Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

In Which A Random Israel-Hater Gets Trounced By Truth (Judean Rose)

“Just in case you are in the mood to get annoyed,” read the private message from a friend of mine in Canada, the text accompanying a link. I clicked the link. It was to a status from one Fran Miller, whose profile photo was her sweet-looking pet dog.

“Please inform yourself re what's happening in Gaza. People are being MASSACRED and EXTERMINATED. Yes those words should ring for us Jewish people. Gazans live in an "open air prison," there is no hope for young people, 75% unemployment, no prospects, a few hours of electricity per day, and closed borders - they can't get out. The soil and water are poisoned b/c there is no good sewage system. The events away from the fence were festival-like, families with food and kids dancing. Of course there were some rock-throwers; they pose no imminent danger to Israeli soldiers - not a one has even been injured! These were snipers aiming slowly at people not even that close to the fence, and drones going way beyond the fence dropping tear gas and suffocating 8 month old children.

“The shootings at the fence are being done on Netanyahu's orders, who of course is Trump's best friend. (If you hate Trump, please think about that if you continue to defend Israel's actions.) Today, Democracy Now has a very strong piece on what's going on, if you want more detailed info.”

Below the post one could see the enthusiastic response: 9 shares, 4 hearts, 8 angry emojis, and 23 just plain thumbs ups. Appearing below that was a LONG thread of sycophantic comments thanking Miller and blessing Jesus for cluing them into “the truth.” Miller’s people alternatively damned Trump, and cursed Israel and its democratically elected leader, PM Benjamin Netanyahu. The words “horrific” and “inhumane” came up as did #FASCISM.

Now pretty much, I’ve given up on debating random strangers on the internet. It’s just a waste of time and energy. In my experience people have lost the art of genuine debate, particularly when it comes to politics.

Most people just don’t care enough to bring facts and sources to the table. It’s too much work. Instead, it’s about who can twist words into the twistiest pretzel or trip up a sparring partner with tautologies and semantics. If all these things fail, we are told that feelings matter more than facts. And there is, of course, the last refuge of any content-less debate: impugning the sources of the other.

Since my friend had sent me that post, however, I stopped to consider: was my friend asking me to get involved? To say something? To shoot down these lies with facts and truth?

Like I said, I’ve given up debating random strangers on the ‘net, but I’m nothing if not loyal to my friends. And if my friend needed help, I was THERE.

So I took a deep breath and jumped in.

Note that Miller brought in a lot of s**t in her post. Throw enough of it, some of it is bound to stick. That is how people like Miller serve to confuse the picture for their followers. They know that their readers will take away some of it: how much, it doesn’t really matter, as long as they take away something really ugly (and share it with their friends).

For some, that takeaway would be: If you hate Trump, hate Israel.

For others, the message received would be: Israel exterminates and massacres innocent brown people.

It’s all good.

When forced to confront the pathology of these liars, I try to keep things very basic. I work to pin them down with one or two actual facts. Which of course, leaves them with nothing left but to impugn my sources. Because that’s what they do.

What happened in this case was interesting, because my source was unimpeachable: a prerequisite for this sort of internet chatter. (Go pour yourself a tall cool one, and settle in to watch the fun.)

“The only thing that should concern Jewish people is the truth. Hamas admits that 50 of those killed are terrorists: https://www.jpost.com/.../50-Hamas-members-reportedly...” I wrote.

But then I just had to get into her pathology, because really, it is egregious. “Actually, not one thing you've written is true. Why would you lie like this unless you really hate your own people? Are you not aware that Jews ceded this territory to the Arabs, lock, stock, and barrel, expelling 11,000 Jews from their homes in a unilateral gesture of peace? Are you not aware that these people have their own democratically elected leadership? If they live in an open-air prison and have no electricity, complain to the appropriate address: Ismail Haniyeh, their democratically elected leader.”

As for “open air prison” I thought to share a link showing the luxury malls and resorts of Gaza. I searched around on Google for a while, and then I remembered a recent piece Elder of Ziyon had done on new Gaza homes built with German money. That should work, I thought, and wrote, “Also, I wish I had as nice a home as one of these: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/.../new-gaza-houses...”

I waited to see if Miller would respond. She did, and since my points were inarguable facts, she naturally impugned my source. Because that’s what they do. (She was running true to type.)

“i guess we will have to agree to disagree since i believe not one thing you've written is true. look at your sources - elder of ziyon? ‘For virulent pro-Zionism (and plain straightforward lies of course) there is nothing much to beat it,’” she quoted at me from the Mondoweiss commenter's comment on the right side of Elder's home page.

“Fran Miller," I wrote. "All his blogs are sourced. Check the sources. All factual. If you prefer not to believe the truth, it's because you prefer the lie. Why is that?

“Elder's first link, for instance, is to Maan, the Palestinian news service. http://www.maannews.net/Content.aspx?id=945598,” I wrote.

I waited a bit. Miller didn’t respond. Because really, what could she say? Elder had only cited Maan, the Palestinian news service. It was the same exact story; the same photos of the same gorgeous homes the wonderful German people had built for the Arabs of Gaza, only in English instead of Maan’s Arabic.

If Miller persisted in impugning my source, Elder of Ziyon, she would be impugning the Palestinian news service, Maan. And she couldn’t be seen to impugn the Palestinians, God forbid.

