Wednesday, April 27, 2016

  • Wednesday, April 27, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
Ma'an reports that Jordan's Ministry of Endowments announced today that it is recruiting 150 new "observers" in the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

There are already 300 paid "observers" at the site.

It is assumed that these "observers" are meant to make up for the embarrassing episode where Jordan planned to install cameras on the site but Palestinians were upset over the plan that could prove that it is Arabs who instigate violence on the holy site, not Jews.

The "observers" would presumably never make such a mistake as the cameras would.

It will take several months before the logistics of who would be hired is worked out.

Rarely are there more than 30 Jews visiting the Temple Mount at any time, so the "observers" would outnumber the people they are meant to observe by a ratio of as much as 15-1.




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From Ian:

PMW: The PA's Billion Dollar Fraud
The Palestinian Authority is deceiving Western donor countries, falsely claiming to have stopped paying salaries to terrorist prisoners, and reaping more than a billion dollars/year in return
This special report by Palestinian Media Watch reveals a major fraud by the Palestinian Authority, through which it is reaping more than a billion dollars in foreign aid yearly.
In 2014, the PA announced that in order to continue receiving more than a billion dollars in financial support annually, it was acceding to US and European donor countries' demands that the PA stop paying salaries to terrorist prisoners. The PA claimed the money for prisoners salaries would no longer be paid by the PA but instead by the PLO.
Even though PMW warned at the time that this was a "ploy," the US and EU countries accepted the PA's assurance, and continue to give the PA over a billion dollars in financial aid every year.
This PMW special report cites numerous official PA sources and statements by officials, showing that the PA is violating the trust of the US and EU donor countries. According to all these sources, the PA Ministry of Finance continues to make the decisions and remains the source of the money for paying salaries to terrorist prisoners.
Gaza kids put on play about stabbing, killing Israelis
Young Palestinian children participating in a festival in the Gaza Strip this week wore military fatigues, and brandished toy knives and machine guns as they performed a play simulating violence against Israelis.
The event was broadcast on a Hamas television channel dedicated to culture, available in Gaza and the West Bank, according to Channel 2 news.
One short clip of the play aired on Channel 2 on Tuesday shows a young girl armed with a knife attempting to free a Palestinian prisoner from Israeli jail by stabbing the guards. She is shot and falls to the ground amid cries and screams from the audience. Other little girls then approach and cry over her “body.”
“Do not be angry with her,” a voice on the loudspeaker says. “She is your blood, your flesh and your honor.”
Gaza kids put on play about stabbing, killing Israelis



Marc Lamont Hill is a political news host at the BET network, although I have a hard time taking anyone seriously as a supposed newscaster who chooses to do TV appearances wearing a T-shirt.

But he is a former frequent guest on Fox News and has also appeared numerous times on CNN.

Here he is proving that he is a fraud both as a supposed news host and willing to make claims out of ignorance as well.


Yes, this is another professor who wants to curtail academic freedom in the name of academic freedom.




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  • Wednesday, April 27, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
The latest JMCC poll of Palestinian youth find yet again that a majority support stabbing Israelis:

In answer to the question "To what extent do you support or oppose the continuation of knife attacks against Israelis?" a majority, 58.2%, support while only 37.8% oppose.


This was slightly higher than the 56.2% of the general Palestinian population that support knife attacks according to their March survey.

As usual, there is no soul-searching in Palestinian media about how they could be raising a generation of people who support cold-blooded murder. In fact, the media and PA government is what is creating this generation by constantly praising the murderers and would-be murderers.

I found this other question interesting: "Do you support having multiple wives?"


Here is a great example of how pollsters can fudge the data to make the answer look the way they want it to look.

If we assume that nearly all of the women surveyed do not want to share their husbands with other women, that means that the number of men who support multiple wives is over 50%.

This wasn't the only question that showed that Palestinians are largely more Islamic than secular. 65.3% of those surveyed said they would refuse to shake hands with members of the opposite sex, and the vast majority cited religious reasons.

And a plurality would rather vote for fundamentalist Islamists than secular Palestinians:


This is quite different from how the media chooses to represent Palestinian society, as they mightily attempt to make them look as secular and Western as possible - a subtle but important message to get news consumers to identify with them.

Pointing out that the majority of Palestinian youths support Islam over modernism is not a narrative that the media wants the world to see.





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  • Wednesday, April 27, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon


From YNet:
Two Palestinian terrorists Wednesday morning attempted to stab Border Policemen at Qalandiya checkpost north of Jerusalem before being shot and killed by security forces. No injuries were reported.

