Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 13, 2016

10/13 Links Pt1: UNESCO votes: No connection between Temple Mount and Judaism; Obama’s Temptation—and Abbas’s Enabling

From Ian:

UNESCO votes: No connection between Temple Mount and Judaism

In a 26-6 vote, UNESCO on Thursday gave its preliminary approval to a preliminary approval to a resolution that ignores Jewish ties to its most holy religious sites: the Temple Mount and the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Another 24 nations abstained and two were absent all together.
Those countries who voted in support of Israel were: the United States, Great Britain, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Germany and Estonia.
The vote was taken by UNESCO’s 58-member Programme and External Relations Commission in advance of its ratification next Monday or Tuesday, by UNESCO Executive Board, made up of the same member states.
In advance of that vote, Israel’s Mission to UNESCO in Paris had given board members and international diplomats a brochure detailing the deep historical connections Judaism has to those sites, which are also holy to Christianity and Islam.
In the draft of the Executive Board resolution dated September 2016 that was shown to The Jerusalem Post, the Western Wall was mentioned twice in quotes. Otherwise it was referenced in the text by its Muslim name of the Buraq Plaza.
The text, however, does state that Jerusalem and its Old City walls is important to all three religions.

JPost Editorial: UNESCO on the Temple Mount

The sun rotates around the world. The world is flat.
There was never a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount.
When people make foolish declarations with conviction they are usually motivated by a political agenda or religion or both.
The ongoing Palestinian campaign to erase Jewish ties to the holy places of Jerusalem falls under this category. Last October, the Palestinian Authority failed in its attempt to garner enough support in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for a resolution that ignores Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and that mentions only Muslim ties to the site.
This October it will try again.
In April, UNESCO’s 58-member Executive Board met in Paris and adopted a resolution that spoke solely of Muslim ties to the Temple Mount.

Lapid: Israeli Radical Left working with antisemites on UNESCO Jewish history denial vote

The radical left gave Zionism a bill of divorce by cooperating with an Arria Formula Meeting of the United Nations Security Council on ‘Illegal Israeli Settlement" slated for Oct 14 at the United Nations, Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid said Thursday.
Lapid railed against far-left human rights organization B’Tselem and Peace Now, who are scheduled to speak at the forum later this month.
“They’re not even pretending that their goal is to influence the Israeli public,” Lapid said. “Instead, they decided to work with antisemitic BDS [boycott, divest and sanction] organizations to try to force Israel’s hand from the outside.”
The Yesh Atid chairman said the efforts will not succeed and Israel will not give up.
“Israel will decide its own fate. That’s why we established an independent state that is strong and secure. No one will dictate to us how to run our lives, certainly not transient organizations that are unwilling to accept the fact that Israeli society stopped listening to them,” he added.

From Press TV; the story is widespread in Arab media:

A Palestinian boy has been shot and killed by Israeli forces in the town of Qararah near Khan Yunis, says a Palestinian official.

"Abdullah al-Naseef, 10, was killed by (Israeli) occupation fire close to his house in the Qararah municipality, near Khan Yunis," said Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in the besieged Gaza Strip on Wednesday.

According to eyewitness, the Israeli forces shot the child from a military base.

Only one problem: it is a lie. COGAT writes:

Abdallah Abu Nadif, 13-year-old boy from Alcarara in Gaza, was found dead yesterday evening as a result of a shooting that took place at a wedding in the area. The Palestinians are blaming Israel for this incident, but the truth is that the shooting did not come from the Israeli side. We send our condolences to the family for this unfortunate incident.

There have been lots of deaths and injuries from celebratory wedding gunfire over the years.

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

The perfect microcosm of the Israeli Arab conflict - from soccer

Haaretz reports:

The head of the Palestinian Football Association has threatened that if FIFA, the governing body of international soccer, doesn’t decide to suspend six Israeli teams from West Bank settlements, he’ll petition the Court of Arbitration for Sport for a ruling on the issue.

FIFA’s president has been trying to broker a solution to the issue through agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. But such a petition would make this effort impossible.

Jibril Rajoub, who heads the Palestinian association, told a press conference that allowing the settlement teams to play is a gross violation of both FIFA’s bylaws and those of the Union of European Football Associations, of which Israel is a member.

What a perfect microcosm of how Palestinian Arabs view Israel as a whole.

They push international bodies to misinterpret international law (or, in this case, sports statutes) and create new laws that apply only to Israel.

As Eugene Kontorovich wrote:

[T]here is simply no support in international law for prohibiting business [like sports teams - EoZ] in occupied territories, as British and French courts have recently affirmed.

Indeed, Morocco maintains a team, part of its national football federation, in occupied Western Sahara. Yet the HRW completely fails to mention this fact in its report. The human rights abuses in Western Sahara — where the majority of the population are Moroccan settlers and the indigenous population has been heavily displaced — are too vast to recount. No one — including the HRW and the Parliament members — has suggested expelling Morocco on account of its team, based deep in land taken from the Sahrawi.

