Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 09, 2017

In His Talks With The President, Abbas Moved The Goalposts and Is Already Trying Mislead Trump (Daled Amos)

A few days ago, Noah Pollak wrote that in his meeting with the president Abbas Lies to Trump, Big Time:

There was only one remarkable moment in the otherwise formulaic remarks to the press Wednesday by President Trump and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas: a claim by Abbas so audacious and dishonest that he may have damaged his credibility with the president:

"Mr. President, I affirm to you that we are raising our youth, our children and grandchildren, in a culture of peace."

Abbas and Trump Credit: Whitehouse.gov

Pollak goes on to show that on the contrary, based on his previous statements, Trump is well aware of Abbas's dishonesty.

Let's hope that Trump is also aware of Abbas's deception in rigging negotiations with Israel.

During that same meeting, Abbas Told Trump: Peace Talks Should Resume From Where 2008 Negotiations With Israel Left Off

The Palestinians showed Trump the details of the negotiations with Olmert. “At the time, we presented land swaps of 1.9 percent [of the West Bank] and Olmert offered 6.3 percent, and this is where things ended because Olmert left politics, and we told [Trump] and his staff that the differences are not so great and that is a good starting point for any negotiations on borders, which is a critical issue and which will have implications for all the core issues and the permanent agreement,” said the official.

There are 2 claims made here:

The implied offer to Olmert of land swaps of 1.9% and Olmerts offer of 6.3%.
The breakdown in negotiations was due to Olmert leaving office under scandal

Back in 2011, these same 2 claims were made by Abbas himself, with a slight difference:

Abbas also contended that he and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were "very, very close" to reaching a peace agreement in 2008, before the Israeli leader left office under a cloud of corruption allegations.

"It was a very good opportunity," he said. "If he stayed two, three months, I believe that time we could have concluded an agreement."

He confirmed Olmert's account that the Israeli leader was prepared to withdraw from 93.5 percent of the West Bank. The Palestinians, Abbas added, responded by offering to let Israel retain 1.9 percent of the West Bank.

The difference is that Abbas explicitly states that the Palestinian offer of 1.9% of the land was in response to Olmert's offer, not before.

So on this basis -- Olmert's leaving office early and the Palestinian last counter-offer of 1.9% -- Abbas wants to begin the negotiations on borders from this point and go forward from there.

Abbas, French then-President Sarkozy and Olmert Credit: Israeli Prime Minster's Office

But this suggestion by Abbas is simply not true.

The Abbas version of events is directly contradicted by the Palestine Papers, a collection of confidential documents about the Israeli–Palestinian peace process leaked by Al Jazeera between 23 and 26 January 2011. They were authenticated by Al Jazeera and The Guardian, and a media adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also affirmed their authenticity.

According to those papers, Abbas never presented Olmert with a counter-offer.

Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East has carefully reviewed the "Palestine Papers," which Al Jazeera says are Palestinian Authority documents memorializing a decade of Israeli/Palestinian peace talks. If these documents are authentic, they offer significant clues to one reason why the process has thus far failed.

Sr. Ruth Lautt, O.P., Fair Witness National Director, says "What the documents from the post-Annapolis talks reveal is that members of the respective negotiating teams shared pragmatic talk about borders, Jerusalem and refugees. While there was not complete agreement on core issues, there was hope of reaching a compromise. A 'Palestine Paper' dated August 31, 2008, memorializes Israeli Prime Minister Olmert's peace proposal package. But there is no indication that Palestinian President Abbas ever came back with a counteroffer."

The "Palestine Papers" reflect claims about an alleged counteroffer, but no evidence that one was ever relayed to Olmert. A December 14, 2008 memo shows Saeb Erekat telling Israeli negotiator Udi Deckel that the Palestinian counteroffer had been 1.9%. It appears, however, that 1.9% was a number Palestinian negotiators had been discussing with the Israeli negotiators prior to the Olmert offer. And, as Deckel points out, "discussions on territory" between negotiators do not constitute a leader's response to a comprehensive peace offer.

An internal Palestinian document reveals that Abbas never intended to respond to the offer at his September 16, 2008 meeting with Olmert, which he regarded as merely "ceremonial." A memo drafted in preparation for that meeting states:

In order to avoid the blame game, the President [Abbas] today is going with a positive attitude, where he will ask more questions from Olmert on his offer, and he will tell him that the Palestinians will respond later.
There is no record of a subsequent response from Abbas.

Rev. Thomas Prinz, pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Leesburg, Virginia, notes that "Talk amongst negotiators is very different from an actual peace proposal agreed upon by leaders." [emphasis added]

This version of events, that Abbas did not provide a counter-offer to Olmert is confirmed by none other than Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat himself:

Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Ereqat reveals that PA President Mahmoud 'Abbas refused an offer by the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert to establish an independent Palestinian on an area equal in size to the West Bank and Gaza, with a 6.5% land swap to accommodate the settlement blocs.

