Sunday, July 21, 2019
Elder of ZiyonSome stuff I did on Twitter last week:
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Sunday, July 21, 2019
From Ian:
Shin Bet nabs man who allegedly planned to bomb Ashdod hotel
Pre-Mossad, IDF – England’s Jewish Brigade fought Nazis, got Jews toward Israel
Shin Bet nabs man who allegedly planned to bomb Ashdod hotel
The Shin Bet security service said Sunday it had caught an Arab Israeli man who was planning to carry out a terror attack in a hotel in support of the Palestinian terror group Hamas.Honest Reporting: The Munich Massacre: The 1972 Slaughter of Israeli Athletes on German Soil
Adel Abu Hadayeb, 20, of the southern Bedouin town of Rahat, was indicted Sunday in the Beersheba District Court for allegedly planning to bomb the Leonardo Hotel in Ashdod, which was near where he worked as a gardener.
Abu Hadayeb became a supporter of Hamas after being exposed to online propaganda materials for the group, the indictment reads, and had already attempted to construct a bomb for the attack by the time he was arrested last month.
He also attempted to build a rocket, and had purchased some of the materials needed.
Grenades belonging to Adel Abu Hadayeb, 20, of the southern town of Rahat, who was indicted on July 21, 2019, for allegedly planning a terror attack in Ashdod. (Courtesy Shin Bet)
After his arrest, he led investigators to a stash of five grenades — two stun grenades, one smoke grenade and two tear-gas grenades — as well as a “Carlo” submachine gun he had collected.
In a statement, the Shin Bet said Abu Hadayeb’s alleged radicalization was part of a trend in which Israeli citizens were being “influenced by Hamas propaganda spread on social networks and through Palestinian media.”
Following the 2005 release of Steven Spielberg’s movie, Munich, the attack’s mastermind, Black September leader Mohammad Daoud Oudeh (a.k.a. Abu Daoud) told Sports Illustrated that the attack was financed by Mahmoud Abbas. Daoud died of kidney failure in Damascus in 2010.
Five of the Munich massacre martyrs, Andre Spitzer, Amitzur Shapira, Kehat Shorr, Eliezer Halfin, and Mark Slavin were buried together in Tel Aviv’s Kiryat Shaul Cemetery. Another fallen athlete, dual US-Israeli citizen David Berger, was buried in his hometown of Cleveland, where a sculpture of broken Olympic rings was designated as a national memorial by the National Parks Service.
Widows of the murdered athletes have campaigned for official IOC commemorations at subsequent games such as a minute of silence during the opening ceremony. Olympic officials repeatedly rejected the idea saying such tributes would inject politics into the games. Matters came to a head four days before the 2012 London games — the fortieth anniversary of the Munich massacre — when, during a lightly-attended ceremony honoring the Olympic truce, IOC President Jacques Rogge held a spontaneous minute of silence for the Israelis. The widows denounced Rogge for “trying to do the bare minimum.”
In Memoriam
With the passage of time, the individuality of each of the 11 has faded into a collective group of Munich massacre victims. But for the generation that didn’t grow up with first-hand memories of the shock and horror of the Munich massacre, it’s worth reminding ourselves that Moshe Weinberg, Yossi Romano, Ze’ev Friedman, David Berger, Yakov Springer, Eliezer Halfin, Yossef Gutfreund, Kehat Shorr, Mark Slavin, Andre Spitzer, and Amitzur Shapira were all accomplished athletes who followed their own individual paths to the top of their sports. We can only imagine how they might have impacted the sporting world had they not been cruelly cut down.
Pre-Mossad, IDF – England’s Jewish Brigade fought Nazis, got Jews toward Israel
Before the establishment of the Mossad and the IDF in 1948, a unit of 5,500 Jews known as the Jewish Brigade fought the Nazis as part of the British Army, and carried out underground operations to smuggle Jews across Europe to sail to British-occupied Palestine.
While the activities of Aliyah Bet, the Bericha (Flight) and subsequently the Mossad are well-known, the Jewish Brigade preceded these efforts both in smuggling Jews to Israel – as well as providing food, necessities and preparation for aliyah – under the noses of the British, and in using wildly creative schemes to succeed in those efforts.
Put differently, the movie Exodus about the ship the SS Exodus 1947, which embarked from the port of Sète near Montpellier, France, en route to Palestine, is famous, but the brigade is the story about how Jews were smuggled to the docks to board ships like the Exodus.
The brigade is also distinguished from these other efforts as its establishment was critical in the success of the future IDF. Jewish volunteers in the British Army in general served as a pipeline for an estimated 721 of the IDF’s first 2,180 officers, and the brigade contained a sizable number of those 721.
Graduates of the brigade who took leadership positions in the IDF rose to the highest ranks, with Mordechai Makleff and Haim Laskov both becoming chiefs-of-staff.
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
Daily Beast, upset that Mariano Rivera is pro-Israel and Christian, implies he is a far-right racist
This article in The Daily Beast by Robert Silverman is truly remarkable in how much it tries - and fails - to tar the greatest relief pitcher of all time as a bigoted, far-right racist.
