Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, June 16, 2016

06/16 Links Pt1: PA Minister of Education honors terrorist who murdered policewoman; Islamic Terrorists Are Not Motivated By Hate

From Ian:

PMW: PA Minister of Education honors terrorist who murdered 19-year-old policewoman

The Palestinian Authority Minister of Education visited a school this week in order to “honor the souls” of three terrorist “Martyrs” who had attended the school. Among the “Martyrs” was the murderer earlier this year of 19-year-old Hadar Cohen, an Israeli policewoman.
The article in the official PA daily points out that the students in the school named their class after two of the terrorists.
The Minister of Education, Sabri Saidam, added that:
“After the announcement of the results of the high school matriculation exams, a tribute to the Martyrs' families will be held at this school as a sign of loyalty to them and to their sacrifice.”[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 12, 2016]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that a central teaching of the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education is terror glorification.

A terrorist's mother makes 'V' sign at site of attack

The parents of Palestinian terrorist Muhannad Halabi, who murdered rabbis Nehemia Lavi and Aharon Bennett in Jerusalem's Old City last October, decided to carry out a provocation in the same spot: They recently visited the site of the attack, on Hagai Street, where the mother was photographed making a "V" sign.
It was just another effort to glorify Halabi, who was killed by Israeli security forces at the scene of the attack. He was recently honored by al-Quds University, where he studied law. During a recent event at the university, Halabi was praised by the speakers and his parents were given his diploma.
Recently, Palestinian groups began collecting money to rebuild his family's home, in the village of Surda near Ramallah, which had been demolished by the IDF as a deterrent against future attackers. After it became clear the home would not be rebuilt on the same plot, the money went toward buying a fancier place in the nearby village of Abu Qash. The place spans about 3,870 square feet and is currently undergoing renovations. Palestinian officials also named a road after Halabi and built a memorial honoring him.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Anarchy Returns to the West Bank

Hostility towards the Palestinian Authority (PA) seems to have reached unprecedented heights among refugee camp residents.
A chat with young Palestinians in any refugee camp in the West Bank will reveal a driving sense of betrayal. In these camps, the PA seems as much the enemy as Israel. They speak of the PA as a corrupt and incompetent body that is managed by "mafia leaders." Many camp activists believe it is only a matter of time before Palestinians launch an intifada against the PA.
Nablus, the largest city in the West Bank, is surrounded by a number of refugee camps that are effectively controlled by dozens of Fatah gangs that have long been terrorizing the city's wealthy clans and leading figures.
Hamas, of course, is cheering on the sidelines as it watches the PA-controlled territories going to hell.

The Fatah Facebook page looks back nostalgically at some older PLO posters with identical themes of a rifle emerging from the Dome of the Rock that is covered in a keffiyeh:

The caption for this 1979 poster says "Long live Jihad!" And indeed, the Facebook post also emphasizes "on the path to Jihad" - where the meaning of jihad is clearly military given the context.

Fatah has long linked violence with the religious symbolism of the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock.

For example, these two Fatah posters with the themes "The Flags of the Revolution Will Fly Until Liberation" and "Confrontation is our choice" were both notably created during the Oslo process:

This Fatah poster is even more recent, from 2010, with the caption "No choice except resistance":

The use of the holy spot as iconography for Fatah posters is fairly widespread, and the message is unmistakable - the impetus for fighting is religiously-directed jihad, not a secular concept of independence.

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The Independent falsely claims Israel cut off water supply to Arabs

The headline and photo in The Independent:

The first paragraphs of the article by Peter Yeung:

Israel has cut off the water supply to large areas of the West Bank, Palestinian authorities have claimed.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have reportedly been left without access to safe drinking water during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, a period of fasting, at a time when temperatures can exceed 35C.

The northern city of Jenin, which has a population of more than 40,000, said its water supplies had been cut in half by Mekorot, Israel's national water company. Jenin is home to a refugee camp, established in 1953, which contains 16,000 registered refugees.

Finally, after 13 paragraphs of accusations of Israel deliberately withholding water from Arabs, comes the "balance:"

A spokesperson for the Israeli government told The Indepedent there is "no truth" in the claims, and said the shortages were down to faulty water lines.

They said: "Several hours ago, COGAT's Civil Administration team have repaired a burst pipe line, which disrupted the water supply to the villages of Marda, Biddya, Jamma'in, Salfit and Tapuach. The water flow has been regulated and is currently up and running.

COGAT even shows a short video of the burst pipeline, commenting "COGAT's Water Unit is available around the clock to address any water disruptions throughout Judea & Samaria, and we continue to work diligently to ensure that civilians have access to running water at all times."

Israel has no incentive whatsoever to purposefully withhold water from Arab civilians. The article makes it sound like the army is simply being vindictive and petty, when in fact the COGAT unit tries to help Arab civilians as much as it can - that is its entire purpose.

The International Business Times coverage was even worse.

Israel is reported to have cut the water supply to the West Bank during Ramadan, in a move often dubbed "water apartheid" by critics of Israel. The state-run Israeli water company, Mekorot, shut the valves of the lines leading to areas in the West Bank, reports have stated on Wednesday 15 June.

