Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, September 12, 2016

Abby Martin: just another conspiracy theorist who hates Israel (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

If you look up Abby Martin on her own website, you will learn that at the tender age of 19, she “began streaming her thoughts and emotions through a paint brush” and “discovered her niche.” Unfortunately, Martin didn’t stick with painting and now prefers to ‘stream her thoughts and emotions’ through “news” programs that offer much food for thought to conspiracy theorists and people who can’t hear enough about how evil America and the West are. It goes without saying that pleasing such an audience also requires an intense hatred for the world’s only Jewish state.

Martin is certainly no slacker in this respect. Her views on Israel are informed by the likes of Max Blumenthal, whom she has interviewed repeatedly and reverently. In November 2014, she commiserated with Blumenthal when he complained bitterly about “How Germany is Using ‘Anti-Semitism’ to Shut Down Israel Criticism;” exactly a year later, she talked with him about “Palestine’s Rebellion” – a euphemism for the wave of murderous terror attacks that began a year ago – and “Israel’s Fascism.” Shortly before this interview with Blumenthal, Martin also produced a vile anti-Israel propaganda clip under the title “The Distortion & Death Behind Israel/Palestine Coverage,” which features some disgusting cartoons, and where she calls Gaza-based terror groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad “resistance forces” (11.41).

When she recently visited Israel in order to produce yet another program showcasing her hate for the world’s only Jewish state, many of her related tweets garnered hundreds of retweets and heartfelt “likes.” However, her Twitter fans seemed most pleased when she tweeted: “Israel is the most Orwellian country in the world. Its entire existence depends on projecting what they do to others as being done to them.”

One of the responses to her tweet came from BDS supporter @Ha1Piper, who posted the following image:

Claiming that Israel “uses” the Holocaust “as an excuse to commit genocide” is of course popular among anti-Israel activists, but it is also antisemitic.

Here you can watch Abby Martin making pretty much the same vile claims with great passion and utter conviction.

Of course, Abby Martin feels it’s totally unfair to accuse her of antisemitism when all she pretends to be doing is “being against Netanyahu’s policies” and “criticizing the Israeli government’s bad policies.” It’s really such an unfortunate coincidence that – just like Jew-haters everywhere – she seems unable to “criticize” the world’s only Jewish state without demonizing it as the epitome of evil while whitewashing murderous genocidal terror groups like Hamas that want very much what Martin and her fans want: to see Israel replaced with yet another Muslim-Arab majority state.

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09/12 Links Pt1: Yarden Frankl: How the World Sees Jerusalem; Gordis: Getting to ‘why’

From Ian:

Daniel Gordis: Getting to ‘why’

Yet those early Zionists cared about much more than mere safety. They believed that if a new Jewish state could come to be, a new Jew would also emerge.
Who would that Jew be? What would she stand for? How would she be educated? What values would she place at the center of society? About that, those Zionists disagreed passionately. On this, though, they agreed: As they imagined Jewish sovereignty restored, they also imagined the Jew recreated.
Do the Jews have a purpose in today’s world? Millennia ago, we taught the world about monotheism, Shabbat, the evils of slavery, the notion that the rich could not harm the poor with impunity, society’s responsibility to widows and orphans. Yet what ideas are the Jews contributing to the world today? What is our 21st-century prophetic message that – if only it were heard – might constitute the Jewish people’s raison d’être?
And what role does a Jewish state play in our shaping that message? Is the state our stage? Is it our laboratory? In what ways has the Jewish state already modeled ideas and behaviors from which the world could learn? In what ways must we continue to rethink what a sovereign Jewish state should be, if we are to justify the high cost that protecting it exacts from our people?
Perhaps we should set aside settlements and borders, checkpoints and refugees – not because they are unimportant, but because our inability to shape policy is part of what leads to the vituperativeness of our discourse. If we were to do so, would we locate both a subject that could animate large swathes of the Jewish people, engage us in a conversation about why the Jewish people matters and, in the process, foster a conversation much less toxic than the one we have created?
We have yet to try. Strangely, in the midst of all the Israel-teaching that we do, we hardly ever discuss why – and whether – the State of Israel really matters. Yet if we are to have any hope of a young generation of Jews wanting to have anything to do with the Jewish state, it is time to do what Jews have always done best. It is time to place front and center the question that matters most of all – the question of “why?

JPost Editorial: Unhelpful messages

Netanyahu’s basic argument – that the Palestinian demand to uproot Jewish settlements reveals bigotry and intolerance – has been made by this paper in the past. If the peace process is genuine, a future Palestinian state should be tolerant enough to accommodate and protect a Jewish minority in its midst. That the Palestinian political leadership is unable to contemplate such an arrangement is a worrying sign that any purported peace process would be empty of meaning. Only when settlements cease to be perceived as the key obstacle to peace, will there be hope of a true reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.
However, Netanyahu’s choice of words was unfortunate. The US and other pro-Zionist supporters of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not advocates of ethnic cleansing. They view the dismantling of Jewish communities as a means of reducing tension between the sides. These settlements should be removed not because Jews’ unalterable ethnic affiliation disqualifies them to live in this geographic area, rather because the legacy of the conflict makes it impossible for the two peoples to live together right now. It is, therefore, better to separate the two peoples in the short term.
The US position – shared by a large swath of the international community – should not be confused with support for ethnic cleansing of Jews. The idea that Israelis and Palestinians cannot live with one another and therefore must be separated underlies the reasoning of the two-state solution. Zionist political parties that support such a solution – such as Labor and Meretz, and even Netanyahu according to his famous Bar-Ilan speech in 2009 – believe that peace is worth the heavy price of uprooting Jewish settlements. They also believe that maintaining control over Judea and Samaria with its large Palestinian population for the sake of the settlements undermines Israel’s standing as a democracy.
Indeed, it was Menachem Begin, Israel’s first prime minister from the Right, who set the precedent for uprooting settlements and transferring Jewish populations as a precondition for peace with our Arab neighbors. The 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty was made possible after Begin agreed to dismantle Jewish settlements built in Sinai.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Bad News
for Israel-Haters

