Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, April 20, 2017

04/20 Links Pt1: We’re turning a blind eye to Iran’s genocidal liars; A steady diet of anti-Israel rhetoric

From Ian:

Michael Oren: We’re turning a blind eye to Iran’s genocidal liars

The Australian, April 19, 2017 - In responding forcibly to North Korean and Syrian outrages, President Trump has taken a major step towards restoring America’s deterrence power. His determination to redress the flaws in the JCPOA and to stand up to Iran will greatly accelerate that process. The US, Israel and the world will all be safer.
The US has signed agreements with three rogue regimes strictly limiting their unconventional military capacities. Two of those regimes — Syria and North Korea — brazenly violated the agreements, provoking game-changing responses from Donald Trump. But the third agreement — with Iran — is so inherently flawed that Tehran doesn’t even have to break it. Honouring it will be enough to endanger millions of lives.
The framework agreements with North Korea and Syria, concluded respectively in 1994 and 2013, were similar in many ways. Both recognised that the regimes already possessed weapons of mass destruction or at least the means to produce them. Both assumed that the regimes would surrender their arsenals under an international treaty and open their facilities to inspectors. And both believed these repressive states, if properly engaged, could be brought into the community of nations.
All those assumptions were wrong. After withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Pyongyang tested five atomic weapons and developed intercontinental missiles capable of carrying them. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, less than a year after signing the framework, reverted to gassing his own people. Bolstered by the inaction of the US and backed by other powers, North Korea and Syria broke their commitments with impunity.

Seth Frantzman: 'With Syria in pieces, it’s time to recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan'

Michael Oren says it is time for the world to recognize the Golan Heights as part of Israel.
In contrast to negotiations with the Palestinians, there is no Syria to negotiate with, Deputy Minister for Diplomacy in the Prime Minister’s Office Oren said on Tuesday.
“Without Israel there [in the Golan], the region would be jeopardized. ISIS would be on the Kinneret,” he said, adding that other states in the region are glad Israel is on the Golan. This is one of several important outcomes of the 1967 war still felt today.
Israel annexed the Golan in 1981 in a decision that was never recognized internationally.
Oren was speaking at a Jerusalem seminar hosted by The Israel Project and the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research. The seminar – one of a series that runs through June – is focused on the impact of the war of 50 years ago, domestically and geopolitically, with special emphasis on Jerusalem.

JPost Editorial: Strike Out

The hunger strike by Palestinian terrorist prisoners that began this week, as explained by convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti in an op-ed in The New York Times that identified him as “a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian,” was a last resort to protest “Israel’s illegal system of mass arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners.”
The uninformed reader might ask why this hunger strike is different from all other Palestinian hunger strikes.
While some might be inclined to accept Barghouti’s motives at face value, there is ample evidence that his action is nothing more than a cynical attempt to exploit his fellow prisoners in a bid at succeeding Mahmoud Abbas as leader of the Palestinian Authority – despite his imprisonment.
According to Barghouti, Palestinian prisoners and detainees have suffered from torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, and medical negligence. “Some have been killed while in detention. According to the latest count from the Palestinian Prisoners Club, about 200 Palestinian prisoners have died since 1967 because of such actions,” he wrote.
But there remains an aspect of unreality about this strike. All one has to do is take a look at some of these conditions in prisons being decried by the Palestinians, some of which have actually been improved over the years. In the early days of Palestinian terrorism following the Six Day War, convicted terrorists were denied pencil and paper. By 2012, their privileges extended to obtaining remedial education behind bars, including academic degrees from the Open University.

This story came out, and was widely reported, last week:

Marvel artist Ardian Syaf will face “disciplinary action” after it was revealed over the weekend that he promoted an anti-Christian and anti-Semitic verse from the Koran in one of its books.

Superhero fans know the X-Men as a team of “mutants” that fights against intolerance. The newest issue of “X-Men Gold,” however, included a reference to Indonesian politics and the Koranic chapter and verse QS 5:51. The surreptitious messaging spread on Reddit and entertainment websites on Saturday before the company took action.

“O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies,” one translation of the text reads. “They are, in fact, allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you — then indeed, he is one of them. Indeed, Allah guides not the wrongdoing people.”

The Koranic reference was printed on a main character’s clothing in a story where a Jewish woman becomes the team’s leader.

A “212” and another “51” appeared elsewhere in the book, both references to a day of Muslim protests in December over claims that Jakarta’s Christian governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, insulted Islam.

“The mentioned artwork in X-Men Gold #1 was inserted without knowledge behind its reported meanings,” Marvel said in a statement released Saturday. “These implied references do not reflect the views of the writer, editors or anyone else at Marvel and are in direct opposition of the inclusiveness of Marvel Comics and what the X-Men have stood for since their creation. This artwork will be removed from subsequent printings, digital versions, and trade paperbacks and disciplinary action is being taken.”

The reaction from the artist:

In an interview with local Jakarta newspaper Jawa Pos published today and translated by Coconuts, Ardian stated that he had tried to explain his side to Marvel. “But Marvel is owned by Disney. When Jews are offended, there is no mercy.”

There is an irony here from a Muslim artist who doesn't like Jews.

Back in the 1940s, the first Muslim comic book hero was created. He was called Kismet, Man of Fate. An Algerian, Kismet eschewed alcohol, used phrases like "By the beard of Allah!" and fought Nazis in Nazi-occupied France, although he would try not to kill anyone.

