Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, March 08, 2017

Aliyah, IDF style - Part 1 (Ziesel R)

A couple of months ago I asked a friend of mine whose daughter had just made Aliyah right out of high school if she would be interested in writing about her experiences. - EoZ

I begin writing this while chilling in my Youth Village apartment where I currently live with my international contingent of flatmates. It is 6:23am and I've been up for a while since I was unable to sleep last night. After two months since my Aliya flight, all of this is only now starting to be common and ordinary. Getting to this point was a long and convoluted journey.

My whole life I knew that after finishing high school, I would go directly into the IDF. I always felt that I had an equal obligation to everyone my age living in Israel and coming up in the United States was no excuse. I was born to Jewish parents therefore I must serve in my homeland. My father served in the Nachal brigade as a lone soldier and I looked up to him my whole life and respected him for his service.

At the beginning of 12th grade I began looking into different options for me to make Aliyah and draft into the army in "the best way possible". I discovered a program through Nefesh B'Nefesh called Garin Tzabar. It is a program for Olim who are drafted into the army. There are about 80 18-24 year old men and women, religious and secular, from any of a dozen countries, living here. We have ulpan in the morning and army preparation activities in the afternoon. We are given a tremendous amount of support and our group has become a family.

Now moving back I mentioned this journey wasn't simple and that is because when I originally applied for Garin Tzabar, in October of 2015, I had never been to Israel, my Hebrew level was quite poor, and I was 16 at the time of application. After interviewing with the East Coast coordinator it was clear all of these were issues. I was rejected.

I was quite disappointed. However I still knew this program would be the best plan for me and I set about to do what is necessary to meet its requirements.

In January of 2016 I took my first trip to Israel with my mother. It was an incredible trip and afterwards I was 100% certain that Israel is the only place for me to live. The whole year I stayed in touch with the coordinator pushing him politely and reminding him of my existence. In September of 2016 I reapplied to Garin Tzabar and booked my second trip to Israel. This time I participated in Sar-El, a volunteer program on an army base. While in Sar-El I was given the IDF uniform to wear which got me excited for my future.

Upon returning home I had my first Garin Tzabar weekend seminar in the US. I met an amazing group of people and knew I had to be a part of it. I impatiently waited but eventually I got the letter informing me I was invited to the second seminar. At the second seminar I was interviewed by a highly ranked army officer which was quite intimidating. A few days after the second seminar I finally received the letter informing me I was accepted into the program. This news came December 7th 2016, exactly three weeks before my Aliyah flight.

That Aliyah flight is a whole other story because like all the bureaucracy in Israel it was a long and grueling process. I won't bore you with the details but in short all the issues centered around my age. I wanted to make Aliyah as soon as possible upon graduating from high school but as a November baby I had to wait until I turned 18.

Fortunately everything worked out for the best. I have an amazing support system and have met incredible people. I will be drafting into a more intensive army ulpan in April. After this I plan on drafting into palchatz (search and rescue), a unit that I believe suits me well and will enhance my service.

I want to write about my experiences because I hope my story inspires you. Maybe not to join the IDF, but perhaps to take on one thing for the state of Israel and for the Jewish people.

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The Palestinian Ministry of Information celebrates International Women's Day by, of course, trying to hijack it to be an anti-Israel event (which they have successfully done with the "Women's Strike.")

The Ministry says in its press release that the "women of Palestine" suffer under oppression and are "paying a heavy price by the aggression of the occupation."

The Ministry salutes the Palestinian women as the "mothers of the martyrs, and prisoners' wives and sisters."

That is apparently the highest aspirations available for Palestinian women, although in previous years there was a lot more about the heroic women who murdered Jews.

Actually fighting for women's rights is barely mentioned as the purpose of the day. As with everything else, from Christmas to Earth Day, the Palestinians will use the occasions as excuses to do what they do best - hijack the world's agenda towards their own selfish aims.

Which happen to be totally against equal treatment for women, by the way.

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An Iranian website, Countdown2040, is literally counting down the days to Israel's planned destruction, apparently on September 18, 2040.

I'm not 100% sure of why that date was chosen. It is very possibly related to a statement that Ayatollah Khamenei made in September 2015 declaring that Israel would not exist in 25 years, but that was reported on September 11. September 17, 2040 is Yom Kippur so perhaps the Iranians think that God will destroy the Jews after they do not repent properly on that date.

What do the Israelis have to repent for? Glad you asked. While much of the site is a rehash of the normal complaints about Israel we hear at the UN every day, the Iranians also have problems with Israel being way too liberal.

So for example there is a page about gay rights in Israel, where the website complains that "there is no doubt that Israel is the most tolerant of gays in the Middle East."

Likewise, Israel's tolerance for abortion - even abortion of little Zionist fetuses - is decried as another thing to hate about the Zionist entity.

Most of the rest of the site is just to gather everything bad about Israel they can find. It is always amusing how everyone can find Jews to be the representatives of everything they hate, no matter where they are politically.

