Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

09/12 Links Pt1: Abbas’ advisor: US Ambassador “motivated by satanic urge”; Israel Rescues the Middle East, Again

From Ian:

PMW: Abbas` advisor: US Ambassador was motivated by "satanic urge"

Mahmoud Abbas' advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash has described US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman and Americans in general, as being motivated by a "satanic urge" and having "lost all morals."
In an interview Friedman gave to The Jerusalem Post, he rejected that Israel occupies any land by using the term "alleged occupation." Abbas' Advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs and the PA's Supreme Shari'ah Judge Mahmoud Al-Habbash referred to Friedman's statement as "idiocy," and added that he and "these people," presumably Americans in general, are motivated by "satanic urges" and "have lost all morals":
Al-Habbash: "One of the representatives of the superpowers - who some people consider to be the most expert and knowledgeable people, the greatest supporters of justice, and the greatest democrats - one of them [US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman] spoke several days ago about the occupation, which is clear even to the biggest idiot, and all the more so to a wise man. Regarding the Israeli occupation of the land of Palestine - he [Friedman] said that it is an 'alleged occupation,' in other words: 'You claim there is an occupation? It isn't really an occupation.' What idiocy is this? What satanic urge motivates these people? These are people who have lost all morals, who watch the oppressed and support the oppressors and stand by their side." [Friday sermon in presence of PA Chairman Abbas, Official PA TV, Sept. 8, 2017]
Al-Habbash said this during his Friday sermon at the mosque at the PA headquarters in Ramallah, in front of Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen. The sermon was broadcast live on official PA TV.

Caroline Glick: The State Department's strange obsession

The law of Occam’s Razor, refined to common parlance, is that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
If we apply Occam’s Razor to recently reported positions of the US State Department, then we can conclude that the people making decisions at Foggy Bottom have “issues” with Jews and with Israel.
Last Friday, JTA reported that the State Department intends to abide by an agreement it reached in 2014 with the Iraqi government and return the Iraqi Jewish archives to Iraq next year.
The Iraqi Jewish archives were rescued in Baghdad by US forces in 2003 from a flooded basement of the Iraqi secret services headquarters. The tens of thousands of documents include everything from sacred texts from as early as the 16th century to Jewish school records.
The books and documents were looted from the Iraqi Jewish community by successive Iraqi regimes. They were restored by the National Archives in Washington, DC.
The Iraqi Jewish community was one of the oldest exilic Jewish communities.
It began with the Babylonian exile following the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem 2,600 years ago. Until the early 20th century, it was one of the most accomplished Jewish communities in the world. Some of the most important yeshivas in Jewish history were in present-day Iraq. The Babylonian Talmud was written in Iraq. The Jewish community in Iraq predated the current people of Iraq by nearly a thousand years.
It was a huge community. In 1948, Jews were the largest minority in Baghdad.
Jews comprised a third of the population of Basra. The status of the community was imperiled during World War II, when the pro-Nazi junta of generals that seized control of the government in 1940 instigated the Farhud, a weeklong pogrom. 900 Jews were murdered.
Thousands of Jewish homes, schools and businesses were burned to the ground.
With Israel’s establishment, and later with the Baathist seizure of power in Iraq in the 1960s, the once great Jewish community was systematically destroyed.

Israel Thrives: We cannot sit still for this

The JTA has reported over the weekend that the Iraqi Jewish Archive will return to Iraq in September 2018 with the end of its exhibition at the Jewish Museum of Baltimore. According to the article, the State Department announced that the return of the archive to Iraq can be delayed as long as there is an agreement between the Iraqi government and an institution that will exhibit it. The Iraqi government claims that the archive is part of the country's patrimony and could serve as a domestic education tool of the country's Jewish history. I need not tell readers of this blog the Iraqi government came into possession of the archive by looting it from the Iraqi Jewish community. The issue is what to do about it.
As a stopgap, it is possible that another institution could make an agreement with the Iraqi government to host it for another period of time. However, that would only be a stopgap. To permanently prevent the archive's return would require either the United States Government to renege on the agreement or for the Iraqi government to decide to waive its rights. There have been voices in Congress pushing for the US Government to do exactly as I describe. However, their voices have not gained traction for wider publicization. Without broad awareness of the archive's existence, let alone the travesty of it returning to Iraq, the State Department will not consider holding the archive without the Iraqi government's permission.
Similarly, the Iraqi government will not consider waiving its rights unless they are shamed into acknowledging that their possession of it is a result of looting the Jewish community. Shaming them will require mass awareness. A few things we need in order create this mass awareness. One is that we need protests at Iraqi diplomatic missions highlighting that the archive is looted. The second part is to get friendly voices in the media to write about and broadcast about it in outlets that are viewed by the large public. This isn't to claim that doing so will definitely prevent the archive's return to Iraq, but can anything think of a better approach than shaming the Iraqi government and is there any way to shame the Iraqi government without creating mass awareness?

Last week, Ari Y. Kelman, associate professor and Joseph Chair in Education and Jewish Studies at the University of California-Davis, came out with a study entitled "Safe and on the Sidelines." Its purpose is to challenge the results of other studies that have reported on the hostility and intimidation of antisemitism on college campuses, to the extent that campuses themselves have become "hotspots of antisemitism."

"Safe and on the Sidelines" disputes the impression given by the other surveys, and claims that on the contrary, those surveys are not representative of the Jewish student experience on campus:

...Contrary to widely shared impressions, we found a picture of campus life that is neither threatening nor alarmist. In general, students reported feeling comfortable on their campuses, and, more specifically, comfortable as Jews on their campuses.

Interviewees reported low levels of antisemitism or discomfort. When they did encounter discomfort, they traced it either to the carelessness of student speech or to tensions within campus debates about the Israel-Palestine conflict, which they characterized as strident, inflammatory, and divisive. They held both supporters and critics of Israel responsible for creating this environment. The tone of student activism created a divided campus that left little room for reasoned, productive debate. (from the Executive Summary)

"Safe and on the Sidelines" has taken issue head-on and has itself drawn fire.

