Award winning American director, Oliver Stone has said the United States is a global "outlaw" that has made a mess of the Middle East.
In a wide-ranging press conference held during his first visit to Iran, Oliver Stone expressed appreciation for Iran's extensive history and recent cinematic accomplishments, criticized American policy toward the Middle East, and voiced his wish that acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi would be allowed to attend the Cannes Film Festival to witness the premiere of his latest film.
Spending a week in Iran as a guest of the Fajr International Film Festival, Stone answered questions from journalists in the Charsou complex in Tehran.
The press conference was his third public appearance since arriving in Tehran on Monday, when he participated in a master class at Tehran University. On Tuesday, he was interviewed for live on Iranian TV, during which he ignored a request to avoid the subject of politics and criticized the Trump administration for including John Bolton, an anti-Iran hawk, on its national security team.
He also denounced what he called the "lies...of the Israeli right-wing press" including reports that he had requested an interview with former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2006.
The closest I found to this story was from that famous right-wing Israeli newspaper The Guardian, which claimed in 2007 that Stone wanted to make a documentary about Ahmadinejad and was turned down. Also, Stone's son converted to Islam and denied Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial on Fox News in 2012.
Stone, director of politically charged factual movies such as Nixon, Looking for Fidel and Snowden, as well as classics such as Midnight Express and Platoon, went on to blame the US for much of the violence and trauma that has rocked parts of the region in recent years: "America, combined with ISIS, and Israel aims to destroy the Middle East and make it a parking lot for America; to make it over and I think it is a very destructive plan and it is a tragedy," he said.
"I think it makes no difference who the president of the US is," he asserted.
"When Obama came [to power], we were hopeful that the situation would get better but nothing changed and now Mr Trump is here and the same stories are going on again. This octopus will continue its path again and again. Iran is the main target for the US, so it will not leave Syria until it gets access to Iran which is a rich country geopolitically."
Stone insisted his appearance at the festival was entirely non-political.
Yeah, sounds very non-political.
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The good news from the south is that the number of protestors in the “March of Return” is decreasing. Hamas is encouraging, calling, shouting, broadcasting, publishing—but the masses are staying away.
From one Friday to the next, the numbers are dropping. Tens of thousands in the first protest; only several thousand last Friday. In this sense, at least in the current stage, it’s a failure.
The bad news is that there is no need for hundreds or tens of thousands of protestors to succeed. Just one 15-year-old boy, whose death is being investigated, is excellent fuel for the anti-Israel propaganda. And if the moment he was hit was caught on camera, it’s double trouble. It’s a great opportunity for Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi, and not just him, to turn IDF soldiers into murderers, and it’s an opportunity for the UN envoy and other functionaries and “rights activists” to use their arsenal of propaganda rockets against Israel.
The events on the Gaza border have stopped occupying a lot of space in the global press. But Natalie Portman’s announcement, unintentionally, put Gaza back in the headlines, as did the UN envoy’s statement and the European Union’s demand for an investigation into the incident. The IDF, in any event, intends on investigating.
Let’s put things in order. First of all, any killing of an innocent person is unfortunate. Hamas gains, Israel’s enemies celebrate, and Israel is the only one that loses from the situation. No one has placed cameras on the US-Mexico border, although 412 infiltrators or work migrants were killed there in 2017, and 498 in 2016, including children. But the border between Israel and Gaza, as well as the points of friction in Hebron, seem to have the highest number of cameras in the world.
The Times of Israel, Haaretz, and other newspapers have published pictures of Hamas using children as human shields, yet these images — and the double war crime they illustrate — go unmentioned by major US press organizations.
Clear evidence of Palestinian violence exists, but many news outlets either ignore it or present it as merely an “Israeli claim.” By contrast, some in the media have had no problem regurgitating Hamas statements.
For example, Brian Stelter, who hosts a CNN show called “Reliable Sources,” treated the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry as credible, repeating casualty figures supplied by that terrorist-controlled entity. In an anti-Israel screed masquerading as a “World Views” analysis, The Washington Post’s Ishaan Tharoor presented dead Palestinian terrorists as nonviolent civilians indiscriminately slaughtered by the IDF — long after they were publicly identified as belonging to terror groups.
But many in the media already have their talking points.
As Bassam Tawil noted in an April 18 Gatestone Institute report, Hamas’ “press office” has issued guidelines for how journalists should be covering the demonstrations. According to Tawil, “the first order that Hamas requires the journalists to obey is to refrain from focusing on the actions of individuals participating in the demonstrations.”
The directives, issued by a group with a history of kidnapping and intimidating journalists, require that the march be presented as a “peaceful and nonviolent civilian uprising.” The participation of terrorists must go unmentioned. Palestinian journalists — many of whom serve as producers, translators, and “fixers” for international news organizations — are instructed to highlight “the various personal and social aspects” of those killed at the border.
The goal is to single out Israel for international opprobrium, while securing greater aid relief for the Gaza Strip — despite the fact that Hamas has a long and documented history of pocketing aid money or using it to build “terror tunnels” to attack the Jewish state.
While many in the media have fixated on the “economic misery” of everyday Palestinians as a chief factor in the demonstrations, few have noted that a violent antisemitic terrorist group is clearly ill-suited to governing. To do so would require discussing Palestinian Nazi flags, kite bombs, and human shields. And that would mean departing from the Hamas-approved scripts.
Anytime a student government votes to divest from Israel or a celebrity chooses not to perform in Israel a cry goes out throughout the Jewish world that Israel is in danger and the anti-Semitic boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS) is winning.
It is not true.
Take the example of celebrity boycotts. When Lorde cowardly gave in to pressure to cancel her Israel concert, the BDS trolls crowed and the pro-Israel activists expressed outrage.
What was the impact? A lot of disappointed Israeli fans.
