Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, November 13, 2017

11/13 Links Pt1: Pipes: Why Palestinian delusions persist; PA textbooks teach “martyrdom as a life goal”

From Ian:

Daniel Pipes: Why Palestinian delusions persist

In 1974, 2nd Lt. Hiroo Onoda of the Imperial Japanese Army was still fighting for his emperor, hiding in a Philippine jungle. He had rejected many attempts to inform him of Japan's surrender 29 years earlier. During those many years, he senselessly murdered about one Filipino and injured three others each year. Only a concerted effort by his former commander finally convinced Onoda that the emperor had accepted defeat in 1945 and therefore he too must lay down arms.

The Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are Onoda writ large. They formally acknowledged defeat by Israel 24 years ago, when Yasser Arafat stood on the White House lawn and recognized "the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security." Trouble was, Arafat himself did not sincerely offer this act of surrender and most Palestinians rejected it.

Accordingly, the war continues, with Palestinians emulating that grizzled, vicious Japanese soldier: They, too, battle on for a failed cause, murder senselessly, and ignore repeated calls to surrender. Just as Onoda insisted on believing in a divine emperor, Palestinians inhabit a fantasy world in which, for example, Jesus was a Palestinian, Jerusalem was always exclusively Islamic, and Israel is the new Crusader state on the verge of collapse. (In this spirit, Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei has helpfully provided the precise date of Sep. 9, 2040, when Israel will vaporize, and his acolytes built a large doomsday clock to count down the days.) Some imagine Israel already gone, with nearly every Arabic map of "Palestine" showing it replacing the Jewish state.

How do Palestinians ignore reality and persist in these illusions? Due to three main factors: Islamic doctrine, international succor, and the wariness of the Israeli security services. (The Israeli Left was once a major factor but it barely counts anymore.)

PMW: Fatah official: Israel has a "fascist governmental plan, typical of Nazism"

In 2013, the Palestinian Football Association (PFA), headed by Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee Jibril Rajoub, launched an unfounded attack against the Israeli Football Association (IFA) in FIFA. The PFA claimed that the IFA is in breach of FIFA's statutes since six of its registered clubs play in what the PFA refers to as "its territory."

On Oct. 27, 2017, FIFA's Council rejected Rajoub and PFA's claim, deciding
[To] "refrain from imposing any sanctions or other measures on either the Israel FA or the Palestinian FA, as well as from requesting any other FIFA body to do so. The matter is declared closed..." [FIFA Council statement, Oct. 27, 2017]

While not acting on Rajoub's complaint, FIFA's council also said it would not act against the PFA. The basis for acting against the PFA was Palestinian Media Watch's complaint to FIFA's Disciplinary Committee which provided evidence that the PFA and Rajoub were inciting terror, glorifying terrorists, and promoting racism and Antisemitism.

In response, Rajoub continues to use denigratory and discriminatory language, saying Israel has a "fascist governmental plan... that is typical of Nazism," in breach of section 58 of FIFA's Disciplinary Code. Two days after FIFA's decision, Rajoub said:

"This is a blatant violation when they [Israelis] organize an official [football] league on lands that are not Israeli lands. Even the Israel [Football] Association did not dare to claim: "These lands belong to us." The one [Israel] who brings in politics and makes sport political is the one who works according to a fascist governmental plan, a government that is typical of Nazism. We have rights, and we will continue to demand them at the FIFA court in accordance with all the laws and regulations, and also the laws of Switzerland where FIFA is located."
[Official PA TV News, Oct. 29, 2017]

PMW will be submitting another complaint to FIFA against Rajoub's new breach of FIFA's Disciplinary Code.

New Palestinian Authority textbooks teach “martyrdom as a life goal”

For years we’ve been covering incitement on the part of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its failure to prepare Palestinian society for a resolution of the conflict via non-violent means.

The PA is viewed by the West as the ‘moderate’ Palestinian body and Israel’s supposed ‘partner for peace’, but as we’ve repeatedly highlighted, its officials routinely demonize Israel and glorify terrorists as national heroes. Young people are exposed to this radicalization, as schools and educational programs justify and condone the use of violence.

The sad reality is that a whole generation of Palestinian children is learning in schools and playing in sports fields and arenas named after mass murders.

Now a new study by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) documents how kids in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas are being further indoctrinated to hate through their schoolbooks.

Like earlier textbooks that were used to teach “over one million impressionable children”, the IMPACT-se report finds that the new textbooks—recently released as part of the PA’s first full reform of the educational curriculum since 2000—are still promoting the demonization of Israel.

But the IMPACT-se assessment also finds that the radicalization is pervasive across this new curriculum—to an even greater extent than before.

Basically, Palestinian children are being groomed to commit to jihad war and to sacrifice themselves to martyrdom.

A survey of civic organizations that have embraced the BDS agenda would show a number of groups (possibly a majority) in a state of institutional collapse. Which surfaces the question of whether dying organizations tend to embrace BDS on their way to oblivion vs. the embrace of the BDS being the cause (vs. the symptom) of decay.

An example I’ve covered ad nauseam for the “dying institutions embrace BDS” argument is the US Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) which voted in BDS in 2004, only to overturn that vote in 2006 with subsequent votes in 2008, 2010 and 2012 also ratifying lack of interest for returning to the BDS fold.

Like the University of Michigan - now about to enjoy its tenth referendum on boycotting Israel - the Presbyterian Church was never going to be left alone by the Israel haters until they finally voted as they were told (which they finally did in 2014 when they reinstated their BDS credentials).

Those who understood church politics well enough to see past the BDS issue understood that boycott votes that took place year after year after year were a symptom of a much deeper problem within the church having nothing to do with Israel or the Middle East. For the Presbyterian Church, like all Mainstream Protestant denominations in the US, has seen membership decline by 50% over the last several decades and has struggled to stay relevant in a world where people are not interested in listening to what the church has to say, much less joining a dying institution.

