Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, May 01, 2017

Is there a lower limit for Israel-haters in academia?

The Spring 2017 edition of Fathom – a journal that offers a lot of interesting material on Israel – includes a review of a book that was published last year under the title “Israel and Palestine: Alternative Perspectives on Statehood.” As this title indicates, the book is yet another attempt to legitimize proposals to do away with the world’s only Jewish state, though it also features contributions by academics who reject the so-called “one-state solution”. According to the Fathom review, the book “originated in a 2011 conference organised by the Political Science Department of Tel Aviv University,” and in view of this information, I was sure that the Richard Silverstein mentioned as one of the contributors couldn’t possibly be the notorious blogger.

Well, I was wrong…

The fact that a contribution by Silverstein was included in the book (Chapter 3: Israel and the Closing of the American Jewish Mind) is unfortunately not criticized in the Fathom review, though it arguably provides a revealing glimpse of the odious company anti-Israel academics keep. Apparently, Silverstein didn’t quite have what it takes to finish his Ph.D. – he says he “studied for a PhD at UC Berkeley”– and while he has dedicated fans among Israel-haters, he has long been known as a zealous propagandist who will use racial slurs against opponents and who loves to come up with bizarre conspiracy theories and imaginary “scoops” that suit his agenda.

As I’m writing this, I just see a new EoZ post mentioning Silverstein among those who live in a fantasy world where “Israel and ISIS are allies” – and we also learn that Silverstein is now a popular contributor to Russia Insider, where almost 10K readers thought his story about Israel’s imaginary alliance with ISIS was worth sharing… It’s just one of many Silverstein posts that could be entitled with an updated version of the Nazi slogan “The Jews are our misfortune” – as Silverstein’s message is clearly: “The Jewish state is our misfortune.” And it turns out that his message is popular: The widely shared Russia Insider post is recycled from the Middle East Eye, where it also got several thousand social media shares under the title “Ultimate opportunism: The tacit Israeli-Islamic State alliance in Syria,” and it was first published on Silverstein’s own blog under the title: “BREAKING: Former Israeli Defense Minister Confirms Israeli Collaboration with ISIS in Syria,” with the social media counter again showing several thousand shares.

Fake news about Jews behaving badly remain unsurprisingly popular.

While I think a supposedly “academic” book that includes a chapter by a fake-news propagator like Silverstein should not be taken seriously, I am all too aware that advanced academic degrees and prestigious positions don’t necessarily provide protection from irrational views on Israel. Ian S. Lustick, Bess W. Heyman chair in political science and professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, is a good case in point. His chapter on “Sense of the Nakba: Ari Shavit, Baruch and Zionist Claims to Territory” is criticized in the Fathom review as based on a “tendentious view” that seems “odd” and that “would be regarded as absurd if applied in the Americas.”

But there’s more that could be described as “tendentious,” “odd” and “absurd” about Lustick’s views on Israel. As Martin Kramer has pointed out, Lustick insisted in the early 2000s that “that the success of the ‘peace process’ in achieving its aim of two states wasn’t only plausible and possible,” but that it was ultimately “inevitable.” Yet, a decade later, Lustick “reversed his supposedly well-considered, scientifically informed assessment […] without so much as a shrug of acknowledgement” and penned a lengthy New York Times op-ed in favor of a “one-state solution,” asserting that it wouldn’t be “the end of the world” if the world’s only Jewish state ceased to exist and was replaced by “a single state [that] might be the route to eventual Palestinian independence.”

A few weeks after writing this op-ed, Lustick hosted Max Blumenthal to promote his odious screed Goliath, which equates Israel with Nazi Germany. As I have described previously, Lustick highlighted during the event with apparent approval that Blumenthal showed in Goliath that “Israel is not just a little bit fascist, Israel is a lot fascist.” Lustick pointed out that this was the “ultimate delegitimizer” because after World War II, “nothing fascist can even be allowed to survive.” Referring to the biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, Lustick then proceeded to ask Blumenthal to fancy himself in the position of God in order to decide whether there are enough “good people” in today’s Sodom-like Israel to save it from destruction. Blumenthal, who really didn’t need convincing that Israel as a Jewish state shouldn’t be allowed to survive, asserted that his priority was relieving “the suffering of the indigenous people of Palestine,” which could only be achieved by “external pressure” – as advocated by the BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) movement – on Jewish Israelis in order to force them to choose between emigrating and agreeing to “become indigenized” by accepting Arab dominance in political, cultural and social terms.

After Lustick had encouraged Blumenthal to ponder the question if there were enough “good people” in Sodom-like Israel to save it from destruction, it was hardly surprising that he didn’t object when Blumenthal responded by openly calling for the demise of the Jewish state and a “Juden raus”-policy for those of Israel’s Jews who would be unwilling to “become indigenized” after the hoped-for victory of the BDS movement.

When it comes to the world’s only Jewish state, there is apparently no lower limit in academia: academics with prestigious positions will happily legitimize scribblers like Silverstein and Blumenthal whose only qualification is their intense hate of Israel.