While Prof. Kelman claims that the other surveys create an impression that "does not represent the experiences of Jewish students at the campus level," others point out that Kelman's own survey is limited to the undergraduate students at five California universities: Stanford, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, UCLA, and UC Irvine.

Emblem of Stanford University. Source: Wikipedia. Motto: The Wind of Freedom Blows

The sampling of the study itself is based on interviews with 66 of those undergraduate students.

But "Safe and on the Sidelines" is a qualitative study, trying to understand the student's perspective through interviews, finding common themes and using the students' own language in the report. Those other studies are quantitative and are based on information which is then analyzed through numerical data and statistical inferences.

Still, one would expect similar conclusions.

The issue of numbers and location are enough that in an interview with Tablet Magazine, Prof. Kelman admits his study is based on a "limited sample that was not a representative sample of Jews on campus."

Considering that the 66 students interviewed come from 5 different universities, one can argue that not only was the sample not representative of Jews on campus -- it was not a representative sample of Jews on any campus.

Another bone of contention is the sampling group itself. Kelman describes how the survey was designed:

We intentionally sought out Jewish students who were either unengaged or minimally engaged in organized Jewish life on their campuses. Our rationale for selection reflected the understanding that students who fit our profile represent the vast majority of Jewish college students...we screened students with respect to their activities in order to determine whether or not they fit our general criteria so as to minimize those with vastly different definitions of “involvement” than ours. [emphasis added]

Caroline Glick attacks this aspect of the study's methodology. In When Great Institutions Lie she writes that

There is certainly a valid argument to be made for researching the views of uninvolved Jewish students about antisemitism on campus. But the researchers didn’t do that. They didn’t survey a random, and therefore statistically meaningful sample of uninvolved Jews.

They went to great length to ensure that the “uninvolved” Jewish students were their sort of “uninvolved” Jewish students. As they wrote, “We screened students with respect to their activities in order to determine whether or not they fit our general criteria so as to minimize those with vastly different definitions of ‘involvement’ than ours.”

In contrast, the Kosmin and Kaysar National Demographic Survey of American Jewish College Students 2014 Anti-Semitism Report, which interviewed 1,157 self-identified Jewish students, used open-access databases of college students across the country. The Jewish student random sampling was extracted by isolating distinctive Jewish names.

Prof. Leonard Saxe and his group, in their study Hotspots of Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Sentiment on US Campuses, used as their sampling applicants to Birthright Israel who were undergraduates at one of the 50 schools selected for their study. They included both students who ended up going on the trip as well as those who did not -- the understanding being that "Birthright Israel applicants represent a broad spectrum of the Jewish student population, although they likely differ from Jewish students who did not apply to the program on some dimensions".

These two studies, based on statistical analysis, conclude there is a problem of antisemitism on campus.
The fact that the Kelman study, based on what Glick considers a non-random sampling, comes to an opposite conclusion has her fuming.

Another issue that should be mentioned is that there are errors in the report, where quotes from one study are attributed to another. On page numbered 6 in the study, Kelman writes

Kosmin and Keysar also found that antisemitic incidents, while on the rise, are still “relatively rare, and the vast majority of Jewish students report feeling safe on their campuses.”

Later, on the page numbered 11 in the study, Kelman writes:

Kosmin and Keysar wrote, “While it is important not to conflate anti-Semitism with every incident of anti- Israel activity, the rise in anti-Israel events on college campuses contributes to what some students experience as a hostile campus environment."

In fact, neither of these quotes attributed to Kosmin and Keysar are theirs. Instead, they are found in the ADL's Anti-Israel Activity on Campus, 2014-2015: Trends and Projections, which is also quoted in Kelman's report.

The first quote in particular is actually the opposite of what the Kosmin and Keysar report concludes.

When I emailed Prof. Kosmin to let him know about the error, he invoked Caveat Emptor, let the buyer beware.

Then there are the issues of interpretation. As a qualitative study, the impressions of the students are presented in their own language. The study categorizes their responses, but its conclusions are not always obvious.

For example, according to the section "Rejecting the Conflation of Jewish and Israel"

Many students traced whatever discomfort they felt to the tone of campus activism related to the Israel- Palestine conflict, and they generally did not identify activism as antisemitic. Nevertheless, fierce critiques of Israel left some of our interviewees feeling unsettled or attacked, regardless of their political attitudes. Our interviewees traced some of their discomfort to assumptions that they, as Jews, support Israel and its policies, and they offered careful explications of how they understood the relationship between their Jewishness and their politics. [emphasis added]

But what are the examples of "activism"?

Lindsey (junior, UCLA) described her discomfort after seeing a cartoon drawing of the Israeli Prime Minister in the local student newspaper. (the content of the cartoon is left to our imagination)
Emily (junior, Stanford) recalled the personal nature of her reaction to the student senate discussion of a divestment resolution that took place during her first year on campus.
Amanda (senior, Berkeley), reported being made uncomfortable not by the criticism itself, but from being erroneously “blamed for what people perceive as the crimes of the Israeli government.”

If a divestment resolutions, singling out Israel for economic action does not qualify as antisemitic or at least anti-Israel, but rather as mere activism, then the nature of the mere discomfort seems suspicious.

And what is one to make of being held responsible for "the crimes of the Israeli government" just because one is Jewish, yet feeling only "uncomfortable"?

The study does make clear that of the 66 students, there were 6 who "expressed their understanding that anti-Israel sentiment was, by definition, antisemitic," but if BDS is being perceived as a political as opposed to an anti-Israel action, then it may be that even fewer than 6 would see the problem.

Kelman justifies his sampling of 66 Jewish students who were "unengaged or minimally engaged in organized Jewish life on their campuses" based on his understanding that they represent "the vast majority of Jewish college students."