So she shut up.

Since I had successfully shut up her stupid, ugly trap, I decided to deliver one more broadside.

“So peaceful,” I wrote, delivering the coup de grâce, this clip of Hamas Yahya Sinwar describing the true aim of "The March of Return," to tear out the hearts of the Jews.

To her credit, Fran Miller didn’t block me nor resort to ad hominem insults.

I went back to my friend. “Who is Fran Miller? Is she important?” I asked.

“She is with the JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace), a virulent antisemite,” said my friend. “What she does is bordering on criminality; she spreads Nazi-like propaganda while claiming to be Jewish. I have no idea if she is important, but people seem to be inspired by her and share her posts.

"I have a friend in New York who has been manipulated by her," said my friend. "That really upset me."

I could only hope her friend had read the exchange between me and Miller.

Such debates are a dime a dozen really. I shared it here only because clearly it was one for our side: Fran Miller got trounced by the truth. And when that happens, it’s always a win.

Especially when the sycophants are watching.

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Settlement Construction Halted: Plans Only Reported By NGOs As New 43 Times (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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: Credit: יעקב via Wikimedia Commons

Beit El, Binyamin Regional Council, May 23 - Housing starts in this community north of Jerusalem were put on hold this week following revelations that the development plans for the new homes had only been included in settlement watchdog groups several dozen times, a figure that does not meet official criteria for generating the impression that Israel is expanding Jewish settlements at a blistering pace and not, as the reality on the ground indicates, more slowly than any other government in the country's history.

Clerks at the Ministry of Housing and Construction reported Monday they were putting a provisional stop on the scheduled construction of fifty-five free-standing and semi-attached houses in Beit El, now that they discovered the deficient figures. According to precedent, development plans beyond the 1967 armistice line with Jordan must be included in no fewer than eighty reports by groups such as Peace Now and Yesh Gvul before actual construction may proceed. Without repeated mention of the same housing units as if they represent many different ones, explained a ministry official, the world will understand the actual figure, and remain unable to characterize Israel's settlement policy as "radical," "strangling hopes for a two-state solution," "pounding mails into the coffin of a peaceful resolution," or "beholden to far-right settlement zealots."

"There's cultural and political precedent we have to respect," noted Deputy Secretary-General of the ministry Gad Demmitt. "It's kind of a ritual. The government announces approval of certain plans, the international community condemns them, some time passes, the approval lapses, gets approved again, and Peace Now makes sure not to note the approval applies to units that had already received approval, so everyone thinks there are twice as many houses for Israelis going up than originally planned, but in fact it's zero. Repeat."

"Once the requisite number of watchdog reports have been issued, contractors bid for the project," continued Demmitt. "In this case, however, because of a bureaucratic oversight, the tender was issued without provoking the necessary outrage quotient from the usual suspects, and we will be forced to place a hold on this building initiative until that deficiency is remedied."

This incident marks the second time is as many months that such a bureaucratic failure has stymied government projects. In early April, the Ministry of Defense shelved an initiative to train the IDF Spokesman's Office in better use of social media because the six-month quota of UN resolutions against Israel had not been met.

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05/23 Links Pt1: Sohrab Amari: The EU Picks Iran and Hamas; Palestinians: Americans Now Legitimate Targets; Glick: Pompeo Presents the Trump Doctrine

From Ian:

Sohrab Amari: The EU Picks Iran and Hamas

From the mullahs’ nuclear-weapons program to Hamas’s calculated campaign to rush the barrier fence with Israel to the Iranian-led insurgency in Yemen, Mogherini and the EU see only diplomatic challenges to overcome. And the answer is always, always to convene a gabfest in Basel, Lausanne, Vienna or some other plush Continental city, where civilizational clashes and historic animosities and sharp moral contrasts can be dissolved in technical solutions.

Never mind that the Iranian nuclear deal on its own terms puts Tehran on the glide path to the bomb, and never mind that it fails to address the mullahs’ missile program, regional aggression, and human-rights violations. “We had a process,” say the Brussels mandarins, “and that process must be preserved at all costs.” Never mind that Hamas is constitutionally committed to the destruction of world Jewry and has been staging terror attacks and bloody stunts for decades. “We had a process,” say the mandarins, “and Trump’s embassy move disrupts the process.” In this worldview, the likes of Iran and the Palestinians can appear as friends and good guys, because they cynically embrace European process games. All the while, the U.S. and Israel are cast as the bad guys since they don’t play geopolitics the European way.

Along with Mogherini, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel epitomized this bankrupt mindset. One of the three, Obama, has already exited the world stage. The tectonic electoral shifts underway in Europe mean the other two are likely to fade sooner than later.

PMW: PMW posters of terrorists and their PA salaries distributed to Israeli MPs at committee hearing

Palestinian Media Watch was invited to the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense committee once again last week for the latest debate on new legislation to deduct the amount the Palestinian Authority pays terrorists and their families from Israel's tax transfers to the PA.

In order to impress upon members of Parliament the horror of the PA practice of paying salaries to terrorists, PMW produced 13 small posters with information about a number of Palestinian terrorists, their hundreds of victims and how much money the PA has paid each of the terrorists since they were arrested.

