Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 26, 2018

01/26 Links Pt2: Pres Rivlin: Israel ‘not compensation for Holocaust’; Hidden 2005 Photo of Obama With Farrakhan; Jerusalem belongs to the Jews: Islam says so

From Ian:

President Rivlin to foreign envoys: Israel ‘not compensation for Holocaust’

President Reuven Rivlin is not a lone voice in the wilderness when he insists the creation of the State of Israel was not compensation for the Holocaust.

He is supported in this belief by Prof. Dina Porat, the chief historian at Yad Vashem.

Rivlin was speaking on Thursday to foreign diplomats who braved the inclement weather to attend the annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day event for the diplomatic corps at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

Rivlin noted that his own family came to the Land of Israel well over a century before the Holocaust and said other Jewish families were already living here long before the arrival of his own ancestors. “The State of Israel is not a colonial project, and not compensation for the Holocaust,” he declared. “The State of Israel came into being from the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in its own homeland.”

Porat, in a video presentation, explained how Holocaust denial can be manipulated to delegitimize Israel’s existence. She said former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied the Holocaust ever happened as a pretext for saying if there was no Holocaust there was no legitimacy for the State of Israel.

Then, endorsing Rivlin’s contention, Porat stated: “The State of Israel did not come out of the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad ignores the fact that the State of Israel came out of Zionism that was there 70 years before the Holocaust.”

UK Parliament Passes Resolution Deeming Hezbollah in Its Entirety a Terrorist Organization

Members of Parliament on Thursday supported a non-binding resolution in the House of Commons to proscribe Hezbollah as a terrorist organization under UK terrorism legislation.

There was widespread support for the move to proscribe the political wing of Hezbollah. Currently, only the military wing is defined as a terrorist organization in UK law. The full text of the resolution said: “This House believes that Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation driven by an antisemitic ideology that seeks the destruction of Israel; notes that Hezbollah declares itself to be one organisation without distinguishable political or military wings; is concerned that the military wing of that organisation is proscribed, but its political wing is not; and calls on the Government to include Hezbollah in its entirety on the list of proscribed organisations.”

During the debate, Labour MP Joan Ryan, who proposed the motion, said: “Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation, driven by antisemitic ideology, which seeks the destruction of Israel. It has wreaked death and destruction throughout the middle east, aiding and abetting the Assad regime’s butchery in Syria and helping to drive Iran’s expansionism throughout the region. It makes no distinction between its political and military wings, and nor should the British Government.”

Ahead of the debate, the Labour Party sent a briefing note to Labour MPs urging them to oppose the motion, claiming it would hinder peace talks in the Middle East. The briefing made no mention of Hezbollah’s involvement in the ongoing conflict in Syria or its long history of carrying out terrorist attacks. The briefing said: “There is a balance between making absolutely clear our abhorrence of using violence to achieve political ends and at the same time encouraging organisations down an effective democratic path.”

The Photo That Never Saw The Light of Day: Obama With Farrakhan In 2005

A journalist announced last week that he will publish a photograph of then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D) and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan that he took in 2005 at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting, but did not make public because he believed it would have “made a difference” to Obama’s political future.

The photographer, Askia Muhammad, told the Trice Edney News Wire that he “gave the picture up at the time and basically swore secrecy.”

“But after the nomination was secured and all the way up until the inauguration; then for eight years after he was President, it was kept under cover,” Muhammad said.

Asked whether he thought the photo’s release would have affected Obama’s presidential campaign, Muhammad said, “I insist. It absolutely would have made a difference.”

Reached by TPM on Thursday, Muhammad said a “staff member” for the CBC contacted him “sort of in a panic” after he took the photo at a caucus meeting in 2005. TPM has published the photo above with Muhammad’s permission.

“I sort of understood what was going on,” Muhammad told TPM. “I promised and made arrangements to give the picture to Leonard Farrakhan,” the minister’s son-in-law and chief of staff.

Jeremy Corbyn’s Holocaust Memorial Day Statement Leaves Out the Jews

Last January, Donald Trump infamously omitted mention of the Jews from his Holocaust Memorial Day statement, provoking a national scandal and withering criticism from liberals. Today, Jeremy Corbyn, the leftist leader of the U.K. Labour party, released his Holocaust Memorial Day statement—and did the exact same thing.

As has been widely reported, Labour under Corbyn has been rocked by escalating anti-Semitism scandals, leading to the suspension of dozens of officials, and extending all the way up to Corbyn himself. Before the 2017 U.K. election, just 13 percent of British Jews said they would vote for Corbyn’s Labour, the same as the percentage of Muslims who voted for Donald Trump. This Holocaust statement, then, offered Corbyn an easy opportunity to mend some fences with British Jews and show that he takes their concerns into account.

Instead, he managed to erase Jews from the story of their own genocide. Here is Corbyn’s statement in its entirety:

We should never forget the Holocaust: The millions who died, the millions displaced and cruel hurt their descendants have suffered.
We should understand the way fascism arose in Germany and the circumstances that gave space for the Nazis to grow.
At this, and at all other times, we should reflect and make sure succeeding generations understand the power of words.
Their power to do immense good and inspire; and their power to promote hate and division.
Let us use their power to educate to inspire but above all to build values of trust and respect.