This collapse of membership can be traced to changes in the wider culture, notably secularization and the rise of popular Evangelical Christianity. Both of these factors created competition for the Mainline Protestant denominations (which include Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans as well as different branches of Presbyterianism) who tried to deal with these challenges through a logical approach that only accelerated their decline.

Why, thought the Mainliners decades ago when these trends were becoming apparent, should we be making it easy for people to join Evangelical churches or abandon church affiliation altogether by making it harder to understand, much less embrace, the creed of one Protestant sect over another? Why, in other words, should subtle and difficult-to-understand doctrinal difference between Methodist and Presbyterian (for example) become a barrier for someone to join either church?

And so the Mainline churches joined together in ecumenical communion in which these differences in doctrine were played down in order to stress what united vs. what separated one Mainline institution from another.

Perfectly reasonable, most of us would agree even today. But as it turned out de-emphasizing what made it unique to be a Presbyterian made it difficult to explain what unique value one would get out of becoming one. And having put aside religious disputes to focus on areas of agreement, what most churches found agreement on was secular politics.

This swing towards politics had two unintended consequences.

First, it helped to accelerate the decline of every church participating in this strategy. For, as it turned out, if all the church was offering were ways to participate in social justice causes, then it was competing with a host of secular organizations, many of them offering more direct and effective opportunities to fight for those same causes. More importantly for readers of this site, the focus on politics made these organizations vulnerable to those who wanted to leverage church reputation for their own political ends.

And this is the true cause of how BDS became Presbyterian dogma, replacing older dustier traditions outlined in the church’s Book of Order, as the source of militant, decades-long debate. It was during the course of this transition that church leaders rose to their positions fully committed to the anti-Israel cause – regardless of what harm it might do to the church they purported to lead.

And thus the corruption that led to countless BDS votes turned an organization that once served as backbone to US cultural life into nursing home for aging members and clergy, led by officials more interested in overseeing the decline of a politically homogenous institution than building up a church that might stray from now doctrinal anti-Israel animus.

So here we have an example of how a dying religious institution tried to redefine itself as a secular political one, only to see its collapse accelerate as outsiders with no interest in the church scavenged the remains in hope of giving their BDS agenda unearned weight. One can see secular examples of similar “Walking Dead” institutions in groups like the Lawyer’s Guild.

With PCUSA as the exemplar of the “dying institutions tend to embrace BDS” hypothesis, we will next turn to an example where the embrace of Israel hatred preceded organization disintegration: The Quakers.

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Arab and Muslim paranoia about Israel continues

Three completely different articles from wildly different Arab and Muslim sources all agree that Israel is behind everything.

From the Daily News Egypt:

All developments in the region are in favour of Israel, and lead it to regional and civil wars, former Egyptian assistant to the foreign minister, Hussein Haridy, said.
He added that the US president’s speech in October, the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariry, and the recent developments in Saudi Arabia, all revealed a plan to eliminate Iran’s influence in the Arab region, as a prelude to a general confrontation, where all conflicting parties would stand to lose, except Israel. If the Israeli plan succeeds, they would end up with a declaration of the Greater Israel.
Why is Israel involved in this confrontation? One of the goals of this war is to stop the expansion of the Iranian belt from Tehran to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel and Saudi Arabia share that goal, whether by agreement or not.So Israel is the main player in the current scene? Israel is the catalyst of events and its interests coincide with American arms manufacturers’. The Israeli strategy does not only aim at the elimination of Iran but also exhausting the main Arab forces and draining their economic resources, in preparation for establishing Greater Israel.What do you mean by Greater Israel? For the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel, it will have borders, as it is considered the only United Nations member without internationally recognized borders so far. This is the undeclared goal.Is Sinai part of this scheme? The Israeli scheme had four phases: the first phase was the Balfour Declaration, the second phase was the establishment of the so-called State of Israel, the third phase was the 1967 aggression, and we are witnessing now the final phase. At one time, Sinai was part of the Zionist project since its launch.It is known that Al-Arish was an alternative to the establishment of the Israeli homeland before the Ottoman Empire rejected that. Regardless of this rejection, there was an agreement between the British and the World Zionist Movement to replace Al-Arish with Palestine. When the two state solution was suggested, the Israeli side thought of expanding the Gaza Strip westward to absorb the density of population. This proposal was met with approval under the rule of the [Muslim] Brotherhood in Egypt.So the 30 June revolution aborted this scheme? It destroyed this project, which put the Zionist and Turkish forces and those who were behind this project in an awkward position, and made the Arab world preoccupied with confronting Iran. Unfortunately, the engine and the beneficiary is Israel.

I am trying to figure out the logic behind all this, but I can't. In the end - everything happening in the Arab and Muslim world is Israel's fault and Israel is using all the chaos to expand. Why Israel gave up the Sinai and much of the West Bank and Gaza are questions that only someone as smart as Hussein Haridy can answer, I guess.

From KashmirWatch:

Despite the repeated assurances of Pakistan’s military and civil leadership that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are well-protected and are under tight security arrangements, having well-coordinated command and control system, a deliberate propaganda campaign against the safety of these weapons keeps on going by the US, India and some Western countries who are acting upon the Zionist agenda to ‘denuclearize’ Pakistan.
It is mentionable that being the only nuclear country in the Islamic World, Pakistan was already on the hit-list of the US, India and Israel, including some Western countries. Based in Afghanistan, American CIA, Indian RAW, Israeli Mossad and British MI6 which have well-established their covert networks there and are well-penetrated in the terrorist outfits like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and their affiliated Taliban groups are using their terrorists to destabilize Pakistan by arranging the subversive activities such as target killings, suicide attacks, hostage-takings, sectarian and ethnic violence in various cities of the country. Now, these foreign entities have also started backing the Islamic State group (Also known as Daesh, ISIS, ISIL) in order to weaken Pakistan through terrorist acts.

