Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, April 05, 2018

04/05 Links P2: Collier: The Jewdas Gambit, assimilation and distorted statistics; Christian Arabs Receive More Support From Israel Than From Muslim Arabs; Why Shouldn't Peter Beinart Be Discomforted?

From Ian:

MEMRI: Palestinian American Columnist Ray Hanania: Christian Arabs Receive More Support From Israel Than From Muslim Arabs

In a recent column in the English-language Saudi daily Arab News, Christian Palestinian-American columnist Ray Hanania laments that Christian Arabs receive more support from Israel than from their fellow Arabs. As an example he presents Palestinian-Christian filmmaker Shady Srour, whose new film, Holy Air, is celebrated by Israelis but is likely to be disregarded by Arab activists because it was made with Israeli funding. Arab activists, says Hanania, pay lip service to the idea that Christian and Muslim Arabs are brothers, but in practice they do not regard Christian Arabs as their equals – especially if these Christians challenge mainstream Arab principles such as supporting the BDS or rejecting normalization with Israel. Stressing that films are far more effective than protests as a means of swaying public opinion, Hanania suggests that, instead of rejecting normalization with Israel, Arabs should make quality films that will show Israelis, and the rest of the world, the positive face of Palestinians and Arabs.

The following is his column:
"Shady Srour, a Palestinian-Christian filmmaker based in Nazareth, has produced a comedic film called 'Holy Air,' which has received huge promotional support from Israeli activists. It is about a fictional character who devises a scheme to sell bottled air from the Holy Land to enrich himself and pay his family’s bills. It is one of several Palestinian-made films headlining this year’s Israeli Film Festival in Los Angeles.

"The message in Srour’s film is that money cuts across Middle East differences and brings Arabs and Israelis together. Even though the film is not political, because of Israeli funding it is unlikely to get support from Arab activists.

"Overall, I think Christian Arabs tend to get more support from Israel than they do from Arabs. Israel recognizes how important Arab Christians are in the war for the hearts and minds of the world, especially in gaining US support. Arabs tend to pay lip service to Arab Christians, parroting the politically correct line that Christians and Muslims have shared the same suffering and challenges, and shed their blood for the same causes.

"But Christians are not equal to Muslims in the eyes of Arab activists. Christian Arabs who challenge mainstream Arab principles — such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, and rejection of the two-state solution — are marginalized, demonized as 'Zionist shills' and labeled 'traitors to the Palestinian cause.' Activists do not want their 'wisdom' questioned. They want these moderate voices silenced.

Seth Mandel: Ideas Have Consequences

Review of 'Realism and Democracy' By Elliott Abrams
Here is where Abrams’s book stands out: He provides, in the last two chapters, an accounting of the weaknesses in U.S. policy, including mistakes made by the administration he served, and a series of concrete proposals to show that democracy promotion can be effective without the use of force.

One mistake, according to Abrams, is America’s favoring of civil-society groups over political parties. These groups do much good, generally have strong English-language skills, and are less likely to be tied to the government or ancien régime. But those are also strikes against them. Abrams relates a story told by former U.S. diplomat Princeton Lyman about Nelson Mandela. Nigerian activists asked the South African freedom fighter to support an oil embargo against their own government. Mandela declined because, Lyman says, there was as yet no serious, organized political opposition party: “What Mandela was saying to the Nigerian activists is that, in the absence of political movements dedicated not just to democracy but also to governing when the opportunity arises, social, civic, and economic pressures against tyranny will not suffice.” Without properly focused democracy promotion, other tools to punish repressive regimes will be off the table.

Egypt offers a good example of another principle: Backsliding must be punished. The Bush administration’s pressure on Mubarak over his treatment of opposition figures changed regime behavior in 2005. Yet by the end of Bush’s second term, the pressure had let up and Mubarak’s misbehavior continued, with no consequences from either Bush or his successor, Barack Obama, until it was too late.

