Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, May 21, 2016

05/21 Links: J-Street and Ploughshares were paid to promote Iran deal; The Mirage of BDS Momentum

From Ian:

J-Street was paid by Obama administration to promote Iran deal

J-Street received more than half a million dollars to advocate for the Obama administration's controversial nuclear deal with Iran, it has been revealed.
The liberal Jewish group, which bills itself as "pro-Israel and pro-peace" but which critics say takes solely anti-Israel stances, was paid the money by the White House's main surrogate organization for selling the deal.
The Ploughshares Fund was named in an explosive New York Times profile of Obama aid Ben Rhodes, in which the President's chief spin doctor listed the central groups responsible for creating an "echo chamber" in order to promote the deal, even when the White House's official line didn't jibe with the facts.
According to Associated Press, the group's 2015 annual report details several organizations which received substantial funds to peddle the official White House line on the nuclear deal. Among them was National Public Radio (NPR), which received a $100,000 grant to promote "national security reporting that emphasizes the themes of U.S. nuclear weapons policy and budgets, Iran's nuclear program, international nuclear security topics and U.S. policy toward nuclear security."
Other grantees included: The Arms Control Association ($282,500); the Brookings Institution ($225,000); and the Atlantic Council ($182,500), who "received money for Iran-related analysis, briefings and media outreach, and non-Iran nuclear work," according to AP. (h/t Yenta Press)

Rhodes' Echo Chamber' Group Paid NPR To Cover Iran Deal

In a disturbing revelation of how much the Obama Administration’s plans to sell the Iran nuclear deal involved the corruption of the media, AP reports that The Ploughshares Fund [funded by Soros], a group identified by Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes as one of the groups that helped build an “echo chamber” to promulgate the administration’s narrative, gave National Public Radio $100,000 last year to report on the deal and ancillary issues.
The Ploughshares Fund's mission is to ostensibly "build a safe, secure world by developing and investing in initiatives to reduce and ultimately eliminate the world's nuclear stockpiles," but as Rhodes revealed in an article in The New York Times Magazine, the fund was one of a group of nongovernmental organizations that worked to engender support for the deal. Rhodes said brazenly, "We created an echo chamber.”
The GOP had slammed the deal as being a product of White House spin.
Ploughshares’ 2015 annual report stated that the grant to NPR supported "national security reporting that emphasizes the themes of U.S. nuclear weapons policy and budgets, Iran's nuclear program, international nuclear security topics and U.S. policy toward nuclear security.” Board chairwoman Mary Lloyd Estrin bragged in the report that the success of the Iran deal was "driven by the fearless leadership of the Obama administration and supporters in Congress, less known is the absolutely critical role that civil society played in tipping the scales towards this extraordinary policy victory."
Ploughshares spokeswoman Jennifer Abrahamson protested to AP, "It is common practice for foundations to fund media coverage of underreported stories,” adding that funding "does not influence the editorial content of their coverage in any way, nor would we want it to." NPR admitted that Ploughshares has funded NPR's coverage of national security since 2005; every grant descriptions since 2010 mentions Iran. (h/t Yenta Press)

Media-Darling Muslim Selfie Girl: ‘Hitler Left Some Jews So We’d Know Why He Killed Them’

A Muslim girl who took a “defiant” selfie at an anti-Islam protest in Belgium allegedly posted anti-Semitic comments on her Twitter, Facebook, and Ask.fm accounts, according to a Belgian former soldier and a leading Dutch website.
Zakia Belkhiri, 22, was lauded as an “inspiration” by the media as her picture next to Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) protesters went viral.
But web sleuths have now claimed that Ms. Belkhiri’s “peace sign” in the picture is perhaps out of character for her. They claim she tweeted in 2012: “Hitler didnt kill all the jews, he left some. So we [would] know why he was killing them”.
The tweet, seen in these screengrabs, appears to have been sent on the 29th December 2012, is now circulating social media as people attempt to draw attention to Ms. Belkhiri’s alleged racist views. As Ms. Belkhiri has now deleted her account it is not possible to verify these tweets.
Shortly before she deleted her accounts, Ms. Belkhiri tweeted: “I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING AGAINST JEWS THOSE TWEETS ARE FAKE THEY ARE PHOTOSHOPPED BUT if you don’t believe me that’s your choice people”.
But social media users are also claiming her Ask.fm account allegedly read: “f#ck that Jewish language” when she was asked if she wanted to learn Hebrew while critics claim her Facebook account expressed her hatred for Jews.

05/20 Links Pt2: The Israel That Arabs Don’t Know; A week of ordinary French anti-Semitism

From Ian:

IDF-critiquing NGO faces court debate on revealing its sources

The State Prosecutor’s Office has demanded that Breaking the Silence name its sources, saying anonymous witnesses allow potential lies to spread and make it impossible to investigate alleged abuses.
According to Israeli media reports earlier this year, the army is demanding testimonies that primarily relate to evidence of alleged war crimes and compliance by IDF troops with illegal orders. The State Prosecutor’s Office — officially acting on behalf of the army as the matter pertains to a civilian organization — presented the petition to the court.
Breaking the Silence co-founder Yehuda Shaul said the hearings were aimed at closing down the NGO, and insisted the group is determined to protect the identities of its sources.
The NGO provides a platform for military veterans to describe what they say were disturbing aspects of their service in the 2014 war in the Gaza Strip and in operations in the West Bank.
It has faced increased political pressure in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presides over one of the most right-wing governments in the country’s history.
In March, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who on Friday morning announced his resignation, accused the NGO of “treason” by asking discharged soldiers to reveal classified information, a charge denied by the group.
The Military Police have also demanded the names of the NGO’s sources — a request it refused.

