Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Norway deports Iranian asylum seeker, she gets 80 lashes

This is horrific - and not surprising at all:

The Iranian asylum seeker Leila Bayat, who was deported from Norway on 8 March 2017, has received 80 lashes in Tehran. During the investigation of her asylum case, the Norwegian authorities didn’t approve the documents regarding Leila Bayat’s flogging sentence and denied her asylum.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director and spokesperson of Iran Human Rights (IHR) said, “It is a shame that the authorities of a country like Norway, which has a reputation of respecting human rights and in particular women’s rights, didn’t provide a woman who had escaped flogging sentence with asylum and deported her back to Iran. In this case, Norwegian authorities didn’t fulfill their legal and human duty, and in the best case scenario, deported her to Iran despite having serious doubts about her flogging sentence. There were lots of evidence showing Leila’s flogging sentence was authentic but the Norwegian authorities ignored them. The Islamic Republic of Iran is to be blamed for the inhumane sentence of 80 lashes Leila received, but the Norwegian authorities have their share of responsibility in this case and must be held accountable for it.”

According to a close source, Leila Bayat received 80 lashes at branch 3 of the Section for Implementation of Sentence of Tehran’s Prosecution Office at 1 pm on Tuesday September 19.

Leila Bayat and three of her friends were arrested in 2007 and sentenced branch 3 of the 21th district Prosecution Office of Tehran to 80 lashes for drinking alcoholic beverages. They were released on bail of 7 million Tomans (about 1800 USD) and tried to change the sentence for two and a half years. Being disappointed, Leila together with her 5-year-old son sought asylum in Norway where they were denied asylum several times by the authorities of The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration.

Leila Bayat was finally deported to Iran on March 11, 2017 and tried to have her sentence suspended which was unsuccessful.

“I told them (Norwegian authorities) the exact details of my case, but it was refused seven times. They claimed that the verdict, the warrant, my lawyer’s testimony, and everything I presented to them were fake and my case was a lie. They said that their expert at Norway’s Embassy in Iran had examined the documents and said that such a sentence would never be carried out in Iran. And in the end, they separated me from my 13-year-old son and deported me back to Iran,” said Leila to IHR.

She added, “Before returning to Iran, I was so angry about why I had to escape from my own country. But now, I’m angrier at Norway. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, we were sentenced to flogging because we didn’t obey the law, but I sought asylum in Norway and I thought that I would be safe there, which was far from true.”

The story has been verified and is starting to gain traction in Europe.

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Iran responded to Netanyahu's speech at the UN last week with some brand new lies I'd never heard of before (video here):

The representative of Iran, speaking in exercise of the right of reply, said the representative of the Israeli regime had made unfounded allegations against his country. The nature of that regime was founded on aggression, occupation, suppression, violence and terror, he said, adding that in the information age, “weapons of mass deception” (which the Iranian representative called "another type of WMD" that Israel has) were becoming more useless day by day. That representative could have explained why his regime had invaded all its neighbours, and even countries outside its region, waging 15 wars in its short lifetime. Why did that regime continue to disrespect resolutions adopted by the Assembly, the Security Council and other United Nations bodies, he asked, and why was it a State sponsor of terrorism, including support for ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) with arms and other military assistance. It was the world’s last apartheid regime and the warden of its biggest prison, arresting and jailing Palestinians and imposing an inhumane blockade on the Gaza Strip. He went on to ask why that regime, the only nuclear weapons possessor in the Middle East, lectured the world on non-proliferation and Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme. The representative of the Israeli regime had hypocritically tried to abuse the Assembly by accusing others and stirring anxiety about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, he said. It was a regime that favoured conflict and war over diplomacy, he added.

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09/24 Links: Collier: Thomas Suarez, an academic charlatan; Israeli rescue team applauded in Mexico

From Ian:

David Collier: Thomas Suarez, an academic charlatan. State of Terror is hateful fiction

Alongside Jonathan Hoffman, I spent part of the summer inside the National Archives at Kew, checking some of the sources that Thomas Suarez had used to build his argument for the book ‘State of Terror’. The findings were inexcusable. Suarez distorted the documents to such a degree that history was unrecognisable.

At times Suarez had simply inverted the meaning of a document. At others, I felt we were looking at entirely different files. From the perspective of someone who respects historicity and spends much time sewing together the complex tapestry of historical context, Thomas Suarez is an academic charlatan.

Recently, Thomas Suarez has been spreading his hate-filled mythical tale in the United States. He also found time to respond to the report. What an empty response it was.
The Thomas Suarez response

Given that what was found in our analysis was so overwhelming, his recent response is a clear attempt to create a deflective dialogue. To suggest that we are engaged in an argument over opinion.

It will not work. I will not be drawn down a rabbit-hole by anyone, least of all by Thomas Suarez. Our argument was that his work is deceptive. That he has misused, misquoted, misrepresented and even inverted the meaning of, what he found in the archives. Our underlying position was that this occurred too often to be just down to Suarez being an awfully bad historian.

Time after time, quote after quote, file after file. ON EVERY SINGLE OCCASION we uncovered an error, we found the error supported an anti-Zionist stance. Each one dehumanised Jews or created a devious intent surrounding their actions. None of the many, many mistakes we found, favoured the Zionists. Not one. How on earth can that be deemed anything but deliberate?

