Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, November 26, 2017

11/26 Links: Dershowitz: Dems' double standard on terrorists murdering Israelis; The “Black Friday” Massacre in the Sinai Mosque

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Dems' double standard on terrorists murdering Israelis

Palestinian terrorist leaders often use teenagers to commit acts of terror because they know the Israeli legal system treats children more leniently than adults. Now 10 Democrats belonging to the Congressional Progressive Caucus are trying to give terrorist leaders yet another reason for using young people to murder even more innocent civilians.

Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., introduced legislation Nov. 14 – co-sponsored by nine other Democrats – calling on the State Department to “prevent United States tax dollars from supporting the Israeli military’s ongoing detention and mistreatment of Palestinian children.”

In a news release about the proposed legislation, McCollum said: “This legislation highlights Israel’s system of military detention of Palestinian children and ensures that no American assistance to Israel supports human rights violations …. Peace can only be achieved by respecting human rights, especially the rights of children. Congress must not turn a blind eye the unjust and ongoing mistreatment of Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation.”

It is well established that recruiting and using young Palestinians to wage terror on Israeli civilians is part of the modus operandi of Palestinian terrorist leaders. For decades, members of the radical Palestinian political and religious leadership have been stirring up young people to wage war against the Jews and the Jewish State.

This was seen in the gruesome intifada that began in 2000, in which Palestinian teenagers committed dozens of attacks against Jewish Israelis on buses, in cafes and at nightclubs.

More recently – in what has become known as the “lone-wolf” intifada – children as young as 13 have stabbed Israelis with scissors, screwdrivers and knives.

Legislation proposed by the 10 Democrats is titled the Promoting Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children Act. The bill does not explicitly define at what age a person moves from childhood to adulthood.

While noting that children between the ages of 12 and 17 are held and prosecuted by Israeli military courts, the bill fails to acknowledge that some of the most barbaric terrorist attacks against Jewish Israelis have been committed by Palestinian teens.

Richard Millett: Students at SOAS told that Zionists paraded dead and mutilated Arab bodies through Jerusalem.

There is currently a hate-filled anti-Israel exhibition in the library at SOAS. It has been up since October 25th and finishes on November 30th. During this time thousands of SOAS students will have been subjected to sick lies about Israel.

One exhibit is a cake filled with M16 bullets supposed to represent the time an Arab girl baked a cake for her sister in “Fawwar refugee camp near Hebron” in 1967.

The exhibition is called Memory Metamorphosis: An Exhibition of Palestine Remembered. The exhibits are based on interviews with Palestinians.

On Thurdsay night I went to a discussion at SOAS about this exhibition chaired by SOAS lecturer Rafeef Ziadah. On her panel were two of the artists; Jacqueline Reem Salloum and Suhel Nafar. Also on the panel was Hazem Jamjoum from New York University.

Jamjoun explained that someone they tried to interview for the exhibition had lived in Deir Yassin. Jamjoun told the audience what apparently happened there:

“There was a retributory attack on Deir Yassin. The bodies of the people who were killed and mutilated were then paraded around the Zionist neighbourhoods of western Jerusalem. It was a very intentional psychological warfare of getting stories of murder, rape and killing pregnant women to go far because it would scare and was extremely effective.”

A new book describes there being nothing of the sort having happened at Deir Yassin.

JCPA: The “Black Friday” Massacre in the Sinai Mosque

The Struggle between the Islamic State and the Sufis

Residents of the Al-Rawdah village said the terror attack on the mosque began during Friday prayers a short time before the sermon. Explosions ripped through the mosque, and hundreds of worshippers were then shot at from close range for 10 to 20 minutes. Some 25 to 30 terrorists fired with automatic weapons after arriving at the mosque in four-wheel-drive vehicles.

The residents say the mosque was attacked because it is a Sufi place of worship; Al Qaeda and the Islamic State regard Sufi Muslims as heretics. In addition, the terror organizations operating in the Sinai Peninsula view residents of the village who belong to the Al-Sawarka Bedouin tribe as collaborators with the Egyptian police and army.

Sufism is a mystical trend in Islam that deals, among other things, with the doctrine of the “hidden.” The Al-Rawdah mosque belongs to the Sufi stream, and the Islamic State had made threats to attack it. However, no special security measures were taken there.

The mosque itself was established by the Sufi Sheikh Eid Abu Jarir, founder of the Sufi community in the Sinai Peninsula. About 90 percent of those living in the Al-Rawdah village are Sufis, and they have good relations with the Egyptian security establishment.

As noted, the Islamic State sees the Sufis as heretics against Islam. In 2013 Islamic State terrorists blew up both the tomb of the Sufi Sheikh Salim Abu Jarir in the village of Mazar and the tomb of Sheikh Hamid in the Al-Mughara region, both of which are located in Sinai.

In November 2016, Islamic State terrorists murdered 90-year-old Sheikh Sulaiman Abu Haraz, the senior figure among the Sufi sheikhs in Sinai.

40th anniversary of Sadat's visit ignored by "pro-peace" groups

J-Street has a page dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, including criticism of the document by this supposedly "pro-Israel" organization.

[T]he Declaration didn’t explicitly mention the rights of the indigenous Palestinian people who had inhabited the land for centuries and, most importantly, failed to recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination in a national home alongside the Jewish state. In many ways, these omissions laid the groundwork for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Jeremy Ben Ami adds:

As we mark 100 years since the Balfour Declaration and even celebrate the first international recognition of the cause of Jewish national independence in the modern era, there seems to me to be good reason to take equal notice of the century of violence and the ongoing conflicts that trace their origins to the mistakes and gamesmanship of the Balfour era.