Ereqat said that the late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat had instructed him to uphold the Palestinians' full rights, including their right to all the West Bank and Gaza, as well as Jerusalem, 37 kilometers of dead sea coast, 46 kilometers of no man's land between Latrun and Jerusalem, the right of return for the refugees and a safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza. Ereqat added that 'Abbas had given him similar instructions, and emphasized that no Palestinian would give up these rights. If Israel rejects the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, he concluded, it will be left only with the option of a bi-national state. [emphasis added]

Source: Al-Hayat (London), November 17, 2010

Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat.
Credit: Wiki Commons

Abbas is moving the goal posts by trying to talk Trump into starting the talks from a point in time that never existed. If Abbas really is unable to be an honest negotiator, then Trump will have to either have to find a way to pressure Abbas in order to keep him honest, or admit that peace talks at this time are simply not possible.

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In 2012, I reported that Cloudflare, a company that protects websites from denial of service attacks, was protecting Hamas websitesm which appears to be a violation of the US Patriot Act.

EoZ readers created enough of a stir that Reuters interviewed Cloudflare, where they defended their decision on freedom of speech grounds. Cloudflare's CEO, Matthew Prince, claimed that the company wasn't doing anything wrong: "We're not providing material support for anybody. We're not sending money, or helping people arm themselves."

The words "material support" are important, because that is what is prohibited to give to terrorists under the US Patriot Act. But the Patriot Act itself defines what "material support" is:

The term “material support or resources” means any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (1 or more individuals who may be or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials.

The way that Cloudflare works is that all traffic that is meant to go to these websites first goes through Cloudflare servers which decide if it is legitimate or not, and then it gets passed through to the actual website. This means that Cloudflare is providing communications equipment and services, as well as intangible property and facilities in the form of a front end to the target webservers. Their technical support teams may even be considered "personnel" under this definition if they ever work together the webmasters of terrorist organizations.

ProPublica had an article on Cloudflare recently that concentrated on a different topic: Cloudflare would provide personal information of people who complained about various white supremacist organizations to the organizations themselves, which then proceeded to harass the complainants mercilessly.

However, the article also said:

In 2015, the company came under fire from the hacker collective Anonymous for reportedly allowing ISIS propaganda sites on its network. At the time, Prince, the company’s CEO, dismissed the claim as “armchair analysis by kids,” and told Fox Business that the company would not knowingly accept money from a terrorist organization.
[CloudFlare counsel Doug] Kramer, in an interview with ProPublica, reiterated that the company would not accept money from ISIS. But he said that was not for moral or ethical reasons. Rather, he said, Cloudflare did not have dealings with terrorists groups such as ISIS because there are significant and specific laws restricting them from doing so.

The same laws that prohibit Cloudflare from giving services to ISIS are the ones that prohibit it from providing services for Palestinian terror groups.

And Cloudflare protects Hamas website Hamas.ps, the English site of the Al Qassam Brigades as well as the Arabic site, the website of Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine site, and the Nedal Brigades website of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. (Look up the Name Server section of each of the WHOIS links provided to see for yourself that CloudFlare protects these sites.)

All of these are designated foreign terrorist organizations by the US State Department.

The penalty is $50,000 per violation, and arguably every single time someone surfs to a terrorist website and Cloudflare intercepts and inspects the traffic it is a separate violation (a "service") - which would be billions of dollars in fines.

So why has Cloudflare not been fined by the US for what appears to be clear violations of the Patriot Act?

(h/t Ben)

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Pro-Hamas "rabbi" seemingly trying to sneak into Israel from Egypt

David Mivasair is the "rabbi" of a synagogue in Vancouver named Ahavat Olam. Judging from its website, the synagogue has no address outside a post office box and has not planned any events since announcing services last Rosh Hashanah which may or may have not actually occurred. Mivasair seems to make his living doing weddings and teaching kids their bar/bat mitzvah portions.

At one point he was on J-Street's rabbinic council, although I'm not sure he still is. He is active in Jewish Voice for Peace.

He is on the record supporting Hamas rockets to Sderot.

Whenever we read about … I have to say about a puny, ineffective rocket fired into some place like Sderot, something to think about is very likely that very likely the people firing it are the children or grandchildren of people who perhaps once lived in Sderot. But it wasn’t Sderot, it was a Palestinian village that had existed there for centuries that had several hundred people who were forcibly expelled at gunpoint and when the place was empty, then Jews moved in and built a town…

Mivasair also implicitly justified 9/11 by saying that Israel and the US are to blame for radical Islam in critiquing a sermon by another rabbi:

The sermon identifies radical Islam as “the enemy” of our time just as Nazism was so disastrously the enemy three-quarters of a century ago. Further, it says that for Jews not to recognize this today is parallel to Jews in Europe in the 1930's not accepting the reality of the threat posed by the Nazis in their time – which only makes the threat of radical Islam more threatening and largely the fault of those Jews who don't think so.
The writer avoids any mention that both the US and Israel might have done something to elicit such enmity. It is as if it arose spontaneously, a completely irrational aberration in human thinking, with no relationship whatsoever to anything that the USA and Israel have ever done.
On Rosh ha-Shanah, of all days, we need to look at our own failures and misdeeds. ...
... It is not Israel’s mere existence which has led to growing enmity but rather Israel's actions. Similarly, the reader is expected to forget current US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and decades of history, for instance, that the dictatorial regime in Saudi Arabia which produces Wahabi extremists and exports “radical Islam” is itself a direct creation British imperialism at the end of World War I and would not have survived without United States support.