Israel's step is likely to leave tens of thousands of Palestinians living in the volatile region without water for safe consumption. Israel has sanctioned water available to Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip ever since Israel's occupation of the areas, which started in 1967.

It gets even worse.

UK Media Watch contacted COGAT and Mekorot:

COGAT has informed us (in a series of emails) that... due to increased usage during the summer months, Mekorot (Israel’s water carrier) was forced to reduce the overall supply to ALL areas of the West Bank – including in Jewish communities.

We sent an email to Mekorot, who then confirmed to us the increased demand during the summer months has resulted in shortages in the West Bank “to Israeli settlements and Palestinian areas“. A resident in an Israeli community in Samaria who we spoke to confirmed that the shortages have indeed affected Jewish communities.

COGAT told the Independent reporter this - and he didn't bother to mention it, because the idea of Israel discriminating against Arabs is simply too good to bother contradicting with facts.

UK Media Watch did further investigations that Peter Yeung didn't:

[COGAT] told us that, in order to accommodate Palestinians during Ramadan, when Muslims can’t drink water during the day, “the water supply has been increased during night-time in order to meet the needs of the residents”.

Additionally, COGAT noted that, beginning at the start of Ramadan, on June 6-7, “the water supply to Hebron and Bethlehem [was] expanded [by] 5,000 cubic meters per day in order to meet the needs of the residents“.

This shows another dimension to media bias against Israel. Accusations of mendacity against the Jewish state are treated as facts, as is often the case, but when those lies happen to coincide with the biases of the reporters, there is little or no attempt to find out if there is another side of the story. (In this case, the COGAT quote was only added after complaints to Yeung, he didn't bother to contact COGAT or Mekorot before submitting the article.)

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Influential website Politico has an anti-Israel story by Ben Ehrenreich that is literally filled with lies that for some reason were not considered worth checking.

The centerpiece is an interview with a former Israeli soldier turned "peace activist" named Eran Efrati who described the horrors of what IDF soldiers do to Palestinians in Hebron. Of course it is not possible to debunk specific details of the soldier's anecdotes or alleged conversations with his superior, but this one incident that he mentions is simply impossible - and with it goes Efrati's credibility:

That weekend, Efrati recalled, settlers filled the central city. He was assigned to escort a group of them into the Patriarchs’ Tomb, a site holy to both Islam and Judaism, where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their wives Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah are believed to be buried. The settlers were allowed into the Palestinian side of the site, into the mosque. What he saw there shocked him: Israeli children were peeing on the floors and burning the carpets. Their parents were there—the mosque was packed with settlers—but no one was stopping them. He and another soldier grabbed one of the children and took a cigarette lighter from his hand. “He started screaming at us,” Efrati said. “We laughed at him.” Five minutes later, “one of our very, very high-ranking officers came inside the mosque and said, ‘Did you steal something from the kid?’” They tried to explain, but the officer only repeated the question. “We said yes.” The officer ordered them to give it back and apologize. They found the child, apologized and returned the lighter. The boy ran right into the next room, Efrati said, and resumed setting fire to the carpets.

The Cave of the Patriarchs is the second-holiest site in Judaism. Several times a year Jews are allowed to visit the entire holy site. Those are the only times of the year that Jews can visit the cenotaphs of Isaac and Rebecca. Naturally, on those days the site is crowded with fervently religious Jews who take the opportunity to pray in a place they are normally banned from.

The tomb is holier to Jews than it is to Muslims.

The idea that religious Jews would allow (or, as implied, encourage) their children to urinate and set fires in this sacred spot is beyond absurd. In 2009, there was a small fire at the site from Jews placing too many candles there for religious reasons but it caused no damage. Arab websites would be filled with allegations of Jews urinating at the site and purposefully setting fires - but the story begins and ends in the sick and hateful imagination of Eran Efrati, and happily believed by Ben Ehrenreich.

(There have been reports of Muslims urinating next to the Torah scrolls at the site and otherwise desecrating it.)

Given that this story is simply not possible, Efrati's other lurid tales from Hebron should be treated as equally suspect. And for any real journalist, they would be. But for Ben Ehrenreich these are too good to check, since the target is religious Jews and the army.

Ehrenreich then goes on to extrapolate on the reasons for the knife intifada based on these lies:

If you terrorize people long enough, they eventually lose their fear. They hold onto the anger. This last October, after a year of relative calm, young Palestinians began attacking Israeli soldiers, police and civilians, occasionally with guns or cars but most often with household implements: knives, scissors, screwdrivers. The attacks were uncoordinated and outside the control of the Palestinian leadership or the traditional armed factions. Many occurred in or near Hebron, often at checkpoints or other sites of friction between Palestinian civilians and the Israeli military, but also on buses and trains in Jerusalem, in supermarkets and in the streets.

This is the Western media view of the uprising, and as I demonstrated previously, it is a lie. Arab media never blamed the violence on "frustration" or general "anger" at "occupation." They were very specific as to their reasons: because of supposed Israeli designs on the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and later as revenge for Israel killing those who attacked Israelis. And it can all be traced back very specifically to Mahmoud Abbas' speech in September when he said, referring to Jews who peacefully visit the holy site, “Al-Aqsa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We won’t allow them to do so and we will do whatever we can to defend Jerusalem.”

It was a call to violence. And the attacks started shortly thereafter.