Sheikh Abdullah Tamimi and his colleagues do not believe in boycotts and divestment. They are convinced that real peace can be achieved through dialogue between Palestinians and all Israelis -- not just those who are affiliated with the left-wing. The Israeli left-wing, they contend, does not have a monopoly over peace-making.
For Tamimi, real peace begins between the people and through economic cooperation and improving the living conditions of the Palestinians. This, he explains, is more important than the talk about the establishment of a Palestinian state, which he believes, under the current circumstances, is not a realistic option. This notion goes against the ideas of the advocates of "anti-normalization" and others in the West obviously acting against the true interests of the Palestinians by promoting boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.
Venal leadership has always been the main tragedy of the Palestinians. But it has created a vacuum that provides an opportunity for Palestinians such as Tamimi to search for other alternatives. This, of course, comes as bad news for those who hate Israel and keep hoping to destroy it. Now the question is, who will triumph: Palestinians and their Jewish neighbors in the West Bank who wish to live in peace, or the anti-Palestinian, anti-Israel, "anti-normalization" activists who seek to derail a true peace at any cost?

No separation of mosque and state in "Palestine" (correction)

One of the more under-reported stories in the West is how a Palestinian state would be an explicitly Muslim state, in many ways far more than Israel is a Jewish state.

Article 4 of the Palestinian Basic Law states "Islam is the official religion in Palestine. Respect for the sanctity of all other divine religions shall be maintained.
The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be a principal source of legislation." Islam is not an official religion, the official religion.

Yet no one complains about "apartheid."

The extent of involvement of the Palestinian government in religious affairs is ignored by the West. They have a Ministry of Waqf and Religious Affairs that issues rulings under the name of the Palestinian Authority. Here's one example on how Mahmoud Abbas' government tells women how to dress:

There are no howls of outrage over this from supposedly liberal and human rights groups.

Today, during Eid Al Adha celebrations, as he does every year, Mahmoud Abbas participated in the ceremony in his own presidential palace.

Abbas at Eid service in 2013

Separation of mosque and state? It is not even a remote possibility for "Palestine." But no one even considers bringing this up as an issue, while many bitterly and falsely accuse Israel of being a theocracy.

CORRECTION: Originally I reported that Abbas led the service, but he did not. (h/t Ibn Boutros)

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From Times of London:

The head of a controversial charity is leaving without a job to go to amid investigations by the Charity Commission into the organisation’s “campaigning and political activities”.

John Hilary, executive director of War on Want, will step down next month after growing controversy about the charity’s work against Israel. War on Want funds Israeli Apartheid Week, an event at universities that Jewish Human Rights Watch has accused of “targeting and harassing Jewish students and inviting anti-semitic speakers to campuses”.

At this year’s event, War on Want paid for the accommodation of a speaker, Steven Salaita, who appeared to defend violence, saying: “If we are going to reduce a project of ethnic cleansing, illegal settlement and military occupation to the minuscule chance that a soldier or a settler will be harmed by an act of resistance by the natives, then we forfeit all right to be taken seriously.”

Another speaker, Malia Bouattia, who is now president of the National Union of Students, claimed UK government policy was fuelled by “Zionist and neocon lobbies”. A third called for Israel’s destruction.

War on Want also campaigns against the “violence of neoliberalism”, saying benefit cuts in the UK are a form of “violence against the poor”. British law says an organisation cannot be a charity if its purposes are political, but War on Want explicitly says it is a “political organisation” that believes in “justice, not charity”.

Its website states: “We do not provide humanitarian relief or deliver services to the poor . . . For War on Want, change comes from contesting power through concerted political action.”

The Charity Commission said it had received complaints about War on Want, “particularly in respect of its campaigning and political activities”, and would be publishing an “operational case report” into the charity, a rare procedure that is carried out only when there is “significant public interest in the issues involved” or “lessons that other charities can learn” from it. The case began last year after a complaint by Jewish Human Rights Watch.

Hilary has repeatedly denied the existence of any inquiry, calling it a “complete fabrication.” This year he said the Charity Commission had “rebuffed all the complaints which were made against War on Want in the past by certain different Zionist groups”.

However, in an email seen by The Sunday Times, a commission official, Neil Robertson, said it was “not necessarily” taking up Jewish Human Rights Watch’s specific concerns but had identified “regulatory issues of our own that require attention”.

Hilary said: “My decision to leave the organisation was taken many months ago, in view of the fact that I have been at War on Want for 12 successful years. Any implication there is another reason . . . is pure fantasy.”