This year, Mivasiair hosted a seder themed around Deir Yassin in a church.

In other words, Mivasair is a disgusting excuse for a human, let alone a Jew or a "rabbi."

Mivasair created a GoFundMe page to raise funds to go to "Palestine" this month, joining a group of Israel-haters in Hebron to protest "50 years of Occupation" with the anti-Israel group called the Center for Jewish Nonviolence whose activities are planned for May 14 – 22.

Yesterday, a week before the "direct actions" in the territories, he flew to the Middle East - but not to Israel.

On his Facebook page he wrote:

In my seat in Egypt Air 996 to Cairo. Announcer welcomes us "as-Salaam aleikum wa-rahmat-Allah wa-birkathu" -- peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessing. We will be in Cairo in 11 hours inshaAllah -- if God wills it.

It appears that Mivasair knows that Israel is cracking down on anti-Israel activists at the airport and is trying to sneak into Israel through the Taba crossing in Egypt instead, hoping that the Israelis aren't looking as hard at that crossing.

I doubt he came up with this idea himself, chances are that many of the planned protesters have come up with this way to sneak in as well.

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Tunisian Nobel Peace Prize winners urge Israel to release murderers. For "peace."

In 2015, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet "for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011".

These noble Nobel winners now have a new cause: to allow terrorist murders to be released, because some of them are on a hunger strike.

They sent a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations saying they want to draw his attention "to the deterioration of the health situation of Palestinian prisoners who are engaged in a hunger strike for the past seventeen days."

"We appeal to you to help mobilize the international community to pressure Israel to release Palestinian sisters and brothers detained illegally in Israeli prisons and to put an end to their suffering and the suffering of their families."

Well, if they actually took their hunger strike seriously, they'd end their suffering soon enough.

Peace doesn't mean the same thing it used to.

(I'm surprised they didn't get Jimmy Carter to join them.)

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05/08 Links Pt2: Deborah Lipstadt: Behind the lies of Holocaust denial; More Lies from the UN

From Ian:

Entire platoon calls commander who claims he beat Palestinians a 'liar'

Former members of a platoon in the IDF's Nahal Brigade who served with Dean Issacharoff, spokesman for the nongovernmental organization Breaking the Silence, which publicly and often anonymously criticizes IDF conduct in Judea and Samaria, are furious with their former comrade over public claims that while serving in the army, he beat a Palestinian he had been sent to arrest while his fellow platoon members watched.
Issacharoff made the allegation on camera at an event hosted by Breaking the Silence, a group whose aim is to collect recorded testimonies of IDF misconduct in Judea and Samaria.
Issacharoff 's former platoon comrades went on record calling his "testimony" an outright lie, and are even threatening to sue him for slander.
On Thursday, the Reservists at the Front organization, which is devoted to countering false or distorted narratives about IDF conduct, posted a video on its Facebook page in which 11 former members of Issacharoff 's platoon, as well as company commander Omri Synar, face the camera -- their full names appearing on screen -- and deny his claims. The video went viral, racking up about 270,000 views and thousands of likes and shares. The post was also translated into English.
"When I saw his testimony, I was just astonished," Synar told Israel Hayom.
"I talked to the war room, the command center, and all the soldiers. Maybe there had been something I hadn't seen. No one understood what he was talking about. I'm willing to take any lie detector test. It never happened. It's a completely made-up story," the company commander said. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Behind the lies of Holocaust denial

"There are facts, there are opinions, and there are lies," says historian Deborah Lipstadt, telling the remarkable story of her research into Holocaust deniers — and their deliberate distortion of history. Lipstadt encourages us all to go on the offensive against those who assault the truth and facts. "Truth is not relative," she says.

