Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 08, 2018

Hamas' plan to use NGOs - and liberal Jews - to help destroy Israel

Senior Hamas official Ahmad Yousef wants the terror organization to reach out to anti-Zionist Jews of the world - and he has identified the Reform Jews of America as a prime target for his message.

Writing in Al Watan Voice, Yousef says that there were a significant number of anti-Zionist Jews in Europe before World War II who were targets of German security services in the 1920s and their names are now lost in the alleged Holocaust.

He then looks at America:

During the years of my stay in America for nearly two decades, I felt that there were great differences between the Jews of America when it came to the Palestinian issue. Yes, there are supporters of Israel who have been drinking the Zionist ideology and living and defending it through lobbies and political pressure groups such as AIPAC, , But there are also among the Reform Jews others, and they had positions in which they resisted the Zionist thought with its religious dimensions and inhuman practice.

Yousef says that Zionists brainwashed most Jews and it is time for Hamas to set the record straight.

He briefly goes through a litany of Arab lies, like saying that the only reason Jews emigrated from Arab countries to Israel was because Israel sent agents to incite acts of violence against them, and their Arab hosts had no animosity towards them.

Yousef admits that the "land of Palestine" is the historic incubator of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but says that "anyone who reads history and anthropology knows that this land was Arab for five thousand years" beforehand.

"It is time to remove the bluff from the eyes of millions of Jews in Europe and America, and to get them out from under of the yoke of the Zionist fictions. The Palestinians are looking forward to a decent life in the land of parents and grandparents, and they see them in ending this conflict to restore rights to their people and openness to everything that constitutes security and stability and prosperity for all citizens of this blessed land, in formulations addressed by the ideas and proposals of Palestinian elites, such as a single state or a binational state," the Hamas official says.

And he sees a way to get the help Hamas wants towards the goal of a single Palestinian state with a Jewish minority, since Hamas can't do it directly, as it is still recognized as a terror group in the West.

"There are many international and human rights organizations in the West that can play the role of mediator to break the barrier of suspicion and enter into a line of communication with the Jews of the world," Yousef writes.

Hamas literally plans to use "human rights groups" to help destroy Israel. After all, they are already so antagonistic towards the Jewish state while their criticisms of Palestinian terror are muted at best. Of course Hamas sees them as allies. And he knows that liberal American Jews are ignorant enough to listen to these anti-Israel NGOs as a step towards pushing for a Palestinian state that would treat Jews exactly as well as every other Arab state has treated its Jews.

Notice also that Hamas' stated goal of dividing Jews in America exactly mirrors that of J-Street.

The Hamas strategy is similar to that of Fatah and other pro-terror, anti-Israel groups. This is the more "pragmatic" face of Hamas, pretending to care about human rights - as long as those rights don't extend to actual Jews and Jewish self-determination.

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From Ma'an Arabic:

The European Union Representative Office is directing the efforts of more than 300 Palestinian students in East Jerusalem to clean streets surrounding their schools in various locations throughout Jerusalem.

This initiative, entitled "Let's Clean Jerusalem", comes ahead of a broader activity that will be launched later in October as "Our Green City".

The waste has been collected in eco-friendly bags, while the recyclable materials will be used in an upcoming event to create green artwork by the students who have collected it.

"I do not usually find a trash can nearby, so I end up dumping garbage in the street, but I think I'll start by paying more attention and keeping it with me until I find a trash can," said a St. George schoolteacher.

EU Representative Ralph Tarraf, who joined the students in Wadi al-Joz, said, "I am thrilled to be here today and I am witnessing these small hands cleaning the streets around their schools because they have the right to clean sidewalks and corridors. They need a healthy and balanced environment to realize their potential. We affirm our full support for them reaching their rights."

Tarraf pointed out that the placement of waste in East Jerusalem, especially around schools, is alarming, as the EU and its member states reaffirm their position on the two-state solution, where East Jerusalem is the capital of a future Palestinian state. This capital needs to include high-quality and well-suited health measures for the emerging generation that hopes for lasting peace.

The European Union insists on supporting such initiatives in East Jerusalem to strengthen the steadfastness of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and to preserve the Palestinian character of the city. Furthermore, through this initiative, the European Union supports the residents of East Jerusalem in expressing their right to clean streets and green areas.

Can you imagine a similar EU initiative in a poor Haredi section of Jerusalem? For that matter, could you imagine a Jewish section of Jerusalem where schoolteachers, of all people, simply throw garbage on the streets?

Even if the Jerusalem municipality doesn't provide adequate sanitation services for parts of the city, the question must be asked:

If Palestinians love Jerusalem so much and regard it as their capital and as the third holiest city in Islam - why do they allow it to become a garbage dump to begin with? Why do they need Christian Europeans to help them clean up where they live?

Where is their own sense of pride of living in Jerusalem?

The last paragraph is quite accurate. The EU allocated €14.9 million this year for activities in East Jerusalem with a few goals in mind, the first of which is "to preserve the Palestinian character of the city." But again, if Arabs loved the city as much as they tell the world they do, then where are the Arab initiatives to do the same thing? I've seen only rare examples - and the most prominent Palestinian I ever saw who tirelessly tried to improve Jerusalem was murdered for his efforts and his death ignored by the Palestinian media and government.

But this isn't the PLO or a Palestinian NGO or the Arab League or Saudi Arabia putting money into cleaning up Jerusalem. It is the EU. And this shows that Arabs and Muslims, despite their rhetoric, don't care about Jerusalem - except to take it away from non-Muslims.

