Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Davis, CA residents protest Imam Shahin hate speech

Last month MEMRI published several transcripts of hate speech by Imam Ammar Shahin at the Islamic Center of Davis (ICD) in Davis, California, where he explicitly called for the genocide of all Jews. These included these words from July 14::

Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews....Oh Allah, show us the wonders of Your ability that you inflict upon them. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon them. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon those who wish ill upon [the Al-Aqsa] Mosque. Oh Allah, keep them preoccupied with one another, and make a deterrent example out of them. Oh Allah, count them one by one and destroy them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them. Oh Allah, destroy them and do not spare their young or their elderly. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon those who occupy Palestine. Oh Allah, show us the wonders of Your ability that you inflict upon them. Oh Allah, turn Jerusalem and Palestine into a graveyard for the Jews.

And on July 21:

Oh Allah, support the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the rest of the Muslim lands. Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews. Oh Allah, destroy those who closed the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Oh Allah, show us the black day that You inflict upon them, and the wonders of Your ability. Oh Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them.
[...]
Oh Allah, liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Oh Allah, make this happen by our hands. Let us play a part in this. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds. Oh Allah, let us support them in words and in deeds.

After California members of Congress issued a condemnation, the Islamic Center of Davis released a non-apology apology filled with lies that is no longer on their website. The "apology" says

The sermon was about the theological virtues of one of Islam’s holiest sites, Al-Aqsa Mosque. He also addressed the recent horrific events including the illegal closure, occupation, and attacks against Al-Aqsa Mosque, in addition to the killing and injuring of Muslim worshipers, including the wounding of the Imam of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the prevention of worship and the call to prayer at the Mosque. Specifically, the Imam was referring to individuals that are contributing to this oppression.Imam Shahin and the ICD reject any attempt to blame all Jews for Israel’s policies just like we reject the attempts to blame all Muslims for the acts of fringe groups. In reality, Jews around the world are on the front lines speaking out and protesting Israel's repressive policies against Palestinians.
MEMRI, an extremist agenda driven organization that supports Israel's occupation of Palestinian land, and other Islamophobic news organizations, accused Imam Shahin of anti-Semitism, quoting edited, mistranslated, passages of the sermon out of context.
If the sermon was misconstrued, we sincerely apologize to anyone offended. We will continue our commitment to interfaith and community harmony.

Afterwards, when the outcry remained, Shahin issued a somewhat stronger statement of apology - but he didn't repudiate his words in any way. “To the Jewish community here in Davis and beyond, I say this deeply: I am deeply sorry for the pain I have caused.”

Essentially he said: Sorry you were hurt. But I still believe every word I said.

The organized Jewish community seemed to accept his apology at face value, even though the initial outrageous fake apology proves that he was only engaging in PR and does not in any way disagree with his very explicit antisemitic words that were documented in great detail.

A grassroots group formed in Davis and held a silent vigil last night.

Here was the announcement sent via email:

As most of you know by now, Imam Ammar Shahin of the Davis Islamic Center preached a hate-filled sermon on Friday July 14 and also on July 21, in which he (quoting a Hadith) called for the annihilation of Jews. "Oh Allah, make this happen by our hands," asking for his followers to participate in the slaughter "Oh Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them.".and referred to "the filth of the Jews".
Shahin's supporters initially doubled-down and made excuses for the translated sermon, an "apology" was later issued, and some elected officials and Muslim and Jewish leaders held a closed joint press conference in which speeches were made, including an "apology" by Imam Shahin for the "pain" he caused. At no time was there any retraction or denunciation of the words quoted from the Hadith (the same words that are in the Hamas Charter which call for the murder of our Jewish friends, families and children). Neither was there any call for the Imam to be fired. Equally disturbing is the fact that no member of the DIC's board of directors, nor its congregants, have come out asking for his resignation.
No Christian, Jewish, or Muslim clergy who preaches murder of any minority group should be tolerated. Such speech leads to violence and murder. It simply has no place in a civilized society.
We need to do more to bring awareness to our community of this despicable and dangerous man. Imam Shahin has NOT said he was wrong to have made his statements (just that he was sorry for causing "pain"---as if he did not know beforehand). Nor has he said he will stop preaching such vile ideas!
THEREFORE WE ARE HAVING A PEACEFUL VIGIL WITH SIGNS. NO SPEAKERS. NO MEGAPHONES. MAKING A STRONG STATEMENT WITH OUR PRESENCE AND SIGNS.

The protesters were purposefully spread out so that drivers would see them, which unfortunately does not make for good photos of the protest, but some 60 people participated, including many Christians.

I am told that many people of Davis had not been aware of the events happening in their own town and that they were shocked when they heard the details.

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

08/09 Links Pt2: Preaching violence from the pulpit; The Olympics Should Investigate Iran

From Ian:

Clifford D. May: Preaching violence from the pulpit

Imagine if an American priest, minister or rabbi were to call for Muslims to be annihilated. It would be a scandal and it would spark a nationwide controversy over Islamophobia, hate speech and incitement to violence. So why is that not the case when an imam calls for the annihilation of Jews?
On July 21, Ammar Shahin, the Egyptian-born imam at the Islamic Center of Davis (ICD) and an instructor at the Zidni Islamic Institute, both in California, preached from his pulpit: "The Prophet Muhammad says that the time will come, the Last Hour will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews. ... O Allah, liberate Al-Aqsa mosque from the filth of the Jews. ... O Allah, count them one by one and annihilate them down to the very last one. Do not spare any of them. ... O Allah, make this happen by our hands. Let us play a part in this."
A video of the sermon was released by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that for almost two decades has provided access to primary source materials from the Muslim world, translating such materials from Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and other languages.
Stories soon appeared in the Israeli press and right-of-center American news outlets such as Breitbart, The Washington Times, The Washington Free Beacon, The Blaze and Fox News. Left-of-center outlets, also known as mainstream media, apparently saw nothing to report.
The ICD put out a press release calling MEMRI "an extremist agenda driven organization" and claiming that Shahin's sermon had been "mistranslated" and taken "out of context." The imam told a local television reporter that it was "very sad to hear that people are taking your words and they are twisting it around."
In response, MEMRI pointed out that it had posted the sermon uncut and unedited. There could be no question about the accuracy of the translation. The prayer had referred specifically to "the Jews" -- not Israelis or Zionists. MEMRI also translated a sermon from July 14 in which Shahin "made similar statements."

