Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 09, 2017

02/09 Links Pt2: UNRWA Teachers Promote Nazis, Antisemitism, Anti-Gay Hate; Why do peace organizations rely on ‘alternative facts’?

From Ian:

UNRWA Teachers Promote Nazis, Antisemitism, Anti-Gay Hate

UNRWA's funders—the U.S., the EU, the UK, Sweden, France—need to to urgently investigate why UNRWA teachers praise Hitler and the Nazis and incite antisemitism and anti-gay hatred. Urge them to create a commission of inquiry now into UNRWA

Why do peace organizations rely on ‘alternative facts’?

A prime example features in Breaking the Silence’s tour of the Southern Hebron hills region. In Susiya, tourists are taken to a well opening in the ground, roughly a meter square. As I stood there, the guide explained that the IDF had pushed an entire vehicle into the well. “Here, if you look, there’s a Subaru car deep inside,” he claimed. “They pushed it inside in order to poison the well.” A detached white car door lies on the ground adjacent to the hole.
It sounds dreadful. Initially, I was shocked. There’s just one problem: As anyone who’s been there can attest, no car is actually visible. That’s because there isn’t one in there at all. The aforementioned door is nothing but a devious, strategically positioned prop. And after taking a moment to think about it, I realised the sheer impossibility of ramming a whole car through a one meter square opening. But how many people simply accept the story unquestioningly?
Another time, Breaking the Silence uploaded a story to its Hebrew Facebook page, claiming that a Palestinian family was instructed to leave home eight times in one year so that the army could perform drills nearby. At the time, I was part of My Truth, an organisation that had refuted a number of Breaking the Silence’s lies. Although I had already developed a deep mistrust of the organisation by this point, this claim was too strong to ignore. I was concerned by the possibility that the IDF could acts so callously.
Anxious to verify the details, I relayed concern to my boss that we should tread carefully in case the army had indeed marked out this family’s land as a firing zone. I advised that it would be prudent to examine the case further. And so we did. We obtained aerial photographs of the area from 1999 and from 2016. In so doing, My Truth uncovered what really happened there: Whereas the 2016 photograph clearly showed homes, the image from 1999 showed uninhabited land. When the area was declared a closed military zone that year, no Palestinian village existed there. The family then deliberately chose to live in a military firing range, in defiance of both the law and common sense. Put simply, Breaking the Silence’s claim that the army was cynically embarking on a training exercise and using this as a cover to evict a family was a barefaced lie.

PMW success in US Congress
Representatives Ted Budd and Mark Sanford introduce the No Bonuses for Terrorist Act of 2017 (Feb. 9, 2017)

A new bill introduced by U.S. Representatives Ted Budd (R-NC) and Mark Sanford (R-SC) aims to ensure that American taxpayer dollars will not be used to reward Palestinian terrorists. Palestinian Media Watch first revealed to the international community in 2011 that the Palestinian Authority pays significant monetary rewards to terrorists. Since then, PMW has documented the PA’s continued practice of using foreign aid money to reward terrorism in a series of follow up reports:
The PA's Billion Dollar Fraud (April 27, 2016)
Is the PA Lying to Western Donors? (May 18, 2015)
Compilation of PMW Reports on PA Salaries to Terrorist Prisoners (Feb. 13, 2013)
The No Bonuses for Terrorist Act of 2017 (H.R. 789), if passed, will require the US Secretary of State to certify that the PA and PLO have terminated all financial rewards to terrorists and their families. In describing the new bill, Representative Ted Budd showed his familiarity with PMW’s findings in The PA’s Billion Dollar Fraud, which exposed last year that the PA has funneled its salary payments to terrorists through the PLO in order to deceive donors:
“Although our current law allows reductions in aid to the Palestinian Authority based on the amount of payments they make to terrorists and their families, they’ve found a way around this by giving to third party organizations - like the Palestinian Liberation Organization.”
- Representative Ted Budd [Feb. 1, 2017]
The No Bonuses for Terrorist Act is designed to close all loopholes. If the US Secretary of State is unable to certify to Congress that the PA and the PLO have ceased payment of financial rewards for terror, the aid money designated for the PA will be redirected towards funding Israel’s Iron Dome program.

PMW report prompts Wiesenthal Center's condemnation of German-Palestinian sports agreement

Following Palestinian Media Watch's disclosure this week that Germany signed a sports agreement with one of the Palestinian Authority's most outspoken terror promoters, Jibril Rajoub, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is urging Chancellor Angela Merkel to "suspend this unthinkable agreement until the Palestinian Authority removes all names of terrorists from all sectors of Palestinian sport and their acts of terror be publicly condemned by Ramallah." [Simon Wiesenthal Center website, Feb. 7, 2017]
The Wiesenthal Center suggested that Germany instead encourage joint football matches between Israelis and Palestinians. PMW has documented that Rajoub, in his capacity as head of the PA's Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs and the Palestinian Football Association, has described such peacebuilding matches as "a crime against humanity." He has similarly announced, "I won't allow and won't agree to any joint game between Arabs and Israel." [Official PA TV, July 1, 2013]
PMW has documented that it is PA policy to present terrorists as role models. Naming sporting events after terrorists is one of the many ways the PA glorifies and honors terrorists.

From Al Jazeera on February 4:

Jordan said late on Saturday that its warplanes bombed positions held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in southern Syria, two years after one of its pilots was captured and killed by the armed group.

