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A Palestinian father pushed his 4-year-old son toward armed Israeli soldiers on Friday, encouraging his son to throw stones at the soldiers. At the same time, he taunted the Israeli soldiers to shoot at his son, calling out to them: "Shoot this little boy, after all you always do that to small children."PA TV falsifies video to hide handshake between Israeli soldier and boy
However, when the little boy reached one of the Israeli soldiers, the soldier stretched out his hand to the boy who immediately "high fived" and shook the soldier's hand. Finally, when the boy fulfilled his father's instructions to throw stones, he threw the stones at the empty field and not at the soldiers.
Palestinian Media Watch has viewed two video versions of this incident. The unedited version appears as described above and was published on the Facebook page of Israeli Army Spokesperson and Head of the Foreign Press Branch Lt. Col. Peter Lerner. However, official PA TV did not want its viewers to see a friendly handshake between a young Palestinian child and an Israeli soldier, so they distorted the footage. In slow motion, PA TV showed the Israeli soldier reaching out his hand to the Palestinian boy, but then jumped a few seconds ahead so it seems as if the boy never shook the soldier's hand. The PA TV reporter completed the deception by lying to the viewers, claiming the boy refused to shake hands with the soldier:
The most recent wave of Palestinian terrorism that began in September 2015 – a wave of stabbings and knifings now being emulated in European cities – has a particularly grotesque feature: child terrorists.Abbas and the strategy of falsehood
Palestinian children who directly perpetrate acts of terrorism, including murder, violate the most fundamental of human rights: the right to life. The Palestinian adults who encourage Palestinian child terrorism violate one of the most fundamental rights of the child: the right not to take part in armed conflict or hostilities.
The Palestinian Authority has supported its claim that "Palestine" is ready for statehood, and responded to the UN General Assembly's formal recognition of "non-member observer state" status of the "State of Palestine," by formally acceding to international legal prohibitions on children in armed conflict.
In violation of those legal obligations there have been at least 36 separate terrorist attacks by Palestinian children...
The Secretary-General's report is due to be taken up by the Security Council on Tuesday, August 2, 2016.
The State of Israel would have been established with or without the Balfour Declaration. As David Ben-Gurion, then-chairman of the Jewish Agency, testified before a royal British committee in 1937, "Our right to Eretz Israel does not derive from the [British] mandate and the Balfour Declaration. It predates those. ... The Bible, which was written by us, in our own Hebrew language and in this very country, is our mandate."
Abbas certainly knows that the founding of the State of Israel was not the result of the Balfour Declaration, but raising these claims about the declaration, within the legal and historical spectrums, is meant to give weight to the claim that the founding of the State of Israel supposedly robbed the Palestinian "nation" of its land, its sovereignty and its historical purpose.
Nonetheless, this is not just about rewriting history, but practical tactics, because if the validity of the Balfour Declaration is undermined, the logical conclusion is that the Jews do not have a right to a state in any part of "Palestine," not even within the framework of "two states for two peoples."
This, by the way, is also the intention of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, which is raging in different parts of the world, including in the U.S., and is not a struggle against the "occupation," but rather meant to undermine the right of the State of Israel to exist. This sentiment is the only reason Abbas refuses to hold true peace negotiations with Israel and various Arab leaders throughout recent decades rejected all the agreements and compromises offered by the State of Israel, the Zionist entities that preceded her or other international bodies. One of the lessons we should learn from all this is that the Palestinians' disregard for international agreements puts the value of any agreements with them into question.
Palestinian swimmer Mary al-Atrash can't wait to make a splash at the Rio Olympics in August...
The 22-year-old university graduate's preparations have been hampered because she does not have an Olympic-sized pool to train in. There are none in the Palestinian territories and she has to settle for a 25-meter pool.
Use of superior Israeli facilities and training partners in nearby Jerusalem where there are several Olympic-sized pools and many swimmers, has not been possible due to the long-standing conflict with Israel.
FACT CHECK: Mary al-Atrash CAN train for the Olympics in Jerusalem, if she ever applied for a permit.Reuters wrote its story without asking Israel whether it was true, and it didn't correct it. Which pretty much tells you all you need to know about Reuters' lack of objectivity.
The Olympic candidate, Mary al-Atrash, claimed she cannot train for the Rio Olympics due to “Israeli Restrictions”. However, we found Mary never applied for a permit to train in Jerusalem in the first place.
