Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, July 10, 2016

UNESCO has a curious definition of "history"

The UN cultural body’s World Heritage Committee is set to vote on a controversial draft resolution challenging Jewish historical ties to the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and calling of a return to the “historic status quo” on the holy site. A similar resolution was adopted by the organization’s executive board in April, a move that infuriated Israel.

A revised joint Palestinian-Jordanian draft resolution on “the Old City of Jerusalem and its walls” was submitted to the 21-member committee which is convening for its annual meeting in Istanbul, Turkey. The text calls for a return of the Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa Mosque to “the historic status quo,” a status that existed before the 1967 war.

The language of "historic status quo" is new and wasn't in the April resolution.

The wording implies that the anomalous situation in Jerusalem during the 19 years between 1948 and 1967 was not anomalous at all, but was a "historic status quo."

While this absurd draft resolution denies any Jewish connection to Judaism's holiest site on the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, the use of the word "historic" to refer to before 1967 could easily be used to claim that any Jewish presence in the Old City is a violation of the 1948-1967 situation when Jordan ensured that the Old City was Jew-free.

The PLO and Jordan have an interestingly skewed definition of "historic." After all, neither Jordan nor the Palestinian Arab people existed a hundred years ago, if you try to look for them in any contemporaneous newspaper articles or books.

The Palestinians use the word "Historic Palestine" to refer to the borders of British Mandate Palestine, an entity that existed for less than three decades. There are no maps of "historic Palestine" that include those borders prior to 1920.

By emphasizing the word "historic' to refer to events that are a blink in the eye of history, the Palestinians and Jordanians are attempting to remove any Jewish connection to the only historic Jewish land.

After all, if events that happened in the 20th century are "historic," then anything before than is prehistoric and irrelevant.

The intentional misuse of the word "historic" is an attempt to ethnically cleansethe Jewish people from history - and to inflate the value of the recently invented Jordanian and Palestinian Arab people.

Perhaps Israel should submit a new resolution to return Jerusalem to the historic status quo of how it was under King Solomon. At the very least it could expose how the Arabs are trying to hijack the very word.

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07/10 Links: UNESCO again tries to deny Jewish connection to Temple Mount; Another Gaza tunnel collapse

From Ian:

UNESCO again tries to deny Jewish connection to Temple Mount

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is again entertaining efforts to deny any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.
The motion, which was filed by Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, repeats previous attempts to declare the entire complex as a holy Muslim site and leaves out any relationship to Judaism, even regarding the Kotel.
It would require Israel to restore the site to its "historic status quo," presumably meaning that Jews would be banned from visiting, as was the situation under the Jordanian occupation from 1948 to 1967.
The document casts Israel in a negative light whenever possible, referring to it as an "occupying force" that allegedly violates the Geneva and Hague Conventions. The drafters claim that Israel severely damages the historic buildings, gates, windows and ceramics, and that it prevents Jordanian repair efforts.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry is working to convince countries to vote against the motion. "The document that was presented to UNESCO is an another malicious and dishonest attempt to harm Israel’s affinity with its capital," an official statement read. "This is a tendentious text and we hope that it is does not receive support from the member states. Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the nation of Israel and of Israel’s alone."
Israel's ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama Hacohen, says: "Anyone who thought that after the criticism voiced by Israeli and international Jewry against this decision and the recanting of the heads of state and foreign ministers around the world following the last decision that Palestinians would come to their senses need to come to their senses and internalize this complicated reality.

PMW: Al-Aqsa preacher: US responsible for terror in Muslim world

In a Friday talk at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Al-Abu Ahmad blamed America for all acts of terror in Muslim countries targeting Muslims. Sheikh Al-Abu Ahmad posts his videos on a YouTube channel called Aqsa Calls.
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the Palestinian Authority has repeatedly said that the US and Israel are behind the civil wars and killings in the Muslim and Arab world today.
The following is an excerpt of the Sheikh's talk, delivered at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on July 8, 2016:
Sheikh Al-Abu Ahmad, preacher at the Al-Aqsa Mosque: "America's crimes in Muslim countries are known to all. Any action carried out, any explosion and any operation in which a Muslim is killed in Muslim countries, America stands behind it, together with the infidel West that hates Islam and Muslims. It doesn't matter who takes responsibility for the crime and who announces it. We will never believe it. We will never believe it. We will never believe it because America is the one that blows up Muslims and it is the one that kills Muslims." [YouTube Channel Aqsa Calls, July 8, 2016]

Writing in Commentary magazine, Evelyn Gordon tells us:

On Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon predictably assailed Israel’s announced decision to build 800 new apartments in Ma’aleh Adumim and eastern Jerusalem. He noted that just four days earlier, the Middle East Quartet (i.e. the U.S., EU, UN and Russia) had issued a report deeming settlement construction an obstacle to peace. What Ban didn’t mention is that just a few days before that report came out, a leading Israeli leftist expert on the settlements published a comprehensive rebuttal of this claim, providing facts and figures showing that the settlements effectively aren’t growing at all.