The football-as-human rights-violation arguments against Israel are tendentious and prove too much. So those campaigning against Israel rely principally on a lawyerly claim about FIFA’s rules: The clubs “clearly violate FIFA’s statutes, according to which clubs from one member association cannot play on the territory of another member association without its and FIFA’s consent,” the members claim.

The problem is nothing in the FIFA statutes that equates “territory” with sovereign territory. Indeed, that would be impossible, since many FIFA members are not sovereign states at all. Instead, territory, as is often the case in international texts, means jurisdiction.

This is because the FIFA is not a border demarcation body. That is why FIFA clearly separates any question of sovereign statehood and territory from FIFA membership by not requiring that member federations be recognized states (i.e. Hong Kong, American Samoa, Faroe Islands, Northern Ireland, etc.). The claim that the acceptance of the Palestinian soccer federation into FIFA constituted a recognition of Palestine as a state and a recognition of its maximal border claims is unsupportable. FIFA membership does not imply statehood, nor has FIFA ever taken a position on preexisting border disputes.

Indeed, FIFA practice makes clear that it never gets involved when teams of one federation play on territory that is the subject of sovereign claims by the state of another member.

Another clear parallel between sports and the real world is that the Palestinians show that they have no interest in negotiations or compromise. If they don't get their way - they threaten anyone who stands in their way.

Including FIFA.

Palestinians are hijacking every international body that they join and turning them into anti-Israel weapons to the detriment of their otherwise laudable goals. They did it with various UN bodies (like UNESCO) and they are trying to do it with FIFA.

Yet another analogy: Palestinians rip off what Israelis do, as Jibril Rajoub used a Bibi-style prop when speaking to FIFA:

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

From Haaretz:

The 58 members of UNESCO are expected to vote Thursday on an anti-Israeli resolution that disregards Judaism’s historic connection to the Temple Mount and casts doubt on the link between Judaism and the Western Wall. The resolution is expected to pass by a large majority.
Israel has made efforts to block the resolution or at least soften it, but succeeded only in swaying the positions of a few member states.

The resolution proposal, which condemns Israel on several issues regarding Jerusalem and its holy sites, was advanced by the Palestinians alongside Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar and Sudan. The draft resolution, a copy of which was obtained by Haaretz, asserts that Jerusalem is holy to the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. However, it includes a special section dealing with the Temple Mount, which says the site is sacred only to Muslims and fails to mention that it is sacred to the Jews as well. In fact, it mentions neither the Hebrew term for the site – Har HaBayit – nor its English equivalent, the Temple Mount. The site is referred to only by its Muslim names – Al-Aqsa Mosque and Haram al-Sharif.

Also, the resolution calls the Western Wall plaza by the Arab-Muslim name al-Buraq plaza. Only afterward does the Hebrew-Jewish name “Hakotel Hama’aravi” appear in quotation marks.

The resolution is even worse than Haaretz notes.

First of all, the draft doesn't even say "Kotel." It says

Further deplores the Israeli ... project of the elevator in Al-Buraq Plaza "Western Wall Plaza"...

UNESCO is saying that the primary name of the plaza in front of the Kotel is "Al Buraq Plaza," a name that simply didn't exist historically - since there was no plaza there under Muslim rule.

For this reason alone, UNESCO has proven itself to be a sham.

But it goes way beyond this.

It indeed denies any Jewish ties to the Temple Mount:

Strongly condemns the Israeli escalating aggressions and illegal measures against the Awqaf Department and its personnel, and against the freedom of worship and Muslims’ access to their Holy Site Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif,

In fact it doesn't use the words "Temple Mount" anywhere in the resolution that mentions the site name as Haram al-Sharif/Al Aqsa Mosque 18 times.

There is a very good reason why UNESCO will never admit any Jewish ties to what is unquestioningly Judaism's holiest site: because if it admits it, then not only do Jews have the right to visit, they have the right to pray there under international law. But the resolution deplores Jews merely peacefully visiting their holiest site.

Firmly deplores the continuous storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif by the Israeli rightwing extremists and uniformed forces, and urges Israel, the Occupying Power, to take necessary measures to prevent provocative abuses that violate the sanctity and integrity of Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif;

UNESCO is complicit in denying history for the express purpose of denying the human rights of Jews. Which means that UNESCO is, by definition, an antisemitic organization.

The resolution also deplores the Palestinian Arab spree of stabbings, car rammings and shootings of Jews.

Oh, I'm sorry: it deplores Jewish "settlers" and "extremists" from being "aggressive" and doesn't mention any Arab culpability at all:

Deeply deplores the new cycle of violence, going on since October 2015, in the context of the constant aggressions by the Israeli settlers and other extremist groups against Palestinian residents including schoolchildren.

