Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 28, 2016

2nd Al Aqsa preacher convicted of incitement, racism in two weeks

Kikar Hashabat reports that Al Aqsa preacher Sheikh Omar Abu Sara was convicted of incitement and racism based on a 2014 sermon he gave at the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Here is the text of that sermon published by MEMRI:

Let me start by saying that talking about the traits of the Jews requires one to get into a special mode, because we are dealing with people to whom every single vile trait has been attributed. They were the masters of these vile traits, and they taught their secrets to others. These traits were registered in the Quran, which depicted all aspects of the lives of the Jews in the most abominable images.

These traits are the same today as they were in the days of yore. Nay, they have become even more vile and evil with the development of means of crime and corruption in this day and age. By Allah, the Jews are the most evil of Allah's creations. They are the most evil creatures to have walked this Earth.

They are the slayers of prophets. Ibn Al-Qayyim said that they had killed seventy prophets in one day, and that they had killed a total of over 10,000 prophets. They tried to kill our Prophet Muhammad twice, as far as we know.

It was the Jews whom Allah turned into apes and pigs, and afflicted with degradation and humiliation.

We are living in a time when the battle with the Jews has drawn near, as our Prophet Muhammad was reported to have said: "You fight the Jews until the trees and the stones will say: Oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him."

I say to the Jews loud and clear: The time for your slaughter has come. The time to fight you has come. The time to kill you has come. Allah willing, we are ready for the task – we and the loyal and faithful Muslims, along with the armies of the state of the Islamic Caliphate, which will come to liberate this land from your filth.

We await the day – nay, the very moment – of your slaughter. We are ready. By Allah, we are. Do your worst. The balance of power is tipped in your favor. Go ahead and kill! Go ahead and slaughter! Stones, trees, and humans suffer at your hand. Please do not leave in our hearts a single grain of mercy towards you, oh Jews, because when the day of your slaughter arrives, we shall slaughter you without mercy.

Oh Allah, make that day come faster.
Crowd: Amen.

Omar Abu Sara: Oh Allah, hasten the day of the [slaughter[ of the Jews.
Crowd: Amen.

Omar Abu Sara: Oh Allah, hasten the day of their killing.
Crowd: Amen.

Omar Abu Sara: Oh Allah, hasten the day we fight them.
Crowd: Amen.

Omar Abu Sara: Oh Allah, hasten the day of their slaughter.
Crowd: Amen.

Omar Abu Sara: Allah, hasten the day when the Al-Aqsa Mosque is cleansed of their filth.
Crowd: Amen.

Omar Abu Sara: Oh Allah, hasten the establishment of the state of the Islamic Caliphate.
Crowd: Amen.

Omar Abu Sara: Oh Allah, make it a righteous caliphate in the path of the prophets.
Crowd: Amen.

Omar Abu Sara: Oh Allah, hasten the pledge of allegiance to the Muslim Caliph.
Crowd: Amen.

The judge noted that the Palestinian knifing spree is connected to this sort of rhetoric.

Two weeks ago another Al Aqsa preacher, Sheikh Khaled Al-Mughrabi, was convicted and sentenced to an eleven month prison term for similar incitement. He had claimed that Jews make matzah with gentile blood but his indictment came from calls to destroy Jews in accordance with the Koran.

The pro-Israel NGO Honenu has been instrumental in bringing these videos to Israeli police to force the arrest of the hate sheikhs.

It is nice to see that something is being done - finally - about open incitement to terror.

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Teen terrorist is praised by Haaretz because his martyrdom note wasn't monstrous

The bar for how little Palestinians have to do to be considered saintly keeps getting lower.

From David Sarna Galdi at Haaretz:

[O]n March 9th, as live television broadcasts jumped between different scenes of attempted attacks, one news report caught my eye. Mid-morning at the Zawiya checkpoint in the West Bank, a 16-year-old boy, Ahmad Amer, from the neighboring village of Mas’ha, approached Israeli soldiers with a knife and was immediately killed. Nobody else was injured.

While the troubling details of the attack otherwise fit the familiar pattern, a Haaretz report mentioned that Amer had left a suicide note – an unusual detail. Driven by curiosity, I found a full copy of his letter.

“In the name of God, the most gracious, the most compassionate. May peace, God’s mercy and blessings be upon you.
Dear mother and father, forgive me and be pleased with me for I am a martyr by God’s will. Thank God for everything. I want you to recall my bad deeds and not my good deeds, so that people may forgive me.
I owe money to some people:
Rami Mohyee A-Din - eight shekels
My uncle Hamdallah - twenty shekels
Al-Beek Restaurant - thirty two shekels.”

The short note, in its humble, poorly scrawled simplicity, is a revelation. Not only does it portray complexity and humanity that is invariably lost between the headlines, but it shows us Israelis where we’ve gone wrong.

It's too late to ask 16-year-old Ahmad Amer why he made the poor decision to go up to an IDF checkpoint with a knife that morning - a long walk to what he knew would be his death. Before he could be arrested, interrogated and tried in court, which might’ve given us a clue as to the motive for his act, Amer was shot dead.

Despite Prime Minister Netanyahu and his right-wing government's determined efforts to ignore the deep-seated resentment and frustration behind politically motivated acts of violence, and to dismiss all attackers as zombies infected by incitement and hatred, equal to the Nazis or to ISIS, what emerges from the suicide note is a picture not of a hate-fueled killer robot, but of a boy. Amar believes in God. “Forgive me,” he begs, anticipating his parent’s disappointment. He seeks the forgiveness of his community. “Recall my bad deeds and not my good deeds,” is an unexpected, sophisticated twist of reverse psychology and penitence. This teenage boy believes he is sacrificing himself for what he feels is a greater good: his community’s historic struggle.