Two terrorists, one female and one male, attempted to walk through a passage intended for vehicle entry and began speeding up in the direction of Border policemen stationed at the scene. The female assailant was carrying a knife.

The police called upon them to stop several times. However they continued to quickly approach in their direction causing the police to neutralize them.
Here are apparently the identity papers of the woman, Maryam Saleh Abu-Ismail:


According to this, she is a 23-year old mother of two girls.

We'll probably never know if she decided to become a martyr because of incessant incitement in Palestinian media, or if she wanted to do it as an "honorable" way to commit suicide and escape an abusive marriage. Or both.

What we do know is that it takes a sick society to create a woman who would want to make her children orphans.

(It is also bizarre that the Hebrew identity papers identify her birthplace as "Al Quds," not Jerusalem.)



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Tuesday, April 26, 2016

  • Tuesday, April 26, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
From a video press conference with U.S. Air Force Major General Peter E. Gersten, deputy commander for operations and intelligence, Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve, speaking from Baghdad:

I would say, it -- we have to measure every weapon and every effect that we bring to the battle space. It doesn't change the way we operate; we've always had a very precise system that is highly vetted and highly precise as it engages the enemy anywhere it presents itself.

The enemy obviously is much easier to engage when it openly presents itself. Like, you bring up a good point. As we get into the highly congested environment of an urban operation, much like we had an urban operation in Ramadi, and we're now starting open operations in Fallujah, it's a great concern to us. But we make every effort -- now, if you would allow me, I'll give you an example.

We recently were engaging with some of the bulk cash storage facilities in order to go after counter finance. And we saw in this particular facility, which also had a finance amir in the southern section of Mosul, he was the major distributor of funds to Daesh fighters. We watched him come and go from his house, we watched his supplies, we watched the security that was involved in it.

And we also watched occasionally a female and her children in and out of the quarters.

We actually saturated that with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets, RPAs, to get a pattern of life study. And then we formulated a plan to ensure that -- that that particular, women and children and the non-combatants were clear of that objective.

We went as far as actually to put a Hellfire on top of the building and air burst it so it wouldn't destroy the building, simply knock on the roof to ensure that she and the children were out of the building. And then we proceeded with our operations.

That's an example of exactly how we do this. But we have to understand that Daesh is into the fabric of the people. They are using the civilian force as human shields, and we will fight and do everything possible we can to keep those civilian casualties to an absolute, absolute minimum.

Q: A follow-up on two points very quickly. When you described this air burst over the building, did you see, then, the women and children with her, did you observe them run out of the building? This is a technique, I think, that the Israelis have used in the past.

MAJ. GEN. GERSTEN: That's very good, Barbara. That's exactly where we took the tactic, and technique and procedure from. It is called a knock operation, it is a (inaudible) operation, and we absolutely did see the woman and child leave.

And interestingly enough, the men that were in that building, multiple men, literally trampled over her to get out of that building. And we watched her and observed her leaving the building. And she cleared the building, and we began to process the strike.

It's a difficult situation, I would tell you, in this particular event, because it was -- it ended -- it ultimately ended up in a civilian casualty.

So, as much as we tried to do exactly what we wanted to do and minimize civilian casualties, post-weapons release, she actually ran back into the building. That's a -- we watched, very difficult for us to watch. And it was within the final seconds of the actual impact.

The good news, I guess, of all of that, was that we actually brought forth the CIVCAS event for review. We reviewed it with a very thorough process, the event, looked everything we could do to have mitigated that fact. And it was an unfortunality.

But it is a very congested environment we fight in, and we do everything we possibly can.

...Q: Can you go back on a couple of things? I think David asked you was this in fact the strike listed in your press release that resulted in one civilian casualty? Can you go back over the point you knew what room the money was in and you hit that room, I take it?

And third, since you have now adopted in one instance this technique that the Israelis have used in the past, can you tell us, did you get briefed by the Israelis on how to carry this out? Did you -- did the U.S. military sit down and discuss this technique with the Israelis, how to use it, how to employ it?

MAJ. GEN. GERSTEN: Barbara, to your first question, I was cut out I believe on the money. I said I wish I could share with you the intelligence that we had to the exact location of where that -- that money was being stored. Because if you watch the strike, where the weapon entered the facility was the exact location of where that money was being stored.

Now, as to whether we are working with the Israelis on this or did they teach us this, what you're looking at is a highly skilled military force that has spent personally 25 years across the spectrum of warfare. I've watched warfare being operated across the entire region. We did not work with them. We've certainly watched and observed their procedure.