War on Want was actually the major sponsor of Israeli Apartheid Week this year, as this poster detail shows:

Their website brags:

War on Want has worked for decades to support the call for justice for Palestinians. We support the activist movement behind the Palestinian call for a global campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, focusing on high-profile actions and direct challenges to corporations complicit in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. War on Want coordinates its actions closely with the Boycott National Committee in Palestine, as well as with Palestinian social movements and human rights groups opposing Israel’s continuing oppression of the Palestinian people. We confront UK and EU support for Israel through our call for an immediate cessation of all contact with Israeli arms manufacturers, including those responsible for building the next generation of UK military drones. Our credibility and strong partnerships with Palestinian organisations give War on Want a unique position as the largest mainstream charity demanding justice for Palestinians.

Notice it doesn't say "occupation." The organization is against Israel altogether, and Israel is the only country it targets in such a way.

One of its funders is Interpal, which is designated by the US State Department as a terrorist organization.

(h/t Adam Levick)

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Would forcing Jews out of Judea and Samaria be ethnic cleansing?

Leftist Israelis and many Westerners are upset an Binyain Netanyahu's video where he said that a Palestinian state that would include no Jews in Judea and Samaria would be practicing ethnic cleansing.

Chemi Shalev is livid and creates a litany of reasons why Netanyahu decided to say this:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim in a Facebook video on Friday that the Palestinian demand for the evacuation of Jewish settlements from the West Bank constitutes “ethnic cleansing” belongs in the same league as “Arabs are coming to vote in droves” and “the Mufti persuaded Hitler to exterminate the Jews.” It’s the kind of statement you can’t believe he really said until you see he really said it. Then come the aftershocks, when all sorts of people in the know laud the utterance as a brilliant gambit of a grandmaster strategist.
He wanted to divert the public agenda from the recent crisis over railroad construction on Shabbat, which tainted him, to rebuffing the expected backlash of leftists over his right wing assertions, at which he excels. He is distracting attention from the ongoing police investigation of potential corruption charges. He wants to humiliate Mahmoud Abbas a bit more, after the Palestinian leader was forced to agree to a Moscow summit without preconditions, and perhaps to scuttle the meeting altogether. He wants to show Yair Lapid, who has been breathing down his neck in the polls after assuming a more right wing position, how a consummate rabble-rouser can muster up the nationalist mob without even breaking a sweat. He wants to stick it to U.S. President Barack Obama while he still can, just for the fun of it - or to show what a ferocious war he'll wage against the prospective UN Security Council resolution on the conflict.

You can practically feel Gideon Levy's spittle on his laptop as he writes:

Israel knows a thing or two about ethnic cleansing. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows a thing or two about propaganda. The video he posted on Friday proves both points. Here’s the real thing — yet another record for Israeli chutzpah: The evacuation of settlers from the West Bank (which has never happened, and presumably never will) is ethnic cleansing.
Yes, the state that brought you the great cleansing of 1948 and that has never, deep in its heart, given up on the dream of cleansing, and that never stopped carrying out methodical microcleansings in the Jordan Valley, in the South Hebron Hills, in the area of Ma’aleh Adumim and in the Negev, too — that state calls the removal of settlers ethnic cleansing. That state compares the invaders of the occupied territories with the children of the land who clung onto their lands and homes.
Netanyahu proved once more that he is the real thing, the most authentic representative of the “Israeliness” that created reality for itself: Turning night into day, shamelessly and without any sense of guilt, without inhibition.

There is really only one question here: would the forced deportation of Jews from Judea and Samaria be considered ethnic cleansing? To make the question sharper: was the forced removal of Jews from Yamit during the withdrawal of the Sinai, and from Gaza during the disengagement, ethnic cleansing? Shalev asks this question in a starker fashion: were Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon guilty of ethnic cleansing of their own people in those examples?

The question is difficult to answer because there is no universally accepted definition of ethnic cleansing, a relatively recent term coined in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Wikipedia gives a few definitions:

The official United Nations definition of ethnic cleansing is "rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove from a given area persons of another ethnic or religious group".[21]

As a category, ethnic cleansing encompasses a continuum or spectrum of policies. In the words of Andrew Bell-Fialkoff:
[E]thnic cleansing [...] defies easy definition. At one end it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population exchange while at the other it merges with deportation and genocide. At the most general level, however, ethnic cleansing can be understood as the expulsion of a population from a given territory.[22]

Terry Martin has defined ethnic cleansing as "the forcible removal of an ethnically defined population from a given territory" and as "occupying the central part of a continuum between genocide on one end and nonviolent pressured ethnic emigration on the other end".[9]

The Bell-Fialkoff and Martin definitions would seem to indicate that a state can be guilty of ethnic cleansing against its own people, the UN definition seems to say it must only be against a different ethnic group.

But Shalev's question is actually a larger one than he admits. The only reason Begin and Sharon forcibly moved the Jews from those areas was to save their lives. The land was being given away, the Jews would not have ever been allowed to live in their same homes in Egypt or Gaza in safety. The larger context is that the Arabs would have ethnically cleansed those same Jews in a much more violent (i.e., genocidal) fashion, so this was the lesser of evils.

Presumably any withdrawal from parts of Judea and Samaria would follow the same model. The Palestinians are on the record as not allowing any Jewish "settlers" to remain on any land they control, and this demand for what is undeniably ethnic cleansing even according to the UN definition is outrageous, immoral - and accepted as perfectly OK by Western governments. It is not Begin and Sharon that were guilty of ethnic cleansing; it was the demand by the Egyptians and Palestinian Arabs that no Jews remain on their lands that made the expulsion a necessary evil. The Arab demand was paramount to ethnic cleansing, if not exactly that.

