Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, June 06, 2018

06/06 Links Pt2: Sirhan Sirhan, Forgotten Terrorist; Argentina soccer match canceled over terrorism, not a boycott; Rockefeller Fund gives to groups funding Palestinian terrorism

From Ian:

Because the assassination came just over four years after his brother President John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, and just two months after Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down in Memphis, the nation focused on gun violence and hatred of the Kennedy family in its aftermath. Many blamed right-wing racists, since the Kennedys had supported the civil-rights movement. I was in school back then, and I remember the most common phrase: “They killed another Kennedy.” The “they” was generic. It wasn’t an individual; it referred to a supposed violent streak that ran through American culture and mythology all the way back to our frontier days.

But a single individual killed Kennedy for very specific reasons. Sirhan was obsessed with both Israel and Jews. He was born in British Mandatory Palestine in 1944 and emigrated to the United States in 1956, attending school in Los Angeles. Yet even though the California economy of the 1950s and 1960s was one of the strongest in the world, Sirhan never took advantage of what surrounded him: He worked as a stable boy and never became a U.S. citizen.

The shooting took place on the one-year anniversary of Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War. This was no coincidence. When Kennedy was 22 years old, he traveled to Palestine, writing articles for the Boston Post about his admiration for the country’s Jewish inhabitants. As a senator from New York, Kennedy continued his strong support of Israel. Shortly before the assassination, in a televised debate with his chief Democratic rival, Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy, Kennedy said he supported the sale of fighter jets to Israel.

Indeed, Kennedy was a consistent and staunch supporter of Israel — which infuriated Sirhan. In a 1989 interview with David Frost, Sirhan said: “My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center Is Indifferent to Muslim Antisemitism

Muslim antisemitism receives scant mention from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organization that is supposed to be dedicated to “fighting hate and extremism.” Its website has 1,327 articles on non-Muslim antisemitic actions, statements, or hate crimes. But less than 10 articles out of thousands mention Muslim antisemitism.

Instead, the SPLC aligns with Islamist groups and leaders — including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) — while giving their antisemitism a pass.

The SPLC’s credibility has already been questioned. It took down its media guide this year after Quilliam Foundation co-founder Maajid Nawaz pointed out that it contained fabrications about him.

While the report may be gone, SPLC Intelligence Project Director Heidi Beirich has yet to correct a false accusation she made against Nawaz, claiming that he was placed on a list of anti-Muslim extremists in part because he supported vast surveillance of Muslims.

Beirich has produced no evidence to support the claim, which Nawaz insists is a lie.

“The SPLC says it fights hate. Yet it criticizes groups that call out Jew-hating Islamists and ignores groups packed with Jew-hating Islamists,” Center for Security Policy Executive Vice President Christopher Hull told the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

U.N. Accused of Doctoring Video to Erase Leading Pro-Israel Speaker’s Credentials

The United Nations is facing accusations it doctored an official video to remove all mention of a leading pro-Israel speaker's credentials ahead of a scathing speech accusing the international organization of promoting anti-Semitism and hatred against Israel, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Professor Anne Bayefsky, the director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and president of Human Rights Voices, was recently invited by the Israeli government to speak at an event at the U.N. on anti-Semitism about the harmful impact of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, a global campaign to economically isolate the Jewish state that has widely been discredited as anti-Semitic in nature. Bayefsky specifically addressed anti-Semitism at the U.N. itself.

In an official video of the May 30 event posted on the U.N.'s website, all mention of Bayefsky's credentials and longstanding status as a leading expert on anti-Semitism was initially erased, leaving a confusing gap that she claims diminished the speech's impact.

Bayefsky, a vocal critic of the U.N.'s anti-Israel bias, alleged in a subsequent video highlighting the U.N.'s deletion that the international body was engaged in an attempt to revise history and weaken a speech that called out in stark terms the entire U.N. for its promotion of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic policies.

U.N. officials who spoke to the Free Beacon admitted the original video deleted all mention of Bayefsky's credentials, but explained this was due to a technical issue that was rectified soon after the Free Beacon began its initial inquiries in the matter.

Tens of thousands of Muslims on Temple Mount upset over a few dozen Jews

Literally every day, Palestinian media continues to demonize Jews who want to worship at their holiest spot.

Here's today's example from FPNP:

Settler gangs continue to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque

On Wednesday morning, dozens of extremist settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the occupied city of Jerusalem from the Mughrabi Gate, under heavy guard from the Israeli Special Police.

According to sources, 120 extremists accompanied by intelligence officers and special forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque in several groups during the morning, and roamed in his courtyard provocatively, with tight security.

They explained that during the incursion the settlers carried out rituals in the Al Aqsa Square, specifically in the area of Bab al-Rahma, but worshipers and guards responded to them, where the voices of worshipers raised in protest to the continued incursions in the last ten days of the holy month of Ramadan.

