Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 07, 2016

Those apartheid beaches

Today, at a beach in Bat Yam, I saw a bunch of giggling Muslim girls, fully covered, who were showering the sand off their hijabs after hanging at the beach for a while along with lots of Jews.

Just like South Africa during apartheid.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Today I came across an article by Rabbi Baruch Efrati in which he opposes cooperation between Israelis and the Reform Movement.

So what, you say. Another Orthodox attack on the heretical reformim. Perhaps so, but here is what caught my attention:

The secular Jewish world does not want to take over the religious world from a theological point of view, but to live beside it – hence, the possibility of influencing that world, listening to its hearts' desires, elevating its holy sparks to their heavenly source. The secular are actually non-observant Orthodox, they do not present an alternative organized religion that turns transgressions into an ideology intended to take the place of the Torah. They have not invented a made up religion but are in the midst of a process where secularism is withering and faith is blossoming, as one can see over the last few years in which there is constant strengthening of ties to Torah, baruch Hashem.

“Non-observant Orthodox,” or as the saying goes, ‘the synagogue that they don’t go to is Orthodox’. At worst, thinks Efrati, they won’t interfere with the religious world while at best they might join it. On the other hand, the Reform are a threat. “It’s either we or them [sic],” he adds.

One wonders why he is worried, because only about 3% of Israeli Jews identify with the Reform movement, and most of those are English-speaking immigrants. The ‘non-observant Orthodox’ aren’t rushing to join them, either. Those that I talk to simply don’t see the point of Reform Judaism, maybe because just living in Israel provides the sense of Jewish community that many American Jews seek from their congregations, and because even the least observant Jew in Israel is likely to have a stronger background in Jewish history and ideas than most American Reform Jews. And of course, they already speak Hebrew!

The real possibility of religious change in Israel today comes from Orthodox Jews (including well-known rabbis) who ask why certain customs, in particular in respect to women, are adhered to when they are not required by Jewish law. They also ask why certain rabbis should have a monopoly on kosher certification, conversions, and so forth. These folks will certainly have a much greater effect on the nature of Jewish observance in Israel than Reform Jews, because they can’t be accused of ‘inventing a religion’.

Nevertheless, the American Union for Reform Judaism does present a problem for Israel, but it has little to do with theology. It is because the Reform Movement is conducting a left-wing political campaign targeting both American Jews (primarily) and Israelis.

The campaign focuses on issues like mixed prayer at the Western Wall, ‘segregated’ Haredi buses, and the Rabbinate, which is widely perceived as arbitrary and even corrupt in its behavior in regard to marriage and conversion. Another issue is ‘religious pluralism’, which means the fact that Orthodox synagogues and rabbis are subsidized by the government’s Religious Affairs Ministry while liberal streams of Judaism are not. The URJ’s associated groups have filed numerous lawsuits in connection with these issues. The controversies are presented as evidence for Israel’s failure as a liberal democracy.

They resonate as civil rights issues in the US. But they haven’t ever become serious concerns for most Israelis, who are much more concerned with security and economic problems. The average secular Israeli sees both the Women of the Wall and the Haredi Rabbi of the Kotel as radical extremists, and their struggle as having nothing to do with ‘normal people’.

The URJ also takes a strong position for a ‘2-state solution’ and is critical of Israel’s settlements across the Green Line. In the US it has supported the Obama Administration’s policies (after agonizing for a time, it decided ‘not to take a position’ on the Iran deal that was strongly opposed by both the Israeli government and opposition). Many American Reform rabbis belong to J Street, and the President of the URJ, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, is a former activist in both J Street and the New Israel Fund.

Jacobs wasn’t shy about his intention to intervene in Israeli politics when he outlined his positions in his 2015 biennial address and announced that the URJ would not “check [its] commitment to tikkun olam at the door.”

The American Reform Movement, in its 1885 Pittsburgh Platform was explicitly anti-Zionist. After the state of Israel was established it was grudgingly accepted, but it wasn’t until the 1997 Miami Platform that Reform Judaism began to present itself as a Zionist movement. But two years later it began to specify the kind of Jewish state it wanted Israel to be, and the proprietary attitude has only gotten stronger. Like the Obama Administration and J Street, Reform seems to love us to death.

All of this fits neatly with the program of the tiny but loud Israeli Left, which lately has been arguing that the liberal Israel that they knew and loved is being replaced by an undemocratic, theocratic and militaristic monster, the Jewish counterpart of the Islamic State. They too want to make us better.

Just as very few Israelis are attracted to Reform Judaism, very few agree with the political point of view that the URJ espouses. And neither secular nor religious Israelis buy the idea that Israel is becoming undemocratic, theocratic and militaristic. What is happening is that the cultural elites that have set the tone here since 1948 are finally changing to match the more right-wing political landscape. Naturally, those being deposed are unhappy.