Kismet was supposedly created by "Omar Tahan," but that was a fiction. In fact he was conceived, written and drawn by Jews. And considering that comics in that time period were routinely blatantly racist, Kismet - despite the stereotypical catchphrases - was someone who was clearly a good guy.

The comic book house that created Kismet, Bomber Comics, was owned by two Jews, including a woman, Ruth Roche, who probably wrote the Kismet stories.

So we have Jews who created a very respectful (if short-lived) Muslim comic book hero 75 years ago when racism and bigotry was widespread, and today we have a Muslim artist who inserted anti-Jewish messages in the modern form of the same medium.

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In 2005, this encouraging news was reported:

The University of Maryland is planning to use private grants to have a fully functioning studies program by 2010 dedicated to Israeli culture, not just the nation's conflict with Palestine.

Though there are Israeli studies programs at other universities — including Wesleyan University, American University and the University of Pennsylvania — many of them focus only on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said associate professor Hayim Lapin, director of the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies. In contrast, this program will offer classes on language, literature, sociology, economics and ecology, he added.

"The way Israeli studies gets played out is it becomes extremely politicized," Lapin said. "We don't have that problem right now. There are plenty of people with very strongly held political views, but we don't have a highly politicized program in one way or the other."

Here is a description of every course being offered by the Israel Studies program at UMD for this coming fall semester:

ISRL289I The Israeli/Palestinian Conflict: Fundamental Questions
Why are Palestinians and Israelis unable to resolve their conflict? Will they ever? Using insights and methodologies from a variety of disciplines and contrasting interpretations of history, this course will examine why the Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues, why it has become so central in world politics and how it connects with other global issues.

We can't know the specifics without a syllabus, but claiming that the conflict is "central in world politics" is already an indication of the bias in this course.

ISRL329E Special Topics in Israel Studies; Israel and the Arab Spring
This course will explore and analyze the political, diplomatic, and strategic effects of the Arab Spring and its continuing after effects on the State of Israel, using that as a lens to study the contemporary Middle East. It starts with a preliminary study of Israel's foreign policy and then examines the effects of the Arab Spring on its domestic politics: relations with other regional actors, the Palestinians, and the United States; and Israel's strategy towards non-state actors such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and ISIS.

This could be an interesting course, but either way it is clearly political.

ISRL329F Special Topics in Israel Studies; The History of Economic Policy in Palestine/Israel
This course examines economic policy in Palestine/Israel from 1999 (under Ottoman rule [sic]) through the British Mandate (1922-48) until 1988, when the current neo-liberal economic policy began. It will examine how the governments and society dealt with issues such as growth versus equality (distributive justice); ideology versus praxis; local original policy versus imported policy; and politics versus academic economics - who decides and under what circumstances?

I could be wrong, but the term "distributive justice" seems to indicate that this is an anti-Israel (and anti-free market) course.

ISRL349Q Investigating Topics in Israel Studies; The Self and the "Other" in Israeli Culture: Literature, Film, and Television
Modern Israel includes people of many different faiths, ethnicities, languages, and cultures, but, Jews of European origin have generally dominated its political and cultural climate. Through literature and film, we will explore how the sense of the "self" is constructed and how the "other" is imagined in Israeli culture. "Others" include Palestinians, Sephardim, Mizrahim, non-Zionists, women, and Eastern Europeans who do not relinquish their ties to the past, as well as other individuals who resist the collective ideologies of a nation constructing itself.

The topic is worthwhile; the presentation looks highly biased. A lot would depend on whether this course looks at contemporary Israeli culture or if it will be dominated by the admittedly problematic aspects from the 1950s.

ISRL349Z Investigating Topics in Israel Studies; Beyond Black and White: Jews and Representations of Race
An examination of Western constructions and representations of 'race' from medieval times to the modern rise of Zionism and the founding of Israel, with a focus on how Jews utilized the racial discourses of each period to negotiate their position within Western history.

I cannot see any way that this course is not problematic given the politics around race on college campuses nowadays.

ISRL448M Seminar in Israel Studies; The Israeli War Discourse, 1967-2017
Recommended: Some knowledge of Israel or a previous Israel Studies course. This online course focuses on a unique Israeli phenomenon, 'war-normalizing discourse', a set of linguistic and cultural devices that blur the various characteristics of war by transforming it into a "normal" part of life. We will examine the reciprocal relations between this discourse, Israeli culture and society, and foreign policy.

When war is part of life, how can "war-normalizing" be avoided? This looks highly biased from its conception.

ISRL448T Seminar in Israel Studies; Israel's Occupation at 50
Now in its fiftieth year, Israel's occupation of the West Bank is the longest continuous military occupation in the world. This seminar will examine its history, the radical transformation of Israeli policy towards Palestinians over five decades, and its impact on the daily lives of Palestinians struggling with the ongoing military and settler presence in their land. The seminar will conclude with a discussion of continued Palestinian resistance to military occupation, including the use of terror against civilians.

This one is obviously anti-Israel. even the course description cannot avoid bias.

It is possible that there is a lot more nuance here and that my skepticism is misplaced. Mitchell Bard, who is an excellent analyst, praised this UMD program last year.

I fear, based on these descriptions, that the UMD Israel Studies Program has not lived up to its original goals, and based on what little we can see here, it may have been largely subverted to be a subset of the traditionally anti-Israel Middle Eastern Studies programs that infest academia today.