As we formulated the way to get the civilians out of the house, this was brought forward from one of our experts as a (inaudible) built the technique. We employed the technique. We put leaflets down. Knock-offs were achieved. It was actually a very highly paced, precision event in order to mitigate CIVCAS. Across the entire region, we do that.

If the Israelis were violating the laws of war, why would the US study and mimic their methods when fighting an enemy that is itself mimicking Hamas?

It must be that HRW and Amnesty, when they self-righteously declare that Israel is guilty of war crimes, don't know what they are talking about.



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From Ian:

Bret Stephens (WSJ): The Anti-Israel Money Trail
SJP’s self-declared goal is to end Israel’s “occupation and colonization of all Arab lands” while “promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.” That’s another way of saying destroying the Jewish state.
Yet as prominent as SJP and the wider BDS movement have become, less is known about the sources of their funding. That changed last week after testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee by Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Mr. Schanzer, a former Treasury Department official and terrorism-finance expert, notes in his testimony that a prominent backer of SJP and like-minded groups is an organization called American Muslims for Palestine, based in Palos Hills, Ill., and led by UC Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian, who also happens to be one of SJP’s founders. AMP claimed to have spent $100,000 on anti-Israel campus activities in 2014, including to SJP. An AMP conference that year at a Chicago Hyatt invited participants to “come and navigate the fine line between legal activism and material support for terrorism.”
FDD discovered that many of AMP’s leading members were previously active in some dubious former charities. The most prominent, the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation For Relief and Development, was shut down in 2001 by the federal government for providing millions in funds to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas; five Holy Land officials eventually were convicted to prison terms and two others fled the country.
Today, AMP’s leaders include at least three Holy Land alumni. One of them is Milwaukee furniture salesman Salah Sarsour, who last year told Al Jazeera that an AMP conference he chaired “aims to keep up with and support the Palestinian people’s continuous intifada.”
Obama's view of reality
Truth be told, Obama is living in a movie we all want a part in. In this movie of his everyone is the good guy, everyone loves one another, and most importantly everyone has really good health insurance. Obama's reality is precisely like the health insurance reforms he forced on Americans: In theory everything is wonderful, but in real life it's not all that great. Maybe this is why 83 senators asked to increase defense aid to Israel -- because the world isn't becoming a safer place, even if Attila the Hun isn't around anymore.
Obama has a tendency to build high hopes. Remember the hullabaloo over his Cairo speech? Remember what happened afterward? It's possible that Obama's words from Hannover on Monday managed to snap even Hosni Mubarak to his feet. Over 80 million Egyptians truly can't recall such tranquility.
The truth is that Obama is a president with exceptional capabilities. He has even managed to jar the mythically unflappable Brits. The American president's intervention in the country's internal politics, by calling on British citizens to vote against leaving the EU, has not only incensed the Brits but according to polls has increased the number of those who favor such an exit.
Some 400,000 Syrians have been slaughtered in their own country. Not since the Second World War has Europe been flooded with so many refugees and migrants. Also not since that war has the radical right in Europe posed such a challenge. The threat of terror has never been as tangible as the threat posed by Islamic State today. And the stagnation presently threatening European markets has never been worse.
But not to worry, although we may be on the precipice of the abyss in many places across the globe, next year, heaven forbid, we could take that large step forward -- among other things, because of Obama's legacy.
Don’t Protect Terror Sponsors
It is true that other countries might respond in kind to the United States, though most respectable countries would have far more to lose than gain from such actions, and the United States can afford to ignore less than respectable countries, think the Zimbabwes, Venezuelas, and North Koreas of the world. At the same time, it is worth considering the opposite: What is the cost of not holding to account those who perpetrated or facilitated an attack in the heart of New York City?
This was a conundrum at the heart of “Sovereignty Solution,” a book co-authored by Anna Simons, Joe McGraw, and Duane Lauchengco. They proposed generally that governments should be responsible for their citizens and note that sovereignty is both an honor and a responsibility. When a citizen of a country perpetrates an attack, then that country has a choice: shield its citizen or hold them to account. If a Belgian citizen sought to strike at the United States, Brussels would likely cooperate with the United States to bring that person to justice, even waiving diplomatic immunity if need be. When Iranian or Saudi elements sponsor terrorism, Tehran and Riyadh should have the same choice: Join with the United States to bring the perpetrators to account or shield them. If the latter, then the government of the country should assume responsibility. Sovereignty Solution is, of course, far more complicated but it really has been one of the most insightful and provocative books on statecraft of the decade
In the Supreme Court victory for victims of terrorism and their families over the Islamic Republic of Iran, the court deferred to Congress. Perhaps Congress and, more broadly, the White House should then work more to protect and advocate for American victims of terror rather than for those who shield the terrorists. If a country does not want to risk the consequences of its citizens attacking the United States, then it should damned sure put mechanisms in place to make sure that the money is expends on radicalism isn’t used for that purpose and that it doesn’t distribute diplomatic passports without recognition of the consequence of their recipients engaging in an act of war.
The United States should not treat Saudi Arabia unfairly, but if Saudi Arabia truly did wish to be an ally, it would recognize that it is their responsibility to bring to justice those of its employees or civil servants who contributed materially or in services to that fateful day.



