Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, July 13, 2018

07/13 Links Pt2: The Roots of BDS and the Campaign to Delegitimize Israel; Anti-Semitism is the West's self-destruction; NASA will consider sending another Israeli astronaut into space

From Ian:

JCPA: The Spider’s Web: The Roots of BDS and the Campaign to Delegitimize Israel

Summary of the Main Findings

For almost two decades, Israel has been subjected to an international campaign of political subversion – known as the “Delegitimization Campaign” – aimed at undermining its existence as the sovereign nation state of the Jewish people. The campaign operates in the political, legal, academic, cultural, religious, and economic fields, and also includes “direct action” activities such as flotillas or pre-coordinated demonstrations and marches around the world.

Various organizations follow, map, analyze, and examine the central groups and their EU sources of funding. At the Jerusalem Center we have also been following and mapping the main groups that take part in the campaign. Yet, comprehensive and in-depth research is still missing; such research should isolate the main players – their structures and working methods, inner struggles and dynamics within the campaign, as well as the attempts to convey their message in Western liberal language. In this paper, which is part of our ongoing research, we aim to assist in the filling of this gap. This time, we will map strategically significant European countries, each having its own specific weight, as well as the United States. This mapping exercise also reveals that in spite of the unique geo-political structures in each country, when looking at the main players in the Delegitimization Campaign, the picture is very similar.

The move toward Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) on Israeli products, which comprises most of the economic aspects of the campaign, has probably gained most of the attention among the other fields of the campaign. BDS has many overlapping features with other fields of this campaign, yet also has its unique structures. In common with other fields of this campaign, BDS is presented as a Palestinian “grassroots,” “civil society” initiative; implementing “nonviolent” means to resist the occupation. Yet the reality is markedly different and highlights the main tactics of the main players in the whole campaign:

Yair Lapid: The U.N. and antisemitism: 10-year report card

Between 2006 and 2016 the United Nations Human Rights Council passed 67 resolutions condemning human rights violations around the world: against the massacre of half a million people in Syria, the genocide in Darfur, the execution of lesbian, gay and bisexual people in Iran. A long, bloody and tragic list of horrors.

In that same decade the same Human Rights Council passed 68 resolutions condemning Israel. The council condemned Israel, a law-abiding democracy fighting for its life against murderous terror organizations, more times than the rest of the world combined.

And it’s not just the Human Rights Council.

It’s the biased approach, the disgraceful discrimination of UN bodies when it comes to Jews.

Navi Pillay, who served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (a different body from the Human Rights Council), condemned the anti-Muslim caricatures published in the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Caricatures looked to her like a violation of human rights. The same high commissioner remained silent when a terrorist murdered a teacher and three children in a Jewish school in Toulouse. That didn’t strike her as a human rights violation.

The situation hasn’t improved since then. The current high commissioner, Zeid Raad Al Hussein, consistently ignores every attack and terror attack against Jews and Israel. The other UN bodies are no better.

Haaretz [click on twitter link]: The Jewish Israeli Living in Iraq and Helping ISIS Victims Rebuild Their Lives

The Jewish Israeli living in Iraq and helping ISIS victims rebuild their lives https://t.co/5CgeaG3h5F
— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) July 12, 2018

Talking to: Lisa Miara, lives in Jerusalem and northern Iraq, founder of Springs of Hope Foundation.

How a Jerusalem resident ended in up in Iraq, working with Yazidi child soldiers and women who were tortured, raped and brainwashed in ISIS captivity

We’re familiar with the stories of women who were kidnapped by ISIS and became handmaids. That’s certainly not the whole picture. What do you hear, firsthand, from women who have escaped?

The kidnapped women are forced to give up their Yazidi name and take a Muslim name instead. Naturally, they also undergo coercive conversion to Islam and must take on all the Islamic precepts. Not a few women were simply thrown off high buildings because they refused to pray or bow. There are women who weren’t raped but were stuck in a prison three stories underground, without light or air, without food and water. They weighed 20 kilos [44 pounds] when they were rescued, had no hair on their heads and were suffering from terrible diseases. They said that ISIS gave them one dish of rice for 30 women, once a week. That they were urinated on and were made to drink the urine.