PMW's Director, Itamar Marcus, and Head of Legal Strategies, Maurice Hirsch, both actively participated in the debate. In addition, PMW had invited relatives of terror victims who also spoke at the hearing, demanding that Israel not transfer any money to the PA that might go to pay salaries to the murderers of their loved ones. Some of them held up PMW's posters while they spoke, documenting how much money the PA has already paid the terrorist who murdered their relatives.

Caroline Glick: Pompeo Presents the Trump Doctrine

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech Monday at the Heritage Foundation marked a pivotal moment in U.S. foreign policy.

Pompeo made several important arguments in the course of his half hour address, in which he set out President Donald Trump’s policy regarding Iran in the wake of his May 8 announcement that he is abandoning Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

The key line in his speech was, inarguably, “As President Trump said two weeks ago, he is ready, willing and able to negotiate a new deal [with Iran]. But the deal is not the objective. Our goal is to protect the American people.”

The basic insight that there is no intrinsic value to any agreement – or foreign policy initiative of any sort – that does not advance the interests of the United States or protect the American people is striking, because it has been absent from American foreign policy in relation to rogue regimes and entities for better part of the last generation.

In 1994, when then president Bill Clinton sought to contend with North Korea’s illicit nuclear program, the first fantasist president, Jimmy Carter, turned up in Pyongyang to see if there was a deal to be had.

Last week Hamas terrorists stood on principle.

They turned away 2 Israeli trucks of medical supplies, including IV fluids, bandages, pediatric equipment, disinfectants and fuel for hospital generators.

This despite the fact that hospitals in Gaza are suffering from shortages.

But Hamas did not turn everything away. They did accept 4 shipments from the Palestinian Authority and 2 from UNICEF.

So what was Hamas trying to prove?

Keep in mind that whatever point they are trying to make, Hamas is not above making that point at the expense of their own people.

Earlier this year, Israeli reported that when Gaza was suffering from power shortages, Hamas was stealing electricity from power lines leading into the southern Gaza Strip. There was a video to support the claim:

In fact, despite the economic situation in Gaza, in 2014 Forbes Israel ranked Hamas as one of the 10 wealthiest terror organizations -- ahead of Hezbollah, Al-Qaida and Taliban, and second only to ISIS.

Former Hamas Prime Minister Haniyeh (far right) aboard his private plane

So when Hamas turns back medical essentials at a time that hospitals in Gaza don't have enough of the supplies it needs, it is unlikely Hamas expects to suffer the natural consequences of their actions.

After all, we are talking about the same terrorists who have no problem using their people as human shields.

In fact, we know that Hamas has no problem affording themselves the best medical treatment in the region - from Israel.

Former Hamas PM Haniyeh sets the example:

o April 2012: Haniyeh's brother-in-law was treated in Israel for a serious cardiac episode that could not be treated in Gaza. According to Al Arabiya, Haniyeh's brother-in-law and his wife "had the option of going to a more advanced medical center in Egypt but chose to go to the Israeli hospital instead." Haniyeh did not stand in their way.

o  November 2013: Haniyeh's granddaughter was admitted Schneider Children’s Medical Center for Israel in Petah Tikva in serious condition for acute infection of the digestive tract.

o  June 2014: Haniyeh's mother-in-law was admitted to the Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem, by the Mount of Olives

o  October 2014: One of Haniyeh's daughters was admitted to an Israeli hospital for emergency medical treatment after she suffered complications from a routine procedure.
Haniyeh is not alone.

In November 2014, the sister of Hamas senior official Moussa Abu Marzouk was treated in an Israeli hospital for cancer

Actually, Hamas does generally allow regular Gazans into Israel for medical treatment.

According to Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which coordinates with Palestinian authorities on border crossings, about 20,000 Gazans enter Israel per month, mainly for medical treatment.

Hamas treads a fine line, making a show of rejecting Israeli aid.

But the fact is that as things stand now, Hamas leaders are as much in need of Israel and the help it provides as the people of Gaza are.

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While Israel gets crucified for killing actual Hamas terrorists trying to infiltrate into Israel, something far worse is happening in Turkey under the radar of the media and most "human rights" NGOs.

[Deadly] incidents have become increasingly common in the past three years since Turkey ended the open border policy it adopted when the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011. Since then, Turkey has erected a wall and fences along its 900-km border with Syria and sought to set up what it calls safe areas inside Syria for those displaced by the fighting.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported last week that it had documented more than 360 cases of Syrian civilians killed by Turkish border guards between August 2015 and April 2018. Those casualties include 68 children and 32 women, it said.

Since the beginning of 2018, six civilians from the area of Ras al-Ayn have been killed and five wounded by Turkish border guards, according to officials at the local hospital where all of the victims were taken.

Of the six killed, four died trying to cross the border, while the remaining two were targeted while working in fields along the frontier, the officials said.

“I know three of the victims who died under torture after they were captured by the (Turkish) gendarmerie,” said Izedin Salih, a local reporter who closely follows the issue.

He said the bodies of victims were dropped on the border by Turkish security forces and then picked up by Syrian residents or local authorities.

Further west along the border, residents of the Syrian town of Tel Abyad said they had been living in fear after more than a dozen civilians were fired at by Turkish border guards while working in the fields in the past 10 months. At least three of them were killed, local sources said.