Rather than investigate the truth, it's a shame that media outlets such as Mondoweiss use these stories to paint Israel in a negative light.
We wish Mary the best of luck at the 2016 Rio Olympics and hope she will come train in Jerusalem upon her return.
As a target audience, foreign activists are perfect. They are concentrated in a small space. Many are obsessive and almost none check the veracity of the message they are being given. The term ‘like shooting ducks in a barrel’ comes to mind.
Additionally, because Facebook is ‘merely’ a social media platform, anyone can open an account in any name they choose. Beyond an email account which can be set up freely in minutes, you need no documentation whatsoever. Double and triple accounts, deliberate misspelling of names, completely false identities. There are also tell-tale signs in what I did not see. I did not see a single message sent from anyone in the West Bank. None sent by anyone seeking assistance for the Syrian refugees. 100% of the private requests came from Gaza.
As Ami Horovitz found in Portland State University, people are willing to donate directly to Hamas. I cannot be sure of the scale of what is occurring, but I saw dozens in a single Facebook account. Each of them were connected to dozens if not hundreds of other activists. Each activist would have others connected to him. This in every community where BDS operates. Crossing nations, crossing continents. This is a massive industry, and we are potentially talking about millions of dollars.
As the foreign activists are truly duped by the propaganda, how many of them are giving their money online, directly to someone in Gaza? Someone who could well be sitting in a room with other Hamas operatives, all doing the same thing. And remember too, that for every visible project, for each of the crowdfunding pages, there are scores, hundreds, if not thousands of requests, taking place behind closed doors. An entire industry that lives in the shadows.
A current of political change for Israel is in the air. The moribund "two-state solution," that Prime Minister Netanyahu solemnly and routinely voices, and which the Republican Party has now ignored, can be transcended now by considering new thought and discourse.
Israeli Sovereignty
The justification for Israel formally annexing Judea and Samaria – as was done for East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights – is compelling: the right of an ancient people to the territorial core of its homeland; defending a narrow coastal plain from attack; and denying the emergence of an irredentist Islamic entity from threatening the very existence of Israel.
The imposition of Israeli sovereignty throughout Judea and Samaria, perhaps in stages, would however be a political game-changer evoking deleterious ramifications: domestically, grave dissension between Jewish segments of the population; internally, violent Palestinian resistance; regionally, Arab threats to actively oppose the decision; and internationally, condemnation of Israel and threatened sanctions for violating its legal obligation to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The inconclusive nature of the existing situation could yet prod Israel, while battered with interminable demands to implement a 'two state solution', to initiate a bold new political démarche.
When I was asked to run as a delegate on the progressive Hatikva platform to the 2010 World Zionist Congress, I encountered my personal rubicon, the line I could not cross. I was required to sign the "Jerusalem Program." This statement of principles asked me to affirm that I believed in “the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem as capital” for the Jewish people. It encouraged “Aliyah to Israel,” that is, the classic negation of the diaspora and as such the ending of Jewish life outside a homeland in Israel.
The death of vast numbers of Jewish communities as a result of Zionist activity has impoverished the Jewish people, robbing us of these many cultures that have fallen into the maw of Israeli homogenization. The ideal of a religiously neutral state worked amazingly well for the millions of Jews who came to America.I wonder what vibrant Jewish communities Israel is responsible for destroying.
I feel a sense of repulsion when I enter a synagogue in front of which the congregation has planted a sign reading, “We Stand With Israel.”
But there is more to this than just a diplomatic evasion. By focusing on Balfour and treating it as illegal, what the Palestinians are doing is rejecting the very legitimacy of the Jewish presence anywhere in the country. It is not for nothing that Abbas has often referred to pre-1967 Israel as being occupied territory rather than just the West Bank.
For years, those intent on pressuring Israel into making more territorial concessions to the Palestinians have tried to claim that “moderates” like Abbas truly want peace. But every peace negotiation or Israeli gesture such as Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal of every soldier, settler, and settlement from Gaza in 2005 hasn’t budged the Palestinians from the same intransigent position they’ve held since they rejected Balfour, the Mandate, and the 1947 UN partition plan.
