Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, April 28, 2017

Lawmaker apparently doesn't recognize Belgian Jews as citizens

It is common in Europe to view Jews as Israelis and as "eternal" foreigners and immigrants. At the same time, many also believe that Jews have no rights to Israel.

The late Ulrich Beck, professor of sociology at the University of Munich, wrote in 2003 an article about antisemitism arguing that the majority of the Germans and of the Europeans do not accept the distinction between Jews and Israelis, although such a distinction is essential for German-Jewish reconciliation. He relates that in the course of an informal chat after a talk by the President of Israel, Ignaz Bubis, the chairman of the German Council of Jewish Association, was told as a compliment that the address by "his" President had been excellent. Ignaz Bubis replied that talks by Roman Herzog, the then President of Germany, were always excellent. His interlocutor replied: "No, no, I'm referring to Mr. Weizman, your President".

Christian Laporte of La Libre Belgique reports that during a debate on the limitations of ritual slaughter of animals, Véronique Waroux a lawmaker of the Walloon regional Parliament told Philippe Markiewicz, president of the Consistoire organization of Belgian Jewry, that she had just returned from "his" country, i.e. Israel. Thus implying that Jews are not Belgian citizens and that they are citizens of the State of Israel. Unsurprisingly Waroux is a Israel-basher.

Again unsurprisingly, there were no protests.

Challenged by a reader of this blog, she adamantly refused to apologize or express regrets, instead she was furious at his daring to make such a request.

Mr Philippe Markiewicz is a Brussels-based lawyer and his family has lived in Belgian for six generations.

Curiously, Ms. Waroux - who is so quick to accuse others of not being true Belgians - chooses an image as the header to her Facebook page that could open her up to charges of dual-loyalty, at best.

(h/t Rudi)

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04/28 Links Pt1: Getting Away with Murder; Where Are the Moderate Muslims?

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Getting Away with Murder

American taxpayers’ money is being used by the Palestinian Authority to encourage and glorify murderous terrorism. A group of Republican lawmakers has drafted legislation to end this scandalous state of affairs and Israel should support this legislative effort, even if it risks destabilizing the PA .
The tragic story of Taylor Force has become a rallying cry in the push to force the Palestinian Authority to stop funding the families of so-called martyrs and payrolling convicted terrorists serving time in Israeli prisons.
On March 8, 2016, Force was stabbed to death on the Jaffa beachfront after Bashar Masalha, a Palestinian from Kalkilya, went on a murder spree that left 12 others wounded, including a pregnant woman.
Israel knew that Masalha’s funeral would become a demonstration of support for terrorism and delayed the release of his body until May.
According to a transcript provided by Palestinian Media Watch, the official PA news agency reported that friends, family and people of the region celebrated Masalha’s funeral as if it were “a large national wedding.” Why a wedding? Because “martyrs” who die while carrying out an act considered to sanctify Islam are rewarded in the afterlife with 72 “virgins of paradise.” Nowhere in the news coverage was Masalha’s “martyr” status challenged.
Other-worldly compensation is not the only kind enjoyed by terrorists like Masalha. Official PA policy provides an annual stipend for “martyrs” who are killed while attempting to murder innocent civilians, thus incentivizing murderous terrorism.

Caroline Glick: Netanyahu’s bold move against Europe

For instance, one of the major ways that European- funded groups subvert the government is by suing the government in local courts. The government must require the foreign governments that fund these groups to appear as sides in the court battles. In this manner, the government can ask the courts to compel these foreign governments to hand over documents relevant to the cases being adjudicated.
So, too, the government should require foreign government- funded groups to submit all communications between their representatives and those governments, and all internal documents of foreign governmental funders relating to their decision to fund the Israel-registered group. Given that the goal of the funding is to interfere with domestic Israeli affairs, those communications should not enjoy diplomatic immunity.
The penalty for failing to present all the required documents will be the imposition of a 100% tax on the foreign government contributions to the Israel-registered nonprofit.
Perhaps the most discouraging aspect of Netanyahu’s diplomatic gambit this week is that opposition leader MK Isaac Herzog refused to support him. Instead, Herzog sided with Gabriel. He insisted that Netanyahu harmed Israel’s relations with Germany by demanding to be treated in a manner that comports with international norms.
For decades, the political Left has claimed that it can manage Israel’s diplomatic ties better than the Right, which it castigates as inept, incompetent and dangerous to Israel’s international standing. By failing to recognize why Netanyahu’s move was vital for Israel’s international standing, or to understand that international conditions have changed sufficiently to allow Israel to stand up for itself, Herzog and his colleagues showed that their boastful claims to diplomatic capabilities are empty.
Netanyahu took a necessary first step toward implementing a constructive strategy for handling Western diplomatic warfare. More steps are still required for this strategy to succeed. But at least, for the first time in years, Israel is finally taking a constructive position in its own defense. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Douglas Murray: Terrorism teaches a lesson that some still refuse to learn

Another knife-attack was thwarted yesterday in Westminster. Overnight there were anti-terror raids in Kent and London. These were unconnected, but police say that they have foiled an ‘active terror plot.’ All this will blend into the background soon, as much as last month’s attack in Westminster already has. Not because we don’t remember anything, but because we never learn anything.
After last month’s attack in Westminster there seemed to be an even more concerted effort than usual to say that the perpetrator – a Muslim convert called Khalid Masood – probably suffered from some mental illness, was a mere madman, criminal or drug addict. Various Muslims who knew Masood promised in the media that he hadn’t really been religious at all.
This swiftly became the story. Man drives car into pedestrians on Westminster bridge and stabs a policeman to death. Nothing to see here. Certainly nothing to do with Islam. Probably to do with everything else in the world. But nothing to do with Islam.
The Church of England helped to spread around this fudge. At an interfaith service held in Westminster Abbey shortly after the attack (and before PC Keith Palmer was even buried) the Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend John Hall declared that the nation was ‘bewildered’ by the attack (as it may well be with the amount of disinformation and misleading speculation going around).