Undercover at a secret ‘neo-Nazi’ meeting with Holocaust denier David Irving

Holocaust denier David Irving spoke alongside other anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists at a secret meeting of the “neo-Nazi, white supremacist” London Forum, where it was claimed Auschwitz was “like Disneyland” and that the Holocaust was “gossip”, “propaganda” and a “rumour", The Independent can reveal.
Mr Irving, whose defeat in a libel trial is dramatised in 2017 blockbuster Denial, began by praising the organisers for ensuring there were “only white faces in the audience”.
Fellow speakers delivered anti-Semitic jokes and coded references to Adolf Hitler to a receptive crowd of around 100 at the meeting, which was attended by an undercover reporter.
One attendee told this reporter the murder of MP Jo Cox was “cheery news”. Another claimed there were Jews controlling “all 193 states” and a third said life for African-Americans was “better before the end of slavery”.
Far-right luminaries appearing alongside Mr Irving included Vincent Reynouard, a Frenchman who like Mr Irving has been imprisoned for Holocaust denial; Alison Chabloz, whose anti-Semitic songs have seen her banned from the Edinburgh Fringe; and David Shayler, an MI5 agent turned 9/11 truther who has claimed he is the Messiah.

Those non-indigenous Zionist pigs strike again!

From the Palestinian Authority's official "news" agency, Wafa:

A wild pig attacked on Friday night a 10-year-old child in the town of Yamoun, west of Jenin, causing her injury in her hand, according to local sources.

They said Alaa Houshieh was admitted to hospital after she as bit in her hand by a pig.

Palestinians say Israeli settlers let wild pigs run loose in the fields to attack farmers and villagers as a way to keep them off their land.

The residents, who say they never before had wild pigs in the West Bank until the settlers came there, have urged the Palestinian Authority to help get rid of the wild pigs in their areas, which have become a threat to them, particularly children.

From Baedecker, 1906 " Palestine and Syria with the chief routes through Mesopotamia and Babylonia: handbook for travellers"

From "Palestine," Josiah Conder, 1830:

From Psalms 80:13:

Why hast Thou broken down her fences, so that all they that pass by the way do pluck her? The boar out of the wood doth ravage it, that which moveth in the field feedeth on it.

Yes, the wild boars are more indigenous to the region than....Palestinian Arabs.

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There are a number of NGOs that report on checkpoints that Israel places to protect Israeli citizens from being, you know, murdered. Machsom Watch, B'Tselem, Amnesty, the Al-Quds Center for Israeli and Palestinian Studies, EAPPI and others eagerly watch for alleged human rights abuses at these flashpoints where many Palestinian attacks occur.

Hamas security just issued a statement recommending that all Gaza residents carry their identity cards at all times.

The reason? "The cards would facilitate the passage of citizens through security and traffic barriers."

Meaning, Hamas sets up arbitrary checkpoints throughout Gaza. Not at the border: inside Gaza itself, for whatever reasons.

You know what to do, NGOs who pretend to be concerned about human rights abuses: Ignore Hamas as you always do and pretend that the only terrible checkpoints are the ones that actually, provably save lives.

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05/08 Links Pt1: Abbas's "Culture of Peace"; To Pursue Peace, Stop Rewarding Palestinian Terrorists

From Ian:

The PA's quandary

Lately, there have been numerous reports that U.S. President Donald Trump is demanding that Abbas stop his payments to imprisoned terrorists. It is unlikely he will succeed where the EU has failed. Sources in the EU claim that in recent years, Abbas has cunningly put a billion dollars in donations aside to be used for welfare payments to imprisoned "martyrs" and their relatives. A senior Fatah official, Rawhi Fatthouh, told Europeans who are not well-versed on the topic: "These are innocent civilians who were living peacefully in their homes and were suddenly arrested by Israel. ... Entire families were killed in the 2014 operation [Operation Protective Edge]."
Trump's advisers would be wise to clarify to him that Abbas, the ruler of the "Palestinian entity," governs something of a hybrid between a failed state and a third-world country. In this strange body, the national agenda is dictated to the rulers by imprisoned terrorists. During the great crisis between Fatah and Hamas in 2006, Abbas and former Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal authorized the prisoner leadership to pen the settlement document. Imprisoned terrorists top the lists of donation recipients. Thousands of terrorists -- some would even say tens of thousands, if you include the security forces and "reserves" -- have adopted a policy of "I have earned this with my sacrifice."
Raising the demand that Abbas halt the payments to terrorists and their families is therefore more likely to embarrass the person making the demand than the Palestinian leader himself. Abbas will refuse. He faces no greater threat than the threat of imprisoned terrorists.
In Israel, every home needs a balcony. In the territories, every home needs a prisoner. In the war over the Palestinian street, the one with the most prisoners on his side wins. Abbas could threaten to resign and "hand back the keys," or even flee the region. It would be easier for Abbas to resign and escape than it would be to go down in history as the man who made Palestine a normal country, free of terror and incitement. Abbas would rather refuse Trump than be remembered as the Palestinian leader who forced Hamas to beat its swords into plowshares and made PLO operatives turn their spears into pruning hooks.