But the most astounding thing about the note is that this 16-year-old boy confesses to the money he owes a friend, a family member, and a local business, making one last request: that his parents pay it back. The sums of money in question are so small that the act of contrition would be laughable if it wasn’t so heartbreaking; For Ahmad Amer, a small-town boy with an adult's sense of responsibility and honor, those measly few shekels were crucially important. In the last moments of his life and, in his own moral world — incomprehensible to us — he was concerned with doing the right thing.

And then there is everything Amer’s message isn’t. It isn’t angry or hateful; it doesn’t speak about revenge or glorify killing. It is personal, casual and hauntingly resigned - a world apart from the scripted, Koran-wielding, politicized videos familiar to us from terror group-sponsored suicide attacks.

The suicide note makes it hard to write off Ahmad Amer as a homicidal jihadist monster; it reminds us that no person, even a violent person, is just one thing: good or bad, black or white. A Palestinian, it seems, is also a human being with beliefs, experiences, pathos, and motives that demand consideration. Yes, Palestinians are killing. But these killings are a twisted response to an equally twisted political and social reality that Israel has a strong hand in. In the words of Charles M. Blow, “You can’t condemn the unseemly howl and not the lash.”

Ahmad Amar teaches us that there is always a partner for negotiation, despite Israeli leaders’ claims to the contrary. As the powerful side of the equation, it’s easy to sit back, claim victimhood, blame — or just kill — the enemy and assert that there’s no possible path to a two-state solution.

Ahmad Amer’s suicide note teaches us that there is still hope for a renewal of the dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians founded on the basic mutual recognition of our humanity, and that there no excuse to stop trying to find a way. In another time and place, Ahmad Amer wouldn’t have attempted to kill and had to die for the sins of others, becoming a statistic in a fifty-year-old conflict. Like his death, his note is not eloquent, but conveys a message much more powerful than the sum of its words.

How much wishful thinking is crammed into this piece?

Because a kid who set out to murder Jews is also concerned about repaying debts, he is now considered the paradigm of a peace partner?

Osama Bin Laden was a fan of Whitney Houston, Charles Manson played a flute, John Wayne Gacy was a clown at children's birthday parties. Are they any less monsters because of these personal details?

Ahmad Amar was clearly not raised as a normal child to want to end his life this way. His decision to stab Jews seems to be a far more important detail of his life than his asking forgiveness in his martyrdom note. Also important was the fact that his mother greeted the news with "Thank Allah he is a martyr!"

I'd day that despite his idea that repaying a few shekels of debt is more important than life itself, Amar was closer to being a monster than a misunderstood moral actor.

But people who want to blame everything on Israel see someone who attempted murder as a victim and those who defended themselves - people who incidentally also have girlfriends, hobbies and other complexity in their lives - are the monsters.

The moral universe that Haaretz lives in is one where no matter what, Israelis are evil and Palestinians are saintly. And they don't even realize that they are engaging in the exact stereotyping that they claim Israelis are guilty of - with far less evidence to support that simple-minded conclusion.

Ahmad Amer woke up on March 9 intending to kill. The soldier who killed him did not. And that is a world of difference.

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03/27 Links: Maher: After attacks maybe Europe will lay off Israel; Another Palestinian disruption of Brussels Memorial

From Ian:

Bill Maher: After attacks maybe Europe will lay off Israel

Liberal comedian and commentator Bill Maher, who has become famous for his profanity-laced riffs on conservatives and organized religion, took aim at European treatment of the Jewish state on Friday.
During a panel discussion on his late-night HBO show Real Time, Maher blasted the UN and scolded Europe for its behavior towards Israel.
"Europe has been real a******s about Israel," Maher said.
"I mean, in general. The U.N. – as of 2015, the United Nations Human Rights Council had issued more official condemnations of Israel than the rest of the world's nations combined. I wonder now that Europe has been attacked four times now in a little over a year, and they say ISIS has 400 fighters that they are ready to introduce back into Europe, and they're trying to get a dirty bomb - maybe Europe will have a little more sympathy for what Israel goes through."
Maher has consistently bucked prevalent trends among fellow liberals, and is a strong critic of Islamic radicalism and a staunch supporter of Israel.

Bill Maher: "Maybe now Europe will have more sympathy for Israel" [NSFW]

PreOccupiedTerritory: After Brussels Attacks, Europe Promises Stronger Cowardice (satire)

The deadly terrorist attacks in the Belgian capital Tuesday have sparked a fierce desire across the Continent to depart from the complacency and accommodation of the past in the face of growing Islamist violence, and instead engage in a new form of more severe, harsher cowardice.
After dozens of people were killed in bombings at an airport and subway station in Brussels Tuesday morning, political leaders in the European Union voiced frustration with the multicultural model that has for so long defined Europe’s attempt to foster tolerance, and called for a sharper practice of avoiding potential offense to Muslim immigrants by implying that Islam has anything to do with the deadly Islamist violence that has plagued France, Germany, Sweden, Britain, Belgium, Denmark, Turkey, and other European countries.
“We’re going to have to step up our game,” admitted EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini at a press conference in Amman, Jordan. “When terrorist opposition to European values of tolerance, liberalism, and democracy rears its head in ever-increasing fury, we have no choice but to find the strongest possible way of shrinking from confronting it.”

Abbas is coming to the US. Will reporters ask him these questions?

According to Hanna Amira, a member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas is planning to visit the US next month, and is hoping to meet with President Obama.

I have long been frustrated by the fact that reporters and others who meet with Abbas rarely ask him any tough questions. The record shows that he has said and done some particularly disgusting things in recent years yet his statements and actions are not treated with 1% of the scrutiny of those said by Israeli leaders.