Which has been the Muslim attitude towards Jerusalem since the dawn of Islam.

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10/07 Links: 2 Israelis killed, 1 injured in West Bank terror shooting; Hamas, Islamic Jihad praise deadly shooting in northern West Bank; Vogue Can’t Glamourize Terror

From Ian:

2 Israelis killed, 1 injured in West Bank terror shooting

Two Israelis were shot dead and a third was wounded Sunday morning in a terror attack at the Barkan Industrial Park in the northern West Bank, the army said.

The Magen David Adom medical service said that a man in his 30s and a woman had been critically injured and were later pronounced dead.

The woman who was killed in the attack was identified as Kim Levengrond Yehezkel, 28, from Rosh Ha’ayin, and the man was named as Ziv Hajbi, 35, from Rishon Lezion.

The third victim, a woman in her 50s, was moderately wounded and taken to Petah Tikva’s Beilinson Hospital for treatment. A hospital spokesperson said the victim did not appear to be in life-threatening condition.

Security forces launched a manhunt for the shooter, who fled the scene after the attack.

“The suspect arrived at the industrial park and opened fire at three civilians. Large numbers of IDF and Shin Bet security service forces have launched a manhunt for the suspect, whose identity is known to security forces. In addition, large numbers of troops have spread out throughout the area to conduct searches and checks,” the army said.

The IDF spokesperson later confirmed that the shooting was a terror attack.

Terror shooting victims identified as Kim Levengrond Yehezkel and Ziv Hajbi

Authorities on Sunday afternoon identified a man and a woman shot dead in a terror attack in the West Bank earlier in the day as Kim Levengrond Yehezkel, 29, a married mother of a baby, and Ziv Hajbi, a 35-year-old father of three.

Yehezkel was from the central Israeli town of Rosh Ha’ayin, while Hajbi hailed from Rishon Lezion. They were shot dead by a Palestinian gunman at the Barkan Industrial Park near the settlement-city of Ariel.

A second woman was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment for a gunshot wound in her stomach and was in moderate condition.

The suspect, a 23-year-old Palestinian man from the northern West Bank, entered a factory where he was employed in the Barkan Industrial Park shortly before 8 a.m, armed with a locally produced Carlo-style submachine gun, according to army spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus.

Inside, he tied up and shot dead Yehezkel and Hajbi at close range, as well as wounding the third victim, according to eyewitnesses.

Terror victims mourned as dedicated parents, cut down in their primes

Family and friends of the victims in Sunday morning’s terror attack in the West Bank mourned the two casualties — both in their prime, both dedicated parents to young children — in the hours after the grisly shooting.

Kim Levengrond Yehezkel, 28, and Ziv Hajbi, 35, were shot dead by a Palestinian terrorist. Both had worked at Alon Group, which manufactures waste management systems, at the Barkan Industrial Park near the settlement-city of Ariel. Levengrond Yehezkel was secretary to the CEO, while Hajbi worked in accounting.

Their families both said they would donate their organs.

Levengrond Yehezkel will be buried in her hometown of Rosh Ha’ayin in central Israel at 10 p.m. on Sunday. Hajbi’s funeral will be held at 2 p.m. Monday in the southern community of Nir Yisrael.

“She was all smiles, beloved and sweet,” her aunt Yehudit said. “The skies have shattered over us. But Kim will always be with us. I’m angry. Someone needs to answer for this and fast. It doesn’t make sense that parents should bury their children.”

Her friend Natalie remembered “an amazing, wonderful, kind woman, all about giving. A wonderful mother.”

Throughout the day, friends and relatives of Levengrond Yehezkel arrived at her parents’ home in Rosh Ha’ayin. Kim and her husband Guy had lived in Barkan, where the attack took place, up until a year ago, when they moved into an apartment in Rosh Ha’ayin to be near Kim’s parents. They have an 18-month-old child. Despite the relocation, Kim continued to work at Alon Group, where she served as secretary to the CEO. She had studied law and was preparing for her bar exam.

When I was a tiny, little Zionist growing up in New York and Connecticut in the 1970s and 1980s, Jewish youngsters did not learn Krav Maga.

I doubt any of my friends, Jewish or otherwise, ever even heard of this martial art.

We punched a nose when we had to, just as every other boy did, but it was a regular part of growing up. We were teens and pre-teens and made of rubber.

My neighborhood was middle-class and ethnically mixed. Sometimes the kids were working on their cars in their parents' garage. We would call them "clutch-heads." They tended to be Catholic and they sometimes wore leather jackets. Tough boys, y'know. There were also the "freaks" -- the children of the Counterculture and the New Left -- who wore long hair and denim with patches and listened to the Dead and the Stones and Zep on the cusp of the New Wave and the Reagan Administration.

And then there were the "jocks" and the "norms" and whatever.

These are the terms that we used at the time.

"Freaks" and "Jocks" and "Norms" and "Clutch Heads"... at least at Trumbull High School, just outside of Bridgeport.

And sometimes fights would break out. Almost nobody ever got seriously hurt and even the parents did not worry too much about this kind of thing, because they grew up with it, themselves. Kids have to work out their own personal relationships just like everyone else, but the parents usually did not get involved. It was always pretty much left up to the kids in the street because it was primarily harmless.

The folks were trying to make a buck and after school, we were pretty much on our own as teens and pre-teens. But it was natural as a young man growing up to learn how to throw a punch. You did not need to be Jean-Claude Van Damme, but it was definitely helpful to know how to defend oneself. You had to be willing to fight because none of us respected a kid who was too cowardly to stand up for himself. You did not even need to be particularly big and strong because, as my old hero Yankees manager Billy Martin said, "It is not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog."

