Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, April 14, 2016

A useful list of academic frauds who demand textbooks publish lying anti-Israel propaganda

The "Jewish Voice for Peace" group seems very upset that McGraw-Hill removed a textbook from circulation after I showed that it included a false piece of anti-Israel propaganda.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 12, 2016

Dozens of Prominent Academics Urge McGraw-Hill Education to Reverse Decision to Censor Palestinian Loss of Land Maps

Last month, publishing giant McGraw-Hill Education withdrew and destroyed copies of a US college level textbook because of complaints from supporters of Israel over a series of maps showing loss of Palestinian land from 1946, shortly before Israel was established, to 2000.

In response to this shocking and outrageous act of censorship of the Palestinian narrative from US schoolbooks, dozens of respected Palestinian, Israeli, and American academics have signed onto the enclosed open letter calling on McGraw-Hill Education to reverse its decision. Signatories include Rashid Khalidi, Noura Erakat, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Sarah Schulman, Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappé, and Angela Davis.

Here is the letter they signed. Keep in mind that these people are considered "academics."

Academics Urge McGraw-Hill Education to Reverse Decision to Destroy Textbook

We, the undersigned, urge McGraw-Hill Education to reverse its recent decision to withdraw and destroy the US college level textbook, “Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World”, which was made following complaints about a series of maps showing loss of Palestinian land from 1946 to 2000.

This blatant act of censorship, in response to complaints from those who seek to suppress a free exchange of knowledge and ideas about Israel and Palestine, is shocking and unacceptable.

The maps in question are historically accurate and vividly illustrate Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinian people and appropriation of their land, which is why the Israeli government and its supporters wish to suppress them. If there were in fact any minor errors with the maps they should have been corrected rather than removed altogether. Last year, in a similar act of censorship, the cable news network MSNBC apologized for airing a similar series of maps and retracted them.

It is imperative that students be able to visualize history, including through the use of maps, in order to learn how to analyze and understand it. Further, it is essential that faculty and students have access to educational materials that speak to the dispossession Palestinians have experienced, and continue to experience today. We cannot have a truly comprehensive understanding of Palestine or Israel without this information.

We urge McGraw-Hill Education to reverse its decision and reinstate the maps and textbooks in question.

First these academics say that the maps are historically accurate, but they they admit that the maps may have "minor errors" that "should have been corrected." Which is it?

It is neither. The maps are lies from beginning to end, both individually as well as in the way they are presented as a series. But you wont find any of these "academics" actually answering the proofs that they are propaganda. If they were true academics, who wouldn't lower themselves to answer my proofs, they should answer the objections of Yaacov Lozowick, who really is a historian unlike virtually all of the signatories.

If you need more proof that these "academics" are academic frauds, think about this: I am willing to bet that not one of them has actually seen a copy of this textbook. They are defending this propaganda map without knowing if it even fits in with what the text is saying! They argue that "it is essential that faculty and students have access to educational materials that speak to the dispossession Palestinians have experienced" but without reading the book, how can they know that this is appropriate in this case?

Here are the facts, since I've seen the full context and they haven't. The section of the book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is less than two pages. The text mentions the separation fence and refers to the series of maps as showing where the fence is - but the maps don't show that.

I don't know whether it is the authors or copy-editors of the book who are to blame, but the reference the book gives for the Map that Lies is an obscure article, written in Arabic, that was published in a now defunct website. It was not published as an academic paper anywhere as far as I can tell.

Furthermore, the map was not created by the author of that paper; it was grabbed from some propaganda site and thrown in by the webmaster just to add an illustration. The paper was about possible security-specific solutions between Israel and a Palestinian state and had nothing to do with supposed land loss.

In short, there is no academic source for this series of maps. It was placed in the textbook even though it had nothing to do with the text, referencing a paper that had no relationship with the map to give it academic cover. There was some effort involved on the part of someone to include this piece of propaganda and to hide its origins from anti-Israel hate groups.

The academics who signed this don't give a damn about truth. They are saying that anti-Israel lies must be inserted in every possible medium and venue. In this sense they are echoing what professor Amy Kaplan said at a BDS conference on how to try to incorporate anti-Israel propaganda in courses that have little to do with the topic.

McGraw Hill did the right thing because the maps are filled with lies, the source for the maps was falsified (or laundered, if you prefer,) , and the graphics had nothing to do with the actual text. The Isrsel-haters know that the maps are a great propaganda tool and they cannot stand the fact that its lies have been exposed so publicly, both in this case and by MSNBC last year.

There are 37 signatories of this absurd letter. Being a signatory of this letter defending the indefensible is a very good indicator that these "academics" are simply frauds who are willing to sacrifice the truth in their hatred for Israel.

So here is the list of these academic frauds, courtesy of JVP. I include links where I previously showed them to be liars and deceptive (or quoted others who did.) Note also that there is at least one prominent J-Street member, Rebecca Alpert.