Over the past three years, [Rivera's] served at the pleasure of a racist president, taken part in thinly veiled propaganda on behalf of an apartheid government in Israel, and gotten chummy with outright bigots and apocalyptic loons. None of this will be inscribed on his Hall of Fame plaque. It should, even if much of the sports world would very much like to pretend none of it exists.The article then goes into detail about these accusations, and ends up with nothing more than guilt by association with people whose views the author finds odious, again without proof.
The illustration of Rivera on a yarmulka/pitcher's mound with the Israeli flag is actually perfect for this article - nothing but insinuation, zero facts, and showing how biased the author is.
Let's start off with Silverman's "proof" that Israel is an apartheid state. He links to an article about a document released by a UN commission made up exclusively of 18 Arab states, because whatever Arabs say about Israel must be true. He doesn't mention that the document was not accepted by the UN and the person who wrote it was forced out of her job for making that accusation without clearing it with her UN bosses.
I'm not going into whether Trump is racist (I don't believe he is although he is too willing to use racist dog whistles to help his political aims) but to imply that everyone who does anything for Trump is a racist is something that any decent editor would throw back in the face of the writer.
Look at the doggerel in the article:
Rivera insisted he would retire from baseball in 2003 in order to focus on evangelical work; “Phil. 4:13", referring to Philippians 4:13, was scribbled on his cleats; the year he retired, Rivera’s charitable organization, one very much powered by his faith, was distributing nearly a million dollars annually, according to New York magazine; he recently founded a church in New Rochelle, NY (his wife serves as pastor); when Rivera gave up the game-winning single that cost the Yankees the 2001 World Series, he said it was part of the greater good—God’s plan, even—because doing so prevented a teammate from possibly getting on a plane that crashed; and when it comes to his signature pitch, “He put it in me,” Rivera said. “He put it in me, for me to use it. To bring glory, not to Mariano Rivera, but to the Lord.”Wow. Silverman has proven that Rivera is a devout Christian and supports Israel. Which is, of course, unforgivable to Silverman.
But the vast majority of Evangelical Christians also believe in a particular messianic biblical prophecy: Jews must rule the Holy Land before Christ can return. Whether Rivera ascribes to those beliefs entirely is unclear, but his support for Israel and the Israel Defense Forces is a matter of public record. He has traveled to Israel on multiple occasions, possibly beginning in 2013.
It gets more absurd:
[A]ccording to the NYBR {New York Board of Rabbis] executive vice president, at one point they were in the Golan Heights. Gesturing toward Lebanon and Syria, which were visible from where they stood,“They could have a much better life and yet they choose not to take that path,” the rabbi claimed Rivera told him. “There’s an ideology that infects their thinking, and they just don’t want to live in peace.”
If Silverman has evidence that Syria and Lebanon want peace with Israel, he should stop writing about baseball and publicize that. He could win a Pulitzer.
While there, Rivera said the IDF trains soldiers to be “a better person, a better citizen, and a better human being,” according to a statement put out by the FIDF. Two-and-a-half months earlier, Israeli soldiers killed at least 60 Palestinian protesters in Gaza and injured thousands more.Of whom nearly all those killed were Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists. But isn't it better just to call them "protesters?"
The entire article has not a single fact to prove its point. All it has is loose linkages of Rivera with people and organizations that Silverman has an obsessive hatred for but who aren't close to what Silverman claims they are.
In the end, Silverman is upset that a successful athlete is pro-Israel and a proud Christian, which proves that the only bigotry in this entire article comes from the author.
- Sunday, July 21, 2019
- Elder of Ziyon
J Street
For a purportedly "pro-peace" organization, J-Street has been quite silent on actual progress towards peace between Israel and the Arab world.
Since Israel's Foreign Minister Israel Katz met the foreign minister of Bahrain in public on Friday, J-Street has been silent.
When Katz visited Abu Dhabi and met with at least one senior UAE official, J-Street was silent.
This has been a consistent pattern with J-Street. No matter what the diplomatic achievements of Israel in the Middle East and Africa and with majority Muslim nations worldwide, J-Street cannot find a nice thing to say.
When Netanyahu sat down with foreign ministers from United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain in Warsaw, and even when he flew to Oman to meet the Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said, J-Street had nothing to say - except a link to a Foreign Policy article complaining about how the Arab world was abandoning the Palestinians.
Benjamin Netanyahu has made more progress for peace between Israel and the Arab world than Rabin, more than Begin, more than Peres, more than any other Israeli leader. Even the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan never resulted in smiling photo-ops between Arab and Israeli leaders of the type we have seen so many of in recent months.
J-Street claims to be pro-Israel - even though it cannot say a good word about Israel in any tweets or articles.
Its claim to be pro-peace are just as specious.
But it is definitely telling the truth when it says it is pro-Palestinian.
One out of three ain't bad, is it?
- Sunday, July 21, 2019
- Elder of Ziyon
Yousef Alhelou writes for Arab Weekly.