On Monday, thousands of Jews went to the Western Wall for the annual Passover blessing by Kohanim.

Palestine Times complained that the sounds were loud enough to be heard at the Al Aqsa Mosque where it caused "confusion" among worshippers during their daily noon prayers.

Yes, the people who use ear-splitting loudspeakers day and night to call people to prayer or to broadcast their services - without the least regard for any non-Muslims - are bothered that a couple of times a year they hear some Jews making a blessing.



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“There was an indiscriminate massacre by Arabs last night at Tiberias, in which 19 Jews [21 in some sources] were killed, including three women and 10 children, a slaughter unequalled since the Arabs attacked the Jews of Hebron and Safed in 1929,” The Times of London reported on 4 October 1938, quoting its correspondent writing on 3 October.  The attack was premeditated, well-planned, and merciless.

“At 9 p.m. a large band of armed Arabs, after having cut all the telephone wires, made a concerted attack on Tiberias,” the report went on.

“They entered the town in two detachments, one from the north, the other from the south.  Five minutes later, when the invaders were in place, a whistle was heard from the hills above the town and firing began.  It was directed chiefly at the district offices, the police station, and the billets of the British police.  Simultaneously fires broke out in the district offices and the synagogue, and six houses in the Akiva quarter, which lies on the hillside above the Old Town, were entered, set on fire, and the inmates – men, women and children – massacred.  The police turned out immediately, and within 25 minutes were reinforced by the Transjordan Frontier Force, from Samakh, which fought its way past an ambush at a road obstruction near the hot springs to the south of Tiberias.  After the arrival of the troops fighting in the town lasted for two hours before the raiders were driven out.  A curfew was enforced about 11 p.m.  Most of the Jewish casualties occurred in three wooden houses.”
Killed in one of those houses were Joshua and Shoshanah Ben-Arieh and their two little boys.  The couple, with son Arieh, were stabbed and left to burn to death; the other son, Moshe, an eighteen-month-old toddler, was shot dead.  Also stabbed and burned to death at the house were three visiting children: Chaim Leimer aged twelve, his sister Rivka, aged ten, and brother Ezra, aged eight.  Their mother Hanka, aged 37, was badly wounded.

In another of those houses an American citizen, Menachem Kabni (as the American Jewish Outlook, 7 October 1938 names him) – The Times report says merely “Mr Kalpin” – was stabbed and burned to death along with his a female relative; another female relative escaped.  (According to The Times the female survivor was his wife; according to the American Jewish Outlook, his sister.)

And in the third house 26-year-old Rachel Mizrachi was home alone with her five children – her husband Shimon Yochanan Mizrachi was on guard duty elsewhere in Tiberias.  She too was brutally murdered, together with Ezra (aged twelve), Miriam (five), Yocheved (three), Samuel (two) and Hephzibah (one).

Ezekiel Katz (or perhaps Saltz) , aged forty-two, died when the synagogue of which he was gubbai was set ablaze.  Two Jewish constables, Israel Bookman and Zvi Chatzkelovitz, lost their lives, and also killed was Jacob Gross.  Rahamin Halevy and Hanna Sabach were slightly injured.
(See http://myrightword.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/looking-for-kabni.html for other accounts of the victims’ names.)