Regardless of whether they think Reform Judaism is a “made up religion” or even care, most Israelis think that decisions affecting life in this country should be made here, and not by a liberal American organization that represents very few of us. And that is the real issue.

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07/07 Links Pt1: PA pays $140 Mil a Year to Terrorists; Fatah TV: Jews do the satans' work on earth

From Ian:

The End of Palestinian Nationalism

When a movement devolves into a death cult, it’s time to rethink our assumptions
The Palestinian genius for nay-saying is well-documented, but what’s at play here is something new, something that transcends the dull boundaries of international negotiations and seeps into the hearts and minds of the young. Once the essential No that has guided Palestinian policy for decades has been turned inward, it could find no other outlet but destruction and no better target than the Jews next door. Anti-Semitism has something to do with fanning this derangement, but it is not its essence; neither are pure yearnings for an independent Palestinian homeland. The revolt we’re seeing now is more profound, more ontological in nature: It’s the revolt of an educated and relatively well-off generation—note how many of the stabbers have come, like Tarayrah, from comfortable and stable families—that looks for meaning and honor and sacrifice and can find it nowhere in the vastly compromised world outside, succumbing instead to the all-consuming fire of utter annihilation. We’ve seen this tide rise before under similar circumstances, and we’ll see it rise again.
It’s easy to argue that Tarayrah and his fellow pogromists are merely youth pushed into murder by the constant torrent of incitement prevalent in every corner of Palestinian culture; this is true, but it eerily assumes, like the looniest moralists do when they argue that violent video games or gangster rap will inevitably lead to shootouts in the streets of suburban Connecticut, that adolescents are spongy creatures incapable of doing much more than soaking violence and spurting out violence in kind. It’s even easier to continue to blame that mythical horned beast, the Occupation, as if there was no other reason for young Palestinians to feel hopeless—like, say, the fact that their own government is one of the world’s most repressive and corrupt—and as if hopelessness necessarily translated into taking knives to the throats of slumbering children. If we abandon these simplicities, and acknowledge instead that what bedevils Palestinian society is a much more wicked problem, we’re left to make some uneasy decisions of our own.
First, we should realize that we must approach a death cult differently than we would a healthy national movement. The latter calls out for compromise. It rewards negotiations, and it reassures its foes by offering indications, real and symbolic, that future reconciliation is likely and at hand. This is why we often forgive it its missteps, and are willing to look away even when it occasionally unleashes bloody hell, as even the most well-tempered and responsible national movements sometimes do. The former, however, has no appetite for anything but destruction, and measures its triumphs with the crude arithmetic of body counts and death tolls. It cannot be reasoned with. It can only be forcefully stopped. Until it is, any attempt to pretend that Palestinian nationalism is still viable is simply grotesque.
This should come as little surprise to any serious student of national movements throughout history. Reread Herder’s remark that, in a certain sense, every form of human perfection is first and foremost national in spirit, and reflect again on the Treaty of Westphalia, which sliced Europe into nation-states erected on the basis of self-determination and committed to diplomatic congress as a means of resolving disputes. Then go forth and observe the myriad national movements that failed miserably to live up to this new spirit of creative nationalism. Ask the Moravians or the Transnistrians about their efforts at self-determination, and that’s just one small corner in Europe. The world is thick with failed national movements that, for one reason or another, saw their dreams disintegrate into violence, or irrelevance, or both. Sadly, the Palestinians now join them. This will have many implications, for Palestinians and Israelis alike, but if history is any guide, the only way to counter a No is with an equal or greater Yes, a spirit that meets death by loudly and enthusiastically affirming life.

PMW: Jews do the satans' work on earth - Fatah TV cartoon for kids

In honor of Ramadan, Fatah TV broadcast a cartoon series for young children that presents Jews as the representatives of several satans, fighting battles for these satans, and doing their work on earth. The educational message to Palestinian children is that the satans are scheming to fight and destroy Muhammad, and in order to succeed in this, they use the Jews to fight Muhammad.
The series shows the satans (who oppose Muhammad) being upset that the Jewish tribes left Medina without fighting Muhammad, thus enabling Muhammad an unopposed victory. One of the satans then plants the idea in the minds of the Jews to organize all the tribes to fight against Muhammad so that the Jews can regain their prestige. This plan succeeds because the satan knows "the burning hate and loathing of Muhammad and his supporters, that fills the hearts of the Jews."
Finally, viewers are taught that Muhammad was preparing for battle by digging trenches to protect himself from the Jews, even though he already had a treaty with them because, as one Muslim explains: "Since when do Jews keep their treaties?"
Presenting Jews as agents of the satans who do evil on earth is a part of the PA's religious ideology, although the PA claims to the international community that their conflict with Israel is only territorial. Mahmoud Abbas' advisor on Islam recently stressed that the Palestinian Authority ideology is to see the conflict with Israel as a conflict with Satan. Israel, Mahmoud Al-Habbash taught, is "Satan's project":