This resolution proves beyond any doubt that UNESCO is a worthless and meaningless organization that has been thoroughly divested of any value by its decision to admit "Palestine" as a member.

Here's the full resolution:

Anti-Israel UNESCO resolution (draft) by Eldad Tzioni on Scribd

UPDATE: UNESCO once barely acknowledged that there was a point in time called the "Temple periods." I wonder where they think those Temples were:

Jerusalem between these hills, forms a unique witness to the cultural cradle of the Western monotheistic religions, including Jewish sites identified during,the Temple periods, including the City of David Christian sites identified by Queen Helena including Gethsemane, the Church of the Ascension, Bethany, and the site of the Last Supper, and Islamic sites of the Night Journey of Mohammed.

In fact, this was written by Israel (h/t David B) so UNESCO really doesn't acknowledge basic history in its hate of Jews.

UPDATE 2: It passed, 24-6 with 26 abstentions.A senior source said that the efforts of Israeli diplomats significantly changed the votes of European states, none of which supported the motion. Israeli efforts, he said, succeeded in swaying France, Sweden, Slovenia, Argentina, Togo and India to abstain from the vote.

When it is considered a victory to get Western nations to abstain from a vote on Jew-hate, things are not looking positive for the future of Jews in the world.

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

Those Israeli "traffic jams" on Yom Kippur (update)

Yanai Cohen on Twitter notices that Google Maps was showing many of Israel's main highways jammed on Yom Kippur - when practically no one drives:

The reason? Because (non-religious) Israelis with cell phones were walking or bicycling on the nearly empty major roads and Google saw that they were traveling very slowly (compared to normal car speeds.)

(h/t Yenta Press)

UPDATE: Video:

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

10/12 Links: On Yom Kippur, we examine our sins, but defending Israel isn’t one of them.

From Ian:

On Yom Kippur, we examine our sins, but defending Israel isn’t one of them.

As we approach Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, we highly recommend a thoughtful meditation on the Jewish culture of self-criticism by Ruth Wisse recently published in the Wall St. Journal.
Here’s an excerpt:
Jews rightly take pride in their culture of self-accountability—before the Ultimate Judge and justly established human authorities. This culture has created and sustained a remarkably resilient people. Lamenting the excesses of the current American electoral cycle, the columnist Ira Stoll imagines how much richer the country’s politics would be if “this spirit of self-examination were exported from the Jewish religion into the rest of American culture.” If democracy requires the patient improvement of life in a community, nothing furthers that goal better than the practice of individual and collective self-scrutiny.
But the millennial-long history of Jewish self-restraint also stands as a warning. It is all very well to focus on overcoming your failings. Yet the search for moral perfection can also render individuals, and nations, prey to those who believe in conquest rather than self-conquest and who join in holding you accountable for their misdeeds. The same confessional posture, praiseworthy when standing before the Perfect Judge, becomes blameworthy when adopted before an enemy that has you before a rigged tribunal.
In the 20th century, some modern European thinkers and political leaders began singling out the Jews for their alleged racial or religious or social culpabilities. Many Jews felt obliged to answer apologetically for these supposed failings, instead of exposing the evil ideology that had chosen them for its target. Jewish Marxists, for example, blamed Jewish capitalists and bourgeoisie, even though defamation was leveled equally at Jewish professionals, artisans, journalists and paupers.
No sooner had the politics of Jew-blame reached its genocidal apotheosis in Europe than it was taken up in the Middle East. Rather than accepting the principle of co-existence and concentrating on improving the lives of their own subjects, Arab leaders refused Jews the right to their homeland in a war that they, the Arab leaders, had initiated. Forcing almost a million Jews from their ancient communities in Arab lands, the same leaders blamed Israel for Arab refugees whom they themselves refused to resettle.
This calumny is by now the basis of political coalitions not only at the United Nations and in Europe but on campuses here in the U.S. So ingrained are the assumptions of Jew-blame that newspapers will often devote more coverage to the shooting of one Palestinian Arab by an Israeli, often unintentionally or in self-defense, than to the murders of Jewish civilians by Arab and Muslim terrorists. What such belligerents do with the aim of eliminating the Jewish state, friends sometimes do in the name of holding Jews to “a higher moral standard.” And, as previously, some Jews join the blame-shifting ranks, castigating the Jewish state for engaging in self-defense rather than apology.