The incitement against Jews escalated and it expressed itself with stabbings and shootings and car rammings that were cheered by Mahmoud Abbas' own political party as well as by other factions. Those who were killed for trying or succeeding to kill ordinary Jews were heroes. Only after Israeli forces responded with increased security did the targets turn to the soldiers at the checkpoints, because the would-be stabbers could not as easily reach Jewish population centers. And the people most vulnerable to propaganda - teenagers - were the ones who were the most likely to attack,

The meme of "frustration" is a convenient untruth meant to blame the victims.

When I was back in Israel and the West Bank earlier this month, the violence appeared to be ebbing. Until Wednesday’s shootings, no Israelis had been killed by Palestinians since February 18.

This simple statement shows how Ehrenreich knows the facts and wants to minimize Arab responsibility for the violence.

On March 8, American Taylor Force was murdered, and 10 others injured, in a stabbing spree in Tel Aviv. But since he wasn't an Israeli, Ehrenreich wants to ignore that attack to make it appear that the timeline of "calm" is longer.

The terrorist who murdered Taylor Force didn't know that he was an American. But Ehrenreich chose to ignore this attack to minimize Palestinian culpability for violence and strengthen his thesis that Israelis are not in as much danger as they claim. That is why he chose to frame this sentence the way he did.

And it is all the proof you need to show that Ehrenreich isn't trying to illuminate the situation in Israel, but to obfuscate it for his own anti-Israel propaganda purposes.

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06/15 Links Pt2: When Someone Says He’s Only Anti-Israel, Not Antisemitic, It’s a Lie; What to Expect from an Independent Palestinian State

From Ian:

Sting Operation Reveals Facebook’s Double ‘Community Standards’ in Relation to Pro-Israel Posts
Facebook apologizes for removing pro-Israel post

Facebook was forced to restore a posting it had removed from a pro-Israel page, after a social-media experiment revealed that an identical pro-Palestinian posting was not deemed to be in violation of “community standards.”
The restored posting in question, on the Israel Video Network page, was a meme that read: “It is called Israel and not Palestine. Share if you agree.”
On May 25, the Israel Video Network received a notice from Facebook that the post was being removed for violating community standards. In addition, group administrators were warned that the page would be shut down if it continued to post similar items.
According to former Yesh Atid Party member of Knesset Dov Lipman — who now serves as the director of public diplomacy in the vice chairman’s office of the World Zionist Organization — after he was alerted by Israel Video Network of Facebook’s behavior, he and his team set up a sting operation to test whether an identical post — but one which favored the Palestinians — would produce the same results.
In a statement on Tuesday, Lipman wrote, “My staff set up a page called ‘It’s called Palestine and not Israel’ and we, with the help of a friend, loaded an exact replica of the first graphic but exchanged the words ‘Palestine’ and ‘Israel.’ We then had people complain about the new graphic and Facebook responded that the new graphic did not violate its community standards.”
After repeated attempts to get in touch with a live person at Facebook “to complain about this inconsistency,” Lipman penned an open letter in the Jerusalem Post, exposing Facebook’s behavior.

World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder: When Someone Says He’s Only Anti-Israel, Not Antisemitic, It’s a Lie

“When someone says they are not antisemitic — they are only anti-Israel – that is a lie,” the president of the World Jewish Congress said on Tuesday night.
Ronald S. Lauder made this assertion in a speech he delivered at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where he received the Guardian of Zion award from the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar-Ilan University.
Addressing the approximately 200-strong audience of movers, shakers and Israeli academics, Lauder — the 20th recipient of the annual award – spoke about the increasingly unabashed expressions of antisemitism and Israel-hatred “not just from the far-Right, but from the far-Left.”
Whereas in the past, he said, Jews were to blame for all ills, “According to today’s antisemites, whatever is wrong in the world, Israel is at fault.” This, he added, “is no longer a fringe element of society,” and “when you hold Israel to a different standard, when you lie about Israel, its past and its present and its people — and when you want Israel to disappear — that makes you an antisemite… pure and simple.”

Clifford D. May: Terrorism and economic warfare

So today, non-state actors lead the campaign. Omar Barghouti, credited as a co-founder of the so-called BDS (for boycott, sanction and divest) Movement, has stated plainly that the goal is not to pressure Israelis into making concessions that might lead to peace. “We oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine,” he has said.
With two BDS supporters appointed — courtesy of Sen. Bernie Sanders — to the Democratic Party’s platform committee, even Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of left-leaning J Street, seems to have grasped the truth. The movement, he now says, “fails to recognize Israel’s right to exist, to support a two-state solution, to differentiate between the occupation and opposition to Israel itself.”
In recent months, more than 20 governors have signed anti-BDS laws. In response, BDS advocates are angrily asserting that their freedom of speech is being violated. That’s a canard. These laws simply make clear that taxpayers — in Illinois, South Carolina, Colorado, Florida and a growing list of other states — will not support companies that discriminate against Israel.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that conditioning government money on compliance with anti-discrimination policies does not violate the First Amendment,” legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich pointed out. He added: “Israel boycotts — which target all businesses from a particular country — have the key hallmark of impermissible discrimination: They cut off business to people and companies not because of their own particular conduct, but on the basis of who they are.”
BDS advocates claim to fight for “social justice” but they turn a blind eye to the Muslim-on-Muslim wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen, the genocide of Middle Eastern Christians and Yazidis, the enslavement of girls in northern Nigeria and the routine executions of gays in Gaza, Iran and other corners of the Islamic world.
“Anti-Semitism,” the British rabbi-philosopher Jonathan Sachs recently observed, “is a virus that survives by mutating. In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries they were hated because of their race. Today they are hated because of their nation state, Israel.” There may be treatments for this virus but no one has a cure.