Corbyn was seemingly unaware of the irony of calling for people to be circumspect in using their “power of words” while utterly effacing the Holocaust’s primary victims from his account of their murder. The Times columnist Hugo Rifkind, among others, expressed his disbelief: (h/t Elder of Lobby)

The Palestinian zero-sum mentality, now proven by a poll

The joint Israeli-Palestinian poll I referred to earlier had a most interesting question:

In the Israeli–Palestinian conflict nothing can be done that’s good for both sides, whatever is
good for one side is bad for the other side: agree or disagree?

72% of Palestinians agreed that peace is a zero-sum game. If it is good for Israel - meaning, peace and having normal relations with the Arab world - then it must be bad for Palestinians.

Surprisingly, presumably after years of seeing how Palestinians act, slightly more than half of Israelis (both Jews and Arabs) agreed with that statement as well.

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01/26 Links Pt1: Amb. Haley: Hate-Filled Speech by Abbas Shows He’s Not Ready to Make Peace; Caroline Glick: Pence and Pew, present and future; Hezbollah’s Man in London?

From Ian:

Amb. Haley Says Hate-Filled Speech by Abbas Shows He’s Not Ready to Make Peace

Referring to a recent “hate-filled” speech given by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in which he declared the Oslo Accords dead, United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the UN Security Council Thursday, “A speech that indulges in outrageous and discredited conspiracy theories is not the speech of a person with the courage and the will to seek peace.”

Haley, who was addressing the Security Council during its monthly meeting to address the Middle East, said that she would “set aside her usual practice” of highlighting the Iranian threat to the Middle East and instead address what she called the “important element” of making peace, specifically “leaders who have the will to do what’s needed to achieve peace.”

Haley cited the example of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who addressed Israel’s Knesset and told Israel, “You want to live with us in this part of the world. In all sincerity, I tell you, we welcome you among us, with full security and safety.” The words, Haley said, made “Israel understand that it had a partner with whom it could make those painful compromises” that were necessary for a peace deal with Egypt.

In contrast, in his recent speech to the Palestinian Liberation Organization Central Committee, Abbas “declared the landmark Oslo Peace Accords dead. He rejected any American role in peace talks. He insulted the American President. He called for suspending recognition of Israel. He invoked an ugly and fictional past, reaching back to the 17th century to paint Israel as a colonialist project engineered by European powers.”

“A speech that indulges in outrageous and discredited conspiracy theories is not the speech of a person with the courage and the will to seek peace,” Haley observed. And while she said that the United States “remains fully prepared and eager to pursue peace,” which would require compromise, but “hate-filled speeches and end-runs around negotiations take us nowhere.”

Nikki Haley to U.N. Security Council: Where is the Palestinian Anwar Sadat?

Nikki Haley to the Security Council: Where is the Palestinian Anwar Sadat? - Full Transcript

Trump: Money Will Be Cut Off to Palestinians if Leaders Don’t Engage in Peace Negotiations

Trump addressed the United Nations vote from December to condemn the planned embassy move in which only a handful of countries voted in favor of the U.S. decision. He noted that the United States was "out in the wilderness by ourselves."

"We give billions of dollars away every year to countries and in many cases those countries don't even support us, they don't support the United States," Trump said. "Israel has always supported the United States, and so what I did with Jerusalem was my honor, and hopefully we can do something with peace."

Trump went on to say that the Palestinians, who received hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aide and support, disrespected Vice President Mike Pence when their leaders said they would not meet with him during a recent visit to the Middle East.

"That money is on the table and that money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace," Trump said beside Netanyahu. "Because I can tell you that Israel does want to make peace and they're going to have to want to make peace, too, or we're going to have nothing to do with it any longer."

Prior to Trump's remarks, Netanyahu also commented on the historic nature of the administration's commitment to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Pence announced on Monday the move is planned for 2019.

"I want to say, this is a historic decision that will forever be etched in the hearts of our people for generations to come," Netanyahu said of Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. "People say that this pushes peace backward; I say it pushes peace forward because it recognizes history, it recognizes present reality. And peace can only be built on the basis of truth."

The prime minister also said the Israeli people support Trump completely, especially regarding his stance on backing out of the nuclear deal with Iran if "fatal flaws are not fixed."

Arab American Jew-hater claims he plans a "USS Liberty" memorial in Israel

From the conspiracy site American Free Press ("America's last real newspaper"):

Ibrahim “Abe” Ayad, a Dearborn, Mich. born and raised American patriot, has decided to convert a parcel of land in Israel, which his family has owned for decades, into a living memorial to the 34 Americans needlessly slaughtered and 174 wounded, while serving aboard the USS Liberty (AGTR-5), by Israeli air and naval forces on June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War.

The article goes on to give an outlandish story of how his grandmother acquired the land in Beit Hanina and how the ADL (!) has been trying to take it away from him. The story has enough holes to fill the Albert Hall:

“When [my dad, a US army soldier] got wounded [in Italy in WWII], he was lost for three days at a MASH unit during the air war,” said Ayad. “So the Army, in its infinite wisdom, had sent my grandmother a letter telling her he was dead. My grandmother couldn’t read English, so she took it to the village elder [who] told her, ‘Your son is dead.’ And she said, ‘He’s not dead. If he was dead I’d believe it.’ ”

Refusing to believe her only child was dead, she prepared for his return from the war.