Tens of thousands of Palestinian worshipers performed Taraweeh and Ta'i prayers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque amidst a distinctive atmosphere of faith. The mosque is witnessing a remarkable increase in the numbers of worshipers who are leading it to revive the last ten days of Ramadan, despite the restrictions of the occupation.

Here are the "settler gangs:"

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06/06 Links Pt1: Gaza border clashes financed by Iran; Poverty Isn’t What Causes Gaza’s Endemic Violence; Obama Skirted U.S. Sanctions to Grant Iran Billions in Cash

From Ian:

PA warned Paris that Gaza border clashes financed by Iran — report

The Palestinian Authority informed the French government last month that Iran was financing and encouraging the weeks of violent protests along the Gaza border, Channel 10 reported Tuesday.

“Iran is fully financing and pushing the Hamas demonstrations,” Salman al-Harfi, the Palestinian ambassador to France, reportedly told a government official. “The PA has no choice but to support the demonstrations because so may of the participants are demonstrating against the economic situation.”

While the Ramallah-based PA does not support the Hamas-led protests, the Palestinian ambassador said it “does condemn Israel’s response, because most of the protesters are non-violent.”

Last week Iran agreed in principle to renew its funding for the Hamas terror group, according to a report published in a London-based Arabic daily.

The move reportedly sparked anger in Iran, which is experiencing an economic crisis and in recent days Iranian protesters have been throwing away charity boxes for the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation after a film showed it gave millions of dollars to Palestinians rather than direct the money to needy Iranians.

Poverty Isn’t What Causes Gaza’s Endemic Violence. It’s the Other Way Around

No cliché has dominated the discourse on the Gaza situation more than the perception of Palestinian violence as a corollary of the Strip’s dire economic condition. No sooner had Hamas and Israel been locked in yet another armed confrontation over the past weeks than the media, foreign policy experts, and politicians throughout the world urged the immediate rehabilitation of Gaza as panacea to its endemic propensity for violence. Even senior members of the Israel Defense Forces opined that a “nonmilitary process” of humanitarian aid could produce a major change in the Gaza situation.

While there is no denying the argument’s widespread appeal, there is also no way around the fact that it is not only completely unfounded but the inverse of the truth. For it is not Gaza’s economic malaise that has precipitated Palestinian violence; rather, it is the endemic violence that has caused the Strip’s humanitarian crisis.

For one thing, countless nations and groups in today’s world endure far harsher socioeconomic or political conditions than the Palestinians, yet none has embraced violence and terrorism against their neighbors with such alacrity and on such a massive scale.

For another thing, there is no causal relationship between economic hardship and mass violence. On the contrary: in the modern world it is not the poor and oppressed who have carried out the worst acts of terrorism and violence, but rather the militant vanguards from among the better educated and more moneyed circles of society – be they homegrown terrorist groups in the West or their Middle Eastern counterparts.

Yasser Arafat, for instance, was an engineer, and his fellow arch terrorist George Habash – the pioneer of aircraft hijacking – a physician. Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, was a schoolteacher, while his successor, Sayyid Qutb, whose zealous brand of Islam fired generations of terrorists, including the group behind the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, was a literary critic and essayist. The 9/11 terrorists and certainly their multimillionaire paymaster, Osama bin Laden, as well as the terrorists who massacred their British compatriots in July 2005 and those slaughtering their coreligionists in Algeria and Iraq, were not impoverished peasants or workers driven by hopelessness and desperation but educated fanatics motivated by hatred and extreme religious and political ideals.

Forest Jihad: Palestinian Arabs have been setting terror fires since the 1920s

There is nothing new about using fires for terror. Palestinians in fact innovated the practice.

Here is some background on Palestinian use of fires as a weapon of terror written in 2009:

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, arson comprised about one-third of all forest fires in Israel, which is a very large proportion. Some of the sources of this arson were identified as the work of criminals, whose sole aim was to collect the insurance money. However, many instances of arson in the late 1980s were directly related to the Palestinian uprising (the first Intifada). Palestinians have used arson in the past as an insurgency method, as early as the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, but in the 1980s it was adopted as a highly visible action against Israel. Arson was found to be easy to execute: all one had to do was cross the old border between the West Bank and Israel, which was unguarded and open to all, start a fire in one of the many forests in the hilly areas near the border, and then disappear. According to the International Forest Fire News (IFFN), between 1988 and 1991 the number of fires attributed to arson rose to over 30%, which was explained by an increase in politically motivated arson associated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[7]

There were frequent occurrences of forest fires in areas adjacent to the old "Green Line" border between Israel and the West Bank, during the years 1988-1990. Between 288 and 388 forest fires were caused by arson, which occurred in areas near the old pre-1967 border.[8] In some of the fires, which occurred in northern Israel, Israeli Arab Palestinians were found to be responsible. These fires were extraordinary, given the fact that in 1988, there was a great deal of rain and, as a result, the vegetation was highly combustible.