Prager U: Where Are the Moderate Muslims?

After every terrorist attack, politicians and pundits reassure us that the atrocity does not represent the true beliefs of the "moderate Muslim majority." But how many moderates are there? And what exactly does "moderate" mean? Military instructor and researcher Hussein Aboubakr explains.

Amazing Israeli initiative to educate children in hospitals showcased at the UN

The World Jewish Congress issued a press release:

The World Jewish Congress and Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations launched the fourth installment of the Education Without Borders exhibition this week, at the UN headquarters in New York. The exhibition, which is open to the public through May 12, showcases a unique Israeli initiative to provide education to children of all backgrounds hospitalized for more than three days, as mandated by Israeli law.

The Education Without Borders initiative is a partnership of Israel’s Ministry of Education, SASA Setton Kav Or, and World ORT, run in 35 hospitals across Israel. Through computer-based applications and other activities, children can pursue the studies despite their prolonged absence from school. The program is open to all children in Israel, irrespective of their background and including refugees from Syria and other places.

According to the Education Ministry's directives, every child hospitalized in Israel for over three days is entitled to free education. The exhibition, featuring photographs by Shahar Azran, aims to highlight Israel's uniqueness with regard to human rights, particularly concerning the support and protection of children.

“In Israel, education is not merely a privilege, it is a human and civil right entitled to by all children, without exception. Hundreds of thousands of children hospitalized in Israel, including Syrian refugees and Palestinians, have already benefited from this important initiative,” said World Jewish Congress CEO Robert Singer. “We thank the United Nations for allowing us to host this exhibition at its headquarters in New York, and to expose the true face of Israel to the family of nations.”

The exhibition first launched at the Palais de Nations in Geneva in September 2015, and has since run at the Hotel de Ville in Strasbourg, and the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

Details in the catalog that accompanies the exhibit:

Every year, 120,000 children and teenagers are hospitalized in Israel for periods of over three days. In addition to taking care of their physical needs, the medical system has the medical system has joined together with the SASA Setton Foundation, the Ministry of Education, World ORT in Israel ("Kadima Mada") provide a comprehensive educational solution for each of these children, ensuring that they continue their studies and keep connected with their schools and friends, and that they are kept occupied with enriching activities and positive experiences throughout their hospital stay.

While hospital and medical staff are concerned with the physical healing of their patients, schools and teachers usually focus on educating entire classes and large numbers of students. Neither profession is accustomed to delivering educational solutions for individual, isolated children suffering from trauma. It is both a pedagogical and logistical challenge, with thousands of children of a wide range of ages and backgrounds spread across large medical campuses.

For two decades, the Kav-Or organization has been developing unique computer systems and curricula, which enable children and teenagers to continue their schooling – even during lengthy hospital stays – and to study, play and enjoy new and exciting experiences, despite going through the most difficult time of their young lives.

Here are some of the photos from the catalog.

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"Kairos" claims over 2 MILLION Palestinians have been detained by Israel.

Kairos is the antisemitic Palestinian Christian organization that teaches supersessionism.

From Wafa:

A statement by Kairos Palestine, which describes itself as the Palestinian Christian voice, said it “expresses its support for the just and humanitarian demands of prisoners – children, women and the sick – and their families.”

It said “Kairos deems it intolerable to see prisoners engaged in an all-out hunger strike to obtain basic rights and humanitarian demands that should be granted to them as human beings and are applicable to all under international law.”

Remember, the "basic rights" being demanded under "international law" include a larger choice of cable TV channels, access to their own kitchens and free university education.

The statement said: “We view all prisoners as human beings whose dignity is granted by God; no man or occupying power has the right to deprive them of what was granted by God. The norm is freedom and a just peace for them and the entire Palestinian people. It is unjust for the majority of a people to experience detention and imprisonment in occupation prisons because they demand their freedom and dignity."

Hold on. The Palestinians were just getting to the point of falsely claiming that a million of them have been arrested and detained, but Kairos is now saying that a majority of them - meaning, presumably, more than half of the 4 million Arabs under PA control (or perhaps more than half of the 5.6 million Arabs in Israel and the territories, or maybe even more than half of the 10 million "Palestinians" worldwide) have been arrested by Israel or have been incarcerated in "occupation prisons."

Kairos is claiming between 2 and 5 million Arabs having been arrested by Israel!

It gets better:

In the name of the humanitarian values espoused by every religion, and in the name of Christian values and teachings, we express our support for prisoners as human beings who possess dignity granted to them by their creator. We support them and demand their freedom; we support their humanitarian demands.

Terrorists must be freed - it is a "Christian value." This way they can kill more people who can turn the other cheek as they are being stabbed!

And now that we understand Kairos math and its alleged Christian morality to free terrorists, we are introduced to Kairos logic on the validity of the hunger strikers' aims:

Prisoners risk their lives with this demanding step of a hunger strike, but it also proves that their demands and stance are justified and sound.