I was recently in conversation with a friend of mine -- an old online sparring partner -- who studies and teaches Krav Maga in the San Francisco Bay Area. I contacted him because it seems obvious to me that diaspora Jewish kids need training in martial arts.

Anyone who looks fairly at the situation in Europe can see that our Jewish brothers and sisters are under the gun. The Labour Party, with Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, is fighting off charges of intense antisemitism even as the country is grappling with Muslim gang rape issues. One of the options in response is Jewish self-defense.

In truth, I would love to see the Hillels introduce Krav training as part of their regular curriculum.

The basic criticisms that would come from the Hillels and other Jewish organizations is that the very last thing that they want is to be seen as antagonistic or militaristic or pugnacious. This is entirely understandable. The Jewish population in the United States is somewhere between one and two percent of the total. But the thing is, anyone who knows anything about martial arts knows that you learn how to fight so that you do not have to.

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Arab terrorists have been setting fires to Jewish fields for decades

Arutz-7 reports:

A large fire erupted on Saturday night in the southern town of Ein Habesor after an incendiary balloon from Gaza landed in the area.

Several teams of firefighters, as well as security officials and local farmers, are working to prevent the fire from spreading to local greenhouses.

On Monday, incendiary balloons ignited five fires in the Gaza border area, which serves as one of Israel's main agricultural areas.

At the beginning of September, it was estimated that Gazan terrorists sending incendiary kites and balloons had burned 30,000 dunam (7,413 acres) of Israeli land and caused ten million shekel ($2,754,821) in damage.

Arabs purposefully set fires all over Jewish-owned lands in Palestine for a very long time. Here is only one of dozens of articles about it, this from 1938:

Sometimes the fires were set as a stage for more deadly attacks:

There's nothing new - except that now Jews can defend themselves and fight back.

Which is the only reason why things aren't nearly as bad as they were in the 1930s.

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The news is horrifying. An execution-style murder for "Palestine."

A man and a woman in their 30s were pronounced dead after being critically wounded in a shooting terror attack carried out by a 23-year-old Palestinian in the Barkan industrial area in the West Bank, while a 54-year-old woman was moderately wounded.

The woman who died in the hospital was found handcuffed on the floor. The 54-year-old told the paramedics she heard a loud noise and went to check its source. After seeing her, the terrorist shot at her and she hid under a table.

Some 5,000 Palestinians are employed in Israeli-owned businesses in the Barken industrial area.

The number of Palestinian Arabs who work in "settlements" has increased over the years, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics some 20,000 Palestinians now work in the "settlements" (despite threats to such people by the PA years ago) and over 105,000 more work for Israelis within the Green Line.

The number of Arab employees working for Israeli employers has been steadily increasing while the number of workers for Arab employees has been going down and the unemployment rate increasing.

The wage gap between Arab workers for Israelis compared to working in the West Bank for other Arabs has dramatically increased. The daily wage rate was 107.9 shekels in the West Bank and 62.6 shekels in the Gaza Strip in the second quarter of 2018 - but those working in Israel and the settlements make a daily average wage of 247.9 shekels.

Some 13.5% of all Palestinian workers now work for Israelis. If you include how much they make, that means that over 30% of all Palestinian incomes come from Israeli employers.

Given this information of how much better off Palestinians are economically when there is less terror and more opportunities to work in Israel, one would think that ordinary Palestinian Arabs would be incensed at a terror attack that could jeopardize such a huge portion of their economy.

I have yet to see any such reaction.

Hamas-oriented sites are filled with people are praising Allah for the attack, and Fatah is bragging that this is proof that settlements will never be secure from terrorism.

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.

10/06 Links: Arab MK Claims Ari Fuld Executed Palestinian Terrorist; US Jews help families of terrorists; The tragic tale of Superman’s Jewish creators, told in graphic novel form

From Ian:

Arab MK Claims Ari Fuld Executed Palestinian Terrorist; Likud MK: ‘She Called Fuld a Murderer’

An Israeli-Arab MK is being referred to the Knesset Ethics Committee after she appeared to claim that the late Israeli-American Ari Fuld killed the Palestinian terrorist who attacked him in an extra-judicial execution.

Fuld, a well known pro-Israel activist, was stabbed to death last month in the Gush Etzion bloc near Jerusalem by a Palestinian teenager. As he bled to death, he pursued and shot his attacker before collapsing. It is believed that his actions prevented further casualties. The terrorist was not killed and underwent treatment at an Israeli hospital.

According to Israel’s Channel Two, at a Knesset committee on women’s rights, Likud MKs Sharon Heskel and Amir Ohana spoke in favor of arming Israeli civilians in order to quickly neutralize terrorists who commit attacks.

Heskel specifically cited Fuld as an example, calling him a “hero” who “with his body and his life prevented the death of additional innocent civilians.”

In response, Joint List MK Aida Tomeh-Suleiman said, “You know how many lives you would save if the settlers got out of there.”

MK Ohana then pointed out the number of attacks prevented or ameliorated by armed civilians, again citing Fuld as an example.

Suleiman hit back even harder, saying in an apparent reference to Fuld, “In other words, you would execute on the spot.”

In a complaint to the Knesset Ethics Committee delivered on Thursday, Heskel wrote of Suleiman, “She called Fuld a murderer who executed the wounded man.”

