Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, April 04, 2018

Getting Out of Facebook Jail: Not Free (Judean Rose)

A rather neat coincidence, I thought, that my husband was released from Facebook “jail” an hour before the Passover holiday began. Another name for Passover, is, after all, Zman Cheruteinu, the time we mark our freedom; our liberation from bondage. Four days later, however, while the holiday celebrating our freedom was still in full force, my husband landed back in the (Facebook) slammer once more.

This was getting ridiculous.

Both times, my husband was reported for comments that were several years old. There appears to be no Facebook statute of limitations for reporting comments. Though the notifications, telling of a ban, offer a way to mark a "sentence" as a “mistake,” doing so yields no response. There is, in actuality, no way to appeal a ban, no recourse to justice. Anyone can troll your timeline, report a random comment, and Facebook duly puts you, the “offender” in jail.

Why choose an old comment? In doing so, the troll protects his identity. There is no way to connect the anonymous report to an actual thread, hence no way to connect the report to an actual person.

In the pro-Israel community, getting trolled for an old comment and put into Facebook jail has become a badge of honor. If you’re getting banned, you have the right politics. But it’s an ugly thing when social media is used to still the pro-Israel voice; where dissent is disallowed, at least temporarily, with Facebook a willing assistant/enabler.

Ryan Bellerose is a staunch Israel advocate and blogger. He’s been banned—put in Facebook jail—five times thus far, each time for way old comments. In one of the reported comments, Ryan jokingly called his friend a “vampire” for staying up so late on social media. This is the comment that was reported as “offensive.” No appeal possible, no recourse, no sane person to whom one might explain that the charge is drummed up, false, ridiculous. Facebook is an omniscient Big Brother. Justice is what Facebook says it is.

But you know how in TV shows, the villain always has to brag and give himself away? The guy who reported Ryan bragged about it using a fake profile. And a friend recognized that fake profile.

By the way, Ryan tells me he only uses his own name for the Facebook profiles he creates. Mark Rowan and Krista Kay are real people in their own right. The troll is not just a troll, but a paranoid troll at that.

Here is the troll using another alias, laughing at Ryan, bragging in an obscenity-laced screed of his prowess in silencing Ryan's important voice for Israel .

Indefatigable pro-Israel blogger Ari Fuld has also been put in Facebook jail numerous times. Like Ryan and like my husband, Ari has discovered the workaround is each time creating a new Facebook profile. But the troll watches out for and targets the new profiles, encouraging others to follow suit:

The troll sees fake profiles everywhere. The Morris Goldberg profile is not Ari, by the way. Just as Ryan is not Mark Rowan or Krista.

Here the troll (varying the spelling of his/her name) brags about reporting Ari's old comment, posting screenshots:

I put a call out: be in touch with me if you've been in FB jail for a way old comment. I was inundated with responses. But perhaps the Guinness Book record for most time in FB jail should go to David Meir, who writes, “Since 2010, I have been so much in FB jail that it makes at least 3 or 4 years.

“I'm not joking.

“I just got out of FB jail and the account went back in [jail] after less than an hour and so did my second David Meir [Facebook profile] after less than a day.

“Thing is that as soon as I go out of FB jail I go right back in so obviously someone is watching my posting pattern and when he (or she) sees I don't comment anymore, wait for a month and then reports again so I am almost continuously in FB jail.

“Something must be done, it is simply criminal that a nobody can report comments you've made years ago and have so much power to virtually block you from ever being on FB.”

Lea Yarden has three alternating Facebook profiles, and all three have often been in “jail” for comments made many years previously. She too is an Israel advocate, and proud Zionist. “One day I got suspended from Facebook for old comments. And it kept happening over and over again. Not just me. All my friends. They were from hate groups where antisemites gang up on Jews and Zionists.

“They called us awful names. ‘Kike.’ ‘Dirty Jew pigs.’ ‘Monkeys.’ Then the icing on the cake were the words ‘Jump back in the ovens dirty Jews’ and ‘Hitler didn’t finish the job.’

“We thought we could change minds with facts. But they didn’t want facts. They wanted to degrade us. We reported every antisemitic comment. But Facebook didn’t think ‘dirty Jew’ or ‘jump back in the ovens’ violated their community standards.

“I removed myself from the groups. Sometime later the bans started. A 1-day ban, 3 days, one week and then the 30-day ban. You would have a few days when the 30 days were over then get hit with another 30-day ban from three and four-year-old comments. Three and four-year-old comments!! What was going on?

“This was happening to all my friends. It was surreal. Why would Facebook ban us over years old comments? We just can’t figure it out.”

Karen Shlomo is in Facebook “jail” for the ninth time in three years. She too, is being reported for old comments. I asked Karen the age of the comments that are being reported. She told me that they are three years old.

Karen knows the age of the comments because she recognized a word that she stopped using three years ago on Facebook. She found out the hard way that certain language is bound to be reported, and learned to phrase things more carefully to escape censorship. But when someone is obsessively trolling your timeline, they’re going to find those old comments with the politically incorrect wording, and yes, they’re going to use those ancient comments to stifle your voice.

S, like my husband, Ryan, and Ari, knows the identity of the man who is trolling her. It’s actually the same person trolling all four of them, using fake profiles most of the time. But in one case, the troll outed himself, using his real email address, phone number, and signature when complaining about S to S’s husband at his work address (!), accusing S of infidelity (among other iniquities), and threatening litigation.

In similar fashion, the troll attempted to damage Ari’s reputation and even his livelihood: “I have posts that people sent to the TV station I work in [suggesting] that I have an ‘attraction’ to little boys," relates Ari.