Nadia Abu-El-Haj, Professor at Barnard College and Columbia University

Rebecca Alpert, Professor of Religion, Temple University

Sofya Aptekar, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston

Sa’ed Atshan, Visiting Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, Swarthmore College

Elsa Auerbach, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts Boston

Daniel Boyarin, Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley

George Bisharat, Emeritus Professor of Law, UC Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco

Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley

Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus), Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Omar Dajani, Professor of Law at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law

Angela Davis, Author and activist

Estelle Disch, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston

Lisa Duggan, Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University

Nada Elia, Program Manager, Global Cultures Program, Northwest Language Academy

Noura Erakat, Assistant Professor at George Mason University

Andrés Fabián Henao Castro, Political Science Department, University of Massachusetts Boston

Margaret Ferguson, Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Davis

Katherine Franke, Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Director of the Open University Project, and member of the steering committee of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University

Marilyn Frankenstein, Professor of Media and Society, University of Massachusetts Boston

Randa Jarrar, President of Radius of Arab American Writers

Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies, Columbia University

Martha London, University of Massachusetts Boston

David Lloyd, Distinguished Professor of English, University of California, Riverside

Saree Makdisi, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, UCLA

Ussama S. Makdisi, Professor of History and Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies, Rice University

Bill V. Mullen, Professor of American Studies, Purdue University

Nadine Naber, Associate Professor, Gender & Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago

David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, and Professor of Comparative Literature, Stanford University

Ilan Pappé, Professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies

Rachel Rubin, University of Massachusetts Boston

Sarah Schulman, Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, City University of New York, College of Staten Island

Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations, St. Antony’s College, Oxford

C. Heike Schotten, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Boston

Jack Shaheen, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at New York University’s Asian/Pacific/American Institute and The Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies

Simona Sharoni, Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh

Barry Trachtenberg, Director, Judaic Studies Program, University at Albany – SUNY

Judith E. Tucker, Professor of History, Georgetown University

This is a very useful list - a list of so-called academics who act in opposition of what academia is supposed to stand for. Anyone who attends any of their schools - or pays tuition for someone who does - should really ask their deans whether they are proud to have educators who explicitly favor hate and lies over the truth.

(h/t Alyssa)

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

04/13 Links Pt2: Israel Is Here to Stay; The Left’s political orthodoxy is the gateway drug to jihad

From Ian:

Aaron David Miller: Israel Is Here to Stay

Is Israel doomed? Will bad demography, bad neighbors, and bad Israeli behavior turn the once hopeful and idealistic notion of a thriving Jewish democratic state into a veritable Middle Eastern Sparta -- isolated in the international community and struggling to survive in a hostile region even as it occupies a restless and growing Palestinian majority?
Having worked the Israel issue for half a dozen secretaries of state, I certainly wouldn't want to minimize the challenges Israelis face at home and abroad.
Still -- and I concede up front that the view from Washington, DC isn't the same as the one from Jerusalem -- I'm more convinced than ever that Israel is here to stay. I may not be around to mark Israel's 100th birthday. But Israelis will. And here's why.

The Left’s political orthodoxy is the gateway drug to jihad

By Bret Stephens
The Tsarnaevs took their bomb-building tips from Inspire, an online English-language magazine published by al-Qa’ida’s branch in Yemen.
But the influence of the Awlakis of the world cannot fully account for the mindset of these jihadists.
They are also sons of the West — educated in the schools of multiculturalism, reared on the works of Noam Chomsky and perhaps Frantz Fanon, consumers of a news diet heavy with reports of perfidy by US or British or Israeli soldiers.
If Islamism is their ideological drug of choice, the political orthodoxies of the modern Left are their gateway to it.
Take the most recent issue of Inspire. Mixed in with step-by-step photos on how to build a timed hand-grenade and an analysis of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, there’s a long article on the oppression of blacks in America, starting with the killing of Ferguson’s Michael Brown.
The spring 2013 issue contains a “message to the American nation” from al-Qa’ida commander Qassim al-Reimy in which he asks whether “meddling in our affairs and installing whomever tyrant agents and lackeys you want who kill and oppress (is) forgivable?”
“Leave us with our religion, land and nations and mind your own internal affairs,” the commander — now emir — writes. “Save your economy, look after your concerns, for it is better than what you currently are.”
This isn’t the language of Islam, with its impressive tradition of conquest. It’s the language of the progressive Left, of what Jeane Kirkpatrick at the 1984 Republican convention called the “Blame America First” crowd.

Junior Elder took this snapshot of a church sign that he passed by. He amused because he assumed that the verse was a funny translation of Psalms 117:1, "Praise the Lord, all ye nations (goyim); laud Him, all ye peoples." (JPS 1917 translation.) His assumption was that someone was too clever by half and mistranslated "goyim" as "gentiles" which is how the word is sometimes used colloquially, even though it means "nations."

But a closer look shows that the sign didn't quote Psalms, rather it quoted Romans in the Christian Bible.

The verses are so similar, though, that it was worth researching.

Romans of course was written in Greek, and the word at issue here is "ἔθνη," , pronounced "ethnē." Strong's translates this as "a race, people, nation; the nations, heathen world, Gentiles."

Apparently sometimes in the Christian scriptures the word refers to nations, and sometimes to gentiles.