That, in turn, leads to another of Abrams’s recommendations: “American diplomacy can be effective only when it is clear that the president and secretary of state are behind whatever diplomatic moves or statements an official in Washington or a U.S. ambassador is making.” This is good advice for the current Oval Office occupant and his advisers. President Trump’s supporters advise critics of his dismissive attitude toward human-rights violations to focus on what the president does, not what he says. But Trump’s refusal to take a hard line against Vladimir Putin and his recent praise of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s move to become president for life undermine lower-level officials’ attempts to encourage reform.

There won’t be democracy without democrats. Pro-democracy education, Abrams advises, can teach freedom-seekers to speak the ennobling language of liberty, which is the crucial first step toward building a culture that prizes it. And in the process, we might do some ennobling ourselves.

Yisrael Medad: Hammerman's Anti-Zionist Terror

Ilana Hammerman has smuggled Arabs-called-Palestinians into Israel illegally from Judea and Samaria as an act of defiance. With friends*.

Now, she ratchets up the incitement speech.

She has published, in Haaretz, of course, an op-ed: Israel Is the Terrorist
sub-titled:
Young Palestinians are not carrying out acts of terror- they are leading a desperate struggle against an army
Selected outtakes:
the West Bank – in which not a single dunam belongs to the State of Israel
the reality there [in Judea & Samaria]...it’s one of state-sponsored terror, [by] the State of Israel.

All this stems from
the choice of Israeli governments to use terror to impose the “state of the Jewish people” on the entire region between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

Despite the terror of Haj Amin El-Husseini 1920-1948, that of the Fedayeen 1948-1956, that of the PLO founded in 1965, Hammerman writes that it is
this policy [of Israel] that gives rise to the acts of resistance against it.

Either she cannot think, cannot read or, like too many in the anti-Zionist camp, simply ignore facts of history, fly in the face of logic and seek to harm Jews and the state's existence.

Anti-Zionist terror.

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Before you can discuss solutions to the problem of the African infiltrators, migrants, asylum seekers or refugees in Israel – call them what you want – you should know the facts. You are strongly encouraged to read about them here; but in summary there are about 38,000 people from various countries in Africa who crossed our Egyptian border illegally and want to stay in Israel. The government has tried to find a way to deport them that will be both effective and humane, but so far has been stymied at every turn.

The position of the government is that only a small number deserve refugee status, and the rest are illegal immigrants who should leave the country one way or another. The majority of Israelis (66% of Jews and 50% of Arabs) agree.

Initially, illegal migrants faced detention (they were allowed to work during the day, but required to return to a detention facility in the evening) or even imprisonment, in order to encourage them to leave. But Israel’s Supreme Court declared this policy illegal.

Since the majority of them cannot be deported to their home countries – for example, because they will be prosecuted for draft evasion (Eritrea) or for travelling to Israel with which a state of war exists (Sudan) – an agreement was reached with “third countries” (Rwanda and possibly Uganda) to accept them. The migrants and the destination countries would both receive payments, and the migrants’ exit would be “of their own free will,” even though both carrots and sticks would be deployed to encourage them.

Naturally, the migrants would prefer to stay in Israel. Their case was taken up by the Israeli Left, along with numerous international and foreign organizations such as Amnesty International, the European Union, the New Israel Fund, the Union for Reform Judaism (in the USA) and others. The Supreme Court froze the plan, and massive international pressure was applied to the government of Rwanda, which – embarrassed by what was portrayed as “enabling anti-black racism” – backed out.

PM Netanyahu blamed the New Israel Fund (NIF), an organization primarily based in the US but with an Israeli branch. According to the very reliable NGO Monitor, the NIF gives millions of dollars annually to groups promoting BDS, and engaging in incitement and demonization of Israel. In a Facebook post (Hebrew), Netanyahu wrote,

The central factor behind the European pressure on the government of Rwanda to withdraw from the agreement to take the infiltrators from Israel was the New Israel Fund.

The Fund is a foreign organization funded by foreign governments and forces hostile to Israel, such as the funds linked to George Soros. The primary objective of the Fund is to erase the Jewish character of Israel and turn it into a state of its citizens, on 1967 lines, next to a Jew-free Palestinian nation-state whose capital is Jerusalem…

I don’t know of any Western democracy, in particular the US, that would suffer for very long hostile activities financed by foreign powers, like those that have been going on here in Israel with the New Israel Fund for decades… [my tr.]