A woman who went by the name of Um Sami told Ahval that her 62-year-old husband died at the local hospital in December two days after he was shot at by Turkish guards. The husband was working on his farm outside Tel Abyad when the shooting happened.

“My husband had been working on the farm for more than 40 years,” said Um Sami. “He was the only breadwinner of our family. He wasn’t trying to cross the border or anything. His only crime was that his farm was on the border.”

Similar cases have been reported in Kobani, another Kurdish-held town on the Syria-Turkey border. At least six civilians were targeted, the Kobani Media Centre said.

Turkey is doing exactly what the world is falsely accusing Israel of doing. Without the criticism.

There are major music concerts planned for Turkey in upcoming months, including Wiz Khalifa, Joe Satriani, Liam Gallagher and Imagine Dragons. No one is calling on these artists to boycott Turkey because it kills hundreds of civilians a year just on the Syrian border alone - not counting what else it does.

Hypocrisy is the norm.

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Sari Bashi, the "Israel and Palestine advocacy director" at Human Rights Watch who never advocates for Israel, writes in Foreign Policy another anti-Israel screed that shows just how hateful and ignorant HRW is towards Israel.

First of all, Bashi completely ignores the point of the demonstrations, to incite tens of thousands of civilians to breach the fence and attack Israeli civilians with guns and knives. Bashi doesn't even mention the word "return" in his entire article, claiming that the protests were both about the US Embassy and about general anger at the "siege."

Once Bashi falsely frames the protests - something she does deliberately, since she selectively quotes the social media of the riot organizers and ignores the point of the "Great Return March" - she goes on to claim that Israel did not use the correct methods to defend itself from a threat that she doesn't admit exists:

[U]nder the international standards for policing demonstrations, even the use of rocks or firebombs does not justify lethal force, absent an imminent threat to life.Yet under the international standards for policing demonstrations, even the use of rocks or firebombs does not justify lethal force, absent an imminent threat to life. It doesn’t matter whom the protesters support or who, if anyone, encouraged them to demonstrate. Lethal force can only be used when strictly necessary to protect against an imminent threat to life.

The Israeli government acknowledges the international law enforcement standard but says its forces will fire live rounds even before a threat to life becomes imminent, because it believes that Hamas will exploit the presence of thousands of demonstrators to breach the border fences. That essentially empties the word “imminent” of any meaning. It ignores the nonlethal means, such as tear gas, skunk water, and rubber-coated steel pellets, that Israel can and should exhaust to protect its border.

It took me maybe 30 minutes of research to find out exactly why Israel cannot accurately or effectively use those means to protect against thousands of violent rioters hell bent at breaching the fence and pouring into Israel. But the teams of researchers at HRW confidently claim not only that these means would work, but also that Israel isn't using them as much as it can, without saying what facts back up that claim. Beyond that, HRW is implying that Israel wants dead civilians, because there is some secret way that HRW knows that Israel could use non-lethal means in ways that Israel refuses to use:

Even if those methods were to fail (and they haven’t been exhausted), Israel would be justified in using lethal force only if a border breach presents an imminent threat to life. Israeli troops and snipers currently fire from well-fortified positions inside Israel, behind two fences, and, in key locations, behind ditches dug to prevent border crossings. They receive footage from drones hovering over Gaza and have backup from additional personnel and equipment located farther inside Israel.

Essentially, Bashi is arguing that Israel is too aggressive in stopping Gazans from cutting through the fence and pouring through the breach by the thousands - and then, even if thousands would rush through and aim towards Israeli communities, the IDF must wait until they take out their knives and raise their arms to stab Jews before the IDF can intervene.

How insane is that?

If the IDF would follow HRW's advice, it would be forced to kill hundreds of people, rather than the few dozen that were killed.

Moreover, Sari Bashi of course does not mention that even Hamas admits that the vast majority of those killed with Hamas members - which proves that Israeli snipers were only aiming to kill the militant organizers of the protests who were directing their human shields to breach the fence while Hamas -which openly admits its militants were disguised as civilians - would take advantage of the chaos to infiltrate Israel and kidnap Jews, its major military goal for years.

The entire riots are military operations to breach Israel's border, and civilians are used to cover the military aims.of Hamas. Arguably, the laws of war are the proper framework for Israel, not the laws of domestic police work as HRW tries to frame this.

Yet even under HRW's framework, Israel is doing everything possible to limit civilian deaths. Given that the number of civilians killed is quite small compared to the number of militant organizers, it is apparent that Israel's actions at the border saved far more civilian lives than HRW's proposed solution of waiting for the fence to be breached and for thousands of Gazans to attempt to run into Israel and enter civilian communities before the IDF can respond with deadly force.

(h/t Ari)

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05/22 Links Pt2: David Collier: Kaddish for Palestinian terrorists; Justin Trudeau Is No Friend of Israel; The Guardian: Israel supporters are morally sub human

From Ian:

David Collier: The day that Jewish people said Kaddish for Palestinian terrorists

Mitzvot and terrorists

The event itself began badly and got worse (Jonathan Hoffman’s analysis was published here). There was talk of how Israel ‘murders’ Palestinians. Mention of how protesting Palestinians are just performing a ‘Mitzvah’. Then the names were read out. All of them. Those that brought explosives to the fence, those that died in a firefight with Israeli soldiers. All the names. Including approximately 53 terrorists. Kaddish was said for them all.