(h/t MKG)

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This morning, gunmen riding a motorcycle fired shots at four stores that sell alcoholic beverages in the village of Zababdeh.

Zabadeh, near Jenin, is the only Christian-majority town under PA rule north of Nablus. About two-thirds of its residents are Christian.

This was reported in Ma'an Arabic but not its English edition. Ma'an tries to frame the attack as anti-alcohol, and doesn't mention the religious angle, although of course only Christians sell alcohol in the territories. This is meant to send a message to the entire population of the town, not just the store owners.

In general, Zabadeh Christians downplay any suggestion of friction with their Muslim neighbors, although Christmas trees were burned by Muslims there in 2015, and one source notes that there are sometimes fights when Muslims make lascivious comments to Christian women in the village.

This is the sort of low-level yet overt intimidation that have prompted the vast majority of Christians under Arab rule in the West Bank to flee since 1948.

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Gaza cancer patient and her sister try to smuggle explosives into Israel for Hamas

From JTA:

Two Palestinian sisters attempting to cross into Israel from the Gaza Strip so that one could receive cancer treatment were caught smuggling explosives.

The explosives, used in the production of homemade bombs, were hidden in tubes carried by the women labeled “medical materials,” the Shin Bet security service said in a statement issued Wednesday evening, hours after the women were stopped at the Erez Crossing.

The sisters were approved for entry into Israel so that one could receive potentially life-saving treatment for her illness.

According to the Shin Bet statement, a preliminary investigation showed that the explosives were sent by Hamas be used in a terrorist attack on Israeli targets in the “near future.”

This story tells us a lot.

It shows (yet again) that Hamas is willing to endanger Palestinians - current and future medical patients - for a chance to murder Jews.

It shows (yet again) that humanitarian aid is being used by Hamas for terror.

But perhaps more importantly, it shows why Hamas can do this with impunity.

Because this story is virtually unreported outside Israel.

When Israel places restrictions on Gazans crossing the border, dozens of NGOs jump all over the story and ensure that the issue gets worldwide coverage. But the same NGOs (like Gisha) are silent when Hamas cynically uses Israeli goodwill as a weapon to try to kill Jews.

Hamas knows that there is very little downside to these smuggling attempts because there is no publicity, and when there is no publicity there is no shame. When there is no shame, there is no disincentive to callously disregard human lives for those who live in an honor-shame society.

(h/t Zvi)

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04/19 Links Pt2: U.N. Fair and U.N. Balanced; Murray: UK: War on Free Speech at the NUS

From Ian:

U.N. Fair and U.N. Balanced

Sengupta’s implication in the third example is that the UN Security Council’s obsession with Israel is no big deal because it also discusses Yemen and Syria. But those countries are active war zones, sites of terrorism and foreign intervention and humanitarian crises. Is the New York Times seriously likening the situation in Israel to what’s happening in Yemen and Syria? To do so would be to commit the same gross moral equivalence of which the UN stands condemned.
Moral equivalence between Israel and its adversaries might as well be part of the Times style guide, I suppose. What’s remarkable about Sengupta’s piece is that even as she clumsily attempts to provide left-wing “context” to Haley’s appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, she can’t bring herself to mention that the charge of corruption against the UN Human Rights Council is a long-standing bipartisan element of U.S. foreign policy.
Saint Hillary Clinton herself, when she announced that America was rejoining the council in 2009, said her goal was “improving the UN human-rights system,” and in a subsequent speech she chided its anti-Israel bias. “It cannot continue to single out and devote disproportionate attention to any one country,” Clinton said.
Haley’s charge is obviously true. The council exists only because its ancestor, the UN Human Rights Commission, had become so monopolized by autocrats, dictators, anti-Semites, anti-Americans, and chronic human-rights violators that it was dissolved upon American withdrawal in 2006. Its replacement is little better, since any human-rights body whose members do not recognize rights within their own borders is not worthy of the name. Last November, the nonprofit UN Watch reported that the autocratic socialist government of Venezuela used hundreds of fraudulent groups to whitewash its record before the council. What’s the word for that? Right: corruption.
Nikki Haley has the clarity of vision and political gumption to call corruption by its name. No wonder the Times finds her so unusual.

It’s fact and fiction at TOI event with two Jerusalem-based authors

Both immigrants from North America, Matti Friedman and Haim Watzman now live and write in Jerusalem. As reporters, they both observed Israeli life with the detachment of a foreigner — and the keen eye of an insider. Now, as authors, this insider-outsider perspective continues as seen in their recently published work.
On Tuesday, April 25, the pair will discuss their new books in English for The Times of Israel Presents. The event is part of the monthly series, Personal Pages: Meet the Authors, and take place at the Tower of David.
Former The Times of Israel staff writer Friedman hails from Toronto. His first book, “The Aleppo Codex,” an investigation into the strange fate of an ancient Bible manuscript, won several awards including the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize and was translated into seven languages. His latest book, “Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story,” based on his military service in an isolated Israeli army outpost in Lebanon, was chosen as a New York Times notable book and one of Amazon’s 10 best books of 2016.
His reporting, mainly for the Associated Press, took him from Israel to Lebanon, Morocco, Moscow, the Caucasus and Washington, DC. Critical essays he wrote for Tablet and The Atlantic about foreign media coverage on the 2014 Gaza War gained worldwide attention.

