Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Today's fake news from the Palestinian Authority

How Arab newspapers illustrate "Jewish settlers"

The official Wafa news agency has another scoop courtesy of Ghassan Daghlas, the man who is literally paid by the Palestinian Authority itself to make up lies about Jewish settler activity and yet gets quoted by major news sources dozens of times a year even though he never backs up his accusations with any actual evidence.

This time Daghlas claims that Jews not only uprooted over 140 olive trees - something that is literally impossible without major earth moving equipment and a lot of time - but that they stole them!

How many trucks would be needed to steal over a hundred olive trees? Unless they are saplings that were just planted this past year or so, this story has zero credibility.

As most of Daghlas' fantasies have.

Which doesn't stop wire service reporters from quoting him liberally.

Of course, this absurd accusation of Jews stealing trees is all over Arab media.

And if the Jews are stealing trees, then Daghlas doesn't have to show any evidence - the evidence was stolen!

There is a difference between fake news from the Palestinian Authority's official news media and from any other media. No one (besides me and a very few others) calls them on it. So when the mainstream media swallows their lies, they have more incentive to add to the lies.

It would be so easy for a Washington Post or AP to launch an investigation into the lies of the PA's official news agency. A single story would do more for peace than a hundred anti-Israel stories. But there is no interest in exposing Arab lies, and that lack of interest in covering what would be a major story in the West feeds into the fantasy that both sides have equal credibility.

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The headline is Purim, but the rest of this article is not.

"Rabbi" Michael Lerner of Tikkun Magazine writes:

We at Beyt Tikkun have been struggling internally about how to deal with the Jewish violence and revenge that is part of the Purim story.

The question we struggle with is: Should we boycott this holiday entirely? Is there a way to challenge its hurtful parts without discrediting the legitimate joy our people feels when it is saved from the intended violence against us?
...
At a Purim celebration last year Rabbi Dev Noily presented this very moving introduction to those chapters that momentarily woke up those who had come to “just have fun” with a message that forced everyone to realize that we were talking about Jews involved in mass killing.... Please read Rabbi Dev’s valuable words.

Rabbi Dev Noily's introduction to chapter 9 of the Book of Esther:

And now, my friends, here comes the part

that, if you have one, will break your heart.

Na'hafoch na'hafoch,it's all reversed,

all turned around and gone berserk.

What's good is bad what's bad is good,

there's bloodshed where the hero stood.

Our people are spared, no one kills any Jews

and that, of course, is very good news.

If only the story could stop right here,

we'd offer thanks, we'd raise a cheer!

We'd dance and sing and shout in glee,

we'd be just who we hoped we'd be.

The Jews of Shushan would fall to their knees

with gratitude to the Source of Being.

But no, my friends, we'll have no such luck.

As the story unfolds, we think,What the F - ???

This "Rabbi Dev" and "Rabbi" Lerner don't even understand the basic plot of the Book of Esther. No, they cannot find a possible way to interpret the text in any way beyond bloodthirsty Jewish revenge.

This ridiculous poem is an introduction to Chapter 9 of Esther. Yet Chapter 8 explains exactly why the Jews were going on the offensive. It was because the king's decree that would allow his subjects to murder all the Jews was still in force (verse 5), and a royal decree cannot be reversed (verse 8). Haman's followers were sharpening their swords to murder the Jews at the very point in time that this ridiculous Tikkun "rabbi" claims that the Jews were saved.

Moreover, while the decree that Mordechai wrote would have allowed the Jews to kill not only the men but also their wives and children and to take their possessions, in chapter 9 there is no mention of any killing of women and children - it says in Shushan that 500 men were killed, and the 75,000 killed elsewhere are described only as "enemies" and "those who hated" the Jews. Furthermore, the chapter makes clear that the Jews did not take the possessions of their enemies, which again the edict would have allowed.

Why did the Jews not follow the edict allowing them to take the spoils? The answer may be because the wording of the edict in chapter 8 was meant to instill fear in the enemies of the Jews as verse 2 of chapter 9 states, "no man could withstand them; for the fear of them [the Jews] was fallen upon all the peoples."

Similarly, the wording of the edict used the word "avenge" - but the actual description of the fighting in chapter 9 does not.

There is a clear disconnect between the words of the edict and what is reported about what actually happened. How deep that disconnect is, we cannot say for sure.

What we can say is that not only are the Tikkun "rabbis" completely wrong in their assumption of Jewish bloodthirsty revenge for no reason, but the very words of Esther can be easily interpreted to say that the Jews only destroyed the hard-core enemies bent on genocide, while the others who felt the (intended) fear from the edict opted out of the civil war, and the edict was worded in a way to avoid unnecessary casualties.

Why can't Tikkun have figured out a way to interpret Esther in a way that would adhere perfectly to the Geneva Conventions as I showed here using only the plain text of the Megillah?