US Jews help families of terrorists

On January 4, 2017, a Palestinian-Arab terrorist drove a truck into a group of Israeli soldiers, killing four and injuring 17 others. The attack was immediately identified as terrorism, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the scene of the attack and said the perpetrator was “by all indications a supporter of the Islamic State.”

Fast forward to October 2018, Israel decided to expel the terrorist's family from Israel, as they have links to ISIS, are not citizens and present a security concern. Opposing the state in court is Hamoked, an organization supported by the New Israel Fund, which assisted the relatives of the terrorist to petition against their deportation from Israel.

Thankfully, they lost and this family – and their security concerns – have been expelled.

Israeli soldiers are killed, and American Jews who support the New Israel Fund stand with the family members of the terrorists – sickening and despicable.

The parents of one of the soldiers who was killed in the attack said today in court, “We are here to prevent the next attack, God forbid. It is delusional that the governments of Europe and the New Israel Fund provide legal protection to the lowly terrorists who murdered our Shir and many other Israelis. We will fight here to the last drop of our blood against those who make their living by murdering Jews."

Hamoked has received more than $720,000 from New Israel Fund donors, like the Leichtag Foundation, and Oz Benamram of White & Case while claiming to work “for the enforcement of standards and values of international human rights and humanitarian law.”

Hamoked – using American Jewish donor money – defends the families of terrorists.

Swedish prosecutors appeal decision not to deport Gazan who firebombed synagogue

Swedish prosecutors appealed to their country’s Supreme Court against a lower tribunal’s decision not to deport a Palestinian immigrant who firebombed a synagogue.

The unusual appeal announced Thursday by the Public Prosecutor’s Office is of a June court decision not to deport Gaza-born Feras Alnadim, who attacked a synagogue in Gothenburg in December with two accomplices. The appeal follows vocal protests of the trial by Israel and the World Jewish Congress.

Last month, a Swedish appeals court overturned a criminal tribunal’s ruling from June stating that Alnadim would be deported at the end of his two-year prison term. The firebombing, he and his accomplices said, was payback for President Donald Trump’s decision to have the United States recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Since Alnadim committed a crime that “could be perceived as a threat to other Jews,” and Israel “might be interested in the matter,” the appeals court ruled that one “cannot safeguard the man’s fundamental human rights if he is deported to Palestine,” the judge wrote in his opinion.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office decided to appeal the ruling in the Supreme Court because “there is no reason to assume that the man would be subjected to death penalty, torture or other inhuman treatment upon return to Palestine,” the office wrote in a statement Thursday.

This news story is instructive:

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees vowed Saturday to continue operations in Jerusalem despite Israeli plans to remove it.

The Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, said that education, health care, and other services to Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are “important work.”

On Thursday, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said Israeli authorities will take over the organization’s services, most notably schooling for 1,800 students, without giving an exact timeline.

Barkat, whose term as mayor ends at the end of the month, accused UNRWA of failing those under its purview and instead inciting terror activity.

According to Barkat’s plan, the seven UNRWA-run schools — with a total of 1,800 students — which operate without a license from the Education Ministry will be closed at the end of the current academic year, and the pupils absorbed into existing municipal schools.

Barkat wants to expropriate or lease the existing UNRWA schools to use as municipal buildings, and in addition will construct an educational and municipal services complex near the East Jerusalem neighborhood “whose services will be far superior to those that UNRWA has provided.”

The municipality will also issue closure orders for UNRWA’s medical centers, which operate without approval from the Health Ministry, and construct a new public health center in their place, Barkat said.

Existing UNRWA-run welfare programs operating within the Shuafat camp and nearby Kufr Aqeb will continue but will be transferred to the governance municipality welfare and employment services, according to Barkat’s plan.

Garbage disposal and sewage infrastructure, which Barkat said was currently under the auspices of UNRWA, will also be transferred to the municipality’s responsibility.

@UNRWA keeps telling the world how necessary it is to provide services for Palestinian "refugees." But when a state says it will do all of those services - better - allowing UNRWA to use its money in other ways, it does not cooperate. On the contrary, UNRWA claims that its services of providing unlicensed medical and educational facilities are "important" and must remain even when they are completely redundant.

This episode reveals that UNRWA doesn't exist to help Palestinians. On the contrary, UNRWA wants as many Palestinians as possible to use it in order to maintain its own existence.

UNRWA's unique definition of "refugee" for Palestinians is self-serving. It is meant to ensure that it stays in existence forever.

What would happen if Jordan suddenly said that it is willing to take responsibility for its own citizens of Palestinian origin? Would UNRWA be happy or upset? This story tells you the answer. The Arab world, UNRWA and the Palestinians all have a vested interest in never solving the "refugee" problem - and in claiming that it is all Israel's fault.

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.

10/05 Links Pt2: Phillips: The full-scale unraveling of Western cultural norms; Mandatory College Event Compares Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu To Hitler

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The full-scale unraveling of Western cultural norms

The Kavanaugh confirmation circus is not just a jaw-dropping and unedifying spectacle. It is a paradigm event in the unraveling of American and Western cultural norms.

The allegations of sexual assault against the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have crumbled away under their own multiple contradictions, absence of corroboration and unsubstantiated claims.

So have all those who instantly proclaimed Kavanaugh guilty as charged expressed contrition for this character assassination? On the contrary: They have merely shifted the goalposts to yet more spurious accusations.

These include his alleged teenage drinking, lying and pedophilia, along with the apparently supreme disqualification for judicial high office of having displayed anger and upset at having his hitherto stellar reputation tarnished forever through such smears.

Worse still, though the eyes of this frenzied mob, Kavanaugh himself stands proxy for every social evil or injustice.