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05/01 Links Pt1: Israel’s birthday, Abbas and Balfour; Teaching Palestinian Children to Value Terrorism

From Ian:

Why Everything You Think You Know About Foreign Policy Is Wrong

There are no winners in war, only losers. The most arduous nuclear inspection regime in history involves letting Iran inspect its own nuclear sites. Funding a state at war won’t fill its war chest. Restraining the clerical regime in Iran means relieving sanctions to make billions of dollars. Rewarding a state sponsor of terror for its activities makes that state less likely to sponsor terror. Deterrence doesn’t work.
The logic at work in some of the more popular arguments made by Obama aides and their validators in the press wasn’t dialectical or paradoxical; e.g., if you want peace, prepare for war. It was Gladwellian—what’s really true is the opposite of whatever you think is true. Of course, that’s not journalism, it’s just marketing, or, in contemporary journalism-speak, Voxsplaining, after the popular liberal website Vox, which devoted itself in its entirety to counter-intuitive self-branded “hot takes” designed to showcase the wisdom of whatever the current Obama administration policy was.
To anyone who had read their Malcolm Gladwell, this was all deeply familiar. In Gladwell’s new-age sociology of marketing, you had the “connectors,” who knew lots of people, and the “mavens,” who knew important things. Most important of all were the “persuaders,” or super-charismatic figures, at the top of the heap. All of which explains why Mad Men was one of the big cultural events of the Obama years: It’s a story about an inner circle of somewhat-hip mavens and connectors working for a visionary king of cool to shape the beliefs of millions of Americans.
Obama’s “echo chamber” was another such story, with the “mavens” (policymakers and experts) and “connectors” (journalists) busily selling the Iran deal for their own king of cool in the White House. Those who wanted to be convinced were pretty easy to convince: Obama had Israel’s back and would never grant a nuclear weapon to a regime that threatens the existence of the Jewish state. Filters make cigarettes better for you! Others were a harder sell, and so the message had to be turned against them: If you don’t support a deal that frees up billions for a regime that threatens war, then you’re a warmonger.
It was no accident so much of the language and even imagery the Obama team used to sell the deal spun off anti-Semitic tropes. It was supposed to be scary. All of advertising is a threat, where the trick is simply in how you veil it—you don’t fit in but you want to, so buy our product. Malcolm Gladwell and Vance Packard would have been proud.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Embattled, Weak Abbas Comes to White House

This week, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and US President Donald Trump will sit down together to talk. This is the first such meeting since the US presidential election, and it comes at a time when the Palestinian scene is characterized by mounting internal tensions, fighting and divisiveness. The disarray among the Palestinians, where everyone seems to be fighting everyone else, casts serious doubt on Abbas's ability to lead the Palestinians towards a better future. The chaos also raises the question whether Abbas has the authority to speak on behalf of a majority of Palestinians, let alone sign a peace agreement with Israel that would be acceptable to enough of his people.
Abbas, however, seems rather oblivious to the state of bedlam among the Palestinians, and appears determined to forge ahead despite the radical instability he is facing.
He is travelling to Washington to tell Trump that he and his PA leadership seek a "just and comprehensive" peace with Israel through the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
In the meeting, Abbas is likely to repeat his long-standing charges that Israel continues to "sabotage" any prospect for peace with the Palestinians.
Abbas is not likely to mention the mayhem that the PA leadership is facing at home. Nor is the fact that the Palestinians are as far as ever from achieving their goal of statehood likely to be a preeminent subject. Why bother discussing inconvenient truths, such as the deep divisions among the Palestinians and failure to hold presidential and parliamentary elections, when you can point the finger of blame at Israel?

Elliott Abrams: Teaching Palestinian Children to Value Terrorism

Peace between Israel and the Palestinians does not, fundamentally, depend on who is doing the negotiating, how skilled they are, and other such diplomatic matters. Fundamentally it depends on the desire for peace.
A new study of Palestinian textbooks finds that Palestinian children are being taught to glorify and value terrorism and violence. The study, called “Palestinian Elementary School Curriculum 2016–17: Radicalization and Revival of the PLO Program,” was conducted by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (in Jerusalem) and can be found here.
The study’s summary begins with this:
The new Palestinian curriculum, which includes new textbooks for grades 1–4, is significantly more radical than previous curricula. To an even greater extent than the 2014–15 textbooks, the curriculum teaches students to be martyrs, demonizes and denies the existence of Israel and focuses on a “return” to an exclusively Palestinian homeland.
Within the pages of the textbooks children are taught to be expendable. Messages such as: “the volcano of my revenge”; “the longing of my blood for my land”; and “I shall sacrifice my blood to saturate the land” suffuse the curriculum. Math books use numbers of dead martyrs to teach arithmetic. The vision of an Arab Palestine includes the entirety of what is now Israel, defined as the “1948 Occupied Territories.”
That is not the way to prepare children for peace.

Days after questioning whether we should be taking student government divestment votes seriously any longer, along came Exhibit A-Z for why we shouldn’t, direct from the University of Wisconsin at Madison (UWM).

This story has everything, folks!

First, the familiar phenomena of an endless student council meeting to debate an anti-Israel divestment motion proffered by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) who, after browbeating student leaders for hours, ended up seeing their measure tabled indefinitely. But for SJP et al, “indefinitely” translates to “until we can sneak it back on the agenda when no one is looking.”

Sure enough, a new debate on the topic of divestment was announced and information distributed about it – you guessed it – during the Passover holiday! And when Jewish students complained, rather than hold off debate until all interested parties could participate, student leaders changed the rules to make sure divestment could make it back on the agenda.

Fortunately, everyone was told, the original anti-Israel language would not be part of this new resolution. Instead, student leaders were going to discuss a list of demands to be made to school administrators addressing divesting from companies involved with a wide range of controversial issues, like fossil fuels and general human rights abuses. In other words, the vote would be about companies, not countries.

Ah, but here is where the amendment process kicks in. For no sooner had the general (i.e., non-Israel-specific) measure gained support that SJP and their allies in student government added amendments that turned the thing back into a full-fledged BDS resolution. “Not so!” screamed the conspirators. Just because we accuse Israel of everything from practicing Apartheid to training cops to beat up black people, and demanding that companies on the BDS blacklist be specifically mentioned, that doesn’t mean the measure we just got passed has anything to do with BDS.

The first people who weren’t buying it were Jewish students, which is why the few of them attending the meeting marched out in disgust (along with principled non-Jewish student leaders). And then – predictably and within hours – the school’s administration announced they would not act on any student demands generated in such an anti-democratic fashion, condemning the entire student government for good measure.

