Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 03, 2016

UNbelievable - UN says "no proof" Hamas using smuggled cement for tunnels

A tunnel made of imaginary cement

The head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) stressed on Sunday that there is no proof that the construction material entering Gaza through his organisation was used for “military purposes”, Safa news agency has reported.

Robert Piper’s comment was made in a film broadcast by Sky News about the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.

I had seen this quoted in other Arab media as well as Iranian media.

Al Resalah, a Hamas mouthpiece, praised Piper's assertion.

Palestinian parliamentarian and senior Hamas leader Yahiya Mousa said the UN denial that cement has been used for military purposes is a move on the right direction. Mousa called the UN to take a stand that would lift the Israeli siege on Gaza, saying Israel fakes up lies to further tighten the siege on Gaza.

I tweeted Piper on Monday morning to allow him to confirm or deny this statement but as of this writing did not receive a response.

If he in fact said this, it would be an astounding example of willful blindness by the UN. In January, Ban Ki Moon said he was "alarmed" after Hamas explicitly promised to continue to build tunnels despite the deaths of many of its tunnel workers. Only two weeks ago, Moon condemned tunnel that Israel discovered as a dangerous and provocative move that undermines attempts to rehabilitate the Gaza Strip.

So what is the evidence that Hamas is using cement for military purposes?

We know that Hamas is still building tunnels - they say it explicitly and we have seen terrorists killed while building them.
We know that cement is necessary to build tunnels deep under Gaza.
We know that cement that is earmarked to help ordinary Gazans is being sold on the black market.
We know that very little cement can be smuggled in from Egypt, if any, as Egypt has destroyed the vast majority of tunnels on the Rafah border.
We have known since 2014 that the system that allows cement to enter Gaza was rife with corruption and that Hamas has been taking advantage of it to enrich themselves and to grab more cement.

It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to realize that these five facts are evidence that Hamas is using some of the cement meant for homeowners to build and rebuild terror tunnels. There is simply no other source for the cement.

But apparently Robert Piper and the UN prefer to turn a blind eye to what is happening literally under their noses.

In fact, the UN is spending money producing professional videos ostensibly about Gaza reconstruction but instead concentrating on how Israel, for no reason whatsoever, just decided to bomb civilians in Gaza and now restricts reconstruction. No mention of rockets or tunnels or weapons caches, no shots of armed Hamas or Islamic Jihad terrorists, no names of the homeless people so we could research which of their relatives were the target of the bombs that destroyed their houses and why they have been denied cement so far while allowing tens of thousands of other Gazans to rebuild.

My guess is that the UN spent at least $100 for each of the 130 people who viewed this video in the past three weeks.

(h/t Irene)

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The most polite policeman in the world is in the IDF

Some leftist activists wanted to cross a security checkpoint leading to the West Bank in Israel. They tried to get the security forces angry.

But they didn't count on Israeli Police Officer Alon Tif.

(h/t Yoel)

UPDATE: Bob Knot found the original; the leftists were from Ta'ayush and the video is from 2013.

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05/02 Links Pt2: Vatican-funded club holds Abu Jihad Football Tournament; Why Are There Still Palestinian Refugees?

From Ian:

PMW: Vatican-funded sports club sponsors tournament named after mass murderer

The Jerusalem Clubs Association, which is funded by the Vatican, sponsored a football tournament for youth named after arch-terrorist Abu Jihad. On numerous occasions, the PA has glorified Abu Jihad because he planned terror attacks that killed 125 Israelis.
According to the official PA daily, the Abu Jihad Football Tournament was "held under the auspices of the Jerusalem Clubs Association, in the framework of its program that is funded by the Pontifical Mission."
The Pontifical Mission is "the Papal agency for Middle East relief and development," according to its website. "Pope Pius XII mobilized worldwide Catholic aid, establishing in 1949 a temporary agency - the Pontifical Mission for Palestine - to feed, clothe and educate Palestinian refugees." [Pontifical Mission-Jerusalem's website, accessed May 2, 2016]
Palestinian Media Watch has reported that Abu Jihad is routinely honored by the PA and Fatah, by having sports events, summer camps, and other events named after him. This is the first time Vatican funding has been involved in glorifying Abu Jihad.