While comments can only be reported anonymously, sometimes the nature of a reported comment outs the reporter as in this comment of Ari’s that landed him once again in jail (for "bullying"):

And in this case too, the troll could not resist bragging:

One unifying thread between the troll and the people he reports is that he sees himself as a defender of Sarah Tuttle-Singer, the new media editor of the Times of Israel. The friendship between the two is quite public.

Which is why S tried writing to the Times of Israel. She thought perhaps they’d stop the harassment. But she received no response. Not from TOI and not from Facebook.

As she did her research on the troll, however, she saw he was using a corrupted swastika to decorate his blog’s homepage, along with a quote that speaks of restoring a "free and Christian Germany."

Considering the threatening nature of his comments (whether under his real name or an alias) to her and her husband or to a Facebook audience at large. . .

. . . S felt quite within her rights reporting him to the FBI.

Will the FBI respond? I don’t know. But I do know that Facebook must be held to account for its practice of allowing old, innocuous comments to be reported, for stifling free speech, for listening to and acceding to the demands of horrid, anti-Israel trolls.

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

The antisemitism that underlies Palestinianism

The recent interview of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Salman by Jeffrey Goldberg has raised eyebrows because of this section:

When I asked him whether he believed the Jewish people have a right to a nation-state in at least part of their ancestral homeland, he said: “I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation. I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land.”

Salman did not explicitly say that the Jewish people have the right to live in their own land, but that Israelis do.

Still, the comment was enough to really upset Palestinians.

In an editorial, Ma'an's editor Nasser Al-Laham can't even mention Crown Prince Salman's name, only calling him an "Arab leader," but he writes, "The Jews are not a people and they are not a nation. "

He is quite adamant about this, and later on he says why he believes that: "If we say that the Jews are a people, then there is no place for the Palestinian people on the land of Palestine."

In other words, the Palestinian position is that they must deny Jewish peoplehood in order for them to claim to be a people themselves, since people are attached to a land.

Meaning that the antisemitic position that there is no such thing as a Jewish people is an essential part of the belief in Palestinianism. The propaganda of a Palestinian people - a people wholly invented in the past century - is inherently antisemitic.

This is not the first time that Palestinians have made this position clear. In the Palestine Papers, this point is also made:

Recognizing the Jewish state implies recognition of a Jewish people and recognition of its right to self-determination. Those who assert this right also assert that the territory historically associated with this right of self-determination (i.e., the self-determination unit) is all of Historic Palestine. Therefore, recognition of the Jewish people and their right of self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people’s claim to all of Historic Palestine.

Historic fact is not of interest. Palestinians cannot admit there is a Jewish people because it can negate their own claim to peoplehood and their own claim to rights to the land. Therefore, they must claim that there is no such thing as a Jewish people.

I wrote about the Palestine Papers for NewsRealBlog back in 2011 and the site is now defunct, so here is what I wrote then:

_____________________________________

When The Guardian and Al Jazeera released “The Palestine Papers,” they chose to write articles about a very small percentage of them — and then they twisted what the papers actually said to advance their agenda.

In fact, the papers have a lot of information that is quite newsworthy that the Guardian decided against publicizing — precisely because it makes the Palestinian Arab leaders look like fools, liars or both.

Here’s just one example out of many.

One paper is called “Talking Points on Recogntion [sic] of Jewish State,” where the PLO details its reasons for not accepting Israel as a Jewish state.

The paper includes an annex that discusses the implications of such recognition. One of them is:

Recognizing the Jewish state implies recognition of a Jewish people and recognition of its right to self-determination. Those who assert this right also assert that the territory historically associated with this right of self-determination (i.e., the self-determination unit) is all of Historic Palestine. Therefore, recognition of the Jewish people and their right of self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people’s claim to all of Historic Palestine.

There is no controversy over the existence of the Jewish people. The Jews have been recognized as a nation by the entire world for some 3000 years. (Here’s an example from 1850, and an anti-Semitic example from 1743.) The Koran seems to say it as well. It is simply a fact.

Which means that the official PLO position is to deny an undeniable fact because that fact may makes their negotiating position weaker!

Also, note that while they use as their reason for denying Jewish peoplehood the possibility that it might be used against them in negotiations over the Green Line, that same denial can be (and is) used by Palestinian Arabs to deny the Jewish right to self-determination anywhere.

Yasser Arafat and other senior PLO officials used to tell everyone that there was never a Temple in Jerusalem. The official Palestinian Authority Ministry of Information website had an article last year that denied that there was any Jewish connection to the Western Wall, a claim that was repeated in official PA media.

The fact is that any recognition that Jews have historical ties to the land of Israel is threatening to a “people” who have only sprung up in the last century. The very existence of a Jewish people is a natural extension of that fear.

As a result, the Palestinian Arab leaders must go to great lengths to ensure that they can lie consistently about the non-existence of the Jewish nation. After all, if self-determination is a human right, then the Jews have that right as well — but only if the Jews are a people.

Here we can see that the Palestinian Arabs know that their proposition is absurd, but they willingly choose to lie about a historical fact because the truth is uncomfortable to them.

Why should we believe them about anything else?

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

04/04 Links Pt1: Terrorist-run territories will produce terrorism; Fatah: Palestinian flag is wonderful "soaked in the blood of the Martyrs,"; 'Doctor' Katherine Heigl 'Welcomed' to Gaza?

From Ian:

Gaza reality check: Terrorist-run territories will produce terrorism

Mass chaos erupted along Israel's border with the Gaza Strip this weekend as the Hamas-sponsored "March of Return" predictably descended into violent confrontations that left at least sixteen Palestinians dead and hundreds of others injured. Friday’s affair was the first in a series of planned provocations along the frontier over the next six weeks, culminating with the May 15 commemoration by Palestinians of the "catastrophe" of Israel's creation on so-called Nakba Day.