“She was working as a nurse at a local hospital and they were trying to trick an old lady whose son they thought had died. They’d come and they’d pawn their land to her,” said Ayad, “and she’d buy it and put it in his name.”

When Ayad’s father eventually returned home, “everybody thought he was a ghost.” As his grandmother had accumulated a significant amount of land, the illegal occupation government of Israel began to make moves on it. [What happened between 1945 and 1967 is a bit unclear since the land was in Beit Hanina....]

“All of a sudden Israel starts confiscating this land, doing all kinds of stuff to it,” said Ayad. It “was illegally confiscated even according to Israeli law, because it’s occupied territory. It can’t be taxed, and they confiscated it for tax purposes.”

Ayad tried to fight them, but Israel sicced its U.S.-based public relations firm on him.

“I’ve been fighting the Anti-Defamation League for 20 years,” he said, “and they wielded their influence over the [U.S.] Department of Justice. Even James Comey came down personally to oversee their raid against me. They robbed me of over $3 million—and this is my own government, who I pay taxes for, doing all this to me.”

Abe Ayad had a gas station in Cleveland that was raided by the FBI a couple of years ago. His son and nephew, both of whom had criminal records, were arrested on gun charges. His gas station was famous for regularly posting antisemitic and anti-Israel signs and murals.

He sold the site in 2016.

He isn't exactly the most trustworthy person.

But possibly the most outlandish part of the absurd story is that he claims that Israel is anti-American:

Ayad then discussed his plans for the Liberty memorial, which he first started thinking about five or six years ago.
“I don’t see any memorials in Israel: not for World War I, not for World War II,” he explained. “[Israel owes] the United States so much from two world wars, not counting all the financial and military hardware [it’s] getting from America. I would love to see a USS Liberty Memorial Hospital for all the victims of the Liberty, her crew, and all the victims that suffered after and all the victims that have suffered in two world wars and since. And it’s about time they honor America.”

Israel has memorials for World War I. It has a memorial for John F. Kennedy. It has a memorial for 9/11. It has an entire Liberty Bell Park honoring America.

I don't see any of those in "Palestine" or in any Arab country.

Obviously, Ayad is lying about building anything in Israel (although it is fascinating that he considers Beit Hanina to be part of Israel.) He is a bitter man who has nothing but hate to animate him, and this website is the perfect place for him to spout his crackpot Jew-hatred.

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A joint poll by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research (TSC), Tel Aviv University and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) shows that Palestinians are against any possible solution to the conflict.

Their press release doesn't say it, but the poll itself does.

A series of options are given to Palestinians:

Mutual recognition of Palestine and Israel as the homelands of their respective peoples. The
agreement will mark the end of conflict, Israel will fight terror against Palestinians, and no further
claims will be made by either side. 56.9% oppose.

The independent Palestinian state which will be established in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip

will be demilitarized (no heavy weaponry) 77.4% oppose

A multinational force will be established and deployed in the Palestinian state to ensure the

security and safety of both sides. Support or oppose? 60.5% oppose

The Palestinian state will have sovereignty over its air space, its land, and its water resources, but

Israel will maintain two early warning stations in the West Bank for 15 years. Support or oppose? 67.2% oppose

The Palestinian state will be established in the entirety of West Bank and the Gaza strip, except
for several blocs of settlement which will be annexed to Israel in a territorial exchange. Israel will

evacuate all other settlements. 62.7% oppose

The territories Palestinians will receive in exchange will be similar to the size of the settlement

blocs that will be annexed to Israel. Support or oppose? 70.6% oppose

East Jerusalem will be the capital of the Palestinian state and West Jerusalem the capital of the

Israel. Support or oppose? 71.6% oppose

In the Old City of Jerusalem, the Muslim and Christian quarters and al Haram al Sharif will
come under Palestinian sovereignty and the Jewish quarter and the Wailing Wall will come under

Israeli sovereignty. Support or oppose? 71.4% oppose

The only provision they supported was "right of return":

Palestinian refugees will have the right of return to their homeland whereby the Palestinian state
will settle all refugees wishing to live in it. Israel will allow the return of about 100,000 Palestinians as part of a of family unification program. All other refugees will be compensated. Support or oppose? 52.4% supported

For the majority that opposed a package deal of "demilitarization of the Palestinian state, equal territorial exchange, the family unification in Israel of 100,000 Palestinian refugees, East Jerusalem the capital of Palestine and West Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and the end of the conflict," they were asked if any futher sweetening of the deal would change their minds:

If in addition to the above items of the permanent settlement package, Israel agreed to accept the
Arab peace initiative and in return all Arab countries supported this peace treaty? Support or oppose? 69.9% oppose.

The agreement states that the state of Palestine will have a democratic political system based on

rule of law, periodic elections, free press, strong parliament, independent judiciary and equal rights for religious and ethnic minorities as well as strong anti-corruption measures. 58.6% oppose.