Why Are There Still Palestinian Refugees?

It's been seven decades since the 1948 Arab-Israeli, and yet there are still an estimated 4 million Palestinian refugees...and zero Jewish refugees. With so many nearby Arab allies of the Palestinians, how did this happen? What does it say about Israel? What does it say about its Arab neighbors? Dumisani Washington, Diversity Outreach Coordinator for Christians United for Israel, explains

US authorities say one arrested in foiled bomb plot on Florida synagogue

US federal agents over the weekend arrested one suspect in what is said to be a thwarted bomb attack on a synagogue in Florida, local news reported Monday.
Miami-Fort Lauderdale's 7News cited law enforcement sources as saying the FBI had set up a sting operation Friday to foil the planned attack at the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center.
According to the sources, authorities posed as terrorists and managed to detain the suspect, who was allegedly planning to hurl an explosive device at the Jewish house of worship in the Miami area.
Friday's arrest came as crowds filled the synagogue in observance of the second to last day of the Passover holiday.
The arrested suspect may have converted to Islam, according to the local news reports.

Douglas Murray - Mass Migration Irreversibly Changing Europe

Douglas Murray speaks on J-TV with Alan Mendoza on how mass migration is transforming Europe.

QudsPress has been zealously counting every Jew who ascends to the Temple Mount, and the April numbers are in.

According to these counter, 1,868 "settlers" "stormed" and "broke into" the "Al Aqsa Mosque" during the month, the largest number possibly ever.

It should be noted that far more Muslims desecrate (from the Jewish viewpoint) the holiest Jewish site on any given Friday than the number of Jews who respectfully visit the site every year.

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UN says 29.5% of WB "refugees" live in UNRWA camps. It doesn't ask why.

Robert Piper, UN Assistant Secretary General Development & Humanitarian Coordinator for Palestine, tweeted this graphic today with the (corrected) caption "29.5% of West Bank refugees still live in camps."

The question that the UN leaves unasked is - why do these camps still exist some 68 years after the last refugees were created? (There were essentially no refugees by any definition created by the Six Day War.)

This graphic claims that life in the UN-administered camps is dangerous due to IDF operations. Of course, it doesn't bother to say that the reason that many operations occur in these camps is because they are hotbeds of terrorism.

70% of the so-called "refugees" (actually, descendants of refugees) live outside the camps - meaning that there is no legal impediment to integrating the "refugees" with the rest of Palestinian society.

The Palestinian Authority, recognized by the UN as the State of Palestine, can build as many houses as needed for these people in Areas A and B. And they have had this autonomy for nearly 20 years now.

Where are the infographics showing how successful the PA, with international aid, has been in dismantling these completely unnecessary and dangerous camps and mainstreaming the residents to become normal citizens?

They don't exist, because no such programs exist.

The PA doesn't want to dismantle the camps because they want to point to overcrowded, violence-filled ghettos as evidence of how Palestinians are still suffering from Israeli actions in 1948.

Jordan was happy to keep these camps around from 1948-1967 because the hundreds of million of dollars used to maintain the camps was money that Jordan didn't have to spend - even though the Palestinians were full Jordanian citizens.

The UN, which puts out reams of reports about how awful things are for Palestinians, has no interest in a single program to take vulnerable people out of these camps.

The graphic comes from a 33-page UN document that describes how many problems Palestinians have and all of the programs the UN has to help them. Yet these is not one program to mainstream camp residents into normal houses and apartments, going to normal non-UN schools and becoming self-sustaining members of society.