The Israel That Arabs Don’t Know

On my flight from Rome to Tel Aviv on Israel’s El Al airlines, I thought about what awaited me and what I would see. Although I had an idea of what Israel was like and friends who have told me of their experiences working there, memories of the accumulated assumptions about the place that I had gained throughout my childhood in Egypt presented a conflicting counter narrative. I wondered which was the truth: what I now knew, or what had been instilled in us Egyptians as children. Do the “Jews” in Israel actually hate Arabs? If they found out I was Egyptian, would treat me poorly? Would I be verbally or physically abused if Israelis heard me speaking Arabic?
Halting my train of thought, a man sitting next to me with his wife asked me something in Hebrew. In English, I explained that I didn’t understand the language. The man then apologized and asked in English, “Where are you from?” When I answered that I was from Egypt, he and his wife smiled genuinely and welcomingly. These were not the fake smiles our schools, society, television, and film had attributed to Israelis and Jews.
When I arrived in Israel’s financial capital, Tel Aviv, the airport’s clean atmosphere and facilities left me wondering whether I had left Europe. Its modernity left little doubt that I had entered a developed country.
On the road from the Ben Gurion Airport to Jerusalem (al-Quds)–Israel’s political capital–I saw wide, clean roads, filled with trees and captivating natural scenery. I took notes on everything, in line with my mission to relay the truth of life inside Israel. Once I had arrived in the political capital, I visited the Ministry of Exterior, the Knesset, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.
I met with both Arabs and Jews of Arab origin, and they recounted their memories of life in Iraq, Egypt, and the other countries from which they had come. I listened to how they had left those countries after bitter experiences of incitement and hatred. Life had brought them to a place where they peacefully coexisted. Unfortunately, the truth of coexistence has been muddled with the help of many media organizations. (h/t IsraellyCool)

A week of ordinary French anti-Semitism

September 1972, Munich’s Olympic Village, “31” block. Some of the Israeli athletes were Holocaust survivors. The Black September Palestinian terrorists took them hostage demanding the release of 234 terrorists in the Israeli jails. But Black September was not there for an exchange or negotiation, what they wanted the killing of Jews, the young representatives of the Israeli people hosted by the nation which once planned the Holocaust.
The Olympic Village was located a few kilometers from Dachau.
The Cannes Film Festival has now hosted “Munich: A Palestinian Story” by the Lebanese filmmaker of Palestinian origin Narsi Hajjaj. Ilana Romano, widow of Yossef Romano, who was murdered in the massacre, has refused to cooperate with this film because the director insisted on defining as “freedom fighters” the Black September terrorists who killed her husband, while the murdered Israelis are called “representatives of an occupying country”.
A year ago, it emerged that at least one of the athletes, Yossef Romano, was castrated bythe Palestinian kidnappers in front of his companions. Hajjaj, however, called the massacre not a terrorist act, but an “international incident”.
Roger Cukierman, president of the Council of Jewish Organizations in France, voiced “anxiety and deep concern” over the viewing in a letter to Cannes Film Festival President Pierre Lescure and French Culture Minister Audrey Azoulay.
Resoundingly ghastly is the fact that the Cannes Festival agreed to host and commercialize this anti-Semitic movie.
But this has been a week of ordinary French anti-Semitism.

From the PLO "Department of Culture and Information" website:

[PLO Executive Committee Member Dr. Hanan] Ashrawi commented on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to appoint Avigdor Lieberman as the defense minister: “Such a decision is extremely dangerous—Lieberman, who has called for the beheading of Palestinians and for their transfer outside the state of Israel, is a serious threat to peace and stability, and his appointment will generate a culture of lawlessness, extremism, violence, and hate in Israel.”

In 2011, Ashrawi went on CNN to defend Hamas terrorists joining the Palestinian government.

Hypocritical much?

By the way, despite all the hysterics that we are reading today about Lieberman painting him as an ultra-right extremist, he supports a two-state solution. He supports (under the right conditions) Israel dismantling some settlements.

For a decade now, Avigdor Lieberman has taken on the mantle of Ariel Sharon before him - a crazed ultra-right nationalist who wants to kill all Palestinians. As with Sharon, the reality is not close to the rhetoric. Yes, Lieberman says some outrageous things, but when he calls to "behead" those Israelis who actively act against the state he is obviously not speaking literally, even though it is in the interests of many to pretend that he is. (He also doesn't call for "transfer." He calls to redraw the borders so Jewish sections outside the Green Line become part of Israel and Arab sections inside become part of a Palestinian state. It will never happen, but redrawing borders is not "transfer.")