While much of the international community denounced Jerusalem's "disproportionate" response to the storming of its border by an estimated 40,000 people, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman warned Sunday that the military will, by contrast, employ even tougher measures if the unrest continues. The defense chief also claimed that ninety percent of the "protesters" comprised Hamas officials or "activists"—accompanied by their families, including children—who were paid to sow disorder. This is reinforced by the IDF's assertion that at least 10 of the 16 individuals killed in the conflagration were card-carrying members of Palestinian terror groups, with Hamas proudly acknowledging that among the dead were five fighters from its ranks.

In fact, many analysts are astonished by the widespread shock and awe generated by the fully foreseeable outcome of an initiative spearheaded by a terror group dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state. Since assuming power in the Strip just over a decade ago, Hamas and Israel have fought three major conflicts—the last being the fifty-day confrontation in the summer of 2014—interspersed by the unprovoked firing of thousands rockets at Israeli cities; the construction of a network of subterranean attack tunnels stretching into Israeli territory; and the kidnapping of numerous Israeli soldiers and civilians. This, as Hamas has reigned over Gaza with an iron fist, consistently using its "subjects" as a collective human shield and squandering hundreds of millions of dollars on its war machine that instead could have been spent with a view to alleviating the humanitarian plight in the enclave.

Yet, when another round of hostilities inevitably breaks out, so too does the same old international chorus of refrains ranging from "independent investigations" and "restraint by both sides" to accusations that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. And this by actors that seemingly should be capable of digesting the simple fact that terrorist-run territories invariably produce terrorism.

And that, as a tragic corollary, people are going to die.

PMW: Palestinian flag is wonderful "soaked in the blood of the Martyrs," says Abbas’ Fatah

Fatah: “We are sowing our land from the veins, from the arteries, and from blood, and from the inner heart we will build our state and will not relinquish”

A bloodied Palestinian flag lying on the ground is reason to rejoice according to Abbas’ Fatah Movement’s Bethlehem branch, which posted the photo above with text glorifying the spilling of “the blood of the Martyrs”:

Posted text: “How wonderful and mighty you are, O flag of Palestine, when you are soaked in the blood of the Martyrs (Shahids)”
[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement - Bethlehem Branch, March 31, 2018]

An image of a man in an Arab headdress leaning over barbed wire and planting a flower with bleeding hands was also posted by Fatah. Accompanying text emphasized that it is with “blood” that Palestinians are “sowing the land”:

Posted text: “We are sowing our land from the veins, from the arteries, and from blood, and from the inner heart we will build our state and will not relinquish” [Official Fatah Facebook page, March 31, 2018 (image only); Facebook page of the Fatah Movement - Bethlehem Branch, March 31, 2018 (image and text)]

The PA and Fatah continuously state that “all means” are legitimate in the “struggle against the occupation” and in the process of building a Palestinian state. “All means” include the use of violence and terror - when these are viewed as beneficial. Therefore Fatah repeatedly promotes the ideal of Martyrdom-death and spilling one's blood for "Palestine."

Fake News: Actress Katherine Heigl 'Welcomed' to Gaza by Palestinians Applauding Her as a 'Doctor'

The first casualty of war is truth, a maxim the Palestinian Information Center is learning for itself in the hardscrabble world of social media communications.

In the wake of the Hamas-instigated “March of the Return” Gaza riots that tore across the Israeli border last week, the center was keen to publicize what it claimed was a publicity coup. In a Facebook post, it told its 500,000 followers that a French doctor had arrived in the Gaza Strip to perform her work and treat ‘wounded Palestinian protesters.’

See the evidence below:

Trouble is, the shot is of actress Katherine Heigl who played a doctor on TV in the hit show Grey’s Anatomy from 2005-2010.

One bullet, three injuries? The latest #Pallywood lie

This tweet speaks for itself.

🇵🇸 @ShehabAgencyEn : Israeli army' explosive bullets injures three #Palestinians by one bullet during their participation in the #GreatReturnMarch on the Gaza Strip border pic.twitter.com/P81qK6kVYz
— Shehab News (@ShehabAgencyEn) April 4, 2018

People actually believe this garbage.

Soon the UN will call to outlaw the magic Israeli bullets.

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

One of the key points made by the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Rabbi Michael Schudrich, in last week's interview was that not all of Poland supports the new Holocaust law that forbids attributing any responsibility for the Holocaust to Poland:

There is a certain segment of the population that likes the law very much. And there is a whole other bunch of people that really don’t get why it is at all necessary.
I believe that certainly more than half the country is against the law.

Proving that point, on March 11, several hundred Poles gathered at the Gdansk Railway Station in Warsaw with the group Solidarity in Truth to express solidarity with the Polish Jews who had to leave 50 years earlier in 1968 when Polish authorities forced several thousand Jewish survivors of the Holocaust to leave the country.

Logo of Solidarity in Truth. From the site

There is a video of the event, where a number of prominent Poles spoke out. El?bieta Podle?na of Polish Women's Strike spoke at the event and was also interviewed.

El?bieta Podle?na of the group Polish Women's Strike. From snapshot of the video

Aga Zaryan, Polish jazz vocalist, read an open letter addressed to international public opinion, at the initiative of 110 civic NGOs in Poland who signed on to the letter:

And from many other places in the world, where we live, study and work. We, the Poles, who do not agree with how current policy casts a pall over the Polish-Jewish relations developed over the years. We write to all of you who look at Poland today with disbelief, sadness or anger.

We write because we want you to know that regardless of how radical and inappropriate the positions of Polish authorities or certain groups are, these are not the positions and views of us all. We ask that you keep current politics in perspective, although we know how difficult this may be.