Never missing an opportunity to play victim, the BDS cru then demanded the President of the university resign for not taking them seriously with regard to the various social justice causes they were hiding behind (perhaps because they had already demonstrated their total disinterest in black lives or economic justice by insisting all such issues take a distant back seat to BDS uber alles).

Oh, and did I mention the lawsuits?

Hard to believe that in barely a month the BDSers managed to destroy campus comity by purposely driving wedges between minority groups, alienate student and school leaders at a time when both are facing the consequences of drastic state budget cuts), and turned student government into a laughingstock being condemned, mocked and targeted for dissolution when it’s not being sued.

And I haven’t even mentioned the punchline: that all of this activity was rushed to the finish line in April so that the BDSers could chalk up a “victory” before new student leadership took over on May 1^st (with that new leadership likely to undo everything the boycotters just forced down everyone’s throats). In other words, all the tears and anger and hatred and destruction the boycott brigade visited upon UWM was for nothing more than a one-day headline on Mondoweiss announcing an impotent political pose not destined to last the week.

So once again, can someone tell me why we need to treat this kind of activity as saying anything about campus opinion on Israel vs. the ludicrous and destructive behavior of those who hate the Jewish state?

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Hamas again denies new #Hamas_document replaces its antisemitic charter - in Arabic

This evening, in Doha, Hamas will officially unveil its new "political document."

Even in English, Hamas has been careful not to call it a charter, or to say that it replaces the Hamas charter that refers to antisemitic Islamic sayings, such as "The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: 'The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharqad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.'"

I've been reporting since February that Hamas is not calling this a new charter. Still, too many Western reporters and even some experts have claimed that this is a new Hamas charter that eliminates the doctrinal antisemitism and explicit call to destroy Israel that the charter has.

Today, ahead of the photo-op in Doha where Hamas will introduce the new document with much fanfare, Hamas again said in Arabic that this is not a new charter. Felesteen, a Hamas newspaper, says "Hamas denied that the document is an alternative to the Charter of the movement, which was released to coincide with its founding, at the end of the 1980s, stressing that it is a 'political vision and ideology of the movement.'

The entire purpose of the document is to present a false, moderate face to the West.

The new document will deny that Hamas has anything against Jews, and it is only against "Zionists." It will also say that Hamas would accept a Palestinian state in the "1967 borders," a position that will fool more credulous journalists and editorialists into thinking that Hamas supports a two-state solution.

Hamas has claimed that it is not antisemitic for years despite its still-extant charter. Here is a laughable attempt from 2009:

GAZA CITY, May 14 (2009) (IPS) - A founding member of Hamas says he hates all weapons and insists that his organisation is not anti-Jewish.

In an interview with IPS, Sayed Abu Musameh described frequent claims in the European and U.S. press that Hamas's charter is based on enmity towards Jews as a "big lie".

"In our culture, we respect every foreigner, especially Jews and Christians," he said. "But we are against Zionists, not as nationalists but as fascists and racists."

Musameh also contended that Hamas has long been ready to agree a truce - known in Arabic as a hudna - with Israel but that Israel had refused all offers and imposed a crippling economic blockade on Gaza. The firing of Qassam rockets on the Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Sderot was designed "not to destroy Israel or to destroy Israeli people" but to "make them notice our siege."

"I hate all kinds of weapons," said Musameh. "I dream of seeing every weapon from the atomic bomb to small guns banned everywhere."

Hamas fetishizes weapon, as this anniversary parade shows:

And that same 2014 parade is proof that Hamas is a Jew-hating organization. It placed a picture of the Jewish Temple on a coffin:

On another coffin, it proudly displayed daggers stabbing the heads of four rabbis who had been slaughtered in a synagogue earlier that year:

Hamas also created a stereotypical Jew, with a white shirt, side curls, beard and a black hat, to burn in effigy:

This all happened years after Hamas claimed to not have anything against Jews.

Yet perhaps the best evidence that Hamas is an officially Jew-hating organization is that it refuses to replace its charter, even as it has claimed over and over again to Western audiences (like this 2011 essay) that the charter is not relevant.

Any reporter that gives credence to this Hamas publicity stunt is not a reporter, but a propagandist for one of the world's most successful and bloodthirsty Islamist terror groups.

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One of the main criticisms aimed at Islamic leaders today is that they have not generally attacked ISIS from a theological perspective. Young people often see in ISIS a pure Islamic theology, consistent with the Quran and untainted by modern political correctness.

Every once in a while a major religious figure attempts to say, using religious sources, that ISIS is not interpreting the Quran accurately and that they are in fact violating Quranic precepts.

Egypt has a special responsibility to make this distinction. It is still in many ways the center of Islamic thinking, and it is the most populous Arab state.

So it is important news when the Egyptian Minister of Awqaf (religious endowments) published a book meant to"refute the misguidance of terrorists" and identify and expose terrorist ideology.

Minister Mohamed Mokhtar Gomaa said on a TV news show promoting the book that that terrorist groups are trying to recruit young people through false ideas and distortion of texts and purposefully misinterpreting religious texts. He says he researched and debunked theological works that ISIS (which he derogatorily calls Daesh) secretly distributes to its members . pointing out that he was able access to ideas, books and publications that terrorist groups distributed clandestinely on its elements.

He says his work refuting ISIS theology will be translated into 12 languages.

So far, so good.

But when he promoted the book on TV he also said that "the damned movement known as Daesh fools young people into thinking that paradise is in store for them them. They do like the Jews do in their seizure of land and how they killed the Palestinians under their rule - the same thing."

Apparently, theological arguments aren't enough. In order to turn people against ISIS, one must compare them to Jews.

Antisemitism is the one constant that Arabs can rely on when convincing people how evil their enemies are.

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Israel has weaponized "sex mania" against the Arabs and Muslims

From Palestinian Media Watch:

In March this year, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas posed for pictures in his office with the Antisemitic PA TV host Imad Hamato, who Abbas appointed dean of Gaza's Al-Azhar institutes in October 2016. This month, official PA TV rebroadcast one of Hamato's many antisemitic hate lessons from 2015.