So faced with vicious character assassination on the basis of demonstrably absurd accusations, it is the victim who finds himself dehumanized, demonized and delegitimized. Moreover, the very suggestion that he is indeed the victim is itself treated as a further outrage.

Sound familiar? It should. For this is exactly the same treatment meted out to the State of Israel and those Jews who support it.

Mandatory College Event Compares Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu To Hitler

A mandatory event on Thursday for the University of Michigan’s art students compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.

The event was hosted by the Stamps School of Art & Design for their “Penny Stamps Speakers Series Presentation” and featured Emory Douglas. On the department’s website, it explains that Douglas “worked as the resident Revolutionary Artist and Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1967 through the 1980s.”

During the event, a slide was put on the screen that showed a picture of Netanyahu and Hitler with the words “Guilty Of Genocide” written across Netanyahu’s and Hilter’s faces. Below the photo was the definition of genocide.

Outrageous: Last night, a radical speaker compared Israel to Nazi Germany in a mandatory art lecture at @UMich.

The University of Michigan has one of the most vibrant Jewish communities of any school in the country. It must act swiftly to ensure that remains the case. pic.twitter.com/S5D61FwdQv
— AJC (@AJCGlobal) 5 October 2018

The university confirmed that undergraduate students receive academic credit for attending 10 of the 14 scheduled Stamps events.

A student who attended the event first posted about it Friday morning. “Yesterday I was forced to sit through an overtly anti-Semitic lecture,” Alexa Smith wrote on her Facebook. “In what world is it ok for a mandatory course to host a speaker who compares Adolf Hitler to the Prime Minister of Israel?”

Tom Gross: When it comes to Israel, the internet can correct fake news, not just spread it

It is fashionable to claim that the internet is a purveyor and spreader of fake news. This may be true in certain respects, but when it comes to Israel, I would argue the opposite is often the case.

Take one small example from April 2002, before Facebook, Twitter and YouTube had been invented, and the term blog was barely known.

That month, almost every British news outlet repeated the same lie, day after day, about events in the West Bank town of Jenin – and it was all but impossible for audiences to know the truth.

The Daily Telegraph reported the IDF had “stripped [the Palestinians] to their underwear, they were searched, bound hand and foot, placed against a wall and killed with single shots to the head.”

The Evening Standard spoke of Israel’s “staggering brutality and callous murder.” “We are talking here of massacre, and a cover-up, of genocide,” wrote a columnist for the paper.

Janine di Giovanni of the Times wrote: “Rarely in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such disrespect for human life.”

These reports seem to have been based on the claims of a single individual: “Kamal Anis, a labourer” (The Times), “Kamal Anis, 28” (The Daily Telegraph), “A quiet, sad-looking young man called Kamal Anis” (The Independent).

10/05 Links Pt1: Sykes-Picot 2018: The EU and Khan al-Ahmar; Glick: Trump Speech at U.N. Restored U.S. Leadership; France's Schizophrenic Iran Policy

From Ian:

Gerald Steinberg: Goliath vs David: The 2018 Version - Is there anything Israel can do to avoid losing soft-power wars?

Israeli government officials and military leaders thought they were well prepared for the first round of Gaza’s “Return March” along the border, at least compared to previous confrontations with Palestinians over the past two decades. The scenario was understood in advance – indeed, Hamas leaders made no secret of their plan to stage a series of such mass confrontations, using thousands of Palestinians, including women and children, as camouflage for attacking soldiers and infiltrating terrorists into Israel. On this basis, the Foreign Ministry and other branches sent diplomats and journalists analyses, telling them not to be fooled by this cynical ploy, and the IDF practiced responses to breaches of the border that would prevent or minimize civilian deaths.

But, to understate the reality, even in the initial skirmish the results of these preparations were less than satisfactory – Israel’s image took a beating, with another round of condemnations and “war crimes” allegations. The headlines in media platforms and the accompanying photos again portrayed Israel as the Goliath in the drama, with the Palestinians in their standard role as the innocent victims. The pictures – featured on the front pages of many mainstream newspapers and leading the video news feeds – reinforced this slogan. The New York Times lead (before the number of dead reached 16) screamed “Israeli Military Kills 8 in Confrontations on Gaza Border.”

In later versions of the news stories, the detailed evidence which clearly linked at least 10 of the 16 dead to terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad was cited, usually briefly. This part of the reporting took the standard “he said, she said” format, as if Hamas and Israel were on parallel footings.

However, as always, the greatest damage was from the visuals of death and suffering that are deemed necessary to grab readers and for use as “click bait” on social media. These images, perhaps staged (a process known as Pallywood), all featuring Palestinian “victims” and without any Israeli parallels, gave editors their headlines in what is otherwise yet another predictable round of the ancient and immovable conflict.

Following the flood of images and headlines, politicians and foreign policy officials, particularly in Europe, recycled the standard condemnations of Israel for using “excess force,” and called, as always, for “independent investigations.” The solemn statement from Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign minister (her title is High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, among other jobs), mourned the loss of life, while failing to even mention Hamas or terrorism.

Gerald Steinberg: Sykes-Picot 2018: The EU and Khan al-Ahmar

Today, European politicians, diplomats, and NGOs are busy drawing new borders for what they imagine to be a "solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are currently focusing their attention on the tiny encampment of Khan al-Ahmar, situated strategically just outside Jerusalem on the four-lane highway that connects Israel's capital to the Dead Sea and the Jordan River.