The agreement includes formal guarantees by the US, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who will create a

joint commission to ensure proper implementation on both sides. 68.1% oppose.

The agreement states that Palestinians, including refugees, are allowed, if they wish, to live as

permanent residents inside Israel while maintaining their Palestinian citizenship, as long as they are law

abiding 70.4% oppose

The agreement allows the current Palestinian National Security Force to become an army with

light weapons but without heavy weapons 80.8% oppose

The agreement states that Israel recognizes the Nakba and the suffering of refugees, and

provides compensation to refugees? 58.1% oppose

Also, when given a choice of options (status quo, armed resistance, unarmed resistance, peace treaty) a plurality of Palestinians preferred armed resistance over peace, 38% to 26%.

The only thing that Palestinians agree on is that they do not want peace.

The poll didn't ask the obvious question, because the people behind it don't want the world to know the answer, but the real question should have been: Do you hope to see Israel destroyed and replaced by Palestine?

Other questions that would illuminate how Palestinians feel might include "would you support an Iranian nuclear attack against Tel Aviv, even if it would kill thousands of Arabs in Jaffa?"

These polls dance around the real feelings of the Palestinians because the answers would far more explicitly show that they have no desire for a real, permanent peace with Israel. Yet one only has to look at these (unpublicized) results from the poll to see that this is exactly what they feel.

Don't expect the media to notice, though.

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The crime of stealing another's culture and history (ElderToons, poster)

Remember, Jews eating falafel is cultural genocide.

Idea taken from a discussion in the comments by Norman F, Max and cbusa.

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01/25 Links Pt2: Ben Shapiro: Partisan Divide over Israel; Glenn Simpson, Conspiracy Theorist, Finds a Place for the Jews in his Trump-Russia Fantasia

From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: Partisan Divide over Israel

That deeper element is worldview, exposed by 9/11 and exacerbated over time by increasing partisan bickering over Islamic terrorism. From 1978 through the Oslo Accord, support for Israelis declined while support for the Palestinians stayed approximately even. About as many Americans said they supported “neither party” or “both” as said they supported the Israelis. That’s because the United States faced virtually no threat from Islamic radicalism. After Oslo, support for Israel jumped, particularly as Israel was hit by wave after wave of Palestinian terrorism.

Then, after 9/11, support for Israelis jumped among Republicans and never stopped growing. Conservative Americans, who had been more likely to draw a moral equation between Israel and her enemies, identified with the Israelis — they saw Israel as an outpost of Western civilization in a region rife with Islamic terrorism. They saw Palestinians handing out candies as the World Trade Center towers fell, and they knew that Israelis had been facing down the same threat. The real, meaningful conflict between Islamist barbarism and Western liberalism was thrown into sharp relief.

Democrats, too, initially responded to 9/11 with more support for Israel. But as the war on terror progressed, Democrats began to see Western civilization as the provocative agent. Too many on the left saw Islamic terrorism as a response to Western cruelty — cruelty to which Israel was supposedly a party. Nowhere was this clearer than in the media coverage of the Gaza War, which glorified Hamas at the expense of Israel, even as Israel tried to avoid civilian casualties and Hamas tried to inflict them. The Obama administration reflected that viewpoint, which is why it pursued Iranian regional growth with alacrity. The West, Obama and the Democrats thought, had to withdraw from the Middle East in order to empower dispossessed Islamists (hence State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf’s asinine suggestion that ISIS be given jobs to help them avoid terrorism).

Unfortunately, the gap yawns ever greater. Republicans live in a post-9/11 world; Democrats live in a pre-9/11 world. That has dramatic, unfortunate implications for Israel: In a polarized political environment, the historic bipartisan support for the Jewish state is quickly eroding. That’s not a bipartisan problem. That’s a specifically Democratic problem, and one that should encourage Jews to examine whether the Democratic Party ought to re-evaluate its moral worldview in the Middle East.

Glenn Simpson, Conspiracy Theorist, Finds a Place for the Jews in his Trump-Russia Fantasia

In April 2017, Politico published “The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin.” How are they connected? Well, Putin is close to several Chabad supporters, as well as Chabad rabbi Berel Lazar, Russia’s chief rabbi. Trump worked with some Russian emigres who are active in Chabad, including a convicted felon, Felix Sater. In Florida, Trump hosted the wedding of the daughter of a Chabad supporter he knows to an associate of one of the Chabad supporters who is close to Putin.

What does all this tell us about the alleged relationship between Trump and Putin?

“Their respective ambitions led the two men,” writes Politico, “to build a set of close, overlapping relationships in a small world that intersects on Chabad, an international Hasidic movement most people have never heard of.”

You see—they’re furtive. Almost no one has heard of them. The only people who appear to understand Chabad’s role in the secret Trump-Putin collusion conspiracy are the author of the story and Glenn Simpson, who came back to this insane theory again in his testimony before Congress. Yet this lunacy was evidently plausible enough to the editorial staff at Politico, whose headline is the only thing that actually connects Trump and Putin in a story insinuating a secret Jewish plot to undermine American democracy.