Representatives of the Jewish community in Tunisia are presenting a request to the Truth and Dignity Commission (Instance de Vérité et Dignité) to investigate institutional abuse of Jews in Tunisia from 1955 to 2013.

The filing demands an investigation into "abuses and violations and other illegal acts suffered by the Tunisian citizens, whose only fault is that they are affiliated with the Jewish religion, since independence."

The Commission was set up in 2013 to address these sorts of complaints from citizens.

The complaint lists various examples of abuse suffered by the community, such as losing their citizenship and losing their property.

There are about 1,500 Jews remaining in Tunisia. There were more than 100,000 Jews there in 1956 when Tunisia won independence from France.

Lyn Julius just wrote a biting Huffington Post article about Tunisian Jews in wake of the pilgrimage there a few weeks ago:

One of the modern-day pilgrims was a rabbi from England: Liberal Judaism’s senior rabbi, Rabbi Danny Rich.

As well as visiting Al-Ghriba — the oldest synagogue in Africa — Rabbi Rich met Tunisian government members.

“Jews have lived successfully in Tunisia for centuries and the authorities seem determined to ensure that the ancient Jewish communities in Djerba and Tunis are both safe and able to thrive,” Rabbi Rich told the Jewish Chronicle.

His words must have been music to the Tunisian government’s ears.

Yes, Jews had lived in Tunisia for centuries - indeed there were 105, 000 in 1948. But Tunisia had failed miserably to hang on to its Jewish community - just 1,000 still remain, most in the enclave known as Hara Kbira on Djerba. By anyone’s reckoning, Tunisia’s rapid cleansing of its Jews is a sign of catastrophic failure. Tunisian Jews have been departing in waves over the last 50 years.

The latest wave was in June 1967, following the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours. About 100 Jewish-owned businesses in Tunis were attacked and looted. The Great Synagogue, on the Avenue de la Liberte, was ransacked and set on fire. Rioters called out to “throw the Jews into the sea” and to burn them. Some 13,000 Jews took the hint and fled - many with nothing but a suitcase.

Numbers continued to dwindle and families left Djerba in the wake of the Arab Spring, which broke out in Tunisia in 2011.

But well-meaning westerners such as Rabbi Rich perpetuate the delusion that all is, and always has been, well. Tunisia is desperate to boost its fragile economy and image as a tourist destination, its Number One industry - and Rabbi Rich is all too willing to play the game. The Al-Ghriba pilgrimage is the highlight of the tourist calendar, bringing much-needed tourist dollars to the island of Djerba and filling its hotels.

While in Tunisia Rabbi Rich attended a conference at which the Minister of Culture promised support for a museum of Tunisian Jewry.

Few can argue with that. Except that if numbers continue to decline, the Museum of Tunisian Jewry may end up as nothing more than a forlorn reminder of Hitler’s project to establish the Museum of an Extinct Race.

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Harrowed Khamenei Describes His Orlando Nightclub Ordeal (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Tehran, June 15 - Now back in the safety of the Iranian capital, Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described for well-wishers the tale of his miraculous survival in the Orlando, Florida nightclub where a Muslim radical killed 49 people and injured 53 on Sunday.

Khamenei, still visibly distraught from the horror of the incident, escaped harm by hiding behind and under other patrons, and managed to hold another person between himself and the gunman long enough to escape the carnage. Friends and relatives in Iran described his actions as heroic.

The Supreme Leader, 76, was spirited back to Iran immediately following the shooting. He had traveled to Orlando to visit the various Disney theme parks and the Universal Studios resort, and in the course of his stay discovered that Pulse, an establishment catering mostly to an LGBT clientele, was celebrating Latin Night as part of Pride Week, and he decided to check out the scene, which is illegal back home in Iran.

However, recalled the Ayatollah, gunfire soon rang out and people scrambled. He managed to avoid being seen by Omar Mateen, the shooter, at one point even flinging a 25-year-old man into the path of the gunfire, an act he regards as heroic. "I soiled myself, but kept my wits about me," he said, breathing heavily as the moments came back. "Somehow I managed to conceal myself from the shooter. I managed to maintain a buffer between him and me of at least one person who was immodestly dressed, and therefore deserved to be shot. But it was close. I hightailed it out of there as best I could."

Khamenei had dismissed his bodyguards for the Pulse excursion, a move he now questions. "Nobody knew who I was there - I looked like any old hipster, so my personal security as Ayatollah wasn't really in doubt," he explained. "But I guess no one expected this. From now on, I'm not going anywhere without protection," he added, glancing at his wallet.

A spokesman for the Ayatollah said he lost several friends in the massacre, but was still in shock and urged visitors not to bring them up. "Please show sensitivity at this difficult time," the spokesman urged. "It will help with the healing process."