(h/t Yoel)

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03/07 Links Pt2: Women’s Strike platform calls for destruction of Israel; Legacy of the Mufti and Hitler

From Ian:

March 8 International Women’s Strike platform calls for destruction of Israel

“The decolonization of Palestine” is “the beating heart of this new feminist movement”
The so-called “Day Without A Woman” strike scheduled for March 8 was first conceived by a group of extremists under the banner of the International Women’s Strike, through a call to action posted in The Guardian newspaper, Women of America: we’re going on strike. Join us so Trump will see our power:
One of the women issuing the call was the virulently anti-Israel activist Angela Davis, former leader of the Communist Party USA and Black Panther.
Another was convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh, who served 10 years in Israeli prison for the 1969 SuperSol supermarket bombing that killed Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner. See the background on Rasmea in the post On March 8, remember victims of #DayWithoutAWoman co-organizer Rasmea Odeh (#DayWithoutEdwardandLeon).
Rasmea’s involvement has stirred controversy in the U.S.
The International Women’s Strike has affiliated marches and strikes around the world in many countries. In the U.S., the strike is marketed by the same group that arranged the Women’s March on Washington.

Bill banning boycotters from Israel becomes a law

The Knesset plenum passed a bill on Monday 46-28 in its third and final reading that will allow the Interior Ministry to ban those who support the boycott of Israel from entering the country.
The measure will enable the interior minister to refuse to grant visas to non-Israeli citizens if they are active in a body aligned with the BDS movement or if they publicly support the boycott of Israel.
Knesset Interior Committee chairman MK David Amsalem (Likud) presented the bill and said it should be perceived as an obvious step.
“If someone demeans me, I do not let them into my home,” he said. “If anyone insults us, we respond; this law is elementary.”
Amsalem added that he is not against legitimate criticism and that this law is for handling situations where red lines are crossed. “They are not talking about boycotting only the settlements; they are talking about boycotting the state as a state, without any distinction. We are talking about antisemites here,” he added.
After the bill passed, MK Bezalel Smotrich (Bayit Yehudi), one of the initiators of the bill, said that the law reflects the will of the state to fight its enemies.
“We are done turning the other cheek,” he said. “In recent years, a new antisemitic front has been initiated against Israel.

Israel law banning entry to boycott supporters draws fire

A new Israeli law banning entry to foreigners who support boycotting the country came under fire Tuesday from human rights groups and the opposition, who called it “thought control” harmful to Israel’s international standing.
The approval of the law late Monday was defended by government ministers and supporters as a necessary response to the movement that calls for Israel to be boycotted over its perceived ill-treatment of the Palestinians.
Israel sees the boycott movement as a strategic threat and accuses it of having anti-Semitic motives. Activists deny this claim, saying they only want to see the end of Israel’s civilian and military presence in the West Bank.
The law follows other recent measures seen as targeting left-wing NGOs, and human rights groups said it could affect their work.

Lifting ban, Israel lets Human Rights Watch staffer in

An American employee of Human Rights Watch was granted entry into Israel Monday evening, after authorities blocked his previous attempts to enter the country over his alleged anti-Israel bias.
Omar Shakir, HRW’s Israel and Palestine director, entered Ben-Gurion International Airport on a tourist visa for a 10-day visit.
“Landed safely in Ben Gurion-@IsraelMFA awaited w a sign, secured tourist visa & escorted me thru in >5 mins.Thanks to them/y’all for support,” he wrote on Twitter, thanking the Foreign Ministry for facilitating his quick entry.
“At first we decided not to let him enter the country. But we reconsidered,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon told The Times of Israel on Tuesday morning. “That doesn’t mean that we do not have serious misgivings with regards to the organization and the purposes in coming here to Israel.”
Shakir was not given “VIP treatment” but the Foreign Ministry, which has a permanent representative at Ben-Gurion Airport, wanted to avoid any problems with his entry and decided to escort him, Nahshon said.

Last week UNRWA was forced to suspend Suhail al-Hindi, a school principal who was known to be associated with Hamas for years, when he was elected to a top Hamas position and UNRWA could no longer ignore the evidence.

It turns out that another of the top Hamas members elected is also an UNRWA employee.

The Meir Amit Intelligence Center details the evidence that Mohamed al-Jamassi is both a lead UNRWA engineer and one of the elected Hamas officials.

Al-Jamassi is described in this article from earlier this year as the Director of the Engineering Department at UNRWA, involved in rebuilding the homes in Gaza destroyed in 2014.

The Meir Amit Center documents lots of Hamas activities from both Mohamed al-Jamassi and his family.

As a person heavily involved in Gaza's rebuilding, Al Jamassi would be a perfect person to help redirect cement and building materials from legitimate housing projects to Hamas tunnels.

As I was researching this, I saw a probable relative of Al Jamassi from Gaza who dressed up his baby boy this way:

(h/t Josh. After I wrote this I saw it hit the Times of Israel too.)

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This poem is the documentation of a modern miracle, brought forth out of the sheer stubbornness of a people and their relationship with a land that is just as stubborn.