Friday's strikes came on the second anniversary of ISIL's release of video showing pilot Moaz al-Kassasbeh being burned alive in a cage after his aircraft crashed in Syria in December 2014.

"Jordanian Air Force planes, in memory of our martyrs who have fallen in our war against terrorism, on Friday evening targeted various positions of the terrorist gang Daesh in southern Syria," the military said in a statement, using the Arabic acronym for ISIL.

I find it remarkable that a modern army, using drones and precision-guided bombs, chooses the date and time for an attack not for tactical advantage - but to coincide with the anniversary of an event.

This is a peripheral consequence of the honor/shame dynamic. Jordan's army was humiliated by ISIS burning its pilot alive, and the way to best cleanse this shame is to do a revenge attack that is explicitly tied to the humiliating event.

The army released this statement linking the two both to give a message to ISIS and, more importantly, to Jordanians so they could erase the shame they felt for the past two years.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

I opened my newspaper this morning (Wednesday) and was greeted with the headline: the White House has no comment on the regularization law that was passed yesterday, and will talk about it when PM Netanyahu visits Washington to meet with President Trump next week.

Imagine my relief. I mean, why should the White House have an opinion about something which is really an internal Israeli affair? I am amused – well, pretty irritated, actually – by the way Ha’aretz and my social media friends have decided to call it the “land grab law,” when it actually goes farther to compensate owners of land than customary common law would. As Eugene Kontorovich explains,

Israel’s proposed “Regulations Bill” has attracted broad international criticism, including from the U.S. State Department and the European Union, as well as from opposition Israeli politicians and some government lawyers. The bill seeks to solve a situation in which, over several decades, over one thousand Israeli homes in West Bank settlements have been built in open areas to which Palestinians subsequently asserted property claims, typically based on broad give-aways of state land by the King of Jordan during the Hashemite occupation (1949-67). The homes are in communities built with some level of government involvement. Thus the bill provides the government would compensate the landowners 125% of the value of the land, in order to allow the communities that have been built there to remain.

The plots are generally open, uncultivated fields. The frequently used characterization of “private Palestinian lands” is misleading. In the overwhelming majority of cases, no individual Palestinians have come forward to claim the lands. Indeed, in most cases, no property claimants asserted their interests for decades after houses were built, a situation that in common law would certainly warrant the application of adverse possession doctrines, under which long-term possession of property unprotested by owners can change legal title, exactly to prevent these kinds of conflict between long-term users and owners who slept on their rights . Under Jordanian law, rules of prescription, which would turn the land over to its existing inhabitants, would apply. In cases like the community of Amona, which inspired but are not covered by the law, the Court made its determination without any fact-finding, and the lands claimed by the Palestinian petitioners only slightly overlap with those on which the Israeli homes stand.

It’s not really a big deal, is it? No Palestinians are being exploited, and the residents of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are just getting the same kind of protection for their investment as people in the rest of Israel, the US and many other developed countries have. Better, since the state is willing to pick up the tab for compensation.

Of course the world leaders in virtue and morality, the EU and the governments of Germany and France, are dead set against the law. The folks whose wisdom brought us two world wars and a Holocaust have “lost confidence” that we are serious about the “two-state solution” that they hope will slice our country into indefensibility.

Later today I listened on the radio to the reactions of the European representatives in Israel. You would think that the Knesset had passed a law demanding that the Palestinians must throw all their male children into the sea, and not one that simply makes it possible to compensate people in return for taking property that they may not even have clear title to, and haven’t used for years, if ever. I am becoming more and more convinced that after Iran, Europe is our greatest enemy, and the Palestinians their weapon.

Well, Amona is rubble, its residents are homeless, and the cabal made up of the Civil Administration (the military entity that rules Area C, where almost all Jewish settlements are and few Arabs live), the left-leaning legal establishment, and the subversive European-paid NGOs are smacking their lips over how they will do the same to numerous other Jewish communities, just as soon as the Supreme Court voids the new law.

Because, after all, who cares what the democratically elected Knesset and government decide? Don’t we understand who really runs the country and knows what’s good for us? Those religious settler fanatics are an obstacle to peace! Just ask the talking heads on Israeli radio and TV.

Which brings me to the next headline: Channel 2 reports that Netanyahu told the police that have been investigating him nonstop for who knows how long, that he didn’t know about bottles of champagne and other gifts received by his wife from a businessman friend, and he didn’t check the value of cigars that he himself was given. He just smoked them! Not only that, but he told the police that he bought plenty of cigars with his own money.

So, just some random thoughts on this “scandal:” Channel 2 has been selectively dribbling out information about Netanyahu’s supposedly confidential police investigations for months. Where do they get it, and why is it OK for them to release out-of-context snippets of interrogations in a country where the names and faces of people accused of crimes are routinely redacted from news reports?

The investigation itself is on the same level as one of the previous ones, in which Mrs. Netanyahu was accused of returning deposit bottles that had been used at official functions, and keeping the money. Yes, she did it; yes, the small amount of money was returned; and yes, the silliness of creating a scandal about deposit bottles was duly noted.

The fact is that the same media people that deliberately mischaracterize the regularization law and also gleefully bash Netanyahu on every occasion, are running a long-term project to make him look like a crook. How much of the evening news is devoted to his non-scandals, almost every day? How many hours has he wasted, answering police questions and trying to deal with the fallout from these frivolous investigations? He’s the Prime Minister of the strongest country in the region, economically and militarily, the one and only Jewish state – which half the world hates and wants to destroy – and you are busting his balls about some cigars?