Really? There was no Arab violence against Jews in Palestine before 1917?

Idiot.

But what is more interesting is that this "pro-peace" group did not say a word about the most successful peace event of the past century for Israel - the 40th anniversary of Sadat's visit to Jerusalem, which happened this month.

Similarly, "Jewish Voice for Peace" tweeted over a dozen times against Balfour, but didn't mention Israeli-Egyptian peace.

The only peace group I could find that mentioned it was Peace Now, which mentioned it in a weekly interview with Yossi Alpher - and not wholly supportively.

There are at least two reasons the "peace camp" doesn't like to mention the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement.

One is that they want to paint Israel as the party that doesn't want peace, and the fact that Israel has shown that it really does want peace and is willing to make sacrifices for real peace contradicts their entire basis for existing.

Two is that not only did Israel make peace with Egypt, but it was a right-wing Likud government that made peace. That is something they cannot stomach.

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Islamic Jihad and Hamas, both offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, and ideological cousin to ISIS, is blaming Israel for the horrific terror attack against a Sufi mosque in Egypt.

Gaza clerics held a meeting to respond to the attacks, and Gaza terror groups are very sensitive to upsetting Egypt, since the Rafah border crossing is important to them for travel and Egypt has blamed Gaza terror groups for arming Sinai terror groups. It appears that Islamic Jihad and possibly Hamas was involved in putting this emergency meeting together to distance those Islamist terror groups from Sinai Islamist terror groups.

The main theme of their statements was that the purpose of these attacks was to '"establish chaos in the Egyptian Republic and turn it into separate entities to serve the enemies of the Islamic religion, especially the Israeli entity."

Sheikh Abdul Fattah Hajjaj, head of the Iqra Charity Association, said "this murder and terrorism that targeted Egypt raises questions about the objectives of those terrorist groups that serve only the Zionist enemy."

Sheikh Nimer Abu Aoun said on behalf of his fellow Islamist sheikhs that "We are absolved of the criminal act that targeted Egypt and Arabism and this terrorist act is forbidden in Islam" and called for "Love, cooperation, harmony and tolerance among the sons of the Arab and Islamic nation because the Islamic religion is one religion for all people." He said the attack was "a conspiracy run by the enemies of Islam against Egypt and its people and its army."

Sheikh Samih Hajjaj, the General Director of the Azhar Institutes in Palestine, said the attack was meant "to weaken the great army feared by Israel, and rid Egypt of any economic and social plans."

Keep in mind that the media in Gaza, including religious media, is filled with calls to violence and murder. But not usually against other Muslims.

A mark of maturity is the ability to take responsibility for things. ISIS, Al Qaeda and other terror groups didn't appear out of a vacuum - their founders were all members of the Muslim Brotherhood, as were the founders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. There is no difference in their interpretations of the Koran that I am aware of. By claiming that these ISIS and ISIS-inspired attacks are really done on behalf of Israel (or, as Iran says, the US,) the Muslim world is not doing anything to actually solve the problem. On the contrary, they are trying to distance themselves from these groups - because they know that their own support for terror is not very far from that of ISIS and al-Qaeda and they do not have an ideological leg to stand on.

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Saturday was the "International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women."

The Palestinian Authority noted the day, in its usual way: by using it as a platform to blame Israel.

While one in four married Palestinian women report physical abuse, this is not mentioned in the official PA commemorations of the day. They brush aside any hint of those problems and only admit gender discrimination as a result of Arab heritage.

Instead, they say that all of the problems of Palestinian women are a result of the "occupation." At a conference last week, PA officials and ministers talked about how Palestinian women were fighting for Jerusalem against Israeli violence, how Jews are supposedly taking off their headscarves, and it called on the international community and international NGOs "to stand up against the violations committed against women in Jerusalem in particular and in Palestine in general through implementing United Nations resolutions on ending the occupation and recognition of the Palestinian state."

The PA knowingly avoids the very real problems of domestic abuse, honor killings, women who are raped who are then accused of adultery, and the majority of Palestinian wives who report psychological abuse from their husbands. Instead , it uses the day as yet another way to blame Israel for all its problems.

Which means that it isn't the "occupation" that hurts women - it is the politicization of the topic that allows the Palestinian Authority to avoid actually dealing with its own issues and problems in its own society because of its single-minded desire to attack Israel by any and all means.

It should be noted that the only time the PA pretends to care about domestic violence against women is when outside agencies give it money earmarked specifically for that purpose. On its own, however, women are just another bullet to try to hurt Israel - and in the end the only people being hurt are the women themselves, who are doubly victimized, both as victims of abuse in their own society and then as pawns in the PA's never ending campaign to use any topic, no matter how far fetched, as a reason to bash Israel.

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11/25 Links: Palestinians vs. Trump: The Battle Begins; Balfour Centenary Lecture with Simon Schama

From Ian:

Palestinians vs. Trump: The Battle Begins

Over the past year, the Palestinians have managed to keep under wraps their true feelings about US President Donald Trump and his Middle East envoys and advisors. In all likelihood, they were hoping that the new US administration would endorse their vision for "peace" with Israel.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas ensured that his spokesmen and senior officials spoke with circumspection about Trump and his Middle East advisors and envoys. The top brass of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah felt it was worth giving Trump time to see if he was indeed gullible enough to be persuaded to throw Israel under the bus and fork over their demands.