These are stories that no one is taking the trouble to publish. Nor is anyone talking about the insane brainwashing that the Yazidis undergo in captivity. We have an 11-year-old boy who was taken to the hospital in Mosul, where by chance he met his sister, who had been missing for three years and whose fate was unknown. She spat on him and called him a heretic. Of course she refused to go back to her family. Another girl, who was located by the Iraqi army, refused to leave because she thought that the whole world was already under ISIS rule and that there was no point leaving Mosul. And there are, of course, the children. Children who served as soldiers in every respect. On the front. (h/t Zvi)

To Life: How Israeli Volunteers Are Changing the World [featuring Lisa Miara]

To Life is a look at five Israeli organizations dedicated to helping people across the globe. This is a story about Israel you won't see in the news. In keeping with the Jewish tradition of tikkun olam ("repairing the world"), Israel has been at the forefront of humanitarian and disaster relief work since the 1950s, less than a decade after becoming a nation. Since then, the Jewish state has provided humanitarian aid to millions of people in 140 countries around the world. Featuring stunning cinematography and moving interviews, To Life follows Israeli volunteers in Uganda, Nepal, Greece, Kurdistan, and the Palestinian territories to find out how and why, with so many security challenges of their own, they reach out so effectively to help other nations.

Full Documentary

Seen in Israel: Moroccan sardines being sold in stores

Sent to me, seen on an Israeli supermarket shelf:

Only a tiny amount of the tens of millions in trade between the two countries.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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7 year old Israeli girl wins European chess championship (video)

Something nice to watch on a Friday...

Seven-year-old Liel Levitan was the top winner in the Girls U7 category of the European School Chess Championship 2018, held June 29 to July 8 in Krakow, Poland.
More than 300 players from over 20 European federations were divided into six age categories for open competitions and girls’ competitions (U7, U9, U11, U13, U15 and U17).

The winners of the European Championships 2018 receive free board and lodging to participate in the World School Championship 2019 to be held in Tunisia.

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07/13 Links Pt1: Kontorovich: The U.S. Must Stop Funding UN Agencies That Admit the Palestinian Authority; Amari: The Iranian Terror State Targets Europe; Syrian civilians appeal to Israel calling for intervention

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Northern exposure

In the last six months, the threats have grown. An Iranian drone flew into Israel near Beit Shean in February. A salvo of twenty rockets was fired at the Golan in May.

Each action has led to a reaction by Israel, usually punishing Iran and the Syrian regime. But the attacks have not deterred the regime or Tehran. Tehran knows that it can continue to threaten Israel in a variety of ways. Israel has sought to warn Damascus via Moscow to stop the Iranian threat. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly stressed that Iran must leave Syria. Assad responds that there are no Iranian forces in Syria. Beneath the war of words the airstrikes and Iranian presence continue.

In retaliation for the drone incursion, the IDF struck three targets in Syria. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has warned that Syria must refrain from any actions that violate the border area. “I made it clear here, both to the commanders and to the representatives of the UN Disengagement Observer Force that any Syrian entering into the buffer zone, every Syrian soldier in the buffer zone, would endanger his soul.”

A new report at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies argues that “Israel now seeks to ensure this does not develop into a pattern, where Iran is allowed to test Israel and simply absorb limited retribution.”

On the heels of Netanyahu’s trip to Moscow and US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week, the message must be clear: Iran must leave Syria.

The regime and Moscow must take this seriously and not continue the rhetorical charade of claiming there are no Iranian forces in Syria or that they are not “foreign” or that they consist merely of militias or advisors. The Golan border must not become another Gaza, it must remain quiet or Assad will pay the price for allowing threats to fester.

Eugene Kontorovich: The U.S. Must Stop Funding UN Agencies That Admit the Palestinian Authority

In 1990 and 1994, Congress enacted laws requiring the government to cease funding any “specialized agencies” or “affiliated organization[s]” of the United Nations that grant full membership to the Palestinian Authority (PA). These laws have become relevant since Mahmoud Abbas began a campaign to join international institutions as a stepping stone to a unilateral declaration of statehood and a tool for lawfare against Israel. Since 2016, the PA joined four such groups, which nonetheless continue to receive funds from the U.S. Eugene Kontorovich argues that these organizations should be defunded, not only on strictly legal grounds but also as a matter of policy:
PDF
The acceptance of [the PA as a] member state turns these UN agencies into political tools for Palestinian unilateralism, rather than technical agencies dealing with specialized tasks. Moreover, as evidenced by the Palestinian membership in UNESCO, once it is a part of these agencies, the PA will hijack their agendas and divert them to anti-Israel policies and polemics. . . . [I]f the U.S. does not enforce non-waivable statutory measures triggered by PA action, it will lose its credibility as a potential broker of Middle East peace. Any peace plan will require U.S. assurances to Israel in the event the Palestinians take certain hostile measures. Implementing those assurances will always have a cost, a downside. If the U.S. will not abide by its own statutes when doing so might be uncomfortable, it can hardly be expected to do so with mere diplomatic assurances.

[Furthermore], a failure to implement the funding restrictions will only encourage the PA to step up its “internationalization” campaign. . . . Finally, the UN agencies admitted the PA with full knowledge of the consequences. The UN itself has thus put the promotion of the PA’s agenda above the original goals of these agencies. If mandatory U.S. funding cuts would be destructive to the mission of these organizations, they would not have accepted PA membership. If cutting funding impedes the functioning of these organizations, the solution consistent with U.S. law is not to continue funding, but rather defunding [in order] to pressure the PA to quit the organizations it has already joined.

