day of semester. This is an alarming escalation in anti-Jewish hostility and is a cause for concern,” Abramovich said….’

Question: What have these three items in common, aside from the fact that they deal with instances of antisemitism?

Answer: They all spell antisemitism (and its derivative adjective) with a hyphen. One of the examples cited writes of “anti-semites” while the other two write of “Anti-Semitism”/“anti-Semitism”.

Further question: Does that matter?

Answer: Yes, it most certainly does. It implies that there is an entity or movement called “Semitism” that it is feasible to be antipathetic to – rather like “Islamism”, say, which certainly justifies opposition of an “anti-Islamist” kind – when there is, in fact, no such thing.

Back in 1989 – fifty years after my first example above – in the Newsletter of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Shmuel Almog wrote a persuasive piece headed “What’s in a Hyphen?” in which he pointed out that the terms “Semitic” and “Aryan” were originally coined to describe linguistic groups, and that the extension of those words to supposed genetic groups is mistaken and unconscionable. Inter alia, he wrote:

‘A seemingly minor point crops up from time to time but grows in importance the more you reflect upon it. Should one write “anti-Semitism” with a hyphen or “antisemitism” as one word? What is the importance of such a technical question and why should anyone, apart from type-setters and proof-readers, worry about it?....

Let me start at the beginning: When did the word 'antisemitism' make its first appearance? It is generally attributed to Wilhelm Marr, who was called by the Israeli historian Moshe Zimmermann "The Patriarch of Antisemitism". Marr coined the term in the 1870s to distinguish between old-time Jew-hatred and modern, political, ethnic, or racial opposition to the Jews. This term made great advances and soon became common usage in many languages. So much so, that it applied not just to the modern brand of Jew-hatred but – against all logic – was attached to all kinds of enmity toward Jews, past and present.

Thus we now say “antisemitism”, even when we talk about remote periods in the past, when one had no inkling of this modern usage. Purists no longer cry out in dismay against such anachronistic practice; it is currently established procedure to use “antisemitism'” for all types of Jew-hatred.

Let's go back to the hyphen then. What's the difference? If you use the hyphenated form, you consider the words “Semitism”, “Semite”, “Semitic”as meaningful…

It is obvious then that “anti-Semitism” is a non-term, because it is not directed against so-called “Semitism”. If there is any substance to the term, it is only to denote a specifically anti-Jewish movement. Antisemitism is a generic term which signifies a singular attitude to a particular group of people. As the late philosopher Zvi Diesendruck pointed out, "There has never been coined a standing term for the merely negative attitude" to any other people in history. Only antisemitism; only against Jews.

So the hyphen, or rather its omission, conveys a message; if you hyphenate your “anti-Semitism”, you attach some credence to the very foundation on which the whole thing rests. Strike out the hyphen and you will treat antisemitism for what it really is – a generic name for modern Jew-hatred which now embraces this phenomenon as a whole, past, present and – I am afraid – future as well. ‘

Yes, a persuasive piece. It certainly made me drop the hyphen, as did numerous other individuals, and organisations too.

Persuading publishers is another thing: it is disheartening to submit a manuscript in which antisemitism is spelled the “Almog way” only to find the hyphen inserted in the proofs. Arguing with publishers is usually to no avail: publishing houses have their style guides, and they generally stick to them.

Try spelling antisemitism and derivatives without a hyphen in a Microsoft Word document and a lack of uniformity applies: anti-Semite (that’s Microsoft Word changing what I’ve just typed); Antisemitism (that spelling got through unscathed!); antisemitism (ditto); anti-Semites (Microsoft Word meddling again!); antisemitic (that’s been dealt an underscore “wavy line” implying a misspelling).

They, like publishers and the general public, need to be politely educated.

But how is such education to be effected when we see even Jewish journals – the Australian Jewish News is just one case in point – steadfastly clinging to the hyphen, and invariably changing “antisemitism” in readers’ letters and op-eds to “anti-Semitism”. That upper case S is especially grating; it appears to emphasise the validity of the absurd non-existent “Semitism”.

And, as Item One above unconsciously foreshadowed, it plays into the hands of antisemites.

Time and again, “anti-Zionists” on social media and elsewhere love to taunt Jews and supporters of Israel with the observation that Jews are misusing the term antisemitism, abrogating it to themselves when it is just as descriptive of Arabs/Palestinians, because – so the by now familiar theme runs – they are Semites too (optional addition, depending on how anti-Jewish the writer is: and as a matter of fact the Arabs/Palestinians are far more justified in calling themselves Semites than the Eastern European invaders who as everybody knows are really Khazars and have no links to Palestine at all.) And of course the corollary to this is: How can the Arabs/Palestinians be antisemitic when they are Semites too?

Jews and other “Zionists” – even Israelis themselves – have long since undermined the pro-Israel cause by accepting the term “Palestinians” when “Palestinian Arab” would do just as well as a nod to those who, until that wily old villain Arafat and his mates got sly and slick over rebranding, were generally known as Arabs.

