Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, June 04, 2016

06/04 Links: Incitement rife in Palestinian textbooks; 35 years on: mission to bomb Saddam’s nuke reactor

From Ian:

Incitement rife in Palestinian textbooks

In almost every study conducted by researchers looking into incitement in Palestinian textbooks, materials have been found which breach the Palestinian Authority's pledges to halt anti-Israel incitement in schools.
Researchers have been surveying Palestinian school textbooks frequently over the past few decades to see if they have inciting material, such as the non-recognition of Israel as a sovereign state or the glorification of terror attacks and terrorists.
The schools researched in the various surveys are all public schools under the control of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Ministry of Education.
It turns out that in the vast majority of Palestinian textbooks, Israel isn't on any maps in any form. Israeli cities within the 1967 Green Line - such as Acre, Haifa, Nazareth, Jaffa, and others – are presented as being Palestinian cities. There are only a few schools which use textbooks that show a difference between PA controlled areas and Israel.
The IMPACT-se group looks into the issue of what governments teach their children and put in their textbooks worldwide in an attempt to determine how peaceful and tolerant a society is. They also looked into the school curriculums in the PA.
According to Chairman Marcus Sheff, "we looked for characteristics of peace and tolerance. We investigate education systems all over the world. We search using objective criteria written by UNESCO, and use these criteria to rank the peace and tolerance in children and in the society itself. There is a definite and clear correlation between the level and peace and tolerance and political violence in a society."

PHOTOS: PA President Abbas’ Dedication Of Street In His Name Backfires

A West Bank municipality’s decision to name a street after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has backfired, with street signs vandalized and a great deal of abuse on social media.
Abbas dedicated the street in the town of Bir Zeit last week with pomp and circumstance.
The naming of the street was “a token of appreciation for [Abbas’] efforts to better the lives of the Palestinian people and his efforts to realize the dream of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” the municipality said in a statement.
Less than a week later, the sign was vandalized and Abbas’ name erased from it. The official media ignored the incident, but it went viral on social media, accompanied by many comments ridiculing the President, some of them accompanied by a picture of the tweeters raising their middle finger.
“The youth of Bir Zeit couldn’t stand that sign for more than a week,” Beesan wrote.
“We congratulate our great leader, the liberator of Jerusalem and the crusher of the Jews, Mahmoud Abbas, for the naming of a street in Bir Zeit after him,” Dr. Khalil Awadi wrote ironically.

06/03 Links Pt2: BDS: A new face on an old hate; Jeremy Corbyn on Israel; Mekonen – Journey Of An African Jew

From Ian:

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: This bigoted radical does not deserve a "feminist artist" award

[Angela] Davis experienced her first visit to “Palestine” (with other “scholars of color”) as a “nightmare . . . the wall, the concrete, the razor wire everywhere conveyed the impression that we were in prison.” Deftly, she compares the jailing of black Americans with the jailing of Palestinian . . . terrorists. She tells her audiences that if they support BDS, “Palestine will be free.”
In the guise of anti-racism, Davis is a bigot — an activist Jew-hater. In her lectures, she doesn’t condemn Jordan or Egypt for their anti-Palestinian actions, nor does she fault the many Arab and Muslim countries that have systematically refused citizenship and even employment to Arab Palestinians.
Davis doesn’t talk about the anti-black racism of Arabs or about the practice of real gender and religious apartheid in Muslim countries. She doesn’t even fault the Palestinian leadership for torturing and executing its gays and dissidents or for forcibly veiling and subordinating Palestinian women. A real feminist would do so.
Real feminists wouldn’t be honoring such a figure.
In early May, 100 activists and artists staged a protest at the Brooklyn Museum about “displacement both in Brooklyn and Palestine.” This demonstration was organized by the Decolonial Cultural Front and Movement to Protect the People.
No one mentioned the relentless Palestinian terrorism against Israeli Jewish civilians — or the enormous “displacement” and murder of Christians by Arab Muslims, or the “displacement” brought about by indigenous civil wars among Muslim Afghans, Libyans, Iraqis and Syrians, a “displacement” that threatens the stability and viability of the Western world.
I doubt they will demonstrate against Angela Davis.

BDS: A new face on an old hate

BDS- boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the world’s only Jewish State are nothing new, and are not related to the "occupation"- but against the very existence of Israel, within any borders.
From the Saturday Evening Post, Dec 27 1947 spoken by Salel Jabur, Prime Minister of Iraq
“What is it”, he asked me, that Americans want?” If it is a safe home for the Jews, that cannot be found in Palestine for Palestine is in the heart of the Arab world. We surround it. How shall a Jewish state live there?”
We will boycott it, give it no foods or raw materials, buy nothing from it. We will squeeze it in a ring of steel until it dies and our heart is ours again”

Fatah media reports that Hamas arrested five members of the Presidential Guard for "collaborating" with Palestinian Authority that it claims it is unified with.

On Wednesday morning, Hamas reportedly arrested Mohammed Ghazi Khitab, Isaac Ibrahim Abdullah Hussein, Shadi Alslol, Hatem Yousef Mohammed Hasanat, and Mohammed Abdul Rahman Ibrahim Mattar.