...These Zionist-controlled foreign elements have, again, started terror attacks in Pakistan to show that nuclear weapons of the country are insecure.
Overtly, American high officials remark that they seek stability in Pakistan, but covertly, they continue to destabilize it to obtain the illegitimate interests of Israel.

This gibberish was originally written in the "Veterans Today" antisemitic conspiracy site.

From Iran's Abna24:

Iranian Parliament’s General Director for International Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian underlined the role of the United States and the Zionist regime in crisis in Middle East and said “the Zionists are after controlling the region.”
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks in a televised interview with Negah-e Yek on Saturday.
Referring to the resignation of Lebanon’s PM, Amir-Abdollahian said “during the last 6 years, simultaneous with the Islamic awakening, an unholy alliance was forged between the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia through which they resorted to various means, such as ISIS, in order to suit their fundamental purpose.”
“Defeating ISIS, with all the support it had received from terrorists and super-powers, was a major step that was taken in about three years. ISIS had set the destabilization of the region as its primary objective and wanted to effect demographic change through tribal conflicts,” added Amir-Abdollahian.
“When they realized ISIS had failed in the region, they forced the referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan. But Masoud Barzani was only used as a means to an end,” he went on.
“Americans gave Barzani the green light. Barzani had asked Israel to maintain peace, but he stood alone, so Israel finally had to take measures. Iran provided the greatest support for Kurds in this situation,” said Iranian Parliament’s General Director for International Affairs.
“The Zionists are after controlling the region, but their plots have failed. Their next plan is to disturb peace in the region. They will accept peace and security in the region only when Israel is in peace and other countries, even Saudi Arabia, are destroyed and separated,” he went on.

The old ways of thinking that Israel and Jews must be behind everything have never left the Arab and Muslim world.

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Terror suspect found innocent by Israeli military court? I thought that never happens!

Human Rights Watch wrote in June:

Israeli authorities have incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Palestinians since 1967, the majority after trials in military courts, which have a near-100 percent conviction rate.

The "hundreds of thousands" claim is unsourced, in keeping with HRW's careful adherence to anti-Israel lies. I've looked at the statistics on how many Palestinians have been incarcerated and the numbers are much, much lower than the 800,000 that Palestinian NGOs like to spout, and that HRW believes without question.

What about the near 100% conviction rate? That comes from a Haaretz article from 2011, and that is the only source ever cited for that claim.

Have things changed since then? No one has bothered to check. But the figure is quoted, over and over again, as if it is current. Which shows again how much HRW cares about the facts.

CAMERA has looked at this statistic, and showed that in the US in the same year:

the US military's “conviction rate for all crimes is more than 90 percent.” This rate includes conviction for all crimes including sexual assaults; the sexual assault conviction rate was only 27%, bringing the total conviction rate down.
In US federal civilian criminal courts, the conviction rate is slightly higher. For fiscal year 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, 94.2 percent of criminal defendants in federal district courts either pleaded guilty or were convicted, and 91.8 percent of criminal defendants in federal magistrate courts either pleaded guilty or were convicted.

CAMERA gives various reasons for the high conviction rate, mostly that prosecutors in Israel have huge incentives to only bring cases that have enough evidence to result in conviction.

So it is interesting to see a seeming exception that was just reported:

A Palestinian prisoner was exonerated by an Israeli court on Thursday from charges against him alleging that he carried out a bombing at an Israeli hotel in 2015.

According to Lawyer Yousif Nasasra of the Palestinian Committee of Prisoner’s Affairs, Jerusalemite Khalil al-Nimr, 23, was detained on November 30th, 2015 over accusations of carrying out an explosion that targeted the Rio Hotel in the southern Israeli city of Eilat.
According to a statement from Nasasra, al-Nimr was proved innocent on Thursday after several court sessions.

How can this be if the courts are stacked against Palestinians? Why would anyone be exoneratred?

I guess it is court-washing.

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"35,000 Jews Storm Hebron!"

We've mentioned many times how Arab media reports on Jews peacefully visiting the Temple Mount as they are "storming Al Aqsa."

This past Sabbath was the annual pilgrimage of Jews to Hebron to mark the weekly Torah portion where Abraham buys - at an exorbitant price - the field where he will bury Sarah, and where he and all the Patriarchs and Matriarchs (except Rachel) will be buried.

In Hebron.

So naturally Arab media reports on the pilgrims in this way:

MORE THAN 35 THOUSAND JEWS BREAK INTO HEBRON
Thousands of Jews stormed the city of Hebron to perform religious rituals, where religious Jews from "Kiryat Arba" hosted more than 35,000 Jews, where the huge tents were erected near what they call the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

By the way, 35,000 visitors is a record.

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"Balfour as bad as the Holocaust"

Abdo Wazen in Al Hayat is upset that two major French literary awards were recently given to Holocaust-themed novels.

After saying that the books really aren't deserving of any honors, he goes into full blown Arab conspiracy theory territory:

Is it really a coincidence that these two "regular" Nazi novels win two big prizes at a painful historic moment when the Palestinians celebrated their 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration? Do you not see that this British and European "promise" is the same as the Nazi project in its cruelty, violence and crime? Is it not worth representing a knot in the conscience of Britain, Europe and America? [Balfour] promised the Zionists of the world the opportunity to play the role of Hitler's executioner, but against the people of Palestine. This dubious promise was the "legitimate" international motive for fighting the people, persecuting them, expelling them from their land and displacing them. No Western novel has been written about the Balfour Declaration, nor about Palestine, and the massacres committed - and still - by the Israeli occupation army against the people of the land. No European or American novelist has written a story about one of the worst tragedies of the twentieth century, cruel, dark, and miserable. The Holocaust is overflowing with novels, movies and theatrical works all over the world. The tragedy of Palestine was seen only by the Arabs. The French writer dissident Jean Genet is the only Western who wrote the novel of Palestine and the Palestinians in his wonderful book "Prisoner of Love", which aroused the anger of Israelis and Zionists in the world. Is not it very unfortunate that the Palestinian tragedy does not lead to its inspiring works by Western novelists that suit it?