The Intifada militants also began to systematically burn Israeli fields, orchards and forests, and whilst no lives were lost, considerable damage was caused.[9] Interviews conducted in 1988 with local Fatah leaders from the Tulkarem region, revealed that forests were regarded as the Israel government's property and were therefore a symbol deserving of arson.[10] Setting fires was employed as a tactic, politically motivated, aimed at damaging Israel's economy and exhausting its resources. The Palestinian propaganda increased the perception that forests were used intensively by the State of Israel as a “political tool”, to mark its presence on the ground along the “Green Line”, in order to underline its existing borders after the 1948 war and the creation of the State of Israel, which the Palestinians totally rejected (until the Oslo Accords in 1993).

During the initial Intifada period, Palestinians started dozens of Israeli forest fires, some quite extensive, intentionally as acts of arson for political reasons.[11] The evidence is overwhelming that these were deliberate acts of political sabotage and Palestinian arsonists have been apprehended as a result.[12] The Israeli police have apprehended Palestinians and Israeli Arabs in the act of setting fires, while others confessed to arson after their arrest.[13]

Some fires followed specific calls by underground Palestinian terror organizations to torch forests, and cause economic damage to Israel and its symbols. Incidents of arson proliferated during the period of the first Intifada, the inciting rhetoric was often disseminated in the leaflets, praising arson and call upon Palestinians to burn the land from underneath the Jews.

Some fires followed specific calls by underground Palestinian terror groups. The instances of arson carried out by the Palestinians were in accordance with the instructions issued by the underground leadership,”The Unified National Command of the Uprising ”(Al- Qiyada Al- Wataniyya Al- Muwahada lil-Intifada-Arabic)[14] which published leaflets providing information and instructions to the population. Typewritten leaflets were distributed across the West Bank and Gaza with instructions for action to be taken against Israel.

Leaflet No. 3 of the “Unified National Command of the Uprising” dated to 31 January 1988,” called for a fire to be set underneath the invader’s feet”[15]. Leaflet No. 7, issued on 13 February 1988, contained amongst other directions and instructions to perpetrate violent activities, a call to”..convert the uprising into a continious war of attrition against the occupation and its forces, causing heavy loss of human lives and damage to the political, economic and moral spheres”.[16] A leaflet distributed in the Ramallah region in the West Bank on 10 January 1988, on behalf of “The Women’s Association”(identified with the Fatah, The Palestinian Popular Front, The Palestinian Democratic Front and the Palestinian Communist Party) called to “praise the torching hands”.[17]

Leaflet No. 18, issued on 8 June 1988 by the Palestinian uprising's underground leadership, called for the destruction and burning of the enemy's properties, industry and agriculture. The leaflet presented plans of action, including…"on the 22.6.88 – a general strike - return to the land, sow and improve it - burn the enemy’s (Israel) property, industrial and agricultural facilities”.[18] In 1989, the PLO's Baghdad radio station described methods of arson through which "the orchards and fields of the Zionist enemy can be set ablaze." [19]

During the initial period of the first Palestinian Intifada, Israeli law enforcement and the judiciary system were engaged with countering the arson phenomena. An example demonstrating the Israeli punitive severity in its approach to Palestinian arson of forests is demonstrated in the Israeli Supreme Court verdict in the trial of Muhammad Bin Ali Jaradat (case number 1926/90,8 July 1990).[20] Between October 1988 and July 1989, Jaradat was involved in committing arson, as his Intifada activities. He was found guilty of arson, setting fire to Israeli agricultural property, fields, forests and crops. Jaradat was sentenced to 4 years imprisonment of which a year and a half were actual imprisonment, two and a half years conditional imprisonment and a monetary fine. In its verdict, the Supreme Court stated, "arson has become in recent years a widespread dangerous phenomenon".[21]

The Palestinian Hamas organization was also active (and still is) in projecting the economic Jihad ideology not only on the local arena of confrontation with Israel, but also on the global scale and against the USA. One of the movement's senior leaders, Dr. Abd al Aziz Rantisi, published a written statement on Hamas's official web site calling on Muslims all over the world to wage an economic Jihad against the United States. "Muslims must recruit their financial resources and capabilities to strike and weaken the U.S economy. American-made products must be boycotted, he said, and urged Muslims to offer any kind of possible financial aid and support to the Mujaheedin (Muslim warriors) fighting for the sake of Allah".[22]

These incidents of setting fires deliberately were reported almost as afterthoughts in Israeli press in the 1920s and 1930s. Here's an example from 1936:

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Do all medics throw incendiary devices, or only in Gaza? (video)

This video of a young, female Gaza medic (probably not Razan a-Najjar, at least not her on Friday) with Red Crescent clothes and throwing an incendiary device is going around:

Does the ICRC think that this is an appropriate way for medics to act? Or is there an exception when they are faced with an enemy that represents Jews?

(h/t Yisrael Medad)

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Yesterday:

An incendiary kite flown from Gaza sparked a major fire in an open field across from the Sapir College in the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council, near the southern city of Sderot on Tuesday afternoon.

Heavy smoke covered the college building as firefighters were dispatched to the area and worked to prevent the fire from spreading to the nearby road and into the college. There were no reports of injuries.