Fatah TV cartoon: Jews sided with satans to fight Muhammad and the Muslims

Palestinian Authority Pays Terrorists and Their Families $140 Million a Year

The Palestinian Authority spends roughly 10 percent of its annual budget paying terrorists who attack Israelis and supporting their families, according to expert testimony to congressional lawmakers.
Yigal Carmon, the president and founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday that the Palestinian Authority is investing $137.8 million this year in salaries to terrorists jailed in Israel and payments to the families of imprisoned terrorists or suicide bombers, in violation of the Oslo peace accords with Israel.
Wednesday’s hearing took place following a months-long wave of violent attacks waged by Palestinians on Israelis in the West Bank. Last week, a Palestinian attacker broke into a home in the West Bank and stabbed to death a 13-year-old Israeli-American girl in her sleep.
There have been 250 such attacks or attempted attacks by Palestinians on Israelis since October 2015, according to the report of the Middle East Quartet—comprised of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations—issued last week. The assaults have killed at least 30 Israelis and resulted in dozens of Palestinians being killed by Israeli police.
Official Palestinian Authority media have glorified perpetrators of these terrorist attacks. Bashar Masalha, a Palestinian who stabbed U.S. Army veteran Taylor Force to death and wounded several others in March, was hailed on official media outlets as a “martyr” at the time of his funeral.

MEMRI President Yigal Carmon's Testimony To House Committee On Foreign Affairs

Palestinian Authority Support For Imprisoned, Released, And Wounded Terrorists And Families Of 'Martyrs'
The following is written testimony submitted to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, July 6, 2016, by Yigal Carmon, President and Founder, The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Washington, D.C.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Members, and Members of the Committee,
My testimony today is dedicated to a persistent problem: the financial and other support given by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to those who have continued their terrorist activities after the Oslo Accords, in which Yasser Arafat made a commitment, on behalf of the Palestinian people, to stop all terrorist activity.
By providing this support, the PA is encouraging terrorism in violation of its Oslo commitment.
Furthermore, the PA has been using money granted by donor countries for this purpose, and by doing so, has made them complicit in encouraging terrorism as well.
The details of this support, which I will cite in my testimony, may sound somewhat tedious, and I apologize for this in advance. They are taken both from the Palestinian media and from official PA records, available online.
MEMRI, as you may know, has been monitoring and analyzing the Middle East media for nearly 20 years. My testimony today is based not only on an analysis of the PA 2016 budget, but on years of research.

An anecdote from Iran, 1979

During my current trip to Israel I am getting the opportunity to speak with many fascinating people. Yesterday I spoke on the phone to an expert on Iran, and when I introduced myself as the Elder of Ziyon he said he had to tell me a story that happened to him - about me.

This scholar was in Iran studying at a religious school in the late 1970s. He was 28 years old at the time. His fellow classmates knew he was Jewish and they told him all about the conspiracy theories they "knew" about Jewish world domination and the Elders of Zion.

He tried many times to disabuse them of this notion, but absolutely nothing he said could shake their conviction that the Elders guide the Jews who control the US which controls the world.

Finally, after months of not being able to convince them otherwise, this scholar decided to "confess" with the most outrageous conspiracy theory he could devise.

He told them that we Jews are superior and have extraordinarily advanced technology. All of us have been fitted with a nearly invisibly tiny zipper, a nano-zipper if you will, between the forehead and the hairline. If you look very, very closely, you can just about make it out, although he admitted that he couldn't quite see it in the mirror, perhaps they could see it.

Every night, the zipper is remotely opened and the Jews' brains are uploaded to "Conspiracy Central" there they are programmed by the Elders of Zion. When they wake up, they know what to do that day. Perhaps the program is activated by saying the "Modeh Ani prayer," I don't know.

The Jewish student went on to say that he was frustrated about this process, because he didn't want to be programmed - he wanted to be one of the Elders who create the program to tell other Jews what to do. Alas, he was too young to join the Elders at that time. Maybe one day.

He told me that you could have heard a pin drop as he spun this tale. The Iranian students bought this story completely.

Every one of these Iranian religious school students lined up to see if they could detect the tiny zipper on his forehead.

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Last week I had a wide-ranging conversation with famous Israeli columnist, author and lecturer Ben Dror Yemini at a Tel Aviv cafe.

He wrote a book called The Industry of Lies about anti-Israeli incitement by radical left, human right groups, pro-Palestinian organizations and radical Islam. He just finished the English translation and it should be released before the end of the year.

In part 1, he shows how Mahmoud Abbas isn't interested in peace.

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We were assured, repeatedly, that if Iran would break the terms of the nuclear deal that the sanctions regime would automatically "snap-back."

