Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 10, 2016

Jewish Voice for Peace is right: Miko Peled is a worthy BDS advocate (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

There can be no doubt: the Orwellian-named “Jewish Voice for Peace” (JVP) did the right thing when they quickly backtracked and issued an abject apology for condemning Miko Peled just because he had accused Israel of causing antisemitism. After all, Peled is a popular anti-Israel activist and an ardent BDS advocate, and I’m really glad that JVP rushed to re-embrace him as one of their own. As I have long argued, “antisemitism is not a bug, but a feature of BDS,” and Miko Peled’s odious views and associations make him an excellent case study.

In a somewhat lengthy post on “Miko Peled’s big anti-Semitism problem,” I recently documented that any group or movement that was serious about opposing antisemitism would want nothing whatsoever to do with Peled. But of course, neither JVP nor most other groups and individuals devoted to anti-Israel activism can afford to do without the antisemitism that is all but inevitable if your goal is to demonize the world’s only Jewish state in order to justify its elimination for the sake of the establishment of yet another Arab-Muslim state.Just like other prominent anti-Israel activists – e.g. Max Blumenthal or Ali Abunimah – Peled has a penchant for comparing Israel to Nazi Germany; he also likes to downplay the threats Israel faces from Iran’s mullah regime and Islamist terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Peled has even teamed up with the aspiring suicide bomber and notorious Hamas apologist Azzam Tamimi to have his book promoted, and to promote one of Tamimi’s books on Hamas in turn. (If you’re lucky enough to never have heard of Azzam Tamimi, you can watch him deliver a hate-convulsed rant at a rally for the annual Iranian-sponsored Quds Day, where he called for the eradication of the “cancer” that is Israel.)

The collaboration with Tamimi has apparently paid off handsomely for Peled: it just so happened that a mutual friend of Tamimi and Peled in Gaza translated Peled’s book to Arabic, and Tamimi promptly invited Peled to his TV show to promote the new Arabic edition. One can only hope that Peled’s book will get the publicity it deserves and be prominently displayed at book fairs in Arab capitals alongside popular fare like the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and similar offerings.

Indeed, this is the kind of company Peled himself seeks out. For the past year, he has been a regular contributor to the American Herald Tribune (AHT) – a site that often features the utterly deranged conspiracy theories peddled by its “editor in chief” Anthony Hall as well as other AHT contributors such as the fairly well-known anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Kevin Barrett. Barrett reportedly thinks that the “Holocaust controversy” is “a legitimate topic of historical debate;” similarly, Hall apparently once declared that a book presenting the Holocaust as a myth requires a “very dramatic re-looking at what happened in Europe in World War 2.” Just a few months ago, Hall explained in a short You Tube clip “why he supports open debate on the Holocaust;” there is also another version showing Hall and two other people airing their obscene views on the same topic, and this clip elicited some enthusiastic comments from fellow holocaust deniers. These clips were posted by “CODOH - Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust;” the offerings at this channel also promote the hard work of dedicated Holocaust deniers, such as “Curated Lies: The Auschwitz Museum’s Misrepresentations, Distortions and Deceptions.”

As it happens, Hall has occasionally found the work of JVP useful.

Hall may soon be able to devote himself full-time to Holocaust denial and the various conspiracy theories he likes to promote in his rambling AHT columns. Shockingly enough, he has so far been indulged by the University of Lethbridge, Canada, where he has been a professor for more than 25 years. But according to a recent report by The Algemeiner, Hall has now been asked to resign; another recent report indicates that he has been suspended.

The fact that Peled has been a regular contributor to a site where Hall serves as editor in chief is a vivid illustration of the swamp from which BDS draws support. And there are of course many other cases where just a little bit of research will reveal similarly unsavory associations – whether it’s Max Blumenthal being cheered wherever there are Jew-haters, Ali Abunimah getting an award from an openly antisemitic Islamist “news” outfit, or Stanford professor Palumbo-Liu promoting a site with offerings that are arguably even more offensive than those on Hall’s AHT.

Even if JVP had not backtracked so quickly from its condemnation of Peled, it would have meant very little: the antisemitism that infests the BDS movement is so pervasive that rooting it out would inevitably lead to the collapse of BDS.

Last but not least, here’s a quick update on Peled’s current activities: it seems he is currently visiting Israel and the West Bank – for him it’s of course all “Palestine” – and he has been meeting with old friends like the notorious Tamimis of Nabi Saleh. According to Bassem Tamimi, they are apparently planning some kind of “conference” in November. Just a day before Peled visited his “brother” Bassem Tamimi, Bassem’s wife Nariman posted a heartfelt “happy birthday” for Nizar Tamimi, a nephew of Bassem who is a convicted murderer and the husband of Sbarro massacre mastermind Ahlam Tamimi. No wonder Peled feels so close to them.