Yemen minister says fate of country’s last 50 Jews unknown

Yemen’s information minister said his government is unaware of the fate of the country’s few dozen remaining Jews, most of whom reside in the Houthi rebel group-controlled capital of Sana’a, Israel Radio reported.
Speaking to an Israel Radio reporter on the sidelines of a conference on the civil war in Yemen in Paris, Moammer al-Iryani also said Saturday that the Houthis view the tiny remaining Jewish population as an enemy and are engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing that includes ridding Yemen of its Jewish community.
Approximately 50 Jews are believed to remain in Yemen, 40 of them living in Sana’a in a compound adjacent to the American Embassy. Despite the ongoing civil war, they have refused to leave the country.
The Iranian-backed Houthis, who took control of large parts of the country in an offensive beginning in 2015 alongside forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, have long incited against Jews and Israel. The group’s slogan is: “Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse upon the Jews. Victory to Islam. Allahu Akbar.”

photo credit: Abba Reitsman, MDA

There’s something about the way the sound carries to my street, but I always know when there’s a terror attack at the Gush Etzion Junction, as there was today. One siren? It’s a heart attack or some other emergency. Several sirens? We’re talking a terror attack.

Now I’m going to specify here and say that it was an Arab terror attack. At this point you may be thinking: is there any other kind? But it needs to be specified. It needs to be said. An Arab did this to a Jew.

Why does it need to be said? And isn’t it a little bit racist to specify the nationalities or races of the parties involved? And why not say “Palestinian” and “Israeli” if you must specify nationality or “Jew” and “Muslim” if you must specify religion?

So here’s the thing: last week a British tourist, Hanna Bladon, was murdered by an Arab terrorist while she was riding the Jerusalem light rail. He murdered her because he THOUGHT she was Jewish. At any rate, not one of the British news outlets referred to her murder as such. They said she was killed. They didn’t call it terror. They didn’t call her murderer an “Arab” or a “Palestinian” because it didn’t fit their narrative.

Hanna Bladon, murdered by an Arab who thought she was a Jew.

It didn’t fit what those reporters felt comfortable reporting, what they WANT to report. They don’t want a good British Christian murdered because someone thinks she’s a Jew. They don’t want Arabs murdering Jews. They want Palestinians murdering Israelis, because then they can call it “freedom fighting.” Or they can explain it away as “he just snapped” from all the supposed Israeli oppression/occupation.

They’re comfortable with that. But definitely not comfortable with the idea that Israeliness has nothing to do with terror on any level. It’s not about someone fighting for land or someone snapping. It’s Arabs, wanting to murder Jews.

Period.

That’s the truth of the matter and it’s all anyone should be interested in, specifically news outlets.

“Democracy dies in darkness” is alliterative as all get out, but it’s meaningless pap. The truth is, the truth is the last thing you’re going to get from news outlets. Which is why I have to blog this stuff at the end of a long, tiring day at work. Because no one pays me to lie.

So back to our terror attack of today. My husband pointed out that none of the Israeli news outlets saw fit to mention this dynamic: that of an Arab terrorist, attempting to murder a Jew. The Times of Israel mentions a “Palestinian assailant” (read “freedom fighter) in the article, but not in the headline. Ynet also doesn’t see fit to put the facts in the headline, which reads: One lightly-moderately wounded in a terrorist attack at the Gush Etzion intersection; Terrorist shot, killed.‏ The article itself refers to a “Palestinian terrorist” who wounds a 70 year-old “man.” We have to guess at the victim’s nationality/religion.

Haaretz doesn’t tell us anything about the identity of the attacker. The headline reads: Israeli man wounded in West Bank car-ramming attack; driver killed. Obfuscation. Both victim and attacker could have been Israeli Arabs, for all we know. The attacker gets no identity at all, because they’re leaving open possibilities here, you see? The “driver” could have been anyone, Arab, Jew, or even Mr. Smith from Idaho. In a leftist fantasy world where everyone is equal, we don’t need to know that here an Arab tried to murder a Jew. Both are human beings and that is all that matters.

The Israel National News headline reads: One Injured in Car Attack in Gush Etzion and the text tells us that the victim is “Israeli” and describes the attack as “terror.” But we don’t know a thing about the terrorist. He could have been any nationality, any color, any religion. If we wonder, we’re probably already racist bigots, just for asking the question.

The Jewish Press went pretty much as neutral as Haaretz: Terror Attack at Gush Etzion Junction, Terrorist Dead. Do I think they did it on purpose? Of course not. But it doesn’t matter. If a British person should stumble across that headline, what is he going to think?

He’s not going to think: An Arab tried to murder a Jew. Because he’s not ALLOWED to think that kind of thought in his cosseted little world of political correctness.

The thing is, the only way we’re going to hammer home the truth is by speaking it clearly ourselves, over and over again. It must be said: An Arab terrorist tried to murder a Jew. Every time it happens.

Let’s stop pretending there is a nationality called “Palestinian.” That’s THEIR game. Not ours. We don’t play games. We tell the truth.

If they wanted a state called Palestine, that could have been Transjordan. But no one is confusing Jordan with a mythical place called “Palestine” and neither should we.

This is not about land, either. It’s about hatred and bigotry. Tamimi the terrorist who killed Hanna Bladon did not give a rat’s ass about her passport. He wanted her dead because in his mind, she was a Jew, which is the same thing as some kind of vermin to be offed the moment it is confronted.

Let me say this: no hero goes around stabbing defenseless women riding trains minding their own business. This was no freedom fighter. He was a piece of crap who deserved to die.