Here's how the New York Times described it:

The so-called snapback mechanism to renew United Nations sanctions is one of the most unusual parts of the deal. In the event that Iran is perceived as violating it, the agreement allows the full raft of penalties to resume automatically, without a vote on the Council that would risk a veto by one of its permanent members — namely, Russia, Iran’s closest ally on the Council.

Instead, the snapback mechanism allows any of the six world powers that negotiated the deal to flag what it considers a violation. They would submit their concerns to a dispute resolution panel. If those concerns remained unresolved, the sanctions would automatically resume after 30 days, or “snap back.” According to the draft Security Council resolution, this means that the previous penalties “shall apply in the same manner as they applied before.”

Here's our chance!

From Bild (translated):

After the nuclear agreement with Iran on July 14, 2015 was signed, the federal government and the remaining contractors embraced the slogan: The threat of Iranian nuclear bomb is banned. Iran had agreed to the inspection of its nuclear facilities and will not pursue any further plans to weaponize radioactive materials.

Experts have always been skeptical about the agreement with Tehran for its many loopholes and its sanctions waivers meant a windfall for the mullahs' regime and its activities in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. However, the Federal Government and especially the Federal Ministry of Economics felt that the prospect of business with Tehran was too tempting.

But now the [German] Secret Service warns in its annual report in no uncertain terms: The attempts of Tehran to illegally obtain nuclear weapons technology in Germany has increased.

Thus, the report states dryly: " The BfV established that illicit Iranian procurement attempts in Germany in 2015 remained at a quantitatively high level. This was especially true for goods that can be used in the field of nuclear technology."

There are controversial sentences that can be found on page 265 of the Constitutional Protection Report: Obviously Tehran tried to acquire materials beyond what is needed for civilian nuclear technology.

The mullahs apparently are continuing to work on nuclear weapons and related missile technology.

Literally the report says: " The BfV stated also in the field of ambitious Iranian missile technology program, which could be used inter aliaffor the use of nuclear weapons, a rising trend in the already substantial procurement efforts."

The report says that they expect that Iran will continue with its clandestine efforts to acquire nuclear technology that is not allowed under the terms of the JCPOA.

So will Germany implement the snap-back mechanism? Will the White House do it upon seeing this report?

You know the answer. The six countries who can trigger the "snap-back" have every incentive not to. Both the economic benefits of selling to Tehran and the embarrassment of having to scrap the agreement and incur the wrath of the other nations who want the billions of dollars of trade with Iran ensure that no one will ever have the guts to trigger the mechanism.

The Iran agreement was, and remains, a massive exercise in deception.

(h/t Petra)

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Two tweets that show Americans for Peace Now is clueless

I was struck by these two consecutive tweets by Americans for Peace Now's Lara Friedman.

The first:

Here is what the referenced Haaretz article says:

According to the developing formulation, a court will be able to order the platform to remove any content immediately, if it is a post that deals with terror or poses real danger to the security of the state, the public or an individual.
“In light of the potential harm to freedom of expression, orders to remove content will be given sparingly, in extreme cases and directed only at harmful content,” according to the statement released at that time.

In other words, the proposal is meant to save lives when the content is incitement to murder.

No less an authority that Amnesty International says "International human rights law obliges states to prohibit advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence." (Amnesty unfortunately changes its opinion radically when Israeli Jews are the targets of such incitement.)

Lara Friedman is falsely claiming that incitement to murder and terror is protected speech - and limiting it is similar to what China and Saudi Arabia and Russia do. Actually, she says that Israel is holding up those three countries as examples of what to emulate.

The article says no such thing. And international humanitarian law says the opposite of what Americans for Peace Now seems to believe.

Why does Americans for Peace Now support incitement to murder?

The second tweet:

I responded back by pointing out that the entire "linkage" argument that was popular around 2010 and has experienced a resurgence lately is based entirely on that false claim that she says doesn't exist:

Except for Mahmoud Abbas. https://t.co/R9cfbn8IAl And French FM https://t.co/2Vfg9aG7NZ And many others @lara_apn https://t.co/26Qc39Xgq6
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) July 6, 2016

Two tweets that are both 100% wrong.

You would think that Lara Friedman and her fellow "Peace Now" pals would be embarrassed at being so wrong. But these people live in a fantasy land where wishful thinking is far more real than reality.