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10/10 Links Pt1: Danon to UN: Why don't you ask PA to condemn terror attack?; Europe exported ISIS jihadism as it once did Nazism

From Ian:

‘We had so many plans together, a home, children,’ weeps wife of murdered cop

Hundreds of mourners joined family and fellow officers at the funeral of a 29-year-old cop killed in Sunday’s deadly shooting attack in Jerusalem.
First Sergeant Yosef Kirma was laid to rest at around 6 p.m. Sunday at the capital’s Mount Herzl cemetery.
Kirma’s father Uzi eulogized his son. “Yossi, you were my friend. Now you are no longer with us any more. How is it possible to continue? What will I do now?” he said. “How can I move on from here? I love you so much.”
Kirma married in April. His wife Noy lamented their short time together. “We had so many plans together, a home, children, and you always supported my career. You loved me always, unconditionally, even more than I loved myself,” she said. “My Yossi, look how many people came just for you. You are my light and my heart.”
Chief Superintendent Meir Namir, Kirma’s commander in the elite tactical response unit Yasam in the Jerusalem Police, said Sunday’s attack “will be seared in the hearts of the policemen of the unit. Yossi was made of the stuff of the heroes of Israel. Now we salute you for the final time.”

Danon to UN: Why don't you ask PA to condemn terror attack?

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, penned a letter to the UN Security Council, calling upon that body to demand the Palestinian Authority condemn the murder of Yosef Kirma and Levana Malichi in Jerusalem on Sunday.
In his letter, Danon noted the numerous expressions of joy and celebrations by Arabs in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria following the terror attack. He also included photographs documenting the celebrations. In some cases, Arab residents were seen handing out candy and waving pictures of the terrorist.
Danon argued that the Security Council must “demand that the Palestinian Authority immediately halt the incitement [against Israel] and strongly condemn the murders in Jerusalem.”
“The time has come,” he added, “for the international community to explicitly and unconditionally declare that support for terror or aid to terrorists is unacceptable, and that it will demand from Palestinian Authority leaders to accept this. The Palestinian Authority’s silence following these chilling murders and the subsequent disgusting celebrations is deafening.”
“In the streets of Gaza they are celebrating a murderous terror attack against innocents, and are praising the lowly murderer. These celebrations and the support for terror are the real impediment to peace, and the primary cause of the terror attacks and the murder of Levana Malichi and Yossi Kirma. In Gaza a generation of children is being raised on hate and violence.”

Egypt loves the Jews whom they ethnically cleansed

The latest example of how Egypt has been showing a recent fascination with Jews, now that there are fewer than 10 Jews left in the entire country, comes from an article in Al Ahram about the historic Ben Ezra synagogue in old Cairo.

This is the synagogue that housed the famous Cairo Geniza, one of the most important historic Jewish archives ever discovered.

Tradition says that the synagogue was built on the spot that Moses was found by Pharaoh's daughter.

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This Haaretz op-ed from Benny Morris is a must-read, since Morris is considered the godfather of Israeli revisionist historians and is quoted so often by Israel's detractors.

Since it is behind a paywall, here is the entire article.

At the bottom of his piece last week “Netanyahu, this is what ethnic cleansing really looks like,” Prof. Daniel Blatman is described as a “historian.” In that case, Blatman betrayed his profession when he attributed to me things I have never claimed and distorted the events of the 1948 war.

First, throughout the article Blatman ignores the basic fact that the Palestinians were the ones who started the war when they rejected the UN compromise plan and embarked on hostile acts in which 1,800 Jews were killed between November 1947 and mid-May 1948. (In that, by the way, the Jews differ from the Serbs, who started the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and did in fact carry out ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and elsewhere).

Regarding the second stage of the 1948 war, Blatman claims that the Arab countries invaded prestate Israel in order to rescue their Palestinian brothers from the ethnic cleansing that the Jews had launched, and that most of them attacked the new State of Israel in order to do this. During this alleged cleansing “over 400,000” Arabs – who according to Blatman made up over half the Palestinian Arab population – were expelled from their homes and forced to flee by May 14. (Actually, there were about 1.2 million to 1.3 million Arabs in the country at the time.)

The real number of those who fled and were forced to flee was apparently smaller, but more importantly, the Arab countries attacked the State of Israel largely to harm it, if not to destroy it. The fact is, their leaders threatened to invade even before the UN resolution was passed on November 29, 1947, and before a single Arab had been uprooted from his home. And they continued to threaten an invasion in the following months, until May 1948.

It wasn’t the tragedy of the Palestinians that motivated the Arab countries during their invasion. The truth is, the flight and expulsion of the Arabs from their homes in prestate Israel, especially from early April until May 14, 1948 (in that connection the capture of Jaffa, Tiberias and Haifa, and the Deir Yassin massacre have always been mentioned), fostered extremism among the Arab populations surrounding prestate Israel and were one reason Arab leaders decided to invade on the eve of May 15.
But more important factors influenced the Arab leaders in their decision; for example, Jordan’s King Abdullah wanted to expand his country’s borders, the Egyptian king wanted to deny the Jordanian king major territorial achievements, and the leaders of Syria, Iraq and Egypt feared the reaction at home if they did not invade. Concern for the welfare of the Arabs in prestate Israel was not the main motive for the Arab invasion.