In an interview with Prof. Leonard Saxe, I ran that past him -- and he disagreed. He feels that a vast majority feel "substantial connection." There was not enough time to delve into that, so it may be that Prof. Kelman and Prof. Saxe may be defining the idea of "engaged" differently. However, there is an aspect of that where they clearly do not agree. Kelman is adamant that the students in his study are knowledgeable:

Speaking up, either in support of Israel among students who were critical of Israel or as a critic of Israel among Jewish students seemed, to many, to be too heavy a burden. This was not for a lack of knowledge. We interviewed many students who regularly read the news or majored in International Relations, or elected to write about these issues in other classes. [emphasis added]

The omission of books as a source of knowledge is as conspicuous as his insistence that following the news gives you the facts.

On this point Prof. Saxe disagreed, and here I do too.

We live in a world where we can easily access thousands of videos of "man in the street" interviews, where people are regularly shown up to know less than what they think they do.

Ami Horowitz can get donations to Hamas terrorists while on the campus of a US university

More to the point, Prof. Saxe described how he found that Jewish graduate students were incapable of distinguishing between the geographic locations of Tel Aviv and the West Bank.

At issue is more than just methodology. There is an unavoidable problem of interpretation involved in assessing comments of the students in a study of this sort. A discussion to divest from Israel is seen as only a bunch of activists talking while being told that as a Jew you are responsible for Israel's actions is just a source of discomfort from someone talking out of turn.

Glick, for her part, blames the researchers of the report for convincing the students "that antisemitism isn’t antisemitism," but that may not be accurate.

The study, which is considered a report about antisemitism, is entitled "Safe and On the Sidelines," but it is subtitled "Jewish Students and the Israel-Palestine Conflict on Campuses and on the Sideline." No mention of antisemitism. Similarly, a quick search in the study for the word "Israel" shows that it comes up 181 times. The words "antisemitic" and "antisemitism" appear 29 and 48 times respectively for a total of 77 times.

The message of the study that seems to come across is that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism -- but merely a bit of discomfort.

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PA accuses Israel of prison "war crimes" while terrorists have lavish meals, university courses and access to Facebook.

Issa Qaraqe, the Palestinian Authority head of prisoner affairs, has accused Israel of "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" over its treatment of Palestinian prisoners.

Qarqa'a said that Israel is committing collective punishment against prisoners, arbitrary arrests, unfair trials, detention of minors, arbitrary administrative detention, and crimes of torture, ill-treatment and medical negligence.

He urged international pressure and and legal instruments to protect them.

As Daled Amos reported last May, here is the Facebook page of one of these poor tortured prisoners:

Here are some of the prisoners enjoying lavish meals that they prepared themselves:

I don't need to go into details of the absurdity of calling how Israel treats prisoners "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity," the most serious charges possible in international law that normally apply to genocide, wartime rape and similar horrendous acts.

On the one hand you can say that this Palestinian insistence that they are the most oppressed people on Earth is a sort of mass delusion, where they live in a permanent feedback loop bubble reading delusional news stories of how terrible their lives are even as they are living what can only be described as pretty decent lives compared to the average person on Earth.

On the other hand, this mass delusion is rewarded with attention from the media, sympathy from academia, support from NGOs and aid organizations who are diverting funds from people who are actually in real need.

I

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President of New Israel Fund says Israel is evil

On Monday, Haaretz editor Amos Schocken tweeted this to promote an article by professional Israel-hater Amira Hass:

Translation: "Is Israel an evil country, or is it just committing ethnic cleansing on a regular basis?"

Talia Sasson, a member of Meretz and the president of the New Israel Fund, "Liked" this post.

And then she answered it:

"It is both."

She deleted the tweet soon after

Here is a person who is the leader of the major left-wing fundraiser for Israeli causes - who explicitly says that Israel is evil (and commits ethnic cleansing, of course.)

It is nice to see the Israeli Left admit publicly that they don't criticize Israel out of love, as they pretend when they are criticized and when they are fundraising.

They simply hate Israel.

(h/t Yoel, Mida)

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09/11 Links Pt2: Shapiro: The 5 Lessons We Should Have Learned From 9/11; Delicious BDS Fails

From Ian:

J Street U to Push Resolution Calling for End to ‘Israeli Occupation of Palestinian Territory’

A campus activist network will push student governments and university administrations this year to pass a resolution calling for "an end to … the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory."
J Street U, the university wing of a group that positions itself as pro-Israel and anti-boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), has drafted a motion "for ratification by student government and implementation by [administrators]" that would "affirm their support for a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which will ensure a future of peace and dignity for both peoples."
The draft resolution, which was viewed by the Washington Free Beacon, is titled "Invest in Israel; Invest in Two States" and urges the campus community to recognize the "two-state solution as the only viable solution for the end to the occupation of the West Bank by Israel."
The bill would encourage a repudiation of BDS by university trustees and students as counterproductive to the goal of reaching a two-state settlement, while also apportioning considerable blame for the ongoing conflict to Israel's "occupation" of East Jerusalem and the West Bank—areas that include Judaism's holiest sites—since the 1967 Six-Day War.
Also in the draft is a nod to ending "violence, terror, incitement," though the text makes no mention of who it considers responsible for terror and incitement in the region.
Repeated phone calls to the J Street national office and communications officials produced no response.

