Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Iran Threatens To Aim Missiles At Palestinians That Will Miss And Hit Israel (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

: Credit: Hossein Velayati via Wikimedia Commons

Tehran, June 21 - The Islamic Republic of Iran has modified its anti-Israel rhetoric in the last two days to reflect the poor performance of the country's ballistic missiles, media monitors are reporting.

Iranian forces launched seven ground-to-ground missiles at targets of the Islamic State Group in Syria on Monday, declaring the move a retaliatory strike for bombing and shooting attacks that place in the Iranian capital two weeks ago, and for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility. The impressive sights and sounds of the launchings, however, gave way to dismal performance statistics: only one rocket of the salvo hit the target; the other six misfired, fell short in Iraq, or hit places unknown. The poor showing prompted the mullah to alter its threats to target Israel with nuclear-tipped rockets to declare instead that Iran will aim for Palestinian areas, making it more likely that Israel will be hit.

"The Zionists' days are numbered," pronounced Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in a radio address. "We are close to the day when we can place an atomic warhead atop our missiles, at which point we will program the weapons to hit Palestinian cities such as Qalqiliya, Jenin, Gaza, Jericho, and Tulkarem, thus making them more likely to hit Tel Aviv."

"Or we will target the Mediterranean Sea, or perhaps Lebanon," added Khamenei. "The Zionists will cower in fear before they are obliterated, maybe, knowing that our weapons can land almost anywhere. No one will knw where until it happens!" He also threatened to target Israel's offshore gas fields in the Mediterranean by aiming the weapons for Cyprus or Egypt.

Palestinian leaders have remained muted in their response. "We appreciate the sentiment behind the statements," offered Fatah official Saeb Erekat, formerly a negotiator with Israel. "The solidarity with our movement to rid the land of the Zionist occupier is moving indeed. We do think that we Palestinians are quite capable of our own self-destructive behavior aimed at harming Israel, and that while Iran's offer of help is a welcome gesture, it is not Iran's place to sacrifice us in order to destroy Israel. That is our job." He suggested that Iran instead provide the weapons to the Palestinians so the latter may launch them against Israel in the manner that Hamas have done with Iran-supplied rockets in the Gaza Strip.

"Of course we would rather Iran not supply anything at all if it means Hamas gets to use it," added Erekat. The fight against Israel is much too important to be left to anyone who would deny Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas the exclusive glory of conducting it."

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06/21 Links Pt1: Haley to UN Designate Hamas as Terrorists; Gaza’s Fake Humanitarian Crisis

From Ian:

Haley Calls for UN to Designate Hamas as Terrorist Organization

U.S. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley told the Security Council on Tuesday:
"Hamas is one of these forces of terror that yet again showed its true colors to the world earlier this month. It is a terrorist organization so ruthless that it will not hesitate to put the lives of innocent children on the line. A few weeks ago, UN officials discovered a tunnel underneath two schools run by the UN in Gaza. It was the exact type of tunnel that Hamas has used for years. These tunnels are what Hamas uses to smuggle in the materials they need to make rockets. Or to sneak into Israel to attack civilians or kidnap them in the dead of night."
"What is happening to the people of Gaza is heartbreaking. And it is so preventable. Gaza is prime real estate on the Mediterranean Sea. It has enormous potential. But the potential is being squandered by the terrorists who govern it."
"Make no mistake, Israel did not cause the problems in Gaza, even though it is often the usual suspect around here. Ten years ago, every Israeli soldier was withdrawn from Gaza, and for the last 10 years, there has not been a single Israeli settler in Gaza....We should never forget the responsibility for this humanitarian crisis rests squarely with the one group that actually controls Gaza: Hamas."
"I saw how this works firsthand. I walked through one of the terrorist tunnels coming out of the Gaza Strip, which Israel discovered and since secured. The top and sides of this tunnel were lined with solid, sturdy concrete. We know how badly Palestinians in Gaza need concrete to rebuild their homes. But here, in this tunnel, we see how Hamas uses the concrete Gaza receives - not to help the people, but to fortify its terrorist infrastructure."
"This Security Council must stand up to condemn Hamas' terror....We should condemn Hamas in this Council's resolutions and statements. We should name Hamas as the group responsible when rockets are fired from Gaza, or when fresh tunnels are discovered. And we should designate Hamas as a terrorist organization in a resolution, with consequences for anyone who continues to support it. That is how we can help build a more peaceful Middle East."