There is no reason that these camps should exist today. But the UN is complicit in keeping a second-class society of Palestinians in misery and insecurity, all while promising them a fairy tale that one day they will "return" and go back to their ancestors' houses that no longer (and in some cases never did) exist.

If the UN recognizes a "state of Palestine," isn't it time for the UN to help that entity to take responsibilities for its own citizens as every other nation does?

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05/02 Links Pt1: Corbyn called convicted 'terrorist' an 'iconic figure'; Today's Labour suspension count 3.. so far

From Ian:

Jeremy Corbyn called convicted 'terrorist' an 'iconic figure'

Jeremy Corbyn described a convicted terrorist accused of plotting a series of suicide attacks in Israel as an “icon” and compared him to Nelson Mandela.
In a post now deleted from Mr Corbyn’s website, the Labour leader described Marwan Barghouti as an “iconic figure for ordinary Palestinians”.
Barghouti was convicted of organising attacks against Israeli civilians and allegedly founded the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, a designated terrorist organisation.
The comments threaten to intensify the anti-Semitism row that has engulfed the Labour Party in the last week.
In 2004, an Israeli court sentenced Barghouti to five life sentences and 40 years in jail. He was accused of orchestrating ambushes and suicide attacks during the Palestinian Intifada.
In the article entitled “An icon is born: Marwan Barghouti”, Mr Corbyn wrote: “His sentence of five life terms by an Israeli Court means he now becomes an iconic figure for ordinary Palestinians, and his unshakable belief that he will be freed is shared by many.
"The Palestinian papers have likened his situation to that facing Mandela after the Rivonia Treason Trial in 1964.
"Indeed the similarities go well beyond the trial and prosecution of Marwan.”
Mr Corbyn has repeatedly failed to apologise for his past links to Hamas and Hezbollah.
He once described members of the two Islamist militant organisations as “friends”.

Pressure grows on Jeremy Corbyn as dossier of anti-Semitism in Labour Party is revealed

A dossier compiled by The Telegraph includes a series of disturbing examples of anti-Semitic attitudes among party activists and leading members.
It follows the suspension from the party last week of Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, and of Naz Shah, Labour MP for Bradford West, for making anti-Semitic comments.
Labour has announced an independent inquiry into anti-Semitism and other forms of racism within the party.
But Mr Livingstone, who was suspended after saying that Hitler supported Zionism “before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews”, on Saturday refused to withdraw his statements and claimed the Israeli Prime Minister agreed with him.
Our dossier reveals that:
- A London Labour council leader shared a Facebook post comparing the “terrorist state of Israel” to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). He apologised and deleted it on Saturday;
- Mr Corbyn questioned why an anti-Semitic mural in east London should be taken down;
- The Labour leader also attended events run by self-confessed Holocaust denier Paul Eisen long after his views had become clear, and
- A Labour council candidate used the derogatory term “Zios” to refer to Jews.
Muhammed Butt, leader of Brent Council and “equalities lead” on the body representing 32 London boroughs, shared a post calling Israel a terrorist state and compared it to Isil, on April 16. It showed a Palestinian girl in a skirmish with an Israeli soldier.

The Islamic Jihad Police Force

Palestine Today has a story about how Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades has busted a major drug ring, capturing some 175,000 tablets of Tramadol.

Take a look at the police:

In Gaza, apparently anyone with a gun (and a ski mask) can now legally do police work. There is no indication that Hamas is against this police force and in fact Hamas works closely with Islamic Jihad in other matters. It seems likely that Hamas allows the Islamic Jihad terrorists to act openly as an official security force.

When "human rights groups" claim that the police in Gaza are considered civilians, keep this in mind.

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US exhibits at another Arab book fair with lots of antisemitic titles

The Abu Dhabi Book Fair is in full swing, and the US Embassy is there:

So are the antisemitic book titles.

Doing a quick search for the word "Jews" in the titles of the books, here are some - from many different publishers - that are clearly antisemitic.