By the same token, no heroic freedom fighter stabs a 70 year-old man in the head as that man is minding his own business, just crossing the street. THAT is pathological, sick, ugly.

During all the travails of the Jewish people, we never acted out randomly like this because we snapped. No one does. It’s not how people operate. Terror is pure evil and must be presented as such and labeled clearly. Caveat emptor.

If we don’t do it in our own media, don’t label victim and terrorist clearly, we cannot expect the world to fall in line and do it for us. Moreover, if we don’t label victim and terrorist clearly, we cannot expect to WIN.

The thing is, even if the news reporters are in a hurry or don’t have a lot of space for a headline, there’s no excuse for this lack of clarity. Accuracy doesn’t have to take up either space or time. “Jew” and “Arab” are both a heckuva lot shorter than Palestinian, attacker, assailant, Israeli, and so on and so forth.

Please, let’s get our act together on this score, people. This is a war we’re fighting. And we’re not going to win it by obscuring the truth.

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Egypt's Al Azhar University under pressure to become more moderate

interesting read from Al Ahram:

Al-Azhar's Council of Senior Scholars defended its teachings on Tuesday amid rising criticism in Egypt that its curriculums foster extremism and sectarianism.

In an official statement released following a meeting presided over by the grand imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed El-Tayyeb, to discuss several issues, the council described itself as "the only ones mandated to teach righteous Islamic dogma that spreads peace and stability between Muslims themselves and between Muslims and others."

"The proof of this is the millions who have graduated from Al-Azhar whether in Egypt or worldwide and who call for peace; and it is a falsification of people's awareness and a defamation of its teachings to accuse it of nurturing terrorists," the statement read.

The council added that anyone who "tampered" with the religious body would be considered to be meddling with Egypt and its history, as well as being unfaithful to the integrity of the people and the whole nation.

Egypt was rocked by twin bombings of churches last week, which killed at least 47 people. The attacks in Tanta and Alexandria were claimed by local IS-affiliated militants.

Criticism of Al-Azhar has increased since the attacks, with some public figures accusing the venerable Islamic institution, which has branches all over Egypt and several abroad, of spreading extremism through its teachings and syllabuses and by its public decision not to formally declare IS militants apostates.

The statement also said that the council stands side-by-side with the Coptic Orthodox Church against the latest attacks, stressing that the Egyptian people will be able to fight off terrorism and extremism.

The Council of Senior Islamic Scholars is an advisory board comprised of prominent Azhar clerics; appointees are selected by the grand imam.

President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has called on Al-Azhar in several speeches to rethink religious discourse and "purge it of flaws" that negatively affect Islam.

Al Azhar has been fairly outspoken against anti-Christian terror, it does not extend that courtesy to Jews. In fact, Al Azhar clerics have praised suicide bombings against Jews.

It is interesting that the Egyptian public has been so anti-fundametalist, and that Al Azhar is frightened of this development.

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Maggid Of Mezeritch Reveals Gebrochts An April Fools Prank Gone Out Of Control (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Medzhybizh, Ukraine, April 19 - A chief disciple of the founder of the Hasidic movement revealed today that a practice he initiated of abstaining from the consumption on Passover of matza that has come into contact with liquid was actually a joke, and that he never intended for it to be adopted as a serious custom.

A rueful Dov Ber of Mezeritch, known as the Maggid of Mezeritch, told a reporter today that the widespread Passover stringency known as gebrochts was a practical joke he and several other followers of the Baal Shem Tov had devised for April Fools Day about 250 years ago, and that the families and communities that subsequently adopted the practice in good faith did so unaware that they were being trolled.

Gebrochts, referring to broken pieces of matza that are soaked in or mixed with liquids such as water, oil, and eggs, originated in the late eighteenth century as early devotees of Hasidism adopted the extra stringency of avoiding bringing matza in contact with water, out of a concern that any flour that had not been kneaded into the dough, and still remained unnoticed on or in the matza after baking, would become chametz when wet. While the Talmud and medieval authorities explicitly cite contemporary practice as unconcerned for such an eventuality, the extra measure of care for Passover's strictures caught on among the Hasidim, and became standard among Jewish communities influenced by the movement. The Maggid disclosed in an interview that the time had come to set the record straight, and that he never meant for people to take the concern seriously.

"Anyone who knows the sources, as a Hasid is expected to do, would know immediately it's out of line even with what our holy ancestors practiced," he explained. "What does it mean, after all, if the saintly Maharal, Rashi, and Rambam ate gebrochts - that we are somehow more devoted to the laws than those giants? My friends and I were sure that our disciples, who were learned men, would get the joke, and that would be the end of that. But it didn't happen that way. I guess we should have realized some people are so earnest they can't detect irony. Now Hasidim will never know the Passover pleasure of chicken soup with kneidlach, of matza brei, of matza meal chremzlach. And that's a shame."

He did, however, offer advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, suggesting that someone manufacture an oral insert to be sold to adherents of gebrochts, designed to prevent saliva from touching the matza in one's mouth, lest it become chametz before being swallowed.