So rather than merely a nonsensical diversion into fantasy, the Palestinian lawsuit illustrates the plain fact that their goal remains reversing the verdict of history altogether; not merely a demand for an Israeli pullout from the West Bank and Jerusalem. This reflects the state of Palestinian public opinion and the fact that their national identity has remained intrinsically tied to the century-old war against Zionism. Not until they give up this futile quest will peace be possible–something that the majority of Israelis already understand but which has eluded the U.S. government and many liberal American Jews.
As the Obama administration and the Europeans plot their next move to pressure Israel into making the same mistake in the West Bank that Sharon made in Gaza, they ought to be paying attention to the signals Abbas is sending to the world. So long as the Palestinians are still trying to erase Balfour, the idea that they are prepared to accept the state of Israel is the real joke.
Many Palestinians refer to cities inside Israel proper as "occupied." Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Tiberias, Ramle and Lod, for example, are often described in the Palestinian media as "Palestinian Cities" or "Occupied Cities." Jews living in these cities, as well as other parts of Israel, are sometimes referred to as "Settlers."What the Arab League Meeting Reveals
Many Palestinians have still not come to terms with Israel's right to exist. For them, this not only about the "occupation" of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. The real "occupation", for them, began with the creation of Israel in 1948.
Non-Arabic speakers may find this assertion baseless, because what they hear and read from Palestinian representatives in English does not reflect the messages being relayed to Palestinians in Arabic.
It is no secret that Palestinian leaders have failed to prepare their people for peace with Israel, and deny its right to exist.
The Arab League's precipitous decline in political clout was symbolically exposed by the failure of many key national leaders to attend the conference. The leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Tunisia did not attend. Only eight national leaders from the 22-member organization attended the conference.
However, the most significant aspect of this year's conference was the downgrading in significance of Palestinian issues on the agenda. Perhaps aware of this development, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas also decided not to attend. However, PA Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad al-Maliki explained that Abbas could not attend due to the recent death of his brother. Later, Maliki, somewhat quixotically, called upon the Arab League to help sponsor a UN Resolution to initiate a lawsuit against the United Kingdom for having embraced the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which made it official London policy to support the creation of a national home for the Jewish People.
Nevertheless, when the representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hectored delegates that they no longer seem to treat the depressed state of the Palestinian people as the overriding issue that should unite all Arabs, his pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears. The PFLP gave public evidence of the Palestinian issue's fall from priority, stating on their website that "this year's resolutions are no more than a carbon copy of the resolutions of the Arab Summits made in previous years. It reflects the situation too of the Arab League which long ago lost the Arab peoples' confidence."
Hamas also ruefully expressed similar frustration with the Arab League delegates, saying the summit "reflects the status of decline which the Arabs are suffering, even at the official level."
“The Israeli government is unlawfully incarcerating prisoners from Gaza inside Israel and then making it very hard for their families to visit them,” said Sari Bashi, Israel and Palestine director. “The government’s security concerns over having these families enter Israel for visits with their loved ones are of its own making.”The main point of the report is that Israel has placed too many restrictions on Gaza family visits to prisons in Israel, such as not allowing siblings of terrorists to visit if they are above 15. There are obvious security concerns with older siblings who are very often the first to become terrorists themselves, and Israel is quite within its rights under international law to prioritize security over family visits.
Israel holds most Palestinian prisoners who were apprehended in occupied territory inside Israel, in violation of international humanitarian law prohibitions against transferring residents from occupied territory. It then requires family members to obtain permits from the military to enter Israel to visit them. This means that family members must pass an Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet) security screening to visit their imprisoned relatives.
While holding these prisoners in Gaza is not practicable, because Israel ended its permanent ground troop presence in Gaza in 2005, Israel can and should transfer them to the West Bank, the other part of the occupied Palestinian territory, Human Rights Watch said. The prohibition against removing prisoners from the occupied territory is designed, in part, to allow them to maintain family ties, and the Israeli government should facilitate visits for family members from Gaza to the maximum extent possible.Why is it not possible for Israel to hold the prisoners in Gaza? After all, isn't it occupied territory according to HRW? Geneva doesn't make a distinction between "occupied territory where the occupying army has actual control" and "occupied territory where the army has no possibility of maintaining the obligations of the Convention." HRW is making such a distinction, which has no basis.
