Gaza NGO PCHR's weekly report went through all the the major Israeli attacks in Gaza last weekend, of course without mentioning the hundreds of rockets shot towards Israel.
Besides the people I already mentioned who it incorrectly called "civilian" in its daily report, there were another couple of anomalies that show that Western NGOs and reporters can never trust PCHR to say who a "civilian" is.
This paragraph is self-contradictory:
At approximately 13:10 (May 5), an Israeli warplane launched a missile at a group of Palestinian civilians, who were in the east of al-Sheja’eya neighborhood, east of Gaza City. As a result, Bilal Mohammed Abdul Banna (29) and Abdullah Nofal Mohammed Abu al-‘Ata (21), members of the Islamic Jihad Movement, were killed.
If Israel shot at a group of civilians, how can it be that the only people killed are terrorists?
At approximately 14:45, Israeli warplanes launched a missile at a car driven by Hamed Ahmed Abdul Khudari (34), from al-Tuffah neighborhood, east of Gaza City. The targeting was in the vicinity of al-Sedrah area in the abovementioned neighborhood. As a result, al-Khudari , who works in Currency Exchange, was killed.
Also, Hamas had an event to celebrate the deaths of two of its members the previous Friday, which included these disturbing photos showing what is presumably one of their sons in full terrorist gear.
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Hesh Kestin, an award-winning author, wrote a book called The Siege of Tel Aviv which was released by small, prestigious publisher Dzanc Books.
Immediately thereafter, a furor arose, mostly from people who never read the book, calling it "Islamophobic" and demanding that the publisher pull the book. After a week of stonewalling, Dzanc did exactly that.
Most critics based their assumptions of Islamophibia on the blurb on the book jacket:
What, exactly, is Islamophobic? According to the critics, two things: One, saying "Iran leads five Arab armies in a brutal victory over Israel" implies that Iran is Arab, they say, which isn't true. In fact, the book makes clear that Iran is not Arab, so this is a problem with the person who blurbed the book, not the contents.
Secondly, they claim that the spelling of the word "Moslem" is offensive. Apparently, when the "S" is pronounced like a "Z", it means "One who is evil or unjust" so Muslim groups have been pushing the alternate spelling since the 2000s. Yet it cannot be that offensive, given that there are many Muslim charities in America that continue to use the older spelling.
Based on the initial backlash, it appears that none of the critics actually read the book before pushing Dzanc to drop it.
The Siege of Tel Aviv, with blurbs from Stephen King and others, addresses the tragic situation in the Middle East. It is a book that weds absurdism with satire with social commentary. It is not in any way meant to be read literally as an Islamophobic text. That the material presents itself as problematic in this regard troubles me deeply. I hoped readers would understand the intent of the novel, the over-the-top absurdist narrative, drawing attention to—not championing—the ridiculous ways in which we, as a universal community, see one another and fail in our interactions. That the novel has been viewed as otherwise is our failing.
The novel isn't a satire, although parts of it are a bit absurd and there is social commentary.
If publishing this novel is an error, then we will listen to the complaints and pull it from the market. I am opposed to censorship, but we are living in fraught times and listening to the public is important. I truly thought readers would grasp the literary objective of the novel. The novel was acquired three years ago, before Trump's election and the dynamic shift in American politics.
Is this guy really a publisher? Why would it matter whether a book is read before or after the 2016 elections? If he is opposed to censorship, then why is he willing to pull a book less than a week after publication and before most critics even bothered to read it?
This is a story of censorship and political correctness. It is not a serious discussion about a book.
I read The Siege of Tel Aviv over the weekend.
The first half of the book describes a nightmare scenario where, as the Arab League announces that it is ready to negotiate for peace with Israel without preconditions, it is secretly working with Iran to launch a series of sneak attacks to destroy Israel.
In the preface to the book, Hesh Kestin describes his life at the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. In that context, it is obvious to anyone who read the book and who knows history that the first half of the book is essentially an updated version of that war - a sneak attack that could have easily destroyed Israel if it hadn't improvised hasty defenses, if the Syrians hadn't been incompetent, if the US hadn't sent over weapons.
The second half of the book describes how the Israelis, without any weapons to speak of and starving to death in besieged Tel Aviv with no communication with the world, manage to miraculously fight back and win.
Kestin did no small amount of research for the book, and parts are very entertaining - if one can be entertained at the prospect of hundreds of thousands of dead Jews and the rest starving.
The characters are not much more than cartoon stereotypes. The Russian Jewish mobster, the American president with an (affected) Southern accent who speaks nicely but only cares about winning the next election, the Arab leaders who fight among each other on how to divide up the land, the Iranian mastermind who studies Hitler to know how to best exterminate the Jews, the vapid attractive CNN reporter - we don't learn anything about them because we already know the characters, and they don't change. So if the book is Islamophobic, it is antisemitic and anti-American as well. In reality, it is none of those things. In fact, one major character is an Israeli Bedouin who is one of the "good guys."
