Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, July 09, 2019

07/09 Links Pt1: Netanyahu warns Iran that F-35s can reach ‘anywhere in the Middle East’; PLO summer camp teaches children to honor terrorists who murdered hundreds; The Gaza you don't see

From Ian:

Netanyahu warns Iran that F-35s can reach ‘anywhere in the Middle East’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Tehran on Tuesday that Israel’s F-35 fighter jets can reach “anywhere in the Middle East,” following threats against Israel in recent weeks by senior Iranian officials.

“Lately, Iran has been threatening Israel with destruction,” Netanyahu said, standing in front of an F-35 Adir jet during a visit to the Nevatim Air Force Base in the south. “It should remember that these planes can reach every place in the Middle East, including Iran, and of course also Syria.”

The F-35 stealth jet is not believed to have an effective range to reach Iran unassisted, but it could conduct operations there with in-air refueling, a capability possessed by Israel’s air force.

Netanyahu visit to Nevatim included meetings with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin, and the air force’s top command echelons.

Norkin last year said that Israel had used the fifth generation fighter jet in operations in the Middle East. At the time, Norkin did not specify in which countries the aircraft had been used.

Israel has long seen Iran as its greatest threat, while Iranian officials regularly threaten to destroy the Jewish state.

Seth Frantzman: Innovations in the U.S.-Israel Security Alliance

In April an Israeli airstrike struck an Iranian base in Syria on the road to the ancient city of Palmyra. The target, according to an Israeli report, was an Iranian 3rd Khordad air defense system. Two months later a U.S. Global Hawk drone flying over the Gulf of Oman was struck by a missile fired by a 3rd Khordad system in Iran, almost leading to war.

The two incidents highlight the shared threats faced by the U.S. and Israel, not only from Iran but also from hybrid groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and Islamic State, which operate as both parastate entities and terrorist organizations. The result of these shared threats and the close political ties between Washington and Jerusalem is a uniquely close relationship between the two country’s militaries. Often the Israel-U.S. defense relationship is seen through the lens of U.S. foreign military financing for Israel, which comes to more than $3 billion a year. Far less attention is paid to the fact that since the 1980s Jerusalem has become a key supplier of advanced military technology to Washington. To name one recent example, the kibbutz-owned Israeli vehicle manufacturer Plasan supplied add-on “modular armor kits,” exterior platings that covered American military vehicles and protected U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. “That armor which was developed in Israel has saved many hundreds or thousands of lives of U.S. troops of vehicles hit by IEDs,” recalls Dan Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador and visiting fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies.

Israel now has three of the largest defense companies in the world, Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. With $7.5 billion in exports in 2018 it is the eighth largest arms exporter in the world. The country has excelled in supplying the U.S. in areas where Washington requires a technology quickly. American companies—encumbered by a lengthier and more bureaucratically involved bidding and defense-acquisition process—can’t always move as quickly as their Israeli counterparts to meet the dynamic requirements of the modern battlefield. “There is a range of technologies where things were brought to market faster than in the U.S. or with no U.S. counterpart and once they see the effectiveness and use they [the U.S.] want it and it is mutually beneficial,” says Shapiro, who concludes that the U.S.-Israel alliance is unique in this respect. “I’m sure there is no other country where we see so many examples of it.”

The Gaza you don't see

The increasingly popular Twitter account called @Imshin disseminates videos, blog posts, and news from the middle-class and wealthy world of the Gaza Strip that never make it into the mainstream media.

According to the UN, 53% of Gazans live in poverty, despite humanitarian assistance. But while world media outlets choose to focus solely on photographs of destitute Gazans carting off sacks of UNRWA flour by donkey cart, the swank world of high-class hotels, black-tie restaurants, and gourmet supermarkets stocked to overflowing with Israeli products are ignored, presenting a misleading picture of what life in Gaza after Israeli "occupation" is truly like.

Under the hashtag #TheGazaYouDontSee, Imshin, who prefers to keep her identity anonymous, shares diverse vignettes from life in Gaza that are a far cry from the oppression and misery that "everybody knows" is the lot of the Gazan population. From shopping sprees to swimming academies, bumper cars to the upscale Palmera Restaurant, Imshin opens our eyes to the fact that life in Gaza is more complex than what anti-Israel propagandists would have one believe.

"Tala and Ameer share their day with us," Imshin tweets. "They start with lunch at the Palmera Restaurant. They've obviously been there before, they know exactly what they want and don't need on the menu."

"The reason I started following children's vlogs was that reading and listening to Palestinian news accounts, sites and radio stations was depressing and started to make me anxious," Imshin told Arutz Sheva. "I wanted a lighter non-political input, which still exposed me to the local dialect. I was very surprised with what I found."

Yiddish is a lot more alive than the media realizes, because they don't want to think much about chareidim

AP has a story about a Yiddish music concert in Israel:

In a musty basement hall of an unassuming building nestled among modern high-rises in the heart of Tel Aviv, a few hundred spectators are kindly requested to turn off their cellphones. What makes the typical scene surreal is that they are asked to do so in Yiddish — the playful, lyrical language of Diaspora European Jews.

In its first performance in Israel, a Grammy-nominated concert had arrived to play the lost songs of lost Jews in a nearly lost language. More than 70 years after the purged poems of Holocaust survivors, victims and Jewish Red Army soldiers were first composed and curated, a Canadian historian has brought back to life works thought to be long gone.

The result is "Yiddish Glory," a collection of songs describing the harrowing World War II experience of Soviet Jews. Even amid the horrors of the Holocaust, Jewish musicians created a vibrant cultural life in camps and ghettos, with the arts providing a refuge, a sense of meaning and even a form of resistance.

"The last thing a lot of Yiddish speaking people did was to write a song," said Anna Shternshis, the University of Toronto professor behind the project. "Before Yiddish was killed, it was sung."

Yiddish is a lot more vibrant than most people realize.