But, the critics say, the Jews that live there are there illegally to begin with! Does that make a difference?

Even if you accept that premise - which is false - the answer is no. Forced population transfer is considered a war crime by most formulations of international law, and there is no distinction between types of civilian population ("legal" or "illegal") when those laws were written. In no other case of "settlement" activity (Syrians in Lebanon, for example) were the settlers demanded to evacuate when the occupation ended. Therefore, the question of legality of the settlements is moot as far as the ethical and legal aspects of the expulsions are concerned.

Yet in this case it is still the state that is ultimately forcing its own people to move. Is that ethical or legal?

The best historic analogy would be to voluntary population transfers, where by treaty between powers some of the populations of two countries are swapped or one population is moved. This is the closest example one can find because any expulsion of Jews would be a result of a peace treaty.

While population transfer was a popular solution to problems from the late 19th century to post-World War II, since then the idea of forced population transfer even in the context of a treaty is considered objectionable at best, and for many it is considered a violation of international law.

In "Mass Expulsion in Modern International Law and Practice," by Jean-Marie Henckaerts, he writes,

Although the International Law Association has not clearly held that the compulsory exchange of populations is unlawful, it has at least declared it to be "inherently objectional." The ILA Declaration of Principles of International Law on Mass Expulsion provides: 'Compulsory transfer or exchange of population on the basis of race, religion, nationality of a particular social group or political opinion is inherently objectional, whether effected by treaties or by unilateral expulsion....' In contrast, the Draft Declaration provided: 'Compulsory transfers or exchanges of population by treaties are as inherently objectionable as unilateral expulsions, and any such treaties today are to be considered null and void as inconsistent with those peremptory norms of international law from which no derogation can be permitted (jus cogens).'.' The reference to peremptory international law was deleted at the suggestion of ILA International Committee on the Status of Refugees members Chung Il Chee, Henn-Juri Uibopuu and James Nafziger.

Wikipedia says:

The view of international law on population transfer underwent considerable evolution during the 20th century. Prior to World War II, many major population transfers were the result of bilateral treaties and had the support of international bodies such as the League of Nations.

...The tide started to turn when the Charter of the Nuremberg Trials of German Nazi leaders declared forced deportation of civilian populations to be both a war crime and a crime against humanity.[4] That opinion was progressively adopted and extended through the remainder of the century. Underlying the change was the trend to assign rights to individuals, thereby limiting the rights of states to make agreements that adversely affect them.
There is now little debate about the general legal status of involuntary population transfers: "Where population transfers used to be accepted as a means to settle ethnic conflict, today, forced population transfers are considered violations of international law."[5] No legal distinction is made between one-way and two-way transfers since the rights of each individual are regarded as independent of the experience of others.

The author of the Mass Expulsion book goes on to say that the only way that a population exchange would be agreed not to be illegal would be if it is coupled with a viable right to stay. "The ultimate criterium to decide whether the option to stay is viable is whether one can reasonably be expected to stay in the circumstances at hand."

Wikipedia amplifies this:

The final report of the [United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities ] (1997)[8] invoked numerous legal conventions and treaties to support the position that population transfers contravene international law unless they have the consent of both the moved population and the host population. Moreover, that consent must be given free of direct or indirect negative pressure."

It is fascinating how much emphasis is placed on whether the population being moved is doing it voluntarily. In modern human rights law, this is the single most important criterion as to whether population transfer is considered legal or not.

The overwhelming attitude of legal scholars as far as I can tell to a situation where any population is forced to move against their will, or even if they are pressured to move by the alternative of being in an nonviable living situation, is that such a demand is against international law and humanitarian law. Calling it ethnic cleansing is not inaccurate. And it is up to those who demand that Jews be removed from the territories to explain why they are advocating a likely violation of international law and a clear violation of the human rights of the so-called "settlers."

One other data point of interest for those who claim that the Jews in the territories have no legal, property or human rights whatsoever. In 2004, Human Rights Watch discussed the return of ethnic Kurds, Turkomans, and Assyrians displaced by Iraq’s Arabization program. HRW says

"The ethnic Arab populations brought in by the Iraqi government—some against their will, but most with financial or other incentives—also have accumulated rights that must be respected. Many Arabs paid the government for the homes or land they occupied, or built their own homes on the land. Because of the time that has elapsed since the original expropriations in some areas—nearly thirty years for the expropriations and expulsions of the mid-1970s—many properties have changed hands a number of times, and the current occupants are often far removed from the original beneficiary of the expropriation and Arabization policies."

In other words, even residents who were moved there in clear violation of international law have rights to their property, all the more so if they built it themselves and moved there voluntarily. HRW does not demand that these Arabs be removed from their homes; on the contrary, it only says that disputes over property that used to belong to the Kurds, Turkomans and Assyrians and that were later taken over or purchased by Arabs be judged with a consistent legal process. "The right to repossess private property must be balanced against any rights these secondary occupiers may have under domestic or international law, using impartial and efficient procedural safeguards."

Applying these standards to Judea and Samaria, HRW would have to admit that the Jews who moved there voluntarily and built their own homes - which is nearly all of them - have the right to stay in their homes since there is no other claimant.

But being the hypocrites that they are, HRW would never, ever say this about Jews in Judea.

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Palestinian police arrest a woman for witchcraft

The Palestinian police have announced that they have arrested a woman in Nablus who is suspected of witchcraft.