Kestin's view of the Middle East looks like it hasn't changed much since 1973. Jordan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia are as implacable foes of Israel as Syria and Iran are. Egypt doesn't flinch at attacking an aid flotilla and a BBC helicopter.
The underlying worldview is one dimensional, but not that inaccurate. If Iran could devise a plan to actually destroy Israel, pretending that this was 2010 or so, would the Arab world have signed on? I think so. Would the Arab world ignore the Palestinians altogether in their dismantling of Israel? Probably, although not immediately.
That being said, The Siege of Tel Aviv is entertaining. How the Israelis win is a absurd but fun. The new world order that is ushered in by the ultimate Israeli victory is wishful thinking to the extreme.
Unfortunately, the most notable thing about this book isn't the plot. It is how it exposed how so many self-defined liberals are actually not interested at all in free speech. While Kesten laughs this off, as all publicity is good publicity and he wants to sell books, the saga of The Siege of Israel is really about the continued fall of American liberalism into what is closer to fascism. The attempted censorship of a novel that is no more offensive than thousands of other international thrillers because it is pro-Israel should make all serious people feel a bit queasy.
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Ahead of next week’s Eurovision Song Contest, Israel is countering the anti-Israel boycott movement, or BDS, on social media and the internet with its ‘Beautiful, Diverse, Sensational’ campaign.
The move comes after Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs exposed a coordinated campaign by the BDS movement calling for the boycott of the Israeli-hosted international music event. As David Gerstman reported for Legal Insurrection earlier this month, the BDS movement had “deployed hundreds of bots to promote a campaign to boycott this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.” The online campaign was backed by several Palestinian groups, including designated terrorist groups Hamas, the PFLP, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, David wrote, citing an official Israeli report.
“Instead of believing in culture as a tool to unite, Israel’s detractors try to use it to divide,” Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan said recently. “Israel is a vibrant democracy which provides a safe-haven of freedom in the Middle East for its wide mix of cultures, people and religions. I call on all artists of the world to reject BDS’s hate-filled and bigoted campaign and continue to unite the world with their music.”
Israeli news website Ynetnews reported: israel has launched a PR campaign to counter calls for a boycott of the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest final in Tel Aviv, using Google ads which refer to the boycott but lead to a glossy website extolling Israel. The international Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement dismissed the tactic as “crude propaganda”. (…)
Internet advertisements on Google featuring the words “boycott” and “Eurovision” encourage searchers to click on a link that, in fact, leads them to a pro-Israel website which – in a play on the BDS initials – extols Israel as “Beautiful, Diverse, Sensational”. (…)
Minister of Strategic Affairs, Gilad Erdan, said the advertisement, which features high quality photographs and videos, was intended to “show Israel as it really is, a diverse, beautiful and sensational place, while at the same time, successfully dispelling the lies BDS spreads.”
כאן מציגים: מחזמר האירוויזיון הרשמי של ישראל, ארץ זבת חלב והרבה שווארמה. הצטרפו אל לוסי ואליה והסבירו פנים לתיירים #כאן_אירוויזיון ⏰ 4 ימים לחצי הגמר הראשון! pic.twitter.com/ABuizHNZnQ
Regrettably, there is a small group of extremist activists who have tried very hard over the past year to prevent the Eurovision happening this year or at least to stop Ireland’s state broadcaster RTE from airing the event.
These people like to call themselves ‘pro-Palestinian.’ Actually, they are not.
Their activism, their hatred, their negative calls for boycotts, and their aggressive intimidation of people who support Israel do not do anything to improve the life of a single Palestinian but show that their only agenda is an anti-Israel one.
They pretend that the Jewish people have no right to live in the places where they were born and where their history, religion and culture are deeply rooted since ancient times.
They ignore that since the 1990s continuous attempts to reach a peace agreement have been rebuffed and have been met with more and more Palestinian terrorism.
Only last week, Israeli civilians once again became the target of more than 600 rockets fired indiscriminately at towns and cities in southern Israel.
Hamas, the Palestinian terrorists who carried out those attacks, have committed a double war crime. They are intentionally targeting civilians in Israel while also using their own civilian population as human shields for their military assets and rocket launching sites.
In essence, all of this is being backed by those extremist boycotters.
While debate over Israeli policy, like a debate of any country’s policies, is, of course, legitimate, the extremists constantly try to bash and defame Israel by abusing terms and descriptions hijacked from other agendas, places and times.
The most extreme of those false allegations come dangerously close to being covered by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, adopted by representatives of 31 countries – including Ireland.
