Chief of the Civil Aviation Regulatory Commission (CARC), Haitham Mesto, Monday reiterated Jordan's rejection of Israel's unilateral move to open and operate an airport in its current location in the south, unless it meets international criteria and the Kingdom's interests.
Mesto said that Jordan's rejection comes as the airport, near the southern city of Eilat, is in breach of international criteria regarding the respect of the sovereignty of the space and territory of other countries when operating the facility.
As far as I can tell, Jordan is concerned that airplanes landing in the new Ramon Airport will violate its airspace, since the airport is very close to the border with Jordan.
Here's the hypocrisy. Jordan's King Hussein Airport is just about as close to the border as Ramon Airport is. If Israel's new airport threatens to violate Jordan'a airspace, then Jordan's airport does the same to Israel.
Jordan is simply trying to irritate Israel even though there is little reason for airplanes landing at Ramon to violate Jordanian airspace.
If Jordan decides to make a stink over this - and I cannot find anything in international air agreements that Israel would be violating, as the kingdom claims - it can lose far more than it can gain.
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When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews, You are talking anti-Semitism”
More exact words were never said, and they were spoken by the great civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr.
However, the quote didn’t come from a letter, as long believed, but were spoken by him.
Martin Luther King Jr. whose life and dream we celebrate today, was a great leader for civil rights. Unlike today’s “Civil Rights” leaders who seek divisiveness and handouts, Dr. King dream was a post-racial society where people were judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin.
Also unlike most “Civil Rights” leaders today, Dr. King was a supporter of Israel and the Jewish people. In recognition of MLK day many Jews will post a letter supposedly penned by Martin Luther King called “Letter to a Zionist Friend,” but the story of the letter is a hoax.
During his lifetime King witnessed the birth of Israel and the continuing struggle to build a nation. He consistently reiterated his stand on the Israel- Arab conflict, stating “Israel’s right to exist as a state in security is uncontestable.” It was no accident that King emphasized “security” in his statements on the Middle East.
The most famous line from the letter “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking Antisemitism,” was uttered by Dr. King, just not in any letter. Over the next day or two, you will read various posts containing the letter— most of the text does not include the words of the great Civil Rights Leader. The good news is, however, is it does contain his sentiments.
On this Martin Luther King Day, the future of African-American and Jewish relations hangs in the balance.
The explosive controversy around National Women’s March leaders like Tamika Mallory refusing to apologize for their love of Louis Farrakhan — or to affirm Israel’s right to exist — is disturbing enough. But The New York Times’ decision to feature Michelle Alexander’s op-ed, “Time to Break the Silence on Palestine,” signals the opening of a new line of attack against our community.
Michelle Alexander has superstar credentials. She taught the Civil Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School and clerked for Justice Harry Blackmun at the Supreme Court. Today, she teaches “social justice” at Union Theological Seminary. Her 2010 bestseller, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, argues persuasively that the post-1960s “war on drugs” cemented African-American males’ status deep in the new underclass, a condition of racial inferiority reminiscent of the post-Reconstruction Jim Crow era. But she implies that much of our current racial crisis is the result of white racists — and immoral white liberal politicians in league with them. During 2016, she urged African-Americans and white progressives not to vote for Hillary Clinton.
James Foreman, Jr., son of a civil rights icon and himself a Yale Law professor, just won a Pulitzer Prize for Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. His central thesis in may ways reinforces Alexander’s argument — as he has acknowledged. Yet Foreman has criticized Alexander for downplaying the role of exploding black violent crime during the 1960s and 1970s in creating a political crisis over drugs, for flirting with the idea of an alleged white-racist political conspiracy when many African Americans also supported a harsh crackdown on crime, and for inflaming black-white polarization at a time when cross-race and cross-class alliances are needed for prison reform.
In her New York Times broadside, Alexander paints a picture of Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian territories as the greatest human rights crime of our time. There is no mention of Arab armies repeatedly invading Israel, of Palestinian terrorism, of the corrupt Palestinian Authority’s refusal to negotiate a peaceful two-state solution, or of the genocidal Hamas. Worst of all is her shameless revision of Martin Luther King’s history to re-imagine him as a late-blooming critic of Israel.
King was a man of peace and a humanitarian, sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians. But he knew — from first to last — the difference between right and wrong in the Middle East.
The American Zionist Movement commemorated Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., noting his support for the Jewish people and the State of Israel, on the national holiday named in his honor.
"Dr. King...is famously remembered for his 'I Have a Dream' speech, delivered at a moment and in a place where not only the country, but the world heard his message and joined in his commitment to build a better life," the organization's statement released Monday read. "Theodor Herzl, the founder of our modern Zionist movement in 1897 was also a dreamer who famously proclaimed, 'If you will it, it is no dream.'"