The mystery is why the King James Bible chose to use "gentiles" here instead of what was obviously a copy of the quote in Psalms - which it translates as "nations." The scholars that translated the King James Bible certainly would have known that the verse in Romans was simply a Greek translation of the Hebrew verse in Psalms.

The Christian commentaries clearly want to emphasize translation of the term as "gentiles" based on the context - and this is the theme of the chapter, where the word "goy" is quoted from other parts of the Jewish scripture and translated as gentiles as well! 15:9 quotes Psalms 18:50 (Hebrew verse numbering), and 15:10 quotes Deuteronomy 32:43 (where in context the word clearly refers to nations besides Israel.)

The chapter is apparently trying to retrofit the Jewish scripture to refer to Christian theology, which explains why the translators chose to use the word "gentiles" rather than "nations." Clearly the Tanach sometimes used the word "goy" to refer to Israel alone as well so the translation seems more to be geared towards religion than accuracy. (The Biblical mentions of Israel as a "nation" and as a "people" are the best answers to those, like the PLO, who insist that Jews are not part of a nation but merely members of the same religion.)

It is just amusing to me that possibly the first people to translate "goyim" into "gentiles" n English were, in fact, gentiles!

(Maimonides used the word "goy" to mean gentile several centuries before King James. But in Biblical Hebrew it never meant an individual gentile.)

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

Obama Hires Bill Cosby To Reassure Americans To Trust Iran Deal (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Washington, April 13 - Amid continued revelations that the Obama administration has failed to push back against Iran's repeated violations of the nuclear deal struck last year, the president has engaged the services of trusted comic icon Bill Cosby to reassure worried citizens that all is going according to plan and that the wisest course of action is the one the White House has been pursuing.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters of the hire this afternoon (Wednesday) at a press briefing, and expressed the hope that Cosby's stature in the entertainment industry would help sell the administration's policy to a skeptical American public. He then introduced the 78-year-old entertainer to the White House press corps for some brief remarks. Cosby did not take questions.

"I think I speak for all Americans when I say that Bill Cosby inspires confidence," said Earnest, recalling the actor's character Dr. Cliff Huxtable from the 1980's sitcom The Cosby Show. "Whether as Dr. Huxtable or as himself, nobody invites trust the way Bill Cosby does."

The comedian thanked Earnest and told the assembled journalists he was honored to accept the president's offer. "What this country needs right now is someone to calm the populace, to assuage their anxieties over the Iran nuclear deal and its enforcement," intoned Cosby. "And that is what I intend to do. I look forward to reassuring the country that they have nothing to fear from Iran anymore. The Islamic Republic will serve as a source of stability in the region, and we certainly need not suspect there is anything ulterior about the arrangement."

"I lend my reputation and credibility to this endeavor because I believe it is in the best interest of the country and the world," continued the veteran television personality. "Certainly I do not think Iran, or the administration, would violate the trust placed in them, and certainly not take advantage of our vulnerabilities, or those of our allies, to pursue anything untoward. They also would not abuse the new status that the nuclear deal gives them to unfair advantage over the less powerful to violate them in any way."

"Do not give credence to stories that the administration has been intimidating officials who might challenge the agreement's wholesome image," added Cosby. "They have ulterior motives, and don't have your best interests at heart. Trust me. Trust us. Bill Cosby wouldn't hurt you or betray your trust, would he?"

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

04/13 Links Pt1: Dershowitz: Sanders Must Clarify Where He Stands on Israel; Glick: Obama’s nuclear contrition

From Ian:

Alan M. Dershowitz: Bernie Sanders Must Clarify Where He Stands on Israel

While the media has focused on Bernie Sanders' egregious overstatement of the specific number of innocent Palestinians killed in Operation Protective Edge, the more revealing aspect of what he told the Daily News is his generalization that Israel indiscriminately leveled hospitals and apartment buildings. Although he did not explicitly say that the Israel Defense Forces deliberately targeted civilians and civilian structures, his canard can certainly be understood that way by those Israel haters who are actively supporting his campaign.
The word "indiscriminate," especially applied to Israeli military actions, has acted as a code word among Israel-bashers for war crimes and even genocide. The reality is that the Israeli military efforts to stop Hamas from indiscriminately killing Israeli citizens with rockets and through terror tunnels has been the opposite of indiscriminate, as Colonel Richard Kemp and other military experts have attested. No other country in history has gone to such lengths in trying to distinguish between military and civilian targets, even in the face of an enemy that regularly uses its own population as human shields, and that hides military equipment in schools and hospitals. Israel's efforts to protect its citizens compare favorably to the U.S. and NATO led military bombing campaigns in Iraq, Syria, and other areas, in which civilians have also been used as human shields.
At best, Mr. Sanders' comments on Operation Protective Edge reflect a disappointing lack of interest in the specifics of what happened during the course of the seven-week war. As has been noted by several commentators, Senator Sanders is a long-term elected official who deals with some frequency with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and who should be expected to avoid gross misstatements on the topic. Mr. Sanders has done nothing to assuage these concerns: in two recent interviews, Mr. Sanders mistakenly put the number of civilians killed at "over 2,000" and again described the Israeli response as "disproportionate."