The very fact that they are on a pseudo-hunger strike (which includes vitamins, sugar and salt) is proof that they are justified in wanting better TV channels!

The biggest irony is that Kairos, which traffics in lies, pretends in its own slogan that it tells the truth.

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The Daily Mail reported on the protest by some 500 Israel-haters at SOAS as Israeli ambassador Mark Regev spoke.

Inside the university, security was heightened with specialist police and dogs patrolling the corridors as well as plainclothes security personnel.

Nory, a student, told MailOnline: 'I support Palestine. I am against the occupation and the oppression. In 2017, a country like Israel should be ashamed. I hope there is not violence here today but if there is, I could maybe understand it.

'I'm a Malcolm X supporter. I believe that in certain circumstances, violence is justified. A revolution never happened without violence.'

This small section was, to me, chilling:

Ben Paul, 46, a former Jewish Society president, was wearing an Israeli flag around his shoulders.

'I'm here with my flag saying talk to me,' he said. 'I don't care what side you're on, talk to me.

'I've had a few people bump into me quite hard. I get it, I'm wearing an Israeli flag. But I hope it doesn't get any worse than that.'

It is the very definition of intimidation to "bump into" people "quite hard." Imagine that happening to you in any public venue, especially one patrolled by police.

But even worse is Ben Paul's acceptance of that fact. "I get it." This means that the idea of publicly supporting Israel on a college campus is expected to be met with physical intimidation.

This anecdote should send chills down the backs of anyone who cares about freedom of expression.

The final irony is that the anti-Israel thugs are the ones claiming that a low-key talk is intimidating - to them. The harassers are claiming that the existence of a Zionist anywhere on campus is provocative, and that their rights are somehow being threatened by the existence of free speech.

The Israel-hating drones, by the way, were instructed by their leaders not to engage in any discussion about Israel. Haaretz notes:

Organizers handed out leaflets urging demonstrators to keep to a code of conduct: “Don’t talk to cops,” “don’t talk to media,” and “don’t interact with Zionists,” were the main suggestions. “Consider covering your face to shield your identity from haters,” was another.

A modern college campus spawns students who are explicitly against freedom of speech, who are against dialogue and debate, and who are encouraged to hide their very faces to give them freedom to physically harass anyone who disagrees with them.

The most shameful part is that the world does not consider this shameful.

(h/t Zvi)

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04/27 Links Pt2: Being a Zionist is even worse than being an Islamophobe; Israeli downs Syrian drone over Golan

From Ian:

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: Being a Zionist is even worse than being an Islamophobe

In classic Islamic fashion, I was dis-invited by the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas Law School one and half working days before the 8-day holiday of Passover began--a time when both I and many colleagues, including those who would be celebrating Easter the following weekend, would be away from our desks and unable to "break" any news.
However, several most worthy colleagues stepped right up to the task. I am indebted to Yisrael Medad, at his site, My Right Word), and to all those who linked to his website; to Richard Landes who "fisked" the email chain that led to my dis-invitation, at his site The Augean Stables and to all those, beginning with Rochel Sylvestsky at Israel National News, who introduced and posted, or linked to, and tweeted out Landes' work. Finally, I am grateful to Winfield Myers of Middle East Forum (who worked long and hard on a piece that has yet to appear) and to Bruce Bawer whose piece will appear sometime this week.
Despite this extraordinary and diligent collegiality, the specific significance of my dis-invitation still hovers far below the radar.
We know that many worthy souls are also, almost routinely, dis-invited. I have been covering this precise phenomenon for the last fifteen years. In the last week and months, many recent news stories and op-ed pieces have covered the threatened--and actual violence towards both Milo Yiannopolous and Ann Coulter; Charles Murray and Heather McDonald.
Over the years, I have covered the hostile working conditions as well as dis-invitations that truth-tellers about Islam and about Israel have faced on campus: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, Brigitte Gabriel, David Horowitz, and Robert Spencer, etc.
In what way is my dis-invitation different?

Richard Millett: MP calls armed police to evict Jewish blogger from Parliament event on ‘Palestine’

At the Houses of Parliament last night the Palestine Return Centre (PRC) held an event called The Question of Jerusalem. It was hosted and chaired by Mark Hendrick, Labour MP for Preston.
Prof. Wendy Pullan, Senior Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Architecture at the University of Cambridge, went first and described Jerusalem as “a badly damaged city” the blame for which she lumped on Israel due to “50 years of conflict and occupation”.
She explained that Israel’s urban planning had led to Israelis and Palestinians vilifying each other and she compared Israel’s security barrier to the Berlin Wall.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Kamel Hawwash then told of how he had recently been refused entry to Israel and treated badly at Tel Aviv airport while his wife and child were let through. He was put on a plane back to the UK. He said “Israel was an expert at inciting hatred and was not a country that wanted peace.”
Finally, Prof. Penny Green, Professor of Law and Globalisation at Queen Mary University of London, described how one of her friends who works at Hebrew University was attacked and “called a filthy Arab which is very common”.
She described the “segregation wall” and road network in the Palestinian territories as “apartheid” and said that the wall “is not about security”. She also condemned the checkpoints where Palestinians queue before they can enter Israel to work saying they are where “humans are treated worse than cattle”.
She compared the barrier to the Berlin Wall as well.