In 1946, under the British Mandate, it was discovered that the Jewish community of Biriya, next to Tzfat, had stockpiled weapons. The British felt that Jews could not be allowed this freedom (self-determination) and decided to demolish the community. An order was given that declared the area “military territory” in which Jews were not allowed to live. The Jewish leadership saw this as an unprecedented infringement on the right to settle Jewish land and decided they would not relinquish their rights or the land.

Thousands of Jews flooded in to Biryia. The British army fought them off. With unwavering determination, another wave of Jews came, their numbers so great that the British were overwhelmed. The mighty army simply gave up.

Natan Alterman witnessed the victory over the British and the re-establishment of Biryia. The poem he wrote describing the event, so powerfully captured the relationship between the Jews and the Land that the British censorship would not allow it to be published in the newspaper (so it was published a few months later in a book!).

It was clear that the Jews would not give up on their land. Or was it the land who would not relinquish her Jews?

Biriya’s Earth \ Natan Alterman

Three times the British army uprooted Biriya’s fences,

And they were replaced. The local people and the hundreds who flocked

And came to their aid threw themselves on to the ground, and the soldiers

Labored to shake them and uproot them by force from the land of Mount Canaan.

He flattened the full height of his body in the field,

And his eye flashed like a knife.

And the earth craggy, wild, ancient

Clung to him, caught and held him.

The army was given the order: "Shake him, take him from here!

Against his will, we will make him stand on his feet!”

But the earth, the craggy and bold devil’s daughter,

Did not want to let him go.

On his face and back they rolled him

They pulled him.

Dragged him by the arm.

But that day the craggy earth would not allow

His body to be ripped off of her.

And three time he was ripped

And thrown back

And made to rise and thrown back

Because the craggy earth, the grey daughter of demons,

Chased him and growled.

And three time he was ripped

And thrown back

And three times she vowed to him,

And three times the fence was uprooted

And three times the fence was put back in place.

Then the witnesses said: I declare

Other lands are beautifully attired

But,

No other land would cling

To the body of a Jewish person in this way!

As the army withdrew, a boy said softly:

The army did not shoot this time.

But they could have, today with their bullets, you know,

Disconnected me from you, Land of Rage.

She answered him with a laugh, the craggy, the salty [earth]:

Even had a bullet split your brow,

They could not have disconnected your body from me,

Because then, you would have stayed with me till eternity.

The land Alterman described is not the land of plenty the Jews in exile dreamt of, the Zion he described is not flowing with milk and honey, she is harsh and difficult. She is grey, craggy and salty – a land almost impossible to draw fruit from, one not made for agriculture. Another man might give up on such a land, searching for easier, prettier shores. But not the Jew.

What other land would cling so to a Jewish person?

Ancient and wild, the land has claimed us for her own.

As the poem describes, try as they might, the British were unable to disconnect the Jew from the land. Understanding the danger, the Jewish boy tells the land, “they could have killed me and broken our connection.” The land, knowing better, answers: “even your death will not part us.”

For better or for worse, even death will not part us.

There are many beautiful places in the world but there is only one place on earth that the land clings to the Jew.

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03/07 Links Pt1: Aboriginal leader: Jews are the first peoples of Israel; Palestinian Journalists Protest Normalization

From Ian:

MEMRI: Palestinian Authority, Fatah Members Participate In Celebrations In Israeli City For Arab-Israeli Prisoner Released After Serving 15-Year Terrorism Sentence

On February 27, 2017, the Israeli city of Lod hosted a reception and celebration for Hafez 'Abd Al-Fattah Muqabal, a local resident, who was released from Israeli prison after serving a 15-year sentence for perpetrating a 2002 terrorist attack at the Maccabim Security Checkpoint and for possession of illegal weapons.
The event was organized by Israeli-Arab Lod residents and was attended by Muqabal's family and members of the Arab scouts, who held a musical procession in his honor.
The attendees also included released prisoners and a delegation from East Jerusalem, representing the Fatah movement's Jerusalem region.
'Awad Al-Salaymeh , a Fatah member in Jerusalem, said during the ceremony: "The issue of the prisoners is a top priority for the Palestinian national leadership, which will not rest until all the brave prisoners are released." Jerusalem Palestinian Prisoners' Club director Nasser Kos said that "the prisoners [represent] the true meaning of steadfastness and sacrifice for the sake of an honorable life in the homeland that the occupation is attempting to Judaize."
Muqabal himself thanked Fatah in Jerusalem, stating: "My joy is incomplete, as I have left my prisoner brothers behind in the occupation prisons under harsh conditions."
The reception hall was decorated with Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah flags, as well as Fatah posters expressing joy at Muqabal's release.