Next day, 5 October, The Times carried a report of Arab unrest and near anarchy in some parts of Palestine, so much so that it seemed that Britain might have to fight to conquer Palestine all over again.  “Rebel activities from a nuisance have become a threat to orderly government,” it observed.  “Rebel attacks have for months so endangered traffic on the inter-urban roads that Government has had to declare a night curfew on all roads outside the towns and villages…. The telephone and telegraph system has been so frequently sabotaged that communication is uncertain, and even Jerusalem is cut off at times.  The landing of airborne mails at Tiberias has been given up because it is unsafe to carry mails from Galilee to Jerusalem.  Outside the large towns it is almost impossible to collect taxes except as collective fines…. Ordinary police patrolling and crime detection have been given up… The administration of the villages through the mukhtars (headmen) has stopped because the mukhtars obey orders of the [Arab] bands.  The schools may soon reopen, but this means little as the Government schoolmasters are Arab propagandists and are subservient to the Arabs’ wishes… Because issuing arms to the Arab police often means supplying arms to the bands, they have been disarmed in many places, and may soon be entirely dismissed .…”

In a telegram to Malcolm MacDonald, British Secretary of State for the Dominions and Colonies, the Sephardi and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbis of Palestine, Yaakov Meir (who died the following year aged 83) and Yitzhak Herzog, declared: “Palestine Jewry is deeply horrified at the Tiberias massacre and sacrilege.   In God’s name, we appeal to you to end the terror.” [http://www.jta.org/1938/10/04/archive/21-jews-slain-in-tiberias-massacre-worst-since-29-synagogue-homes-razed]

The following month, on 24 November in the House of Commons, MacDonald made a speech which foreshadowed his White Paper of 1939, predicated on a fear of a full scale Arab rebellion necessitating huge British military commitments in Palestine at a time of impending war in Europe, and which, in attempting to appease the Arabs, was seen by Jewish and non-Jewish Zionists as a betrayal.

In that speech (The Times, 25 November 1938) MacDonald maintained, inter alia:

“No one could justly say that Great Britain had not been fulfilling her obligation to facilitate the migration of Jews to Palestine.  Since 1922 more than 250,000 Jews had entered Palestine and settled there.… The Jews were in Palestine not on sufferance but by right and today, under the lash of persecution in Europe, their eagerness to return to their own homeland was multiplied an hundredfold.  The tragedy of a people who had no country had never been so deep as it was this week…. But he had hoped that we were not going to allow our horror at the plight into which these people had been thrown to warp our cool and just judgment on the difficult problem of Palestine today…. When we promised to facilitate the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine we never anticipated this fierce persecution in Europe….”

You may correctly anticipate the rest.

“In 1933 30,000 Jews came into Palestine; in 1934 42, 000; and in 1935 … 61,000….  If he were an Arab he would be alarmed…. The House of Commons … ought to recognise that many in the Palestinian Arab movement were motivated by a genuine patriotism…. [T]hey were thinking … of their freedom, and they were afraid that if this process went on at last they would have to surrender to the political overlordship of the enterprising, hard-working, ever-increasing citizens of the Jewish national home.  We, the British people, should be the last people in the world not to understand the feelings of the Arabs in this matter because we, too, would sacrifice our material advantages if we thought that our freedom was at stake.”  (What he meant by “freedom” for the Arabs seems puzzling, since Mandate Palestine was in effect a British colony and since the Arabs were ruled by clan heads and had little concept of freedom in the western sense.)

Nevertheless, MacDonald, aware that “a great many people regarded this agitation as the mere protest of a gang of bandits,” conceded that “many Arabs who had taken part most eagerly in the troubles were cutthroats of the worst type.  Their massacre of the innocents at Tiberias, and on a score of other miserable battlefields, had disgraced their cause.  It was true also that many of those who were associated with them had been terrorized into that association.”


Moreover, when the Balfour Declaration was promulgated “there were already living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea more than 600,000 Arabs…. The Jews brought with them money, and development work provided extra means of livelihood.  Modern health services, which were extended not only to Jews but to Arabs, gave the individual a further lease and security of life.  Since 1922 the Arab population in Palestine had, scarcely at all by migration from outside and almost entirely by natural increase, gone up from something over 600,000 to 990,000 persons.  It was calculated that the total of 990,000 Arabs in Palestine today would have become 1,500,000 within 20 years…. The Arabs could not say that the Jews were driving them out of the country.  If not a single Jew had gone into Palestine after 1918 he believed that the Arab population in Palestine today would still have been about 600,000.  It was not only the Jews who had benefitted from the Balfour Declaration.  They could deny it as much as they like, but, materially, the Arabs had gained very greatly from the Balfour Declaration.  It was useless to present that argument to most Arabs.  They were dead to the argument; they were blind to the spectacle of a gradually improving spectacle of life for their people…”



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From Ian:

Muslim worshipers attack Jews trying to pray on Temple Mount
Video footage from Arab television emerged on Tuesday showing Muslim worshipers on the Temple Mount attack a small group of Jews who ascended to the holy site and attempted to pray.
Israeli authorities on Tuesday evicted eight Jewish visitors from the Temple Mount complex in response to what security forces said was inappropriate behavior at the holy site.
Police said 527 visitors, of them 400 tourists, ascended to the holy site during Tuesday morning visits.
After the last group of Jewish visitors left the compound, a gathering of Muslim worshipers began yelling slogans at the Jews.
Police and Border Police officers in the area escorted the group of Jews away from the scene and acted to subdue the disturbances.
As Israeli Jews celebrate Passover, the security services are on high alert as part of an effort to head off any attempts by religious Jews to make overt gestures on Temple Mount that might be construed as worship.
Temple Mount: 2 Waqf officials arrested for attacking Jews
Among a number of individuals arrested during clashes between Jews and Muslims on the Temple Mount earlier Tuesday were two members of the Jordanian Waqf, the Islamic trust which administers the site.
The two Islamic "guards" were arrested for assaulting Jewish visitors.
Israel Police also arrested nine Jews during the day, claiming they had violated the rules; presumably, this includes the ban on Jews praying or showing religious worship of any kind on the Temple Mount.
In total, 825 visitors ascended the Temple Mount Tuesday, including 557 tourists and 268 Israelis.
"The Jerusalem District Police, Border Police officers and police reinforcements in Jerusalem will continue providing extra security reinforcements throughout the city, and especially at flashpoints, in order to maintain order, public safety and welfare, as well as to regulate traffic," the Jerusalem police responded.
PMO to Jordan on Temple Mount: Jerusalem is acting responsibly, and Amman knows that
One day after 13 Jews were removed from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount for illegally praying at the contested holy site, the Jordanian government on Monday warned Israel of “serious consequences” if the area’s delicate status quo is breached.
Sunday morning’s impasse was further exacerbated when a group of Muslims was also removed from the compound by police for chanting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”) at the nearly 1,000 Jewish and Christian visitors who ascended it for the holiday.
In a sharply worded statement issued Monday, Jordanian Media Affairs Minister Muhammad al-Momani accused “Israeli settlers and police” of flagrantly violating international laws and conventions by “storming al-Aksa Mosque,” which he said could lead to “serious consequences.”
The ongoing and wholly unsubstantiated allegations that the Israeli government surreptitiously intends to seize al-Aksa – Islam’s third holiest site – has led to the recent wave of deadly terrorism which has largely fueled what many are deeming a third intifada.

  • Tuesday, April 26, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
Freedom House had been one of the remaining, objective arbiters of which countries are free and which aren't. A few years ago, I had shown that there was no correlation between how free a country is according to Freedom House and how much attention it received from Human Rights Watch.

Unfortunately, Freedom House seems to have fallen prey to the politically correct anti-Israel crowd.

Its new report on press freedom (embargoed until later this week) changes Israel's rating from "free" to "partly free." And the reasons it gave to justify this are, by any measure, bizarre.


Israel's score went to 32, which is barely in the "partly free" category. 

Freedom House ranks freedom of the press under three broad criteria: whether there is freedom under the legal, political or economic environment. The description of why Israel's score went down seems to be wholly based on their perception of the economic environment making it harder for print media to survive, because Israel Hayom is distributed for free (plus the "paid content" part which I don't understand.)

Freedom House in 2015 gave Israel a 30 - a slightly better score, and it gave its reasons here. But I fail  to see how those reasons have changed for the worse this year.



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  • Tuesday, April 26, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
Amnesty International loves when there are Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians.

Because then it can issue statements against all such attacks and pretend that it is not biased against Israel.

Yet even when Amnesty issues a very mild rebuke of Hamas, it bends over backwards to minimize blame while it uses it as yet another excuse to bash Israel.

Here is most of the Amnesty press release about the recent Jerusalem bus bombing, divided up into the parts that are negative towards Hamas, neutral and negative towards Israel (I omitted some background information.)

Even though the title calls on Hamas to condemn the attack, most of the negative words it has are for Israel alone.





Anti-Hamas
Neutral
Anti-Israel
Hamas must condemn attacks on civilians following Jerusalem bus bombing


After the Hamas movement in Bethlehem claimed the person who detonated a bomb aboard a Jerusalem bus earlier this week as a member, Amnesty International reiterates that deliberate attacks on civilians can never be justified, and calls on Hamas to condemn all such attacks.