This isn’t really funny. Netanyahu has said that he believes there is a media campaign to force the Attorney General to indict him. And if he is indicted, he could be forced to resign.

The story on page 11 of the newspaper reminds me that not everything is frivolous or political. It is about Trump and Iran trading barbs over the Iranian missile development program. Now that Obama is gone, it may be possible for the US and Israel to develop an effective policy to prevent their common enemy, Iran, from producing and deploying nuclear weapons.

I devoutly hope that this will be the main subject for discussion between Netanyahu and Trump, rather than Judean real estate law. Or cigars.

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02/09 Links Pt1: Unlike Obama, Trump isn’t obsessed with where Israel’s Jews live; Iron Dome intercepts three rockets from Sinai headed for Eilat

From Ian:

Unlike Obama, Trump isn’t obsessed with where Israel’s Jews live

It takes a curious derangement to conclude from this that all would be well in the Middle East if only Israel would stop enlarging Jewish neighborhoods. Yet that is the mindset of the UN and much of the international community. It was also the mindset of the Obama administration, which rarely missed an opportunity to condemn Israeli settlements — going so far as to facilitate a Security Council resolution declaring even East Jerusalem, with its storied Jewish Quarter, “occupied Palestinian territory.”
To its credit, the Trump administration rejects that paradigm. The Republican platform adopted last summer made no reference to the “two-state” unicorn, and Trump’s ambassador to Israel firmly backs the expansion of Jewish communities in the historic Jewish heartland. Last week the White House spokesman, while advising caution toward the construction of new settlements, made a point of emphasizing that the new president and his foreign-policy team “don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace.”
Bizarrely, those words were spun in the media as a sign that Trump had come to embrace Obama’s way of thinking about Israel and the Palestinians.
That interpretation struck me as wrong-headed on its face. When Trump warmly welcomes Netanyahu to Washington next week, I expect it to seem even more outlandish.
Anything can change, of course, especially given Trump’s volatility. But on the evidence so far, Obama’s frostiness toward Israel is anathema to the new administration. Palestinian rejectionism has always been the insurmountable impediment to Middle East peace — not Jewish housing. Obama could never bring himself to acknowledge that elementary truth. I’m guessing Trump won’t have that problem.

At least 5 lightly wounded in Petah Tikva shooting, stabbing attack

At least five people were lightly wounded after a Palestinian man opened fire at a bus and stabbed someone near an outdoor market in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva on Thursday evening, officials said.
Police officers arrested the West Bank man, who was still in possession of the gun used in the attack, a police spokesperson said.
The suspected terrorist is 18 years old, a resident of the northern West Bank, according to police.
Just before 5:00 p.m., the gunman opened fire at a bus near the Petah Tikva market on HaBaron Hirsch Street, hitting a man and a woman in their 50s. Another woman, approximately 30 years old, was also injured by shrapnel.
They all suffered wounds to their legs, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.
He continued on foot before he was cornered by a group of civilians outside a sewing machine repair shop, according to police officer Ami Ben-David.

On February 25, there will be a "Conference for Palestinians Abroad" in Istanbul. It is mean to attract Palestinians outside the Arab world.

The goals are:

Affirming our right of liberation and self determination and the role of Palestinian abroad in achieving it.
Affirming the right of return for refugees and working on achieving it.
Taking Political actions to claim civil and human rights of our people.
Building and strengthening the unity of the political stance of the Palestinian people abroad.

Significantly, the organizers don't seem interested in obtaining human rights for their fellow Palestinians in Lebanon or Syria or Egypt or Saudi Arabia, but only by "returning" to a country most of them have never set foot in.

These goals are largely consistent with what the PLO says it wants as well. But the PLO is not happy and has criticized this conference.

The PLO's Expatriate Affairs Department has denounced the conference because the PLO pretends to be the sole representative of the Palestinian people and they weren't invited.

Probably because the PLO does nothing for these people they claim to represent.

The vehemence of the PLO objections reveals something that most Western observers don't realize: the PLO wants to make it look like all Palestinians share their opinions on everything, because they (rightly) understand that a single unified message is far more effective when presented to the world than varying points of view.

When the PLO claims that "Palestinians want X" they do not want to be contradicted by other groups, or opinion polls. They want to be considered as if they truly represent all Palestinians, not as the self-appointed and unelected leaders they really are.

So any outside group that does anything without PLO control is considered a danger because any divergence of their messages is considered a weakening of their political position. For their part, nearly all Palestinians understand this message, and they will give a unified front to any Western reporters or NGOs with rare exceptions when they know that there will be no consequences to their differing opinions.

In a society where dissent is so strongly discouraged, Palestinians aren't free to express what they truly want. And that is exactly what the PLO is trying so hard to perpetuate.

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As a followup to my post about UNRWA and defining refugees, it looks like the reality is a bit simpler than I thought.

I asked an international legal scholar about UNRWA's definition of refugees, and he responded simply "There is only one treaty that defines refugees – the 1951 convention."

Reading the Refugee Convention more carefully, this is in fact the case. It doesn't say that Palestinians are or aren't refugees; it merely says that they are not eligible for protection under the Refugee Convention because UNRWA already existed. Their refugee status is simply not addressed in the Convention - because there is only one definition.