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04/19 Links Pt1: Glick: General Mattis and the Fatah tautology; Marwan Barghouti Is No Nelson Mandela

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: General Mattis and the Fatah tautology

On Friday, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis will visit Israel as part of a tour of the region that will bring him to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Djibouti. The declared purpose of Mattis’s trip is to “reaffirm key US military alliances, engage with strategic partners in the Middle East and Africa, and discuss cooperative efforts to counter destabilizing activities and defeat extremist terror organizations.”
Ahead of his visit, Mattis should spend some time considering the hunger strike being carried out by the Palestinian terrorists imprisoned by Israel. A serious consideration of the strike will tell him more about the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel than a hundred “expert” briefings.
There are several important things for Mattis to consider in relation to the strike.
The first thing he needs to note is that all of the terrorists on strike are members of the Fatah terrorist group.
This fact should signal to General Mattis that Fatah is not a normal political party. In fact, it is a terrorist organization that has a political party.
The second thing Mattis needs to consider about the strike is that it is supported by the international Left.
To understand why, Mattis needs to recognize the Fatah tautology.

PMW: PA students are read letter glorifying terror written by terrorist murderer

In line with the Palestinian Authority's policy of teaching children to see terrorists as heroes and all violence as internationally accepted means to confront Israel, the PA Ministry of Education decided that a letter by imprisoned terrorist Marwan Barghouti should be read to all "students of Palestine."
Marwan Barghouti is serving 5 life sentences for orchestrating three shooting attacks that killed 5 people in 2001-2002.
Barghouti's dominant messages in the letter are that the imprisoned terrorists are the students' heroes and role models and that studies and terror go together.
Referring to himself as "the great prisoner and the free man," Barghouti addressed "all the young people of Palestine" presenting himself and his fellow imprisoned terrorists and murderers who "have already chosen the path of resistance" as examples to follow.
While he emphasized that studying and acquiring knowledge is a way of "resisting," even while in prison, Barghouti focused on his personal experiences as a prisoner: "I was arrested for the first time when I was in high school... Imprisoned for more than 23 years, expelled for seven years, and subjected to pursuit and assassination..." He then concluded: "I say this to you in order to emphasize to you that the path of studies and the national path go side by side" - the national path being his euphemism for violence, terror, and murder. Barghouti underlined how he himself has been able to study while imprisoned:

JPost Editorial: No Barghouti option

Those in Israel who support Barghouti remember him from before the second intifada. It was a period in the late 1990s when Barghouti opposed violent struggle and led the fight against corruption within the Palestinian political leadership.
But Barghouti was radicalized as a result of the collapse of the peace talks in 2000 between then-prime minister Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat. He turned to terrorism and became involved in the Tanzim, the military arm of Fatah which was responsible for some the most deadly terrorist attacks ever carried out against Israeli civilians.
Barghouti is a savvy political manipulator who has managed to remain relevant despite his incarceration a decade and a half ago. He is using the Palestinian prisoners as his latest ploy for self-advancement.
It is depressing that a man like Barghouti, with the blood of so many victims on his hands, has consistently been the most popular candidate to lead the Palestinian people. And it is not despite his murderously violent past, but precisely because of it, that Barghouti is able to beat a Hamas candidate for the Palestinian vote. This is the sad state of radicalized Palestinian politics that is the real obstacle to peace.
The idea that people can change is central to Judaism.
It forms the basis for Teshuva – roughly translated as repentance or contrition, but more properly expressed as a return to one’s true moral nature. If Barghouti were popular for a brave call to stop violent terrorism and embrace peace that would be laudable. If, however, he enjoys the support of the Palestinian street due to his track record as a murderer who inflicted pain and suffering on Israelis, that is intolerable.

While manic, radical energy tends to give individual Israel haters the zeal they need to continue their harassment and propaganda campaigns year after year, decade after decade, the drive towards ever-increasing radicalism tends to be a weakness of anti-Israel organizations, which explains why such groups have relatively short lifespans.

The Palestinian Solidarity Movement (PSM), which was responsible for much of the petition-driven divestment activity on college campuses in the early 2000s (years before the BDS movement was alleged to have been born, BTW), fell apart when their success led to ever-escalating attempts at infiltration by factions driven by different ideological agendas. In the end, it became easier to dissolve the organization, rather than spend all their time fighting off hostile takeover attempts.

During this same period, I saw a similar drama play out during an early municipal divestment campaign between 2004-2006 in Somerville, MA. You can read about the first two years of that battle here, but for purposes of this discussion the salient point was that each year the campaign continued the group behind those divestment efforts (called the Somerville Divestment Project, or SDP) imported more radical activists into their ranks, shoring up the leadership but horrifying and alienating less extreme members who were driven out.

We can see something similar happening to the organization Jewish Voice for Peace. While ostensibly founded in 1996 (their own documentation of organizational birthdates needs to be taken with as large a grain of salt as the BDS movement’s claim to have emerged from “Palestinian civil society” in 2005 – despite the rage of divestment campaigns years earlier), JVP really came on the scene over the last decade as BDS campaigners realized the importance of appearing to have Jewish support.

Claims that JVP members wearing t-shirts saying “Another Jew for Divestment” demonstrate genuine (vs. fringe) Jewish support for BDS have proven most convincing to the corrupt (such as the leadership of the dying Presbyterian Church) or the gullible (rank and file members of that same church). But as JVP grew from a small West Coast/Internet presence to a well-heeled organization with dozens of staff, able to fly scores of members to events like Presbyterian national assemblies, it also had to struggle with the same forces that have roiled similar war groups masquerading as peace warriors.

First off, while I and others have joked in the past about joining JVP in order to pretend to speak in the organization’s name, the scruples that prevent us from behaving in such a manner are not present among JVP’s “allies.” The organization claims over “200,000 supporters and 10,000 donors,” and while those numbers are wildly exaggerated, there has clearly been growth in their ranks in recent years – enough to support JVP branches on many college campuses which work in accord with groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) on projects like student government divestment measures and Israel Apartheid Weeks.