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07/06 Links Pt2: Undeclared Wars with Israel; How to talk to Jews about Israel

From Ian:

Review: Undeclared Wars with Israel

Nothing new under the sun, King Solomon said about three thousand years ago. Those who fight for BDS, who make the apartheid analogy with Zionism, who accuse the Zionists of having collaborated with the Nazis and who spread the legend that Zionists define Jews as a “chosen people” and are therefore racist have not invented something new. They just continue the Soviet and communist propaganda that stopped with the crumbling of the system in the late 1980s. Probably nowhere outside the Soviet Union was this propaganda take more seriously than in East Germany (the so-called German Democratic Republic).
Cambridge University Press has recently published Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989 by the American historian Jeffrey Herf.
Nothing new under the sun. Herf shows the origins of the present strategy to delegitimize Israel and amalgamate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Shortly after Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, East German leader Walter Ulbricht said on June 15, 1967 that the Israeli government had made itself into a “tool of a new despicable imperialist aggression” and had “brought shame and disgrace on itself by playing the role of an imperialistic aggressor against the Arab states”. Ulbricht turned a source of pride in West Germany – the tradition of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, its policies of restitution and support for Israel – into liabilities of shame and windows of opportunity for East German diplomacy in the Arab states. Israel, he insisted had not faced any threat at all. Rather than have regard for human rights, “the government and militarists of the state of Israel [then still led by the Labor Party] are apparently struck with blindness, due to chauvinism, racial madness and class rule.”
East Germany wanted to publish statements by Jewish citizens of the GDR which expressed indignation about “Israeli aggression” and the “Israel-Washington-Bonn conspiracy.” However, it was difficult to obtain supportive statements. Several prominent Jewish writers and leaders in East Germany, including the author Arnold Zweig, refused to sign such a statement. The singer Lin Jaldati referred to the PLO’s Ahmed Shukeiri’s call to annihilate the Jews. Helmut Aris, president of the Association of Jewish Communities in East Germany, refused because “in the past our brothers and sisters in Germany were murdered and today their lives are at risk in the Near East”.
Ulbricht proposed to Brezhnev in 1969 to send East German “volunteers” to fight Israel. According to Herf, the issue of whether East German soldiers ever engaged in combat with the IDF remains unresolved. Nevertheless we find in the book long lists of East German arms and munitions sent to the Arab states and terrorist organizations fighting Israel. East Germany became a safe haven for anti-Israel West German terrorists.

Vic Rosenthal: How to talk to Jews about Israel

I tried to buy a day sponsorship from the local NPR station “in honor of the 1000 [or whatever the number was at the time] Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism since 2000.” They refused, saying that I couldn’t prove that there were so many victims. I provided names, dates and locations. They said that it was ‘too political’. I said it wasn’t political, it was factual and asked how it was different from the sponsorship they did accept “in honor of the victims of the Stonewall Uprising.” That’s different, they said. That was a matter of civil rights, not politics. Anyway, you can’t prove that there were so many victims.
The local newspaper sometimes printed my letters, all 200 words of them, and sometimes not. They rarely printed op-eds that I wrote. Meanwhile the ‘news stories’ that ran every day pushed the ‘cycle of violence’ line that presented the attempts to kill us as a squabble between two parties both at fault.
My personal approaches were, if anything, more frustrating. People were polite, but noncommittal. As time went on, I realized that they weren’t uninterested; rather, they sensed that my position wasn’t shared by many Democratic politicians, NPR and the New York Times. They suspected that I was influenced by Republican ideas or even becoming a Republican myself. I realized, in 1960s slang, that they were shining me on. Anything I said was tainted and could be ignored.
As time went by and Barack Obama became president and Israel more and more a partisan issue, it got much worse. Now it wasn’t the ‘cycle of violence’ anymore, it was ‘Netanyahu won’t negotiate and won’t stop building settlements’. The local Reform rabbi refused to allow a film critical of J Street to be shown in his building. The Jewish Federation, of which I was a board member, was increasingly nervous about programs related to Israel.
It soon became clear that there weren’t very many ‘undecideds’. There were those that were pro-Israel, those that were against us, and those that would not listen because being pro-Israel was out of their political comfort zone.

Remembering the Destruction of Iraqi Jewry

One of history’s most devastating pogroms is also one of its least well-known. A historian analyzes how it happened, and why its origins have such troubling resonance today.
Seventy-five years ago, on June 1, 1941, a massive pogrom broke out against the Jews of Iraq. Committed by Muslim mobs influenced and incited by Nazi propaganda, it has come to be called the Farhud, and it remains the primal trauma of Iraqi Jewry, beginning the process of oppression and violence that ultimately forced the ancient community to emigrate en masse, most of them to Israel.
The Farhud killed hundreds of Jews and wounded thousands. The cruelty reached its height during a massacre in Baghdad. Interviews I have conducted with survivors paint a picture of inhuman violence. Children were murdered and the legs of babies were cut off because the Iraqi Jews placed bracelets on their children’s legs to ward off evil spirits and track their movements by attached bells. Pregnant women were raped in front of their husbands.
Jewish property was looted and Jewish homes burned to the ground. “The destruction itself was enormous,” future Israeli president Yitzhak Ben-Zvi reported to the Jewish Agency in 1941. “From 2,000-3,000 were left without a means of making a living. … The damage to property is valued at a million Palestinian pounds. This amount is not exaggerated.”
In contrast to popular myth, however, the Farhud did not break out spontaneously, but in fact was well-organized. Ezra Levi, a witness to the events, showed me photographic evidence that several days before the Farhud, Baghdad Jews noticed that Arab names had been written on Arab-owned shops, apparently to ensure that only Jewish businesses were looted.