The PM then negotiated a deal with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The plan was that over five years some 16,000 migrants would be resettled in Western nations, while another 16,000 would get temporary residency in Israel. The ones that stayed would get job training and be dispersed around the country to relieve the pressure on South Tel Aviv. This time it was the Right that objected, and not just the extreme Right. For one thing, the resettlement of the migrants would take five years, and given the involvement of the UN, there are serious doubts that it would take place at all, or that more than a very few of them would actually go.

The remaining 16,000 would have a temporary status which, with the passage of time would certainly become permanent. Once people have established families and have Hebrew-speaking children that know no other home, it becomes extremely painful (for everyone involved) to relocate them. Finally – and I think this is the most important consideration – such an arrangement makes Israel a desirable destination again for migrants.

Israel stopped the flow of migrants in part by building a fence along the Egyptian border, but also by making it difficult for them to get work, benefits and residency here. If that were not the case, no fence would keep them out. The new arrangement would make Israel a magnet again for migrants who knew that if they could get in they could stay or move on to Europe or North America.

As I write this (Wednesday), the PM has declared that the deal is off, and everything is being “rethought from the beginning.” The Left and the various foreign organizations that favored the deal are furious. Netanyahu is talking about passing a law permitting the imprisonment of those who have entered the country illegally (until they agree to leave “voluntarily”), with a clause saying that the Supreme Court cannot overturn it. I have no idea how this would play out, but it’s clear that the political storm won’t be over for a while.

So why is this so important? Why can’t a country with 8.5 million people fit some 38,000 new ones in somewhere?

First of all, there is the “magnet” argument. If Israel becomes a desirable destination, we will not be able to put limits on the flow. And 8 million is still a small country, with a housing shortage and a labor market that is getting increasingly sophisticated every day. The migrants are from cultures very different from the Jewish and Arab cultures that (uneasily) coexist in Israel. One can expect conflict, and that is borne out by the experience of South Tel Aviv.

Second, there is the problem of South Tel Aviv. 90% of the migrants have congregated there and have trapped the residents in what they call a living hell of crime, dirt and stress that they cannot escape. They can’t afford to move since their property is almost worthless. They can’t sleep at night because of noise or walk the streets without encountering human waste. The area has always been neglected, but the advent of the migrants has made it ten times worse. It is the obligation of the government to take care of its own people – first.

Third, and very important, is the struggle for a Zionist majority. Some will read this and immediately accuse me of racism. This is a misunderstanding of Zionism, which is not a belief in the superiority of Jews, or that they have some kind of special status in the world. It is fundamentally the idea that in order for the Jewish people to survive and thrive they must have a state of their own. Zionism asserts that living as a Diaspora  minority has been tried and it doesn’t work.

It should be obvious that in order for there to be a state of the Jewish people, it must have a Jewish majority. And if it is also a democracy, it must have a Zionist majority, because if it does not, then its elected representatives can decide that it will not be a state that exists for the Jewish people anymore, but rather a state like Canada or the US which is a state belonging to its inhabitants. The Left, and organizations like the New Israel Fund – as PM Netanyahu quite accurately points out – at least in theory believe that this is the only kind of state that is truly legitimate, and that a nation-state that exists on behalf of a specific people does not belong in the 21^st century.

In practice, they look past all the dictatorships and monarchies, and the countries where people of the wrong religion or ethnicity (or sex!) are persecuted. They welcome the creation of yet another such state in “Palestine” while they focus all of their moral condemnations  on Israel.

And the controversy about the African migrants is an absolutely perfect vehicle for it. The migrants are black, so they can accuse Israel of racism, while ignoring the airlifts that have brought more than 125,000 black Ethiopian Jews to Israel as part of the realization of the Zionist dream of the Ingathering of the Exiles.

The government and a majority of Israeli citizens believe that absorbing the migrants and inviting more will strain the fabric of their society dangerously. At the end of the day, they are the ones  that live and work here, defend their nation, and pay the price of whatever happens in this tiny country.