PMW: Abbas refuses to stop salaries to terrorists

PA Chairman Abbas and numerous other Palestinian Authority leaders have rejected the demands of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump, and many other governments and legislators to stop the payments of salaries to imprisoned terrorists.
Following the demand made by Israel and just before Abbas' meeting with Trump last week, Director of the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake announced Abbas' "absolute refusal":
"The President [Abbas] emphasized his absolute refusal of the Israeli demands to stop the allowances of the families of the prisoners and Martyrs (Shahids), and emphasized his absolute support for them (i.e., for the payments).'"
[Amad, independent Palestinian news website, April 29, 2017]
There are two recurring Palestinian defenses of the payments. (See additional sources below.) The first is that the prisoners are not terrorists but "freedom fighters" and therefore rightfully are being rewarded. The second claim is that the payments are actually "social welfare for the families," and therefore not a reward for terror. Both of these claims are false.

Who's telling the truth, Abbas or Netanyahu?

Palestinians: Abbas's "Culture of Peace"

Thanks to Abbas's falsehoods, his media continues to this day dishonestly to talk about "Jewish invaders and settlers storming" Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. This and this alone is the source of the knife and car-ramming attacks against Israelis.
Perhaps by a "culture of peace" Abbas means calling -- as he and his top officials regularly do -- Israel an apartheid and racist state. Or maybe "culture of peace" means calling all Jews "occupiers" and "colonists" -- or denouncing and threatening Palestinian children who play soccer with Israeli kids. Or naming schools and electoral lists after convicted murderers?
Under Abbas, anti-Israel incitement and indoctrination is a business that has expanded exponentially. It has, in fact, grown to the point that a new generation has been raised on the glorification of jihadists -- a generation impatient to draw yet more Jewish blood. If this is Abbas's "culture of peace," one has to wonder what he would consider a culture of war?

Elder summarized an interesting article that talked about how societal norms change not due to decisions made by the majority, but as an accommodation to an inflexible minority.

This phenomenon can be thought of in economic terms. For example, the fact that most commercial beverages are kosher is not because that choice was forced or imposed upon the drink industry by the Orthodox. Rather, the fact that those who don’t keep kosher wouldn’t care (or even notice) whether the beverages they drink are kosher or not means going 100% kosher gives a beverage manufacturer access to 100% of the market without the cost of creating and maintaining separate product lines.

This idea can also be thought about in light of evolutionary theory. For instance, which religion is likely to have more staying power in terms of natural selection: one that is indifferent to (or even encourages) members to explore alternatives, or one that exacts a high price (up to and including death) on those who leave he faith?

There are some confounding variables which prevent this idea from morphing into a theory of inevitability. For instance, a faith that is intolerant to apostates might apply that term to people within the faith who stray from orthodoxy, leading to the kind of population-reducing religious civil wars we’ve seen throughout history. But the theory does demonstrate the power an intransigent and even irrational minority can have over a culture – for good or for ill.

I’d like to explore the ill side by looking at the concept of the BDShole – you know who I’m talking about – in light of a book I read a while back called Assholes: A Theory by philosopher Aaron James. Behind the amusing title is an idea of a unique type of unpleasant person – the asshole – which is distinct from the jerk, the shmuck or other types associated with rude or unpleasant behavior. For the asshole (quoting from James) uniquely combines the following characteristics:

1. He allows himself to enjoy special advantages and does so systemically.

2. He does this out of an entrenched sense of entitlement.

3. He is immunized by his sense of entitlement against the complaints of other people.

As an aside, James prefers “he” in the belief that the majority of assholes are male (which he explores from a sociological perspective), although in the case of BDSholes I think it’s safe to say this is a gender-neutral term.

If you buy into James’ descriptive list, you can see why the asshole’s behavior is particularly infuriating. For a jerk cutting into a line in front of you because he’s in a hurry is annoying. But when an asshole does the same thing, he (or she) is informing everyone they cut in front of that they do not matter – a message all of us react to with anger and resentment. This might explain why we might fight with or avoid the asshole, even if we forgive a rude friend for the same misbehaviors.

Looking at the BDSholes behavior in light of James’ three characteristics, consider a phenomenon discussed frequently on this site: the fact that BDS advocates (and anti-Israel activists generally) demand we take them seriously as human rights activists and insist we respond to their accusations (usually illustrated with bloody photographs) of Israeli “atrocities” in the name of human dignity and justice.

But when confronted by the fact that the Palestinians and their Arab nation-state supporters are guilty of these same crimes a hundred fold, the BDSer becomes angry – even furious - ignoring any appeal to the same humane values they insist we use when considering their accusations.

This behavior makes sense, however, in light of James’ description of the asshole. For the BDShole insists that title of human-rights champion as well as the vocabulary of justice and virtue belongs exclusively to them, and does so in a consistent (actually permanent) manner. The BDShole does so out of a sense of entitlement that they, and they alone, are part of an all-seeing vanguard that understands the world in ways all others do not. And this entitlement allows them to say and do whatever they like, whenever they want to, despite the harm their words and actions routinely cause others.

Why would the boycotters cause mayhem and misery on campus after campus, church after church, civic organization after civic organization for paltry real-world political gain? Why would the coopt every campaign and organization genuinely dedicated to human rights, decimating those institutions’ ability to actually fight on behalf of the poor and weak, just to use them as weapons to harm their political foes? What are they even thinking when they scream their heads off at the mere mention of the violence and misogyny and bigotry of those with whom they are allied?