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...And here's the final proof that Prashad is an academic fraud.

There are two ways of proving that someone is an academic fraud.

One is to prove that he or she knowingly lies.

Yesterday I proved with a high degree of probability that popular Trinity College professor Vijay Prashad lied, by claiming that Hamas does not deny the right of Israel to exist. He quoted selectively from a 2009 New York Times article and used Khaled Meshal's words to pretend that he accepted Israel's existence, but he didn't bother to mention that the article itself said explicitly that Meshal refused to accept Israel's existence.

I then brought a much stronger proof using Meshal's own words, on video, that leave absolutely no doubt about his opinion.

But perhaps Prashad was just being sloppy, and he didn't notice the part of the NYT article where Meshal was shown to hold the opposite view. Or maybe he read about it secondhand. And perhaps this Middle East scholar was unaware of the many other statements in Arabic by Hamas that explicitly denies Israel's right to exist.

That possibility, that Prashad is just a sloppy professor and not a malicious liar, was put to rest when he sarcastically responded to my tweet about his article:

This means that he read my post and decided that proof that pushing anti-Israel propaganda is more important than truth. The Alternet article he wrote remains unaltered; he did not issue a correction or change the words.

Any person who claims to be a scholar, who works in academia, and yet who consciously decides to lie is simply a propagandist and should not be allowed to work at any self-respecting institution of higher education.

Unfortunately, today's colleges think that free speech includes the right to teach lies.

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05/20 Links Pt1: Poking a gaping hole in the Palestinian narrative; Has the UN Human Rights Council become Frankenstein?

From Ian:

IDF Blog: ISIS threatens to wipe out Israel. Here’s why we’re taking them seriously.

Facts at a glance:
- ISIS in Egypt started out targeting Israeli targets, such as Israeli pipelines carrying gas between Israel, Egypt, and Jordan.
- The most dominant terrorist organizations in the Sinai have ties to Hamas. ISIS fighters train in Gaza before returning to the Sinai. Hamas helps with training, medical care, transferring funds, and assisting with communications.
- In 2012, the Egyptian Army started Operation Sinai to destroy tunnels between Hamas in Gaza and militants in Sinai. These same tunnels were used to smuggle weapons into Gaza to attack Israel.
- Top ISIS leaders have repeatedly threatened major attacks against Israel. We take their threats seriously.
Israel’s border with Egypt has long been volatile, with terror groups shaking the stability in Northern Sinai. Our newest threat in the region is an offshoot of a deadly international terror organization: ISIS in the Sinai. The terror capabilities of ISIS’s Sinai branch are cannot be ignored. Their shootings, bombings, projectiles, and other attacks have killed both civilians and soldiers. Israel has always been a primary target of the group from its inception. Ansar Bait al-Maqdis (ABM) and their anti-Israel rhetoric has only increased since their incorporation into the Islamic State.
The situation in the Sinai has undergone serious changes over the last five years. Here are some key points in the evolution of the ISIS threat in the Sinai:

ISIS threatens global war with Israel

Islamic State threatens Israel in an article in its weekly newsletter this week, saying that unlike Hamas, the “war on Israel will not be limited by geographical boundaries or by international norms.”
According to the article in the Al-Naba newsletter identified by the Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor of MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) and shared with The Jerusalem Post, Israel feels threatened by ISIS because of the “collapse” of neighboring states and the Sunni terrorist group’s advance toward the borders of the Jewish state.
For this reason, Israel has started to fight against Islamic State in Sinai and Syria, it says, adding that the entire world is now an arena for the fight against all the “polytheist combatants, including the Jews,” who are legitimate targets. Israel is using jets to attack Islamic State in Sinai, the article claims.
“The collapse of the Sykes-Picot statelets, which were tasked with protecting the Jewish state; the approach of ISIS mujahideen toward its borders; [Israel’s] fear of the spread of its [ISIS’s] methodology among the oppressed Muslims inside those borders [i.e. fear that ISIS ideology is spreading among Israeli Arabs]; and the manifest failure of the Crusader states who protect the Jews to win the battle against it [ISIS] – all these are factors that caused the Jewish state to not sit idly by in face of this danger,” it says.

Poking a gaping hole in the Palestinian narrative

Most people have never heard of the Eshkol plan, and you might be wondering why.
The answer is really very simple: it pokes a gaping hole in the narrative put forward by the Palestinians and their supporters, who assert that the root of all Israeli-Palestinian discord lies in the events of 1967, rather than in the long-standing and deep-seated Arab desire to wipe Israel off the map.
The fact is that had the Arabs and the Palestinians sincerely accepted Eshkol’s proposal, regional peace in the Middle East would be entering its sixth decade already and the so-called Palestinian question would have been resolved long ago.
Going back still further, if they had come to terms with Israel’s establishment in 1948 rather than choosing war, the entire region might have flourished.
At this point, there is no turning back the clock, and in light of subsequent developments, Eshkol’s plan is as unworkable now as it might have been sensible back then.
But even after so many decades, it is worth recalling his audacious proposal, if only to highlight where the underlying fault truly lies for the ongoing conflict: with the Palestinians and their defenders.
So next time you hear someone blathering about how the “occupation” is the cause of all our troubles, just think back to the grandfatherly figure of Levi Eshkol, the peace he offered to make in 1965, the Arab hatred and enmity with which it was greeted and just how different things could have been.