Cruz, Ros-Lehtinen protest that UN resolution would 'delegitimize Israel'

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., sent a letter this week to the Executive Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization protesting a resolution the U.S. lawmakers say is part of a wider effort to delegitimize Israel.
"The United Nations' obsessive hostility towards Israel will be on display yet again this week as UNESCO considers another blatantly biased resolution that unjustly singles out our close ally Israel with false accusations and criticism, and attempts to erase the specific deep-rooted, historical connection of Jews and Christians to Jerusalem, Israel's eternal capital," Cruz's office said Tuesday.
The Texas senator and Florida congresswoman were joined in their letter by 39 of their congressional colleagues.
"For thousands of years, Jerusalm [sic] has played a defining, central role in the history and identity of the Jewish people," Cruz's office said. "For Christians, Jerusalem is a seminal spiritual site. This resolution flies in the face of, among other things, science as recent archeological excavations, notably in the City of David, have revealed incontrovertible, physical evidence that reaffirms Jewish and Christian ties to the holy city of Jerusalem. Members of the UNESCO Executive Board should vote against this intentional campaign to deny these historical truths, rewrite the history of Jerusalem, and delegitimize Israel."
Ros-Lehtinen's office added Tuesday that the proposed U.N. resolution's "ill intent" is clear
"[T]o deny the historical record of the Jewish peoples' connections to their holiest city and to imply that Jerusalem is inconsequential to Jews and Christians, with the intent of laying the groundwork for additional UN efforts to delegitimize Israel and undermine its status as the capital of the Jewish State," he office said.
"Furthermore, this irresponsible and reprehensible resolution falsely lays the blame for the violence on Israel since last October while ignoring the acts of terror and violence that are being incited by the Palestinian Authority and Abu Mazen. UNESCO was created to build intercultural understanding yet, as is the case across the entire UN system, intolerance and intentionally corrosive behavior on the part of many of the organization's members has undermined its original mission and only further underscores the need for drastic reform throughout the entire UN system," they added.

Palestinian soccer team honors Jerusalem shooter who killed two Israelis

And anti-Israel activists want Israel kicked out of FIFA!
On Sunday, October 9, 2016, we reported how Palestinians celebrate murder of two Israelis in Jerusalem shooting attack.
Video has been released of the “heroic” drive by shooting being celebrated:
Those celebrations included approval and encouragement of further attacks from both Fatah and Hamas news outlets, a phone call of congratulations from the political head of Hamas to the killer’s family, dancing outside the home of the killer, and the killer’s 14-year old daughter praising the attack.
Israeli police closed the candy store owned by the killer’s family, so I guess they’ll have to find another source of goodies to hand out.
And now this, a Palestinian soccer team holding a banner honoring the killer.
Oh, by the way, the Palestinians and anti-Israel activists want Israel kicked out of FIFA because security checks of Palestinian soccer teams disrupt their ability to play. Let’s see, soccer team honors terrorist killer who conducted shooting spree that killed two Israelis — certainly no security concerns with those fine young men.

10/11 Links Pt2: Glick: The liberating responsibility of atonement; PA: 'Arabs the original inhabitants of Israel'

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The liberating responsibility of atonement

The Jewish people and the Jewish state face extraordinary challenges today. Luckily, we can handle all of them. But to do so, we need to be capable of judging ourselves fairly.
Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish year because it is the day that the Torah sets aside for us to reckon with ourselves. We are commanded to give an accounting – before our fellow men and before God – for our actions in the previous year. We must make amends to both for our misdeeds. And since none of us is perfect, every one of us has things to atone for.
Yom Kippur’s power stems from a basic assumption that forms its core. That assumption is that we are all moral agents. We all have to make an accounting.
This basic assumption is the most liberating notion ever created. Moral agency is what makes us free. It doesn’t matter how wretched or rich our external circumstances, the fact that the Torah enjoins all of us to take responsibility for our behavior means that as far as God is concerned, we are not slaves and never will be slaves.
The converse is also true.
We are only free for as long as we are capable of accounting for our actions. This means that preserving our ability to properly judge ourselves is the key to preserving our liberty.
This is true not only for the Jewish people as individuals. It is true as well for the Jewish state, Israel.

JPost Editorial: Decision time

On Sunday, just hours after an east Jerusalem Palestinian shot and killed two Israelis in the capital, politicians hit the airwaves.
Some called to punish residents of Silwan, the east Jerusalem neighborhood where the terrorist came from. Others called to immediately authorize the construction of homes in Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Agriculture Minister and Bayit Yehudi member Uri Ariel said: “Massive building and removing from the heart of our enemies the idea that we will ever move from a united Jerusalem... will minimize the potential for attacks in Jerusalem.”
Bayit Yehudi MK Mordechai Yogev said: “Every attack requires a Zionist response of authorizing new building plans in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.”
This has happened before.
After the brutal murder of 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel, Education Minister Naftali Bennett called on the government to build in the settlements. A few days later, the government approved the publication of a tender to build 42 additional homes in Kiryat Arba.