Israel vilified in Parliament, four Jews protest and get thrown out

Another Palestine Return Centre meeting in Parliament. They have it in clover: get a tame MP or Lord to book a room at no charge; that MP/Lord chairs it and calls for anyone who challenged the lies to be thrown out (four Jews last night); the police outside the door then enforce the decision, however undeserved; the meeting then continues as an Israel hatefest with no-one to bear witness. All courtesy of the taxpayer.……..
Tonight’s meeting was about Jerusalem chaired by Mark Hendrick, a Labour MP with a safe seat (Preston) – so he does not need to worry about campaigning for the upcoming election. The leadership ranks him as ‘neutral’ regarding Jeremy Corbyn but not hostile. His electorate is 18.5% Asian.
The speakers: Professor Wendy Pullan, Professor Kammel Hawwash and Professor Penny Green.
Professor Pullan spoke about how the ‘occupation’ has been bad for Jerusalem. She neglected to mention that in 2015 Jerusalem was 36% Muslim and 61% Jewish, versus just 21%/75% after the Six Day War in 1967. She also said that Har Homa is a “settlement”. It isn’t. Most of the land — 75% — was expropriated from Jews. She talked about the security fence – of course without mentioning WHY it was built – to save lives from terrorist attacks. She suggested that Israel creates National Parks in order to obstruct Arab development.
Professor Hawwash told us about how he had recently been refused entry to Israel. I wonder why he was barred …. maybe because he is a leading advocate of a boycott to sabotage Israel’s economy and the Vice Chair of the PSC – which he calls an ‘anti-Israel government policy’ organisation, not an anti-Israel organisation. Appallingly he suggested that Israelis are “breaking into” the Al Aqsa Mosque and that Israel “is an expert in inciting hatred”. The truth Is that Jews have very limited access to the Temple Mount – and are not allowed to pray there! As for ‘inciting hatred’ – one look at Hamas TV or Palestinian schoolbooks shows who is ‘inciting hatred’. The fact that Israel wants peace has been demonstrated time and time again: eg the Peace Treaties with Egypt and Jordan and the exodus from Gaza in 2005.
Professor Green also has form. And here. Last year she was on the shortlist of two for the position of UNHRC Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories (she lost out to Michael Lynk). She is on record as saying that Israel has a “criminal government”, and she believes it is “time to stand up against Israeli state violence”. She supports the total boycott of Israel, wants Hamas de-listed as a terrorist organisation, and has wondered why the British and Americans have not begun “bombing Israel for its massacres”. Tonight she was true to form. All the defamatory hate clichés came out: “settler-colonialism”, “the State of Israel is in many senses premised on ethnic cleansing”, “unique form of apartheid”, “800,000 Palestinians evicted from their homes at gunpoint in 1948” (Not true of course).

There are some legal proceedings this week in a continuing case against a dozen Egyptians and Germans (in abstentia) accused of illegally taking archaeological samples from the Great Pyramid in 2013.

The article says that the Minister of Antiquities in Egypt have charged the Germans of working for German Jews to find proof that the pyramid was built by Israelite slaves and not Egyptians.

This is of course ludicrous, as the Pyramids predate Jacob by centuries. No one seriously believes that the Israelites built them, although Menachem Begin did say that they did in a rhetorical flourish in 1977.

Every so often Egyptian newspapers publish articles saying, no, really, we built the Pyramids and not the Jews. There were at least two such articles in the past week alone.

It appears that this accusation about the Germans being paid by a Jew to find evidence of Israelites building the pyramids was originally made by the previous Minister of Antiquities in Egypt, Zahi Hawass. Al Masry al Youm reported in December 2013:

Dr Zahi Hawass, ex Minister of State for Antiquities, revealed that the robberies of King Khufu’s cartouche was done on behalf of, Robert Bauval, an Egyptian Jew working in Belgium, who has been trying by every means to prove that the pyramid is ‘a Jewish and not Egyptian product’. Hawass said in a special statements that Muhamed Ibrahim, the Minister of Antiquities has said in one of his media interviews that Khufu’s cartouche had was stolen in 2006, which is not true, as the inspecting agencies and the police have proved that the robbery took place in 2013, and the passports of the Germans showed that they entered Egypt last April. Hawass wondered ‘how the theft could have taken place in 2006 while the investigations were conducted with current officials and not those responsible for the pyramid area at the time? While the investigation result came to confirm my words, and all those responsible for the crime have been removed from the pyramid area after their involvement, one way or the other, has been proven’. He added: “I would like to make it clear that the foreign vandals are led by an Egyptian Jew living in Belgium, who had previously sent more than one person, who were all forbidden completely, and with whom I have had many battles, and he wrote a book before trying to prove that the pyramid was not Egyptian”.

Bauval is a researcher on ancient Egypt. He is not Jewish. He never met the Germans before this incident. The entire accusation is a series of lies from the paranoid former Egyptian antiquities minister.

There is lots more at Bauval's site.

One would think that if there is any historical event that Egyptians could feel secure in, it would be the building of the Pyramids. Their frightened reactions to some Hollywood depictions of Jews building the Pyramids reveals a lot more about the Egyptian inferiority complex than about history.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Dr. Richard Landes has written a great deal about honor-shame cultures, like the Arab culture. In an honor-shame culture, what’s important is not how you see yourself, but how others see you. Loss of honor in such a culture is disastrous and can lead to suicide or murder – as in the case of so-called “honor killings” carried out to recover the honor of a family after a perceived act of sexual delinquency.

Modern Westerners are usually less concerned with honor and shame. Especially in America, it is laudable, even heroic, to do the right thing no matter what others think. This would make no sense in an honor-shame culture.