They are the ones who get to decide – and not the representatives of the EU, Amnesty International, the Union for Reform Judaism, or the New Israel Fund’s donors.

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04/05 Links P1: New Reports: 80% of Gaza Casualties are Terrorists; Hamas reveals payouts to injured protesters; Jewish visitation to Temple Mount during Passover nearly doubles from 2017

From Ian:

Eli Lake: Palestinian Casualties Are No Accident for Hamas

Leave it to Hamas to make nonviolence violent.

This is what happened over the weekend as thousands of Gazans swarmed the Israeli border crossing on what they called a "march of return." It's not just that the Israeli Defense Force claims to have video showing peaceful marchers interspersed with militants wielding Molotov cocktails and burning tires. The organizers of this civil disobedience, Hamas, are themselves devoted to bloodshed.

As the Qassem Brigades helpfully announced on Sunday, five of the 16 marchers killed during the march were members of this Hamas militia -- which shares a name with the short-range rockets its members launch at Israeli towns and cities. You may remember them. In 2014, their kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers sparked the last major war between Israel and Hamas.

In case the point was missed this time around, the statement from the Brigades promises: "The blood of the pure martyrs will not go to waste. The enemy will pay a price at a time and place and in a way that the resistance decides.”

None of this is to say that Gazans do not have legitimate grievances. They face a triple blockade from Israel to its north, Egypt to its south and the Palestinian Authority, that last year sought to choke off the strip from the electric grid in Israel. The fact that at least 16 Palestinians were killed in the march compounds this suffering.

And that suffering demands attention from people of conscience. But this attention should not treat the arsonist like the fire victim. The arsonist is the march's organizer, Hamas. For this group, any Palestinian casualties in the march were a feature and not a bug. Like its tactics in previous Gaza wars, where it launched rockets from apartment buildings and schools, Hamas seeks Palestinian casualties to earn legitimacy for its armed struggle.

Honest Reporting: Exposed: More Palestinian ‘Victims’ Identified as Terror Org Members

Total of 15 persons with actual military identification. Another 4 whose connection to military activity has not been proven.

Note: Failure to find any connection publicly in the Palestinian media does not mean that they are not military activists.

Another important factor to consider when examining the identity of the dead and their affiliation is the fact that out of the 19 killed, it is possible to clearly identify 15 military activists, i.e. around 80% of those killed at a minimum.

The entire Gaza Strip has fewer than 70,000 military operatives, including from all the various organizations. Gaza has a population of 2 million today. That is, the percentage of military activists out of the total population is lower than 3.5%.

Thus, the dry facts show that although the share of military activists in the population is only 3.5%, in practice, 80% of those killed are military activists. That is 23 times the rate of their percentage in the population. This high rate among those killed is even more amazing given the fact that they were dressed in civilian clothes and could not be identified in advance as military activists.

New Reports: 80% of Gaza Casualties are Terrorists

Ahead of fresh standoff, Hamas reveals payouts to injured protesters

Hamas has distributed payments to Palestinians injured in protests in the border region between the Gaza Strip and Israel and to the families of those killed, according to a report on the Islamist movement’s official website.

Palestinians critically and moderately wounded in the protests respectively received $500 and $200, while families of Palestinians killed were given $3000, Hamas spokesman Hazim Qassim is quoted as saying.

Since the start of the six week-long, Hamas-backed protests in the border region last Friday, which has been dubbed the “The Great March of Return,” the IDF has killed 21 Gazans, including 12 individuals whom Israeli authorities identified as militants.

The IDF has described the protests as “violent riots,” asserting that many protesters have thrown Molotov cocktails and rocks at its soldiers, opened fire on them, attempted to infiltrate Israel’s borders and set tires on fire. Videos shared on Facebook and Twitter appear to show some protesters participating in violent actions, while several others did not.

However, several human rights organizations have said that the IDF has targeted “unarmed civilians.” Adalah — the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said in a statement last Friday that Israel opened fire on “unarmed civilians” and violated international legal obligations to distinguish between civilians and combatants. Videos shared on Twitter and Facebook appear to show Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinians who do not seem to present any imminent threat to their lives.