Stabbing attack thwarted near Cave of the Patriarchs

A stabbing attack was thwarted this evening (Wednesday) near the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron.
An Arab approached a Border Police checkpoint near the holy site in a suspicious manner. He stopped several feet from the police before calling out to them. The officers then noticed that he was holding a knife.
The police pointed their weapons at the man and ordered him to drop the knife and surrender. The suspect complied and the situation was resolved without violence.
The suspect a 25 year old resident of Hevron, is being interrogated by police.

'What if Paris attacker was treated like those who attack Jews?'

Amid outrage in France over a suspected terrorist attack against police officers, the CRIF umbrella group of French Jews suggested the incident highlights indifference to anti-Semitic violence.
CRIF on Wednesday posted on Facebook a tongue-in-cheek statement, questioning whether authorities would place under psychiatric evaluation a suspect who fled after ramming six police officers with his car in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret. Two officers sustained serious injuries and the rest suffered moderate ones in the Wednesday morning attack.
“What do you think, should this insane person be put in a psych ward while we contemplate the reasons for his actions?” CRIF posted in French on Facebook about the attacker in Levallois-Perret.
It was a provocative reference to the handling by authorities and the media of the slaying of a Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, in April by a Muslim man who was sent to observation as per his insanity plea even though he has no record of mental illness. He shouted about Allah while killing Halimi, his neighbor, whose daughter he allegedly once called a “dirty Jewess.”
CRIF has campaigned vigorously for the inclusion of an aggravated element of a hate crime into the murder indictment against Halimi’s killer, Kobili Traore. The judiciary’s omission of this element is a “cover up” of the anti-Semitic character of the crime, CRIF President Francis Kalifat has said.

Through the years, I've had my ups and downs with Bibi. I did not like him at all when revelations came out about his extramarital affairs so long ago, in 1993. I thought: How can I trust him with my beloved country when he can't even be faithful to his wife?

Simplistic? Maybe. I was younger then. But from my feminist purview, it really was that simple. Fidelity is fidelity. And I wanted someone who would stand by the country, no matter what.

But I found myself wanting to like him as time went on. Wanting to, and not quite sure I did or could like him.

Sure, he's urbane and eloquent, a brilliant orator. But Bibi has done so many awful things during his career, and flip-flopped on so many important issues it's impossible to turn a blind eye to it all. I laid out many of his misdeeds in a 2013 blog called I Want to Like Bibi:

· He talked reciprocity and gave away Hebron

· He left the government over Disengagement, then voted for it four times

· He criticized Oslo, then gave the Bar Ilan speech

· He's the leader of the Greater Israel party, but froze building in Judea and Samaria

· He wrote a book laying out the reasons terrorists should not be used as bargaining chips, then released over one thousand terrorists with blood on their hands for one Gilad Shalit

· He commissioned the Edmond Levy Report, but didn't bring the commission's recommendations before the Knesset

· He apologized to Turkey for the Mavi Marmara incident, though Israel was the party that was wronged

· He talked the good talk about Iran, but took no real action to apprehend its nuclear ambitions (could he have?)

It's four years since I enumerated all the times Netanyahu waffled and betrayed the country, his fellow Jews. Since that time, there's a lot more. But there's also more in his favor. The way he stared down the UN, for instance.

Masterful.

The way he stayed dignified through 8 years of Obama nastiness, without once losing it. At least not in public. (I couldn't have done it.)

But then there was the time Bibi suppressed crucial military testimony in the Bank of China lawsuit. This was a lawsuit against the bank involving more than 20 families of American victims of terrorist attacks that took place in Israel from 2003-2008, including the families of those murdered in the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva massacre. Shurat HaDin, the Israel Law Center, had initiated the proceedings with the support of the Israeli government, with the knowledge the bank had handled the accounts of senior Hamas officials. Hamas had claimed responsibility for the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva massacre. My friend's son was murdered in that massacre. He was fourteen years old (HY"D).

Avraham David Moses, HY"D, with his little brothers.

It was untenable, unbearable. An agony. But most of all, heartbreaking.

And now, of course, the problem is the way Netanyahu caved on the issue of those metal detectors on the Temple Mount. Everyone knows Bibi let terror win and no one knows why. (Yes. In every case where his behavior is inscrutable, it's always possible there are things we don't and cannot know. Things that go on behind the scenes. But it just will no longer wash.)

Sure. We know about the to-do in Jordan, with the security guard who shot dead two Jordanians after he got stabbed in the back with a screwdriver by one of them. Jordan held him and the Israeli ambassador to Jordan hostage for a short period of time. It was during this time that Bibi had the newly installed metal detectors and other new security aparatus dismantled. This was followed by smiling photos of Bibi sitting with the Israelis released from Jordan. A photo opp.

We were supposed to believe the removal of the metal detectors served as ransom for the Israeli hostages.

But I don't think anyone believed it.

Look, Bibi said it straight out: He wants to keep the status quo regarding the Temple Mount. He wants to fortify the Waqf.

Why? God only knows. I sure don't. I don't understand that at all.

Once again, the Temple Mount was in our hands. Har HaBayit B'Yadeinu! The Arabs were staying away. And we once again thwarted our own ambition. Our highest ambition. (Or did we? Maybe we just didn't care enough.)

Two weeks ago Har HaBayit was empty. It was ours.