It is because they systematically assign to themselves the privilege of defining both themselves and others out of a fantasy-driven sense of entitlement which immunizes them against any and all criticism.

In short, they are assholes. And if the general tone on campus is any indication, other political groups have been taking notes about the power such assholiness has over others and are starting to act upon what they’ve written down.

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B'Tselem writes in a January backgrounder:

Israel prevents the repair and restoration of the power station it bombed in 2006, keeping it from operating at full capacity.

The people who run the Gaza power plant disagree.

From the Palestine Electric Company 2016 Report:

Palestine Electric Company was invited to participate in an open meeting held in Gaza by the Palestinian Institute of Communication and Development, titled “ The facts behind the electricity crisis in Gaza strip” on 8 March 2017, which brought together all parties interested in inquiring about any aspect related to the power plant’s technical performance, government agreements, signed contracts, company vision and goals and financial matters.

The purpose of this important meeting was to clarify any matter that has been mishandled by the local media in recent affairs amidst many unjustified claims. Palestinian press and media were invited to record and take notes of the happenings.

PEC’s Executive Managing Director was happy to answer all questions along with the power plant’s managers of the different departments. Palestine Electric Company has always advocated full transparency in all its affairs from inception to date.

The following are the main points that were highlighted and discussed:
[...]
- The clarification that the power plant is capable of generating the full capacity of 140MW if fuel is available.
[...]
- The company is very vigilant in carrying out the necessary maintenance work on a regular basis to ensure the continuity and peak performance of the power plant at all times.

The report says that the power plant has been able to provide its full capacity since February 2015. Not half capacity, as Gisha and other NGOs insist - full capacity.

Whether Gaza's electricity infrastructure can handle the full 140 MW is a different question. It is also unclear whether the fuel tank damaged by an errant Israeli shell in July 2014 has been fully repaired. But all of the media and NGOs that claim that Israel is to blame for the power plant not operating at full capacity are, quite simply, lying. The only real limitation, with the report makes quite clear, is lack of fuel, and Israel pumps all the fuel that is paid for (which is at the moment, zero, because of infighting between Hamas and Fatah.)

B'Tselem and Gisha, not to mention the numerous other NGOs and media that depend on these biased sources, are not telling the truth - because they want everything to be blamed on Israel.

(h/t Irene)

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From AFP, in its article on the video footage of Marwan Barghouti eating cookies during the hunger strike that he pretends to lead:

Some 850,000 Palestinians have been incarcerated since the Israel's occupation of their territories 50 years ago, Palestinian leaders say.

Palestinian leaders usually say that between 850,000 and 1 million Palestinians have been "detained" or "arrested" since 1967. (Sometimes they slip and say "imprisoned" as well.)

Those numbers are lies. I have never found any actual study that claims to count anything close to that many people arrested; on the contrary, Palestinian NGOs who actually keep track of arrests and detentions count only several thousand a year at most (and some of those are suspect.)

As far as I can tell, the number of pretend arrests has been inflated over the years with the reported total Palestinian population so that the propaganda NGOs can consistently claim that 20% of all Palestinians, and 40% of all Palestinian men, have been arrested. (See Addameer from 2004 2008 and 2015 reporting that exact ratio with numbers of 650,000, 700,000 and 800,000.)

AFP is going further than most of the bogus Palestinian statistics, however. It claims that there have been 850,000 people incarcerated, not just those arrested or "detained" as the lying Palestinian NGOs usually say.

It would be bad enough if AFP just parroted easily debunkable statistics without comment. But in this case they are creating their own!

This is quite literally fake news.

(h/t Yair)

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How are terrorists treated in Israeli prison?

COGAT has a backgrounder on how Israel treats convicted terrorists and other political prisoners.

Security prisoners in Israel are entitled to a number of basic rights, as well as receiving additional benefits. Under the basic conditions, inmates are entitled to meet with an attorney (within a professional framework), receive medical treatment, religious rights, basic living conditions (such as hot water, showers and sanitation), proper ventilation and electric infrastructure. They also receive regular visits from the Red Cross and education as well.

Apart from these basic conditions, security prisoners in Israel's are entitled to receive newspapers, send and receive letters and read and keep their own books. Prisoners are even permitted to buy goods from the prison's canteen, which is run by the inmates themselves. If that is not enough,relatives of prisoners can deposit money for them at the post office's bank. As a part of the living conditions, prisoners receive family visitations, television watching hours and even electrical appliances, such as kettles and mosquito killers. On top of it all, many security prisoners receive monthly salaries, which can sometimes reach up to 12,000 NIS a month, from the Palestinian Authority for carrying out their murderous crimes. COGAT recently posted a report describing the funding by the Palestinian National Fund to Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails. This report can be found here.