He is evidently a Fatah loyalist, but even so, a Palestinian Arab publicly accusing Hamas of ruining Gaza in English is a little rare:
Many crises that took place recently led Palestinians to question why Hamas has stayed in power but is unable to lift the siege and provide a decent life for the nearly 2 million residents of the tiny costal enclave.
Those who want to work in the governmental sector in Gaza must be a Hamas loyalist or at least supporter. This also applies to international aid assistance from countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Turkey and NGOs.
The priority to receive food aid depends on how well a person is connected to the Islamic movement. Housing projects for those whose homes were destroyed in wars with Israel are also prioritised by level of loyalty to Hamas.
If a person has no connection to Hamas, they must be very patient and fight for rights.
No accountability is carried out. Many young people committed suicide because of poverty and debts. The number of beggars — mainly children — in the streets has reportedly tripled.
Mass migration is taking place from Gaza to settle in Europe, especially among unemployed youth and graduates. Even some of those who are rich and who have a stable life have left looking for a better future and to enjoy their basic rights.
Activists and journalists have left because they were unable to express themselves or report without intimidation.
Leaving Gaza is not easy. The Egypt-controlled Rafah crossing is the main gateway for the Gazans to the outside world. They must exert effort to make sure their name is on the departures list. Connections and sometimes bribes are a must to make it out of the “big prison.”
Coordination must go through both Egyptian authorities and Hamas. Reaching Cairo safely from Rafah via the Sinai Peninsula is another story. The suffering has become part of Gazans’ daily life and Hamas is often accused of contributing to the misery by refusing to concede power, allow elections and reconcile with Fatah. The gap between the two parties is big.
Saturday, July 20, 2019
From Ian:
Caroline Glick: Israeli Court Tells the Truth About Palestinian Authority and Terror
The First Amendment Shouldn’t Be An Empty Promise To American Jews
Caroline Glick: Israeli Court Tells the Truth About Palestinian Authority and Terror
From a political perspective, the implications of Drori’s judgment are harder to predict.Melanie Phillips: In Trump vs 'the Squad,' American Jews have picked the wrong target
Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner heads the Shurat HaDin organization, which is dedicated to seeking legal redress for victims of Palestinian terrorism. She filed several of the lawsuits on behalf of terror victims that led to Drori’s ruling.
Darshan-Leitner was firm regarding the implications of the ruling. In a statement to the Post, she said that the Palestinian terror war was an attempt to achieve political ends that the PLO was unable to extract at the negotiating table with Israel. Specifically, she explained, “The Palestinian cause was genocide against Jews in Israel.”
She added that the court’s ruling proved that the Palestinian terror war “was not a popular uprising, but a planned and deliberate war against the civilian population of Israel.”
It should be noted that little has changed since 2002. The Palestinian Authority continues to incite and indeed solicit terrorism against Israel.
The PA’s “pay to slay” policy remains in force today. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas prefers to forego both U.S. financial aid and Israeli financial transfers, which last year were conditioned on the PA ending the payments to terrorists.
Abbas insisted that the payments to terrorists must continue because “we actually sent them, so we are committed to them. We have to pay them.”
If the United States and Israel accept the evidence that led to Drori’s decision, the policy implications are clear. The PLO and the PA are terrorist organizations, not political actors. And they should be so designated and treated accordingly.
Hatred of Trump seems to have caused a number of Jews to lose their reason altogether. In The Los Angeles Times this week, Michael Hiltzik wrote: “What’s most striking about current administration practice is how it resembles the pre-Final Solution treatment of Jews in Germany and Nazi-controlled portions of Europe.”
This obscenely false analogy unforgivably trivializes the genocide of the Jews of Europe. Yet one after the other, liberal Jews are abusing the memory of the Holocaust and its victims by claiming that Trump is paving the way for Nazism.
Heaven only knows, Trump has his faults – many of them unattractive, egregious or alarming. But those who so hysterically anathematize him and have falsely made him into a figure of mythic malice, while themselves nodding along to bigotry, violence and seditiousness on their own side, are saying much more about themselves. And none of it is good.
It is the Democrats who are embracing anti-Americanism, anti-white racism, Jew-baiting, witch-hunting, and contempt for the rule of law. It is Trump who is standing up for the defense of America and its values, for legality and due process and for the Jewish people.
By displaying Democratic and liberal partisanship that is shallow to such a horrifying degree, American Jews are disgracing their cultural heritage and destroying their own moral standing.
The First Amendment Shouldn’t Be An Empty Promise To American Jews
The First Amendment’s promise of freedom of religion is an empty one if all Americans, including American Jews, don’t feel safe in their houses of worship or welcome in their communities. With FBI data showing that 58 percent of religiously-motivated hate crimes targeted American Jews in 2017, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been making an increased effort to support and engage with the Jewish community, including by convening a summit on domestic anti-Semitism this week.
The day-long event included speakers from the Departments of Justice, State, Treasury, and Education, including the secretaries of Treasury and Education. Panels addressed how to combat anti-Semitism while respecting the First Amendment, anti-Semitism on college campuses, the prosecution of hate crimes, and federal efforts to combat anti-Semitism.