Egyptian paper: "These ten Jews control the world economy"

I always wondered who they were, and now popular Egyptian newspaper Vetogate lists for us the ten Jews who run the world economy.

Haim Saban

Haim Saban
Patrick Drahi
Yitzhak Tshuva
Shari Arison
Idan Ofer
Ronald Lauder
Rupert Murdoch (who is not Jewish)
Sheldon Adelson
Irving Moskowitz
Bernard-Henri Lévy

Now you know!

(corrected headline from "world "to "world economy," h/t Oren K)

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A popular French health website, DocteurClic, has a section on the dangers of traveling to other countries.

Here is the map it uses to travel to "Palestine":

In general, it is safe to travel to "Palestine" which is entirely occupied, although from the map it is unclear exactly who is occupying it. Perhaps Great Britain.

It does have a section on traveling to Israel, which is apparently a state in two sections somewhere on the Mediterranean:

For Israel, it says that it is very dangerous to travel:

The troubled political climate, lack of stability in the region and the situation on the ground makes it dangerous country for travelers.

In addition, the low level of health does not allow the traveler to ensure optimum safety in terms of the management of health problems. Health infrastructure is poor or very degraded.

Precautions are needed to avoid many worries or to compromise a part of your stay.

It is in any essential way to know the safety rules to be respected during trips.

Who knew Israel's health system was so primitive?

It has similar rules for "Palestine," but it adds for Israel:

Travel is not recommended in this country, except for imperative professional reasons.

Due to the increase in suicide bombings and their random and unpredictable, visitors should exercise extreme caution.

In all major Israeli population centers:

avoid places and rush hour: market squares, pedestrian streets, shopping centers, restaurants located on major streets, cafés, clubs, gatherings of any kind on the highway;
refrain from using public transport (buses, taxis, trains)
Do not participate in any event,
rent a mobile phone and tell the number to friends or acquaintances, or even the French official representations.

These instructions apply especially to pilgrims planning to visit Jerusalem and Bethlehem, but also in Galilee (Nazareth Christian sites near the Sea of Galilee: Taghba, Capernaum, Cana, Mount of Beatitudes, Mount Tabor ...) .

While Israel is rated amber for travel, Egypt is considered green. So is Jordan.

And so is Syria, which is green in every single category.

Travelers to Israel are warned about respiratory diseases in the dry air but not for Jordan or Syria.

(h/t The New Antisemite)

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UC Irvine is officially an anti-Israel campus

From Campus Reform:

An event held by a Jewish student group at the University of California, Irvine was disrupted Wednesday night by a crowd of Muslim students chanting anti-Semitic and anti-police slogans.

Ariana Rowlands, president of the College Republicans club at UCI, told Campus Reform that her group had just wrapped up its weekly meeting Wednesday night, and were gathered outside the building preparing to hang posters advertising an upcoming appearance by Milo Yiannopoulos when they heard a commotion nearby.

Wandering over to investigate, the CR members encountered a large group of students—Rowlands estimated there were perhaps 50 in total—holding signs and screaming in unison to protest a movie screening being held by Students Supporting Israel (SSI).

Shawn Steel, a Republican National Committee member who was on campus to address the CR meeting, posted a video on Facebook depicting a portion of the demonstration.

“Intifada, Intifada/long live the Intifada,” the protesters shout at the start of the video, following that up with a call-and-response chant of “displacing people since ‘48/there’s nothing here to celebrate!”

Kevin Brum, Vice President of SSI, told Campus Reform that the demonstrators were members of the Muslim Student Union and Students for Justice in Palestine groups, who were apparently incensed that two former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers were planning to meet with attendees at the screening.

“The film was Beneath the Helmet, a film about IDF soldiers with personal interviews that sort of humanizes them,” he explained. “One of the campus advisers for Hillel is an Israeli citizen who served in the IDF, so she has former IDF friends, and two of them stopped by. Someone posted that information on Facebook, and SJP and MSU got wind of it.”

Here's video:

SJP bragged about violating free speech of people who support Israel:

Today we successfully demonstrated against the presence of IDF soldiers on campus. ...The presence of IDF and police threatened our coalition of Arab, black, undocumented, trans, and the greater activist community. Thank you to all that came out and bravely spoke out against injustice. ‪#‎UCIntifada‬

SSI says that the police stopped the event for the safety of the Zionist students being threatened by the Israel-hating thugs:

Tonight one of our events was disrupted by certain student organizations. They were in violation of UC Regents Hate Speech policy and were shouting various anti-Semitic statements. The police had to escort attendees out of the event for their own safety. While it saddens us that there exist individuals who are more interested in shutting our Peace Week down, we at SSI want to assure you all that we are not backing down in the slightest. We are not going to give in to their intimidation tactics and anti-Semitic rhetoric. ‪#‎UCIsrael2016‬ ‪#‎WeStandUnited‬ ‪#‎NeverGiveUp‬ ‪#‎StudentsAgainstHate‬ ‪#‎StudentsForPeace‬ ‪#‎PeaceWeek‬

Only two weeks ago SJP, JVP and MSU at UCI hosted "anti-Zionism week" on campus. An entire week dedicated to destroying the Jewish state and denying the Jewish right to self-determination. No attempt was made to shut it down.