King was a supporter of Israel during the Six-Day War, and vociferously condemned antisemitism. The statement from the AZM included King's statements in support of the Jews.
"I solemnly pledge to do my utmost to uphold the fair name of the Jews, because bigotry in any form is an affront to us all," King said.
"Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity," King said. "I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy."
"Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality," King said.
You don’t seem to need the encouragement, but now that my birthday has come around again, so has a boost in the apparent drive you have for taking my words and shoehorning them into your ideological box. Yay.
My entire ethos revolved around achieving equality for all Americans, regardless of ethnicity. The non-violent protest movement I had the privilege to lead resulted in a moral credibility that even today, more than forty years after I was murdered, people want to invoke. Even if my views on their pet issue prove the polar opposite of theirs. Such an honor.
Take “Palestine.” I made it plain on multiple occasions that hatred for Israel serves as a poor mask for hatred of Jews. But that doesn’t stop self-proclaimed human-rights activists or New York Times op-ed columnists from pretending I’d change my pro-Israel stance if only I knew the truth. I know the truth, folks, and the truth is that giving credence to unceasing slander of Israel as if it commits some unique evil and therefore deserves unique, existential opposition, stands against everything for which I fought and bled. I should not need to spell this out.
I had this dream once – you may have heard me describe it, or read a transcript of the description. You know, the one about wanting people to be judged not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character. To have it bandied about in support of identity politics or intersectionality constitutes a grievous insult, but another truth is that the people doing the bandying about don’t really care for truth, or my aims. They just want to score political or rhetorical points, and, well, citing Dr. King will give you quite the cudgel. So what if he wouldn’t agree with you or your goals? A mere technicality. The same attitude had anti-abolitionists quoting Scripture to defend the institution of slavery.
As a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this comic strip – apparently from Marvel Superhero’s Contest of Champions (1982) – puts a smile on my face.
Or perhaps it is a grimace. Either way, it just goes to show how things have not changed much in 37 years.
But there was an optimistic ending: according to a thread on Reddit, he later saved her from falling with his flying carpet and they fought side by side.
Meanwhile, Marvel need to make a Sabra movie, starring Gal Gadot!
Nearly six years ago I gave a lecture at Yeshiva University on how to answer anti-Israel arguments. Since the lecture was over an hour and twenty minutes, I decided to break it up into 20 sections, one each to answer one popular anti-Israel argument.
Here is part 18..
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.3
There is an unwritten rule in journalism to avoid making Palestinians look bad collectively.
Israelis, sure. Settlers, certainly. But Palestinians? No, they must be given every benefit of the doubt.
The last PCPSR survey of Palestinians showed that they support a return to an armed intifada that would target Jewish civilians.
This support for terror was across the board:
Support for an armed intifada is higher in the Gaza Strip (60%) than in the West Bank (51%), among the youth between the ages of 18 and 22 years (65%) compared to those whose age is 50 years or higher (55%), among holders of BA degree (55%) compared to the illiterates (44%), among men (57%) compared to women (52%), among students (63%) compared to laborers (47%), among the religious (62%) compared to the somewhat religious (49%), among those who oppose the peace process (81%) compared to those who support the peace process (41%), and among supporters of Hamas (76%) compared to supporters of Fatah (36%).
Yes, 41% of those who say they support the peace process also support murdering Jews.
Previous surveys asking about support for specific terror attacks showed that the numbers go up when Palestinians are asked if they support the attacks on Jewish civilians in Israel.
Previous surveys also show that the number who support killing Jews who live in Judea and Samaria are much higher, in the 80-90% range.
This is a society that supports terror on the whole. By under-reporting this, the media is implicitly blaming only Israel for the problems in the region.
The truth needs to be publicized, even if it makes Palestinians look bad. The media has an agenda and that agenda does not include facts.
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Israeli fighter jets targeted Iranian weapons storehouses, intelligence facilities and a training camp near Damascus during a massive overnight bombardment, the Israel Defense Forces said Monday, accusing Iran of firing a missile at Israel a day earlier.
In addition, the Israeli Air Force bombed a number of Syrian air defense systems that fired on the attacking fighter jets, including a Russian-made Pansir S-1 battery, the military said.
“During the attack, dozens of Syrian surface-to-air missiles were fired, despite the clear warnings expressed [by Israel] to refrain from attacking. As a result, a number of Syrian air defense batteries were also attacked,” the IDF said in a statement acknowledging the attack. The public confirmation was in line with a recent departure from Israel’s previous silence about such strikes.