Meanwhile, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Backstreet Boys, Nick Cave, and Bryan Adams were among those who did perform in Israel. Upcoming shows include: Foreigner, Ringo Starr, Ozzy Osbourne and Enrique Iglesias. Yes, some celebrities (mostly B- and C-listers) are shunning Israel, but the BDSers have failed completely in orchestrating a mass artistic boycott.
Perhaps the biggest recent celebrity news was the vigorous attack on anti-Semites by author J.K. Rowling, a vocal opponent of BDS. After tweeting the definition of anti-Semitism in response to efforts by some of her followers to contort its meaning, she asked: “Would your response to any other form of racism or bigotry be to squirm, deflect or justify?” After revealing that Jews in her timeline were bombarded by anti-Jewish comments, Rowling said, “perhaps some of us non-Jews should start shouldering the burden.”
BDSers kvelled over Natalie Portman’s decision not to attend an awards ceremony in Israel. While she gave some comfort to them, her explanation for skipping the gala made her position clear: “I am not part of the BDS movement and do not endorse it.”
BDS campaigns on campus are troubling, but they are confined to fewer than 3% of all campuses. Also, contrary to claims that elite schools are particular targets, fewer than one-third of schools ranked in the top 50 have had a BDS vote in the last 13 years. Only 35 schools in the entire country have passed a divestment resolution in that period and 64% have been defeated.
Following my ripping of the ADL and some pro-Israel campus groups for attacking the group Canary Mission – for the unforgivable crime of pointing out anti-Israel and antisemitic hate (but perhaps not because of it) – the ADL has publicly expressed their regret over the language they used.
The Anti-Defamation League said it regretted using “overly broad language” to describe the Canary Mission, a group that posts blacklists of what it says are anti-Israel students on campuses.
“We regret the overly broad language that we used to describe the Canary Mission in a tweet earlier this week,” an ADL spokesman said in an email Thursday evening after JTA asked the group to demonstrate where Canary Mission had deployed “Islamophobic & racist rhetoric,” as ADL had alleged in its tweet.
“It was wrong to apply those labels to a group working, like us, to counter anti-Semitism on campus,” the spokesman said, adding that it still backed some of the reservations expressed in an Op-Ed by pro-Israel students that decried Canary Mission’s tactics.
“We reiterate our support for the University of Michigan students who have expressed valid concerns about Canary Mission’s impact on student-led efforts to advocate for Israel,” the spokesman said. “We understand that the Canary Mission’s approach and its tactics on campus might not be the preferred approach of many students. We believe that all parties involved in this situation want the same outcome so we encourage them to find ways to work together to fight anti-Semitism and to support the needs of Jewish students.”
Portman’s behavior throughout the entire affair has of course been indisputably imbecilic, infuriating and indefensible.
To begin with, the Genesis Prize Foundation is hardly an unknown quantity. Indeed, since its establishment five years ago, it has awarded its annual prize to an array of high profile individuals— Michael Bloomberg (2014), Michael Douglas (2015),Itzhak Perlman (2016), and Sir Anish Kapoor (2017). Except for Kapoor, all were awarded the prize at a glittering ceremony at which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke.
Significantly, the 2017 award ceremony was cancelled, not because of any recriminations against Israel, but because, as Kapoor requested, the ongoing horrors in Syria made it “inappropriate to hold a festive ceremony to honor Mr. Kapoor and his work on refugee issues…”
Moreover, the generic connection between the Genesis Foundation and the Prime Minister’s office is clearly touted on its website, where it is described as a “unique partnership”.
All this was clearly known—or should have been known—to Portman, who immediately after the 2015 elections expressedher aversion to Netanyahu and her dismay at his reelection.
Yet, evidently, none of this seemed to prevent her effusive acceptance of the prize when six months ago, it was announced that she was to be the 2018 recipient. Thus, early last November she gushed: “I am deeply touched and humbled by this honor. I am proud of my Israeli roots and Jewish heritage; they are crucial parts of who I am”.
The New York Times has an article about the assassination of Fadi al-Batsh in Malaysia, saying that it was a Mossad operation meant to hurt Hamas attempts at obtaining advanced weapons systems, especially drones. It also says that Batsh may have been working to obtain illegal weapons shipments from North Korea.
I noticed the article says that Batsh used to say that he was almost killed when Israel targeted his uncle's house in 2014. I remember the incident, and it was a classic case of a family's home almost certainly being used as a command and control center for Hamas.
Six of the al-Batsh family members killed in that one raid were members of Hamas.
Nahed Na’im al-Batsh. 41 , Qassam commander
Bahaa Majed al-Batsh, 28
Ahmad Nu’man al-Batsh, 27
Jalal Majed al-Batsh, 26
Zakariya Alaa Subhi al-Batsh
Yihya 'Alaa al-Batsh, 18
The uncle Taysir who owned the house was a Hamas police chief as well. (There was at least one other al-Batsh home targeted by Israel where the terrorist was killed along with his human shield family. )
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In a way, Guatemala's planned move of their embassy to Jerusalem is more important than Trump's decision to move the US embassy.
Palestinians have expended a great deal of political capital to isolate the US after the embassy move was announced. They are threatening and cajoling other nations because as long as the US is considered an anomaly and Trump a crazy person, they can make that move look like a temporary move that will be reversed when the next president comes along.
But when other countries follow suit, it is much harder to paint it that way. And PLO officials are seething at not only the planned embassy moves but also the trial balloons being floated in other countries, with open support from prominent politicians supporting the move. Every new news story about someone supporting it makes the Palestinian threats look emptier and emptier.
The outgoing president of Paraguay said he supported relocating his country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by mid-August, even though that seems unlikely.