In his introductory remarks, Attorney General William Barr compared various forms of anti-Semitism to different forms of cancer, observing that the body politic needs a strong immune system that rejects both anti-Semitism and racial hatred. Speakers throughout the day acknowledged the patient is sick. However, Barr told American Jews that he sees rising anti-Semitism, not only in the widely discussed attacks in Pittsburgh and Poway, but also on the streets of Crown Heights, in desecrated cemeteries, and in zoning decisions intended to exclude growing Jewish communities.
Barr told the audience, those experiences “form the daily background of concerns about safety and security that many Jews feel. I want to assure you that the Department of Justice and [the] whole federal government stands with you and will not tolerate these attacks.”
Friday, July 19, 2019
From Ian:
A historic tenure
Netanyahu becomes Israel’s longest-serving prime minister on Saturday
A historic tenure
The son of a distinguished historian, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows that history is a leader's northern star. The leadership test is the impression that is passed on for generations. Today, as Netanyahu becomes the longest-serving prime minister in Israel's history, this fact is certainly of historical significance.
In the 70 years to the state's founding, three prime ministers will be remembered for building a real and meaningful layer in its history: David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, and Netanyahu.
Ben-Gurion will be remembered as someone who, at a unique point in Jewish and world history, bravely declared the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel and led it at it the beginning of its path.
Began will be remembered for generations as the Jew who hitched the "Second Israel" that had been left abandoned by the side of the road to the carriage of redemption, and who signed the peace agreement with Egypt.
Netanyahu will forever be remembered as someone who, within the span of 10 years, succeeded in turning a small country on the sidelines of the Middle East into a recognized and esteemed global power in the fields of diplomacy, economy, science, technology and the military. Many great nations across the world are amazed by Israel's achievements and make significant efforts in order to figure out its secret to success.
Never before in the country's history has there been a prime minister that developed such close ties with important leaders from countries like Russia, the United States, China, and India, but also smaller countries in Africa and Asia. These ties make Arab countries realize bolstering their ties with Israel could be of significant help to them. Netanyahu's ability to stand face-to-face with former US President Barack Obama for eight straight years, and not bend over or fold, is a reflection of his proven courage and leadership.
Netanyahu becomes Israel’s longest-serving prime minister on Saturday
Imagine Donald Trump serving as president of the United States for 45½ years.When Liberals and White Nationalists see eye-to-eye
If Trump, or any US president, had ever served for that long, it would mean one man at the country’s helm for nearly 19% of America’s 243-year-old history.
That’s a huge percentage of time, a massive piece of any country’s history.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will overtake founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having held that role for 13 years and 127 days, or 4,873 of Israel’s 25,981 days of existence.
That represents nearly 19% of Israel’s entire history. And that, too, is a huge chunk of time.
Put the lengths of Ben-Gurion’s and Netanyahu’s tenures side by side, and this country has been guided by two leaders for more than a third of its history (37.5%).
And just as Ben-Gurion – his personality, ideology and leadership style – placed an unmistakable stamp on the country’s first two decades, Netanyahu has left his indelible imprint on the last two.
As Israel of the 1950s and 1960s reflected its leader – tough, pragmatic, socialist, content with a frugal lifestyle – so, too, Israel of the last two decades has reflected Netanyahu: tough, pragmatic, fiercely capitalistic, and someone who very much enjoys the good life.
Ben-Gurion retired to a sparse, book-lined hut in Sde Boker. Netanyahu, when/if he retires, will retreat to a luxurious, book-lined home in Caesarea. That says much about the difference between the two men, and also about the different ideals of the country at the time.
The media chose to make it all about race. Yet this tweet is not about race. If anything, because Trump has never attacked the Americanness of politicians who believe in the American way of life, regardless of their skin color – and regardless of their antagonism towards this administration. That is the reason the President considers the Canadian-born Hispanic senator Ted Cruz completely American, despite their bitter political feud.Britain says Iran has seized two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz
This is not the first time liberals agree with white nationalists. Both camps are obsessed with race. Liberals just disagree with white nationalists on whether whites are the bane or the blessing of America. This agreement is sorely evident in academia and the media, where sociologists and journalists outdo each other to convince us that the problems faced by minorities all derive from racism. Likewise, the White House‘s proposals for immigration reform are scrutinized for their racial impact by both white nationalists and liberal pundits.
Liberals will be aghast at being compared to white nationalists. They will argue that centering every discussion in America on how policies affect racial minorities is the most anti-racist attitude possible. These liberals should remember that racism does not emerge in a vacuum. It emerges in an atmosphere where every problem is viewed through the prism of race. That is the reason the obsession with ethnicity and race in American universities today is eerily reminiscent of academia in Nazi Germany. Both fuel an intellectual climate that poisons race relations.