"Our conflict today between us and Israel is the conflict between spirit and body. Israel's global media has expanded, and its war against the Arabs and Muslims is through sex mania which it distributes globally. Israel had to use this sex mania, as we mentioned in a previous lesson, in order to destroy the spirit of Arabs and Muslims. Everything among the Muslims has died, except for their lust. Therefore we see filth and immodesty on many satellite channels, pictures and ads for penis enlargement and for all sorts of things. All of these are contrary to modesty. Why? Because the Jews, as it is said in the Quran, believe only in the body, not in the spirit. The Jews, according to our religion, believe only in the body.

"What has Israel given to the world in our times, aside from moral corruption and degeneration of values, aside from the use of drugs and pills? I said in a previous lesson that the CIA has a unit called the Unit for Creating the Global Mood. They look at a map: 'What is appropriate for Gaza, or Jordan, or Syria? Tramadol pills (i.e., pain killers)? Mood enhancers? Hallucinatory substances?' They are produced in India, shipped to Israel and distributed in Sinai. Afterwards they are spread in the region, in order to destroy what remains of our children's values."

[Official PA TV, June 12, 2015 and April 14, 2017]

Remember, half of Israel's R&D budget is dedicated to increasing Arab sex drive, and the other half to making them impotent.

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Idiots say Israel is allied with Al Qaeda. And ISIS. And even Iran.

Electronic Intifada, which tacitly supports Syria's bombing and gassing its own citizens, has spent a great deal of energy trying to pretend that Israel is somehow allied with Al Qaeda in Syria, because some of the people it gave medical attention to are apparently members of the Al Nusra Front which is fighting both ISIS and Iranian-backed Syrian and Hezbollah troops.

Other idiots like Richard Silverstein have seized on an offhand comment that Moshe Yaalon made that ISIS had "apologized" for firing on Israeli troops. The Daily Mail explains why:

Under Israeli law, it is technically illegal to communicate with a terrorist group because they are classed as 'enemy agents' - raising questions as to how exactly the apology was delivered.
But a clue might be found in the testimony of Jürgen Todenhöfer, the German man who spent 10 days inside the Islamic State in 2014.
He told the Jewish News the only country IS fighters feared is Israel.
'They told me they know the Israeli army is too strong for them,' he said.
He added: 'They are not scared of the British and the Americans, they are scared of the Israelis and told me the Israeli army is the real danger.'
Mr Ya'alon's comment about the apology was related to his country's strategy in the Syrian Civil War.
Israel has adopted a policy of non-intervention in Syrian Civil War, but has defended its borders when fighting spilled over in the past.
They have remained out of the fight for the most part, but have hit back hard when fighting spills into the Israeli Golan Heights - land Israel took from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War.

But Silverstein, writing in "Russia Insider," uses his impeccable logic to say that "when you bomb an ally you apologise. When you bomb an enemy – you don’t. What does that make IS to Israel?"

There ya go!

But wait, there's more! Israel is also allied with Iran!

Hisham Najjar writes in a Libyan paper that Israel and Iran have a lot in common. They both occupy land that is not theirs, they both attack Arabs, they both want to expand their empires (Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates,), they both expel opponents, they both extend their influence to Africa, they both are working on or have nuclear weapons, Jews are still grateful for Persians giving them rights in Jerusalem 2500 years ago, and both are religious-based states.

Therefore, he says, don't be fooled by the rhetoric they employ against each other; they are really on the same side.

Just remember - everyone also agrees that Israel is Islamophobic.

What do all of these bizarre opinions have in common?

It shows that for people who hate the idea of Jewish self-determination, Jews are always allied with whomever they consider their enemies at the moment. This is the same thinking that had Communists accuse Jews of being capitalists and American antisemites accusing Jews of being Communists, of Europeans accusing Jews of being Semitic and of Arabs accusing Jews of being European.

In the end, it is all the same hate, dressed up in different clothing. And it would be laughable if it wasn't the same hate that also has been responsible for some of the worst atrocities in history.

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04/30 Links: Collier: Israel to honor another 97 fallen; When Mark Regev went to SOAS

From Ian:

Memorial Day 2017 Israel to honor another 97 fallen

Over the past year, another 97 soldiers and officers serving in Israel’s security forces, including 37 wounded veterans who succumbed to their wounds, have joined the ranks of Israel’s fallen, according to numbers released by the Defense Ministry ahead of Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers of Israel and Victims of Terrorism, which begins Sunday at 8 p.m. with a siren that will be heard throughout the country.
Since the beginning of the modern Jewish movement in the Land of Israel in 1860, a total of 23,544 have died defending the State of Israel, including those fighting with pre-state defense forces, IDF soldiers, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), the Mossad, police officers, and officers of Israel’s Prisons Services.
According to the National Insurance Institute, there are a total of 9,157 bereaved parents in Israel, thousands of bereaved siblings, 4,881 widows and 1,843 orphans under the age of 30. In addition, 3,117 civilians have been killed in hostile acts such as terror attacks since the birth of the the State of Israel, including 122 foreign nationals and 100 Israelis killed in attacks abroad.
In a letter to IDF soldiers and commanders, IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot wrote that "in their death, the fallen have left us with a legacy and a will to be the defenders of the people and to hold the sword for its freedom in its land."
"With the legacy of the fallen, we are charged to preserve the values that they adopted in their lives—courage and mental fortitude, responsibility and dedication, a sense of mission and belief in the righteousness of the way. The values that beat in the hearts of the fallen are the secret to the strength of the Israel Defense Force to this very day. The IDF spirit is the common language shared by those who serve."