And the rumblings are getting louder:
Earlier this month, the parliament of Honduras passed a nonbinding resolution calling for the country’s embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Other countries have also stated they will relocate their embassies. The president of the Czech Republic on Wednesday announced the beginning of a process that will move the country’s diplomatic missions from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, though it remains unclear if and when Prague will actually open an embassy in the holy city. In private conversations, European and Israeli officials acknowledge that Milos Zeman’s announcement by no means prefaces the speedy relocation of the Czech embassy. On Thursday, Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dancilas and the head of the country’s Chamber of Deputies, Liviu Dragnea — both ardent proponents of the embassy move — were in Jerusalem for meetings with top government officials.
As each nation considers it, the topic is no longer taboo. And that is what scares the PLO more than anything else.
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It is those liberal internationalists, after all, who are primarily responsible for the antisemitism and vilification of Israel now coursing through the Western intelligentsia.
And these same British and American liberals are also busily vilifying Britain and America, trying to destroy and transform their culture and emasculate Britain as a self-governing nation, for a similar reason to their hatred of Israel – that these are nations with a strong sense of their own exceptionalism.
That, of course, is why so many millions voted for Brexit and Trump – precisely because, in opposition to these elites, they wanted Britain and America once again to uphold and defend their national and cultural identity.
And that’s why liberals have become hysterical about President Trump’s stated aim of making America great again. It’s why those who want Britain to remain in the EU are hysterical about Brexit. And it’s why British audiences have been weeping and cheering at screenings of Darkest Hour.
It’s because at some level at least they know how the free society in which they so passionately believe has been systematically degraded, undermined and weakened by those who choose to portray Western cultural particularism as a form of bigotry.
As a result, the image of Churchill using the poetry of the English language to breathe into his people the courage and resolve to stand alone and fight to defend their nation’s exceptional values is almost unbearably moving.
Britain, America and Israel form a triple lock as islands of western exceptionalism. And whether or not their people recognize it, it is upon these three nations that the fate of the free world now depends.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, lashed out at Hamas Thursday, accusing the Palestinian terror group of “using children as cannon fodder,” following the deaths of dozens of people in clashes with Israeli forces during protests along with border in the Gaza Strip.
“Anyone who truly cares about children in Gaza should insist that Hamas immediately stop using children as cannon fodder in its conflict with Israel,” Haley told a UN Security Council meeting convened to discuss the situation in the Middle East.
Ahead of the meeting, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem urged the Security Council to protect Palestinians taking part in the demonstrations on the border.
In an unusual move, the group’s executive director, Hagai El-Ad, wrote to UN Secretary General António Guterres, saying: “Preventing further loss of life is a responsibility that must be shouldered without delay.”
Hagai El-Ad, executive director of B’Tselem, at a press conference in Tel Aviv, February 5, 2016. (AFP/Jack Guez)
Tens of thousands of Gazans have taken part in Friday protests along the border with Israel, supported by the Hamas, which rules the coastal enclave. Hamas leaders say the ultimate aim of the demonstrations, dubbed “March of Return,” is to see the removal of the border and the liberation of Palestine.
B’Tselem gave a list of names and ages of 35 Palestinians it said were killed by Israel during the demonstrations.
The group described the victims as “unarmed” and said their deaths were “the predictable outcome of the manifestly illegal rules of engagement implemented during the demonstrations, of ordering soldiers to use lethal gunfire against unarmed demonstrators who pose no mortal danger.
A picture of the inside of the Dome of the Rock, which was built on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem where the ancient Jewish Temples were built, reveals the respect that the Palestinians have for a place whose ground is the holiest spot on Earth for the Jewish people:
Palestinians have treated the area of the Temple Mount with disdain for decades. Often they have displayed an active desire to destroy any evidence that the site was where the Jewish Temples stood in an effort to discredit the Jewish claim to Jerusalem, which dates back roughly 3,000 years.
In September 2,000, the Muslim Waqf refused permission for any archeological oversight by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Then it removed 13,000 tons of rubble from the Temple Mount and deposited it into the garbage; that rubble included archeological remnants from the First and Second Temple periods. For details see here.
A report in 2012 stated that the Muslim Waqf was continuing to destroy Jewish antiquities on the Temple Mount.
As Dr. Gabriel Barkay, professor emeritus from Bar-Ilan University and recipient of the 1996 Jerusalem Prize for Archeological Research, stated last October, “Temple denial started in the 1990s, even though the Islamic Wakf itself in the 1920s and ’30s issued booklets which were given to visitors of the Temple Mount in which they said the existence of the Temples is beyond any doubt. It was accepted and in the Islamic literature through the generations there is a plethora of mentions of Solomon’s Temple and the Temple of the Jews in Jerusalem, so it is very strange that they deny it now.”
PA president Abbas' official spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeina, said that any alternative peace plan to the minimum Palestinian demand for Jerusalem, 1967 lines, "right of return" and so forth is doomed to failure and will be rejected outright.
But then he added the mob-style threat that every PLO and PA and Fatah leader always adds, saying that any peace plan that doesn't adhere to the Palestinian demands "will create more tension and instability in the region and the world."
You can almost hear him saying, "We don't want you to get hurt, see?"
Western leaders simply ignore these threats, as if they weren't an admission that Palestinians and their supporters are violent, irrational people who will instigate violence unless they are mollified with every demand fully met. People just waiting for the signal to come out and start a war or a terror spree.
Yet there is no other interpretation.
Abu Rudenia even looks like mobster:
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Anti-Semitic attacks occur every day in Germany, but since they aren’t filmed, they don’t go viral on Facebook and Twitter. Statistics published by the German government two months ago revealed that German police nationwide documented an average of four criminal incidents with an anti-Semitic motive every day last year, for a total of 1,453 incidents.
Yet these statistics are only partial, because they count only incidents reported to the police. ...
Statistics published by the German Interior Ministry show that one third of German Jews have experienced either verbal or physical anti-Semitism. Its survey found that Muslims are responsible for most of Germany’s anti-Semitic assaults, whether physical or verbal.