The incident marks the first time since 2011 that Khamenei has encountered such acute physical danger to his life. That year, he was one of seventeen hospitalized for heat stroke at the Tel Aviv Gay Pride Parade.

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06/15 Links Pt1: Amnesty: Whitewashing the PFLF to Condemn Israel; Hamas Threatens Jordan

From Ian:

MEMRI: Palestinian Columnist: Armed Struggle Must Be Ever-Present, But Used According To Circumstances; It Must Not Be Considered A Crime

Following the June 8, 2016 shooting in the Sarona compound in central Tel Aviv, Hani Al-Masri, a columnist for the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, wrote that a distinction must be made between organized resistance, which should be subject to strategic considerations, and spontaneous actions by individuals, which are an effective deterrent because the Israeli security forces are hard pressed to prevent them. He added that, in the absence of a leadership and organized action, spontaneous actions are better than nothing.
Al-Masri called to preserve the option of armed Palestinian resistance as defense against the aggression of the Israeli occupation and the settlers, and to combine it with other modes of resistance, as circumstances require. He added that all Israelis are legitimate targets, since they all serve in the military except for the ultra-Orthodox, most of whom are extremists who incite to kill non-Jews. Al-Masri did advise to avoid targeting children or targeting people indiscriminately in public places, "as befitting the just nature of the [Palestinian] cause and our moral superiority," and to "take into account" the presence of Israeli Arabs and "Jews who oppose the Zionist enterprise or who are fighting to defend Palestinian rights."

PMW: PA TV teaches kids that Israel's Mount Meron is "in Palestine"

PA TV teaches kids that Israel's Mount Meron is "in Palestine"
During the month of Ramadan official Palestinian Authority TV is entertaining kids with different games and quizzes. One quiz question on the children's program The Best Home taught Palestinian children to deny Israel's existence and replace it with "Palestine," when the host presented the highest mountain in Israel (not including Mount Hermon in the Golan), Mount Meron, as "the highest mountain in Palestine":
PA TV host: "What is the highest mountain in Palestine: Mt. Meron, Mt. Olives or Mt. Ebal?"
Girl: "Gerizim."
PA TV host: "Mt. Meron (in the Galilee), Mt. Ebal (near Nablus) or Mt. of Olives (in Jerusalem)?"
Girl: "Ebal."
PA TV host: "Ebal? Is Ebal higher than Meron?"
Girl: "Mt. Meron."
PA TV host: "Good job, good job! Give her a hand!"
[Official PA TV, June 7, 2016]
This is not the first time Mount Meron in northern Israel is presented as being located in "Palestine." Previous years' quizzes have included the same question and many others presenting different locations in Israel as "Palestine."

Why Palestinians Reject Peace

When Shipler was actively reporting on the conflict, he was an exponent of the idea that peace could only come when both sides would be able to see the justice in the claims of the other side. By that definition, it’s clear that one side has moved toward peace, the other has not.
Shipler’s assertion that most Israelis no longer view themselves as the sole victims in this conflict is unquestionable. It is also unquestionable that Palestinian attitudes have gone in the other direction. Indeed, Shipler’s impressions reinforce research conducted by Daniel Polisar demonstrating that support for terror and opposition to peace was mainstream Palestinian opinion and not merely the views of a small group of violent extremists.
After two decades of concessions and withdrawals on Israel’s part, Palestinians now routinely speak of all of Israel—including liberal, cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, where terrorists struck last week—as “occupied” territory. So, despite the emphasis on settlements and Netanyahu’s supposedly hardline personality, Israel’s willingness to do what Shipler and peace activists advised had the opposite effect on the Palestinians than they thought.
By granting legitimacy to Palestinian concerns, Israelis haven’t inspired reciprocity but have encouraged their foes to double down on their narrative in which the Jews are interlopers without rights or history. It has convinced them that the Israelis are thieves who must be forced to disgorge all of their stolen goods (i.e. all of Israel) rather than fellow humans with whom they must share land if there is to be peace. Shipler seems to have caught onto the basic conundrum of the peace process that has eluded many of his successors at the Times and elsewhere in the media.

Did the UAE suspend its $500M annual aid to PA?

On June 12, a popular and prolific Palestinian columnist named Jihad el-Khazen wrote an article for the pan-Arab London-based Al Hayat that caused a sensation.

El-Khazen interviewed an unnamed senior Gulf official who sharply criticized President Obama, saying he was acting more as a professor than a president and saying that perhaps Donald Trump would be a better president. He called Obama's Middle East strategy a disaster: "He pulled out of Iraq and then returned. He reduced US forces in Afghanistan and then increased them. He drew red lines in Syria and then ignored them. He says the Saudis are allies, but then he is not serious in cooperating with them. He accuses us in the Arab coalition of killing civilians; the Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan hundreds of thousands of civilians, and now they are blaming us. The situation between the Gulf and Washington has gone from bad to worse."

Crown Prince Zayed of Abu Dhabi

That wasn't the controversial part in the Arab world. This was:

The Gulf official told me that the entire leadership of the Palestinian National Authority must resign, there is no confidence. He asked me, "Have you heard about the PA deal with the United Arab Emirates?" I told him I definitely hadn't and asked him for clarification.