Imagine a campus allowing an "Anti-Palestinian Week" or indeed a week dedicated against any country's very existence. It could never happen.

But at UCI, a week dedicated to hate against the Jewish state is protected, while an event that celebrates Israel is in danger of being shut down because of the violence of the haters.

There is something seriously wrong on campus when hate speech is celebrated and people supporting peace cannot speak without being threatened.

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05/19 Links Pt2: How to Destroy Israel; 90% of Israeli Jews call themselves Zionists

From Ian:

The Top Five Most Hilarious Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories

Last week, the British Labour party suspended Musabbir Ali, a former campaign official, for making anti-Semitic statements on social media. He joined an ignominious cast of characters punished for similar offenses, including a former mayor of London and a current parliament member. But Ali distinguished himself with his particularly creative brand of anti-Semitism.
On Twitter, among other bigoted bromides, he shared a link to a post claiming that the Jews had “financed Oliver Cromwell’s overthrowing and beheading of Stuart King Charles I after he refused them control of England’s finances.” This extraordinary assertion overlooked one minor detail: Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and could not legally return until 1657, years after Cromwell came to power.
Ali’s ahistorical absurdity highlighted an underappreciated aspect of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories: In addition to being hateful and ignorant, they are often hilarious.
In that spirit, I’d like to pay tribute to the most ridiculous anti-Jewish fulminations I’ve come across in my years covering them. These eruptions of inspired idiocy span centuries and continents, from America to Europe to the Middle East. They implicate the Jews and the Jewish state, as well as Monica Lewinsky and the animal kingdom, in their nefarious plots. And they frequently interchange “Zionist” for “Jew” in comically inept attempts to obscure their bigotry.
In other words, it’s a collection that should satisfy any connoisseur of fine anti-Semitism.

Marc Goldberg: How to Destroy Israel

In a twist of fate, the state of Israel lives and thrives (certainly in comparison with her neighbors) because of antisemitism not in spite of it.
Would a tiny country have been able to fight the Sinai Campaign in 1956 or win the Six Day War if its population hadn’t more than doubled in size?
I doubt it. But Israel haters please note that once again Jews fled when they had no choice, not because a million of them simply, collectively, woke up one morning and thought moving to Israel would be a fun thing to do.
A million Jews made it to Israel once the Iron Curtain collapsed. The most academically diverse, educated aliyah Israel had yet experienced made Israel the hi-tech powerhouse it is today. Israel hater think about that. Jews had been oppressed under the Czars, providing the forge within which Zionism was molded. Then the communists took over with an entirely different ideology and world view. And oppressed the Jews. Then decades later a million Jews moved to Israel.
Think about that. Antisemitism at work.
And now the French aliyah. Thousands more well educated and in many cases wealthy Jews from France are packing their bags and going anywhere they can. Including to Israel.
Antisemitism at work.
Israel is the solution to antisemitism not the cause of it. Some people who hate Israel hate Jews. Everyone who hates Jews hates Israel. Ending antisemitism would end Israel.
The former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone recently ranted that “Hitler was a Zionist”. He wasn’t. Clearly. He simply proved just how important, just how righteous, how necessary Zionism is.
Antisemitism at work.
Think about that.

Khaled Abu Toameh: How Terrorists and Dictators Silence Arab Journalists

That is the sad state of journalism in the Arab world: "If you're not with us, then you must be against us and that is why we need to shut your mouth." A journalist who does not agree to serve as a governmental mouthpiece is denounced as a "traitor."
Hamas shut the Gaza offices of Al-Arabiya in July 2013, under the pretext that the station broadcasted "incorrect news" about the situation in the Gaza Strip. The closure did not receive much attention from the international community and human rights organizations. Had the office been closed by Israel, there would have been an international outcry, with journalists screaming about Israeli "assaults on freedom of the media."
Al-Arabiya, like many other Arab TV stations, has a bureau in Israel, and its reporters enjoy more freedom reporting out of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv than they do in the Arab world. Today, the only free and independent Arabic newspapers in the Middle East can be found inside Israel.

The University of Turin is holding a conference about the Middle East called "From Caliphate to Caliphate: The Middle East from the Sykes-Picot Treaty to violent jihadism."

The third session of the conference was dedicated to Palestinian issues, and the only people who presented were known anti-Israel activists.

Diana Carminati, former professor of European Studies at the University of Turin, spoke on "The Contemporary Israeli project of settler-colonialism and the destruction of the Palestinian economy." She mentioned the tunnels being used to smuggle goods, but not a word about weapons.

Enrico Bartolomei of the University of Macerata spoke. He is also a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and has written of "Israeli apartheid" and is against any peace process, saying, "Any political solution must aim at decolonization of historic Palestine, rather than a supposed (peace process) or the construction of statehood or national authorities."