The media's reaction to the President‘s tweet is another wasted opportunity to discuss what really matters: How to strengthen the American way of life and how to attract immigrants devoted to the American way of life. All else is cheap politics – and racism.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards seized two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, officials in London said, in a move that appeared to infuriate American and British leaders.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said it had seized British oil tanker Stena Impero, claiming it “was confiscated by the Revolutionary Guards at the request of Hormozgan Ports and Maritime Organization when passing through the Strait of Hormuz, for failing to respect international maritime rules.”
US officials told CNN there were indications that Iran had seized a second vessel, the Liberian tanker MV Mesdar. Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that Masdar had been detained by Iranian forces but was released and left Iranian waters.
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt confirmed that two ships had been seized, condemning the incidents as “unacceptable” and saying he was “extremely concerned” by the incidents.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt leaves 10 Downing Street in London on June 11, 2019. (Isabel Infantes/AFP)
“I’m extremely concerned by the seizure of two naval vessels by Iranian authorities in the Strait of Hormuz,” he said in a statement. “These seizures are unacceptable.”
- Friday, July 19, 2019
- Elder of Ziyon
The Soviet Union may have killed millions, may have imprisoned hundreds of thousands of political prisoners, it may have been institutionally antisemitic - but boy, was it progressive!@nytimes is a self-parody. https://t.co/gyJfJ4O87l— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) July 18, 2019
You want more proof that @IfNotNowOrg is a hate group, not a peace group?— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) July 15, 2019
Guess what word is not mentioned ONCE in its 634-word Principles document?
"Peace."
Here's where @marclamonthill accuses Israel of poisoning Palestinian water, echoing the lies that brought pogroms that killed thousands of Jews in the Middle Ages.— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) July 16, 2019
We're a little touchy about that.https://t.co/yiGkL73uY8 pic.twitter.com/CtMqlqNer0
A reminder: In 2010, reporter Helen Thomas said that Israeli Jews should all "go home" to the places they were ethnically cleansed from.— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) July 16, 2019
Almost everyone, including Obama, called her statement offensive.
But @CAIRNational and the PLO's @DrHananAshrawi each gave her awards! pic.twitter.com/gCSMVzNQdy
Presidential candidates @ewarren, @SenGillibrand, @GovInslee and @JulianCastro spoke at the Netroots summit which featured T-shirts for sale that equated Zionism with racism and sexism. https://t.co/2I5NGexY7Q pic.twitter.com/WCcH2Js0aK— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) July 16, 2019
Congratulations. You have just proven that you have no concept of morality.— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) July 19, 2019
From Ian:
Douglas Murray: Is Boris wrong to claim Islam set the Muslim world back?
Happy ending for Palestinian who was penalized for rescuing wounded Jews
Douglas Murray: Is Boris wrong to claim Islam set the Muslim world back?
Alas here again we must be disappointed. For in his book Johnson apparently argued that the Islamic religion caused the Muslim world to be ‘literally centuries behind’ the West. He furthermore said,The Most Recent PFLP Hijacking: European Parliament
‘There must be something about Islam that indeed helps to explain why there was no rise of the bourgeoisie, no liberal capitalism and therefore no spread of democracy in the Muslim world.
‘It is extraordinary to think that under the Roman/Byzantine empire, the city of Constantinople kept the candle of learning alight for a thousand years, and that under Ottoman rule, the first printing press was not seen in Istanbul until the middle of the nineteenth century. Something caused them to be literally centuries behind.’
The Guardian, and Perraudin, along with the MCB and Tell Mama and various other professional offence-takers think it not just outrageous but seriously provocative for someone to point this out.
So rather than counter anger with anger, I would like to respond in a spirit of charity and generosity. Thus do I hereby offer a box of Roses chocolates to any Muslim or non-Muslim organisation or spokesperson who can prove that Johnson was wholly wrong in the above statements, and that rather than being a plausible and legitimate interpretation of the historical record, the statements in fact constitute a set of wholly made-up hate-claims. I have purchased the box of chocolates. They are sitting beside me, temptingly, indeed coquettishly, as I write. Yet I will not touch them. All that Tell Mama, the MCB or anyone else needs to do to get them, is to prove that wherever and whenever the religion of Islam arrives in a society, that society sees a burgeoning of capitalism, democracy and the free exchange of ideas. It can’t be that difficult, can it? I await the deluge of applications.
The European Parliament (EP) has a Palestinian terrorist problem.
The EP hosted an event last week featuring Khaled Barakat, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), according to the terrorist group’s website. He is also the president of the Palestinian NGO Samidoun.
The European Union designated the PFLP as a terrorist group in 2002 — and the designation is well deserved. The PFLP gained notoriety in the 1960s and 1970s for high-profile hijackings and attacks against Israelis. One of the hijackers was Leila Khaled, who speaks regularly at Samidoun events. In October 2001, the PFLP assassinated an Israeli minister. And in 2014, the PFLP claimed responsibility for a grisly attack on a Jerusalem synagogue that left six dead, including three Americans.
Manu Pineda Marin, a Spanish member of the European Parliament, hosted Barakat, along with Charlotte Kates, Barakat’s wife and Samidoun’s international coordinator, for a panel discussion in Brussels. The panelists also included Samidoun’s European coordinator and PFLP member Mohammad Khatib.