For three decades, Israel has rejected all the efforts to turn Khan al-Ahmar into a Palestinian outpost along the strategic highway near Jerusalem. As 20 years of Israeli court rulings have confirmed, the law clearly prohibits anyone - Palestinians, Bedouin and Europeans - from squatting on land that is not theirs and starting to build.

The Oslo accords declared Area C, where Khan al-Ahmar is located, to be under full Israeli control. Yet the Europeans have dotted Area C with EU flags hoisted above one-room pre-fabricated huts which, to add to the emotional impact, are usually declared to be schools. Destroying a school is ideal for accusing Israel of human rights violations, and Khan al-Ahmar's European school is featured in the current campaign of solidarity visits by European diplomats and UN officials.

As part of this campaign, Palestinian NGOs funded primarily by European governments have spent millions of euros from European taxpayers to churn out urgent statements, reports, and social media posts declaring the plan to resettle the residents of Khan al-Ahmar to be a "war crime."

Caroline Glick: Trump Speech at U.N. Restored U.S. Leadership

In the tumult of the circus surrounding Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, little attention was paid to President Donald Trump’s speech last week before the United Nations.

This is a shame, because his address last week was arguably the most significant foreign policy address any U.S. president has delivered since the end of the Cold War.

Many of Trump’s critics insist his view of the world rejects the liberal world order America has led and defended since the end of World War II. But that assessment misconstrues Trump’s world view. Indeed, that ignores it.

Trump’s critics cannot see his world view because they are convinced the universe of foreign policy is but a narrow linear spectrum that veers between isolationism and globalism.

Trump, who has been a peripatetic foreign policy practitioner since his early days in office, is manifestly not an isolationist. He does not believe the U.S. can walk away from the world. He is deeply engaged with the world.

His argument with the globalists is not about whether the U.S. should be engaged with the world. His dispute with globalists and globalism revolves around the form U.S. involvement should take and what the proper goal of that involvement should be.

The four post-Cold War presidents who preceded him in office — George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — differed on many things. But they shared the basic globalist view that U.S. foreign policy should be undertaken to advance ideological goals not directly related to U.S. national interests. They all agreed with the basic proposition that the U.S. should carry out its foreign policy under the aegis of international or transnational governing structures, which they perceived as somehow more credible than unilateral action or action undertaken in informal cooperation with likeminded governments.

The saying goes: “The dead tell no tales” but that’s not exactly true. The dead speak to us from beyond the grave but they do so in silent symbols that we, those who are full of life and sometimes full of arrogance, can choose to ignore.

Haifa’s cemetery is full. It’s in a beautiful location, overlooking the sea. One could say it’s wasted on its residents but maybe the scenery provides comfort to those who come to pay their respects to deceased relatives and friends. In general, I find it an unpleasant place. It’s packed with graves, so much so that it is difficult to walk between them. Moreover, most of the headstones provide very little information about the people they are supposed to be memorializing.

I think graves should give you a hint, a glimpse into the life of the person buried there. Something about knowing nothing about their stories bothers me.

There is however another cemetery in Haifa, one that is older and very different.

This was the first Jewish cemetery of Haifa, presumably founded in the late 1850 and used until 1940. There are several mausoleums in the cemetery (which is unusual for Jewish cemeteries), including one for Shmuel Pevsner, one of the founders of Haifa’s Hadar HaCarmel neighborhood.

We know the names of some of the people buried because they have streets and institutions in Haifa named after them – but once they weren’t streets, they were real people who now lie here, mostly forgotten.

Why isn’t this a national heritage site? How come the schools of Haifa don’t bring children here, to learn about the history of their city?

Possibly it is because of the stories the dead tell that their voices are avoided…

We’re told that Haifa is a mixed Arab and Jewish city, a symbol of coexistence, that it always was. That makes this a little hard to explain:

A mass grave for Jews murdered in the riots of 1929. Jewish burial is very specific, careful and done with great reverence. Tradition forbids letting the dead lie unburied overnight, it is imperative to bury them on the day of death. It would seem that the existence of a mass grave is indicative of the number of people murdered on the same day and the difficulty in providing them a proper burial.

The quote on the standing stone is from Ezekiel (16:6) and tells volumes about the spirit of the people who had to bury their friends and relatives in this way:

“וָאֶעֱבֹר עָלַיִךְ וָאֶרְאֵךְ מִתְבּוֹסֶסֶת בְּדָמָיִךְ וָאֹמַר לָךְ בְּדָמַיִךְ חֲיִי וָאֹמַר לָךְ בְּדָמַיִךְ חֲיִי”.

“As I passed over you and saw you weltering in your own blood, I said to you, as you lay thus in your blood, in your blood LIVE”

The graves nearby are also of victims of the riots. This one tells the story of Esther Rivka Katz: “Wicked people made her death come faster than it should have. She was a saint and victim of the riots. May God grant rest to her soul”

I have to use Google to verify the Gregorian equivalent of Hebrew dates. Modern headstones usually use both the Hebrew and Gregorian dates but the Jews of Israel, living Jewish lives in their ancestral homeland, before the reestablishment of the Jewish State, were different.

Haifa is promoted as a place to become familiar with the charm of Arab culture. Jewish influence on the city is treated as something non-existent, insignificant or as foreign.

I didn’t specifically look for the grave of Leon Stein, found it by chance. It was covered in leaves but the words I could see piqued my curiosity.

His grave is not silent, it simply needs someone willing to listen.

It says:

Engineer
Leon Stein
Pioneer of the metal industry in Israel

Made aliyah in 1886,
Died in 1926, in the 63^rd year of his life.