Seth Frantzman: Calling Israel ‘white supremacist’ perpetuates Western antisemitism

The 2017 issue of the Tufts University “Disorientation Guide” describes the campus group Hillel as “an organization that supports a white supremacist state.” The guide is not an official university brochure. According to the Tufts Daily it is “distributed at the start of the semester by a group called the Tufts Anti-Authoritarian Collective and seeks to “provide a platform for many underrepresented, radical voices on campus and to present the option of an alternative community to freshmen.”
Among “radical voices” on campuses in the West, hatred of Israel has become a pillar of faith. It is one cause that most of the disparate groups can agree on. In the Disorientation Guide, a whole section is devoted to Israel Apartheid Week and attacks on Israel and Jewish organizations such as Hillel. The anonymous writers would argue they are not anti-Jewish, because if you read closely it’s clear some of them are Jewish and they simply want to create “alternative Jewish communities on campus to celebrate their Judaism while remaining critical of Zionism and Israel.”
The Tufts guide isn’t unique, it’s representative of a wider phenomenon that is well known. Israel is a toxic issue on campus and opposition to “Zionism” is de rigueur. This fashionable anti-Israel activism has been a hallmark on campuses and parts of the Left since the 1970s. Even in 1966 the General Union of Palestine Students sought to get the National Union of Israel Students expelled from the International Union of Students.
What is particular to the current depiction of Israel is that it has grown beyond just pro-Palestinian activism that used to be part of the anti-colonial struggle and graduated to a depiction of Israel as a “white supremacist” state to connect it to current struggles in the US and the West. They posit that Jews are “white” and enjoy “white privilege” and therefore Israel is “white supremacist” because it is an expression of Jewish nationalism, which for them is like white nationalism.
There is an irony here in that the anti-Israel activists in the West tend to have more white privilege than the average person from Israel has. They portray Israel as “white” primarily as a device to distract from their own insecurities about being white, and to try to distract from the crimes of Western countries, including the Holocaust, and foist “white supremacism” onto Israel.

Berkeley Agitators Say Orthodox Jew Ben Shapiro Is A ‘White Supremacist’

Left-wing agitators have falsely labeled conservative commentator Ben Shapiro a “white supremacist,” in an apparent attempt to inflame tensions ahead of Shapiro’s speech at the University of California, Berkeley on Thursday.
Shapiro, the editor in chief of The Daily Wire, is an Orthodox Jew and a vocal opponent of the alt-right and other fringe white nationalist groups. Nevertheless, Refuse Fascism, a group that has previously organized violent demonstrations in Berkeley, labeled Shapiro a “fascist thug” and “white supremacist” over the weekend.
“Fascist thug [and] white supremacist Ben Shapiro is coming to UC Berkeley — The issue is not ‘Free Speech,'” the group wrote in a Facebook post. “The Issue is Fascism.”
The post linked to a Refuse Fascism statement declaring that “Campuses must become FASCIST-FREE ZONES.”
UC Berkeley has encouraged similarly dramatic responses to Shapiro’s talk on campus. The university announced that it would be offering “counseling services” to students upset by Shapiro’s presence on campus. (RELATED: DNC Platform Member Cornel West Tied To Violent Berkeley Rioters)
“We are deeply concerned about the impact some speakers may have on individuals’ sense of safety and belonging. No one should be made to feel threatened or harassed simply because of who they are or for what they believe,” Paul Alivisatos, the university’s executive vice chancellor and provost, wrote in an open letter.

UC Berkeley Offers Assisted Suicide to Students Offended by Shapiro Talk (satire)

After learning that intensive counseling had failed to heal many of the deep emotional wounds caused by the event, the University of California at Berkeley is now offering assisted suicide to students threatened by conservative journalist Ben Shapiro’s scheduled talk.
“No student should ever feel threatened, harassed, or the least bit uncomfortable by being exposed to controversial or offensive ideas,” the university wrote in a letter to students. “Since such offense may be unavoidable with a Zionist Nazi like Shapiro invading our safe spaces, we understand that for many students, death may be the most merciful option, and we offer complimentary euthanasia for anyone who requires it.”
The letter stressed that these services would only be given only to students who chose to utilize them. This was not enough, however, for the radical ‘Antifa’ movement, which vowed to forcibly euthanize any students who chose to forgo the university’s treatment.
“Any students who want to live in a world in which a fascist like Shapiro can speak on their campus are themselves fascists,” one Antifa member told The Mideast Beast. “They therefore forfeit their right to live, and we are totally justified in attacking them with sticks and clubs.”

Rai Al Youm has an article by Fouad Al Batayneh talking about how the Jews stole the ideas in the Torah from Hammurabi, the ancient Babylonian king whose "code" is a book of laws that pre-dates Moses by several centuries.

I am Hammurabi, who lived with my ancestors in civilization, built our cities and minted the shekel currency of the nations then, and created a law called the Code of Hammurabi. The scientific revolution of the last three centuries has revealed the true history of Palestine, the region and its people, and ended the monopoly of the Torah and its narratives of history.

Your behavior is disgraceful as you have stolen your history about the shekel and other things. The Torah writers have approporiafed the civilizations and cultures of all nations and have stolen from their epics, stories and ideas. As for you, sons of the people of the kingdom of the Khazars, you have reached the bottom, and you have nothing left except for hummus, falafel, tabouleh, and the Palestinian dress, as now you are stealing the culture of the Palestinians.

There you go! The Jews are thieves just like the Israelis are! They have contributed nothing new to the world!

Don't call this antisemitism. It is science!

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A conference to promote the idea that Jordan is the proper place for a Palestinian state is slated to take place next month in Jerusalem.

The only description I can find of the conference is in its GoFundMe page, which doubles as a way to purchase tickets for the event at the Begin Heritage Center.

The speakers' list is certainly interesting:

Personally, I always looked at this idea as wonderful in theory and utterly unrealistic. The opposition to the idea is as near as absolute as it possible in the Arab world and no one in the West takes it at all seriously.

The fact that the video for the conference uses the Hatikva as it's soundtrack indicates that despite the presence of some anti-Jordanian Arabs on the panel, this is a Zionist initiative through and through.

If the initiative is to have any chance of success the organizers need to truly make a convincing grassroots case to the Arabs, not to the Zionists. Unfortunately, this conference itself - like the video - appears to be amateurish and not well thought out as to strategy. The domain name of the International Jewish-Muslim Dialogue Center that is behind this does not even have a webpage set up.

All successful revolutions start with what sounds like a bizarre idea at first. I wish these guys luck. But so far I've not seen anything that indicates a decent strategy on how to advance the plan. At this moment it looks to be as successful as a plan to pay hundreds of thousands of West Bank Palestinians to move to South America that I saw years ago.