#HasbyAwards part 3: Hen Mazzig (StandWithUs) presents "Best Activist Organization" to My Truth

As we continue to show the great talks that the presenters and awardees gave at the Hasby Awards, here is Hen Mazzig of StandWithUs talking about his experiences speaking to college campuses. He presents the Best Activist Organization Hasby award to Elan Miller of MyTruth, which counters the lies of Breaking the Silence.

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Islamic State Claims Credit For Trump (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Medina, July 6 - The Islamic State has not claimed credit for perpetrating an suicide bombing attack yesterday at the burial site of the prophet Muhammad that killed 4, but a video clip has emerged of an organization spokesman asserting that a more momentous phenomenon, the rise of Donald Trump as a likely candidate to win the US presidential election in November, is an IS initiative.

In a two-minute video posted on social media today, IS representative Ayman Assol can be seen announcing that Trump's success as a candidate is the result of a Daesh plot to bring about the downfall of the West and thus remove a major obstacle blocking the organization's ambition to establish a global Islamic caliphate.

"The people who prophesy the decline of Daesh will be shamed and our enemies will cower when they finally realize that the political rise and success of Donald Trump is our doing," boasted Assol. "The arm of Islam reaches into the depths of the enemy's rear and strikes with the fist of a thousand vengeances."

Analysts voiced disagreement over whether the claim constitutes mere bluster or reflects fact. "I'd say that, like Trump himself, this claim is little more than hot air dressed up in funny hair," asserted Richard Silverstein, a Seattle-area blogger with expertise rivaled only by that of the 1940's IBM executive who predicted a world market for maybe four computers. "The only kernel of truth in this claim is that because ISIS is actually an Israeli conspiracy to divide, weaken, and ultimately destroy the Islamic world, and Israel also controls everything happening politically in the US, ISIS and Trump are on the same team." He called for the abolition of the two-party system and the Constitution and for them to be replaced by a triumvirate consisting of him, Ali Abunimah, and Max Blumenthal to safeguard against further Zionist control of the country.

On the other side of the divide stands noted political analyst David Duke. "Oh, this is real," he said. "But I'm still endorsing Mr. Trump, because in the chaos that will inevitably follow his election, my allies and I will be able to seize power and implement our agenda, which in many ways parallels that of the Islamic State, only with more Jews on the receiving end."

Others disputed both assessments, noting that earlier reports showed evidence that Trump's rise is a plot by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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07/06 Links Pt1: U.S. Bankrolling Hezbollah'; 3 soldiers hurt in car ramming attack

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Can the Palestinians Hold Free and Fair Elections?

Even as Hamas continues to resist Fatah demands to relinquish control over the Gaza Strip, Hamas representatives could easily win elections in several West Bank cities and villages, especially in the Hebron area, where the Islamist movement is considered more popular than the Fatah faction. Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah have yet to recover from their recent defeat by Hamas at Bir Zeit University's student council election in April.
The decision to hold the municipal elections was announced at a time when the West Bank is witnessing increasing lawlessness among Palestinians, and Palestinian Authority security forces seem to be losing control.
Holding elections without Hamas's participation, will risk further consolidating the split between the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- and reinforcing the reality that the Palestinians already have two separate mini-states.
The current mayhem plaguing West Bank cities, villages and refugee camps will not help in holding any free and fair elections.

Elliot Abrams: The Iran deal a year after: There are no benefits

Most critics of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA ), or the Iran nuclear deal, thought the costs outweighed the benefits. Supporters of the deal thought the benefits outweighed the costs. But today, after a year of experience, we can conclude both sides were wrong – because there aren’t any benefits.
Consider the arguments made during the debate over the agreement. In every single case – with one possible exception we will get to later – the arguments have already been disproved.
First, transparency.
On July 14, 2015, President Barack Obama said: “Because of this deal, we will, for the first time, be in a position to verify all of [Iran’s] commitments.
That means this deal is not built on trust; it is built on verification.” The next day, he said the deal offered “unprecedented, around-the-clock monitoring of Iran’s key nuclear facilities and the most comprehensive and intrusive inspection” ever.
But this year’s two quarterly reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) included less information on Iran’s nuclear program.
How is this possible? “In the previous reports, the bases were the previous UN Security Council resolutions,” IAEA head Yukio Amano said in March. “But now they are terminated. They are gone.”
Yes, and so is our access to information.