Jewish danger - The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, That Al Salasil Company
Jewish influence in the media by Fouad al-Rifai, Dar Al Yakeen for Publishing & Distribution
Jews and contempt of religion, Hanafi Mahalawy, Alam Al Kotob publishers

Great Deception: Are the Jews really God's chosen people?
Dr.. Mohammed Jamal Tahan, Safahat for Studies & Publishing
Secrets of Jewish supremacists, Yuri Mukan Aladdin, Publishing, Distribution & Translation
Is the Jewish religion heavenly? Abdul Majid Hamu
Human sacrifice and the Talmudic sacrifices by pagans and Jews, D / Fathi Mohamed Zoghbi,
Dar Al Afak Al Arabia
There are plenty of others whose titles don't make it obvious that they include Jew-hatred, although it is highly likely.

Once again, the US is supporting an event that includes blatant antisemitism in the Arab world. And it is not like they don't know that such things are going on.

At what point does the US State Department make an actual stand against antisemitism, instead of meaningless declarations? A simple declaration that they will not attend any fair that includes antisemitic literature is all that is needed to make a huge impact.

And yet - they don't.

(h/t Shawarma News)

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One terrorist was killed and two other people injured by a "mysterious explosion" in the northern Gaza Strip today.

Mazen Lulu, a terrorist for the Al-Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad, was killed east of Gaza City.

The explosion occurred near the Civil Administration building, indicating a war crime by putting military facilities in or near ostensibly civilian structures.

Far more terrorists have been killed by tunnel accidents and accidental explosions in Gaza than from any Israeli actions this year.

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Antisemitism to defend Labour's antisemitism -all in the name of tolerance

The Intifada-Palestine site has an article about the UK Labour party's latest antisemitic incident, and it does a very nice job of proving that anti-Zionism (in the guise of pro-Palestinianism) is very often identical to antisemitism.

UK Labour Party in grip of Zionist Inquisition
by Stuart Littlewood

The orchestrated smear campaign against pro-Palestine sympathisers sent me reaching for my pen. But Gilad Atzmon too was eyeing the Labour Party’s crazed witch hunt for “antisemites” with misgiving and had already declared, in his usual robust way, that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was not so much a party as a piece of Zionist-occupied territory.

Writing in his blog about Corbyn and McDonnell’s servile commitment to expel anyone whose remarks might be interpreted by Zionist mafioso as hateful or simply upsetting to Jews, Atzmon concludes: “Corbyn’s Labour is now unequivocally a spineless club of Sabbos Goyim [sic] [which I take to mean non-Jewish dogsbodies who do menial jobs that Jews are forbidden to do for religious reasons].

“The Labour party’s policies,” says Atzmon, “are now compatible with Jewish culture: intolerant to the core and concerned primarily with the imaginary suffering of one people only. These people are not the working class, they are probably the most privileged ethnic group in Britain. Corbyn’s Labour is a Zionist Occupied Territory… It proves my theses that the Left is not a friend to Palestine, the oppressed or the workless people.

It's a breath of fresh air when they make their hate explicit.

By being upset at people who don't want to be explicitly associated with antisemitism, a lot of people who claim to to against all forms of bigotry are showing that there is one type that they actually are pretty comfortable with.

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Academic fraud Noura Erakat gets Palestinian unemployment numbers way wrong

Noura Erakat is one of the more prominent of pro-Palestinian so-called academics in the US. She writes weighty papers pretending that Israel has no legal right to defend itself whatsoever, and her sycophants eat it up.

She has proven yet again that her interest in truth-telling is nil.

She tweeted:

She is quoting Middle East Monitor which in turn is quoting Qudsnet, two highly unreliable media outlets - and ones that this assistant professor of law trusts completely.

In fact, the 2015 unemployment rate in Gaza, released today, is at 41%, a little better than it was in 2014!

It is the unemployment rate of women that is at 60%, and the quality Palestinian media that Noura Erakat relies on for her pseudo-facts got it wrong.