There are millions of people in our country for whom the Polish-Jewish dialogue and the truth about common history are important. We write to you as friends to friends, so that you may know that we are there, in Poland and the times that history and heritage bound us, and that we are also bound together in daily life and the future...

The letter appears in full on the Solidarity in Truth website, translated into Polish, Hebrew and English.

On March 15, after postponing debate, the Polish government finally approved a law making March 24th a national holiday remembering and honoring Poles who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. The debate was originally tabled due to the tensions resulting from the new Holocaust law. The day chosen is the day in 1944 when members of the Polish Ulma family -- a father, pregnant mother and their six children -- were executed by the Nazis for hiding Jews in their home. According to Poland's Institute of National Remembrance, between 700 and 1,100 Poles were killed by the Nazis for trying to rescue Jews.

Still, there are critics who accuse the Polish government of using the new holiday to conceal the role played by Poles in Nazi crimes and exaggerating the role actually played by Poles in saving Jews.

Also last month, on its own initiative The Polish Bishops’ Conference issued a statement in reaction to an eruption of anti-Jewish rhetoric in Poland, stating that anti-Semitism is "contradictory to the principles of Christian love of one’s neighbor."

In response, a group of rabbis in Poland expressed their appreciation for their condemnation, and in return promised to continue to speak out against similar attitudes among Israelis and American Jews expressing anti-Polish sentiment.

There continues to be a lot of tension in Poland today. The Holocaust law has not only caused accusations that the Polish government is trying to hide the role Poland played during the Holocaust and has had a chilling effect. The law has also encouraged antisemites in Poland to be more open about their opinions.

The fact that there are Poles willing to openly condemn both the new law itself and antisemitism in Poland is a promising step that will hopefully lead to a long overdue healing.

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

The IDF posted this video showing how a single Gazan youth was able to open a hole in the fence to Israel, as one of his buddies easily slipped through for a moment.

This is the context that is missing in all the reporting on the riots that started last Friday.

While I would like the IDF to explain its open fire policy in more detail, because it is not doing a good job on that, clearly the threat of masses of people being able to simply walk into Israel is far greater than the media is reporting.

No sovereign nation would allow that, and every nation would defend its border with deadly force if it was invaded in that fashion.

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

Delusional: Plurality of Palestinian Arabs say Israel was behind Gaza blast that targeted Palestinian PM

A new poll of Palestinian Arabs from An Najah University shows that many Palestinian Arabs have no ability to think beyond the absurd propaganda they are force fed by their media.

When asked the question, "From your point of view who bears the responsibility for the explosion that targeted the motorcade of Prime Minister, Dr. Rami Hamdallah, during his visit to Gaza?" 17% said Hamas, 9% Fatah, 25% said some other Palestinian group - and 32% said Israel.

In the West Bank, fully 41% blamed Israel for the attack.

The poll also indicated that the zero sum mentality of Palestinians is fully in force. That is the only way to explain the anomalous results where 40% say they support "the creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967
borders as a final solution for the Palestinian cause" while only 22% say they support " the creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with some land exchange as a final solution for the Palestinian cause."

The results show that Palestinians aren't interested in their own state even on the 1967 lines, because they want all of Israel (that question was not asked but other polls show this to be true.) However, the high opposition to a state with land swaps shows that they are against anything Israel might support - in other words, if Israelis want peace with land swaps, then Palestinians must oppose it.

The poll also shows that support for Hamas, while low, is now stronger in the West Bank than in Gaza itself. When asked both what party they would vote for in a presidential election as well as for legislative elections, West Bank Arabs wanted Hamas more than Gazans, 15% to 11% in the latter case. At the moment, Fatah has the most support of any party in any potential election, both in Gaza and in the West Bank.

However, the vast majority of Palestinians want both the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror organizations to join the PLO - 68%, with 77% in the West Bank supporting the PLO allowing these internationally recognized terror groups to be part of the PLO.

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

04/03 Links Pt2: Bari Weiss: French Jews Face the Hatred That Can’t Be Named; Brendan O'Neill: The return of the socialism of fools; Jeremy Corbyn and the far left’s anti-Semitism doublespeak

From Ian:

Bari Weiss: French Jews Face the Hatred That Can’t Be Named

In Paris, two Muslim men, one of them yelling “Allahu Akbar,” recently murdered the eighty-five-year-old, wheelchair-bound Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll. Noting that this is hardly an isolated incident, Bari Weiss scrutinizes the official French response:

Parisian authorities are investigating the murder as being motivated by the “membership, real or supposed, of the victim of a particular religion.” But euphemisms should have no place in describing the nature of Mireille Knoll’s death. She was murdered by men apparently animated by the same hatred that drove Hitler. . . .

[Knoll’s] neighborhood . . . has already borne witness to a nearly identical crime. Almost exactly a year ago, a sixty-five-year-old Jewish widow named Sarah Halimi was murdered by her neighbor, twenty-seven-year-old Kobili Traoré. Other neighbors said they heard Traoré scream “Allahu Akbar” as he beat Halimi, a retired doctor, to near death in the early hours of April 4, 2017. He then threw her body into the courtyard below. It took months for Halimi’s murder to be categorized as an anti-Jewish hate crime. . . . This time, French authorities have been quick to call the crime by its proper name. . . . But the people actually killing Jews in France these days are not members of the National Front. They are Islamists. . . .

Here are some facts that are very hard to talk about: Jews represent less than 1 percent of the population in France, yet in 2014, 51 percent of all racist attacks were carried out against them, according to the French Interior Ministry. A survey from that year of about 1,000 French respondents with unknown religious affiliation and 575 self-identified Muslims . . . found that the Muslim respondents were two or three times more likely to have anti-Jewish sentiments than those from the random French group. Nineteen percent of all respondents felt that Jews had “too much” political power. Among Muslims, the number was 51 percent. As for the idea that Zionism “is an international organization that aims to influence the world and society in favor of the Jews,” 44 percent of Muslims surveyed approved of this statement. . . .