Bucking Sanders, PM says Israel would not hesitate to act strongly against Gaza again

Two days after Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders charged that Israel acted “disproportionately” during the 2014 fighting in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel would not hesitate to hit Gaza hard again, if necessary.
“Israel is surrounded by extremist Islamic radicals, and therefore we need to guard our borders, and this is also true regarding the communities surrounding Gaza,” Netanyahu said in Yeroham at the seventh annual Negev Conference.
“In another couple of months we will mark two years since Operation Protective Edge, and those who attacked us from the Gaza Strip took an unprecedentedly heavy blow. We will – of course – not hesitate again to act strongly against anyone who wants to endanger Israeli citizens.”
Netanyahu said that security is a precondition to all the development his government is promoting in the country’s South.

Meet the outspoken critic of Israel who is Bernie Sanders' new Jewish outreach director

Simone Zimmerman, the Bernie Sanders campaign’s newly hired national Jewish outreach coordinator, is quite familiar with the American Jewish establishment.
She is used to fighting against it.
During the 2014 Gaza war, Zimmerman was one of the leaders of a group of young Jews that held regular protest vigils outside the offices of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, reading the names of Palestinians and Israelis killed in the conflict.
She opposes Israel’s occupation, wants Hillel to allow participation by groups that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, is against Jewish federation funding for Israeli projects in the West Bank and wrote favorably of the efforts of Jewish Voice for Peace, a pro-BDS group, to get “international corporations to stop profiting off human rights abuses.” (The Anti-Defamation League has called JVP one of America’s top 10 anti-Israel groups.)
“We’re paying attention to what’s happening in Israel — and we are angry,” Zimmerman said in a column on her fellow millennials in Israel’s daily Haaretz in February.

Bernie’s New Jewish Outreach Director: ‘F–k you, Bibi’

The Sanders campaign’s newly hired Jewish outreach director wrote an expletive-laden Facebook post last year that condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a mass-murderer.
“Bibi Netanyahu is an arrogant, deceptive, cynical, manipulative asshole,” wrote Simone Zimmerman, a former J Street student activist, in the March 3rd 2015 post. “F#ck you, Bibi … you sanctioned the murder of over 2,000 people this summer.”
At a later date, Zimmerman edited the post, replacing “asshole” with “politician” and “F#ck you” with “shame on you.” The Free Beacon obtained screenshots of the original and edited posts.

UNESCO draft resolution says Israel plants "Jewish fake graves" in Jerusalem

Item 19 on the 199th session of UNESCO's Executive Board which is taking place this week includes a draft resolution from Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, and Sudan.

This resolution goes over a litany of complaints about Israel, including how it allows Jews to visit the Temple Mount, or, as it says, "the continuous storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif by the Israeli right-wing extremists and uniformed forces, and urges Israel, the Occupying Power, to take necessary measures to prevent provocative abuses that violate the sanctity and integrity of Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif."

But there is a new bizarre accusation being brought up:

This lie has been around since 2012, when the Al Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage claimed that Israel planted thousands of fake graves around the Temple Mount.

In 2013 a Muslim cleric in Jerusalem claimed that the ancient Mount of Olives cemetery was filed with fake Jewish graves.

In 2014 another Muslim committee claimed that Israel created a new cemetery also filled with fake graves.

The irony of course is that Muslims have been proven to be planting hundreds of fake graves for years.

As far as the rest of the resolution, those Umayyad palaces that are mentioned were discovered and are being preserved by those awful Jews. Yet they were built using plundered stones from Byzantine churches and even the second Jewish Temple.

No one is "converting" them into Jewish ritual baths - those had been there for a thousand years before the Umayyad palaces were built.

How will UNESCO act when being given this laundry list of lies?

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)

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

From i24News:

The brother of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was on Monday hospitalized in Tel Aviv in serious condition, Ynet reports. His arrival at and admission to the hospital took place in secret.

Abu Louai, who lives in Qatar and who turned 81 last month according to Ynet, was admitted to Assuta Medical Center, where Abbas' wife and brother-in-law have previously been treated. Recently diagnose with cancer, Abu Louai chose to receive treatment in Israel.

Abbas' brother initially began his treatment at Assuta, an expensive private hospital, before returning to Qatar after a stay of several days at the hospital. Now, ahead of his next treatment, he has once again been admitted to the Tel Aviv-based medical center, arriving via Jordan.

In summer 2014, Abbas' wife, Amina Abbas, was admitted to Assuta for an operation on her leg. She returned to Ramallah after several days at the hospital.

Six months ago, just as the current escalation in violence was beginning, Abbas' brother-in-law — Amina's brother — was hospitalized at Assuta for life-saving heart surgery.

It is not as if he lives in the West Bank and had few options as to where to be treated. Abu Louai lives in Qatar and took advantage of his relationship with his brother in order to be able to be treated in Israel!

It has happened in the past. A daughter of one Gulf royal family went to Israel for a heart operation. Hamas leaders have sent their family members to Israel for treatment.

The Assuta Medical Center specializes in "medical tourism" to attract patients from outside Israel.

As usual, the demand to boycott the Jewish state disappears when you need it for something.