Any person who...owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

The first article of the Convention then lists people for whom the Convention doesn't apply, for example those who are guilty of war crimes or those who become citizens of another country. And Palestinian Arabs are excluded as well. This was done at the request of Arab countries. Since UNRWA was considered temporary, the Convention says that Palestinian Arabs will fall under the provisions of the Convention as soon as UNRWA no longer can be responsible for them. Then they would only be considered refugees if they fit under the Refugee Convention definition and not under the rest of its exclusions.

Likewise, in their carefully written policy documents, UNRWA doesn't define the people registered with UNRWA as "refugees." They refer to them almost invariably as "Palestine Refugees." sometimes with the word "refugees" capitalized, but that is nomenclature, not descriptive.

UNRWA also takes pains to say that they are using the term only for the purposes of determining who is eligible for services, not as a legal term. It is a working definition.

UNRWA is not trying to define the term "refugee," because it cannot do that: the Refugee Convention is the only place the term can be defined. All UNRWA can do is decide who they want to provide services to, and the main (but not only) category of those people is what they name "Palestine Refugees." It doesn't mean that they are real refugees any more than the UN calling Gaza "Occupied Palestinian Territory" means that Gaza is legally occupied - something the UN essentially admitted.

It is simply a word game.

Let's look again at UNRWA's definition in its "Consolidated Eligibility and Registration Instructions" with this in mind:

Persons who meet UNRWA’s Palestine Refugee criteria

These are persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict. Palestine Refugees, and descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, are eligible to register for UNRWA services. The Agency accepts new applications from persons who wish to be registered as Palestine Refugees. Once they are registered with UNRWA, persons in this category are referred to as Registered Refugees or as Registered Palestine Refugees.

Notice how UNRWA capitalizes "Palestine Refugees" but doesn't capitalize the "r" in "descendants of Palestine refugee males." This is because the descendants are also "Palestine Refugees" but they are not real refugees.

On UNRWA's website, capitalizing the R in refugees is not standard - but the phrase "Palestine refugees" is ubiquitous. Only rarely do they refer to "refugees" without a qualifier of "Palestine refugees" or "registered refugees." Once you are aware of that fact, it is honestly irritating to read their literature. They are trying hard to make the causal reader think that "Palestine refugees" are refugees, but as my lawyer friend points out, they cannot.

So for example this 2010 document that attempts to show the difference between UNRWA and UNHRC consistently says that UNHRC takes care of "refugees" while UNRWA takes care of "Palestine refugees" with the word "Palestine" italicized throughout. Once you understand that "Palestine refugees" is simply a phrase that has no legal meaning these paragraphs suddenly make much more sense.

Palestine Refugees as Defined by UNRWA

Anyone whose normal place of residence was in Mandate Palestine during the period from 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war qualifies as a Palestine refugee, as defined by UNRWA, and is eligible for UNRWA registration. Hence the reference to Palestine refugees, not Palestinian refugees, in UNRWA’s name and official documents.

Here they say explicitly that UNRWA defines what a "Palestine refugee" is but in no way are they saying that they are actual refugees - because only the Refugee Convention can do that.

On the other hand, when the same document refers to "Palestinian refugees" it refers to Palestinians who are real refugees under the Refugee Convention, and therefore (if they are outside UNRWA areas) they are eligible for UNHCR protection. Typically these are refugees from Syria or Iraq who happen to be of Palestinian descent.

UNHCR has a world-wide mandate to protect, assist, and seek durable solutions for refugees as well as for other people in need of international protection. UNHCR’s mandate covers Palestinians who are refugees within the meaning of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which could include Palestine refugees as defined by UNRWA. UNHCR normally takes up the case of Palestinian refugees only when they are outside UNRWA’s area of operations.

Notice how the document distinguishes between "refugees within the meaning of the 1951 Refugee Convention" and "Palestine refugees as defined by UNRWA." Only the former are real refugees under international law, because only the 1951 Refugee Convention defines what a refugee is. Only real refugees can apply for asylum in other countries, not "Palestine refugees" (again, unless they are fleeing persecution for other reasons.) UNRWA merely defines who is eligible for their services and, for most of them, they call the "Palestine refugees." They could call them Blurpies - it would be just as meaningful.

Other UN agencies will not be so particular and will mix up "Palestine refugees" with real refugees. Sadly, even UNHCR - which has an interest in inflating the number of refugees worldwide - will count UNRWA's "Palestine refugees" as real refugees in their annual reports and ignore the definitions in the Refugee Convention. Over the decades, the UN has happily pushed the myth of a growing number of Palestinian refugees - but UNRWA knows better by insisting on calling them "Palestine refugees." The media, of course, is often complicit with this.

The term "Palestine refugees" is meant to deceive. And UNRWA has done a brilliant job in doing exactly that.

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Meet the happy female terrorist supporters at Palestinian universities

These are photos from the Facebook page of a women's student group at Al Quds University that is associated with Fatah:

The name of the group?

"Sisters of Martyr Dalal Mughrabi."

Mughrabi was the terrorist responsible for the 1978 murders of 38 Israelis including 13 children.

There are Fatah-aligned groups with the same name at BirZeit University, Al Azhar University, An-Najah University and various places beyond universities.

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Fake news: Turkish "news" agency calls a road accident a "vehicular attack by settler"

Suleiman Salah Hammad, 85 (or 81), was riding his donkey along a highway south of Bethlehem when he was accidentally hit by a car driven by a Jew.

Hammad and his donkey were tragically killed.

The car sustained severe damage.

Israeli ambulances and emergency personnel helped as best they could and opened an investigation.