According to Russia, four Syrian servicemen were killed in the Israeli strikes. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said at least seven other pro-regime fighters were killed, likely Iranian or Shiite militia troops.
The Israeli army said its series of airstrikes on Iranian targets was in response to a surface-to-surface missile that was fired by an Iranian militia at the Golan Heights a day earlier and intercepted by an Iron Dome anti-missile battery. According to Intelligence Minister Israel Katz, the missile attack was aimed at the popular Hermon ski resort, which was full of visitors at the time. Military officials, however, were more circumspect about the target of the missile, saying it could have been either a civilian or a military site on the Golan Heights.
The Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported Monday that the missile carried a nearly half-ton warhead.
The missile attack on the Golan appeared to come in retaliation for an alleged Israeli strike earlier Sunday against targets in the Damascus International Airport and in the town of al-Kiswah, south of the capital.
The Israel Defense Forces on Monday said the missile that was intercepted over the Hermon ski resort the previous day was launched by Iran in a “premeditated” attack aimed at deterring Israel from conducting airstrikes against the Islamic Republic’s troops and proxies in Syria.
According to the Israeli military, the missile was an Iranian-made medium-range model that was fired from the outskirts of Damascus at approximately three in the afternoon. Conflicting reports emerged about the intended target of the missile, with some politicians claiming it was the Hermon ski resort and the IDF saying it could have been heading to either a civilian or a military area.
The attack came shortly after the IDF allegedly conducted a number of rare daylight airstrikes nearby.
In response to the missile attack from Syria, which was intercepted before it breached Israeli airspace, the Israeli military launched three waves of airstrikes that targeted first Iranian sites in and around Damascus, and then Syrian air defense batteries, which had fired on the Israeli fighter jets that had attacked earlier, the IDF said.
Israeli troops on Monday remained on high alert in the north. The Hermon ski resort was closed to visitors, but no other special safety instructions were given to residents of the area.
Military spokesperson Jonathan Conricus said the three response sorties destroyed a number of Iranian intelligence sites, training bases and weapons caches, including one of the Islamic Republic’s largest depots near the Damascus International Airport, which triggered secondary explosions.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported that 11 pro-regime fighters were killed in the Israeli raids. Of those, according to Russia, at least four were Syrian military personnel, apparently killed in the strikes on the country’s air defenses.
On Monday morning, the IDF released video footage of its airstrikes on Syrian air defenses, including on social media.
The missile that was fired into the Israeli Golan Heights on Sunday and in response to, the IDF struck multiple targets throughout Syria, was fired from an area near Damascus which Israel had been assured was empty of Iranian forces.
“The firing of the missile yesterday, a launch that could have killed civilians, was fired by Iranians out of Damascus within an area that we were promised that there would be no Iranians,” IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Ronen Manelis told reporters Monday morning.
According to the Israeli military, the missile was an Iranian-made medium-range model that was fired from the outskirts of Damascus. The launch which came at approximately three in the afternoon came about an hour after Israel allegedly struck targets in Syria in a rare daytime attack.
“The bottom line is that such a missile fired by Iranians from an area where there they are not supposed to be is an Iranian attempt to attack Israel, to endanger civilians lives and military targets.”
According to him, the fire was carried out by Iranian command and not by Syrians or local militias.
"This was planned in advance as an attempt to deter us from continuing to act against them in Syria," Manelis said, stressing that the missile launch on Sunday and the Iranian targets struck early on Monday showed just how deep Iran’s entrenchment in the war-torn country is.
"This is the third time that Iran has tried to attack Israel in the past year, he said referring to past events in February and May when rockets were launched by Iranian troops towards Israel, adding, "Iran is exploiting Syria, and Syria is paying a heavy price for facilitating Iranian actions.”
By now, the rise and decline of the Women’s March – once
hailed as the most important mass political movement in a generation – is well
documented.
Interestingly, it was a piece of investigative
journalism by the online publication Tablet that pulled the thread
which began the unraveling. Rumors of
anti-Semitism within the national leadership of the March had been a staple of
criticism of the organization’s leadership, as were questions regarding how
those leaders were dealing with the millions of dollars earned through
sponsorship, product sales and donations. But the detailed Tablet story added
the names, dates and quotes needed to create a groundswell that couldn’t be
swatted away as the work of racist critics by the March’s flawed and corrupt leadership.