Security forces on high alert in Jerusalem as Jewish Israelis mark Yom Kippur

The IDF was set to place the West Bank and Gaza border crossings under a general closure on Tuesday evening at the start of Yom Kippur. The closure was scheduled to be lifted on Wednesday night.
Humanitarian, medical and other urgent journeys will be permitted, the army said.
One day after a deadly Jerusalem terrorist attack jarred the nation, police on Monday said extensive security measures for Yom Kippur, beginning Tuesday night, have been implemented throughout the capital, with “nothing being left to chance.”
In anticipation of thousands of visitors from around the world visiting the Western Wall beginning Monday evening, Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said nearly 4,000 officers will be on hand to closely monitor all activity.
“Overall general security assessments have been made across Israel, with an emphasis on all public areas such as synagogues, central bus and train stations and the Old City,” he said Monday afternoon. “At the same time, during the festivals themselves, we’re having more than 3,500 officers in Jerusalem to carry out security measures, with an emphasis on the Old City, where we’re expecting thousands of people to arrive to go to the Western Wall on Tuesday and Wednesday.”
According to Rosenfeld, a wide range of elite units will be based in Jerusalem, including Border Police, counterterrorism units, special patrol units and undercover units.
“If necessary, they will give an immediate response to any type of incident,” he said, “and these security measures are standard measures taking place despite the terrorist attack that took place over the last 24 hours.”
“The level of security across the country and in Jerusalem is relatively high, and this will continue for as long as necessary throughout the festival period, including Succot, which will last for over two weeks from today,” Rosenfeld said.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are called the High Holy Days. They are more holy days, than holidays, a time for introspection more than a time of celebration.

The Jewish tradition says that every year God reviews the lives of all of humanity and decides what will happen in each life in the year to come. God decrees life or death for each person, inscribing all who will live in the Book of Life.

On Rosh Hashanah Jews wish each other a happy holiday and good year to come. It is a commandment to be happy during the holiday, a must. It would be highly presumptuous to even suggest the possibility of a happy year. Happiness for the whole year?! That’s too far-fetched and very possibly not what would be the best for you. God’s plan for an individual can even be painful so you couldn’t call the experience “happy” but it still can be “good”.

In the time between the New Year and Yom Kippur the traditional blessing is “May you be inscribed in the Book of Life.” The exact translation of the Hebrew reflects Jewish cynicism (and negative experiences throughout our history) saying “May your name be well written, all the way, in the Book of Life” and basically expresses the sentiment: “I hope you don’t die next year.”

It’s kinda funny and terrible at the same time.

Cultures around the world have different New Year traditions, ways to celebrate and times of the year that are considered “New Year.” I don’t think there is any culture that marks the New Year with the same level of introspection about the year that passed and the upcoming year, in the same way Jews do. How many people do you know who truly reflect on the quality of their lives, what they have contributed to their fellow man and the possibility of dying in the upcoming year?

Jewish tradition says that before being right with God people have to be right with each other. During the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur individuals reflect on their actions during the past year and ask forgiveness from people they may have hurt during the previous year. People ask God to forgive their sins AFTER humans forgive each other for hurting each other. This is a very different emphasis than that of other religions and cultures. Religious figures, God or prayers do not have the power to absolve Jews from their sins. Healing can occur only when the individual takes personal responsibility for previous wrong actions and asking forgiveness from the person that was wronged.

Jews don’t need to be good just to other Jews; we believe that it is crucial to be good to all people, everywhere, to provide help where it is needed, to right wrongs wherever possible, to make life better.

I am proud that Israel upholds these ideals throughout the year, providing humanitarian aid around the world as well as innovations that affect the lives of people everywhere – everything from agricultural inventions that provide food and clean water in third world countries to the modern day conveniences people in the western world no longer know how to live without. One of the most disparaged nations on earth, we probably provide the most to people worldwide (this is absolutely true when Israeli & Jewish contributions to humanity are calculated per capita).

Our country is not perfect. No one is perfect. But we try damn hard. We argue all year long about the right way to do things and about how to be better. We demand compassion for our elderly, for the sick, for the strangers amongst us, for our enemies and the people of other countries. Each year we take note of our nation’s accomplishments and find that we have fallen short. As long as there are those amongst us that are suffering, that are not being taken care of properly, we have not done enough.

Each year we consider what is wrong and in the next year we try to do better.

Surrounded by enemies who openly declare their desire to see our destruction, weighed down by “friends” who use a lot of the same terminology and slogans as our enemies, it is difficult to know what will be in the year to come.

Who amongst us will die, simply because we are Jews?

Friends and family, colleagues and strangers will die from old age, disease and accidents. Others will die because we are who we are.

Happy thoughts for the new year, right?

Realistic ones.

On Sunday two Israelis were murdered simply because they were Jews. The family of the terrorist had a huge celebration, happy that he died killing Jews. People from abroad wrote me saying that it is our fault, Israelis deserve to be attacked and why can’t we all just work things out with a nice discussion? Nice.

This is our reality and yet we refuse to be other than what we are. We do our best to do the right thing for each other, for our nation and for the world. We will continue to do so, whether others recognize this or not, whether this is appreciated or not.