US Spokesperson Rebukes Veteran Arab Diplomat Over Remark to UN Security Council Comparing Gaza to ‘Concentration Camp’

A veteran Arab diplomat’s remark comparing the Gaza Strip with a “concentration camp” at a Security Council briefing drew a sharp rebuke from the US mission to the United Nations on Tuesday.
“Indecent and irresponsible remarks such as these are another example of the anti-Israel bias at the UN that has to end,” a spokesperson for the US mission to the UN told The Algemeiner following the speech at a Security Council meeting on “the Middle East, including the Palestinian question” given by Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister and UN envoy to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
During his address, Brahimi — who spoke as a member “The Elders,” a body of global influencers gathered under the auspices of former US President Jimmy Carter — sympathetically quoted a Palestinian woman in Gaza who told him, “Israel has put us in a concentration camp.”
Gaza has been under a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade since the violent seizure of power by the Islamist terror organization Hamas in 2007. The Egyptians eased some crossing restrictions with Gaza in December 2016, while Israel enables the constant resupply of civilian and humanitarian goods into the coastal enclave. The UN’s own figures show that between 8,000-12,000 truckloads of goods cross from Israel into Gaza each month, including construction materials, medical supplies, IT hardware, foodstuffs and hygiene products.
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, slammed Brahimi for having made “no mention of Israel’s legitimate right to defend its citizens.” Israel has faced three wars launched by Hamas from Gaza in the previous decade.
“The Security Council has provided a platform to antisemitic comments and a malicious blood libel,” Danon declared in a statement. “This one-sided obsession with Israel is beyond the pale. To accuse the Jewish state of using concentration camps is not only despicable, but it degrades the Security Council and the UN as a whole. We demand that the Security Council renounce Brahimi’s statement immediately.”

Iran’s Real Missile Target Wasn’t Syria

Former Secretary of State John Kerry has recently been making the rounds lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize. Last week, for example, he traveled to Norway where he sat on a podium with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. There, both criticized the Gulf Arab state and the current U.S. administration. In Kerry’s quest for the prize, he either lied about U.S. allies or leaked highly classified intelligence by detailing the (still-classified) contents of conversations. Either way, he sought to depict himself as a peacemaker when, in reality, he emboldened and resourced the main source of instability in the region. In his quest to secure an accord and to cement his own personal legacy at any strategic cost, he watered down language about Iran’s ballistic missile program. This provided Iran with cover, or at least enough legal ambiguity, to pursue its ballistic missile program.
Kerry and his team knew Iran’s aggressive intent but did not care. Numerous Iranian officials—including those surrounding Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—have pledged to develop and even use nuclear weapons. It was Hassan Rouhani, as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, who managed, resourced, and oversaw Iran’s covert nuclear program to develop such weaponry. Indeed, he subsequently bragged about it.
Despite Iran lobbyists’ efforts to suggest that former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said that Israel’s should be wiped off the map, pictures from Tehran and Iran’s own official translations tell another story. When Major-General Hassan Moghadam died in an explosion at a missile laboratory and test facility in 2011, the Iranian press reported that his last will and testament asked that his epitaph read, “The man who enabled Israel’s destruction.” A year ago, Iran tested to ballistic missiles inscribed in Hebrew with calls for Israel’s destruction.
Iran’s immediate target might have been the Islamic State, but its ideological goal remains eradication of Israel. That the former commander of the Revolutionary Guards tweeted acknowledgment of such goal should not be as easily erased as his tweet. After all, Iran deal or not, it is the Revolutionary Guards and not Zarif who are in charge of the military applications of Iran’s nuclear program.

Abbas launches his own pathetic hashtag "With the President"

On the Fatah Facebook page it was announced that "activists" started their own hashtag supporting Mahmoud Abbas, "With the President" # :مع_الرئيس

But that hashtag was actually launched on the Fatah Facebook page hours earlier, to hype Abbas' visiting people in his Ramallah stronghold during their iftar meals. No one used it until then (besides it being used years ago in Egypt):

So Abbas, under fire for his handling of Gaza and his censorship of the media, started his own clumsy social media campaign to make it look like he has widespread support.

This hashtag shows the exact opposite of its intent. It shows that Abbas is not nearly as popular as people pretend and that he has to engage in bizarre social media plots to make it appear otherwise.

On Twitter, the hashtag was used by maybe a couple of dozen people.

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I stumbled onto this 2015 article in Slate about 3000 descendants of Palestinian Arabs who fled in 1948 to Egypt.

It shows exactly how much the Arab world really cares about Palestinians.

Excerpts:

Ghafra, now an 80-year-old grandmother, is one of 40 members of the Abu Hussun tribe who fled Beersheba, an oasis in the Negev desert in what is now Israel, in 1948. They journeyed 13 days on camelback across the Rafah border, along the Mediterranean coastline of the Sinai, and southwest to the Nile Delta governorate of Sharqeya. There, they settled on a piece of land they called Jeziret el Fadl—“Island of Favor.” Nearly seven decades later, 3,000 Palestinians remain marooned on the figurative and largely forgotten island.

“Under President Abdel Nasser, we were granted equal status with Egyptians, so nobody set up specific services for us,” says Said el Namudi, the community leader. “But now, they classify us as foreigners and nobody knows about us. International charities don’t know about us.”

Even neighboring Egyptians don’t know about Jeziret el Fadl. The village is invisible from the road, surrounded by a 9-foot wall of mud and brick. Inside the wall is a maze of one-story houses and dirt paths lined by children. Their distinctive light eyes, dulled by malnutrition, watch me with lethargic indifference as I pass by. These children make up 75 percent of the village’s population today, the result of three generations of relentless reproduction aimed at increasing Palestine’s future population, Namudi explains to me.