There is one guaranteed outcome, though: Jordanian media will notice this conference and they will go insane in their reporting against it. Jordan's government might even issue a statement. Which will definitely be fun to watch.

With any luck, the crazed Jordanian reaction will get the idea some publicity.

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09/11 Links Pt1: PA Governor lauds Martyrs’ perfumed blood; PA Arrests Peace Activist For Hosting MK Glick

From Ian:

PMW: PA Governor lauds Martyrs’ perfumed blood

District Governor of Ramallah Laila Ghannam has declared that the PA will stay faithful to the “path” of the “Martyrs.” During a visit to the “monument in memory of the Martyrs” on the Muslim holiday Eid Al-Adha together with representatives of the PA Security Forces, she glorified the Palestinian “Martyrs” - the majority of whom are terrorists killed during their attacks against Israelis - for “perfuming the ground with the scent of their blood,” which was “spilled for the epic of struggle whose title is Palestine”:
“She... emphasized that our Martyrs will always remain in our hearts and souls, and we will all remain loyal to their path until we are liberated from the occupation and realize everything for which they died as Martyrs... who are perfuming the ground with the scent of their blood that was spilled for the epic of struggle whose title is Palestine.”
[WAFA, official PA news agency, Sept. 1, 2017]
A few days earlier, while Ghannam was seeing families of “Martyrs” off to Mecca, she “asked that Allah have mercy on the souls of their sons who have saturated the land of Palestine with the fragrance of their blood...” and “mentioned the virtues of the Martyrs who gave their blood for the homeland." [Donia Al-Watan, independent Palestinian news agency, Aug. 27, 2017]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Ghannam is an avid supporter of terrorist murderers. On the morning after murderer Muhannad Halabi killed 2 Israelis in the Old City of Jerusalem in October 2015, and terrorist Fadi Alloun stabbed and wounded another Israeli - and both terrorists were killed by Israeli soldiers during their attacks - Ghannam posted the following praise for them as “Martyrs” on Facebook:
“Palestine’s morning
A morning fragranced by the blood of the Martyrs (Shahids)
The morning of wounded Jerusalem
Have a morning of pride and honor.”
[Facebook, "Friends of Dr. Laila Ghannam," Oct. 4, 2015]

Palestinian Authority Arrests Peace Activist For Hosting Israeli MK

Mohamed Jabir is a former member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization. He used to decorate his home in Hebron with photographs of Osama bin-Laden, and, at one point, considered becoming a suicide bomber. He had a change of heart, realized the evil of violence against innocents, and became a prominent peace activists. Yehuda Glick is an Israeli member of Knesset with the Likud party. He is an active promoter of the right of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, and is a survivor of an assassination attempt by Jabir’s former terror group. He is also a firm believer in peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews, and when the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha rolled in, Glick traveled to Hebron to pay his friend Jabir a visit.
The two men sat on the couch, enjoyed some fruit and sweet pastries and the company of Jabir’s sweet children. Later that day, Glick posted a few photos of the afternoon on his Facebook account. “Inshallah,” he wrote, “may we all live here in peace. Happy holiday.”
To anyone truly interested in peace, the post should’ve been a cause for celebration: Here are two men, a Jew and a Muslim, putting aside their differences, enjoying each other’s company, and suggesting that there’s hope yet for something like a normal life for Israelis and Palestinians who believe in peace and reconciliation. The Palestinian Authority, however, had other ideas: As soon as the photos were made public, it dispatched its secret police to Jabir’s home and arrested him.
Sadly, Abbas’s goons weren’t the only ones persecuting Jabir for having coffee with a Jew. The Palestinian’s family, too, was quick to denounce him, issuing a statement saying that they no longer considered Jabir their relative and that his actions were “a betrayal of the homeland.”

Palestinian Family Disowns Son, Calls Him ‘Cancer’ for Meeting with Israeli Lawmaker

A Palestinian family from Hebron has announced in Palestinian media that it has cut ties with one of its sons who insisted on meeting with Israelis, with the last straw being his meeting with Likud Knesset member Yehuda Glick.
The Jaber family from Hebron announced that it was cutting ties with their son, Muhammad, and that it was unconnected to Muhammad’s actions after photos were circulated online showing their son hosting Glick in his home during Eid ad-Adha, which ended last week. The photos were originally posted on Glick’s Twitter account.
Muhammad’s brother said in a conversation with the Al Quds network that he and his brothers were cutting ties with their sibling and that they were innocent of the “normalization meetings he used to hold, but we didn’t announce it publicly out of consideration of our sick mother. But after hosting Glick in his home, we announce that Muhammad is not our brother and we’re free of him.”
According to the brother, “Muhammad persisted for years in meeting with Israelis despite opposition from the family who considered these meetings as a betrayal of their homeland. The entire family gave up on him and all the family members will say this. Muhammad hosts Israelis every day and the last one was Yehuda Glick, who invades the al-Aqsa Mosque every day and is hostile to the Palestinians. We reject these meetings and we refuse to shake our brother’s hand because whoever has done this is a traitor.”

Broadway musicals are frequently played and sung in our home, and (usually once a year) we skip rent and food for the month to actually buy tickets to a Tony-winning show.

Our two latest stage adventures were Hamilton (which we all saw in Chicago) and Dear Evan Hansen (which only some of us saw in New York). The former was definitely the more ground-breaking, a game-changing masterpiece that brought new urban musical forms to the stage in the same way West Side Story recreated Broadway via jazz and modern dance. But Hansen certainly earned this year’s Tony’s with its talented cast, memorable songs, and heart-rending story about a high-school senior trapped in his own lies over a classmate’s suicide.

When comparing the two shows, it dawned on me that the protagonists were about the same age when you first meet them. Hamilton grows up during the play (which continues through his death at 47), while Hansen is the same age throughout. But it’s interesting to note that by the time Hamilton had reached Hansen’s 17-18-year-old mark, he had already been in college for several years, penned two remarkable and important public pamphlets railing against British treatment of the colonies, and was one year away from fighting his first battles as an artillery Captain in the Revolutionary army.