One professor at Sapir was probably thrilled.

Dr. Yeala Ra'anan, a lecturer there, recently participated in a demonstration in support of Hamas in Sakhnin , where she said that "we are all partners in erasing the fascist regime in Israel."

Several Arab MKs participated in the event, including Ahmad Tibi, Jamal Zahalka and Aida Tuma Saliman.

Ra'anan, called on Israeli and Arab citizens to join the Gaza border riots, calling the Gazans there "our brothers on the other side of the fence."

Ra'anan supports BDS and said, "Together we will liberate Palestine."

(h/t Naftali)

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06/05 Links Pt2: Standing up to the UN shows America’s greatness; Joy Reid’s Blog Published Posts Blaming Jews For Terrorism; Will the World Finally Turn Off the UNRWA Spigot

From Ian:

Standing up to the UN shows America’s greatness

It happened again last week. When the UN Security Council voted to condemn Israel for what happened along its border with Gaza — without even mentioning Hamas, let alone acknowledging the terror group’s responsibility for the violence — not a single nation joined the United States in opposing the motion. When UN Ambassador Nikki Haley then put forward a separate measure condemning Hamas, the rest of the council either voted no or abstained.

That leaves Americans asking whether fears about having the rest of the world aligned against us are more important than pride in being willing to stand up and do the right thing, even if it means being alone.

This isn’t the only time the US has stood alone recently and it’s got the foreign-policy establishment as well as America’s European allies up in arms. The same thing happened when President Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and when he pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal. His critics took the refusal of America’s Western European allies to agree as a sign that his administration’s foreign policy is doomed to fail.

By contrast, they point to the Obama administration’s popularity with the international community, which cheered as Barack Obama championed an effort to appease and end the isolation of the Islamist regime. They were pleased as Obama sought to put more “daylight” between the US and Israel and by his allowing the Security Council to condemn Israel. Much of the world also approved of Obama’s decision to punt responsibility for the slaughter in Syria and much else to Russia.

Obama’s love affair with international organizations like the UN was at the heart of his faith in multilateralism. While not every interaction during that time began with an apology for all of America’s alleged sins, there was little question that he wanted the world to know that the era when the US could impose its will or its values on other nations seemed to be over.

Israel Praises Trump Administration’s New Approach to Combat U.N. ‘Hypocrisy’

Israel on Friday praised a new Trump administration strategy that seeks to combat the hostility and hypocrisy of members of the United Nations Security Council.

The strategy was unveiled Friday when U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley vetoed a resolution sponsored by Kuwait seeking to condemn Israel for the "excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate" use of force "against Palestinian civilians," according to The Jerusalem Post.

Kuwait introduced the resolution in response to weeks of rioting and violence along the border between Israel and Palestinian-controlled Gaza. The violence erupted towards the end of March when thousands of demonstrators swarmed the border for what organizers call the "March of Return." The demonstrators, demanding that Palestinian refugees and their descendants be allowed to return to what is now Israel, have attacked Israeli soldiers in an effort to breach the border.

The violence has resulted in approximately 120 Palestinians being killed and hundreds wounded.

The Kuwait resolution made no mention of Hamas, the terrorist group governing the Gaza Strip, and the role it has played in encouraging Palestinian demonstrators to assail Israel Defense Forces with incendiary kites and Molotov cocktails. Instead, the resolution laid the sole blame for the violence at the feet of Israel, ignoring accounts, from both Israel and Hamas, indicating a large portion of the demonstrators killed were affiliated with terrorist organizations.

The resolution, which garnered the support of 10 of the 15 Security Council members, would also have granted "international protection" for Palestinians in Gaza and insisted Israel cease its actions in self-defense.

'JEWISH JIHADISTS': Joy Reid’s Blog Published Posts Blaming Jews For Terrorism

Embattled MSNBC host Joy Reid once promoted the conspiracy theory that "Jewish Jihadists" were responsible for Islamic terrorism, according to newly discovered screenshots obtained by The Daily Wire.

Screenshots from a post dated July 21, 2006, show that "JReid" blamed Jews in Israel for Islamic terrorism and appeared to go as far as justifying terrorism against Israel. The post states:

The bottom line now is the same as it has always been: you cannot kill enough of your enemies to make the people of the Muslim world accept, respect, or permit themselves to be dominated by you. Eventually, the occupied will get even. Eventually, the people you consider terrorists will fight you hard enough, and long enough, that the people they say they are fighting for believe them, far more than they believe you. And then the people you're bombing in the name of fighting terrorism, will hate you so much, they'll take up arms with your "terrorists" -- or look the other way as they move in next door -- in order to see harm done to you.

Reid continued by saying that terrorism is not a simple "black and white equation," but rather a symptom of a disease that is "transmitted by colonialism, resource greed, racism, (and Zionism)..." It is not clear why Reid wrote "and Zionism" in parenthesis.