Although the video incident has prompted EU leaders to start to recognize this fact, it has been known for years.
A report last year from the University of Oslo entitled "Antisemitic Violence in Europe, 2005-2015
Exposure and Perpetrators in France, UK, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Russia" included this chart:
Neo-Nazi antisemitism is concerning and must be denounced. Just today there was an outrageous incident in France where an apparent neo-Nazi tried to take hostages at a Jewish museum.
However, Muslim and Arab antisemitism is worse and more prevalent, and has been swept under the rug for too long since the left-leaning media and academia don't want to make Muslims look bad, or they wantsay that the Muslims are "merely" anti-Zionist, because - the implication is - people with Zionist worldviews deserve to be beaten or killed.
It is way past time for the media and political leaders to recognize that Muslim antisemitism is real, it is endemic, and it is deadly.
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Once again, Haaretz and Rogel Alpher are beyond despicable.
On a day of immense tragedy in Israel, when ten of her best and brightest youths were killed in a flash flood, Haaretz' Alpher was complaining that there was too much television coverage of the event, saying that it was not a national disaster.
Alpher is complaining that Israeli TV was spending so much time on the drowning deaths of ten students because of ratings.
This is one case where I am thankful for Haaretz' paywall, because I can't see what other bile Alpher is writing in this article. Perhaps he was upset that his favorite European football club wasn't being properly covered by Israeli TV, or he wanted to more closely follow the news about the name of the new royal baby, which has dominated UK headlines for three days now.
The irony is that the only reason I can think that Haaretz keeps Alpher is because his writings are designed to create controversy - and therefore attention - for a newspaper who has long ago sunk into irrelevance in Israel, even as the world's antisemites continue to embrace it as their main source of evidence of Israeli evil.
Alpher need not be concerned about one thing. When he finally leaves this world, Israeli TV won't spend more than a few seconds noting his passing.
(h/t Yoel)
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Left-wing and Arab enemies of Israel make a number of accusations that they repeat as if they were facts. Here I take apart those myths from a left-wing Arab perspective.
I summarize the facts, but I include many links to other articles that provide further background. Some of the articles referenced are mine, where I reference serious sources not considered pro-Israel, including Haaretz, BBC, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, and The Huffington Post. I also reference pro-Israel sources that are known for their journalistic integrity, including The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, and The Gatestone Institute.
This article is not for everyone. It is intended only for a narrow audience: People who are willing to base their opinions on facts and not lies. Others are kindly advised to stay away, lest they be contaminated by facts that they would rather continue ignoring.
1. “Israel can end the conflict by withdrawing from the “West Bank””
I would welcome the creation of a Palestinian state, but I would be lying if I said that the possibility is realistic under current conditions. Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, and the resulting transformation of Gaza into a terrorist base shows what happens when Israel withdraws unconditionally. Since Israel left Gaza in 2005, many thousands of rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel and many tunnels were built to try to infiltrate Israel. As reported by Haaretz in 2014, an online clock timer showed “how much time has passed since the last rocket was fired; Sadly, this counter never really gets above an hour”.
Israel cannot afford to make the same mistake in Judea & Samaria (the correct name for the “West Bank”) which is much closer to Israel’s large cities than Gaza is. If Israel withdrew from Judea & Samaria unconditionally, it is virtually certain that the newly evacuated land would be controlled by terrorists dangerously hostile to Israel. Until Arabs agree to a reasonable solution that provides Israel the security it requires, Israel’s military presence in Judea & Samaria is fully justified, and even as an Arab, if I want to be honest with myself, I have no choice but to support it. (h/t Gnomercy)
The only possible discussions will be over process. To discuss the speed with which mechanisms will work if we can agree on antisemitism. Yet will will almost never agree and there will always be voices in Corbyn’s ear that reinforce the world vision that he adheres to. Thus antisemitism in Labour will always be just ‘anti-Zionism’, no matter what those pesky Zionists were accused of by the Labour member. Given that Ken Livingstone still hasn’t been expelled and there are demonstrations to re-instate him, the Jewish community and Jeremy Corbyn are not even speaking the same language. In fact, the only notable expulsion, Tony Greenstein, wasn’t even a success. We must remember that the Jews who have Corbyn’s ear – hate Tony Greenstein. For them, this was no sacrifice. They threw something to the Jews that they simply didn’t want.
Corbyn can do no more than give empty gestures even as he backtracks on any progress that is made. Everything is a contradiction. In yesterday’s meeting he apparently refused to adopt the IHRA definition (in full), which many believe had already been adopted. This is where Jeremy Corbyn wants everything – locked in vagueness. In the Evening Standard article Corbyn stated that ‘a genuine two-state solution is essential to lasting peace in the Middle East’ and yet within a paragraph was protecting anti-Zionists who explicitly oppose the very solution he suggests is vital for peace. Corbyn is not a natural two state supporter. He sees the 2SS as the most that can probably be taken back from the European thieves who took the Palestinian land.
The conversation between Jeremy Corbyn and the Jews cannot make sense because Zionism and Jews are intertwined and Zionism doesn’t make sense within Corbyn’s paradigm. Corbyn cannot justify it to himself and he certainly cannot justify it to his supporters. Attacking ‘privileged’ Jews, especially dressed up in the ‘Zionist’ disguise, is almost certainly a vote winner within his faction. The only question is whether anyone else cares enough to not vote for him because of it.
Sami A. does not work. He lives in Bochum, Germany. The newspaper Bild just revealed that Sami A. is the Tunisian who belonged to the squad of Osama bin Laden's bodyguards and is under surveillance as an Islamist threat. As an aside, three of the 9/11 pilots, including Mohammed Atta, were based in Germany.