This year I pray that my friends and family, people I know and people I do not know will be inscribed in the Book of Life. May the people around the world not have to experience the suffering we have experienced.

A happy year would be wonderful but a good year, one we learn from, grow and become better as a result… that would suffice.

Gmar hatima tova! May you be inscribed in the Book of Life!

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

10/11 Links Pt1: Hamas suicide bus bombing in foiled; The sickness of narrative thinking

From Ian:

Shin Bet foils Hamas suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem

An East Jerusalem man was indicted Tuesday for planning to carry out a suicide bombing on a bus in the capital, officials said.
On September 9, the Shin Bet security service arrested alleged Hamas operative Muhammad Fuaz Ibrahim Julani, a resident of the Shuafat refugee camp, a few days before he planned to carry out his attack, the agency said.
Over the past few months, Julani, 22, had been planning to carry out a terror attack on behalf of Hamas, the Shin Bet said.
In September, he told an accomplice he planned to carry out the suicide bombing as “this is the way of God,” according to the indictment.
The Hamas terror group’s operatives in the Gaza Strip had been in contact with Julani through the internet in order to plan the bombing and had also encouraged him to recruit other people to carry out attacks, according to the indictment filed against him Tuesday in the Jerusalem District Court.
“This investigation reiterates and highlights the unrelenting effort by Hamas operatives in the Gaza Strip to instigate severe terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank,” the Shin Bet said in a statement.

BBC headlines for same story differ according to target audiences

While failing to accurately describe it as terrorism, the BBC News website’s English language report on the attack in Jerusalem on October 9th did make it clear to audiences that the perpetrator was a “Palestinian gunman” in both the headline and the opening paragraph.

In contrast, the headline selected for the BBC’s Arabic language report on the same incident failed to provide visitors to the BBC Arabic website with any information concerning the identity of the attacker.
The headline reads “Two Israelis killed and 6 wounded in shooting in Jerusalem”. The report’s opening paragraph reads:
“The Israeli police said that two Israelis were killed and six others injured as a result of shooting near the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.”

Ben-Dror Yemini: The sickness of narrative thinking

In recent years, the truth has fallen casualty to storytelling; the Palestinian narrative of the Nakba must not override the truth that the Arab armies came to try and destroy Israel in its inception, and must not infantilize the Arab population by not holding them accountable for their actions.
A severe disease has stricken the institutes of knowledge, media, and academia in Israel. It's the disease of narrative thinking. There is no longer and truth, no historic facts. We are living in a new world. Instead of serious research aimed at finding the truth, the world now sees reality through different stories, with each community, group, people, and country having its own.
Case in point, the claims made by MK Ayman Odeh (leader of the Joint List party) following the death of former president Shimon Peres. According to Odeh, the "Palestinians of 1948" (how Israeli-Arabs define themselves), who experienced the "Nakba," are victims of the Zionist enterprise, of which Peres is a main representative. So why should the victim come to the criminal's funeral?
And so, things should be made clear: There was indeed a Nakba. There was a disaster. Crimes were committed during the Independence War, whose victims were local Arab people. And those who would deny this are at least as bad as MK Odeh and his "narrative." We need to acknowledge this not in order to identify with the victims on a human level (not that this is unimportant), but because these are facts.
The thing is, MK Odeh ignores the fact that the Arab leadership of that period, to which he is a successor, mad it unequivocally clear: Not only are we not interested in compromise and in a division of lands, we plan on conducting a massacre.

Since 2008, Hamas has been pretending - in English - that it only targets Israeli soldiers, and is against killing civilians in Israel.

In an interview at the time, Hamas' English-language spokesman, Abu Obaida, said, "There is no justification for targeting civilians. It is against Islam to deliberately kill unarmed civilians during jihad. In addition, our doctrine is to target the enemies army, security services, and support apparatus. But it is known that Zionist society is a militarized society. Service in the army is mandatory; and reserve duty continues past the age of 40. Our determined stance is that unarmed persons on both sides of the conflict should be left out of the fighting. However, we will not accept giving the enemy a free hand against our civilians."

In Arabic, of course, posters inciting murdering Jews and celebrating their deaths are pervasive.

Now, Hamas' "political wing" has admitted supporting murdering Israeli Jews in English as well on its hamas.ps website:

Chairman of Hamas political bureau Khaled Meshaal has called the family of Misbah Abu Subeih, the 40-year-old Palestinian who carried out a resistance attack in Jerusalem yesterday, offering the Movement’s condolences to the family and praising the courage of the late martyr.

“Palestinians are proud of this hero who sacrificed his life and blood to defend his people and the holy Aqsa Mosque,” Meshaal said.

He reaffirmed Hamas’s position that resistance remains the chosen road toward the liberation of Palestine.

“Our resistance shall persist until the land and sanctities are liberated, the prisoners are freed and the refugees are back to their homeland.” He stated.