And now we have lost our holy place again. Or rather: we gave Har HaBayit to Jordan, once more.

And this time, it's not on Dayan, but on Bibi. Bibi of the "iron wall" remarks of July 23, one day before it was announced the metal detectors were going bye-bye:

"The members of the Government and I share in the terrible grief of the Solomon family. Yosef, Chaya and Elad were murdered by a beast incited by Jew-hatred. The security forces are operating on the ground as necessary, at all times. The home of the loathsome terrorist will be demolished as soon as possible. We are also taking action against those who incite toward acts of murder and those who praise them.

Since the start of the events, I have held a series of assessments with security elements including those in the field. We are receiving from them an up-to-date picture of the situation, as well as recommendations for action, and we will decide accordingly. We are conducting this calmly, determinedly and responsibly and thus we will continue to act in order to maintain security.

Today we are marking the anniversary of the passing of Zeev Jabotinsky, one of the fathers of Zionism. The Cabinet will make an important decision regarding the preservation of his heritage, one of the principles of which – as is well-known – is 'The Iron Wall.'"

It's a disaster, a real one. Not some silly drummed-up charges by those on the left to take Bibi down in court, but a serious reason for the right to boot him out on his butt.

“They are trying to get me and attempting to topple the right,” Netanyahu reportedly told senior officials in his coalition, regarding all the faux criminal investigations surrounding him and his wife. But the "right" isn't right and hasn't been for a long time. Har HaBayit is not ours. We cannot pray there. We aren't building settlements but destroying them. Judea and Samaria are still under martial law.

And there is no iron wall.

The problem is Bibi knows there is no one of his caliber to take his place. This makes him think he can act with impunity, without any accountability to his electorate. This is what we contemplated during the 2015 election. The fact that no matter whom we vote for, we get leftist policy.

We vote for the Likud, for the right, to shore up settlement activity, to be true to Jabotinsky's vision of Greater Israel, an Israel on both banks of the Jordan. We vote for the right so as to end the state of martial law in Judea and Samaria and exercise sovereignty. We vote for the right so Jews will have freedom of worship on the Temple Mount, our holiest site.

But we never get what we vote for. Ever.

And anyway, the alternative is to vote for a small party that can't possibly win enough votes to make noise or effect policy.

A prime minister to replace Bibi: who can find? Moshe Feiglin doesn't have the charisma or the presence. His milquetoast response to the business with the metal detectors was a serious turn-off

"Although I anticipated that Netanyahu would remove the metal detectors from the Temple Mount, and although I very much hoped that I would be proven wrong, things developed in such an amazing and fascinating manner that I couldn’t help but think that perhaps we were on the threshold of an historic change."

So, um. He knew Bibi would blow it, but hoped he was wrong? He was WAITING for things to go south?

Um, WHY? This was a time to scream and act. Not hold our collective breath and wait.

This is not someone who can lead my country.

Bennett? The MK who uses every opportunity and crisis to grandstand and verbally kick the PM between his legs.

Lapid? Who knows what the man believes. To the right, he is right-wing on issues. To the left, he is left-wing on issues. He's a journalist who makes stuff up.

A journalist with great hair.

I could happily give a run down on all the people who might take Bibi's place. But it's a waste of my time and yours.

The bottom line is it no longer matters that the person to take over from Bibi won't have perfect English, be an amazing orator, or a brilliant strategist. We've had enough capitulation on the issues that matter most to us as a people. It's time for Bibi to go.

And it almost doesn't matter who takes his place.

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

UNESCO Calls Pride Rock Scar Heritage Site, Deems Simba Return Illegal (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Pride Rock, Serengeti Ecosystem, Tanzania, August 9 - The United Nations Education, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated this location as a site of Scar's heritage today, striking a political and diplomatic blow against Scar's nephew Simba in their struggle over rule of the pride.

The body voted 14-2 in favor of Scar's claim to Pride Rock, following appeals and machinations by Scar's allies among the member states, and against Simba, who claims title to Pride Rock by dint of his late father, Mufasa. Scar and his supporters, which include the influential Hyena Group of non-aligned states, maintain that Simba has no claim to the title, either because he is not authentically Mufasa's son; because even if he is Mufasa's son, Pride Rock is and always has been indigenously Scar; because Simba or Mufasa stole it from Scar; or because Simba has perpetrated genocide against Scar and has forfeited the privilege of sovereignty on Pride Rock.

While the move carries little practical significance, supporters of Scar trumpeted their victory. "This is yet further proof that our cause is just and the Zionist Simba is but a usurper," declared Shenzee, a Hyena representative who brought the resolution before the Council on behalf of Scar. "Let this herald momentum toward a just resolution of Scar's suffering at the hands of the imperialist Simba."

Observers of the UN lamented the blatant ahistoricity of the vote results. "No serious scholar questions Simba's connection Pride Rock," explained Rafi Ki of Baboon Watch. "The nations involved in this fiasco care more about the declarative value of the motion, though, than about its relationship to reality. This is a non-binding forum through which the various regimes can pay lip service to the Scar cause, even as they develop relationships with the up-and-coming Simba, who may yet prove more useful to them than the tired old Scar who appears more interested in holding onto power than in improving the lot of his subjects."

Recent months have seen increased tension over the historic site, with hyenas and Scar jockeying for control of the elevated area overlooking the pridelands. Simba and his supporters have accused Scar and his allies of inciting violence, while Scar continues to cultivate the image of a pursuer of peace even as his administration pays stipends to anyone who kills a member of Simba's band.

Simba was exiled from Pride Rock long ago and aims to reestablish his place in his ancestral homeland, a move Scar opposes.

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

08/09 Links Pt1: Is the State Department Buying Arab Propaganda?; Preparing for the post-Abbas era

From Ian:

Is the State Department Buying Arab Propaganda?