Sami A. only has to show up at the police station once a day. He cannot be expelled according to the German Supreme Court. The judges argue that he could be tortured in his country of origin. Since he lives with his family in Germany, Sami is now a well-paid public danger. And he receives a monthly benefit payment of 1,100 euros. By law, the Tunisian and his wife are entitled to € 194 each. In addition, they get between 133 and 157 euros for each of their four children.
Bin Laden's bodyguard can walk, well paid and undisturbed, in the streets of Berlin today. A Jew wearing a kippah on those streets is risking his life.
Thousands of Islamists today in Germany live in multicultural enclaves such as that of Neukölln, the trendy district of the capital which draws in youngsters and Muslims alike. A few days ago, a small demonstration was held in that largely immigrant Berlin neighborhood. The flashmob in Neukölln proved all the fears that Jewish symbols today in Germany are under threat. Bystanders insulted and spit on participants and tore up an Israeli flag. The organizers ended the protest prematurely.
A hot potato today in Israel’s Knesset is the so-called chok hahitgabrut (literally, “the overriding law”) which would provide a way for the Knesset to pass a law over the objections of the Supreme Court. Various versions of such a law have been considered, which require larger or smaller majorities in the Knesset to override a Court decision to throw out a law. Another approach would be to require more than a simple majority of justices of the Court in order to reject a law passed by the Knesset. The precise form the law might take is still up in the air.
The issue that is presently driving the controversy is a series of Court decisions that have made it impossible for the government to deport any of the 38,000 African migrants that entered the country illegally since the early 2000s. Those who want such a law say that the unelected Court rides roughshod over the views of the majority of the citizens, which are expressed by the votes of their representatives in the Knesset. That’s undemocratic, they say. Opponents argue that in a liberal democracy it is necessary to protect minority rights, which is what the Court has done.
Critics of the Court have been complaining for a long time that it is biased leftward, and that it sticks its nose where it shouldn’t, like the proposed deal regulating the concession for the natural gas recently discovered off Israel’s shores; or the ownership of property in Judea and Samaria, decisions that forced the demolition of communities and the removal of people from their homes.
But the intricacies of the gas deal were understood by only a small percentage of Israelis, and the inhabitants of the razed settlement of Amona did not find a lot of empathy in the general population, many of whom thought of them as extremists. The migrant question, on the other hand, resonates more broadly. It pits the residents of South Tel Aviv – who say that the migrants who are concentrated in their neighborhoods have brought crime, dirt and fear to them – against a coalition of organizations that claim to be defending the human rights of the migrants. In fact, many of these groups are funded by unfriendly foreign governments, or groups with a political motive to embarrass our government (e.g., the Israel Religious Action Center).
A balance between the powers of the various branches of government is important to protect minority and majority rights. A comparison with the Supreme Court in the US will be helpful in understanding just how unbalanced the situation in Israel is.
The American court only has appellate jurisdiction, which means that it can only rule on cases that have been appealed from lower courts. It can decline to hear a case, but it does not have original jurisdiction in which it can take up a case that has not already been heard by a lower court, except in special circumstances (such as one state suing another). The Israeli court is the highest appellate court, but it also acts as the High Court of Justice – bagatz – which can rule on anything done by any branch of government, including the army, municipalities, and – importantly – laws passed by the Knesset, whether or not they have been ruled on by a lower court.
The American legal system includes a doctrine of standing, which means in particular that a person can’t challenge a law or government action unless they can convince a judge that they could be directly injured by it, or that they would be prevented from exercising their legitimate rights by threat of legal sanction. But in Israel, anyone can petition the Supreme Court if he believes a law or government action is illegal or not in the public interest. As a result, anyone can paralyze the government by paying a couple of thousand shekels to file a petition. For example, several foreign-funded NGOs have recently petitioned the Supreme Court to force the IDF to stop using snipers to defend the border fence with Gaza.
In America, some matters are considered political and not legal, and are therefore not taken up by the courts (they are considered not justiciable). Two such areas are foreign policy and impeachment. In Israel, the limitations on justiciability are much weaker.
American Supreme Court justices, including the Chief Justice, are appointed by the President and then confirmed by the Senate, after which they serve for life unless they are impeached, resign or retire. Interestingly, there are no constitutional requirements for a justice to have judicial experience, or even a law degree!
In Israel, the justices are appointed by a committee which includes members of the Bar Association and sitting Justices, as well as the Justice Minister and representatives of the government and opposition Knesset factions. There is a mandatory retirement age of 70, which in practice means that Israeli justices tend to serve for shorter terms than American ones. There are specific qualifications of legal experience. The President of the Court is the most senior of the Justices.
The method of appointment of justices in Israel tends to make the Court reflect the views of the legal establishment, which critics say is biased toward the left end of the spectrum. It tends to prioritize what it perceives as the rights of individuals over the needs of the state, and Israel’s democratic character over its Jewish one.
An associated issue is the Attorney General. In the US, the Attorney General is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and serves as the government’s lawyer. He or she is required to defend the government in the courts, including the Supreme Court, and on several occasions attorneys general have been fired by the President for refusing to do so.
In Israel, the Attorney General is appointed by the Justice Minister from a list of candidates drawn up by a commission whose majority also represents the legal establishment. The Attorney General can prevent the government from taking an action by saying that he or she believes it to be illegal, and will not defend it before the Supreme Court. The authority of the Attorney General is, like many things in Israel, unclear.
One example of the possible conflicts involving the Supreme Court, the Attorney General and the government, is the legal peril faced by PM Netanyahu. The police have recommended that he be indicted in several corruption cases, and it is up to the Attorney General to decide whether to indict him. The law is not clear whether an indicted PM is required to resign his position, although the Attorney General has expressed the opinion that if indicted, he should resign. But supposing he is indicted, Netanyahu could refuse to quit. Then the Supreme Court would undoubtedly take up the question, and the Attorney General likely would not defend him before it!