Qassim said the payments were made as a part of Hamas’s “social and national responsibility to strengthen the steadfastness of our people in its struggle for return, freedom and breaking the siege.”

Chag sameach!

For those in time zones where sundown is coming soon, wishing you a wonderful last day(s) of Passover!

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Jews in Jerusalem were treated with contempt by Muslims, Christians in 1814

You know how Muslims love to say how they lived harmoniously with Christians and Jews in the Holy Land before Zionism?

Not so much.

From "Travels in Egypt, Nubia, Holy Land, Mount Libanon and Cyprus, in the year 1814" by Henry Light:

Also:

(h/t American Zionism)

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15 of the 19 killed in Gaza were members of terror groups

Honest Reporting has researched the affiliations of the people killed in Gaza in the past week, and the number of dead who were members of terror groups is significantly higher than even the IDF has announced publicly.

As the article shows, the dead include:

7 operatives from Hamas’ Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades
1 operative of the military wing of the Islamic Jihad, Saraya al-Quds
2 activists of Katayef al-Maqawama al-Wataniya al-Filastina – the military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
1 operative of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the military wing of Fatah’s Shahid Nakhl al-‘Amudi faction
1 Hamas security forces operative (armed)
1 military activist of the Fatah movement
1 affiliate of Shada al-Aqsa – the Shahid unit of Nabil Mas’ud – an Iranian-oriented faction
1 Hamas-affiliated operative with an orientation to the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades
1 Fatah activist – it has not been proven that he is a military activist
3 without any significant organizational affiliation

Each one of the dead is documented.

The percentage of actual fighters and members of terror groups compared to Gaza's population is quite small. Perhaps there are 20,000 fighters in Gaza out of (supposedly) 2 million people, around 1%.

Israel has done a very poor job of explaining its actions, but the facts show that it is an absolute lie to say that the IDF is indiscriminately shooting at innocent, peaceful protesters.

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Felesteen interviews some of those injured by "occupation snipers" during the riots on the Gaza border.

Somehow, they are all military aged men.

19-year-old Yusuf, shot in the knee.

Ibrahim Al-Bahtaiti, 18, shot in the leg.

Mohammed Siam, 24, shot in the leg.

Raed Saad, 21, shot in the foot.

Even though we see photos of women and children at the riots, somehow they aren't being shot.

Hamas announced that they will pay $3000 to the families of those killed, $500 to those severely injured and $200 to those moderately injured.

You can be sure that they are only paying people who are already Hamas members or sympathizers.

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 Pt2: Murrary: UK: Funding Textbooks That Teach Children to Blow Themselves Up; Lumish: NYTs Celebrates Reem Assil’s Antisemitic Cafe; Marx’s sinister legacy of anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: UK: Funding Textbooks That Teach Children to Blow Themselves Up

The IMPACT-se investigation revealed, however, that "radicalization is pervasive across this new curriculum." And not just pervasive, but pervasive "to a greater extent than before." The study found that in textbooks which pretend to be teaching "equal rights'", girls are encouraged to sacrifice their lives. A textbook aimed at 5th grade children (that is, children aged 10) teaches that "drinking the cup of bitterness with glory is much sweeter than a pleasant long life accompanied by humiliation." Another textbook urges that "Giving one's life, sacrifice, fight, jihad and struggle are the most important meanings of life."

In a statement, in response to the Sunday Times (UK), which broke the story, Alistair Burt, MP, and Minister of State for the Middle East at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Minister of State at the Department for International Development, revealed that the UK taxpayer continues to support this radical curriculum of incitement. He admitted that the UK taxpayer funds the wages of 33,000 teachers in the West Bank, who use these curriculums. "UK-funded public servants and teachers... are therefore involved" he said. Instead of investigating these findings or announcing the immediate cessation of funding to the Palestinian Authority until such a time as it stops preaching incitement to another generation of Palestinian children, the UK's Department for International Development responded to the findings with a typical form of bureaucratese:
"Our support is helping around 25,000 young Palestinians go to school each year. The UK government strongly condemns all forms of violence and incitement to violence."