In the past, it was Russian intelligence that trafficked in disinformation operations tagging Jews as the engine of instability in Western countries. The most famous specimen was The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And previously, the ethics and institutional structures of the mainstream American press prevented conspiracy theories from polluting the country’s public sphere. Today, by contrast, American journalists congratulating themselves for their ever-vigilant stance against Russian encroachment on our democratic institutions willingly usher in updated versions of the Protocols. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Making peace with Israel

In all my discussions with the high-ups of the Pakistani security establishment, politicians and diplomats there is a high acceptance and willingness to engage with Israel. The problem is that nobody wants to take the lead and responsibility fearing a backlash from the right-wing religious hawks that wrongly put it as a religious issue. The result is that Pakistan’s foreign policy has continued to suffer due to its shortsighted and spineless leadership that fears mullah more than Allah.

Pakistan’s stale Israel policy reflects a deeper level rot in its governance, inability to change and non-strategic personalised foreign policy. Take for instance Pakistan’s bi-relations with Saudi Arabia. It’s more of a House of Saud and House of Sharif relation than a state-to-state level relation. The US-Pak relations are in reality Pakistan military and US relations. Same is the case with Pakistan’s relations with Turkey, Iran and the UK. Essentially, the ruling elite in Pakistan have used the state to garner and develop its personal interests at the expense of national interests — a tragedy that inhibits Pakistan from any real policy change.

Make no mistake; Pakistan’s Israel policy is not driven by any grandiose ideas of human rights or Muslim solidarity, and especially not out of any national interest. The senseless policy on Israel continues to exist because the elite don’t see any personal or institutional benefit in the relation. The day our leadership sees a personal financial or military benefit, no fear of mullah or Allah can stop. Until then, Pakistan will continue with its senseless policy expecting a different result in its global standing. (h/t Solomon2)

Palestinian Authority Jerusalem propaganda videos

The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Information has been producing videos, seen by practically nobody, to make their case for Jerusalem.

For example, this video thanking the countries of the world for voting against ("rebuking") the US at the UN:

This one, a truly awfully produced video, denies any Jewish connection to the city as it says that "Biblical and Quranic verses are craved [sic] on its ancient walls."

This one claims that there is more that 5000 years of Arab Palestinian history archaeologically proven in Jerusalem.

It also gives various blurbs about Jerusalem in various languages. In Hebrew, however, it doesn't use the word Jerusalem but Al Quds.

Because the PA knows very well that Jerusalem is associated with Jews, first and foremost.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

I am trying to understand Yehonatan Geffen.

Geffen is an icon of Israeli culture. The nephew of Moshe Dayan, he is a poet, playwright, author, performer and journalist. He wrote the children’s song, “The prettiest girl in the kindergarten,” which remains enormously popular with Israelis of all ages (listen to it here). His music is heard regularly on the radio. I find it pleasant and peaceful.

Like most Israelis in art, literature, media and performing arts, Geffen is politically left-wing. Some people say that this is because the artistic/literary/performing establishment is not kind to those with divergent views, and there is some truth to this.

Anyway, I expect it and am not surprised when an artist or writer denounces “the occupation” or thinks that Netanyahu is a fascist dictator who prefers war to peace or that “settlers” are not human. That’s normal these days.

But Geffen has gone far beyond normal. In a poem posted on his Instagram account, Geffen wrote,

A pretty girl of 17 did an awful thing
And when a proud Israeli officer
Invaded her home again
She gave him a slap.
She was born for this and in that slap
Were fifty years of occupation and humiliation.
And on the day that they tell the story of the struggle
You, Ahed Tamimi,
Red-haired,
Like David who slapped Goliath,
You will be on the same page as
Joan of Arc, Hannah Senesh and Anne Frank. (my translation)

Ahed Tamimi lives in the village of Nabi Saleh, about 20 km north of Ramallah. Since 2009, Nabi Saleh has been the scene of weekly demonstrations (sometimes riots) by townspeople and activists, against a nearby Jewish community that they claim has appropriated land belonging to Nabi Saleh. The Tamimi family – the father Bassem, mother Nariman, Ahed and her brothers, sisters and cousins all take part. Ahed’s specialty is cursing, hitting, kicking, and biting Israeli soldiers while the cameras of the international media carefully focus on the fracas, in hopes that a soldier will lose his temper or even raise his hand to defend himself, at which point the (carefully edited) video will be proof of IDF brutality (of course, if the soldiers do nothing, it’s proof of their cowardice).

Ahed has been doing this for almost a decade, earning the nickname “Shirley Temper.” It’s part of the information war, the campaign of cognitive warfare against the Jewish state to delegitimize and demonize Israel in order to make her ultimate physical destruction easier. The Tamimis are soldiers in this war.

The family’s activism ranges from propaganda to mass murder. Although Ahed has never seriously harmed anyone (yet), her Uncle Nizar and Aunt Ahlam have both been convicted of murdering Israelis. Ahlam masterminded and participated in the Sbarro Pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem in 2001, in which 15 people (7 of them children) were murdered. Although she received 16 life sentences, she was released in 2011 as part of the ransom for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. She now lives in Jordan with Nizar (a second cousin, also released from prison in the Shalit deal) where she has a career as a TV personality. She is currently the subject of an extradition request by the US, since several of her victims were American citizens.