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

Video: Parking shortage is "violation of human rights" for Golan Druze

Yaron London is a left-wing Israeli TV commentator, but he makes a Druze from the Golan Heights (and the UNHRC, sorry for the typo) who is claiming that Israel is violating his human rights look like an idiot.

The other Druze lawyer on the show is sort of amazing.

There is a lot to learn about the Golan Druze in this show; for example that Druze residents of the Golan still manage to go to University of Damascus for free - and then get jobs as doctors in Israel.

(h/t Yoel)

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

04/12 Links Pt2: Palestinians: Erasing Christian History; Angry words at Jews for Bernie event

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Erasing Christian History

For Palestinian Christians, the destruction of the ancient Byzantine church ruins is yet a further attempt by Palestinian Muslim leaders to efface both Christian history and signs of any Christian presence in the West Bank and Gaza, under the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas. A growing number of Christians feel they are being systematically targeted by both the PA and Hamas for being Christians.
Bulldozers were used to destroy some of the church artifacts; some Palestinian Christians accused both Hamas and the PA of copying ISIS tactics to demolish historic sites.
"Where are the heads of the churches in Jerusalem and the world?... Where are the Vatican and UNESCO? Where are the leaders and politicians who talk, talk, talk about national unity and the preservation of holy sites? Or is this a collective conspiracy to end our existence and history in the East?" — Sami Khalil, a Christian from the West Bank city of Nablus.
The plight of Palestinian Christians does not interest the international community. That is because Israel cannot be blamed for demolishing the antiquities. If the current policy against Christians persists, the day will come when no Christians will be left in Bethlehem.

Douglas Murray: Trevor Phillips is finally discovering the pitfalls of the term ‘Islamophobia’

Later on he says:
‘Twenty years ago, when, as chair of the Runnymede Trust, I published the report titled Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, we thought that the real risk of the arrival of new communities was discrimination against Muslims.’
And then:
‘Non-Muslims who live and work in areas with a large Muslim presence have been uneasily aware of the emerging differences for a long time, but many are too worried about being tagged as Islamophobes to raise the debate.’
Well isn’t that the problem right there? I am as happy as anyone to see the liberal dams cracking when it comes to the big issues of our time. But it is harder to celebrate those causing those cracks when they are the very people who put up those dams in the first place.
It was the mainstreaming of the fraudulent concept of ‘Islamophobia’ and the whole grievance-industry set up by Trevor Phillips, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and their ilk that made Britain so incapable of answering this problem any earlier. Even now Trevor Phillips remains principally helpful in waking up to things just a few years too late. So although his proscriptions for how to deal with this problem may be helpful, even this late in the day, they miss perhaps the biggest remaining ‘unsayable’.

From Ya Libnan:

A senior Palestinian official with the mainstream Fatah organization was killed on Tuesday in a car bomb explosion in the southern city of Sidon.

General Fathi Zaidan and four others died and two bodyguards, were injured in the blast near Ain el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp.

Zaidan, who is nicknamed “Zorro”, is the security official with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah group who runs the Mieh Mieh refugee camp.

The army’s forensics unit later arrived at the scene of the explosion and cleared away scorched body parts lying near a car in flames, said an Agence France Presse correspondent at the scene.

Ziadan’s body parts were taken to al-Hamshari and Sidon state hospitals, said the state-run National News Agency.

Zaidan, before

His body parts were taken to two different hospitals?

The head of the joint Palestinian security force in Lebanon Mounir al-Maqdah told LBCI TV that before the blast, Zaidan attended a meeting in Mieh Mieh during which he asked for increased security measures at the camp.

Fatah gunmen have recently clashed with Islamic extremists in Ain el-Hilweh, the largest of 12 refugee camps in Lebanon.

Ain el-Hilweh has become the scene of score-settling between several factions, and a breeding ground for extremist groups that have flourished on the back of the poverty afflicting the camp.

And why are they so poor, I wonder? Oh, that's right: because of how Lebanon treats them.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, the PFLP burned and trampled on images of Mahmoud Abbas.

They would have such a peaceful state if only Israel would just disappear.

(h/t Yoel)

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

John Lloyd Stephens (1805-52) was an American explorer, writer, and diplomat. He travelled in the Middle East during 1834-36. In this extract from volume two of the third edition his Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia, Petraea and the Holy Land, published in 1839, we encounter a very moving tale of his literally overnight bonding with the Jews of Hebron and of a moving incident concerning Hebron’s octogenarian chief rabbi, who I believe was Ḥayyim ha-Levi Polacco. I’ve also included brief snippets from the author’s impressions of Jerusalem, which he visited next.

Wrote Stephens:

The Bedouins and Fellahs about Hebron are regarded as the worst, most turbulent, and desperate Arabs under the government of the pacha [sic; Pasha].… We turned a point pf the mountain to the left; and at the extreme end of the valley, on the side of a hill, bounding it, stands the little city of Hebron, the ancient capital of the kingdom of David. But it bears no traces of the glory of its Jewish king…. [A] small town of white houses, compactly built on the side of the mountain, a mosque and two minarets, are all that mark the ancient city of Hebron.