'Thanks to the fallen, we rose; thanks to them, we are alive'

Ahead of the official start of Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism on Sunday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin, and other state officials took part in a ceremony dedicating a new national memorial edifice on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
The new memorial hall, which was unveiled last Thursday, features the name of each one of the 23,544 fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism in Israel's history. Each name is inscribed on a separate brick, and the bricks are arranged by the dates of death.
Throughout the year, the names of those whose anniversaries are approaching will be illuminated by electronic candles. In the coming days, the site will be open to bereaved families only. It is later scheduled to open to the general public.
Speaking at the dedication ceremony Sunday, Rivlin said: "'The world is full of remembering and forgetting, like sea and land. Sometimes the memory is the solid, existing land, and sometimes the memory is like the sea that covers everything.' So said my teacher, the poet Yehuda Amichai. Today, as the eve of Memorial Day approaches, here at the memorial hall, memory becomes tangible. It is like the sea that covers everything.
"Memory is not just remembering the past. The secret of the power of the Israeli memory is its continuity. It's a memory that goes from the past to the present to the future."

IDF chief: Remember the fallen, embrace their families

Israel Defense Forces commanders, soldiers, and employees: In these moments, we stand together, bow our heads in respect, and remember our common, unifying purpose -- the shared fate for which our brothers and sisters, the IDF fallen throughout the generations -- gave their lives.
When they were alive, the fallen worked for the same goal: to ensure the security of the state and its residents. From the moment they enlisted in the IDF, they devoted all their energy to fulfilling their obligation to their people. In their deaths, the fallen left us a legacy and a directive: to serve as a shield and wield a sword to ensure the people's freedom in their own nation.
The legacy of the fallen requires us to examine the values they held when they were alive: a path of heroism and courage of spirit; a path of responsibility and devotion; a path of belief in the righteousness of their mission, the justness of their path. The values that beat in the hearts of the fallen are the secret of the Israel Defense Forces' success through today. The spirit of the IDF is that of a common language among those who serve in it.
The legacy of the fallen requires us to work in constant cooperation and be friends to one another, like the Prophet Isaiah said: "They help each other and say to their companions, 'Be strong!'" And also that we join forces, acknowledging that we have a single destiny: we all wear a uniform, we all hold a weapon, and we all work together for the security of the state.

23,544.

Last year the number was 23,447.

Tonight Memorial Day for IDF soldiers and victims of terrorism begins.

23,544. What is a number? Can it even be understood?

It is only when you see the faces behind the numbers that you begin to comprehend the enormity of the loss… Benayah Sarel, Hadar Goldin, Oron Shaul, Chagai Lev, Shiri Negari, Kobi Mandell & Yosef Ishran, Noam Apter, Revital Casus-Ohayon, Matan Casus-Ohayon, Noam Casus-Ohayon, Roi Klien, Eyal, Gil-Ad and Naftali… 23,544 people, families and friends left behind.

I wrote about this more than a decade ago. The words I wrote then are even more relevant today.

August 15, 2006

I feel so, so sad today. For the past few days I’ve felt like I can’t breathe. I can’t rest. My throat is choked with unshed tears.

All I can think about is numbers.

Israelis often seem obsessed by numbers. The over 6 million murdered by Nazis. The over 6 million that currently populate the state of Israel. The number of Arabs living amongst us. The years there were wars. The date a husband, brother, child or friend was killed. The number of people who died alongside them. The identifying numbers of the resolutions passed by the UN. The amount of explosives in a bomb detonated by a suicide bomber… Israelis have good reason to be obsessed with numbers.

During this war with Hezbollah the TV stations showed us a different number each day, letting us know how many days we fought for our lives. A good thing too – I tried to keep track of the days but everything ran together. Night and day turned upside down. I had a hard time remembering what day of the week it was, much less how many days had gone by. Each day I tried to count the sirens and the explosions and each day I lost count. There were so many explosions I lost the ability to tell the difference between the sound of a katusha slamming into Karmiel and the sound of artillery fire being shot from the near-by hills, over the border into Lebanon.

I’m not sure exactly why numbers are so important. I suppose being able to count, to differentiate and isolate separate events helps create order. It carves sanity out of insanity. I tried to count, to keep track. Each day I failed. Each new day I tried again. The numbers on the TV screen helped, a little.

An American friend told me that the people around her have a hard time understanding why Israelis get so upset over what American’s consider a “minimal loss of life”. In response, she contrasted the populations of both countries: The day after Hezbollah attacked Israel (this time) she wrote:

The last census taken in the US gave us a population of 299, 206, 827 people. The last census taken in Israel gave them a population of 6,352,177. Yesterday 8 IDF soldiers were killed. In comparison with the population, this would have resulted in the loss of 377 US soldiers in one day. There are 3 IDF soldiers being held captive at the present time. This would equal to 141 US soldiers being kidnapped and held hostage.

During this past month 157 Israelis were killed. That would be 7,395 Americans. As if 9/11 happened twice in one month.

Even so, it’s not the numbers that matter. It is what they represent that counts.

In Israel, the news comes on at proscribed times. The worse the situation the more news updates are added to the regular schedule. During this past month, there often was no break in the news. On better days, it came just on the hour. If we were lucky a few hours went by between updates. The special 11pm news that I was watching a few days ago went straight on into the normal midnight news.

The news crew, desperate to show something pleasant decided the reporter should interview a group of soldiers resting between combat missions to show how our boys were doing. Sprawled outside, leaning on whatever was convenient, the camera revealed a group of handsome guys. Built like men, with the gleam of youth in their eyes, they were chatting companionably between themselves. They included the reporter they had so often seen on their TV screens at home as one of their own. With typical Israeli abruptness, one of the soldiers interrupted the reporter, calling out: “Moshe! You forgot to ask the most important question!” “What’s that?” Moshe asked. The soldier, Sagi Eko, from Karmiel, said with a grin: “You forgot to ask what we miss the most!”