I’ve never seen a grave that gives the title Engineer like other graves might place the title Cohen-Tzedek, indicating someone who comes from the lineage of priests who would have served at the ancient Jewish Temple.

Who was this man? Born in 1864 in Poland, he followed in the footsteps of his older brother and made aliyah as a grown man of 23. Many of the other residents of the cemetery didn’t live longer than that (albeit many of the young deaths were those murdered in the riots).

Leon went to France and bought metal working equipment and in 1888 he opened a small metal works shop to address the needs of the growing community. Slowly his business grew and he upgraded the technology of the equipment used from hand run, to running on a steam engine and then on a kerosene engine – the first in Israel. From fixing metal equipment, he advanced to producing agricultural equipment.

At the time agricultural development was difficult because there was no pump strong enough to produce large amounts of clean water. Leon Stein, in collaboration with Abba Neeman, invented a pump that increased water production from 5-6 m²an hour (powered by beast of burden) to 100 m²an hour (running on kerosene).

As a result, within 14 years, the agricultural cultivation in Israel increased threefold!

Stein's factory continued to grow, manufacturing equipment for flour mills, ice-making machines, iron gates and more. The number of employees rose from 40 in 1905 to 125 in 1907 and 150 in 1909. The plant was spread over several plots and a branch was also established in Petah Tikva. The factory's technicians went to all parts of the country to assist in assembling engines.

They exported products to Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan and Egypt.

How times have changed.

The stories of the dead tell of proud Jews, living Jewish lives in their ancestral homeland, long before the Declaration of Independence. Their stubbornness is written in stone, their murderous Arab neighbors would not move them from the land. Lying in their own blood, burying family and friends, they took upon themselves the commandment to LIVE. And all the while they were developing the land (and any of the neighboring countries who also wanted to progress), bringing modern technology and equipment that would help build the country we have today.

There is a deliberate movement to undermine Jewish connection to the land, delegitimize, minimize and dismiss Jewish history. It’s not just in the ravings of BDSers it’s an insidious poison that has penetrated, quietly in many different variations into Israel – often in what is not said, what is not taught, not emphasized.

The dead lie quietly. Those who want to, who find it politically expedient to do so, can ignore their voices or attempt to drown them out with other stories. The dead do not impose themselves on the living, it is up to us to remember, inquire and pay attention.

The truth of their lives, their history, our history, is etched in stone for anyone willing to see.

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Gaza terrorists use "I ❤ You" balloons

An AFP article on Gaza terrorists who are sending incendiary balloons as well as sound bombs to Israel includes this photo:

Aw, isn't that sweet?

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Just another terror parade in Gaza City encouraging kids to become martyrs

Yesterday, Islamic Jihad held a parade in Gaza City.

Thousands of Gazans came to participate and cheer them on, bringing their children.

We don't see too many articles about these Palestinians. Because talking about them does not further the narrative that the media wants people to think about Gazans.

Terror isn't tolerated by Palestinians. It is celebrated. And it is taught to their kids.

(The question marks on the rockets are meant to say that their type and range is a secret.)

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10/04 Links Pt2: Landes: Netzarim Junction and the Birth of Fake News; Murdered American-Israeli Reminds Us That Jews No Longer Go Quietly Away; Merkel says Palestinians must accept Israel as Jewish state

From Ian:

Richard Landes: Netzarim Junction and the Birth of Fake News

One of the most shocking and transformative experiences occurred to me in late October 2003, when I got to see the original raw footage that a Palestinian cameraman had shot three years earlier at Netzarim Junction on Sept. 30, 2000. It was a peek through the lens of Talal Abu Rahma, the Palestinian cameraman who had filmed what journalists later depicted as a day of riots that killed many in the Gaza Strip, including the 12-year-old boy, Muhammad al Durah.

Charles Enderlin, chief correspondent of France2, aired the footage as news with his cameraman’s narrative: an innocent Palestinian boy, targeted by the IDF, gunned down while his father pleaded with the Israelis to stop shooting. It became an instant global sensation, enraging the Muslim world and provoking angry protests where Western progressives and militant Muslims joined to equate Israel to the Nazis. Ironically, for the first time since the Holocaust, “Death to Jews” was heard in the capitals of Europe. From that point on, for many, Israel was to blame for all violence, a pariah state.

Even had the child died in a crossfire, blaming his death on deliberate Israeli action made it a classic blood libel: A gentile boy dies; the Jews are accused of plotting the murder; violent mobs, invoking the dead martyr, attack the Jews. In Europe, the attacks the al Durah libel incited were mostly on Jewish property. In the Middle East, a new round of suicide bombers, “revenging the blood of Muhammad al Durah” targeted Israeli children to the approval of 80% of the Palestinian public. It was, in fact, the first postmodern blood libel. The first blood libel announced by a Jew (Enderlin), spread by the modern mainstream news media (MSNM), and carried in cyberspace to a global audience. It was the first wildly successful piece of “fake news” of the 21st century, and, as an icon of hatred, it did untold damage.

But it gets worse. Not only did the evidence show that the Israelis could not have fired the shots that hit the boy and his father, but everything about the footage suggests the scene was staged. There was no blood on the wall or ground and footage never shown to the public appeared to show the boy moving after being declared dead. I set out to explore this staged hypothesis, first raised by Nahum Shahaf, and exposed to the Anglophone public by James Fallows in 2003.