I’m guessing most readers are aware of the sponsor
withdrawals (some public, some quiet), failed attempts at explanations and
apologies, too-weird-too-late shots at adding Jews back into the leadership
fold, that led to movement’s main event (a March on Washington) declining
precipitously this year. But I’d like to
focus on a dynamic that Divest This readers are well aware of: how the
infiltration of a high-profile, fast-moving, progressive organization by
anti-Israel activists always leads that the host’s corruption and ultimate
demise.
I wish I could find the quote where one of the women who
began the March talked about how the organization’s openness to new blood and
eagerness to include diverse names and faces left them vulnerable to
predators. For if you look at the three
women who have become the flashpoint of controversy regarding the March, you
can see that their agenda was not to move the fight for women’s rights forward,
but to channel the momentum created by others towards their own political ends.
Phyllis
Chesler highlights how little the agenda of the March has to do
with issues specific to women. Women
obviously make up half the planet’s population, so a focus on immigration,
economic justice (whatever that means), and international affairs is going to
impact women as well as men. But the
point Chesler is making is that the concept of intersectionality (which links
every injustice with every other) is so broad and amorphous that it allows
anyone to claim the mantle of feminist leadership regardless of which issues
they are actually fighting for.
Similar infiltration of progressive groups by anti-Israel
activists is so well documented as to almost be a cliché. When the Occupy Wall
Street project popped up a few years ago, one of its most well-known
features was lack of leadership and direction.
This was intentional, given that Occupy wanted to avoid hierarchy,
relying on consensus to decide what would happen next (even if that turned out
to never end in a decision).
The Israel haters would have none of this. As usual, their involvement in consensus
building involved insisting that any consensus that did not embrace their
agenda represented treason to the progressive cause (defined – by them – as an
unquestioning embrace of the anti-Israel project). And so an organization that could barely
rouse itself from camp somehow managed to march on a single consulate – guess
which one – increasing suspicion of the entire project (which eventually made
it easier to shut the whole thing down).
Infiltration of other people’s institutions can be seen
wherever progressive politics is ascendant, notably college campuses where
intersectional coalitions somehow always include support for BDS. BDS champions insist that this is simply a
matter of justice, but as I’ve noted before, intersectionality seems to have
ended up a one-way street where feminists and gay rights activists (to pick a
couple of examples) must embrace an assault on Israel while shutting up about
the abominable plight of women and gays everywhere else in the Middle East save
Israel.
Why must everyone in a college intersectional coalition –
including feminists and gay activists – submit to the will of mostly male,
mostly straight BDS leaders far from campus?
Because the boycotters are ready to do anything, including destroying any
organization they join, in order to get their way.
Within the Women’s March you are seeing a similar drama play
out as predators who have taken over a project they did not start seem ready to
see it go down in flames rather than free it from enslavement to issues of
their choice.
I suppose it is good news that so many women are voting with
their feet by abandoning the national organization and either running events of
their own or exploring other ways to make womens’ rights a higher priority in
the US and around the world. But if any
of these other groups find themselves taking off, best they learn a lesson on
how to protect any institution they build from those who are ready to join it
for the sole purpose of turning it towards different ends.
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.
I looked up the sources for these statistics and every single one is suspect -or outright wrong.
Did a quarter of Palestinian adolescents attempt suicide? No. In one specific town, 25% of teens seriously considered or made plans for suicide, according to a survey. Bizarrely, slightly more students reported having made plans for suicide than those who reported seriously considering suicide, which makes no sense and points to serious problems with the survey methodology.
Do 23.2% have PTSD? No, that survey was only of adolescents who were already mental health patients. Even the study that was quoted says "The findings in the below studies need to be considered with caution due to weaknesses in study design, such as the use of self-developed and unverified questionnaires and measurement tools that are in need of further validation."
Moreover, the questionnaires themselves used in that study point to the idea that students who respond are lying. For example, 35% of youths surveyed claimed that they had experienced Israelis searching their house in the previous year, during the height of the intifada.
A back of the envelope calculation, assuming six people per household, would indicate that the IDF searched over 100,000 homes in a single year.
That is physically impossible.
The other findings are equally ludicrous: 15% reported being beaten in the previous year, 6% said they were used as human shields, 14% said their houses were taken over by Israeli soldiers while they were inside. Again, none of this makes sense even at the height of the violence. But it is reported as fact and is the basis on conclusions of how Palestinian youths are traumatized.
It is more likely that many Palestinians are conditioned to respond to surveys the way they want the world to think, not what really happened.
The rest of the Quartz article is an interview with a Palestinian psychiatrist who claims that things are actually worse than the survey says - that Palestinians are so traumatized that you cannot claim they have PTSD because their trauma is ongoing, there is nothing "post" about it. And she is talking about today, not during a wave of terror, when the only time most Palestinians see an Israeli soldier is when they go through checkpoints. The doctor uses Gaza as an example, but these surveys were all done in the West Bank.