I'm not trying to argue that Gaza is a paradise. But Erakat simply believed that the unemployment rate there went up by some 20 points in very little time when in fact it went down.

There were some other interesting facts in the annual May Day labor report that Noura would not want you to know.

Regarding wage employees in the West Bank, more than half of the employees 51% work in the private sector compared with 25% in the public sector and 24% work in Israel and Israeli settlements.

24% of all West Bank employees are employed by Israelis - and they are paid more than twice what their counterparts are paid. This means that some 40% of the wages paid to West Bank employees are coming from Israeli employers! (h/t Gabriel for fixing my math...)

If Gaza was not run by terrorists, its labor statistics would be dramatically better. But people like Noura Erakat will never admit that simple, obvious fact - because they are more interested in finding new ways to bash Israel than to actually help Palestinians.

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05/01 Links: Murray: The Left's Little Antisemitism Problem; Remembering the Mike’s Place

From Ian:

Col. Richard Kemp: Why we are optimistic about Zionism

By Col. Richard Kemp, Yossi Raskas and Dr. Harold Rhode
The Middle East is a mess. Terrorism is weakening resolve in the West. The migration crisis threatens to unravel the transatlantic security fabric. Civil society is faltering.
Yet we remain inspired by Israel as it celebrates its 68th year of existence. Why?
The answer is straightforward: Zionism, the movement inspired by belief that the Jewish people should return to the Land of Israel to rebuild their own sovereign state, has succeeded in one of the most inhospitable regions on Earth. And it continues to lead the way as a beacon of moral clarity and success for the West.
Of course, statehood is no guarantee for security, and we cannot perfectly predict fluctuations in the terrorist marketplace. We do not know, for example, whether Iran will decide to break out toward nuclear weaponization today, tomorrow fifteen years from now. What is clear, however, is that western rapprochement with Iran is moving forward, well before either the US or the European Union is capable of outlining an effective contingency plan.
But fears regarding Israel’s survival would be overwrought. The Israel Defense Forces—the strongest military in the Middle East —will remain battle-ready, as they always have been. They will continue to set the standard, morally and militarily, for armies of liberal democracies to operate against sub-state enemies.
Ultimately, Israel will not only survive but thrive. Since its inception, the Jewish state has endured several major wars, waves of suicide attacks, and other traumatic events. Still, Israel’s birth rate is steadily climbing, its economy is punching far above its weight, and its diplomatic ties with Sunni Arab states are growing stronger.

Douglas Murray: UK: The Left's Little Antisemitism Problem

Within a week, Britain's Labour party leadership was forced to suspend one of its newest MPs and one of its oldest grandees -- and both for the same reason.
Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone both say that they condemn anti-Semitism. They always tend to add that they also condemn "Islamophobia and all other forms of racism," a disclaimer that always seems a deliberate attempt to hide a hatred of Jews under the skirts of any and all criticism of Islam. What is most fascinating is that all the while they are saying this, they stoke the very thing they claim to condemn.
They pretend that the Jewish state does such things for no reason. There is no mention of the thousands of rockets that Hamas and other Islamist groups rain down on Israel from the Gaza Strip. The comment turns a highly-targeted set of retaliatory strikes by Israel against Hamas in the Gaza Strip into a "brutal" attack "on the Palestinians" as a whole. While mentioning those death-tolls, Livingstone has no interest in explaining that the State of Israel builds bunkers for its citizens to shelter in, while Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields and useful dead bodies for the television cameras, to help Hamas appear as an aggrieved "victim."
It is the narrative of the "left" on Israel that is causing the resurgence of anti-Semitism. It is not coming from nowhere. It is coming from them. If the left wants to deal with it, they first have to deal with themselves.

Douglas Murray: Britain? Moderates? How's That Again?