Well, that bus has long passed.

The Palestinians are now denouncing Trump and his people for their "bias" in favor of Israel. Even more, the Palestinians are openly accusing the Trump administration of "blackmail" and of seeking to "liquidate the Palestinian cause." To top off the tone, the Palestinians are insinuating that Trump's top Jewish advisors and envoys -- Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman -- are more loyal to Israel than to the US.

The Palestinians' unprecedented rhetorical attacks on the Trump administration should be seen as a sign of how they plan to respond to the US president's plan for peace in the Middle East, which has been described as the "ultimate solution." Although the full details of the proposed plan have yet to be made public, the Palestinians have already made up their mind: Whatever comes from Trump and his Jewish team is against the interests of the Palestinians.

Michael Lumish: "Palestine" is a Wraith

"Palestine" and "Palestinian" are European settler colonial terms for the land of the Jewish people. I think we should cease to use those terms or, at least, put them in quotes.

Or perhaps go with Palestinian-Arab.

In truth, the greater Arab nation gave the world "Palestinians" - a word which used to mainly refer to Jews living under the British mandate - as a challenge to Jewish sovereignty on historically Jewish land.

The Jews are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel.

The Arabs are settlers and colonists on Jewish land.

I certainly do not mind that Arabs live there. Nor do I mind that Chinese people or Venezuelans or the Easter Islandish live there.

But none of those folk can claim sovereignty because none of them are indigenous.

Only the Jewish people have a claim to indigeneity to that land and we must insist on this basic concept.

Everything flows from that recognition.

From a purely objective historical standpoint, only the Jewish people can claim indigeneity to Israel.

The Full Balfour Centenary Lecture with Simon Schama

On 1st November, renowned historian, Simon Schama delivered a guest lecture marking the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. This historic lecture delved in to the details and background that led to the signing of the iconic Balfour Declaration- the 67 words that led to the creation of the State of Israel. This lecture is sponsored by Balfour 100, the official tribute of the British Jewish Community, marking 100 years since the Declaration.

Three insane English news articles in the past few hours saying Israel is in cahoots with ISIS (and Freemasons)

Today seems to be fertile for English-language Muslim media to act pretty insane.

Pakistan Observer:

SUICIDE bombing in mosques, shrines and slaying of innocent people in public places, targeting security and law-enforcement personnel by the so-called Islamic revolutionaries around the Islamic world; be they Al Qaeda, Boko Haram or Daesh and what have you, they are no Muslim missionaries but mercenaries hired to distort the noble concept of Jehad in Islam which is supposed to be struggle and resistance against tyranny and exploitation. This is all part of the Zionist plan drawn decades ago to dis-enfranchise, destabilize and fragment the Islamic Ummah.
...As if the Israeli transgression upon and annexation of Arab Lands was not enough to translate their hegemonic agenda, the Zionists in the early eighties schemed to fragment potentially powerful Islamic Countries; carving an Islamic State of Mecca and Medina out of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Free Kurdistan out of Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan, dividing the rest of Iraq into Sunni and Shiite States, Free Balochistan out of Iran and Pakistan, and establishing its foothold through Greater Lebanon, Jordan and Afghanistan by manipulating territories out of Syria into Lebanon, Saudi Arabia into Jordan and Pakistan’s KPK and FATA into Afghanistan.
The map was drawn up by one Col. Peter Wolf (Map source assigned to Ralph Peters) translating an Israeli diplomat Yenon’s vision and divisive plan of these countries on ethnic and sectarian lines while garnering support from ambitious India dreaming ascendency in the region, which coincided with the imperialist designs; and hence the role being assigned to it in South Asia. Although the Zionists expansionist agenda had found fruition in in severing the now Central Asian States from the then Soviet Union and partitioning of Sudan and Indonesia, it had been at work since the Israeli annexation of Arab lands in 1967 followed by the 8-year long Iran-Iraq confrontation.
But its repeat landing in Afghanistan after staging 9/11 eying the natural resources of Central Asia appears to be its culmination point.

Brighter Kashmir:

ISIS or Daesh is one such group which was created to serve the interests of those who have nothing to do with Islam. America, Israel and their Arab puppets laid the foundation of this group and provided all the required resources to them including propaganda machinery. The main motive of this group was to create sectarian violence in the Middle East to pave way for the Greater Israel and to secure the illegitimate monarchy of Arab rulers. At the time when the youth were awakened against Zionist and arrogant powers in this world and were working and praying for the liberation of Palestine, Daesh was founded to sabotage the liberation movement of Palestine and to crush the resistance movement. The creators of this terrorist group in order to hoodwink the world community staged the drama of fighting this group. There are ample reports that US and Israel were providing arms and ammunition to ISIS terrorists in Iraq and Syria and also provided treatment to those ISIS terrorists who had got injured.