We reiterate and reemphasize that in everything connected with conditions of detention and the relevant provisions of the Geneva Convention and even of additional international laws regarding the holding of detainees, this Court determined clearly and unequivocally that Israel must respect the provisions of international law, and that every detainee is entitled to conditions of detention appropriate to his human self respect. This Court did not withhold criticism as to the determination of physical conditions and personal welfare needed by the detainee, and in this matter, as aforesaid, there has been considerable improvement, precisely because the detainees are held in Israel. As we noted, the provisions of the Convention must be interpreted as bearing on the special conditions of holding of the area in the hands of Israel, and in consideration of its principled initial point, as laid down in Article 27 of the Convention, which instructs as follows:The Court also notes that if Israel would build new prisons in the territories, that could cause other problems in international law, both for prisoners and for Palestinian Arabs.
“Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity...
However, the Parties to the conflict may take such measures of control and security in regard to protected persons as may be necessary as a result of the war.”
In this the respondents are observing the relevant provisions of the Geneva Convention regarding conditions of of holding of detainees, In this matter, with adaptation, the words of Justice Bach in the Sajidia Case are good in that he felt that the Convention must be observed according to the proper interpretation, and he said: “It cannot be understood from these words that all the provisions included in the Convention, and relating to the detention of administrative detainees must be observed blindly; each provision must be examined according to its importance, vitality and appropriateness to the special circumstances of the detainees camp that is the subject of our discussion” (ibid, p.832)
In the circumstances created thought must be given to the practical implication of erecting new prison facilities in the area in the required scope after withdrawal of IDF forces from the cities in which were facilities in the past, erection in the course of which there may be harm to detainees from the viewpoint of conditions of holding and to the local residents on whose land the facilities will be built. In application of the provisions of the Geneva Convention they must be implemented in adaptation to the reality that was not foreseen by the drafters of the Convention; the geographic proximity of the area to Israel must also be taken into account and the fact that there is nothing in the holding of detainees in Israel to necessarily deprive them of family visits or legal aid. There must, therefore, be separation between the obligation to observe the humanitarian provisions of the Convention and the maintenance of conditions of detention of detainees and between the argumentation as to the location of detention; in consideration that the question of location of the detention was arranged years ago in enactments of the Knesset, and its legality was approved in verdict of this Court, and in consideration that the conditions of Israel’s holding of the area and the reality prevailing between Israel and the area, the holding in prison facilities in Israel does not strike at the essential provisions of international law.
Although for years the most widely read daily, Yediot Ahronot, and its owner took a decidedly anti-Netanyahu line, claims of left-wing bias fall flat these days, when most Israelis are getting their news from Israel Hayom or Walla News, and when the only remaining liberal bastion — Haaretz — struggles to stay afloat. And yet Mr. Netanyahu continues to present himself as a victim of a vindictive press.But Yediot is still around. Haaretz is still around. No one is pressuring them to change their editorial line. The success of Israel Hayom and the poor performance of Haaretz have nothing to do with governmental policies, and everything to do with Israelis considering Haaretz to be way too far left and Israel Hayom being free.
The only heartening thing in all this is that news outlets are pushing back to maintain their independence. Investigative “60 Minutes”-type programs like “Uvda” (“Fact”) and “Hamakor” (“The Source”) continue to delve into government corruption and to air in prime-time slots. “Despite the assault on the press, the Israeli media remains very critical, very aggressive, and has a lot of chutzpah. It’s a kind of basic instinct that’s part of our DNA,” Ms. Dayan, who hosts Uvda, told me.OK. We determined that major TV and newspaper outlets are quite harsh on Bibi even after he's "crushed" the free press. But at least the article proved that Walla is firmly under Bibi's control, right?
Earlier this year, Walla News’ diplomatic correspondent Amir Tibon wrote an article critical of Mr. Netanyahu’s response to the latest wave of Palestinian violence under the headline “Netanyahu’s Promises of Calm Replaced by Cheerleading.” Soon after the piece was published, Mr. Tibon was told that the prime minister’s office was pressuring editors to remove it from the website. Taking to Twitter, Mr. Tibon wrote of the prime minister’s “attempts to silence criticism.” Apparently as a result, his article remained in place. One thing did change, however: The word “Netanyahu” was removed from its headline.Hold on - Walla published an anti-Netanyahu article? But I thought they were in his pocket! You know, the whole Bezeq thing?
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
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The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
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