In the West, the operative concepts are usually morality and guilt, which are independent of what others think. Landes explains the difference:

…for guilt, it’s the awareness of the deed and its meaning, for shame, it’s whether others know. In some countries in the world, it’s not a question of whether you’re corrupt or not (everyone is, everyone knows), but just if you get caught. How many teenagers apologize for getting caught? Some adulterers have no sense of wrongdoing, as long as no one else knows. On some level everyone is subject to these concerns.

While honor-shame cultures have moral codes, however, their vulnerability to the fear of shame can readily lead to a jettisoning of any moral concerns. After all, the limbic dread of shame – its disastrous psychological and practical impact on them – kicks in in times of humiliation and fear.

Guilt is expiated by compensating the victim of an evil act and vowing to never commit the offense again (in Jewish terminology, doing tshuvah). Shame only requires that the awareness of the crime in the public consciousness be cancelled out.

But the honor-shame dynamic still does exist to some extent in the West, and Landes finds it in the European obsession with Israel. In traditional Christian supersessionim, the Church replaces the Jews as God’s people. Landes refers to a different “supersessionist narrative,” in which the Israelis replace the Nazis and the “Palestinians” become the Jews:

When Europeans (or Christians) adopt the Palestinian replacement narrative, when the universalization of the Holocaust leads to silence about its prime victim, the driver of the megadeath industry, when academics and politicians engage in “holocaust abuse” by replacing the (old) Jewish victim, with the (new) Palestinian one, and denouncing Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians, they reveal that they are driven not by Holocaust guilt, but Holocaust shame, and the result is the exact opposite of what one might/should expect. Instead of making sure they don’t participate in another genocide against the same people their foreathers had so grievously treated only a couple of generations ago – Nie Weider! – they adopt the narrative of those who would “finish the job.”

Young Europeans especially feel shame rather than guilt. After all, they weren’t even born when their grandfathers committed the crimes that they are constantly pressed to remember and atone for. They aren’t guilty of anything. But still, who wants to be known as a descendant of mass murderers or part of the nation that committed the greatest genocide in history?

This new supersessionist narrative works by canceling shame. If the Jews are Nazis, Israel’s crimes replace and supersede those of the Nazis and their collaborators in the public consciousness. Europeans and especially Germans have struggled with their feelings since the war, and here is a way to finally lift the burden!

Landes’ discussion is thought-provoking. And it occurred to me that it explains something that has been puzzling me about the behavior of Germany today for some time.

Since the war, Germany has had what is called a “special relationship” with Israel. Germany has paid reparations to the state of Israel and to Holocaust survivors there and gives Israel aid in the form of large discounts on purchases of military items like submarines. There is close security cooperation. Germany has often voted against anti-Israel initiatives in the UN, and for several years, it even gave Israel the maximum number of points in the Eurovision contest, regardless of the quality of our entry. There are extensive contacts in the areas of trade, science, education and culture. Israel and Germany have numerous sister cities.

And yet, the German government both by itself and through the EU is by far the largest donor to Israeli NGOs that support BDS, anti-Zionism, anti-Israel lawfare and even terrorism. The activity of foreign-funded anti-state NGOs in Israel is on a massive scale involving millions of Euros a year, and constitutes a form of cognitive warfare against the Jewish state. Just yesterday, PM Netanyahu canceled a meeting with the German foreign minister after he met with representatives of two particularly subversive NGOs, B’tselem and Breaking the Silence. German money, as Tuvia Tenenbom wrote in his book “Catch the Jew” is everywhere in Israel, even funding pro-Palestinian movies.

How can we explain this seeming contradiction? Do they want to support us or to help our enemies kill us? Landes’ analysis suggests an answer. If he’s right and the Germans today are primarily motivated by shame, then it makes sense that they would do as much as possible in public to counteract the perception that they are the heirs of the murderous Nazis. On the other hand, their shame drives them to work privately at the same time to transfer the responsibility to Israel, to make the Jewish state into the new Third Reich. And as a matter of fact, German funding for anti-state NGOs in Israel is highly non-transparent. While Germany is a public friend of Israel, in private it helps our enemies drive their knives into our collective back.

In a way, we’re stuck. We don’t want the world to forget the horrors of the Holocaust, but the more we remind them, the more ashamed, and thus angry, they become. My own view is that we should stop trying to get sympathy for what was done to us 70-odd years ago, and concentrate on gaining respect for forcefully defending ourselves today.

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04/27 Links Pt1: Palestinians: This is How We Intimidate Journalists; Who's afraid of Marwan Barghouti?

From Ian:

Palestinians: This is How We Intimidate Journalists

In the world of the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership, a journalist's loyalty to his leaders and their cause supersedes his loyalty to the truth. In a word, it is the truth vs. Abbas's security forces.
As the international media relies heavily on Palestinian journalists and "media assistants" in covering Palestinian affairs, this intimidation of Palestinian journalists heavily colors the reporting of Western journalists. The stories Palestinian journalists tell their Western colleagues are limited to ones that will not endanger their own lives. This censorship, whether by the Abbas's security forces or self-imposed, explains why one rarely reads or sees a story in Western mainstream media about negative things happening in the PA-controlled territories.
Even when their Palestinian colleagues are beaten and arrested by Abbas's security forces, these "journalists" fail to report such incidents. This makes some sense: should they open their mouths with the truth, Abbas and his cohorts might indeed stop inviting them to press conferences and banquets in the fancy restaurants of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jericho.