In contrast, Evan Hansen has spent those same years anguishing about his lack of friends and purpose, writing letters to himself to buck up his ego (one of which is mistaken for a letter of friendship with the boy who killed himself), and set up a web page to maintain this fictional relationship.

This comparison is not designed to decry the youth of today, but rather to ask the question of how a society that has overcome so many of the terrors men like Hamilton had to face over two centuries ago (disease, want, slavery, invading imperial armies) today seems obsessed with the small and internal when so few obstacles are in the way of thinking and living for larger purpose. After all, if men like Hamilton were able to fight for independence with barely enough food to feed and army and build a country while contending with Yellow Fever and gout, shouldn’t we moderns be doing so much more with hideous diseases banished and food (and other needs of life) plentiful?

But what if such hardships were not impediments to living a serious life, but the inspiration to live one? In fact, might Evan Hansen’s existential angst (and the angst felt by so many of us these days) derive from having inherited all the default comforts derived from the society he lives in, rather than having created that society (or contributed to its ongoing creation)?

This contrast may help solve one of the world’s great riddles: why are Israelis again and again ranked among the happiest people on the face of the earth.

Such happiness seems lunatic, given the knife-edge existence of the Jewish state and everyone dwelling within it, not to mention the sacrifices people living in that state must make in terms of high taxes and military service (including near life-long duty as reservists). But if we think of these sacrifices as contributions each citizen is making to the nation they and their parents built, then being an Israeli is revealed as synonymous with having higher purpose, a reason for existence.

With purpose, one has room in the soul for genuine love and friendship, not the pretend friendships and unrequited high-school passions of Evan Hansen’s lost high-schooler, but the deep and profound connectedness between lovers, family members, and comrades-at-arms that marked the life of Hamilton.

With this Fall’s hurricanes bringing so much peril and damage to the United States, Jewish news sources have noted that today it is Israel that is sending aid to its American landsmen, reversing a decades-long dynamic in which Americans were the givers and Israelis the recipients of charity. While such material aid is enormously welcome, it’s worth noting that the Jewish state has been exporting something much more important over the last seventy years: a way of life that provides an antidote to the existential crisis facing us all.

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Palestinians ecstatic: Africa/Israel conference postponed

Yesterday I reported that the Arab League was placing the topic of canceling the planned upcoming Africa/Israel conference at the top of its agenda for its upcoming meeting.

That pressure has actually been unrelenting against Togo, the host of the conference, as this August 15 article shows:

Togo is set to invite all 54 countries on the continent to the event, which is scheduled for October 23-27 in the capital Lome. But the Palestinians, Morocco and South Africa are actively seeking to derail the gathering, African and Israeli sources told The Times of Israel.
“This is not taking place without contrary pressure,” Netanyahu said during Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting, referring to the Africa-Israel Summit. “Various pressures have been placed on the Togolese president to cancel the conference. These pressures are the best testimony to the success of our policy, of Israel’s presence in Africa.”

It appears that the pressure has succeeded, at least partially, as a visit to the webpage of the conference shows:

JPost reports:

The first ever Israel-Africa Summit scheduled to take place in October has been called off in the aftermath of boycott threats by a number of countries and pressure against the event from Palestinians and Arab countries.

News of the summit's temporary cancellation come as Netanyahu is en route to make the first-ever visit by a sitting Israeli prime minister to Latin America.

In its statement to the press, the Foreign Ministry said that the event had been “postponed” but it did not provide an alternative date.
“At the request of the President of Togo and following a joint consultation with the Prime Minister, it was decided to postpone the convening of the Israel-Africa Summit, scheduled to take place in October in Lomé,” the Foreign Ministry said.
It added that an agreed upon date would be set later by both countries.
“In the near future, Israel will hold consultations in Africa, both on the bilateral level as well as in regional gatherings and fora on the continent in order to guarantee the full success of the summit,” the Foreign Ministry said.
Togolese President Faure Gnassingbé “thanked and praised the prime minister for his determination to strengthen the cooperation between his country and Israel, as well as for his personal engagement to guarantee the initiative to hold the summit,” the Foreign Ministry said.

The Palestinian foreign affairs ministry is taking full credit for its (increasingly rare) diplomatic victory.

However, it appears that a separate Palestinian group has exerted most of the pressure, and the PA foreign ministry jumped on the bandwagon afterwards. This group is actually opposed to the PA.

It looks like Israel will need to continue to be more private about its diplomatic efforts in Africa for the time being.

In the end, the African states will act in their own self interest, and the Palestinians have nothing to offer them except threats.

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Muslims upset at IDF spokesperson receiving Hajj gifts

From the Facebook page of Avichai Adraee, the IDF's Arabic-language spokesperson:

How wonderful to receive a gift from the holy hom!
With the return of the pilgrims of the house of God to their homes and families, the pilgrims honor their relatives and friends with gifts.
I also received a gift from a close friend who returned from the pilgrimage last week...

The gifts that Adraee received are Islamic prayer beads and, apparently, an Islamic cloak associated with the pilgrimage.

The idea that a Muslim might give gifts like this to a Jew is too much for some. Egypt's Youm7 has an article claiming that Adraee is lying, saying "In a continuation of the attempts at normalization and the lies of Avichai Adraee, an Israeli army spokesman in Arabic through social media sites, he published a picture carrying a rosary and a cloak claiming that one of the pilgrims had given it to him."

Because how could a Muslim possibly feel close enough to a Jew to give him gifts like this? .

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Breaking the Silence has no need to worry about terror attacks

Anti-Israel organization Breaking the Silence offers tours where their members routinely lie about alleged Israeli army atrocities.One covers the South Hebron Hills and the other one in Hebron itself.

In both of those tours, the organization's description mentions:

"The buses are not armored."

Of course, Jews who live in their ancestral homelands of Judea and Samaria must travel in armored buses in order to survive the daily stoning and Molotov cocktail and shooting attacks that they suffer.

But the people who go on Breaking the Silence tours have no such fears.

