Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, April 07, 2017

For two weeks, Hamas didn't allow Gazans to fish

Ma'an reports that today was the first day that Hamas allowed any fishing boats to leave port in two weeks, since the assassination of Mazen Fuqaha on March 25.

The price of fish in Gaza increased sharply as no domestic fish reached the market.

There were reports that Hamas believed that the killers came by sea.

This came in context of Hamas stopping nearly everyone from leaving Gaza altogether.

There have been scattered news stories from the Middle East about these Hamas restrictions, but on the whole the world media and human rights groups have been silent. (The only exception I could find was the next to last paragraph of a report by Israeli NGO Gisha, who used to be silent about Hamas abuses on people entering and leaving Gaza until I shamed them a couple of years ago and they realized that their egregious anti-Israel focus could threaten their EU funding.)

The biweekly UN OCHA-OPT humanitarian report implied that the fishing ban was just slightly worsening Israel's restrictions on fishing to a 6 mile perimeter:

[S]ince 26 March, the de facto authorities are preventing the access of Palestinian fishermen to the sea along Gaza’s coast. The Gaza Fishermen’s Syndicate has estimated the resulting losses at two to three tons of fish per day, triggering rises in the price of imported fish. These restrictions, which came at the beginning of the sardine season, are further undermining fishing livelihoods weakened by the longstanding access restrictions imposed by Israel.

Hamas' decision to lift these restrictions seem to be more from worries about people revolting than from any progress in their investigation about the Fuqaha hit.

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.

In 2007, Aijaz Zaka Syed won third place in the EU's Lorenzo Natali Media Prize for outstanding reporting on development and poverty eradication.

Here's what he is writing today:

The Western media narrative is indeed hopelessly flawed and skewed and is often dictated by its economic and political interests worldwide. It remains hostage to powerful lobbies – especially the all-powerful Israeli lobby.

Clearly, this is an impossibly one-sided, asymmetrical battle. The Muslims feel that they are faced with a giant propaganda machine and its awesome power that has for years controlled their world and dictated its agenda. And their claim and historic sense of perpetually being at the receiving-end is not entirely without basis.

From the worldwide media empire of the likes of Rupert Murdoch – whose News Corp owns scores of newspapers, television channels and radio stations around the globe – to the stable of Time Warner – which owns some of the world’s most powerful newspapers, magazines and television networks – the lobby’s stranglehold over the global media industry is firm and complete.

This control even extends to Hollywood, the mighty dream factory that plays a critical role in building and perpetuating stereotypes and age-old myths and biases about ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ in Hollywood-speak.

Many of the major Hollywood studios and production companies are wholly or partly owned by the Zionist and pro-Israel groups and families. So it is little surprising then that Arabs and Muslims do not exactly come across as the friendliest and most likeable people on earth in films and television shows like ‘24’ and ‘Homeland’.

The fact that some of the top editors, columnists, writers and filmmakers in the US and elsewhere also happen to be pro-Israel also hasn’t helped our cause. Just look at the New York Times and the Washington Post – the two most formidable voices of the US establishment – and the proud line-up of their editors and columnists. From Tom Friedman to Charles Krauthammer, some of the biggest names in the business are staunch supporters of Israel and its divine claim over Arab lands.

If America as the sole superpower and the political and economic master of the free world controls our world, the Zionists, in turn, are seen as controlling Uncle Sam.

Notice that Syed complains that Thomas Friedman supports Israel's "divine claim over Arab lands." Since he is against settlements, what land does that leave that he could be referring to?

It is apparent that Syed (and the Muslim world) calls anyone who supports Israel's existence, in any borders, part of the sinister worldwide Zionist lobby.

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.

04/06 Links Pt2: Phillips: The Hamas Formulation; Murray: Livingstone and the Decay of Labour

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The Hamas Formulation

Why is everyone so shocked by the Labour party’s decision not to expel Ken Livingstone? I wasn’t the slightest bit surprised. Indeed, I would have been amazed had it done so.
Of course, his claim that Hitler had supported Zionism was a grotesque and profoundly Jew-bashing untruth. The only overtures between Zionists and the Nazis were for the Jews a desperate manoeuvre to save some from extermination, and for the Nazis a way of getting rid of them. The ludicrous claim that Hitler supported the national self-determination of the very people he wanted to wipe off the face of the earth is a malevolent distortion which Livingstone appears either to have got from sources who are themselves driven by hatred of the Jews or is his own misrepresentation of other accounts.
Having already been suspended from the party for twelve months over these remarks, Livingstone has now been suspended for a further year. Far from being repentant, however, he has doubled down and repeated the calumny, thus compounding the general outrage and the deep distress of the Jewish community.
There are three main reasons, though, why it was never likely he would be expelled.
1) Labour’s leader Jeremy Corbyn is opposed to expelling someone for antisemitism, because to Corbyn it is simply impossible for someone on the left to be an antisemite.
2) Labour plays heavily to the Muslim gallery and many Muslims believe Jews and Nazis are virtually synonymous, particularly in Israel.
3) If Livingstone were thrown out, similar action would become necessary against other Labour members who have displayed anti-Jewish attitudes. This the party has already refused to do – as over incidents in the Oxford university Labour club — effectively whitewashing Labour party antisemitism and refusing to acknowledge that the Labour party is riddled with it, not least because of 1) and 2) above.

Douglas Murray - Ken Livingstone and the Decay of Labour

UNRWA Spreads False Notion that UNRWA will introduce new curriculum of peace

Over the past week, UNRWA spread the word that UNRWA intends to introduce a new curriculum for peace and tolerance in the UNRWA school system.
However, UNRWA reports widespread popular opposition to such an initiative.
The fact that UNRWA admits that there is a problem in their schools represents a newsworthy development in itself.
However, the Center for Near East Policy Research checked all public and private sources in UNRWA. No intention, initiative or program exists in the UNRWA Department of Education for any change in the UNRWA curriculum.
UNRWA curricula in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza remain under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education, which makes it clear that no plans are afoot for any change in the Palestinian Authority Education System.

US State Dept. designates Hamas commander as global terrorist

The State Department gave a “global terrorist” designation to a Hamas military commander who it accused of being involved in the 2006 kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
On Thursday, the State Department declared Abu Anas al-Ghandour a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” under a 2001 executive order that imposes sanctions on foreigners who have committed or pose “a significant risk” of committing terrorist attacks.
The US and its citizens will generally not be allowed to conduct business with Ghandour, and any assets he has in the US will be frozen.
According to the State Department, the Israel-born Ghandour leads a Gaza brigade for Hamas, which the US considers a terrorist organization. In the kidnapping of Shalit at an Israeli border crossing, two Israeli soldiers were killed and four were wounded.
Shalit was released in 2011 in exchange for over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Ma'an reports that the Palestinian public prosecutor issued a warning Thursday to all stores that it is illegal to sell Israeli SIM cards or phone cards.

The possession of the chips " constitutes a criminal violation punishable by law in Palestine."

Shops have two weeks to comply. Afterwards, anyone found in possession of Israeli SIM cards can be prosecuted.

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.

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

As a child, one of my great fears was being the victim of a chemical attack. I read and reread the article on chemical warfare in the Encyclopedia Britannica in the school library with horrified fascination. When we practiced getting under our desks “in case of an atomic attack” I was relieved that it was only an atomic attack that was expected. Gas would be 100 times worse, I thought. Maybe this was because I was a Jew and heard that the Nazis had gassed Jews, even though as far as I knew my own relatives in Ukraine had been shot and not gassed.

The sarin gas attack carried out this Tuesday in Idlib by forces controlled by Bashar al Assad (the word ‘alleged’ is not necessary) was a war crime, a mass murder of civilians by horrific means. To make it even worse, hospitals where victims being treated were also bombed. It’s not the first time the same criminal has committed the same crime. But Assad could not have done it alone. He has a powerful accessory to his crimes.

Russian planes are not dropping sarin (or chlorine or barrel bombs), but they are supporting Assad’s forces with more conventional weapons, and killing plenty of civilians in the process. The Obama Administration, which initially provided some minimal support for the rebels that had opposed Assad, more or less gave up on the idea of deposing him when Russia stepped in, and recently the Trump Administration admitted that it too is “focused” on defeating Da’esh and not on removing Assad.

Interestingly, although Putin initially claimed that he was intervening in Syria in order to defeat Da’esh, he has actually done very little against it. The Atlantic Council, which is funded primarily by European governments, said this about the Russian intervention in Syria:

The results have been grievous. Russia carried out its air strikes with scant regard for the rules of war: Open-source footage shows the repeated use of banned cluster munitions, and strikes on targets including mosques, hospitals, and water treatment plants. Imagine the outcry if the United States or its allies conducted military operations in this manner. Russia’s military campaign allowed Assad’s forces to retake lost ground, a task they did with great brutality and immense human suffering. It barely dented the ISIS terrorist group, whose recent territorial losses have largely come at the hands of Kurdish militias backed by a US-led coalition. Far from shortening the war, it exacerbated it—and in so doing, it sent yet more waves of refugees flooding into Turkey and Europe.

Until recently, I hadn’t understood Putin’s motives. It’s been clear that he wants to protect and expand his naval and air installations in Syria, but by putting his eggs in Assad’s basket he is enabling the Iranian project of creating a corridor from its western border to the Mediterranean, something that might prove dangerous to Russia in the long term.

But if his goal is to destabilize his traditional enemies in Europe by flooding them with refugees, then both his intervention and the brutal way it is carried out – as well as his tolerance of Assad’s even worse behavior – become understandable. The wars going on in Syria and Iraq serve his purpose, and so does the continued existence of Da’esh.

This also explains why Russia has not interfered with Israeli activities in Syria. Although Assad and his Iranian patron are interested in building up Hezbollah as a threat against Israel, Putin doesn’t necessarily share their goals, and may even wish to limit the advance of Iranian hegemony in the region. Russia has its problems with radical Islamic jihadism, and Iran either has or shortly will have missiles that can reach Moscow. What does serve Putin’s purpose is chaos – which he promotes by helping Assad stay in power and kill anyone associated with (or stuck in the same town with) the opposition. Israel’s bombing of weapons bound for Hezbollah doesn’t detract from his goal.

It’s also an incentive for Israel to not interfere. There have been suggestions that Israel should intervene against Assad for humanitarian reasons. It is highly unlikely that Israel would take such a step. Not only would it place Israel in direct conflict with Russia, but Israel is dependent on Russia to allow it to operate against Hezbollah in Syria. The greatest direct threat against Israel today is Hezbollah as a proxy of Iran, and it would be disastrous if Putin were to decide to protect it.

I think Putin is the big winner here. In a stroke of malevolent genius, he managed to turn the Syrian civil war, the rise of Da’esh, the struggle between the Sunni and Shia worlds, the advance of Iran toward the Mediterranean, and the concomitant suffering of the peoples of the region, to his advantage. He now controls the airspace of the eastern Mediterranean region and is building up important air and naval bases here, a strategic coup against Europe and the US. Meanwhile, Europe is being destabilized by the waves of refugees from the conflicts in our region. All this on the backs of a few million dead and displaced Arabs!

Whether or not Russian activities had any effect on the American election, there is no doubt that Russia is carrying out psychological warfare against the US with the intent to create as much dissension and chaos there as possible. This isn’t anything new – the Soviet regime did it too – but social media have made it easier and increased the leverage of a small number of operatives.

Putin is a remarkable figure. I would call his actions in fanning the flames of war in Syria psychopathic, although maybe any despot has to be a psychopath. He seems to have suppressed internal opposition to his regime quite effectively (and brutally, in part by murdering anyone that threatens him). He has drastically improved the strategic position of Russia relatively cheaply, and is on his way to restoring the Soviet empire.

Various pundits have said that Putin is playing chess while Western leaders play checkers (or even simpler games, like marbles). I agree – except that the pawns he sacrifices so unemotionally are people.

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.

04/06 Links Pt1: Jibril Rajoub hit with lawsuit upon arrival in US; Russia and UNESCO recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital

From Ian:

Senior Fatah member hit with lawsuit upon arrival at JFK

A senior member of the Palestinian Authority was served with a $250 million civil lawsuit on Wednesday, upon his arrival at a New York airport, over his alleged involvement in the torture and killing of a Palestinian-American man.
Jibril Rajoub, who is a senior Fatah member and heads the PA Olympic committee, was handed the writ for $250 million and a court summons as he descended from the plane at JFK airport, Ynet news reported.
The suit accuses Rajoub of involvement in the alleged torture and killing of Azzam Rahim by the Palestinian Authority security forces in 1995.
The suit was filed by Rahim’s family on Tuesday in their home state of Texas against Rajoub, who at the time of the alleged killing served as head of Palestinian security in the West Bank. According to the writ, Rahim was detained by the PA on September 29, 1995, and tortured to death.
The claimants accused Rajoub of playing a major role in the arrest, torture and death of their relative. The family testified that Rahim was visiting his home town of Ein Yabrud, near Ramallah, over 20 years ago, when plainclothes security forces detained him while he was playing backgammon in a local coffee house and took him to prison in Jericho. Two days later an ambulance delivered his dead body back to the town.

Moscow surprisingly says west Jerusalem is Israel's capital

Russia recognizes west Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated in a surprise announcement on Thursday, obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post.
The announcement comes as US President Donald Trump's administration is agonizing over whether to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move that would constitute recognizing west Jerusalem as the country's capital. No other country in the world recognizes any part of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry reads, “We reaffirm our commitment to the UN-approved principles for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, which include the status of East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. At the same time, we must state that in this context we view West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”
This is a sharp shift in Russian policy, which until now has formally held that Jerusalem should eventually be under a permanent international regime. The statement appears in English on the Russian Foreign Ministry's Russian web site.
While officials in Jerusalem interpreted this to mean that recognition of west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital will only come once east Jerusalem becomes the capital of a Palestinian state, The Jerusalem Post has learned that Moscow intends this recognition to go into effect immediately.

UNESCO Chief: ‘Jerusalem is the Capital of King David’

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova has rebuffed attempts by the UN cultural body to deny a historic Jewish connection to Jerusalem.
“In the Torah, Jerusalem is the capital of King David, where Solomon built the Temple and placed the Ark of the Covenant,” Bokova said last week at the policy conference of the European Coalition for Israel, a grassroots Christian initiative.
“To deny, conceal or erase any of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions undermines the integrity of the site, and runs counter to the reasons that justifies its inscription in the UNESCO World Heritage List,” she added.
Bokova’s comments represent a sharp contrast to previous statements and resolutions issued by the UN agency. In October 2016, UNESCO passed two controversial resolutions condemning Israeli actions at Jerusalem’s holy sites and ignoring Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
Yet in a meeting last month with World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reaffirmed his recognition of Judaism’s historic ties to Jerusalem. Before March’s remarks, the UN chief had said on Israeli radio, “It is completely clear the Temple that the Romans destroyed in Jerusalem was a Jewish temple.”

The Arab online magazine "Highlights" has an article called "The nature of the Jews as the Nazis saw them." The photo-illustration for the article is above.

It is an Arabic translation of an article by Joseph Goebbels written in 1929 that was entitled, simply, "The Jew."

It says:

One cannot defend himself against the Jew. He attacks with lightning speed from his position of safety and uses his abilities to crush any attempt at defense.
Quickly he turns the attacker’s charges back on him and the attacker becomes the liar, the troublemaker, the terrorist. Nothing could be more mistaken than to defend oneself. That is just what the Jew wants. He can invent a new lie every day for the enemy to respond to, and the result is that the enemy spends so much time defending himself that he has no time to do what the Jew really fears: to attack. The accused has become the accuser, and loudly he shoves the accuser into the dock. So it always was in the past when a person or a movement fought the Jew. That is what would happen to us as well were we not fully aware of his nature, and if we lacked the courage to draw the following radical conclusions:
1. One cannot fight the Jew by positive means. He is a negative, and this negative must be erased from the German system or he will forever corrupt it.
2. One cannot discuss the Jewish question with the Jews. One can hardly prove to a person that one has the duty to render him harmless.
3. One cannot allow the Jew the same means one would give an honest opponent, for he is no honorable opponent. He will use generosity and nobility only to trap his enemy.
4. The Jew has nothing to say about German questions. He is a foreigner, an alien, who only enjoys the rights of a guest, rights that he always abuses.
5. The so-called religious morality of the Jews is no morality at all, rather an encouragement to betrayal. Therefore, they have no claim to protection from the state.
6. The Jew is not smarter than we are, rather only cleverer and craftier. His system cannot be defeated economically — he follows entirely different moral principles than we do. It can only be broken through political means.
7. A Jew cannot insult a German. Jewish slanders are but badges of honor for a German opponent of the Jews.
8. The more a German person or a German movement opposes the Jew, the more valuable it is. If someone is attacked by the Jews, that is a sure sign of his virtue. He who is not persecuted by the Jews, or who is praised by them, is useless and dangerous.
9. The Jew evaluates German questions from the Jewish standpoint. As a result, the opposite of what he says must be true.
10. One must either affirm or reject anti-Semitism. He who defends the Jews harms his own people. One can only be a Jewish lackey or a Jewish opponent. Opposing the Jews is a matter of personal hygiene.
These principles give the anti-Jewish movement a chance of success. Only such a movement will be taken seriously by the Jews, only such a movement will be feared by them.
The fact that he shouts and complains about such a movement therefore is only a sign that it is right. We are therefore delighted that we are constantly attacked in the Jewish gazettes. They may shout about terror. We answer with Mussolini’s familiar words: “Terror? Never! It is social hygiene. We take these individuals out of circulation just as a doctor does to a bacterium.

Just in case it isn't clear enough, the translation is placed under the section of the magazine called "The Palestinian Cause."

It is also remarkable how closely Goebbel's advice has been embraced in the Arab world, officially about "Zionists."

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.

Algerians answer "Where are your Jews?" with "They were ungrateful traitors"

Two weeks ago, Hillel Neuer of UN Watch gave a short speech at the UN Human Rights Council that went viral:

Mr. President, let me begin by putting the following on the record: Everything we just heard — from the world’s worst abusers of human rights, of women’s rights, of freedom of religion, of the press, of assembly, of speech — is absolutely false; and, indeed, Orwellian....

Israel’s 1.5 million Arabs, whatever challenges they face, enjoy full rights to vote and to be elected in the Knesset, they work as doctors and lawyers, they serve on the Supreme Court.

Now I’d like to ask the members of that commission, that commissioned that report, the Arab states from which we just heard. Egypt, Iraq, and the others:

How many Jews live in your countries? How many Jews live in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco?

Once upon a time, the Middle East was full of Jews.

Algeria had 140,000 Jews. Algeria, where are your Jews?

Egypt used to have 75,000 Jews. Where are your Jews?

Syria, you had tens of thousands of Jews. Where are your Jews?

Iraq, you had over 135,000 Jews. Where are your Jews?

Mr. President, where is the apartheid?

This speech caused a minor furor in Algeria.

A columnist for Algerian paper Echorouk Online attempts to answer the question by claiming that the Jews of Algeria greeted the French occupiers with joy, and when the French soldiers looted the Muslim homes, the Jews bought their stolen goods cheap.

So, of course, they deserved to be terrorized, murdered and ethnically cleansed, according to this Algerian columnist.

These are lies, of course. Here's the truth about the Jews of Algeria, from Lyn Julius:

Far from being colonial, Jewish roots go back 2,700 years when Jewish traders arrived in North Africa with the Phoenicians, 1,000 years before Islam; and the first Jewish slaves and expellees from Judea settled among the Berbers soon after the destruction of the 2nd Temple. Some Berber tribes were said to have converted to Judaism. The most famous Jewish Berber of all, the warrior Queen Kahina, fought the Arab Muslim invaders in the 7th century – in vain.

The toshavim, the settled indigenous Jews who managed to survive islamisation, were joined in the 15th century by the megorashim, Jews escaping the Spanish Inquisition. Under Ottoman rule, most Jews lived in abject misery as dhimmis – inferior subjects under Islam. One 19th century traveller, Signor Pananti, wrote: “there is no species of outrage or vexation to which they are not exposed…the indolent Moor, with a pipe in his mouth and his legs crossed, calls any Jew who is passing, and makes him perform the offices of a servant…. Even fountains were happier, at least they were allowed to murmur.”

No wonder then, when Algeria became part of metropolitan France in 1830, the oppressed Jews greeted the French as saviors and liberators. Forty years later the Decret Cremieux, named after a famous Jewish politician and philanthropist, imposed French nationality on the entire Jewish community.

The myth has since developed that only the Jews were offered French nationality. The Muslims were offered it too, but overwhelmingly rejected it, as it would mean compromising their personal status, which was governed by Muslim law.

In Muslim eyes, the fact that the dhimmi Jews could have greater rights than they did caused great resentment. But the Jews were also resented by the pieds noirs. How dare these natives be given the privilege of French nationality and suppose themselves equal to true Frenchmen?

The Jews found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Muslim antisemitism reached its peak with the eruption of the Constantine pogrom of 1934, in which 25 Jews were killed. French antisemitism reached its zenith with the WW2 abrogation of the Decret Cremieux. Under Vichy rule, Jews not only were stripped of their French nationality, but were sacked from public service jobs and subject to quotas and restrictions.

The Decret Cremieux was reinstated in 1943. In some Jews, the trauma of having their French citizens’ rights taken away created an absolute dread of being identified with Arabs: they were Frenchmen of the Jewish faith – francais israelites.

But as the Arabs embarked on an ever more brutal campaign of decolonisation in the 1950s, while the pieds noirs engaged in equally brutal counter-terror, the Jewish community was careful to maintain an official position of neutrality – although in retrospect, the killing of rabbis and bombings of synagogues looked deliberate enough. Some Jews supported the FLN independence fighters. A minority of anti-French Jewish communists earned the title ‘pieds rouges‘.

The Jews could sit on the fence no longer when two events forced them decisively into the French camp: the first was the burning of the Great synagogue in Algiers in December 1960. Arabs went on the rampage ripping memorial plaques from the walls, and torching books and Torah scrolls. The second was the murder in June 1961, while he was out shopping in the market, of the famous Jewish musician, Sheikh Raymond Leyris, a symbol of a shared Arab-Jewish culture and father-in-law of the singer Enrico Macias.

Like the pieds noirs, the Jews were faced with a stark choice: suitcase or coffin. They scrambled to reach seaports and airports. By the time Algeria had declared independence on 3 July 1962, all but a few thousand Jews had left for France.

The watchword was now ‘Muslim Algeria’ not ‘Algeria for the Algerians.’ No ‘foreigner,’ even those who had fought for the FLN, was awarded Algerian nationality, unless they had a Muslim father. There was no place for Jews in the new Algeria, as there is no place for Jews anywhere in the Arab world.

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

From Iran's mouthpiece PressTV:

Iran has strongly condemned the use of chemical weapons in Syria, underling the need for disarming terrorists operating in the Arab country.

“We strongly condemn any use of chemical weapons, irrespective of who used them or their victims,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Wednesday.

Dozens of people were killed in a chemical attack in the Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun in the northwestern province of Idlib on Tuesday.

The United States and its allies were quick to accuse Syrian government forces of carrying out the attack. The Syrian army said, however, that “it has never used them (chemical weapons), anytime, anywhere, and will not do so in the future.”

The Iranian official said that the catastrophe was not the first of its kind in Syria, warning that dealing with the tragedy based on double standards, rash judgment and propaganda purposes and using it as a tool to level accusations against others and reinforce the political demands of certain sides would prevent addressing the root causes of such disasters.

Qassemi said the Syrian government had voluntarily dismantled its stockpile of chemical weapons under the supervision of the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), stressing that it was now time for disarming terrorist groups in the Arab country.

“Considering the transfer, stockpile and use of chemical weapons by terrorist groups in Syria, the Islamic Republic of Iran has always believed that despite the disarmament of the Syrian government through its full cooperation and under the supervision of a joint representative of the UN and the OPCW, ignoring the need for the chemical disarmament of terrorist groups has been a major flaw in the country's chemical disarmament process,” the Iranian official said.

Iran is saying that its ally Syria has complied with international resolutions on getting rid of its weapons of mass destruction and therefore couldn't have been guilty of the horrific attack in Idlib.

Similarly, Iran also says that it has complied with international resolutions on getting rid of its capability of building weapons of mass destruction.

Meanwhile, Iran's ally North Korea, which does have nuclear weapons, has been threatening other countries with a nuclear holocaust and is testing long range missiles that can carry such weapons. Like Iran, North Korea had also signed an agreement to stop its nuclear weapons program and to allow inspectors free access, and like Iran, North Korea breached that and many other agreements.

Iran's client Syria and its ally North Korea provide the blueprint for Iran's own ambitions to build and threaten the world with weapons of mass destruction while pretending to the end to be compliant with international law and demands.

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.

04/05 Links Pt2: Sweden and the safe enemy; AI Takes Part in Apartheid Week South Africa

From Ian:

The Obama Administration Allegedly Spied on Pro-Israel Activists. Did They Do the Same to Trump?

This is familiar territory. In spying on the representatives of the American people and members of the pro-Israel community, the Obama administration learned how far it could go in manipulating the foreign-intelligence surveillance apparatus for its own domestic political advantage. In both instances, the ostensible targets—Israel and Russia—were simply instruments used to go after the real targets at home.
In order to spy on U.S. congressmen before the Iran Deal vote, the Obama administration exploited a loophole, which is described in the original Journal article. The U.S. intelligence community is supposed to keep tabs on foreign officials, even those representing allies. Hence, everyone in Washington knows that Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer is under surveillance. But it’s different for his American interlocutors, especially U.S. lawmakers, whose identities are, according to NSA protocol, supposed to be, at the very least, redacted. But the standard for collecting and disseminating “intercepted communications involving U.S. lawmakers” is much less strict if it is swept up through “foreign-foreign” intercepts, for instance between a foreign ambassador and his capital. Washington, i.e. the seat of the American government, is where foreign ambassadors are supposed to meet with American officials. The Obama administration turned an ancient diplomatic convention inside out—foreign ambassadors were so dangerous that meeting them signaled betrayal of your own country.
During the long and contentious lead-up to the Iran Deal the Israeli ambassador was regularly briefing senior officials in Jerusalem, including the prime minister, about the situation, including his meetings with American lawmakers and Jewish community leaders. The Obama administration would be less interested in what the Israelis were doing than in the actions of those who actually had the ability to block the deal—namely, Senate and House members. The administration then fed this information to members of the press, who were happy to relay thinly veiled anti-Semitic conceits by accusing deal opponents of dual loyalty and being in the pay of foreign interests.
It didn’t take much imagination for members of Congress to imagine their names being inserted in the Iran deal echo chamber’s boilerplate—that they were beholden to “donors” and “foreign lobbies.” What would happen if the White House leaked your phone call with the Israeli ambassador to a friendly reporter, and you were then profiled as betraying the interests of your constituents and the security of your nation to a foreign power? What if the fact of your phone call appeared under the byline of a famous columnist friendly to the Obama administration, say, in a major national publication?

The safe enemy

By disproportionately covering this attack and ignoring other, weekly, incidents, the media is perpetuating a myth that the main threat facing the Jewish population is a massive Nazi insurgence, and that when it is squashed, the Jews are once again fair game.
The reason the first incident in Umea was not covered by the national press was that the left-leaning media had no interest in an issue where the political left had hijacked a Jewish day of remembrance to drive their personal cause, and the villains of the story were too close to home and far too close for comfort. So the media kept quiet, and failed not only the Jews of Umea but also their entire profession by choosing to become party to the proceedings.
I feel for the Jewish community in Umea, but I also fear for all of us. This is the thing about us Jews: not even our sorrows are our own. Our victories are celebrated but we remain whatever the world wants and needs us to be. Umea saw their Kristallnacht memorial stolen for political purposes and now I fear their last days will be stolen, too.
I am thankful for the attention being showered on the Jews of Umea, and for all the pledges and promises made by politicians and leaders in support of our cause. But it is tomorrow, not today, that these pledges will be put to the test. When the next attack hits and the other shoe drops, will they still love us then? Will they stand by us even when the attacker doesn't fit the bill? I hope so, I pray so, but I won't be holding my breath.

'Sweden's anti-Semitism has crossed all red lines'

After a Jewish center in Sweden closed in response to anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi threats, World Zionist Organization Vice President and Department for Countering Anti-Semitism Head Yaakov Haguel said "all red lines" had been crossed and the Muslim community was "chasing after Jews."
"This is just a continuation of the previous plots," Haguel said. "Sweden's anti-Semisim has crossed all red lines. The recent events are only the latest in a long line of incitement and blood libels. People are sowing an unjust fear of Jews, and the government is closing its eyes to everything which relates to Jews and israel.
"Jews are running from here, because they're scared of he rising anti-Semitism. There are anti-Israel campaigns which focus on libels claiming Jews steal and sell Palestinian limbs. There have been incidents in which local Muslims literally chase after Jews. And the government supports an anti-Israel stance, unequivocally supporting the Palestinians and Islamic countries.
"All of these should make us do some soul-searching with regards to our relationship with this counry.
"I call on the Swedish government to take responsibility and ensure the safety of its citizens," Haguel concluded.

Chocolate spread. It’s made out of not much more than cocoa and fat. And it’s the most Israeli sandwich spread there is.

Kids love it. Parents love the convenience, but hate the lack of nutritional value. They sigh and give in, especially on Passover, when you can spread it on matzoh to make it taste less like cardboard and more like, well, CHOCOLATE.

My 16 year-old still likes chocolate spread, but he always cautions us to only buy the Hashachar brand chocolate spread. The one with the yellow cap (there’s also a Hashachar chocolate spread with a white cap). That’s why it got our back up when Sarah Tuttle-Singer, the new media director at the Times of Israel, shared an article from Haaretz, calling the spread “racist” and urging her followers to boycott the company.

The Haaretz article, written by Roger Alpher, reads:

“What could be more Israeli than matza with Hashachar Ha’ole chocolate spread on top?” asks a Passover ad for this veteran brand, known to anyone who grew up in Israel.

Even though the ad immediately replies with a list of national symbols such as the flag, the anthem, a chain with a Star of David, as well as cultural symbols such as TV Channel One and popular Israeli melodrama films, it’s obvious that the advertisement assumes that public consensus considers Hashachar Ha’ole to be one of the consumer products most identified with Israeliness. However, it’s patriotic and nostalgic air is tainted: This is a company that donates tens of thousands of shekels a year to the settlements.

“I believe in a Greater Land of Israel, which you call ‘the occupied territories,’ and I wish I could donate even more,” CEO Moshe Weidberg told Haaretz in December 2015.

Regarding the option of donating to human rights group B’Tselem, he said he’d rather go bankrupt. Weidberg devotes part of his company’s profits to financing the occupation and the apartheid regime in the territories, along with its blatant violation of human rights. He espouses an ideology that makes him an enemy of democracy and a supporter of a benighted ultra-nationalistic regime that squelches any criticism. His opposition to any criticism of the occupation is so fierce that he’d rather go bankrupt (not a trivial matter, considering that his is a family business that’s been around since 1955) than donate to an organization that works to end the occupation.

It’s a declaration that’s commendable for its directness, honesty, openness and transparency. Weidberg has no problem with being political and annoying potential customers who oppose the occupation. Good for him. His clear political standpoint should be countered with a no-less clear and strong political stance.

Anyone opposing the occupation should boycott Hashachar Ha’ole, otherwise his or her ideology is meaningless. It’s a moral duty to exact this small price from Weidberg. It’s unseemly that a person objecting to the occupation should continue purchasing his products in the knowledge that he is thereby contributing to the settlements and submitting to Weidberg’s destructive and immoral ideology.

Hashachar Ha’ole is, regrettably, no longer Israeli. Apparently, there is no chocolate spread anywhere in the world more fascist and racist. Weidberg should be forced to face the ramifications of the ideology he is so loyal to. The fact that his products are identified with the occupation and the persecution of left-wing groups should be advertised.

He prefers to go bankrupt over donating to B’Tselem? The required response is that supporters of B’Tselem immediately cease, this Passover, being his customers.

Otherwise, in their apathy and lassitude, they are almost as bad as he is since their money will go to the settlements.

Instead of buying Hashachar Ha’ole products, one may as well directly contribute to the Ateret Yerushalayim yeshiva in the Old City and to the seminary in Elon Moreh. That, at least, will circumvent the self-deception.

“I wish we could give more,” declared Weidberg. Thus, advertisements for purchasing his products this Passover can be viewed as a collection of donations for the settlements.

It’s time Hashachar Ha’ole (the Rising Dawn in Hebrew) turned to dusk.

In other words, Weidberg is a patriot who supports Jews settling their indigenous Jewish territory. No wonder Haaretz is upset. No wonder Sarah Tuttle-Singer is upset. Supporting the building of homes in Jewish indigenous territory?? Unthinkable, when your entire goal is to bring the State of Israel crashing down upon our heads.

Both would have you believe that Jews living in Judea and Samaria are stealing Arab land. Both love to listen and cry big fat crocodile tears as Arabs lie to them, recounting their invented humiliation at being forced to live under the thumb of the oh-so-oppressive Jews. This is what the Roger Alphers and Sarah Tuttle-Singers of the world care about most.

It’s what they write about. They write about the poor Arabs. They write about the need to call out injustice when they see it, about the “occupation.”

They write blogs excusing terrorists.

You know what they don’t write about?

They don’t write about Ayala Shapira’s brave speech to the European Parliament this week. Ayala was on her way home from her gifted math class when an Arab went up to the passenger seat of her father’s car, where she was seated, and threw a firebomb at her window. The Arab well knew that father and daughter always came home around this time. He timed the attack. He planned it. He knew a little girl was sitting there on that side of the car.

Ayala sustained burns on 30% of her face and body. Her face is disfigured. But when she spoke to the European Parliament last week she said, “I can't say, 'I want to be beautiful,' because it means that today I'm not beautiful, and that's not true.”

This was something that didn’t interest Sarah Tuttle-Singer enough to tweet about it, write about it on her Facebook page, or blog about it at the Times of Israel. No. She was too busy writing about the suffering hearts of terrorists and how we shouldn’t kill them. She was just deeply absorbed in writing about boycotting anyone who supports settlement in Judea and Samaria. And when she wasn’t using her writing and her clout as an internet star to work toward bringing down the State of Israel, she was writing about the cute way her kids played with her vibrator.

My kids found my vibrator. I told them it was a back massager. They've spent the last 30 minutes rubbing my back with it.
— (((TuttleSinger))) (@TuttleSinger) March 31, 2017

I always wonder why these people live in Israel in the first place. Why do they live in Israel if they think this constitutes “occupation?”

The answer must be that they are attempting to undermine us from within, to infiltrate. They’re working for the other side. Because how could a Jew possibly find anything wrong with Jews living in their ancestral lands? It makes no logical sense. And a Jew calling to boycott other Jews’ businesses?

Unthinkable. Sick.

But that’s okay. Because in addition to these traitors, we have heroes. People like Ari Fuld. The minute he heard about Sarah Tuttle-Singer and Roger Alpher, he went out and started buying up Hashachar chocolate spread like there was no tomorrow. He bought it to give out to IDF soldiers to help make their Passover celebrations a little sweeter, more festive.

Ari kept us updated.

And of course, with his actions, Ari prompted a wild buying spree. Everyone suddenly had to buy Hashachar chocolate spread. Because that is the only patriotic thing to do! That is, if you care about Israel. Love it with all your heart.

One friend’s daughter took her patriotism and love of Israel one step further. She named her new son Shachar!

Shachar Bakish (photo courtesy Tamar Rubin)

Shachar. It means “dawn.”

Maybe someday, it will dawn on the Roger Alphers and Sarah Tuttle-Singers of the world that they aren’t ever going to succeed at bringing down the Jewish State.

Not as long as we’ve got people like Ari Fuld and Ayala Shapira on our side.

Dawn? We say yes. It's time. Wake up and smell the chocolate.

Buy blue and white. And brown. Definitely brown. Hashachar HaOle chocolate spread. For Passover.

It's good.

h/t Dov Epstein for the heads up on this story.

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.

Archaeologists Find Remnants Of Obama Red Line On Syria Chemical Weapons (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Damascus, April 5 - Scientists digging in the outskirts of the Syrian capital have discovered fragments of what appear to be one of former US President Barack Obama's "red lines" warning Basher Assad not to use chemical weapons, the excavation leaders reported today.

A team of archaeologists exploring historical features of Syria came upon the pieces of red line, and, based on contextual and chemical indicators, pinpointed the date of the fragments at the latter half of 2014 CE, during Obama's second term. They also utilized analytical tools that gave them what they described as near-certainty" that the original red lines, of which there must have been at least three, came from Obama himself.

"We're confident we have identified the origin of these red line fragments, and have determined that their purpose was a series of ultimatums from President Obama to President Assad, to the effect that deployment of chemical or biological weapons by Syrian regime forces would prompt an immediate and severe US military reaction," explained team leader Linie Roth of the University of Munich.

What remains unclear, noted Roth, is whether the fragments the team has collected and identified all come from a single red line or from several. "When Assad crossed Obama's red lines, it's not completely certain what happened to those lines. Contemporary records indicate that the lines still existed after having been crossed, but the record runs dry by the end of 2014, and the only mentions of red lines are in reference to lines that once existed, presumably these three. We need to examine these specimens closely, and perhaps continue digging to shed light on what became of Obama's red lines on Syrian chemical weapons."

Compounding the difficulty is the Obama administration's own subsequent attempts to conceal or otherwise reduce the identifiability of the red lines it had established. "Unconfirmed accounts from the period place administration personnel in the vicinity of the red lines with deflection, concealment, and denial tools, and the vague picture we have at the moment is consistent with efforts to fudge the record, so we are still cautious," added Roth. "Non-echo-chamber sources are of course held as less credible than those who towed the presidential line, a fact that poses challenges to gaining a coherent picture."

Obama's red lines in Syria are only a fraction of the red lines the previous president laid down, according to scholars. "Accounts from the time of Obama discuss various ultimatums regarding Ukraine, Iran, and something called 'ISIL,'" observed John Kerry, a former US Senator. "None of those red lines, when violated, appear to have triggered anything. I'm at a loss to explain it."

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.

04/05 Links Pt1: Livingstone’s words have emboldened anti-Semites; A Nobel Prize for al-Qaeda?

From Ian:

UK’s Labour suspends Livingstone for year over Hitler-Zionism comments

The UK Labour Party on Tuesday suspended former London mayor and senior party official Ken Livingstone for one year for comments about Hitler supporting Zionism that a disciplinary committee found “grossly detrimental” to the party.
Jewish groups, who had been calling for Livingston to be expelled, called the move “deeply disappointing” and said it would erode the fractured trust between the party and its Jewish members.
“Given that Ken Livingstone has been found guilty, we are deeply disappointed at the decision not to expel him from the Labour Party. A temporary suspension is no more than a slap on the wrist,” the Jewish Leadership Council said in a statement.
“Livingstone’s antagonistic attitude towards the Jewish community has been longstanding and has had a huge impact on Jewish people,” the group said. “This decision makes us question if the Labour Party wanted to repair its historic and long-standing relationship with the Jewish community.”
Those sentiments were echoed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. “Relations between the Labour Party and the Jewish community have reached a new all-time low,” said President Jonathan Arkush.

Ken Livingstone’s words have emboldened anti-Semites

A bottled punishment
The Labour National Constitutional Committee (NCC) panel that heard the case should at least be congratulated for the correct ruling, but predictably, they bottled the punishment. Livingstone has brought the party into disrepute and emphatically so, but it does not end there. He has continued, unapologetically, to dig himself into a further hole and in doing so is damaging the Labour party.
In the wake of this bottled decision, I have been receiving emails from those most emboldened by it. I have been asked how much the Jewish lobby will be remunerating me by, why Jewish votes are so priceless and congratulated for “not cringing to…subhumans”.
A cursory search of Twitter and one will find similar comments with Holocaust denial and other foul racism. One supposedly Labour-supporting group posted a message on Facebook stating the decision to further suspend Livingstone was “manufactured in Tel Aviv” a comment straight out of the far-right handbook. The Labour party should be a force for good but what happened yesterday has inspired racists and antisemites. We will have to act.
Gaslighting
This type of revisionism seeks to demean or undermine what happened to Jews and others at the hands of the Nazis. Decent people will rightly be horrified by it. Attempts by Livingstone or others to gaslight what he said must be resisted.
He said Hitler was supporting Zionism. Look up Zionist in the dictionary and you’ll find it explained as a supporter of Zionism. This claim is part of a pernicious form of anti-Jewish hatred. Antisemitism should not be treated differently to any other form of racism.
There is no choice. The leadership of the party must respond and review the decision. I call for anyone that has ever supported Labour to join, step forward and speak out in order to demand the quick change that we need.

Douglas Murray: In defence of Ken Livingstone

As the historian Paul Bogdanor showed in a scholarly article last year, Brenner imbibed his ideas from the well of Soviet propaganda. As opposed to far-right Holocaust fabrications (which either claim that it did not happen, or downplay the numbers), Soviet-inspired anti-Semites tend towards claims that the Jews were themselves involved. Brenner, who was involved in the 1980s with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), clearly helped dig this well, from which Livingstone drank deeply. In Livingstone’s own 2011 memoirs he credited Brenner’s books with having ‘helped form my view of Zionism and its history’.
On international affairs — an area in which he has mercifully never had a meaningful role — Livingstone’s views are a hodge-podge of learning from quacks. But all good quacks lean on nuggets of truth. In the case of Jews in the 1930s, it is true that a small number of Labour Zionists had meetings with Nazi officials in 1933 about helping German Jews emigrate to what was then Palestine. But these were not ‘clandestine’ meetings, as Brenner and Livingstone claim. And their aim was not to cooperate, much less find mutual interest in the creation of a Jewish state, but rather one small part of a desperate scramble to get some people and possessions out of Germany.
Brenner and Livingstone’s take is classic crackpot history. And like Livingstone’s frequent citings of Mosaddegh and the CIA in discussing the wider Middle East, it isn’t that what he’s saying didn’t in any way happen. It’s just that what happened doesn’t remotely support the conclusions he comes to.
Many observers, especially British Jews, wonder why Livingstone wants to keep raking over all this. Is it a demonstration of anti-Semitism? Or senility? Both seem possible. But it is also possible that, armed with his little learning, Livingstone has chosen his version of history, as many people do, and is sticking with it.
He is wildly wrong, of course. If he had any power, his proselytisation on behalf of his theory could be dangerous. But Ken has no power, and his crazy insistence on arguing every inch of ground has instead allowed a public debate about a corner of left-wing pseudo-history that might never otherwise have had a light shone on it to allow for such mainstream debunking.

From Express Tribune (Pakistan):

A Malaysian lawmaker has caused outrage after he suggested rape victims should marry their attackers in order to lead a good life and help solve social problems.

Shabudin Yahya, the MP for the ruling coalition party United Malay National Organisation, said: “The thing is they have an opportunity – with a marriage they can lead a healthy and good life.” The MP’s statement came during a debate on Child Sexual Offences Bill in parliament.

“For a woman that was raped, if she can marry [that person] she would not go through such a bleak future. At least she has someone who can become her husband. So this will be a remedy for social problems,” Shabudin said.

He further went on to defend rapists by saying it was not fair to assume that a person who committed a sexual offence will continue to be a bad person. “Maybe he repents, or regrets. It’s better to have people who regret rather than people who do not regret. So in this case, let us not put an assumption that the person will remain bad. [Marriage] can be an exit clause for this problem,” he said.

He even said girls aged between 9 and 12 can be married off as they hit puberty at that age and the physical state of their body is already akin to them being 18 years old.

There is a secondary story here.

This story is widely covered in English-language Asian media outlets, and Shabudin's statements have been condemned across the board by Muslims and others.

But even though Reuters picked up (and watered down) the story, most Western news outlets have stayed away from it.

The probable reason is that they are afraid to post it because of "Islamophobia" - even though most Muslims on the record are angry at the MP.

This is another dimension of media bias - what the media doesn't report is often as indicative of bias as how they report the stories they do publish.

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.

Overwhelming number of Palestinians are against teaching their children peace

Mosaic has a must-read article surveying hundreds of Palestinian public opinion polls to find out how interested Palestinians are in peace with Israel.

Answer: They aren't.

[I]n June 2014, the Washington Institute’s David Pollock commissioned and supervised a survey of West Bank and Gaza residents. In the poll, respondents were presented with three choices for the main Palestinian national goal over the next five years. Working for “a one-state solution in all of the land: a state in which Arabs and Jews will have equal rights in one country, from the river to the sea” garnered 10-percent support. “End the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza to achieve a two-state solution” was backed by 27 percent of respondents. The runaway first choice, selected by 60 percent of respondents, was “to work toward reclaiming all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea.”

In June 2015, another poll by Pollock and the Washington Institute, this time in conjunction with the PCPO, asked about the main Palestinian goal for the next five years, and again the option of “reclaiming all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea” was the most popular choice. This result is particularly astounding given that participants were not asked about a long-term dream, but about what they saw as the goal during the next half-decade.

We have reported on these results in the past. But there is one other question that Palestinian pollsters have asked over the years.

When asked on sixteen occasions if they would be willing to “adopt [a] school curriculum in the Palestinian state that recognizes Israel and teach school children not to demand return of all Palestine to the Palestinians,” a massive majority, 88 percent on average, said no, and only 9 percent said yes.

This question about whether Palestinians want to teach their children about peace is arguably more damning than the others. It shows that there is no desire for long-term peace with Israel for the vast majority of Palestinians.

We've seen the fruits of such an attitude with the outbreak of Palestinian youth attacking Israelis that we've seen over the past 18 months. They aren't attacking because of "desperation" or "occupation." They attack because their parents teach them that the Jews are a temporary blight on their land and it is the job of the next generation to get rid of them.

The answers to this question are so damning to Palestinians, apparently, that this question has not been asked since 2008 when only 13% of Palestinians polled supported a curriculum advocating peace with Israel.

(h/t Yoel)

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.