The sheer unbridled racism and arrogance of the international Left, of the EU, the UN, and the Obama administration never ceases to amaze.

They honestly want us to believe that Jews living upon, and thus building upon, land that we come from, and that was purchased, makes us thieves.

They honestly want us to believe that the land of our ancestors actually belongs to the Arab invaders of the seventh-century CE despite the fact that Israel was the land of the Jewish people millennia before Muhammad's armies showed up with their religious-imperialist ideology of head-chopping.

The hypocrisy is profound.

The Criminalization of Jewish Existence

Ban Ki-moon wants us to think that the decision to build 800 new apartments in Ma’aleh Adumim and the eastern section Jerusalem somehow represents an obstacle to peace? How is this possible? If an Arab builds a home in the suburbs of Paris is that a war crime? Is that an obstacle to peace?

Should that Arab not be allowed to build on land that he has purchased because it is not "Arab land"?

Anyone who ever suggested any such thing would be knocked in the head as a stone-cold racist, but not if you suggest it about a Jew living in Judea!

If a Jew building a second bathroom for his family in the eastern part of Jerusalem, or anywhere in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, is an obstacle to peace it is only because the Arabs and the EU and the UN and the Obama administration have made it an obstacle to peace. There is nothing unpeaceful about building on property that one has purchased and that is precisely what we are talking about.

They are criminalizing the mere Jewish presence on Jewish land because Jews cannot live on that land if they cannot build on that land. Does the Obama administration really want to tell the Jews of Judea that if they build an elementary school for their children that they are unethically imposing upon the rights of Arabs?

A Touch of History

The Arabs stormed out of their peninsula in the seventh-century, gobbled up the Middle East, almost took-over Europe, but were stopped at the "gates of Vienna" and thereby had to satisfy themselves merely with conquering the Iberian Peninsula.

Since that time they have conducted an ongoing genocide of both the Christians and the Jews in the Middle East and, yet, somehow, feel themselves morally aggrieved.

It is an astonishing long-term propaganda success story.

Arab-Muslim imperial aggression is historically the foremost example of imperial aggression in the world. It even, remarkably, overshadows imperial Roman expansion. Medieval Christian Europe responded to this Arab-Muslim aggression against their fellow Christians with what we call "the Crusades." In the West the Crusades are interpreted as a form of European malice that is often docketed with other atrocities, including the Holocaust.

The reason for this is because, since the Enlightenment, Europe and the West have undergone a remarkable transformation that has brought us from a primarily theological worldview to a primarily secular and scientific worldview. The secular and the scientific suggested a questioning stance toward the world. This questioning stance met with Jewish introspection and moral sensibilities to give us the West as we know it today.

{G-d help us.}

As we know, the Arab-Muslim world has not gone through such a reformation since the early days of the empire... when Islam stood atop the world. There was a time when Islamic societies led in science and discovery, but those days are long over and the reason for that is because Islam means "submission" - not "peace" as Obama would tell you - and submission by its nature must stifle free inquiry.

Ask Galileo.

Settlement Construction and the Racist Left

And this brings us back around to those uppity Jews, like my friend Yosef Hartuv of Love of the Land fame, and all the other hippie Jews like, say, Yishai Fleisher, who insist that we have every right to live in the land of our posterity.

When racists like Barack Obama suggest that the Jewish people have no right to build on historically Jewish land they are resurrecting old, long established, medieval tropes that portray Jews as endless wanderers... as the Wandering Jew.

Somewhere in the introductory pages of A Tale of Love and Darkness Amos Oz reminds us that early twentieth-century European Jews were told, and I paraphrase, "Get out of Europe! Go back to Palestine where you belong!"

Now we are told by leftist legends like former White House correspondent Helen Thomas to "get the hell out of Palestine."

The Jewish people are a long abused minority and we represent a whopping .02 percent of the world population.

Much of the Left often suggests that world peace is dependent upon making the Jews of the Middle East leap through imaginary hoops.

But the Day of the Dhimmi is Done.

My suspicion is that a growing number of Jewish people are getting tired of being pushed against the wall - for our own alleged well-being - by false friends like Barack Obama.

The real lesson of the Holocaust is that we must stand up for ourselves.

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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EoZTV: #HasbyAwards part 5: Eugene Kontorovich presents Best Commentator award to Evelyn Gordon

World renowned legal expert Eugene Kontorovich starts with a comedy routine about the Hasbys and the Elders' superhero identities, but then talks about how the anti-Israel narrative is meant not to be descriptive but self-fulfilling and how people like Evelyn Gordon effectively fight the propaganda.