Sagi explained, “Right now, the girlfriend doesn’t matter, I don’t care about food or even a shower. All I want is my mom!” Sagi’s friends laughed and chimed in with their assent. “Bring me my mom so I can hug her for about ten minutes,” said Sagi “and I will be set to fight for another month or so!”

I’m sure Moshe would have been happy to produce Sagi’s mother for him. What a small request to ask in return for risking his life to protect his people and his country. The best the news crew could do was to try to get in touch with Sagi’s mom. They posted the studio phone number along with the message: “If you are Sagi’s mother or a member of his family, please call us”. Sagi’s mother DID call. She couldn’t talk to her son; most likely by the time she called he was already back in the midst of yet another hand-to-hand, life and death battle. The man reading the news spoke to Sagi’s mom on air, asked her if she had seen the piece with her son and made sure to tell her how much her boy loves her.

You might think such an event would be rare but here in Israel it’s not. The next day I saw footage a different group of soldiers had filmed, documenting themselves (via their cell-phone video cameras) inside Lebanon. They were resting between battles. Some of the soldiers were sleeping. One was praying. Another was singing a song that basically consisted of the chorus: “Mother, mother, oh how I love my mother”.

People overseas don’t understand why we love our soldiers so much. They don’t understand why we are devastated when one is hurt or killed. Some, like my friend, try to use numbers to explain. Israelis (especially those employed by the State Department) often attempt to use numbers, statistics and ratios to explain, without realizing that it is that very insistence on using numbers that enables people to ignore what stands behind the numbers.

The Nazis thoroughly understood that mechanism – that is why they carved numbers into the arms of Jews. They turned people into numbers, which can be erased without any qualms.

For this very reason those who combat this horror memorialize the murdered by plucking names out of the numbers. On the Memorial Day for the Holocaust people read the names of each person known to have been murdered. They are not a faceless 6 million. They are people with names and with stories. They had shoes and glasses and suitcases too… It’s not the numbers that make the difference; it’s the people the numbers stand for that matter. On the Memorial Day for our soldiers a TV channel is dedicated to one single thing – displaying the name of each soldier killed protecting Israel. It takes 24 hours to go through the list of all those killed in the different wars. The people of other nations sometimes understand this as well. That is why there are names on the Vietnam memorial wall. That is why the names of those murdered on 9/11 were read during the memorial ceremony.

Numbers are important but the most important thing is to remember what the numbers represent. It’s not, “How many?” It’s,“Who?”

People might say: What is one person? To them I say –

One person is Sagi. Or his mother. Or me. Or YOU.

One person is everything.

And until people learn see the faces behind the numbers, nothing will ever change.

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Look at the beautiful house of a terrorist family, thanks to your tax dollars

Samer al-Mahrum, a member of the PFLP terror group, was sentenced to life in prison for the 1986 murder of yeshiva student Eliyahu Amadi in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1986. He was released in the Shalit deal after 25 years of his sentence, but was re-arrested in 2014.

He managed to smuggle out his semen and his wife gave birth to a child last December.

Al Mahrum is now celebrated as one of the more prominent hunger strikers in prison.

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Facebook page highlighted a news story from the official Palestinian news agency WAFA about how awful his family situation is because of his imprisonment and how difficult life is for his wife and mother.

Here is a screenshot from the video showing his mother holding a poster. His new baby can be seen here as well.

His house, decorated with images of "resistance," is gorgeous!

How can a family whose patriarch was in prison for 27 of the past 31 years afford such a beautiful home?

It is because the terrorists who murder Jews get paid a handsome salary from the Palestinian Authority, which gets its budget from the West.

Yes, your tax dollars paid for the home of Samer al-Mahrum.

You can be sure that 99% of the "pro-Palestinian" protesters who say how awful Israel treats the Palestinians do not live in homes this nice. In fact, 99% of the entire world population does not live in homes that are this spacious and well decorated. Most of the people living in Egypt or Jordan would kill to live so well as this poor, deprived family who openly show their allegiance to terror groups.

It pays to be a Palestinian terrorist.

Here is a photo of Eliyahu Amadi, his victim.

(Incidentally, one of the others who was convicted in Amadi's murder was Omar Zayed. He went on on his own hunger strike and escaped from the hospital in 1990, managing to get to Bulgaria where he married and had a nice life until Israel requested his extradition. He fled to the Palestinian embassy in Bulgaria where he was not very welcome and then was found dead under mysterious circumstances.)

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Ma'an News, as one of the few independent news agencies in the territories and perhaps the only one that has a full English news desk, is relied upon by many lazy Western reporters to get their stories

On Friday, Ma'an wrote:

Israeli authorities opened the Karam Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing between Israel and the besieged Gaza Strip on Friday to allow limited amounts of fuel into the coastal enclave.
The Gaza Petroleum Committee said that some 500,000 liters of diesel, 100,000 liters of fuel and 120 tons of cooking gas are expected to enter.
The Karam Abu Salem crossing has been opened intermittently since the beginning of the year, affecting the small Palestinian territory’s access to fuel to power the enclave’s sole electricity plant.

The link from "opened intermittently" went to a story from March, that said:

Israeli authorities decided on Thursday to open the Karam Abu Salam (Kerem Shalom) crossing on Friday between Israel and the Gaza Strip to allow fuel into the besieged coastal enclave.
Kerem Shalom was opened earlier this month, and twice last month to allow diesel into the small coastal territory.

The links to the two other stories were similar.

However, Kerem Shalom is open every day from Sunday through Thursday, and it pumps fuel every one of those weekdays.

Ma'an is making it sound like it is hardly ever open.

What's going on?

Here's what appears to be happening: Israel sometimes opens Kerem Shalom on Fridays when there is reason to believe that Gaza needs extra fuel. So whenever Israel decides to open the crossing on a Friday there are some press releases in the Arab press letting people know the situation.

The Ma'an English editors appear to not understand these stories, and assume that when the Arabic media reports that Kerem Shalom is opening on a exceptional basis on a friday, that means it is not open the other days of the week.