…. I had no wish to stop at Hebron, though the first city in the Holy Land … The glory of the house of David had for ever departed. ,,, I had an indefinable longing to sleep my first night in the Holy land in [Bethlehem]. But the governor positively refused to let me go that afternoon; he said that it was a bad road, and that a Jew had been robbed a few days before on his way to Bethlehem… Seeing there was no hope for me, I made the best of it, and asked him to furnish me with a place to lodge that night….

… I followed the janizary [sic; janissary] … I had no idea where he was taking me; but … their peculiar costume and physiognomies told me I was among the unhappy remnant of a fallen people, the persecuted and despised Israelites. They were removed from the Turkish quarter, as if the slightest contact with this once-favoured people would contaminate the bigoted follower of the Prophet. The governor, in the haughty spirit of a Turk, probably thought that the house of a Jew was a fit place of repose for a Christian; and, following the janizary through a low range of narrow, dark, and filthy lanes, mountings and turnings, of which it is impossible to give any idea, with the whole Jewish population turning out to review us … I was conducted to the house of the chief Rabbi of Hebron.

If I had had my choice, these were the very persons I would have selected for my first acquaintances in the Holy Land. The descendants of Israel were fit persons to welcome a stranger to the ancient city of their fathers; and if they had been then sitting under the shadow of the throne of David, they could not have given me a warmer reception. It may be that, standing in the same relation to the Turks, alike the victims of persecution and contempt, they … felt only a sympathy for the object of mutual oppression. But, whatever the cause, I shall never forget the kindness with which, as a stranger and a Christian, I was received by the Jews in the capital of their ancient kingdom …

[My own friends] would have smiled to see me that night, with a Syrian dress and long beard, sitting cross-legged on a divan, with the chief rabbi of the Jews at Hebron, and half the synagogue around us, talking of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as of old and mutual friends.

With the few moments of daylight that remained, my Jewish friends conducted me around their miserable quarter. They … took me to their synagogue, in which an old white-bearded Israelite was teaching some prattling children to read the laws of Moses in the language of their fathers; and when the sun was setting in the west, and the Muezzin from the top of the minaret was calling the sons of the faithful to evening prayers, the old rabbi and myself, a Jew and a Christian, were sitting on the roof of the little synagogue, looking out as if by stealth upon the sacred mosque containing the hallowed ashes of their patriarch fathers. The Turk guards the door, and the Jew and the Christian are not permitted to enter; and the old rabbi was pointing to the different parts of the mosque, where, as he told me, under tombs adorned with carpets of silk and gold, rested the mortal remains of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

…. Hebron, one of the oldest cities of Canaan, is now a small Arab town, containing seven or eight hundred Arab families. The present inhabitants are the wildest, most lawless, and most desperate people in the Holy land …. A petty Turk now wields the sceptre of the son of Jesse, and a small remnant of a despised and persecuted people still hover round the graves of their fathers; and though degraded and trampled underfoot, from the very dust in which they lie are still looking to the restoration of their temporal kingdom.

Accompanied by my Jewish friends, I visited the few spots which tradition marks as connected with the scenes of Biblical History. Passing through the bazars at the extreme end, and descending a few steps, we entered a vault containing a large monument, intended in memory of Abner, the greatest captain of his age, the favoured and for a long time trusted officer of David, who, as the Jews told me, was killed in battle near Hebron, and his body brought here and buried. The great mosque, the walls of which, the Jews say, are built with the ruins of the temple of Solomon, according to the belief of the Mussulmans and the better authority of the Jews, covers the site of the Cave of Machpelah, which Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite; and within its sacred precincts are the supposed tombs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The doors were guarded with jealous care by the bigoted Mussulmans; and when, with my Jewish companion, I stopped for a moment to look up at the long marble staircase leading to the tomb of Abraham, a Turk came out from the bazars, and, with furious gesticulations, gathered a crowd around us; and a Jew and a Christian were driven with contempt from the sepulchre of the patriarch whom they both revered. A special firman from the pacha, or perhaps a large bribe to the governor, might have procured me a private admission; but death or the Koran would have been the penalty required by the bigoted people of Hebron.

On a rising ground a little beyond the mosque is a large fountain or reservoir, supported by marble pillars, where my companion told me that Sarah had washed the clothes of Abraham and Isaac. Leaving this, I went once more to the two pools outside the walls, and after examining them as the so-called works of Solomon, I had seen all a stranger could see in Hebron.

…. I had spent a long evening with my Jewish friends. The old rabbi talked to me of their prospects and condition, and how he had left his country in Europe many years before, and come with his wife and children to lay their bones in the Holy Land. He was now eighty years old; and for thirty years, he said, he had lived with the sword suspended over his head; had been reviled, buffeted, and spit upon; and though sometimes enjoying a respite from persecution; he never knew at what moment the bloodhounds might not be let loose upon him; that since the country had been wrested from the sultan by the Pasha of Egypt, they had been comparatively safe and tranquil; though some idea may be formed of this comparative security from the fact that during the revolution two years before, when Ibrahim Pacha, after having been pent up several months in Jerusalem, burst out like a roaring lion, the first place upon which his wrath descended was the unhappy Hebron; and … the unhappy Jews, never offending but always suffering, received the full weight of Arab vengeance. Their houses were ransacked and plundered; their gold and silver, and all things valuable, carried away; and their wives and daughters violated before their eyes by a brutal soldiery.