Apparently, two sisters went to the woman to help cure their sick father who could not be helped by doctors. They paid the suspect some 5300 shekels (about $1400) but his condition did not improve.

The police department did not say that they were arresting the woman for fraud. They said that they arrested her for suspicion of engaging in witchcraft.

This is a regular occurrence in Saudi Arabia, but it is relatively rare to hear about this in the PA. It sounds, however, as if they have a similar law on the books outlawing sorcery.

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Noon Presse, a Moroccan news site (ranked #19 in that country among all websites), published what they call a blacklist of Moroccan performers and artists who have "normalized" with Israel.

Among the seven artists named are:

One was Jamel Debbouze, an actor and director, who visited Israel in 2013 and even put on a yarmulka when visiting the Kotel.

Karima Skalli is a singer who, according to the article, was interviewed on Israeli radio for an hour but she claimed later that she didn't know who she was speaking to.

Nabil Ayouch is a producer and screenwriter whose mother is Jewish.

Chico Bouchikhi is a musician whose brother was killed by the Mossad in a case of mistaken identity. Even so, he said that he would perform in Israel if it would help peace (and apparently he has.)

Other artists made documentaries about and in Israel.

Many of these stars are quite popular, and for the most part their pro-Israel activities aren't even mentioned on their Facebook pages, so chances are that most Moroccans really aren't bothered by this.

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09/11 Links: The Palestinians were Osama bin Laden’s most ardent fans; Anti-Israel UN seminar led by BDS activists

From Ian:

Fifteen years on, 9/11 seared into New York history

New York marks the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks more resilient, wealthier and more diverse than ever, yet that terrible day is forever seared into its DNA.
The al-Qaeda hijackings of September 11, 2001 — the first foreign attack on the US mainland in nearly two centuries — ruptured a sense of safety and plunged the West into wars still being fought today.
More than 2,750 people were killed when two passenger jets destroyed the Twin Towers, the symbol of New York’s financial wealth and confidence. The remains of only 1,640 people have been identified.
Nearly 75,000 others live with mental and physical illnesses as a result of the attacks, many of them emergency workers who breathed in cancerous toxins as they valiantly tried to save lives.
In the last 15 years, New York has sought to craft a balance between remembering the victims and the carnage, and doing what it does best: endless regenerating, rebuilding and looking toward the future.

In Israel, 9/11 marked with shared grief, vow to fight terror together

Israeli politicians and American officials in Israel marked the 15th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying Israel stands “shoulder to shoulder” with the United States in combating Islamic terrorism.
“We remember the victims. We embrace their loved ones. We stand with our greatest ally, the United States of America, and with other partners in the battle against militant Islamic terrorism that spreads its fear, its dread, its murder around the world,” Netanyahu said at the start of his cabinet meeting.
Netanyahu made the remarks in English.
“Our memories are long, our determination is boundless. Civilized societies must band together to defeat these forces of darkness, and I’m sure we will,” he said.
Netanyahu’s remarks Sunday morning came ahead of most US memorials of the devastating al-Qaeda hijackings of September 11, 2001, that killed nearly 3,000 people in the first foreign attack on the US mainland in nearly two centuries.
Outside Jerusalem, US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro and others gathered at Israel’s 9/11 memorial to pay their respects at an official ceremony.

The Palestinians were Osama bin Laden’s most ardent fans

It is a fitting coincidence that just in time for this 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, The New York Review of Books (NYRB) has published an article by Middle East analyst Nathan Thrall urging President Obama to use his remaining time in office to pass a United Nations Security Council resolution that would define binding parameters for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Like most Middle East analysts, Thrall is apparently not interested in the longstanding and well-documented Palestinian support for terrorism, even though the pervasiveness of this support has arguably serious implications for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Thrall wants President Obama “to salvage his legacy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” asserting right at the outset that “Barack Obama entered the White House more deeply informed about and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than any incoming president before him.” He notes Obama’s friendship with the historian Rashid Khalidi and his acquaintance with Edward Said – whom he describes as “the most famous and eloquent Palestinian critic of the Oslo accords;” Thrall then goes on to recall that Obama “had offered words of encouragement to Ali Abunimah, the Palestinian activist, writer, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada, and leading advocate of a one-state solution.” What Thrall prefers not to mention is the fact that Abunimah is also an ardent Hamas supporter and has only disdain for Obama. As Abunimah cockily declared in a tweet some three years ago, referencing all of Obama’s Palestinian “friends” mentioned by Thrall: “Back when this While I have no way of knowing how “deeply informed” Obama is about the “Palestinian cause,” I do know for sure that anyone who gets their information from the likes of Khalidi, Said and Abunimah will simply be brainwashed with seething hatred for Israel. But this could actually pass as being “deeply informed” about the “Palestinian cause.”

Edward Said Mural at SFSU

Last April students from the San Francisco State University (SFSU) chapter of the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) called for "intifada" directly in the face of Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.

Barkat dropped by at the invitation of SFSU Hillel and subsequently found himself subject to cries of "Intifada! Intifada! Long live the Intifada!" within the venue, itself.

Because Israel is the dhimmi that got away, the Qur'an is very clear on Muslim obligations to Allah concerning those intransigent former social inferiors:

Death.

Or, in the current vernacular, "intifada."

It is unclear just what type of intifada SFSU GUPS was calling for, however.

