Friday, June 01, 2018

  • Friday, June 01, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon
This story from Middle East Monitor is not too unbelievable....but still, it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has threatened to severe security cooperation with Israel if the blockade on the Gaza Strip is lifted, according to the Palestine Information Centre.

Quoting Hebrew media sources, the news site reported that the PA intelligence chief Majed Faraj sent a letter to his Israeli counterpart Nadav Argaman warning him against any action that would help alleviate the suffering of the population in Gaza.

The warning allegedly came after reports surfaced that Egypt and Qatar would help mediate a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas that would relax the blockade, now in its eleventh year.

Such a plan is thought to be detrimental to the interests of the PA, which seeks to pressure Hamas into handing over control of the Strip, following failed reconciliation talks at the end of last year.

A possible deal, according to Israeli media, would see Tel Aviv demand a complete cessation of rocket fire and tunnel building, in addition to respecting the security perimeter at the Gaza border and a solution regarding the Israeli prisoners of war held in Gaza.

In return, Israel will substantially reduce restrictions at Gaza’s border crossings, including permitting the entry of goods and services to the impoverished enclave, on the condition that they will not be used to boost Hamas’ armed wing. Egypt will also lessen restrictions at its Rafah crossing with Gaza and open the border more frequently.
PIC is a Hamas-linked propaganda site, so they have reason to make things up. They don't say what Hebrew sources they used so it could be some Hebrew-language conspiracy site for all we know.

But it is interesting that Hamas want to publish this.






We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
  • Friday, June 01, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon
Sarah Leah Whitson, the Executive Director, Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, yesterday retweeted a 2015 tweet from the BDS-supporting Jewish Voice for Peace.

Her retweet proves beyond any doubt that HRW is not only anti-Israel but has complete disregard for facts and fairness.


The graphic is a bunch of lies, as we've proven many times before.

Even worse, MSNBC apologized at the time of the incident and stated that the maps were "completely wrong."

Yet Sarah Leah Whitson is pretending that the apology never happened.

Similarly, McGraw Hill once went through significant expense to withdraw and destroy a textbook that included The Map That Lies and apologized for publishing the lies that are on this graphic.

Years later, the person at HRW who is most responsible for knowing the truth retweets an outdated post by an anti-Israel group that pushes a series of lies.

If MSNBC and McGraw Hill apologized for publishing this, then HRW is obligated to do no less. But we know they won't, because in the areas under the responsibility of Sarah Leah Whitson, bashing Israel is more important than the truth. It has always been that way and this incident shows that HRW will never change until Ken Roth, Sarah Leah Whitson and all the other Israel haters are fired and replaced with people who actually give a damn about the truth.

(h/t Petra)





We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
  • Friday, June 01, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon

The Arab world is very upset over the injury of star soccer player Mohamed Salah, who was tackled by Read Madrid superstar Sergio Ramos last weekend in Kiev.

A petition demanding that Ramos be punished for the hit has reached over half a million signatures.

An Egyptian lawyer has filed a €1 billion lawsuit against Ramos for causing the injury.

"I'll ask for compensation, which could exceed €1 billion (£873 million), for the physical and psychological harm that Ramos gave Salah and the Egyptian people," the Egyptian lawyer said.

But most bizarre was the part that was most obvious: Arabs are accusing Ramos of being secretly Jewish in order to explain Ramos' action.

Egyptian newspaper El Fagr starts off its article making this accusation this way:

It is not a conspiracy theory, which the Jews always accuse us of adopting, when we create positions that sound far from reason and logic to prove our position, even though we prove every time that we are right. Every hatred against us has its roots and origins. Those who support them stand behind them with all their might. 
In the beginning, we must mention a clear fact that Jews never leave their vengeance no matter how long it has been. Examples include the assassination of Dr. Ashraf Marwan in London in 2007 after he killed 2,500 Israelis in the 1973 war because of his misleading information about the date of the real war, And before him liquidation of the leaders of the resistance in the Arab world which caused the deaths of Israelis, notably Yahya Ayyash, Imad Mughniyeh, Mahmoud Mabhouh and others.