He said that the UAE had for four years subsidized the Palestinian Authority by about $500 million a year, and that he personally carried a symbolic Palestinian keffiyeh in solidarity with the Palestinians.

[Former PA prime minister] Salam Fayyad came to Abu Dhabi, saying he decided to establish a non-governmental organization. Officials in Abu Dhabi chose to support his association with ten million dollars.

They were surprised when the prosecutor general of the Palestinian Authority froze the transfer of $700 thousand dollars to the NGO of Salam Fayyad, and accused the Emirates of trying to launder money through the Palestinian territories.

The official said angrily, "Can you believe that the UAE would choose to launder funds through the Palestinian territories and that the amount is only 700 thousand dollars?"

The Emirates are now demanding the Palestinian president to apologize publicly, and have stopped all aid to the Palestinian Authority.

The official PA Wafa news agency and Fatah went bananas over this. They said that the el-Khazen article was an "obscenity" and asked Al Hayat why they would choose to publish such "vulgarity." They are also demanding that Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed answer whether he really has the opinions mentioned in the article towards the PA.

But there was no denial that funds had been suspended to the PA.

The Arab world are once again showing how sick they are of the Palestinian issue and their corruption. The West should be wondering why Arabs who know the PA well and have supported them for decades are now cool towards their "brethren."

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Canadian "Independent Jewish Voices" supports antisemitic conspiracy theories, linked to Holocaust denial article

Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) is essentially a Canadian version of "Jewish Voice for Peace," a virulently anti-Israel group that uses its Jewish members as a shield against charges of antisemitism - and manages to get media attention as a legitimate voice of the Jewish community.

Whoops.

This link goes to the well-known antisemitic conspiracy theory site Veterans Today, and the editor of that site added these paragraphs to the original article by rabid Ziophobe Alan Hart:

One of the most prevalent abuses of what is called the holocaust is the ritual exploitation of numbers which have long been debunked, but are still continually abused. I used to remind all media ten to twelve years ago that the Auschwitz plaque had been changed from the “four million died”, to roughly “one million died”.

I did the math for them… 6 minus 3 does not equal 6, except in holocaust math. Not a one of them was aware of the change in the Auschwitz plaque; but still, after all of this time, media never fails to use the old debunked number.

This link by IJV to the Holocaust-denial article was exposed by B'nai Brith Canada:

A group that calls itself Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), and passes itself off as an organization that speaks on behalf of Jewish Canadians, promotes Holocaust denial through social media, a B’nai Brith investigation reveals.

Postings on the group’s official Twitter and Facebook accounts have been directing followers to articles from the white supremacist hate site Veterans Today. One article in particular falsely asserts that no more than 1-million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany and characterizes modern antisemitism as a natural reaction to Israeli policies. The article was also promoted online by Sid Shniad, a B.C. resident who serves as IJV’s co-chair and official spokesperson.

Both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Law Poverty Center have denounced Veterans Today as a white supremacist hate site, replete with false accusations of Jewish responsibility for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the assassination of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, and the Sandy Hook elementary school shootings.

The posting by IJV cannot be described as accidental or unknowing. In fact, one Facebook follower of the IJV page explicitly pointed out that the article supports Holocaust denial, but IJV failed to answer it or delete the link.

IJV then went into attack and coverup mode.

It apologized for linking to the story, but defended author Alan Hart. Here is its amended defense:

In 2015 IJV provided a social media link to an article written by the widely-respected journalist and Mid-East expert Alan Hart entitled, “A truth most Jews don’t want to know about anti-Semitism”. Like Hart, IJV strongly condemns anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial of any kind.

Hart’s article was re-published on a website called Veterans Today which upon further examination proved to be an extremely disreputable site that engages in wild conspiracy theory and Holocaust debunking. The editor at Veterans Today inserted a note into the article denying the number of Jews exterminated in the concentration camps that we find repugnant.

We thoughtlessly linked to Hart’s article on the Veterans Today site. We acknowledge that our oversight in this respect was lax: we didn’t verify the nature of the Veteran’s Today website, and we didn’t examine the Editor’s note. For that, we apologize to our members and supporters for our carelessness. IJV has now removed that link.

IJV is claiming ignorance about the nature of Veterans Today - and also about the fact that the article it linked to included Holocaust denial inserted by VT's editor. It seems more than strange for a group, and many of its members individually, to link to an article without actually reading it.

The idea that they knew nothing about Veterans Today is far-fetched. After all, VT itself praises IJV and its coordinator Tyler Levitan in 2015, with the VT editor saying that he wanted to get in contact with Levitan to see how they could work together.

Even without VT's adding the explicit Holocaust denial to Hart's article, IJV's defense of Alan Hart as a "widely-respected journalist and Mid-East expert" betrays its fringe agenda. After Bnai Brith Canada pointed out that Hart peddles outrageous 9/11 conspiracy theories, IJV added that they don't support that part of Hart's oeuvre. Yet they still defend him and call him "widely respected."

Also, IJV has another 9/11 conspiracy theorist on its steering committee, Diana Ralph. IJV deleted that page after it was exposed.

In fact, IJV has been furiously cleansing its social media timelines and website of embarrassing materials as Bnai Brith Canada has been exposing them.