The most recent intifada in Israel took various forms. For awhile the press referred to the "Stabbing Intifada." That is, young Arabs - inspired by what is ultimately a Qur'an-based call to murder Jews who refuse dhimmi status - grabbed kitchen knives or hand-axes and rushed into the streets attacking pretty much any Jews that they met, including old ladies and small children.

/And please make no mistake, the source of the conflict is a malicious seventh-century theocratic-political ideology that insists that any bit of land, however small, that was once grabbed by the Ummah, the Muslim community, must always, and forever, remain part of the Ummah./

Shortly thereafter, however, the Stabbing intifada merged into what they started calling the "Car Ramming Intifada" in which Arabs of driving-age sought to plow their vehicles into perfectly innocent people standing on the sidewalk or at bus stops within Israel.

This style of murder, it should be noted, may represent the inspiration behind the Bastille Day Massacre in Nice, France (July 14, 2016), where a jihadi rammed a 19 ton cargo truck into a crowd of celebrators slaughtering 86 people in the name of Allah.

But whatever type of intifada SFSU GUPs might have had in mind, one thing is clear:

They were calling for the murder of Jews.

As far as I know, I am the only person to even acknowledge this undeniable fact in print.

If there is no murder, or attempted murder, it is not an intifada. If it is an intifada, that means murder and attempted murder.

This is not a matter of interpretation, but a matter of fact.

Thankfully, Bay Area Jewish leadership successfully encouraged SFSU President Leslie Wong to take some action on the matter.

Finalized on August 29 of this year, the SFSU approved document, in response to the official investigation (pdf) of the Barkat fiasco, is entitled, "Initiatives and Interventions in Response to Incidents at Mayor Nir Barkat Event, April 2016". (pdf)

This is the document that tells the world just what SFSU intends to do about the fact that not only was the Barkat event disrupted by childish barbarians, but that the childish barbarians doing the disrupting called specifically for intifada which is exactly equivalent to the call for the murder of Jews... thereby transmogrifying themselves into childish barbarians.

{I am sure that their mothers are very proud.}

The Squishiness Factor

The primary action that SFSU is taking on this issue, according to that document, is to install new protocols for reacting to student disruptions of campus political events. If you read the "Initiatives and Interventions" pdf file above you will see that from now on when GUPS calls for intifada, while disrupting Jewish student events, they will only get four opportunities to do so before being removed by campus police.

In the first instance, the Dean of Students (or designee) will politely request that they cease screeching for Jewish blood.

In the second instance, the Dean of Students (or designee), accompanied by a campus police officer, will politely request that they cease screeching for Jewish blood.

In the third instance, the Dean of Students (or designee), accompanied by a campus police officer, will again politely request that they cease screeching for Jewish blood.

In the fourth instance, the Dean of Students (or designee), accompanied by a campus police officer, will again politely request that they cease screeching for Jewish blood. This time, however, if the barbarian screeching continues they will be removed from the premises by the University Police Department (UPD).

If they return for a fifth peak experience then they may end up in police custody.

Needless to say, GUPS is free to call for intifada at the Malcolm X Student Plaza whenever they please, so long, I suppose, as they do not do so during an actual student event at that venue.

Of course, the document fails to acknowledge that calls for intifada are equivalent to calls for the murder of Jews.

Instead, in their best imitation of the late Edward Said, they tend to think of it as a call to righteous resistance against the unjust and "illegal" military occupation of the "indigenous" Arab population within the Land of Palestine.

The SFSU administration, under President Wong, must believe that the Jews of Israel are a racist, militarist, imperialist, colonialist, apartheid gang - or some mix-and-match thereof - in order to justify funding a student organization, like GUPS, that regularly calls for violence via calls for intifada.

Either Wong, and his fellow bloodless functionaries, do not know what the word "intifada" suggests or they think that childish barbarians have every right to call for the extermination of Jews.

My guess, of course, is that they know very well what the word suggests.

Meanwhile, GUPS feels entirely vindicated.

Writing in Jweekly.com, Rob Gloster tells us:

In a Sept. 1 statement, GUPS said the group felt vindicated by the report, and claimed that the real disruption was caused by Barkat coming to campus.

“Not only were we subjected to this hate monger, but we were investigated for months and publicly smeared as violent and anti-Semitic,” the GUPS statement said, adding that the report “proves that these allegations are false.”

I guess that we are supposed to believe that in the minds of these students that killing is not OK, committing genocide is not OK, but encouraging both is just dandy.

In any case, the administration also intends to hand out First Amendment "resource cards" the next time GUPS gets together for one of their obnoxious little Hate Fests.

I am sure that will make all the difference in the world.

It was not long after, Muhammed Hammad, former president of SFSU GUPs, waved around his famous blade for tumblr, proclaiming his desire to stab an Israeli soldier, that Wong said that "GUPS is the very purpose of this great university" and went forward to forge a relationship with An-Najah University in Nablus, perhaps the most violently racist university in the world.

{Please sign the Middle East Forum's petition discouraging that partnership.}

I think, therefore, that we can reasonably conclude that Wong is absolutely sincere in his sentiments and his loyalties.

One must wonder, however, just how it is that while the university felt justified in getting rid of Mr. Hammad that it continues to fund Hammad's friends who likewise encourage intifada?

Oh, and by the way, Dr. Wong?

You did not fail the protesters, as you said in your letter.

You gave them precisely what their little hearts desire most - aside, of course, from stripping the Jews of the Middle East from any means of self-determination and self-defense - and that is legitimacy.