U.S. Bankrolling Hezbollah

Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, said that U.S. sanctions would have no impact on the organization, as it already obtains complete financial and weaponry assistance from the Islamic Republic of Iran.
After the flimsy and uncompleted nuclear agreement, the Obama Administration immediately began transferring billions of dollars to Iran's Central Bank. One of the payments included $1.7 billion transferred in January 2016. $1.4 billion of this sum came from American taxpayers.
Thanks to President Obama and the continuing lifting of sanctions, the money that Iran is receiving from the U.S., from international trade, and from increased oil sales is most likely being directed toward Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards, Iran's major beneficiaries, which keep attempting to scuttle U.S. foreign policy objectives in the region.

Hamas official Ahmed Yousef is reported to have complained on his Facebook page about the "chaos" caused by the huge number of mosques that are disturbing the peace with their incessant announcements and sermons in Gaza.

According to the report, Yousef asked whether anyone at the Ministry of Awqaf can be held responsible for this "mess."

Throughout the month of Ramadan, we can not rest; the sounds of the PA systems do not calm down and are heard all day and night. In the morning the sheikhs' throats are bursting with their prayers and are unforgiving for those who want to sleep after the prayer. .. .. Ears are rattling. If you try to take a nap the voices of microphones start again, mixing with the sounds of those calling people to give to charity and to offer their assistance to the mosque. This scene is repeated routinely each day.
It is our right to enjoy quiet.

Just remember: when non-Muslims complain about being woken up by calls to prayer and loud sermons from nearby mosques, they are being Islamophobic.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

On Tuesday, I visited the newest university in Israel, Ariel University.

It is a beautiful campus with 15,000 students. Over a dozen buildings are being constructed right now as it expands. I was shown the robotics lab and spoke with an expert in making wine from grape varieties that have been proven to have been used in First and Second Temple times. (I plan to write about that in the future.)

Ariel University has the only free electron laser particle accelerator in the Middle East.

The campus has hundreds of Arab students. Student groups foster dialogue between Jewish and Arab students. It also attracts students from around the world. (Some of the lectures are in English.)

It is building a hospital which will be available for all residents of the region, with the aim of building a medical school as well. Ambitious plans to add more dormitories and more research centers are bearing fruit.

It has what may be the only college-level program in the world to mainstream students on the Aspergers' spectrum. I met one very polite young man in that program who said that he had been rejected from every school he applied to before Ariel accepted him and he is soon to graduate with a degree in Middle Eastern studies.

Ariel U is centrally located, easily accessible via Highway 5 which goes directly there from Tel Aviv. From Ariel University's "upper campus," on a clear day, you can see Israel's entire coastal plain.

Ariel University is a Zionist success story, in the edge of a bustling and beautiful town of 20,000 residents.

But when American Jewish groups visit Israel, nearly all of them avoid visiting Ariel University.

Jewish Federation trips to Israel do not go to Ariel University (with very few exceptions.)

AIPAC doesn't visit.

Even Birthright won't visit - left-wing or right-wing trips avoid it.

Because Ariel University is across the Green Line.

American Jewish organizations, afraid of criticism from the Left, have decided that Ariel does not exist and it should not be visited. It is too controversial.

But here's the thing. Virtually every Israeli politician from left to right considers Ariel to be non-negotiable in any peace plan,

If you visit the community you know why. It is a large town and strategically situated. It is part of Israel in every real sense. The idea of uprooting the town is unthinkable.

Amazingly, J-Street U has visited Ariel to see what it is like and what their ideological enemies are up to. Yet groups that are unabashedly Zionist do not want to visit.

Christian groups love to visit the university when they go on Israel trips. But Jewish Israel missions almost all will avoid it.

This is outrageous.

The same people who say that BDS is terrible, even when practiced against Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, are effectively engaging in BDS themselves by avoiding visiting the incredible, and very Zionist, accomplishments of Ariel and Ariel University.

They cannot argue that Ariel is dangerous. (That is Birthright's official reason.) It isn't. There were no incidents since the knife uprising began last September. Hamas rockets never reached Ariel. It has been far more dangerous to visit Jerusalem than Ariel over the past year.

They cannot argue that Ariel University is filled with messianic right-wing Jews. It isn't. Some professors there are leftists, even Meretz-voters. Arab students can and do write their theses on the "Nakba." Yarmulkas are the exception, not the rule.

At the very least, these American organizations that tell their participants that they are going to learn about both sides of the conflict are completely ignoring the biggest settlement, and only Israeli university, that is in the territories not adjacent to the Green Line.

If anyone is going to claim that they are well-educated on the conflict, shouldn't they at least visit Ariel?

To have Jewish groups - liberal or conservative - essentially boycott Ariel sends a message that American Jews are out of sync with what most Israelis believe would be part of any peace agreement.