Two other known anti-Israel, pro-BDS professors speaking were Marzia Casolari and Michelguglielmo Towers, who has said that Hamas has a "high degree of pragmatism."

Literature at the conference included materials calling Gaza an "open air prison" and describing Operation Protective Edge as a" macabre spectacle of death and destruction on a large scale." Very scientific.

Conference organizer Marzia Casolari, Professor of History at the university, emphasized that the rabid pro-Palestinian positions of the speakers would not affect the "scientific rigor" of the seminar. Rector Gianmaria Ajani defended the conference and said any criticism was "specious", say that a conference is "not a talk show where they offer a seat to any political position."

I am told by someone who attended that there were also accusations of Jews raping Arabs in 1948 mentioned at the conference.

The good news is that only 25 people - including media.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

I had the good fortune to meet Tuvia Tenenbom, author of Catch the Jew and I Sleep in Hitler’s Room the other night.

He’s writing a book about America. I haven’t read it since he hasn’t finished it, but I think I can safely say that it is going to be a painful experience, because what he found isn’t pretty. To compress it into a single sentence, the American experiment of creating unity from diversity is crashing and burning.

One thing he noted was a recent explosion of hatred against Israel and Jews, coming from both the left and the right. I think he’s quite correct.

Let’s dispose of the red herring that anti-Zionism and Jew-hatred are different. Oh, they are different concepts, but the group that hates Israel generally hates Jews, and vice versa. A distinction without a difference. And that especially includes Jewish anti-Zionists.

It’s only natural that someone who dislikes Jews would dislike a Jewish state. And objecting to the Jewish state’s stubborn refusal to lie down and die despite the world’s protestations that the tiny enclave of Jewish sovereignty is unacceptable, just naturally leads a person to wonder what it is about these Jews that makes them so stubborn.

Stubborn is what they are, refusing the True Religion (whether Christianity or Islam) for millennia. Refusing to return to Europe after the Holocaust, and demanding – demanding – to be allowed to enter the land that had been promised to them by the international establishment, not to mention other promises from a higher authority, despite the inconvenience for His Majesty’s government. Refusing to give up the idea of a Jewish state and return to a Diaspora in which their existence would be conditional on the whims of the non-Jewish majority.

Jew hatred is sweeping the world again today, even, as Tenenbom noted, the US. The US is especially interesting, because it is the home to about half the world’s Jews. With the exception of the 10% of American Jews that are Orthodox, many of them – especially the younger ones – are embarrassed by Jewish stubbornness and believe that their liberal morality compels them to join with the ‘oppressed Palestinians’ and help them to end the Jewish state. In fact, they lead the anti-Zionist crusade there, even in Jewish organizations like Hillel.

But we have to excuse them. They are far from the action, they don’t have the facts, they are subjected to a constant bombardment of anti-Zionism in their media and from their government, their teachers, their peers and even liberal synagogues. In the universities they are intimidated by Muslim students and hard-left faculty, while receiving little or no support from administrators when faced with anti-Jewish racism. And as Diaspora Jews, they need to ‘go along to get along’ as Jews learned for centuries under Christian and Muslim rule.

On the other hand, we don’t have to excuse Israelis, even the highest IDF officers, when they react to the waves of Jew-hatred like Diaspora Jews. The recent remarks of Maj. Gen. Yair Golan were not only explicitly political – and therefore broke IDF rules – but by drawing a comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany, validated the most hateful anti-Zionists for whom such comparisons are stock in trade.

In part, he was referring to an incident in which a young soldier, Sgt. Elor Azaria, shot and killed an already ‘neutralized’ Palestinian who had just stabbed another soldier, and to the outpouring of public support for Azaria as the Army tries him for manslaughter. Azaria is accused of violating the IDF’s principle of ‘purity of arms,’ which forbids harming prisoners of war, although he argues that he believed the terrorist had a suicide vest on. Whether or not he was justified, his action was as different from Nazi genocide as day from night.

What motivated Golan to make such a comparison? You’d have to ask him, but I think he is harkening to a typically European, non-Jewish, even Christian morality, in which love for all humanity, including enemies, is the highest value. Tribalism is the first step to Nazism. Possibly he believed that if he just beat his country up enough, the ones that hate us would realize that we are human after all.

This is Diaspora thinking. Nothing we do will ever be enough for the anti-Zionists. Their irrational hatred is not our problem and we can’t solve it for them. Psychiatrist and historian Kenneth Levin called the belief that we can fix things by accepting the criticism of those who hate us and being better according to their principles the ‘Oslo Syndrome’. As the expression suggests, it is pathological.

The Diaspora Jew is used to being powerless, so he has to beg the non-Jewish authorities to protect his community. Of course, the more we abase ourselves before them, the more they hold us in contempt. An analogy today would be an Israeli leader begging Obama to protect Israel from Iran. How did that work out for us?

Diaspora Jews worry a lot. What will the goyim think? Don’t make the goyim mad. Flatter them, pretend that we believe that they don’t hate us, and they will pretend in return. Maybe.