This isn't the first brush that IJV had with crazed conspiracy theories that they now claim to disavow. Check out this Facebook post from 2012:

This episode shows that IJV is not mainstream and represents no one besides a tiny fringe of self-hating Jews who are happy to use their ostensible Jewish ancestry as a means to bash Israel. Its orgy of support for unhinged antisemitic and anti-Israel conspiracy theories and its pathetic attempts to cover them up in the past few days proves this better than anything else.

(h/t Aidan Fishman)

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Yehudah Glick is routinely referred to in Western media as a "zealot" for his efforts to allow Jews to have equal rights on the Temple Mount. His entrance to Knesset earlier this month brought a wave of tweets and articles calling him every name in the book and using him as further evidence that the current Israeli government is the most "right-wing extremist" government in history.

Today he showed that his critics are all idiots.

Knesset members from nearly every political party were set to propose a new law on Wednesday to halt arms sales to “gross human rights violators” around the world.

Meretz MK Tamar Zandberg has been leading the charge on that front, with help from activist attorney Eitay Mack and Professor Yair Auron of Israel’s Open University. Their proposals, however, have rarely gained traction, as Zandberg’s left-wing party is in the opposition, putting a majority out of reach.

To help raise this issue out of the mire of partisan politics, freshman MK Yehudah Glick of the Likud party stepped into the fray, bringing with him another 16 members of Knesset.

The proposal was written by Mack, but is based on a similar American law, Zandberg told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. It is an amendment to the existing law that would require the Defense Ministry to reject export licenses for Israeli companies selling technology or services to human rights violators.

Though the legislation is originally hers, Zandberg allowed Glick to take charge — and credit — for the renewed initiative. His name deliberately appears above hers on the proposal. “It’s not just alphabetical,” she said.

Glick, a polarizing figure in Israeli politics due to his campaign for the right to Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, also tried to distance the topic from partisan politics.

“I try to deal with things not based on the people, but based on the issue,” Glick told The Times of Israel over the phone on Tuesday. “This is an issue of the Jewish people. We have to be sure that nothing coming from Israel has anything to do with breaking basic human rights on a very severe level.

“There is no reason we should be arming people who are killing women and children.”

Yes, brand-new Knesset member Glick worked with the ultra-left Meretz party to rescue a proposal that is purely liberal and help it gain bipartisan support, something that no one else had done.

This should not be surprising. After all, Glick has campaigned for rights to the Temple Mount based on liberal concepts. But since he was supporting Jewish rights, his critics showed their own antisemitic tendencies by calling him names and tacitly condoning the Arab who tried to assassinate him.

In just a few weeks, Glick has already proven himself to be the most liberal member of Likud. But his critics will never admit that they were wrong about him because to admit that would also be to admit that perhaps Jews should have equal rights to the Temple Mount - and what self-respecting leftist would ever admit that?

Apparently, Yehudah Glick is more liberal than his critics from the Left are.

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Hating Trump in Saudi Arabia (Mike Lumish)

Writing in the Times of Israel, Josef Federman tells us:

An opinion poll of attitudes inside Egypt and Saudi Arabia conducted by Israel’s Interdisciplinary Center found virtually no support for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the two Arab countries.

The survey could signal trouble for Trump if he wins the November election and sets out to devise a Mideast policy. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are two of America’s most powerful and important allies in the Arab world.

When asked who their preferred candidate was, just 3.8 percent of Egyptian respondents chose Trump. In Saudi Arabia, only 6% favored Trump.

According to survey director Alex Mintz, “The overall pattern is that most people … do not support either candidate, but they hate Trump..."

Ya don't say!

They hate Donald Trump in Saudi Arabia, do they?

I have to tell you, it almost makes me want to support the guy.

Saudi Arabia is the very fountainhead of Salafism and thus Islamism and thereby ISIS.

It was the Arabian Peninsula, of course, where Muhammad and his friends came to believe that killing Jews was not only a dandy idea, but adored in the eyes of G-d.

For all that Koranically-based hatred murdering its way around the Middle East, and all those chopped heads toppling onto the beaches in Libya, and all those young girls raped as a matter of religious privilege... let's hand it to our friends on the Saudi peninsula.

Let's hand it to the King, the Crown Prince, and the Royal Family.

Let's give them a big round of applause.

I am not writing this as a Trump supporter, you should know, mainly because the guy is just so obnoxious that I do not see how he can possibly function as president of the United States.

People say that Trump is both a racist and a sexist and he definitely threw away my likely support when he demeaned Carly Fiorina's looks.

The racism charges, however, are primarily based on the notion of a wall separating the United States from Mexico and the fact that Trump intends to keep Islamic terrorists out of the United States.

As to the former, what Trump wants is simply to keep out illegal immigrants and I do not have a problem with that. I do not know that a big wall is the answer and I certainly would hate to see the National Guard rounding up gazillions of Latinos for deportation, but I do not believe in an open-door policy, either.

But Latinos are not the problem.

The gang activity in places like Los Angeles or Phoenix, Arizona, is considerable, but it is not particularly political or ideological and no more troubling than gang activity throughout the United States from other ethnicities, including white people.

And, unlike political Islam, it is not grounded in religiously-based Jew hatred.