In a separate phone call, Deputy Chairman of Hamas political bureau Ismail Haniya said that Abu Subeih set a model for the generations to follow.

“He was a staunch defender of Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque both in his life and his death,” Haniya said.

Hezbollah's political wing also cheered the murderous rampage in Jerusalem. That "political wing" is still not considered a terror group by the EU or UK.

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

This is an update my Yom Kippur message of previous years.

I unconditionally forgive anyone who may have wronged me during this year, and I ask forgiveness for anyone I may have wronged as well.

Specifically (as enumerated in previous years, based on the list from The Muqata a few years back):

-If you sent me email and I didn't reply, or didn't get back to you in a timely fashion -- I apologize.
-If you sent me a story and I decided not to publish it or worse, didn't give you a hat tip for the story -- I'm sorry. I'm also sorry if I didn't acknowledge the tip (especially Irene and Ronald, who send me lots.) I sometimes get multiple tips for the same story and I usually credit the first one I saw, which is not always the earliest. And I cannot publish all the stories I am sent, although I try to place appropriate ones in the linkdumps, or tweet them.
-If you requested help from me and I wasn't able to provide it -- I'm sorry.
-I apologize if I posted without the proper attribution, with the wrong attribution, or without attribution at all.
-I'm sorry that I don't give hat tips on things I tweet.
-If I didn't thank you for a donation, I'm very, very sorry.
-I'm sorry if I didn't give the proper respect to my co-bloggers Ian, Mike, Daphne, PoT, Vic, Varda and Forest Rain. They are all great. (UPDATE: sorry, I forgot Petra! I need to ask forgiveness from her next year...)
-I'm sorry if any of my posts offended you personally.
-If I forgot to send you the perks for donating at Patreon - I'm sorry, and hope to do it soon!
- For all the initiatives I started and didn't complete - I'm sorry. I hope to do better next year.
- Please forgive me if I wrote disparaging things about you.
- I'm sorry for not always scrubbing spam from the comments as quickly as I would like.
- I'm sorry if things got published in the comments that violated my comments policy but that I missed.

May this be a year of life, peace, prosperity, happiness and security.

I wish all of my readers who observe Yom Kippur an easy and meaningful fast.

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

Zahir Ammar is a Labour Councillor in Glossop, Derbyshire, UK, according to his Twitter account.

I cannot find any mention of him outside that, and his Twitter account is only two weeks old, so it is possible this is all a scam, but here are two of his latest tweets:

This is a variant of the 2007 quote by Muhammad Nimr Al-Zaghmout, head of the Islamic Palestinian Council in Lebanon, where he said, "The Prophet of Allah has promised us that the Jews will gather in Palestine, and that the Muslims will fight them, and totally kill them. Even the stone and the tree will say: 'Oh Muslims, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.' You might tell me that I am relying on supernatural hadiths. I believe this is not supernatural but is the core of our belief."

Along with his pro-Labour and pro-Corbyn tweets, Ammar also sprinkles in death threats:

But don't accuse him of being anything but liberal and tolerant. His anticipation of massacring millions of Jews comes from a good place.

(h/t Georgia)

UPDATE: It looks like a fake account. The photo is of Asad Dandia, a Brooklyn College student and cofounder of a group called Muslims Giving Back. (h/t Bob Knot)

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

Syria hosts lecture on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

The "Syrian Higher People's Committee for Arab support of the Palestinian people and resistance to the Zionist project" held a lecture in the Al Assad National Library in Damascus in late September.

The topic was "The Arab national project in the face of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Sabra and Shatila massacre model."

The lecturer said that "the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are the most dangerous protocols in the present age because they contain dangerous laws aimed at provoking wars in the world and control" to include the fragmentation of the Arab world into statelets and to stir up unrest, for example, "the crimes committed by Zionism against Arabs and Palestinians for more than six decades."

The official Syrian SANA news agency site that carried this story - proving that the Syrian government supports antisemitism - is not visible from some countries, but you can see the article here.

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

10/10 Links Pt2: Palestinian refugee camps: Facts, myths, & illusions; Goodbye, Barack

From Ian:

Palestinian refugee camps: Facts, myths, & illusions

Why has this festering wound of deprivation and suffering perpetuated and grown? Why haven’t Arab host nations closed the camps and integrated the Palestinians into their own populations? And why, indeed, are there still refugee camps in areas ruled by the Palestinian Authority? Accountability lies not with Israel, but with Palestinian leaders and Arab States.
The same is true of the origins of the refugee exodus. In 1947, the UN Partition Plan proposed two independent states. Israel accepted, but Palestinian leaders, whose state would include the West Bank and Gaza, rejected the proposal. How many Palestinian refugees would there be had the Palestinians accepted this offer of statehood? Zero.
In 1948, Israel declared statehood. The next day Israel was attacked on all sides by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. Those nations failed in their quest to destroy Israel, and the war they launched caused an exodus of Palestinian refugees. How many Palestinian refugees would there be had the Arab nations not attacked Israel in 1948? Zero.
There is an oft-repeated but false narrative that Israel “expelled” the Palestinians from their homes in 1948. In fact, at Israel’s founding Prime Minister David Ben Gurion proclaimed that all Arab inhabitants were invited to stay “on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions.” Many Palestinians left, implored to do so by the same Arab leaders who were bent on destroying Israel. A handful were expelled during the war. But, the Palestinian Arabs who took up Ben Gurion’s offer to stay in Israel are today (along with their descendants) among the 1.8 million Arab citizens who are part of a thriving and diverse democracy.
Notably, former Syrian Prime Minister Haled al Azm stated in his memoirs: “Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the UN to resolve on their return.”
Solutions to the problem have been routinely rejected by Palestinian leaders. In 2000, the Camp David accords offered Palestinians another opportunity for statehood. The offer included 97% of the occupied territories, additional land swaps, and $30 billion in compensation for the refugees. But, the proposal also required recognition of Israel’s right to exist in peace. Yasser Arafat rejected it.

Ben-Dror Yemini: How to deal with the next Gaza-bound flotilla

The Gaza-bound flotilla received international media coverage, especially when Roger Waters joined the party and announced that Pink Floyd was reuniting for a special performance for the boat’s passengers. What did we gain from that, asked my friend, who was listening to foreign media reports. Instead of taking over the boat and reminding the world of the Gaza blockade, which turns into a siege when translated into foreign languages, Israel could have acted differently. Why confront a small group of women and turn them into heroes? We could have turned them into what they really are: Useful idiots.
Want to enter Gaza? Go right ahead. We’ll even equip you with medicine and tomato boxes. It’s true that hundreds of Israeli trucks transfer goods into the strip every day, but if you want more – be our guest.
We could have taken the same opportunity to do other things. For example, to equip them with an official letter from the Israeli government, something that would be photographed well on the media. A letter adorned with arabesques in dozens of languages. And if Israel were smart, not only would it not have prevented media coverage, it would have invited a distinguished delegation of journalists from around the world to cover the delivery of the letter.
And what would be the content? Well, the following things should have been written: “The State of Israel wants prosperity and welfare for the strip’s residents. For that purpose, Hamas is required to accept the simple formula of demilitarization in exchange for reconstruction. Instead of investing in tunnels of death, instead of investing in the production of rockets directed at innocent civilians, it is possible to turn over a new leaf of cooperation, of economic investments, of project building. Israel is not interested in a blockade.

Vic Rosenthal: Goodbye, Barack

At last, after eight long years during which Barack Obama a) applied almost unrelenting pressure on Israel, much more obsessively than anything else he did, and b) taught us the painful truth about American liberal Jews – that for them, Israel is just another foreign country – he is leaving the White House. What comes next could be better or worse, but who here won’t be happy to see his particularly offensive brand of hypocrisy and hostility disappear?
But the game isn’t over until January 20, and soon there will be nothing to restrain him from acting on his obsession.
Last Wednesday, the State Department issued a press release in which it “strongly condemn[ed]” Israel’s plan to build 98 homes inside an existing settlement in order to house families that will be displaced by the demolition of another settlement, which has been ordered by Israel’s Supreme Court.
“Strongly condemn” is language normally used for terrorism or, for example, Russian and Syrian air strikes on hospitals in which dozens of civilians die.
The State Department claimed that Israel was violating its assurances to the US that it would not build “new settlements.” Israeli officials called the statement “disproportionate” and argued that it was neither a “new settlement” nor an obstacle to peace.
Administration lackeys like the New York Times and J Street echoed the criticism. The Times, in language that could have been (and probably was) written by NSC staffer and Obama confidant Ben Rhodes, blasted Israel and called for a Security Council resolution to “set guidelines” for Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. An administration official said that “the White House boiled with anger” (more Rhodesian rhetoric) over Israel’s plan.

Arab film producers' union blames "Jewish lobby" for JASTA legislation

I've mentioned how Saudi media covered the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) passed by Congress.

For some reason the Egypt-based General Union of Arab Producers decided that they must weigh in on the issue as well.

Like the Saudis, they blame the Jews.

But for a completely different reason.

The producers at first expressed reluctance for an artistic union to get involved in a political issue like this. But that didn't last. After declaring that even many Americans agree that the Saudis had nothing to do with 9/11, they said:

We emphasize that there are a number of members of Congress who are working for the interests of the "Jewish lobby", which aims to form "a new Middle East..." And this Zionist lobby in the United States is aimed at causing unrest in Saudi Arabia that will cause the collapse of the Saudi state .. followed by the Gulf states until the "new Middle East" scheme is completed, putting the Gulf states are in crises like Syria, Libya and Iraq.

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