According to Blatman, I claimed that “over half a year before the Arab invasion began” the leaders of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Eretz Israel, aspired to expand the country’s borders beyond those decided on in the UN General Assembly resolution, “and to minimize the number” of Arabs who would remain in the Jewish state.

This is nonsense, a distortion of my words and of history. Of course, leaders in a country’s early years are interested in enlarging the country’s territory, but there’s a big difference between personal and political aspirations.

In political terms, the Yishuv’s leaders aspired to enlarge the area of the state in the making only beginning around March-April 1948, not starting in November 1947. And this happened only after four months of Arab combat against the Yishuv, which was staging a strategic defense. And it happened only after the Arab leaders stated clearly morning, noon and night that they intended to attack the Jewish state when the British left.

Regarding minimizing the number of Arabs, at no stage of the 1948 war was there a decision by the leadership of the Yishuv or the state to “expel the Arabs” – neither in the Jewish Agency nor in the Israeli government; neither in the Haganah General Staff nor in the Israel Defense Forces General Staff. Nor did any important party in the Yishuv, including the Revisionists, adopt such a policy in its platform.

It’s true that in the 1930s and early ‘40s David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann supported the transfer of Arabs from the area of the future Jewish state. But later they supported the UN decision, whose plan left more than 400,000 Arabs in place.

It’s also true that from a certain point during the war, Ben-Gurion let his officers understand that it was preferable for as few Arabs as possible to remain in the new country, but he never gave them an order “to expel the Arabs.” (In July 1948 he even decided against the expulsion of the Arabs of Nazareth, while he halfheartedly ordered the expulsion of the Arabs of Lod and Ramle.)

The atmosphere of transfer that prevailed in the country beginning in April 1948 was never translated into official policy – which is why there were officers who expelled Arabs and others who didn’t. Neither group was reprimanded or punished.

In the end, in 1948 about 160,000 Arabs remained in Israeli territory – a fifth of the population. Over the decades, this number has grown to 1.6 million. (This month their leaders decided not to attend the funeral of Shimon Peres, who tried to promote a compromise based on a two-state solution.)

If Blatman reads my books he’ll learn that already on March 24, 1948, Israel Galili, Ben-Gurion’s deputy in the future Defense Ministry and the head of the Haganah, ordered all the Haganah brigades not to uproot Arabs from the territory of the designated Jewish state. Things did change in early April due to the Yishuv’s shaky condition and the impending Arab invasion. But there was no overall expulsion policy – here they expelled people, there they didn’t, and for the most part the Arabs simply fled.

It’s true that in mid-1948 the new State of Israel adopted a policy of preventing the return of refugees – the same refugees who months and weeks earlier had tried to destroy the state in the making. But I still consider this policy logical and just.

I don’t accept the definition “ethnic cleansing” for what the Jews in prestate Israel did in 1948. (If you consider Lod and Ramle, maybe we can talk about partial ethnic cleansing.) And certainly there was no ethnic cleansing that was “one of the most successful of the 20th century,” as Blatman puts it.

On the contrary.

In the end, 160,000 Arabs remained in Israeli territory, and not all those who tried to return from Arab countries after 1948 were expelled, as Blatman claims. Many were expelled, and many somehow returned, were allowed to stay and became citizens of the Jewish state.

Incidentally, Arab countries carried out ethnic cleansing and uprooted all the Jews, down to the last one, from any territory they captured in 1948 – for example, the Jordanians in Gush Etzion and Jerusalem’s Old City, and the Syrians in Masada, Sha’ar Hagolan and Mishmar Hayarden. The Jews, on the other hand, left Arabs in place in Haifa and Jaffa, and in the villages along the country’s main traffic arteries – the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway and the Tel Aviv-Haifa highway – a fact that does not conform with the claim of “successful” ethnic cleansing.

Regarding the current preoccupation with the subject, it’s absurd, to put it mildly, to claim that uprooting Jewish communities from the West Bank is “ethnic cleansing,” but there is logic to the presence of Jews in Arab areas, just as Arabs live in the Jewish state. In today’s circumstances, the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria is an obstacle to a possible peace between us and the Palestinians. I have always opposed this enterprise, because a division into two states for two peoples is the just and logical solution.

Unfortunately, Benjamin Netanyahu is right when he says the main obstacle to peace is the unwillingness of the Arabs on both sides of the Green Line to agree to a compromise based on two states for two peoples, and their rejection of the legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise and the State of Israel.

Other examples of Morris destroying others who pretend that history shows Israel's birth to be the original sin:

Benny Morris' letter to The Irish Times

Benny Morris takes on Hitchens

Benny Morris schools author of another anti-Zionist book

Benny Morris owns Ilan Pappe (link to full TNR article)

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Fatah continues to celebrate terror attack; calls 60-year old grandmother a "soldier"

Fatah's Facebook page published this cartoon celebrating yesterday's terror attack, implying that the victims were soldiers (as Wafa claimed yesterday):

Hashtag "Al Quds."

Mahmoud Abbas' repeated claims of being against violence are shown yet again to be baseless lies. He and his organizations praise and incite the murder of Jews, daily.