MalayMail Online:

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 25 — PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang said he was not surprised with the inclusion of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) — of which he is vice-president—into a terrorist list by Saudi Arabia and its allies.
Instead, Hadi rebuked the Anti-Terror Quartet, which also included Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, as failing to act independently amid its pursuit of relations with Israel and the so-called “Mason-International Zionist” network.
“These are the same countries that are pursuing neutralisation of relations with Israel and countries within the Mason-international Zionist network. Such political association is akin to a ship sailing astray in the vast ocean.
It is unclear what he meant by the “Mason-international Zionist network” but it may refer to the conspiracy theory involving an alleged secret coalition between the Jews and the Freemasons.
In December last year, PAS’ Datuk Khairuddin Aman Razali said the party believed that Muslim terrorists are funded by foreign powers, while the conflicts in the Middle East are allegedly perpetrated for the benefits of foreign powers and the Zionist regime.
In his statement today, Hadi accused the quartet of being driven by their belief and admiration for the “Zionist Jewish powers-at-be”, more than they trust God, Islam and their fellow Muslims.

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11/24 Links Pt2: UM Students Behind Anti-Israel Resolution: ‘Jews Are Not a Nation’; Phillips: Worried about Jew-baiters? Give it straight back to them

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Worried about Jew-baiters? Give it straight back to them

In the Diaspora, people are aghast at rampant antisemitism and Israel-bashing and dismayed over the failure to halt its apparently inexorable rise.

In Britain, the parliamentary group on antisemitism heard evidence last week that anti-Jewish bigotry is now entrenched in many British universities. Student officers have used the Twitter hashtag #Jew while discussing wealth, and the swastika is now seen on campus as a “casual symbol of fun.”

In the US earlier this year, researchers from Tel Aviv University found a 45 percent increase on campus of “all forms” of antisemitism. At McGill University in Canada, three board members of the University’s Students Society were removed from their appointments over their alleged “Jewish conflict of interest” in a battle about BDS.

Much valiant effort is going into fighting this scourge.

It’s not getting anywhere, though, because the overall strategy is wrong. This is because it’s based on defending Israel against demonization and Jewish students against intimidation. It needs urgently to move from defense to attack.

Accusations of antisemitism can easily be brushed aside as hysterical shroud-waving. Evidence of Israel’s humanitarian acts towards Syrians, the moral uprightness of the IDF, Palestinian rejectionism and so on is accurate but ineffective.

This is because it’s being presented on ground defined by Israel’s enemies. To engage with their calumnies is to grant these an inescapable validity. Israel’s defenders should be reframing the whole issue. Instead of trying to rebrand Israel, they need to rebrand its enemies.

The Israel-bashers delegitimize Israel through lies and libels. Its defenders need to delegitimize them through facts and truths. Israel’s defenders should not be trying to rid it of its pariah status. They should be turning its attackers into pariahs instead.

The Expanding Umbrella of Anti-Semitism

Islam did not trick Western nations; the West brought itself to the embrace of Islam.

The center of the original Islamic message seems to have been to convert, kill or drive away Christians and Jews, rather than to meet the spiritual needs of Muslims. To this day, the central preaching of Islam still appears to be an intolerance of non-Muslims.

What made America great is being discarded together with America's imperfect past, without acknowledging that America has taken -- and is still taking -- steps to correct its injustices, as many Middle Eastern nations have not.

There is a good possibility that, with the impact of Islam -- and the replacement of the active values of personal responsibility and "pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps" by the passive values of victimhood for blackmailing, redistribution and abdication to "government" -- the West's humanistic values, which welcomed Islam in the first place, may not survive.

Martin Kramer: Sadat and Begin: The Peacemakers

It has been 38 years since the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, most famously evoked by the three-way handshake on the White House lawn that changed the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat put war behind Israel and Egypt, and in so doing, ended the Israeli-Arab conflict. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues, and so too does the Israeli-Iranian struggle.

But Israeli-Egyptian peace put an end to the destructive battlefield wars between Israel and Arab states of the kind that erupted in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973. Since the famous handshake among Begin, Sadat and Jimmy Carter, there has been no battlefield war between Israel and a conventional Arab army. And Egypt and Israel now have been at peace longer than they were at war.

It has often been said of Begin and Sadat that the two men were like oil and water. “The two men were totally incompatible,” recalled Carter, describing the Camp David negotiations that produced the treaty. “There was intense perturbation between them, shouting, banging on the tables, stalking out of the rooms. So for the next seven days, they never saw each other. And so we negotiated with them isolated from one another.”

Yet in a briefing paper prepared for the US team prior to the Camp David negotiations, these sentences appear: “Both Begin and Sadat have evidenced similar personal and national objectives throughout their familiar transformation from underground fighter to political leader. Despite their often vituperative comments, each should be able to recognize the other as a politician basically capable of change, compromise, and commitment.”

11/24 Links Pt1: 235 dead in Sinai Mosque bombing; Glick: Portents of quagmires in Syria

From Ian:

At least 235 dead in Sinai bombing, shooting terror attack

At least 235 people were killed and more than 120 wounded in a bombing and shooting attack against worshipers at a mosque in the northern Sinai after Friday prayers.

Egypt's government has declared three days of mourning in response to the attack that struck the Al-Rawdah mosque in Bir al-Abed west of El-Arish.

Reuters reports that witnesses saw terrorists enter the mosque to kill worshipers during Friday prayers, when mosques see the largest attendance. The attack began around noon time. They also attempted to prevent rescue services from reaching the area.

"They were shooting at people as they left the mosque," a local resident whose relatives were at the scene told Reuters. "They were shooting at the ambulances too."

No group claimed responsibility for the assault but it was the deadliest yet in the region where for three years Egyptian security forces have battled an Islamic State insurgency that has killed hundreds of police and soldiers.