The fact that the event took place is curious. Weeks prior, Germany, an EU member state, prohibited Barakat from engaging in political activities due to his affiliation with the PFLP and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. This came just weeks after Germany’s parliament passed a resolution declaring that BDS is antsemitic.
Happy ending for Palestinian who was penalized for rescuing wounded Jews
Three years ago this month, thousands of Israelis attended the funeral of Rabbi Michael “Miki” Mark, director-general of the Otniel Yeshiva, who was killed in a drive-by Palestinian terrorist attack.
The father of 10 children was shot while driving with his wife and two of his kids on Route 60 in the South Hebron Hills. He was struck by a barrage of bullets and lost control of the car, causing it to overturn.
As Mark, 48, bled to death in front of his injured 14-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son – whose mother, Hava, was rendered unconscious in critical condition – a Palestinian Authority civil servant who happened by the scene of what he thought was a car accident rushed to assist the family.
For his swift and humane action, the young man from Hebron was thanked profusely by the Mark family. He and a Palestinian doctor who arrived a few minutes later to help were also granted an award for “outstanding citizenship and courage” by the Shurat Hadin-Israel Law Center during a conference at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem
In an interview at the time with Israel’s defunct Channel 2, “A” – whose name has been withheld since then – recounted seeing the Marks’ overturned vehicle and stopping on the side of the road.
“I tried to open the door, but the car was completely locked,” he said. “I saw two children inside screaming and asking me to help them. I put out my hand and for two minutes, I tried to open the door to get to the children who were suffocating in the car. I think that if they stayed there a little while longer, those children would have suffocated in the car. Out of the shock she felt, the young daughter spontaneously grabbed me and jumped onto me. I immediately put my hand on her head and spoke to her in Hebrew, of course. I told her, ‘Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, I will help you. Don’t worry.’ I did what I did out of humanity. These are children. There were children inside. There were people inside. I didn’t hesitate at all.”
In spite of Israeli efforts to assist, “A” remains anonymous for his own protection. The powers that be in Ramallah knew exactly who he was, and promptly penalized him for rescuing wounded Jews. As Israelis lauded him – not only for being a Good Samaritan, but for rekindling a ray of hope in peace – the PA promptly dismissed him from his job.
- Friday, July 19, 2019
- Elder of Ziyon
- cartoon of the day
Continuing my series of re-captioning single panel cartoons...
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.
- Friday, July 19, 2019
- Elder of Ziyon
Albawaba is a Jordanian based Arab news site that, in English, looks professional and youth oriented.
A media bias/fact check site found it to be unbiased.
In Arabic, though, things are a little different.
This article doesn't say anything new but it touches on all the standard Arab antisemitic thinking:
President Donald Trump considered Jerusalem as the capital of Israel based on a lie that Jerusalem was the capital of the Jewish people. We know that Judaism is only a religion, but the Jewish religion is not national, which makes us deny the existence of a Jewish people. ... Is there any connection between the Jews of Israel and the Jews of the people of Moses peace be upon him? The Jews that are Khazars have nothing to do with the Jews of the time of Moses, peace be upon him, neither in form, in language. As well as the Jews of Yemen .. Falasha Jews .. They are residents of Abyssinia and did not know Palestine and did not visit them and have no relationship with the Jews in terms of form, race or language. There were also Jews in the Arabian Peninsula, the Jews of Khyber, Bani al-Nathir and Bani Qinqaa. They are Arabs who have nothing to do with Israel.The existence of such hate in a mainstream Arab publication is disgusting, but that isn't the worst part. The worst part is that there is absolutely zero criticism from any of the hundreds of millions of Arabs who are exposed to this type of article, even though they all swear they are not antisemitic at all.
For Jews, there is no religion except Judaism. The Islamic and Christian holy sites do not matter to Israel, nor do they consider them to have any sanctity, in addition to their being unwelcome.
The Jews are known for lying and charging interest and fornication since ancient times. They are a people of terrorists, as described by the Torah, the Bible among the Jews, who robbed the Egyptians of gold and fled under the cover of darkness when they came out of Egypt with deceit. They invented an imaginary pretext and fled from Egypt under the cover of darkness. In the Sinai instead of the worship of God one of them crafted a calf of gold to him until the Jews worshiped it as stated in the Torah...
The Jews are a false and fraudulent people. We are puzzled by this crooked people. Their prophet orders them to steal and their Lord helps them. Their holy book tells us that theft and fraud are among the great ideals and values that they boast to the peoples of the world.
As a result of these qualities in the Jews, they were expelled from the European countries several times...
If the Jews read Jewish and Islamic history they'd see how the Arabs embraced them and treated them excellently, but they are like a snake after you take care of it, the fangs are planted with the deadly poison to those who hugged and warmed them.
In other words, this bile is not treated in the Arab world as opinion, but as fact.
- Friday, July 19, 2019
- Elder of Ziyon
Jewish Insider reports that both Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar plan to visit Israel and the PA-controlled territories next month.
The question is whether Israel should allow them to enter, given that they are both BDS supporters.