Note also that no Muslim seems to have has any problem with using the Dome of the Rock as an illustration for incitement to violence. This is not the first time such imagery was used and I have not once seen any pushback in Arabic-language forums. The "religion of peace" is silent about using its symbols to celebrate and encourage murder.

This would be unthinkable in any other religion.

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Selichot Friday/Sunday: Jerusalem and Peace, the two things the world tries to take away from the Jewish people

I've been occasionally commenting on some specified piyutim (intricate poems said before and during the High Holy Days) during the Selichot services.

I was struck by a pair of piyutim, one from Friday's service and one from Sunday's, in the Ashkenazic order of the service.

On Friday, the longest piyut was dedicated to Jerusalem. The author is unknown. The word "Jerusalem" introduced every verse and the end of every verse was an explicit Biblical quote about Jerusalem. Altogether the word was mentioned 54 times in this one prayer alone, begging God to restore Jerusalem to its former glory.

That's 54 more than the number of times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Quran.

In Sunday's selichot, there was a remarkably similar piyut using essentially the same form (reverse alphabetical acrostic instead of straight for the second word of each stanza), probably by the same poet-scholar. but instead of "Jerusalem" the motif is "Shalom," peace.

"Peace" and "Jerusalem" are part of the Jewish DNA.

The irony is that the world wants to ensure that the Jewish people have neither.

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From Samaa.TV:

ISLAMABAD: Jamshaid Dasti, a member of the National Assembly, said that the parliament has been subdued by the American non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their Jewish agenda as the joint session of the parliament passed anti-rape and anti-honour killing bills.

“Indian forces are standing on the border, hundreds of our soldiers are injured and many have embraced martyrdom. There was no point of bringing up this bill today. We had to send a message to our enemy, but this bill (anti-rape bill) has overshadowed it,” he said while speaking during the session.

He also lamented that “today even 5th graders are aware of sex education”.

Under the new law relatives of the victim would only be able to pardon the killer if he is sentenced to capital punishment. However, the culprit would still face a mandatory life sentence of twelve-and-a-half years.

Some stories need no comment.

(h/t Phyllis Chesler)

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Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah declares day of mourning - for the murderer

The Fatah movement, headed by that alleged moderate Mahmoud Abbas, has declared a strike and a day of mourning today for the terrorist who murdered two Jews, including a 60-year old grandmother.

The Palestinian Authority gave this day of mourning a stamp of approval by reporting it on the official Wafa website, saying that the terrorist was being mourned along with all of the other "martyrs of Jerusalem."

The article in Wafa called the victims "soldiers."

Mahmoud Abbas is considered a peacemaker. No reporters, as far as I know, has ever asked him about his heading a terrorist group and an organization that openly celebrates the murder of Jews.

This is outrageous - and perhaps even more outrageous is how the world ignores this.

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10/09 Links: Jerusalem shooting victims: A newly married cop and a grandmother

From Ian:

Jerusalem shooting victims: A newly married cop and a grandmother

The victims of Sunday’s deadly shooting attack were named as Jerusalem resident Levana Malihi, 60, and police officer First Sergeant Yosef Kirma, 29.
Kirma, a member of the elite police reconnaissance unit Yasam, was killed in the shootout while trying to charge the gunman, police said. “He fearlessly pursued the terrorist in order to neutralize him and prevent further harm to innocent bystanders,” the police statement said.
Kirma, a resident of the Jerusalem suburb Mevasseret Zion, will be buried at 5:30 p.m. Sunday in the capital’s Mount Herzl cemetery. He is survived by his wife of five months, parents and two brothers. He was posthumously promoted to the rank of first sergeant.
Kirma was decorated after helping to stop a terror attack in December 2015.
Malihi, a mother of three and grandmother of six, was a retired Knesset employee.
Malihi worked in the Knesset for more than 30 years until retiring in 2010, the parliament’s spokesman said in a statement. “Veteran workers remember a very warm woman, loved by all, dedicated, caring and modest,” the statement said.

Police officer and civilian killed, 4 wounded in Jerusalem vehicular terrorist attack

A Special Patrol officer and elderly female civilian were shot and killed, and four wothers lightly and seriously wounded, during a two-point vehicular terrorist attack carried out near police headquarters in Jerusalem’s Ammunition Hill, and the nearby Sheik Jarrah neighborhood.
The terrorist, an east Jerusalem resident, was shot dead during an exchange of gunfire with police in Sheik Jarrah.
The attack began at approximately 10:30 a.m., when the terrorist, who was driving a white vehicle, opened fire on a male and female civilian near the Ammunition Hill light rail stop, across the street from Police Headquarters.
“The terrorist opened fire on two people, and one woman in her 60s was wounded critically, and a man was moderately-to-seriously wounded,” said Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
The woman died of her wounds a short time later at Hadassah University Medical Center in Mount Scopus, said Rosenfeld.