The honor/shame dynamic is not considered in these surveys and articles. "Experts" and people who take surveys want to give an impression more than they want to tell the truth, because the truth is often shameful but blaming all problems on Israel is honorable.
(h/t Bill)
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In the 1960s, Martin Luther King's brand of nonviolence and support for Israel was the mainstream black opinion, while a fringe radical black movement (called Black Power) started that supported violence and, not coincidentally, saw more affinity to Arab terrorists than Israel.
It is unfortunate that the radical black vision where the only "intersectionality" is to those who want to murder Israelis has become the mainstream.
Here is an article I posted a number of years ago by Bayard Rustin, a major black civil rights leader in the '60s and '70s (who also happened to be openly gay,) that shows that he felt that there excellent reasons for blacks to support Israel - and his reasons sound "intersectional."
__________________________
I had a number of tweets related to Martin Luther King that I posted over the past couple of days that did fairly well.
Martin Luther King, 10 days before he was killed: "Peace for Israel means security,
and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist,
its territorial integrity. I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one
of the great outposts of democracy in the world...
MLK continued: "...and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land almost can be transformed
into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means
security and that security must be a reality."
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Nearly six years ago I gave a lecture at Yeshiva University on how to answer anti-Israel arguments. Since the lecture was over an hour and twenty minutes, I decided to break it up into 20 sections, one each to answer one popular anti-Israel argument.
Here is part 17.
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.
Sadly, the response so far from International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has been weak. On Monday, AFP quoted the IPC as saying that it was “disappointed” with Malaysia’s decision to bar Israeli swimmers from entering the country and that it hoped to find a solution to the matter.
“While we continue dialogue with the Local Organizing Committee and the National Paralympic Committee, the IPC Governing Board will be discussing this matter at its meeting in London next week,” the IPC said in a statement. “World Championships should be open to all eligible nations and athletes. We will explore all options open to us to try and ensure the full participation of all eligible athletes.”
We do not understand what the IPC needs to wait a week to “discuss” and have a “dialogue” about. When facing an act of antisemitism and discrimination, the solution is a simple one and should be implemented as soon as possible: the IPC should rescind its decision to hold the tournament in Malaysia, choose another venue, and then – in response to the Malaysian decision against Israeli athletes – impose punitive sanctions on Malaysia, including the banning and even expulsion of the country from future tournaments.
Such a decision will send a clear message to other countries that might, on the one hand, want to host sporting events, but on the other hand not allow Israelis inside their borders. This is the policy for multinational organizations like the World Trade Organization, which a few years ago, for example, held its annual gathering in Indonesia, which – to host the event – had no choice but to allow Israeli government officials to attend.
As its mission statement reads, the IPC was established 30 years ago to allow disabled athletes to “achieve sporting excellence and inspire and excite the world.” What Malaysia is doing is the exact opposite of inspiring or exciting the world. Letting it get away with blatant antisemitism undermines the IPC and the purpose for which it was established. Take action now, IPC, before it is too late.
Fatah official: "Normalization with the Zionist entity is the greatest danger to our Arab nation"
The Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate called on all media outlets "to settle accounts with anyone who has participated in a visit to and any activity of normalization with the occupying entity"
Fatah official repeated PA libel that Israel was established to steal the resources of the Arab region: "The Palestinian people, through its struggle, has always constituted an impregnable wall against the colonialist Zionist project that wants to take over the resources of the Arab peoples, and against the spread of Zionism towards the Arab region"
Op-ed in official PA daily: "Western colonialism in general, and British colonialism in particular - in cooperation with the Zionist movement, and later with its physical base, the colonialist State of Israel - attempted... to erase the Palestinian identity, history, and existence, and to establish the rogue state [Israel]. This was in order to serve the goals of the capitalist West at the expense of the Jews, who were misled in the name of religion"
The disconnect between the events in the hall and the outside world – in terms of the member states’ bilateral relations with Israel; the Palestinian public’s rejection of Abbas; and Abbas’s role as terror sponsor and financier – points to a basic truth about the Palestinians and the nature of international relations.
International support for the Palestinians grows with the level of abstraction. The more concrete one’s relations are with the Palestinian Authority – whether as Palestinians who live under its jackboot, or Israelis who are the target of its aggression – the less legitimate Abbas is, and the smaller the octogenarian with no legitimate claim to power appears.