There are those who wonder what all this has to do with sport, and the injury by Real Madrid player Sergio Ramos to our international star Mohamed Salah. Yes, there is a strong relationship that confirms the claim that Israel has never renounced its revenge.
Why did Jews want to exact revenge on Salah? Well, five years ago Salah - forced by his team to travel to Israel for a friendly match - refused to shake hands with the Israelis.

The Jews, according to this article, never forgot this awful snub. And Sergio Ramos has a Star of David tattooed on his arm - which means he is Jewish, and probably a Marrano or an otherwise secret Jew since his family is publicly Catholic.



The article says that the Jews, who never forget a slight to their honor, waited for just the right time to injure Salah a couple of weeks ahead of the World Cup where he was to lead the Egyptian team.

There you have it. The Jews enlisted a Real Madrid superstar to hurt the Arab because he refused to shake hands with Israelis.

I have yet to see any ridicule over this theory in Egyptian media.

(Ramos had tattooed the Star of David in memory of a Jewish teammate of his who died suddenly.)

There is one other theory floating around to explain Salah's injury, though. A Kuwaiti preacher says Allah willed it it is because he ate on Ramadan.




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

Thursday, May 31, 2018

From Ian:

A Radical Romance with the Palestinians
A Shadow over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America. By Keith P. Feldman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. 312 pp. $24.95, paper.

In August 2014, protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, after police killed Michael Brown, Jr., an African American teenager who had stolen some cigars. Meanwhile in Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were negotiating a ceasefire with Hamas following Operation Protective Edge, attending the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers. But the slogan at Black Lives Matter protests in Missouri read “Ferguson is Palestine.”

Feldman’s A Shadow over Palestine is a detailed but deeply flawed account of the origins of the radical romance between American Black nationalists and Palestinian rejectionists in Gaza, Beirut, and the faculty lounges of Columbia University. The current cant of “intersectionality” and “resistance” revives the post-1967 alliance between Black nationalists and the New Left in the United States and among anti-liberal nationalist and Islamist movements in Arab societies.

The outcome of the 1967 Six-Day War deepened the Kennedy-era U.S. support for Israel into a Cold War alliance but also coincided with dramatic shifts in American political life. The legislative victories of the civil rights movement tipped American politics towards a Tocquevillian “revolution of rising expectations” and a radicalization that would break the Black-Jewish coalition of the early 1960s. The New Left, its expectations of working-class revolution thwarted by prosperity, found new allies in Frantz Fanon’s “wretched of the earth,” the peoples of the postcolonial Third World.

In his first chapter, Feldman of the University of California, Berkeley, traces how the definition of Zionism as “a new offshoot of European Imperialism and a new variety of racist Colonialism” made its way from the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Palestine Research Center (PRC) in Beirut to the 1975 United Nations General Assembly resolution identifying Zionism with racism. Significantly, Feldman does not mention that Faeyez Sayegh and other theorists at the PRC were merely regurgitating Soviet propaganda from the 1950s. He does, however, characterize diplomat Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s campaign against the resolution as an attempt “to delink racism from history” and to export “racial liberalism” as the imperial face of neoconservatism.

Next, Feldman describes how the Black Panther Party and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) disseminated propaganda for the “colonial analogy” linking race revolution in America with the Palestinian cause. SNCC’s 1967 position paper on Zionism, “Third World Round-Up,” was “purportedly drafted within the organization.” In fact, it reproduced “almost verbatim” the PRC’s 1966 pamphlet “Do You Know?: Twenty Basic Facts about the Palestine Problem.”
‘Non-Violent’ Palestinian Rock-Throwers Murder Another Israeli
Another Israeli has been murdered, after having been struck in the head by what Haaretz described as a “heavy brick.”

For years, major American news media outlets have portrayed Palestinian rock-throwers as “peaceful” protesters, even when they throw rocks and bricks.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman infamously once included rock-throwing in his list of types of “non-violent resistance” that he hoped Palestinians would carry out. Well, I guess Friedman got his wish.