I am reminded of part of the judgement following the David Irving trial:
‘the correct and inevitable inference must be that for the most part the falsification of the historical record was deliberate and that Irving was motivated by a desire to present events in a manner consistent with his own ideological beliefs even if that involved distortion and manipulation of historical evidence.’

The time when Israeli intel, CIA caught mega-arms boat and changed history

“Everything you say is well and good, but we have no boat!” IDF Lt. Col. Naval Intelligence Counter-terror chief Yaron* exclaimed in frustration to his deputy, IDF Maj. Gal*.

Gal* (full names kept secret to prevent identification) had just updated him on the first intelligence breakthrough in the Karine A Affair, which would eventually change history.

In the affair, the IDF navy and air force units captured a large Palestinian Authority owned freighter in the predawn hours of January 3, 2002. The freighter was loaded with 50 tons of weapons, including long range rockets, from Iran with assistance from Hezbollah.

Had the weapons gotten through to PA President Yasser Arafat, he could have targeted larger cities like Ashkelon and possibly even Ben Gurion Airport with rockets, changing the entire balance of war and peace in the region.

The full riveting intelligence backstory about uncovering the well-concealed plot and finding (just barely) the phantom boat, included work between Israeli intelligence and the CIA. The story is being told now for the first time after its declassification by Israeli intelligence for a Hebrew book, also sponsored by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, about to come out called Drama in the Red Sea by retired IDF Brig. Gen. Amos Gilboa.

The Jerusalem Post recently interviewed Gilboa and received a copy of the book prior to its full release next month.

Israeli naval intelligence officers Yaron and Gal were speaking sometime between October 3-8, 2001 after having worked since August 15, 2001 on trying to put together a puzzle of some sort of major PA-related arms smuggling development.

PMW: Jibril Rajoub visited the family of terrorist murderer

Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub exploited his entry to Israel around two weeks ago in order to visit the family of terrorist murderer Karim Younes.

Karim Younes is an Israeli Arab who, together with his cousin Maher Younes, kidnapped and murdered Israeli soldier Avraham Bromberg in 1980. He was sentenced to life in prison. (His sentence was commuted to 40 years by Israeli President Shimon Peres in 2012.)

In a post on his Facebook page, Rajoub took pride in having visited the murderer's family in the village of 'Ara, and he posted pictures of himself with the family members.

Palestinian Media Watch checked and found that the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories had not approved Rajoub's visit to the murderer's family.

In the 2015 terror wave, Rajoub explicitly incited for terror attacks and acts of murder, and he called the terrorist murderers "heroes... a crown on the head of every Palestinian."

This year the Fatah Movement appointed murderer Karim Younes to be a member of Fatah's central committee.

Forest Rain has written a smart piece published in Israellycool entitled, From Exodus to Munich: How Did We Get Here?

This is an interesting bit of cultural inquiry that wonders how the Jewish people in Israel went - in the popular Western imagination - from plucky and outnumbered victims seeking sovereignty (Exodus, starring Paul Newman in 1960) to what is, essentially, the "galut" mentality of semi-neurotic self-doubt in Steven Spielberg's Munich.

Concerning Exodus, Forest Rain writes:

"This is the first, the only movie I have ever seen that has empathy (rather than sympathy), not for the Jewish victim but for the Jewish survivor – admiration for the people who had been to hell and back, that had more spirit than anything else and were willing to do whatever it takes to be free in the land of their ancestors."

Forest Rain is, for very good reason, a tad more skeptical of Steven Spielberg's Munich.

She writes:

Steven Spielberg did a deep service to the preservation of Jewish heritage by creating the Shoah Foundation and documenting the testimonials of Holocaust survivors. His movie, Schindler’s List, has become a staple in teaching children about the Holocaust. I’m sure, when he chose to create Munich, he did not intend to create a film filled with poisonous, anti-Israel propaganda. And yet, shockingly, that is exactly what he created.

In Exodus, the Paul Newman character (Ari Ben Canaan) is a proud, strong Jew and military commander, fighting unapologetically for the establishment of the State of Israel and for the well-being of the Jewish people in our continuously conquered homeland.

Spielberg's Munich, on the other hand, according to Forest Rain:

show conflicted Jews. Jews (especially Israelis) who are strong but feel bad about it. The IDF soldier that does not want to fight, is afraid or doesn’t want to “hurt the poor Palestinian” is a particularly popular character.

Spielberg's emotive standpoint is close to Ari Folman's 2008 Waltz with Bashir wherein the main character is so horrified by whatever role he thinks that the Jews played in the 1982 Lebanese Christian massacre of Arab-Muslims in Sabra and Shatila that he cannot even remember it.

He psychologically blocks it out.

He cannot emotionally face the idea that while he was a soldier in Lebanon Jews may have been complicit in the Christian murder of Muslims. Or, at least, that he - himself, personally - may have been complicit.

Ultimately, Forest Rain and I wonder along similar lines.

She concludes:

From Exodus to Munich, how did we get here? More importantly, how do we go back?