Ahed has been allowed to curse, slap, punch, kick and bite to her heart’s content for years, but apparently Israeli officials finally had enough. This month, after the famous slap, she was arrested and indicted for “aggravated assault, hindering a soldier in the line of duty, incitement, threatening a soldier's life and stone-throwing.” Naturally, this immediately gave rise to a massive worldwide campaign to “free Ahed Tamimi.” One wonders what would happen if a 17-year old in any other country, including the US or Canada, behaved like her.

Ahed has enlisted herself (or been enlisted by her parents) as a soldier for the Palestinian Cause, which is to put an end to the Jewish state and drive the Jews out of the land of Israel. This is not a noble cause. Like the Nazi cause that took the lives of Hannah Senesh and Anne Frank, it aspires to the destruction of a people, which is objectively evil. There is no similarity between the Zionist aspiration for a Jewish state where the civil rights of non-Jews will be respected, and the Palestinian aspiration to kill and disperse the Jews from Israel.

But Yehonatan Geffen goes even farther than the usual left-wing trope of a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. By comparing Ahed Tamimi to Hannah Senesh and Anne Frank, he is – quite explicitly – saying that Israel is comparable to the Nazi regime. By comparing her to Joan of Arc he is suggesting that the arrest of a juvenile delinquent is comparable to burning a woman at the stake.

This isn’t merely leftist politics, it’s pathological hatred for a country that, by the way, has been very kind to Geffen and made it possible for him to live, and live well, as a poet and a dissident.

Geffen’s hatred for his country boils over into expression that is more pungent than that of our physical enemies. We expect what we get from Hamas – after all, they launch rockets to kill us, too – but it is always a shock to hear from a Jew that we are Nazis. It’s impossible to get used to. How can he not know that he is inverting reality?

I don’t understand how a person who could write beautiful songs for children and even a touching poem about a street cat(Hebrew video link) could be so cruel to his own people – and how he could join the demonization campaign led by our enemies, the true heirs of the Nazis.

I don’t have a good answer, but here are a couple of theories. Possibly artists who have a powerful ability to empathize – with kindergartners and cats, for example – can too easily be overwhelmed by emotion. The political and the personal can come together. Their feelings overflow and they lose their common sense – common sense that should tell them that while they wish we were not occupying Judea and Samaria, we are not doing it in order to commit Nazi-like genocide on the Palestinians.

It is also true that as creative people they are used to creating alternate realities. What else does a poet or playwright do? Then perhaps they can become confused about which one is the real world. And of course they live in the parallel universe of the intellectual and artistic class in which everything they hear from their friends and read in Ha’aretz competes to present the most extreme picture.

Whatever. But it would be best for him to retire from public life now. He can spend his spare time helping the Russian ladies who feed the street cats.

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01/25 Links Pt1: Trump: No more aid unless Palestinians accept that Jerusalem is ‘off the table’; Abbas buys $50 million private jet; The Big Palestine Lie

From Ian:

Trump: No more aid unless Palestinians accept that Jerusalem is ‘off the table’

In a freewheeling press availability on Thursday, US President Donald Trump said the US would no longer transfer monetary aid to the Palestinians unless they entered peace negotiations with Israel, and excoriated the Palestinian leadership’s reaction to his decision last month to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“That money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace, because I can tell you that Israel does want to make peace, and they’re going to have to want to make peace, too, or we’re going to have nothing to do with it any longer,” he said.

Sitting alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before their bilateral meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump called Palestinian Authority officials’ unwillingness to meet with members of his administration — including US Vice President Mike Pence during his visit to the region last week — “disrespectful.”

PA President Mahmoud Abbas has also recently sought to have European powers replace the United States as the primary mediator in Middle East peace talks.

“If you look back at the various peace proposals, and they are endless, and I spoke to some of the people involved. And I said, ‘Did you ever talk about the vast amount of funds, money that we give to the Palestinians? You know, we give hundreds of millions of dollars.’ And they said, ‘We never talk about it,'” Trump said. “Well, we do talk about it. When they disrespected us a week ago by not allowing our great vice president to see them, and we give them hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and support, tremendous numbers, numbers that nobody understands, that money is on the table.” (h/t Elder of Lobby)
Full text: Netanyahu-Trump meeting in Davos

Washington said reexamining entirety of US aid to Palestinians

The US leadership is looking beyond its recent cuts to the the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, with the State Department reexamining the entirety of its aid budget to the Palestinian Authority, Hadashot news reported Wednesday.

According to the TV station, which indicated the report was based on US sources, the $100 million cut to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) earlier this month may well only be the start, as the crisis between Washington and Ramallah deepens.

A top proponent of further cuts is said to be US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, who reportedly wants the Palestinian leadership to pay for its attitude towards the US government and President Donald Trump. Other officials are said to oppose further cuts.

There was no confirmation of the TV report.