Evelyn talks about the importance of restating the obvious, over and over again, and how hasbara also helps even pro-Israel activists.

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.@Amnesty changes Abu Jame story, but still blames Israel

Last year Amnesty International came out with a page on the one-year anniversary of the Gaza war (advertising their very inaccurate Gaza Platform) with its usual combination of lies and half-truths.

One of the charges they made was that Israel deliberately targeted family homes for no reason except to murder entire families. Here's what they wrote:

I pointed out that by the time that they wrote this report it was already well-known that in fact there was a Hamas military commander who was killed in that airstrike, something that Amnesty purposefully hid from its readers.

We know that Amnesty hid is because it was known that 26 people were killed in the strike, not 25.

Here was what B'Tselem wrote about the Abu Jame home in 2014:

I published photos of Sahmoud and pointed out that he had a huge funeral, indicating his importance to the terror group.

I wrote at the time that it is still reasonable to ask whether the 25 family members killed indicated a violation of the principle of proportionality in war, and that Israel was investigating it.

But this proved that Amnesty knowingly misrepresented the circumstances of the incident.

This year, Amnesty put out another report on the anniversary of the Gaza war, and once again trotted out the Abu Jame family as an example of Israeli war crimes. But this time it admitted that Sahmoud was killed too:

Although Israel has not released any information on the attack, its apparent target was Ahmad Sulaiman Sahmoud, a Hamas operative, who died in the strike. The families said he was not in the building at the time but may have been in the vicinity. If Ahmad Sulaiman Sahmoud was the intended target, the attack was disproportionate and a potential war crime. It should have been apparent that a large number of civilians were in the house, and the attack should have been cancelled or postponed.

So they changed their charge from "Israel obviously targeted civilians" to "Israel should have been more careful when targeting militants." Yet they still claim "war crime."

We don't know the circumstances of the targeting of the home. But what we do know is that Amnesty was wrong to assume in 2015 that Israel had no military target, and they are wrong to assume in 2016 that Sahmoud was the only reason that Israel targeted the home. After all, if the Abu Jame family lied to Amnesty about whether they were harboring a Hamas terrorist (whether voluntarily or not) they would also lie about whether there were any command centers or weapons caches hidden in their house, which would make it a valid military target if either Sahmoud was a high-enough level Hamas operative or if the targets were of sufficient value.

Amnesty declared Israel guilty while apparently hiding some exculpatory evidence. And now they are declaring Israel guilty even with that evidence. This only goes to prove that Amnesty knows that it wants to damn Israel and it creates and modifies the narrative to achieve that aim.

It is also telling that Amnesty chose to highlight the Abu Jame family again. If Israel had routinely attacked family homes in Gaza, as Amnesty charged last year and the year before, surely they could have found other houses without any terrorists being targeted?

Yet last year Amnesty tried to do exactly that on the anniversaries of many Israeli attacks, and for virtually all the cases I was able to find a legitimate target.

Israeli air strike hit Joudeh family in their garden. 4 children & mother killed. http://t.co/gcEFrcDfMc #50days4Gaza pic.twitter.com/f6FM4eG1Eo
— AmnestyInternational (@AmnestyOnline) August 24, 2015

Fact: Homeowner Essam is a fighter for the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades of Fatah. His nom de guerre is Abu Mustafa.

Israel bombed home in #AlShati without warning & killed 6, including 4-year-old: http://t.co/MhYwhZx2gG #50Days4Gaza pic.twitter.com/Eefaf3xoAW
— AmnestyInternational (@AmnestyOnline) August 4, 2015

Fact: Two Islamic Jihad militants were killed in the same attack, including a family member.

#DeirAlBalah: family home bombed. 8 civilians killed. 2 children found on roof: http://t.co/A9ZPlxmS0E #50Days4Gaza pic.twitter.com/SYiBtu9dRl
— AmnestyInternational (@AmnestyOnline) August 20, 2015

Fact: A family member was a Hamas militant, even though Amnesty investigated this themselves and couldn't figure that out.

Amnesty's lies were demolished by me last year about Israel's supposed indiscriminate bombing of houses - and therefore they are moving the goalposts without correcting the older reports and tweets that slander Israel. This new report even links back to the old Amnesty report that gives the slander of indiscriminate bombing, a report that has not been corrected despite the fact that Amnesty clearly is aware of the facts by now, as evidenced by their grudgingly adding the fact that terrorist Ahmad Sahmoud was killed at the Abu Jame home.

If you still need evidence that Amnesty is more interested in bashing Israel than in reporting the truth, you are simply not willing to listen.