Eugene Kontorovich: Palestine, Uti Possidetis Juris, and the Borders of Israel

Israel’s borders and territorial scope are a source of seemingly endless debate. Remarkably, despite the intensity of the debates, little attention has been paid to the relevance of the doctrine of uti possidetis juris to resolving legal aspects of the border dispute. Uti possidetis juris is widely acknowledged as the doctrine of customary international law that is central to determining territorial sovereignty in the era of decolonization. The doctrine provides that emerging states presumptively inherit their pre-independence administrative boundaries.
Applied to the case of Israel, uti possidetis juris would dictate that Israel inherit the boundaries of the Mandate of Palestine as they existed in May, 1948. The doctrine would thus support Israeli claims to any or all of the currently hotly disputed areas of Jerusalem (including East Jerusalem), the West Bank, and even potentially the Gaza Strip (though not the Golan Heights). VIEW PDF

Evelyn Gordon: Israel’s Wrongheaded Retreat on BDS

Regardless of whether you support or oppose a new law allowing Israel to bar entry to prominent supporters of anti-Israeli boycotts, one outcome was eminently predictable: Israel would lack the guts to enforce it even when doing so was most justified. That was amply proven by Wednesday’s decision to grant a one-year work visa to Human Rights Watch researcher Omar Shakir. By this decision, Israel eviscerated the one crucial point the law got right, despite the many it got wrong: You cannot wage an effective war on the BDS movement while giving the people behind it a pass. As the old truism goes, people are policy.
Shakir is the epitome of someone who should have been denied entry, and his case exemplifies why the law’s basic assumption–that boycotters must be targeted personally–is 100 percent correct. He has given lectures on college campuses in which he accused Israel of being an apartheid state, advocated anti-Israel boycotts, compared Zionism to “Afrikaner nationalism,” rejected a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the grounds that it would “institutionalize injustice,” and called for ending Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. His resume also includes a stint as a legal fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, an organization that provides legal assistance and training to BDS activists and files war crimes suits against Israeli defense officials. Nor would discovering all this require any great research skills on the part of government officials; it’s all in a handy memo, complete with links, that NGO Monitor published in December.
Yet in his new role as HRW’s “Israel and Palestine director,” Shakir is supposed to oversee the production of unbiased, objective reports about human rights violations in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Needless to say, the very idea is fatuous; when someone has already made up his mind that Zionism is racism, Israel practices apartheid and a Jewish state has no right to exist, expecting him to produce unbiased research on this subject is like expecting the head of the Ku Klux Klan to preside fairly over the trial of a black man accused of raping a white woman. Instead, Shakir will spend his year here producing reports full of vicious anti-Israel slurs. Thanks to the “halo effect” enjoyed by all human rights organizations, those findings will be treated as credible by numerous well-meaning people overseas and will further undermine Israel in the international arena.

Please, please sue Britain, Mahmoud Abbas!

After the British government refused to apologize for the Balfour Declaration, the thugocracy that is known as the Palestinian Authority did what it does best: it threatened Great Britain.

The Palestinian ambassador to the UK said on Tuesday that the UK would not apologize for the Balfour Declaration, which contributed to the establishment of an Israeli state, as the 100th commemoration of the signing of the document is marked this year.

Palestinian Ambassador Manuel Hassassian conveyed the news to Voice of Palestine radio that the UK government has officially refused an apology for the 1917 document which supported establishing a Jewish state on what would become British Mandate Palestine.

Hassassian also confirmed that the UK would hold celebrations, along with the Israeli government, during the centennial anniversary of the document on Nov. 2, despite Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urging the UK not to celebrate the document during the recent Arab Summit in Jordan and encouraging the government to officially apologize to Palestinians instead.

Palestinian leaders have continued to issue threats of suing the UK government over the declaration, with Hassassian reportedly saying that there were a “number of attorneys in the UK” who have already begun taking steps to sue the government.

“If the UK backs down, apologizes to the Palestinian people and recognizes the state of Palestine, the issue of suing the UK will be cancelled,” official Palestinian news agency Wafa quoted Hassassian as saying.

What, exactly, would they demand in a lawsuit?

An apology?

Reparations?

What?

The threat of a lawsuit was first brought up by Mahmoud Abbas in a statement last July. At the time, he said:

With this anniversary, the painful solutions, and the passage of about a hundred years on this historic massacre of our land and the capabilities of our people, and with the continuation of this disaster without a solution, we ask the General Secretariat of the League of Arab States to support our preparation to file a lawsuit against the British government which issued the Balfour Declaration, and its implementation of the Mandate then, causing the plight of the Palestinian people, and dispersion, and depriving them of living in their homeland and to establish an independent state like the rest of the peoples of the region.

The specifics are...unclear.

Maybe he should sue the Arab leaders, including Palestinian Arab leaders, who refused to accept the UN resolution that would have given them a state in 1947!

Please, please sue the British government, Abbas. Sue them to demand an apology. Sue them to demand money. Sue them as publicly and noisily as possible. If you cant find a legal excuse to sue, please continue to threaten a lawsuit anyway.

It is a sure way to lose support for your cause in the West, as people are slowly realizing that the Palestinian Authority is more interested in stunts than peace. The Arab world is already there, and your actions are the surest way to ensure that your people will be whining about their terrible lives in their villas in Ramallah for the next century.