Certainly you took no disciplinary action because that would imply that these students are adults and thus largely responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their own behavior... heaven forfend.

You might as well have patted them on the head, given them some milk and cookies, and shooed them off to bed in their jammies.

Were I a parent with college-age kids I would think twice before sending them off to a place like SFSU, at least not without some formal training in martial arts.

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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The hole in the sky, 15 years later

Ten years ago, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, I created an image of the lower Manhattan skyline on which I superimposed the silhouette of the destroyed World Trade Center twin towers to give people an idea of the enormity of the terror attack.

Here is what that skyline looks like today.

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MK Zoabi describes how her party wants no Jewish or Zionist state

From Hamodia:

United Arab List MK Hanin Zoabi is a staunch believer in the two-state solution...with one state for Palestinians, and the other a “a secular democratic state of all its citizens,” with the concept of a Jewish state banned altogether.

If the two states decided to unite into one at some point, that would be fine, she added. “My vision is justice and liberation,” she said. “The exact formula – one state or two – is a technical question, as far as I am concerned. But neither of them can be a Jewish state. My party advocates a two-state solution – one a democratic state of all its citizens, with a Palestinian state next to it.” The “right of return” for the descendants of Arabs from within the Green Line would apply as well, she added.

“If these two states build relations and eventually decide to unite, that would be possible,” she said. “But we cannot have one state under the current circumstances with the settlers remaining in the West Bank. We must do away with Zionism and the Jewish state, and then we can decide how to set up the states – one or two of them, I personally don’t care.”

The talk was at the Swiss Palestine Association in Bern, Switzerland, last April.

(h/t Yoel)

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The other half of the "justice, justice you shall pursue" verse

This weekend is a favorite for the left-wing critics of Israel, because they love quoting from the weekly Torah portion of Shoftim, "צֶ֥דֶק צֶ֖דֶק תִּרְדֹּ֑ף,"which is usually translated as "Justice, justice shall you pursue." (Deut 16:20)

The word "justice" has been perverted in the cause of the Palestinian Arabs in various ways, and the use of this word in the Torah is an irresistible jumping off point for many to imply that Israel is guilty of injustice.

While the word "justice" is most often used to translate the Hebrew word "Tzedek," it usually means "righteousness." In the context of the verse, it clearly means that you are supposed to appoint judges of high moral character.

But few of the many Jewish critics of Israel who love to quote this verse mention the rest of it:..." so that you may thrive and occupy/inherit the land that the Lord your God has given you."

This verse explicitly says that God gave the land to the Jews. And this is referring to the entire land to the west of the Jordan River.

Now, why wouldn't these critics mention that part of the verse?

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09/10 Links: Israeli victory is the only way to advance peace process; Marseilles Synagogue Attack Thwarted

From Ian:

Israeli victory is the only way to advance peace process

American policy has long been to prevent Israel from achieving a decisive military victory over its adversaries. In 1956, President Eisenhower forced Israel to abandon its territorial gains from the Suez Crisis. Similarly, following the 1967 Six Day War, the U.S. helped engineer a U.N. resolution calling on Israel to return unspecified “territories occupied” in the war. The Reagan administration stopped Israel from obliterating Yasser Arafat’s PLO forces in Lebanon in 1982, and, most recently, the Obama administration pressured Israel to limit its objectives in its 2014 war with Hamas. These concessions, which are often unilateral and irreversible, include settlement freezes, prisoner releases and forfeiture of territory.
Such policies deliver pernicious results; American “restraint” of Israel encourages its enemies to take risks. Much like government bailouts encourage banks to make high-risk, high-payoff investments by removing the consequences of failure, Israel’s adversaries need not fret over irrevocable loss because they know the international community will admonish Israel for any gains it achieves.
Moreover, restraining Israel legitimizes and nourishes Palestinian rejectionism, defined as the refusal to acknowledge Israeli sovereignty and right of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland. Because it knows there will be no consequences for its sophisticated propaganda war, the Palestinian Authority can continue to demonize Israel. “To become a normal people, one whose parents do not encourage their children to become suicide terrorists, Palestinian Arabs need to undergo the crucible of defeat,” writes Middle East Forum President Daniel Pipes.
When Israel has licensure, without American opprobrium, to unleash its military might after a Palestinian rocket or terror attack, as when Liberman ordered over 50 airstrikes on Hamas military infrastructure in Gaza in response to one rocket, the Palestinians retreat. The fear of crushing defeat is a potent weapon in neutralizing Palestinian resistance.
America’s handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict is preventing the kind of metamorphosis in Palestinian thinking about Israel that peace requires. It’s time for Washington to allow Israel to demolish the Palestinian dream of a one-state solution, free of Jews. As Ronald Reagan said regarding the US fight against communism, the only way to “win is if they lose.”
This doesn’t mean the U.S. should support a winner-take-all settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But we must dispense with the fallacy that Israel is only a concession or two away from an American-brokered diplomatic breakthrough. As Gen. Douglas MacArthur said famously, “there is no substitute for victory.”

Washington calls Netanyahu’s ethnic cleansing video ‘inappropriate’

Washington on Friday fumed at comments made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a video released online in which he accused the Palestinians of advocating ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population in the West Bank.
US State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters the administration is “engaging in direct conversations with the Israeli government” about the video.
“We obviously strongly disagree with the characterization that those who oppose settlement activity or view it as an obstacle to peace are somehow calling for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank. We believe that using that type of terminology is inappropriate and unhelpful,” Trudeau said.
She said Israel expansion of settlements raises “real questions about Israel’s long-term intentions in the West Bank.”