…. He told me that he had lately had occasion to regret exceedingly the loss of a paper, which would now be of great use to him; that he was a Jew of Venice (I can vouch for it that he was no Shylock), and thirty years before had left his native city and come to Hebron with a regular passport; that for many years a European passport was no protection, and, indeed, it had been rather an object with him to … identify himself with the Asiatics; that in consequence he had been careless with his passport, and had lost it; but that now, since the conquest by Mohammed Aly and the government of Ibrahim Pacha, a European passport was respected, and saved its holder and his family from Turkish impositions. He mourned bitterly over his loss … for his children and grandchildren, whom his carelessness had deprived of the evidence of their birthright and the protection of their country.

I was interested in the old man’s story … and drawing upon … my legal knowledge, I told him that the loss of his passport had not deprived him of his right to the protection of his country, and that. If he could establish the fact of his being a native of Venice, he might still sit down under the wings of the double-headed eagle of Austria… Learning tjhat there were in Hebron some of his very old acquaintances, who could testify to the fact of his nativity, I told him to bring them to me; and I would take my affadavits, and, on my arrival at Beyroot, would represent the matter to the Austrian consul there; and I thought that with such evidence the consul would not refuse him another passport.

He thanked me very warmly, and the next morning early, while I was waiting for my departure, he brought in his witnesses…. I swore the white-bearded old men upon … a Hebrew copy of the Old Testament. I then dictated an affidavit for the rabbi himself, and was about administering the oath as before, when the old man rose, and taking the paper in his hand, and telling me to follow him, led the way through a range of narrow lanes and streets, and a crowd of people, to the little synagogue, where, opening the holy of holies, and laying his hand upon the sacred scroll, he read over the affidavit and solemnly swore to its truth. It did not need this additional act of solemnity to convince me of his truth; and when he gave me back the paper, and I saw the earnestness and deep interest depicted in the faces of the crowd that had followed us, I again resolved that I would use my best exertions to gladden once more the old man’s heart before he died. I added to the several affidavits a brief statement of the circumstances under which they had been taken, and, putting the paper in my pocket, returned to the house of the rabbi; and [subsequently] … at Beyroot I called upon the Austrian consul, and before I left had the satisfaction of receiving from him the assurance that the passport would be made out forthwith, and delivered to the agent whom the old rabbi had named to me.

I had nothing now to detain me in Hebron; my mules and a kervash provided by the governor were waiting for me, and I bade farewell to my Jewish friends…. I passed through the dark and narrow lanes of the Jewish Quarter, the inhabitants being all arranged before their houses; and all along, even from the lips of maidens, a farewell salutation fell upon my ears…. With the last of their kind greetings still lingering in my ears, I emerged from the Jewish Quarter, and it was with a warm feeling of thankfulness I felt, that if yesterday I had an Arab’s curse, today I had a Jewish blessing.

…. [A] few days after my arrival, the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, the high priest of the Jews in the city of their ancient kings, called upon me, accompanied by a Gibraltar Jew who spoke English, and told me that they had come at the request of my friend in Hebron, to receive and welcome me in the city of their fathers. I had already seen a great deal of the Jews. I had seen them in the cities of Italy, everywhere more or less oppressed; at Rome, shut up at night in their miserable quarters as if they were noxious beasts; in Turkey, persecuted and oppressed; along the shores of the Black Sea and in the heart of Russia, looked down upon by the serfs of the great empire of vassalage; and, for the climax of misery, I had seen them contemned [sic] and spit upon even by the ignorant and enslaved boors of Poland. I had seen them scattered abroad among all nations, as it had been foretold they would be, everywhere a separate and peculiar people, and everywhere, under all poverty, wretchedness, and oppression, waiting for, and anxiously expecting, the coming of a Messiah, to call together their scattered tribes, and restore them to the kingdom of their fathers; and all this the better fitted me for the more challenging spectacle of the Jews in the holy city. In all changes and revolutions, from the days when the kingdom of Solomon passed into the hands of strangers, under the Assyrian, the Roman, the Arab, and the Turk, a remnant of that once-favoured people has always hovered around the holy city; and now, as in the days of David, old men may be seen at the foot of Mount Zion, teaching their children to read from that mysterious book on which they have ever fondly built their hopes of a temporal and eternal kingdom.

The friends made for me by the rabbi at Hebron were the very friends above all others whom I would have selected for myself. … [O]ne of the first offers of kindness they made me, was an invitation to wait and partake of [Pesach/Passover] with them. The rabbi was an old man, nearly seventy, with a long white beard, and Aaron himself would not have been ashamed of such a representative. …

The Jews are the best topographers in Jerusalem … That same morning they took me to what they call a part of the wall of Solomon’s temple. It forms part of the southern wall of the mosque of Omar, and is evidently older than the rest, the stones being much larger, measuring nine or ten feet long; and I saw that day, as other travellers may still see every Friday in the year, all the Jews in Jerusalem clothed in their best raiment, winding through the narrow streets of their quarter; and under the hallowed wall, with the sacred volume in their hands, singing, in the language in which they were written, the Songs of Solomon and the Psalms of David. White-bearded old men and smooth-cheeked boys were leaning over the same book; and Jewish maidens, in their long white robes, were standing with their faces against the wall, and praying through cracks and crevices….[A]nd now, as the Mussulman lords it over the place where the temple stood, and the Jews are not permitted to enter, they endeavour to insinuate their prayers through the crevices in the wall, that thus they may rise from the Throne of Grace. The tradition is consistent, and serves to illustrate the consistency with which the Israelites adhere to the externals of their faith.