Using this information, it can be determined that it is better to be behind Israeli prison bars than it is to be in the streets of Hamas controlled Gaza. Israel grants all these rights to prisoners who, more often than not, attempt even from their prison cells to carry out attacks against Israel's citizens.

COGAT adds that of the 6,100 Arab security prisoners, fully one third of them were directly involved in murdering Israelis.

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Liberal rabbis, defending Sarsour, say terrorist Rasmea Odeh may be innocent

The New York Daily News has an op-ed by rabbis Ellen Lippman and Barat Ellman, fully supporting Linda Sarsour's activities and defending her from accusations of antisemitism and supporting terror.

How they treat and downplay the most damning piece of evidence of Sarsour's support for murderers shows how intellectually dishonest Sarsour's supporters are:

Still others point to her friendship with and support of Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted of involvement in a 1970 supermarket bombing in Israel that killed two people. They ignore Odeh’s claim that she was tortured and coerced into confessing guilt, a contention worth exploring.

This is simply disgusting.

There is overwhelming evidence of Odeh's guilt, not the least from her friend bragging about it in a film that is sympathetic to Palestinian terrorists..

There is also overwhelming evidence that Odeh was not tortured, as she confessed only one day after her arrest, not after "25 days of torture" as she claims.

Legal Insurrection has the entire story of Odeh in great detail, and no one can credibly claim that she is not a terrorist after reading that. She herself admits another attempted terrorist bombing, of the British Consulate.

Lippman and Ellman care more about supporting those who would destroy Israel than the truth. More sickeningly, they give credibility to proven terrorists over justice system of the State of Israel, whose trial of Odeh was transparent and fair, even according to the ICRC.

Sarsour is a supporter of Odeh, and therefore a supporter of terror. This is to be expected.

But Lippman and Ellman are more perverse, They are Jews who are willing to spit on the memories of Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner, the two people Odeh murdered in the 1969 supermarket attack, in order to show support for a person who supports terror (and Shari'a law, and the destruction of Israel, and who claims that feminists cannot be Zionist...)

These "rabbis" don't give a damn about the facts of the case. They will support their anti-Israel friend no matter what, and the evidence that she explicitly supports a proven and convicted terrorist - who has admitted belonging to a terror group and the attempted British Consulate bombing - is just something to be swatted away with an airy "oh, maybe she's innocent, the evil Israelis probably tortured her into confession" - an accusation with no merit or an iota of proof.

They are beneath contempt.

Joffe and Kanner

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05/07 Links: Attempted terror attack in Jerusalem; Quilliam’s “Former Extremist” Still Supports the Jihad Against Israel

From Ian:

Video allegedly shows hunger-strike leader Barghouti sneaking food

The Israeli Prison Service released a video on Sunday purportedly showing Palestinian inmate and hunger strike leader Marwan Barghouti secretly eating a candy bar and other food in the bathroom of his cell on Friday.
Barghouti, a convicted terrorist serving five life sentences, has been leading a large-scale hunger strike among Palestinian prisoners to push for more privileges, ratcheting up tensions with Israel and on the Palestinian street. The strike entered its 21st day Sunday.
The video shows two separate occasions — on April 27 and May 5 — in which Barghouti could be seen apparently unwrapping food in his prison cell and eating it in his toilet stall.
When asked for comment, a prison service spokesperson said: “The video speaks for itself.” (h/t Elder of Lobby/Yenta Press)

ברגותי אוכל בתאו from שירות בתי הסוהר on Vimeo.

Female assailant tries to stab cop in Jerusalem, is shot dead — police

A young female assailant who attempted to stab police officers was shot dead by security forces at the Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem on Sunday, police said.
None of the officers were injured in the alleged attack attempt.
According to police, the girl approached a group of officers who were standing guard at the gate.
“The terrorist arrived from Sultan Suleiman Street toward the steps of the Damascus Gate. She approached a police and border guard force stationed in the area. She took out a knife and while screaming ‘Allahu Akhbar’ tried to attack them,” the spokesperson said.
“The force responded with determination and professionalism, and neutralized her,” the spokesperson added.
The assailant was not immediately identified, but police said she appeared to be a “Palestinian minor.”
Police recovered her knife, along with a note in which she said goodbye to her family “and signed it with the word ‘martyr,'” police said.

Visit to Israel by Prince Charles scrapped because of FCO 'pandering' to Arab nations

Foreign Office blamed for dumping invitation issued by Rivlin for Prince of Wales to commemorate Balfour in Israel
A planned visit by Prince Charles to Israel to mark the Balfour Declaration later this year has allegedly been scrapped to avoid upsetting Arab nations.
Although the trip was never officially announced, it was rumoured to be under consideration after Israeli president Reuven Rivlin issued an invitation during a meeting with Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in Jerusalem in March.
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, told the Sun the decision was an “insult to British war dead”, and accused the Foreign Office of being behind the decision.
Mr Kemp claimed the FCO were “pandering” to Arab dictators by allegedly blocking the trip.
No Royal has ever been on an state visit to Israel since it was founded in 1948, although there have been official visits to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya and Qatar.
According to the Sun, the decision was made by the Royal Visits Committee – part of the FCO - and there is no suggestion the Prince of Wales was involved in the cancellation.
The invitation reportedly never reached the office of Prince Charles.