I have a list of dozens of questions and followups that reporters rarely ask Abbas.

Any Western reporters who fail to ask Abbas any of these questions should be asked why they don't want to do their jobs.

Here's a poster with some of those questions.

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Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization continues to openly embrace violence and terror even as Abbas insists that he only supports "non-violent resistance."

This weekend, the Abdul-Qader al-Husseini Brigades of Fatah held a joint military exercise with the National Resistance Brigades, the military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, on Friday evening, in Rafah, Gaza.

A similar exercise between another Fatah armed group, the Nabil Massoud Brigades of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and the DFLP was held last weekend.

The exercises included practice for shooting rockets at Jewish communities.

Video for the exercises can be seen here.

The DFLP National Resistance Brigades openly supports terror attacks against civilians.

I have yet to see a reporter ask Mahmoud Abbas about his support for Fatah terror groups.

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Pet project: The £8million palace built by Palestine, which has received £72million of foreign aid (Daily Mail)

The Daily Mail has finally noticed that UK and EU taxpayer money helps support Palestinian terrorists and corruption. Excerpts:

The scandal of how Britain fritters away billions in foreign aid – including paying salaries to convicted terrorists who have murdered hundreds of innocent people – is exposed today by a major MoS investigation.

The shocking revelation that thousands of Palestinian terrorists, including men who have masterminded suicide bombings and murdered children, are given cash handouts from aid money will cause anger and disbelief, particularly in the wake of the Brussels massacres.

Our probe exposed how huge amounts of taxpayers’ cash, that critics say should be spent in Britain, is being ‘squandered’ on wasteful schemes elsewhere by the Department For International Development (DFID) and Foreign Office.

We dug beneath the headline figures on DFID’s websites to reveal waste and misguided largesse which seemed to extend to virtually every corner of the globe and which will shock readers. In the West Bank and Gaza, despite promises by the ruling Palestinian Authority (PA) to end the practice of paying aid money to convicted terrorists, our investigation revealed that they had simply duped the West by allowing the Palestine Liberation Organisation to hand out the cash instead.

Britain gives £72 million a year to Palestine, more than one-third of which goes straight to the PA. It openly admits supporting terrorists whom it hails as heroes for fighting illegal occupation, awarding lifetime payments that rise depending on time spent in jail and the seriousness of crimes.

One Hamas master bomber has reportedly been given more than £100,000. Other ‘salaries’ go to the families of suicide bombers and even teenagers involved in the latest upsurge of deadly attacks on Israel.

DFID and the European Union are still effectively supporting these payments to thousands of terrorists – despite claims to have ended such links two years ago. This was confirmed to the MoS by former prisoners and families receiving the cash, and in official statements by the PA.

We also visited a lavish £8 million palace that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is having built on the West Bank.

Ahmad Musa sits beside me, a convicted double murderer sentenced to life in prison. As we talk, I ask him if he did indeed kill the two men. ‘Yes, I shot them dead,’ he replies.

Yet we do not meet in a jail cell. Musa is free, released after just five years. For he is a Palestinian terrorist and he was liberated under a peace deal.

Like thousands more Palestinian prisoners, including jihadi bombers and killers of children, Musa enjoys his freedom after being awarded a ‘salary’ for life.

He gets £605 every month, others get far more. If they die, the cash goes to their family. These men are seen as terrorists, certainly by Israel, and many in the West
But, astonishingly, the money behind these payments – described by some as ‘rewards for murder’ – flows from British and European taxpayers.

The UK cash comes from the Department for International Development, which will give up to £25.5million this year to the ruling Palestinian Authority (PA) as part of a £72million aid package. Our investigation discovered that the PA passes millions on to the infamous Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) – which in turn gives it to convicted terrorists locked up in Israeli prisons and their families.

Amjad Awad (pictured) and his cousin Hakim Awad killed Ehud and Ruth Fogel and their three children in their West Bank home in 2011. They have been getting foreign aid since they were convicted for life (Dailu Mail)

Among them are Amjad and Hakim Awad, cousins who killed Ehud and Ruth Fogel and their three children in their West Bank home in 2011. It is estimated that Amjad alone may have been paid up to £16,000 from the fund so far.

Also on the payroll is Abdallah Barghouti, the Hamas bomb-maker who was sentenced to life after attacks in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It is thought he has received payments totaling £106,000.

Dfid confirms that the PLO makes such payments, calling them ‘social welfare’ provisions for prisoners’ families.

It denies, however, that any British cash reaches terrorists, with the PLO taking over such payments two years ago from the PA after an international outcry.

But a Mail on Sunday investigation has found that Britain funded the PLO until last year and that the PA openly boasts of still funding salaries of convicted terrorists, even in its own official statements.

Former prisoners and the families of terrorists we have spoken to also confirmed receiving cash from both the PA and the PLO.

British aid money is supposed to be rebuilding and developing the Palestinian territories. However a devastating new report to be released this week by Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli NGO, suggests that Western donors have been duped by assertions that the Authority no longer funds terrorists.

Some Hamas terrorist masterminds have reportedly been given more than £100,000.

Other ‘salaries’ go to relatives of suicide bombers and even teenagers involved in the latest upsurge of deadly attacks on Israel. Several ex-prisoners confirmed to me that they were paid monthly stipends that started in jail.

One said they also received a ‘bonus’ on leaving prison and lucrative civil service job offers, the most senior posts going to those serving more than 15 years behind bars, even though they are not qualified.

PA officials openly defend such stipends. Amr Nasser, adviser to the minister of social affairs, said: ‘It is not a crime to be fighting occupation. These people are heroes.