The Perfect Antisemite (photo)

A photo from a 2014 anti-Israel rally in Berlin was recently republished in different contexts at Algemeiner and JNS.

The protester's tattoos include "88", a neo-Nazi reference to "Heil Hitler", H being the eighth letter of the alphabet, and a German eagle.

So he is a right winger, right?

Except he is also wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh. Which is a fashion choice among the Left.

Now, what do neo-Nazis have in common with Palestinian Arabs?

Let's mull that one over.

(h/t Ghilmeini)

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Hamas attacked "martyr medic"s memorial service

Wattan reports that. according to Razan al-Najjar's father, Hamas attacked a memorial service for the now-celebrity medic that everyone is accusing Israel of killing.

Ashraf al-Najjar said that members of the Hamas movement attacked a memorial ceremony for his daughter. He said they tore down posters, damaged 80 chairs and beat 10 people who went to a private hospital for treatment.

There might be some political infighting as to which group "owns" Najjar and can gain the political benefits of being associated with her.

Fatah denounced the attacks.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

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06/05 Links Pt1: Plot to assassinate PM, Jerusalem mayor thwarted; Hamas Is Trading In Palestinian Blood To Serve Iran's Interests; IDF: Gazan medic shot dead last week was not deliberately targeted

From Ian:

Shin Bet says it thwarted plot to assassinate prime minister, Jerusalem mayor

Israeli forces arrested an East Jerusalem man suspected of planning to assassinate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat earlier this year, on orders from a Syria-based terrorist group, the Shin Bet security service revealed on Tuesday.

The main suspect, 30-year-old Arab Israeli Muhammad Jamal Rashdeh, was arrested on April 24. Two more suspects were arrested in the following weeks, the Shin Bet said. The security service refused to identify the two suspected accomplices.

Indictments were filed against the three on May 27, but the case was kept under a court-issued gag order until Tuesday.

Later on Tuesday, the Israel Police released footage (above) of Rashdeh’s arrest from the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem where he lived.

“Working on orders from terrorist operatives abroad, Muhammad planned to carry out a number of significant terror attacks against a variety of targets,” the security service said.

The targets included Netanyahu and Barkat, as well as buildings belonging to the US consulate in Jerusalem (which has since been converted into an embassy) and a delegation of Canadian security officials who were in Jerusalem to train Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank, the Shin Bet said.

Watch: Arrest of terrorist who planned to assassinate Netanyahu

The police released a video documenting the arrest of the terrorist cell which planned to assassinate Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat Tuesday.

The arrest was carried out by the Border Police.

According to an indictment filed on Sunday against three terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the terror cell had targeted Israel’s Prime Minister and the mayor of Israel's capital.

The terrorists suspected in the plot included Muhammed Jamal Rashda, a 30-year-old resident of Shuafat in eastern Jerusalem who previously served jail time for other terror-related activities.

According to the indictment, Rashda was the mastermind behind the assassination plots which were revealed Tuesday. Rashda also reportedly coordinated his plans with terrorists operating abroad, including a terrorist in Syria.

MEMRI: Arab Writers: Hamas Is Responsible For Return March Fatalities, Is Trading In Palestinian Blood To Serve Iran's Interests; It Must Relinquish Power In Gaza

The death of over 100 Palestinians in the Hamas-organized Return March protests, in which thousands of Gazans marched on the Israeli border with the aim of crossing it,[1] evoked many expressions of support for the Palestinians and condemnation of Israel – but at the same time also triggered a wave of criticism against Hamas. The criticism reached its height following the events of May 14, 2018, the day of the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, which saw mass protests on the Gaza border in which over 60 Palestinians were killed.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) finds itself in a difficult position vis-à-vis the Return March events. On the one hand, in light of the deep crisis in its relations with Hamas, it does not wish to legitimize this movement's actions. But at the same time it does not wish to oppose the Return March, which expresses the Palestinian consensus regarding the legitimacy of the right of return. As a result, its position on the events has been ambiguous and inconsistent, as was manifest in the PA press, which published articles supporting the march alongside articles sharply critical of Hamas.

For example, an editorial in the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida condemned Hamas for backing the Return March protests that resulted in numerous victims. Similarly, an advisor to the PA president claimed that Hamas is trading on the blood of Gazans and sending children to their deaths.

Criticism of Hamas was also voiced by Arab writers and intellectuals known for their opposition of the pro-Iranian camp, to which Hamas belongs. These writers claimed that Hamas was capitulating to Iranian dictates instead of improving the standard of living in Gaza, and that it was using the fatalities to gain political advantage. They also accused Hamas of using terror against the Gazans and sending children to their deaths while its own leaders were living in luxury. Another claim was that Hamas strives to perpetuate the siege and misses every opportunity to turn Gaza into the nucleus of a Palestinian state, and that advancing the peace process therefore requires removing Hamas from power.

J Street seems to have a habit of hurting Israel in the pursuit of its own agenda.