The Moment That Made Israel a Nation

‘Jews do not shoot at Jews.” So the young Menachem Begin confidently assured a worried young man on June 20, 1948, just after Israel became the world’s newest nation. A ship under the control of Begin’s militia, the Irgun, had come ashore at Kfar Vitkin with badly needed arms and ammunition for the fledgling Jewish state. A disagreement ensued between Begin and Israel’s leader, David Ben-Gurion, as to the allocation of the arms on the Altalena. Ben- Gurion ordered Israeli Defense Forces to surround the ship. A boy assisting in the unloading of its cargo fretted that those who had just come ashore might be fired upon. Begin assured him that this was inconceivable. Whatever might happen, Jews do not shoot at Jews.

He proved badly mistaken. A firefight did break out, and the Altalena fled back to the Mediterranean, landing near what is now Tel Aviv’s Frischman Beach on June 22, with Begin on board. David Ben-Gurion ordered the ship shelled. Sixteen members of the Irgun were killed. Standing on the ship while being fired upon—with dear friends of his dying—Begin ordered those aboard the Altalena not to fire back, declaring milkhemet ahim le-olam lo, never a war between brothers. After leaving the smoldering Altalena, with much of its arms cache lost forever, Begin went on the radio and again ordered his seething followers not to seek revenge. After wrongly predicting that Jews would never shoot at Jews, Begin now enunciated an even more extraordinary principle: Jews do not shoot at Jews, even when those Jews are shooting at them.

This was his greatest moment. The survival of the newly born state was anything other than assured, and shooting back, however justified the self-defense might have been, would have torn the people apart. In his memoir The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, Yehuda Avner quotes Begin explaining his motivation: “Twenty centuries ago we faced the bitter experience of the destruction of our Second Temple, the destruction of our capital Jerusalem. And why? Because of our senseless hatred of each other, a hatred that led to civil war and to our utter ruin: behiya le-dorot [a weeping for generations].” This time, civil war did not take place, and the nascent Jewish state flourished into the mighty, vibrant, “start-up nation” we know it to be today.

This coming month, millions of Israelis and Jews around the world will celebrate the 70th anniversary of Israel’s birth. Far fewer will mark, a month later, the 70th anniversary of the Altalena affair, and Begin’s decision on that day. Yet it is perhaps the second-most important moment in 1948, one that defined Israeli democracy forever.

Ben Shapiro: Tony Kushner’s West Side Story Problem

By the logic of the identity politics he claims to support, he can’t remake a play about Polish and Puerto Rican gangs.

The Left’s favorite playwright, Tony Kushner, is in a bind.

Kushner, you’ll recall, is the author of such politically radical travesties as Angels in America and Munich — and the author of far more mature works, such as Lincoln and Fences. Kushner is the type of fellow who says: “The founding of the State of Israel was for the Jewish people a historical, moral, political calamity. . . . I wish modern Israel hadn’t been born.” But he still likes to stand on his Jewish ethnicity as a crutch for his leftism. He’s an anti-capitalism radical who has earned millions of dollars and summers in a Provincetown vacation home.

And now, Kushner has a problem.

His problem: He’s a Jewish gay guy remaking West Side Story — a musical about Polish and Puerto Rican gangs, originally written by four Jews. This violates the core tenet of intersectionality, which maintains that it’s cultural appropriation when people of one culture write about another culture, and that it’s “white privilege” when too many members of “white America” (which now includes Jews) earn money on a particular endeavor. Kushner declares himself a “big believer in identity politics and political correctness.”

So how will he square this circle? He explains:
I mean, it’s a little tricky with West Side Story. . . . It’s also not exclusively about Puerto Ricans. It’s about white guys and Puerto Rican guys and white girls and Puerto Rican girls. So what does that mean, we should have two directors and two screenwriters?

Well, by his standards, yes. But he’s not going to give up that paycheck or that creative project:
Why shouldn’t we want to be politically correct, if by correct you mean not toeing the party line but toeing the line of history, being on the right side of history, being moral and ethical. . . . I’m aware of my privileged position, but do I believe I’m doing something wrong by writing West Side Story? I absolutely do not. I’m much more afraid of the musical theater queens.

Well, of course he doesn’t believe he’s doing something wrong. His ox would be gored if he abided by the idiotic intersectional principles he claims to support. Because Kushner is left-wing, the Los Angeles Times gives him a pass here, so long as he utters the buzzwords that the Left prefers. But there’s little doubt that he’s avoiding the consequences of his own ideology.

The Hamas-affiliated Palestine Information Center's reporting of Jews peacefully visiting their holiest site is always amusing.

Monday:

Scores of Israeli settlers on Monday morning broke into al-Aqsa Mosque via al-Maghareba Gate under heavy police protection.
Public relations official of the Jerusalem Islamic Awqaf Department Feras al-Dibs told the PIC that 244 settlers as well as two Israeli intelligence officers stormed al-Aqsa Mosque during the morning hours.
The PIC reporter said that a plane belonging to the Israeli police kept hovering at a low altitude over the Mosque during the raid.
Over 200 Israeli settlers stormed the holy site during Sunday's incursions and performed Talmudic rituals at the Dome of the Rock.

The drone is a new wrinkle.

It is rather impossible that the Jews even approached the Dome of the Rock, let alone prayed there, since that is off-limits to religious Jews according to practically everyone.