A new poll of British Muslims found that a majority hold views with which most British people would disagree. For instance, 52% of British Muslims think that homosexuality should be made illegal. An earlier poll found that 27% of British Muslims have "some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks" at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last year.
Whenever opinion poll results come out, nearly the entire Muslim community, including nearly all Muslims in the media and all self-appointed groups of "Muslim community leaders" try to prove that the poll is a fraud.
If I had always known my "community" harboured such views, and a poll revealing this truth came out, I would be deeply ashamed. But when such polls emerge about the opinions of British Muslims, is that there is never any hint of introspection. There is no shame and no concern, only attack.
If there were indeed a "moderate majority," when a poll comes out saying that a quarter of your community wants fundamentally to alter the law of the land and live under Sharia, the other 75% would spend their time trying to change the opinions of that quarter. Instead, about 74% of the 75% not in favour of sharia spend their time covering for the 25% and attacking the polling company which discovered them.

San Francisco State University President, Leslie Wong, very much admires the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS).

He even said that "GUPS is the very purpose of this great university."

The problem that president Wong has is that GUPS, while according to him representing the very purpose of SFSU, also incites violence against Jewish supporters of Israel, which is the great majority of the Jewish people.

Why would the president of a significant American university support a student organization that quite literally calls for the murder of Jews?

Let that question sink in for a second.

By going out of his way to compliment GUPS - an organization friendly with terrorists like plane-hijacker, Leila Khaled - Wong signals to Jewish people that inciting violent hatred toward us is acceptable to himself, and to SFSU, as a matter of "social justice."

The Context

Rates of violent anti-Semitism are dramatically rising around the United States and throughout Europe.

Jews are killed by jihadis in places like Paris or Marseilles or Malmo, while within Israel Junior-Jihadis are chasing after old ladies with knives and hand-axes.

Meanwhile, throughout the Muslim Middle East, imams and ayatollahs regularly teach their congregants that Jews are the children of orangutans and swine and screech to the heavens for our genocide.

They love to tell one another that butchering Jews is beautious within the heart of Allah.

Iran inches closer to an operable nuclear weapon that it has promised to use against Israel in order to bring about genocide and the progressive-left could hardly care less. In fact, the western-left generally blames anti-Semitic violence on the victims of that violence. Of course, such a scenario would also result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Arabs, but Tehran does not seem to particularly care and neither does its western supporters.

In Europe and the United States, the Red-Green Alliance between progressives and advocates for political Islam is flourishing. And the movement to Boycott, Divest from, and Sanction Israel (BDS) - supported by Wong if he supports GUPS - is seeking to undermine the viability of the tiny Jewish state by seeking to turn universities, corporations, governments, and NGOs against it and, therefore, against the Jewish people, more generally, in an effort to eventually bring down both the country and the well-being of the Jewish people.

Israel and the Rise of the Crybullies

Of course, it is in the universities that the crybullies (snowflakes) demand their "safe spaces" while refusing to allow Jewish students any such courtesy. They complain about "microaggressions" and "micro-rapes" - like commenting on a cute sweater - even while inciting deep hatred toward Jews in the most raw terms possible.

Anti-Semitic anti-Zionists incite hatred toward Jewish supporters of Israel, and Israeli Jews, via "the Palestinian narrative." The narrative depends upon defamation, unjust insinuations, and highly biased historical conclusions that leave the great Muslim majority in the Middle East, which represents perhaps the most successful and vicious political project in human history, as innocent victims among among the minority population that they have victimized.

This results in violence against Jews supported by western academic institutions as driven by their most hateful and racist students.

Enter the General Union Palestine Students (GUPS) and their patron saint, San Francisco State University President Leslie Wong.

As Dusty over at Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers reminds us:

The president of the organization, Mohammad Hammad posted a photo on his tumblr account, declaring "I seriously can not get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier.

San Francisco State University General Union of Palestinian students neither condemned Hammad's words, nor distanced themselves from them.

Why does SFSU continue to tolerate the intolerable?