Photos posted online by a Twitter account that publishes news from Sinai showed the wounded being transported in the back of pickup trucks to hospital. It said the attack also targeted a kindergarten. Photos from inside the mosque showed at least thirty bodies laying on the floor.

Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi has summoned a meeting of security officials to address the incident.

After mosque massacre, Israel says it ‘stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Egypt’

Israeli ministers on Friday expressed solidarity with Egypt following a deadly terror attack in a north Sinai mosque that claimed at least 200 lives, with one calling for “a regional front” against jihadists.

They also used the attack as a platform to attack Iran.

On Twitter, Transportation and Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) offered “condolences to the families of the dozens of people murdered in the terror attack on a mosque in Sinai” and said the Jewish state “stands shoulder to shoulder with Egypt and other countries in region and the international arena in the war against radical Islamic terror.”

In a Hebrew tweet, he also said “Radical Islam is striking indiscriminately and murdering Muslims as well. It’s time to form a regional front against Iran’s Shiite terrorism and Islamic State’s Sunni terror.”

Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) offered condolences and said: “The murderous terror attack is testimony to the fact that a new world order is being created around us, in which the distinction is between terror supporters like Iran and [IS] and supporters of humanity.

Egyptian army strikes vehicles of terrorists behind Sinai attack — report

An unconfirmed report in Sky News Arabia Friday said Egyptian military forces destroyed two vehicles carrying terrorists involved in an attack on a mosque in northern Sinai, in which at least 235 people were killed.

An unnamed army source told the TV station that unmanned drones had attacked two cars in a desert area called al-Risha, killing 15 jihadists. He added that the hunt for other perpetrators was ongoing.

There was no official word from Egypt’s military on the matter.

Armed attackers killed at least 235 worshipers in a bomb and gun assault on the packed mosque, state media reported, the country’s deadliest attack in recent memory.

A bomb explosion ripped through the Rawda mosque frequented by Sufis roughly 40 kilometers west of the North Sinai capital of el-Arish, before gunmen opened fire on those gathered for weekly Friday prayers, officials said.

Witnesses said the assailants had surrounded the mosque with all-terrain vehicles then planted a bomb outside.

The gunmen then mowed down the panicked worshippers as they attempted to flee and used the congregants’ vehicles they had set alight to block routes to the mosque.

Tel Aviv City Hall lights up in solidarity with Egypt

The facade of the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality building wore red, white, black and golden hues on Friday night as it was lit up in solidarity with Egypt, which suffered a mass casualty terror attack on Friday.

The municipality building, situated in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, donned the colors of the Egyptian flag in an official expression of Israel's support of its southern neighbor, as Egypt continues to reel from the attack that claimed the lives of at least 235 worshipers at a mosque in the northern Sinai after Friday prayers.

The mayor of Tel Aviv, Ron Huldai, expressed his condolences to Israel's southern neighbors in Egypt.

"A horrific attack in Egypt. We send our condolences to our friends across the border and light the Municipality building in their honor," wrote Huldai on Twitter.

Palestinians trying to leave Lebanon - because of Israel?

From Arutz-7:

The number of “Palestinian refugees” in Lebanon has decreased significantly over the past few years and many are leaving for other countries to try to improve their situation.

In an interview with the Hamas newspaper Palestine on Thursday, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon Ali Baraka said that some 260,000 “Palestinian refugees” had left the refugee camps in Lebanon to various countries in recent years because of the difficult security and economic conditions.

According to him, the figures he cited are based on a poll conducted by the Lebanese authorities and which indicates that there is a deliberate action to bring about the emigration of Palestinian refugees from countries bordering Israel.

"The Zionist enemy is working in this way to empty the refugee camps and to destroy the foundation for the right of return," Baraka claimed.

He further argued that this emigration should be dealt with through activities to improve the situation in the camps and through assistance from UNRWA to ensure stability in the camps prior to the return of the “refugees” to “Palestine”.

According to the data of the director of the Shahad Institution, Mahmoud Al-Hanafi, over 45 percent of the “Palestinian refugees” have emigrated from Lebanon and only 280,000 remain in Lebanon today. According to another version of the data, only 200,000 Palestinians remain in Lebanon. Hanafi noted that poverty, denial of work and security instability contribute to an increase in the phenomenon.

Remember that UNRWA claims that there are 450,000 Palestinian "refugees" in Lebanon. We have noted for years that roughly half of those have fled - but UNRWA still keeps counting them.

I couldn't find the original Felesteen article, but I found one from a few months ago quoting the same al-Hanafi about a study showing how Lebanese youth know that they have no future in Lebanon.

59% of them believe that Palestinian identity is their main obstacle to achieving their aspirations to build a family and actively contribute to the development of society.

The study said that suffering is linked to the reality of "being a Palestinian" and linked this fact to "the practice of successive Lebanese governments of the policy of deprivation and harassment of the Palestinian, so that his life has become intolerable."

70.3 percent of the 18 to 20-year Palestinians in Lebanon would migrate if given the opportunity.

The funny part is that Lebanon is controlled by Iran by proxy - but the Palestinians there who Iran pretends to love are in worse shape than they've ever been. Must be because Lebanese authorities who practice apartheid against their Palestinian "guests" are really partnering with Israel, not Iran.

(h/t Josh K)

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From Al Ahram:

At least 235 worshippers have been killed by gunmen who attacked a Sufi mosque in Egypt’s North Sinai during Friday prayer, the general prosecutor's office announced in an official statement, making the attack one of the deadliest targeting civilians in the country in recent years.