“Egypt has been a gracious host to us,” he says, speaking in slow, elegant Arabic. “All we want from the Egyptian government is for someone who lives in Egypt and was born in Egypt to be treated like an Egyptian. … Today, our poor pay the prices of Egypt’s wealthiest. All we want is for our poor to be treated as the Egyptian poor.” As foreigners, the Palestinians don’t have access to the state subsidies provided to poor Egyptians.

Sixty-year-old Maliha remembers well the days when she could pick up bread, sugar, oil, and rice for mere pennies. Growing up, she never worried about having the right papers—why should she? She was born in Egypt and had never thought to question whether she had the right to be there. But suddenly, about 30 years ago, something changed, she tells me as she swings her scythe at knee-high clovers with gusto disproportionate to her age and frame.

“God knows why, but suddenly, we had to pay for everything,” she tells me. “Everything costs money now.”

What Maliha doesn’t know is that 37 years ago, after extended discussions in a place called Camp David, her host country signed a treaty that began U.S. military aid to Egypt—and the end of equal status for Palestinians. With the swish of a pen, the state’s allegiances shifted toward the power and wealth of the West and away from the stateless Palestinians, who had become a political nuisance and a drain on the country’s resources.

Salon may be trying to pin the blame here, obliquely, on the US and Israel. However, an Al Monitor article on this topic says that Egypt started giving Palestinians "foreign" status after Nasser's death, years earlier. Egyptians hated the Palestinians from the start but Nasser liked them.

The situation had already been gradually getting worse throughout the 1970s, but the nail in the coffin came with Camp David and then later that year when a Palestinian assassinated the Egyptian culture minister, Yusuf Sibai, according to Oroub el Abed, a post-doctoral research fellow at the British Institute of Amman. “They started changing laws. During the days of Abdel Nasser, the laws used to say things like, ‘Education is to be free for all citizens, including Palestinians,’ ” Abed says. “But after the killing of [the minister], the words changed to ‘except for Palestinians.’ ”

As these laws began to be implemented in the ’80s under President Hosni Mubarak, people like Maliha gradually lost access to food subsidies, free education, and free health care—and they were then required to obtain and maintain legal residency as foreigners. Failure to do so could mean fines or even jail time, Abed says.

“They live in prison, literally,” Abed says. “Often, the state turns a blind eye because they know they cannot run after everyone. But when they do catch them without the right permits, what do they do? Deport them where? Nowhere. They cannot deport them. They simply put them in prison.”

I follow the region pretty closely, and I had no idea about this. No one wants to notice the facts: Arab states and NGOs claim to care about Palestinians, but in the end the only ones they care about are the ones that can be used as cannon fodder against Israel.

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.@UNRWA still lying

UNRWA tried to raise money on Refugee Day by sending out this message:

69 years since their original displacement in 1948, Palestine refugees are still refugees, awaiting a just and durable solution to their plight.

No, they are not refugees.

As I noted in February, there is only one definition of refugee in international law, in the 1951 Refugee Convention:

Any person who...owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

While Palestinian refugees were excluded under the Refugee Convention from protection by UNHCR, there is no additional definition to include them as refugees. UNRWA has a working definition of something they made up called "Palestine refugees" that have nothing to do with actual refugee status and is entirely for UNRWA to determine who is eligible to receive their services.

Today, nearly none of the original refugees (and some of them were refugees in 1948) are alive, and their descendants aren't refugees.

UNRWA knows all this, as I noted in the earlier article. UNRWA documentation almost never calls them "refugees" but only "Palestine refugees" which has its own definition that has nothing to do with actual refugee status. They cannot apply for asylum in Europe, for example, unless they are also truly refugees fleeing from Syria or Hamas.

And in this case, for this fundraising campaign , they are knowingly lying when they say "Palestine refugees are still refugees."

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06/20 Links Pt2: Breaking the Silence and Immoral Equivalence; Exposing the Media’s Lies About Israel

From Ian:

Immoral Equivalence

In March 2004, a group of Israel Defense Force soldiers founded Breaking the Silence, a nongovernmental organization ostensibly seeking to hold the military to its own stated standards of warfighting conduct. In theory, such a group could serve an important role in checking abuses. In practice, however, Breaking the Silence is something different. It has dubious sources of funding, pursues explicitly leftist political aims, and routinely misrepresents facts to paint Israel in the worst possible light.
Kingdom of Olives and Ash, a new collection of essays edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, features 26 different writers—all of whom visited Israel on delegations organized by Breaking the Silence. The book is a latticework of propaganda, pieced together by distortions and half-truths. The writers are talented, so there are no misplaced commas even though there are plenty of misguided ideas. The felicitous, compelling prose that makes this collection so readable is precisely what makes it so dangerous.
In their introduction, the married novelists Chabon and Waldman explain that they had long avoided the conflict: “Horrified and bewildered by the blur of violence and destruction, of reprisal and counter-reprisal and counter-counter-reprisal, put off by the dehumanizing rhetoric prevalent on both sides; we did what so many others in the ambivalent middle have done: we averted our gaze.” This claim is belied by the fact that Chabon wrote a novel 10 years ago featuring an entire counter-history of the Jewish state, while Waldman, the daughter of a Sabra émigré, has spent a decade fulminating about Israel’s misdeeds on social media.
No, Chabon and Waldman are neither ambivalent nor in the middle. Their insistence to the contrary is an attempt to gull the uninformed reader into believing they came into the project in innocence and came away sadder and wiser and ready to speak truth to power. They claim to have had “no political expectations of these writers,” but their partnership with Breaking the Silence tells a different story. The only scintilla of honesty comes in the form of punctuation: the two quotation marks with which they set off the word “security” when they ask whether Waldman bears “some measure of responsibility for the crimes and injustices perpetrated in the name of [Israel] and its ‘security.’” Since checkpoints, border walls, and police raids might all be justified when the security of civilians is at stake, Chabon and Waldman are compelled to imply that “security” is a mere ruse, that something far more sinister lies at the heart of these unfortunate realities.

Exposing the Media’s Lies About Israel

While today’s widespread use of the term “fake news” can be traced to US President Donald Trump claims that well-established facts are not actually facts, Israel has long had to grapple with the phenomenon of media outlets bending the truth for political gain.
Indeed, the mainstream media often blames Israel for all the problems in the Middle East, and this trend has only been exacerbated by the explosion of social media networks and alternative online outlets. Yet instead of complaining about this unfair treatment, organizations such as Israel’s Tazpit Press Service (TPS) are providing real-time, accurate and reliable news stories for international media outlets seeking coverage of Israel and the Middle East.
“Foreign agencies come to Israel with their own perspectives. No one is completely objective,” says Amotz Eyal, the CEO and founder of TPS. TPS employs “Christians, Arabs, Druze and Jewish experts who provide accurate stories about Israel,” Eyal says. “Our goal is to expose stories that other services do not cover — not just terrorist attacks, but stories about the different communities in Israel.” Since its establishment in 2012, TPS has broken stories on a wide range of topics related to economics, security, politics, technology, scientific developments, agriculture and more.
With regard to Reuters, The Associated Press and other leading wire services, the TPS CEO isn’t worried about taking on the industry’s Goliaths. “We’re not trying to compete by size, but rather by quality,” Eyal said. “We have 250 photographers all over Israel. We have more people on the ground here than any other service. As a result, we get to the stories more quickly than any other news agency.”

Mark Pellegrino: What Makes A State

Mark Pellegrino is an American actor of film and television, best known for his work as Lucifer in Supernatural, Paul Bennett in Dexter, and Jacob in Lost. He is co-founder of The American Capitalist Party.
When it comes to Israel, people generally fall into two categories of thought. The first, is that Israel is an artificial construct of victorious European powers; that it is a result of imperialism and has no claim to legitimacy, and thus no right to exist. The second, is that Israel was founded by Jews thousands of years ago and has every right to exist as a Jewish state regardless of its modern origins. Which perspective is right? Both sides claim a kind of squatter’s status to the land. The first claims an Arab majority has lived in the region for millenia and that this majority cannot be removed by legal fiat. The second claims a historical connection to the land dating back to the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages which entitles an entire people – via a kind of historical deed – to resettlement and re occupation of a geographic area. Though I sympathize with this latter view in terms of verifiable ancestral origins making a clearer tie to the land; and though the idea of migration from one place to another seems, to me, to be a fundamental human right, I find neither argument (from indigenousness) suffices to establish legitimacy in the eyes of those who are undecided on the issue. Furthermore, the fact that indigenousness or the artificiality of redrawn borders is not much mentioned in the establishment of the legitimacy of any Arab state in the Middle East (which were almost universally formed in the same ‘arbitrary’ way as Israel) leads me to believe that something may be rotten in the state of Denmark with such a standard. So, perhaps it’s not the origins of a state that makes for its legitimacy, but rather something else entirely. And perhaps it is the evasion of this fact that shifts the argument constantly to indigenousness as a standard for the establishment of a rightful ‘state’.
Let’s face it, like ALL human knowledge the concept of the state has evolved over time; and, despite the resurgence of statism in the early and mid twentieth century, the idea that the state’s function is the protection of this little thing called ‘right’ has been a nearly impossible discovery to avoid. Even vile statist regimes must play to the notion that they are servicing rights by violating them, and spend much blood and money upholding that illusion. The inflation of rights and the establishment of modern democracies has been the mechanism by which statists maintain this fiction. But the awareness that such a fiction need be maintained shows an evolution. The evolution is this: that even statists recognize protection of right as the function that legitimizes a state. Anything other than rights protection is illegitimate. In other words, any state that practices rights protection is legitimate and has a right to exist (since its right is predicated upon the protection of rights). Any state that does not, or actively violates those rights is illegitimate (for the same reason).