These include, for example, denying the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination; describing Israel as a racist state; dehumanising and demonising Israeli Jews. (h/t Zvi)
The Palestinian Authority called Saturday for Jerusalem to be cut from videos promoting Eurovision, accusing Israel of “propaganda” ahead of Tel Aviv hosting the international song contest.
The Kan public broadcaster aired a clip Friday aimed at tourists traveling to the country for Eurovision, which features a shot of East Jerusalem’s Temple Mount compound, the holiest place in Judaism, referred to as the Noble Sanctuary by Muslims, where the Al-Aqsa Mosque stands.
The video also refers to Jerusalem as “our beloved capital.” Palestinians claim the eastern sector as the capital of their future state.
East Jerusalem was captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed in a move never recognized by most of the international community. The US recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017, and moved its embassy to the city last May.
The PA’s foreign ministry said Israel was using the song competition to “entrench its colonial occupation by effectively normalizing the global acceptance of its unlawful conduct.”
Hamas can prevent the Eurovision Song Contest in Israel, warns Hamas TV editor
In Arabi21, an Arab writer Zahrat Khadaraj writes about how Israel has supposedly destroyed hundreds of mosques.
The article centers on the Hassan Bek (or Bey) Mosque in Jaffa. But she doesn't expand on its use as a place of prayer. She concentrates on how it was a military site!
The minaret was used in 1948 as a sniper position as well, documented in the Palestine Post and confirmed by Khadaraj:
She writes, "The mosque has a tall minaret used by the Mujahideen as a sniper station during their defense of the city against the Zionist occupiers. "
How dare the Jews damage a sniper position!
Moreover, Khadaraj alleges that the minaret was built for a military purpose to begin with! She says that it was built during Ottoman times "because of the conspiracies planned by the Jews of the Ottoman Empire and their constant attempts to smuggle arms from the sea through Manshiyeh [Jaffa.]"
I had never heard of Jews arming themselves during Ottoman rule, and this sounds completely made up. But it shows that to the Muslims of Jaffa, there was no difference between a religious site and a military site, and indeed the military dimension of the site makes it more important religiously.
Instead of razing this terrorist sire to the ground, Israel allowed it to be rebuilt and it remains in Jaffa today. Yet the Arabs are using it as an example of Israeli hatred of Muslims.
(h/t Ibn Boutros)
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Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib said she “loves the fact” that her “Palestinian ancestors” were part an attempt “to create a safe haven for Jews” after the Holocaust, although the role “was forced on them” and took place “in a way that took their human dignity away.”
Tlaib referred to the recent commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day when asked about her decision to support a one-state solution, becoming the only Democratic member of Congress to buck her party’s position in favor of two states.
“There’s always kind of a calming feeling when I think of the tragedy of the Holocaust, that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence, in many ways, has been wiped out … in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-Holocaust, post-tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that in many ways,” said Tlaib.
Let's be clear: Palestinian Arabs were complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews, at the very least.
If it wasn't for their rioting against Jewish immigration during British rule, the British wouldn't have limited that immigration in in 1930 and then drastically reduced in in 1939, right when European Jews needed it the most.
Uncountable numbers of Jewish men, women and children could have been safe and alive instead of gassed and burned by the Nazis if it wasn't for the actions of the Arabs of Palestine.
After the Holocaust, the main people who were responsible for "horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time" were Tlaib's fellow Arabs, both in Palestine and throughout the rest of the Arab world.
Tlaib's words go beyond mere whitewashing these historic facts. She is not only claiming that Palestinians deserve credit for helping Jews after the Holocaust. She is also saying that Palestinians were Holocaust victims themselves, by giving up "their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence" for Jews to have a place to go.
This is simply obscene from anyone, let alone a member of Congress.
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Former Miss Iraq Sarah Idan on Friday shot down an anti-Israel rant by ex-Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters in which he urged the boycott of the Eurovision song contest being held next week in Tel Aviv.
“An artist has power to inspire. Make sure you use your power for good and to bring people together,” Idan, 29, said in a series of Twitter posts. “I never understood artists who boycott an entire country, you’re singing for people not for governments.”
The former beauty queen’s comments were in response to an article, posted on Twitter by the blog Israelycool, about the latest anti-Israel video uploaded onto Facebook by Waters, who is an avid supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
Idan, the founding CEO of the organization Forward Humanity, was attacked on social media in 2017 and received death threats for taking a selfie with Miss Israel Adar Gendelsman at the Miss Universe pageant in Las Vegas. At the time, she refused to delete the photo despite pressure from her Iraqi sponsors, including the director of the Miss Iraq Organization, and out of fear, Idan and her family fled Iraq. She now lives in New York.