The truly sickening thought is this. Imagine the eight terrorists had not been killed by Israeli soldiers at the fence. What if they had killed the soldiers, broken through, reached a neighbouring town and massacred Jewish residents. What then? Then there would have been none of these Jews in Parliament Square. As the Jewish bodies had been buried, these Jews would not have publicly come to mourn and say Kaddish. Think about how twisted that is.

There is little difference between anti-Israel activists holding a vigil for terrorists at SOAS, and the people who said Kaddish at Parliament Square. The actions of those who were responsible for not raising a voice against, or cancelling this event are disgraceful. Some of these people are involved in summer camps that work with children. I wouldn’t want my children near anyone who is connected with this, nor the organisations that allow them to act as ‘influencers’. They wanted to make the community angry. I think it is safe to say they succeeded.

Justin Trudeau Is No Friend of Israel

While 33 ambassadors and dignitaries participated in the recent celebration of the US embassy’s relocation from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, one country was noticeably absent. Though considered by many to be one of Israel’s strongest allies, Canada chose to boycott the dedication.

“We will not be moving Canada’s embassy to Jerusalem,” said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in response to President Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital city. Palestinian diplomats welcomed the Trudeau government’s decision not to support the move.

While condemning what he called Israel’s “excessive use of force” in defending itself against violent riots organized by the terrorist group Hamas, Trudeau seemed to take issue with the fact that alleged murderer Tarek Loubani — a Palestinian-Canadian previously arrested in Egypt for his support of Islamic terrorism — was reportedly shot in the leg during the protest.

In stark contrast, Trudeau’s Conservative predecessor Stephen Harper lauded the decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. The Canadian Conservative Party has pledged to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital if they win the general election in 2019.

The video below contains an important message about #Hamas everyone should see and for that I need your help! Retweeting my video is not enough. I urge you to tweet it yourselves in your own words. Here's a draft⮕https://t.co/U5wzvSVrmq
EDIT & TWEET!pic.twitter.com/1iqBCMpyJB
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) May 21, 2018

Pro-Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Shaft Palestinians and Human Rights

To collect compensation from the Palestinian Authority, however, the victims are required to submit a variety of medical and psychological assessments -- tests often expensive to run and which the Palestinians cannot afford. To help their clients, the Palestinians' attorneys, Barak Kedem and Aryeh Arbus, applied to 15 human rights organizations for assistance -- a "Who's Who" of human rights activism in the Israel-Arab conflict that are always the most vocal in the struggle against the Israeli "occupation," and regularly condemn the plight of Palestinian and Israeli Arabs under Israeli "occupation." These organizations are the greatest activists against demolition of homes belonging to terrorists' families, and the leaders of the fight against the "oppression" of Arabs by the Israel Police and the IDF, which they refer to as "occupation forces."

Each of the human rights organizations approached benefit immensely from the extremely generous support of foreign governments and charities such as the New Israel Fund and other well-known "liberal" foundations. The response the attorneys received speaks volumes:

The New Israel Fund, B'Tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights, and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel were among the groups that completely ignored the pleas of the Palestinian plaintiffs. These organizations, not known for their reticence, were suddenly mute.

Yesh Din expressed "feelings of anger and pain," but explained that they cannot help because they "represent victims of violations only when they are harmed by Israeli authorities or Israeli citizens."

Another well-known NGO, Adalah, stated that they "only help Palestinians who are suing the State of Israel."

Amnesty International replied that their organization "does not have the professional tools to address the needs of these refugees."

All told, 13 of the 15 "human rights organizations" proved that they are, in fact, dedicated to defaming the State of Israel, and have no real interest in defending human rights. Only two organizations -- The Committee for Prevention of Torture and Physicians for Human Rights -- offered assistance of any kind.

Ironically, help also came from two unexpected sources: Honenu, a legal aid society most often associated with right wing causes, and Regavim, a think-tank and lobbying group that regularly finds itself in court to protect Israeli sovereignty. Apparently, these two organizations actually believe that "human rights" is more than a battering ram to be used to defame Israel.

The case of these 52 victims of Palestinian Authority torture is a cautionary tale about the type of state one can expect PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his henchmen to create if they are given the chance. It is also a sad but eye-opening lesson in the cynical use of the mantra of "human rights" as the sheep's clothing worn by the wolves who seek to tear real human rights -- and the countries and organizations that actually do care about them -- to shreds.

The Gazan border with Israel, May 2018

Everyone who cares about the Jewish people and the well-being of Israel is writing about the Hamas Embassy Riots.

We are doing so because Western media people are, yet again, yapping against Israel on cue from the vicious antisemitic ding-bats in Gaza like trained seals yelping for sardines.

We've known for so long about Western media bias against Israel, but this seems even worse than usual. They are honestly portraying a massive Hamas assault with upwards of 50,000 people against the Jews of Israel as an Israeli aggression against innocent Palestinian protestors and their children.

This means that CNN, MSNBC, the Daily News, and the New York Times are, yet again, responsible, in some measure, for violence against Jews around the world because they always portray Israel as the aggressor. They almost never provide any meaningful historical context or treat Palestinian-Arabs as anything beyond unruly children in need of a pat on the head and a chocolate chip cookie.