The story goes on to accuse Hamas of building secret, underground prisons specifically for political opponents, where they routinely engage in torture. Some are in the basements of mosques which are soundproofed so that the residents nearby don't hear the screams.

Fatah media is even less trustworthy than Hamas media, but the arrests and charges of torture are probably true.

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Hundreds attend funeral of Holocaust survivor they didn't know

From Miriam Goodman on Facebook:

Now this is Israel...and her people!

Following an announcement that there was no minyan (quorum) to accompany Holocaust survivor Fernand Pavel Klitz, a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, hundreds of people came to his funeral. They came from all over the country . Secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox. Old and young. School children
The burial society motorcycles escorted the procession and the coffin was carried by IDF officers and soldiers who came on their own initiative.

While this is impressive, it also points to a problem: people should worry more about these incredible survivors while they are still alive. so they wouldn't die alone.

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06/03 Links Pt1: Israel Criticized for Declining Invitation to National Suicide; Iran’s chess board

From Ian:

Charles Krauthammer: Israel Criticized for Declining Invitation to National Suicide

This seems a gratuitous provocation. Sanders hardly made Israel central to his campaign. He did call Israel’s response in the 2014 Gaza war “disproportionate” and said “we cannot continue to be one-sided.” But now Sanders seeks to permanently alter — i.e., weaken — the relationship between the Democratic Party and Israel, which has been close and supportive since Harry Truman recognized the world’s only Jewish state when it declared independence in May 1948.
[Cornel] West doesn’t even pretend, as do some left-wing “peace” groups, to be opposing Israeli policy in order to save it from itself. He makes the simpler case that occupation is unconscionable oppression and that until Israel abandons it, Israel deserves to be treated like apartheid South Africa — anathematized, cut off, made to bleed morally and economically. The Sanders appointees wish to bend the Democratic platform to encourage such diminishment unless Israel redeems itself by liberating Palestine.
This is an unusual argument for a Democratic platform committee, largely because it is logically and morally perverse. Israel did in fact follow such high-minded advice in 2005: It terminated its occupation and evacuated Gaza. That earned it (temporary) praise from the West. And from the Palestinians? Not peace, not reconciliation, not normal relations but a decade of unrelenting terrorism and war.
Israel is now being asked — pressured — to repeat that same disaster on the West Bank. That would bring the terror war, quite fatally, to the very heart of Israel — Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ben Gurion Airport. Israel is now excoriated for declining that invitation to national suicide.
It is ironic that the most successful Jewish presidential candidate ever should be pushing the anti-Israel case. But perhaps not surprising considering Sanders’ ideological roots. He is old left — not the post-1960s, countercultural New Left. Why, the man honeymooned in the Soviet Union — not such fashionably cool communist paradises as Sandinista Nicaragua where Bill de Blasio went to work for the cause or Castro’s Cuba where de Blasio honeymooned. (Do lefties all use the same wedding planner?)
For the old left, Israel was simply an outpost of Western imperialism, Middle East division. To this day, the leftist consensus, most powerful in Europe (which remains Sanders’ ideological lodestar), holds that Israeli perfidy demands purification by Western chastisement.

Caroline Glick: Iran’s chess board

Strategic thinking has always been Israel’s Achilles’ heel. As a small state bereft of regional ambitions, so long as regional realities remained more or less static, Israel had little reason to be concerned about the great game of the Middle East.
But the ground is shifting in the lands around us. The Arab state system, which ensured the strategic status quo for decades, has collapsed.
So for the first time in four generations, strategy is again the dominant force shaping events that will impact Israel for generations to come.
To understand why, consider two events of the past week.
Early this week it was reported that after a two-year hiatus, Iran is restoring its financial support for Islamic Jihad. Iran will give the group, which is largely a creation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, $70 million.
On Wednesday Iranian media were the first to report on the arrest of a “reporter” for Iran’s Al-Alam news service. Bassam Safadi was arrested by Israel police in his home in Majdal Shams, the Druse village closest to the border with Syria on the Golan Heights. Safadi is suspected of inciting terrorism.
That is, he is suspected of being an Iranian agent.

BDS leaders whine about left wing peace groups and Arabs as foreign investment in Israel skyrockets (update)

From MEMRI:

Palestinian BDS Operatives: Activities of US Peace Groups Are Destroying Anti-Normalization Efforts

Gaza BDS activist Haidar Eid said that there was resentment among BDS activists toward Palestinian authorities for allowing American peace groups such as One Voice, Seeds of Peace, and the Peace Alliance, to operate in the West Bank and Gaza. "Allowing such groups to operate in the Gaza Strip destroys the boycott campaign," he said.

BDS activist Omar Barghouti said that the Right of Return was "the most important of the three rights upon which we are insisting."

They were speaking on the Lebanese channel Palestine Today TV on April 10, 2016.

Barghouti (who, remember, went to Tel Aviv University while saying that all normalization with Israel by everyone else is absolutely prohibited) gives a nice list of BDS fails in the Arab world:

- Israeli security delegations in Saudi Arabia
- Israeli sports delegations in Qatar
- Israeli trade delegations in the UAE
- Other Israeli delegations in Bahrain, Morocco and elsewhere.