‘We could be giving them much more money and it would not be enough.’ Nasser added that, if Palestine won independence, the government would seek reparations from Britain for its historic role in encouraging Zionism, saying ‘You should pay us more money.’

Tory MP Andrew Percy said last night: ‘How can we justify foreign aid as a noble endeavour when taxpayers money goes to pay terrorists? The government has got to get a grip.’

The four million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza receive the highest aid support per head in the world.

Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, said: ‘This serves as a huge financial incentive to carry out acts of terror against Jews.

‘Is it imaginable for a Western government to contemplate subsidising acts of mass murder and terror in this fashion? Yet that is effectively what is happening.’

Among those paid is Abdallah Bargouti, a Hamas leader given 67 life sentences for lethal attacks in 2001 and 2002, including a restaurant bombing that killed 15 diners. He is thought to have earned more than £100,000 since conviction, handed to his family.

The cash-strapped PA relies on foreign aid for nearly half its budget. Yet it gives £79 million a year to prisoners locked up in Israeli jails, former prisoners and their families.

Although DFID says the salaries are ‘social welfare’ provisions, they go to people convicted of ‘acts of resistance’.

The department also insists payments come from the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which was handed responsibility for prisoner welfare two years ago after concerns over aiding terrorism were raised in Westminster and Brussels.

Yet the father of two brothers jailed for gun attacks on Israeli settlers and soldiers told me he received monthly payments of £428 from the PA as well as £285 from the PLO.
Britain has provided aid in the past to the PLO, although this ceased last year.

The Palestinian Media Watch report suggests that Western donors have been misled by detailing documents and official statements exposing how the PA still funds the salaries of convicted terrorists.

Evidence includes the Ministry of Finance saying in an official statement last year it transfers almost half its budget to Gaza, adding this includes ‘the salaries of prisoners, the released and the families of the Martyrs and wounded.’

The report also reveals the PA transferred an extra 444m shekels to the PLO in 2015 - significantly, only marginally more than the 442m shekel budget given to its own Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs the previous year before it transferred responsibility.

Itamar Marcus, the report’s author, said: ‘There is wilful blindness by the UK and EU, who were happy not to even carry out the simplest investigation.’

The group also claims to have discovered two cases of individuals who carried out attacks for cash.

In one, Khalad Rajoub, a father of seven arrested for attempted murder two years ago, told police he had big debts and planned to die during an attack.

He is reported to have said: ‘My family would get money and live comfortably… my children would get a monthly allowance.’

A DFID spokesman denied funding terrorism and defended aid support to the PA. ‘This helps build Palestinian institutions and promotes economic growth.’

The sprawling building sits high on a hill, a presidential palace looking down imperiously on thousands of beleaguered West Bank residents crammed in below.

When I visited the impressive mansion on six acres of land, builders were putting finishing touches to its fine limestone walls and water displays. ‘This is like a five-star hotel,’ one security guard told me. ‘It has two helipads, two swimming pools, a Jacuzzi, restaurant… all the latest technology.’

This £9 million palace in Sudra, just weeks away from opening, was designed for Mahmoud Abbas – a president whose domain is so dependent on aid that last year his Palestinian Authority had to pass an emergency budget when some was held up by Israel.

In Gaza – a place where there is rampant poverty – I witnessed bizarre scenes: long queues of people at bank cashpoints.

It was pay day for thousands of civil servants whose salaries are supported by Western aid, even though they have had no jobs since 2007.

Mahmoud, an accountant, said he was given more than £1,000 a month. ‘I just sit at home, spending time with my family. Sometimes I travel abroad to visit relatives,’ he said.

Others admitted to second jobs as shopkeepers and taxi drivers. One ex-teacher, who still draws his £6,000-a-year salary, confessed to running a dairy, completing a master’s degree in Britain and working as a journalist.

‘Getting paid from Britain while living here means you can have a good life,’ he said, although he added that his home was devastated in Israeli air strikes two years ago.

The salary payments are a legacy of the Palestinian divisions since Hamas took control of Gaza from Fatah, the rival faction recognised by the international community.

At least 60,000 officials were told to stop working by Fatah yet are still being paid. Many of them have been replaced by Hamas officials.

Mohammad Aboshair, 37, a police officer, said: ‘We hoped it would not last long. It is really wrong to stay in our homes and get paid without jobs. I wanted to serve my country, not become a burden – this is crazy.’ Three years ago auditors urged the EU to stop the salaries. Critics condemned ‘blatant misuse of taxpayers’ money’ that undermined the credibility of Brussels when millions of Europeans were jobless. Dfid sources said the cash went only to civil servants on an approved EU list and insisted they took precautions to ensure British aid did not support Hamas.

Of course, by paying for the PA salaries in Gaza, the UK and EU are effectively supporting Hamas indirectly.

We've been talking about this for years - my first post on this was in 2005 - and Palestinian Media Watch has been reporting on specifics for quite a while, but it is nice to see that Western media is finally picking up on this.

(h/t Yoel)

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What everyone missed about the "AIPAC Trump kippot" story

A small story from the AIPAC conference last week attracted some major attention.

Haaretz, the New York Post , Politico and Arutz-7 all had the story that originally came from the Washington Free Beacon:

If yarmulke sales are any indication of voter attitudes, Donald Trump was the clear winner at AIPAC on Monday night.

Marc Daniels, a vendor selling campaign logo kippas outside the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington, D.C. on Monday evening, said the “Donald Trump 2016” cap was his most popular item by far.

Daniels said he was “inundated” with requests for the Trump yarmulkes from conference-goers and sold out almost immediately.