On the evening of 18 April, 20 people were wounded when a Palestinian man detonated a bomb on an Israeli bus in Jerusalem….While it does not appear that Hamas’ leadership or its military wing in Gaza ordered the attack, the involvement of the Hamas movement, possibly including members of its military wing in Bethlehem or elsewhere, is a worrying development.

Hamas, including its political leadership in Gaza and elsewhere, must clearly condemn all attacks targeting civilians. Such attacks can never be justified and represent a serious violation of international humanitarian law.



In the upsurge of violence since the beginning of October 2015, 29 Israelis and two US nationals have been killed in Palestinian stabbing, shooting, and car-ramming attacks on Israeli soldiers, police and civilians.1 The vast majority of these attacks, however, have been carried out by individuals not affiliated with any Palestinian armed group,

though Palestinian political factions and armed groups, including Hamas and its military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades, have frequently praised the attacks.



During the same period, at least 197 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and civilians,

the majority of whom were reportedly either carrying out or perceived as intending to carry out attacks.



While deliberate attacks against civilians are never justifiable, the Israeli authorities have an obligation to uphold international law at all times, including in their response to such attacks.

Amnesty International has documented a series of unlawful killings of Palestinians – including attackers or alleged attackers who were not posing an imminent threat to life when they were shot – by Israeli forces since the beginning of October 2015. Some of these killings appear to have been extrajudicial executions.

In addition, Israeli forces have increased measures that amount to collective punishment against Palestinians, such as demolishing the family homes of attackers, imposing arbitrary restrictions on movement, and carrying out mass arbitrary arrests. Collective punishment is prohibited under international law, including Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which applies to Israel as the occupying power.


Note that Amnesty takes pains to say that Hamas in Gaza doesn't seem to have really been directly involved and cannot even say that Hamas had anything to do with the attack altogether - its only negative words for Hamas is the fact that it did not condemn the attack, not that it was involved in planning and executing it.

The bus attack was well planned and involved many people, and the bomber was an admitted member of Hamas. The Shin Bet says that Hamas was behind it. Yet Amnesty, which will run with any anti-Israel accusation with little proof, is careful to give Hamas the full benefit of the doubt as to whether it was involved in planning this attack.

Amnesty loves to point to press releases like this as proof that it is not biased, yet it proves the exact opposite.



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  • Tuesday, April 26, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
On Sunday:
The IFJ condemned the arrest yesterday of Palestinian journalist Omar Nazzal, member of the board of IFJ affiliate, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, while he crossed the al-Karameh border.

According to the PJS his mobile was confiscated and he was allowed one call to his wife which he told her he was taken to the Etzion interrogation center.

Nazzal was on his way to Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina, to attend the General Meeting of the European Federation of Journalists taking place on 25-26 April as part a PJS delegation invited to participate.

IFJ president Jim Boumelha will be writing to Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu to demand that Nazzal is released forthwith and allowed to travel to Sarajevo to attend this general meeting.

“It was shocking to hear that a participant to a congress for journalists from all over Europe has been arrested by the Israeli authorities on his way to attend and banged in Etzion prison without any reason being given,” said Boumelha. “The 100 delegates representing over 320,000 journalists in 51 unions from all over Europe will be demanding that their colleague is released forthwith.”

From Times of Israel:

Israel’s Shin Bet security service on Monday accused a Palestinian journalist arrested this past weekend of belonging to a “terror group” after colleagues called for international support for his release.

Omar Nazzal, a member of the general secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), was detained by Israeli officials on Saturday at the border between the West Bank and Jordan.

He was seeking to travel to a meeting of the European Federation of Journalists in Bosnia.

The Shin Bet said in response to an AFP query that he had been recently appointed a director of Palestine Today, a TV channel it declared illegal in February, and was active in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — a group Israel considers a terror organization.

“Omar has for years been known to be a Popular Front activist: he was arrested now because of his involvement in current Popular Front activities,” Shin Bet said in a written reply.

It said he was not detained because of his journalism but over “his involvement in terror group activities”.
Of course, the Shin Bet is right - Nazzal is a PFLP operative who uses his supposed journalism credentials to promote terror.

He has written several articles for the official PFLP website.

One has to wonder why the International Federation of Journalists are more upset over the arrest of a member of a terror group who masquerades as a journalist in order to travel to Europe than they are over the fact that terrorists cynically endanger all journalists by using them as cover.