Car packed with gas cylinders parked in front of Marseilles synagogue

A week after police in Paris discovered a booby-trapped car near a tourist attraction, a suspect vehicle with gas cylinders was found outside a Jewish community center in the southern city of Marseille.
The parked car found Saturday morning outside the Bar Yohaye Jewish Community Center and synagogue in Marseille’s 4th Arrondissement east of the Saint-Charles railways station had no trigger mechanism to cause an explosion and was not stolen, Laurent Nuñez, the police commissioner of the Bouches-du-Rhône region, told La Provence.
There was no indication that the car found in Marseille was connected in any way to what police believe was a foiled attempt to carry out a terrorist attack in Paris last week involving a car with several gas cylinders that was found abandoned near Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral, Nuñez added.
Three women were arrested last week in connection with the Paris incident. They were likely planning an imminent attack, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.

Arrested French women, directed by Islamic State, planned Paris attack

One of three women arrested over a failed Islamist attack in Paris had been "promised as a bride" to two men behind attacks on police officers and a priest earlier this year, the Paris prosecutor said on Friday.
The revelations highlight the close links between members of radical Islamist circles in France, even though they might live in different parts of the country.
Sarah H, a 23-year-old Frenchwoman, was taken into custody on Thursday along with the other two women after police launched a manhunt to find them, believing they were planning an imminent attack on the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris.
The three women were being tracked after a car loaded with gas cylinders was found near Notre Dame cathedral at the weekend. Sarah H allegedly stabbed a police officer when she was arrested; another of the women was shot and wounded . Neither the police officer nor the woman shot was seriously injured.

09/09 Links Pt2: The last acceptable hatred; How the Left is propagating Anti-Semitism without knowing it

From Ian:

The last acceptable hatred

All the major Swedish news outlets reported this week that the city of Malmo is investing in a comprehensive educational effort, initiated by the Jewish community, aimed at countering the rise in anti-Semitism that has plagued the city for many years. As part of this effort, 288 teachers are receiving specific education on the topic of anti-Semitism, and newly produced educational materials in the form of books and movies will be handed out to the pupils to "facilitate a conversation" and teach them about the issue of Jew-hatred historically and currently.
More anti-Semitic hate crimes are reported in Malmo, Sweden's third-largest city, than in any other city in the country, and the Jews who live there have become used to constant harassment, having eggs thrown at them and being yelled at, degraded and even physically assaulted on a regular basis. The Chabad rabbi of Malmo, Shneur Kesselman, reported 80 anti-Semitic attacks between 2004 and 2010, and although there are no official numbers since then, it can be assumed that things have not improved.
After World War II, the Jewish population of Malmo reached a high of 4,000. In recent years, because of the city's failing economy and the rise in anti-Semitic incidents by the influx of Muslims, the city has been losing its Jewish population. Today the city's organized Jewish community has only 550 members, with more leaving for Stockholm, the United States or Israel each year.
Any effort to lessen the anti-Semitic hate crimes in Malmo is a good thing, but I am saddened that children and adults need to be specifically educated not to hate and attack Jews and, perhaps even more so, that after all these years of persecution the initiative for this comes from the Jews themselves, rather than from the political establishment.

An Inherited Culture of Hate

"I hate Christians and Jews. I don't know why. I don't have any apparent reason to hate them but I always hear my mom talking badly about them. She hates them too, and this is why I hate them, I guess. Mom has always told me that Muslims are Allah's favorite people," — F., a 15-year-old Tunisian girl.
"They said that non-Muslims deserve to die; we should have no pity for them. They will burn in hell, anyway." — M., a 16-year-old Tunisian boy.
People who do not read tend to fear things they do not know, and this fear can turn into suspicion, aggression and hate. These people need to fill the void, to remove the discomfort, so they turn to terrorism to create a goal in their lives: defending Islam.
As most Tunisians do not read, they watch TV a lot. "After watching 'The Sultan's Harem,' I wanted to be one of the Sultan's concubines, to live in the Ottoman Empire era; I wanted to be like them," said S., a 14-year-old Tunisian girl.

World’s Oldest Working Journalist, 90-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Noah Klieger, Fears Nazi Genocide Will Be Forgotten in 50 Years

One of Israel’s best-known Holocaust survivors told a packed audience in Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening about his genuine fear that the Nazi genocide will not be remembered 50 years from now.
Noah Klieger expressed this concern at an event that doubled as the release of a documentary film about his having staved off the gas chambers at Auschwitz by lying to the SS about being a professional boxer and a celebration of his 90th birthday.
Klieger, who is still on the staff of the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot — making him the oldest non-retired journalist in the world — described a bleak view of the future.
“Young people don’t know about the Bar Kochba revolt, so I’m worried the Holocaust won’t be remembered either,” Klieger said, referring to the second century Judean war against the Romans. “But as an optimist — something I’d have to be to have survived what I did and be standing here today — I hope I’m wrong.”
The biographical film, which Klieger said he was seeing for the first time with the hundreds of people gathered in his honor — among them members of the Israeli government, the media, ambassadors, rabbinical leaders, fellow survivors, IDF brass and soldiers — gave a moving overview of the trials and tribulations of a Strasbourg-born Jewish boy robbed of his youth by Hitler and his henchman.