Earlier, the Egyptian health ministry said that at least 75 people were injured following the terror attack.

According to eyewitnesses who spoke to Al-Ahram’s Arabic website, the gunmen fired heavily on worshippers after IEDs were detonated at the mosque.

The attack targeted Al Rawdah mosque in Bir Al-Abed, in the west of Arish province.

Reports say that the gunmen fired on first responders as well.

Blame the "occupation," because everyone knows that Israel is what causes all conflict in the region, right?

Also keep in mind - if this is what Muslims do to each other, imagine how Jews would far in Muslim lands nowadays without an Israel.

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According to an official Hamas website for Palestinian "refugees," there was a riot in the Al Bureij camp on November 11. During the riot, youths attacked UNRWA schools with "explosive devices," frightening students and teachers.

This was not reported anywhere else that I can see.

Putting the pieces together, here is what happened:

UNRWA, under pressure from Western nations that have concerns about the bias in its teaching materials, added what it euphemistically called "enrichment materials" to blunt some of the more egregious anti-Israel and antisemitic lies in the official Palestinian curriculum that violates UN standards.

So for example, the official PA textbooks ask fourth graders about malnutrition and "martyrdom" of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. But the enrichment materials ask students instead to research malnutrition more generally on the Internet.

A lesson on air pollution said that one example was Israeli smokebombs in Gaza. The added material changed the example to forest fires.

Teachers complained about the modifications to the curriculum, and UNRWA threatened to fire anyone who did not comply, according to the official Wafa news agency.

This news was published on November 9, two days before the riots.

The Hamas site says that after the riots, concerned parents met with UNRWA officials and UNRWA agreed that schools will be allowed to hold "national events" that were going to be curtailed. It's not clear to me if this is referring to a separate UNRWA edict to curtail school activities that were anti-Israel and antisemitic (as we've seen in the past) or if this is an oblique way of referring to the curriculum changes. They certainly seem to be related.

UNRWA caved to the threats and violence, which almost certainly were sparked by the parents and teachers themselves.

But no one reported on the riots to begin with, since this is Gaza and the hundreds of reporters there aren't interested in reporting news that is too uncomfortable. Only after the agreement where UNRWA gave in to threats and violence - the desired outcome - was this mentioned in passing as a safety issue.

The idea that police would investigate and arrest people throwing firebombs at schools in Gaza is simply absurd, when the Hamas government supports the goals of the firebombers.

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Holocaust questioning, 9/11 "Truther" professor gets his job back

From Global News (Canada):

A controversial University of Lethbridge professor returned to work on Thursday after being suspended for spreading conspiracy theories.

Dr. Anthony Hall was suspended without pay in October of 2016 following comments he made online suggesting there was a Zionist connection to the 9/11 attacks, and that the events of the Holocaust should be up for debate.

“The Board of Governors of the University of Lethbridge and the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association have agreed that the outstanding issues that have been raised concerning Dr. Anthony Hall will be addressed in the context of the faculty handbook. As a result, the suspension imposed on Dr. Hall has been lifted and he has returned back to work at the University,” the statement said. “The parties will be fully participating in the agreed upon processes in the faculty handbook to investigate and address the outstanding issues.”

Hall has spent over two and a half decades at the U of L, teaching Native American studies, liberal education and globalization.

Tony Hall is a conspiracy theory nutjob.

He co-hosts a weekly video show with antisemite Kevin Barrett (who is a regular on Iran's PressTV) called False Flag Weekly News. Literally every episode mentions Jews prominently - how we control the media, how the Holocaust is exaggerated, and so forth. Hall isn't as completely crazy at Barrett but he adds his two cents on the Jewish conspiracies as well.

If nothing else, Hall's partnership with a true antisemite like Barrett should be no different than an alt-right professor who partners with neo-Nazis. If one should lose their job, so should the other.

Hall also is the editor of a conspiracy news website, American Herald Tribune. Some headlines:

The funny thing about conspiracy theorists is that they pretend to exercise critical thinking skills that other less enlightened people don't have. But the truth is the opposite - they have zero ability to think rationally; they latch onto bizarre and insane ideas and defend them no matter how much evidence shows them to be idiots.

In other words, anyone who is a conspiracy theorist - right or left-wing - is supremely unqualified to be a university professor where one needs to actually think.

And here's the unbelievable part: Anthony Hall teaches 9/11 conspiracy theories to his students!

From RateMyProfessors - from the students who like him:

Hall is makes the whole poli sci department look like court jesters for those in power. He has written peer-reviewed critiques of the official story of 9/11. Meanwhile the poli sci crew presuppose the nebulous and unproven official story. Take Hall's classes and feel privileged that at least one prof cares about truth and justice not just $$$

Professor Hall opened my eyes about many current events that have brought the USA to wars, such as the concept of False Flags.

And from students who don't:

This lecturer has no structure. Uses sensational, biased views to draw attention but does not substantialize any of them. He does not encourage your free thinking or a balanced presentation of opinions/facts he basically abuses the stage he receives as a "teacher".

Tony is extremely biased. I think it is OK to have your own beliefs, and to even teach different theories, but you cannot tell people that they are wrong just because they disagree with you. This class has no structure, and isn't designed to help the students. It is designed to feed Tony's ego.