Barghouti laments how poorly the BDS movement is doing among his Arab brethren at the same time he tells Bloomberg News that even though Israel's foreign investment has tripled since he started the BDS movement, "BDS is not just working. It is working far better and spreading into the mainstream much faster than we had anticipated."

Bloomberg notes:

Despite the appreciating shekel -- a sign of foreign investor confidence -- Israeli startups raised $3.76 billion last year from non-Israeli investors, the highest annual amount in a decade, according to data collected by IVC Research Center. Foreigners, who are responsible for at least 50 percent of total yearly investment in Israeli startups, spent an additional $5.89 billion acquiring them. Chinese buyout firm XIO Group’s $510 million purchase of Lumenis Ltd. led high-tech mergers and acquisitions followed by a U.S. private equity firm’s $438 million buyout of ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. (Acquisitions aren’t captured as part of foreign investment in startups.)

UPDATE: Transcript of the interview:

Omar Baghouti: "The BDS movement embraces international law, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is intrinsic to our movement, not something alien to it. Ever since we established the movement, we insisted that it would not be exclusionary, and would include anybody who abides by international law and human rights, and who believes in the rights of the Palestinian people – the entire Palestinian people, in the homeland and in the diaspora. We are talking about putting an end to the occupation, and to apartheid – Israel's racist system of segregation – and about the need for the return of the refugees, the most important of the three rights upon which we are insisting, because some 68% of the Palestinians, in Palestine and the diaspora, are refugees."
[...]
Haidar Eid: "To be honest, I embrace this opportunity to point out that there is resentment among the BDS activists in Palestine, both in the 1948 and the 1967 borders, at all the normalization projects, which are allowed to operate in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – especially in the West Bank."
[...]
Host: "Are you saying that normalization activities are taking place in Gaza?"
Haidar Eid: "I would not call this 'normalization activities,' but rather, the undoing of the standards of the boycott in the Gaza Strip, by authorizing pro-normalization American organizations, such as One Voice, Seeds of Peace, or the Peace Alliance, which was established after the Geneva Accord, which gave up the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees, even though approximately 75% of Gaza's residents are refugees, to whom international law has guaranteed the Right of Return. Allowing such organizations to operate in the Gaza Strip destroys the boycott campaign."
[...]
Omar Baghouti: "Unfortunately, the official Arab and even Palestinian normalization is on the rise. We hold the official Palestinian circles primarily responsible for this, because they are the gateway to Arab-Israeli normalization. If official Palestinian normalization had not reached this level, nobody would have dared to host Israeli delegations in Saudi Arabia, sports delegations in Qatar, trade delegations in the UAE, and delegations in Bahrain, Morocco, and so on. Official Arab normalization has reached critical proportions. In light of the oppression of Arab liberties and civil society, our allies and BDS activists in the Arab world oppose this normalization, but with great difficulty. They are in need of help, but the litmus test is, first and foremost, putting an end to Palestinian normalization."

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One of the cartoons winning an award in Iran's Holocaust cartoon contest

There was a joke that Jews told each other during the Holocaust:

An antisemite claimed that the Jews had caused the war; the reply was: Yes, the Jews and the bicyclists. Why the bicyclists? Asks the one? Why the Jews? asks the other.

I was reminded of this by the announcement of the latest Iranian antisemitic cartoon contest, coming on the heels of the Holocaust cartoon contest:

An Iranian museum on Tuesday kicked off a “Zionist caliphate” cartoon contest, with “Zionism, terrorism and racism” and “ISIL terrorism and genocide in the name of religion and to the benefit of the Zionists” the designated themes.

The contest by Iranian Cultural-Art Masaf Institute will offer one $5,000 award for best cartoon, $1,000 for best caricature and four $500 awards to the other top entries, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

In its portrait session, participants are asked to focus on Theodor Herzl and Queen Elizabeth. The competition is dedicated to the “Nakba,” or displacement of Palestinians in 1948 with the establishment of the State of Israel, according to the report.

Why Queen Elizabeth?

The answer is probably because they are using her as a representative for responsibility for the Balfour Declaration, but my point is that hate against Jews remains as arbitrary and deadly now as it was during the coining of the first joke. But hating Israel is now considered as considered "obvious" as hating Jews was a couple of generations ago, because Israel in the 21st century has become the proxy for Jews as they were looked upon in the 1940s.

(UPDATE: See L_King in the comments for a probably better reason why Queen Elizabeth is singled out.)

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Daniel Seidemann is a left-wing expert on Jerusalem who heads Terrestrial Jerusalem, an NGO that (in partnership with Peace Now) documents everything that happens in the holy city that could, in its view, jeopardize the peace process.

Seidemann was upset at Bibi Netanyahu saying that Jerusalem will remain under Jewish control.