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Don't forget: Elder speaking in Jerusalem on Arab antisemitism tonight

I will be giving a talk on Arab antisemitism and why NGOs, the media and politicians largely ignore it.

The talk will be tonight in Jerusalem at the Young Israel of Talpiyot Mizrach.

You can sign up on Facebook.

Hope to see many of you there!

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07/09 Links: UNRWA – Who asked you?; Iran sought chem and bio weapons in Germany

From Ian:

New York University’s Students for Justice in Palestine Blames Police Shootings of Blacks on Israel

The killings this week of African Americans Alton Sterling and Philando Castile by police have sparked soul-searching and protests across the nation. Thousands have rallied against police violence and racism towards blacks. In Poland, President Obama took the time after midnight to deliver a sobering speech on the racial disparities in America’s criminal justice system. Both liberals and conservatives have called for reform.
Meanwhile, the New York University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine was busy trying to pin the police shootings on the world’s only Jewish state. On Thursday, the group—which advocates the total boycott of Israel—posted the following on its Facebook page:

The irony of critiquing racism in American society through the bigoted displacement of responsibility for it to Jews in the Middle East was apparently lost on SJP. As was the fact that the sordid history of American violence towards black people far predates the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. (And let’s not even get into the libelous and offensive allegation of Israeli genocide, for whose refutation one need only consult the official Palestinian Bureau of Statistics, which records the Palestinian population’s exponential growth since Israel’s creation.)
What’s particularly pernicious about the posting is that by erasing the American history of predatory conduct towards blacks and instead exporting culpability to a scapegoat, SJP short-circuits any necessary national conversation about U.S. police violence. As long as shadowy outside forces can be blamed for the problem, there will be no internal reckoning.
As of this publishing, despite critical comments on its Facebook page, NYU SJP has not apologized for crudely instrumentalizing the suffering of African Americans to disingenuously attack the Jewish state—or corrected their misspelling of Alton Sterling’s hometown of “Baton Rouge.”

David Collier: From Hezbollah to Hamas. The PSC rally at Downing Street

After the events of last weekend, when the Hezbollah flag was raised in London, spending an evening at a rally with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) seemed positively benign. How wrong I was.
08 July 2016. Richmond Terrace, London SW1A. An area directly opposite Downing Street that is used for demonstrations. It is two years since the 2014 Israel–Hamas conflict, and today the PSC dusted off their ‘stop the attack’ banners, and came out to protest.
But it isn’t 2014 anymore. It was staged to be a big event. It was an anniversary, it was advertised heavily by the PSC minions, their ‘interim head honcho’ Sarah Apps was there, as were their other ‘chiefs’. By half time I heard conversations amongst the organisers making excuses for the low turnout. Scores of banners were left by the sidewalk, with not enough hands to raise them all aloft
A fact about the state of pro-Palestinian activism is this: More people turned out for the Hezbollah Flag than for this PSC anniversary. There were 170, maybe 200. The Facebook event page suggests 557. It seems lots of those that did attend have multiple accounts on Facebook.
I did learn that I need to take my disguise up to another level. I was wearing a hat and a large Keffiyeh, but was ‘clocked’ as soon as I entered. The PSC and I have history, I am passive, I am an ‘investigative journalist’ and they don’t like what I write. A ‘persona non grata’ they can do little about.

UK Lawmakers Call for Ban of Hezbollah Following Public Outcry Over Displays of Terror Group’s Flags During ‘Al-Quds Day’ Rallies

After Hezbollah flags were waved during recent anti-Israel rallies in Britain, two lawmakers are calling for an outright ban of the Lebanese terror group, the Jewish Chronicle reported on Thursday.
In the UK, only Hezbollah’s military branch — which shares the same flag as its political branch — is classified as a terrorist organization. Leader of the House of Commons Chris Grayling announced he would be taking up the issue with Home Secretary Theresa May, after the matter was raised by MP Matthew Offord, who pledged to the pro-Israel community to address the issue in parliament.
“The European Union, including the UK, recognizes the difference between the military and political wings of Hezbollah, but such a distinction does not appear to be recognized by the organization itself,” Offord told lawmakers.
“Therefore in the light of the confusion about the legality of demonstrators displaying Hezbollah flags on the streets of London last Sunday, can we have a statement on the legality of the display of Hezbollah flags?” he asked.
In response, Grayling said, “I agree with my honorable friend. If an organization is proscribed in the UK, it should not be able to publicize itself in the UK whether through flags, or placards, or anything else.”