The answer is that, to Tikkun, the narrative of the warmongering militant Jew hell-bent on murdering civilians for no reason is too compelling for them to abandon. They aren't bending over backwards to interpret the story in a way that they can tell their children that the Jews acted properly; they are bending over backwards to tell their children that they are more moral than the savage Jews of yesterday - and today.

(h/t JW)
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03/11 Links: Hamas trains UNRWA pupils to be terrorists; 8 BDS 'Victories' in 2016 That Were Actually Losses

From Ian:

The BDS Movement Claimed Eight Victories in 2016. They Were All Actually Losses

One of the key tactics of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign is to make claims that are, at best, overstated—and in many cases provably false—in order to bolster their appearance of success.
For example, organizers claimed in 2010 that the American rock band the Pixies had cancelled a show in Israel due to their advocacy. In fact, the Pixies cancelled due to security concerns, and eventually played a concert in Israel in 2014. The Pixies are even planning to return to Tel Aviv for two shows this summer. Other big names to tour Israel in recent years include Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, Bon Jovi, and the Rolling Stones.
An article on the website of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the main BDS advocacy organization, claimed that the campaign chalked up eight impressive victories against Israel in 2016. Predictably, the claims are misleading, overstated, and often outright false.
Below is each claim, followed by an explanation of why it is wrong.

Hamas trains UNRWA pupils to become terrorists

An excerpt from an upcoming documentary on the relationship between the Hamas terrorist organization and UNRWA shows Gazan children being led into a mock terror tunnel, where they are taught how to attack an Israeli kibbutz.
"The UNRWA kids were recruited by Hamas to help build the tunnels, and then infiltrate through the tunnels," said David Bedein, the director of the Center for Near East Policy Research, which is producing the documentary.
Bedein said that Hamas has diverted international aid to construct tunnels with which to attack Israel. "At the same time, Hamas has been getting full supplies, including from Israel, for the past year, and they are able to get cement to continue building [the tunnels]."
He said that the tunnel in the video was a "model tunnel that they built" for training purposes, including the training of school children to kill Israelis.
"Hamas controls the UNRWA teacher's union, and Hamas comes into the schools and [takes the children for this training] as one of their after-school activities."

Trita Parsi’s Accusations Over Kansas Shooting Are the Least of NIAC’s Problems

Last week, Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), co-wrote an article for The Huffington Post called “Trump Didn’t Start The Anti-Iranian Fire.” In it, Parsi and NIAC fellow Tyler Cullis write about a deadly February shooting at a Kansas Applebee’s, after which the suspect, a middle-aged man named Adam Purinton, told a bartender that he’d shot “two Iraninans.” For the authors, the shooting proves that the “anti-Muslim and anti-immigration rhetoric that rode Donald J. Trump to the White House has now spilled over into fear for the physical safety and security of Iranian Americans.”
Per Parsi and Cullis, journalists, think-tankers, and policy advocates who have allegedly demonized the Islamic Republic regime also bear some responsibility for the Kansas atrocity. More than a few people on Twitter noticed that the only people the authors’ called out by name—Michael Rubin, Eli Lake, Adam Kredo, Josh Block, and David Keyes—had one curious thing in common: They are all Jews.
Parsi and Cullis argue that these five, a list that includes a Bloomberg columnist, the CEO of The Israel Project, and the English-language spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “push war with Iran in the most hyperbolic terms, all the while defaming those – most particularly, those in the Iranian-American community – who urge a peaceful resolution to the historical tensions between the two countries.” The Kansas shooting, the authors argue, was the inevitable result of this group’s allegedly warmongering work. “A decade of messaging like this, though, has now had its payday: Adam Purinton walked into a bar and shot to kill what he believed to be Iranians.”
The authors rhetorically connect five of their perceived political opponents to a hate crime without going through the effort of proving that the shooter had drawn any inspiration from their work, or even knew that these five people existed. The causal nexus between the Kansas killing and the Washington Free Beacon is left unexplained.
But these logical leaps represent the least of NIAC’s current issues, as the organization is now facing increasingly visible opposition from the constituency it claims to represent.

Naftali Bennett describes how to avoid war. @HRW's @KenRoth falsely claims he threatens civilians.

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch tweeted this:

If Hezbollah attacks, Israeli minister vows to bomb "Lebanon’s civilians" including Shia "back to the Middle Ages." https://t.co/13XP3OjxBs pic.twitter.com/YOtZPL0PZp
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) March 11, 2017

This is not what Bennett said.

Here is what he said:

Hunting rocket launchers during a war is almost impossible, Bennett told Haaretz this week, adding that he says this “as someone who specialized in hunting rocket launchers.”

...11 years have passed and Hezbollah has learned to deploy in a more sophisticated manner. “They moved their launchers from the nature reserves, outposts in open areas, to dense urban areas. You can’t fight rockets with tweezers. If you can’t reach the house where the launcher is, you’re not effective, and the number of houses you have to get through is enormous,” he explained.

... “Today, Hezbollah is embedded in sovereign Lebanon. It is part of the government and, according to the president, also part of its security forces. The organization has lost its ability to disguise itself as a rogue group.”

Bennett believes this should be Israel’s official stance. “The Lebanese institutions, its infrastructure, airport, power stations, traffic junctions, Lebanese Army bases – they should all be legitimate targets if a war breaks out. That’s what we should already be saying to them and the world now. If Hezbollah fires missiles at the Israeli home front, this will mean sending Lebanon back to the Middle Ages,” he said. “Life in Lebanon today is not bad – certainly compared to what’s going on in Syria. Lebanon’s civilians, including the Shi’ite population, will understand that this is what lies in store for them if Hezbollah is entangling them for its own reasons, or even at the behest of Iran.”

At the same time, he notes that this is not necessarily the plan for a future war, but instead an attempt to avoid one: “If we declare and market this message aggressively enough now, we might be able to prevent the next war. After all, we have no intention of attacking Lebanon.”

According to Bennett, if war breaks out anyway, a massive attack on the civilian infrastructure – along with additional air and ground action by the IDF – will speed up international intervention and shorten the campaign. “That will lead them to stop it quickly – and we have an interest in the war being as short as possible,” he said. “I haven’t said these things publicly up until now. But it’s important that we convey the message and prepare to deal with the legal and diplomatic aspects. That is the best way to avoid a war.”

Bennett never said he wanted to bomb civilians, but he wants to relay the message that Israel is prepared to bomb civilian infrastructure that is being used illegally by Hezbollah - which are legitimate and legal targets in war. Yet he is not saying that this should be Israel's actual war plan, but something to warn the Lebanese to understand the consequences of allowing them to essentially give their government over to Hezbollah and Iran, both of whom would gladly sacrifice Lebanese lives in their zeal to hurt Israel.

This is his plan for avoiding war. The execrable Ken Roth is framing it as if Bennett is telling the world that he wants Israel to attack civilians.

Even the leftist Haaretz doesn't spin this interview with Bennett to make him appear to be a warmonger the way Roth does. Author Amos Harel, who has written a book about the 2006 Lebanon war, praises Bennett's military positions as "complex" and says he displays a "healthy skepticism over positions taken by top defense officials, and he refuses to accept their insights as indisputable conclusions."

It is bad enough that the leader of a human rights organization is so willing to lie to denigrate Israel. Roth would no doubt argue that he doesn't single out Israel but he will expose anyone worldwide who threatens to attack civilians.

Yet only in February Hezbollah threatened to launch strikes at Israel's nuclear power plant and at ammonia tanks in Haifa, which he said could result in the deaths of 800,000 Israelis.

Civilians.

The people that Human Rights Watch pretends to care about.

Unless, dare I say it, they happen to be Israeli Jews.

Because a direct threat by the effective leader of Lebanon towards nearly a million Jews is not worth a single tweet from self-appointed arbiter of morality Ken Roth from among the 600 tweets he has written since then.

Ken Roth is an abomination.

He has turned Human Rights Watch into a joke and yet he can act with impunity since the media won't go after a "human rights" NGO.

If anyone applied the standards of morality, truth and fairness to Ken Roth that he pretends to demand from others, he would fail miserably. He is a hypocrite, a liar and openly and provably biased.

(h/t Yenta P)

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Happy Purim!

For those of you who are outside Jerusalem now, have a freilichen Purim!

(h/t JB)

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03/10 Links Pt2: The Centenary of the Balfour Declaration; Academic Forum or Anti-Semitic Farce?

From Ian:

David Collier: Bare faced lies, distortion and propaganda at the SOAS centenary talk

Last night 9/3/2017, I had an invite to two very different events. The first, an event at UCL hosted by the UCL Israel Society, with Mohammed Zoabi. The second, part of the SOAS centenary lecture series, with a talk by ‘renowned human rights lawyer’ Raja Shehadeh.
As it was, I chose to see both, an upside to the new trend of live streaming. This a tale of two people. One looking beyond the hate, the other losing himself to it. I am left asking why SOAS chose to place such a moment of recognition on pure anti-Israel slander? Academia is now blind to truth, deaf to reason and actively assisting in spreading propaganda instead of academic research or messages of hope.
Zoabi at UCL
Mohammed Zoabi is a confident young man. Very easy with the audience, and spent most of his time interacting and taking questions. Even with the reflection and confusion that being an Arab inside Israel must bring, he handles these different identities well.
Nor is Zoabi an ‘Israeli apologist’ of any sort. He is clearly moderate, open to criticism and ideologically firmly grounded. It is wrong to suggest Zoabi is a Palestinian Blumenthal or Pappe. Zoabi is no self-hater, he is someone who reaches out to both sides.
What Zoabi clearly carries is recognition that Israel is his state, that much of what is being pushed around by the anti-Israel activists is based on lies and distortion. He recognises both the freedom he experiences and the difficulties that conflict introduces to civil society. Like me, he identifies BDS as problematic and based on false narrative.
Those present clearly enjoyed the event.
Shehadeh at SOAS
Then there was Raja Shehadeh. To understand Raja, you only need to listen to the first 3 minutes of his talk. He begins by outlining how his father was involved in an attempt to make peace with Israel in 1967. A peace proposal set on the lines of the 1947 partition. A deal supported by ‘50’ Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
He speaks of its rejection as if Israel flatly refusing to return to the November 1947 position because 50 Palestinians asked nicely was extreme or irrational. As if the Arabs had proposed something valid and Israel, the aggressor had refused. Remember, this is not about a return to the 1949 armistice position, but the lines of the November 1947 partition plan, the Arabs had all flatly rejected (that led to the conflict in the first place).
And then to press home how Israel doesn’t want peace, Raja said this:
“As time passed, most of the PLO supporters of the plan were assassinated by Israel, amongst whom were my father (Aziz Shehadeh), Issam Sartawi, Said Hammami, Naem Hader (sp?), Azadin Chalak (sp)? Now 50 years later it is what the PLO and most of the countries of the world are calling for. How much suffering would we all have been spared, had gone through then.”
Except none of that is true. His father, was killed with a knife by unknown assailants in 1985. Issam Sartawi was assassinated in 1983, in an attack claimed by the ‘Abu Nidal’ Organization. Said Hammami was assassinated in 1978, also by ‘Abu Nidal’. The last two names may have met similar fate, but I was unable to identify them.
So all murdered, but not by Israel. They were killed by other Arabs for not being extreme enough. The truth is, that like everywhere around Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and, Libya, political opponents have a short shelf life. Being moderate and placing yourself against radical terror organisations, tends to impact on your ability to stay alive. How on earth can Raja stand on a platform at a London university event and calmly blame Israel for Arab clan wars, Arab extremism, the lack of democracy and their inability to live with those that think differently?

A disgrace to human rights

Human rights organizations have called for the United Nation’s secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, to add the IDF to the blacklist of states and armed organizations responsible for serial injury to children during armed conflict, alongside brutal terrorist and guerrilla organizations such as ISIS and al-Qaida. This attests to the international community’s profound misunderstanding of the difficulty sovereign states face in low-intensity war (fighting terrorist/guerrilla organizations) while minimizing the collateral damage.
For years the State of Israel has endured a deep lack of understanding regarding its war against terrorist organizations. A prominent case in point is the UN’s Goldstone Report that was published after Operation Cast Lead in 2009. This report served as a “moral earthquake” as far as Israel was concerned, as it stated that Israel had a policy of deliberately harming civilian noncombatants.
In an op-ed published two years later (April 2011) in The Washington Post, Goldstone retracted this statement and admitted that “if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”
Upon retraction, Goldstone argued that the international laws of war should be implemented by nonstate organizations, such as Hamas, to the same extent in which they should be implemented by the armies of sovereign states. According to Goldstone, lack of implementation of the international laws of war during warfare should lead to investigation of the violating party.
This assertion is compelling testimony to the lack of understanding that the terrorist organizations, such as Hamas which the IDF is fighting, have an entirely different value system from that which is acceptable to Israel as a democratic country. These organizations tend not to take human life into consideration – not the lives of their own activists, or the lives of the population in whose name they are fighting, or the lives of the enemy.

03/10 Links Pt1: Col. Kemp: Gaza Report is Mistaken criticism; PA law “murders women twice”

From Ian:

Col. Richard Kemp: Mistaken criticism

I was in Israel throughout Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014 and monitored the campaign as closely as someone outside the official machinery could do. Having been involved in the direction of conflict from the top level of government down to command on the ground in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans and Northern Ireland, I believe this highly complex and demanding operation, fought under an intensely critical international spotlight, was conducted effectively and with the best possible outcome.
To argue that the war could have been avoided is to simply ignore the diplomatic and political efforts made over several years to do just that, not only by the Israeli government and its ambassadors but also by supporters around the world, including the Friends of Israel Initiative of which I am a member. It is to ignore the actions of international governments and organizations like the U.N. and EU that encouraged terrorist acts against Israel and still do. And it is to ignore the malign intransigence and motivations of Hamas itself and its supporters such as Iran, which are hellbent on the destruction of the Jewish state.
Of course errors were made, as they always are in war. Winston Churchill himself readily admitted making many mistakes in the prosecution of World War II. But to a large extent due to his courage, judgment and leadership, Britain and its allies ultimately defeated their enemies in the most lethal conflagration mankind has ever known.

Caroline Glick: The rise of the networked Left

The claim of course, is ridiculous. There is a world of difference between freedom of expression and freedom of action. When students harass and shout down speakers with whom they disagree, they are not exercising freedom of speech. They are denying the freedom of speech of others.
When BDS operatives coerce university administrations and corporations to divest from Israel and ban Israelis from campuses, they are not exercising free speech. They are engaging in economic and cultural warfare against Israel.
Rather than recognize the distinction, major Jewish groups have embraced the antisemites’ false defense, internalizing the notion that opposing the onslaught against the community is tantamount to opposing freedom of speech.
So for instance, two major American Jewish groups harshly criticized the Knesset’s recently passed law banning BDS operatives from entering Israel. The American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League issued statements claiming the move is a blow to free speech.
The riots against Murray and Yiannopoulis alerted non-Jewish Americans to the intellectual and moral decay of their campuses. It is possible that in moving beyond the safe confines of antisemitism – now largely accepted on campuses – the Left has gone too far. Perhaps its wings will be clipped.
But given the Jewish community’s inability to understand, let alone defend against, the campaign being waged against it, it is likely that even if the networked Left curbs its assaults on non-Jewish non-leftists, it will continue and escalate its campaign against Jews and the Jewish state.

PMW: PA law “murders women twice”

Palestinian women's right group outraged that rapists and murderers of women receive reduced sentences
Women's rights activist: "In 95% of the murders of women in Palestine, the [victim's] personal right is waived."
"Many of the murders in Palestine that were perpetrated due to inheritance or political arguments are altered to cases of 'honor' in order to reduce the punishment."
Palestinian women's rights groups are demanding the revocation of an article of Palestinian Authority law that they say allows criminals to get away with murder. According to Article 99 of Penal Law No. 16 of 1960, the family of a murder victim is permitted to "waive its personal right" to justice and forgive the crime. In such cases, the length and severity of punishment is significantly reduced.
However, given that the vast majority of violence against Palestinian women is domestic, the family of the murder victim is often the family of the murderer as well. Thus, the Palestinian Director of the Women's Courts Project in the TAM organization Victoria Shukri explained, "In 95% of the murders of women in Palestine, the [victim's] personal right is waived."

Here is how the official Palestinian Wafa news agency reported the meeting between Mahmoud Abbas and the leaders of the Union for Reform Judaism:

President Mahmoud Abbas Thursday told a delegation from the Jewish reform movement in the United States that Israel’s persistence in settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem obstructs peace efforts.

“Israel’s persistence in settlement construction as well as its policy of killing, home demolitions, detentions and raids obstructs initiating a serious peace process leading to an end to the Israeli occupation,” he told the delegation from the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) who met him at the presidential headquarters in Ramallah.

Abbas affirmed to his guests the Palestinian leadership’s commitment to achieving a comprehensive and just peace based on relevant UN Security Council resolutions, the two-state solution and the Arab Peace Initiative in order to establish an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The URJ delegation stressed their full support to the two-state solution to the decades-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict and justice to the Palestinian people through Palestinian statehood.

They slammed Israeli settlement construction as an obstacle to the peace process.

From the Palestinian perspective, this meeting was a success. They spread propaganda and the Reform Jews helped them. In fact, they amplified them for him in Israeli media:

“I was impressed with the president’s clear and unequivocal commitment to the two-state solution,” [URJ President Rick] Jacobs said in a statement. “He clearly is frustrated with the lack of progress, or even the existence of ongoing negotiations. I share that frustration."

Meaning, they are telling the world that Abbas is more interested in peace than Netanyahu.

Yeah, they brought up incitement against Jews and Abbas deftly told them that Israel is just as bad. That shut them up, because they only know what they read in the New York Times.

It is still amazing to me how clueless some Jewish leaders are not to realize that they are being used as pawns by those who stress every day how they want to destroy Israel while mouthing their support for a "two state solution" - where both states are Arab.

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TOI reports that the water level of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) are the lowest in a century.

Parts of northern Israel experienced the driest February since records began, the Water Authority reported Tuesday, with officials saying that the Sea of Galilee was now at its lowest level in a century.

Israel’s most important natural water source — also known at Lake Kinneret — received just 10 percent of its average rainfall for February, rising by just 22 centimeters (8.5 inches), far below the average for that month of 60 centimeters (23.5 inches).

(This chart seems to indicate that levels were even lower in 2009 and 2002.)

Muslims are very keen in hearing news like this.

It seems that one of the signs of the emergence of the Dajjal, an antichrist figure in Islamic eschatology, is the Kinneret drying up, based on a bizarre hadith.

Here are all of the signs of the impending arrival of the Dajjal, to be followed by the Mahdi messiah figure:

Drying up of Sea of Galilee.
When date-palm trees of Baisan (Bet She'an) stop bearing fruit.
Worship of Satan becomes common.
The sun will rise from the place it usually sets.
The conquest of Constantinople (modern day Istanbul, Turkey) by the Islamic Caliphate.

When the sun rises in the west, then it may be time to be worried.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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NYT lies about Israeli anti-BDS law

The New York Times editorial page says:

A new Israeli law, approved Monday, will bar entry to any foreigner who supports the B.D.S. movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions) against Israel for its occupation of the West Bank. It’s a strong statement by the Israeli right wing, intended to characterize supporters of the movement as enemies of Israel.

No doubt there are haters of Israel among B.D.S. supporters. But there are also many strong supporters of the Israeli state, including many American Jews, who ardently oppose the occupation of the West Bank and who boycott products of the Israeli settlements in occupied territories.

[The law] should be condemned by all who value Israel’s tradition of debate and dissent and who support the search for a lasting peace.

From reading the editorial, one would think that Israel is banning any critics of Israeli settlement policy.

But the actual text says it may ban anyone “who knowingly issues a public call for boycotting Israel that, given the content of the call and the circumstances in which it was issued, has a reasonable possibility of leading to the imposition of a boycott – if the issuer was aware of this possibility.”

In other words, the law would apply to those who are prominent advocates of boycotting Israel and whose calls to boycott Israel can influence others, not anyone who decides on their own to stop using settlement products or who is a critic of Israeli policy as the Times pretends.

The editorial also says "The United States, Israel’s strongest military supporter, has consistently held that settlement building in the occupied territories is illegal and detrimental to seeking a lasting peace." This is also false, The public position of the US, both the White House and the State Department between the 1980s and the UN vote last December, was that the settlements were an obstacle to peace - but the language of legality was studiously avoided.

It is Orwellian that the New York Times has been advertising how important the "truth" is yet it so easily twists the truth for its readers.

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Google Street View shows Solomon's Temple on the Temple Mount

One of the 360-degree views of the Temple Mount on Google Maps is the Temple of Solomon.

I don't know whether this would be considered a hack or not, but it has been there since November and it is pretty cool.

It even includes a picture of the Kohen Gadol (High Priest).

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03/09 Links Pt2: Swiss Parliament Calls for End to Govt. Funding for BDS NGOs; HA! Linda Sarsour Arrested For Disorderly Conduct

From Ian:

Swiss legislature passes bill to stop funding for boycotts of Israel

Switzerland’s National Council – the lower chamber of the legislature – passed a bill on Wednesday to stop government funding of organizations that promote boycotts of Israel and spread antisemitism and racism.
The measure will be submitted in May to the Council of States, the upper chamber of the legislature, which will decide whether it becomes law.
Olga Deutsch, director of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor’s Europe Desk, told The Jerusalem Post: “Today’s positive developments in Switzerland mark a milestone in seriously countering BDS campaigns, antisemitism and hatred, by equating them in the motion. The motion sets an important precedent. NGO Monitor was instrumental in providing details to Swiss decision-makers regarding their government’s funding of organizations that oppose official Swiss foreign policy, such as NGOs that propagate anti-normalization, BDS, and one-state frameworks.”
She added, “This is a perfect opportunity for Israeli and European officials to capitalize on the Swiss example and work together on guidelines and evaluation mechanisms that contribute to positive change in addressing this serious issue.”
The measure was introduced by Christian Imark, a National Council deputy from the conservative Swiss People’s Party. It passed 111- 78. (h/t Zvi)

Swiss Parliament Calls for End to Government Funding for BDS NGOs

NGO Monitor welcomes today’s vote in the Swiss Parliament calling on the government to “amend the laws, ordinances and regulations so that Switzerland can no longer subsidize, even indirectly, development cooperation projects carried out by NGOs involved in racist, antisemitic or hate incitement actions, or in BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaigns.”
Olga Deutsch, Director of NGO Monitor’s Europe Desk said, “Today’s positive developments in Switzerland are an important precedent in seriously countering BDS campaigns, antisemitism, and hatred. NGO Monitor was instrumental in providing details on the Swiss government’s funding of organizations that propagate anti-peace, anti-normalization, BDS, and one-state policies.
This vote, and similar parliamentary initiatves in Europe demonstrate the importance of cooperation and dialogue on the NGO and BDS funding issue. Knesset members should work alongside their European counterparts on guidelines and evaluation mechanisms that contribute to positive change in addressing this serious issue.”
As a research institute that deals with government funding to NGOs active in the Arab-Israeli conflict, NGO Monitor provided detailed and fully referenced information to Swiss decision makers and media throughout the past year, leading to today’s motion.
In particular, the parliamentary vote focused on Swiss government funding to NGOs directly through the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat (managed by the Institute of Law at Birzeit University (IoL-BZU) in Ramallah and the NIRAS consulting firm in Sweden). This framework provides core-funding to organizations, some of which are directly affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist group designated as such by the U.S., EU, Canada, and Israel.

David Collier: UCLUFOP, witch hunts, intimidation and antisemitism

Last night at UCL there was an event hosted by the UCLU Friends of Palestine Society (UCLUFOP). The speaker was Ilan Pappe and the title for the talk was ‘am I an antisemite’? The event was set up as part of a general trend in anti-Israel activism: To find extremist Jews who are willing to deflect accusations of antisemitism and provide an umbrella for all manner of Jew hatred. The event went on to highlight so much of what is wrong with anti-Israel activism on campus.
The event began with a banner on display and ended with an exchange outside the campus hall. In between were several items that I wish to mention:
The ‘welcoming’ UCLUFOP banner contains the term “you just have to be human”. It was placed at the front of the hall, next to where the speaker and Chair sat.
I have problems with the phrase expressed in the banner. What does it mean? That to oppose the political position put forward by this group, makes a person non-human? That to side with Israel does the same? Apparently, my self-identification as a Zionist, a Jew who supports Jewish self-determination and a right to statehood renders me a ‘non-human’ on the UCL campus. So, what am I – a rat or an insect? How are Jewish Zionist students on campus allowed to be so publicly de-humanised? Is nobody paying attention?
The speaker
Much has been written on Ilan Pappe and his aversion to historicity. He has been caught on camera visibly accepting historical distortion to protect his ideology. What is beyond debate is to say he is seen by Jewish Zionists as a highly offensive figure. To invite him as an expert fit to ‘define’ antisemitism at an event at the UCL campus is disgraceful. I cannot imagine UCL permitting a speaker viewed by Muslims as highly offensive being allowed on campus to define anti-Muslim hatred.
That Ilan Pappe was chosen to lead this event was a provocative act. That this event dealt with providing a cover for Jew hatred was unforgivable. This, on a campus where anti-Israel activity has been seen to be violent, anti-democratic and in opposition to the basic elements of free speech.

Newest "Apartheid?" poster

As the month-long "week" continues, I continue to show that it is based on lies.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

This week the Knesset passed a law that enables the Interior Ministry to deny entry into the country to non-citizens without residency permits who are supporters of boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The law does not distinguish between boycotts of all of Israel, or those that relate only to Judea and Samaria. It allows the Interior Minister to make exceptions in individual cases.

The usual suspects have expressed their opposition for the usual reasons.

MK Tamar Zandberg (Meretz) said, “We’re talking about a law that is against freedom of expression, that constitutes political censorship and is meant to silence people. It’s ostensibly against the boycotters of Israel but it doesn’t make a distinction between Israel and the settlements and it thus serves the BDS movement.”

Peace Now said the ban is "neither Jewish nor democratic" and "a clear violation of freedom of expression. Through this law the Bennetyahu [sic] government will not prevent boycott but rather, deteriorate Israel's international standing and lead Israel towards international isolation."

And Rabbi Rick Jacobs of the Union for Reform Judaism said, “It’s going to be a giant sign up by the door of the Jewish state: ‘Don’t come unless you agree with everything we’re doing here.’ I don’t know what kind of democracy makes that statement.”

There are plenty more where those came from. So let’s get a few things straight.

First of all, a sovereign state gets to decide which non-citizens may cross its borders. Period. There is no internationally recognized human right to enter any country one wishes. And the state’s decisions can be based on whatever criteria it chooses. There is no requirement that the rights applicable to residents of the country also apply to non-residents who want to enter it.

Second, the law doesn’t limit free expression. Nobody is prevented from advocating BDS inside Israel or outside of it. It simply keeps out people who have expressed opinions that, in the judgment of the state, are a good indication of intent to harm the state.

Indeed, if it were only about advocating boycotts, it is unlikely that the law would have been passed. But BDS supporters have a history of joining anti-state demonstrations inside Israel, using their status as foreigners as a shield against punishment if they engage in illegal behavior. BDS supporters have entered the country in order to try to provoke violence from security personnel, to embarrass the state, and to create propaganda events.

The BDS movement has a purpose, and that is to delegitimize Israel as a sovereign state. The movement makes demands that could not be possibly met without dismantling the Jewish state (e.g., a “right of return” for the descendents of Arab refugees), and calls for Israel’s excommunication from the world community unless they are met. BDS is part of a program of “cognitive warfare” against the Jewish state that is intended to weaken it and isolate it from all external support – so that it will be easier to destroy it.

Third, the law is not “undemocratic.” It doesn’t limit the rights of Israeli citizens in any way. The law itself was passed by the democratically elected Knesset in a democratic vote of 46 to 28 members.

Several of its opponents have objected to the law on the grounds that it does not distinguish between boycotts of products or residents of the whole country, or just of the disputed territories. But the Knesset members who drew and voted for the law felt that any boycott, even a partial one, promotes delegitimization of the state. Residents of Judea and Samaria are no less Israelis and their rights are as important as those of residents of Tel Aviv.

Israel has a very special problem which I think Americans in particular fail to understand – possibly because they live in an enormous and mighty (economically and militarily) country. Israel is always under attack for its very existence, both by continuous terrorism and periodic war, and by cognitive warfare – which includes psychological warfare, propaganda, “lawfare,” and other means to destabilize and disrupt the country itself, and to drive away or disconnect it from external sources of support.

For at least two decades, our enemies – particularly European countries who think a Jewish state should never have been created – have been pumping millions of Euros and dollars into “Israeli” organizations operating inside our country and international “human rights” groups which, with the help of media friendly to them, carry out cognitive warfare against us. One of their techniques is to send operatives here who cooperate with Arab militants in demonstrations and other activities. As I mentioned above, they use their status as foreigners to shield them from the consequences of illegal behavior; at worst they are deported. Then they return to their home countries and “testify” to the conditions of oppression under which the Arabs live in the land of Israel.

I don’t know if such tactics have ever been employed against the US, or if they could be. But they have been very damaging to Israel. And that is why the Knesset has passed a (weak) law to partly control foreign-funded organizations operating here, and why it is important to keep foreign agents out.

I have a particular problem with the Union for Reform Judaism in the US and its leader, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, who consistently attack Israel as being less than perfectly “democratic,” in relation to women, Arabs, and minorities of all kinds. He particularly opposes Israel’s reluctance to implement a 2-state solution (and thereby turn itself into an indefensible island in a sea of enemies). Jacobs likes to threaten that if we don’t accept his version of what it is to be Jewish and democratic, American Jews will withdraw their support. The implication is clear that he knows what is good for us better than we and our democratically elected government (and especially the Prime Minister!) do.

Jacobs seems to feel so strongly about the rights of non-residents to oppose the Jewish state that in 2010 he participated in a demonstration against Jewish “settlers” in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, and then bragged about it to his congregation in a Yom Kippur sermon. He has also tried to play the 800-pound gorilla in the recent controversy surrounding the status of women and mixed prayer at the Western Wall.

The law permitting Israel to refuse entry to BDS supporters is no more or less than an assertion of sovereignty, the very sovereignty that is so aggressively denied by Hamas – and more politely by Rabbi Jacobs. It is a sort of “Iron Dome” against agents of cognitive warfare, and it is about time we had one.

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03/09 Links Pt1: Haley: Palestinians Must Stop Incitement, Engage in Direct Peace Talks With Israel; Kerry's knee-capping of Israel

From Ian:

One year ago American student and veteran Taylor Force stabbed to death by Palestinian Terrorist

When anti-Israel students on campus chant “Long Live the Intifada,” remember Taylor Force.
The Taylor Force Act proposed legislation seeks to cut off funds from the Palestinian Authority for its policy of paying the families of terrorists. The Free Beacon reports on the reintroduction of the legislation:
The White House is signaling its support for a new congressional effort to cut all U.S. funding to the Palestinian Authority due to its continued support of terrorism against Israelis and Americans, according to senior lawmakers and senior White House officials.
Leading lawmakers in the House and Senate gathered Tuesday on Capitol Hill to introduce legislation that would cut all U.S. funding to the Palestinian government, which has been criticized for providing financial incentives to terrorists who kill American and Israeli civilians.
The White House signaled its support for the legislation in a vast departure from the Obama administration, which worked against similar efforts when in power.
The murder of Taylor Force was part of what became known as the “Knife Intifada,” in which stabbings became the hallmark of Palestinian attacks.
When anti-Israel students on campus, such as these students at UT-Austin, chant “Long Live the Intifada,” remember Taylor Force.

US Ambassador to UN Nikki Haley: Palestinians Must Stop Incitement, Engage in Direct Peace Talks With Israel

The Palestinian Authority must “stop its incitement to violence” and engage with Israel in “direct peace negotiations, rather than looking to the UN,” a top American diplomatic official said on Tuesday.
US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley made the statement after meeting with her Palestinian counterpart, Riyad Mansour — an encounter she described as “productive.”
“The US is committed to supporting a true peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” she said.
Last month, Haley received warm praise from the pro-Israel community in both the US and abroad after taking the UN Security Council to task for its double standards when it comes to its treatment of the Jewish state.
Following her first meeting with Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon, Haley said, “Never again will our allies have to question our support.”

Liberman urges US to cut ties with Israel-bashing UN bodies

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Wednesday asked US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to reconsider American support for the United Nations agency that deals with Palestinian refugees, as well as for the UN Human Rights Council.
During a meeting at the State Department, Liberman urged Tillerson to consider quitting the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council and to stop funding the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, known as UNRWA.
The agencies do not fulfill their mission, he told the secretary, according to readout of the meeting issued by Liberman’s office. “Instead, the Human Rights Council deals with demonizing Israel and with efforts to harm it by distorting reality.”
He said it was unacceptable that 60 percent of the council’s resolutions targeted Israel instead of dealing with the dire human rights situation in Iran or North Korea or Syria.
Last week, the US envoy to the Human Rights Council, Erin Barclay, criticized the council for its outsize focus on Israel.