Indeed. That is an exceedingly good question, although, as we have just learned via the video below, it is not that the SFSU tolerates the intolerable so much as it positively encourages the intolerable.

GUPS is a student organization that is calling directly for the murder of Jews and it is supported by the president of the university.

Check the video clip. Wong's relevant remarks begin around 18:20.

"I want to offer my personal congratulations to the student leadership of GUPS. They have been an inspiration for me. And they have helped me when I have to tell other community groups to mind their own business. GUPS is the very purpose of this great university."

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Scene from one of the films shown

JTA reports:

Nearly 500 people attended the first Jewish film festival of Casablanca, which was organized in the Moroccan city by a Sephardic Jewish woman from Atlanta.

The three-day event, which ended Wednesday at the offices of Casablanca’s SOC club, featured three films about the “consequences of the emigration of the Jews from the fabric of Moroccan society,” the organizer, Vanessa Paloma, told JTA on Thursday. Each screening drew about 150 viewers, she said.

One of the two fictional features screened was “Aida,” which was also Morocco’s submission to the Academy Awards for best foreign language film, about a Paris-based Jewish music teacher’s battle with cancer.

The other was “Midnight Orchestra,” a 2015 production about the son of a Jewish musician who left Morocco amid racial tensions spurred by the Yom Kippur war.

Reactions to the festival were overwhelmingly positive, said Paloma, a singer of Judeo-Spanish music and a researcher on identity and the arts in Moroccan Judaism. She has lived in Casablanca since 2009 with her Moroccan-Jewish husband, Maurice Elbaz, who helped her produce the festival on a shoestring budget that sufficed because the filmmakers waived their fees.

But the event also provoked negative reactions in Morocco, which despite being one of the Muslim world’s few countries where Jewish heritage is celebrated openly, nonetheless has a vociferous anti-Israel lobby that at times resorts to anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Jaouad Benaissi, an author and former member of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces party, complained on Facebook about the festival’s theme, writing that “man-made artworks have nothing to do with religion,” and therefore the Jewish theme was inappropriate – a message similar to that of Abdelilah Jouhari, a journalist who accused Paloma of “trying to make business with religion,” as reported by the news site Le 360.

There were plenty of other criticisms.

The Secretary General of the Moroccan Observatory Against Normalization with the Zionist Entity, Aziz Hnawa, couched his criticism on the claim that such a festival is discriminatory on the basis of religion and race. Meaning that a Jewish film festival discriminates against non-Jews. He said that such a festival could be used to foment unrest among other minority groups in Northern Africa, who might demand their own film festivals!

He also was upset that some of the films referred to Israel as opposed to "The Zionist Entity."

Film critic Hassan Benslakhh said that to organize such a festival in Morocco is a high provocation.

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.

Antisemitic "anti-Zionists" gleefully cherry-pick history of Haavara agreement

It is very telling to see how many self-professed "anti-Zionists, not antisemites" are eagerly supporting Ken Livingstone's statement that "Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism – this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews."

As the UK Labour party reeled from this and other antisemitic statements, so-called "anti-Zionists" went on the offensive, claiming that Livingstone said nothing wrong, because of the controversial Haavara agreement struck between Zionists and Germany in the 1930s to save the lives of German Jews.

To use that agreement as proof of "Hitler supporting Zionism" is nothing but a manifestation of antisemitism.

Others have shown how Livingstone's history is absurd. But that doesn't stop Israel-haters to pretend that he was right. For example:

This morning another example came up, as +972 columnist Mairav Zonszein retweeted this (since deleted but he had tweeted the same link here):

(Zonszein, it will be remembered, penned a NYT op-ed that falsely claimed that Israel made her abortion much more onerous than if it has been done in other Western countries. And she herself is happy to cherry-pick quotes to pretend to prove Israelis are evil.)