This lethal journalism -- as American historian from Boston University, Richard Landes, calls it --will result in international blowback toward Israel and toward Jewish people around the world, and that is the Gazan Wave. But this is nothing new and let us just hope that the coming flood is not among the worst.

An important exception is Matti Friedman in a recent article for, yes, the New York Times entitled, Falling for Hamas’s Split-Screen Fallacy. Friedman is notable among those of us who follow "the conflict" for breaking ground in his first-hand analysis of lethal western journalistic bias against Israel. In this most recent piece, he takes his essential thesis and applies it to the Hamas attack on the Israeli border. He writes:

Hamas understood that Western news outlets wanted a simple story about villains and victims and would stick to that script, whether because of ideological sympathy, coercion or ignorance. The press could be trusted to present dead human beings not as victims of the terrorist group that controls their lives, or of a tragic confluence of events, but of an unwarranted Israeli slaughter. The willingness of reporters to cooperate with that script gave Hamas the incentive to keep using it.

Which is to say, yet again the mainstream media outlets are slanting the story, much to my ongoing astonishment, in Hamas' favor. Let us not forget that Hamas is the very same organization that calls for the genocide of the Jews in its charter through this venerable hadith.

The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."

Whatever the heinous gibberish above may mean to contemporary jihadis, we must make Westerners understand that the Gazan Arabs who sought to murder Jews over the last several weeks were not "demonstrators." They were not "protestors." And they were certainly not unarmed.

These were not college students sleeping in Lincoln Park in Chicago, 1968, in opposition to the war in Vietnam during the Democratic National Convention. Many of these violent rioters were actually paid by Hamas according to the extent of their injuries and the families of the martyrs received thousands of dollars. They carried knives, hand-axes, meat cleavers, guns, children, and Molotov cocktails. They also flew kites with Nazi swastikas attached to incendiary devices for the purpose of burning fields and crops and houses, if not people.

Hamas even provided instructions on where the weak points of the barrier are, where the nearest Jewish villages are in reference to those weak points, and how to carry out the murder and kidnappings of Jewish civilians.

So, yes, the IDF was very restrained given the fact that these were people coming to kill their friends and families. But how would China react under similar circumstances, if crazed enemies were coming to kill Chinese babies? How would Russians react? I will tell you one thing, if Texans saw 50,000 Mexicans on the border of Laredo with guns and machetes and Molotov cocktails, shooting at the cops, and thousands of burning tires darkening the skies as they were screaming for the blood of American children... they would have shot them down like dogs.

There would not have been 60 dead. There would have been at least 600 dead, if not many more.

{Of course, Mexicans would never have brought their own children into a conflict with armed Texans.}

Nonetheless, Hamas wanted dead Arabs to parade before anti-Zionist cameras for the purpose of delegitimizing Israel and stoking hatred toward Jews and they got those dead Arabs, including children, and their families were paid for this atrocity. Nonetheless, this is causing well-meaning people throughout the world to honestly believe that Israel assaulted unarmed Arab men, women, and children. And why should they not believe it after so many decades of mainstream media suggestion of Jewish persecution of the "indigenous" Arabs and centuries of blood-libels and hate?

It just fits so neatly into the "Palestinian narrative" of unending victimhood, even as they ruin their own societies, sacrifice their own children on an Aztec altar of blood, and seek the genocide of my brothers and sisters.

But what is truly joyous at this moment, aside from the swirling chaos, is the fact that these insidious media outlets did their very best to ruin what should have been a beautiful moment. After 2,000 years of diaspora, a major world power, the United States, finally recognized Yerushalayim as the capital city of the Jewish people.

That, as my friend Avi Abelow would say, is truly a miracle.

Nonetheless, Israel is, yet again, subject to a rising wave of world hatred stoked by the media who almost always describe Jewish self-defense as a form of aggression.

But the Gazan waves of hatred wash across all Jews who care about Israel, wherever we live in the world.

It even splashes onto the beaches of northern California.

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I’m reading a book that again reminds me how much we’re leaving unused our most potent argument for creating attachment to Israel among not just Jews but everyone else in the world.

Leading a Worthy Life by Leon Kass is not about Judaism, Israel or the Middle East (although the author is the child of Jewish immigrants). Rather, it distills decades of thinking and writing by its remarkable author into a set of essays that tries to establish what it means to live, truly live, rather than just exist in modern times.

Kass is most well known as a bio-ethicist who warns about promises made by bio-tech utopians offering brave new worlds of human advancement, oblivious to what Aldous Huxley had to say on the matter of Brave New Worlds. But Kass is also a self-educated humanist who “pivoted” later in his career to teaching literature and philosophy at the University of Chicago and the “great-books” centered Saint John’s College.

Like others intimate with his cultural legacy, Kass understands that the components of time on earth worthy to be called a life are unchanging: work that allows you practice and experience excellence; a meaningful and loving relationship (preferably leading to children); genuine friendship; commitment to something greater than yourself (a community, nation; and/ or higher order); and life of the mind dedicated to seeking out truth and beauty.

In our present age, the choices leading to a worthy life are under assault by the wider culture. Work has become a means to an end (usually involving making enough money to live in comfort). Commitment to marriage is diminishing, even as the right to marry has expanded, with many couples not bothering to seal a life-long bond or breaking that bond once made. In such a world, Eros has been separated from love through emotionless “flings” or steady diets of pornography.