Oh, and while the Times of Israel doesn't mention it, Palestine Today is an Islamic Jihad media organization, one that they proudly use as part of their "media war" division.

The IFJ should be condemning the clear violation of their ethics by so-called "journalists" who use that title as cover for their political and terror-supporting activities. But obviously ethics is something for them to accuse others of violating, not an issue for them.


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Monday, April 25, 2016

From Ian:

Vic Rosenthal: The answer to globalized Jew-hatred
Israel’s public behavior needs to change. Our officials need to understand that neither the Arabs nor the West accept the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. They did not accept it in 1948, they do not today and they will not tomorrow. This is not based on a rational calculation of interests; it is a result of deeply felt anti-Zionism, which is globalized Jew-hatred. Our adoption of Western humanist values to an even greater degree than the West itself is never enough for them; and the Arabs rightly hold us in contempt.
Therefore there is no point in trying to hold off the pressure from the US and Europe by making concessions to the Arabs, on the grounds that these minor retreats aren’t dangerous and will make us look good. We cannot ‘look good’ to those who hate us, and the demands for concessions will never end.
There is no point in behaving humanely to those who would behave toward us as the Islamic State does in Syria, if we let down our guard. There is no point in giving up our honor as the owners of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount in order to keep the Arabs quiet. And there will be no point in not using artillery and air power, including even tactical nuclear weapons if appropriate, to shut down the missiles from southern Lebanon.
Zionism indeed changes the odds and makes it possible for the Jewish people to stand up and fight, and to win. But to realize the change we must use the power of our state and our army.
The world will not understand the need for a Jewish state, no matter how we behave. But it can be made to understand that there is one and that it will fight fiercely and without quarter against anyone that tries to destroy it.
The Jewish story is under assault
Last week, as Jews around the world prepared for Passover, the war against the Jewish people and its story — against the meaning of Passover itself — took a particularly ugly turn. A UNESCO resolution, sponsored by seven Arab countries, denounced Israel for supposed violations of Muslim rights to prayer on the site that Muslims call the Haram el Sharif and Jews call the Temple Mount. The resolution ignores the fact that the Israeli government enforces a ban on Jewish prayer at the holy site, granting Muslims exclusive right to pray there. Worse, the resolution implicitly denies the Jewish connection to the area by never actually using the term Temple Mount (only Haram el Sharif). It does refer to the Western Wall, but places that label in quotation marks while leaving the Muslim equivalent, Al Buraq, intact, as though that were the only authentic name.
Reading the resolution, one could conclude that there was no ancient Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, that the Mount isn't the holiest site in Judaism, that the Western Wall isn't the heart of Jewish prayer. One could conclude, therefore, that the Jews living in Israel today have no historic claim to the land, passed down through generations. Of all the attempts to destroy us throughout our history, the campaign against history itself is the most devious.
Passover suggests this definition of the Jews: We are a story we tell ourselves about who we think we are. The current assault on the Jewish story is so dangerous precisely because it strikes at that core idea.
Meet the godfather of Israeli experts on international law and war crimes
When the second intifada broke out full force, then-IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Shaul Mofaz signed the order, stating that an armed conflict now existed. “On that day we went to war with the Palestinians, and I think in retrospect, we were right,” said Reisner.
Regarding where international law should go from here and how equipped it is to deal with fighting asymmetric warfare, Reisner has some nuanced views.
On the one hand, he expressed frustrations with what he views as randomness in what does and does not get on the banned-weapons list once you go beyond biological and chemical weapons.
He also said that the law of proportionality, deciding what attacks are permissible, is far too vague to be useful, and leads to experts on different sides talking past each other.
On the other hand, he does not think it is realistic for Israel to make an open push to change the rules.
“Any idea Israel comes up with will be converted, subverted and diverted by other elements. It’s not that I don’t think that international law has problems. It has a lot of problems.
But because of Israel’s complex diplomatic position, I don’t think it’s realistic that Israel could lead a change in international law that would make sense.”

  • Monday, April 25, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
There were new protests in West Bank UNRWA camps today, as "popular committees" decided to shut down UNRWA offices.

The reason seems to be that UNRWA is replacing the old food voucher system with one that uses magnetic cards.

I have not seen anything that says that the benefits have changed but these "popular committees" depend on regular outbursts of anger in order to justify their existence. So they are telling residents of the camps that their benefits are being reduced by UNRWA and that the "right of return" is being taken away, and calling on them to strike.

Of course, these regular outbursts against UNRWA are almost never reported in English-language media.




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