Now here is how the Turkish Anadolu Agency reported this story:

The story, and a followup story with video that Getty Images archived, repeats the lie that this was a deliberate attack.

Fake news of this type can be seen every day in certain media outlets.

(h/t Bob Knot)

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02/08 Links Pt2: PFLP Terrorist Calling For Women's Mass Strike;

From Ian:

Former PFLP Terrorist One Of “Feminists” Calling For Mass Strike

In an op-ed for The Guardian, a group of “feminists” have called for a mass strike on International Women’s Day (March 8).
The Women’s March on Washington spawned more than 600 sister marches in more than 75 countries around the world. The turnout in Washington, D.C., alone far exceeded expectations, with an estimated half a million people turning out, while the worldwide estimate sits above 3 million. But despite the impressive crowds the question remains — what happens next? How about a mass strike, where women around the world walk out of work on March 8th in protest against male violence and in defense of reproductive rights? Well, mark your calendar, because that’s precisely what one group of women is calling for.
In an Op-Ed for The Guardian, a group of feminist activists and writers — including Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation; Angela Davis, founder of Critical Resistance, which advocates for prison reform; and Rasmea Yousef Odeh, associate director of the Arab American Action Network — issued a call for “feminism for the 99 percent.”
“Militant” feminist struggle somehow seems appropriate, considering one of these so-called feminists is Rasmea Yousef Odeh, a former PFLP terrorist who was sentenced to life in prison in Israel for her involvement in two terrorist bombings in Jerusalem in 1969, one of which killed two people – but only spent 10 years in prison before being released in a prisoner exchange with the PFLP in 1980.

UH-OH: DNC Candidate Ellison Allegedly Ranted About ‘Jewish Slave Traders’

Democrtaic Congressman Keith Ellison, a Muslim who is vying for the position of head of the Democratic national Committee, has been accused of ant-Semitism because of remarks he has made in the past about jews.
Now there is further alleged evidence of his anti-Semitism. As Mother Jones reports, when Ellison attended the University of Minnesota in the late 1980’s, he reportedly snapped that “European white Jews” were “trying to oppress minorities all over the world," referring to them as “Jewish slave traders.”
Mother Jones details how Ellison was a supporter of the racist Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and wrote op-eds, under the name Keith Hakim, in the student paper, the Minnesota Daily, defending the Nation of Islam leader. Ellison also introduced Kwame Ture, the black-power activist formerly known as Stokely Carmichael, when he spoke at the university; Ture called Zionism a form of white supremacy.
Eager to effect a rapprochement between the blacks and Jews on campus, the university organized a series of conversations between the two groups. But Ellison insisted Ture was not a racist. Michael Olenick, the opinions editor at the Daily, recalled Ellison asserting, "European white Jews are trying to oppress minorities all over the world.” He added, "Keith would go on all the time about 'Jewish slave traders.'" Another Jewish student recalled Ellison ranting, "What are you afraid of? Do you think black nationalists are gonna get power and hurt Jews?"

E.U.-Supported Palestinian University Calls to ‘Blow Up’ Jews

A Palestinian university with strong U.S. and E.U. ties held a militant parade graphically calling for the murder of Jews.
Birzeit University, just outside of Ramallah in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), held festivities to celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the Fatah movement on Dec. 31, 2016. Fatah is the dominant movement in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and is led by the authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an organization that translates Arab, Iranian and Russian media, recently issued a report on the event.
MEMRI footage showed armed masked men in military fatigues conducting drills and chanting at Birzeit University’s campus. The men belong to Fatah’s Shabiba student movement. According to MEMRI, during the drill, the student movement members praised deceased Palestinian leader and Fatah head Yasser Arafat and shouted:
“Blow up the head of the settler!”
“We are the guardians of the borders!”
“Oh shabiba, this is a call to arms!”
As CAMERA has noted, Palestinian officials often refer to all Israelis as “settlers,” regardless of where they live.

Europe punishes Israel, blared the headline in Israel National News. “Ha!” I thought to myself. “They kill 6 million of us and then they punish us? What was that, then? The Spring Cotillion?”

"Selection" of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at the death camp Auschwitz-II (Birkenau) in Poland during German occupation, May/June 1944. Jews were sent either to work or to the gas chamber.

Europe. It takes a special kind of chutzpah to be so steadfast, so single-minded in one’s pursuit of hatred’s aim: the Jews. This is a story not lacking in any irony!

Jewish refugees being marched away by British police at Croydon airport in March 1939. They were put on a flight to Warsaw.

Think on it: the Romans oust the Jews from their land and so they go to Europe (some of them dragged there as slaves). Europe tortures the Jews for two-thousand years with all manner of pogroms and expulsions and then tries to finish them off once and for all, while Great Britain prevents them from coming back to whence they came from in the first place.

The Jewish poet Süßkind von Trimberg wearing a Jewish hat (Codex Manesse, 14th century.)

No one else much wants them. Certainly not FDR. Even though he knew exactly what was going on.

But after the Holocaust, all of them are forced to do something: the European nations, America, the UN. And so it is decided they’ll throw money at the creation of a Jewish State, Israel. They’ll give lip service to the idea of a Jewish National Home. Britain, meanwhile, will secretly arm the Arabs from behind the scenes in hopes of counteracting all these efforts.

And the glory of it! Even should the Jews succeed and manage to defend the Jewish State of Israel against all odds, all those Arabs who want them dead after all those Germans who wanted them dead, then at least they’ll all be in one place.