I'm not only talking about the popularity of the Yiddish language "Fiddler on the Roof" in New York. I'm not talking about the huge international hit, Shtisel.

In the chareidi communities of Israel, New York and elsewhere, Yiddish is still the dominant everyday language of hundreds of thousands of Jews.

Here is the latest cover of Kindlein, a weekly Yiddish magazine for children, which includes comics, stories, and puzzles.

The publishing house Kinder Shpiel has hundreds of Yiddish books for children and teens - here are some of their novels for young adults:

Children's books aren't nostalgia-driven. These children's publications, as well as many Yiddish language magazines, newspapers and books for adults, exist because there is a real demand for them from the chareidi community.

It is true that chareidim are insular, but that is not an excuse for reporters or scholars to ignore their existence. Nostalgia for the shtetl will not keep Yiddish alive - it is being kept alive by real Jews who speak the language every day, in shops and in parks and at work.

These are Jews that for some reason the larger Jewish community doesn't want to think about.

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.

A lesson from 1923: How Western supporters of Palestinian Arabs hurt peace

Last month, I wrote an article on how the British Mandatory government offered the Arabs of Palestine an official Arab Agency, parallel to the Jewish Agency, where their opinions could be given the same weight as those of the Jews in Palestine.

The Arabs rejected the idea, and this rejection is still being looked at as a proud moment today by Arabs, even though it resulted in the Jews being politically organized and ready to take over the government institutions in 1948. Had the Arabs accepted the offer, there might very well have been a Palestinian state in the West Bank in 1949.

American Zionism found a formerly secret British document on this incident. While the document I linked to gave many official reasons that the Arabs rejected the formation of an Arab Agency, there was another reason that they rejected it.

The Arabs felt that if they reject the British offer, the British would offer more. And they got that impression from the Parliament members who were pro-Arab and anti-Jewish:

This was seen in a telegram from High Commissioner Herbert Samuel to the Secretary of State:

By rejecting the Arab Agency, the Arabs rejected the entire concept of Arab agency. They rejected the idea that they themselves could do the work to achieve their goals. Instead, they listened to their supposed Western allies, who gave them bad advice, but advice that fit their worldview.

They chose to wait for the West to do their bidding.

It has now been ten years since Mahmoud Abbas literally bragged about his own rejection of a peace plan with Israel in an interview with the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl, using the exact same logic as his 1923 predecessors. The offer might be good - but if we wait, it will get better:

In our meeting Wednesday, Abbas acknowledged that Olmert had shown him a map proposing a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank -- though he complained that the Israeli leader refused to give him a copy of the plan. He confirmed that Olmert "accepted the principle" of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees -- something no previous Israeli prime minister had done -- and offered to resettle thousands in Israel. In all, Olmert's peace offer was more generous to the Palestinians than either that of Bush or Bill Clinton; it's almost impossible to imagine Obama, or any Israeli government, going further.

Abbas turned it down. "The gaps were wide," he said.

Abbas and his team fully expect that Netanyahu will never agree to the full settlement freeze -- if he did, his center-right coalition would almost certainly collapse. So they plan to sit back and watch while U.S. pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office. "It will take a couple of years," one official breezily predicted. Abbas rejects the notion that he should make any comparable concession -- such as recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, which would imply renunciation of any large-scale resettlement of refugees.

Instead, he says, he will remain passive. "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," he said. "Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life." In the Obama administration, so far, it's easy being Palestinian.

Palestinian Arabs simply refuse to think critically about themselves. This is because they have created a culture where critical thinking is discouraged, practically forbidden in the media or in academia. When Western "experts" tell them things they want to believe, they will latch onto that - that Jews are Khazars, that the Temples never existed, that the Holocaust was exaggerated and was the Jews' fault anyway.

This is why they still believe that world pressure will force Israel to make concessions to them without them making any of their own. Or that if Netanyahu loses the elections, there will be a better peace offer than Olmert's.

This is wishful thinking, not actual analysis. It is encouraged by their supporters in the West, who tell them what they want to hear. They will simply refuse to even consider that there are other facts.

If their Western fans really wanted a Palestinian state, they would tell the Palestinians the truth - that they need to negotiate seriously, that Israel has red lines that will never be crossed no matter which party is in power, that they have already lost much of Arab public opinion and are in danger of losing the rest, that Europe is not as much in their pocket as they like to believe, that anti-Israel UN resolutions won't make Israel compromise on its security to be better liked at that failed institution.

Instead, Abbas will hold court in Ramallah as leftist Jews and EU officials come to kiss his ring and tell him how wonderful he is. Not one Palestinian newspaper will dare tell him that his worldview might be skewed. Not one Westerner will tell him that a Palestinian state is further away than it has been since Oslo.

Palestinian leaders choose to live in a fantasy world where the European and leftist American dhimmis will jump and do their bidding while they sit back and wait for things to get better. This is preferable to them actually making decisions and doing actions to help their people

Just like 1923.

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.

Iranian media uses old Stalin-era Soviet antisemitic language to incite Russians against Jews

Iran's Mehr News has a panicky article about how Zionists - and Jews - have infiltrated Russia.

These days, mainstream media mentions very little about the proliferation of Zionism in the Russian Federation. And when there is any mention what is mainly referred to is the presence of Chabad movement and perhaps a strong lobby of Zionism in Kremlin.

However, in reality, the situation is much more severe. To begin with, we should have a closer look at how Zionist business is quite firmly settled in the Russian outback. Representatives of Israeli business are operating in major Russian cities such as Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Surgut and so on. However, in this piece, I would like to single out the Republic of Bashkortostan and its capital Ufa. Why chose this particular region? The major significance here plays the presence of "the central Muftiat of the Russian Federation". It would seem that Muslims must resist the cooperation with the main enemies of the Ummah and all freedom-loving people, but in our strange world, not everything is as it meant to be. In fact, special relationships between Ufa Muftiat and Zionism are not something new.