If you are planning a mission to Israel for your Jewish group, ask yourself why you shouldn't visit a miraculous, modern and liberal campus that could teach most so-called "pro-peace, pro-Israel" groups a lot about real co-existence and peace.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

From the Los Angeles Times:

In recent months, a number of states have passed laws or taken other official actions to punish companies that participate in boycotts against Israel. California soon may do the same. But if it does, it will be making a mistake.

You don’t have to support the so-called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to be troubled when state governments in this country penalize American citizens for their political speech. As the Supreme Court has recognized, boycotts are a form of speech, protected under the Constitution.

As I have already shown, the Supreme Court ruling that the BDSers cite says no such thing. It protects non-violent speech and it protects peaceful picketers of a store as engaging in free speech. Boycotts aren't speech, though - they are actions, and the First Amendment does not protect them. Nowhere in that ruling is it said that boycotts are free speech.

The editorial's misstatements of the law continue:

Do such laws violate the 1st Amendment? Although the Supreme Court has held that government may engage in its own “speech” and express its own opinions, it also has held that government may not deny a benefit to a person (or a company) because he holds the “wrong” opinion. In our view, denying state business to an otherwise qualified contractor simply based on its views about Israel — and its participation in a legal boycott — goes beyond “government speech” and raises serious constitutional concerns.

No one is penalizing a contractor for their political views, only for their actions. If they call for a boycott of Israel that is OK, if they are engaging in such a boycott then it isn't. It is a fairly straightforward distinction that the LA Times is choosing to fuzz.

In California, the situation has grown even more complicated. Opponents of BDS in the Legislature previously proposed a bill that would have forbidden state contracts with companies engaged in a boycott of Israel. But after legal objections, the legislation was radically reconfigured.

From the news stories I have seen, the legislation was not rewritten because of "legal objections" but because of political concerns to increase the chances of passage.

This editorial is misstating and misrepresenting the law. The reconfigured bill doesn't even have the alleged problems that the initial bill had so the entire purpose of this editorial seems to be to make a legal statement - the headline of the article is "Boycotts of Israel are a protected form of free speech" - that is simply not true.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

07/05 Links Pt2: Why Is the New Israel Fund Backing Breaking the Silence?

From Ian:

Israel supporters confront Iran hate-fest en masse

Last week, London - like many cities throughout the world - saw its own "Al Quds Day" march, a yearly anti-Israel hate-fest first launched by the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, to call for the destruction of the Jewish state.
Typically, the march sees thousands of Islamist and far-left demonstrators parading Hezbollah flags and calling for Israel's destruction unchallenged through the streets of the British capital - though in recent years the number of anti-Israel marchers has dwindled somewhat, as Sunni Muslims and supporters of the Syrian opposition have boycotted the parade due to its support for Iran and Hezbollah, the two most important allies of the brutal Assad regime.
Pro-Israel groups have tended to shy away from confronting the parade, with many among the Jewish establishment preferring to "play it safe" and ignore the event - much to the frustration of grassroots activists, who say such demonstrations of anti-Israel hatred, which often spill over into open anti-Semitism, cannot go unchallenged.
This year, however, was different, courtesy of a coalition of pro-Israel and Jewish groups, spanning grassroots groups such as the Israel Advocacy Movement and Sussex Friends of Israel, as well as major Jewish and Zionist organizations such as the Board of Deputies, Jewish Leadership Council and Zionist Federation.
First, a handful of pro-Israel counter-protesters fearlessly confronted the march, at one point even blocking their route in an unprecedented show of defiance. (h/t vwVwwVwv)

IsraellyCool: EU Ambassador Refuses To Condemn Abbas Standing Ovation After Blood Libel

When IBA News anchor Eylon Aslan-Levy asks EU Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen if he condemns the EU Parliament’s decision to give Mahmoud Abbas a standing ovation after his infamous blood libel, this is the response.
Why am I not surprised? This is so typical of Europe (home of the blood libel, incidentally).
Imagine if the EU had sent a clear message to Abbas. No terrorism! No incitement! Or otherwise no funding!
Instead, the Europeans continue their downward slide by siding with the very forces that will be the end of them. (starts 3:35)

Palestine in the 1800s

Félix Bonfils (1831-1885) was French photographer and writer who was active in the Middle East. Four years after his arrival he reported 15,000 prints of Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Greece, and 9,000 stereoscopic-views. He traveled to the region several times and we hear of no mass population of Palestinians, which contradicts everything the Palestinians lie about to the world.
His pictures did not manage to capture any photographs of a single so-called ‘Palestinian’ who are suppose to have lost land to Jewish occupation, if we believe Arab propaganda.
Amin al Husseini made the dome his special project. It had fallen into a state of utter disrepair, but al-Husseini saw it to his political advantage to restore it. The dilapidated Dome of the Rock was a decaying old relic well into the 20th century. It was of no import and it was no longer used as a place of worship.