There is also the Nation-State Law which has been debated for several years now. It is intended to explicate the sense in which Israel is not only a democratic state, but the state of the Jewish people. Various versions of the bill did not get off the ground because the Attorney General said that they were not “constitutional” (Israel doesn’t have a constitution, but it has Basic Lawswhich serve some of the purposes of a constitution). Even if the Attorney General doesn’t object, the Supreme Court is expected to be very tough on any non-vacuous Nation-State Law. A former President of the Court who inspired the activist judicial philosophy that characterizes it today, Aharon Barak, famously opined that the meaning of the phrase “Jewish State” should be “identical to the democratic nature of the state.” In other words, a Nation-State Law would have to be so trivial as to be meaningless.
A version of the law that will permit the Knesset to override the Supreme Court will be voted on by government ministers this Sunday, after which it will be submitted to the Knesset. The Opposition, which has come to depend on the Court to make up for its lack of seats in the elected Knesset, is pushing very hard against it.
The deportation of illegal migrants, the Nation-State Law, and numerous other important issues depend on the ability to take control of the state away from the legal establishment and return it to the elected government. Israelis voted for a right-wing government – they should be able to get right-wing policies. This is a bill that needs to pass.
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A week ago I linked to the Terrorism Info Center analysis that showed that 80% of the first 32 people killed on the Gaza border in the "Great Return March" were not innocent civilians but were linked to terror groups, with many of them known to be terrorists themselves.
The report has been updated ahead of tomorrow's riots, and the percentage remains the same: 80% of the dead are linked to terror groups:
The Hamas-controlled ministry of health in the Gaza Strip reported that 40 Palestinians have been killed during the "great return march" events since March 30, 2018, when the rioting began along the Gaza Strip-Israel border (updated to April 25, 2018).2 The information provided by the Gaza ministry of health, which is used by the Israeli and international media, does not include a statistical distribution or distinguish between terrorist operatives(and those affiliated with them) and civilians. As far as the ITIC has been able to determine, no sources in the Gaza Strip make such a distinction. As a result, the impression given to world public opinion is that all the casualties were innocent Palestinian civilians. The analysis conducted by the ITIC shows that most of the Palestinians killed were terrorist operatives or individuals affiliated with the terrorist organizations.
The interim findings of the ITIC analysis revealed that 32 of the 40 Palestinians killed (80%) were terrorist operatives or individuals affiliated with them, distributed as follows: • 18 of the 32 (about 56%) were terrorist operatives belonging to or affiliated with Hamas: • Nine were operatives in Hamas' military wing (the Izz al-Din Qassam Brigades) and operatives in Hamas' security forces. • Nine were affiliated with or linked to Hamas, based on circumstantial evidence (Hamas issued death notices for them, their bodies were wrapped in Hamas flags, or other supporting evidence). • Ten were members of Fatah, two of them operatives in its military wing and eight with organizational affiliation or connections
• Two belonged to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
(DFLP), one to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), one to Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine PFLP).
ITIC goes on:
The ITIC's interim findings clearly show that terrorist operatives (especially Hamas operatives), or Palestinians affiliated with terrorist organizations, play a key role in the front lines of the "great return march" demonstrations near the fence. They are primarily involved in violent clashes with the IDF and on occasion carry out terrorist attacks. Conspicuous is the small number of civilian activists and ordinary civilians, who were involved in organizing the march, involved in rioting with the IDF. They were left behind when the violence began.
This story has still not been reported in any media as far as I can tell. And it just shows that the media will believe Hamas lies over the truth.
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Palestinian engineer Fadi al-Batsh’s assassination in Malaysia on April 21 was part of a broader Mossad campaign against Hamas efforts to send experts abroad for technical training and weapons acquisitions, The New York Times reported Wednesday night.
The report was based on multiple unnamed Middle Eastern intelligence officials, who said the wide-ranging Mossad operation against Hamas’s overseas efforts was ordered by the agency’s chief, Yossi Cohen.
There was no official confirmation of The Times’ report, which did not itself cite Israeli sources.
The intelligence officials said Batsh himself, an expert on drones and the nephew of Gaza’s police chief Tayseer al-Batsh, traveled to Malaysia to “research and acquire weapon systems and drones for Hamas,” the Times reported.
Israel has a longstanding policy of not commenting on claims about Mossad operations. There has been no official statement about the killing of Batsh from Israeli officials, with the exception of Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman hinting that he may have been a victim of an intra-Palestinian feud.
According to the Times, however, the timing of the killing was no accident. The hit occurred on a day in which Batsh was scheduled to travel to Istanbul, ostensibly for an academic conference. But an intelligence official told the Times that Batsh was to meet a Hamas official in the city, which according to the report serves as the terror organization’s hub for international training programs.
According to the London-based Action Group for Palestinians of Syria, 3,722 Palestinians (including 465 women) have been killed since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011. Another 1,675 are said to have been detained by the Syrian authorities, and another 309 are listed as missing.
More than 200 of the Palestinian victims died because of the lack of food and medical care, most of them in Yarmouk. Since the beginning of the civil war, some 120,000 Palestinians have fled Syria to Europe. An additional 31,000 fled to Lebanon, 17,000 to Jordan, 6,000 to Egypt, 8,000 to Turkey and 1,000 to the Gaza Strip.
On April 24, Syrian and Russian warplanes carried out more than 85 airstrikes on Yarmouk camp and dropped 24 barrels of explosives; 24 rocket and dozens of missiles were fired at the camp.
A day earlier, Syrian and Russian warplanes launched 220 airstrikes on Yarmouk camp. The warplanes dropped 55 barrels of dynamite on the camp, which was also targeted with 108 rockets and missiles.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the conflict in Syria "continues to disrupt the lives of civilians, resulting in death and injuries, internal displacement, extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and persistent humanitarian needs. Affected communities suffer indiscriminate violence, restrictions on their freedom of movement and continued violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. Palestinians are among those worst affected by the conflict."