This is garden variety Islamic antisemitism, calling Jews the "enemies of the Ummah." But the target audience here is not only the Muslims who make up some 38% of Bashkortostan's citizens, but also the ethnic Russians.

The Soviet style dog-whistle comes out next:

Zionism is present in Ufa in several ways, for the most part reflecting the traditional foreign policy of cosmopolitan radicals.

"Cosmopolitan radicals?"

Later on the language becomes more explicit:

Zionism has launched tentacles in many areas, from the power grid complex to the rural farms. It is not enough that all of Moscow and St. Petersburg are at the complete disposal of the rootless cosmopolitans, they are now active throughout northern Eurasia and especially its central part.

"Rootless cosmopolitans" was a code word for Jews in Stalin's time.

The reference to "tentacles" is also not coincidence. Jews depicted as spiders and octopi were recurring motifs in antisemitic Soviet cartoons.

The article touches on other antisemitic conspiracy theories, such as asking why the rabbi of Bashkiria is not a local Jew - as if the local Jews have major yeshivas that can ordain rabbis.

The article ends off by appealing to traditional Russian patriotism, which has also tended towards the antisemitic:

We also see that there is no real patriotism among the rather large Russian-speaking population, we see no protests and let alone the fight against the dominance of the Zionist business in the Republic.

Of course, nothing gets published in Mehr News that the Iranian leadership does not approve. This article shows that antisemitism is a mainstay in Iranian media, if often hidden behind dog whistles and code words.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

07/08 Links Pt2: Jewish Identity excluded from Identity Politics; Hate and poison wrapped in cotton candy at the PalExpo; How Anti-Semitism in Britain’s Labour party made me feel Jewish again

From Ian:

Jewish Identity excluded from Identity Politics

Unlike their Israeli counterparts, US Jews seem to suffer from identity erosion influenced by declining observance, substandard Jewish education, and the sacralization of liberal politics. Though many claim their Jewishness requires them to reject Trump, they conflate identity with secular ideals that defy Jewish tradition. Liberals can dislike Trump for any reason or none at all, but they cannot claim their disdain is Judaically-mandated. Nor can they ignore how Trump has reversed his predecessor’s course of demeaning Israel, enabling Islamic radicalism, empowering Iran, and whitewashing leftist anti-Semitism.

Jewish history is replete with examples of those who rejected heritage and community. During the Hellenistic period, many emulated Greek culture and repudiated their ancestors, while during medieval times some accepted baptism and sought to lead others astray. The apostate Nicholas Donin in 1240 denounced the Talmud to Pope Gregory IX, inflamed Dominican ire, and instigated public disputations and Talmud burnings. Similarly, Johannes Pfefferkorn in 1509 advocated expelling Jews from German lands, kidnapping and baptizing their children, and burning Hebrew texts. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many joined European radical movements, abandoned Judaism, and discouraged education and observance.

Whereas yesterday’s apostates renounced religion and culture, today’s progressives claim fealty to tradition while falsely equating Jewish identity with non-Jewish priorities. They misuse terms like “tikkun olam” and “Mussar” to imply Judaic authenticity, though doing so only illustrates their distance from tradition. True tikkun olam involves the promotion of societal harmony through Halakhic observance, while authentic Mussar calls for ethical character development through Torah study, mitzvah observance, and personal introspection. Neither promotes ideals that are alien to Judaism.

Many American Jews today know little of their heritage and attempt to fill the gaps with agendas that bear no resemblance to the Judaism of their ancestors. Though Jewish voters can certainly support any policies their consciences may dictate, tradition does not require them to be liberal Democrats – or conservative Republicans.

As for President Trump, they can support or oppose him for any reason. But they cannot claim that hatred for the man reflects Jewish virtue – and certainly not in light of his support for Israel and condemnation of global anti-Semitism. Nor can they oppose him based on dubious claims of prejudice, especially when they ignore or excuse flagrant anti-Semitism within the Democratic Party. Whatever moral authority they claim to possess is only diluted when they condemn Jew-hatred where it doesn’t exist but grant a pass where it does. (h/t Yerushalimey)

Caroline Glick: Associated Press Targets Jewish Americans Who Support Israel

Last week, the Associated Press ran a hit job on a successful American businessman. Simon Falic and his two brothers own the Duty Free Americas chain, a private company that runs duty free stores in airports throughout the United States and Latin America.

They also happen to be Jewish. Simon Falic in particular is a powerful advocate for Jewish causes worldwide and for the State of Israel.

Through their family foundation, Simon Falic and his wife donate to dozens of organizations in Israel. The causes they support run the gamut from medical research to Jewish education. They support synagogue construction and refurbishment; archaeological excavations and preservation of archaeological sites; battered women’s shelters and day care centers; and the construction of new Jewish communities in Israel.

AP’s hit piece centers on Falic’s charitable work.

The title of the article gave the game away. It read, “U.S. duty free owners give millions to settlements.”

The obvious question is: so what? There is nothing even vaguely illegal about Falic’s charitable undertakings. And indeed, the article doesn’t accuse him of committing or facilitating any crime.

Instead, the article’s immediate purpose is to “out” Falic as a Zionist Jew and make his support for Jewish national rights and national self-determination in the Jewish homeland stink of fascism and zealotry.

David Collier: Hate and poison wrapped in cotton candy at the PalExpo

The ‘PalExpo’ came back to London for 2019. A large, two day ‘celebration’ of Palestinian culture, history and arts. It is extremely clever marketing. In theory there is nothing wrong with Palestinians holding an exhibition of culture, but the show was built for a far more sinister purpose than teaching dabke. There are two parts to the PalExpo and whilst the main exhibition hall had a range of activities from vase painting to date picking, a chain of political talks delivered the lies and the constant drumbeat of delegitimisation. Even the children’s games they had spread out pushed little but decontextualised propaganda. For example a ‘bowling alley’, where the skittles represent the wall, and they carried logos of companies that people are meant to boycott. A real game for kids:

And this is not to mention the exhibits on the settlements, checkpoints and so on. They even had a UN tent from 1949. It is an exercise in how to use cotton candy as a means of delivering poison.