Every story in the link chain from Ma'an is for a Friday opening.

Are the current Ma'an English editors simply ignorant of the basic fact that Israel opens Kerem Shalom every day except holidays? (The reason it was opened on Friday is almost certainly because it will be closed this coming week for Yom Ha'Atzmaut.)

Or are they interested in putting a false picture of Israel to the world?

Either way, Western reporters should take any Ma'an report with a large grain of salt.

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Jews dancing upsets Arabs. (Evergreen headline)

Shourouk News and Asrar and Al Ghad TV and Arab48 and AlArab News and Qatar News Agency all reported that "Jewish settlers" were performing "provocative Talmudic rituals" in the courtyard of "Bab al-Amud," which is Damascus Gate, "under heavy police protection."

Further reading shows that some Jewish kids were dancing ahead of Yom Ha'Atzmaut at the entrance to the Old City.

That'a it.

This isn't even in "occupied territory."

So the next time someone tries to tell you that there would be peace f only Israel withdraws from the territories, ask them exactly why so many Arab news sites try to incite their readers into a frenzy with antisemitic overtones over Jews dancing on the west side of the Green Line.

(It is also entirely possible that the Arab world is trying to lay the groundwork for a campaign against Jews in any part of Jerusalem, as the upcoming UNESCO vote will deny any Israeli sovereignty over any part of the city.)

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

04/29 Links: N. Korea threatens Israel; Trump proclaims May Jewish American Heritage Month

From Ian:

N. Korea threatens Israel after Liberman calls Kim a madman

North Korea threatened to punish Israel and accused Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Saturday of “rash and malicious” statements that insulted its leadership, after he criticized the Asian nation and called its leadership “extremist and insane.”
In an official foreign ministry statement, Pyongyang said Liberman has challenged North Korea by making “rash and malicious” comments against the nation.
“Our consistent message is to mercilessly punish those who offend the dignity of our leadership,” the statement said.
“We warn Israel to think twice about the implications of its defamation campaign against us.”
The statement further condemned Israel for its nuclear policy, and accused the Jewish state of abusing the rights of Arabs across the Middle East.
“Israel is the only illegal possessor of nuclear weapons that enjoys the support of the United States, but Israel is attacking North Korea for possessing nuclear weapons,” the statement read, going on to claim this was a cynical move intended to distract from Israeli “occupation” and “crimes against humanity.”
On Thursday Liberman said Pyongyang “seems to have crossed the red line with its recent nuclear tests,” adding that its nuclear weapons program posed more of a threat to world order than Iran or any terrorist group.

At UN Security Council, Tillerson Presses for Economic Sanctions on North Korea

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson took the escalating threat of a nuclear North Korea to the United Nations Security Council Friday, urging member countries to financially cut ties with Pyongyang and freeze access to funds that could be used to build up that nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Tillerson called on the international community to fully implement U.N. sanctions and to suspend or downgrade diplomatic ties as well with North Korea.
“With each successive detonation and missile test, North Korea pushes northeast Asia and the world closer to instability and broader conflict," Tillerson said. "The threat of a North Korean attack on Seoul or Tokyo is real."
Tillerson added that it was “only a matter of time” before Pyongyang takes aim at the United States and said the international community must take concrete steps now in order to prevent North Korea from making good on threats.
“Business as usual is not an option,” Tillerson told 15 top diplomats at the U.N. meeting.
The secretary of state’s comments capped off an intense week in Washington that included closed-door briefings between the Trump administration and U.S. lawmakers over the escalating threat.

John Bolton: If North Korea Gets Nuclear Missiles, ‘Iran Could Have That Capability the Next Day by Writing a Check’

Breitbart News National Security Editor Frances Martel joined the conversation to ask Bolton about the deep relationship between the nuclear issues in Iran and North Korea, which are generally treated as entirely separate matters in media coverage.
“The media don’t get the connection, and that in part is because the national security bureaucracy doesn’t get, or doesn’t want to talk about, the connection,” Bolton replied, portraying it as “a classic bureaucratic example of what they call silos.”
“You’ve got the people dealing with Iran there in one silo, you’ve got the people dealing with North Korea in another silo. They might as well be on different planets,” he explained.
“But the fact is, again, from publicly available information going back 30 years, we know that the North Koreans and the Iranians have been in close cooperation on the development of ballistic missiles for that entire period. North Korea sold Iran the first SCUD missiles that were the basis for the Iranian missile program. They’ve cooperated in multiple ways since then. It makes perfectly good sense for that to happen. They’re both using the same Soviet-era SCUD missile technology for their missile programs, so they’ve got a common scientific and engineering base. Their objectives for the missile programs are exactly the same. It’s to deliver nuclear weapons, not launch communications or weather satellites. On that score, it’s just absolutely clear,” Bolton said.
“It is less clear in terms of publicly available evidence on the nuclear side, but I think there is substantial reason to believe there’s close cooperation there as well,” he continued. “The reactor that Israel destroyed in Syria in September of 2007 was being built by North Koreans. It was a clone of the North Korean Yongbyon reactor. Most people don’t think Syria had the financial wherewithal to pay for building that kind of reactor, and the North Koreans don’t do anything for free, so where did the money come from? I think it probably came from Iran.”
“I think there are a lot of other connections that have been noted, the Iranian scientists in North Korea and vice versa. Forget the Iran nuclear deal for a minute – it’s entirely foreseeable that the day North Korea gets the capability to drop a nuclear warhead on the United States via ballistic missile, Iran could have that capability the next day by writing a check in the right amount of money, so this relationship is extremely important,” he warned.