“I totally underestimated the degree of support that Jewish people who are attending this event have for Trump,” said Daniels, who runs an online yarmulke shop called Marc’s Garden Jubilee. “I probably had about 50 inquiries for Trump yarmulkes that I could not fulfill.”

Daniels said he sold two or three Ted Cruz yarmulkes and three or four for John Kasich. By 8 p.m. on Monday, the vendor said he only had Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders caps left over, and was finding those tougher to unload.

JNI media concluded:

So, this is probably not scientific, but the yarmulke market has spoken: the Orthodox Jewish vote is committed to Trump. Because, unlike a button or a sticker, a yarmulke requires a special dedication, which means that, as Daniels put it, “If someone is going to buy a yarmulke, you have to assume they support the candidate.”

But there is something that everyone is missing.

Last week was Purim!

A Donald Trump kippah is a perfect thing to wear on Purim, when people look for the funniest costumes and accessories. It is far funnier than a Ted Cruz or even Bernie Sanders yarmulka would be. (I saw someone with a Donald Trump wig on Purim.)

To say that this is proof of Orthodox support for Trump is not to know how to read a calendar.

It is true that American Haredi Jews seem to like Trump, but they are not the type that would ever wear a red kippah (except, again, on Purim) and very few would go to AIPAC. Among modern Orthodox Jews who are likely AIPAC attendees, a Trump kippah would be a perfect, relatively inexpensive last-minute Purim costume.

To give an idea of how outrageous Purim costumes could be, there was brief panic in a Paris synagogue during Purim when someone dressed as a jihadist with a fake Kalashnikov entered and shouted "Allahu Akbar!" The congregants then realized that they know the man and laughed, but it was probably not the smartest idea.

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03/26 Links: The Israel That Arabs Don’t Know; The Lie of Academic Free Speech; Israel ranked 24th in ‘Global Terrorism Index’

From Ian:

The Israel That Arabs Don’t Know

When the Israeli Ministry of Exterior invited me to visit Israel as part of a delegation of European-based Arab journalists and media representatives, I accepted without hesitation. The goal of the invitation was to provide us with an opportunity to freely explore the different dimensions to life inside the state of Israel. Located in the heart of the Middle East and one of the region's central and enduring conflicts, Israel receives a large amount of attention from neighboring peoples curious about the state itself and its management. Although major developments in international communication and accessibility of knowledge have transformed the world into a connected community that now sometimes resembles a small village, Arab media coverage of Israel continues to be characterized by a lack of clarity and misrepresentation, making it difficult for Arab citizens to truly understand the country. The persistent and recurring problems in the West Bank and Gaza are of major concern to many Arabs, but media sources often conflate the State's controversial foreign policy with life inside the the country itself and produce dystopian visions of life inside its borders.
While not an article or analysis, the following is an honest testimony of what I saw during my visit, without influence by any person or institution. I hope to present an alternative perspective from other Arab media outlets that I have found to exaggerate and mischaracterize the realities of Israeli life.

Israel ranked 24th in ‘Global Terrorism Index’

Israel has been placed 24th in a new global terrorism index which ranks 162 of the world’s nations from most affected to least affected by terror.
Based on a 5-year average, the index takes into account such criteria as the number of terrorist incidents endured by a country, how many fatalities were suffered in those attacks, how many injuries were caused and the level of damage to property. It also weights the scores for each nation according to the long-term psychological damage of the attacks.
The list is compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace, using information from a global terrorism database at Maryland University, which includes more than 125,000 terrorist incidents.
Israel received an overall score of 6.03 out of 10. Its “GTI indicators” for 2015 included 260 attacks, 20 fatalities, 115 injuries and 290 instances of damage to property.
The United Kingdom ranked at 28th, and the US at 35th.

03/25 Links Pt2: Glick: The consequences of anti-Zionism; Palestinian Campuses "More Hamas than Hamas"

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The consequences of anti-Zionism

Following the ISIS strikes in Brussels, both Israeli and American security experts spoke bitterly of the ineptitude of Belgian security services. It is not that the forces themselves are incompetent. Rather, the experts said, their political leadership refuses to allow them to take the actions necessary to protect their country.
The Belgians, like their European brethren generally, refuse to deal with jihad. Rather than acknowledge and deal forthrightly with the phenomenon, they seek every possible excuse to ignore it.
According to senior government officials, the Belgians are among the most vociferous foes of Israel in the EU. Europe’s obsessive castigation of Israel is a central aspect of their jihad avoidance strategy. If Israel is to blame for everything, then they can save themselves by pouring billions of euros on the PA and by funding Israeli anti-Zionist subversives.
This position is of course irrational. In clinging to it, the Europeans have enabled the jihadist forces arrayed against them to gather and grow.
Consider the July 7, 2005, attacks in London. Shortly after they occurred, British investigators discovered that Muhammad Sidique Khan, who led the British al-Qaida cell that carried out the attacks, was connected to the British jihadists who carried out the 2003 suicide bombing at Mike’s Place pub in Tel Aviv, adjacent to the US Embassy.
The Mike’s Place bombers were also connected with the radical Left, having toured Israel and Gaza with an International Solidarity Movement group before carrying out their attack.
Yet, just as British authorities ignored the significance of the participation of British jihadists in the jihad against Israel 13 years ago, and disregarded the significance of the post-7/7 revelations 11 years ago, so in the intervening years, as jihadist forces grew and spread throughout the continent, rather than shed their hostility toward Israel and stop blaming it for the jihadist Islam, the Europeans expanded their onslaught against the Jewish state.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian Campuses "More Hamas than Hamas"

While the anti-Israel activists are busy protesting against Israel on Western campuses, Palestinian students and professors are persecuted by their own Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas governments.
Let us redefine "pro-Palestinian." Instead of bashing Israel, real pro-Palestinians will demand democracy for those they champion, and scream for public freedoms for Palestinians under the PA and Hamas regimes, which have always smashed dissent with an iron fist.
PA security forces systematically target students and academics under various pretexts. Hundreds of students have been rounded up. Many remain in detention without the possibility of seeing a lawyer or a family member.
Palestinians on campuses in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have once again been reminded that they remain as far as ever from achieving a state that would look any different from the other Arab dictatorships in the region. The campus incidents, which have hardly caught the attention of the international media and anti-Israel activists in the West, also expose the media double standard about human rights violations.
In the first case of its kind under the PA, Kadoori University in Tulkarem suspended a student who hugged his fiancée in public.