J Street Support for BDS

An article came out Monday in The Washington Free Beacon detailing how J Street Chapters Aiding BDS Campaigns on Campuses. While it is true that the deputy director of J Street U, Catie Stewart, claims that the organization does not support neither "Apartheid Week" nor BDS campaigns on college campuses, there are indications that J Street hedges on their position and do not necessarily oppose BDS per se:

o In response to a BDS referendum at the University of Minnesota in March, a pro-Israel coalition launched a campaign in opposition. J Street U released a statement opposing the referendum not because it was anti-Israel, but because "this resolution and others like it only serve to empower the Israeli far-right" and that you cannot "effectively oppose BDS without also actively opposing the occupation that fuels it." The BDS referendum passed at UMN in March.

o When a BDS resolution was proposed at Columbia University/Barnard, J Street U posted a statement, since revised, stating that it "opposes the International BDS Movement." But then it went on to decry "the conflation of anti-occupation with anti-Israel," accusing anti-BDS campaigns as being "government funded attacks" targeting "anti-occupation groups, like the New Israel Fund, B'tselem, and Breaking the Silence" while pretending to deal with "the handful of hardline anti-Israel activists." The Barnard BDS resolution passed.

o When a BDS resolution was brought up at George Washington University in April, the J Street U there did not oppose BDS per se, instead again used the familiar theme that "BDS legislation provides Israel's far-right government with the talking points they use to justify their fear-mongering tactics" and insisted that "one can be pro-BDS and not anti-Semitic." The BDS resolution at GW passed.

This disregard for Israeli seems to be part of a pattern.

J Street Support for The Iran Deal

o In 2009, long before there ever was an Iran Deal, Jeremy Ben-Ami, president and founder of J Street, co-wrote an article, How Diplomacy with Iran Can Succeed with Trita Parsi, president of National Iranian American Council (NIAC)
o  A US District Court found that the work of NIAC president and founder Tritra Parsi was "not inconsistent with the idea that he was first and foremost an advocate for the [Iran] regime."
o  J Street was paid $576 million by Soros' Ploughshares Fund to advocate on behalf of the Iran Deal
o In the months leading up to the Iran Deal, Ben-Ami was a frequent visitor to the White House, where he met with Ben Rhodes and with Morton Halperin, the Senior Advisor for the George Soros' Open Society Institute.
o  J Street put up a website defending the Iran Deal without any hesitation about possible consequences or dangers for Israel

Jeremy Ben-Ami. Credit: Joe Mabel

J Street Support for Democrats Only

Last month, I wrote about Judging J-Street By The Candidates They Support, that J Street consistently supports Democratic candidates over Republican ones -- as if they were the only ones who supported Israel. This was true in 2010 through 2016.
I just found a list from 2008 in a J Street report

There actually are Republican candidates listed here: 2 out of 41.
One of them, Representative Charles Boustany, voted against a Congressional resolution to neither endorse nor consider the Goldstone Report. But on the other hand, in 2009 Boustany distanced himself from J Street, writing:

Unfortunately, within a few years of J Street’s establishment, I came to the realization that I had been deliberately misled and in a one instance lied to by the senior leadership of the organization. I refuse to work with any group that conducts itself in this manner.

According to his spokesman Paul Coussan, Boustany was put off by J Street lying about the money it received from George Soros.

Geoff Davis, the other Republican backed by J Street, was supposed to appear on a panel at a J Street Conference but did not show up.

At the same time, it was reported that a number of other Congressmen also distanced themselves from J Street:

The names of Reps. John Salazar (CO-03) and Ed Towns (NY-10) have been scrubbed from the list of congressmen serving on the host committee for J Street's inaugural conference. That brings to ten the number of congressmen, Republicans and Democrats, senators and representatives, who have bailed on J Street after learning that, contrary to their promotional materials, they are not a pro-Israel group...

o Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
o Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
o Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
o Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS)
o Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE)
o Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR)
o Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX)
o Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA)
o Rep. John Salazar (D-CO)
o Rep. Ed Towns (D-NY)

Since then, J Street has had the last laugh, gaining in legitimacy. But the fact remains that it has done so by openly declaring itself the "blocking back" for Obama and aligning itself with policies and groups that do not act in Israel's best interest, and by limiting itself to supporting only Democrats.

J Street Support for The Goldstone Report

o I've noted in earlier posts that Jeremy Ben-Ami claimed that J Street was "refusing to embrace" the Goldstone Report.
o In fact, Mort Halperin on the J Street advisory council also wrote the letter that Goldstone circulated as his own on Capitol Hill last year, defending his anti-Israel report against a House resolution condemning it. This is the same Halperin, mentioned above, who was the Senior Advisor for the George Soros' Open Society Institute.
o J Street went so far as to facilitate visits for Goldstone to the Hill. Ben Ami said Goldstone met only 2 or 3 Congressmen; Goldstone said it was 10 or 12.