On May 24, an Israeli counter-terror unit entered the al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah in pursuit of fugitive terrorists. Apparently, the absurdly large Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces, which are headquartered in Ramallah, had no interest in arresting the terrorists, so the Israelis had to enter PA-occupied territory to do the job that the PA promised to do in the Oslo Accords.

For years, groups like J Street and Peace Now have been telling us that ordinary Palestinian Arabs are just like ordinary Americans — they’re moderate, peace-seeking, opponents of terrorism.
Major French-Muslim website tweets ‘hit list’ featuring famous Jews
A French Muslim anti-colonialism activist on Thursday denied posting a “hit list” of Jewish groups and individuals while referncing a popular TV character.

Sihame Assbague last week posted a list of names of individuals and groups, accompanied by a GIF of a character from the series “Game of Thrones,” from a scene in which she lists the people she intends to kill.

It included the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities; the Socialist Jewish politician Julien Dray; former prime minister Manuel Valls — a supporter of Israel, whose ex-wife and children are Jews; and the radical left-wing politician Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is not Jewish.

But Assbague told the Times of Israel on Thursday that her post “was absolutely not a ‘hit list,'” and was a joking reference to a meme used by many online to denote “people or things that have upset them.” She said the names on her list were those of people or bodies who “distinguished themselves by their Islamophobia.”

The tweet by Assbague — whom the LICRA civil rights watchdog has accused frequently of spreading racist views on Jews – prompted a reply from the official Twitter account of Al Kanz, which is one of France’s best-read Muslim news websites.

  • Thursday, May 31, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon
Palestine Today reports about how electricity from Israel is no longer being set to Gaza (without mentioning that it was Hamas and Islamic Jihad rocket fire that caused the lines to go down to begin with.)

The article also mentions that the "Egyptian lines are still idle."

It has been nearly a year Egypt sent electricity to Gaza. While their contribution was modest, right now it would have been very useful to have the extra 16 megawatts.

I'm not certain if Egypt's lines are off because of damage that no one is bothering to fix, or because no one is paying Egypt for the electricity. Either way, no one is pressuring Egypt to resume its supply of power.





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

Here it is Wednesday midday, and some 180 mortar shells and rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza in the last 48 hours, including rockets that reached farther north than any since 2014. The IDF responded in the usual way, bombarding military targets in the Strip that Hamas and Islamic Jihad personnel had evacuated. At this moment, there seems to be an informal cease-fire in effect. It may or may not hold; we could be on the verge of yet another “grass-cutting” operation in Gaza, or the whole thing could just be a minor blip. Meanwhile, a lot of people who would rather have been somewhere else spent their mornings sitting in bomb shelters.

The usual suspects in the Western media are committing their usual crimes against the truth. Yesterday, NPR ran a story entitled “What Has The Unrest In Gaza Meant For Palestinians?” Really. I won’t bother to link to it, but I thought about writing a piece about what the unrest at Pearl Harbor meant for the Japanese.

The objective of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), is to conquer the land now occupied by the Jews, preferably killing as many of them as possible. It is a religious imperative, an obligatory jihad, and so will not end until one or the other side overcomes its enemy. It’s been a long war, and our enemies have taken different political forms over the last 100 years; but the motive has always been the same. Some periods are more violent than others, but there has never been peace. 

When the battle goes against our enemies, they offer a hudna modeled after Mohammed’s treaty of Hudaybiyyah with the Meccans, a temporary truce to give them chance to prepare for the next round. That is the closest they can get to a peace offer.

Our enemies aren’t stupid, and they understand the overriding importance of cognitive warfare for the physically weaker side in an asymmetric struggle. The recent attempt to invade Israel through the border fence with Gaza was, on its surface, a failure. They did not succeed to breach the fence in great numbers and “tear out the hearts” of Jews in nearby communities, as Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar exhorted them to do. But in the cognitive war, it achieved more than one goal.

The main target is popular opinion, in the world and even in Israel. Liberal Western media like NPR are not exactly pro-Hamas. But they are anti-Israel. And Hamas orchestrated the “March of Return” to induce these media to cover the events in a way that portrayed Israel in the worst possible light. NPR jumped to attention and followed the script perfectly. They referred to the attempted invasion as a “protest,” claimed that “thousands” of people were wounded in their legs by Israeli snipers, and referred to this production as a “Palestinian cry for help,” as they “[try] to break out of an area that people inside often regard as an open-air prison.”