I do not know that I believe in the notion of "national characteristics" but if there is such a thing ours were forged, in part, through the continual irrational malice of larger powers, both European and Muslim.

And while we can never go back to the Western sympathies pre-1967 what we can do is stand up unashamedly for ourselves as did Ari Ben Canaan in Exodus.

The popular sensibility among "soft" anti-Zionists on the western-left is that we are well-meaning murderers.

The friendliest among them tend to be vaguely sympathetic, but ultimately come down on the side of the enemies of the Jewish people.

They honestly believe that Arabs seek to murder Jews because we are mean. Israel is mean. The Jews are, as a matter of schadenfreude, are the New Nazis.

Although they understand about the Shoah, they also consider Israeli Jews to be persecutors of the bunny-like "indigenous Arab population" and this is why "one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter."

The Jewish people will not retrieve western-left sympathies anytime soon. That is simply out of the question. It is not going to happen and it eludes me why we should continue to try.

What we should do is send our young people to Krav Maga training because there is pretty good chance that they might need it.

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From Jordan's Prince Al Hussein Bin Abdullah II's speech at the UN General Assembly last week:

My country--a resource-poor nation in a conflict-rich region--is host to 1.3 million Syrian refugees. Add to that millions of Palestinian refugees and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as others from Libya and Yemen: Jordan, today, is one of the largest hosts of refugees in the world.

Isn't it curious that Jordan considers over 2 million of its own citizens - people who have been citizens of Jordan for nearly 70 years - to still be "refugees" that are a burden on its resources like Syrian and Iraqi refugees are?

This has not been the only casual disparagement of Palestinians by Jordan's royal family this year. In an interview with the Washington Post in May, Jordan's King Abdullah mentioned a startling statistic:

In 2016, for the first time, we captured and killed 40 ISIS terrorists in two major incidents. Ninety-six percent of them were of Palestinian origin.

The math doesn't add up - 38 would be 95% and 39 would be 97.5% - but Abdullah was backhandedly saying that Palestinians are more likely to become ISIS terrorists - but the fact that Abdullah associated Palestinians with terrorism caused Jordanian media to censor their own king's comments to remove the words "terrorist" and "96%." (Abdullah was falsely blaming the high percentage of Palestinian recruits to ISIS on the "Israeli-Palestinian" conflict, which is absurd on the face of it because ISIS is killing Muslims.)

(H/t Irene)

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Turkey granting citizenship to 50K Syrians. Palestinians still shafted.

From Anadolu Agency:

Turkey will grant around 50,000 Syrians citizenship, a top Interior Ministry official said Friday.

Speaking in Turkey's southern province of Şanlıurfa, one of the cities hosting Syrian refugee camps, Interior Ministry General Directorate of Population and Citizenship Affairs Manager Sinan Güner told Anadolu Agency (AA) the process of granting citizenship had already begun.

"The citizenship process of a total of 35,000 Syrians has finished now," Güner said. He said a further 15,000 applications were being reviewed, mostly children.

According to Interior Ministry figures, over 12,000 other Syrians have been given Turkish citizenship so far.

I don't know whether any Palestinian Syrians are among the 50,000. This article from January implies that Turkey makes it difficult for many Palestinians to enter, while this one says that their legal status in Turkey is unclear, thanks to UNRWA being their official agency and not UNHCR.

But while 50,000 is still a small number compared to the total number of Syrian refugees in Turkey, the government's willingness to allow tens of thousands to become citizens after a few years stands in stark contrast to the refusal of nearly every Arab state to allow Palestinians to become citizens after nearly 70 years of statelessness.

And that decision is not an accident - but a deliberate action meant to keep Palestinian Arabs in stateless limbo forever, as a means to pressure Israel.

So the next time Arab nations claim to support Palestinians, ask them the question that they have refused to answer honestly for so long: Why don't you offer them citizenship if you support them so much?

(I'm wondering if a country like Bahrain, which has always been moderate compared to other Arab nations and whose leaders have been quoted as saying that the Arab boycott against Israel is not needed anymore, would consider allowing 10,000 Palestinians to become citizens. That mostly symbolic move would do more to help Middle East peace than anything else as it could shame other moderate Arab states who want to build a solid anti-Iran coalition to do the same and take the Palestinian "refugee" issue off the table as the real Middle East problems could be tackled.)

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09/23 Links: Iran tests missile capable of reaching Israel; Dershowitz: Plame Knew What She Was Tweeting

From Ian:

Valerie Plame Wilson Tweets ‘America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars’

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson tweeted out an anti-Semitic article that claimed Jews were the cause of America's wars.
"America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars," she tweeted.

America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars https://t.co/oUH7b0QPMt
— Valerie Plame Wilson (@ValeriePlame) September 21, 2017
The linked story from the media site, Unz Review, asked, "Shouldn't [American Jews] recuse themselves when dealing with the Middle East?"
The author argued Jews will soon cause a war with Iran as well. "What makes the war engine run is provided by American Jews who have taken upon themselves the onerous task of starting a war with a country that does not conceivably threaten the United States," he wrote.

"The issue that nearly all the Iran haters are Jewish has somehow fallen out of sight, as if it does not matter," he continued. "But it should matter."