Soon to become Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister, Netanyahu’s longevity owes to a combination of ruthless political skill and innate aversion to risk. No democratic leader today matches his natural talent for figuring out how to win elections, even if victory involves skating perilously close to the political, legal, and moral edge. And no leader on the world stage today has registered his success in combining bold, creative diplomacy with restrained, judicious use of military power to improve his country’s strategic position.
Under normal circumstances, the last thing Netanyahu would want is for the President of the United States to propose a detailed plan for the permanent resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is a champion of incrementalism, step-by-step diplomacy that tests both the other side’s true intentions and the political flexibility of his own core supporters—and he has been right to shy away from big, “Made in America” ideas about what’s best for Israel.
Why, then, does Netanyahu appear sanguine about the coming peace plan? Why does he seem willing to legitimize a dangerous strain of know-it-all American solutionism and welcome, even encourage, Trump to propose precisely what he has long opposed?
There are many possible explanations. After Trump’s decisions to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, to scuttle the detested Iran nuclear deal, and to recognize Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights, perhaps Netanyahu views the Trump presidency as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enshrine the Administration’s pro-Israel inclination as official U.S. government policy. Perhaps Netanyahu is confident that Abbas will flub the leadership test and that Palestinian miscues will open the door for Israel to annex key parcels of West Bank territory without triggering either outrage in Washington or much opposition in the wider Arab world. Perhaps Netanyahu is so deeply burdened by his own legal woes that he views the “deal of the century” as a political life preserver.
Whatever the rationale, I hope that “Bibi the strategic thinker” wins out over “Bibi the political tactician,” and that he uses whatever tools at his disposal to abort the Kushner plan in the few weeks left before Trump releases it as his own. This may demand a direct appeal to the President. Alternatively, it may require enlisting the support of someone the President respects—prominent Republican donor Sheldon Adelson or Trump-whisperer Lindsey Graham come to mind—to make an appeal on his behalf. For Israel and its friends, the key point remains: The only way to protect the long-term viability of the best aspects of the Kushner plan is to kill the plan.
A radical Catholic priest and former adviser to Barack Obama invited Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to speak at his Chicago parish.
Farrakhan was kicked off Facebook last week for his long history of hateful comments, including denouncing "wicked Jews." In response, Father Michael Pfleger invited Farrakhan to speak at St. Sabina Church on Thursday to defend himself from charges of anti-Semitism.
"I have been and always will be a defender of free speech as I believe we must all continue to defend," Pfleger told a local news station after the event.
In a statement, the Archdiocese of Chicago indicated they were not aware of the event and were not sponsoring it.
"There is no place in American life for discriminatory rhetoric of any kind," the archdiocese said. "At a time when hate crimes are on the rise, when religious believers are murdered in their places of worship, we cannot countenance any speech that dehumanizes persons on the basis of ethnicity, religious belief, economic status, or country of origin."
Facing a world where anti-Semitism is resurgent again, Holocaust survivor Edith Eger, who watched her mother be marched to the gas chamber, said she pities those who “waste” their life hating.
Seventy-five years after arriving at Auschwitz, where she was forced to dance for the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, Eger told AFP that she of course felt sorry for the victims of rising hate speech and violence.
But the 91-year-old said she was especially distressed by those consumed by bigotry who really “do not acknowledge that [they] are one of a kind.”
You should “not really waste your life hating,” she said in an interview on the sidelines of a conference on compassionate leadership at the IMD business school in Lausanne.
Eger certainly knows what hatred can lead to.
The practicing clinical psychologist, professor and author was just 16 when she and her Jewish family arrived at the Nazi death camp.
Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are often framed as equivalent phenomena and equal dangers. But these are two very different phenomena and should not be lumped together. A phobia is a strong, irrational fear of something that poses no real danger. Judeophobia is an irrational fear of Jews. Islamophobia is an irrational fear of the Islamic religion or Muslims generally. Anti-Semitism is a race-based ideology rooted in stereotypes - not based on fear, but ancient hatred.
Islamophobia became prominent in 1989 when Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, following the publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, which imposed a death penalty on Rushdie and also criminalized all the publishers and translators of the book. Since then, the Islamophobic label has been used increasingly to deter any scrutiny of any groups or individuals who happen to be Muslim, even when they are advancing radical or harmful ideas.
The sword of Islamophobia is wielded to deliberately chill discourse and narrow the public marketplace of ideas. Today, the unfortunate reality is that any time somebody is brave enough to critique a dangerous ideology, the government of a Muslim country or even a terrorist network, they're silenced, shut down and stigmatized for engaging in Islamophobia.
In 1998, George W. Bush made his first trip to Israel. He had just been reelected governor of Texas – the first governor to win back-to-back terms in the Lone Star State – and he was already plotting his presidential bid.
During the visit – together with a few other Republican governors – Bush made the standard gubernatorial stops: a meeting with then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a tour of the Knesset, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and the Western Wall. He then took a helicopter ride up to the Golan Heights. His guide for the flight was none other than Ariel Sharon, the fabled IDF general who was serving at the time as Israel’s foreign minister.