Today's story is juicier:

Approximately 260 Israeli settlers on Tuesday forced their way into al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem, marking the fourth day of Passover holiday.
Department of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs affirmed that the settlers stormed the holy shrine from the Israeli-controlled al-Magharibeh Gate and performed their Talmudic rituals under heavy police protection.
Over the past two days, more than 500 settlers broke into the Mosque in total provocation to Palestinian worshipers.

Yes, walking through a gate is "forcing themselves."

I'm always amazed how the Arabs know that the visitors are all "settlers."

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

Palestinian Arab prisoner ends hunger strike because it was getting too hard

PIC reports:

The Palestinian prisoner in Israeli jails Omar al-Kiswani on Monday decided to suspend his hunger strike after his health condition has deteriorated as a result of the intensive interrogation he is being exposed to.

The Palestinian Prisoner Society said in a statement that al-Maskoubiya military court decided to extend al-Kiswani's detention for eight days under the pretext of completing the interrogation which has not stopped since the moment of his arrest on 7th March.

According to the statement, al-Kiswani informed his lawyer during the trial of his decision to suspend his strike because of the exhaustion he is suffering from.

I thought the entire point of a hunger strike was to be uncomfortable. But apparently, for Palestinian prisoners, if it gets to be harder than the Paleo diet then it is time to quit.

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

04/03 Links Pt1: Gaza and the worthlessness of international opinion; UNESCO to pass ‘most extreme’ Jerusalem resolution next week

From Ian:

Gaza and the worthlessness of international opinion

It is by no means clear that the Palestinian border riots turned out to be the great propaganda triumph Israel's enemies were hoping for. Most of the Arab world is responding with the same perfunctory protest as they put forward after President Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Egypt is not lifting the Gaza blockade. While European governments demand Israeli restraint, they won't be applying any real pressure on Israel to strengthen the terrorist regime in Gaza.

The purpose of the march was not - as claimed by those who have accepted Hamas' propaganda - a march for "a better future." It was explicitly a march to demand a "right of return" for descendants of the 1948 Palestinian refugees into Israel.

As such, it is a call for war without end, since no Israeli government of any political stripe could ever concede this claim, which would effectively end the Jewish state.

The purpose of the protest was to produce Palestinian corpses, not to highlight any grievances. Given the numbers of those assaulting the border, the IDF showed its commitment to a limited use of force.

If you call for open borders for Gaza, you're not so much advancing a humanitarian cause as you are advocating the arming of an Islamist terror group.

PMW: Murderers of Israelis are "sacrificing heroes and torches of freedom that have lit the skies of Palestine," says PLO official

Mother of 5 terrorist sons, among them 2 murderers, raised "sacrificing heroes and torches of freedom that have lit the skies of Palestine"

Reporting on an event honoring Palestinian mothers "of Martyrs, prisoners, and wounded," the official Palestinian Authority daily mentioned in particular the mother of 5 terrorists, among them 2 murderers. Although the paper listed the number of life sentences each is serving, it failed to mention that they are imprisoned for murder of 8 people as well as numerous other terror attacks (see descriptions below):
"Um Yusuf is the mother of Martyr Abd Al-Mun'im, and the mother of four prisoners serving life sentences: Nasser, serving 7 life sentences and an additional 50 years; Nasr, serving 5 life sentences; Sharif, serving 4 life sentences; and Muhammad, serving 2 life sentences and an additional 30 years."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 23, 2018]

This is not the first time the PA has honored this mother of 5 terrorists (also known as Um Hmeid) as a model for Palestinian mothers. In 2011, the PA chose her to launch the PA's statehood campaign with the UN.

At the recent event, a senior PLO official praised the mothers of the terrorists as "crowns on our heads" because they have educated their sons to carry out "heroic acts," and raised them to become "sacrificing heroes and torches of freedom that have lit the skies of Palestine":

UNESCO to pass ‘most extreme’ Jerusalem resolution next week

The United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture is expected next week to pass another resolution on Jerusalem that an Israeli official has denounced as “the most extreme and problematic text” ever proposed.

At first blush, the short text appears harmless from an Israeli perspective, devoid of any incendiary claims or designations. And yet, Jerusalem opposes it because it cites previous UN resolutions on Middle Eastern affairs, thus legitimizing more problematic formulations “through the back door,” Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama Hacohen, said.

The resolution, sponsored by Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan, consists of only four paragraphs. Two recall previous resolutions, one calls for their implementation and future discussion, and one reaffirms “the importance of Jerusalem for the three monotheistic religions.”

UNESCO has passed “less elegant” resolutions in the past, Shama Hacohen acknowledged, but nonetheless condemned next week’s draft as “the most extreme and problematic text we have ever seen.”

In a letter to fellow UNESCO envoys, a copy of which was obtained by The Times of Israel, he argued that the text’s brevity and lack of offensive language against Israel was misleading. Rather, he said, the resolution is “based on politicization and hateful propaganda against UNESCO’s core mandate and own sake, as well as against the Jewish People and the State of Israel.”

For one, the resolution is entitled “Occupied Palestine,” which the Israeli envoy argued is a “pure[ly] political title.”

Furthermore, the draft refers to the 1981 inscription of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls in UNESCO’s World Heritage List, and the subsequent decision to add the site to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage in Danger. Both requests were made by Jordan and “were, and are, political fictions,” Shama Hacohen wrote.

From Palestine Information Center:

Palestinian young men on Monday evening attacked Israeli buses carrying Jewish settlers on a main road in the north of al-Khalil city [Hebron] in the occupied West Bank.

Local sources told the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) that young men threw Molotov cocktails at buses boarded by settlers as they were traveling on the main road near al-Arroub refugee camp in northern al-Khalil.

They added that the buses sustained some material damage during the attack, while Israeli media sources claimed it caused no vehicular damage or human injury.