By default, Arabs expect Palestinians to kill Jews (Zvi)

From Zvi:

This Haaretz opinion piece by an Israeli Arab (who is not exactly pro-Israel) includes 2 paragraphs that should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the conflict.

Or so I thought. I had barely la nded my feet on Egyptian soil when I found myself surrounded by an angry crowd in the middle of Cairo. A local taxi driver happened upon my Israeli passport and took me for a Jewish spy. I was interrogated in public for two hours, during which I struggled to explain that there were Arabs living in Israel, too. The crowd burst into sudden collective laughter, and when an old Egyptian man wondered loudly why we were not fighting the Jews, I knew I was in trouble.Indeed, for millions of Arabs outside Israel, the idea of an Arab living in Israel, and not against it, seemed absurd on both counts: How could the "bastards" manage to survive within the Jewish State when a coalition of five Arab armies was crushed by it? And why in hell would the Jews let the bears in their backyard in the first place?

Arab societies have assigned a job to "Palestinian" (and Israeli Arabs, if they knew that Israeli Arabs existed). That job is to kill Jews. If the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs are not killing Jews, then they are not doing their job. And if they are not doing their job, then in Arab opinion, they are traitors. If they live peacefully beside Jews, they are traitors. If they espouse nonviolence, they are traitors. If they negotiate with Israel, they are traitors. Those who got out of the way of the Arab armies and went to live in some other Arab country are not doing their job. They are traitors, and are treated like the scum of the earth. Those who would accept compensation are traitors; so if they sell a house to a Jew, they are murdered in cold blood.

Israeli Arabs are somewhat insulated from all of this because Israeli society DOESN'T assign them the role of Jew-killers, and most have no interest in proactively accepting that role.

But Palestinian kids are taught that role, intensively, from early childhood onward.

To most Arabs, the Palestinians are nothing but cannon fodder. They exist to kill Jews - nothing else. Any other behavior makes them traitors.

And the PA, HAMAS - all the Palestinians' dreadful leaders - are complicit in accepting and promoting that vicious delusion.

Arab "support" for the "Palestinian cause" is not support at all. It is threat and intimidation. It is the bayonet in the back that keeps the "cannon fodder" charging forward, rather than finding something more worthwhile to do with their lives.

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Meet Ro’i Klein. Look at his face. Doesn’t he look like a sweet and gentle man? 31 years old, husband to Sarah, father of three year old Gilad and one and a half year old Yoav, Ro’i (pronounced “Row-ee”) is an example of the best of Israel.

Admired for his calm peacefulness and constant smile, Ro’i was known for saying: “If I don’t do it, who will?” (All the best ones say that, think and act according to that idea).

People who live in other countries do not understand why we Israelis love our soldiers so much. We keep saying that we hate war and violence, loving our soldiers doesn’t seem to fall in line with that sentiment. Ro’i Klein and others like him are the reason why.

Ro’i was a Major and Deputy Commander of the 51st Unit of the elite Golani Brigade. Golani has a slogan that captures the atmosphere in the unit: “My Golani”. The army belongs to the country but the country belongs to its citizens and Golani belongs to each soldier serving in the unit. Not only that, Golani belongs to the family of each soldier in the unit and all of them belong to each other. It is not a unit made up of interchangeable, replaceable cogs, it is a family and every single member is precious.

On July 26th, 2006, the day before his birthday, Ro’i was with his soldiers in Lebanon. They were battling Hezbollah in Bint J’bail. Because the IAF had scattered fliers warning the citizens of Bint J’bail that fighting was to ensue, Hezbollah had time to prepare traps for the IDF soldiers.

Hezbollah captured one of the soldiers, 24 year old Amichai Merchavyah. Ro’i and his soldiers gave chase, trying to rescue Amichai. The Hezbollah fighters led them into a dead-end alley.

They were trapped.

One of the Hezbollah fighters threw a grenade at the soldiers. That had been the intent all along – to kill the Israeli soldiers in one fell swoop.

Ro’i, the commanding officer had to take care of his soldiers, he had to protect them, his family. Terrorists were trying to kill his children! No, I don’t mean Ro’i’s two children at home. In that moment Gilad and Yoav didn’t matter, neither did his wife Sarah. It was the children standing next to him that Ro’i had to protect. He had to make sure they went home to their families.

He knew he wouldn’t.

Ro’i told the soldier manning the radio to announce what had happened. Then Ro’i threw himself on the grenade.

Those of his soldiers who made it home say that Ro’i had just enough time to say “Shema” before he was blown to smithereens. “Shema” is the prayer central to the Jewish faith: “Hear oh Israel the Lord is our God, the Lord is One”.

Parents all over the world declare that they love their children so much that they would even die for them. In most countries that would be a hypothetical situation. In Israel, it is not.

Sometimes terrorists enter our homes threatening our next of kin. Sometimes terrorists attack on the street, in buses and cafés endangering members of our family that we have never met, related to us through their belonging to the nation of Israel... We are a tiny people and we truly are one family – we bicker and quarrel and we love each other so much that sometimes we die for each other. And that is exactly what Ro’i did.