It’s too late to turn back the clock and consign the term “antisemitism,” with its propensity for mischief, to the dustbin. Nevertheless, employing the term “Jew-hatred” more often, along with “Jew-hater”, “Jew-haters” and (as Dvir Abramovich does above) “anti-Jewish” would help to take the wind out of the antisemites’ sails.

Antisemitism and antisemites will, alas, always be with us – but at least drop their hyphens!

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03/08 Links Pt1: The endlessly collapsing Palestinian Auth.; Where Has All The PA Money Gone?

From Ian:

The endlessly collapsing Palestinian Authority

On the other side of the coin many Israel supporters and commentators claim that the PA is the source of much of the “incitement” that encourages terrorism against Israel. Mort Klein and Daniel Mandel of the Zionist Organization of America wrote in The Jewish Press in 2012 that the PA has not fulfilled its Oslo “obligations to dismantle terrorist groups and to end incitement to hatred and murder against Israel in its schools.” Israeli political leaders from Likud regularly note that the existence of incitement means Abbas is no partner for peace.
Can all of this be true at the same time? The PA is both collapsing and Israel needs to divorce itself completely from many parts of the West Bank. The PA is both a source of collaboration with Israel that ensures security and a source of widespread incitement against Israel that encourages terrorism. The irony is that yes, all of this is true. The one thing that is not possible is that Israel can play any role in reworking the Palestinian education system or that increased Israeli rule in the West Bank can somehow reverse the trends of incitement or hatred of Israel.
With Israel’s military control of the West Bank set to pass the 50-year mark in 2017, the idea that somehow Israel can change the perceptions of Palestinians is a fantasy. Israel’s almost 50-year rule in Jerusalem proves that. Is there any evidence that Palestinians living in Isawiya or Jebl Mukaber like Israel more than Palestinians in Ramallah? Israel has been administering those annexed areas for generations, and succeeded only in alienating people. The real evidence is that many Arab citizens of Israel resent and hate the country and dream of its demise one day. Israel can’t manage to administer its own laws in the Negev or deal with its own Arab citizens who lack basic infrastructure and planning. The idea that Israel can expand its role in the West Bank and meet anything but anger and opposition is a fantasy. Consider the two Israeli soldiers who drove into Kalandiya and were almost killed, in a scene similar to the lynching of two Israeli soldiers in 2000. And someone thinks that Israel can just go set up shop in Kalandiya and “stop the incitement”? The incitement is never going to stop. The photos of martyrs are never going to come down. Withdrawing doesn’t decrease them, and expanding doesn’t decrease them. The PA has many institutions that mitigate its coming collapse, whether it is American- trained security forces or its various bureaucracies.
There are a lot of parties with an interest in not having it fall into chaos, not the least of which are economic interests. People must accept the Janus-like contradictions inherent in this future. The two-state solution may be “dying,” but it is the only solution that exists.
The thing about bureaucracies like the PA is that once they are created, they don’t vote themselves out of existence. Israel should plan for increased chaos in the West Bank. It should not consider any plan that envisions expanding its control over Palestinian people, and it should be wary of plans that envision stripping Palestinians, like those in Jerusalem, of their residency rights, without asking them. At the very least, someone should accept that the Palestinians themselves also have rights to decide what they want.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Have The Donors Finally Woken Up?

Western donors want to see a list of the names of Palestinians who are on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the PA is not happy about it.
What is driving this demand? Thousands of Palestinian school teachers in the West Bank are striking for better conditions. The Palestinian leadership, in response, has ordered a security crackdown on the strikers.
To justify the crackdown, PA officials have claimed that the strike was organized by Hamas as part of a conspiracy to embarrass and undermine the regime of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
What is really happening is that the teachers are blowing the whistle on PA corruption. They have accused the PA Ministry of Education of wasting donors' funds and deceiving them by inflating the number of teachers. They claim that the list of employees (about 56,000) ostensibly hired by the ministry contains many fictitious names. These include teachers and administrative workers of the ministry.
The teachers also accuse the PA of lying to the donors about their salaries. The information provided by the PA to donors claimed that the PA pays higher salaries to the teachers than the teachers actually receive.
In other words, the striking teachers are exposing the PA as playing Western donors for suckers.
The PA's Finance Ministry has yet to publish the general budget for the years 2015 and 2016. The last time the budget appeared on the ministry's official website was in 2014. The striking teachers and other Palestinians say there is something fishy about the Finance Ministry's failure to make public the annual budget for 2015 and 2016. They call this a lack of transparency.

Where Has All The Money Gone?

Where Has All The Money Gone? For the last 25 years, a significant amount of money has gone to lining the pockets of corrupt Palestinian leaders, and has enouraged hate and violence within Palestinian society. Where are the playgrounds and schools? Infrastructure? Homes?