One must wonder why terrorists don't have a problem with people who claim to be working towards peace.

Maybe they understand the agenda of BtS better than most Westerners do.

(h/t Irene)

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09/10 Links: Iran secretly helped N. Korea with nuclear program; Behind ‘Antifa’s’ mask

From Ian:

Jerusalem eviction calumny spreads like wildfire

The story of the eviction of the Arab Shamasneh family from a house in Jerusalem’s Shimon Hatzaddik neighbourhood has spread like wildfire around the world (See here, here and here). The item was carried by countless Arab media and even the measured mainstream western press such as the Washington Post and the Times of London.
It’s a gift to the Palestinian propaganda machine: Israelis are being painted as heartless creatures who are throwing elderly Arabs out on the street. Even the Borneo Bulletin has transmitted this damning impression to its readers.
With one or two exceptions, even the Jewish and Israeli press are failing to state the full facts of the case.
Sixty-nine years ago, the Hubara family, a Jewish family living in Shimon Hatzaddik, were expelled when the British-led Arab legion invaded and occupied the city during the early stages of Israel’s War of Independence.
Called ‘Sheikh Jarrah’ by the city’s Arab population, Shimon Hatzaddik, the site of Simon the Just’s tomb and surrounding pilgrims’ residences, was owned by the Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities. It was emptied of its Jews in 1948, the Jews being the first refugees of the war. Their homes came under the jurisdiction of the Jordanian Custodian for Absentee Property who proceeded to rent the properties to local Arabs.
When the Israelis recaptured East Jerusalem in 1967, the former Jewish owners found themselves in a position to reclaim what had been theirs. Dozens of former owners have embarked on protracted legal struggles to recover their homes.
However, the Israeli courts have protected the Arab tenants’ rights. Only where they have failed to pay rent have the courts’ judgements gone against the Arab residents.
Of all the press reports of the Shamasneh case, only Ynet News and Arutz Sheva (and an early report in Haaretz) have reported that the Shamasnehs failed to pay rent. Few press have bothered even to mention the historical context of the Jewish expulsion from east Jerusalem in 1948. The motive attributed to the Jewish claimants has been to ‘judaise’ Jerusalem – ‘to throw out the Arabs and expand Jewish settlement.’
Ten years ago, the Hubaras sold their property rights on to Aryeh King of the Israel Land Fund. King declared that the Arab family ceased paying rent five years ago. “I don’t trust them anymore because they have a debt of 180,000 shekels [about $50,000] for rent, and damage of another 160,000 shekels.” King says he told them if they provide a cheque from a guarantor he could trust, he would consider letting them stay longer, but they refused. It’s unpleasant, he said, but “they did everything possible so [the eviction] would happen.”
As for reports that the elderly Arab parents are being turned out on the street, King told Haaretz: “The elderly parents have no reason whatsoever to remain in the street because their daughter lives right next door, and there is evidence they will receive housing aid from the European Union.”

Behind ‘Antifa’s’ mask

In the immediate aftermath of last month’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, several prominent figures – including a CNN anchor and the editor- in-chief of The Atlantic magazine – equated the left-wing “Antifa” activists with the thousands of Allied soldiers who stormed Normandy’s beaches to invade Hitler’s “Fortress Europe” on D-Day.
A more appropriate equation would be with the thousands of soldiers in the Red Army who marched toward Berlin with the intent to brutally establish Soviet hegemony in the so-called German Democratic Republic after defeating Hitler.
Despite antiseptic portrayals throughout American media, Antifa are more than “anti-fascists.” Antifa represent the chaos of Germany’s Weimar Republic and provide the violent complement to academic neo-Marxism. Like their philosophical comrades, Antifa seek to destroy the Western ideal of liberty under law and to impose a revival of one of history’s most repressive ideologies.
Bernd Langer, whose 80 Years of Anti-Fascist Action was published by Germany’s Association for the Promotion of Anti-Fascist Literature, succinctly defined the rhetorical subterfuge.
“Anti-fascism is a strategy rather than an ideology,” wrote Langer, a former Antifa member, for “an anti-capitalist form of struggle.”
Antifa – short for the German “Antifaschistische Aktion” – served as the paramilitary arm of the German Communist Party (KPD), which the Soviet Union funded. In other words, Antifa became the German Communists’ version of the Nazis’ brown-shirted SA.

Don't. pic.twitter.com/OUgauPwk4J
— Chloé Simone Valdary (@cvaldary) September 9, 2017

IsraellyCool: WATCH: Lauren Booth Blaming Islamic Terror On Drugs

The last time I posted about antisemite Lauren Booth on here was in June, when she claimed the cause of Islamic terror attacks was drugs and not an Islamic ideology.
I just came across the video of her comments now, and I cannot resist posting it, if not only for the look on fabulous British Colonel Richard Kemp‘s face.

Rogue feminist Camille Paglia - during her recent book tour promoting Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism - suggested that comments under blog posts represent a certain kind of art-form.

Given Paglia's semi-iconic status within the intellectual community that should give some of you the warm-fuzzies.

I do not know if it is true that blog-post commenting represents an art-form, but I definitely like the idea.

{Why the hell wouldn't I?}

On places like Facebook or Twitter or Youtube, or wherever, you get a sense of how particular groups feel on any given topic. I have no doubt that sociologists are having a great time exploring this material.

It is, after all, the grassroots/netroots... where the buses don't run. And that is just the kind of place for the curious-minded.

In a recent exchange concerning the Arab-Jewish conflict with a hard-left leaning San Francisco friend of mine, I wrote:

The fucked up thing is that the contemporary progressive-left wants to be racist and anti-racist both at the same time. It simply does not work that way. You do not get to pick and choose who it is OK to be racist towards.

In partial response to the larger conversation my correspondent wrote:

So demanding the state of Israel to treat Palestinians humanely is anti-Semitic? Is that where we're going?

I do not know why I continue to remain surprised at the automatic presumption of Jewish guilt in the conflict.