Regarding life of the mind, an abandonment of the very texts that inspired Kass in favor of not just trendy multicultural replacements, but pragmatic subjects like business and computer programming, means most students today are not striving to understand what it means to be human, but are rather lost in a sea of ever-expanding life choices all leading nowhere. It is this “lostness” that creates openings for snake-oil salesmen offering politics in the classroom as a replacement to genuine thinking and reflection, or radical experiments in lifestyle that further deteriorate the culture while bringing participants no closer to living vs. merely existing.

Despite what he’s seen happen to our culture over the last half century, Kass is actually an optimist. For in teaching young people over the decades, he has not seen any diminishment in their hunger for all the things he sees as adding up to a worthy life. Despite easy availability of one-night-stands and Internet porn, they want a life where their intellectual, emotional and erotic selves are tied to those of someone else. They understand that Facebook friends are not the same as real ones. And they are ready to ask (and attempt to answer) tough questions such as “What is true?”, “What is beautiful?” and “Who am I?”

This list of components of the worthy life helps unravel mysteries surrounding the topic near and dear to readers of this blog. Why, for example, are Israelis so damn happy despite living under existential threat few of us in the comfortable West even understand, much less experience? They are happy because their life has purpose, for each one of them is responsible for building and defending a nation, rather than just living off unearned inheritance. Such purposefulness equates to happiness that no level of threat or insult from Israel’s enemies seems able to shake.

Existence defined by worthy purpose might also explain why Israel’s high-tech nation (with its focus on life-saving technologies) seems so much more serious than even our own robust start-up culture which tends towards giving consumers ever more choices and pastimes. The fact that Israel is the only westernized nation where parents are committed to having children beyond replacement level also demonstrates an ongoing commitment to something more than the self and the now.

That’s good news for our Israeli cousins. But what do these observations provide to those of us who fight on the behalf of the Jewish state who may not live under similar existential conditions?

Some thoughts on that next time…

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05/22 Links Pt1: Dershowitz: The media's misplaced sympathy for the Hamas lynch mob; Gaza and the Fallacy of Moral Equivalence; Majority Support U.S. Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: The media's misplaced sympathy for the Hamas lynch mob

As evidence mounts that Hamas intended to murder Israeli children, women and men after breaching the border fence to Israel, Hamas apologists must ask themselves why they are on the wrong side of morality.

The recent border attack and attempted invasion of Israel by Hamas was anything but a peaceful protest. It was a lynch mob targeting Israeli day care centers, schools, and homes. The goal of the lynchers, according to Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas political leader, was to “take down the border” and “tear their hearts from their bodies.” According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, “Hamas posted maps for their operatives showing the quickest routes from the border to Israeli homes, schools and day care centers near the border.”

Yet many in the media, and many Hamas sympathizers on the left, insist on portraying this invasion as a peaceful demonstration, comparable to those conducted against the Ku Klux Klan by Martin Luther King and his fellow civil rights demonstrators.

I was part of those demonstrations back in the 1960s, and it is a gross insult to the memory of King and his followers to compare his peaceful tactics to the murderous goals of Hamas. One of Hamas’ co-founders, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, recently told the truth in an interview with Al Jazeera: “When we talk about ‘peaceful,’ we are deceiving the public.”

Many in the public seem all too eager to be deceived because Hamas has succeeded in portraying themselves as the civil rights demonstrators protesting against the Israeli Ku Klux Klan. But in reality, the roles are reversed. Hamas is the Ku Klux Klan, violently rioting to break down the protective barrier so they can lynch innocent Jewish children and other civilians, the way the Klan lynched innocent black citizens.

The Gaza hypocrites

In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo organized by former (and perhaps future) presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the group demanded that the Trump administration address the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza. They described the “return” march as a response to the blockade of the strip being conducted by Israel and Egypt. It specifically and repeatedly mentioned the actions of “Israeli snipers” and cited inflated casualty figures produced by Hamas. But at no point did it reference the terrorist group or acknowledge its responsibility for what happens in Gaza, in addition to noting the ongoing international sanctions on an area that even the Europeans know is a terrorist haven with which normal commerce is impossible.

Just as outrageous, the 13 Democratic senators—a list that included Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Edward Markey (Mass.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Thomas Carper (Del.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), Tom Udall (N.M.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.)—also demanded that the United States restore funding to the United Nations Relief Works Agency, a body that has not only existed solely to perpetuate rather than solve the Palestinian refugee problem, but which has been infiltrated by and exploited by Hamas as part of its ongoing military campaign.

Why did so many Senate Democrats deliberately ignore Hamas’s role in an effort that, as its name indicated, had as its purpose an attempt to wipe out 70 years of history and destroy the Jewish state? Why did they seek to blame only Israel and call to end Gaza’s isolation? Opening the border to Gaza wouldn’t really help Palestinians, who can have no hope for a better life while they are still being ruled by terrorist theocrats who “govern” the strip like tyrants. The only possible outcome of their appeal would be an influx of Iranian weapons and material that would allow Hamas to strengthen its fortifications and its ability to carry on its fight against Israel.