The more symbolic one’s relations with the Palestinians, the more fervent support for “Palestine” becomes. The G-77 isn’t elevating the “State of Palestine” because it cares about the Palestinians. The G-77 is elevating the “State of Palestine” because it doesn’t care about the Palestinians.
Although India, for example, rarely votes against the “State of Palestine” at the UN, its bilateral ties with Israel have expanded exponentially in recent years.
Netanyahu has worked assiduously to leverage the ties he has developed with states like Kenya, Rwanda, Brazil, and India into diminished support for the Palestinians at the UN. His efforts have brought about only a marginal change in behavior.
By and large, the Palestinians can continue to expect support from the vast majority of UN member states for any initiative they launch against Israel. Indeed, long after Abbas, his successors and their PLO are ousted from power, they will remain in senior leadership positions at the UN.
But as the recent massive growth of Israel’s bilateral ties to the nations of the world makes clear, there is often little connection between support for “Palestine” at the UN and animosity for Israel.
The Moroccan Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (MACBI), a boycott movement, has called for the boycott of French singer Enrico Macias’s concert in Casablanca scheduled for next month.
In a statement on January 13, the MACBI described Macias’s presence on stage at Megarama on February 14 a “shame and an insult to the Casablanca public.”
The French singer of Algerian Jewish descent who “likes to present himself as an artist for peace” is “in fact a strong defender” of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and especially the Israeli defense army, Tsahal, reads the statement.
MACBI stated that Macias is giving his blood, sweat and tears to the association Migdal, which supports the the Israel border police, Magav.
Magav, according to boycott movement, is “known for its war crimes against the civilian population.”
The MACAB’s statement, which the Moroccan-Jewish human rights activist Sion Assidon published on his Facebook page, cited some of Macias pro-Israeli statement he gave in French more than 10 years ago.
“From the beginning of my life, I have always devoted my body and soul to the State of Israel but primarily to Tsahal, but now to Magav … I do not do this neither for my advertisement, nor for my career, nor anything at all … I always gave for the State of Israel, for Tsahal, Magav, and for Migdal. Believe me, that’s the miracle of Israel.”
Macias really is a Zionist. Here he is accepting an award from Migdal.
And here is his rendition of Hatikva:
Moroccan anti-Zionists are taking an old poster of Macias fundraising for Magen David Adom and pretending that this Casablanca concert is meant to raise money for Israel.
Macias has tried many times to return and perform in Algeria, which he left in 1961, but the Algerian government has consistently denied him.
Notice that this article is not saying that MACBI is trying to stop the concert, but only to get people not to attend. Which is in itself an indication that the Morocco boycott movement is more noise than anything else.
Macias has given concerts in Egypt without any issues, including at least one that was televised.
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Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad addressed the Oxford Union on friday, and he said his normal nonsense about why he doesn't want Israelis to enter his country.
What struck me was two of his statements that generated applause from the audience.
The first (1:12) was when he said, "Well it is not fair to call me anti-semitic. They should call other people anti-semitic. I'm not anti-semitic - the Arabs are all Semitic people."
Yes, that stupid argument actually elicited applause.
At 1:56, Mohamad justifies insulting Jews as a freedom of speech issue:
We talk about freedom of speech and yet you cannot say anything against Israel, against the Jews. Why is that? So if we....can say that we are something that will be regarded as anti-semitic by the Jews that is their right to hold such opinion of me. This my right to tell them also that they have been doing a lot of wrong things.
The liberal, enlightened students at Oxford applauded the idea of negatively stereotyping entire groups of people.
Well, not really - they only applauded the idea of negatively stereotyping Jews.
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Oh? Is there silence about Palestinians? Among the tens of thousands of articles, hundreds of hours of TV time, thousands of books and scores of UN resolutions, has the world been silenced?
[I]f we are to honor King’s message and not merely the man, we must condemn Israel’s actions: unrelenting violations of international law, continued occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, home demolitions and land confiscations. We must cry out at the treatment of Palestinians at checkpoints, the routine searches of their homes and restrictions on their movements, and the severely limited access to decent housing, schools, food, hospitals and water that many of them face.
Alexander knows nothing about Israel and next to nothing about Palestinians. I have debunked these ridiculous claims over the years.
The fact is that Palestinians could have had a state five times over - and refused. That is not Israel's fault.
The fact is that Palestinians, after promising to avoid terror in 1993, have never stopped their terror campaigns against Jews in Israel. That is not Israel's fault.
The fact is that Israel has a legal right to the territories that is at least as compelling as that of a people who literally didn't exist as a people seventy years ago.
The fact is that Arabs in the West Bank have more freedom and better living conditions, better education, better health care than most of their brethren in neighboring Egypt and Jordan.