Netanyahu yesterday: I support 2 state solution. Netanyahu today:: Jerusalem is ours and will be ours. Translation: I oppose 2 states. QED.
— Daniel Seidemann (@DanielSeidemann) June 2, 2016

QED is the abbreviation for quod erat demonstrandum, a Latin phrase that he slightly misuses as it is meant to say that the initial proposition has been proven by the (usually mathematical) proof that follows, ending in a restatement of the original statement. In this case, Seidemann claims that Bibi's saying that Jerusalem will remain under Israeli sovereignty is proof that he isn't interested in a two-state solution.

I responded with a simple question:

.@DanielSeidemann Why, exactly, is Jerusalem a prerequisite for a Pal state, outside of "they insist on it"?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) June 2, 2016

Even though this question was tweeted to him a dozen times, he refused to answer.

Because there is no answer. The reason that Jerusalem is considered an integral part of any Palestinian state is only because the Arabs insist on it, not because the state could not exist without Jerusalem as its capital.

Somehow, 190 other nations manage to exist without Jerusalem as their capitals.

In reality, there is no relationship between two states and Israel having control of Jerusalem. The link between "Palestine" and Jerusalem is artificial and was created after 1967. No one demanded a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital before Israel redeemed the city in 1967.

In the West, people say that a Palestinian state is necessary to end the demographic threat to Israel, to allow Palestinians to no longer be stateless, to end the conflict permanently, and a host of other reasons. But what is the real reason why Palestinians insist that Jerusalem must be part of their state? After all, all of the other issues would be solved at least as well, and in fact much easier, if that demand is not met. The more one cares about a two-state solution, the more one should want to pressure Palestinians to drop their demand for Jerusalem.

In fact, there is another demand that Palestinians insist on just as adamantly as a precondition for statehood, the so-called "right of return." The West pooh-poohs that demand but in Arabic it is considered as critical as land and Jerusalem and the other conditions Abbas places on any negotiations.

If Palestinians are so desperate for a state, then how come they are in a position to demand things like Jerusalem and "return" that have nothing to do with statehood?

Moreover, why is the Arab demand for the holy sites in Jerusalem considered sacrosanct and the Jewish demand to keep those sites - which by any measure is much stronger, historically and religiously as well as practically - considered a blow to peace?

The Arabs want Jerusalem not because of their historic ties to the city (which they largely ignored when Muslims controlled it) but because they know that Israel without Jerusalem is just another secular state, and they want to sever Israel's ties to its Jewish history. Jerusalem (and to a lesser extent Hebron and Bethlehem and Bet El and other towns) is what proves Jews have historic, religious and cultural ties to the region and have had those ties for thousands of years. Arabs want those ties to be cut.

That is why they demand Jerusalem as a prerequisite to "peace" - it is really a prerequisite to the next stage of the destruction of the Jewish state.

That is why there is nothing inconsistent between everything Abbas is doing and Yasir Arafat's "phased" plan to destroy Israel in stages. This is why Mahmoud Abbas publishes on his website, today, his book that says

Zionism began as an alien thing and it will end as an alien thing. It seemed to us (i.e. Palestinians) as a predestined matter, and its end has become a predestined matter. Both the Jews and us are its victims. We and the Jews will guarantee its destruction, so we will live after it as we have lived before it in a wide homeland full of resources which are enough for everyone and grants everyone wellness, love and equality.

Arabs aren't afraid of Jews like Seidemann who say they want to give up Jerusalem for peace. They are afraid of Jews - even secular Jews like Netanyahu - who would rather die than lose the Old City.

Beggars can't be choosers, yet Palestinians who are supposedly living in stateless misery are making preconditions for a state that have nothing to do with statehood.

Because their goal isn't the creation of a state but the destruction of one.

And the proof is because they insist, without a shred of proof, that there can be no Palestinian state without Jerusalem.

QED.

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06/02 Links Pt2: Lord Sacks: 'Anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism'; UK Labour leader pushed for bans, boycotts of Israel,

From Ian:

Lord Jonathan Sacks: 'Anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism'

The former Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, is the winner of this year's Templeton Prize. For decades he has been lecturing and writing on themes of faith, tolerance and peace. Evan Davis began by asking him a simple question - does religion cause war? (h/t Ha Meshuga)

UK Labour leader pushed for bans, boycotts of Israel, letters show

Before his election as UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn pressed for a boycott of Israel and called on the British foreign secretary at the time to ban Israeli politicians from entering the country, newly released letters from 2010-2015 show.
The letters, sent to then-foreign secretary William Hague, were published following a Freedom of Information request to the government.
Writing to Hague in February 2012 about East Jerusalem, in particular house demolitions in the Silwan neighborhood, Corbyn, who was a backbench MP for Islington North at the time, urged trade sanctions against Israel.
“Israel’s current actions and victimisation of the people of East Jerusalem is an abomination that is totally illegal,” he wrote. “Surely the only logical way forward here is to take concrete action to penalise Israel via the most obvious method.”
“There is clearly no time to lose to take actions via the EU-Israel Association Trade Agreement. Let the suffering of the Palestinian people no longer be so familiar to us that all we do is ‘make representations’ when there are tools at our disposal that our government and other governments are choosing to ignore,” he wrote. (h/t Think of England)