Nine soldiers died on July 26th. They were fighting terrorists in Lebanon so that their families at home in Israel could live free from the threat of those terrorists. They were fighting to protect their mothers and fathers, neighbors and friends. They were fighting to protect people like me, people they never met.

We love our soldiers because they are us. They aren’t some people far away, doing things that have no bearing on our lives. They are us. They are our sons and fathers, brothers and friends. They are our sisters too. Our soldiers are our family. The loss of one is the loss of a beloved family member, whether we knew the soldier personally or not. Each is precious, none are replaceable. Ro’i is (it hurts to say was) exceptional but by no means unique. He is one of many who say “If I don’t do it, who will?”

Haim Smadar and Noam Apter are just two examples of others who made the same purposeful, loving, awe-inspiring choice Ro’i made. Each one was “just” a normal Israeli, someone who walked amongst us every day. They got up in the morning, went to school, went to work, met with friends, played with their kids, did things normal people do. They weren’t normal though – that is to say, they weren’t average – they ARE normal Israelis. Ro’i was a father and a soldier. Haim was a father and a security guard who checked clients entering a local supermarket. Noam was a son and a student.

That is the quality of spirit that exists in this country. They are our family. They love us with a passion so great they sometimes give their lives for us. And we love them back.

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06/20 Links Pt1: Knife-wielding Palestinian attacks Israeli troops, is shot dead; Is PA planning to deceive the US Again?

From Ian:

PMW: Is PA planning to deceive the US and donor countries – AGAIN?

The Palestinian Authority is planning once again to hide its approximately $300 million a year in payments to terrorist prisoners and the families of so-called "Martyrs," by continuing to reward terror but in a different framework, according to some Palestinian sources.
The first time the PA did this was in 2014 when the PA closed the PA Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs, which had paid the terrorist salaries, yet continued the payments through the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs. After Palestinian Media Watch exposed the PA's deception in The PA's Billion Dollar Fraud, by documenting the money transfers from the PA to the PLO, the PA law mandating salaries to terrorists has been repeatedly condemned by the US and countries in Europe.
Now, with increasing pressure by the US and other donor countries for the PA to stop rewarding terror, the PA is looking for a new way to both accept the international demands and yet at the same time continue paying terrorists, according to some Palestinian sources.
Hassan Asfour, a former PA minister and current associate of Muhammad Dahlan, political adversary of Mahmoud Abbas, explained it as follows:
"Abbas, despite his initial objection [to the US demand to stop prisoner salary payments], has begun to examine practical options to comply with the American demand in a way that will not lead to an explosion that might lead to his downfall and the downfall of their [Abbas' and US'] joint plan. Among these options that are being examined with special secrecy, is the option of transferring the prisoners' and Martyrs' salaries to a 'social insurance' body so that it will look as if it is 'humanitarian and social aid to needy families' and not 'monthly salaries to fighter families.'" [Fatah Voice, independent Palestinian news website, June 3, 2017]

Caroline Glick: Livni and dangers of peace theater

The homes of the terrorists who murdered Border Police officer Hadas Malka on Friday evening are now bedecked with Fatah flags and banners reading, “Our heroes.”
Far from condemning the terrorist attack, Palestinian Authority chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and his comrades are condemning Israel. Its security forces, they allege obscenely, committed a “war crime” when they killed the three terrorists to stop their rampage.
The only reason that these actions are not enough to warrant the US and the rest of the West – not to mention the Israeli Left – treating Fatah/PLO as the terrorist group they are and have always been, is because doing so would require them to stop playacting at peace making.
And they couldn’t have that.
Instead, they mimic or recycle “peace process” lingo about “windows of opportunity,” and reincarnate failed peace processors.
In apparent bid to do the latter, last Friday Channel 10 first reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked MK Tzipi Livni to join his government with her Knesset faction and serve as his foreign minister.
While Likud denied the report, Livni claims Netanyahu made the offer through mediators that have been carrying out indirect negotiations between the two politicians.
Livni also has said that she rejected Netanyahu’s offer because she doesn’t believe he is willing to adopt her expansively pro-PLO positions.
Assuming that Livni is telling the truth and Likud’s denial is false, we need to ask why Netanyahu made the attempt.

Fathom Forum with Einat Wilf

Dr Einat Wilf served as an Intelligence Officer in the Israel Defense Forces and was member of the Israeli Parliament from 2010-2013 on behalf of the Labor and Independence parties.
In this video she will provides new thinking on the Peace Process, explaining how “constructive ambiguity” has prevented both sides from reaching a negotiated settlement, and arguing that the Israelis and Palestinians need to adopt a new strategy of “constructive specificity,” the idea of specifying in detail exactly what is required from each side if the process is to result in a ‘realistic’ peace, the excruciating compromises that are necessary, and bring the century-long conflict to an end.

This past Sunday, Iran fired a series of missiles at ISIS terrorist bases in eastern Syria, in retaliation for the 2 terrorist attacks in Tehran on June 7.