This is more prominently reported in Palestinian media than in Israeli media. Because they are proud of their youths trying to burn dozens of Jews alive.

The mainstream media doesn't deign this worthy of coverage at all, of course. They want their readers to see only the cute stone-throwers, not the firebombers.

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

There has been a kerfuffle on social media about UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's decision to attend a "seder" by the group called Jewdas, which is a radical left organization that claims to have some Jewish identity.

The Guardian reports:

Jeremy Corbyn has been criticised for attending a Passover event with a leftwing Jewish group highly critical of mainstream Jewish communal bodies, and which has described the protests against the Labour leader as “faux outrage greased with hypocrisy and opportunism”.

Corbyn attended a Passover seder, the traditional meal of the Jewish festival, in his Islington constituency that was organised by Jewdas, which last week accused the Jewish Board of Deputies, Jewish Leadership Council and Jewish Labour Movement of “playing a dangerous game with people’s lives”.

The group – which runs alternative Jewish parties, events and a satirical website – said in a statement last week over the Enough Is Enough protests that much of the furore over antisemitism in Labour was “the work of cynical manipulations by people whose express loyalty is to the Conservative party and the right wing of the Labour party”.

A spokesman for Corbyn said he attended the event in a personal capacity and not in his official role as Labour leader, after his attendance was revealed by the Guido Fawkes blog. “He wrote to the Board of Deputies and Jewish Leadership Council last week to ask for an urgent formal meeting to discuss tackling antisemitism in the Labour party and in society,” the spokesman said.

Jewdas, a collective that describes itself as “radical voices for the alternative diaspora”, says its members are “synagogue-going Jews, most with either paid or voluntary positions within our communities”. The group has been highly critical of the Israeli government, but has also published pamphlets for pro-Palestinian demonstrations advising activists how to avoid antisemitism in campaigning.

In a piece for the pro-Labour website Labour List, Charlotte Nicols, one of the attendees of the Jewdas seder, said Corbyn had stayed for four hours and was an active participant in the rituals.

Let's look at those "rituals" as seen in the Jewdas "Haggadah" from last year. (h/t On The Dark Side)

Most seders involve four cups of wine. Ours involves one quantity of wine and one only: as much as it fucking takes. For our purposes, the FIRST four cups we drink will represent the normal seder shit. The reason it normally involves four is because Judaism is obsessed with fucking four. Four represents “the four seasons of the year”, “the four douchebag ancient empires that fucked with Israel”, and “the four corners of the universe”. But the universe isn’t square. YOU ARE.
Tonight, the four cups are the four types of freedom. Just fucking go with it.

Now that we see how much Jewdas respects Judaism, we can go on:

Usually, left wing seders love talking about how Jews spill some wine in talking about the plagues to say that Egyptian suffering shouldn't be celebrated. Not this one:

SECOND BUCKET OF WINE
Legend has it that when the Egyptians were being sucked down
into the Red Sea, hallucinogenic angels wanted to chant a cover of
Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah in victory. This peeved Lorde. Lorde
rebuked: “Fucking angels! How you gonna do me like that? Those
are MY little bastards drowning down there! I know they were doing
bad shit, but fucking show some compassion!”
In a “normal” seder, we’d fill our second bucket of wine only halfway
to show that it’s sad to see any human suffering, even those
asswipes. In this seder, we fill two buckets of wine per person
because...yeah. Fuck those fascists.

Finally, we get to the point of "anti-Israel" part. And it isn't just anti-Israel, which, lets face it, no one would complain about. And it isn't just antisemitic, either.

Corbyn's buddies don't like the Queen either. Or Parliament.

“Prayer against the State of Israel” by Geoffry Cohen

Please God, smash the State of Israel. Smash it in the abundance of your
love. Send forth your light and truth to those who lead. And JUDGE it - on Yom
Kippur try to pay special attention to those who hold elective office. Establish
in them, through some sort of magic God thing, wise counsel, that they might
stop being so fucking racist. We're sure you've been trying but srsly, you need
to give this some more thought.
Strengthen the hands of those who seek to liberate our holy land that isn't
actually ours at all but everyone's. Let them inherit salvation and life. And give
peace to the land, and perpetual joy to all its inhabitants. Stop referring to the
“house of Israel”, that's gone, it's been hundreds of years, get over it, get a flat.
Plant in our hearts a love of everywhere. Destroy all borders, tear down all
walls, quick, before Banksy comes and draws something on it.
And for all our people everywhere, may God be with them, and may they have
the opportunity to go wherever they want to go, and help them to live in peace
with their neighbours. Cause your spirit’s influence to emanate upon the
dwellers of Stamford Hill and/or Golders Green.

Meaning...Jews. Because mainstream Jews are evil and need to be set right.

And fuck the queen and ESPECIALLY FUCK PRINCE PHILIP. Burn down
parliament. Full communism. Amen.

The British might tolerate the pure antisemitism and the desire for Israel to be destroyed in this "seder" - but they don't like when you mess with the Queen.

And Corbyn was an "active participant."

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

For the first time, Palestinians going on pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia from Ben Gurion airport

A Russia Today reporter tweeted this:

لأول مرة في مطار بن غوريون، تل أبيب... معتمرون بملابس الاحرام حيث تم سفرهم الى السعودية عن طريق طائرة ترانزيت الى مطار عمان الاردن ومنها الى ارض الحرمين الشريفين لاداء العمرة . pic.twitter.com/GZ8LJUhhwK
— Dalia Nammari (@Dalianamari_rt) April 2, 2018

For the first time at Ben-Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, [Palestinian pilgrims) were traveling to Saudi Arabia via a transit plane to Jordan Amman Airport and from there to the land of the Two Holy Mosques for the performance of Umrah.