A dog trainer defends Max Blumenthal’s vilification of Elie Wiesel at Mondoweiss (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

Guest post by Petra Marquardt-Bigman

Max Blumenthal is a proud antisemitic anti-Zionist endorsed by the likes of David Duke, but after reacting to the news of Elie Wiesel’s recent death with abuse and vilification, he has now become the victim of a “witch hunt” – or so his loyal friends and fellow-Israel-haters would like everyone to believe. At the “hate site” Mondoweiss, the new and eminently qualified contributor Yakov Hirsch (“Professional Poker Player and Dog Trainer”) has a post (archived here) whose length presumably reflects how strongly he feels that Hillary Clinton was wrong to denounce Blumenthal’s vilification of Wiesel as “offensive, hateful, and patently absurd.” Naturally, Mondoweiss founder Philip Weiss eagerly promoted the output of his new writer on Twitter, where he asserted that Clinton’s denunciation of Blumenthal was a “witchhunt” and that Clinton “empowers ethnocentric violent extremists.”

Weiss is of course one of the professional anti-Israel activists who insist that their ardent anti-Zionism has nothing whatsoever to do with antisemitism. The output of Mondoweiss and other sites catering to anti-Israel activists undermines such claims on a daily basis by offering content that could be summarized with the slogan “The Jewish state is our misfortune” – which is just an updated version of the Nazi slogan “The Jews are our misfortune.” The defense of Max Blumenthal offered by Mondoweiss is a good example of the antisemitic anti-Zionism that is so typical of anti-Israel activism.

After highlighting some tweets denouncing the vilification of Wiesel by the popular Avi Mayer, the “professional poker player and dog trainer” who now writes for Mondoweiss muses:

“What is going on here? Why is it so difficult to understand that Elie Wiesel cannot be sacred to people whose sympathies lie with the Palestinians? … Even though it undoubtedly hurts Avi Mayer’s feelings that these people don’t show deference to his religious icons, this particular icon– Weisel [sic!] – was an enemy to the Palestinian people. … There are a lot of reasons for this blind Jewish ethnocentrism … But I’d like to use the Hillary Clinton statement on Wiesel yesterday to show the egregious role American politicians play in this phenomenon. It doesn’t take politicians long to figure out where the money is: Just try to talk as crazy as the craziest Jew and watch the money pour in. You can see this dynamic play out at every AIPAC conference.”

Well, where to begin? Does it really have to be pointed out to the “anti-Zionists” at Mondoweiss how incredibly offensive it is to describe “Weisel” as one of the “religious icons” of an observant Jew like Avi Mayer? And is it really necessary to explain what’s wrong with a statement like “Just try to talk as crazy as the craziest Jew and watch the money pour in”? How often does it have to be explained that American support for Israel reflects broad popular support and has deep historical roots? And why describe Wiesel as “an enemy to the Palestinian people”? Is it because he denounced Hamas as a “death cult” and felt that “Palestinian parents want a hopeful future for their children, just like Israeli parents do. And both should be joining together in peace”?

But it’s by no means only the “professional poker player and dog trainer” now moonlighting at Mondoweiss who can’t do without invoking age-old antisemitic tropes. The site’s founder Philip Weiss isn’t doing much better in his own recent post, where he writes under the title “In latest pander to Israel lobby, Clinton smears Max Blumenthal’s criticism of Wiesel as ‘hateful’”:

“Bernie Sanders was able to build a campaign with us because he had escaped the financial clutches of the elitist Israel lobby … Clinton can’t escape those financial clutches. And she thinks she can only gain politically from smearing Max Blumenthal. … And: isn’t becoming president by marrying neoconservatism the definition of a deal with the devil? What does that do to U.S. foreign policy? Is that why she sought power? Is Hillary Clinton even in touch with her soul?”

Let me suggest an update for Weiss’s post: as reported in the Times of Israel, a cartoon program “recently aired on a Fatah-owned Palestinian TV station showed Jews siding with the devil to fight Muslims and the Muslim prophet Muhammad.” I think there are some scenes in this program that could illustrate the point Weiss is trying to make just beautifully.

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Iran's Mehr News Agency reports that a top advisor to Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has slammed Hamas.

In an interview, Brigadier General Khosro Orouj accused Hamas of seeking to sign a treaty with Israel via Turkey.

Hamas "took up the banner of struggle and fight for the destruction of Israel, but today we see from them different words and thoughts, a different approach than Imam Khomeini, who refuses to sit down with the oppressor at the same table. "

Hamas recently made overtures to get back in Iran's good graces with a top Hamas official lavishly praising the Ayatollah Khamanei.

Apparently it didn't work.