Nyunggai Warren Mundine: Jews are the first peoples of Israel – with a right to exist

During Bill Clinton's presidency, Israel and the PA came within a hair's breadth of peace. Clinton blamed its failure on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Clinton asked both parties to negotiate within set parameters on disputed issues or walk away. Israel agreed, offering Gaza and 97 per cent of the West Bank. Arafat refused. Clinton suggested Arafat "couldn't make the final jump from revolutionary to statesman". Arafat's actions support this. By always wearing military uniform, he sent the message he believed in military victory, not a peace pact.
Clinton said the main hold-outs were the right of return (allowing Palestinian refugees since 1948 and their descendants to move to Israel) and Israeli control of the Western Wall. Palestinian demands on these issues reflect a refusal to recognise a Jewish state. The Palestinian leadership believes the right of return will make Israel an Arab state by flooding it with Palestinians. Ceding Jewish claims to Jerusalem means acknowledging Jews' ancient and continuing presence there, contradicting Arab propaganda that Jews are interlopers in Israel, not its first peoples who lived there for millennia before Arab colonisation.
Sinai, Gaza and the West Bank demonstrate peace won't happen unless both sides agree and Israel's right to exist is respected.
The Palestinian leadership baulks at supporting a Jewish state. This intransigence has repeatedly stood in the way of statehood and weakened the Palestinian position. If not overcome, there will never be a Palestinian state. Israel has twice ceded settlements and land but will never cede its right to exist. Politicians shouldn't expect it to.
Nyunggai Warren Mundine AO is Chairman and Managing Director of Nyungga [Australian Aboriginal] Black Group

Kevin D. Williamson: Fake Hate Crimes

The Republican party within living memory was led by a Jewish man. The Democratic party just came within a hair of elevating to its highest institutional position a man who has long associated with the worst kind of anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists, racists, and lunatics, who has worked with them and apologized for them: As it turns out, Keith Ellison will only be elevated to the rank of No. 2 rather than given the top leadership position in the party. There have been pogroms in modern American history: A notable one happened after the Reverend Al Sharpton gave a number of speeches denouncing Jewish “bloodsuckers” and delivered a stirring denunciation of Jewish merchants in which he insisted “You got to pay!” at a venue in which was hanging a banner reading “Hitler Did Not Do the Job.”
Whatever happened to Al Sharpton?
Do you know why there has not been a string of fake hate crimes and acts of violence conducted by right-wing hoaxers? Because the Right does not have to make this stuff up: Left-wing rioters really did set fire to Berkeley when an unpopular right-wing speaker was invited to campus. They really did burn Baltimore. Jeremiah Wright really is part of a loony race cult. Van Jones really is a 9/11 truther and an apologist for Mumia Abu-Jamal. No need for fiction.
The Left, particularly in the English-speaking world, has been in intellectual crisis since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Left’s last really big idea was Communism. (Bernie Sanders would say “socialism,” and the difference is not entirely trivial: Communism begins with a gun in your face, socialism ends with a gun in your face.) When Communism was discredited — not only by the failures of central planning alluded to earlier but also by its horrifying body count of some 100 million victims in the 20th century — the Left was left intellectually unmoored. It has come up with strategies — environmentalism, feminism, identity politics, “1 percent” resentment politics — but no big ideas. This is a problem, because conservatism’s big idea — the marriage of free enterprise to liberal political institutions — is doing pretty well almost everywhere it has been tried. The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and countries around the world from Western Europe to Scandinavia to Singapore that have adopted, however partially and imperfectly, the universal truths embedded in Anglo-American liberalism are doing pretty well.
Venezuela isn’t.
The Left, for the moment, cannot seriously compete in the theater of ideas. So rather than play the ball, it’s play the man. Socialism failed, but there is some juice to be had from convincing people who are not especially intellectually engaged and who are led by their emotions more than by their intellect — which is to say, most people — that the people pushing ideas contrary to yours are racists and anti-Semites, that they hate women and homosexuals and Muslims and foreigners, that they could not possibly be correct on the policy questions, because they are moral monsters. This is the ad hominem fallacy elevated, if not quite to a creed, then to a general conception of politics. Hence the hoaxes and lies and nonsense.
Phony hate crimes. Phony hate.

These days, the only thing more promising for Israel's growing acceptance in the world than the weekly stories of its improving relations with countries like Australia, Singapore and India, are the stories about improving relations between Israel and the Arab Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE.

There was similar hope for the future during the 1950's, when a permanent solution to the problem of the Palestine refugees seemed within reach.

In their book, Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief, the authors Asaf Romirowsky and Alexander H. Joffe write about the leading role of the Quaker American Friends Service Committee in the UN's relief program for Palestine Arab refugees in 1948-1950. They touch on the promise of the reintegration of the refugees at the time and their acceptance into the surrounding Arab countries.

By November 1951, the American Chiefs of Middle East Missions were convinced that although during 1950,

the Arabs have not abandoned the principle of repatriation [in Israel], and may be expected to reaffirm it, they show signs of becoming more realistic as to the obstacles to any satisfactory implementation of this principle, and are giving serious thought to the alternative of compensation and to the concept of reintegration [in Arab countries]. (p. 146; emphasis added)

There was a belief that the solution to the resettlement of the refugees was not solely dependent on their repatriation back to Israel, but their resettlement among the Arabs -- an understanding held not only by the US but by the British as well, based on indications of the willingness of the Arab states to accept the Palestine refugees. After all, the Arab states themselves would benefit from the funding for the projects in their countries that would lead not only to the reintegration of the refugees but would also aid the host countries as well.