Iran's Tasnim News Agency reported the the retaliation was A Warning to Foolish Troublemakers:

The “limited missile raid” by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps against terrorist positions in Syria’s eastern region of Deir ez-Zor unveiled part of the Iranian Armed Forces’ assault and deterrent capabilities, Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan said Monday.

The strike was also a “crushing response and a warning” to those seeking to ignite tensions with their troublemaking and ignorant ambitions, he added.

Late on Sunday, the IRGC fired six missiles, including high-precision Zolfaqar missiles, at various targets in Deir ez-Zor within a range of 650 to 700 kilometers.

But as it turned out, the Iranian missile display really wasn't all that crushing.

In fact most of the Iranian ballistic missiles failed to reach their intended targets. Ehud Ya’ari of Israel’s Channel 2 reported that of the 7 missiles that Iran launched, only one managed to reach its intended target in Syria. Of the others, 3 missiles crashed into Iraq, one landed a few hundred meters short of the target, another landed in the Deir Ezzor area and the location of the last missile was unknown.

Of course, that did not stop Iran from having video available as a testament to their missile-launching prowess.

Still, at least Iran's claim was not as contrived as in years past.

In 2008, Honest Reporting revealed an example of Iranian fauxtography where the photo below appeared on the web site of Sepah News, the PR news service of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Later, the photo was replaced with this, the actual, original one:

Little Green Football showed how parts of the original photo were reused in order to hide the fact that of the 4 rockets -- one had failed to fire.

In 2013, The Telegraph reported on another example of Iranian fake photography when the paper revealed that a picture of Iran's premier fighter jet patrolling the skies was in fact a fraud.

A picture of the Iranian Qaher 313 -- a jet that was dismissed as a model that was not even capable of flight -- was found with the same shadow and light as the one flying over Iran's Mt Damavand.

In addition, a stock photo of Mt. Damavand was found that was very similar to the one in the fake photo.

So while the threat of Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb is very real and very serious, their technology is not as advanced as they would have the West believe.

When it comes to Iran's ballistic missiles, the fact that Iran can miss their intended target reminds one of Hamas, whose rockets have been known to land close to home. After all, doesn't Hamas get supplies and material from Iran?

On the other hand, keep in mind that it is likely that Iran gets some of its own missile technology from North Korea, and while North Korea is an unpredictable threat that cannot be dismissed, 2 rocket launchings failed in April just 2 weeks apart.

Is the fact that both countries have had such spectacular fails proof they are helping each other?

[Hat tip: DG]

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Yesterday, Ma'an Arabic reported that Israel reduced the amount of electricity to Gaza by 8 MW. It quotes a Hamas spokesman as saying that Israel is fully responsible for the reduction in electricity and for how difficult this will be for Gazans.

Today, Ma'an reports that Israel reduced electricity again by an additional 12 MW.

In neither of those articles is it mentioned that the Palestinian Authority demanded these cuts and stopped paying for that electricity, and that Israel was reluctant to go along.

Their English-language articles mention that this was at the "request" of the PA. But they also emphasize that NGOs are demanding that Israel supply the electricity for free anyway, laying the bulk of the blame on Israel.

The PA has been reluctant to publicly own its decision to cut Gaza off from electricity. The official Wafa news agency only speaks about it elliptically, saying the the ultimate responsibility for all woes in Gaza is Israel's. It didn't even mention the reduction in electricity over the past two days - done at the PA's insistence.

Hamas and the PA don't like to publicly blame the other for this crisis. No doubt part of the reason is because their Arab patrons are so sick of their infighting that the flow of money to both the PA and Hamas is threatened when Arab nations see them using their own citizens are pawns in their political fight.

The non-partisan Arabic media don't want to contribute to the gaping schism between the sides.

So Israel is a useful scapegoat.

As always.

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Palestinians try to compare payments to terrorists to Israeli social welfare programs

The pressure is certainly on the Palestinians for paying prisoners - which is the most sacred part of the Palestinian Authority budget, and the one that has been under international scrutiny for the past month or two.

Hassan Abed Rabbo, media adviser for the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs, wrote an article rejecting any effort by any party to reduce the PA budget so it cannot pay terrorists and their families. He says that the West is informed that changing the salaries of "prisoners and martyrs would lead to the collapse of the PA, and the people would protest in the streets."

Abed Rabbo staunchly defends the institution of paying prisoners as part of Palestinian resistance. (Which we all agree with!) he ends off by calling for Palestinians to unify and come up with alternative methods of paying terrorist salaries in case the West cuts them off.

Odeh Bisharat, writing in Haaretz, advances a much more bizarre argument supporting salaries to terrorists:

Did Israel pay child benefits to the family of Yigal Amir, the man who murdered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin? Will Ehud Yatom, who killed the two Bus 300 hijackers with his own hands, get an old-age allowance? Does the state pay old-age benefits to Moshe Zar, who was the driver for the Jewish underground cell that in 1980 planted a bomb that led to the amputation of the legs of Nablus Mayor Bassam Shaka?