The Pax Americana Is Dead. Welcome to the Age of the Godfathers.

Under the circumstances, one can expect the use of force and violence to become commonplace in the region—and since, so it seems, the use of chemical weapons in the war in Syria is no longer considered taboo, one can expect greater and greater use of non-conventional weapons. It goes without saying that the effort to acquire nuclear weapons, or at least nuclear capability, will also continue to expand from Iran to other players in the region.
The obvious result of all this is that the Middle East will become a permanently unstable region, subject to frequent convulsions and pervaded with violence and terrorism. It will become a hothouse for radical Islamic ideas and groups that will attract support among the population both within and outside the region.
The shock waves from the crisis in the Middle East have not stopped at the region’s geographical boundaries. Waves of refugees, which will only increase, are knocking on Europe’s gates, while radical Islamic ideology is seeping deeply into Muslim communities all over the world, especially in Europe, and even in the United States. As state frameworks disintegrated and chaos came to prevail in the region, the tide of migration found encouragement and rose sharply, and there is no basis for assuming that it will not continue to rise in the future.
Ironically, America’s withdrawal from playing a role in the Middle East did not save it from being criticized, both within and outside the region, as the main culprit responsible for the present crisis. This stems from the fact that the United States is perceived as the clearest manifestation of the West, and the West is perceived as being guilty of the original sins of imperialism and colonialism, and is therefore seen as the source of the region’s ills. It can be assumed that as the distress and crisis in the region intensify, the resentment of the West and the United States will increase. This being so, the United States is destined to discover what Israel discovered in Lebanon and Gaza: that it is possible to disengage from the Middle East, but the Middle East will not disengage from you.

BDS activist says no one died in 9/11 and other fun facts

From MEMRI:

Indian People in Solidarity with Palestine, an Indian BDS forum, held a two-day convention in New Delhi on August 22-23, 2015. Among the speakers at the convention was Nasser Barakat, a Palestinian-Indian activist and former spokesmen of the General Union of Palestinian Students in India. He said that Israel was created as a pretext, just like the "fabricated" 9/11 attacks. Barakat added that he was not fooled by the Iranian nuclear project, because he knows that Iran is Israel’s biggest ally, and that the Jews are not enemies because they are the Muslims' "key to Heaven." The video was posted on the YouTube account of the Indian People in Solidarity with Palestine.

Following are excerpts:

Nasser Barakat: Why have the (Western powers) really created Israel in Palestine? There's a very simple reason - because they want an excuse. Like they fabricated 9/11 - there is still no proof. There's no proof that Al-Qaeda did that. That building - they are saying that 3,000 people died. Nobody... It was all fabricated.They wanted... George W. Bush wanted to demolish (former Russian PM) Primakov's plan.

[…]

The trio-triangle unity of China, India, and Russia - this disturbed America. It had become a nightmare for her. So America... The Caspian Sea is very rich in oil. Afghanistan is in the heart of this triangle. So they had to fabricate something. They wanted to attack, to justify their actions.

[…]

In 2007, I was sitting with some people in Ashok Hotel. There was a place, a Lebanese restaurant, and one Iranian professor - she is here in India, I guess, but I don't have any contact with her... I told her: This fake issue of your nuclear thing - you can make anybody believe this, but not me. You are the biggest ally of Israel. I have no little doubt. You guys should know one thing: In Iran, we have 1.5 million Sunnis, but we don't have any mosques. In Iran... In the Zionist military, which is so-called Israel, there are 200,000... There are 200,000 Jews, and they are all high authorized leaders, major generals, and all. In Iran, there are only 30,000 Jews, and they have 200 temples, and they practice their ceremonies very freely. Iran is a big fake that America created.

You know that in America, they put any policy in the drawers for 10, 15, 20, or 30 years. When the time comes, the whole scenario is already known to them. So now what they are doing in Syria and in Iraq is all fake. It is just because they know that there is big enmity between Sunnis and Shias, and that these two parts will fight each other, and the fight will go on for no end. Anyway, Palestinians...

Finally, I will end with something very strange. As a Palestinian, I have many Jews - not Israeli - Jews as friends. One of them tells me: "We are enemies, so how are you my friend?" I told him: "You are mistaken. You have never been my enemy." Allah informed me, I am called murabiteen. Because you occupied my land,I am a murabiteen. Murabitun are those who are forcibly living there. Those murabiteen are killed by you, and we will go to the higher grade in Heaven. Had Palestine been free, we would not have been murabiteen. So you are the key to Heaven for me. You have never been my enemy.

If Israel's creation is a myth like 9/11, then there is no reason to destroy Israel any more! A huge BDS victory!

Will BDS leaders in the EU and US demand that Barakat apologize for this bizarre rant that insults the families of thousands of those killed?

Of course not. They have no more regard for the truth than Barakat does. They just lie differently in different countries to target their audiences.