The unfortunate answer is that within the Democratic Party, there is now a faction that not only fails to think clearly about terrorism and the reality of Hamas-run Gaza. This group also seeks to appeal to the intersectional left leading the “resistance” to U.S. President Donald Trump, and which falsely claims a connection between the Black Lives Matter movement and the Palestinian war on Israel.

Fortunately, not all Democrats agree, and this struggle will play out as America heads towards the 2020 presidential race, in which the party’s left wing will seek to assert its control of the party. If the Democrats are to remain a pro-Israel party, those who care about Israel’s survival must speak out against these senators and others on the left who serve as Hamas’s dupes.

As much as Democrats are currently focused on “resisting” Trump, giving Sanders and his friends a pass for a stand that undermines any hope for progress towards peace, as well as undermines U.S. security, will compromise the integrity of their party. Contrary to the assertions of Israel’s left-wing critics, the Sanders’ letter and the left-wing hypocrites who support it show that the coming battle will be not so much for the soul of the Jewish state as it is for that of the Democratic Party. Those who care about Israel can only hope that sane moderates will step up and ensure that Sanders, Warren and their allies don’t prevail.

PMW: At championship dozens of terrorist murderers honored by Fatah, tournament named after arch-terrorist Abu Jihad

Arch-terrorist Abu Jihad (Khalil Al-Wazir), who organized terror attacks in which 125 Israelis were murdered, has been made into one of the greatest heroes by the Palestinian Authority. One of the PA and Fatah's ways to promote Abu Jihad as a role model to Palestinians is by naming sports tournaments after him.

Thus Fatah's Bethlehem branch organized the
"Martyr Khalil Al-Wazir [Abu Jihad] and Loyalty to the Bethlehem District Prisoners [Futsal] Championship"
[Official Fatah Facebook page, May 1, 2018]

At this tournament, in addition to glorifying arch-terrorist Abu Jihad, Fatah also glorified other terrorists and murderers from the Bethlehem district who are serving numerous life sentences for murdering over 100 people. The terrorists' families were invited to a ceremony and given honorary posters with pictures of their imprisoned terrorist relatives.

The terrorist prisoners who were honored by Fatah at the Abu Jihad Championship in the Bethlehem district included:
[All photos are from the Facebook page of the independent Palestinian news agency Al-Hadath, May 1, 2018]

Ali Abu Hleil - Palestinian terrorist involved in two suicide bombings on buses in Jerusalem - one on Gaza Street on Jan. 29, 2004, in which 11 were murdered, and one on Emek Refaim Street on Feb. 22, 2004, in which 8 were murdered. Over 100 people were injured in the two bombings. Abu Hleil is serving 21 life sentences.
On Abu Hleil's poster is also written: "Heroic prisoner Ali Abu Hleil - life sentence"

Mishary Rashid Alafasy, Imam of the Grand Mosque of Kuwait, has issued some controversial opinions on his Twitter account that seem to allow for peace with Israel - with caveats.

He called for a solution to the Palestinian issue and to accept Israel's existence, saying it is permissible to reconcile with Jews.

But when he was criticized for this he emphasized that he was against all normalization with Israel, and he also reiterated that Jerusalem as a red line. He also said that reconciliation with Jews is a political choice, but not a permanent peace. The implication is that Muslims should accept Israel's existence as a tactical move until the Umma is strong enough to defeat it.

Alfasy pointed out that Mohammed reconciled even with polytheists (who are worse than Jews) before the conquest of Mecca.Reconciliation, he noted, is acceptable at a time when the Muslims are weak, but not when they are strong enough to prevail. He emphasized that he does not agree to normalization with Israel but only a temporary peace.

When Hamas complained about his statements, he pointed out that Hamas has previously offered a similar truce with Israel in the past.

An Arab religious leader who is willing to accept Israel as a temporary reality until it is possible to destroy it in war is what Westerners call a "moderate."

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Rioting in Ramadan as a religious obligation

Here's a cartoon in official Palestinian daily Al Hayat al Jadida making the moon that signals the beginning of Ramadan into a sling for Palestinians to attack Israel:

Here's the "Happy Ramadan" message from Palestine Today showing a Gazan with a burning tire and a traditional lantern for Ramadan:

Just imagine any other religion's symbols being used as positive incitement to violence.

(Obviously Palestinians have used Jewish religious symbols to incite each other to violence as well.)

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The poison that Palestinians read

Here's a photo of Mahmoud Abbas reading the official Palestinian newspaper Al Hayat al Jadida in his hospital bed yesterday morning:

Let's zoom in a bit:

It depicts an Israeli soldier replacing a Palestinian Arab baby's bottle with poison. (The reference is to the baby who had a heart condition who was brought to the border fence during the height of the riots last week and died, supposedly after tear gas exposure.)

This is the kind of blood libel that regular Palestinians read every day, day in and day out.

There is indeed poison in Palestinian society, and it is not from the Israelis.

(h/t Yisrael Medad and Ibn Boutros)

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Video: Palestinians pelt Americans with stones in Beit Jala

Ma'an reports that a group of Palestinian "activists" threw stones at the car of an American delegation to Beit Jala where they attended a ceremony to celebrate graduate students who had studied under an American program.

Video shows that the rioters threw stones, placed posters over the car so the driver couldn't see where he or she was going, kicked the car, sat and stood on the car.

There are at least 7 USAID projects in Beit Jala.

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