Nasir linked to a blog post by another self-avowed "anti-Zionist" who pretends to be against antisemitism, Tony Greenstein, who published this image:

Zonszein and Nasir could have read the rest of the article posted - "the very physical existence of a half-million Jews was at stake" - but their desire to conflate Zionism with Nazism is so deep that they couldn't be bothered to read beyond the highlighted section to gleefully trumpet that Livingstone was right.

However, the article excerpted here is an excellent overview of the agreement itself - and its ultimate effectiveness. Here is the entire section:

A painful controversy divided the Jewish people during the time of Chaim Arlosoroff's term on the world Zionist Executive . It related to the question whether Jewish representatives - more concretely, whether the world Zionist movement - should establish contacts with Nazi Germany for the purpose of getting Jews and Jewish property out of the country. The official Zionist response was : Yes, because there were no chances of a quick end to Hitlerism, and the very physical existence of a half million Jews was at stake . Chaim Arlosoroff was one of the major proponents and implementers of this position, which found its practical expression in the Transfer Agreement .

The opponents of the Transfer argued : Jewish national and human honor could not tolerate the slightest dealings with the Nazis . The controversy was explosive . The Jews in Palestine and the world Zionist organization were accused of breaking the anti-Nazi economic boycott, of "demoralizing" the struggle against Germany. The very usefulness of the Transfer Agreement was questioned - it could at best rescue only selected individuals along with their meager possessions . Naturally, the opposition was directed primarily against Labor, which was in the leadership of HaVaad HaLeumi and the world Zionist organization, and against Chaim Arlosoroff personally, the "architect" of the agreement .

The supporters of the Transfer Agreement replied : Jewish tradition has created two principles, highly moral commandments and standards for Jewish behavior in cases where Jewish lives are being threatened : Pikuakh Nefesh and Pidyon Shevuyim . (Pikuakh nefesh : saving a life . The preservation of life takes precedence over all commandments. Pidyon shevuyim : ransom of captives, even if it means negotiating with criminals .)

The transfer was being undertaken in that spirit . In modern Jewish history there is no lack of examples of sending emissaries even to our persecutors . Did not Herzl go to St . Petersburg to negotiate with the Russian Minister Plehve? Did not Jabotinsky negotiate an agreement with Petlura's chief lieutenant Slavinski in the hope of saving the Jewish communities in the Ukraine from slaughter? Transfer was the practical meaning of Zionism. Herzl himself defined Zionism as a "transport organization ."

In such an atmosphere of sharp debate pro and con, of inflamed emotions against sober and practical calculations, the negotiations concerning transfer were begun with the Heinrich Bruning government as far back as the summer of 1931 . Because of the financial panic and the bank crisis in Germany, the government had set a limit of 200 marks on the amount of money that could be taken out of the country.

Chaim Arlosoroff, together with a number of leaders of the German Zionist organization, attempted to have the regulation repealed . But it was not until September 1933 that the German government gave its consent to the Transfer Agreement. From that moment until the outbreak of World War II, the Haavara (transfer) carried out annually 50,000 transactions. Most of the 50,000 German Jews who emigrated to Palestine utilized the Transfer Agreement, taking out with them 140 million Reichsmarks. 60% of the capital invested during that period in Eretz Israel came from these funds . All of the colonization in Emek Hefer was due to the transfer. All these accomplishments strengthened the yishuv. They helped to create on the internal front many of the advances necessary for a successful policy in the years of struggle for the establishment of the State .

Thus history settled the argument and showed that in the new economic and political realities created by the Transfer, there was more foresight than in all the opposition which had created such a perfervid hostility toward Labor and particularly toward Chaim Arlosoroff.

The people who now claim the moral high ground by saying "ooh, ooh, Zionist Jews cooperated with Hitler!" are engaging in the worst kind of antisemitism. 50,000 Jewish lives were saved because of this agreement, as distasteful and controversial as it was at the time. But the zeal to associate Zionists and Nazis is simply too great to worry about details like that.

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