As long as a seething hate for Israel is the main animating motive, anyone is welcome in the tent of BDS liars and charlatans.

(Ian had posted this a couple of days ago.)

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Excerpts from the candidates' speeches on the Middle East at AIPAC.

John Kasich:

Yes, we will rededicate ourselves to reaching the bipartisan national security policy that President Reagan and the Democrats achieved. And you can be assured that my strategic program will include and incorporate Israel as the bedrock partner for our mutual security in the Middle East. Together we will combat violence incited in Israel itself and, of course, its eternal capital, Jerusalem.

Donald Trump:

We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem – and we will send a clear signal that there is no daylight between America and our most reliable ally, the state of Israel.

Ted Cruz:

On my very first day in office I will begin the process of moving the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the once and eternal capital of Israel.

Both Hillary Clinton's speech at AIPAC and Bernie Sanders' speech on his Middle East policy in Utah did not mention the word Jerusalem once.

(h/t Ghilmeini)

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03/25 Links Pt1: No More Hug-A-Terrorist; New video corroborates Hebron soldier’s testimony

From Ian:

No More Hug-A-Terrorist

How hard is it to understand that radical Islamist jihadis have declared war on the West? In simple English this means: they will find you and kill you wherever and whenever they can.
Time and again, many of us concerned Muslims have highlighted the dangers of political Islam/Islamism, which stems from one of three sources: the Muslim Brotherhood, Wahhabi/Salafism or Khomeinism.
The West has been asleep at the wheel, waffling about how to address the issue with "sensitivity." Calling out the truth should never be subject to political correctness.
The world needs to take the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to task and challenge it about what it is doing to stem the tide of violence emanating from the Muslim world. The world needs to understand that ISIS is not trying to set up a Caliphate. OIC is the Caliphate.

Police thwart Jerusalem stabbing attack by teenage girl

Security forces on Friday afternoon thwarted a stabbing attack by a teenage girl in East Jerusalem, a spokesperson for Israel Police said.
The incident occurred at the entrance to the neighborhood of Isawiya, the police said.
The would-be attacker was overpowered and arrested at the scene.
The police said that the girl, coming from the direction of Isawiyah, approached a unit of Border Police officers next to a gas station in the French Hill neighborhood, which abuts Isawiyah. She then pulled out a knife and began to slash at the security forces. The troops overpowered the girl and detained her. There were no injuries.
The incident comes hours after a Palestinian woman was arrested in Hebron on Friday morning when she approached Israeli security forces at a checkpoint near the city’s Tel Rumeida neighborhood carrying a knife.

Soldier who shot disarmed Palestinian attacker facing murder charge

An IDF soldier caught on camera as he shot dead an apparently disarmed Palestinian assailant in the West Bank appeared in Jaffa Military Court on Friday, where it emerged that he is now the suspect in a Military Police murder investigation.
The soldier was arrested Thursday. He was filmed in Hebron shooting the Palestinian shortly after the latter had stabbed another soldier. When the suspect shot him, the Palestinian was already lying on the ground wounded, as a result of troop gunfire during the stabbing. The Palestinian was one of two stabbers who attacked troops near the Tel Rumeida neighborhood in Hebron, wounding one of them.
The soldier, from the Kfir Brigade, confirmed to the court Friday that he had carried out the shooting, and repeated his earlier statement that he believed the Palestinian had been wearing an explosive vest and therefore posed an ongoing danger, Army Radio said. He arrived in court after a night of questioning.
The soldier’s lawyer, Eyal Beserglick, also said that his client had acted out of the belief that the Palestinian had an explosive device.
“The investigation revealed that the shooting apparently took place when there were already at least several bullets in the attacker’s body,” Beserglick said. “When there was a real danger of an explosion at the scene, after a stabbing incident, what is expected of an outstanding soldier who sees his friends shy away from the same attacker? Who has a genuine fear for his friends’ lives and only then his own?”

Analysis: Severe military punishment awaits IDF soldier who fired on wounded attacker

Judging by the initial IDF response to the ghastly shooting of a Palestinian knife terrorist who had already been shot and was lying on his back, no longer posing a tangible threat to anyone, the soldier responsible for this grave breach of the rules of engagement will meet severe punishment in the military justice system.
The attacker, who together with a second terrorist repeatedly stabbed a soldier in Hebron on Thursday, had already been shot once – justifiably and in line with regulations – preventing him from continuing his mission to kill IDF personnel.
Then a soldier from the Kfir Brigade, standing a few meters away, as seen in a video released by B’Tselem, cocked his firearm and fired a single shot – without justification – at the downed attacker, in violation of IDF rules.
The disturbing images will doubtlessly circulate quickly on social media.
Well before the IDF received the video, the soldier’s commanders took swift and firm action. They held their own investigation, suspended the soldier on the spot, and delivered him to the Military Police, where he will be questioned.
Military sources stressed that no one in the IDF “waited for this video to emerge,” adding that regional battalion and brigade commanders concluded that a grave breach occurred, and acted.

Major terror attack on Brussels airport was foiled by Israeli security in 1979

Remember when Palestinian attacks on civilians were considered terrorism by the entire civilized world?

There is not much difference between the attacks in Brussels this week and a similar one carried out by Palestinian terrorists in 1979 - except that Israeli security prevented a much larger catastrophe in 1979.

From The Washington Post, April 17, 1979 - right before Easter weekend:

Israeli security agents on hand for the arrival of an El Al flight with 160 passengers opened fire on four Palestinian terrorists here today and prevented what could have been a major bloodbath.

The Israelis shot, then seized one heavily armed terrorist and captured a second. Belgian police joined the shootout but were unable to find another man and woman said to be among the attackers.