This page at the Palestine Cabinet website shows that anyone who spent more than a year in Israeli prisons is entitled to free health insurance.

They still have to fill out paperwork - proof that they were in prison more than a year, proof that they are no longer in prison.

Regular Palestinians have to pay a monthly fee for health insurance. Even the unemployed have to pay a token fee. From what I can tell, former prisoners who have been held in Israeli prisons for terror activities are the only ones who get free health insurance.

The support that the Palestinian Authority gives to terrorists goes beyond salaries.

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I mentioned last week that Iranian president Hassan Rouhani claimed that Iran always had very good relations with Jews.

In remarks with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Rouhani said, "Some European countries have historic debts to the Jews that we do not have, but the Jewish nation also has a debt to us. We Iranians saved the Jews of Babylon. They are indebted to us, but the Zionists are an occupying and tyrannical group that oppressed the Palestinian people, besieged the Gazans, supported ISIL, and treated ISIL wounded."

He is referring to Cyrus the Great who saved the Jews in Babylon.

Now, a Saudi news site is seizing on Rouhani's claim that Iran loves Jews to point out that Cyrus is the one who allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple.

So by referring to how Cyrus saved the Jews, Rouhani is implicitly recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the Jews! Why else would Cyrus allow them to go to Jerusalem?

I don't think that Iran denies that Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. Wikipedia in Farsi mentions it.

Iranians know very well that Jerusalem was Jewish way before Islam existed.

(Unfortunately, the Saudi news site turns this into a conspiracy theory, saying that Rouhani implicitly recognized the Jewish ties to Jerusalem as a way to ease sanctions. Which is quite nuts.)

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How the Obama State Department lied with a map (update - new map)

From The New Yorker:

One afternoon in the spring of 2015, a senior State Department official named Frank Lowenstein paged through a government briefing book and noticed a map that he had never seen before. Lowenstein was the Obama Administration’s special envoy on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, a position that exposed him to hundreds of maps of the West Bank. (One adorned his State Department office.)

Typically, those maps made Jewish settlements and outposts look tiny compared to the areas where the Palestinians lived. The new map in the briefing book was different. It showed large swaths of territory that were off limits to Palestinian development and filled in space between the settlements and the outposts. At that moment, Lowenstein told me, he saw “the forest for the trees”—not only were Palestinian population centers cut off from one another but there was virtually no way to squeeze a viable Palestinian state into the areas that remained. Lowenstein’s team did the math. When the settlement zones, the illegal outposts, and the other areas off limits to Palestinian development were consolidated, they covered almost sixty per cent of the West Bank.

Lowenstein showed the small map to Secretary of State John Kerry and said, “Look what’s really going on here.” Kerry brought the map to his next meeting with President Obama. The map was too small for everyone in the Situation Room to see, so Lowenstein had a series of larger maps made. The information was then verified by U.S. intelligence agencies. Obama’s Presidency was winding down, but Lowenstein figured that he could use the time left to raise awareness about what the Israelis were doing. “One day, everyone’s going to wake up and go, ‘Wait a minute, we’ve got to stop this to at least have the possibility of a two-state solution,’ ” Lowenstein said.

This is idiotic.

The white areas of the map are essentially Areas A and B under the Oslo Accords from 1995. Under the accords, the rest of the West Bank was under Israeli control.

This has nothing to do with settlements. It is a map of Palestinian areas being misrepresented as evidence of Israeli settlement growth.

Here you can see, side by side, the State Department map of 2016 that claims that the map proves no two state solution is viable and the actual 1995 Oslo II map of Areas A and B. Pretty much identical.

Here's another view putting the two maps side by side, with the right hand map from ResearchGate showing Areas A and B:

If you can tell the difference between Area C in 1995 and in 2016, you have much better eyes than I do.

The Obama map is a lie.

But look how impressed the Obama White House and John Kerry was with the deception:

Kerry met regularly with Obama in the Oval Office. During one of those meetings, Kerry placed the maps on a large coffee table, one after another, so Obama and his advisers could study them. Ben Rhodes, one of Obama’s longest-serving advisers, said the President was shocked to see how “systematic” the Israelis had been at cutting off Palestinian population centers from one another. Lowenstein didn’t show the maps to the Israelis, but he did walk them through the key findings, which were incorporated into Kerry speeches and other documents.

The Israeli peace offers made after the Oslo map was created removed most of the separations between Palestinian areas.

The idea that the maps prove that Israel is gobbling land and making peace impossible is a pure falsehood.