04/28 Links Pt2: This never-ending meltdown over Israel is the distress of fools; Jerusalem: Rooted in 3,000 Years of History

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: This never-ending meltdown over Israel is the distress of fools

To see how illiberal and outright irrational anti-Israel sentiment has become, look no further than the fear and horror that has gripped SOAS over tonight’s visit by Mark Regev.
Yes, in a brilliant PR move, Regev, the colourful Israeli Ambassador to the UK, has agreed to speak about the prospects for peace in the Middle East at SOAS, a Uni known for its agitation with all things Israeli. It’s like the Chippendales visiting a convent, or Shane MacGowan crashing a meeting of temperance-movement bores. It’s hilarious.
People at SOAS don’t find it funny, though. It’s questionable whether they ever find anything funny, so steeped are their minds in the depressing creeds of postcolonial studies and ethnographic theory. No, they think Regev’s visit will cause “substantial distress” to the SOAS community. Really.
According to the Guardian, there are “fears” that Regev’s visit won’t only “spark unrest” — par for the course: every visit by an Israeli representative to a British campus sparks unrest — but that it will also lead to “substantial distress on campus”.
More than 150 academics from SOAS and other universities have written to SOAS director Valerie Amos to plead with her to call off the Regev meeting and save SOAS students from the “substantial distress” of having someone with a different opinion to theirs on campus.
The first thing to note here is how craven it is — a McCarthyite level of cravenness — for academics to demand the silencing of a speaker they disagree with.

INSANE: Newsweek Labels Palestinian-Arab Terrorist A ‘Man of Peace’

Contrary to what the great Benjamin Franklin once said, there are actually three certainties in life: Death, taxes, and that members of the "Palestine" Liberation Organization (PLO) are perennial liars. The third certainty could not be more accurately depicted than in a dumpster fire article in Newsweek written by Dr. Hanan Ashrawi in defense of convicted Palestinian-Arab terrorist Marwan Barghouti.
Barghouti, who rightfully rots in an Israeli prison for murdering five innocent Israeli civilians, entered the spotlight almost two weeks ago for writing an op-ed in The New York Times accusing Israel of committing "judicial apartheid" and justifying why Palestinian-Arab terrorist prisoners started a hunger strike. In that article, he described himself as a "Palestinian leader and parliamentarian" rather than a former Fatah terrorist who was convicted in Israeli civil court for murder. Despite the deliberate lies and misrepresentation of Barghouti from The New York Times, Ashwari used her pedestal with Newsweek to describe the terrorist as a "man of peace."
First, Ashwari accused Israel of committing a "character assassination" regarding Barghouti, claiming that the terrorist "proved to be a strong advocate of good governance and human rights, including women's rights." As comical as that assertion is, Ashwari goes even further to claim that Barghouti has never possessed terrorist ambitions:
Even after he was deported by the Israeli occupation in 1987, he frequently met with the negotiations delegation and expressed his full support for a peaceful negotiated settlement. While Barghouti believes in the Palestinian people's right to resist occupation by all available means under international law, he always opposed attacks against civilians. In recent years, he advocated peaceful means and civil disobedience to achieve our freedom.
This spin-doctoring of a man convicted of killing innocent civilians represents another attempt by leaders within the PLO to brainwash ill-informed Western liberals that Israel is an oppressive force that is preventing peace. Unfortunately, history has proven that the Palestinian national movement itself has been the consistent cause for a lack of peace between the Israelis and the Palestinian-Arabs. This reality has been eloquently articulated by David Brog in the PragerU video below:

How ‘The Deranged Ones’ Are Reshaping France

On the day before her killing, Sarah Halimi had, it seemed, complained to the concierge about her future killer. The killer and his brother were known in the small cité for being noisy troublemakers who were often under the influence and prone to fighting, and she was fed up. The young man was not only a drug user but also a dealer and sources close to the investigation indicate that he owned his suppliers a great deal of money, and the day the murder occurred was consequently very agitated.
Under the influence of drugs, and probably drunk, he then started to knock on several doors before someone opened a door to him. That someone was, coincidentally, Sarah Halimi’s neighbor. Did he know where he was going when he started to climb up the balcony leading to Sarah Halimi’s apartment? Or did he identify her only afterward? Did he start to beat her because he’d recognized her as the Jewish woman whose children he and his family had insulted for years, the neighbor who’d complained about him the day before? Did he hit her because she screamed and fought him? And when and why did he begin to shout “Allahu akbar”?
It appears that the murder was the result of a spiral of chance events, engineered by psychosis as much as by drug abuse, but with an anti-Semitic impulse in the background, which a significant portion of the French media and judicial apparatus is determined to edit out of the story, partly because it is confusing and partly for what might politely be termed “social hygiene.” What is clear is the reason the three police officer on the scene not only did nothing to stop what was unfolding but even prevented the neighbors from intervening.
France is not convinced by its own reassuring rhetoric about “the deranged.” The country has become so nervous and paranoid about terrorism that here is what, according to sources, apparently happened: Although the man was indeed deranged, the policemen hearing the killer shouting“Allahu akbar” thought they were dealing with a terror attack. They, therefore, backed off and waited for instructions and backup when they could have — and should have — intervened to save Halimi’s life.
A few days after her statement, and in a completely unrelated intervention, Marine Le Pen abruptly denied that France had anything to do with the deportation of Jews during World War II. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

I commented on this piece in Newsweek by Hanan Ashrawi:

The person writing this heads an NGO named Miftah that has published numerous articles that explicitly support terrorism (they removed some but not all when it was pointed out.) One famous article also said that Jews drink the blood of Christians for Passover.

Ashrawi is hardly a reliable source.

Even within this article she repeats the laughable lie that Israel has arrested 800,000 Palestinians since 1967. Simple math and research shows this to be an absurd claim.

Oh, and the prisoners are also demanding - get this - a larger selection of satellite TV channels.And education at Hebrew University. The really have it rough.

Barghouti was convicted in an Israeli civilian court. He headed a group that is designated a foreign terrorist group by the US and EU. This article is a whitewash of the truth and Newsweek should do some basic fact checks on Ashrawi's many, many lies.

(h/t Georgia)

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