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PLO says calling Jerusalem Jewish is "incitement"

The dictionary definition of incitement is "something that encourages people to be violent or commit crimes, or the deliberate act of encouraging violence or crime."

Writers like me, organizations like Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI, and the State of Isael itself have accurately and effectively documented thousands of cases of incitement in Palestinian media and from Palestinian leaders, directly encouraging their people to act violently and encouraging terror by praising and paying the terrorists and their families.

The PLO has no defense, so they are trying to accuse Israel of incitement as well.

But the evidence of Israeli incitement to violence against Palestinians is thin. So they have to simply change the definition of incitement to fit with their purposes.

The Negotiations Affairs Department of the PLO published a document that accuses Israel of having an official policy of "incitement."

In this document they portray legitimate political positions and policies as "incitement". Here is every category of "incitement" they list:

"Israel's incitement against the two state solution"

"Expand existing settlements"

"'Land Theft Law'"

"Jerusalem: 'Eternal and Undivided Capital of the Jewish People'"

"Incitement against Palestinian prisoners"

One specific example of "incitement" listed is saying that Marwan Barghouti is a murderer.

Another is a statement from the Prime Minister's office that "We are in the land of the Bible, in the city of Jerusalem. Everything that happened there happened here. This is our land, our heritage, our book, our story, our faith and our hope."

Yes, the PLO officially claims that mentioning that the Bible is the story of the Jewish people is "incitement."

That mentioning the importance of Jerusalem to Jews is "incitement."

That noting that prisoners who tried to, or succeeded in, murdering innocent civilians are terrorists is "incitement."

That making legal claims on parts of the Land of Israel is "incitement."

They know that they are lying. But that is what the PLO does.

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Middle East conflict in a nutshell (poster) (update)

Today's news, illustrated:

UPDATE: Actually, some Gazans are blaming ...UNRWA!

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Officially designated Palestinian terror group holds rally under auspices of PA

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades has been designated a terror organization by the United States, Canada, the EU and other countries.

Yet it is allowed to operate freely by the Palestinian Authority, where it is part of Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas' ruling party.

Here are photos and video from a rally in Yatta, near Hebron, on Wednesday. The terrorists are masked, openly firing weapons, and the Palestinian Authority condones this open display of violence by a known terror organization.

Most real governments would ban a separate military group from roaming the streets, masked, firing in the air. But Mahmoud Abbas' government doesn't have a problem with them. They gave permission for this rally, whether explicit or implicit.

The Aqsa Brigades have been responsible for numerous terror attacks, including some of the most heinous suicide bombings of the second intifada, killing well over a hundred Israelis.

And Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority is on their side.

So why exactly does the world consider the PA to be moderate again?

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UNRWA-USA lies again to fundraise, falsely blaming Israel for Gaza power woes (UPDATE)

UNRWA-USA sent out a fundraising email entitled "Your Gaza electricity crisis questions answered."

It fails any fact check.

The reason for the Gaza electricity shortage is summarized in this recent Washington Post article:

Until now, the Palestinian Authority received fuel from Israel and sold it to the power station in Gaza, which is under Hamas’s authority. The Palestinian Authority even reduced the taxes. But financial difficulties meant other countries occasionally had to step in to cover the cost. In January, after public unrest over power cuts, Qatar and Turkey donated three month’s worth of fuel to Gaza.

But that arrangement has ended, and the Palestinian Authority has said that as long as Hamas remains in charge in Gaza, it should be responsible for paying the electricity bill — at the full cost.

The political fighting between the two Palestinian factions has left Gazans to survive with between four and six hours of electricity a day.

UNRWA-USA doesn't want to talk about the infighting between Palestinian leaders over who pays for the fuel. No one will donate to help a dysfunctional "state" which can't even get it together to help their own people.

So UNRWA-USA blames - well, you know who.

What caused the blackouts in the first place? The electricity crisis in Gaza has been ongoing since June 2006, when an Israeli airstrike hit the GPP. It was targeted with another airstrike in July 2014, temporarily shutting it down. The damage sustained in these airstrikes, combined with the chronic fuel shortage due to the blockade, has forced the GPP to operate at half its normal capacity for years.

What is the current energy crisis caused by? On April 17, the GPP was forced to shut down completely due to exhaustion of all fuel supplies and a complete lack of funds to replenish them. On April 20, the fuel supply from Egypt was also cut off due to a technical malfunction that has not been repaired.

Actually, the Gaza power plant never reached anything close to full capacity since it was built in 2002, because Gaza power lines couldn't handle that amount. The most it ever generated was 90 MW out of 140 MW capacity; recently it was generating around 70 MW while Israel supplies 120 MW directly to Gaza.

And Israel has not limited the amount of fuel to Gaza in years. The "blockade" has nothing to do with why the power plant has no fuel.

UNRWA-USA goes on to deceive would-be donors:

No matter what, UNRWA remains the largest humanitarian provider for Palestine refugees in the Gaza Strip, and the Agency will stop at nothing to provide critical education, health and mental health care, social services, and emergency response to the 1.3 million refugees who remain trapped under siege.

UNRWA does not buy or provide fuel for Gaza. This fundraiser is meant to appeal to the donors by saying how terrible those sieging, blockading Israelis are for making Gazan lives awful, without noting that UNRWA is not even helping them get electricity or fuel.

And all without saying a negative word about Hamas and the PA who every Gazan knows are the ones to blame for this problem.

Of course, we already knew that UNRWA-USA workers are rabidly anti-Israel.