It wasn't until a letter from the Arab League in 1959, rejecting the idea of resettlement outright, that the concept died altogether.

Today, there is an understanding that the common enemy of Iran will draw together Israel and the Gulf Arabs.

Is that understanding any different; is it any more likely?

After all, those Arab states would benefit not only from Israeli intelligence, but also from military cooperation and weapons -- not to mention Israeli technology in other areas, such as water, as well.

In the previous post, we went over positive indications that a fundamental change in attitude was possible -- and had already begun: an unofficial Saudi visit to Israel and the beginnings of an effort to address the problem of Antisemitism.

Saudi ex-General Anwar Eshki, standing in the middle with striped tie, with members of the Israeli Knesset.
Credit: Haaretz

At the same time, Saudis have continued to openly describe Israel as an enemy, and even a war criminal, due to the problem of the "Palestine refugees."

Just recently, while praising their own "progress" in human rights, a Saudi official slammed Israel for "flagrant violations of human rights":

Just a few days ago, Yousef Al Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the US, wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal describing how the Arab world looked forward to US involvement in the region -- without a single reference to Israel.

Just a few weeks earlier, an article appeared in the same Wall Street Journal about the US suggestion for an alliance against Iran that would include countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and Egypt, with the potential for other Arab countries to join. But the Israeli role in an Arab alliance against Iran would be limited:

The U.S. would offer military and intelligence support to the alliance, beyond the kind of limited backing it has been providing to a Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, the officials said. But neither the U.S. nor Israel would be part of the mutual-defense pact.

“They’ve been asking diplomatic missions in Washington if we’d be willing to join this force that has an Israeli component,” said one Arab diplomat. “Israel’s role would likely be intelligence sharing, not training or boots on the ground. They’d provide intelligence and targets. That’s what the Israelis are good at.”

While neither the US nor Israel would be part of the proposed alliance, the aid from the US would include military aid. The role of Israel, as currently proposed, would not include weapons but only intelligence. The preference for a limited role from Israel, comes from the Arabs, not the US.

In the Iraqi war, during Operation Desert Storm, Israel was left out, and was even encouraged not to retaliate against Iraqi missile attacks, lest the Arab coalition be compromised.

Have matters improved, 27 years later?

In some areas, they clearly have.

But just as Arab assistance to resolve the crisis of Arab refugees decades ago did not materialize, the idea of the Arab normalization of relations with Israel -- even in the interests of defense against Iran -- appear distant. Back then, the Arab countries were not adverse to accepting the benefit of work programs that came with the integration progress.

Today, clearly Arab states are not adverse to accepting military aid and weapons to protect themselves from Iran -- when the weapons come from the US.

No doubt there are improvements in Arab-Israel ties that never make it to the headlines, but their extent and the potential for normalization are far from clear.

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A human rights violation no one discusses: Child marriages in Palestinian territories

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics just released data on child marriages in the PA-controlled areas, and it isn't good.

20.3% of Palestinian Arab women get married before they are 18, as opposed to just 1.1% of men. In the Gaza City area the number climbs to 40.8% while in Hebron is it at 36.2%.

In Jordan the number is only 8%. In Egypt, 17%; in Syria, 13%.

Child marriage is a human rights violation according to UN agencies. Yet this is the first time I have read about how prevalent it is in the territories, even though there are more "human rights" workers per capita in areas under PA control than probably anywhere else in the world.

Which just goes to show once again that "human rights" workers who pretend to care about Palestinians really don't, and they concentrate their efforts not on helping a group of people but on demonizing another.

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Facebook thinks "Jerusalem, Palestine" is in Malaysia

Mrs. Elder took a picture of where we are staying in Jerusalem and posted it to her Facebook account. Facebook, pretending to be helpful, asked "Is this where you are?" and titled it "Jerusalem, Palestine."

This blatant disrespect to thousands of years of Jewish history is, of course, outrageous and offensive.

But when she showed it to me and I looked at the map that Facebook showed, the landmarks didn't sound Middle Eastern.

They were in Kuala Lumpur.

I zoomed out and saw exactly where Facebook thinks "Jerusalem, Palestine" is.

Rather than get angry at Facebook yet again, I think that Facebook has stumbled onto a solution to a major Middle East peace issue.

Since the Palestinians insist that Jerusalem must be part of their state or else they will continue to pursue violence instead of peace, we just have to award them the "Jerusalem, Palestine" in Malaysia.

Their historic ties to the Malaysian Jerusalem are just about as strong as their historic ties to Jewish Jerusalem, after all.

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New "Apartheid?" poster

There is an inexhaustible list of people and photos to add to this series.