Little did the two know that in just three years they would meet again, although this time as president and prime minister. The helicopter ride sparked a mini-crisis between Israel, the US and the Palestinians. Sharon wanted to land the helicopter in the West Bank to show Bush the reality on the ground, but the Palestinians objected.
They feared that Israel would use the visit to try legitimizing the settlement enterprise, which Sharon had long championed. In the end, Israel compromised. The helicopter didn’t land but it flew low enough for Bush to see Jerusalem’s ancient rooftops, the ridges overlooking the Jordan Valley, the red-roofed stucco homes in the Israeli settlements and the densely populated Palestinian cities. Sharon and Bush wore headphones so they could communicate over the noise made by the Black Hawk helicopter’s rotors.
The former IDF general shared with the Texas governor his own personal story, pointing along the way at hills and valleys where he had waged battle in past Israeli-Arab wars. When Sharon told Bush that at its narrowest point Israel was just 10 miles wide, the future president joked that some driveways in Texas are longer.
We already knew that Mahmoud Abbas is a dictator. Apparently, he wants to learn from the best.
Just like Chairman Mao essentially forced every Chinese citizen to own a copy of the "Little Red Book" containing hundreds of his aphorisms, PA president Mahmoud Abbas is publishing a book of his own sayings to be distributed to all schools under his control. Paltoday reports:
The initiative came in order to teach students in schools in Palestine these quotations in order to "highlight the national identity and bring about the desired development and change," according to the initiators of the initiative .
Minister of Education Marwan Awartani said that the ministry is committed to printing this booklet and distributing it to all schools in the country, adding that teaching students these quotations is an important initiative to develop their creative skills to highlight the national identity and bring about the development and change desired.
A member of the Fatah Central Committee Azzam al-Ahmad said that the booklet was printed by a decision of President Mahmoud Abbas and distributed to all educational institutions in the country.
People are complaining on social media - because they assume that the quotes will support peace rather than war. The terrorist groups see Abbas as someone who cooperates with Israel and who, occasionally, condemns terror attacks against Jews, so they don't want their kids to be influenced by someone like that.
Another said she didn't want her kids to learn from someone who gave up on returning to his birthplace in Safed.
It should be fun to see how this plays out.
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As around 700 rockets rained down on southern Israel last weekend, leaving four Israelis dead and many more wounded, many in Western media were doing what comes naturally to them – suspending the normal rules of journalism to distort, twist or lie.
The usual, fundamental errors littered their reports – such as that Gaza was “occupied,” regardless of the fact that Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005.
There was the usual reversal of aggressor and victim, with sly implications of moral equivalency between Arab attack and Israeli defense.
There was the usual eagerness to believe the propaganda produced by the attackers, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and a corresponding unwillingness to believe the factual claims by their Israeli victims.
A number of British media outlets led their reports with the false accusation that a pregnant Gazan woman and her 14-month-old baby had been killed by the Israeli strikes. In fact, as PIJ eventually admitted, they were killed by a malfunctioning rocket fired from Gaza.
Some outlets corrected this error; others did not. None, though, pointed out that these particular casualties furnished graphic evidence that the Gazan warmongers weren’t only targeting Israeli innocents but using their own Gazan people as human shields by putting missiles in and around civilian homes – thus committing war crimes twice over.
In the United States and the United Kingdom, politicians on the Left were doing what comes naturally to them – either ignoring this latest, murderous onslaught from Gaza against Israeli civilians, or bashing Israel for its own victimization.
In the US, while President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence tweeted their support for Israel’s defense of its citizens and condemned the attacks by Hamas and PIJ, not one Democratic presidential contender saw fit to condemn the attacks from Gaza.
While some Democrats did back Israel, there was no party censure for their two Muslim congresswomen, who typically chose to defame Israel even as its citizens were being bombarded by Arab missiles.
Robert F. Kennedy wrote a clear explanation of this despicable behaviour against Israel. In excerpts of his articles written in1948, while in his early twenties when he was in Israel working for the Boston Post, he gives examples of this collusion. He warned America that Jewish Rights in Israel were being trampled upon by both the British and the Arabs.
Robert F. Kennedy wrote that he grew to admire the Jewish inhabitants of the Land. When he became a Senator in 1965 he became a strong supporter and advocate for Israel until his assassination during his Presidential Campaign in June 5, 1968, exactly twenty years after he had published his June 5, 1948 articles favouring Israel. The assassin was a Palestinian terrorist who disapproved of Robert Kennedy’s support for Eretz Israel. Robert F. Kennedy died 26 hours after being shot.