The deception works well. Many of those I spoke to outside could not understand what there was to protest. It is just a ‘cultural exhibition’, they said. And asked ‘why are you protesting against it’? Did they not see who was speaking inside and what they were telling the audience? The reality is that many of these people do not realise how lost they are to the propaganda. When they hear the Palestinian narrative, when they look at the maps and listen to their ‘history’, they have so completely lost themselves inside it all, they see all opposition as nothing more than those ‘few’ in power trying to shut down the ‘truth’. It is all about the dead children and the hateful army that deliberately kills them. There is nothing beyond that.

This was not my first PalExpo. In 2017, they unceremoniously threw me, my wife and my son out following complaints about my presence from some attendees. We were mid-meal when we were told to leave. It is perhaps worth mentioning that since then, two of those involved have been expelled from the Labour party. In 2017 it was at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference centre. This year, the PalExpo was in Olympia London. The main organisers, Friends of Al Aqsa, had only taken part of Olympia for PalExpo and even then, the venue was far too large for the crowd. I am sure they will spin the numbers, but they were certainly well down on 2017. On Saturday they claimed it was over 10,000 which is absolute poppycock:

Apart from inside the main auditorium during the more important sessions, the place seemed sparsely populated. Many of the exhibits had no queue at all:

The cotton candy was for the families, almost exclusively Muslim, who had come to experience a ‘day out’ with their children. But the more serious stuff was taking place in one of the four rooms they were using for the talks. Inside these, the demographic was different, it was far more mixed with a majority of ‘white’ Corbynista types taking up the seats. It was almost as if two separate events were taking place. And whilst the anti-Israel media outlets are distributing images of the central hall during the final event because it was full, the truth is that the sparse numbers were visible almost everywhere:

Arab Knesset member calls for Israel boycott at Palestine Expo

Arab-Israeli Member of Knesset Yousef Jabareen called for a boycott of Israel while speaking at the Palestine Expo conference over the weekend.

The London-based conference that took place over Saturday and Sunday was the largest of its kind in Europe, focusing on Palestinian culture, history and arts, according to its website.

"The international community has all the tools to deal with war crimes – to boycott settlers, to boycott settlement products, to boycott international companies," said Jabareen at the conference, which was recorded by Kan.

"There needs to a more mass mobilization of our people on the ground, in Gaza but also in the West Bank," continued Jabareen. "[Israel] is exactly like the South African Bantustan. And it's a combination of apartheid and occupation."

Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan (Likud) tried to prevent Jabareen from participating in the conference, because his funding came from an organization with ties to BDS, the Middle East Monitor. Ultimately, Erdan was unsuccessful.

Friends of Al Aqsa, the organizer of the event, is also a supporter of boycotting Israel.

1948 academic paper shows Palestinian Arab culture was essentially non-existent

Here are excerpts from The Cultural Life of the Palestinian Arabs, published in The Journal of Educational Sociology, Nov., 1948, pp. 232-239. published by the American Sociological Association:

The Palestinian Arab cannot boast of any marked creative ability in the field of the arts, such as the theater and music or, because of the opposition of the Islamic religion, in such arts as painting and sculpture. In recent years there have been signs of an artistic awakening in some of the countries, especially in Egypt. As yet this is not the case in Palestine. However, the theater, dance, and music are aspects of art that are closer to the Arab spirit. There are some groups that are attempting to create in these fields, but to date none of them has made an impression on the Arab community. When the Arabs in Palestine want to witness a professional play, they invite a group from Egypt.

The motion pictures shown in the Arab cinema are American and British imports. Such Arab films as are shown are imported from Egypt. In comparison with European standards, the Arab-produced motion pictures are technically poor and artistically primitive.

In the field of literature, too, there is more importing than creativity. The groups that want to read an Arab book turn to the literature of the other Arab lands, especially Egypt.

Since most of the educated among them read French and English, there is not too great a demand for native creativity.
...
Between 1919 and 1932, 54 Arab books (including magazines and pamphlets) were published, an average of less than 4 books a year. Between 1933 and 1944, 155 books (including all the propaganda literature dealing with the riots) were published, an average of less than 13 books a year.

With the exception of textbooks, not one book had had a second edition. A first edition does not have more than 1,000 copies, sometimes even less.

Political publications have been the most popular type of literature among the Arabs. Most of these rail against Zionism and the Jewish national home. Several deal with the inner conflict among the different groups and with Arab affairs outside Palestine. The peak of this type of literature was reached during the riots of 1936 and 1939. As far as political books are concerned, to date there has not appeared even one basic book dealing with the Arab community either from a scientific, sociological, or historical viewpoint.

Culturally and journalistically the newspapers suffer from provincialism and a great lack of variety. This is due mainly to the absence of free thought. Opinions, especially those concerning Zionism, are fixed and unchangeable. Even in internal affairs, doubt is never cast on the status quo. Editorials are rarely original. In typical Oriental fashion they abound in epigrams, proverbs, exaggerations,
pedantries, and repetitions in their form and style.

In general, the policy of the Arab press is to clamor for Arab independence, emphasize the importance of pan Arabic unity, and foster extreme nationalism. They condemn Jewish immigration, colonization, and the selling of land to Jews. Even in their propaganda, the Arab newspapers do not express the opinion of the masses, as has been evidenced in the past years by the wide gap between policies of the papers and the true opinion of the average Arab native. This is because the first principle of every public announcement must be a hatred for the Jewish cause whether or not the average Arab shares this opinion.

Very few books, no theatre, no dance, no music, no arts, newspapers that are only propaganda outlets. All Palestinian culture was imported from Egypt and other Arab states.