After centuries of Muslim persecution, often genocidal, or dhimmitude under sharia, Christianity in the Middle East has been stunted, if not effectively crushed. To avoid discrimination, Christians gave their children Arab names instead of Biblical ones. Their religious celebrations are kept indoors, lest Christian festivities offend Muslims. As in a Stockholm Syndrome, Middle East Christians often ended up defending and even praising Islam, even if that comes at the expense of their own religious rights.
It is stunning to see is how on the one hand, the US State Department and media play down the genocide going on today against Christians in the Middle East, but on the other hand, immediately believe Muslims when one of their leaders tells an American delegation that he does not fear Arabs but fears Jews.
With many branches of the US government apparently determined to distort reality, there seems to be a series of deliberate decisions to ignore -- and to prevent the American public from knowing -- what is really going on.
"Politically incorrect" language has been censored by the State Department, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the previous Executive branch, and, most recently, the National Security Council, which recently seems to have purged the entire department.
It is dangerous for the West to accept Arab anti-Semitic propaganda voiced by some Christian leaders in the Middle East; they are held hostage by the Muslim majority around them. Since the age of the internet, even many Arabs have stopped buying Arab propaganda.
A recent mark was retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was Secretary of State. Wilkerson recently said on MSNBC, during the recent Temple Mount crisis, that Jews pose the biggest threat to Christians in the Middle East. He learned this, he said, in 2002-2003 in Ramallah, during a business trip to meet with Yasser Arafat, from a Middle Eastern Catholic Bishop, who had told him that the biggest enemy for Christians in the region was not the Arabs but the Jews. So, Wilkerson, instead of condemning countless unprovoked terror attacks against Israelis, criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It is most unfortunate that a former high-ranking State Department official decided to blame Israel during the recent crisis, in which Jews were the obvious victims. It is more than unfortunate that Wilkerson took the Bishop's statement at face value instead of recognizing the complexities of the Middle East, where "no" and "yes" rarely mean "no" and "yes".

Peace With the Palestinians Was a Bust. Here’s What Israel Should Do Next.

Half a century after the victory in the Six-Day War, 40 years after its most important political benefit in the separate peace with Egypt, half a decade after the implosion of the Arab structures around it, Israel needs a different strategy vis-à-vis the Palestinian issue. Israel should have adopted such a strategy at the latest when the “Peace Process” predictably failed in Oslo, Camp David, and Annapolis. But it’s not too late to finally abandon the fantasy of peace with the Palestinian national movement and move to an admittedly less desirable yet much more realistic proposition of unilateral disengagement from the overwhelming majority of the West Bank. Three questions beg a detailed and responsible answer: Why isn’t peace a possibility? Is there a viable alternative? How would it work?
Why no peace?
Peace, in the sense of termination of conflict and end of claims, where both sides are free to pursue their own separate nation-building projects—an Arab state of Palestine and a Jewish state of Israel—has been consistently rejected by the Palestinian national movement. Manipulative or ignorant Arabs, Westerners, and Israelis who claim that the Palestinians have all but abandoned their insistence on the “right of return”—the destruction of the Jewish state by demographic means—can no longer successfully cheat mainstream Israelis. “Let me put it simply,” said President Abbas, in January 2014: “The right of return is a personal decision. What does this mean? That neither the Palestinian Authority, nor the state, nor the PLO, nor Abu-Mazen [Abbas], nor any Palestinian or Arab leader has the right to deprive someone of his right to return. … The choice is yours. You want to return? You will return. … Even a father cannot forgo his children’s right.”
Palestinian leaders not only consistently rejected a state (notably in 1947, 2001 and 2008) but demonstrated their profound lack of interest in any constructive enterprise when the nation-builder they were lucky enough to have as prime minister—Salam Fayyad—could not muster any significant public support in the PA kleptocracy. For almost a quarter of a century of controlling most of their population—and with contributions, goodwill and assistance on a magnitude never before showered on a small people—Palestinian elites have produced little except for excuses and a discourse of perpetual victimhood. They have never taken responsibility for the consequences of their misguided decisions and have demonstrated no motivation to take charge of their future in an independent state.
Based on their national record since the emergence of a Palestinian people almost one hundred years ago, the State of Palestine, if it is born, will be a failed, violent, corrupt state, adjusted even less than other Arab entities in the region to meet the challenges of the 21st century. As long as they are under occupation the Palestinians have the supreme attention of the world, billions of dollars to live off and scheme bribes off, perfect excuses to invest nothing in their future, and armies of gullible supporters in Western democracies that help them delegitimize Israel. All this will go away if the Jews can no longer be blamed. Since the Palestinians are not willing to terminate the conflict and have no motivation to establish a state and undertake the responsibilities that statehood entails. Next to the Palestinian addiction to victimhood, the other unbridgeable obstacles for peace—including security and the barbaric Hamas regime in Gaza representing half their people—dwarf in comparison.

MEMRI: Motto Of Hamas Summer Camps This Year: 'Marching On Jerusalem'; Their Goal: To Train The Generation That Will Liberate Palestine, Jerusalem

Hamas's summer camps in the Gaza Strip, whose motto this year was "Marching on Jerusalem,"[1] opened on July 9, 2017 and were attended by 120,000 children and teens. According to Hamas officials, their goal is to train the generation "that will lead the campaign of liberation."[2] In addition to Quran lessons, sports and technology activities, games and entertainment, the camps also offered extensive military indoctrination and training, including weapons training.[3]
Explaining the rationale behind the camps' motto, Hamas's former education minister, Osama Al-Muzaini, said: "Jerusalem is the compass of the Palestinian cause and the central issue of the conflict with the occupier... It is part of the Islamic faith, and its liberation is first a religious duty and then a national one." He added that the camps' goal is "to train the generation of victory and liberation, which will have the honor of liberating Jerusalem and uprooting the occupation."[4]
Many of the camps had names alluding to Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, such as the "We Are the Keepers of the Gates" camp, while others were named for Palestinian martyrs, such as the Muhannad Al-Halabi camp, named for a man whose stabbing of two Israelis in Jerusalem's Old City in October 2015 sparked off the Al-Quds Intifada,[5] or the "Eastern Area Martyrs" camp.[6]

HAMAS SUMMER CAMP: "CAPTURE" ISRAELI SOLDIER

A source of pride is the consistent headlines of Israel providing medical assistance to other countries, even those that are not friendly.