.@nikkihaley: "President Abbas declared the landmark Oslo Peace Accords dead. He rejected any American role in peace talks. He insulted the American president. He called for suspending recognition of Israel." pic.twitter.com/5BaU4nRtY8
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 25, 2018

Amid funding cut fears, PA purchases $50 million private jet for Abbas — report

Even as the Palestinian Authority faces major funding cuts from the US, it has purchased a new luxurious $50 million private jet to be used by President Mahmoud Abbas, Hadashot news reported Wednesday.

The report, which did not provide sourcing, said the plane was set to be delivered to Amman within weeks, and will be stationed there for use by the PA chief.

Funding for the plane was said to have been provided both from the PA budget ($20 million) and from the Palestinian National Fund ($30 million).

The report comes amid deep cuts to US aid to the Palestinians, and reports that further cuts may be coming.

When US President Donald Trump originally threatened to cut aid earlier this month, top PLO official Saeb Erekat said it would lead to starvation among Palestinian refugee children.

“Now, he is threatening to starve Palestinian children in refugee camps and deny their natural rights to health and education, if we don’t endorse his terms and dictations,” Erekat said, referring to Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

From The National:

In pursuit of the perfect pout, a dozen camels have been disqualified from a camel beauty pageant in Saudi Arabia for receiving Botox injections.

What distinguishes a beautiful camel is not just its height, shape and the placement of its hump. A full, droopy lip and large features are essential to achieving camel celebrity-status in the multi-million dollar industry of camel pageantry.

“They use Botox for the lips, the nose, the upper lips, the lower lips and even the jaw,” said Ali Al Mazrouei, 31, a regular attendee at Gulf festivals and son of a top Emirati breeder. “It makes the head more inflated so when the camel comes it’s like, ‘Oh look at how big is that head is. It has big lips, a big nose’.”

Beauty season is in full swing and 30,000 camels have gathered for the second annual King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, the largest pageant in the Gulf. It takes place in Al Dhana, 120 kilometres from Riyadh, and runs through January following Abu Dhabi's Al Dhafra Festival.

Prize money at the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival totals US$57 million (Dhs209.3 million), with more than US$31.8 million for pageantry alone. About 300,000 visitors have attended the festival since it began on January 1, up a third from last year.

Days before it started, Saudi media reported that a veterinarian was caught red-handed performing plastic surgery on camels. At his clinic, camels were not only given botox but went under the knife to reduce the size of their ears. Delicate ears are a winning attribute on some Saudi breeds.

Cheaters are creative, said Ali Obaid, a camel owner and pageant guide from Medinat Zayed. “For example they start to pull the lips of the camel, they pull it by hand like this every day to make it longer. Secondly, they use hormones to make it more muscular and Botox makes the head bigger and bigger. Everyone wants to be a winner.”

I really don't have anything to add.

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The Neturei Karta seem to have helped write the Al Azhar declaration on Jerusalem

The text of the Al Azhar World Declaration to Support Jerusalem, the result of the conference last week that Mahmoud Abbas attended, has 13 paragraphs of declarations and recommendations.

Paragraph 10 is interesting:

The conference urges the wise people of the Jews themselves to take into consideration history, which witnessed their persecution in every place yet they were tolerated only under the Muslim civilization, and to expose Zionist practices contrary to the teachings of Moses, peace be upon him, (including) violation of the sanctity and the theft of the land and the looting of our sanctities .

There were a couple of Neturei Karta members in attendance, and Arabic language media widely reported on them.

It sounds like they were invited to add their own paragraph (or at least to edit it).

The document also claims that Arabs have controlled Jerusalem for 5000 years.

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Some recent items of interest in Muslim and Israeli media

Here are some things I've noticed in the past couple of days from browsing around.

Haaretz reached yet new frontiers of absurdity by saying "only the Arab MKs truly oppose the occupation and seek peace."

Iran's Tasnim News started off an article with "Israel, which has failed to achieve the dream of a Zionist state from the Nile to the Euphrates, is a constant nuisance for the national security of all countries..."

Al Hayat al Jadida illustrated a story about Zionism with these obvious Zionists:

Literally every day there are headlines about Jews "deliberately desecrating Al Aqsa" by walking on the Temple Mount.

A relatively thoughtful piece in Arab21 about how Israel's relationship with India could help it achieve the ultimate crime - other Arab states "normalizing" relations. It says that flights between Israel and India may soon be allowed to travel over Saudi airspace, which would of course be a disaster. He goes on to describe other horrible Israeli attempts to make friends in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

In a followup to this story, where there was talk in Morocco of withdrawing citizenship of Moroccan Jews who moved to Israel across the Green Line, the party that was claimed to have been pushing the law has denied it, saying it was only rumors.

Ammon News in English quotes King Abdullah in Davos as saying Jerusalem is "eternal to Jews, Christians and Muslims." In Arabic it doesn't mention that; instead it says that Israel's supposed one state solution "will be a racist state against Arabs, Muslims and Christians."

Yoel has been sending me videos of this interesting and different Israeli singer on TV competition shows, Neta Barzilai:

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Here's one of the more bizarre articles by Palestinians about how Israelis have "stolen" their supposed heritage.

Usually these articles stick with falafel, but this guy - Dr. Fayez Rashid - goes all out.