Police: Terror attack could have been much worse

Police are continuing their investigation into this morning's terrorist attack, in which Levana Malichi and Yosef Kirma were murdered in Jerusalem.
Kirma is to be buried on Mt. Herzl and the funeral for Malichi will be held at 7:30 tonight.
At approximately 10:10 Sunday morning, a terrorist drove his car to the light rail station at Ammunition Hill and shot at civilians waiting at the station. The terrorist then attempted to flee towards the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood, where he was intercepted by police and killed in the subsequent shootout, where he fatally wounded Kirma.
A police spokesman said that the officers that intercepted and neutralized the terrorist prevented the attack from becoming even worse. "The officers placed themselves between the shooter and the civilians, and their determination prevented further casualties among the civilian population and the security forces."

Most western Jews, for obvious historical reasons, tend to be left-leaning and concerned with issues of social justice and universal human rights.

It is obviously no coincidence that one of the most kicked-around people in human history would support the rights of minority populations everywhere in the world, including their home state of Israel. It is for this reason that the country of the Jewish people has a far better human rights record than any of their hostile neighbors. Despite malicious claims otherwise throughout the Muslim world and among pussitudenous western-left Jews, Israel treats Palestinian-Arabs far better than do their brothers and sisters elsewhere in that part of the world.

The great irony is that the political movement that claims to stand for social justice and universal human rights, the progressive-left, actually stands for neither. If it did, surely it would have stood up for the Yazidis when their people were being slaughtered by ISIS or it would have supported the Christian Copts in Egypt who suffer the Qur'anically-based genocidal intention of the far larger Muslim population.

It did neither.

In the United States the culmination of the four-year election cycle brings out the very worst in ideologically-blinkered political drones who do little more than spit hatred, ridicule, and contempt at their counterparts on the other side of the aisle.

{I find it disheartening and vaguely nauseating.}

Among American Jews, however, what never ceases to amaze is the tenacity with which they cling by their teeth to a political party that holds them in such contempt that its leadership honestly believes that they have every right to tell Jewish people where we may, or may not, be allowed to live.

They will vote for a political party with members that flew the flag of the Palestinian-Arabs inside the hall of the Democratic National Convention, even as some burned the Israeli flag just outside in the street.

Furthermore, they did so while calling for Intifada which is nothing less than calling for the murder of Jews on Jewish land.

In the early years of the Obama administration it was clear to many of us that Obama's insistence that Jews be allowed to live over here, but not over there, in the Land of Israel rang the death knell of the two-state solution. I wrote about it as early as 2009 in a piece entitled, The End of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process.

The point then, as now, is that by demanding "total settlement freeze" Barack Obama forced Benjamin Netanyahu and dictator Abbas into entirely irreconcilable positions. Netanyahu, if he were to maintain his governing coalition and the respect of Jewish Israelis, could never agree to Obama's anti-Semitic demand that Jews not be allowed to raise families on the very land where Jewish people come from. For his part Mahmoud Abbas was forced into the position where he could demand nothing less because he cannot afford to be seen as more pro-Israel or pro-Jewish than the American president.

Even Yassir Arafat was willing to sit at the big table while Jews built housing for themselves on land purchased within disputed territory. It took the Obama administration to turn it into a deal killer right out of the gate.

And, yet, lo these many years later, Obama continues to make such demands because he is clearly incapable of learning from past mistakes and because he honestly believes that he has the right to kick the Jewish people in the head whenever he so pleases.

Writing in Ha'aretz, Barak Ravid tells us of Obama administration fury at Jews for daring to build 300 housing units - a whole 300 - on historically Jewish land. He writes:

A senior U.S. official said that the White House boiled with anger at the advancement of the plan and even more at the timing of the decision – just a week after the signing of the military aid agreement by which the U.S. will give Israel $38 billion for a decade, and the day of the death of former president Shimon Peres, whose funeral was attended by President Barack Obama.

The White House "boiled with anger," huh?

I find it amusing that Israel sent Obama into a rage of fury at the mere thought of Jews building housing for themselves and their children on Jewish land. And, yet, against all rationality, the commander-in-chief is entirely complacent about the rise of Political Islam, which not only calls for the slaughter of all Infidels who refuse to submit to al-Sharia, but continues to perform an excellent job on that project to this very day.

The indignant reaction of Obama, the Democratic Party, and the western-left to the fact of Jewish people daring to build housing is reminiscent of the medieval princely authority to push Jews around in a likewise manner. Then, as now, western authorities believed that the Jews must comply to their prejudicial demands in regards the placement of arbitrary limitations on Jewish living spaces.

Furthermore, this most recent 38 billion dollar deal with the Obama administration gives the US government additional leverage over the Israeli government.

The statement, signed by Mark Toner, deputy spokesman for the State Department, drew an unusual linkage between the signing of the defense aid agreement with Israel and criticism of settlement building.

And this is precisely why Israel should never have signed this deal to begin with.

Israel has the capacity to build all the weaponry it needs and doing so would reinforce the Israeli economy through strengthening its arms-manufacturing sector. What the deal really means is that the Obama administration can twist Jewish-Israeli arms behind Jewish-Israeli backs in order to force them to conform to the wishes of dictator-terrorist Mahmoud Abbas and his friends in Brussels.

The saddest thing about all of this, however, is the obvious failure of Jewish self-esteem in the West.