For instance, recently, a medical team from Israel was in Fiji providing medical assistance

Also, over the past few years, Israel has not only brought Syrians in need of medical attention into the country, Israel has also built clinics inside Syria and provided tons of food, medicine and clothes.

But what about closer to home? What kind of medical help does Israel provide to Palestinian Arabs?

The medical help that Palestinian leaders get from Israeli hospitals is an open secret, not the least because of the irony of these Arab leaders accusing the Jewish state of all manner of war crimes and apartheid -- all while availing themselves of those medical facilities.

For example, Hamas terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh has never been shy about getting Israeli medical care for his family:

o His daughter (complications after routine procedure)
o His grand-daughter (acute infection)
o His brother-in-law (serious cardiac episode)
o His Mother-in-law (cancer)

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh
Credit: Wikipedia

PA President Abbas is also not shy about having his family treated in the hospitals of the evil Zionist state:

His wife (surgery)
His brother (cancer)
His brother-in-law (heart surgery)

Mahmoud Abbas. Credit: Wikipedia

The sister of Hamas senior official Moussa Abu Marzouk was treated in an Israeli hospital for cancer and most recently chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat is being treated in Israel for pulmonary fibrosis while waiting for a lung transplant.

Saeb Erekat Credit: Wikipedia

But what about the regular Palestinian Arab on the street?

A report published by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) gave the following numbers for how many Palestinians have been treated:

o 2008: 144,838
o 2009: 180,000 (source: IDF)
o 2011: 197,713
o 2012: 219,464 Palestinian patients received medical treatment in Israeli hospitals – 21,270 of them children
o 2015: 221,787 (190,000 from West Bank and from 31,787 Gaza; source: Mako; Hat tip: Elder of Ziyon)

One major factor in the number of Palestinian Arabs who get the medical care they need in Israel is security. That was not as pressing a concern before the Second Intifada in 2000:

“Up until September 2000, a Ramallah resident could have taken his car and driven to Ichilov Hospital [in Israel],” began Commander of Judea and Samaria Division, Brig. Gen. Nitzan Alon [speaking in 2010]. “But from September 2000 we’ve been in a state of terror. Hundreds were killed, Jews and Palestinians alike. The battles took place in the heart of the cities, in places where enemies stood side by side with civilians, with difficult conditions and limited ability to evacuate. We could not practice medicine beyond the minimum. In those days, we were on the verge of a humanitarian crisis.”

But today, he says, the situation is different. Thanks to many efforts on both sides, stability has been restored. “The political leadership is able to make decisions not in the context of buses exploding. And now, along with direct military activity – patrolling, arrests, crossings – we are starting a new kind of routine. Medicine is an integral part of it. In today’s reality, we are obligated to do a lot more than the minimum. Our addressing of the situation should be as wide ranging as possible,” said Brig. Gen. Alon.

But while the situation is more stable, it has not returned to the way things were before the Second Intifada. The process for getting access to Israeli hospitals remains complex:

Sick Palestinians need to see a local doctor, who will refer them to a specialist, who then may ask to send them for treatment in Israel. From there, the Palestinian Authority Health Office will need to authorize it, get a permit from an Israeli coordination officer, find the right hospital, and send a commitment to pay the bill. This process alone can take weeks or even months.

That bill is being paid, at least in part, by the Palestinian Authority. The PA prefers that their people (though not their leaders) get their medical care in the hospitals available in the West Bank and Gaza. Besides the expense of superior care, there is the issue of the PA paying money to Israel, which they do whether the patient is from the West Bank or Gaza. For a time in 2009, the PA stopped paying the Israeli hospitals altogether.

But while the cost of care is higher in Israel than in the West Bank, Palestinian Arabs are charged the lower rates that Israelis pay, not the higher rates for foreigners. Those rates the Palestinians pay are much lower than those in the US or Europe. Another consideration is that there are subsidies from foreign governments, charities and the hospital itself.

An example given by Dr. Weintraub, of Hadassah, in 2009, for cancer care is that “it costs between $50,000 and $100,000 here. It costs four times that in the U.S.”

One source of subsidies is The Peres Center for Peace, which sponsors care for 1,000 Palestinian children each year in Israeli hospitals and provides training for 40 Palestinian doctors.

This medical aid and hospitalization is provided despite an atmosphere of mistrust from the Palestinian patients and potential mistrust from their neighbors for having availed themselves of medical assistance from 'the Zionist state'.

It is also provided despite the claims from those who question providing medical care to the enemies of Israel. Shurat Hadin is among those who have written to the Health Ministry and the National Transplant Center requesting that PA chief negotiator Saeb Erekat be removed from the waiting list for a lung transplant in Israel.

And this medical aid is provided while some in Gaza think that Israel owes them that medical care because of the embargo, ignoring the actions taken by the Hamas terrorists which have made that embargo necessary.

The fact remains that while Israeli medical assistance is most noticed when it is being offered in far away places in friendly countries, it is also available to those with no love for Israel, some of whom continue to wish for it's destruction.

And it is those latter cases of assistance that do not get the big headlines.

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This story is nonsensical unless you understand Arab honor/shame culture.

Many young Palestinians are upset that Israeli police have increased inspections of their bags on the way to visit Al Aqsa Mosque, in the wake of the fact that it has been used as a weapons depot for attacking Israelis.

So they came up with a bizarre plan to walk around with empty knapsacks on their backs. This causes the Israeli police to stop them, check them and check their bags.