Just another proof that there were no Palestinian people to speak of before Israel was reborn.

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.

“Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

While the final words of John Donne’s seventeenth-century poem are more well-known than the first, the complete quote captures my response to news of the suicide death of Simone Burns, the Irish anti-Israel activist who was caught on video in 2018 screaming racial taunts at the crew of an Air India flight that refused to serve her more alcohol.

While I made a brief comment about the incident in this piece about BDSers behaving badly, that was the extent of the time-of-day dedicated to the story (although I will admit she popped into my head whenever I contemplated what boycotters would sound like if they generally let their masks slip).

Apparently Burns was arrested after her tirade and sentenced to six months in prison. During her time behind bars, the video of her crazy behavior went viral, turning her into a punchline for strangers, an embarrassment to allies, and a stand-in for everything wrong with those who pretend their anti-Israel animus is actually a crusade for human rights.

Since the soul of other living beings is ultimately inaccessible to outsiders, there is no telling if Burns took her life out of guilt over her misbehavior, embarrassment at having her bigotry communicated across the planet, abandonment of former friends and allies, hate-Tweets from ideological enemies, pain from long-term skin cancer treatments, depression, alcoholism or (most likely) some combination of the above.

In retrospect, what came off originally as the BDS mindset taken to its logical extreme now seems like the ravings of a staggeringly lost soul, someone who – like all of us – desperately wanted her life to mean something. The fact that she found that meaning in the objectification and negation of a people, then found a community ready to celebrate her “bravery” in doing so, are two early steps that likely led to her final fate.

Burns’ fervency in promoting the anti-Israel cause can be seen in the energy she devoted to it professionally, as well as her demands that complete strangers on an airplane give her the respect she clearly felt she deserved. Yes, alcohol (and likely other factors) contributed to her Air India breakdown which ultimately led to her demise, but I wonder if all of this tragedy could have been avoided had she not fallen into a community built on turning an entire people (Israelis – although just the Jewish ones) into the kind of one-dimensional caricatures that Burns saw herself become on social media.

As far as I can tell, Burns became a non-person among “friends” after that Air India video became a global phenomenon, although it sounds like there has been some effort to blame critics (especially the more irrational and threatening among them) for tormenting her into the grave.

Personally, this rational critic feels more sadness and regret than contempt (much less joy) over the news that a political opponent chose to end her life. Perhaps this is a sign of weakness, although the disastrous track record of those who celebrate the demise of opponents (as well as recruit the mentally disturbed to their cause) gives practical value to the moral choice of not treating anyone (even someone who hates you) as a thing.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

07/08 Links Pt1: The Mirage of an International Jerusalem; Prominent Imam Decries 'Palestine' Obsession of U.S. Muslim Leaders; PA lies to its own people to justify cutting health care

From Ian:

The Mirage of an International Jerusalem

The United States decision on December 6, 2017 to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to transfer the American embassy there from Tel Aviv was one of the more momentous acts of diplomacy ever undertaken by a U.S. administration in Middle Eastern affairs. So much so that nobody believed President Donald Trump would actually do it, until he did.

When he did, most Israelis and most pro-Israel Americans approved or were positively delighted. By contrast, the American political class, Republicans and Democrats alike, was stunned—even though the president had merely fulfilled a legislative mandate, the Jerusalem Embassy Act, that had been passed near unanimously by both houses of Congress and promulgated by another president, Bill Clinton, 22 years earlier in 1995, only to be repeatedly deferred by successive White Houses for over two decades. The Department of State, for its part, put on a stern face and obeyed.

What came next was no surprise. The “international community,” from the United Nations General Assembly to the European Union, not to mention the Arab League and the World Islamic Conference, stridently rejected the American initiative. Two weeks after the decision was announced, 128 of the 193 member states of the General Assembly approved a resolution—ES-10/L.22—drafted by Turkey and Yemen and demanding that “all states comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the Holy City of Jerusalem and do not recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.” Only eight countries, including Israel, sided with the United States.

This international condemnation relied on a venerable notion: that the legal status of Jerusalem—does it belong to Israel? To the Palestinians? To both? To neither?—was a settled matter, and that the answer to those questions was “none of the above.” Instead, international law and legal precedent had carved out the city as an international ward.

There is, indeed, a long legal history, built of many resolutions and agreements, to just that effect. But there are two problems with this settled conviction. First, its roots in law have been egregiously misrepresented. Second, the claim that Jerusalem actually belongs to the state of Israel rests on strong legal, moral, and demographic foundations.

Let’s start with the law.

Prominent Imam Decries 'Palestine' Obsession of U.S. Muslim Leaders

As Islamist Watch has pointed out many times before, Islam is enormously diverse – containing many competing schools of theology, schools of jurisprudence, sects, ethnicities, cultures and mysticisms. Islamism is also not a single force; it comprises dozens of (both) competing and collaborating radical ideologies.

One of the most intriguing divisions, then, within both American Islam and Islamism of late has been growing dissent over the question of liberalism.

Should Muslims seek partnerships with left-wing organizations, given that some progressivist policies evidently conflict with both conservative Muslim and theocratic Islamist beliefs?

There is growing dissent within U.S. Islamism on the question of partnerships with progressives.

We addressed this issue in a recent piece on "theo-progressivism" – the curious rise of Islamists who appear to have genuinely embraced progressivist politics, and the anger of more traditional voices who believe progressivism to be a corrupting influence. ... This is a fascinating topic, and we will continue cataloguing the fractious debate over the issue among Muslim communities and Islamists.

The latest example comes from Abdullah bin Hamid Ali, founder of the Lamppost Education Initiative. Writing on Facebook, Ali laments:

Muslim national political and social agenda = free Palestine, marriage equality, gender equality, LGBTQIA equality, legalize marijuana, infanticide, sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants, and socialist economic policies. Soon it will include legalize prostitution, pedophilia, and incest. Polygamy is a long shot.