UNRWA said that of the estimated 438,000 Palestine refugees remaining inside Syria, more than 95% (418,000) are in critical need of sustained humanitarian assistance. Almost 254,000 are internally displaced, and an estimated 56,600 are trapped in hard-to-reach or wholly inaccessible locations.
Around 20 civilians have been killed in week-long regime airstrikes on Yarmouk, a neighborhood of Damascus referred to as a "Palestinian refugee camp", the Turkish Anadolu news agency reported on Tuesday.
Several people were injured in the attacks, local sources told the news agency on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
According to the sources, regime forces were trying to advance from the southern side of the camp, which accommodates some 2,500 families, amid heavy bombardment.
The attacks come after the regime and the Islamic State (ISIS) group failed to reach a deal on evacuating the group’s jihadists from Yarmouk and its vicinity.
On March 2, 2018, Salman Masalha, an Israeli-Arab intellectual of Druze origin,[1]published an article in the Dubai-based Al-Hayat daily that harshly criticized the Arab leaders' response to the civil war raging in Syria, which is currently in its eighth year. Masalha claims that the Arab leaders aren't lifting a finger to alleviate the crisis in Syria and are unwilling to take in Syrian refugees, but are instead waiting for the international community to deal with the disaster there. This, he says, reveals their shameful failure to deal with the problems in their own Arab region and proves that the Arab slogans and Arab solidarity are nothing but an unfounded illusion. He adds that "every Arab who retains a shred of human dignity" should be "ashamed of belonging to this wretched nation and its leadership."
The following is a translation of his article:
"There is no morality in the politics of the superpowers, and all the more so where wars are concerned, especially when they take place in distant arenas. In such a situation, self-interest dictates policy, and these interests – even when couched in honeyed words – are ultimately economic interests. The people and their fate are not taken into account in the calculations of profit and loss of the superpowers' policymakers.
"For example, let us examine the recent statement by Russian General Vladimir Shamanov in the Russian parliament.[2] He stated that the Russian army had brought 200 types of new Russian weapons [systems] to the battlefields in Syria, to test them. The general added that these experiments proved the efficacy of the Russian weapons, which will increase the sales of Russian arms worldwide and advance the Russian economy. We are aware that the Russian economy is based solely on the military industries and that Russia has nothing to export to the world other than its military products. What this means is that the Russian war in Syria is an [just] an opportunity for the Russian Czar [President Vladimir Putin] to try out the new Russian weapons. What is true of Russia in this sphere is also true of the U.S. and of the other powers. As I said, there are no morals in politics.
"That's how Syria, with its ethnic and religious complexities, became an arena for disputes and tugs of war [between parties with conflicting interests], and a testing ground for the regional and international forces. In its calls on the 'international community' to intervene to bring an end to the Syrian tragedy, the Arab leadership expresses only its own shameful national failure to deal with what is happening in its own Arab back yard.
I’ve heard that people who are bipolar often go off their
medication because, although the lows of depression are difficult and sometimes
even dangerous, the highs they experience are so thrilling, they don’t want to
give them up for the sake of being normal. The highs open the door to genius,
to creativity, to the sublime.
And it is impossible to attain the high, without also
experiencing the low.
The Israeli experience is something like this. I hesitate to
compare my beloved country to a disorder but like the bipolar person, our
“normal” isn’t normal.
Everyday life in Israel is about as normal as casually
making sandwiches for the kids while walking on a tightrope, with no safety
net, over a sea of blood-thirsty sharks. We do make fabulous sandwiches - as
well as self-driving cars, solutions for world water shortages and cures for
cancers – with a smile and full of joy for life – on the tightrope, over the
sharks.
Some days are more intense than others. Probably (unless
there is a war), the most intense day of the year is the day of Yom Hazikaron,
IDF Memorial Day, which at night becomes Israel’s Independence Day.
On Yom Hazikaron my family attends the ceremony held at the Hebrew Reali
School in Haifa. The children of the school attend as well as many of the
school’s alumni. There is something special about generations of alumni coming
together, on this important day.
The Reali was founded 1913. The State of Israel had not yet
been formally re-established but this did not stop the Jewish community in
Palestine (Eretz Yisrael) from building institutions of education for the next
generations, the new Jews who would be free in their homeland and be educated in
Hebrew, the language of their ancestors.
The ceremony at the Reali is probably the most impressive
and moving Yom Hazikaron ceremony in the country. Israelis are notoriously bad
at ceremonies. Pomp and circumstance is a foreign concept, there is something
about focusing on the way things look (rather than their content) that goes
against Israeli nature.
The Reali ceremony is simple, yet profound. The 9-12th
graders of the school march on the field with the flags of the school and the
military academy (also managed by the Reali). The visual impression this
creates is of seeing the present and the future at the same time – the students
dressed in civilian clothes will soon graduate and join the IDF (and look like
the students from the military academy marching alongside them). A group of
teachers and distinguished alumni also march on the field.
A few songs are sung. They are never songs about war, always
songs of grief, sadness at innocence lost and hope for the future. Yom
Hazikaron songs are never about the enemy. The Yizkor and Kaddish prayers are
said.
The bulk of the ceremony consists of the names of every
single Reali student killed in Israel’s wars or by acts of terrorism. This year
they read 302 names.
Think about that. In 105 years 302 people were killed from
this school alone.
During the ceremony I sat behind a family. Grandparents, a
mother and her daughter, a daughter of the grandparents.
The principle of the school explained that this year,
classmates of Dudi Zohar were marching on the field in his memory. The
grandmother’s head sunk down on her daughter’s shoulder. The little girl turned
around and I saw that her face was streaked with tears. Dudi’s
family. His is the 302nd name on the list.
When it came time to say the prayer for the dead, Dudi’s 14
year old son read the kaddish. I don’t know if there was a dry eye in the
audience, mine certainly weren’t.