When the bags are found to be empty, they claim, the Israeli police are "angry" and, therefore, the young Arabs are happy.

One Arab who saw this play out said, "I saw a group of police officers stop a group of young Jerusalemites in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, they searched their bags, and they were all empty, and I saw anger in the faces of police officers who were not able to do anything but inspect and return the bags to their owners."

This means that these Arab youths are deliberately trying to be stopped and searched by Israeli police, slowing down their ability to visit their supposedly holy site - all because they think that it makes the Israeli police frustrated to search a bag and not find any weapons. And if they are traveling in groups then all of them must wait for every bag to be inspected.

This makes them happy.

While normally, being stopped and searched is considered humiliation for the Arabs, but now that they consider it humiliation for the police they want to be stopped and searched.

Even more insane is that metal detectors would allow them a much faster path to praying (and playing soccer) on the Haram al-Sharif - but that is too "humiliating" so they'd rather be inspected one by one.

But that isn't shameful when they believe that they are humiliating the police instead of being humiliated, which was what they considered being frisked a week ago.

This also illustrates the zero-sum game mentality - if we aren't humiliated, then the enemy must be feeling shamed. And vice versa.

The reason that there is no peace plan that works is because Westerners try to think logically about the issue and to see what each side wants. There is no logic. Arabs generally don't work in a logical world but in an emotional one, where the exact same event can be considered either honorable or shameful based on their mindset that day.

In the end, though, any Jewish control over what they consider Arab and Muslim lands is the ultimate humiliation and that shame cannot be erased no matter how many concessions Israel gives.

The Palestinians don't need aid. They need an army of social workers and psychologists to help their self-esteem (=honor.) If they were half as confident in themselves as they pretend to be, they would be able to make concessions for real peace instead of symbolic victories like supposedly frustrating the police.

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Even two-year old Palestinians are taught to attack Jews

I received this email from Rabbi Elchanan Poupko, a New York based writer, teacher, and blogger.

I am on a visit to Israel and went to the Western Wall.

When I left the Western Wall I decided to walk through the Arab market up to Jaffa Gate. As I am walking I hear a ring of fire crackers, the kind that you throw on the floor and they make a little pop, blowing up all around me. I get under a balcony and it still coming I look around and can't figure out where it's coming from. Suddenly I realize that this Arab mom has her two-year-old child in a baby carriage.

He has a huge package of firecrackers and she has him throwing them on Jews.

I took out my camera took a picture and a video and she got really mad.

Just thought it's a powerful message about what kind of unthinkable things some Palestinians do using their children as tools of terror.

Bang snaps are not dangerous, of course, but the idea that 2-year old kids are being taught from the cradle to throw explosive devices on Jews would be considered shocking in any context - except when the attackers are Palestinians.

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The knock on the door (Forest Rain)

Israelis are generally friendly, warm and happy to have guests over. You don’t have to call in advance, just show up and knock on the door.

But there is also a different kind of knock on the door. One that is never welcome. In fact, it is every family’s nightmare.

Last night a family in Haifa was getting ready to go to bed. Galit and her four children ages 6-14, were going through their habitual motions, the same as any other evening. The only thing different was that Galit’s childhood sweetheart, husband, father of her children, was away in the south of the country, on reserve [military] duty.

Dinner, baths, possibly a TV program or a movie. The things every family does.

There was no forewarning, nothing to raise alarm or concern. Dudi hadn’t gone off to fight in a war, of course he would come back… The news that a military helicopter crashed would not have reached his family. The news was only released this morning.

One moment life is completely normal and then, a knock on the door changes things forever.

Can you imagine that knock on the door, when no one is expected to show up? Looking out, you see military uniforms and somber faces. Your heart begins to race. This is the experience you have heard about from others. The one experience you never dared think about, horror of horrors, the event you never want to have happen to you. But it is happening. This time, the nightmare is yours.

Do you dare open the door? If you let them inside you know your life will be shattered. You don’t want to hear what they came to tell you. At the same time, you know that slamming the door in their face will not undo the reality that is about to step in to your home.

Did Galit hope they were going to tell her that her Dudi had been injured? Were her children next to her when she was notified?

If your child is asleep when you find out that your husband is dead and will never come home again, do you wake up the child or do you let the child sleep to give him or her a few more hours of innocence?

The IDF never leaves a bereaved family to cope alone. A trained team goes to notify the family face to face. They are the ones who take the brunt of the family’s initial shock and all the emotions that rise up as a result – anything can happen from tears, rage, to physical collapse that necessitates emergency medical treatment.

I have heard so many stories of this awful moment. People who opened the door and understanding what they were about to be told, instinctively slammed the door, as if that would keep the awful news away. One mother told me that when she was notified, she fainted. When she revived she found herself lying on her couch but it seemed like she was in a black pit with demons pushing her down. She couldn’t get up, couldn’t hear anything that was happening around her.

I will never forget the teenager who described how the night before they were notified that his brother had been killed, he and his mother felt physically ill. The next day he was sitting in the window of their home and he saw the uniformed team walking to their door. He flew out of the house, screaming at them to go away, to not come any nearer to his home. He did not want to hear what he knew they were going to tell him. He did not want his mother to have to face them. He screamed at them in rage. They calmed him, hugged him and took him inside to speak with the rest of his family.

What a horrible job.

It takes unfathomable depths of spirit to be capable of embracing and containing the pain of families ripped apart.

I did not know Maj. David “Dudi” Zohar or his family but he is (was) a well-known figure in Haifa. He was a Hebrew Reali School alumnus. His four children attend the Reali school (the same school mine attended). The school has a Remembrance Wall for each student / graduate killed during IDF duty or in terror attacks. Dudi’s will be the 302^nd name added to the wall.