Corbyn pans UK Jewish journalist for coverage of anti-Semitism claims

UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn takes aim at top British Jewish journalist Jonathan Freedland in a new fly-on-the-wall documentary aired Wednesday, accusing the veteran Guardian columnist of “subliminal nastiness” in his coverage of the claims of widespread anti-Semitism in the party.
Corbyn said on film that Freedland is “kind of obsessed” with him, basing his claim on a column piece in which the journalist accuses Labour of having an anti-Semitism problem.
In a phone call with his director of strategy Seumas Milne, Corbyn accused Freeland of “utterly disgusting subliminal nastiness” over the March opinion piece entitled “Labour and the left have an anti-Semitism problem.”
“He’s not a good guy at all. He seems kind of obsessed with me,” Corbyn says of Freedland.
The dispute over anti-Semitism in Labour has been simmering for months — since Corbyn was elected party leader by grassroots supporters, despite opposition from many MPs — with a stream of party officials shown to have made anti-Semitic statements.

Livingstone blames ’embittered MPs’ for his suspension over Hitler remarks

Former London mayor Ken Livingstone has blamed “embittered MPs” for branding him a Nazi apologist over his controversial statements about Hitler.
Speaking at the Oxford Union, he refused to apologise for the comments and claimed Jeremy Corbyn “had no say” in his suspension from the Labour party.
In an appearance dominated by questions about anti-Semitism, Mr Livingstone stuck by his remarks that Hitler supported Zionism as “historical fact”.
He told members of the famous debating society that the furore was being used to deflect attention away from the Labour leader’s policies.
“I think this has been largely manufactured by people trying to undermine Jeremy Corbyn,” he said.
“If someone says something anti-Semitic they will be expelled but you can’t expel someone for telling the truth.”

I have been talking about Ali Gad's series of articles at Al Ahram, Egypt's most highly circulated newspaper. He is pretending to prove that Jews have been plotting to take over the world since Talmudic times.

Part 4 was published last week, and Ali Gad said that Jews orchestrated World War II and other wars for economic reasons.

In part 5, published today, Gad says

[Jews] seek to demolish the governments in all countries, and replace them with Jewish autocratic governments, and create the environment for this, including: the temptation of kings and rulers against persecuted peoples, and the lure of the peoples to rebel against them, using the principles of liberty, equality and the like, with a particular interpretation meant to hurt both sides, and trying to keep all of government power and strength against the hostile people, and to keep both of them in the permanent fear of the other, and the corruption of government and leaders of the people... The most important elements of control are throwing the seeds of discord and unrest in all countries by secret political, religious, artistic and sports associations and Masonic lodges and clubs of different activities, and move the nations of tolerance to political and religious extremism...all this with a stick to keep the Jewish nation above the fray, according to the protocols, making people into herds of cattle, while international leaders are only pawns in the hands of Jews...

This is what is being published in mainstream Egyptian media. Today and every week. From a country that gets billions of dollars in international aid.

But this is not newsworthy, apparently.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

I am sitting at my desk on a quiet day. There are no screaming sirens. Hezbollah isn’t bombarding us with its tens of thousands of missiles, and Hamas tunnels aren’t disgorging terrorists near kibbutz dining halls. Nobody has been stabbed yet today (as far as I know) by an Arab teenager. Iran’s nuclear project is not yet complete and the Islamic State is occupied with devising more ingenious ways to kill people. Bashar al-Assad is bombing hospitals, but they are in Syria, not here.

Nevertheless we are at war.

Israel is under severe and sustained bombardment from its enemies in the Muslim world and also Europe, the UK and the US, in two main non-physical spheres of combat.

One is the propaganda war, in which the world is saturation bombed with lies about how we are the vilest imaginable creatures who are constantly committing the most sadistic atrocities, particularly against angelic Palestinian children who only want to grow into peace-loving Palestinian adults.

The world is told that we entered this land that wasn’t ours and viciously dispossessed those aforementioned peace-lovers, punishing them for the sins of Hitler, which actually weren’t sins since we ourselves are worse than Hitler and deserved everything we got. Justice, it is told, requires that 11 million ‘Palestinians’ be allowed to come ‘back’ to the land they never saw and take our nice cars and buildings and rape our women, because everything belongs to them.

People hear that our communities are illegal (according to laws and interpretations they invent as they go along) and we are white Ashkenazi racist colonialist exploiters whom it is acceptable – obligatory – to ‘resist’ violently. Not only that, but we have hooked noses and are descended from apes and pigs.

Any means of resistance is legitimate, but anything we do to defend ourselves is illegal, because it is European white colonialism. Even if some of our skins are black and most of us are not from Europe.

There is also the BDS movement, which tries to weaken the state economically while at the same time driving home the lesson that we are so depraved, so subhuman, that civilized people mustn’t engage in any kind of intercourse with us, not in commerce, sport, academics, the arts or anything else. BDS is presented as a grass-roots movement, but it is organized with the support of the usual suspects, mostly European.

Somewhat more subtly, almost all of the American ‘mainstream’ media push a line according to which Israel is intransigent, its government is extremely right-wing and it has no interest in peace. It is suggested that our PM is afraid to take risks for peace and needs to be pushed. This is despite the fact that the government is precisely in the center of the Israeli political spectrum, and has made concessions to the Arabs more or less continuously since the Oslo accords were signed, including a total withdrawal from the Gaza strip. At the same time, the Palestinians have barely altered their positions – in some ways they have hardened them – and at present refuse to sit down with us at all.