The fact is that most of the issues with Gaza are directly because of decisions made by Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
If there is any silence around the Palestinians, it is around these facts which Michelle Alexander and The New York Times will rarely mention. That is the conspiracy of silence.
Her pretense that she is being brave by mentioning this is absurd. Bravery would be for her to say something honest about Israel that contradicts these tired lies and anti-Israel propaganda that she swallows whole.
But Ms. Alexander insists that Martin Luther King would agree with her:
Ultimately, King canceled a pilgrimage to Israel in 1967 after Israel captured the West Bank. During a phone call about the visit with his advisers, he said, “I just think that if I go, the Arab world, and of course Africa and Asia for that matter, would interpret this as endorsing everything that Israel has done, and I do have questions of doubt.”
Here is the entire quote:
I’d run into the situation where I’m damned if I say this and I’m damned if I say that no matter what I’d say, and I’ve already faced enough criticism including pro-Arab. I just think that if I go, the Arab world, and of course Africa and Asia for that matter, would interpret this as endorsing everything that Israel has done, and I do have questions of doubt... Most of it [the pilgrimage] would be Jerusalem and they [the Israelis] have annexed Jerusalem, and any way you say it they don’t plan to give it up... I frankly have to admit that my instincts - and when I follow my instincts so to speak I’m usually right - I just think that this would be a great mistake. I don’t think I could come out unscathed.
King was talking primarily about his reputation. He wanted to maintain support from the Arab and African worlds, and his main reason to cancel the visit was because of how it would hurt his standing, not any moral stance.
Yes, he had doubts about Israel capturing territory, and he did say that he felt that Israel should return territory for peace. And - it did exactly that, with Egypt. It also gave Palestinians land where they can live autonomously, and the result was not peace, but more terror.
Sorry if those actual, provable facts are too inconvenient to mention.
Alexander quotes a rabidly anti-Israel historian as "proof" that King would have been anti-Israel today. But if you look at the last words he publicly spoke on Israel, at the Rabbinical Assembly on March 25, 1968 a week before he was assassinated and nearly a year after the "occupation," this is what he said:
On the Middle East crisis, we have had various responses. The response of some of the so-called young militants again does not represent the position of the vast majority of Negroes. There are some who are color-consumed and they see a kind of mystique in being colored, and anything non-colored is condemned. We do not follow that course in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and certainly most of the organizations in the civil rights movement do not follow that course.
I think it is necessary to say that what is basic and what is needed in the Middle East is peace. Peace for Israel is one thing. Peace for the Arab side of that world is another thing. Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land almost can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.
On the other hand, we must see what peace for the Arabs means in a real sense of security on another level. Peace for the Arabs means the kind of economic security that they so desperately need. These nations, as you know, are part of that third world of hunger, of disease, of illiteracy. I think that as long as these conditions exist there will be tensions, there will be the endless quest to find scapegoats. So there is a need for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, where we lift those who are at the bottom of the economic ladder and bring them into the mainstream of economic security.
His plan for the Arabs sounds a lot like - Benjamin Netanyahu's.
But that little fact is what is being silenced, as black people today are being told that being anti-Israel is a necessary position in their own civil rights movements.
This is nonsense, and anyone reading King knows it is nonsense.
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The Palestinian uproar over the scene of a religious Jewish policeman can, in short, best be described as a display of anti-Semitism. Otherwise, how do the Palestinians explain their non-objection to a non-religious Jewish policeman patrolling the holy site? Why is it all right for a policeman without a skullcap to enter the Dome of the Rock, but not all right for one wearing a skullcap to visit the site?
The Palestinians who protested against the policeman wearing the skullcap were following the words of their president, Abbas, when he stated that the Palestinians won't allow Jews with their filthy feet to defile the Al-Aqsa Mosque." In this instance, though, the Palestinians were disturbed not by the policeman's "filthy feet", but by the fact that he was a religious Jew. Perhaps Abbas should modify his statement from 2015 so that it would include, in addition to "Jews with their filthy feet," also: "Religious Jews wearing a skullcap."
Abbas and the Palestinian leadership are clearly trying to drag Israel into a religious conflict with all Muslims, not only Palestinians. The Temple Mount has become their favorite platform for disseminating blood libels and fabrications against Israel and Jews. If anyone is defiling the sanctity of the holy site, it is Abbas and his representatives in the West Bank. Abbas's ruling Fatah faction played a major role in the protests that erupted over the latest incident at the Dome of the Rock (involving the policeman with the skullcap. The police later detained Awad Salaymeh, a senior Fatah official in east Jerusalem, for his role in the incident involving the policeman. He and other Fatah activists were at the scene as part of their leadership's ongoing effort to instigate tensions between Jews and Muslims at the Temple Mount.