In Al Quds al Arabi, he quotes a Palestinian researcher called Nabil ‘Alqam. 'Alqam who mentioned a statistic, which was taken from a book called “Orientalism, Zionism, and Popular Folklore”, by Mun’im Haddad, a professor at Haifa University.

According to Haddad, out of 18,500 stories that are purportedly from the Israeli heritage/folklore that Haddad recorded, 11,944 are really from Arab folklore, told by Jews from Arab and Islamic countries, and out of those, 215 are Palestinian stories.

So specific! It must be true! (Although I'm surprised that there are over 18,000 Israeli folklore stories. Unless he means "Jewish.")

Rashid also complains that Israel donated plants and flowers to China for a botanical garden set up during the 2008 Olympics that were really "Palestinian." And that Israelis received awards for Arab dishes in international competitions. And that Israelis love to steal Palestinian songs and dances like the Dabka.

Rashid goes on to say that in the 1950s, Israel (presumably the government) set up committees to steal Palestinian heritage.

That must have been where all those wooden camels that tourists in the 1960s brought back from Israel came from!

Rashid goes on to say that there is no Israeli culture which is why they are forced to steal the culture from others, and implies that Jews have been doing that for centuries.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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01/24 Links Pt2: How Arafat Eluded Israel’s Assassination Machine; Saving the Syrian Jewish Brides; Why Do Western Gays Abandon Their Islamic Brothers?

From Ian:

NYTs: How Arafat Eluded Israel’s Assassination Machine

The choice facing Ivry on that day in October 1982 was only one example of a dilemma that has confronted many Israeli authorities over the course of the nation’s brief history — the violent and sometimes irreconcilable clash between the fundamental principles of democracy and a nation’s instinct to defend itself.

As a reporter in Israel, I have interviewed hundreds of people in its intelligence and defense establishments and studied thousands of classified documents that revealed a hidden history, surprising even in the context of Israel’s already fierce reputation. Many of the people I spoke to, in explaining why they did what they did, would simply cite the Babylonian Talmud: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” In my reporting, I found that since World War II, Israel has used assassination and targeted-killing more than any other country in the West, in many cases endangering the lives of civilians. But I also discovered a long history of profound — and often rancorous — internal debates over how the state should be preserved. Can a nation use the methods of terrorism? Can it harm innocent civilians in the process? What are the costs? Where is the line?

Increasingly, people want to talk. It was during a conversation in 2011 with a senior officer in a North Tel Aviv cafe that I heard for the first time about how Sharon had ordered that transport plane carrying Arafat to be shot down in 1982. He described everything in detail but set a stiff condition for publication of the story — another person had to describe the event on the record as well. Only by doing that could I publish the story. I went to see that person, knowing how difficult it would be to get him to speak about the episode. I approached in a roundabout manner before I touched on the relevant point. The man looked at me with his steely gaze, but then a softer and slightly sad expression came over his face. “For more than 30 years,” he said, “I have been waiting for someone to come and ask me about this story.”

No target thwarted, vexed and bedeviled the Israeli assassination apparatus more than Yasir Arafat, the charismatic P.L.O. leader who died in 2004. Sometimes he would simply escape, and sometimes the officials overseeing an effort would call it off because the target could not be confirmed or because the price in civilian lives was deemed too high. Time and again, the desire to kill Arafat placed Israel at the center of the ongoing debate about what a nation can and cannot do to survive. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

David Collier: Uni of Warwick – false accusations of aggressive & misogynistic behaviour

And it is important to remember that the issues mentioned are serious, but localised. After I released the last report, some press articles lost both perspective and context, painting Jewish existence at Warwick as an image of constant peril. Little could be further from the truth. As someone who constantly seeks context rather than headlines, and in support of Jewish students at Warwick, I need to address some of this here.

As a result of the exaggerated threat, Jewish students on Warwick released a statement that is worth reading. These students firmly believe that Warwick is one of the ‘greatest campuses’ in the UK for Jewish students. They remain proud of the growth and activity of the Warwick Jewish Israeli Society.

The facts speak in their favour. They firmly defeated the BDS motion, and passed a ‘Warwick Against Antisemitism’ motion in the students union, organising a ‘whole week celebrating the diversity in Israel and hosting holocaust survivors’. It was the BDS defeat that led to the small group of Faculty founding ‘Warwick for Justice in Palestine’ in the first place.

They accept they have issues with university support and individuals within the Student Union, but are insistent this does not reflect on their experience of Warwick as a whole. For them, most of the Faculty, and most of the student body are on-side and supportive. Anti-Israel activism is in general seen for what it is. Remember, only 10-15 students turned up for the event last Wednesday. On a campus that holds thousands.

This small group of activists are an issue, and whilst holding the greater picture in focus we must be allowed to deal with it. In context, and bearing in mind the real-life issues of the students. I am absolutely certain many of the Faculty on Warwick are appalled by the actions of the few. I am also certain over-exaggeration, confuses the issue, complicates life for all students on Warwick, and in many cases can be self -defeating.

What everyone deserves, is for the university to recognise the problem that does exist, and deal with it. The only question is – do they have the guts?

Abbas, May, Trump

Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the implications of Mahmoud Abbas ripping off his mask, as well as the pressure building for Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May to go and the May/Trump fiasco.