Absolutely horrible. Anyone who follows politics should not take this class. Anyone who doesnt believe in the 9/11 conspiracy should not take this class. If you're not on the radical left, you will not enjoy this class at all.

There isn't even a free speech argument here. Tony Hall is an incompetent teacher.

But apparently, the University of Lethbridge is not concerned with actual academic integrity and standards for its professors.

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11/23 Links Pt2: Thankful for Liberation From Nazis, Holocaust Survivor Donates $1 Million to Help US Military Veterans; Hitler’s ‘Jolly Elf’ and The New York Times

From Ian:

'P' is not for 'Palestine,' Ms. Golbard-Bashi

The Philistines hadn’t existed since the days of King Hezekiah. But the Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed the Jews’ country for them, in a deliberate act of final humiliation to the Jews.

And this brings us to the question: What does the name “Philistine” mean?

– “Philistine” is the Anglicised form of the Hebrew name “P’lishti”, from the Hebrew “polesh”, “invader”. The P’lishtim (Philistines) were a sea-faring nation, invaders who came from the Aegean Islands (which is why they dwelt mainly along the Israeli coastline).

This is the true origin of the name “Palestine”. The name means nothing in Arabic, and indeed cannot possibly exist in Arabic. This alleged “Palestinian” nation is a nation which cannot even pronounce its own name.

Golbarg Bashi is quoted as saying, “I consider myself Palestinian at heart”. A truly interesting sentiment for a woman born in Iran, not even an Arab, who has no connection whatsoever with “Palestine”.

But then again, maybe not so strange. After all, the most famous “Palestinian” in history was Yasser Arafat, born in Egypt to an ancient Egyptian family, who served in the Egyptian Army in the 1948 war of attempted extermination against Israel (which turned into Israel’s War of Independence) – and who only later morphed into a “Palestinian”.

In a surreal world in which the entire identity of “Palestine” is a fictitious narrative which begins with Aegean invaders who were defeated by the indigenous Jews and whose identity was falsely resurrected a millennium later by the European Roman colonialist imperialists, an Iranian can be just as much a “Palestinian” as an Egyptian can.

But still, Ms Bashi, get your alphabet right. “P” is not for “Palestine”. “P” is not for any Arabic word. “F” can be for “Filastin”, which is about as close as the Arab colonialists can get to pronouncing the Roman colonialists’ version of the original Hebrew name of the Aegean invaders.

And “F” is also, of course, for “fraud” and “fake”.

IsraellyCool: N Is For You Know Nothing Nathan Lean

Someone called Nathan Lean, a self proclaimed expert in Islamophobia no less, and the author of an entire book on this made up construct “The Islamophobia Industry” came out with this “genius” reply:

Utter ignorance on parade here. There is no letter “P” in Arabic because “Palestine” is an English translation of Filasteen (فلسطين), for which there is most certainly a letter “F,” ف. This book is for second-generation, English-speaking Arab kids. Also: “O” is for “occupation.” https://t.co/dSRE6BY9vv
— Nathan Lean (@nathanlean) November 22, 2017

Oh boy, where to start. Fortunately another contributor to Israellycool set him straight:

No sir. Palestine is not an English translation of Filasteen. Filasteen is an Arabic translation of Palestine which is an English translation of Palæstina which is a Roman translation of Plishtim, Hebrew term for an invading "sea people" no connection to today's Palestinians. https://t.co/1F2E55UMjk
— AntiSuperDushIsraeli (@NotAntiSemitic) November 22, 2017

Here’s the chain:
Plisthtim – Hebrew – invaders from the sea, the Philistines from the bible.
Palæstina – Latin version of the Hebrew
Palestine – English version of the Latin
Filasteen – Arabic version of the English and, of course, lacking the P because non-indigenous language Arabic hasn’t got that sound in it!

Which is exactly correct. The Arabs only call this land “Filasteen” because they literally can’t pronounce the name they chose to give themselves as recently as the early 60’s.

IsraellyCool: Golbarg Bashi Did Not Think This Hashtag Through

The Israel haters have come up with all sorts of campaigns to promote their agenda, whether it be BDS, their own versions of the Ice Bucket Challenge, and the Salt Water Challenge.

But I think this one takes the (urinal) cake.

And yes, I do realize this is just a really unfortunate use of a hashtag, but it seems strangely appropriate.

A peace metric that "Jewish Voice for Peace" fails

Number of tweets from Jewish Voice for Peace against the Balfour Declaration for its 100th anniversary:
9

Number of tweets from Jewish Voice for Peace celebrating the 40th anniversary of Sadat visiting Jerusalem:
0

It used to be that the word "justice" was the keyword that really meant to destroy Israel

Now the word "peace" is being used to mean the same thing.

Because if they wanted real peace, wouldn't they celebrate the first peace treaty Israel made with an Arab state?

JVP doesn't want peace. They want a world without Israel.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

The most basic rule in dealing with the Saudis and their friends is that Israel must not feel that it has to pay anything for peace, anything at all. Nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada. – Dr. Mordechai Kedar

Dr. Kedar is talking about Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, but this is true for all of Israel’s foreign relations. So many times when dealing with Europe, the US, and of course Arab countries, agreements are made contingent on concessions on the “Palestinian issue.” And what does that mean? Usually it implies acceptance to some degree of the “Palestinian narrative,” namely that we Jews came along and dispossessed the “native” Palestinian Arabs, and now if we want to be left alone (never mind being treated like a normal nation and not the spawn of Satan) we need to make it up to them. Often the concessions demanded lead directly to the destruction of our state, but hey, the Jews lived so happily as a Diaspora in the Christian and Muslim spheres for thousands of years, so why would that be a problem?