Yes. They managed to murder 6 million Jews, spread as they were throughout Europe. But 6-7 million of the suckers concentrated (get it?) in one tiny country the size of the state of Vermont? What with nuclear weapons a thing, this time they figure they can’t lose. Just point and shoot, as the saying goes.

Fettmilch Riot: The plundering of the Judengasse (Jewry) in Frankfurt on August 22, 1614

That is approximately (okay, so exactly) what went through this author’s head while reading about Europe punishing Israel over the passing of Israel’s brand spanking new Regulation Law, which gives 125% of the value of the land, or an equivalent piece of land to any Arab who can prove ownership of land on which a Jew built a home in Judea and Samaria.

You have to understand: Jews didn’t build in Judea and Samaria indiscriminately, but did their utmost to ascertain that the land in question was public—that there were no previous owners. Then and only then did Jews build homes with the government’s okay and assistance. These claims that keep coming up, they’re BOGUS. The claimants do not even need to show a deed. So of course people are going to claim land they want if they don’t even need to prove ownership with papers of some sort.

Need a crash course in contemporary land rights in Judea and Samaria? You’ve got it. Here’s what historian and political analyst Dr. Moshe Dann, has to say on the subject:

After the Six Day War in 1967 . . . the IDF commander ruled that the IDF would follow Jordanian law completely and exclusively [regarding land ownership in Judea and Samaria], except where it conflicted with IDF rules and regulations. This was an administrative decision, not law, and exceptions were made, for example to apply Israeli law concerning VAT. But regarding land ownership, the Civil Administration (Minhal) followed Jordanian law. This became important several decades later as Jews built new communities and as Arab Palestinians and NGOs Peace Now, Yesh Din and Rabbis for Human Rights, appealed to the High Court claiming that Jews had built their homes and property on “privately owned land.”

Their claims are based on massive land distributions that were carried out by Jordan during the early 1960’s in Judea and Samaria (the 'West Bank'). These arbitrary land grants were unconditional and, according to Mandate and Jordanian law, when recorded in the land registry, gave the recipients title and permanent possession. Most of the land was never used and no taxes were paid, which are required by Ottoman law, and therefore should have nullified any claims of ownership.

Since Jordan’s occupation of Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem was illegal, and its claim to be the legitimate sovereign was rejected by the entire international community, except for England and Pakistan, the IDF was under no obligation to recognize Jordan’s authority, including its laws and legal structure. Three Israeli laws were already in force and should have been employed:

1. The Area of Jurisdiction and Powers Ordinance (1948) requires that Israeli land laws be applied to "any part of Palestine which the Minister of Defense has defined by proclamation as being held by the Defense Army of Israel." According to late attorney and legal expert Howard Grief, this law “was enacted for the sole purpose of recovering for the Jewish State those lands that had been recognized as integral parts of the Jewish National Home under international law in 1920 and had always been considered the patrimony of the Jewish People."

2. The Emergency Regulations (Cultivation of Waste [Uncultivated] Lands) Law (1949) “authorizes the Ministry of Agriculture to declare lands as ‘waste’ lands and to take control over ‘uncultivated’ land.”

3. The Emergency Land Requisition (Regulation) Law (1949) authorizes the requisition of land when it is “necessary for the defense of the state, public security, the maintenance of essential supplies or essential public services, the absorption of immigrants or the rehabilitation of ex-soldiers or war invalids.”

Regarding the new Regulation Law, Dann says the media is making out as though Israel were legalizing land theft, though nothing could be further from the truth. A piece of property could have been registered in someone’s name 60 years ago, though that person is long gone. "Sometimes we can't even find out if that person ever existed. So people claim to be descendants of that person thereby to own land and that certifies them without ever going to court," says Dann.

Now let’s say you didn’t just read about Jordanian land rights and how these claims for land cannot be proven, and don’t even need to be proven in order for the leftist Israeli High Court of Justice to rule in their favor against the settlers. Let’s say you’re completely ignorant of the contemporary history of the area, but you do know that these territories are the heart and soul of the Jewish people, indigenous territory.

How could a European be so bold as to tell a Jew he cannot live in Judea and Samaria? Do Europeans not read their own bible? Are they so utterly ignorant of history that they do not know where Jews come from?

Of course not. Everyone knows it and no one is fooling anyone else. Everyone knows where Jews come from. Just as everyone knows where Arabs come from (hint: Jews=Judea, Arabs=Arabia).

They threw us out of our land, put us in ghettos, forbade us most forms of employment, tortured us with pogroms and expulsions, systematically gassed and burned us by the millions, and now deny us the right to build homes in the land they know we come from. The land that is OURS by birthright.

A 15th-century German woodcut showing an alleged host desecration.
1: the hosts are stolen
2: the hosts bleed when pierced by a Jew
3: the Jews are arrested
4: they are burned alive.

And so, Europe is punishing us! Denying us the pleasure of their company by delaying a meeting between Israeli and European officials. (Oh darn. Don’t you just hate that?)

Oh. Also they chastised us, with various talking heads calling for a repeal of a law that actually goes above and beyond what has been legally required of other countries in similar situations. Prof. Eugene Kontorovich writes:

In several prominent cases, long-term occupiers have used compensated takings, and the international community appears to have acquiesced, and certainly did not declare it illegal. Examples include the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus, where a compensation scheme aimed at permitting Turkish settlers to remain in Greek properties was approved in 2005 by the European Court of Human Rights. Similarly, the Russian occupation of Crimea takes private property with compensation (often in the form of other land), even for highly controversial projects like the Kerch Bridge, which will serve to deeply entrench the occupation and facilitate the transfer of settlers. Yet while many aspects of Russia’s occupation of Crimea have been denounced as illegal by the international community, the use of eminent domain has not. In particular, the ICC Prosecutor’s report on possible Russian crimes in Crimea makes no mention of it. The fact that many aspects of Russia’s Crimean occupation have been explicitly criticized on international law grounds, but this one ignored, suggests that it is not seen as illegal.