All of these propaganda themes can be shown to be false, irrational or both. But it doesn’t matter. Other ‘occupations’ throughout the world, as well as actual genocides, sieges and horribly bloody wars get little or no attention. Only Israel is singled out. Accusations against Israel are often believed with no proof, but when Israel establishes that they are false, it is ignored.

The function of this assault of lies is to prepare the people of the world for the ultimate violent destruction of the Jewish people and their state, to make it understandable, even welcome, to them.

The other non-physical ‘war’ employs a multifaceted strategy of subversion inside Israel herself. Israel has an open society with a free press and a commitment to democratic governance and personal liberty. So our enemies dedicate massive amounts of money and manpower to exploit those characteristics in order to disrupt and destabilize our country.

Money is provided to anti-state extremists to support and nurture their organizations and allow them to carry out operations to feed the propaganda campaign, to promote conflict between Jewish and Arab citizens and to provide raw material for diplomatic and legal warfare against Israel in international forums. Anti-Israel activity by Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem is financed and encouraged, including illegal construction in areas supposedly under Israeli control. Demonstrations are organized with the intent of provoking security forces; international activists are pleased to provide video cameras to record the confrontations.

Attempts are made to influence our elections and to destabilize governments that the US administration and Europeans see as insufficiently compliant. The last election saw a major effort against Netanyahu, “V15,” run by a former advisor to President Obama. Financing for the project was murky, but a predecessor to V15 got a grant from the US State Department, “to promote coexistence.”

What we are planning is so important to the administration that in 2013 the CIA called Israel one of its main targets of surveillance – along with China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and Cuba! We should be flattered to be in such company.

Especially in the US where there still remains some support for Israel, a more subtle tactic is popular: loving us to death. Groups like J Street, the Israel Policy Forum, the Union for Reform Judaism and now even the ADL insist that they can’t possibly be any more pro-Israel, but then attack Israel’s democratically elected government and argue that they have a right to pressure Israel to change its policies. Naturally the changes they want are territorial concessions that will make our state indefensible. These groups are all close to the Obama Administration and follow its lead. It used to be possible to assume that Jewish organizations would be pro-Israel. Not anymore.

We mustn’t forget the international support for the Palestinians themselves: the billions given to UNRWA, whose task is to maintain and expand the population of Arabs claiming refugee status (they are the only group in history for whom such status is hereditary). UNRWA schools are used to teach Hamas ideology, and sometimes to store rockets that will be fired at Israel. More billions are fed to the Palestinian Authority, which uses them in part to pay salaries to convicted terrorists in Israel’s jails and for propaganda against Israel (much of the rest is simply diverted to the bank accounts of the ruling elite).

Finally, the Obama Administration has just concluded a process to strengthen Iran, the oft-declared enemy of both Israel and the US, which glories in its intention to destroy us both. Although the arrangement is supposed to serve American interests, it seems highly unlikely that it will benefit the US for Iran, where “death to America” is chanted by crowds on a daily basis, to be a nuclear-armed power in control of the entire Middle East. What is absolutely certain is that Israel’s survival has been made more difficult.

Next week there will be an international conference in Paris where several big nations will decide on ‘parameters’ that they would like to impose on Israel. The parameters will involve the usual concessions to render Israel vulnerable.

Yes, it’s paranoia. But not insanity. Much of the world is conspiring against my country. To be precise, there is a decentralized network of conspiracies, with centers located in the White House, Teheran, Riyadh, Paris, London, Ramallah and other places. Some of the participants are enemies of the others, but on this they seem to be able to cooperate: the anti-Zionist Left, the Jew-hating Right and the Muslims all agree that we have to go.

Has the world ever worked together so well for a cause? Such a massive common effort devoted to trying to accomplish one thing (in this case, our destruction)? Would they cooperate this well if an asteroid were heading for the earth? Think what the resources devoted to us could do if applied to problems like hunger, climate change, illiteracy or disease!

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06/02 Links Pt1: 15 years ago today: Dolphinarium disco bombing murdered 21 young Israelis; Time to truly liberate Jerusalem

From Ian:

PMW: Fatah: Netanyahu = Baby Killer

A post on the official Fatah Facebook page presents Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a baby killer. The text posted by Fatah in English accompanying the above cartoon, asked the Israeli PM:
“How many Palestinian kids did it take you to kill to win the Israeli votes?
#Asknetanyahu”
[Official Fatah Facebook page, May 12, 2016]
The cartoon shows a rising graph made of dead Palestinian babies as PM Netanyahu walks across, rising in popularity. "#Asknetanyahu" is referring a May 12, 2016 event on Twitter in which PM Netanyahu responded to questions tweeted to him using the "Asknetanyahu" hashtag.
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the PA and Fatah often repeat the libel that Israel, its leaders and soldiers deliberately target and kill Palestinians for no reason.