It is from this presumption that the conversation is apparently supposed to begin.

Despite the fact that the Jewish people lived as second and third-class non-citizens for thirteen centuries under the boot of Arab and Muslim imperial rule - from the seventh-century until the fall of the Ottoman Empire - it is the Jewish people who are automatically assumed guilty in the war against us by a far larger power.

The Jews of Israel are, from the get-go - before the discussion even begins - considered to be "inhumane."

So demanding the state of Israel to treat Palestinians humanely is anti-Semitic?

This is precisely the kind of loaded question that Jewish people throughout the world have been subject to generation upon generation.

We are expected to begin the conversation from back on our heels despite the fact that we are the minority population under judgment.

Why are Jews such horrible people?

Why did you kill Jesus?

Why did you invent secularism?

Why did you invent socialism?

Why did you invent capitalism?

Why did you invent communism?

Why do you promote homosexuality?

And, now, why are you so brutal to the "indigenous Palestinians"?

My interlocutor is coming to the discussion from a progressive-left ahistorical perspective that assumes an almost transcendental white-anglo guilt for the oppression of the non-white victim. The presumption is that "people of color" are nothing more than pawns in some Euro-centric geopolitical game of world dominance and the Jewish people, in the form of Israel, are among the agents of that aggression.

In response, I wrote:

It's good that you asked that question because this where we get to the crux of the matter on why the progressive-left tends to despise the Jewish state of Israel. You honestly believe that the Jews of Judea are inhumane.

I imagine that this response took him just a bit off-guard. Most well-meaning "soft" anti-Zionists don't expect push back because the progressive Jewish left is semi-anti-Zionist, itself. I am talking about Ha'aretz Jews. The kind of Jewish people who agree that Israel sucks, but if you kick us in the head hard enough we will try to do better.

The classic example is from now deceased Ha'aretz editor, David Landau, who suggested that Israel was in need of a good raping from the West... to keep us in line, apparently.

It is obvious that Jewish people who care about the well-being as a people are grappling with how to address the continual vitriol spit at us from the greater Muslim community, the European Union, the United Nations, the Democratic Party, and almost the entire western-left.

The place to start - if I may be so bold - is with insisting upon our indigeneity to our own ancestral lands.

I think that we owe indigenous rights activist Ryan Bellerose a certain debt of gratitude.

Bellerose's major contribution to the conversation is that the Jewish people are the only indigenous people in recorded human history to regain self-determination and self-defense on their ancestral homeland.

In a piece for Tablet entitled, Are Jews Indigenous to the Land of Israel?, Bellerose writes:

As an indigenous activist—I am a Métis from the Paddle Prairie Metis settlement in Alberta, Canada—there is one question I am most often asked by the public, one that can instantly divide a community due to its intense and arduous subject matter.

Yet, regardless of the scenario, each time I hear the words, “Are Jews the indigenous people of Israel?” I’m inclined to answer not only with my heart but with the brutal, honest truth, backed by indisputable, thousands-year-old historical and archaeological fact: yes.

Although I thank Ryan with my own heart, I must wonder how it is that a non-Jewish, Native-American, football-playing, giant Métis can get to the ideological crux of the matter when we cannot?

Any conversation with an anti-Zionist or anti-Israel person must always begin with the fact of Jewish indigenousness.

You cannot win the argument without it.

Thankfully it has the additional benefit of being historically accurate.

Let the other side have their narrative.

We have history.

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Lara Friedman is the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. Previously she was the director of policy and government relations at Americans for Peace Now.

Since she clearly love peace so much, you would think that she would be against anything that promotes violence.

But as with many Middle East topics, words like "peace" do not mean what you might think they mean.

Friedman wrote in The Nation last month:

[F]unding for families of those killed or imprisoned by Israel represents a critical social safety net. Removing it would amount to collective punishment, illegal under international law and viewed by most of the world as immoral.

Yes, Friedman is saying that demanding that the PA stop paying terrorist families is "collective punishment" and therefore illegal.

That is too stupid for words. To take away something that the families don't deserve to begin with is not punishment - it is basic justice.

Friedman tries to justify her position by claiming that so many Palestinians have been imprisoned, so therefore these payments are really more like social programs than rewarding terror:

It is a fact that Israeli military forces detain an extraordinary number of Palestinians, often for long periods without any due process. Many are convicted in military courts that have nearly a 100 percent conviction rate. According to Palestinian sources, Israel has arrested 40 percent of the male Palestinian population since 1967. This is in addition to Palestinians killed while attacking, or accused of attacking, Israeli targets.

First of all, her sources for "40 percent" of male Palestinians being arrested is a complete and utter lie that Addameer has been pushing for years. They have absolutely no polls, studies or statistics to support this lie. It is pure lying propaganda.

Secondly, the Palestinian payments are for families of current prisoners - of which there are only around 6000 - plus the families of "martyrs" who have been killed while trying to kill Israelis. In addition they pay salaries to prisoners who have been released.

When the US, EU and Israel oppose payments to families of prisoners, they are speaking about a small percentage of the total Palestinian population, not the 40% she pretends. And we know this because we know how many families get the benefits. And she only embraces the 40% number in order to make it look like the program is more like a social security program than a program to pay for people convicted of terror related activities.

Indeed, the Palestinian law to pay salaries to families of prisoners defines prisoners as "anyone incarcerated in the occupation’s prisons for his participation in the struggle against the occupation." They aren't claiming that these prisoners are imprisoned for no reason, as Friedman implies in her article. They are proud of their "struggle," which is a code word for "terrorism."

Friedman's arguments are fundamentally pro-terror. Which is a curious position for someone who pretends to be pro-peace to take. But when anti-Israel activists pretend to be pro-peace, they are really saying they support Palestinians only - and they therefore support and defend a sick and perverted Palestinian society where murderers are at the top of the social pyramid.

Lara Friedman is not pro-peace. She is a fraud who tacitly condones enabling and praising the murderers of Jews.

(h/t Noah Pollak via Ian)

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