Israeli Jews may stand tall and proud, but progressive-left Jewish Americans bow their heads before the kind of progressive-left virtue posturing and self-righteous indignation that the Obama administration has turned into a form of art.

When even the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) becomes an arm of the pro-Islamist Obama administration it sends a very strong signal that American Jewry is slowly falling into a chronic state of spineless prostration.

Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL has pen and will grovel.

What a shame.

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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South African flotidiot press conference turned into a fiasco

The press conference that was supposed to herald the homecoming of the supposedly brave South African volleyballer Leigh Ann Naidoo was marred by the unexpected comments from South Africa's ambassador to Israel, Sisa Ngombane.

Ngombane tried to say that Israel invaded Gaza in 2014 after Palestinians had kidnapped and murdered "two or three" Israeli children, which he attempted to justify. Even though his statements were extremely anti-Israel, the organizers of the press conference were upset at the idea of bringing up any supposed reason for Israeli crimes outside of pure Jewish evil.

“The West Bank suffered gravely because three or two Israeli children were abducted and killed whilst in a neighbourhood in the West Bank. Of course that gave a good excuse for the Israeli Defence Force to go door-to-door in West Bank. This is an untold story and of course Gaza got the headlines because planes flew to Gaza and bombarded Gaza. But the untold story or the less known story that it is the Palestinians in the West Bank who live day to day with the IDF. And of course when actions, they may be well intended, are taken which provoke this type of thing, those families are in the forefront. We must always remember that,” he said.

He was then interrupted by one of the organizers, Women’s Boat to Gaza spokesperson, Zeenat Adam, saying "I'm going to ask you to stop" and prompting the anti-Israel drones to start chanting slogans "Free, free Palestine! Down, down Israel!"

Ngombane refused to relinquish the mic, and then read the official statement he was supposed to read. Then Ziyad Pattel, a lawyer for the "Women's Boat to Gaza," said that the ambassador "must understand that this is a pro-Palestinian event" and he has no right to say anything other than the sanctioned narrative of pure Palestinian victimhood.

Afterwards, Leigh Ann Naidoo tearfully lied by claiming that at the same moment that she and the other flotidiots were photographed being given food by Israelis, women in Gaza were being bombed while waiting for her boat to arrive on the shore (1:30).

According to other accounts, she also said that there were no other boats in Gaza, and that she doesn't think any aid managed to get there.

#LeighAnnNaidoo "There were no ships going to the Gaza port. I don't believe that goods are being allowed into Gaza" #WomenToGaza
— Karishma Magan (@Kima_kinz) October 7, 2016

She is so well-informed!

Her lies continued in South African TV, where TV hosts didn't challenge her astonishing naivete in the least.

(h/t Spotlighting SA)

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Jerusalem terrorist was previously arrested for incitement in Facebook, was banned from Temple Mount

Today, an Arab terrorist killed 2 Jews in Jerusalem and injured several others before being killed:

Eight people were wounded Sunday after a terrorist opened fire on Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem, according to Israel Police. The terrorist was neutralized following a brief police chase.

Two of the victims later succumbed to their wounds and were pronounced dead Sunday afternoon, according to the head of Hadassah Medical Center, Prof. Zeev Rotstein. The families of the victims have already been notified.

According to an initial police investigation, a terrorist driving in a car came to a nearby junction, opened fire and hit a civilian. The suspect fled the scene, driving in the direction of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Police motorcycle forces chased after the suspect's vehicle, stopping him in Sheikh Jarrah. When the terrorist saw the officers, he opened fire in their direction. The officers shot back at the suspect, successfully neutralizing him.

The dead include a 60-year old woman.

According to Arab media, the terrorist was Misbah 'Abu Sabih, 39, who called himself Abu Ezz al-Maqdisi. He was arrested in the beginning of 2015 and served a 12-month sentence for incitement on Facebook.

When he was released, he said "I am not a stranger to the occupation that defiles our holy places."

On his Facebook page he praises the Hamas terrorist Yahya Ayyash, who innovated explosives aimed at Jews.

He also has these pro-terror and pro-Hamas images on his page, which hadn't been updated since his arrest:

Hamas praised the attack as "heroic."

Apparently, Sabih was banned from going to the Temple Mount earlier this year and was arrested in late September.

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Obama's "noninterference policy" to keep Iran's Ahmadinejad in office

Wired magazine has an article about a Google initiative to monitor the Internet for trolling using machine learning, and other initiatives in its Jigsaw division.

The head of the organization is Jared Cohen, who used to work for the State Department in digital activism.

The article says:

When Cohen became the youngest person ever to join the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff in 2006, he brought with him a notion that he’d formed from seeing digitally shrewd Middle Eastern youths flout systems of control: that the Internet could be a force for political empowerment and even upheaval. And as Facebook, then YouTube and Twitter, started to evolve into tools of protest and even revolution, that theory earned him access to officials far above his pay grade—all the way up to secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and later Hillary Clinton. Rice would describe Cohen in her memoirs as an “inspired” appointment. Former Policy Planning director Anne-Marie Slaughter, his boss under Clinton, remembers him as “ferociously intelligent.”