"For those American Jews who lack any shred of integrity, the media should be required to label them at the bottom of the television screen whenever they pop up, e.g. Bill Kristol is ‘Jewish and an outspoken supporter of the state of Israel.'"

Alan Dershowitz: Plame Knew What She Was Tweeting

I actually read the Philip Giraldi article before I was aware of the Plame tweet. I read it on a neo-Nazi website, where Giraldi's articles are frequently featured. That's where Giraldi's articles belong – on overtly anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi websites. For Plame, a former CIA operative, to claim that she was unaware of the anti-Semitic content of Giraldi's article is to blink reality. Plame had to know what she was doing, since she was aware of Giraldi's bigotry. Her apologies ring hollow. Her true feelings were revealed in what she said before she realized that she would be widely condemned for her original re- Tweet. She must now do more than apologize. She must explain how she came upon the article? Who sent it to her? Does she regularly read bigoted website? Why is she reading and re-Tweeting a known anti-Semite? What are her own personal views regarding the content of the Giraldi's article.

The Plame incident reflects a broader problem about which I have written [A new tolerance for anti-Semitism, by Alan M. Dershowitz, published by Gatestone Institute, 2017].There is a growing tolerance for anti-Semitism. Even when some people themselves do not harbor these feelings, they are willing to support those who do, as long as the anti-Semites are on their side of the political spectrum. This is an unacceptable approach, especially in the post-Holocaust era. Unfortunately, Valerie Plame is the poster child for this growing tolerance. She must be called out on it, as must others who follow the same path of bigotry.

The problem exists both on the hard right and the hard left. Both extremist groups see the world in racial, ethnic and religious terms. Both engage in identity politics: the hard left gives more weight to the views of certain minorities; while the hard right gives less weight to the views of these same minorities. Both are equally guilty of reductionism and stereotyping. Neither group is prepared to judge individuals on their individual merits and demerits. Both insist on judging entire groups and of stereotyping.

American Jews—like other Americans -- are deeply divided on important issues, such as the Iran deal, the current prospects for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, and the Trump administration's foreign policies. To generalize about "Jews" is both factually and morally wrong.

What the hard right and hard left share in common is special bigotry toward Jews: the neo-Nazi right hates the Jewish people; and the hard left hates the nation state of the Jewish people and those Jews who support it. Both views are bigoted and must not become acceptable among centrist liberals and conservatives.

Israeli Warplanes Strike Hezbollah Weapons Depot outside Damascus

Israeli warplanes attacked a Hezbollah weapons depot outside of Damascus in the early hours of Friday morning, The Times of Israel reported.

According to reports in Arabic media outlets, the three separate strikes were carried out near Damascus International Airport, an area which is a stronghold of the Iranian-backed terrorist organization.

“Israeli warplanes targeted with rocket fire a weapons depot belonging to Hezbollah near the airport,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Images of the alleged Israeli strikes surfaced on social media, which show fire and smoke rising from the area around Damascus airport.

There have been no confirmations or denials from Israel, Syria or Hezbollah on any of the reports.

Israel has for years carried out airstrikes in Syrian territory to contain and destroy the military infrastructure of its enemies, including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles, as well as Hezbollah outposts.

Shana Tova U'Metuka 5778!

(Posting early so my Australian and Israeli readers can see it before the holiday.)

Another year has passed. And it has been a good year for the blog. As far as the rest of the world...hard to say.

Israel is in better diplomatic shape than any time since 1967. Terrorism in Israel is down, again thanks to brilliant IDF intelligence and smart police work.

But Iran is one year closer to the bomb. And it is best friends with North Korea, where it gets much of its missile technology. (And probably nuclear tech as well.) And no one knows what is going to happen with the current resident of the White House.

Praying for two days sounds like a great idea.

On the blog front, I have nearly 25,000 Twitter followers. An article I quickly wrote last week went viral on Facebook and is now my most popular news post ever, with nearly 100,000 views across all platforms. (#1 rule of social media: You never know what will go viral!) I can't even keep up with the comments here any more (if you need to bring something to my attention, please email me!)

I didn't send out my quarterly donation appeal yet, but if you think that this blog is valuable, please use the donation buttons on the sidebar or the subscription Patreon link below.

I created the graphic above a few years ago, to symbolize the 30 mandatory sounds of the shofar as a kind of art (stealing the idea from a mystical artist in Tzfat/Safed.) Feel free to use it as a Sukkah decoration!

May the coming year be one of blessing, health, prosperity, joy and, above all, peace.

I will not be blogging from Wednesday afternoon until at least Saturday night.

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09/20 Links Pt2: Leibler: Taking stock and looking ahead; Terrorist Rasmea Odeh Deported From US!

From Ian:

Isi Leibler: Taking stock and looking ahead

We enter Rosh Hashanah 5778 with conflicting emotions.

Israel has never been stronger, but we live in a world of chaos.

North Korea threatens nuclear Armageddon and Europe is now suffering Islamist terrorist attacks the likes of which Israel has endured since its inception.

The Iranians and Hezbollah seek to move in on Israel’s northern frontiers, repeatedly proclaiming an imminent war that will destroy Israel. Prospects are nonexistent for peace with the Palestinians and Hamas has announced a renewal of its relationship with Iran.