Enough. As Ben-Dror Yemini shows in his impressive but depressing new book, Industry of Lies: Media, Academia and the Israeli-Arab Conflict, demonization of Israel is pervasive. It is everywhere, it is irrational, it feeds on itself and it is effective. Ultimately everyone who studies in a university, a grade school, a high school or even a kindergarten has it explained to them that Israel is a uniquely evil enterprise that tortures and murders Palestinians, keeping them under a system of apartheid until they can be killed by the ongoing genocide.

So naturally, everyone, even if they are Israeli, thinks it is perfectly OK to demand that we give up to the Palestinians what we “owe” them, and maybe even a little more as punishment for the pain and suffering we’ve inflicted.

As I said, enough. Israelis, at least, should be capable of standing up for the truth, not to mention their own survival. Especially when the falsity of the accusations against Israel are self-evidently false: Yemini discusses “genocide” claims, including a particularly egregious one by Israeli academic Yitzhak Laor, who published an article in the London Review of Books including a statement that “gas chambers are not the only way to destroy a nation, it is enough to develop high rates of infant mortality.” But publicly available data show that Palestinian infant mortality dropped from between 152-162 per thousand births in 1967 to between 53-63 in 1985 and less than 20 in 2014. Palestinian life expectancy at birth has gone from 49 to 76 since 1967, and the Arab population of Judea, Samaria and Gaza has at least tripled since 1970. Genocide indeed!

Other accusations are logically inconsistent, not even needing empirical data to refute them. One of the well known ones is “pinkwashing,” the idea that Israel’s tolerance of LGBT people cannot be used as evidence for Israel’s overall liberal, tolerant behavior, including toward Palestinians – because Israel oppresses Palestinians. Could an argument be more circular?

One can’t forget the famous master’s thesis by Tal Nitzan at Hebrew University, which generated a storm of astonished criticism 10 years ago, when she received a high grade and a prize for a paper that claimed that the fact that IDF soldiers did not rape Palestinian women implied that Israeli Jews are racists who don’t find Arabs attractive! Leaving aside the fact that there has been an Arab Miss Israel (Rana Raslan, 1999) and that an Arab woman won the popular Israeli singing competition “The Voice” (Lina Makhoul, 2013), the argument illustrates a misunderstanding of the nature of military rape (which is about power and subjugation, not attractiveness) in addition to being, well, just blindingly stupid.

A great deal of the political discourse about Israel is based on premises which, while not so obviously false as Tal Nitzan’s thesis, are simply made up. Every day “journalists” around the world (especially in Israel) make up stories which are either completely false, biased, contextless, or exaggerated, and which cast Israel in an ugly light. Gideon Levy and Amira Hass of Ha’aretz are tireless masters of the art form. And anything ugly about Israel is immediately accepted as true by the hundreds of millions of people on this earth – I don’t think this is an exaggeration – who must believe that Israel is far more evil than Hitler was.

Political leaders, presidents, popes, prime ministers and EU officials are not immune, as we saw when President Obama and Pope Francis repeated Hamas-sourced accusations about child casualties in Gaza, or when then-EU Parliament President Martin Schultz parroted falsehoods about Israel keeping water from Palestinians.

Along with the continued demonization, there is also the suggestion that Israel’s very statehood is illegitimate, a colonial enterprise that should be undone, like white minority rule in Zimbabwe or South Africa. We are told that if we want “peace,” we need to surrender like the whites in what used to be Rhodesia did, although in our case there is a Jewish majority. But, no problem – that is precisely what would be achieved by implementing a Palestinian “right of return” for millions of descendents of “refugees,” many of whom were migrants who came to Mandate Palestine as late as 1946 before fleeing the war that the Arabs started. After all, that would be “justice,” because they are “colonized” and we are “colonizers.” Never mind that there is no precedent for any such “right” in modern history.

No, it wouldn’t be justice, and we don’t need “peace” on these terms, not with Saudi Arabia, not with the EU that is placing identification badges on goods from the “settlements” that it speciously calls “illegal,” not with the PLO – which should never have been crowned “legitimate representative of the Palestinian people” in the first place – and not with the UN Human Rights Commission, which apparently is about to release a blacklist of companies to boycott who do business across the Green Line.

All of these entities see us as less than legitimate, not even the “normal” state that Herzl longed for, but far lower than normal. They project their own dark history – imagine, Europeans calling us “colonialists” and Arabs accusing us of racism and ethnic cleansing! – and they pretend that they’ll let us live if we repent from our “crimes” and compensate our “victims.”

The Gulf states, led by the Saudis, want something from us today: to stop Iran’s march across the region. Tomorrow the West may need something – you laugh, but look at the direction Europe is going. Whatever any of them offer, we should demand in return an end to their abusive treatment, including a true end to the academic incitement that governments allow to pass and even fund. And they can stop it if they want to: anti-Israel academics are whores – watch their fervor evaporate with their grants. If countries can make it illegal to use the “wrong” pronoun, they can stop the demonization of Israel in their schools.

That’s part of what we should get. And what we should pay in return?

Other than our contributions to science, technology, medicine and the arts – that we would freely give them anyway – nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada.

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