Not everything on this list is bad. But, one does need to ask just how many of these are islamic or universally acknowledged moral goods?

PMW: PA lies to its own people to justify cutting health care

As part of its self-inflicted financial crisis, in March 2019 the Palestinian Authority decided that Palestinians would no longer be referred to Israeli hospitals. At the time, the PA justified this by claiming it was costing the PA $100 million a year. PMW has just learned that this figure is false and that the PA was in fact lying to its own people by exaggerating the cost of treatment to justify the prohibition.

When the decision was announced, PA Ministry of Health Spokesman Osama Al-Najjar explained:

"This decision was made in response to the deduction of sums [Israel transfers] from the taxes that [Israel] collects each month for the Palestinian coffers. He added that the cost of the referrals to the Israeli hospitals is $100 million a year."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 27, 2019]

However, comprehensive statistics provided to Palestinian Media Watch by Israel's Ministry of Finance in response to a freedom of information request prove that the PA leadership are once again not telling their people the truth.

From 2010 - 2018, the years covered by the statistics, the cost of treating the Palestinians in Israeli hospitals never reached $100 million. In the nine years covered by the statistics, the PA expenditure on treatment for Palestinians in Israeli hospitals averaged $62 million year, with the highest expenditure ($83 million) registered in 2014, the year of the last Gaza war.

Israel tweets to Arabs about proposed train line from Haifa to the Gulf

Israel In Arabic tweeted its proposal for a train line that will bring goods from the Haifa port through Jordan to the Gulf Arab states.

"During his visit to Abu Dhabi, the Israeli Foreign Minister presented an initiative linking Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries through Jordan to the Israeli railway network and Haifa port in the Mediterranean Sea. This initiative would create shorter, cheaper and more secure regional trade routes, will support the economies of the Gulf nations."

The tweet got the attention of Arab media, even though the plan is now a year old.

One writer noticed that the Haifa port website recently added an Arabic section (previously it only pointed to a downloadable PDF file).

The reaction in the Arab world to this plan has been mixed. It is a direct threat to both Lebanese ports and the Suez Canal for trade between the Gulf and Europe.

The reaction tweets were mixed as well, with some supporting the idea, some against and one saying that it should be a business-only relationship where no diplomatic recognition would result.

This is the sort of economic initiative that can only help peace. If Gulf countries gain economically from access to an Israeli port, they have little incentive to antagonize Israel - and great interest in stopping anti-Israel terror plots in their territories.

The Israel in Arabic Facebook and Twitter accounts have proven extremely effective in getting Israel's message out to the Arab world.

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.

Times of Israel reports:

A woman who was badly hurt while running to a bomb shelter in southern Israel in May during an onslaught of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip died of her injuries Sunday.

Rivkah Jamil, 89, of Ashkelon fell and injured her spine while seeking cover from the projectiles and was hospitalized in serious condition.

With her death in Barzilai Hospital on Sunday, the death toll from the weekend of intense fire two months ago climbed to five, the highest casualty rate for Israel since the 2014 Gaza war, which began exactly five years ago.

Most Arab media reported this story accurately - an elderly woman who fell while trying to reach a bomb shelter and who never recovered from her resultant injuries.

Palestine Today, media arm of Islamic Jihad, did not. Here is how they reported it:

Israeli medical sources announced on Sunday that settler Rivkah Jamil died at Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon after being wounded by shelling of the Quds Brigades of the occupied city of Ashkelon during the Battle of Bahr al-Badr on May 5.

The newspaper "Yedioth Ahronoth said that the number of dead Zionists rose to 5 during the latest round of escalation, after the death of the settler "Rivkah Jamil" from her wounds after the rocket attacks on the city of Ashkelon.

It is worth mentioning that the Al-Quds Brigades and the Palestinian resistance claimed responsibility for the bombing of cities and Zionist settlements with hundreds of rockets and missiles, including the Badr 3 missile, which was introduced during the Battle of the Al-Badr, which targeted the cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod, and caused considerable material damage to Zionist property and houses.

They are proud that they can add another "Zionist settler" to their trophy case! They claim she was injured by their rockets themselves, and they will not mention that this was an 89-year old woman.

Because they want to look like a strong, formidable military force, and they can only do that by hiding the truth about Rivkah Jamil. There is no honor in an elderly woman dying from a fall, but Islamic Jihad believes that there is great honor in killing Zionist "occupiers" - including civilians, since they tell their people there is no such thing as an Israeli who is not an "illegal settler."

I'm trying an experiment by tweeting to Palestine Today in Arabic about how they are proud at the death of an 89-year old woman who fell. I'm curious if they will respond.

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.

Iran claims US begged to bomb uninhabited desert to "save face." The West ignores the honor/shame mindset at its peril.

As we've mentioned many times before, one of the fundamental mistakes that Western analysts and leaders make when dealing with the Middle East is not understanding the honor/shame culture of Arab and Muslim societies.

Western Liberal thought is based on the idea that everyone is generally the same and thinks the same way. The concept that some people think in a fundamentally different way appears, on some level, to be racist, and therefore the truth is ignored. This leads to catastrophic results in the basic assumptions of how to deal with Arabs and Muslims. Westerners understand that they must not shame members of these societies but assume that this is more an etiquette issue than something that must be thoroughly understood - and that can be used to advantage.

The mistake of assuming that the other side thinks the same way is not only done by the Western side. A small story in the Iranian media illustrates this perfectly:

TEHRAN – The commander of the Civil Defense Organization said on Sunday that the U.S. has sent a message to Iran saying it wanted to conduct a limited strike against the country in order to save face after Iran shot down its drone.

“After the downing of its intruding drone, the United States told us through diplomatic intermediaries that it wanted to carry out a limited operation in an unimportant and deserted region to save face and asked us to avoid giving them a response, but Iran said it would regard any operation as the initiation of a war,” Mehr quoted Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali as saying.