Fathom 21 | ‘Understanding the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa is the key to understanding the whole Middle East conflict’: an interview with Lyn Julius

Earlier this year Fathom’s Grant Goldberg interviewed Lyn Julius about her new book, Uprooted, which documents 3,000 years of Jewish civilisation in the Arab world and explains how and why that civilisation vanished in a single generation in the middle of the 20th century. Julius describes what brought Nazi Germany, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem into an alliance and how this impacted Jews in the Middle East and the formation of the State of Israel. Download a PDF version here.

Grant Goldberg: What prompted you to write the book?

Lyn Julius: I have a strong connection to the region. My parents arrived in Britain in 1950 as Iraqi-Jewish refugees, and throughout my childhood I was very conscious of the connection with Iraq, mainly because I still had family there. Conditions deteriorated for the remaining 3,000 Jews of Iraq after the 1967 Six-Day War and Israel’s defeat of the Arab countries. Saddam Hussein embarked on a reign of terror, executing nine Jews in Liberation Square in Baghdad. My grandparents were still in Iraq as well as various aunts and cousins and all were desperate to leave. The community’s telephones were cut off, their jobs were lost and their university entry blocked. Their very lives were in danger – some 50 Jews were arrested and never seen again.

I honestly think that understanding the Jews of the Middle East is the key to understanding the whole Middle East conflict. The way the Jews have been treated in Arab countries points to a major dysfunction in Arab society: the inability to tolerate anyone who is different from the mainstream, whether non-Sunni Muslims or minority non-Muslims.

I’ve been very involved in Harif, the UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, which I founded 13 years ago. As well as organising events to raise awareness of the history and culture of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, I’ve been blogging and writing. Eventually, I realised I had accumulated enough material for a book.

Also, there has not been much written about Mizrahi Jews, certainly not in English.[i] The most mainstream work was In Ishmael’s House by Sir Martin Gilbert, published in 2010. Most of the research on the subject has been done by historians writing in French, such as Georges Bensoussan, Nathan Weinstock, Shmuel Trigano, Bat Y’eor and Paul Fenton, who, despite his English origins, is a professor at the Sorbonne. David Litman also wrote about Jews from Morocco. I hoped my book would make the essence of their work accessible to English readers.

Widow of legendary spy Eli Cohen begs Syria to return his remains

The widow of famed Israeli spy Eli Cohen, who was executed in Syria 53 years ago, issued a public plea to Syrian President Bashar Assad on Wednesday to return her husband's remains to Israel for burial.

Nadia Cohen was speaking at the first International Multidisciplinary Conference on the Treatment of War Injuries at the Galilee Medical Center in northern Israel.

"Release Eli, release his bones," Cohen said, addressing her plea to Assad.

"When my mother-in-law died, I wept and said she had not been able to see her son laid to rest.

"Forgive, extend your hand, and give us the grave … so we can be at peace, and he [Eli] will feel that he is in his own land," she said.

Cohen thanked the conference organizers for giving her a platform, saying that some 18 years ago she had tried to persuade the Assad regime to release her husband's remains.

"I corresponded with Bashar … and we sent pictures of my children, my grandchildren, so he would take pity and soften his heart about releasing the body. I was happy when he wrote that it would happen 'when the time was right.' Even those two words were a comfort," Cohen said.

Accumulated Dog Poo On Jerusalem Streets Becomes Sentient, Leads Mayoral Race (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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: Credit Deror via Wikimedia Commons

Jerusalem, October 4 - A cohesion of canine fecal matter sat so long on the pavement of Israel's capital city that it has evolved a consciousness and communication skills, according to a spokesman, and now holds the front-runner position in a hotly-contested election campaign to succeed Nir Barkat at the head of the municipality.

P. Tabaat, the representative, told an assemblage of reporters Thursday that the chunk of doggy-doo sat at the intersection of Shabbazi and Lod Streets in the Nachlaot neighborhood long enough for its constituent microorganism population to develop into colonies, which, over the eons it sat uncollected, grew into a unified organism with more to recommend it than any of the humans campaigning for the mayoralty, and, seeing the opportunity to improve the city, launched its own election bid. Elections are scheduled for the 30th of this month.

Tabaat cited several polls showing the excrement in the lead over previous front-runner Moshe Leon, with 47% of those surveyed choosing the feces over the career politician, who polled at 29%. Likud candidate Zeev Elkin polled a distant third at 12%.

"It's an obvious choice to an clear-headed citizen," explained Tabaat. "A turd that's known the grittiness of the city's streets has much more resonance with the day-to-day struggles of Jerusalemites than any politico, especially the polished, groomed personalities of the mainstream parties. Also, a campaign being run by a piece of actual, physiological crap is shaping up to be the cleanest campaign Israel has ever seen. I know that doesn't say much, though."

Leon's and Elkin's staffs found themselves scrambling this week to explain and address the gap, which one Wednesday poll saw widening further. "It's tough to compete," acknowledged Leon campaign director Asla Authaus. "Even with the endorsement of the Haredim, which would normally prove key to victory, our candidate can barely crack the 30% mark. We're in some deep, uh, trouble."

Elkin spokeswoman Beth Hakisseh indicated that if polling continues to show the coprolite in the lead, the Netanyahu protege would consider pulling out of the race. "Not much sense in asking for humiliation on election day at the hand of a living piece of digestive waste," she acknowledged.

Even if the kaki fails to win, predict analysts, it will upend accepted wisdom about municipal elections in Israel, Jerusalem in particular. "A strong showing such as the one we're seeing really threatens the established power brokers," noted local journalist Bea Yuv. "You can tell they're producing more of the leading candidate each time they look at the polls."

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