The terrorists, armed with fragmentation grenades and Soviet-made submachine gun, hurled two light hand grenades into the crowded terminal from a balcony, wounding what officials said was "about a dozen persons." none seriously. The victims, all Belgians, were taken to hospitals in Brussels, 10 miles from the airport.

Belgian police joined the attack on the terrorists but Defense Minister Paul vanden Boeynants-who rushed to the airport as soon as he heard of the attack-said. "The first shots at the terrorists were fired by El Al security agents who happened to be there."

While police said one or two other terrorists were believed to have escaped, most eyewitnesses mentioned two, one of them a woman.

Authorities said the captured terrorists carried bogus Lebanese passports, and said the El Al plane was their target. They reportedly declared they were from a new group of the Palestine Liberation Organization called "Black March"-for the month when the Egyptian-Israeli treaty was signed.

Belgian state radio said the terrorists belonged to the Marxist radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group that broke away from the PLO in 1974.

In Beirut, the PLO disclaimed any knowledge of the attack.

Last month the PLO spoke of reviving the Black September terrorist group to punish Egypt and Israel for signing the peace treaty. The Black September group carried out the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

Airport authorities said the usual El Al security precaution of parking its planes a good distance from the terminal foiled the apparent intent to seize the aircraft. El Al planes are considered a choice target by Palestinian terrorists.

Police closed the roads leading to the airport for three hours, stranding hundreds of persons on Easter Monday, a holiday in Belgium.

Police then raided the Brussels residences of well-known PLO sympathizers, informed sources said.

JTA added some color that also could have been written this year:

In Washington, the State Department condemned the terrorist attack but refrained from condemning the PLO.

Nathan Perlmutter, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, sent a telegram to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance saying: “It is ironic and instructive that at a time when a State Department visa has been granted to Shafik AI-Hout, PLO representative in Lebanon, to lecture at U.S. universities, and PLO supporters are stressing the ‘moderate’ role of this murderous group, PLO assassins attack innocent passengers in the Brussels airport lounge. We respectfully request reconsideration of your position on AI-Hout.”

And:

The PLO representative in Brussels Naim Khader, said on a Belgian radio interview last night that his organization had nothing to do with the attack. “We had everything to lose and nothing to gain from this senseless attack against Belgian citizens,” Khader said. He charged that the attack was “an Israeli provocation.”

(h/t Naftali)

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Iranian Ababil drone

Israeli site 0404 reports:

A drone launched by Hezbollah over Israel was able to safely return to its base without being damaged, according to foreign reports.

The UAV was launched this past Wednesday night, hovered for about 14 hours over Israel through Thursday morning "and successfully completed the mission," according to reports.

Jihadist sources say Hezbollah is expected to soon provide more details about its success.

Hezbollah has been deploying, with Iranian assistance, some sophisticated drone capabilities. It has also successfully flown drones over Israel before.

Hezbollah drones have reportedly been used to bomb sites in Syria as well, meaning that they have offensive capabilities (possibly by crashing themselves into the targets.)

If this report is true (which is a very big if,) it would be a very worrying development.

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This is the cover of an Arabic novel called "Daughter of Zion", which just had its sixth printing.

Vetogate in Egypt wrote this:

Recently Kayan Publishing published the seventh (sic) edition of the novel “The Daughter of Zion”, by the author Sha’aban Sharif, after the enormous success of the novel after its first edition. The new edition is found in the bookshops of the publishing house.

From the novel:

“When the evening came, they called a Jewish barber named Suleiman. He was a thin-bodied man, and he had a light beard that showed the veins under his skin. They ordered him to slaughter the (Christian) priest. He took out a shaving razor from his suitcase/bag and began to sharpen it so it would be sharp and he would be able to slaughter him (i.e. the priest) easily, but he (i.e. Suleiman) looked at him (at the priest), who was tied and weakened from all the beatings and torture, and he (i.e. Suleiman) hesitated a little, and the razor trembled in his hand. Daoud screamed in his (Suleiman’s) face: “He is a gentile, his blood is halal (permitted) for us” and he took a sharp knife and fell upon him (i.e. upon the priest) with all his brutality everywhere, he cut off his limbs and pierced his torso. All the priest’s screams and pleas fell on deaf ears. Then his brother Haroun Harari came and completed the slaughter. Then they collected his blood in a large and transparent vial and hurried to take it to Rabbi Basha Yaaqub Al-‘Antabi – who gave them the order to slaughter (the priest) -in the Jews' temple.

(Rabbi Basha Yaaqub Al-‘Antabi) was sitting in a dark room on a large wooden chair that had a soft/smooth cushion, and a large Star of David engraved on it. (Rabbi Basha Yaaqub Al-‘Antabi) wore a large black turban, embroidered with Arab ornaments and a wide and black robe, embroidered with golden fiber thread, and a red silk belt. His long white beard hung down to the middle of his chest. He was sitting and impatiently waiting for the two of them (Daoud and Haroun) with his sunken eyes, because of his need for the blood of the sacrificial victim in order to prepare the fatira of the Purim festival from gentile blood.”

Fatira almost always refers to matzoh, so this author is even more ignorant than usual by saying it is eaten on Purim.

This is the beginning of the book itself. For seven pages it describes in detail the supposed blood libel story of Damascus in 1840. The rest of the book is a political novel that starts in Israel in 2003. It is unclear what this section has to do with the rest of the novel.

Oh, who am I kidding? We all know why this is part of the novel - because the author needs to first set the stage of how evil Jews are.

The author works at the Egyptian Department of Antiquities.

Here is a promotional photo of another edition of the book.

(h/t Shawarma News and Ibn Boutros)

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