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Israel: The Jamaican Bobsled Team of Baseball

From ESPN:

If you aren't familiar with Team Israel (in this year's World Baseball Classic), it's essentially the Mighty Ducks, Hickory High and the Jamaican bobsled team all rolled into one. In other words, it's straight out of Central Casting for the role of "underdog team that stands absolutely no chance of winning but somehow goes on to win it all." Except for the part that so far, it has won nothing -- well, almost nothing.

This past September in Brooklyn, Israel penned the opening chapter of its Cinderella story by finishing first in a four-team qualifying tournament to earn its inaugural trip to the WBC. Although the competition wasn't exactly stiff (Great Britain, Brazil, Pakistan), Israel will take it, especially after falling to Spain in extra innings in the deciding game of the 2012 qualifier. The losing pitcher in that contest? Reliever Josh Zeid, who, in true fairy-tale fashion, just so happened to pick up the W in Israel's clinching 2016 win over Great Britain.

Six months later, skipper Jerry Weinstein's squad (raise your hand if you've ever heard of him) is arguably the biggest underdog in the history of the event.

Of the 16 nations represented in this year's WBC, Israel was the very last one in and is the only participant not currently among the top 20 in the world rankings. (It's No. 41, just behind baseball powerhouses such as Poland and the Ukraine.) As if that weren't enough, the team had to travel halfway across the world (with its lifesize "Mensch on a Bench" mascot), where it's the lowest seed in a four-team pool that features host country South Korea (2009 runners-up) and 2013 final-four squad Netherlands. Of the 28 players who made the trip to Seoul, not a single one is presently listed on a major league 40-man roster. No wonder bookmaker Bovada has Team Israel listed at 200-1 odds to win the whole thing, the longest shot in the tourney and 100 times as unlikely as 2-1 favorite USA.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Israel's national team got its World Baseball Classic campaign off to a dream start on Monday, beating host South Korea 2-1 after 10 innings in Seoul.
Mike Meyers scored the winning run for Israel in the top of the 10th inning thanks to Scott Burcham's single. Pitcher Josh Zeid was credited with the win for Israel, pitching three scoreless innings.

What is Team Israels secret?

Mensch on a Bench!

The secret to Team Israel's long-shot WBC chances? Its bench. That's where you'll find the Mensch on the Bench. If you aren't familiar with MOB, he's essentially the Jewish answer to Elf on the Shelf. This particular Mensch is a lifesize version that utility man Cody Decker bought online before the September qualifier because, well, something was missing.

"Every team needs their Jobu," Decker said. "He was ours. He had his own locker, and we even gave him offerings: Manischewitz, gelt and gefilte fish."

Given all the good karma in Brooklyn -- this year marks the first time that Israel has survived the qualifier and crashed the actual WBC tournament -- it's no surprise that the Mensch made the cut for the trip to Korea.

"I tried getting him a first-class ticket," Decker said. "But that didn't fly, so he was put in a duffel bag and checked."

Mensch with team catcher

As for seating in Seoul, that's a nonissue: "He has his allotted space on the bench. He sits on his bench, on the bench."

Outside the lines, the Mensch maintains a much lower profile, according to those within his inner circle.

"He is everywhere and nowhere all at once," Decker said. "His actual location is irrelevant because he exists in higher metaphysical planes. But he's always near."

The best part about the Mensch? Unlike a real mascot, which would be portrayed by a sweaty human trapped inside a furry costume, this one comes with no stench on the bench.

By the way, I doubt that any player on any of the other squads has ever said the phrase "higher metaphysical planes."

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03/06 Links Pt2: BDS Movement Backfires, Deals Blow to Thousands of Palestinians; The Mother of the IDF

From Ian:

BDS Movement Backfires, Deals Blow to Thousands of Palestinians

If these divestment campaigns, commonly referred to as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, are successful, all of these people will be put out of work, dealing an enormous blow to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
For many, including students here at Hunter College, Israel is not just a place on a map or a 30-second clip on CNN. It is home. It is where I feel most comfortable. It is also where people—including Christians and Muslims—enjoy a level of human rights that simply doesn’t exist in any of Israel’s Middle East neighbors.
Knowing that the efforts of Students for Justice in Palestine and its partners on other campuses to “punish” Israel don’t actually bring justice to the Palestinian people, we should be working to demonstrate that demonizing Israel only harms Palestinians. Simple truth, there is nothing pro-Palestinian about these groups. They exist to delegitimize the Jewish state.
I stand for human rights here at home and around the world. I care deeply about providing the best possible outcome for all people in any conflict. I also know that passing a toothless resolution through student government won’t do anything to address the conflict in the Middle East; it will only create more conflict here on our campus. I long to see students actually promoting peace in a region many call home.