Dolphinarium disco: 15 years ago today Palestinian suicide bomber murdered 21 young Israelis

It’s a word that brings chills to those who have lived through or studied the Second Intifada, the murderous suicide bombing campaign targeting Israeli civilians.
Much like the Sbarro Pizza suicide bombing and the Park Hotel Passover suicide bombing, not to mention suicide bus bombings like Haifa Bus 38. Just a few of the more notorious attacks on a very long list of attacks on Israeli civilians starting in 2001.
The carnage only ended after the security barrier was built and Israel launched an intensive military operation in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”). And after almost 1000 Israeli civilians died.
You can’t understand the current Israeli political outlook without understanding the Second Intifada. I’ve heard so many times it was the event that soured so many Israelis on the Oslo Peace process. After all, we now know that the Second Intifada was a planned assault launched by Yasser Arafat after he couldn’t bring himself to say Yes to generous peace offers at Camp David an after.
15 years ago, on June 1, 2001, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 21 young Israelis outside the Dolphinarium disco.

Time to truly liberate Jerusalem

Even as Israel prepares to celebrate the 49th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem next week, a shameful incident took place which should serve as a painful reminder that much still needs to be done to strengthen our hold over all parts of our beloved capital.
According to a report in Wednesday’s Yediot Aharonot, a busload of recruit’s to the IDF Paratroopers Brigade were on their way to the traditional military induction ceremony at the Western Wall when police ordered them to close the curtains over the windows, lest Arab onlookers attack as they arrived at the Old City’s Damascus Gate.
Yes, you read that correctly. Israeli soldiers were instructed to hide behind their bus curtains in the heart of Jerusalem.
The paper noted that the soldiers vehemently objected, but were forced by their commander to accede to the order, although not before they began to chant, “The eternal nation does not fear a long road.”
The irony of this incident is so profound, and so bitter, that it simply defies comprehension.
After all, it was none other than a heroic group of paratroopers – the 55th Paratrooper Brigade commanded by Colonel Mordechai “Motta” Gur – which liberated the Old City during the 1967 Six Day War.

One of the advisors for the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel is NYU sociologist Andrew Ross.

It is no surprise to find out that Ross is yet another academic fraud. It took me about two minutes to find this among his writings for an academic labor journal:

The recent ugly backlash against the American Studies Association’s (ASA) decision to join the boycott of Israeli universities should have surprised no one. ...The tactics of intimidation and thuggery deployed by some organized supporters of Israeli policy should remind us of the military violence at the heart of the colonial occupation in Palestine. Indeed, that is the unspoken intention behind these threats. Somewhere behind all of the bullying and verbal posturing lies the metallic decree of armed force.

Yes, this esteemed academic says that if you oppose discrimination against the Jewish state, you are effectively threatening to shoot BDSers point-blank with Merkava tanks.

The funny thing is that Andrew Ross was the editor of Social Text in 1996, when that journal was the victim of a brilliant hoax to prove that people like Andrew Ross have literally no concept of reality.

As Wikipedia notes:

From 1986 to 2000, Ross served on the editorial collective of Duke University's journal Social Text. In 1996 he was one of the journal's editors who published a paper byAlan Sokal professing to show connections between physics and post-modern theory, and which was later revealed by Sokal to be a hoax meant to expose the low academic standards of "post-modernism" (see Sokal affair). Ross was among the editors of Social Text who were awarded the 1996 Ignoble Prize for Literature for his part in being taken in by the hoax.[1]Ross's involvement in the Sokal hoax gave rise to criticism from outside the area of his academic specialisation. In an article in Nature {Published in Nature, 9 July 1998, vol. 394, pp. 141–143} Richard Dawkins said [2] "Ross has the boorish, tenured confidence to say things like, "I am glad to be rid of English departments. I hate literature, for one thing, and English departments tend to be full of people who love literature"; and the yahooish complacency to begin a book on 'science studies' with these words: "This book is dedicated to all of the science teachers I never had. It could only have been written without them."

Sokai wrote:

The results of my little experiment demonstrate, at the very least, that some fashionable sectors of the American academic Left have been getting intellectually lazy. The editors of Social Textliked my article because they liked its conclusion: that ``the content and methodology of postmodern science provide powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project.'' They apparently felt no need to analyze the quality of the evidence, the cogency of the arguments, or even the relevance of the arguments to the purported conclusion.

This is the entire modus operandi of the anti-Israel crowd. They choose the conclusion first - that the Jewish state is a uniquely evil regime - and then they believe or fabricate any evidence, no matter how tendentious, to support their foregone conclusion. This is why you cannot argue with them: facts are inconvenient obstacles to their sacred goals.

It is no wonder that someone for whom opinion trumps truth is someone who is active in attacking the only state in the Middle East with true academic freedom.

(h/t David Abrams)

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I had missed this important interview in RealClearPolitics with Al-Monitor’s Congressional Correspondent Julian Pecquet about the Arab lobby in Washington. Excerpts:

Can you give us a brief overview of Mideast lobbying in Washington?

[Arab nations are] forced to rely on armies of former officials and assorted influence-peddlers and image-makers to get their way. Often times in the Middle East, those goals include preserving the status quo or trying to put some controversy or other to bed rather than seeking any positive development.