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07/08 Links: Do houses matter more than Jews?‎; Judea and Samaria - it's all in a name

From Ian:

In Africa, Lion King Bibi begins to outroar the Palestinians

Offering high-tech and security know-how in return for diplomatic support, Netanyahu was welcomed like a superpower chief
A life-size stuffed lion greets visitors to the National Palace in Addis Ababa, lying on a red carpet adorned with Stars of David. Always aware of a good frame, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not pass up on the opportunity to have his photograph taken with the lion on the sidelines of his meeting with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn Thursday morning.
A few hours later, the country’s president, Mulatu Teshome, took his Israeli guest down to the palace garden, where they gazed at real lions. Netanyahu is the first statesman to have been allowed to get so close to the animals; even US President Barack Obama wasn’t granted this honor during his recent visit.
Posing for the cameras with President Teshome, as two lions strolled in the background, Netanyahu said the occasion gives new meaning to the verse “They were swifter than eagles, stronger than lions” (2 Samuel, 1:21).
In Africa, Netanyahu could be forgiven for feeling like Lion King Bibi. During his four-day tour this week to Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia — which required unprecedented security arrangements, including special forces and armored personal carriers brought from Israel on Hercules planes — he was treated like the chief of a global superpower.

Do houses matter more than Jews?‎

There was no outrage over the fact that the PA paid for the mourning tent of the family whose son ‎murdered the Israeli girl in her bedroom, nor over the visit by a Palestinian Authority official closely ‎associated with President Mahmoud Abbas to the mourning tent to pay his respects to the family of ‎the murderer. ‎
Nor did the U.S. show any outrage at the fact that the funeral procession for father of 10 Rabbi ‎Michael Mark was hit by rocks thrown by Arabs who were apparently not satisfied that the victim was already ‎dead.‎
Nor was there any outrage at the attempted rekindling of medieval European blood libels by Abbas in the ‎European Parliament, when he claimed that Israelis were poisoning Arab wells. When AP reporter Matt ‎Lee tried to get Kirby, the same State Department spokesman who threw a temper tantrum over ‎Jewish building in Judea and Samaria, to condemn Abbas' statements, Kirby ‎could not make himself utter the words. Pressed by Lee, he made himself say, "We have long ‎said what we want is for both sides to ratchet down not just the violence but the rhetoric, which can ‎inflame some of the violence. And we just don't find that sort of rhetoric helpful."
What a pitiful ‎statement. Especially given that all the inflammatory rhetoric and the ensuing terrorism ‎is coming from the PA, not from Israel. It has always been this way and the State Department is ‎perfectly aware of this. There is no moral equivalence and no "cycle of violence." It is all very one-‎sided, but by consciously making statements such as this, the State Department legitimizes the false ‎narrative of the conflict and ensures that it continues at full speed. Essentially, it tells the PA to just continue ‎its dirty business, because no matter what it does, there will be no consequences politically or, ‎even more importantly, financially. Just like the EU, the U.S. treats the PA as an unruly toddler who can do ‎no wrong and must be indulged in all its whims. That, too, is a racism of low expectations, coming from ‎the country that has recently elevated political correctness into something of a second U.S. Constitution. ‎
We know that for the U.S. administration, in particular the State Department, the building of houses ‎matters. The question that remains is this: Does the administration also believe that Jewish lives ‎matter?‎

Judea and Samaria - it's all in a name

What is in a name? What difference does it make if we refer to this land as the 'West Bank' or Judea and Samaria? The answer is everything. We lose our souls, more, we surrender our identity. We sacrifice our past, diminish the incredible connection we have with this land.
And worse, we allowed quasi-Israeli media outlets to damage our standing in the world by catering to their ghetto mentality. When someone who lives in this area writes that it is the ultra-right who use this terminology, we all lose.
I live in the land of Israel, my home, my heart. My home graces the mountains of Judea.
And when this great grandfather dies, it will be Yisrael written on his tombstone, not Harpo. His neighbors can recognize his name or call them whatever he wants, but his family must know. This is what he was born, this is how he should live.
Two of my children and all of my grandchildren have been born in this land. We will name it as it was, as it is. The larger question is not why we want to be known by our ancient and reborn name, but why others seek to take it away and more, why we let them.
Judea. Samaria. Yehudah and Shomron. Home. Ours. Forever. Our heritage, our rights, our history and our future really IS in the name.
We are Israel.

As we continue on with showing the short talks given by the presenters and awardees of the Hasby Awards last Sunday....

In this award, Brian of London from Israellycool discusses the relevance of Israeli whiskey to public relations and Varda describes how she became such a wonderful commentator.

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The only blockade in history that allows tons of expensive chocolates to pass

Ma'an reports that Gazans somehow manage to buy tons of imported chocolates for Eid, "despite the blockade."

The chocolates are imported from imported from Spain, Italy and Greece as well as chocolate produced under the PA regime.

Six companies import chocolate through the Kerem Shalom crossing that Israel controls.