The Entry into Israel Law (Amendment No. 28), 2017, says that people who advocate BDS should not be allowed into Israel but exceptions can be made:
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The question is whether Israel should allow them to enter, given that they are both BDS supporters.
The Entry into Israel Law (Amendment No. 28), 2017, says that people who advocate BDS should not be allowed into Israel but exceptions can be made:
(d)A visa or residence permit of any kind will not be given to a non-Israeli citizen or a person who has an Israeli permanent residence permit if s/he, or his/her organization; or the body in which s/he works for has knowingly published a public call to boycott the State of Israel as defined in the Law for Prevention of Damage to the State of Israel through Boycott – 2011 (5771), or if this person has committed to participate in such a boycott.
(e) Despite what was mentioned in sub-section (d), the Minister of the Interior is entitled to grant the visa or residence permit mentioned in the aforementioned sub-section for special reasons which must be specified.
Haaretz reports that even though the law says that the Minister of the Interior can allow such an exception, given the sensitivity of the issue in this case the decision will be made by Benjamin Netanyahu himself.
Last year Israel tried to deny student Lara Alqasem entry to the country based on this law, and Israel's Supreme Court ruled that she should be allowed to enter.
When Israel tried to deport Human Rights Watch's Omar Shakir for his anti-Israel activities, the Supreme Court again ruled that he can stay while fighting the order. He's still in Israel and it is not clear when the ruling will come.
As Professor Eugene Kontorovich notes, “It’s very hard for the Israeli government to actually apply the law because, basically in practice, everybody who they try to bar immediately turns to the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court has barred the effective implementation of the law, and unfortunately, that results in a situation where Israel gets all of the criticism for applying it without the actual benefits of being able to exclude people. Omar is an American congressperson. That is a very strong reason for admitting her. But at the same time, I would expect Israel would seek the opinion of the United States government as to whether to admit her.”
Moreover, Israeli law allowed the country to deny entry to people who are a danger to the State before this law.Anti-Israel activist Norman Finkelstein was deported and given a 10-year ban in 2008 and Noam Chomsky was denied entry in 2010, before Amendment No. 28.
It is the right of any country to bar anyone from entering, and the US and UK do it all the time, for example. The current law is not effective in the least, it allows the haters of Israel to engage in drawn out legal proceedings which grab headlines for weeks, it was not necessary to begin with and it has been an unmitigated public relations disaster for Israel.
Refusing entry to Tlaib and Omar would be exactly what they want. It will paint Israel in the media as cruel (for not allowing Tlaib to bring her kids to see her grandmother) and petty (for looking so insecure that it cannot handle the inevitable criticism that both members of Congress will bring up, no matter what they see in Israel.)
This is a PR war. Tlaib and Omar are very good at PR. Israel needs to be better, and barring their entry is the exact wrong decision.
Instead, Israel should make a very public show of welcoming them. It should recommend - and provide logistics - for them to visit the real Israel.
Not Yad Vashem. Not the Kotel. Not the usual destinations that Israel brings politicians.
Instead, Israel should invite them to see the Israel Museum, which carefully shows Jewish, Christian and Muslim history in the Land in equal measure.
They should be invited to see the Museum of Islamic Art, in Jerusalem.
They should be invited to the Mamilla Mall, or really any Jerusalem mall, where Arabs and Jews freely shop together without a second thought.
They should be invited to see Umayyad Muslim archaeological structures that were discovered and are being preserved by Israel in the Old City that we are being told is being "Judaized."
They should be invited to the Peres Center for Peace to see soccer games between Jewish and Arab youth.
They should be invited to see the high tech laboratories in Tel Aviv - and Nazareth.
They should be encouraged to speak to Arab workers at Rami Levy supermarkets (even in the "settlements") or at Sodastream.
The invitations should come not only from Likud officials but from the other parties as well.
All of these invitations should be very public and emphasize how Muslims and Arabs are truly treated in Israel, not how the media portrays it.
The Israel haters carefully choose where to bring their tourists to maximize hate for Israel - but they are the ones who are not allowing the tourists to talk to ordinary people.
To undermine their lies, Israel merely needs to show the reality. Even if that includes the Ethiopian Jewish protests.
They won't become Zionists. That isn't the point. This is a public relations war, a war that Israel still needs to do a better job at. Banning them, or even talking about banning them, makes Israel look like it is afraid of the truth. Making Tlaib and Omar refuse invitations by high level officials will reveal which side is secure and which is afraid of the truth.
And if they accept the invitations, then dozens of reporters will write a little more about what Israel is really like.
Thursday, July 18, 2019
From Ian:
Caroline Glick: Trump's Tweetstorm Correctly Linked Anti-Americanism to Antisemitism
Yisrael Medad: Arab-American Anti-Zionism Before Tlaib and Omar
Caroline Glick: Trump's Tweetstorm Correctly Linked Anti-Americanism to Antisemitism
President Donald Trump’s tweets on Sunday drew predictable condemnation. But aside from the partisan debate about whether they were racist, they contained an important truth: hatred of Jews and hatred of America are linked.