Jalali censured Washington’s warmongering rhetoric against Tehran, saying any move against the integrity of Iran will be firmly dealt with.

This general is giving a message to his people - not only has Iran shamed the US by shooting down the drone, but that the US was anxious to save face by humbly begging Iran for permission to retaliate symbolically. Proud Iran, of course, rejected this request, thereby further humiliating the Americans.

(There is little more comical than claiming that Donald Trump can be shamed.)

Iran's definition of victory is humiliation. Westerners look at this as a quaint cultural quirk and refuse to understand how fundamental this thinking is.

The proper response to any conflict with states that are so wedded to the idea of honor/shame is to calibrate responses to maximize shame. Iran isn't afraid of some US bombs per se; but they are very afraid if the response to their aggression makes them look weak or incompetent. So any military response would have to emphasize that Iran's defenses are poor, and therefore shameful. Iran's rhetoric should not be ignored nor should it be responded to in kind - it must be ridiculed to the world. Iranians should be made into a joke.

Right now, Iran is testing the waters to see how Europe will respond to their explicit violations of the nuclear agreement. So far Europe has failed that test by clinging onto the hope that, behind the scenes, Iran might change its mind. This is a major mistake. Europe must say that the slightest violation will result in a major economic retaliation. Their failure to do so has shamed them, in Iran's eyes, and therefore they have lost their influence - the very thing that they believe they are maintaining by their position. Iran now has proven that it can act with impunity and Europe will meekly beg for scraps. Iran controls the EU.

The honor/shame culture isn't something to be treated as unimportant as table manners. How one responds to aggression must include how to judiciously use shame as a weapon that is just as important as bombs and sanctions.

Their Middle Eastern fear of shame is a resource that the West must add to its arsenal.

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.

Iranian media claims Israel is trying to steal water from the Nile

Tehran's attempts to incite the Arabs against Israel became quite amusing yesterday.

From the Tehran Times:

The Daily Telegraph has accused Iran of devastating activities in Africa, while Washington, Riyadh and Tel Aviv are continuing to plunder the rich African continent under the shadow of news cover-up by the Western media outlets. There should be a lot of focus on the role of Israel in this campaign.

About six decades ago, Golda Meir put a great emphasis on the African continent in line with the interests of Israel. As a result, Mossad officers were scattered across the continent as a cancerous tumor so that the U.S. can find another partner in its efforts to loot African riches. Now, Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya are important for Tel Aviv in terms of their geographic and strategic location.

Located in the Horn of Africa, these countries overlook Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen. In any case, Israel has new plans to interfere in the internal affairs of Africa.

Israel is now facing water crisis. The glow of the Nile waters is making the eyes of the Zionist regime look greedy to Egypt. Israel is struggling to expand its influence in the Horn of Africa to find a foothold in the entrance of the Red Sea.

Undoubtedly, in the near future documents will be released on U.S. and other Western countries’ support for Tel Aviv in its plundering of African. Beyond that, intervention by France, Britain and some other European countries in northern and some other parts of Africa is continuing unabatedly like the past centuries.

Rather than stealing water from Arab nations, Israel is actually planning to provide water to Jordan, with a pipeline being built to bring desalinated water from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret) that Jordan will have access to. Half of Israel's domestic water is now being provided by either desalination or treated wastewater, and the percentage is growing every year.

Israel isn't about to take water from the Nile, even if it could figure out a way to do it.

The article is called "A conspiracy that will fail," meaning that when it is seen in a few years that Israel hasn't stolen any water from the Nile, the Iranian media can say that they helped foil the nonexistent plan.

Perhaps more amusing is the map that accompanied the Tehran Times article - it includes Israel.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

07/07 Links: Netanyahu: Archaeology, DNA prove Palestinians not native to Land of Israel; Sam Schulman, last surviving US crew member on legendary ‘Exodus,’ dies at 91

From Ian:

Netanyahu: Archaeology, DNA prove Palestinians not native to Land of Israel

Could DNA testing prove Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s politics? He seems to think so.

On Sunday, Netanyahu tweeted that, “A new study of DNA recovered from an ancient Philistine site in the Israeli city of Ashkelon confirms what we know from the Bible – that the origin of the Philistines is in southern Europe,” quoting research released last week by the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon, which revealed that the ancient people most known for their biblical conflict with the Israelites were immigrants to the region in the 12th century BCE.

“For 30 years, we excavated at Ashkelon, uncovering Canaanites, early Philistines and later Philistines – and now we can begin to understand the story that these bones tell,” said Daniel M. Master, director of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon, who headed the excavations.

The team used state-of-the-art DNA technologies on ancient bone samples unearthed during the excavation from 1985-2016. Analyzing for the first time genome-wide data retrieved from people who lived in Ashkelon during the Bronze and Iron ages (around 3,600 to 2,800 years ago), the team found that a substantial proportion of their ancestry was derived from a European population. This European-derived ancestry was introduced into Ashkelon around the time of the Philistines’ estimated arrival in the 12th century BCE.

“The Bible mentions a place called Caphtor, which is probably modern-day Crete,” Netanyahu continued in a follow up tweet. “There’s no connection between the ancient Philistines & the modern Palestinians, whose ancestors came from the Arabian Peninsula to the Land of Israel thousands of years later.”

Another Sampson blinded in Gaza

Hooray for Pallywood, or rather Gazallywood, that wonderful melange of misleading footage, falsehoods, fakeries and frauds that makes up so much of what the Western media reports as going on in Gaza. The latest offering was brought to Australia by Todd Sampson, co-creator of Earth Hour and host of Body Hack on Channel 10, which was made with generous funding from unsuspecting taxpayers, courtesy of Screen Australia and Create NSW.

Mr Sampson says he was assisted by the only female fixer in Gaza and not since Samson fell for Delilah and had his eyes gouged out by the Philistines has anyone been quite so blind to Palestinian shenanigans in Gaza.