PMW: US and Israel spreading sex, pornography, and drugs in Arab world, says PA TV teacher of Islam

A Palestinian Authority TV host of a program who teaches Islam, Imad Hamato, explained in a recent TV interview that the US and Israel share the goal of destroying the morals and values of the Arab world and are trying to do this by spreading pornography and sex. It started with former US President Bush, Hamato claimed, quoting Bush as having said: "We will enter Iraq and bring in pornography and we will teach them the American civilization and culture.'' [Official PA TV, Feb. 29, 2016]
The issues with Israel go back even further, Hamato taught last year, because the Jews, according to the Quran, are inherently lacking in values:
"Those Jews, as it is said in the Quran, believe only in the body, not in the spirit.... In their eyes, everything physical is valuable, and thus 'you see that they are the people who strive more than anyone else to stay alive.' We won't say 'alive' definitively, but rather just life, no matter what life - life in the dumps, a life of cowardice. The main thing is to stay alive."[Official PA TV, June 12, 2015]

PA TV teacher of Islam: America intentionally spreads pornography in Arab world

From JPost:

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon demanded that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon revise a report disseminated by his office ahead of International Women’s Day and in which Israel is blamed for the situation of Palestinian women.

The report, issued for the 60th session of the Commission on the Status of Women to be held March 14-24, highlights the situation of Palestinian women for the period from October 1st 2014 to September 30th 2015.

According to the document, Israeli occupation is to blame for domestic violence against Palestinian women.

Actually, it's worse.

First of all, out the 13 documents issued by the UN in advance of this meeting, only one deals with women from a specific "nation." That is of course E/CN.6/2016/6 The situation of, and assistance to, Palestinian women. Report of the Secretary-General.
Here is the paragraph that offended Israel:

Refugee camps in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are among the most densely populated urban environments in the world and the conditions in these camps have deteriorated over decades, in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Specifically for women and girls, this overcrowding limits their mobility, privacy and access to recreational spaces. Overcrowded living conditions and a lack of privacy cause psychological distress among camp residents and strain family and social relations. Residents frequently note that gender-based violence, including domestic violence, is a manifestation of such stress, combined with the strain caused by the unstable political and security situation and discriminatory gender stereotypes and norms.4

The basic question of why "refugee" camps exist in the territory under Palestinian rule is not mentioned. If the existence of these crowded camps inherently causes all these domestic problems including abuse of women, then why does the UN keep funding them? Shouldn't they be dismantled and replaced with new villages and towns where all Palestinians could be treated equally?

The unspoken truth is that the "refugee" camps exist for only one reason - to make their residents' lives miserable for photo ops that blame Israel for not allowing them to "return" to homes that no longer exist even though they live in "Palestine."

Remember, Israel tried to give Palestinians in camps decent housing, and the UN condemned them for it. If anyone is to blame for the camps, it is the UN itself. UN resolution 34/52 section F says that "measures to resettle Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip away from their homes and property from which they were displaced constitute a violation of their inalienable right to return... Calls once more upon Israel to desist from removal and resettlement of Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and from destruction of their shelters."

The report throws in a section about Israeli settlements that has nothing to do with women and doesn't say exactly how Jews building homes impacts Palestinians at all, let alone women.

The Israeli Government has come under increasing pressure from settler groups to resume the planning and tendering of settlements, which have been in a lull since the fall of 2014. In July 2015, following the demolition of two buildings in the settlement of Beit El, the Government announced the construction of 300 new residential units there, as well as around 500 more in East Jerusalem settlements.

I guess after all these years of incitement it is obvious to the reader that Jews building houses is so inherently evil that there is no reason to describe why.

Israel's killing terrorists - who are mostly male - also is terrible for women:

According to data collected by UN-Women and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, it is estimated that a round 700 women were widowed as a result of the conflict in Gaza in 2014.

The vast majority of these men were of course fighters. Yet Israel needs to be more mindful of killing Hamas terrorists - because some of them have wives!

Gender-based violence continues to be a key protection concern for women in
the State of Palestine, and the situation is particularly acute in the Gaza Strip. A
2011 survey showed that 51 per cent of women in Gaza had been victims of genderbased
violence.17 A rapid assessment by UNFPA conducted after the 2014 conflict
revealed that the protracted crisis and related displacement, lack of privacy and lack
of basic services had exacerbated people’s sense of vulnerability, leading to violence
against women.18

But the UN can never blame the men who are abusing them! No, it is because of the lack of privacy and basic services which is, of course, Israel's fault!

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Number of attacks continues to decrease

The Shin Bet released their figures on terror attacks for February.

While three Israelis were killed, the number of attacks decreased from 169 in January to 155. 117 of those were firebombs.

The number of attacks in Jerusalem went up slightly, from 39 to 42, and within the Green Line the number of attacks increased from one to four.

Here is a chart showing the trends since October:

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