Dudi Zohar was a highly appreciated figure in Elbit Systems where he worked for the last 13 years. Just a few short hours before the tragic helicopter crash Dudi was filmed for an internal project in Elbit, geared to support and encourage leadership. He explained his perspective on camera, saying: “Talents are a good starting point. No one is born to be on top. Those who attain the top are born talented but also must work very hard. Talents are the minimal starting point. After that, everything depends on work, guidance and faith… a leader must be brave and have enough daring. His [or her] responsibility is to coach others.”

I didn’t know Dudi but, in a way, I do know him. He is family I never met. His are the qualities that built this country, raised up new leaders and protected our future. He served his people in the IAF and in civilian life. His death bites chunks out of the lives of many who will continue to live but will always have a gap where the man they once knew should have been. The husband, the father, the friend, the advisor, the mentor…. Gone.

I don’t know Galit or her children but I can’t stop thinking about the knock on their door. My heart aches for their pain.

And I hope to God that knock never comes to my door.

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08/08 Links Pt2: Ryan Bellerose: Unassailable; Why Is The News Fake? Visit France see a play on the Toulouse Jew-murderer

From Ian:

Ryan Bellerose: Unassailable

Pro-Israel advocates and activists need to understand that we do not have to say things like “ Jews are indigenous BUT….” Or “ The Arabs have rights too….” Of course the Arabs have rights of longstanding presence but those rights are not the same as indigenous rights.
The indigenous argument is important, because its airtight. The only arguments against it come from people who don’t even understand indigenous rights or indigenous status. The people who say “but the Arabs are indigenous” are only doing so because they have been force-fed false history and lies. The Arabs are indigenous… TO ARABIA, the Hejaz where their language, religion, customs and genetics all come from. If they self-identify as Arabs then they cannot self-identify as indigenous to non-Arab lands and that means any land outside the Hejaz, because truthfully the Arab world should be called the “Arabized” world. Indigeneity is site specific – Jews are not indigenous to the entire Middle East any more than Arabs are, any more than Amazigh are or Bedouin. It’s time to start calling out false narratives, not empowering them.
Jews can trace their lineages back several thousand years. They can show the genesis of their spiritual mode and method and trace it back to Israel, their evolution as a people, their cultural and linguistic coalescence, all of it comes right back to Israel, every path, every creek and stream, every hill, all have a story attached, that’s how you know the Jews are home. How can you expect that to be balanced with a group of people who started showing up in the 7th century and never actually built anything other than some scabby villages and a few mosques?
So get off the fence, you don’t need to be – besides some of you have been fence-sitting so long your ass must be getting sore by now. Take a side, take a stand, because we are the good guys and we are tired of having to carry your ass. No more virtue signaling, no more weak and vacillating arguments that give equal time to the enemy. It’s time to tell the truth.
Jews are indigenous to Israel. Jews are from Judea, Arabs are indigenous to Arabia. It’s not complex, it’s not fair, it’s not balanced, it’s simple unfettered truth.

IsraellyCool: Why Is The News Fake?

Have you ever wondered what I know about how the News Wires like AP, Reuters and Agence France Press (AFP) operate which leads me to be so contemptuous of most of their coverage. This is the first time I’ve told this story in public.
When Matti Friedman first came out and exposed the goings on at Associated Press (AP) in Israel, I recognised the pattern. I had a chat with him and told him the same story I told above: he had never been to the APTN offices in London and wasn’t working directly with the video side but as soon as I told him he started to rethink about things he’d seen while working at AP in Israel.
His original whistle blowing article had put the finger on the problem completely: there is a filter through which the news passes. Stories painting Israel in a positive light very often get blocked, negative stories pass. Negative stories about Palestinian leadership almost never see the light of day.
If you want to see a written version, I first put this down in 2006. It was republished in 2010 largely unchanged. If I have to stress one point about what I saw at the offices of AP TV News in London it is this: why are over half the staff I saw working in a London office speaking and working almost exclusively in Arabic?

Melanie Phillips: Lionising the fringe elements

The key fact about Jackie Walker, however, which has merely been reinforced by her Edinburgh travesty, is that she is troublingly obsessed by Israel and the Jews. In any normal universe, such a person would be treated as a (truly) fringe wacko of repulsive views and ignored. Instead, she is lionised. At Edinburgh she received a standing ovation (ok, there were only about 30 people in the audience, but still) with a banner fixed to the front of the stage reading: “Anti-Semitism is a crime. Anti-Zionism is a duty”.
Across the Atlantic a not dissimilar scene was being enacted by the far left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) at a convention in Chicago last Saturday. That passed a BDS motion, with 90 percent approval of the 697 delegates from 49 states, to wild applause while participants chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. In other words they were chanting their support for the extermination of Israel. This is, of course, what the BDS movement is all about.
You can watch that horrible scene here.
As with the British Labour Party’s Jew-baiting and Israel-bashing bigots, the issue that should cause such concern is the tacit or overt support for such views – or at the very least, the conspicuous failure to confront them.
The DSA claim that they now have about 25,000 dues-paying members nationwide, up from 8,000 in recent years. A similar rapid increase is true of Labour’s far-left Momentum caucus. The real problem, however, is the failure by the Labour Party to kick Momentum out, and the silence of the Democratic party in the US over the DSA spectacle – for even though the DSA is a separate organisation, this is the general direction in which the Democratic party itself has gone.
The deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee Keith Ellison, who has been associated in the past with the virulently anti-Jewish Nation of Islam, has made a number of questionable remarks including recorded comments at a 2010 private fundraiser in which he said that American foreign policy was “governed” by Israeli interests.
In other words, both Jackie Walker in Britain and the DSA in America are holding a mirror up to the so-called moderate left. Like Caliban in The Tempest, those self-described centrists may be recoiling from what they see in that glass – but it’s their own reflection from which they are flinching.

Ma'an publishes, with a straight face, an article by a self-described international law expert named Samir Dweikat describing exactly why Jews have no right to buy land in British Mandate Palestine under international law.