Just for context, more Jews were killed every week during the years of the Holocaust than Palestinians have been killed by Israel in seventy years.

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11/12 Links: Prince Charles blames ‘foreign’ Jews for Mideast turmoil; BBC Erases Jews from Ancient Israel

From Ian:

In 1986 letter, Prince Charles blames ‘foreign’ Jews for Mideast turmoil

In a newly revealed letter from 1986 , the UK’s Prince Charles implied that the “influx of foreign, European Jews” to Israel was to blame for fueling the Israeli-Arab conflict, and lamented that US presidents were unwilling to take on the American “Jewish lobby.”

The November 24, 1986 letter was written to a friend, explorer Laurens van der Post, after a visit to the Gulf with Princess Diana. It was published by the Mail on Sunday. Charles wrote that he now had a greater insight to Arabs’ hostility towards Israel following the trip.

“Also begin to understand their point of view about Israel. Never realized they see it as a US colony,” he wrote. “I now appreciate that Arabs and Jews were all a Semitic people originally + it is the influx of foreign, European Jews (especially from Poland, they say) which has helped to cause great problems.”

Charles, who was 38 at the time, then suggested the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel was a root cause of terrorism that needed to be addressed.

“I know there are so many complex issues, but how can there ever be an end to terrorism unless the causes are eliminated?,” he wrote.

It was not clear from the letter whether he was referring to European Jews immigrating to Israel before or after the Holocaust and the country’s establishment in 1948.

Prince Charles must repudiate 1986 letter demanding someone “take on the Jewish lobby” and claiming “influx” of Holocaust survivors to Israel caused terrorism and are a problem to be “eliminated”

This letter is disturbing. It appears that our future king believed in 1986 that the “influx” of Holocaust survivors to Israel were not “Semitic”, “cause great problems” including terrorism, and should be “eliminated”, presumably through their removal. The letter also appears to endorse the view that Israel is not simply the result of Jewish self-determination in the historic Jewish homeland, but the result of bullying by an all-powerful “Jewish lobby” which holds US presidents in its clutches. We view these comments as unmistakably antisemitic.

However, since the letter was written, the Prince of Wales appears to have warmed to the Jewish community and we note his friendship with the former Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, as well as his attendance at the inauguration of the present Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis.

In order to reassure the worldwide Jewish community, including Jews living in Israel, that the heir to the throne has changed his views, these historic remarks must urgently be repudiated by Prince Charles.

BBC Erases Jews from Ancient Israel

An initially positive feature on the BBC Travel website focuses on the Israel city of Caesarea, specifically the discovery of 2,000 gold coins on the ocean floor, the largest stash ever found in the region.

The author of the piece covers Caesarea’s fascinating ancient history, referring to Phoenicians and Greeks and eventually the Romans:

By 6AD, Caesarea was the capital of the Roman province of Judea and was not known as “Roman Palestine” or “Palestine.” It was only later, following the suppression of the Bar-Kokhba Revolt in the year 135AD that the Romans changed the name of the province to Syria Palaestina.

And who were the “native people” who revolted against Roman rule between 66 and 70AD?

They are the one people who are not mentioned by name in the BBC Travel article – THE JEWS.

Prominent rabbi's speech gives fuel to antisemites

I am hesitant to write this post, but I think it is important that when religious rabbis give talks that are meant to be only heard by like-minded people, they realize that their words can go out into the world and make Jews look bad.

A prominent Israeli rabbi (whose name I will not give here) gave a speech over a year ago where he said, in effect, that what (he says) Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf was correct. According to this rabbi, Hitler in Mein Kampf has nothing against religious Jews. He only hated the assimilated Jews, the Jews who were perverting German theatre to pornography, the Jews who were behind the Communist revolution. In other words, the Jews who Hitler hated deserve to be hated..

First of all, at least the official Nazi version of Mein Kampf does not emphasize it. Hitler was clearly against all Jews and wanted them all dead. I excerpted sections of Mein Kampf recently. I could not find any distinction between religious and assimilated Jews, between communist and capitalist Jews. On the contrary, Hitler wrote things like

From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas in reality they are a race? And what a race! One of the
greatest thinkers that mankind has produced has branded the Jews for all time with a statement which is profoundly and exactly true. He called the Jew “the great master of lies.” Those who do not realize the truth of that statement, or do not wish to believe it, will never be able to lend a hand in helping truth to prevail.

The rabbi's point is that Jews in Israel shouldn't assimilate the way they did in Germany. But his claiming that Hitler was right, and that Jews are the source of Germany's troubles, has given fuel to antisemites.

This video has been widely copied by antisemites on various video platforms and elsewhere. The rabbi is now quoted all over as proof of Jewish mendacity, that even Jews admit.