Welcome to Hotel Banksy

If only. Banksy (who has never revealed his true identity) is calling for courage, but is protesting anonymously. His people explain on Facebook that he has taken the "loaded" view and turned the hotel into an "installation" against the occupation. They explain that the artistic boutique hotel creates a different reality through melting walls, courage and wisdom, creating change and making art. What lofty intellectual expressions to describe an anonymous anti-Semitic coward who refuses to identify himself or appear in the media, who came here from England to operate against Jews.
But whoever "courageously" leaves the building and looks at the bizarre hotel that was built in a strip of Israeli-controlled territory realizes that the hypocritical developer mostly wanted security. If Banksy looked out from his hotel at Bethlehem itself, he would see a particularly ugly view: the ghosts of a large Christian community that was wiped out by Bedouin rapists and Islamists from Hebron who stole the Christian bodies, souls, and property.
If Banksy had wanted to gaze at an ugly view, he'd look at the glass facade of the Park Hotel in Netanya, where he can envision the bodies of the Jews murdered by a Palestinian suicide bomber while celebrating Passover there, when there was still no fence. Banksy might call the blood spilled on the walls and the floor "psychedelic conceptual art in a hotel of occupation." He hasn't shown his face there.
Since Operation Defensive Shield in the spring of 2002, the security fence has separated Palestinians with their terrorism and death lust from the flourishing, life-embracing Israelis, who, for Banksy, represent an "ugly view." Banksy is trying to attach the stigma of apartheid and racism to Israel, tear down the wall, and make it easier for the Palestinians to carry out killing and murder sprees against the "apartheid" state. His staff is promising that Elton John will perform at the hotel, but perhaps Pink Floyd's anti-Semitic Roger Waters is a better fit.

Pro-Jewish State Activist: Through His New Bethlehem Hotel, Famed British Graffiti Artist Banksy ‘Finally Asking Critical Questions of Both Sides’ of Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

A new hotel in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem designed and owned by famed graffiti artist Banksy is one of the “most complex and nuanced” projects the mysterious Brit has ever undertaken, the head of a US-based pro-Israel artists group told The Algemeiner on Sunday.
“He is finally asking critical questions of both sides, far from his previous heavy-handed and one-sided works [in favor of the Palestinians],” Craig Dershowitz — the executive director of Artists 4 Israel — said. “And we support any fair and open discussion and are proud to [have played] at least a small part in moving him to a place of dialogue.”
The Walled Off Hotel, which was revealed to the public for the first time this week, is located next to the West Bank security barrier — built by Israel more than a decade ago as part of an effort to thwart Palestinian terrorist attacks. In the past, Banksy has painted murals on concrete portions of the barrier.

Oy gevalt: Rania Khalek is a victim of BDS-style economic terrorism!!! (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

Have your Kleenex ready for I bring oh-so-sad tidings: ardent anti-Israel activist Rania Khalek has become a victim of economic terrorism. Anyone who has a heart must feel it ache now – after all, Khalek has always done her part to promote BDS campaigns against Israel, fervently hoping that this economic terrorism would lead to the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state. What cruel fate that she’s now finding herself boycotted, divested and sanctioned by many of her erstwhile fans who loved her lies about Israel, but loathe her lies about Syria.

But given the current popularity of fake news, Khalek still has some ardent fans – they either write blog posts railing against her detractors, or, more usefully, donate to her new GoFundMe campaign “Help out Rania”. In just four days, 320 hardcore Rania fans have coughed up more than $10 000 to prevent her detractors from “successfully weaponiz[ing] poverty to silence an independent journalist.” Add to this the almost $7500 she raised last October and the money she likely earns from publishing on various “alternative” sites – including the “Grayzone” run by her very dear friend Max Blumenthal – and it would seem that poor Rania is not so terribly poor.

However, now that Khalek is finding herself at the receiving end of the tactics she and her fans have always promoted against Israel, we can learn a whole lot about the real nature of BDS from the very people who love to see it used against the Jewish state and its citizens.

So forget about claims that BDS is non-violent: threatening someone’s employment is “violence,” or, as Khalek herself put it, “economic terrorism.”

And while BDS supporters are always proud when they manage to shout down – or even shut down – pro-Israel speakers, it now turns out that silencing someone’s free speech “is fascistic.”

Furthermore, we learn from Glenn Greenwald that even if one doesn’t agree with someone’s views, a campaign to prevent a person from speaking is “toxic.”

So to sum up: BDS is “economic terrorism,” it is “fascistic” and “toxic.”

Thanks Rania for clearing that up!

I have no doubt that even Khalek and her supporters would agree that something that is terrorist as well as “fascistic” and “toxic” should have no place in universities or anywhere else where human rights are taken seriously. That is of course the reason why Khalek and her ilk spend so much energy on demonizing Israel. But the fact that they obsess about the world’s only Jewish state while ignoring or even whitewashing the atrocities committed by Assad and his allies illustrates all too well how truly toxic BDS is.

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.