It is becoming harder and harder for us to pretend. And they aren’t hiding their feelings so much either. When an anonymous Obama Administration official called our Prime Minister “a chickenshit,” the statement barely made sense. Literally, the official was calling Netanyahu a coward because he didn’t attack Iran when the US pressured him not to do so. But the emotional message was as clear as a slap in the face. Take that, Jew.

And how did our PM respond to the contempt poured on him from the White House? “The friendship between the US and Israel is stronger than ever,” and “my Congress speech [was] not intended to show disrespect to Obama or the office that he holds,” said Netanyahu in his best Diaspora diction.

But Israel isn’t powerless and doesn’t have to play this game, especially since the goyim have problems of their own. The West is losing in its battle with Islam and the forces of chaos. The Roman Empire may have taken hundreds of years to collapse, but today’s West will go down much more quickly.

For Israel to survive the ensuing cataclysm, we have to become a successful Middle Eastern nation instead of trying to be an outpost of Western power and Western morality. And that implies that we will have to defeat our enemies decisively, not pull our punches for fear of the reaction of the hypocritical Western powers. We will need to make alliances with Arab countries and others like India and China, not with the increasingly anti-Zionist US, the traditionally anti-Jewish Europe, or our bitter enemies, the PLO.

We need to implement a truly Jewish moral system which is suitable for survival in the Middle East, and not adopt the European Christian one (which the Europeans and Americans themselves fail to live up to while trying to impose it on us). This doesn’t mean that we ought to behave like Bashar al-Assad, but it does mean that – for example – the life of a Palestinian terrorist must be counted as worth infinitely less than that of a Jew.

Mostly, we need to stop thinking like Diaspora Jews. Western leaders increasingly can’t and won’t help us, and we don’t live or die by their favor.

Our leaders need to come to understand this. The Israeli in the street – most of whom want Elor Azaria freed – already does.

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05/19 Links Pt1: Israel, Gaza and "Proportionality"; An Israeli Echo Chamber? Haaretz and the Iran Deal

From Ian:

EgyptAir crash debris reportedly found as officials consider terrorism

A Cairo-bound EgyptAir flight that went down in the Mediterranean Sea with 66 aboard early Thursday hours after departing from Paris zig-zagged sharply before plunging, according to aviation officials, who said terrorism was a more likely cause of the crash than technical failure.
Government officials from France, Greece and Egypt spoke at separate news conferences even as boats and ships from several countries were scouring the waters off of the Greek island of Karpathos, near where a witness reported seeing a fireball in the sky.
Ships on the scene included the British missile cruiser HMS Defender, and a Russian ship was also reportedly nearing the suspected debris field.
By midday Thursday, an Egyptian plane spotted two orange items believed to be from the missing plane, a Greek military official told The Associated Press.
The official said the items were found 230 miles south-southeast of the island of Crete but still within the Egyptian air traffic control area. One of the items was oblong, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with regulations.
Two other floating objects, colored white and red, were spotted in the same area, Greek defense sources told Reuters.

PMW: Fatah responds to PMW's bulletin, reiterates that it honors murderer of 24

Palestinian Media Watch reported yesterday that Abbas' political party Fatah had honored Japanese terrorist Kozo Okamoto for his part in the terror attack in Israel's airport in 1972, in which 24 civilians were killed and 70 were injured. Fatah's response to PMW's report was to immediately issue two follow-up posts, "in response to the Israeli media."
In the new posts, Fatah reiterated that it views the murderer of 24 as a hero, and added that if Israelis wants peace they must leave what Fatah calls "our land", the term it usually uses to mean all of Israel. As PMW has reported, PA policy is to deny Israel's right to exist on any part of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas himself calls all of Israel an "occupation."
The following are today's Fatah Facebook posts in response to PMW's exposure that Fatah glorified the murderer of 24:
"Responding to the Israeli media (i.e., PMW report):
44 years since the operation in the [Israeli] Lod Airport. Blessings to the Japanese fighter, the comrade Kozo Okamoto, hero of the operation (i.e., terror attack that killed 24 and injured 70) at the Lod airport.
The Fatah Movement is proud of all who have joined its ranks and the ranks of the Palestinian revolution for the freedom of the Palestinian people. We are proud of every fighter who has joined our mighty revolution. If Israel wants peace, it should get out of our land and we'll live in peace, for it [Israel] is the last occupation in the world." [Official Fatah Facebook page, May 18, 2016]

Belgium declines Israeli teens’ aid request after parents killed in museum attack

Belgium has turned down a request for financial assistance from the daughters of an Israeli couple killed in a 2014 attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels.

Mira and Emmanuel Riva were on vacation and touring the museum in May when Mehdi Nemmouche, a Frenchman who French authorities believe left for Syria via Belgium to fight with jihadists in 2012 before returning to Europe, opened fire on museum visitors and staff.
Along with the Rivas, a French volunteer at the museum and a Belgian employee were killed in the attack.
The Riva teens, who live in Tel Aviv, filed an application for the assistance 10 months after the attack. They applied for the usual allocation of 15,000 euros, or about $17,000, which is generally provided without question, according to French-language news reports.