UPDATE: JPost reports

The Palestinian Authority informed Israel that it is stopping all payments for electricity that enters Gaza through 10 electrical lines, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories said on Thursday.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas has warned over the past two weeks that he will take “unprecedented measures,” if Hamas does not concede some of its control over Gaza to the PA.

Hamas has said that it will not give in to “the threats” of the PA president.

The electrical lines entering Gaza from Israel account for some 120-125 megawatts, more than half of Gaza’s current electrical output. An electrical line from Egypt provides 27 megawatts and a power station, when fueled, delivers between 60-80 megawatts. The power station has not been working for almost two weeks for lack of fuel. Gaza needs a total of 420 megawatts.

Without the 10 electrical lines from Israel functioning, Gaza will almost certainly face a major electricity crisis.

Of course UNRWA will be silent about this as well, and only blame Israel for shutting down the electricity if it gets to that point.

If Israel were smart, it would continue to send electricity to Gaza for humanitarian reasons and withhold the equivalent tax payments to the PA the way it has done in the past.

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04/26 Links Pt2: Lumish: Fun with antisemitic anti-Zionists; 1,500-year-old Torah recovered from Turkish smugglers

From Ian:

Michael Lumish: Fun with antisemitic anti-Zionists

I suppose this is rather stupid, but I find "trolling" antisemitic Facebook pages to be kind-of a kick.
There is a page called "Israel is a War Criminal" that I recently became aware of and - as one would expect - they specialize in separating out Jewish people in Israel, if not pro-Israel Jews, more generally, as a unique evil.
Therefore this morning I dropped in briefly to say hello with this little message:
Good morning anti-Zionists! How are you guys today? One of the things that give me a great deal of satisfaction is the knowledge that the Jewish people, after 2,000 years of diaspora have reconstituted our ancient homeland and reclaimed Jerusalem, the ancient capital of the Jewish people. That in itself is a very beautiful thing, I can hardly even tell you. But, y’know, when the Jews who arrived in the Land of Israel from the concentration camps nobody thought that they could actually beat the combined Arab armies. But nobody quite realized that the combined Arab armies were so feminine.
Former dhimmis, along with Jewish women and half-starved Holocaust survivors actually beat the very cream of the Arab fighting forces in 1948 to re-establish Jewish sovereignty on historically Jewish land. And then to see this small struggling country not only survive but thrive just fills my heart with joy and gladness for the redemption of the Jewish people. Now, of course, Israel is a world leader in a variety of areas including technical and medical sciences, water reclamation, agriculture, not to mention arts and letters. Some of the top universities in the world are in that country. It’s really very gratifying.
Peace to you, please, my friends.

No, Ben-Gurion did NOT say “We must expel Arabs and take their place.”

Though, it’s rare to see this completely discredited quote appear anymore at ‘mainstream’ news outlets, on April 25th, The Irish News (of Belfast) published a letter which included the following claims:
The scene was set in 1937 when Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, in a letter to his son wrote “Negev land is reserved for Jewish citizens, whenever and wherever they want… we must expel Arabs and take their places… and if we have to use force, then we have the force at our disposal…”. This was, and is, the Zionist mindset before the great Estate Agent in the sky decided who really owned the land of Palestine.
In addition to the false quote concerning “expelling Arabs and taking their place”, the letter also distorts Ben-Gurion’s words concerning the Negev and the use of force. Here’s the actual sentence, again, translated into English by CAMERA.
All of our ambitions are built on the assumption that has proven true throughout all of our activities in the land [of Israel] — that there is enough room for us and for the Arabs in the land [of Israel]. And if we will have to use force, not for the sake of evicting the Arabs of the Negev or Transjordan, but rather in order to secure the right that belongs to us to settle there, force will be available to us.
As you can see, the actual Ben-Gurion quote has almost no resemblance to the way it’s presented in The Irish News letter. The “Zionist mindset”, as the letter writer put it, was not that Arabs should be expelled, but, rather, that there was room for both peoples in the land.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Gorka

“Every young person holding a placard to protest my parents and myself—I challenge you now: Go away and look at everything I have said and written in the last 46 years of my life and find one sentence that is anti-Semitic,” Sebastian Gorka said yesterday before walking out of a panel at Georgetown University. “You won’t find one.”
Gorka is right. But who cares? More specifically, why do I care? I’ve spent much of the last two months talking about Sebastian Gorka, and I’m tired. When I raised objections to the ludicrous assertion—repeated frequently and loudly by numerous media outlets—that the senior aide to President Donald Trump is some sort of crypto-Nazi, I was accused by many people of being a Gorka apologist.
Let’s get some things out of the way. I’ve never met Sebastian Gorka and don’t know much about his work on Islam or terrorism. I’m also not a fan of his boss, Donald Trump, which I’ve made clear in one or two or three hundred articles this past year.
What I object to—and what my interlocutors maddeningly refuse to engage with—is the effort to use history and Jewish memory, in particular, the crimes of the Holocaust, in the service of partisan political tricks. The falsification of history, in particular, the history of the Holocaust, is something that all Jews should object to because it is both the foundation and also the most frequent justification for Holocaust denialism. Indeed, it gives aid to Holocaust deniers—in Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe—by using the same methods they do and giving credence to their loathsome rhetoric, which seeks to erase history by insisting that all crimes are the same, whatever their scale.
What I am asking readers to do here is to resist, for a few minutes, the social-media-driven knee-jerk outrage du jour, and instead consider the far weightier issue of how these arguments play into an abuse of history.