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Fatah cartoon for kids calls Jews messengers of Satan

From Palestinian Media Watch:

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?"

The text of the first part of the cartoon will be relevant to my speech being given Sunday night in Jerusalem.

Muslim man: "Prophet [Muhammad] agreed [that the Jews] would leave with their possessions, but not their weapons, so they would not fight with the [weapons] again."
Muslim boy: "So we drove them out without fighting. What a great victory...Praise and thanks to Allah..."
Satan 1: "We (i.e., Jews and satans) suffered a defeat from one of the soldiers of Allah, who we have no power over."
Satan 2: "What sort of soldier was it, my lord? I didn't see any fighting in this raid."
Satan 1: "It was 'fear' (i.e., Allah's soldier) that defeated the Jews and caused them to leave their lands [in Medina] in shame and disgrace, and it's what prevented me from going down to make them fight... Yes, satan. Don't you see that my hands are shaking [from 'fear']? ..."
Muslim man: "The Jews left while playing flutes and drums. How strange!"
Muslim boy: "They did not want to show their frustration over the defeat, [and behaved] as if they had won. May Allah humiliate them."

You can guess what the theme will be....

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Israel is accused of stealing cattle and kidnapping shepherds from Lebanon

From Al Araby:

Proving yet again that it is the modern-day, heavily armed equivalent of a Wild West criminal gang, Israel has now expanded its activities from occupation and illegal settlement, into cattle rustling.

On Wednesday, Israeli forces snatched hundreds of goats from a south Lebanon border village after failing to kidnap a goat herder, according to the National News Agency.

Israeli soldiers first tried to kidnap the Lebanese shepherd named as Mohammad Qassem Hashem near the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms.

When Hashem slipped from their hands, the soldiers stole more than 400 goats he owned, in an apparent act of revenge.

The Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers are attempting to retrieve them, according to the state-owned news agency.

Israeli soldiers routinely attempt to abduct Lebanese shepherds for a variery of reasons, including forcing them to provide information on Lebanese army and Hizballah positions.

Israeli soldiers are also known to snatch livestock animals from the border area, possibly meaning to intimidate locals hostile to Israel.

If Israel routinely attempts to kidnap shepherds and snatches sheep, one would expect that a formal complaint would be lodged with UNIFIL, which patrols the border and reports on all violations.

So I did a search for "sheep" and "shepherds" at the UNIFIL site. And here is what I found:

August 18, 2006

Violation of the Blue Line on the ground in Shebaa area has resumed. Yesterday, two Lebanese shepherds and approx. 100 sheep crossed the Blue Line towards Israel. Such incidents can endanger very fragile and tense situation.

Report from July 2011:

UNIFIL has finalized its investigation into the incident of 12 January, when the Israel Defense Forces apprehended another shepherd in the same area. The investigation concluded that available evidence pointed to a likely Blue Line violation by the shepherd. As a result of the number of incidents in this area, UNIFIL has intensified daily foot and vehicle patrols and increased the number of observation posts along the Blue Line in this area. UNIFIL also called upon the Lebanese Armed Forces to increase their activities and sensitize local shepherds concerning the grazing of their livestock close to the Blue Line. There were other ground violations of the Blue Line, mostly inadvertent, by Lebanese shepherds and farmers tending livestock or working in fields, mainly in the Shab’a Farms and KfarShouba areas.

June 2013 report:

During the reporting period, UNIFIL observed an increase in the number of ground violations of the Blue Line committed by shepherds or farmers, which occurred on an almost daily basis. Most of these violations were inadvertent and occurred mainly in the Shab’a Farms area. UNIFIL protested the violations to the Lebanese Armed Forces and recalled that it is the primary responsibility of Lebanese authorities to ensure full respect for the Blue Line in its entirety.

February 2015 report:

Most ground violations of the Blue Line were perpetrated by farmers or shepherds for short periods of time in the vicinity of Shab’a, Kafr Shuba, Bastara, Blida, El Majidiye (Sector East) and Rumaysh (Sector West). In some c ases, the shepherds, along with their flocks, stayed south of the Blue Line for several hours.

Virtually every incident I saw was of Lebanese shepherds violating the Blue Line. Not a single example of Israelis stealing sheep or kidnapping shepherds.

And since a high percentage of these violations occur around the Shebaa Farms area, that Hezbollah claims as its own, this means that it is likely that Hezbollah is encouraging farmers to enter that land to assert control.

Either way, Lebanese media is lying.