The Washington Post reported Monday:

Jordan and Israel have launched a pilot project that is so small and simultaneously so ambitious that it tells the story.

For the past six months, very quietly, Israel has been allowing Jordanians to cross the border to its Red Sea resort to work minimum-wage jobs at hotels.

The first 700 of 1,500 have started.

So far, nothing bad has happened.

“The Jordanians need work, and we need workers,” said the head of the Eilat Hotel Association, Shabtai Shay.

Getting the Jordanians work permits to cross the border from Aqaba to Eilat took three years of negotiations with 10 Israeli ministries, he said.

“It was mission impossible,” Shay said.

On the Israeli side, there were concerns about security, vetting, the checkpoint, unions, the hours and how Israeli tourists would feel about being attended — even behind the scenes — by service workers who were Muslims from the Hashemite kingdom.

Talkbacks to an article about this in Jordan's Ammon News were mixed. While some bemoaned the "normalization" and how low they have sunk to have to work in Israel (whose minimum wage is higher than the average Jordanian salary.)

But others have been more practical,

One said that the workers want a dignified life and not to have to beg for sustenance, and they should take the best option for their livelihoods rather than worry about people who insult them and have no other solutions.

Another said that he had a degree in physical therapy but had to work in Gulf hotels because of a shortage of jobs in Jordan, so the workers should not be criticized.

While there are a lot of very noisy Arabs who are quick to loudly criticize everything that has anything to do with Israel, there has always been a silent majority who care far more about raising their families in dignity than about theoretical problems with Jews in the Middle East. Unfortunately we hardly ever hear from them - even though they are the keys to real peace.

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Egyptian media continues publishing antisemitic conspiracy theories

I reported earlier this month that Egypt's most popular newspaper, Al Ahram, published an antisemitic article by Ali Gad claiming that the Talmud contains plans for Jewish world domination.

It turns out that the article was the first of a series. Part two was last week, saying that Judaism wants to destroy ethics and all other religions.

Part 3 was just published. In this article, Ali Gad brings more evidence to his theories. He quotes from a book called Talmudic Blueprints about how Jews are taking over the world.

Here's is the cover of this scholarly tome.

The entire PDF of the book is here, scanned from a copy in the Portland State University Library.

The book mentions that Jews aren't doing all the heavy work on world domination themselves, they manipulate other groups like the Masons to do their dirty work.

Ali Gad then quotes from another crazed Arabic conspiracy theory book called Secret World Government.

These bizarre theories are simply normal discourse for a major Arab newspaper.

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Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of 18 books, and a member of the advisory board of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

He is also a provable liar.

He writes in Alternet:

Hamas does not “deny” Israel’s right to exist. Its Charter, written during the First Intifada in 1987, bears the marks of the moment. But it does not define Hamas’ politics, for which a reading of its 2006 election manifesto gives a much clearer picture. In a 2009 interview with the New York Times, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal “urged outsiders to ignore the Hamas charter,” for, in Meshal’s words, “We are shaped by our experiences.” What is the Hamas position, the Times’ reporters asked Meshal? “We are with a state on the 1967 borders, based on a long-term truce. This includes East Jerusalem, the dismantling of settlements and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees.” Nothing here is outside the international consensus. Israel is not denied by Meshal, the leader of Hamas.

If one reads the rest of the same New York Times article, which the scholar doesn't bother linking to, it says

Apart from the time restriction and the refusal to accept Israel’s existence, Mr. Meshal’s terms approximate the Arab League peace plan and what the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas says it is seeking.

Let's forget about the dozens of examples that I have gathered since then showing that Hamas considers all of Israel "occupied" and that it's goal is Israel's destruction.

Let's look at Khaled Meshal's own words since the deceptive 2009 NYT interview.

First of all, Palestine – from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, from its north to its south – is our land, our right, and our homeland. There will be no relinquishing or forsaking even an inch or small part of it.

Second, Palestine was, continues to be, and will remain Arab and Islamic. It belongs to the Arab and the Islamic world. Palestine belongs to us and to nobody else. This is the Palestine which we know and in which we believe.

Third, since Palestine belongs to us, and is the land of Arabism and Islam, we must never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation of it. The occupation is illegitimate, and therefore, Israel is illegitimate, and will remain so throughout the passage of time. Palestine belongs to us, not to the Zionists.
[...]
The liberation of Palestine – all of Palestine – is a duty, a right, a goal, and a purpose. It is the responsibility of the Palestinian people, as well as of the Arab and Islamic nation.

Fifth, Jihad and armed resistance are the proper and true path to liberation and to the restoration of our rights, along with all other forms of struggle – through politics, through diplomacy, through the masses, and through legal channels. All these forms of struggle, however, are worthless without resistance.
[...]
Politics are born from the womb of resistance. The true statesman is born from the womb of the rifle and the missile.

That's as explicit a rejection of Israel's right to exist as words can convey. The whole speech is here:

No doubt Professor Prashad knows this, and he knows he is lying. So he is yet another academic fraud.

(The rest of his article could be fisked just as thoroughly, but once Prashad is exposed as a liar, really, what's the point?)

(h/t YMedad)

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