The "logic" is fairly bizarre, but the argument seems to go like this: After the Ottoman Empire dissolved, the Palestinian Arabs gained legal ownership of everything from the river to the sea (even though these boundaries were created by the British and French.)

The laws that governed the area of what became British Mandate Palestine were -Palestinian Arab laws!

And Palestinian law does not allow Jews to purchase land in Palestine!

QED.

The fact that there was no Palestinian Arab entity or Palestinian Arab laws, in 1918 are of little importance to this expert on international law.

"Palestinian law" which apparently governs international law says that Jews have no right to own "any inch of the land...from the river to the sea." Anyone who sells land to a Jew is a traitor and the sale is invalid, and the Jew must return the land. Dweikat reiterates that Jews are not allowed to own even a grain of sand.

Under international law.

Ma'an actually thinks that this argument, made without a single reference to a single actual law, is weighty enough to publish.

Which tells you a lot about Palestinian media altogether.

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An op-ed in Al Hayat says that Israel's support for persecuted minorities in the Muslim world is really the Jews' attempts to destroy Arab and Muslim unity.

You can't make this stuff up.

Salah Hassan writes that Israel has been wooing religious and ethnic minorities in Arab countries, under the pretext of protecting them from persecution by Muslims. He concentrates on how Israel is destroying Iraq by supporting minority population there.

It started with Israel bringing Iraqi Jews to Israel in the 1950s. Then Israel went after the Baha'i, who were concentrated (and persecuted) in Iran and Baghdad, and who now are based out of Haifa.

Israel has been cultivating relationships with the Kurds for decades as well.

The final straw, apparently, was the Israeli Knesset hosting Nadia Murad, the Yazidi survivor of ISIS atrocities, last month. Once again the Jews are trying to fragment the Arab world by turning the Yazidis against the Muslims who are raping and beheading them.

Hassan is also concerned over some Jews who are making noises to save the minority Mandeans in Iraq.

This is all, we read, "part of [Israel's] work on the permanent fragmentation of the Arab countries. This is to complete the work of Daesh [ISIL}"

Of course, the idea that Arabs and Muslims just have to treat their minority groups as human beings is not part of the discussion.

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08/08 Links Pt1: Arab Tour Guides Slander Israel at Yad Vashem; It’s Not the Settlements, Stupid

From Ian:

Palestinian tour guides accused of anti-Israel 'brainwashing'

Palestinian and Israeli Arab tour guides working in Israel are repeating incendiary falsehoods to foreign tourists they take to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem -- including the refrain common among Palestinians that "Israel is doing the same thing to us as the Germans did to the Jews in the Holocaust."
The Israeli Tourism Ministry grants Palestinian tour guides certificates in accordance with the 1994 Paris Protocol of the Oslo Accords, which mandates that Israel allow Palestinian guides, certified by the Palestinian Authority, to guide tour groups in Israel.
However, several Israeli tour guides have revealed that Palestinian tour guides make anti-Israel assertions, not only at Yad Vashem and elsewhere in Israel, but also during other tours, such as those conducted by the Israeli Tourism Ministry to Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
"The problem is mainly with the Palestinian guides, but sometimes also with Israeli Arab guides," says O., an Israeli tour guide. "The guide usually takes a group of tourists on one- to 10-day trips. ... What he says, and how he says it, will shape their opinions of the place and the people."
Tour guide Zvi Harpaz says he has heard the Palestinians slander Israel at Yad Vashem on numerous occasions.
"This is known in the tourism world, and this phenomenon has been around for many years. I myself heard a guide say that exact sentence to a group of American Catholic tourists, and I am not alone," Harpaz says.

Two Rising Stars of the Democratic Party Are Courting the Anti-Israel Left

Senators Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, both of whom are expected to seek the presidential nomination in 2020, have just seized opportunities to shore up their anti-Israel bona fides, according to Jonathan Tobin. Booker, as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voted against the Taylor Force Act—which would condition U.S. aid for the Palestinian Authority on its cessation of payments to terrorists and their families—while Gillibrand made clear her opposition to the Israel Anti-Boycott Act. Tobin writes:
Both [senators] were once rock-solid supporters of Israel. But both have other priorities these days—they are thinking about running for president in 2020. Their problem is that no one who plans to compete in future Democratic primaries can ignore the growing power of their party’s left wing, which has grown increasingly hostile to Israel. The influence of the far left is the only thing that might explain why Booker and Gillibrand are presenting themselves to their party’s base as less than fully supportive of Israel. . . .
Booker—considered very close to the Jewish community [while serving as mayor of Newark], before he was elevated to the Senate—was one of four committee Democrats (out of ten) to oppose the Taylor Force Act. His explanation was that he wanted the aid money to be held in escrow for more than a year. A more likely reason is that he is signaling to the left that he wants to be considered sympathetic to the Palestinians. Gillibrand’s abandonment of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act was just as telling. . . .

Four US Senators and how they betrayed Taylor Force

Somewhere I read their explanations and their excuses, but so much of it was gobbledygook that it made no sense to me.
Nor would it make sense to anyone who has an understanding heart. There is nothing vague or subtle about Abbas’ program.
His program calls for the murder of every Israeli and every Jew, else why the reward?
Taylor Force, a US Army Veteran, was not Jewish (so far as I know) but on a visit to Israel last year he was murdered by an Arab whose family now live wealthy from the PA pension. That’s what sparked the legislation. The only question is – what took so long?
Next question – who could vote against a bill that asks nothing more than humanity and decency?
Perhaps Murphy, Udall and Merkley would like another try explaining themselves, and as for Booker, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach feels “betrayed” by his “friend.”
The advice from Pirkei Avot (“Ethics of the Fathers”) is to “seek no intimacy with the ruling powers.”
They will use you but when it counts they will let you down – and they did it again last week, times four.