Sampson says his original mission was to document the lives of medics in Gaza, but once he met his fixer, he ended up making something else. What? Hamas propaganda. ‘Body Hack is not a political show, we’re not here to take sides,’ says Sampson somewhat disingenuously, since he didn’t even try to present two sides to the story; he spent three weeks filming in Gaza and none in Israel. As he gads about from one lethal ‘protest’ to the next, he is perpetually surprised when he and his Hamas minders are shot at as they charge at Israeli soldiers and sailors. ‘It’s starting to feel to me like a sick form of target practice,’ he whinges, as if he thinks the whole thing is a nasty game the Israelis are playing. ‘It’s really hard not to take sides, when one side is shooting at you,’ he announces. Well, what a surprise. That is how Israelis feel. Since Hamas seized power in Gaza, in 2006, Israeli civilians have been bombarded with rockets and mortars; more than 600 were fired in May this year, and more than 20,000 have been fired at Israel since 2001. Sampson doesn’t cover that. He is only interested in Palestinian pain. ‘To not show what we showed would be to omit the truth,’ he says, but it is his sins of omission which distort reality. He talks of Israel bombing a school without explaining that Hamas weapons were hidden in it or flattening apartment blocks without explaining that Hamas shoots weapons from heavily populated areas to use civilians as human shields. There is no mention of Hamas diverting millions of dollars in international aid into constructing tunnels to allow terrorists to infiltrate Israel. Or conversely of the thousands of Palestinians who are treated in Israeli hospitals every year.

Rift opens in UK Labour over whistle-blowers ahead of anti-Semitism exposé

The British Labour Party came under fresh attack Sunday after it was revealed that it had cracked down on whistle-blowers by threatening to sue ex-staffers who spoke to the BBC for an exposé on anti-Semitism within the opposition faction.

According to the Sunday Times, at least six former Labour officials agreed to speak to the public broadcaster and provide new details on anti-Jewish sentiment within the party and its handling of the widespread allegations against it and leader Jeremy Corbyn. The ex-employees did so despite having signed non-disclosure agreements with the party.

Lawyers representing Labour have now sent some of the former staffers letters threatening to sue them and accusing them of “wantonly disregarding their obligations by selectively leaking information to the media,” the report said.

BBC TV’s Panorama investigation is set to air on Wednesday and is expected to be critical of Labour and feature further evidence that Corbyn advisers intervened in disciplinary procedures to protect members accused of anti-Semitism. The exposé will also feature interviews with “key insiders,” according to a preview.

Labour reportedly received some details of the show’s content when BBC contacted the party to get its reaction to the Panorama program, titled “Is Labour Antisemitic?”

In a letter sent by the Carter Ruck law firm, which is representing the party, to Sam Matthews, Labour’s former head of disputes, it said some information presented in the documentary apparently could “only have come from you,” according to the Sunday Times.

EXCLUSIVE: Labour has launched a crackdown on whistleblowers ahead of bombshell BBC Panorama doc on antisemitism. Carter Ruck, their lawyers, have written to Sam Matthews, ex head of investigations, saying the party "will not tolerate" ex employees "wantonly disregarding" NDAs pic.twitter.com/0koCyPNnMB
— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) July 6, 2019

The Mujahideen Brigades announced the "martyrdom" of a field commander, Radwan Amara, either 25 or 28.

Most reports don't go into details of his death beyond that he was injured several weeks ago during a "jihadist mission."

However, bits and pieces (so to speak) of the reports indicate that he killed by a rocket explosion in a house in the al-Shojaeya neighborhood in Gaza City. He did not live in that neighborhood, and he was reported to have been killed in a rocket workshop, so the house itself was a rocket manufacturing facility.

Needless to say, building weapons in a residential neighborhood is a violation of international law. Not that people who pretend to care about international law in the region spend too much time looking at violations by Gaza terrorists.

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.

Linda Sarsour @lsarsour doesn't know her Quran. (Or history. )

On Twitter, Linda Sarsour wrote:

Where to start?

Jesus' physical attributes are not once mentioned in the Quran.

There are hadiths that do mention them, but they contradict each other - some saying straight hair, others curly; some say he had a dark complexion and others say white (and with freckles.)

It is all academic because Jesus was a Jew from Judea and most Jews from Judea at the time looked like Mizrahi Jews look today. Sarsour is trying to distinguish Jesus from other Jews and looks like an idiot.

The Quran makes it clear that Jesus was a Jew, saying multiple times that he was sent by Allah to preach to the Children of Israel - of which he was obviously a member. Moreover, the Quran's other references to the Children of Israel makes it clear that Jews are a nation, not just a religion, with land given to them by Allah - land that they lived in in Jesus' time.

Obviously, non-Quranic sources confirm that the Jews are a people, not just a religion.

Furthermore, "Palestine" is not mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Christian Bible or the Quran. Sarsour is claiming that there was a nation called Palestine in Jesus' time - not only is that patently false, there never was a nation called Palestine in all of history.

Finally, Sarsour lies that Jews and Arabs (who she falsely calls "Palestinians" lived in peaceful co-existence before Israel was founded. The history of attacks by Arabs on Jews before Israel is quite extensive. Just in the single town of Tzfat (Safed,) Jews were attacked in 1517, 1660, 1834, 1838 and 1929.

That's about seven lies (Jesus was Palestinian, Quran describes his features, in Islamic tradition he is undoubtedly Semitic looking, Palestinian is a nationality, Palestine was a nation in Jesus' time, the Jewish people are not a nation, Jews lived peacefully with Arabs pre-1948) in two tweets.

Not bad, Linda. But I know you can do better.

UPDATE: Sarsour also is now claiming that Bethlehem is an Arabic name.

Apparently, whenever a place name is transliterated into Arabic, it becomes Arab.

Sheesh.

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.