That’s what you’re seeing right now with Saudi Arabia’s massive $9 million a year campaign to kill legislation allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue the kingdom. The Saudis are also working hard to preempt the inevitable negative media coverage from the pending release of a 2002 preliminary inquiry into the attacks.

The same is true of Egypt. Since late 2013, Cairo has been working with the Glover Park Group to shake off the pariah status that followed President Mohammed Morsi’s overthrow, and lift all remaining restrictions on military and economic aid.

The Lebanese, for their part, want to protect their banking industry from new sanctions on the Shiite militant group Hezbollah. And the United Arab Emirates has kept a close watch on the debate over the Export-Import Bank’s reauthorization, which the UAE has relied on extensively to help build its world-beating airline industry.

Other actors want a shot at political power, with interesting regional dynamics. These include the Iraqi Kurds’ bid for more autonomy (which Baghdad has lobbied against) and the Syrian opposition’s efforts to gain support against Bashar al-Assad (with an assist from the Saudi lobby).

Which Mideast country -- or countries -- might surprise the casual American observer for its outsize influence in our nation’s capital?

Morocco has to be one of the most interesting cases. The kingdom spends upwards of $3 million a year on more than a half-dozen lobbying and PR firms -- not to mention a seven-figure donation to the Clinton Foundation -- to project a friendly image. Mind you, we’re talking about a relatively poor country that’s still eligible for Millennium Challenge Corporation grants. All of that lobbying is directed at one main goal: obtaining U.S. approval -- or at least tacit acquiescence -- for its exploitation of the disputed Western Sahara, where Sahrawi activists have long demanded a vote on independence. The campaign has been largely successful, with neither the State Department nor Congress in any great rush to upset the apple cart and undermine a longtime Western ally by ushering in a potentially ungovernable new state on its borders.

Here's his story about the Clinton Foundation taking a million dollars from Morocco from April 2015:

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton is endorsing the illegal exploitation of disputed lands and risks undermining four decades of UN diplomacy by taking money from Morocco, critics say.

Clinton, who's expected to announce her candidacy for the Democratic nomination April 12, has come under fire for accepting foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation, most recently a $1 million donation from OCP, a fertilizer giant owned by the Moroccan government. Left unsaid in the initial reports: OCP — the Office Chérifien des Phosphates — is a major player in the exploitation of mineral resources from the Western Sahara, a disputed territory known as the “last colony in Africa” that Morocco took over after colonial power Spain abandoned it in the 1970s.

“You’ve heard of blood diamonds, but in many ways you could say that OCP is shipping blood phosphate,” Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., told Al-Monitor. “Western Sahara was taken over by Morocco to exploit its resources and this is one of the principal companies involved in that effort.”

A co-chairman of the Western Sahara Caucus and the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, Pitts is one of a small handful of lawmakers willing to buck Morocco, a longtime US ally that runs a massive lobbying and PR operation in Washington. On April 10, he sent a letter to the Clinton Foundation, first obtained by Al-Monitor, along with House Foreign Affairs human rights panel Chairman Chris Smith, R-N.J., asking the foundation to refund the money and “discontinue its coordination with OCP.”

A spokesman for the foundation did not return an email request for comment.

Later reports say that OCP gave as much as $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, and Hilary Clinton has been an outspoken advocate for Morocco's position vis a vis the Western Sahara.

Segments of the Arab lobby seems to be quite effective in Washington. Funny how few people talk about it.

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Moroccan BDS activists announced that they managed to intimidate dozens of produce wholesalers in the country to stop selling Israeli dates, especially ahead of Ramadan when the demand for dates is high.

One of the merchants confirmed to the media that the requests by wholesalers to buy Israeli dates have ended "as a result of the success of the pressure campaign."

One activist said, "How can we accept the existence of this product on our plates, especially during the holy month of Ramadan, knowing that what we spend on these dates contributes to the perpetuation of the Israeli occupation and oppression of the people of our beloved Palestine?

This article says that the campaign was kickstarted by a Jewish anti-Zionist who noticed the Israeli goods in markets earlier this year.

This is hardly the first time that the issue has come up. Al Jazeera wrote about the exact same phenomenon of Israeli dates coming to Morocco ahead of Ramadan some nine years ago and I covered the paranoia then.

However, the amount of Israeli goods entering Morocco has been steadily increasing, from watermelons to chocolates to clothing to electronics.

How do these goods enter the Arab nation?

Importers in the autonomous Spanish areas of Ceuta and Melilla are bringing them in from Spain. Thousands of Moroccans flock to the enclaves daily to buy Western-made goods at discount.

One importer started to remove any tags that showed that the goods were from Israel, but consumers demanded to know where they were from. This didn't stop them from wanting to buy them.

One merchant said, "Many people in the beginning rejected (Israeli goods,) but with the passage of time some people began to, and some do not care about the source, even if it is Israeli. When they see quality goods they buy."

Whether the BDSers actually won this battle is hard to know because they are the only ones relaying this news. But they are definitely losing the war, as the amount of Israeli exports to Morocco has been steadily increasing year after year.

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