After the ceremony in the school was over, we went to the
ceremony in Haifa’s military cemetery. The IDF prepares the cemeteries
throughout the country for the thousands of families they know will arrive.
Each grave has flowers laid on it, a flag and a soldier (the rank or higher
than that of the person killed) to stand as an honor guard. Stools are brought
to every grave so that families can have a place to sit should they feel the
need to do so and water bottles are brought for everyone attending the
ceremonies. Of course, politicians and dignitaries attend the ceremonies in
their communities.
The ceremony ended with Hatikvah, as all ceremonies do. As I
stood and sang, I watched a woman approximately my age standing in front of a
grave, singing. The ceremony was taking place behind her but she had come for
personal reasons, not to be part of the community. Whose grave was she facing?
Her husband? Her brother? A friend?
Watching her, I choked on the words of our national anthem:
“To be a free people, in our own land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.” The
price of our freedom was lying in the grave, at her feet – and yet she sang. As
did everyone all around me.
That evening we watched the official Yom Haatzmaut ceremony
on tv. Wow! It was like watching a mini-opening ceremony for the Olympics – a
sweeping depiction of Jewish history from the beginning of our people, yearning
for Zion in exile and the rebirth of our nation.
At night we went out to the Independence Day street party. Every
municipality sets up enormous parties with the best Israeli performers, music,
dancing and fireworks. There was a party right by my house but we chose to go
to one in a suburb of Haifa because of the artists who were scheduled to
perform there.
Omer Adam is perhaps the most popular Israeli singer today.
When ticket sales for his concerts open, the lines crash. Within a few minutes
all the tickets are sold out. On Yom Haatzmaut we walked down the street to the
stage and there he was.
There he is! There he is!!! The street was packed, people
were hanging out the windows and standing on the porches of nearby buildings.
Everyone pulled out their cameras. Everyone was smiling and singing. What a way
to end the day.
What other way is there? We mourn death and celebrate life,
we celebrate life in gratitude and appreciation for those who made it possible
for us to live.
In Israel, the equation is very clear.
We didn’t ask to live with the sharks swimming below us. Every
time one of us falls, we all fall. The pain is devastating… there really are no
words to describe it. At the same time, if we must walk the tightrope, why not
dance across it? What could be more glorious?
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Meirav Arlosoroff writes in The Marker (Haaretz' economic magazine) that Bibi Netanyahu is a racist.
But....she also documents that he also has done far more for the Arab sector in Israel than anyone else.
She admits she's confused. She says that Netanyahu speaks in a racist way (in her example, by specifically talking about law enforcement in his remarks about Arab society, which doesn't strike me as proof of racism.)
But...
While Netanyahu's speech makes the impression of a lame and miserable racist, Netanyahu's actions are the exact opposite. In December 2015, Netanyahu passed Resolution 922 - a historic and unprecedented decision to allocate NIS 10 billion to reduce the budgetary discrimination suffered by Israeli Arabs, which was promoted and managed by the Ministry for Social Equality, headed by Minister Gila Gamliel. Together with the Ministry of Education's differential budgeting program aimed at narrowing the gaps between strong and weak pupils in Israel, the decision on which was previously accepted, the total investment in Arab society is likely to range from NIS 12 billion to NIS 14 billion. The approval of Resolution 922, which no Israeli government had dared to ratify, was accompanied by a fierce struggle against right-wing ministers, and was spread over three particularly stormy cabinet meetings. The racist Netanyahu, the one who incites against the Arab voters, is fighting with exceptional political determination to bring about the approval of the resolution.
This week... Netanyahu devoted his precious time to receiving a report on the progress of the implementation of Resolution 922 , to promote decisions on the establishment of two new high-tech parks in Arab communities and to think about how to solve the barriers preventing the establishment of classrooms there. ...
Of the NIS 12-14 billion (including the differential education budget) that Resolution 922 allocates to Arab society over five years, almost NIS 4.5 billion has already been allocated. NIS 1.85 billion was allocated to infrastructure - NIS 700 million for construction of roads, NIS 500 million for sewage infrastructure, NIS 235 million for public buildings and NIS 200 million for public transport investments.
NIS 1.5 billion was allocated to strengthen Arab local authorities. NIS 800 million was allocated to education, including NIS 250 million for differential funding, NIS 260 million for informal education (afternoon classes), and NIS 175 million for absorbing Arab students in higher education. Another NIS 410 million was invested in employment guidance centers, the establishment of day care centers, the establishment of industrial zones and the subsidization of salaries of Arab workers. ... Thus, for example, there is a clause that for any new allocation for public transportation, 40% should flow to Arab communities in the framework of affirmative action. This means that this is not an incremental budget, but rather a decision to allocate certain percentages of each ministry's budget to Arab society, so that the allocation to Arab society should be permanent and ongoing.
Results in the field are already having positive effect. Since the implementation of the plan, the percentage of Arab communities connected to the sewage system has increased from 40% to 85%; The number of trips by public transportation increased by 127%; The number of users using public transport increased by 77%; Eligibility for matriculation increased from 59% to 65% (excluding Druze and Bedouin); The proportion of Arab students out of the total student population rose from 14% to 16%; And 88,000 Arab children now enjoy classes in the afternoon.
The road to narrowing the gaps between Arab and Jewish society in Israel is still very long, but Resolution 922 is undoubtedly a historic milestone. Netanyahu is the man responsible for this historic breakthrough, but he is also the one who threatens its success with its inflammatory rhetoric.
Someone who clearly despises Netanyahu as an anti-Arab bigot has to admit that he is putting significant political capital behind helping the Arab sector, often against the wishes of his own coalition.
Here is another story that won't be reported in Western media- because the "racist Bibi" meme is more powerful than the Bibi who actually cares about all Israeli citizens.
(h/t Yoel)
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Sunday, April 29, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
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