The next paragraph shows that Mahmoud Abbas knows that the maps were wrong, even though the writer doesn't get it:

Later, Kerry presented some of the maps to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President. Kerry’s goal was to show Abbas that the Obama Administration understood the extent to which the two-state solution was threatened. Abbas was taken aback. Instead of feeling reassured, he told a confidant that the maps convinced him that the Americans believed “the chances of a viable Palestinian state is next to nil.”

Abbas was upset because he saw how the State Department completely misinterpreted the map! He knows that in terms of square kilometers, the amount of space taken up by settlements and Israeli control is virtually identical to the amount of space agreed upon during Oslo. It doesn't preclude peace at all - Palestinian refusal to accept the Israeli offers in 2000 and 2001 and 2008 is what precluded peace.

Finally, the deceptive maps were behind the final disgusting anti-Israel action done by Obama:

Alarmed by Israeli actions depicted in the maps, Obama decided to abstain on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the settlements, clearing the way for its passage.

A map that Bill Clinton would have easily recognized as being essentially a map from Oslo was wrongly interpreted by Barack Obama to be evidence of Israeli land grabs.

This story, rather than illustrating Israeli expansionism, perfectly illustrates the antipathy towards Israel shown by Kerry and Obama and their staffs.

(h/t Andrew, Avi)

[I'm not getting into the incorrect population figures on the map.]

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07/12 Links Pt2: The hypocrisy of the Socialist International; Ireland’s anti-Israel Obsession; Ignoring Extradition Request, Putin Meets With Senior Iranian Envoy Wanted by Argentina for 1994 AMIA Bombing

From Ian:

Isi Leibler: Balancing dangers and opportunities

The speed of recent changes is breathtaking.

On the negative side, an escalation in anti-Semitism has reduced the quality of life for most Jews. Most European governments do not conceal their contempt for Israel, and their foreign policies and U.N. voting records display an absence of moral compass.

Nothing illustrates this better than their reaction to Israeli self-defense against incursions by Hamas terrorists and rocket attacks. To depict Israel's efforts to defend itself from violent mobs as a disproportionate response to "peaceful demonstrators" is obscene. No country would have shown as much restraint.

The behavior of the ailing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his acolytes has descended to levels of anti-Semitism that would have made the Nazis proud.

A rabid hatred for U.S. President Donald Trump has led many American Jews to distance themselves from Israel. Forty-two percent of them even opposed moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

On the broader Jewish political level, the Anti-Defamation League, the once respected apolitical body whose mandate was to combat anti-Semitism, today aggressively seeks to slander Trump and often criticizes Israel.

The Democratic Party has become radicalized with the emergence of anti-Israeli agitators. The primary election defeat of Rep. Joe Crowley, the Democratic caucus chairman and a firm supporter of Israel, was a significant blow. Jewish voters were not dissuaded from supporting his opponent, 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has made no secret of her hostility to Israel. She is affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, which supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

The situation for Jews on college campuses has worsened. Many pro-BDS agitators are fringe Jews working with radical Arabs and far-left extremists.

But outside this gloom, there is also light.

JPost Editorial: The hypocrisy of the Socialist International

How did we get here? For the better part of a century, Labor Zionism was a major ideology in the pre-state Zionist movement and in Israeli political life, and a major player in the Socialist International, where the Poalei Zion movement became a member in 1923. Shimon Peres was vice president and honorary president of the Socialist International, and Collette Avital, a former Labor MK, is currently a vice president.

But the progressive world has been hijacked by the idea of intersectionality, which creates a hierarchy of grievances in which Israel’s success is considered a demerit, and the Palestinians somehow are championed by all. The Socialist International reflects a trend seen in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in the UK – with whom Israeli Labor has already cut ties – and a slow but steady rise in ultra-leftist candidates running with the Democrats in the US midterm elections this year.

Never mind that Labor and Meretz members advocate for progressive causes – whether for women, LGBT people or the Arab minority in Israel – while Fatah, the Palestinian party in the Socialist International, led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is far from progressive on social issues, reeks with corruption and openly rewards terrorists who murder and maim Israeli civilians to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

It’s no wonder that Labor left an organization where it had no say and was doomed to lose, despite the party’s storied history in the Socialist International. This only begs the question of why Meretz chose to remain in this den of hypocrites.

Ignoring Extradition Request, Russian President Putin Meets With Senior Iranian Envoy Wanted by Argentina for 1994 AMIA Bombing

Argentina’s government voiced its frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration on Thursday, after Moscow ignored a formal request from an Argentine judge to arrest a senior visiting Iranian official implicated in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires.

Putin met on Thursday with Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to the regime’s “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, greeting him warmly in front of reporters. Velayati was Iran’s foreign minister at the time of the AMIA atrocity on July 18, 1994, when 85 people died and hundreds more were wounded after a truck packed with explosives drove into the Jewish organization’s main building in the Argentine capital.