I came across it in an article at a Kuwaiti news site which mixed up the actual rabbi's name with one of the antisemites who publicized his words, but his summary of the rabbi's words are unfortunately pretty accurate:

In his book Mein Kampf Hitler touched on the subject of the reason for his hatred of the Jews extensively. Rabbi Aaron Kasparov [sic] commented on the reasons for the hatred, asserting that Hitler was right in his hatred of the Jews because, according to the rabbi, the Jews had planned the Communist revolution in Russia resulting in the liquidation of 33 million Russians. The first communist government after the revolution was composed of six Jewish members out of a total of thirteen members, not to mention that the Jews are the spiritual parents of Marxism, communism and Leninism. He added that the Jews owned seven German newspapers out of nine newspapers and were working to destroy literature, poetry and theater in Germany and to eradicate religion, faith and morality. They were the enemies of the Lord. They wanted to control Germany after Russia and to liquidate 20 million Germans.On this basis Hitler felt that he should immediately liquidate them before it was too late. One of the most important things that Rabbi Kasparov [sic] mentioned was that Hitler's book was not translated into Hebrew for long because those who forbade translation were the leftist Jews who feared the exposure of Hitler's true hatred of the Jews. He did not hate them for being Jews but for their heinous deeds and plans to control Germany. Rabbi Kasparov [sic] ended his speech by advising Jews to refrain from returning to such acts after they had gathered from the diaspora.

Of course this wasn't enough for the Arab writer:

Even the idea of the atomic bomb was inspired by the Jewish physicist Einstein. He warned US President Roosevelt of the German possession of the atomic bomb, although their nuclear research was very modest. This drew the attention of Americans to the importance of obtaining the atomic bomb before the Nazis, and the Jewish physicist Oppenheimer, who led the Los Alamos Bomb Research Laboratory, where the Americans succeeded in producing in the so-called Manhattan Project, which cost huge sums and enormous effort. Japan was the first victim of the atomic bomb. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed and hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were killed and they suffered from nuclear radiation for a long time, although Japan was about to be defeated in World War II before being hit by atomic bombs.
Nuclear weapons are among the most powerful weapons that could destroy human civilization and destroy the human race if a nuclear war breaks out between the superpowers. Oppenheimer, the atomic bomb engineer, therefore expressed this by saying: "I am death, devastating to the worlds."
The truth of them is that Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning): "They seek corruption in the land, and Allah does not love those who spoil it."

Antisemites don't need to be handed victories like this on a silver platter. The rabbi's words were inaccurate, sure, but beyond that he became a poster boy for Jew-haters who now claim that religious Jews agree with Hitler that Jews are corrupt individuals hell bent on world domination.

It is possible to speak out against assimilation and secularism and leftism among Jews without mentioning Hitler as a proof-text. The rabbi was irresponsible and his words have caused damage, and will continue to cause damage, to Jews for years to come, all because he wanted to shake up his followers.

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Arafat rally draws thousands in Gaza

A Fatah-organized rally in Gaza yesterday to commemorate the 13th anniversary of Yasir Arafat's death drew thousands of people carrying yellow Fatah flags.

Fatah tried, as always, to equate Mahmoud Abbas with Arafat.

And people couldn't resist indoctrinating children into loving the violence that Arafat's Fatah symbolizes:

After all, the Fatah logo itself on every one of these yellow flags includes rifles - and a hand grenade.

Notably, the mere name Arafat gathers orders of magnitude more people to a rally than a year's worth of preparation for anti-Balfour rallies, of which the largest one I could find in the territories was no more than a hundred people.

Meanwhile, Fatah still says that Israel is "politically and criminally responsible" for Arafat's death.

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"Pro-Israel" J-Street sent out an email:

In 2018, Wisconsin will again be the site of one of the most competitive races in the country. Senator Tammy Baldwin’s seat has been named one of the most likely to flip in 2018, based on last year’s presidential results. If we don’t fight hard for Tammy Baldwin -- if we take her reelection for granted -- we risk losing a key J Street ally in Congress.
Chip in $9 now to support J Street champion Senator Tammy Baldwin.

What does Tammy Baldwin believe?

In 2006, HR 282 entitled "To hold the current regime in Iran accountable for its threatening behavior and to support a transition to democracy in Iran" was passed by a huge bipartisan majority 397-21.

Tammy Baldwin voted against it.

In 2009, HR 2194, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009 passed by an even more lopsided, bipartisan vote of 412-12.

Tammy Baldwin voted against it.

In 2010:the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act passed with a vote of 408-8.

Tammy Baldwin was one of the few who voted against it.

When Baldwin ran for Senate, suddenly she started supporting Iran sanctions bills. But she clearly doesn't really believe in them. It was considered a "full flop" by Politifact.

The Arab American Institute rates Baldwin a +4, "indicating pro-Arab pro-Palestine voting record."

In 2010, Baldwin signed a letter that demanded that Israel lift the "blockade" on Gaza, saying that it was imposing "de facto collective punishment" to Gaza residents.

If you had to list the least pro-Israel members of the Senate, Tammy Baldwin would have to be in the top tier of that list.

So when J-Street claims to be "pro-Israel," their support of Tammy Baldwin shows that they are anything but.

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Academic fraud Joseph Massad claims Ashkenazic Jews are really European

Joseph Massad, of Columbia University, has an article (based on a recent speech he made) in Electronic Intifada that claims - like many antisemites do - that Ashkenazic Jews aren't really Jews. But I'm not sure if he is espousing the discredited Khazar theory, or something different:

It is true that both Judaism and Christianity are Palestinian religions. It is also an established historical fact that the inhabitants of what came to be called “Europe” later, whether Christians or Jews, had converted to these Palestinian religions centuries after the Palestinians had.

It is also true that these new Christians of what would become Europe never thought of themselves as direct descendants of the ancient Palestinian Christians who spoke Aramaic, but saw themselves correctly as more recent converts to this Palestinian religion.

Yet these same Christian converts often insisted that converts to Judaism in what would become Europe were somehow descendants of the ancient Palestinian Hebrews who also spoke Aramaic at the time of the so-called Roman expulsion of the first century.

This was important because these converts to Christianity accused the converts to Judaism of killing the Palestinian Christ.

There is a lot of nonsense here, like calling Judaism and Christianity "Palestinian religions." That is an obvious attempt to claim some sort of special status for Palestinians today who have no relationship whatsoever with the biblical Land of Israel that is indeed the origin of both religions (and of course Islam is also modeled in no small part on Judaism.)