David Collier: Special report: A day of anti-Israel hatred at the University of Warwick

On Thursday, 4th May, I spent the day at the University of Warwick. Warwick forms part of one of my favourite areas of the UK. Close enough to visit from London in a day, and containing both Warwick castle and Shakespeare’s town, Stratford upon-Avon. As is proving to be a recurring theme, the romantic relationship I have with the country of my birth is being torn apart piece by piece. This is my report:
The conference was a full day event. It did not seem to have been long in the planning. Advertising for the event suddenly appeared about two weeks ago and I only saw the event promoted via social media on some university related Facebook pages, and of course, on the pages of the local anti-Israel activist groups.
Logistically , the conference was made up of three panels, three speakers in each and a final ‘keynote’ conversation between a lawyer/activist at an anti-Israel NGO and a Palestinian legal academic. Apart from the final keynote, each academic would present a ‘paper’ and have 15-20 minutes each to speak. Each of the four sessions was chaired by a University of Warwick academic. Fifteen participants in total. ‘Coincidentally’, all four of the chairs (Sara Salem, Alice Panepinto, Teodora Todorova & Nicola Pratt) are all University of Warwick academics who have engaged in anti-Israel activism.
The room was small, attendance peaked at about 45 people. Fifteen participants, alongside a few other organisers. A small number of other Warwick academics were present. Fifteen or so activists from the local Leamington Spa and Warwick Palestine groups also turned up, to have their fetish fed. Perhaps a handful of ‘others’. There was not much of a student presence at all.

The World Bank continues to issue reports about how bad the Palestinian economy is:

JERUSALEM, April 27, 2017 – Foreign aid and investment alone will have limited impact on the Palestinian economy without significant changes on the ground, according to a new World Bank report. A paradigm shift is needed among all parties to break the vicious cycle of near-stagnant economic growth and ongoing political uncertainty – and this could allow foreign aid to have a much more catalytic impact.

The new World Bank report will be presented to the Ad Hoc Liaison committee (AHLC) on May 4, 2017 in Brussels, a policy-level meeting for development assistance to the Palestinian people. The report points out that actions to address past recommendations for policy changes have been inadequate. In addition, the report issues a call to address immediate risks created by economic stagnation that could endanger the social equilibrium by creating the conditions for sustainable growth.

“The Palestinian economy is failing to generate jobs and incomes,” said Marina Wes, World Bank Country Director for West Bank and Gaza,”one third of Palestinians are out of work and more than half of the youth in Gaza are jobless. Gaza is on the verge of a human catastrophe. Such a critical situation is not in anyone’s interest. Concerted efforts by all sides are needed to bring a real change on the ground, boost economic growth and provide hope and prospects for Palestinians, especially youth.”

In the face of dwindling donor aid, the report outlines a number of policy recommendations for improving economic conditions and laying the foundations for sustainable growth. With an US$800 million financing gap, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has to address government spending in payroll and pension payments, and improve its revenue collection through the domestic tax system. Actions are also needed to improve the investment climate and competitiveness, and help new companies enter the market.

The World Bank issues detailed reports on the economies in the territories, and it notes how the PA pays to much in salaries.

But it never mentions how much the PA (or their parent PLO) pays to terrorists and their families.

As of last year, $128,518,896 was paid to terrorists in prison and ex-prisoners, and $174,630,296 to the families of "martyrs." This doesn't include the parts of the PA budget that indirectly support terrorists like their Commission of Detainees and ex-Detainees Affairs.

Don't be fooled by the claim that these expenses are now paid by the PLO, not the PA. The PA gives the PLO $230 million a year.

For an economy that is in such bad shape, these are huge sums of money.

Yet these payments to terrorists are sacred to the Palestinian leadership.

A senior Palestinian Authority official has rejected the “insane” demand that it end its policy of providing social welfare payments to the families of Palestinian terrorists jailed for carrying out attacks against Israelis.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s foreign affairs adviser Nabil Shaath on Thursday told Israel Radio the demand was intentionally designed to sink any potential for renewed US-led Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

“It’s absurd to request that we stop paying the families of prisoners,” he said. “That would be like asking Israel to stop paying its soldiers.”

There you have it: terrorists to murder children are the Palestinian equivalent of soldiers.

This is the elephant in the room. And the only reason the World Bank doesn't mention these huge expenses in their reports is because it is too politically explosive to say that paying terrorists is a Bad Thing.

Which brings up the more fundamental question of why does a society that prioritizes paying terrorists over its own economy, over building hospitals and universities and real state institutions, deserve to become a state?

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