We now realize that the apparent decline in anti-Semitism after the Shoah was illusory. Globally, anti-Semitism – frequently expressed as anti-Israelism – has escalated.

Domestically, Israel has been inundated with accusations of corruption implicating the prime minister and leading government officials, prominent businessmen, senior bureaucrats and even the IDF. Although these charges have yet to be proven, the accused have been proclaimed guilty by undisciplined police officers and the sensationalist media.

Despite these challenges, we must thank the Almighty; the Jewish people is stronger than it has ever been since the destruction of the Second Temple, and Israel is a regional superpower.

Whatever one's views about U.S. President Donald Trump and despite some unfulfilled campaign promises, he supports Israel. In addition, support for Israel in Congress and the overall American public stands at an all-time high.

Caroline Glick: Israel and the American Jewish crisis

As the New Year 5778 begins, 88% of Israeli Jews say that they are happy and satisfied with their lives. This makes sense. Israel’s relative security, its prosperity, freedom and spiritual blossoming make Israeli Jews the most successful Jewish community in 3,500 years of Jewish history.

The same cannot be said for the Jews of the Diaspora. In Western Europe, Jewish communities that just a generation ago were considered safe and prosperous are now besieged. Synagogues and Jewish schools look like army barracks. And the severe security cordons Jews need to pass through to pray and study are entirely justified. For where they are absent, as they were at the Hyper Cacher Jewish supermarket in Paris in 2015, assailants strike.

Western European Jewry’s crisis is exogenous to the Jewish communities. It isn’t the Jews who caused the crisis, which may in time cause the wholesale exodus of the Jews from Europe. The crisis is a function of growing levels of popular antisemitism spurred by mass immigration from the Islamic world and the resurgence of indigenous European Jew-hatred, particularly on the far Left.

The same cannot be said of the American Jewish community, which at the dawn of 5778 also finds itself steeped in an ever deepening crisis. And while antisemitism is a growing problem in America, particularly on university campuses, unlike their European counterparts, American Jews could mount and win a battle against the growing anti-Jewish forces. But in large part, they have chosen not to. And they have chosen not to fight the antisemites because they are in the midst of a self-induced identity crisis.

First, there is the problem of demographic collapse.

Nearing Centennial, Lord Balfour Descendant Shows Pride in Family Support for Jewish Homeland

In anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, British and Israeli senior officials convened in Jerusalem last week to discuss the past, present and future of British-Israeli relations.

The Balfour Declaration was a British government public statement, issued on November 2, 1917, that offered support for the establishment of a “national home” in Palestine for the Jewish people. The declaration is credited with galvanizing popular support for Zionism.

The recent UK-Israeli conference was dubbed “From Balfour to Brexit,” and held on September 13 and 14 to inaugurate the new Jerusalem-based Sir Naim Dangoor Centre for UK-Israel Relations. Speakers at the conference, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Israeli Ambassador to Britain Mark Regev, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, focused on the history and future of British-Israeli relations. They also discussed the possible political and historical implications of Britain’s upcoming exit from the European Union, as mandated by last year’s so-called “Brexit” vote.

At the conference, Lord Roderick Balfour, the 5th Earl of Balfour — and the great-great nephew of former Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour — reminisced fondly about “family folklore” of his ancestor’s “very important letter.”

09/20 Links Pt1: Trump’s Turtle Bay Triumph; Pal. activist: Flotillas are for propaganda, not humanitarian

From Ian:

Trump’s Turtle Bay Triumph

President Trump delivered his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, and it was a triumph.

The speech offered the clearest sign yet that the administration has parted with Steve Bannon and other Breitbart types who wanted to use Trump as a bulldozer against liberal order. At Turtle Bay, Trump recommitted Washington to the defense of a U.S.-led world order. He also called out forcefully the rogue states that seek “to collapse the values, the systems and alliances that prevented conflict and tilted the world toward freedom.”

Trump praised the founding of the U.N. and the Marshall Plan, based on the “noble idea that the whole world is safer when nations are strong, independent and free” and the “vision that diverse nations could cooperate to protect their sovereignty, preserve their security and promote their prosperity.” Robert Kagan couldn’t have said it better.

Turning to specific global security challenges, Trump similarly telegraphed a return to the GOP’s postwar foreign-policy traditions.

On Iran: “We cannot let a murderous regime continue these destabilizing activities [in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen] while building dangerous missiles. And we cannot abide by an agreement if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear program . . . Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever. The day will come when the people will face a choice: Will they continue down the path of poverty, bloodshed, and terror? Or will the Iranian people return to the nation’s proud roots as a center of civilization, culture, and wealth, where their people can be happy and prosperous?”

On socialism in Venezuela and beyond: “The problem in Venezuela isn’t that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba, to Venezuela; wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure. Those who preach the tenets of these discredited ideologies only contribute to the continued suffering of the people who live under these cruel systems.”

On U.N. reform: “Too often, the focus of this organization has not been on results, but on bureaucracy and process. In some cases, states that seek to subvert this institution’s noble ends have hijacked the very systems that are supposed to advance them. For example, it is a massive source of embarrassment to the United Nations that some governments with egregious human rights records sit on the U.N. Human Rights Council.”