Mossad's flat assertion that Jews in Europe were converts is not footnoted so I cannot be sure which nonsense he is pushing. Outside the Khazar theory, there was a genetic study in 2013 that claimed that the matrilineal line of most Ashkenazic Jews came from women who converted to Judaism in Europe.

However, even that study was controversial and a more recent study shows that the women actually were from the Near East. And genetic studies of the patrilineal line have been almost unanimous in showing that Ashkenazic Jewish men also have origins in the Near East. Beyond that, a genetic linkage study of all Jews, Ashkenazic and Mizrahi, found them to be related and concluded "the most parsimonious explanation for these observations is a common genetic origin, which is consistent with an historical formulation of the Jewish people as descending from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents of the Levant." Wikipedia has a fine roundup of the studies.

So Massad is a liar. His calling his lies an "established historical fact" is a bullying tactic to make anyone who disagrees pause - thinking that certainly a professor at Columbia wouldn't lie so blatantly. This is only one part of his writing where he is "thinking past the sale" - he wants to make it look like his assumptions for his hateful theories are "established facts" so that while you are thinking about his theories, he has already made you subconsciously believe that his assumptions are accurate.

Massad's lies are not innocent. He chooses his lies to be consistent with his anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian political beliefs (hence characterizing Judaism as a "Palestinian" religion.) And he couches them as "facts" in such a way that it takes time and effort to dissect his words to show how hollow his actual argument is.

I don't even have the time or the energy to refute Massad's other claims. (He circles back to his claim that the original Zionists were antisemites, for example.)

When the foundation of his argument is a lie, and one that is so easily disproven yet he insists is true without providing an iota of evidence, then he has already proven once again that he isn't interested in the academic pursuit of knowledge but in anti-Israel propaganda.

Columbia is right to allow all opinions to flourish on campus. It is not right to allow its professors to spout lies in a larger effort to radicalize students against Jews who believe in their right of self determination.

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

11/11 Links: Kristallnacht, and Our Modern-Day Approach to Antisemitism; Iran building a permanent military base in Syria — report

From Ian:

Looking for an American bipartisan issue? Try the fight against BDS

As Texas continued to dry out from Hurricane Harvey, one city found itself embroiled in a bit of an imbroglio.

The city of Dickinson, a Houston suburb, announced it wouldn’t approve grants to repair hurricane damaged homes or businesses if the applicant supported boycotting Israel.

It was in the manual. The city’s flood assistance application included this clause: “By executing this Agreement below, the Applicant verifies that the Applicant: (1) does not boycott Israel; and (2) will not boycott Israel during the term of this Agreement.”

The clause was included because Texas law bars state agencies from contracting with or investing in companies that boycott Israel. The city council voted to remove the clause as it pertains to individuals. However, businesses must still pledge to not boycott Israel in keeping with the Texas law.

As controversial as the law may be, it enjoys broad bipartisan support in the Lone Star State. In fact, nearly half the states in the country — regardless of political majority — support anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) legislation, belying the popular narrative that Israel has become a polarizing issue.

“To those saying Israel is an increasingly partisan issue, that narrative is prescriptive rather than descriptive. In Congress, and across the country, Israel is, on a basic level, bipartisan and this legislation really shows that,” said Northwestern University law professor Eugene Kontorovich.

That there are now 24 states in the nation to have anti-BDS laws is a testament to that bipartisanship.

How the Quakers Became Champions of BDS

The Gaza experience—where in fact the AFSC excelled at providing relief and creating infrastructure, despite resistance from the refugees themselves—was enough to convince the leadership to get out of the relief business altogether. At the same time, a faction of the organization’s leadership advocated a radical pacifist, and anti-American, agenda, aimed at nuclear disarmament and elevating the status of the Soviet Union and Communist China. By the 1960s, the AFSC became a liberal pressure group, one that openly supported North Vietnam. Support for Saddam Hussein and North Korea quickly followed.

But the AFSC never lost entirely lost interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict. After 1967, the AFSC escalated its involvement, beginning with quasi-theological criticism of Israel, acting as PLO’s legal representatives in Jerusalem during the 1970s, and conducting ‘interfaith’ events in which American Jews were shamed for supporting Israel. The Quaker tradition of even-handedness and political neutrality was long gone; by the late 1970s the AFSC had effectively enshrined Palestinians as the “new Jews.” Support for Palestinian terror as “resistance” against Israel’s “structural violence” and against sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program is now standard.

These policies are reflected in the educational curriculum of Quaker schools across the country, but most of all in the AFSC’s leading role in the BDS movement. Today, the AFSC runs several offices dedicated to supporting the BDS movement, partners with the odious Jewish Voice for Peace and with the Muslim Brotherhood backed Students for Justice in Palestine to train BDS activists and run campus events at which Israel is vilified and its supporters are harassed, and endorses the Palestinian right of return, which would destroy Israel as a sovereign Jewish state.

Joyce Ajlouny’s appointment epitomizes the transformation of the AFSC. Quaker schools and education have long been hijacked by Palestinian advocacy, as was recently seen at Friends’ Central School in Wynnewood, PA, where BDS supporter Sa’ed Atshan was scheduled to speak to students. Ajlouny, who served for 13 years as the Director of the Ramallah Friends School, will undoubtedly increase that kind of education, given her stated desire to, “bring educational programming on Israeli-Palestinian issues into Quaker schools, where many of the students are Jewish.”

Many Jewish parents are attracted to Quaker schools, which seek to instill values mistakenly believed to be analogous to those of Judaism, especially since the Quakers and their schools have enshrined “social justice” as a guiding principle. This is misleading. The AFSC’s concept of “justice” is one-sided, and Jewish parents must decide whether Jewish values and Quaker values, as they exist today, are really the same. Ajlouny’s appointment makes this more pressing.