Indeed, property owners who have been compensated have no injury to complain of. As the French Government wrote in its submission to the International Court of Justice in the Wall Case, “international law… requires compensation which effectively makes good the entire injury suffered by the owners of the property in question. Indeed, claims of violations of international law are often accompanied by demands for compensation. This may be the first case where it is the payment of above-market compensation is claimed as an international law violation.

In short, prior to the introduction of the Israeli “Regulations” bill, neither the consensus of commentators nor any state practice supported the view that the prohibition on confiscation or seizure of private property in occupied territories applies to land-use regulations accompanied by the payment of complete compensation.

So there you have it: Europe is punishing the Jews for doing more than should be expected of them, especially since everyone knows the territory in question is Jewish indigenous territory, even if they’re all LYING about it, and calling it an “illegal occupation.”

Europe is good at a lot of things: chocolate, cheese, wine. But probably the thing it does best is punish the Jews.

The good news is, we’re just going to keep building homes, having babies, and being a just and democratic nation, and there’s not a thing they can do about it.

So there.

Nyah.

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Activist Rabbi Sure He Saw 'Liberal Values' In Maimonides' 13 Principles Somewhere (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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New York, February 8 - A leading figure in liberal Judaism is struggling to find corroboration for his sensibilities after failing to find modern progressive principles enshrined in the writings of the most prominent medieval Jewish thinkers.

Rabbi Mitt Kademm of Temple Now on Manhattan's Upper East Side could have sworn that self-evident liberal values already appeared in the twelfth-century works of Jewish scholars such as Maimonides, since everything he holds dear indicates they must be synonymous with Judaism. He told confidants that the relevant passages must be in there somewhere, and he just has to keep looking.

Rabbi Kademm has led his congregants in protests against President Donald Trump's suspension of entry permits for citizens of seven terrorism-prone countries; spoke out in solidarity with the women protesting Trump's election; marched with Black Lives Matter protesters; and participated in numerous other events identifying contemporary liberal sensibilities as core Jewish values. In recent explorations of the pedigree of those values, however, Rabbi Kademm has so far been unable to locate any statements that could be understood as endorsement of the progressive weltanschauung.

On the contrary, he notes, the most prominent exploration of core Jewish principles appears in complete contradiction to anything he believes, or exhorts his congregants to follow. "I was looking at Maimonides' Thirteen Principles of Faith, and shuddered," he confessed. "I couldn't find racial equality in there, or multiculturalism, or diversity as a value in itself. I saw such unacceptable notions as the existence of God, the divine nature of the Torah, and anticipation of the Messiah. Worst of all, I saw not a hint of a post-colonialist approach, and this was a man who lived in the Middle East for most of his adult life. Did he not see the exploitation by the West? How am I supposed to call Judaism and progressivism synonymous with any sense of integrity and honesty?"

Moving forward or back through Jewish history has proved little help. "I went back to the Talmud, but my database queries have produced no occurrences of 'diversity' or of 'affirmative action,'" he reported. "The same goes for 'empowerment of women' and the term 'progressive' itself. And even though other, later Jewish thinkers disagreed with Maimonides on his formulation, I couldn't find a one that took him to task on progressive grounds. It may yet take a while to demonstrate that Jewish by definition connotes liberal."

Congregants have noticed the Rabbi's troubled state of late. "His heart wasn't in the ecumenical lox-and-bacon brunch this week," observed Christine Markowitz, a longtime member. "He wasn't really listening to Reverend Sharpton's sermon, I could tell."

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02/08 Links Pt1: Hamas’ Latest Gory Video Full Of Antisemitic Imagery; What if Israel Funded Welsh or Scottish Independence Groups?

From Ian:

IsraellyCool: Hamas’ Latest Gory Video Full Of Antisemitic Imagery

The terrorists of Hamas have released a new video aimed at Israel, threatening us with death and destruction. I guess it’s title Zionist, You Will Die in Gaza gives that away.
The video is hard to get through because of the singing in broken Hebrew to a backing track that sounds like a cross between Riverdance and Pacman, let alone the disgusting scenes.
In case you missed it, here is all the antisemitic imagery, or imagery that otherwise should let you know that Hamas has a real problem with Jews, and not just “Zionists” as the title and lyrics would suggest.

Hamas Music Video: Zionist, You Will Die in Gaza (English Subtitles)
This video has been taken down by YT for ironically Hate Speech
JPost has a non YT link: New Hamas music video threatens to rain down rockets on Israel

'How Would You Feel if Israel Funded Welsh or Scottish Independence Groups?' PM Netanyahu Asks UK Counterpart in Call for Foreign Governments to Stop Giving Money to NGOs That 'Slander' the Jewish State

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on the leaders of both the United Kingdom and Belgium this week to stop funding left-wing NGOs that “slander” the Jewish state.
“I will continue to fight the lies and do everything to protect our soldiers,” Netanyahu vowed in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, the Israeli leader met in Jerusalem with visiting Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel. On Monday, Netanyahu was the guest of British Prime Minister Theresa May at 10 Downing Street in London.
In a Facebook video he filmed while in the UK, Netanyahu said, “I asked the British prime minister today: How would you feel if I was funding with Israeli government money organizations that call British soldiers ‘war criminals’? Or called for independence for Wales or independence for Scotland with Israeli government funding?”
“Well, unfortunately,” he continued, “this is what many governments do when they fund groups like Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem, Adalah, etc. So I asked that the British government cease funding these groups. I think the time has come.”