On the threat from revanchist regimes in Moscow and Beijing: “We must reject threats to sovereignty, from the Ukraine to the South China Sea.”

Netanyahu at UN: Despite Iranian Threats, “The Light of Israel Will Never be Extinguished”

In his speech before the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, hailed what he called a “revolution” in Israel’s acceptance around the world and warned that despite Iranian threats “the light of Israel will never be extinguished.”

“This is happening because so many countries around the world have finally woken up to what Israel can do for them,” Netanyahu explained. “Those countries now recognize what brilliant investors like Warren Buffet and great companies like Google and Intel, what they’ve recognized and known for years: That Israel is the innovation nation – the place for cutting-edge technology in agriculture, in water, in cyber security, in medicine, in autonomous vehicles – you name it, we’ve got it.”

Netanyahu added that Israel doesn’t just give the world the technology to improve lives, but the information needed to save lives, “Israel has provided intelligence that has prevented dozens of major terrorist attacks around the world. We have saved countless lives. You may not know this, but your governments do, and they are working closely together with Israel to keep your countries safe and your citizens safe.”

After noting that hundreds of foreign dignitaries visited Israel in the past year, Netanyahu said, “After 70 years, the world is embracing Israel, and Israel is embracing the world.”

Despite the positive changes, the Prime Minister also noted that Israel still isn’t fully accepted, a problem that, he observed, was apparent at the UN.

Pal. activist: Flotillas are for propaganda, not humanitarian goals

Hamas-affiliated flotilla leader Zaher Birawi has admitted that the goal of flotillas sailing toward Gaza is not really humanitarian, but propaganda, the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center reported on Tuesday.

The British-Palestinian activist has also predicted that the next flotilla designed to break Israel’s naval blockade of Hamas in Gaza will take place in summer 2018.

He made the statements in a recent interview by Felesteen, Hamas’s daily newspaper, translated and analyzed by the intelligence center.

Birawi is the chairman of the International Committee for Breaking the Siege on Gaza, an umbrella organization established to send flotillas to Gaza.

According to the Center, the flotilla leader said the flotillas’ main goal is propaganda aimed at keeping the Palestinians, Gaza and the “siege” as “live” topics in global discourse.

He stated that the objectives of the flotillas are to defame Israel, and to increase the effect of the political and media campaigns accompanying the flotillas.

Let's define Israel as racist and then write a "scholarly" paper "proving" it.

An abstract of a paper at the British Journal of Criminology:

Child Arrest, Settler Colonialism, and the Israeli Juvenile System: A Case Study of Occupied East Jerusalem
Bella Kovner Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

The British Journal of Criminology, azx059, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azx059

Published: 15 September 2017

Abstract

Based on three interrelated theoretical frameworks—institutional racism, settler colonialism and security reasoning—the study examines child arrests in Occupied East Jerusalem (OEJ), addressing how the Israeli justice and law enforcement systems treat Palestinian children. Through analyses of Knesset protocols, court watch participatory observations, review of court proceedings and verdicts, interviews with children, families and professionals in juvenile justice, and a round table discussion, we found that criminalization and punishment are embedded in a systematic, racialized violence that characterizes the Israeli criminal justice system when dealing with Palestinian children in OEJ. The Israeli justice and law enforcement systems categorize Palestinian children as security threats, born terrorists and ideological criminals, lacking all rights.

This very "study" takes as its starting point that Israel is a racist, colonial state - and then adds a veneer of "scholarship" based on pure lies and bias. So its conclusion is not surprisingly an affirmation of its initial biased assumptions.

Even the conclusion cannot possibly be based on any empirical evidence. How can anyone prove that the Israeli justice system considers all Arab children terrorists unless there is a court decision that says this - which of course there isn't, because the idea is absurd? Stone throwing and Molotov cocktail throwing 17 year olds who are the ones who get arrested are not the same as all Palestinian children

Even without reading the paper, it is provably garbage.

But good enough to get published by a British journal.

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Conan in Israel special, part 1 (update)

I haven't yet found the entire show, but here is the beginning at least:

His one minute history of the region is pretty good - and infinitely better better than some I've seen.

If I get a chance before the holiday I'll add more clips as I find them.

UPDATE: All the clips seem to be here but I can't embed them (legally.)

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The tortured prisoners that @HRW and @Amnesty don't care about

If there is any topic that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are known to be concerned with, it is torture (or alleged torture.) The two groups will interview former prisoners and detainees and, often without any corroboration of the stories, publish the most lurid details of the types of tortures endured (or allegedly endured) by the victims.

It is difficult to think of something that human rights groups are better equipped to do than to publicize cases of torture.

There is one group of people that HRW and Amnesty have completely ignored, however.

Last July, the Jerusalem District Court ruled in an 1,800 page decision that some 52 Arabs who were accused of "collaboration" with Israel were entitled to damages for being tortured, often horrifically, by the Palestinian Authority.

The proceedings lasted 14 years. The verdict was announced two months ago. The stories are horrific:

The 1,800-page court decision written by Justice Moshe Drori elaborates on the details of the torture. The gruesome stories, it found, were confirmed by eyewitnesses, the scars on their bodies, and testimony from psychologists.