Other forms of Palestinian incitement against Israel and Jews at the Temple Mount include weekly sermons delivered by leading Islamic figures. Almost every Friday, another senior Islamic cleric uses the podium to deliver inflammatory sermons against Israel and Jews. One of these clerics is Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, the former Palestinian mufti of Jerusalem, who last week told his followers that Jerusalem will never be a Jewish city. Sabri and other senior clerics have also used the podium to warn Palestinians against selling their properties to Jews.
This Palestinian incitement and cynical exploitation of a holy site to spread lies and blood libels and stereotype Jews is barely noticed by the mainstream media in the West. Were Israel to stop a Palestinian from entering a holy site because of his clothing, the foreign reporters based in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv would have rushed to the scene to interview the man and tell the world that Israel is violating freedom of worship. This is yet another example of how the media gives the Palestinians a pass and allows them to continue their vicious incitement against Israel. The next time a Palestinian grabs a knife and goes out to stab a Jew, foreign journalists might consider the last time they failed to report on the Palestinian leaders, especially their incitement.
In October 2016, UNESCO’s executive board ratified a resolution that attempted to erase 3,000 years of Jewish religious history in Jerusalem.
The resolution was drafted by Jordan and submitted by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, and Sudan — with the enthusiastic support of the Palestinian Authority, a full member of UNESCO since 2011.
The central aim of the resolution was to formalize criticism of Israel’s conduct in Jerusalem. It referred to Israel as the “occupying power” and blamed the Jewish state for the spike in violence in the region.
Condemnation of alleged Israeli aggression has long been a standard talking point in the United Nations; that alone did not set off any alarms. What disturbed Israelis about the UNESCO resolution was that it made Jerusalem’s Holy Basin an exclusively Islamic prerogative. By only referring to the Temple Mount by its Arabic name “Al-Haram al-Sharif,” the resolution’s language severed ties between Judaism and the Temple Mount. The Western Wall was reduced to Al-Buraq Plaza — the place where Muhammad tethered his horse.
In the resolution, the Arabic name was only twice followed by the Western Wall’s Hebrew name; but when that happened, it was placed in quotation marks — a grammatical detail that Israelis took as direct belittling of Judaism’s linkage to the site.
The resolution made no mention of the Jewish temples that stood at the site for a thousand years, or the next 2,000 years of continuous Jewish attachment to Jerusalem. Only once did the drafters soften their bias by making a generalized reference to the importance of the Old City and its walls to “the three monotheistic religions.”
Filmmaker Steven Spielberg told NBC News he thinks society must take the possibility of genocide more seriously now that it has in the past generation. In an interview marking the 25th anniversary of “Schindler’s List,” Spielberg referred to the massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue and warned that “hate leading to genocide is as possible today as it was during the Holocaust.”
He was behind the curve. The era of “never again” is ending in Western Europe, fading in North America and never penetrated the Middle East. Relentless demonization of the Jewish state renormalizes demonization of Jewish people.
Examples of post-Nazi genocide and attempted genocide abound, including Muslim Indonesia’s seizure of largely Christian East Timor, the auto-genocide perpetrated by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, suppression of southern Sudan’s Christian and animist Darfur region by the government of the Muslim north, the murder of much of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority by the Hutu majority and today’s oppression by Myanmar’s Buddhist majority of its Rohingya Muslim minority.
Two post-Holocaust mass murders of Jews already have been attempted.
In 1948, five invading Arab countries committed to the destruction of the fledgling Jewish state. The United States no sooner became the first nation to recognize Israel than it slapped an arms embargo on the region. Though intended to diminish general tensions, in practice the move undercut Israel, since the other side continued to receive British arms and advice.
In 1967, Israel preempted a potentially overwhelming attack by Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian forces mobilized on its border. Afterward, the philosopher Eric Hoffer noted that “had [Egyptian President Gamal Abdel] Nasser triumphed … he would have wiped Israel off the map and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.”
* Hitler was a descendant of the Rothschilds.
* He made up propaganda about murdering Jews in order to help create a Jewish state.
* His girlfriends were all Jewish.
* Rudolf Hess was Jewish.
* Hitler escaped Germany and ended up in Argentina where he died in 1971.
* "Soviet Bolshevik Zionists" were responsible for saying that he died in the bunker in Germany.
I didn't quite understand the NASA part. Apparently Jews were involved in bringing German rocket engineers to the US to help create NASA.
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Tuesday, January 22, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