Middle Eastern immigration into the United States, though, is another matter entirely.

What we do not want - or what we should not want, at least - is for Jihadis to slide through the process and end up murdering people in places like San Bernadino, California.

It is not "racist" to defend oneself against a large and hostile political movement that would prefer to see your family dead.

Must it be reiterated that polling throughout the Arab-Muslim Middle East demonstrates a distinct hatred for both Jews and Americans?

And why should Jewish Americans happily welcome people who decidely hate us into our own country?

It is a matter of basic common sense and fundamental human decency - particularly among a small minority - to want to protect one's friends and family and children from those who would seek them harm.

No people of any ethnicity would willingly welcome a much larger hostile population into their own homes and it is not bigoted to say so.

But this is the dilemma for Jewish people throughout the world.

Jewish self-defense is considered a form of aggression in both the Middle East and the West.

And it has been that way for a very long time.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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06/14 Links Pt2: Zionism didn't cause the Farhud, Israel didn't cause Sarona; NYTs Launches a Shavuot Attack on Israel

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: Zionism didn't cause the Farhud, Israel didn't cause Sarona

75 years later on, the motives behind the pogroms on Baghdad's Jews are the same as the Sarona Market and Orlando attacks: murderous hatred; Huldai is presumptuous and erroneous to justify terrorism.
It happens again and again. Last week at Sarona Market, Saturday in Orlando, and exactly 75 years ago, June 1941, during the Shavuot holiday, in Baghdad, Iraq, when a mob set out on a pogrom against the Jews. Some 180 Jews were murdered in the "Farhud," the Iraqi version of Kristallnacht. That isn't a mistake. It was a night of bloodshed preceded by Nazi propaganda directed by the German ambassador in Baghdad, Dr. Fritz Grobba.
Iraq was in those days an independent country. Grobba's influence on the local elite was large. Inter alia, he sent delegations to Berlin, bought a newspaper and took pains to publish therein Hitler's Mein Kampf in installments. The hatred of Jews was not because of Zionism. The majority of Iraq's Jews were not then Zionists. They were, precisely like the Jews of Germany, part of the backbone of the economy, development and progress. During those years, Grobba ensured a steady and virulent drip of anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda. The drip worked: The government took a series of steps against Jews, and their situation worsened.
Later, after having successfully spread the al-Aqsa plot hoax throughout Palestine and after getting into trouble with the British Mandate authorities, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, came to Baghdad and added fuel to the fire. Two months before the Farhud, a pro-Nazi coup took place in Iraq, headed by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. The Second World War was at its height, and the British were advancing on Baghdad. Al-Gaylani and the mufti, the largest inciters, fled to Berlin, where they were received as heroes. The two left the massacre of the Jews of Baghdad to the incited local crowd.

Jennifer Rubin: Israel makes do without a steady U.S. ally

The situation is far from ideal. The U.S.-Israel relationship, rooted in common values and interests as well as mutual foes, has been beneficial to both sides. Autocratic regimes that have no particular attachment to the idea of a Jewish state are not the most reliable of allies, and the degree of cooperation Israel can expect from them in the intelligence realm, for example, is limited.
Ironically, as Kramer points out, the “status quo is unsustainable” narrative that Western diplomats repeat ad nauseam to justify fruitless attempts to secure an Israeli-Palestinian solution does not take into account just how sustainable the status quo has been and may continue to be with Israel’s multifaceted alliances. (“Israel is well positioned to sustain the status quo all by itself. Its long-term strategy is predicated on it.”)
One should not, however, make the mistake of concluding that the U.S.-Israel relationship has been irrevocably changed. One president does not remake decades of policy, especially given the bipartisan support for Israel in Congress and among American voters. Moreover, whether the U.S.-Israel relationship is permanently transformed will depend on the next president. Kramer writes that Hillary Clinton has added a caveat to the “status quo is unsustainable” line. He quotes her as saying “Now, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be sustained for a year or a decade, or two or three …”
In short, President Obama’s departure may repair much of the damage done by his effort to put “daylight” between the United States and Israel and his desire to retreat from the region, provided that the next president returns to the bipartisan policy in place before Obama. If, as an added bonus, Israel can also maintain and bolster its new relationships despite an unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the latter will seem more sustainable than ever before. At the very least, it will convey that Palestinians’ dream of eliminating or wearing down the Jewish state is a fantasy — one not shared by the United States, China, Russia or even Israel’s Arab neighbors. (h/t Alexi)

UK aid 'indirectly spent on Palestinian terror groups' former Cabinet minister warns

UK aid money is indirectly funding Palestinian terrorism, a former Cabinet Minister has warned.
Sir Eric Pickles claimed financial assistance sent to Palestine by the British Government is being used to free up money to pay prisoners who have committed crimes in the conflict with Israel.
The former communities secretary also warned there are "worrying reports" that some NGOs supported by UK taxpayer's money are "promoting violence on social media pages" and called on Ministers to investigate urgently.
International Development Minister Desmond Swayne denied the claims, insisting money given to the Palestinian Authority funds specific civil servants and cannot be misused.
ODI Statement: Daily Telegraph article on links between terrorism and UK Aid to the Palestinian Authority citing ODI research ‘factually inaccurate