In Morocco, Israeli judoka permitted to display his country’s name

Israeli judoka Ori Sasson was booted from the Openweight World Championships in Marrakech, Morocco on Saturday after losing to Frenchman Cyrille Maret.

But Sasson, a 2016 Olympic bronze medalist, was at least allowed to wear Israeli insignia — in contrast to the ban imposed on Israeli national symbols at a tournament last month in Abu Dhabi.

Morocco had threatened not to grant visas to the Israeli team in the days leading up to the tournament. At one point last week team members arrived at Ben Gurion Airport only to be forced to head back home after receiving word they would not be allowed into the predominantly Muslim nation.

Eventually the matter was resolved after International Judo Federation President Marius Vizer personally intervened, and the Israeli athletes finally arrived in Marrakech, via Munich, on Thursday.

11/10 Links Pt2: McGill student group admits using anti-Semitic propaganda; Of British anti-Semites and asterisk Zionists

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The strategic importance of the argument from law

Earlier this week, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely was almost prevented from speaking at Princeton University, after left-wing Jewish students claimed her work “causes irreparable damage to the prospects of a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Meekly genuflecting to this preposterous claim, Princeton Hillel, no less, abruptly canceled her invitation. The day was saved by Chabad, which provided a venue in which Hotovely could speak.

Hillel officials subsequently apologized for this disgraceful episode, adding that this was “an isolated incident.”

Well no, it isn’t. I had an identical experience earlier this year when Berkeley Hillel, which had invited me to speak, disinvited me on the grounds that they couldn’t guarantee my safety. Similarly, it was Chabad which provided a “safe house” where I could speak to Berkeley’s Jewish students.

For years now there have been problems with “open Hillel,” a student-led movement which seeks to advance groups promoting anti-Israel agendas in mainstream Jewish campus life. It’s part of the twin phenomenon whereby pro-Israel students increasingly feel threatened and intimidated, while more and more Jewish students are frighteningly ignorant of both Judaism and the Middle East and are correspondingly hostile toward Israel.

Melanie Phillips: British Foreign Office misrepresented the Balfour Declaration

Please join me in this video clip as I describe to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the way in which the British Foreign Office misrepresented the Balfour Declaration on its centenary, and the intellectual contortions of the Palestinian Authority in its eagerness to blame Britain both for making and not making in Balfour’s famous letter the same promise to the Arabs as to the Jews.

Melanie Phillips: The false claim that there was ever an ancient Palestinian national identity

Please join me in this video clip as I point out to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the falsehood of the claim that there was ever an ancient Palestinian national identity, and emphasise that the Jews are the only surviving indigenous people of the land of Israel.

11/10 Links Pt1: Recycled road rage; Morocco Denies Visas to Israel’s Judo Team

From Ian:

Recycled road rage

Take a quick look at this photograph. I have emphasised the medic in Magen David Adom (Israel’s Red Cross) uniform and the Israeli license and star of David on the Israeli ambulance to make my point.

Which headline do you think best illustrates what you see?
A. Israeli settler runs over a Palestinian child north of Salfit
–OR–
B. Israeli and Palestinian ambulance crews cooperate at traffic accident

In a reverse image search for a better resolution image I discovered this same image had appeared three different times in 2017. The first that I located, and presumably the original was published in January of this year. Then it was reused for different stories in July and then again in November.

In January, the Palestinian Information Center†, named the victim of what they called a hit-and-run attack as Emad Souf, 55, from Salfit. He was described as seriously injured and transferred to an Israeli hospital.

Also in January, Iranian PRESSTV (citing Palestine al-Yawm news agency) reported injuries to an unidentified 40-year-old Palestinian man south of the city of Hebron (al-Khalil), itself south of Jerusalem. In this case the receiving hospital was Rabin Medical Center in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva.

In July, an Internet publication named Ramallah Mix reported that a young man was killed near the town of Khader, south of Bethlehem. He was identified as Omar Ahmed Abu Ghalioun, 37. Eyewitnesses identified a settler car (not clear how a settler car differs from a car on the politically correct side of the Green Line) and identified the hospital as Shari Tzdiq (Shaare Zedek ed.) in Jerusalem. Somewhat ironically, the Internet being what it is, an ad for Magen David Adom in Israel featured above the automatically translated text.

Morocco Denies Entry Visas to Israel’s National Judo Team

Morocco has refused entry visas to Israel’s national judo team ahead of the Nov. 11 World Championships Open in Marrakech.

The visa ban comes on the heels of similar problems that arose prior to the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam judo tournament in October, when the host nation — the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — banned the Israeli flag and national anthem at the competition. Israeli judoka Tal Flicker, who won a gold medal at the tournament, sang the Israeli anthem, “Hatikvah,” to himself on the podium.

Additionally, UAE athlete Rashad Almashjari refused to shake hands with Israeli competitor Tohar Butbul’s after losing to him in the tournament’s first round.

The International Judo Federation sent a letter to the president of the UAE Judo Federation chastising the organization for its discriminatory treatment of Israeli athletes and demanding that “all delegations, including the Israeli delegation, be treated absolutely equally in all aspects, without any exception.”

Anyone not knowing the history of the Israeli/Arab conflict might conclude that the Arabs won all of the wars in which they fought, and could therefore dictate the terms of the peace.
Dr. Alex Grobman, Alice in Wonderland

Back in 2006, Amir Taheri, the Iranian-born conservative author, explained why Israel must claim victory over Palestine:

...For a war to be won it is not enough for one side to claim victory, although that is essential. It is also necessary for one side to admit defeat. The problem in the case of the Arab-Israeli wars, however, was that the side that had won every time was not allowed to claim victory while the side that had lost was prevented from admitting defeat.