When someone challenged her that this has happened in the past, she said that previously Israeli Arabs had taken a bus to Amman and from there taken a flight to Mecca. In this case the plane leaves from Israel, stops briefly in Amman and then goes on to Saudi Arabia, presumably so that the flight doesn't go directly from Israel to the kingdom.

This development was reported last year, although it seems that this is the first time it actually happened:

For thousands of Palestinian pilgrims, the journey to Mecca is about to become much less time-consuming.
The United States is in talks with the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, to allow special flights transporting pilgrims to take off from Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv to Saudi Arabia, reported Roya Arabic.
According to the same source, the designated planes won’t be Saudi or Israeli-owned.
In addition, the aircrafts are planned to make a brief stop in Jordan before continuing to their final destination.

I guess no one wants to report that the administration of Donald Trump may have done something to help Israeli Arabs and Palestinians get to Saudi Arabia.

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

04/02 Links Pt2: Col. Kemp: The bravest and the best; Collier: The Jewish community and Jeremy Corbyn are incompatible; How Terrorists Are Using Twitter to Incite Violence Against Israelis;

From Ian:

Col. Richard Kemp: The bravest and the best

Are we no longer allowed heroes? The 2017 film "Churchill" is nothing less than a character assassination of the man who led Britain to victory in World War II. The movie "7 Days in Entebbe," released last week in Israel, gives similar treatment to the hero of the dramatic rescue, Lt. Col. Yoni Netanyahu. The film is based on a book about the raid by the distinguished British historian Professor Saul David.

Incredibly, in an interview last week, David seemed to suggest that the German terrorists at Entebbe played a greater role than Netanyahu in saving the hostages' lives. He claims they had second thoughts, deliberately sparing the hostages when they could have killed them.

Why? Because they had developed empathy for their captives and "it wouldn't have looked good for Germans to kill Jews again, after the Holocaust." Look good to whom? It doesn't add up. They had seized Jewish hostages at gunpoint, conducted a "selection" chillingly reminiscent of Auschwitz and were members of a rabidly anti-Semitic terror group, the Revolutionary Cells.

Meanwhile, David dismisses Netanyahu, claiming his research shows he "was not a central figure in the planning of the operation." Yet Netanyahu's Sayeret Matkal comrades who were there describe him as "the father of the operation," confirming that he did in fact plan the rescue in meticulous detail after being given orders by Brig. Gen. Dan Shomron,
the overall commander, to take over the airport terminal and release the hostages.

The Rome of Josephus

In the midst of the Judean Revolt of 66-70 CE, the Jewish rebel officer Josephus, his unit defeated, defected to the Roman forces; eventually the emperor Vespasian and his son and successor Titus became Josephus’ patrons, and he went on to have an illustrious career writing about Jewish history and defending Jews and Judaism against their slanderers. He came to the city of Rome in 71 CE, and most likely lived there until his death around the year 100. David Laskin reports on traveling through Rome with the works of Josephus as his guide. Here he imagines the imperial parade—memorialized in the Arch of Titus—during which the emperor celebrated the Jews’ defeat and the destruction of their Temple:

I tried to erase from my mind [today’s] T-shirts and selfie sticks and resurrect the fallen columns. Vespasian and Titus, riding chariots, would have been two dabs of purple surging up the ramparts of the Capitoline [hill] through a sea of white togas. In their train, thousands of Jewish slaves shuffled with bowed heads while the heaps of plundered gold and silver bobbed above them, winking in the sun. “Last of all the spoils,” writes Josephus, “was carried a copy of the Jewish Law”—the Torah.

Josephus reveals exactly where these spoils ended up. Vespasian had a new temple—the Templum Pacis (Temple of Peace)—built adjacent to the Forum where “he laid up the vessels of gold from the temple of the Jews, on which he prided himself; but their Law and the purple hangings of the sanctuary he ordered to be deposited and kept in the palace.” The palace, in ancient Rome, meant the Palatine (the word palace derives from the hill’s name). . . .

Josephus notes that the Templum Pacis, built “very speedily in a style surpassing all human conception,” housed not only the spoils of Jerusalem but also “ancient masterpieces of painting and sculpture, . . . objects for the sight of which men had once wandered over the whole world.” . . .

IsraellyCool: How Terrorists Are Using Twitter to Incite Violence Against Israelis

So how does Hamas incite violence? Increasingly they’re using social media. In fact, the call for a “day of rage” prior to the two recent attacks came via the official Hamas Twitter accounts.

Most are shocked to learn that Hamas is allowed to use Twitter to advance their deadly agenda. After all, Hamas is a recognized terrorist entity in many jurisdictions, including Canada, the United States, the European Union, and Israel. And, quite rightly, other terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda and ISIS, have been booted off the fourth-largest social media platform in the world.

But, when it comes to Hamas, Twitter has refused to act. This is somewhat confusing, considering the company’s own rules were updated in December to explicitly reference promotion of terrorism as unwelcome on the platform.

If Hamas’ status as a terrorist entity isn’t enough to be banned, surely their use of the platform to incite violence should be. But, despite more than two million impressions of the #GetHamasOffTwitter hashtag, Twitter has remained silent.

So, what’s to be done about this deadly problem? Well, experience has taught us that Twitter responds to public pressure. They’re quick to shut down hate speech when it goes viral – because they know it reflects poorly on them: following intervention from concerned citizens, the company stepped up to purge more than 300,000 accounts that supported the Islamic State.

We must keep up the pressure. You can join thousands of concerned members of the Jewish and pro-Israel community and do two things right now:
1. Add your name to a letter to Twitter at cija.ca/HamasTwitter
2. Tweet using the #GetHamasOffTwitter hashtag.