As a side note, in the same October 2009 interview with Jeffrey Goldberg for Atlantic Magazine where Ben-Ami claimed not to support the Goldstone Report, he also referred to "Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups that are consistently upset with us for backing Howard Berman's [Iran] sanctions plan." [emphasis added]

Earlier, in May of that year, J Street came out with a press release, praising Berman for supporting Obama's plan to pursue a diplomatic solution with Iran: "As Chairman Berman stated, the Administration should be given reasonable time to pursue serious and tough diplomacy with Iran." Seeing that J Street was already aligning themselves with NIAC, one has to wonder just how tough J Street thought that diplomacy should be.

Where Is All This Leading?

In a recent article, Caroline Glick notes the growing influence of identity politics in the Democratic Party, and what it means for Israel:

Obama advanced policies and positions that empowered the radicals at the expense of the moderates.
Obama’s hostility towards Israel, his repeated intimations that Israel is a colonialist outpost while the Palestinians are the indigenous people of the land of Israel were part and parcel of his across-the-board effort to enable the radical Left to take over the party. Obama’s efforts laid the groundwork for socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ surprisingly strong challenge to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in the party’s presidential primaries. It also set the stage for the rise of radical leaders like Congressman Keith Ellison and Sen. Elizabeth Warren in the post-Obama Democratic party.

The left wing of the Democratic Party is clearly gaining influence, and J Street is part of that.
But to the degree that it has backed Obama, and continues to support how he framed the Middle East, J Street undermines Israel.

J Street's refusal to condemn BDS, except as a tool in the hands of the "right-wing"; its association with the likes of Soros and NIAC in supporting the Iran Deal; J Street's backing only for Democrats; its support for the clearly one-sided Goldstone Report and most recently J Street's support of the narrative of the "Great March of Return -- these positions do nothing to support Israel.

There are many ways to support Israel, and no one says you cannot criticize it -- but the actions J Street takes demonize Israel and affect Israeli security.

In 2009, William Daroff, the Washington director of the Jewish Federations of North America told JTA that J Street was developing "better PR tactics", such as condemning Iran's Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust -- but:

these were easy calls. J Street, he said, has not yet defended Israel when it is unpopular to do so.

Don't hold your breath.

At the time, Daroff wondered aloud, "when and if the Obama administration shifts direction, would J Street still be relevant?”

J Street has proven that it is capable of staying relevant.

Just not relevant to the survival of Israel

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Is Razan Al-Najar the new Ibrahim Abu Thuraya?

it wasn't that long ago that Israel was falsely accused of killing double-amputee Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh, after months of hateful lies.

The evidence indicates that someone on the Gaza side killed him, with his knowledge, presumably because his becoming a "martyr" would help his family financially, as well as the fact that is would be a huge PR victory for Hamas against Israel.

The case of medic Razan al Najar sure sounds similar to me.

* Israel has no interest in killing a medic.

* Hamas has been chomping at the bit for Israel to kill a poster child civilian; they thought that the 8 month old baby they accused of dying from tear gas would fit the bill but reporters messed that story up by asking questions about what happened.

* The Gaza riots are primarily a PR exercise meant to focus the world on hating Israel. But the weekly riots have been bringing diminishing returns.

* Razan al Najar posted in Facebook her last message: “I am returning and not retreating. Hit me with your bullets. I am not afraid.”

* Najar did not attend the riots to provide medical aid to the injured. Her main purpose of attending was to join the protest.

* There are some serious discrepancies in the stories of how Najar died, even among "eyewitnesses" - discrepancies that simply could not exist from actual witnesses (like where she was shot.)

I don't know if she was killed by an errant IDF bullet or by a Hamas bullet that was meant to create a new symbol of martyrdom to energize the riots. But to me, both those scenarios are worth investigating. There is only one side with incentive to see Najar dead, and it certainly isn't Israel's.

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Samsung says Israel is in Europe, "Palestine" in the Middle East

Samsung has a webpage where you can choose what country you are in, divided up by region.

If you are in Israel and look for a Hebrew page by looking in the Middle East, you are out of luck. You'd have to search a little further down - into Europe.

Remarkably, Israel and "Palestine" are in completely different regions. Hebrew speakers of Israel apparently live in Europe while their Palestinian Arab neighbors are in the Middle East.

By itself, this isn't a big deal. But in the aggregate, the message being given by these sorts of things - UN regional memberships, sports leagues, and so forth - is that Israel doesn't belong in the Middle East.

It reinforces the Arab lie that Israel is a European colonialist outposts, not a nation in the Middle East that has more historical reason to exist there than any Arab nation in the Levant.

It reinforces the idea that Jews do not belong in the region, as every nation in the Middle East section is a Muslim-majority country.

It tells the world that "Palestine" exists and is where it is supposed to be, while Israel is somehow taking up space in Palestinian land.

A website isn't a big deal - but it is a big deal. It legitimizes the idea that Israel really should not exist in the historic home of the Jewish people.