But as those ranks grew, there came an increasing readiness to embrace excess. To take one simple example, in 2012 the group published its first JVP Passover Hagaddah – a ludicrous (and easily parodied) text that made the group seem more delusional than dangerous. But this year’s Next-Year-in-Al-Quds edition demonstrates much more readiness to admit to the end game the organization is aiming for.

The roiling of the radical firmament, first with Black Lives Matter and then with “The Resistance” to the Trump presidency, created a new frenzy among single-issue groups to make sure their cause takes pride-of-place among emerging “intersectional” alliances. And, as history has shown, no cause is willing to play rougher than BDS to get other political “movements” to submit to its will.

One of the reasons extreme political groups are so unstable is that the radical cred of the leadership is forever being challenged by internal and external “allies” pushing leaders to embrace more and more extreme positions. Faced with such challenges, those leaders can stare down their friends (a nearly impossible task for ideologues), disband (as happened to PSM), or succumb. And this year’s JVP conference, where a convicted terrorist and immigrated fraud was wildly cheered, demonstrates which choice the organization has made.

On the plus side, this kind of behavior makes it even more obvious why the vast Jewish majority should continue to shun the group - all but destroying JVP’s ability to infiltrate the mainstream and derailing its hope of one day presenting itself as just one more voice within the “Big Tent” of Jewish America.

With that hope shattered, JVP will continue to become to become indistinguishable from the mobs shouting down Israeli speakers, harassing Jewish students and celebrating murder and mayhem – behavior that has currency among fellow activists, but little impact (beyond revulsion and rejection) among those JVP would ultimately have to reach to have any influence beyond its own increasingly narrow and isolated constituency.

From JPost:

The Fatah-affiliated Shabibah won a total of 41 of 81 seats on the student council at an-Najah National University in Nablus, while the Hamas-backed Islamic Bloc won 34 seats, Student Affairs Dean Musa Abu Dia told Wafa, the official Palestinian Authority news site, on Tuesday.

Student elections in the Palestinian territories are viewed as important barometers of public opinion, since Hamas and Fatah have not competed against each other in municipal, legislative or presidential elections since the 2006 legislative elections.

“These elections are an important indication of where the Palestinian street stands,” said Khaled Musleh, an-Najah Central Elections Committee spokesman.

Student elections at an-Najah have not taken place since 2013 because the various student blocs had previously failed to reach agreements to hold elections.

In the 2013 elections at an-Najah, Fatah won 43 seats, while Hamas garnered 33 seats.

Fatah is trumpeting its win, especially since Hamas has won several high-profile student elections recently especially at BirZeit University.

Hamas, for its part, is noting that it has increased its representation while Fatah's lead has eroded in Najah from 10 seats to 7.

If these elections are a bellwether for the Palestinian mood altogether, then Hamas very possibly would win a general election. Hamas is essentially banned politically from the West Bank (although it can operate freely on college campuses) and the full weight of the PA ensures that Fatah propaganda is dominant in official media. With all those disadvantages, Hamas still wins or does strongly in these student elections, putting to lie the Western fiction that the West Bank is somehow "moderate Fatah territory" while only Gaza is a Hamas stronghold.

While Hamas won't allow free elections in Gaza universities, it seems likely that Hamas student groups would enjoy landslide victories if such elections could be held in Gaza.

Polls show that while Fatah somewhat leads Hamas in mythical parliamentary elections, a huge percentage of the public is undecided. As we saw in the last elections in 2006, Hamas has the ability to get most of these undecided votes.

The reality is that most Palestinians do not want anything close to what would be considered a real peace with Israel. But this simple truth is one that must be hidden by the Western media and pundits because they have an idea that mentioning the truth is somehow racist.

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Recently, UNRWA floated the idea that it would modify the curricula of Palestinian Arab students to slightly reduce bias against Israelis and Israel. As I noted previously, some of the proposed changes (actually addenda that teachers could use to supplement textbooks) to Grades 1-4 textbooks leaked in Arab media included:

* Removing maps of "Palestine" that include all of Israel
* Replacing the phrase "Jerusalem is the capital of the Palestinian state" with the words "Jerusalem is a holy city for all Abrahamic religions"
* Replacing a picture of a wedding that showed only men with one that showed men and women
* Stopping referring to Israelis cities as "Palestinian"
* Removing some pictures of evil Israeli soldiers and innocent Palestinian victims.

The Palestinian Authority education ministry responded by cutting off contact with UNRWA.

As I predicted, UNRWA has caved:

The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency UNRWA Pierre Krähenbühl reiterated the full commitment of the agency to the Palestinian curriculum and emphasized that no change may affect these curricula.

This came during a meeting this afternoon with the Minister of Education and Higher Education Dr. Sabri Saydam...

Krähenbühl stressed that the Ministry of Education is a full partner, especially in the educational field, stressing the right of Palestinian children to receive quality education and to preserve their identity and culture...stressing that any enrichment to Palestinian textbooks will be in coordination between the ministry and the agency.

This is a violation of UNRWA's own stated educational principles of creating students who are "tolerant and open minded, upholding human values and religious tolerance, "

It is also a violation of the UN Charter which UNRWA is obligated to uphold in its mandate. The UN Charter includes the obligation "to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace."