Velayati was also present at a meeting of top Iranian security officials in the city of Mashhad on August 14, 1993, where the decision to bomb the AMIA building is understood to have been made.

Velayati’s face-to-face with Putin on Thursday came just 36 hours after Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral requested his arrest by the Russian authorities. It was Judge Corral who issued international arrest warrants for Velayati and seven other Iranian and Lebanese operatives in 2006. Corral also tried unsuccessfully to secure Velayati’s arrest under the same warrant in 2016, when the Iranian visited Singapore and Malaysia.

Argentine news outlet Infobae.com reported that both Argentina’s foreign minister, Jorge Faurie, and its ambassador to Moscow, Ricardo Lagorio, had reached out personally to their Russian counterparts to enforce Corral’s arrest warrant.

From the official Palestinian Authority Wafa news agency:

170 settlers and Talmudic students storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque

95 settlers and 75 students from Talmudic institutions stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Thursday morning, from the Mughrabi gate, with heavy security guards from the Israeli occupation forces .

Our correspondent said that the settlers carried out provocative tours in the blessed mosque, while the Jewish groups carried out suspicious steps in the Al-Aqsa Mosque behind a wall opposite the Dome of the Rock amid Talmudic movements and gestures .

It would be nice if the majority of Jews cared about the (real) Talmud as much as the Palestinians do!

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Superman Fights To Defend Truth, Justice, American Way, Let Holocaust Happen (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Metropolis, July 11 - The world's greatest superhero granted an exclusive interview yesterday to PreOccupied Territory, in which he detailed his approach to pursuing truth, fighting crime, promoting individualism and democracy, and doing next to nothing while the Nazis systematically slaughtered the Jews of Europe and other minorities.

Superman, who burst onto the international scene in 1938, invited a reporter to his Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic ice Tuesday, where he reminisced and explained how he prioritizes crises to address. During the two-hour series of discussions, the Last Son of Krypton explored the minutiae of his exploits, in the main analyzing how he effectively ignored the industrialized killing of history's most-persecuted group yet still emerged from the 1940's with a reputation for defending the defenseless and serving justice to oppressors.

"No one really thinks anymore that the Holocaust was unknown to Americans while it was happening," acknowledged Superman. "For a couple of decades after World War II that served as a plausible enough excuse that no one really asked me what could be more important than preventing the systematic murder of six million Jews. But subsequent research - and a good number of contemporaneous sources - indicate that knowledge of the atrocities wasn't so hard to come by even across the ocean from where they were happening."

"What it amounts to," continued the Man of Steel, "is that ignoring Jewish suffering is actually an essential part of 'the American Way,' as demonstrated by immigration policy at the time, and no effort on the part of the Allies to disrupt the killing. In retrospect, and I'm glad for this opportunity to clarify things, that means 'Truth, Justice, and the American Way' are not three equally important values, but that the first two are subservient to the third. If promoting truth or justice in a certain case would deviate from the American Way, in this case shutting our doors to people desperate to escape the Nazi persecution and killing machine, lest domestic antisemites get upset and make political trouble, then truth and justice must take a back seat to that."

For similar reasons, the Son of Tomorrow explained, he has taken no measures to stop North Korea or Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and stayed home on September 11, 2001. "My whole ethos is one of an immigrant who becomes the embodiment of the American Way," he noted. "My Jewish creators made me the assimilated ideal. There's no way I can betray that by doing anything that might indicate I harbor special sympathy for Jews, as that would go against my assimilation axiom."

"Barack Obama is no longer in office so I no longer have the excuse of not undermining government policy in terms of Iran," he concluded. "But I'm a lifelong Democrat, and unlike some of my hypocritical political colleagues, I did move north when Trump was elected."

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07/12 Links Pt1: Why Do Palestinian Leaders Oppose Helping Their People?; Israel strikes three Syrian regime posts following drone infiltration; Israeli border towns hit with 1,000 fires in 3 months of Gaza terror

From Ian:

Why Do Palestinian Leaders Oppose Helping Their People?

Mahmoud Abbas and his West Bank-based government seek to prolong the suffering of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. They want the international community to continue to believe that Israel is responsible for the ongoing, intense suffering of the Palestinians. They are hoping to use the crisis there to pursue their campaign to delegitimize Israel.

Palestinian leaders would prefer to see their people starve than make any form of concessions for peace with Israel. Yet Al-Aloul and Abbas are not the ones who are facing starvation. There is nothing more comfortable than sitting in your fashionable house in Ramallah or Nablus and talking about starvation and humanitarian aid.

The Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, who are desperate for jobs and a better life, do not really care about Trump's upcoming peace plan. They also do not really care about a settlement or a checkpoint in the West Bank.

This is the essence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Palestinians' number one priority -- the Palestinian leadership and the Palestinians in general -- is destroying Israel. They would rather die than give up their dream of destroying Israel.

Israel strikes three Syrian regime posts following drone infiltration

The Israeli military struck three Syrian military targets overnight on Wednesday in retaliation for a Syrian drone that infiltrated into northern Israel hours earlier.

"The IDF holds the Syrian regime accountable for the actions carried out in its territory and warns it from further action against Israeli forces," read a statement released by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.

Footage released by the Israeli military showed missiles hitting a hut, a two-story structure and a five-story structure.

The official Syrian news agency SANA reported that Israeli jets “fired a number of missiles towards some military posts” near the Druze town of Hadar and Tal Kroum Jaba in Quneitra countryside, causing only material damage. Another strike by rockets and mortar shells targeted the village of Jaba causing significant damage to the houses.

With Syrian government forces continue to advance in an offensive to retake the strategic Syrian Golan Heights from rebels groups, the IDF has stressed for the 1974 separation of forces agreement between Israel and Syria to be upheld and the demilitarized buffer zone along the border be respected.

On Wednesday a Syrian drone flew some 10 kilometers into Israel before being intercepted by a Patriot missile.

Footage of the Patriot missile intercepting the Syrian UAV that infiltrated Israeli territory today pic.twitter.com/g5MnjZLdyl
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) July 11, 2018

Earlier tonight, Wednesday July 11th, the IDF targeted three military posts in Syria in response to the infiltration of the Syrian UAV into Israel that was intercepted by the IDF earlier today pic.twitter.com/BvaEOfHNDv
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) July 11, 2018

“You keep using that word… I do not think it means what you think it means.”

I keep hearing and reading statements from Jews, usually from America, prefaced by “my Jewish values.” Usually what follows is some sort of accusation against Israel that has little to do with facts – or an understanding of Jewish values.

The basics are really simple, if you take the time to actually look at them:

1) The Ten Commandments, not “Tikkun Olam”

The Ten Commandments are the fundamental guidelines of Jewish values, not the concept of Tikkun Olam. These are predicated on the Shema, the monotheistic declaration of faith in the One God: “Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God is one God.” Deuteronomy 6:4–9

The Ten Commandments are the guidelines that spell out what it means to be decent and provide the fundamental guidelines of moral society which have been accepted by to most of the nations on earth, including ones that do not adhere to Judeo-Christian faith. Societies that have not accepted these rules of behavior, (for example, those that permit murder for the sake of “honor”) are deemed immoral societies.

Tikkun Olam seems to be a very popular term with American Jewry. Interestingly, it has no basis in the Torah.

So where does Tikkun Olam come from?

The concept of Tikkun Olam can be found in in the prayer “Aleinu leshabei'ach” and the Kabbalistic understanding that the world is not whole because the male and female aspects of God are separated rather than united. At the time of redemption these aspects will unite and the world will be repaired. These references are so esoteric that many Israeli Jews have no familiarity with this concept at all.

Tikkun Olam does NOT mean social justice.

The literal translation of Tikkun Olam is “repairing the world.” It is not difficult to comprehend that the world is broken but who has the power to fix it? Why doesn’t God fix the world?

If one takes the time to actually consider this question, it is shockingly arrogant to conclude that a certain group of individuals have the ability to repair the world. Can any single group decide what is the “right” way for everyone to do things and by convincing (forcing?) others to comply, fix all that is wrong in the world?!

Judaism is not a missionary based religion and does not push faith or lifestyle on others. Jews never took part in Crusades or sent missionaries around the world to convince the “heathen” to adopt our religion and our ways of life. In fact, Judaism does the exact opposite, making it extremely difficult to become Jewish – so why would anyone think it is “Jewish” to “crusade” for social justice?

Judaism provides a very clear guidebook of how to live a good life and be a decent human being. The commandments of Judaism are for Jews and are not directed at non-Jews. By extension, redemption (at which time the world will be “repaired”) has nothing to do with what non-Jews do or don’t do but rather the behavior of Jews. Our influence on this process has to do with fixing ourselves, not changing others, fulfilling our own obligations, not demanding others do what we think is right.

History has shown that Jews, living a Jewish life (in contrast to Jewish-by-birth radical atheists) have a positive influence on the societies in which we live but this is not a result of being a “social justice warrior” but rather social justice, the creation of a good and moral society, is a by-product of adhering to the principles of Judaism.

To put it simply – be Maimonides (the Rambam) not Karl Marx.