These are just some examples of Jews who were involved in acts of terror and the killing of prisoners. There are more. The answers to the questions, of course, are clear; these and others who committed acts of terror are getting social benefits. And that’s fine, because a properly run state makes a distinction between rights and duties. Lawbreakers must be punished, but not deprived of their social rights; otherwise, it would be a jungle here. Even criminals have the right to live in dignity, not to mention their families, who are entitled to social benefits no matter what their relatives have done.

U.S. President Donald Trump violates this fundamental principle. He claims to want to achieve peace in the Middle East, while at the same time demanding that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas halt stipends to the families of Palestinian prisoners, thus sentencing tens of thousands of people, including many children, to poverty or even starvation, which sooner or later will fuel another outburst of violence.

Yes, this was a serious argument published in Haaretz this week.

Bisharat's arguments are laughable. If paying salaries to these terrorists was part of a normal social program, then the PA should also pay the equivalent amount to people in its own prisons and their families.

But the PA and the PLO pay these people not because they are poor but because they are heroes. Bisharat calls paying salaries specifically to murderers to be a "right."

The Palestinians love this argument. This drivel that does not distinguish between normal social programs and specific programs to deliberately pay and honor terrorists was republished in Ma'an, Al Quds al Arabi and elsewhere.

Not surprisingly, Bisharat's justifications for supporting terror are partially supported by the New Israel Fund.

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Kontorovich and NGO Monitor eviscerate the UNHRC "blacklist"

Legal expert Eugene Kontorovich spoke at the UNHRC today about the blacklist of companies that work in the "occupied territories" that the UN is putting together.

NGO Monitor and Kontorovich have put together a booklet showing many companies who are profiting from other occupied territories - companies that the UN doesn't care about: From its introduction:

On March 24, 2016, at its 31st session, the UN General Assembly Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted Resolution 31/36, which instructed the High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare a “database” of business enterprises.1 The database will focus on one particular issue, which an earlier Council resolution claimed raises human rights issues: that “business enterprises have directly and indirectly, enabled, facilitated and profited from the construction and growth of the settlements.”2

Such an activity—making blacklists of private organizations—is absolutely unprecedented for the HRC. And the current “research” program is focused on only one context: companies working in areas designated as being under Israeli civil jurisdiction in the West Bank under the Oslo Accords. The General Assembly has allocated $138,700 to cover the costs of this research project. The clear goal of the Council in producing such a list is to create negative reputational consequences for the listed companies, and ultimately to trigger sanctions against targeted companies through subsequent action by the Security Council or national governments.3

If business activity that “facilitates” or “profits” from settlement activity raises human rights issues, then the Commission’s current research program is unjustifiably narrow in its scope, and fails to capture the full context and magnitude of business activities that support settlement enterprises in occupied territories. The narrow focus of the report’s mandate undermines both the legal and practical value of the resulting database. It is also likely to produce consequences both unexpected and undesired by the Council and member states.

Every situation of prolonged belligerent occupation in the world involved widespread “settlement” activity—a non-technical term to refer generally to the migration of civilians from the occupying power into the territory.4 In all of these occupations, business enterprises, including third-country firms, play a major economic role. Many of these settlement enterprises have resulted in the large-scale ethnic cleansing or displacement of the occupied population or subjected it to widespread and massive human rights violations that have been amply documented.

This report is designed to put the HRC’s “database” project in a global perspective. It examines business activity in support of settlement enterprises in occupied territories around the world. This study reveals that such business is ubiquitous and involves some of the world’s largest industrial, financial services, transport, and other major publicly traded companies. Such companies include Siemens, Crédit Agricole, BNP Paribas, Santander, Vodafone, Renault, Veolia, Trelleborg, Wärtsilä, and Turkish Airlines, to take just a few examples.

...As this report shows, the kind of business activity on which the Council is composing a
“database” on the grounds that it violates human rights, is ubiquitous in occupied territories
around the world. Yet in all of the occupation/settlements contexts examined in this study,
the Council has never mentioned the issue of foreign business activity in its detailed reports
on the human rights situations in these territories. If such activity—which in all these cases
contributes to the occupying power’s ongoing control of the territory and dispossession of the
occupied people—is truly a human rights issue, these massive omissions suggest a complete
disregard by the Council for the human rights of people around the world. In such a case, the
Council is not even worthy of its name.

On the other hand, such omission would be justifiable if, as argued here, otherwise legitimate
business activity does not become illegal when it supports a contested political or territorial
situation. In such a case, it would only be the Council’s inquiry into Israel that is unjustified and illegitimate. Instead, it would be just the most egregious example of the Council’s “practice of wrongly singling out Israel for criticism,” which US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has recently demanded must end.13 Such a practice is, as Ambassador Haley says, “seriously wrong,” and deprives the resulting database of any legitimacy.

In other words, the UNHRC is filled with hypocrites for pretending that companies in occupied territories are violators of human rights when they only single out one alleged occupation and give everyone else a pass.

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