(h/t AlexandreM)

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06/04 Links Pt2: When Democrats embrace an anti-Semite; J Street Chapters Aiding BDS Campaigns on Campuses; Swedish FM to PA Arabs: We will fight with you and for you

From Ian:

When Democrats embrace an anti-Semite

In both cases, Democrats have made a meal of this embarrassing situation, despite the fact that the GOP in both California and Illinois has condemned and disowned these candidates, who have no more chance of being elected to Congress than they have of flying to the moon.

But what’s going on in the Virginia district that just so happens to include Charlottesville is something very different.

The Democratic candidate for Congress in Virginia’s Fifth District is Leslie Cockburn, an author and film producer who is presenting herself to the voters as nothing more than an ardent liberal critic of Trump. But far from a garden-variety Democrat, Cockburn is a veteran left-wing propagandist with a troubling history of anti-Israel extremism.

Along with her husband, Andrew, Cockburn was the author of 1991 book Dangerous Liaisons: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship. The book was a compendium of conspiracy theories and smears that sought to depict Israel as manipulating U.S. foreign policy. The Cockburns weren’t content to feed the notion that Jews were the tail wagging the American dog to the detriment of American interests. Instead, they sought to blame Israel for a host of international problems, including South American drug cartels, Central American massacres and apartheid in South Africa.

As no less a critic of Israel than The New York Times noted in its review of the book at the time, it was dedicated to “Israel bashing for its own sake,” and that its message was that Israelis “are a menace” who are responsible for “everything that ails us.”

Women’s March Co-Founder Condemns Founding of Israel as ‘Human Rights Crime’

Women's March co-founder Tamika Mallory said during an event Friday that Israel committed a human rights crime in doing "whatever" it took to take land from Palestinians.

"This is not about stopping one side. This is about ensuring that the native people are able to enjoy the land. They shouldn’t have to ask anybody for their land. This is their land," Mallory said in remarks made via video at an event hosted by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Justice Delegation, and flagged by The Forward.

Mallory, who joined the group of lawyers and civil rights activists on a trip to the Holy Land last month, accused Israel of obtaining the land by force.

"When you go to someone’s home and you need a place to stay, you ask ‘Can I come into your home and can I stay here, and can we peacefully coexist?’ You don’t walk into someone else’s home, needing a place. It’s clear you needed a place to go – cool, we got that! I hear that!" Mallory began.

"But you don’t show up to somebody’s home, needing a place to stay, and decide that you’re going to throw them out and hurt the people who are on that land. And to kill, steal, and do whatever it is you’re gonna do to take that land! That to me is unfair. It’s a human rights crime," she added.

Memo to @TamikaMallory, Jews didn’t just need “a place to go” after the Holocaust, we had a right to our ancestral home & created a democracy w/full rights for all citizens. Your malevolence toward Jews is rivaled only by your complete ignorance of history https://t.co/uouEZ9ipsc
— AJC (@AJCGlobal) June 3, 2018

J Street Chapters Aiding BDS Campaigns on Campuses

Campus branches of the liberal group J Street have been helping anti-Israel activists gain support for student government resolutions calling for boycotts of Israel, according to a Washington Free Beacon review of BDS campaigns on college campuses during the recently concluded 2017-2018 school year.

At many schools where boycott and divestment campaigns have taken place, J Street chapters provided key assistance to BDS activists through statements, lobbying, and activism that fueled the anti-Israel climate on campus and reinforced accusations against Israel made by BDS groups. Despite J Street claims that the group is an important progressive opponent of BDS, at many schools J Street chapters did not oppose BDS campaigns and sat on the sidelines during contentious fights over student government divestment resolutions.

The revelations, compiled from Free Beacon interviews with campus activists and pro-Israel professionals who fought BDS resolutions this year, call into question the group's publicly claimed opposition to the BDS movement. Catie Stewart, deputy director of J Street U, recently boasted that her organization "does not support Israel Apartheid Week or BDS campaigns and joins anti-BDS coalitions." This year's campus fights suggest a different record.

At the University of Minnesota, where a BDS referendum succeeded in March, a pro-Israel coalition launched a campaign to oppose the vote. J Street U refused to participate in the effort, instead releasing a statement condemning the campus Hillel for being insufficiently anti-Israel. The president of J Street U at UMN, Imogen Page, is a donor to Jewish Voice for Peace, a BDS group that endorses terrorism and calls for Israel's destruction. Page was seen handing out anti-Israel flyers during the voting period of the referendum. Weeks later, she was arrested for disorderly conduct during an anti-Israel protest staged by a different BDS group.

Fatah tells Argentina soccer team that all of Israel is occupied

As I mentioned last week, Palestinians are very upset over an upcoming friendly soccer match between Israel's team and Argentina in Teddy Stadium, Jerusalem.

Fatah published a poster to shame the team into not coming:

As far as I know, the team was not planning any trips over the Green Line. Teddy Stadium is within the part of Jerusalem that Israel controlled before 1967 that Palestinians usually pretend in English to have no claim over.

This poster betrays the real opinions of the Palestinian ruling party - the "moderates" who supposedly are willing to compromise. To them, there is no Israel, and everything is

"occupied."

They are even willing to say this in English.

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