Trump told the so-called “squad” of radical Democrats — Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — they could leave the country if they hate it so much. He drew criticism because he said that they came from foreign countries; in fact, only Omar did.
But Trump also highlighted a basic fact about the nature of leftist ideology. Just as the Iranian regime views the United States and Israel as two sides of the same coin, with the ayatollahs dubbing the U.S. “the Great Satan” and Israel, “the Little Satan,” so the radical left views the U.S. and Israel – the most powerful democracy in the world and the only democracy in the Middle East – as states with no moral foundation for existing.
Although other presidents have spoken out against hatred of Jews and Israel on the one hand and hatred of America on the other, it is hard to think of another example of a U.S. leader making the case that the two hatreds are linked as Trump did this week.
This is important, because they are linked. The haters see both America and the Jews as all-powerful forces who use their power to bend the world to their nefarious, avaricious, greedy aims. They stereotype both Americans and pro-Israel and traditional Jews as vulgar and fascist.
Yisrael Medad: Arab-American Anti-Zionism Before Tlaib and Omar
The undermining of Zionism in America by Arabs and Muslims is not new.ABC (Australia) in ‘absolute denial’ over Hamas ‘wanting blood’
As researched here, by Daniel Rickenbachert, there were early attempts and one of them was in January of 1930, when the Mufti-led Supreme Muslim Council (SMC) and the Arab Executive, sent two delegations to the US and to Britain to promote the Arab cause, this just after the murderous 1929 Riots.
As appears there, the delegation to the US consisted of the Syrian pan-Islamic activist Shakib Arslan, his brother Adel Arslan, Issa Bandak and three other members. In the US, the delegation met with the State Department, arguing that only the abolition of the Balfour Declaration could lead to a reconciliation between Jews and Arabs. The delegation also appealed to the Arab-Americans to “emulate the American Jews” by giving donations to the SMC. However, the undertaking was reportedly a financial disaster. This may explain why there were no further Arab delegations from Palestine during the next seven years.
But the first one to speak out against Zionism was an American-Lebanese, Amin Rihani who arrived in the US in 1898. That was in September 1917, two months before the Balfour Declaration, when he published an anti-Zionism piece. In his article,
Sky News host Andrew Bolt says there are people in Australia, helped by the ABC, in ‘absolute denial’ about Hamas wanting 'blood', and not wanting peace.
- Thursday, July 18, 2019
- Elder of Ziyon
The Latin title of this 1659 map by Dutch cartographer Nicolaus Visscher translates to "The Holy Land or Promised Land (Formerly Palestine), Recently Depicted and Published."
It features a picture of the Jewish Holy Temple, surrounded by its various holy objects and utensils.
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It features a picture of the Jewish Holy Temple, surrounded by its various holy objects and utensils.
- Thursday, July 18, 2019
- Elder of Ziyon
- humor, Preoccupied
Kibbutz Keturah, July 18 - The sacred Islamic land of Palestine has made clear its existential revulsion for Jews exercising sovereignty there over the last seven decades, demonstrating its disgust with the phenomenon via such unequivocal acts as producing agricultural and horticultural bounty unprecedented in such an arid climate and lending its previously infertile areas to successful, productive cultivation, but only while Jews govern it.
The land, which supported perhaps tens of thousands of people at a time during the centuries leading up to the Zionist usurpation of its precious soil, now only houses ten million, an unmistakable sign that Palestine cannot abide Jewish control of its natural resources. Another sure indication of its displeasure features in the country attaining the unique status of the only one in the world to achieve a net increase in the number of trees over the last century.
Experts call the land's expressions of distaste for Jewish control unmistakable. "It takes extreme situations for the soil of Palestine to react in such an extreme fashion," explained Yessir Amafart, a Palestine Liberation Organization official. "It didn't react this way for the Romans, Parthians, Byzantines, Rashidun Caliphs, Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatmids, Seljuks, Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mameluks, Ottomans, or British. The land is telling us something clear, and we must act accordingly."
Arab residents of the land and neighboring areas have taken upon themselves to remedy the situation: from Gaza, daily volleys of bombs and incendiary devices travel via helium, wind, or drones travel over the border fence to set alight as much farmland and nature as possible. Arab vandals strike Jewish farms almost nightly, stealing livestock, damaging equipment, attempting to prevent the land from continuing its tantrum. In some locations, local Arabs cut down their own olive orchards and blame it on Jewish settlers, in an effort to both remedy the sacred land's corrupted output and put pressure on the instigators of that output to leave. And throughout the country and region, numerous activists fight to reduce the number of Jews provoking the land's abnormal activity, albeit with limited success.
In the one area Jews did leave, the Gaza Strip, activists have long worked to reverse the dangerous growth of Jewish-cultivated plants and produce. "When the Jews left in 2005 we destroyed the greenhouses they left behind," recalled local resident Qutnoz Sbaytfeis. "Some American do-gooder philanthropist thought we might want to continue working there and making a living, but we can't risk the land being fruitful for us after the Jews were here. It would be sacrilege."
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