(h/t Yigal)

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07/07 Links Pt2: The Great Arab Implosion and Its Consequences; UNRWA Caught Lying Again

From Ian:

The Great Arab Implosion and Its Consequences

Who or what will replace a century of failed Sunni Arab dominance? What, if anything, can the West do to help shape the future?
In 2007, in a seminar room in Jerusalem, a day-long session was devoted to Israeli regional strategic perspectives. I was among the participants together with several other scholars, a former Israeli interior minister, a future Israeli defense minister, and two future Israeli ambassadors to the U.S. At a certain point, the talk turned to various scenarios for the regional future and the opportunities or dangers each of these entailed for Israel. When the possible breakup and partition of Arab states like Iraq or Syria was raised, the near-unanimous response was that this was simply too fantastic a scenario to contemplate.
Now we live that scenario. The great Sunni Arab implosion that began with the 2011 “Arab Spring” was unforeseen in its suddenness, violence, and extent. But some, both inside and outside the Arab world, had long suspected that, sooner or later, a day of reckoning would indeed arrive. (Among Westerners, the names of Bernard Lewis and David Pryce-Jones come most readily to mind.) Today, those in the West who acknowledge this great collapse for what it is will be better able to face the emerging realities. But the first and most important step is to recognize that there is no going back.

Why Are American Jews Abandoning Israel?

Dov Waxman, Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016) 328 pp., $29.95.
What transpired in Boston distressed the American Jewish community. Yet it didn’t come as a total surprise. The controversial nature of AIPAC is well known, and the unique ideological proclivities of younger American Jews are rapidly becoming better known. What went down the next day in Manhattan, nevertheless, did shock the community—or rather the vast majority of it. On April 20, IfNotNow marched into the lobby of the building that houses the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Around one hundred activists donned shirts reading, “No liberation with occupation,” and belted out songs in Hebrew. This was an arrow straight through the heart, for the ADL is possibly the most cherished institution of “mainstream” American Jewry. Established in 1913 in response to Eastern European pogroms, its slogan is “Imagine a World Without Hate” and its agenda involves advocating not just for a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also for LGBT rights, voting rights, disability rights, immigrants’ rights and women’s reproductive rights.
Many who want Israel to withdraw from the “Palestinian territories” (which, at the moment, usually means the West Bank, including East Jerusalem) also participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS). Jews, it’s estimated by various sources, constitute at least 20 percent of the economic-pressuring BDS, which is akin to the campaign once waged against apartheid-era South Africa. Jewish Voice for Peace, a pro-BDS nonprofit based in Oakland, California, “is perhaps the fastest-growing Jewish organization on campuses nationwide,” a professor at Brooklyn College posited in the New York Times recently. In a late-March interview on the Michael Medved Show, Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, went so far as to brand BDS “an anti-Jewish movement.” (It’s not a stretch to deduce from Booker’s remark that BDS is anti-Semitic and, hence, Jews involved with it are “self-haters.”)
If this wasn’t enough to raise blood pressure, mainstream American Jews are realizing that they’re vanishing and, as a result, a lot that’s precious is being lost. Spend a day at a Reform temple—about 35 percent of Jews subscribe to Reform Judaism, making it the largest Jewish denominational movement in the United States by a wide margin—and you’ll discover that baby boomer parents and, especially, greatest generation grandparents are alarmed. The sound of thousands of light switches switching off in cavernous sanctuaries across the country rings in their ears—and hearing aids.
Within several generations, perhaps two or three, it’s possible that very few people in the United States not adhering to some variant of “observant” Judaism will readily self-identify as “Jewish.” Pew found that 30 percent of American Jews have no denominational affiliation while 22 percent have “no religion.” Before 1970, intermarriage was under 20 percent among American Jews of all denominations. Since 2000, it’s been over 72 percent among non-Orthodox American Jews. Additionally, and it almost goes without saying, religious ritual, custom and belief drop precipitously in intermarried households. Even Judaism as a “culture,” which in the Land of the Free today means hardly more than an affinity for bagels, sarcasm and social justice, will soon be more common among non-Jews than Jews, if it isn’t already. From coast to coast, mainstream American Jews reared on a love of Israel and a Judaism of progressive values are despondent and desperately eager to understand what’s happening.

IsraellyCool: UNRWA Caught With Their Lying Pants On Fire Again

Poor Ali Farahat. He needs surgery, but he can’t get out of Gaza.
Well, little does Ali Farahat know, people leave Gaza all the time to take advantage of the many wonderful medical facilities the Zionist Entity has to offer.
All you really need to do is fill out a little paperwork. Hey, us Israelis do it all the time when we need medical care.
And that’s when COGAT Israel, the agency responsible for coordinating civilian issues in the territories, replied to UNRWA’s very disingenuous tweet and accompanying article with 3 simple tweets that not only demolished this lie but turned it into a plea for the public to help Ali’s parents issue the paperwork necessary to facilitate his treatment.