2) “Do not kill” vs “Do not murder”

Recent condemnations of Israeli policy in regard to Gaza draw on “Jewish values” to declare that killing is wrong and accuse the IDF of massacring Gazans. On face value, the idea that the Jewish State implements policy that goes against Jewish values seems like a potent argument - unless you actually know what Jewish values are and have familiarized yourself with a factual accounting of events in Israel.

So, first things first –

Does Judaism say that killing is wrong?

No! The Ten Commandments say that murder is forbidden, not killing.

If killing was forbidden we would all be vegetarians. Instead of extensive chapters on the laws of warfare and the wars of Israel, the Torah would simply say that Jews must be pacifists.

But it doesn’t.

Judaism instructs that life is sacred thus we must protect life – first and foremost OUR own lives. When attacked by someone attempting to murder you it is necessary to make sure that the murderer does not succeed. If the murderer dies in the process this is regrettable but justifiable. Had they not been attempting to murder, they would not have been hurt.

Killing in self-defense is not murder.

So how does this translate to Israeli policy and IDF actions?

On May 14th some 40,000 Gazans rioted on Israel’s border with Gaza. They had explosives, knives and firebombs. Their leaders had openly declared that the goal was to storm the border, break through and eat the hearts of Jews. Many of the rioters used little children and even babies as human shields to hide behind as they a
ttempted to breach the border.

IDF snipers killed 62 of the rioters.

Israel was promptly accused of massacring “peaceful protestors” and using “disproportional force.”

A massacre is the deliberate, indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of a large number of people.

Two days later Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization, announced proudly that 50 out of the 62 dead were Hamas professionals, trained operatives who had left their uniforms at home to blend in with the civilian Gazan population while attempting to attack Israel. Islamic Jihad took responsibility for most of the remaining dead. These were not innocent or peaceful protestors. They were professional terrorists.

Hamas official, Dr. Salah Al-Bardawil is clear about terrorist involvement in the riots pic.twitter.com/p5My6JGQRr
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) May 16, 2018

Had the IDF decided to drop bombs on the rioters that would have constituted a massacre. All of the 40,000 could have easily been killed. That would have stopped the subsequent 100 days of violent riots, missiles and arson attacks on Israeli communities. It would have been much easier for the IDF, faster and more effective. Israelis who lost their livelihood to arson terror would not be in the position they are today.

But we don’t do that.

The IDF, knowing that terrorists were hiding within the civilian population managed, astonishingly, to eliminate the terrorists and not the innocents they were using as human shields. This is an unprecedented level of pinpoint accuracy, discriminant, minimal violence made necessary after all other options were exhausted.

The accusation that the IDF “massacred” Gazans, using disproportional force, is utterly baseless and in fact contrary to Jewish values which demand that the State must defend the lives of her citizens. It would be immoral to do otherwise.

3) Arguing and questioning are the birthright of the Jewish people

Unlike religions that came before Judaism and those that came after, Jewish tradition demands questioning, not blind obedience. One can and in some cases, should, argue even with God. The best example of this is probably the story of Sodom and Gomorrah where God tells Abraham that the cities will be destroyed and Abraham critiques God for this decision, bargaining for the lives of the people living there.

It is imperative to ask “Why?” This is the mindset that has differentiated the Jewish mind from all others, made Jewish scholars extraordinary and is the driving factor in the success of the Start-Up Nation. The constant need to question, arguing sometimes for the pure joy of the mental gymnastics of debating makes Jews annoying but it also makes us exceptional.

In Judaism there is always a reason why. The problem is that those who do not know the answers and do not bother to search for them often jump to incorrect and even baseless conclusions. My Jewish values direct me to not accept bombastic statements but to question everything, think for myself and if I don’t know they answer, ask “why?” until I get an acceptable answer – particularly when it comes to big issues such as my Jewish identity and my right to live free in my ancestral homeland.

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.

The boring anti-Israel protest at Batsheva Dance performance

On Tuesday evening, I checked out the protest by BDSers outside the Joyce Theater in New York where Israel's Batsheva Dance Company was to perform.

The BDSers had a small band and one person would start a responsive verse about some trendy intersectional issue interspersed with verses about "Israeli apartheid" that would be repeated by the 15 or so drones.

It was pretty boring.

I spoke to one lady handing out flyers with typical anti-Israel lies, and asked her if I can ask her a few questions. I asked if she was anti-Israel or pro-Palestine, and she said she wasn't anti-Israel at all. Then I asked her what about the slogan "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" and she answered that she wanted a single democratic state (obviously not Israel.) I then asked her if she was against a Jewish state, and she said she didn't want Israel to be like Iran where there is a state religion (which Israel doesn't have.) When I asked her about every Arab state save Lebanon that says they are Muslim states in their constitutions, she claimed I was wrong and then called over one of the others because she realized she was in way over her head. They told her not to talk to me.