…. At about nine o’clock the next morning I was with [the Gibraltar Jew, the richest Israelite in Jerusalem”], and in a few moments we were sitting in the highest seats in the synagogue, at the foot of Mount Zion. My old friend the rabbi was in the desk, reading to a small remnant to the Israelites the same law which had been read to their fathers on the same spot ever since their fathers came out of the land of Egypt. And there they sat, where their fathers had sat before them … the feeble remnant of a mighty people; there was sternness in their faces, but in their hearts a spirit of patient endurance, and a firm and settled resolution to die and be buried under the shadow of their fallen temple.

…. [As] I could not understand the words of exhortation which fell from the lips of the preacher it was not altogether unnatural that I should turn from the rough-bearded sons of Abraham to the smooth faces of their wives and daughters. Since I left Europe, I had not been in an apartment where the women sat with their faces uncovered; and … I saw many a dark-eyed Jewess who appeared well worthy of my gaze…

The service over, we stopped for a moment to look at the synagogue, which was a new building, with nothing about it that was peculiar or interesting. It had no gold or silver ornaments; and the sacred scroll, the table of the Law, contained in the holy of holies, was all that the pride of the Jew could show. My friend, however, did not put his own light under a bushel; for, telling me the amount he had himself contributed to the building, he conducted me on to a room bought at his own expense in the schoolroom, with a stone in the front wall recording his name and generosity.

We then returned to his home [for dinner]… He was a man about fifty-five, born in Gibraltar to the same abject poverty which is the lot of most of his nation. In his youth he had been fortunate in his little dealings, and had been … an enterprising man; for he had twice made a voyage to England, and was so successful and liked the country so much that he always called himself an Englishman. Having … become very rich, he gratified the darling wish of his heart by coming to Jerusalem, to die and be buried with his fathers in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. But this holy purpose did not make him undervalue the importance of life, and the advantages of being a great man now….

It was Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The command to do no work on the Sabbath day … at first gave me some uneasiness about my dinner; but my host, with great self-complacency, relieved me from all apprehensions, by describing the admirable contrivance he had invented for reconciling appetite and duty – an oven, heated the night before to such a degree that the process of cooking was continued during the night, and the dishes were ready when wanted the next day…

…. I set out for Jaffa, the ancient Joppa…. About three hours from Jerusalem we came to the village of Abougos, the chief of the most powerful families of Fellahs in the Holy Land. Nearly all his life he had been in arms against the government, and his name was known among all the Christians in the East as the robber of the pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre….

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

04/12 Links Pt1: Israel issues pre-Passover travel warnings; Abu Mazen’s Attempt to Blunt the Knife Terror Wave

From Ian:

Israel issues pre-Passover travel warnings, stressing Turkey

Israel again instructed its citizens to avoid visiting Turkey and “to get out of there as quickly as possible” on Tuesday, in light of the approaching travel season.
On Friday, Israel issued a dramatic announcement, raising the threat level for Turkey to the highest possible level, which designates a large, concrete threat.
Israelis should “avoid visiting [Turkey] and get out of there as quickly as possible,” the Counter-Terrorism Bureau said in a statement.
Speaking to journalists Tuesday, a senior counter-terrorism official in the Israeli government reviewed the travel warnings for countries around the world ahead of Passover and the spring season, when many Israelis take advantage of the holidays to go abroad.

US court to hear PA appeal against $656 m. terror judgment

The Second Circuit US federal appeals court on Tuesday is due to hear the Palestinian Authority’s appeal against a historic $655.5 million civil wrongful death judgment against it for involvement in six terror attacks during the Second Intafada.
The judgment, handed down by a Manhattan jury in US federal district court in February 2015, was the first massive judgment ever against the PA in the US and one of the first major anti-terror judgments, along with the September 2014 judgment against Arab Bank for terror financing.
Many observers have said that together the judgments could change the playing field in making it easier to successfully sue in US courts groups which finance or indirectly support terror.
The PA’s appeal and representation have been led by Gassan A. Baloul and Mitchell R. Berger of Squire Patton Boggs LLP.
The plaintiffs, represented by Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Shurat Hadin – Israel Law Center and Kent Yalowitz of Arnold & Porter, central narrative at trial was that a large volume of PA employees, including numerous policemen and commanders, have been arrested and convicted by Israel as having organized, planned and perpetrated suicide bombings and shootings against Americans in Israel, including the six attacks from 2001-2004 in the case during the Second Intifada. In those attacks, 33 were killed with hundreds injured.