Many of his ideas had a digital twist. After visiting Afghanistan, Cohen helped create a cell-phone-based payment system for local police, a move that allowed officers to speed up cash transfers to remote family members. And in June of 2009, when Twitter had scheduled downtime for maintenance during a massive Iranian protest against hardliner president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Cohen emailed founder Jack Dorsey and asked him to keep the service online. The unauthorized move, which violated the Obama administration’s noninterference policy with Iran, nearly cost Cohen his job. But when Clinton backed Cohen, it signaled a shift in the State Department’s relationship with both Iran and Silicon Valley.

Asking Twitter to voluntarily stay up - which incidentally would have helped Iranian dissidents - was considered interference and a firing offense?

It sure sounds like Obama was not only ambivalent towards Iranian dissidents, but was actively supporting the antisemitic Islamist thug who was Iran's president and cutting off his opponents at the knees.

Shouldn't this be big news?

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10/08 Links: The Deadly Israeli House; Prominent Holocaust survivor slams Syria analogies

From Ian:

Netanyahu Spokesman Rebuts Atlantic Columnist’s Criticism: Jeffrey Goldberg, Not the Prime Minister, Is the Real Pessimist

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a “staunch optimist” who remains “fully committed” to seeking peace with the Palestinians, a spokesman for the premier wrote this week in a strong rebuttal of an Atlantic op-ed that harshly criticized the leader of the Jewish state.
On Thursday, Atlantic columnist Jeffrey Goldberg published a message he had received from David Keyes — Netanyahu’s foreign media spokesman — in response to an article Goldberg wrote last week following the funeral of the late Shimon Peres that was titled, “The Unbearable Smallness of Benjamin Netanyahu.” Keyes’ response, titled “The Unbearable Misunderstanding of Goldberg,” said that none of the accusations the veteran American Jewish columnist made against Netanyahu — including “stymieing peace, paralyzing pessimism, alienating Americans, scapegoating Arabs, misplaying Iran and fetishizing fear” were true.
“Implicit in Goldberg’s piece is the assumption that the Israeli people must be stupid or naive,” Keyes wrote. “Why else would they keep voting for someone Goldberg considers such a short-sighted fear-monger? Prime Minister Netanyahu has been elected to four terms because Israelis trust him to navigate the stormy seas that surround Israel and to keep them safe and prosperous.”
Regarding the peace process with the Palestinians, Keyes noted that Netanyahu has “consistently offered and genuinely hopes to begin peace talks with the Palestinians immediately and without preconditions.” The prime minister, Keyes said, still envisions a peace agreement “based on two states for two peoples where a demilitarized Palestinian state finally recognizes the Jewish State of Israel.”
Keyes also took issue with Goldberg’s assertion that Netanyahu mishandled the Iran nuclear issue. “History will judge Netanyahu differently — boldly taking Israel’s case to the American people and Congress to highlight the existential threat of the world’s worst state sponsor of terror seeking atomic bombs,” Keyes wrote. “Netanyahu’s determination over the years to prevent a nuclear armed Iran was a leading force that helped galvanize sanctions against Iran in the first place. Without Israel’s steadfastness, Iran would have had nuclear weapons long ago.”
Concluding his response, Keyes wrote, “Israel’s future has never been brighter. The real pessimist here is not Prime Minister Netanyahu — it’s Jeffrey Goldberg.”

The Deadly Israeli House

There are few weapons as deadly as the Israeli house. When its bricks and mortar are combined together, the house, whether it is one of those modest one story hilltop affairs or a five floor apartment building complete with hot and cold running water, becomes far more dangerous than anything green and glowing that comes out of the Iranian centrifuges.
Forget the cluster bomb and the mine, the poison gas shell and even tailored viruses. Iran can keep its nuclear bombs. They don't impress anyone in Europe or in Washington D.C. Who can even think about genocide in Africa in the presence of the fearsome weapon of terror that is an Israeli family of four moving into a new apartment.
Sudan may have built a small mountain of African corpses, but it can't expect to command the full and undivided attention of the world until it does something truly outrageous like building a house and filling it with Jews. Since the Sudanese Jews are as gone as the Jews of Egypt, Iraq, Syria and good old Afghanistan, the chances of Bashir the Butcher pulling off that trick are rather slim.
Due to the Muslim world's shortsightedness in driving out its Jews from Cairo, Aleppo and Baghdad to Jerusalem, the ultimate weapon in international affairs is entirely controlled by the Jewish State. The Jewish State's stockpile of Jews should worry the international community far more than its hypothetical stockpiles of nuclear weapons. No one besides Israel, and possibly Saudi Arabia, cares much about the Iranian bomb. But when Israel builds a house, then the international community tears its clothes, wails, threatens to recall its ambassadors and boycott Israeli peaches.