UNRWA textbook showing all of Israel as "Palestine"

UNRWA's Palestinian curriculum does nothing of the sort, as has been shown numerous times in examinations of the textbooks and teacher materials used by UNRWA. The UNRWA curriculum (both its written curricula and what UNRWA teachers themselves call the "hidden curriculum") is heavily biased, anti-Israel, anti-peace and often antisemitic.

This statement by UNRWA's head shows that given a choice of adhering to UN standards or teaching hate, UNRWA consciously chooses to continue to teach hate. This episode proves that UNRWA's denials of teaching students to hate Israel ring very hollow, as they are explicitly agreeing to accept the biased Palestinian textbooks without any modification (even though they do add extra materials to Jordanian textbooks to add teaching about the "Nakba" and other anti-Israel propaganda.)

UNRWA has just stated that they will ignore their own and the UN's own principles in favor of a curriculum of hate. The only language UNRWA will understand is if Western funders hold them to their own stated standards.

UPDATE: Based on a series of tweets from Times of Israel's Dov Lieber and IMPACT-SE, which follows PA textbooks, UNRWA did publish a list of 53 specific issues to counteract problematic PA textbook materials; you can see a small part here:

The questions are whether Kraehenbuhl and UNRWA are going to follow through on this given the pushback, whether these addenda are actually ever incorporated into school curricula, how teachers can use these addenda without being able to edit the textbooks themselves which the students still have, and whether Kraehenbuhl's words mean that he agrees not to incorporate these addenda to begin with since that is a change of curriculum.

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04/18 Links: The NYTs stands with terrorists; Allies knew of Holocaust in 1942; What North Korea Should Teach Us about Iran

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians' Real Enemies: Arabs

The Arab heads of state and monarchs do not like to be reminded of how badly they treat Palestinians and subject them to discriminatory and apartheid laws.
It is not comfortable or safe to be a Palestinian in an Arab country. Scenes of lawlessness and anarchy inside Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank have also driven many residents to move to nearby cities and villages. Most refugees in the West Bank no longer live inside UNRWA-run camps.
Let us end where we began: with the Palestinian (non)leadership. What has it done to help its people in the Arab countries? Nothing. No Palestinian leader will urge an emergency session of the UN Security Council to expose the ethnic cleansing and killing of Palestinians in Arab countries. No Palestinian leader will demand that the international media and human rights organizations investigate the atrocities perpetrated by Arabs on their Palestinian brethren. We are sure to see more such criminal silence when Abbas meets with the president of the United States.

Michael Oren: Palestinians were Six Day War’s ‘biggest winners’

Deputy Minister Michael Oren declared Tuesday that the biggest winners of the 1967 Six Day War were the Palestinian people.
Speaking at an event in Jerusalem marking 50 years since the conflict, he noted that before 1967, the concept of a “Palestinian” did not exist as we now know it.
Oren, now deputy minister for diplomacy in the Prime Minister’s Office, spoke more as a historian than a parliamentarian at the event, which was organized by The Israel Project and took place at the headquarters of the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research.
His comments drew on research he completed for his seminal 2002 book, “Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East.”
He remained mostly mum on the issue of where the peace process with the Palestinians stands today.
“We are in a process, but I can’t speak too much about that,” said Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States.

Alan Dershowitz: What North Korea Should Teach Us about Iran

We failed to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. As a result, our options to stop them from developing a delivery system capable of reaching our shores are severely limited.
The hard lesson from our failure to stop North Korea before they became a nuclear power is that we MUST stop Iran from ever developing or acquiring a nuclear arsenal. A nuclear Iran would be far more dangerous to American interests than a nuclear North Korea. Iran already has missiles capable of reaching numerous American allies. They are in the process of upgrading them and making them capable of delivering a nuclear payload to our shores. Its fundamentalist religious leaders would be willing to sacrifice millions of Iranians to destroy the "Big Satan" (United States) or the "Little Satan" (Israel). The late "moderate" leader Hashemi Rafsanjani once told an American journalist that if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons, they "would kill as many as five million Jews," and that if Israel retaliated, they would kill fifteen million Iranians, which would be "a small sacrifice from among the billion Muslims in the world." He concluded that "it is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality." Recall that the Iranian mullahs were willing to sacrifice thousands of "child-soldiers" in their futile war with Iraq. There is nothing more dangerous than a "suicide regime" armed with nuclear weapons.
The deal signed by Iran in 2015 postpones Iran's quest for a nuclear arsenal, but it doesn't prevent it, despite Iran's unequivocal statement in the preamble to the agreement that "Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire nuclear weapons." (Emphasis added). Recall that North Korea provided similar assurances to the Clinton Administration back in 1994, only to break them several years later -- with no real consequences. The Iranian mullahs apparently regard their reaffirmation as merely hortatory and not legally binding. The body of the agreement itself -- the portion Iran believes is legally binding -- does not preclude Iran from developing nuclear weapons after a certain time, variously estimated as between 10 to 15 years from the signing of the agreement. Nor does it prevent Iran from perfecting its delivery systems, including nuclear tipped inter-continental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States.

Chag Sameach redux

The second part of Passover is coming.

I will not be blogging until Tuesday night, when I will frantically be trying to catch up on all the news I miss over the next two days (like the beginning of a new hunger strike by Arab prisoners starting tomorrow with PA support.)

Here's a Passover video I missed in my roundup last week.

Chag sameach - and a happy Easter too!

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