I found Robert F. Kennedy to be a far more honourable man than I had thought, he stood on solid moral ground in his defence of a Jewish Eretz Israel. I think that he should be considered to be among the “Righteous of the Nations."
Examples:
Boston Post- Headline – “British Position Hit in Palestine. Kennedy says they seek to crush the Jewish Cause because they are Not in accord with it."
“Once again the land of Israel was desolate and underdeveloped before the Jewish migration. (By Robert F. Kennedy June 5, 1948.)"
As President Trump today announced the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iran Deal, May 9th will mark a very painful day for many Iranian Jews worldwide who will remember the unjust execution of their community leader, Habib Elghanian 39 years ago at the hands of the current Iranian regime. While many American Jews may not remember or even know who Elghanian was, for my community of Iranian Jews, he was a remarkable leader whose execution sparked a mass exodus of Jews from Iran. Elghanian’s brutal execution has left a painful scare in the hearts and minds of countless Jews who fled Iran after the current Islamic regime took power in the country. After more than 2,500 years of living in Iran we, the Jews were suddenly and violently uprooted in massive numbers after receiving news of Elghanian’s execution by the new regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini. With many of America’s Ashkenazi Jews supporting former President Obama and other prominent Democrats who backed the disastrous Iran Deal three years ago, the time has long passed for the American Jewish community to wake up and realize that this regime in Iran is seeking a second mass genocide of the Jewish people. The time has come for us as American Jews to remember Elghanian’s shameful killing by the Iranian regime and see it as the best example of the regime’s undying hatred for Jews and that it cannot be trusted with nuclear technology nor nuclear weapons.
Habib Elghanian was among the most affluent industrialists in Iran and the leader of the Jewish community in Iran. He, along with his business savvy brothers, pulled themselves up by their own boot-straps out of the poverty-stricken Jewish ghetto in Tehran to become successful captains of industry in the country. He was not only a proud Jew but an even more proud Iranian nationalist who believed in helping the nation of Iran grow and prosper during its 20th century age of modernizing. He not only built the first modern high-rise in Iran in the early 1960s, but hired thousands of Iranians of all faiths in his many industrial companies. Along with his business success, Elghanian was quite philanthropic towards Iran’s Jews and non-Jews. He even contributed financially to the building of a mosque in Tehran which was in the midst of construction and the builders had run out of money! For nearly two decades I have interviewed scores of friends, family members and colleagues of Elghanian who swore that he had an unconditional generosity to anyone who sought financial help from him for a worthy cause or a person in need.
I've been making fun online of this insane video released by Roger Waters where he makes a complete idiot of himself, looking like a homeless drunk. I hope everyone watches it.
Anyway, the main point he is pretending to make is that, supposedly, 136,000 Swiss citizens signed a petition against having Eurovision in Tel Aviv.
I couldn't find any verification of this story anywhere. One worldwide petition gathered 42,000 signatures, but I didn't see any Swiss ones. Switzerland will of course participate in the contest.
As I was looking for the Swiss petition, though, I found another Swiss petition regarding Eurovision in 2007.
The Eidgenössisch-Demokratische Union (EDU) submitted their petition against the Swiss Eurovision Song Contest entry Vampires are alive this Tuesday. As previously reported by esctoday.com, the small political party, which holds only two seats on the federal level of the Swiss government, feels that the song's lyrics promote Satanism and the occult. The party gathered a total of 49,082 signatures over a two week period on their petition condemning the song [in two weeks.]
A minuscule Swiss party managed to get more signatures against a song about vampires in two weeks, in Switzerland alone, than the BDS movement managed to get worldwide in several months.
Which goes to show that petitions mean very, very little except to the people pushing them. There is no shortage of idiots who will sign anything out of ignorance.
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Canary Mission is possibly the most reviled pro-Israel organization out there.
Combing through social media posts, it exposes antisemitism and rabid anti-Israel opinions to the world. Everything that Canary Mission discovers is well-documented and verifiable. All it does is shine a light on social media posts that are public already anyway - it doesn't hack into anyone's email or invade anyone's privacy. Blaming the Canary Mission for publicizing the public words of Israel haters and antisemites just means that the haters are hypocrites.
The Canary Mission's backers and workers are anonymous, which enrages the anti-Israel crowd even more, since their methodology is to smear people and avoid discussing ideas and facts. The Forward is more obsessed over finding out who these "shadowy" people are than the rabid antisemitism it exposes.
Some of its exposes have been spectacular, including the doctor who had tweeted she would purposefully give Jews the wrong medications.
It turns out that The Canary Mission website has a section on "ex-Canaries" which is fascinating. A number of people that it exposed were embarrassed - but then looked at what they had written from a different perspective and realized how hateful their words were.
Twenty people so far are listed on this section of the site. The Canary Mission takes screenshots of their confessions and their regret.