Well, the UK government clearly is not so opposed to "all forms of violence and incitement to violence" that it isn't happy to continue to use millions of pounds of UK taxpayer money to assist the PA in radicalising and inciting Palestinian children.

The Department for International Development also announced that it was now "planning to conduct a thorough assessment of the Palestinian curriculum and evidence". It added that "if we find evidence of material which incites violence, we will take action." Evidence has been given to it in abundance, not just now but for years.

This is the true scandal for Britain: that while the UK government fails to pump the resources needed into helping young British children to grow up literate and numerate in Britain, it pumps millions of pounds into the Palestinian Authority to make sure that young Palestinian children think that a career of violence is a career worth pursuing. While failing to help British children grow up, the UK government helps Palestinian children to blow themselves up. It is a horrible legacy for any country, but for Britain, a shameful one.

Michael Lumish: The New York Times Celebrates Reem Assil’s Antisemitic Cafe in Oakland

The New York Times “Travel Section” has a piece by Rebecca Flint Marx entitled, “An Arab Bakery in Oakland Full of California Love.”

In truth, Reem’s flatbread café is not a very loving place for Jewish people because it publicly celebrates the murders of college students Eddie Joffe and Leon Kanner. Or, at least, it is not loving towards those of us who care about our families and friends in the land of our ancestry.

The very title of Marx’s piece is a form of journalistic deceit.

“An Arab Bakery in Oakland Full of California Love”?

Perhaps I am a tad biased. I don’t know how I could not be, given that I am the guy that Reem Assil dragged into the legal system for speaking the truth about the hatred she spreads through the veneration of the murderer Rasmea Odeh.

To be blunt, Reem’s bakery is defined not by love but by the other side of that coin. In a run-down section of Oakland — within spitting distance of the Fruitvale BART Station where Oscar Grant was shot dead on New Year’s Eve, 2009 — Reem Assil spreads malice toward the Jewish people… but, apparently, according to The New York Times, in a loving way.

The floor-to-ceiling mural of the murderer and antisemitic anti-Zionist Rasmea Odeh is the point of contention.

Bill Clinton admits he tried to help Peres beat Netanyahu in 1996 elections

He explained: “I did try to be helpful to him because I thought he was more supportive of the peace process. And I tried to do it in a way that was consistent with what I believed to be in Israel’s interest, without saying anything about the difference in domestic polices, without anything else.”

When the victorious Netanyahu subsequently visited him at the White House, Clinton recalled, the new Israeli prime minister “wanted me to know that he knew I wasn’t for him and he beat us anyway.”

The former president laughed, then added: “And he was being very ‘Bibi'” (Netanyahu’s nickname).

“But, you know,” continued Clinton, “I realized that he was now the leader of the country and if I wanted to support the peace I had to find a way to work with him. I wasn’t so much angry as just bemused by the brashness with which he played his hand. But that’s who he is. He did a very good job of it.”

The Israeli right has charged on several occasions in recent years that the US has unacceptably sought to intervene in Israeli elections on behalf of more dovish forces. The charge was raised against the Obama Administration by the Likud in the most recent elections, won by Netanyahu, in 2015.

Tuesday’s report featured only brief excerpts of a longer interview which is to be broadcast next week. In another short excerpt, Clinton said he thinks the current Netanyahu-coalition considers the Palestinians too weak to constitute much of a threat.

“By the time prime minister Netanyahu got back in office [in March 2009] the security situation was markedly better on the West Bank because of President Abbas,” Clinton said.

“Now, the coalition that Prime Minister Netanyahu heads, I think they believe that the Palestinians are too weak to cause them any trouble. And the security seems to be working.”

Nonetheless, said Clinton, “I still hope that some day, if some decent accommodation could be reached, that Israel would be even more prosperous.”

And here's his team admitting to the NY Times *during the election* that they did exactly this again in 1999 https://t.co/Oql8Ca3Fdk https://t.co/ODincGkPiZ
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) April 3, 2018

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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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