Christian ecumenical organization confesses Israel's sins

In a few days, Jews will gather in synagogues around the world to ‎atone for their sins on the holiday of Yom Kippur. They will fast for 25 ‎hours, pray, and hope that by the time they sit down to end their fast in a ‎celebratory meal, they will have been purified of their sins and brought to the level of ‎angels.‎
This year, any Jews having difficulty identifying the sins for which they need to ‎atone can consult the website of the World Council of Churches, one of the ‎many Christian organizations that gather stories and images of Jews behaving ‎badly in the Holy Land and then broadcast these stories and images to their ‎Christian supporters around the world.‎
The WCC does this work in a stated effort to promote peace between ‎Israelis and Palestinians, but officials at the council won't mind a bit if Jews in ‎Israel and the rest of the world use their materials for purposes of self-‎flagellation. It would make them happy -- really happy -- to see Jews join in ‎the chorus of condemnations against the Jewish state.‎
One place to look on the WCC's website is the section promoting its World Week for Peace in Palestine and Israel, which takes place every ‎September.‎

10/07 Links Pt2: MDA Heroes Talk About 365 Days of Terror; Matisyahu delivers sobering anti-BDS message in new single

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: The Problem With Using the Tax Code to Punish Israeli Settlements

J Street and like-minded progressives are campaigning to eliminate U.S. tax exemptions for charitable groups that provide support to Jewish communities in the West Bank. The reason: the communities’ existence contradicts the views of President Obama. J Street’s campaign violates the law and the Constitution, and it also suggests an alarming trend in which critics of Israel get a free pass from the Left’s overall strong commitment to civil liberties and distrust of authoritarian government.
While J Street claims that its demand is justified on the grounds that private Americans’ support for settlements contravenes “established public policy,” J Street is calling for the administration to do something unprecedented and clearly unconstitutional. To put it simply, J Street et al are asking that some non-profits be denied tax exemptions because they disagree with the President on diplomatic matters. That’s what going against ”public policy” means here—not violating any statutes, but pursuing goals at odds with the foreign policy of the President.
J Street hides its effort behind language in Treasury regulations restricting the tax-exempt status of groups that act “contrary to clearly defined and established public policy.” But what J Street fails to mention is that groups only act “contrary to clearly defined and established public policy” when they contravene a policy established by law and the Constitution. According to the IRS itself, the public policy exception applies only to one context: racial discrimination. The public policy exception provides no basis for the idea that the IRS can revoke tax exemptions for groups that favor policies disfavored by the White House or State Department.
Unlike presidential disdain for Israeli settlements, the legal background of combating racial discrimination is enshrined in several Constitutional Amendments, numerous statutes, and countless Supreme Court precedents. The legal pedigree of combating racial discrimination is vital to the legal validity of applying IRS exception, as the Supreme Court stressed in narrowly upholding the racial discrimination exception several years ago. J Street makes a mockery of the law and the nation’s long struggle for equality when it attempts to assimilate the “crime” of donating ambulances to communities living in Shilo or the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City into what the Supreme Court justly called the unique “stress and anguish” of racial discrimination in the nation’s law and history.
To get an idea how shocking J Street’s suggestion is, consider its potential scope. During the Bush Administration, it was the firm policy of the U.S.—repeatedly endorsed by Congress and the President—to fight a global war on terror and detain suspected terrorists in Guantanamo. Under J Street’s rule, anti-war groups or civil rights groups protesting Gitmo could have their tax exempt status revoked. After all, protest groups are often explicitly at odds with government policy.

Magen David Adom MDA Heroes Talk About 365 Days of Terror

Jerusalem-based paramedics recount their experiences saving lives over the past year, when Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis skyrocketed.
The current wave of Palestinian terror began on the eve of Rosh Hashana – the Jewish New Year – exactly a year ago, and continued in full intensity.
Listen to the heroic paramedics of Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s national emergency medical service, discuss 365 days of saving lives while working under constant threat.
They talk about the victims – real people, not mere statistics.
This video presents the stories of the MDA teams in the Jerusalem region, where the largest number of terror attacks occurred.

Yom Kippur War: This day in 1973 Arab armies invaded and almost destroyed Israel

October 6, 1973, was Yom Kippur (in the Hebrew calendar). As most Israeli Jews were attending services or otherwise observing the most holy day in Judaism, there was a surprise attack by Egyptian and Syrian armed forces.
As I related in an earlier post:
There are certain events when you just remember exactly where you were when you heard the news.
I was on stage for a third-grade practice of a school play when a teacher walked into the room (the gym, which also was the school theater and lunch room) and told everyone that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been killed. We were sent home early.
I was at my desk using AOL to access the internet (!) when early reports came in of a “small plane” hitting the World Trade Center. And you know the rest.
And on October 6, 1973, I woke up expecting to go to Temple for the Yom Kippur holiday. I turned on my clock radio, the old style that had the metal flaps that flipped to change the time. And I heard that Israel had been invaded in what would become known as the Yom Kippur War. The rest of the day is a blur, I don’t even remember if we went to Temple. I remember the feeling of helplessness, and the near panic in the community because there was nothing we could do.
The situation was dire at the start, and there were fierce battles along the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights. I recounted some of that history along the Golan Heights after I visited two of the sites of some of the largest tank battles ever, Tel Saki and the Valley of Tears: