Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 31, 2018

05/31 Links Pt1: Who’s really behind the latest attacks on Israel; Why the Palestinians Can’t Say ‘Yes’ to Trump; The Zarif Mask Falls

From Ian:

NY Post Editorial: Who’s really behind the latest attacks on Israel

Both Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad are inspired by and closely coordinate with Tehran. And the mullahs are looking for ways to recover their mojo after President Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal.

This month, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard fired 32 rockets from Syria toward the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. This week, Islamic Jihad launched some 200 mortar shells at communities in southern Israel.

It was by far the largest attack from Gaza since the 2014 war. In retaliation, Israel bombed dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets, including a terrorist supply tunnel, drone facilities, weapons caches and a rocket-making plant.

And rightly so. As UN Ambassador Nikki Haley told the Security Council Wednesday: “Who among us would accept 70 rockets launched into your country? We all know the answer to that: No one would.”

Hamas’ decision to stop the attacks suggests it means to avoid another war, one that might well end its control of Gaza.

But Iran, an Israeli defense official said Wednesday, “doesn’t want stability.” No: It wants to send its own message to “deter people from putting more pressure on them.”

It isn’t working. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows that Israel will continue to pursue Iran and its terrorist proxies and make them “pay dearly.” Which is the most important message of all.

Sohrab Amari: The Zarif Mask Falls

Javad Zarif was recently caught on video chanting “Death to America!” and “Death to Britain!” and “Death to Israel!” at a rally in Tehran. That should come as no surprise to Americans who understand the nature of the Iranian regime, its history, and the anti-Western animus that pulsates at its heart. Yet numerous American political and media figures have spent years promoting Zarif as something other than what he is: a pure product of Khomeini’s hateful revolution.

Here’s the footage in question. Watch it—and re-watch it—as you join me on a guided tour of Zarif hagiography, courtesy of the American prestige press.
Death to America! Death to Britain! Death to Israel!

Fareed Zakaria, speaking at the Council of Foreign Relations, Sept. 23, 2016:
My guest needs no introduction. He has a favorability rating in Iran which has declined now to 75 percent. (Laughter.) I don’t think it’s quite that high in the United States. (Laughter.) But Mohammed Javad Zarif is the foreign minister of Iran. He was ambassador to the U.N. He’s a career diplomat. He is also an academic with a Ph.D. I think fair to say that he is the most distinguished diplomat Iran has had for many decades, and we have all seen him as he spearheaded Iran’s negotiations for the nuclear deal.
Death to America! Death to Britain! Death to Israel!

Robin Wright, writing in Time magazine, Oct. 28, 2016:
Zarif has . . . built a following in Washington. ‘He doesn’t play games,’ says Senate Select Committee on Intelligence chair Dianne Feinstein. . . . [H]e has also been lauded by the likes of Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Chuck Hagel when they were in the Senate. And he earned a University of Denver doctorate under the same professors who taught Condoleezza Rice.
Death to America! Death to Britain! Death to Israel!

I could go on and on. Will this latest footage finally shatter the liberal foreign-policy establishment’s illusion of Javad Zarif the moderate? Don’t count on it.

Algerian newspaper defends its antisemitic cartoons

The US State Department, in its annual human rights report, says in its section on Algeria:

In August the private newspaper, Echourouk El Youmi published a cartoon depicting a Jewish man with a Star of David on his sleeve clutching the surface of a globe, appearing to promote stereotypes of Jewish world domination. Also in August, Echourouk El Youmi published an article claiming that Jews had been plotting against Muslims for centuries, that Jews were responsible for most of the disasters that have befallen Muslims, and that Jews controlled the media, cinema, art, and fashion.

A columnist in that same newspaper is very upset at the allegations - and proves how antisemitic he is.

Rachid Ould Bouceifa writes about the Jews of Algeria as if they were never part of the country to begin with, and then complains that they took the side of the French. Proof of this is that after Algeria gained independence. most Jews emigrated to France. It couldn't have had anything to do with how they were treated, right?

He adds how some Jews blackmailed Arabs in Algeria.

And then he says that the cartoons are not antisemitic, ridiculing the idea that one cannot make fun of Jews in a symbolic way by means of caricature (I guess he means that everyone knows that Jews aren't literally holding the entire planet in their hands, duh.)

Bouceifa is also upset at the idea that antisemitism is even looked upon as a human rights issue. The very idea that someone would be concerned over it shows that Jews position themselves as being somehow superior to other humans.

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The Arab Organization of Human Rights issues what appear to be weekly press statements, usually condemning Israel for something or other.

This week was no different.

But buried within the items calling on the ICC to prosecute Israel and for the world to boycott Israel one sees this:

The International Legal and Communication Committee calls on the Palestinian President and the Government to immediately begin lifting the punitive and illegal measures imposed on the Gaza Strip and taking the necessary measures to support the steadfastness of the citizens and secure a decent life for them.

While this is mild language an purposefully vague as to exactly what Mahmoud Abbas is doing (limiting fuel, medicines, salaries, goods, paperwork for Gazans to travel to the West Bank) it is interesting to see that it calls his actions "illegal."

A tiny drop in the tsunami of hate.

As far as I can tell, the AOHR isn't concerned about any Arab human rights issues except in Palestinian areas.

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An online poll at Ma'an Arabic asked its Palestinian readers who the most dangerous and most hostile leaders are towards their cause.

Nearly 85% said that Arab leaders "who were striving to normalize with the occupation" are the most dangerous and hostile ones, with the remaining 15% divided in their anger at Trump and "the government of settlers and Zionist extremists."

This poll was taken after the US Embassy moved to Jerusalem.

It is not a scientific poll by any means but it does give an indication of how, despite the PR successes from the Gaza riots, the Palestinians feel more isolated than ever before.

The Arab world has been fed up with Palestinian refusal to make peace with Israel as well as the continuing Hamas/Fatah split for a decade now, and this has not gone unnoticed among Palestinians, even as this story is still woefully underreported in Western media.

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05/30 Links Pt2: Survivors to appeal to have Farhud seen as a Nazi event; Haaretz’s Strange Tale About ‘Spying’ on Linda Sarsour; UK poll: 23% ‘unwilling’ to have a Jew in the family

From Ian:

Survivors to appeal to have Farhud seen as a Nazi event

Survivors of the Farhud pogrom in Iraq are to appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court after their failure in the lower courts to have the 1941 pogrom recognised as a Nazi-inspired event, writes Ofer Aderet in Haaretz. The judge seems to fear that such an indictment would let Arabs 'off the hook' for antisemitism.

The Supreme Court in Jerusalem will hear the Farhud survivors' appeal

Until now, however, the Israeli government has refused to recognize any ostensible connection between the Farhud and the Nazi regime, and as a result has not granted monetary compensation to its victims in the context of the Victims of Nazi Persecution Law. In February a panel of judges in the Haifa District Court rejected a lawsuit filed by about 2,000 survivors of the Farhud, who demanded legal recognition as Nazi victims. The judges sided with the government, ruling that the Farhud was not a pogrom whose roots lay in Nazi Germany.

“Nazi Germany’s responsibility for the Holocaust of the Jewish people is not under discussion,” wrote Judge Ron Shapira in his ruling, although he also noted that Nazi Germany should receive “all the blame for pogroms against Jews everywhere.”

He added: “Anti-Semitism, in its various forms, existed prior to the rise of the Nazi regime, and didn’t disappear from the world after Nazi Germany was defeated. There are many causes for the phenomenon of anti-Semitism and some change from one period to the next.”

The judge criticized the attempt to blame the Nazis for the Farhud, and said that anyone who does so “is missing the mark and removing responsibility from any others who championed anti-Semitism and racist theories and xenophobia – and do so to this day.”

Melanie Phillips: ISRAELI PR, UK AND JERUSALEM, NORTH KOREA

Please join me here for my discussion with Avi Abelow of Israel Unwired on the media response to the Hamas attack on the Gaza border fence, Israel’s strategic failure to make its own case, the British government’s attitude to Jerusalem and the on/off/on US/North Korea summit.

Kuwait blocks US bid to condemn Gaza rocket fire at Security Council

Kuwait on Wednesday blocked a US-drafted UN Security Council statement that would have strongly condemned Palestinian rocket fire from the Gaza Strip on Israel.

The United States had circulated the draft text ahead of an emergency council meeting, to be held later Wednesday at Washington’s request, on the rocket and mortar attacks by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups.

Kuwait, a non-permanent council member that represents Arab countries, said that it was blocking the statement to allow for consideration of a draft resolution it has put forward on the protection of Palestinian civilians.

In an email to the US mission seen by AFP, Kuwait said: “We cannot agree to the text put forth by your delegation especially as we are considering a draft resolution that deals with the protection of civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories and the Gaza Strip.”

Kuwait earlier this month blocked another US-proposed statement that criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s remarks about Jews as “unacceptable.”

Two other draft statements expressing concern about the violence in Gaza were previously blocked by the United States, laying bare the sharp divisions on the Security Council over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Security Council statements are adopted by consensus by all 15 members.

Haaretz’s Strange Tale About ‘Spying’ on Linda Sarsour

Why is it so important who wrote the document that Uri Blau obtained?

First, because this is not the case of an “Israeli organization” that “spies on an American citizen,” but an American organization collecting open source information on a fellow American.

Second, while Blau alleged that Shelson Adelson, a close associated of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, funded the “spying,” the Forum maintained that it never received any funding from Adelson.

Third, the letter against Sarsour is not a part of a campaign against the BDS movement, but a part of a project of an American organization to counter Islamists in America.

Fourth, nothing clandestine was done (as phrases such as “spying” and “collecting intelligence” suggest). All information was gathered from open sources in order to serve a clear agenda.

And so, a story – certainly not the one that Haaretz‘s Uri Blau set out to tell – emerges from a non-story. Haaretz pedaled a false story about a shadowy Israeli organization spying on an American citizen. But the real story became about the journalist’s false accusations, and his erroneous attribution of the document to the wrong organization.

Presspectiva, CAMERA’s Hebrew department, sent Uri Blau and Haaretz editors the following questions and also asked for response on the points made here:

Why was the report published only in English, an anomaly among Blau’s investigative pieces?

Do you intend to correct the report and/or apologize, per the Middle East Forum’s request?

As of this writing, no response has been received. Nor has Haaretz addressed or made any reference to the Middle East Forum’s statements.

He was only 20 when the heavy concrete or marble slab was dropped from above, ending his life. Three stories up, a young Arab male flexed his hands. He’d held that slab for five full minutes, studying the situation, making sure his aim was true. He’d developed a cramp. But he’d completed his mission, born of hatred nursed for years. He’d dropped the slab. Seen it connect.

Everything that was bad in his life, he’d learned to blame it on the Jews. This is what his parents had taught him, because everyone whose life is hard needs a target for blame and fury. Everyone needs an outlet for the things that can’t be changed, doors that cannot be opened.

For this Arab youth, that outlet, that target, was an anonymous 20-year-old. He would do, this boy who’d never know hardship, who’d never known life as his murderer experienced it. For the Jew wore the uniform of the IDF. The uniform of the people the Arab youth had been taught to hate.

He didn’t know Ronen. Didn’t know if he loved fried chicken, or chocolate ice cream, his brother, his parents. He didn’t know that Ronen may have once had sensitive skin that reddened in the hot intensity of the Israeli sun as he stood guard over his people, a rite of Israeli passage. The Arab youth knew only that the pieces were laid out on the chessboard, had been laid out ages ago, perhaps before the players had been born. The Arab youth on the roof, holding a slab of white marble, three stories up. The Jew on the ground below, in clothes representing all that had ever gone wrong. A symbol. Something to hate.

Ronen, on the other hand, had no symbols of hate as he stood there in his IDF uniform. His energy was not directed that way, but to opening doors.

“You fought. Throughout your life you chose all of the closed doors and were better than everyone else. I’m sure you chose this moment too,” said his brother Arik at the funeral attended by hundreds, for a boy who lost his life too soon, because he’d worn a hated symbol.

Did Ronen see hate as a door closed against him? Something that must be opened?

We will never know. Because the slab came down, down, down, closing a door forever. A door that might have, could have been a bridge between peoples. But was not.

It was just a door slamming firmly shut, sealed by hate. Hatred of someone the Arab youth didn’t know, hadn’t met. He didn’t have to know Ronen to hate him. Didn’t have to know a thing about him. Clothes make the man, they say. The IDF uniform had marked Ronen for death, because of something the Arab youth had been told all his life.

Told at his mother’s breast, imbibed with her milk. Because everyone needs a focus for hate and blame. It helps to let out the fire in the wound, like lancing an abscess, the pus needs to out.

How do you hate someone enough to kill? How are you strong enough to end the life of someone you’ve never met? Only there on the ground beneath you in clothes you don’t like as you hold a heavy concrete or marble slab.

A symbol, that IDF uniform, like a red hot poker, poking you in the eye, nudging you from behind inexorably forward.

A symbol for all you’ve been taught to hate that uniform and the boy wearing it until it boils up, boils over, the hate. Red hot, touching everything you know, poisoning everything in reach.

Did the slab feel heavy in your hands as it waited for the moment you would anoint it killer? Or did it feel light as a feather? Could you have held it for hours until just the right moment when the Angel of Death whispered in your ear, saying, “Now.”

What did it feel like, the moment the slab left your hand? How did you feel watching it plummet from your high perch on a building, unseen and undetected, to watch your missive crash on the head of the unsuspecting Jew?

Or did you run away so you wouldn’t get caught?

No. I think you stood there. You wanted to see, needed to see. Vindication for all you’d ever suffered: poverty, unemployment, hard work, food insecurity. Like the murderer attending the funerals of his victims. Like collecting a trophy, you needed this moment to soothe and calm you, this visual picture, the culmination and full flowering of the hate you’d been raised on all your life. You would see the moment over and over again in your head, an instant replay of the moment Ronen’s young head was smashed like a sharp knife plunging into a ripe melon, splitting Kevlar and steel until you could see the soft, sweet meat that once directed hands to move turn the pages in a book, ears to hear birdsong, a throat to swallow the favorite dish his mama always made him when he came home on leave for Shabbat.

With that slab in your hand, from high above, you were all about ending things and the finality of hate. But Ronen was about possibility, a door-opener. His brother Arik said so at his funeral. He would have done great things, Ronen, opened many closed doors in his life. While you stood there, your mind seething with hate and contemplating evil, Ronen saw doors and challenges and ways to move forward.

Incurable cancer. Could that have been Ronen’s great challenge? The closed door that no one else could open?

Might Ronen have someday discovered the cure for the cancer that would one day take the life of his murderer, or perhaps the life of his murderer’s beloved mother? The one who taught him to hate? To throw heavy slabs of stone on the heads of people wearing a uniform she didn’t/he didn’t like?

Or maybe the great closed door in Ronen’s life would be ending the violence: The Arab war against the Jews. Perhaps that was the unbudgeable door that was closed to Ronen, the door he felt he must open, the door that challenged him above all others. Might he have come up with the plan that would open the door? The plan that would end all the violence forever and all the hate?

The plan that would mean no more marble slabs thrown from three stories up, to slam down on the head of a boy too young to die. A boy who would have opened doors, ended hate, cured cancer, loved well, fathered children. Who might have opened doors, ended the violence, stopped the people who target those in a uniform they don’t like with refrigerators, washing machines, furniture, and marble slabs, while telling all those who hate like them that they have no arms, no guns to defend themselves, as they stand on rooftops above the exposed heads of those they hate, holding things too heavy to fall on the heads of boys.

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BDS, JVP Frustrated By Inability To Make NBA Finals About Palestine (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Oakland, May 20 - Activists accustomed to co-opting every popular issue or cause for anti-Israel advocacy purposes have admitted hitting a metaphorical wall in attempting to do the same with the championship basketball series between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Representatives of Jewish Voice for Peace and local advocated of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement against Israel disclosed to reporters today that despite intense efforts to associate the climax of the National Basketball Association's 2017-2018 season with Palestinian aspirations to destroy Israel, they have enjoyed no noticeable success. Members of the groups attributed the failure to multiple factors.

"It might have been different if [the] Houston [Rockets] or Boston [Celtics] had made the finals," surmised Reem Assil, a restaurateur and Palestine activist in the Warriors' hometown. "As it is, though, this is just a rematch of last year's series, so it's not as compelling a story to hijack. Not as much buzz."

"Also we no longer have the Israelis associated with each team who could have served as lightning rods for our efforts," noted Pardi Pupr, a leader of the Berkeley chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. "Omri Casspi isn't on the Warriors anymore, which in itself is good news, but paradoxically, that deprives us of a figure on whom to focus our venom and make any connection with the cause. The same goes for David Blatt, who no longer coaches the Cavs. Without those two, it becomes much harder to find an emotionally resonant way to show everyone everything is really about us."

Academics in the San Francisco Bay area cited another factor. "My colleagues and I have been advising student activists how to handle this, and we realized one of the important reasons for the challenge," explained SFSU Professor of Gender Studies Hugh Briss. "Specifically, it's that neither of these two teams is a clear underdog. Both are recent champions and have been more or less unbeatable during the regular season. Fighters for justice in Palestine don't really have a way to depict one team as parallel to the plucky, underdog and therefore virtuous, Palestinians, and the other as the more powerful, and therefore evil, Israel."

Other activists perceived actual human intent behind the frustration. "The head of the NBA is a Jew," stated Stephanie Lind, a sophomore at UC-Berkeley and a member of the campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. "Adam Silver obviously set things up so no one would be able to bring any important issues into the arena. We see the same thing with the NFL and kneeling, and the unjust way in which the owners, many of whom are Jewish, manipulate things to the detriment of justice."

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05/30 Links Pt1: Glick: There is No Peace Plan That Would Satisfy Palestinians; Hamas must choose between war or peace; Terrorist funerals – glorification and incitement by the PA

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: There is No Peace Plan That Would Satisfy Palestinians

Two recent Palestinian developments show that peace plans, no matter how well-intentioned, are both doomed to fail and counterproductive.

First, there are Hamas’s concerted efforts to swarm Gaza’s border with Israel.

Since late March, Hamas has massed terrorists interspersed with civilians along the border. It has made repeated efforts – many successful – to destroy Israel’s border fence and penetrate Israeli territory. Hamas terror operatives have destroyed thousands of acres of Israeli farmland with incendiary devices flown over the border on kites and drones.

During operations to protect its territory, Israeli military forces have killed some one hundred Palestinians — the vast majority affiliated with the Hamas terror organization. Early Hamas reports of mass civilian casualties were later retracted.

For the U.S., the main strategic implication of Hamas’s ongoing operation is that the terror group, sponsored by both Iran and Turkey, is firmly in control of Gaza.

With Gaza operating as a miniature Taliban-controlled Afghanistan at war against Israel and Egypt — America’s two most powerful Middle East allies – the notion that there is any chance of achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians is absurd.

If the Palestinian Authority (PA), which runs an autonomous Palestinian regime in Judea and Samaria (otherwise known as the West Bank) were ever to strike a deal with Israel, two things would happen. First, the Hamas regime in Gaza would open major hostilities against Israel. And second, the thousands of Hamas operatives in Judea and Samaria would immediately rise up against the PA.

In other words, so long as Hamas controls Gaza, it has the power to veto any peace deal, and it can be expected to use its power to achieve that goal.

The second development in recent weeks that lays bare the futility of any prospective U.S. push for peace is the medical condition of PA leader-for-life Mahmoud Abbas.

On Monday, Abbas was released from his third hospitalization this month. He was being treated for pneumonia. Although he walked out of the hospital with no assistance, and announced he would be returning to work the following day, Israeli and Palestinian officials acknowledge quietly that the 83-year-old leader, with a history of heart disease and prostate cancer, is not long for this world.

Abbas served as Yassir Arafat’s deputy in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for forty years before succeeding Arafat in power after his death in 2004. Like Arafat before him, Abbas controls all the power centers in the PA. He serves as chairman of the PLO, chairman of the PLO’s ruling Fatah party, and as chairman of the PA. He was elected to the latter position for a four-year team in 2005. He controls the international donor funds and the American- and European-trained-and-financed Palestinian security services.

PMW: Terrorist funerals – glorification and incitement by the PA

The Palestinian Authority's practice of glorifying terrorists is a daily occurrence, well documented by Palestinian Media Watch. Funerals of terrorists provide an additional opportunity for the PA to laud them as heroes and often set the scene for incitement.

To combat this phenomenon, Israel's government decided that, as a general rule, the bodies of terrorists would not be transferred to their families, but rather buried in designated cemeteries in Israel.

In a rare divergence from this policy, in February this year, the bodies of two Palestinian terrorists - Nimr Mahmoud Ahmed Al-Jamal, murderer of 3 Israelis, and Hamza Zamaarah who after serving 14 years in prison for previous terror offences, attempted to stab an Israeli security guard - were transferred to their families.

The release of their bodies resulted in mass glorification of these terrorists.

During its coverage of the funeral of terrorist Al-Jamal, PA TV praised him as a "Martyr" who "ascended to Heaven" when he was killed during his attack:

Official PA TV narrator: "In an atmosphere of sadness and grief, masses of our people accompanied the body of 37-year-old Martyr Nimr Al-Jamal to his final resting place... Martyr Nimr Al-Jamal ascended [to Heaven] on Sept. 26, [2017] while carrying out an operation (i.e., terror attack) at the entrance to the settlement called Har Adar, during which 3 occupation army soldiers were killed. Since then his body was kept [by Israel], until he returned today borne on his friends' shoulders to embrace his town's soil and join the processions of Martyrs." [Official PA TV News, Feb. 17, 2018]

Anti-Israel professor cares about pro-Israel grammar in news stories, but facts aren't important at all

Here is a great example of how anti-Israel academics can get their propaganda spread by pretending to write about something altogether different.

Annabelle Lukin is an Associate Professor in Linguistics at Macquarie University. She has decided to spread her hate under the pretext of critiquing the verb usage on stories from Gaza as not being adequately pro-Israel.

The recent killing of unarmed Palestinians by Israeli forces has sparked not only a reasonable outcry, but commentary on the language journalists use to report these events.

[O]ne of the most important but contested roles of modern journalism [is]the act of putting political violence into words.

The bad news for journalists is there is no neutral mode. If your words sound neutral, it’s likely you’ve simply avoided laying responsibility for the killings, or have imputed responsibility only indirectly.

She illustrates the story this way:

The entire article uses Gaza, and only Gaza, to make her point. Her Twitter account is littered with anti-Israel posts.

But it is ostensibly not an anti-Israel story but a critique of how journalists cover violence.

Maybe I'm just a rube, but while I agree that the wording of stories is important, accuracy should be far more important than "imputing responsibility."

Lukin's desired headline implies that those who were killed were merely protesters, the kind you might see in London or New York.

It is obvious that killing peaceful protesters is abhorrent.

But the Gazans were rioters, not protesters. Throwing firebombs, setting fields on fire with Molotov kites, gunfire and active attempts to invade another country are all military actions, not peaceful protest. Her suggested headline is deceptive, and knowingly deceptive.

Some 85% of those killed were linked to terror groups. That information is now known, and Lukin cannot claim ignorance since she clearly researched all the Gaza stories she could find. To portray them as mere "protesters" - which most media did and continues to do is irresponsible journalism.

The offensive part of the Gaza stories isn't the grammar - it is the lies of omission in not describing the actual context of the riots as being a military operation, planned and executed by a terror group, using civilians as chaff to draw fire while the terrorists attempt to mount an invasion that would include murder and kidnapping. All of this is admitted to by Hamas itself.

To Lukin, the use of passive voice is a bigger problem than the media not doing their actual job of reporting.

Lukin is not concerned with facts - if they go against her hated of Israel.

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Every "martyr student" in Gaza who missed final exams was linked to a terror group

Here is a poster going around Palestinian media of students who were mowed down in the prime of their lives by evil Israelis so they couldn't attend final exams.

One Gazan translated this propaganda to English:

Every single one of these students were associated with terror groups.

Details of the first two can be seen in the most recent report by the Meir Amit Center.

The student on the left is Bilal Badeir Hussein al-Ashram, who was a Fatah operative according to his Fatah branch in Gaza. Here's their martyr poster for him:

The middle photo is of Ibrahim Ahmad al-Zarqa, 18, who spoke often of his desire to become a martyr and who was active in Hamas' media bureau. Here's another photo of him:

The last student, Muhannad Bakr Abu Tahoun, 21, succumbed to his wounds last Thursday in a Hebron hospital (yes, Israel allowed him to leave Gaza to be treated in Hebron.) He was also linked to Fatah and he was buried in a Fatah flag, as uniformed Fatah militants kissed him:

Three high school seniors killed. Every single one associated with terror groups.

The coincidences keep piling up.

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From AFP:

Tickets for an Israel-Argentina friendly in Jerusalem next month with Barcelona star Lionel Messi expected in the line-up sold out within 20 minutes, the Israeli company handling sales said.
The Le'an agency said on its website that nearly 100,000 fans applied for 20,000 tickets when they went on general sale Sunday evening.
"No sporting event has ever caused such hysteria in Israel," it wrote.
Prices ranged from 44 shekels (about $12, 10 euros) for children and soldiers to 825 shekels in the VIP area.
Another 5,000 places went to supporters of the Israeli national team in a pre-sale reserved for them and over 4,000 tickets were to be distributed to children from needy families.
The game will take place on June 9 at the Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem which has a capacity of 31,733 seats.

Palestinians, predictably, are freaking out, especially since the game is being played in Jerusalem.

The Fatah movement called on the Argentine government and people to cancel their friendly match with the team of the occupying state in Jerusalem, saying that conducting this match in the occupation state and in Jerusalem specifically is an attack on the rights of the Palestinian people, meant to mislead international public opinion, and exploit the sport and this game in particular in order to break the law and international legitimacy for the oppression and oppression of the Palestinian people.
A member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and its official spokesman Osama al-Qawasmi said in a press statement that Israel is exploiting a noble sport. One of [football]'s goals is to build bridges of love, peace and communication among the peoples of the earth, but Israel is turning it into racist political goals and to persecute others and create hatred. In Jerusalem, the capital of the Palestinian state, we are recalling that the blood of our children, our young men and women in Gaza whose blood has not yet dried up as a result of Israeli bullets, backed by an unjust American decision to consider Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Sure Teddy Stadium is inside the 1949 partition lines, but apparently the Palestinians don't care about that any more. Anything that happens in Jerusalem is illegal unless they approve.

What really upsets them is that the entire idea of going to Israel came from star player Lionel Messi for good luck in the World Cup:

:If Argentina win the World Cup this summer, Israel can take some of the credit.
The Argentinian players — Lionel Messi, Sergio Aguero et al — are due in Jerusalem on June 9 to play a friendly match in the Teddy Stadium, seven days before they kick off in their first match in the World Cup finals against Iceland in Moscow.
Many of the players are devout Catholics who believe that the opportunity to pray in Jerusalem will boost their World Cup chances.
Pope Francis, an enthusiastic fan of the Argentinean team, will reportedly send a personal emissary to conduct a special mass for the team in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Messi, the team captain, is in no doubt about how important the trip could be. He said: “I really want to visit the Holy Land and for Argentina this will be an important professional and spiritual journey and I’m convinced that coming to Israel ahead of the World Cup will do us good.”

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Palestinian "academic" to Israelis: "May you rot in hell along with your Jewish state"

From the Facebook page of Rima Najjar, an American-educated retired professor of English literature at Al-Quds University now living in Bloomington, Indiana.

Can't you feel the love?

This is the kind of peace that the BDSers and "moderate" Palestinians want. A desire for all Jews in Israel to rot in hell.

And, no, she isn't antisemitic in the least. She just believes that every other people can have a state but the Jews.

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05/29 Links Pt2: France Is Hypocritical on Israel, the U.S., and ‘International Law’; The Tale of Kerry, Zarif, and Assad; Columnist: Israel has no lawful right to defend itself

From Ian:

France Is Hypocritical on Israel, the U.S., and ‘International Law’

Along with several other European countries, France has strongly opposed America’s decision to relocate its embassy to Israel’s capital. To support its position, Paris has claimed, on the basis of various UN resolutions, that international law militates against recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. These legal claims, writes Michel Gurfinkiel, are muddled—at best:

Both France and the EU claim that the 1949 cease-fire lines between Israel and Jordan in the Jerusalem area (the “Green Line”) are an international border. If this were indeed the case, those sectors in Jerusalem held by Israel [following the cease-fire] would be internationally recognized Israeli territory; accordingly, Israel would have every right to turn them into its capital, and the United States, or any other country, to locate its embassy there.

Likewise, France and the EU countries [already] recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s de-facto capital, since they routinely visit the Israeli government or the Israeli parliament there. Under international law, a de-facto recognition is as valid as a de-jure recognition. . . .

Paris and Brussels [therefore] point to Security Council Resolution 470, passed on August 20, 1980, which condemned the enactment by Israel’s parliament of a constitutionally binding law enshrining Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and called upon the governments that had already established embassies in that city to withdraw them. Resolution 470 was largely based on the . . . General Assembly’s Resolution 303 of December 9, 1949.

However, Gurfinkiel argues, France refuses to apply the same logic to itself, as evidenced by the case of the island of Mayotte. Mayotte had been a French colony along with the other Comoros Islands, but when the Comoros became independent, its populace repeatedly voted to remain part of France, which to this day treats the island as its own:

Trump’s Israel Policies Compared To The Last 12 Presidents

With President Donald Trump’s fulfillment of his campaign promise to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel, his moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, his subsequent refusal to ratify the Obama administration’s Iran Nuclear Deal, and official statements from the White House twitter account such as:

"The U.S. condemns the Iranian regime’s provocative rocket attacks from Syria against Israeli citizens, and we strongly support Israel’s right to act in self-defense." – @WhiteHouse, May 10, 2018

(and all of this in just one year!), Trump has set the foundations for what could be the most stalwartly pro-Israel American foreign policy since Israel’s birth in 1947.

With religiously anti-Trump pundits (see here, or here) insisting that Trump’s policies and rhetoric are actually damaging to Israel and somehow worse than those of his predecessors, it’s worth taking a stroll down memory lane to see how past presidents perceived Israel, and how they conducted their foreign policies.

Barack Obama (Democrat) (January 20, 2009 – January 20, 2017)
Barak Obama made strong statements in his campaign for the oval office, marketing himself as an ostensibly pro-Israel candidate. He even called Jerusalem the capital of Israel: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided. I have no illusions that this will be easy."

When speaking with Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy bewailed Israel’s PM saying, "I can’t stand Netanyahu; he is a coward and a liar." Rather than defend Netanyahu, Obama replied, "You can’t stand him? I have to deal with him more than you."

Obama also signed 38-billion-dollars in aid to Israel. The 10-year foreign aid package came on the heels of Obama’s Iran nuclear deal which Israel warned would only further empower Iran and do nothing to mitigate its funding of terrorist organizations or pursuit of nuclear weapons. Moreover, under a provision of the deal called, the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), Israel is barred from receiving any additional funds with the notable exception of wartime.

As one of his final actions as US president, Obama refused to exercise the United States’s veto power in the United Nations, allowing a virulently anti-Israel resolution calling for a halt to Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem (a region Obama previously stated was without question part of Israel’s undivided capital).

Gaza electricity cut off after rocket strikes supplying facility

One of dozens of rockets launched Tuesday by terrorists from the Gaza Strip hit facilities supplying electricity to the Gaza Strip.

Due to the damage to the facilities, three lines supplying electricity to the southern Gaza Strip were stopped.

The electricity company said it would take several days to repair the equipment for a regular supply of electricity.

Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz instructed the Israel Electricity Company (IEC) not to endanger its employees and to repair the problem only after a lull.

Jews now holding tours of Temple Mount for non-Jews!

A Gaza newspaper shows this interesting image:

The article says that "a group of rabbis and settlers" took a group of Chinese tourists through the Temple Mount area, describing where the Temple stood.

According to the article, "this is the first time that a foreign delegation has participated in breaking into the Aqsa Mosque." Obviously there are foreign tourists at the site all the time, but only when Jews walk around the periphery is it called "breaking into Al Aqsa Mosque."

It is a great idea for Jews to show Christians and other tourists the truth about the Temple Mount.

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"Palestinian Lives Matter" (only as long as you can blame Jews) (Poster)

Here's one of the more cynical PR moves by the anti-Israel crowd:

Activists Monday laid out 4,500 pairs of shoes in front of the Council of the European Union in Brussels to represent every person killed in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict over the last decade.

Members of the activist group Avaaz covered Jean Rey Square with shoes, donated by citizens across Europe over the last week.

It was part of what the group said was a "growing call for EU governments to protect Palestinian lives by reining in Israel’s government violence".

"Citizens across Europe have one clear message for our governments: Palestinian lives matter to us and they need to matter to you," said Avaaz Campaign Director Christoph Schott.

If Palestinian lives matter to Avaaz, then why don't they count the nearly 4000 Palestinians killed in Syria in only the past five years? Not to mention the hundreds of thousands who have been forced to flee Syria and Lebanon or the institutional discrimination they suffer throughout the Arab world.

I fixed their banner to be a bit more accurate:

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