Rami Hamdallah, the PA prime minister, gave a speech yesterday at the world premiere of a film about Marwan Barghouti.

Barghouti is in Israeli prison for his role in five terrorist murders. He is also considered one of the leaders of the deadly second intifada, which killed over 1100 Israelis. He was the head of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group.

Hamdallah said that the PA supports efforts to award this terrorist the Nobel Peace Prize.

He said, "We have announced previously our support for activist Marwan Barghouti to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and reiterate our support for all the efforts that people are expending to achieve this. "

Last year the Palestinians launched a campaign to award Barghouti the Nobel. Some Arab parliaments and fringe European MPs have supported the effort.

There is a webpage to push this effort. In the entire biography of Barghouti on that page, which admits his role in launching the murderous terror spree in 2000, the word "peace" is not mentioned once.

While lots of Palestinians and others say he deserves the Nobel, as far as I can tell none of them actually can cite anything that he has actually done for peace. Instead, they brag about how he was a leader of the "resistance."

Which again shows that the concept of "peace" that Palestinians have is quite at odds with how the rest of the world defines it.

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From The Independent:

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s invitation for the Israeli premier to the centenary celebrations of the Balfour Declaration later this year “speaks volumes” about the closeness of the two countries.

Ms May extended an invite to Mr Netanyahu during an official visit to London which concluded on Monday.

“While the Palestinians want to sue Britain for the Balfour Declaration, the British prime minister is inviting the Israeli prime minister to an event to mark the 100th anniversary of the declaration. That speaks volumes,” Netanyahu said.

Mahmoud Abbas' office went nuts. Xinhua translates from the PA's official Wafa news agency:

Palestinian President Spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeinah on Tuesday deplored Britain's invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attend celebrations of the centennial of the Balfour Declaration.

Britain "is responsible for the disaster of the Palestinian people a hundred years ago," Abu Rudeinah said in statements by the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

"Instead of correcting the historic mistake and recognizing the Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, it is preparing to celebrate an incident considered by the Arab world and the international community as a tragic reason that the Palestinian people and the Arab region is paying for," the spokesperson said.

Abu Rudeinah urged the British government to correct this mistake in order to maintain security and stability in the region.

That last line shows exactly how the Palestinian leadership views peace: by erasing Israel.

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The PLO website has a daily feature highlighting anniversaries of major events in Palestinian history throughout the year.

With very few exceptions, nearly all of the 240 or so events in their timeline occur within the last hundred years. (They include a date for the Crusades in 1099 and a couple for Napoleonic times in 1799, plus the First Zionist Congress in 1897.)

For February 8, it says that in 1976, "Zionist court decides to allow Jews to pray in Haram al Sharif."

What happened in 1976?

From JTA:

...[A] tiny nationalistic group has continued periodically to attempt to pray on the Temple Mount. On May 8, 1975, eight young members of this group, while ostensibly touring the site, began to pray. They were almost through with their praying when an elderly Moslem noticed them and summoned his friends. A crowd of Moslems soon gathered and altercations broke out. The policemen (most of them Arabs) on duty at the police post on the Temple mount were called in to stop the clash. They detained the young Jews, who were subsequently brought to court.

Magistrate Ruth Or, in her verdict issued Jan. 28, held that the instructions given to the policemen–to prevent Jews from praying on the Mount–were illegal, in that the law establishes the basic right of all believers to pray at their holy places. The magistrate criticized the Minister of Religious Affairs for not having established a praying procedure for both Jews and Moslems at the Temple Mount.

The government had introduced such arrangements for the common use of the Machpella Cave in Hebron by Moslems and Jews, the magistrate noted, but had refrained from doing so on the Temple Mount.

The State Attorney has appealed the ruling to District Court–which may well reinstate the Supreme Court ruling of 1970. Meanwhile, the magistrate’s verdict is an ongoing cause of tension in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The police continue to bar would-be Jewish worshippers from the Mount, but Moslem anger will apparently only be assuaged if the magistrate’s decision is overruled.

Apparently this ruling was overturned.

The President of the High Court of Justice, Aharon Barak, in response to the appeal in 1976, wrote:

The basic principle is that every Jew has the right to enter the Temple Mount, to pray there, and to have communion with his maker. This is part of the religious freedom of worship, it is part of the freedom of expression. However, as with every human right, it is not absolute, but a relative right... Indeed, in a case where there is near certainty that injury may be caused to the public interest if a person's rights of religious worship and freedom of expression would be realized, it is possible to limit the rights of the person in order to uphold the public interest.

This is astonishing, because it isn't the worshipers that would cause injury, but the bigots who refuse to allow the basic human right that Barak claimed to care about. It means that Muslim extremists have veto power over Jewish human rights as long as they espouse violence, which is the exact opposite of human rights.

Even though the magistrate court ruling allowing Jewish worship was never enforced and Israeli police continued to ban Jewish prayer, Palestinians still mark the day (the wrong day, incidentally) as another example of their being oppressed by Jews.

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