The victims are being represented by the law office of Barak Kedem, Aryeh Arbus, Netanel Rom and David Zur. Kedem, in an interview with The Times of Israel, described some of the worst cases of torture he can remember from the trial.

For days on end, prisoners were hung upside down. After they lost consciousness, they would be put right side up until they regained consciousness. Then the process would be repeated, he said.

Another method of torture was transferring prisoners back and forth between hot and cold baths. Many had their teeth pulled out with pliers, while some had fingernails extracted. Many spent weeks at a time in a tiny metal closet in which they couldn’t move their bodies.

One man was placed inside a metal barrel and left for five hours in the hot August sun. When they took him out, his interrogators placed salt all over his blistering skin.

Walid himself said that the worst torture method was forcing prisoners to sit on the head of a broken bottle of glass, which tore up their insides.

Though the prisoners were placed in different jails throughout the West Bank, many described the same methods of torture.

Kedem said this showed that these methods “were ordered from up top and not at the discretion of individual interrogators.” In his decision, Justice Drori agreed with this assessment.

At no point while in PA custody were the prisoners brought before a judge.

A few alleged ex-Shin Bet agent prisoners were killed while in jail. (They were represented in the lawsuit by their parents.)

Walid said he witnessed more than one of the executions.

I could not find a single story about torture in Palestinian Authority prisons for any reason on the Amnesty website although there are several that allege Israel tortures Palestinian prisoners.

HRW has a couple of articles about Palestinian rights abuses that mention torture of detainees, but not a word about the "collaborators" with Israel who suffered - provably - the worst kinds of torture, abuse and death.

I mentioned recently that the only people in the world without human rights protection from NGOs are the Jews of Judea and Samaria, whom these groups are urging to be subject to mass population transfer, an explicit war crime.

This group of "collaborators" with Israel are an even worse example of people whom the NGOs willfully ignore or want to see tortured and dead.

Because they were trying to stop Palestinians from killing Jews.

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09/19 Links Pt2: Professors Stand Up to BDS; Why Does the U.N. Exist?

From Ian:

Professors Stand Up to BDS

A new academic year has begun and, with it, we can expect new attempts to demonize Israel on our college campuses. As ever, the immoderation of those who support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement should help. The most recent visible move by prominent BDSers has been to try to align their colleagues—in however hedged a manner—with the politically toxic Antifa movement.

So yes, we are not dealing here with strategic masterminds. But, in academia, such people have an advantage, nonetheless. They are “scholar-activists,” distant cousins of the 1960s New Left, who view campuses, as their forebearers did, as grounds from which to assail the powers that be. That is to say, they are there primarily, not incidentally, to engage in political activism. They have an influence far out of proportion to their numbers because most academics are at colleges and universities to teach and engage in research. They don’t, as people say in the movies, want no trouble. So they are inclined to leave politics to the people who care about it, so long as they are allowed to do their work in peace.

It is in part for this reason that organizations like Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and the newer Academic Engagement Network exist (full disclosure: I have worked with both organizations). On the one hand, they enable scholars drawn reluctantly into a fight against BDS to learn from and support each other’s efforts. On the other hand, they try to spread the news that BDS is not only unjust to Israel—a fact that may worry those with no dog in the fight only a little—but also damaging to the academic enterprise, for which BDS seeks to substitute propagandizing.

At the beginning of the academic year, it is worth pausing to notice how many professors have been willing to put their reputations on the line to turn back BDS efforts and how often they have been successful. These include figures like Cary Nelson, Russell Berman, Rachel Harris, Sharon Musher, and Jeffrey Herf, to name just a few. These academicians have well-deserved reputations for waging long and successful campaigns for the integrity of their disciplines in the Modern Language Association and the American Historical Association. But they also include physicist Azriel Genacka and biochemist Fred Naider, who, along with many of their colleagues at the City University of New York, stood up and opposed a pro-BDS resolution passed by a graduate student union there, and supported by some CUNY faculty.

Perhaps most impressively, they include scholars like the anthropologist Gila Silverman, who, despite working in a field that includes many BDS supporters and without the protection of tenure, was willing to fight publicly against a BDS resolution that very narrowly failed to win the support of the American Anthropological Association. Credit is due to the Academic Engagement Network for pulling together, as part of a new guide for faculty, these and other examples of faculty efforts to counter BDS.

Most of the participants in these efforts are left-liberals; in a profession in which conservatives have neither numbers nor much influence, that can hardly be surprising. But BDS has inadvertently brought together people on the left and right who have in common, at the very least, an interest in the health and integrity of their universities and professional associations.

Why Does the U.N. Exist? Secret Deals, Sex Scandals and Silence Harm United Nations Mission

For more than seven decades, the United Nations has been a leading international authority on world affairs. However, its credibility has been damaged by allegations of corruption, and political stalemates among leading powers undermine the U.N.'s core values and often produce more talk than change, critics say.

This week, world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly in New York are set to deliver major speeches addressing some of the most pressing issues facing the international community. President Donald Trump, a frequent critic of the U.N., is widely expected to take on rivals Iran and North Korea in his first appearance at the forum. While the gathering is likely to host some fiery rhetoric from all sides, critics such as U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer are more concerned with what's going on behind closed doors, something he says could compromise the integrity of the organization as a whole.