I don't think The Forward will want to write about these people who have realized that they were wrong to join Jewish Voice for Peace or Students for Justice in Palestine.
Canary Mission is truly engaged in "tikun olam," improving the world, by showing people that the anti-Zionists are truly haters and racists - and prompting some of them to turn their lives around.
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.
During the Q&A session of my Yom Haatzmaut talk (which I didn't put on video,) someone asked me about BDS and whether its failure to hurt Israel economically was a miracle as well.
My answer was that the goal of BDS is not to boycott Israel. The goal is purely to demonize Israel, the make the world associate Israel with "apartheid" and "occupation" and to dissociate it from anything positive like Israel's many accomplishments and its liberalism in the face of enemies who want to destroy her. In that sense, BDS has been very successful, especially on college campuses but also in the left wing of the Democratic Party, the British Labour party.
BDS wants to make the very idea of Israel, and indeed the very word "Israel," toxic.
Which brings us to what happened in Berlin this week.
German Palestinians violently attacked the Israeli clarinetist Daniel Gurfinkel in Berlin in the first week of May, according to a YouTube video that surfaced on Thursday.
The YouTube video caption reads: "Germany: Man attacked at Palestinian event for allegedly yelling 'Israel.'"
According to a report on by the German reporter Ulrich W. Sahm on the website of Audiator, “A dozen hateful Palestinians can be seen beating up Daniel Gurfinkel at an event on a large square.”
Gurfinkel said in a statement: “I walked through Hermann square and saw that there was a demonstration against Israel. I am a resident of the State of Israel. The attack began immediately when I began to support my country with a single word. I've been struck on the head and I'm in pain so far. I was in total shock. "
When a mob attacks someone for saying the word "Israel," and the police are sort of blase about it, it shows how successful BDS is at demonization.
Already in 2009, police in a German city broke into an unoccupied apartment and removed Israeli flags from the window to appease a crowd of anti-Israel protesters who were angered by the sight of the flag and started throwing rocks.
In Austria this past December and again in March, students were actually fined by police for waving Israeli flags during anti-Israel demonstrations - because the very presence of an Israeli flag was considered a "provocation." At the very same time the anti-Israel protesters were screaming "Death to Israel" freely.
How soon will it be before college classrooms post "trigger warnings" before classes that happen to mention Israel, or put stickers on books that show Israel on the map, to avoid haters from going berserk?
The BDS movement wants the very word "Israel," used in any way besides as a profanity, to be banned in public life.
The scary thing is that they are making inroads in doing exactly that, with a combination of threats of violence and claims that the very word is so upsetting to certain people that they must be protected from even hearing or reading it.
The vitriol is reserved only for Israel, and the only precedent that can be found for such a level of hate is historical Jew-hatred. It is no coincidence. The idea that one has more of a right to attack people saying the word "Israel" than the people have of saying that word is nothing less than the mainstreaming of antisemitism - and even the celebration of antisemitism.
This is a full frontal assault on free speech, happening in Western countries under our noses.
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.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis were flocking to beaches and parks, lighting grills, waving flags and craning their necks for a glimpse of Israel’s fighter jets to mark the country’s 71th Independence Day on Thursday.
After a night of fireworks, concerts, parties and an emotional crossover from Memorial Day to Independence Day, most Israelis were spending the day, a national holiday, celebrating the country’s birthday.
Celebrations in Jerusalem kicked off Thursday morning at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem where President Reuven Rivlin hosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, IDF chief Aviv Kohavi and others for a musical ceremony honoring 120 soldiers receiving commendations for excellence.
Speaking to the soldiers, Rivlin said that for Israelis, “everything that is a challenge becomes an opportunity for us.”
The annual international Bible Quiz competition finals took place after the ceremony in Jerusalem and saw Israeli teenager Yonatan Weissman, a Jerusalem native, win the top prize. He beat out American candidate Benjamin Colchamiro of New Jersey’s Kushner yeshiva high school.
The IDF also opened its bases to the public, displaying jeeps, tanks and other equipment throughout the country.
On Wednesday night, the mournful and somber speeches of Memorial Day gave way to joyful celebrations as Independence Day officially started.
The juxtaposition of the two days is a key element of Israelis’ experience of national independence, ensuring that no commemoration completely excludes the achievement wrought by the sacrifice of the fallen and their families, and that the elation of independence is never far removed from an awareness of its cost.
The story of the Jewish people is one of “against all odds,” said Israel’s Knesset speaker at the official torch-lighting ceremony on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on Wednesday to mark the country’s 71st Independence Day.
Noting that many other peoples were larger and more powerful, Yuli Edelstein asked, “What do we have? We have a story.”
“A story of a slave people who were liberated and became free men, and brought to the whole world a new hope of freedom, a new message of peace, and a new destiny of justice,” he said.