The JDL was there doing a counter-demonstration. while I thought that people holding signs saying "Punish Gaza" do not do anything at all positive for Israel, Zionism or Jews, at least they countered the other hate.

Police barricades were up to make sure that theatre-goers wouldn't be harassed. I didn't stay until the box office opened.

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 Progressive Zionists of the California Democratic Party:

Progressive Zionists of the California Democratic Party is concerned about candidate for Assembly Member in District 63 Maria Estrada’s public support of notorious homophobe and antisemite Louis Farrakhan and her repeated and extreme antisemitism in the guise of “criticism of Israel".

Candidate Estrada made repeated antisemitic remarks about the Jewish state in a series of Facebook comments.

On May 10, 2017 she posted a cartoon replacing the Magen David on the Israeli flag with the swastika of the Nazis, but the next day she apologized for her post. However, on October 6, 2017 she claimed non-Jews could not be Zionists without being influenced by Jewish friends or loved ones. In this same exchange--shortly after a detailed posting of many of Farrakhan's hateful statements about Jews--she commented that she “enjoys listening to Farrakhan’s sermons”, as well as claiming Democrats turn a blind eye to Palestinians, and “justify it by bringing up the Holocaust. As if what happened 70 years ago justifies what is happening now.”

On May 14, 2018 “calling out” Eric Bauman, Chair of the California Democratic Party, she admonished him for not keeping “your party, your religion and your people in check.”

Comparing Zionism - the movement for Jewish liberation and self-determination - to ideologies that support oppression and genocide against Jews is grotesquely racist. ...

Additionally, it is antisemitic to claim Jews spend too much time talking about the Holocaust, or compare the situation in Palestine to what the Nazis did to Jews. This comparison holds no real comparable value and is intended only to hurt Jews, especially those who lost the majority of their families to Nazis. Nazis intended to ensure there were no Jews left anywhere on the planet. We can and should be in dialogue about how Israel handles Palestinian concerns, but it is a deliberate and malicious contrivance to attempt to somehow hold these two as equal.

Moreover, Estrada saying that she “enjoy[s] listening to Farrakhan’s sermons”, a known and noxious public figure, is a slap in the face to the LGBTQ community and women as well as Jews. Farrakhan’s sermons are littered with homophobia and misogyny. The SPLC and the ADL label him as a hate figure. A truly progressive leader would spurn him from their spaces to make it as safe and inclusive for all identities.

I have no idea why the organization didn't say anything about the statement "Anyone who believes they are one of 'God's chosen people' automatically feels superior and justified and all they do" [sic]. That is more antisemitic than anything else they quoted.

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.

07/11 Links Pt2: UN Watch: One year later — the answer to "Where Are Your Jews?"; Covering Up Robert Kennedy’s Palestinian Murderer; The Palestinian Space Agency is a Thing

From Ian:

UN Watch: One year later — the answer to "Where Are Your Jews?"

Mr. President, one year ago in this chamber I asked the Arab states a simple question: “Where are your Jews?”

My question was met with dead silence. Millions of people worldwide watched the video, witnessing for themselves the hypocrisy and double standards that characterizes much of what is said and done here.

Today I have come to provide the answer to my question. Algeria, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Libya—your Jews fled as refugees after suffering persecution and deadly pogroms like the Farhud of Baghdad in 1941.

Fortunately, countries like Israel, the U.S., Canada, France and others opened their doors, offering citizenship and equal rights. These Jewish refugees from Arab lands—whose suffering and losses the UN has never addressed—put their hardship behind them and built great lives for their families.

Now let us contrast this with the situation of those descended from Arab refugees who fled the area of British Mandatory Palestine during the invasion of nascent Israel by Arab armies. What is holding them back? The answer is simple.

Palestinians are the only population in the world not eligible for services by the UN refugee agency. Instead these descendants are governed by UNRWA, which holds generation after generation trapped in refugee camps, denied integration in the Arab countries they were born in and denied resettlement elsewhere.

Some of UNRWA’s donors are waking up to the problem. As the Swiss Foreign Minister recently has put it: “By supporting UNRWA, we are only keeping the conflict alive.”

I thank you, Mr. President.

Melanie Phillips: Brexit, PA textbooks, Labour party antisemitism

Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Unwired Britain’s increasingly tumultuous Brexit drama, the UK Foreign Office’s sudden qualms over funding Palestinian Authority textbook incitement (!), the Labour party’s ever-deepening mire over antisemitism, and more.

IsraellyCool: The Palestinian Space Agency is a Thing

In the wake of Israel’s kick-ass efforts to land on the moon by next year, the following website has come to my attention

Yes, seriously. It seems to have been around since 2011, and much like their museum and, come to think of it, space itself, it is full of nothing.

You can get your PSA swag there – just send your post address and order to their email address.