"People don't realize this, but most of what happens at the U.N. is vote-trading," Neuer told Newsweek.

"Sadly, too often European democracies do deals in the darkness; they do secret deals that end up being sort of a deal with the devil," he added.

U.N. Watch is a Geneva-based monitoring group founded in 1993 by lawyer and civil rights activist Morris Berthold Abram. Its stated goal is to hold the U.N. accountable when it fails to live up to its mission. While Neuer cites U.N. inaction on humanitarian crises in Syria and Venezuela as examples of times when states needed to step up and effect real change, he expressed particular indignation toward a recent U.N. scandal that highlighted the practice of nations offering votes for individual political gains, as opposed to dealing on ethical and moral grounds.

Maybe you've heard of the phenomenon known as "only in Israel." It may seem self-explanatory: something that could only happen in Israel, which is true. But it's more than that. It's a flavor, a culture. You only know it's happened when it hits you, and you wouldn't know what you were seeing unless you'd spent some time in Israel, living among Israelis.

"Only in Israel" is so well known a phrase that people often abbreviate it, especially on social media. "OIL," they'll comment, which is ironic, considering that nope: oil was not one of the things God gave Israel. At least not that we're aware, up until now.

There's a Facebook group where people share their moving "Only in Israel" stories. Because they are moving. Besides which sharing and reading "Only in Israel" stories can change a blah, or no-good-very-bad-day to a better one.

The thing is, an "Only in Israel" moment doesn't happen that often. Which is one reason these moments are so beloved, so precious. You have to not be looking for them. They have to catch you unawares. That's part of the charm of "Only in Israel" moments.

The "Only in Israel" moment comes to remind you why you love the land, why you chose to live in Israel instead of your birthplace, in spite of the heat, the terror, and living so far away from family you may have left behind. It comes just when you need it, the "Only in Israel" moment, when you're heart-sore and tense and worried. It's a kind of magic or medicine that completely changes your perspective, without effort, in milliseconds.

As you know, we usher in Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, Wednesday night. Since Rosh Hashana, a two-day holiday, is this year followed by Shabbat, we have to prepare for what is, in essence, a three-day holiday. If one is not lucky enough to get invited out for the holiday, the week has been a maelstrom of earnest shopping and cooking the likes of which is difficult to describe.

You worry about how far in advance you can cook chicken, and whether that kugel can be frozen. You worry about buying lettuce, because if you buy it early it will spoil and if you wait too long, there won't be any left. You worry about not having enough air circulating in your fridge because it's so jam-packed, that the lettuce you managed to find might actually freeze, rendering it inedible. You worry about waking up on Shabbos morning and oh no, that chicken you cooked on Wednesday doesn't smell very good. Most of all, you worry about paying for it all. And if you work for a living, you're hard pressed to get it all done: work, shop, cook, work, shop, and cook some more.

It's a recipe for some serious tension.

Sunday morning, my husband took my second Rosh Hashana shopping list (I made five, broken down by days and tasks) and failed to come home with ginger root, marzipan, and marmalade. I accused him of being vision-challenged, and he dared me to come with him right there and then to find those things in the store. Huffing and puffing, I slipped on my shoes and jumped into the car with him. Sure enough, I found ginger root, marzipan, and marmalade, no problem. That may have been because it was a different store. Or it may be that my husband is, um, vision-challenged.

At any rate, I brought my loot to the checkout line and it was LONG. The cashier was yelling at a woman, saying, "You can't do that when it's busy like this. You can't just make everyone wait and let the line pile up while you go and look for something when I'm already checking out your items!"

'Oh, great,' I thought. 'This is just lovely. Waiting to buy three items with a gazillion people in front of me, a selfish customer, and a testy cashier.'

The cashier called out, "It's busy, here. We need to open another line," and a guy came over to open another line. Three of us raced over the other line. But MAN, this cashier was slow. I should have stayed in the first line.

I was watching the people in front of me to see how long it would take and I realized both of them were friends with me on Facebook, and neither of them knew me by sight. 'Depressing,' I thought. And sighed.

Right at that moment, the cashier, the new one who'd opened up the line, whistled the opening bars of the Looney Tunes theme song, The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down. "DAH dada da DAH da DAH da dada da DAH. DAH dada da DAH da DAH da dada da DAH."

Without breaking a beat, I puckered up and blew, "Da-a DA-AH da-a DA-AH dada da DAH. Da-a DA-AH da-a DA-AH dada da DAH!"

The cashier looked at me agog. Everyone in the store stopped and stared. The guy in front of me whipped around, confused. "Who's whistling??" he said.

"Me," I said. "Er, him," I stuttered, gesturing to the cashier.

The cashier said, "It was a duet!"

Everyone was, by now, smiling and laughing, the tension completely defused. The cashier from the first line, getting in on the fun said, "Everyone knows that song!

No longer was anyone grousing about long lines first thing on a Sunday morning in the supermarket, no longer was anyone worried about paying for the holiday, or getting the cooking done. No longer was anyone panicked about punching a clock at work. All that was gone.

Just like that.

It was an "Only in Israel" moment.

Shana Tova to all my readers! A sweet year.

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