“And though this nation was scattered all over the world,” he continued, “it gathered into one small, magnificent land, and swore that its children would grow up on this land, and that its dreams would be fulfilled on this land.”
“This is our story,” Edelstein said. “A rebellious, striving, daring, insolent people, which has one motto: ‘Against all odds.’ They struck us — and we rose again. They preyed upon us — and we went on. They exiled us — and, against all odds, we always returned to our homeland.”
In a video message, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also spoke of Israel’s historic accomplishments, saying, “We have achieved something that no other people has achieved. We are the only people who live in the same land, with the same name, speak the same language, and have the same faith as we had 3,000 years ago.”
“Yes, we still have antisemitism; yes, we still have those who slander us,” he said, “but more and more people around the world see the truth about our achievement, about our freedom, about our hope.”
It’s often the most regular folks who find themselves at the crossroads of history, and that is true as well of those who lent their assistance in minor or major ways to the establishment of the State of Israel.
That is the theme behind Toldot Yisrael, a nonprofit project that is interviewing hundreds of people, many of them now elderly, all of whom were part of the effort to create the Israeli nation.
The organization is releasing 20 videos made from footage of interviews with American Jews for Israel’s 71st Independence Day Wednesday night.
The 150 Americans interviewed include World War II veterans; industrialists who bankrolled the purchase of ships; the grandson of Rabbi Shalom Zvi Davidowitz, who helped write Israel’s Declaration of Independence; even Norman Lamm, the former chancellor of Yeshiva University who was a chemistry student in 1948 and volunteered to help develop the bombs for the Davidka mortar that was used in battle.
The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), with support from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), will convene the International Conference on the Question of Jerusalem “Preserving the cultural and religious character of Jerusalem” on 27-28 June 2019 at the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG).
The Conference will address the issue of Israel’s policies and measures aimed at changing the character of Jerusalem, which have significant political, legal and socio-economic ramifications, including the threat of derailing prospects for a peaceful solution to the Question of Palestine. The Conference will seek to formulate concrete actionable recommendations and ways forward among the relevant stakeholders for the preservation of a City, considered sacred by three religions.
The Conference will bring together Palestinian, Israeli and international experts, representatives of the diplomatic community and civil society to discuss viable and practical strategies to (1) stem efforts to alter the demography and character of the City, (2) provide viable alternatives that preserve the religious and cultural character of the City, and (3) ensure that all its Palestinian inhabitants enjoy their inalienable rights.
This is an annual conference; last year it was held in Rabat, Morocco. You can see a synopsis of the discussions here.
Of course, no one in history has preserved Jerusalem's historic, cultural and religious character more than Israel has. A look at how Jordan destroyed every single synagogue in 1948 and almost banned Jews from visiting for 19 years (not Israelis - Jews!) is all you have to know about how well Jerusalem was "preserved" under Arab rule for Jews.
In 1953, Jordan restricted Christian communities from owning or purchasing land near holy sites, and in 1964, further prohibited churches from buying land in Jerusalem...In order to counter the influence of foreign powers, who had run the Christian schools in Jerusalem autonomously since Ottoman times, the Jordanian government legislated in 1955 to bring all schools under government supervision. They were allowed to use only approved textbooks and teach in Arabic.Schools were required to close on Arab national holidays and Fridays instead of Sundays. Christian holidays were no longer recognised officially, and observation of Sunday as the Christian Sabbath was restricted to Christian civil servants.
Under Israeli rule, Muslim, Christians and Jews have simultaneous rights in Jerusalem for the first time in history.
Yes, we all know the UN is a joke, but it is worth being reminded every so often.
(h/t Irene)
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.
Besides the hyena story referenced earlier, there have been a lot of other anti-Israel stories floating around that are simply made up.
For example this tweet from someone anonymous received over 20,000 retweets already:
The only part of this that has any truth is the National Cultural Center, which was bombed last August (not last weekend) because it also housed Hamas offices. It also had a library but that it not what the tweeter is referring to.
A building that was meant to be the Palestine National Library was never completed. Instead, the partially-built structure became a Hamas training camp and tunnel hub, which was bombed last July.
The only Azhar Library I can find in Gaza is the library at Al Azhar University. It was never bombed.
Here's another made up story:
I have searched high and low for any Arabic or English news story that mentions Fatmah Hjazi. There were two protesters killed last Friday, none of them had her name. No stories in Arabic news about any girl shot in the head. I see a number of pictures of this girl holding a flag, but none of her injured (which would normally be featured prominently.)
But I found lots of other tweets that repeated the lie, often followed with tweets about how inhumane Israel is to do such a thing.
These Israel haters literally make things up. They lie as easily as they breathe. And the thousands of people who are so anxious to believe them are either idiots, antisemites or both.
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.
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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Elder of Ziyon
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