03/06 Links Pt1: Jerusalem's Secret Embassies; After Decades of Bias, It’s Time to Hold the UN to Account

From Ian:

Jerusalem's Secret Embassies

The West has for decades displayed a diplomatic double standard when it comes to its consulates: refusing to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but holding diplomatic missions to the Palestinian Authority in the very same city.
Much has been made in recent months of President Donald Trump’s pledge to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and its possible repercussions. The public conversation has generally concentrated on the potential diplomatic and political fallout, especially the possibility of a new outbreak of Palestinian violence. Lost in all the controversy, however, is the fact that the U.S. is one of nine countries that already has a de facto embassy in Jerusalem. But these are all embassies to the Palestinians, not Israel.
The U.S. embassy in Israel is located in Tel Aviv, but much less well known is that the U.S. consulate-general sits in Jerusalem, just around the corner from the Prime Minister’s residence—and it handles diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority. It is one of nine consulates-general in Jerusalem, all of which serve the same purpose. Five of them—the UK, Turkey, Belgium, Spain and Sweden—are in eastern Jerusalem. The consulates-general of the US, France, Italy, and Greece are in western Jerusalem. The European Union also has a representative office in eastern Jerusalem, and the Holy See has an Apostolic Nunciature there, alongside the Palestinian offices of several international agencies.
None of the countries that have consulates in Jerusalem recognize Israeli sovereignty over the city. Consequently, their official embassies remain in Tel Aviv. Their consulates in Jerusalem are, almost uniquely, accredited to no state. And none of the consuls seek an exequatur, the diplomatic authorization required by international law. Nevertheless, the Israeli Foreign Ministry treats them for all intents and purposes as if they were normal consulates accredited to the State of Israel. Their jurisdiction covers the whole of Jerusalem, as apart from Israel, as well as the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Arab Idol or Arab Apartheid?

Referring to Abbas's obsession with Arab Idol, other Palestinians launched a hashtag on Twitter: #AbbasFollowUsToo. The goal of the campaign is to express Palestinians' disappointment with their leaders' carelessness and disdain.
Palestinian leaders have long ignored the plight of their people in Lebanon and other Arab countries. In Lebanon, the living conditions of the Palestinians are unquestionably inhumane. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Palestinians in Lebanon
"do not enjoy several important rights; for example, they cannot work in as many as 20 professions... Around 53 percent of the Palestinians in Lebanon live in 12 refugee camps, all of which suffer from serious problems, including poverty, overcrowding, unemployment, poor housing conditions and lack of infrastructure."
Abbas, however, is nothing if not savvy. He knows very well that if he had so much as set foot in a refugee camp in Lebanon, it might have been the last step he would ever take. So he was smart to stay away from the refugee camps, where his people bleed and which have become militia bases for armed gangs that are affiliated with so many groups, including his own Fatah faction.
Yet, it is not only Lebanese refugee camps in which Abbas feels a bit edgy. Similar camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are also teeming with bitterness. The residents are furious with their leaders, who have kept them there for decades, lying to them about a mythical return to their forbears' homes in Jaffa, Haifa, Acre and Ramle. That is the real reason Abbas and other Arab leaders stay as far as possible from these miserable holding-pens. That is also why Palestinian leaders do not care if Lebanon or any other Arab country treats Palestinians as second- or third-class "citizens" (Palestinians in any case cannot be citizens because, with the exception of Jordan, Arab countries deny them the right to citizenship). And that is why Abbas would rather spend time with Arab singers and Arab Idol contestants than confront those he betrays on a daily basis -- people being subjected to real apartheid and discrimination in Lebanon.

Getting International Law Right in Gaza

In October 2009, a few months after the completion of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, Robert L. Bernstein, the former chairman of Human Rights Watch, penned a much-discussed article for The New York Times. Distressed by the direction of the organization he founded, he wrote,
At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them—through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press, and many other mechanisms that encourage reform. … When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies….
Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties, and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world—many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel.
Today, we are living with the fruits of this drift in emphasis and attention. NGOs have not merely cast aside the distinction between democracy and dictatorship, they have capsized it. In spite of the vilification of Israel, Israelis still fight because they have no choice. But Americans, oceans away from the bloody mayhem of the Middle East, feel under no such obligation. For five years, Americans sent their tax dollars and their young men and women to the Middle East in support of a free Iraq, only to be told by the world’s most respected humanitarians that they were no better than the savage Ba’athists they had overthrown. Those who accepted the accusation were ashamed. Those who did not were resentful. And so they elected Barack Obama, who pledged to keep the country out of further foreign conflicts. The price of this American withdrawal from the region has been the devastation of Syria and the surrender of Iraq as far less scrupulous actors have filled the vacuum—to say nothing of the ensuing refugee crisis.
Liberal democracies are not just valuable for the freedoms they afford their own citizens, but for the way in which they behave. The reckless practice of holding them to higher standards than those demanded of totalitarian actors, and the misrepresentations of international law this requires, has produced a morally disfigured view of the world and of the ethics of military conflict. It has made it harder for democracies to defend themselves or sell potentially costly humanitarian interventions to their own war-weary publics. It has helped to undermine the post-Cold War liberal order and empowered its most brutal and cynical enemies. Arresting this slide requires us to recover the moral clarity and self-confidence described by Bernstein in his Times article. The costs of continued confusion are already steep, and they are still rising.