It also brought the Palestinian struggle and in particular the demand for a “right of return” to the forefront of international consciousness, at a time when other concerns had pushed it out of view. In recent years the idea that this issue is at the center of the problems of the Middle East had receded to some extent, replaced by the conflicts created by Iranian expansionist ambitions on the one hand, and Sunni extremism on the other. Hamas wants it center stage so that its allies in Europe will continue applying pressure to Israel and supporting the various NGOs and other groups gnawing away at her.

Finally, it gave them an opportunity to suffer what they can present as civilian casualties, so they can accuse Israel of war crimes, or even try to bring her to the International Criminal Court (for internal political reasons, Hamas admitted that most of the dead “protestors” were its military operatives, so this may not work as well this time).

Hamas, PIJ and the PLO understand the West quite well. They know that their propaganda will find fertile places to grow in Europe and even the US, where they have been preparing the ground for an abandonment of Israel for years. And they also know that the last thing that Israel wants is a ground war in Gaza, which will create even more opportunities for propaganda while our society is torn apart with grief for the young men and women who would be killed or injured, and which will end indecisively like all the others.

So we continue trying to tamp down escalation, while allowing the terrorist leaders of the Gaza Arabs the freedom to continue to plan new marches, launch rocket and mortar barrages, set our fields on fire, and who knows what else that grows out of their implacable hatred. 

This is the status quo that is considered acceptable, or at least less unacceptable than the alternatives. But the status quo is not static. Hamas is now supported primarily by Iran, like PIJ and Hezbollah. Someday perhaps they will join in a coordinated attack with Hezbollah in the north. Perhaps at the same time there will be an American Administration with an outlook more like that of the Europeans, and which – like the Obama Administration – will act to restrain us from defending ourselves. And thanks to the cognitive warfare that our enemies have been successfully waging, we won’t find support among the American people or their Congress. At that point, the status quo won’t look so good, but there will be little that we can do about it.

Right now, this moment, is one of the most dangerous times in recent history, at least for folks that live in the Middle East. Nevertheless there are positive factors. The final days of ISIS seem to be at hand, and maybe the map of post-war Syria will shortly take shape. Iran is being pushed back in Syria and losing influence in Iraq. The economic bonanza of the nuclear deal is coming to an end for Iran. Russia seems to be uncomfortable with an Iranian Shiite crescent in the region. And for the first time in many years, there is an American administration that seems fully supportive of Israel (but which also appears politically unstable). 

It’s impossible to predict what will happen when there are so many players, each with their own interlocking interests and concerns, but there may be an opportunity for Israel here that will not reoccur in the near future. There are two ways to approach a chaotic situation: you can hunker down and try to keep from getting hurt, or you can try to exploit it and achieve objectives that are impossible in normal times. 

I think we have grown too comfortable with what we allow to exist next door to us, in Gaza and also in Judea/Samaria. Would we be so comfortable if they wore Nazi uniforms? Probably not, but their ideology is no better; worse, perhaps, because of its religious underpinnings.

Now could be the moment to crush Hamas in Gaza for good.





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

  • Thursday, May 31, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon
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.






We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
  • Thursday, May 31, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon

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. 




We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
  • Thursday, May 31, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon


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.




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

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

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.



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

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory



Check out their Facebook page.


NBA logoOakland, 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."




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

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.






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

AddToAny

EoZ Book:"Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism"

Printfriendly

EoZTV Podcast

Podcast URL

Subscribe in podnovaSubscribe with FeedlyAdd to netvibes
addtomyyahoo4Subscribe with SubToMe

search eoz

comments

Speaking

translate

E-Book

For $18 donation








Sample Text

EoZ's Most Popular Posts in recent years

Hasbys!

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

Donate!

Donate to fight for Israel!

Monthly subscription:
Payment options


One time donation:

Follow EoZ on Twitter!

Interesting Blogs

Blog Archive