This was a novel situation in history, throughout which the victor and the vanquished had always acknowledged their respective positions and moved beyond it in accordance with a peace imposed by the victor.

In the Israeli-Arab case this had not been done because each time the UN had intervened to put the victor and the vanquished on an equal basis and lock them into a problematic situation in the name of a mythical quest for an impossible peace.

...In every case the winner wins the land and gives the loser peace. In every case the peace that is imposed is unjust to the loser and just to the winner.

Now, this is no longer a claim that is being made in the abstract.

Last December, Daniel Pipes described A New Strategy for Israeli Victory, based on the continued failure of the peace process in its many manifestations and iterations. On the one hand, deterrence could not be maintained indefinitely because of its unpopularity internationally and the way it wore Israelis down. On the other hand, diplomacy became the new way to go -- and seems to be prepared to keep going, indefinitely, with no success.

The solution, according to Pipes, is victory -- The Israel Victory Project:

the key concept of my approach, which is victory, or imposing one’s will on the enemy, compelling him through loss to give up his war ambitions. Wars end, the historical record shows, not through goodwill but through defeat. He who does not win loses. Wars usually end when failure causes one side to despair, when that side has abandoned its war aims and accepted defeat, and when that defeat has exhausted the will to fight. Conversely, so long as both combatants still hope to achieve their war objectives, fighting either goes on or it potentially will resume.

Despite the fact that he Arabs lost every war with Israel, in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982, they never saw their defeat as the end. Instead, they looked ahead for another opportunity to make war against Israel.

This is how Pipes described his solution to this problem back in July:

While he makes a point in the video of refraining from suggesting how to convince the Palestinian Arabs that they have lost the war, in his 2016 article, Pipes does make some suggestions how to discourage rejectionism and promote a change of heart:

When Palestinian “martyrs” cause material damage, pay for repairs out of the roughly $300 million in tax obligations the government of Israel transfers to the Palestinian Authority (PA) each year.
Respond to activities designed to isolate and weaken Israel internationally by limiting access to the West Bank.
When a Palestinian attacker is killed, bury the body quietly and anonymously in a potter’s field.
When the PA leadership incites violence, prevent officials from returning to the PA from abroad.
Respond to the murder of Israelis by expanding Jewish towns on the West Bank.
When official PA guns are turned against Israelis, seize these and prohibit new ones, and if this happens repeatedly, dismantle the PA’s security infrastructure.
Should violence continue, reduce and then shut off the water and electricity that Israel supplies.
In the case of gunfire, mortar shelling, and rockets, occupy and control the areas from which these originate.

These are described as "examples for Washington to propose," a key point since imposing these measures will require the support and assistance of the US to allow this proposed change of Israeli policy. In other words, this Israel Victory Project would not have been feasible and would never have gotten off the ground during the Obama Administration. Now, during the Trump Administration, there may be a chance.

With that in mind, the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus was announced in April:

Reps. Ron DeSantis and Bill Johnson. From the Press Release

Reps. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Bill Johnson (R-OH) will launch the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus (CIVC) on April 27 at 9 a.m. The caucus' goal: to introduce a new U.S. approach to Israel-Palestinian relations.

Cong. Johnson notes that "Israel is America's closest ally in the Middle East, and the community of nations must accept that Israel has a right to exist – period. This is not negotiable now, nor ever. The Congressional Israel Victory Caucus aims to focus on this precept, and to better inform our colleagues in Congress about daily life in Israel and the present-day conflict. I look forward to co-chairing this very important caucus with Cong. DeSantis."

At the time, no Democrats had joined the group.

In order to be successful, Pipes sees the project as being heavily dependent on US support being provided in a sustained way along with select Arab states and others in order to convince the Palestinian Arabs that rejectionism will not work:

That means supporting Israel’s taking the tough steps outlined above, from burying murderers’ bodies anonymously to shuttering the Palestinian Authority. It means diplomatic support for Israel, such as undoing the “Palestine refugee” farce and rejecting the claim of Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. It also entails ending benefits to the Palestinians unless they work toward the full and permanent acceptance of Israel: no diplomacy, no recognition as a state, no financial aid, and certainly no weapons, much less militia training.

Pipes does not sugar-coat the strategy he is proposing:

this change won’t be easy or quick: Palestinians will have to pass through the bitter crucible of defeat, with all its deprivation, destruction, and despair as they repudiate the filthy legacy of Amin al-Husseini and acknowledge their century-long error. But there is no shortcut.

Similarly, the criticism is no less direct.

J Street has attacked the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, referring to it as the “defeat Palestinians caucus,” claiming that the project is “devoted to pushing the truly terrifying myth that Israel can end the conflict by using brute force and repression to make Palestinians accept their eternal statelessness.” They urged congressmen to “stay as far away from such savage and dangerous ideas as possible. The creation of a caucus devoted to promoting them should be condemned, not celebrated.”

Among supporters there is some disagreement too.

Martin Sherman, the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, has supported Pipes' proposal, but there is a key item Sherman and Pipes disagree on. According to Sherman:

Pipes concisely sums up the principal point of disagreement between us: “Sherman and I directly disagree on only one point — Israel accepting the possibility of a Palestinian state.” He goes on to speculate that “the allure of a state after the conflict ends offers benefits to both sides. Israelis will be free of ruling unwanted subjects. Palestinians have a reason to behave.”

Sherman is vehemently opposed to the idea, noting that historically there is little to support the idea that the demand for Palestinian statehood is a genuine grievance.

Six months after the formal announcement of the Israel Victory Project, the strategy is still taking shape and support is still being drummed up.

Considering the need for US support to make this work and the political uncertainty facing both the Trump Administration and the Republican majority in Congress, the Israel Victory Project may not have much time to establish itself.

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