Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, June 02, 2022

Three minutes of color film footage of the Jews of Nasielsk, Poland, on the eve of the Holocaust (video)

In January, The New York Times wrote a story about a new documentary about the discovery and preservation of a remarkable color home movie.

Glenn Kurtz found the film reel in a corner of his parents’ closet in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., in 2009. It was in a dented aluminum canister.

Florida’s heat and humidity had nearly solidified the celluloid into a mass “like a hockey puck,” Kurtz said. But someone had transferred part of it onto VHS tape in the 1980s, so Kurtz could see what it contained: a home movie titled “Our Trip to Holland, Belgium, Poland, Switzerland, France and England, 1938.”

The 16-millimeter film, made by his grandfather, David Kurtz, on the eve of World War II, showed the Alps, quaint Dutch villages and three minutes of footage of a vibrant Jewish community in a Polish town.

Old men in yarmulkes, skinny boys in caps, girls with long braids. Smiling and joking. People pour through the large doors of a synagogue. There’s some shoving in a cafe and then, that’s it. The footage ends abruptly.

Kurtz, nevertheless, understood the value of the material as evidence of Jewish life in Poland just before the Holocaust. It would take him nearly a year to figure it out, but he discovered that the footage depicted Nasielsk, his grandfather’s birthplace, a town about 30 miles northwest of Warsaw that some 3,000 Jews called home before the war.

Fewer than 100 would survive it.

Now, the Dutch filmmaker Bianca Stigter has used the fragmentary, ephemeral footage to create “Three Minutes: A Lengthening,” a 70-minute feature film that helps to further define what and who were lost.

It isn't so easy to find the actual footage as a whole, but I found a lower-resolution version with some added background music.

The kids are excited, making faces, jumping into the view, even hitting each other. Men and women help their elderly parents down the stairs of the synagogue. It is all utterly unremarkable except that nearly all of them would be gone within a few years.

This is a rare view of how dynamic and alive the Jews of pre-war Europe were, and how many distinct worlds were lost in the Holocaust.

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"Jewish Voice for Peace" espouses the blood libel - literally

The ADL tweeted this image from Jewish Voice for Peace's social media:

Yes, this is a literal blood libel, accusing Jews of drinking Palestinian blood.

It doesn't get more antisemitic than this.

Actually, maybe it does. At least one of the corpses wears a striped uniform that evokes Holocaust victims.

The Jews in the cartoon aren't just killing Palestinians for no reason - they are celebrating murdering people to steal their land.

Many of the comments to the ADL tweet double down on the antisemitism, or say that the ADL is distracting from supposed Israeli crimes. One even claims the blood libel was true.

When "anti-Zionists" excuse antisemitism, it tells you all you need to know about "anti-Zionists."

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"The Roots of Violence Among the Jews from the Torah and the Talmud"

On Tuesday, in Egypt, The Karama Party organized a symposium on the topic "The Roots of Violence Among the Jews," about a book with that name, wth the author Dr. Saher Rafea.

It turns out the book was written in 2008. Here's its blurb:

The importance of the Torah, the Talmud, and the sayings of the rabbis in shaping the Jews' mindsets and cultural identities lies in the absence of geography for the Jewish community on which history is built and fabricated. Thus, what is left under their hands to fabricate and make their own history they can, through its events and tales, to shape the Jewish mind, are the written religious texts and its rabbinical explanations. Therefore reading the book directly and also reading between the lines should drive us to change our policies against the other / Jews so that we can achieve what we set for under the light of an explicit religious text which calls for the necessity of killing and extermination of the other - meaning Arabs, Muslims and Christians, all foreigners in their homes and their livestock: Total elimination of the other, physically and spiritually.

Yes, Jews are violent because that is what they are taught in the Torah and Talmud.

In case you cannot quite grasp the antisemitism, here is the cover:

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06/01 Links Pt2: A Palestinian Celebration of ‘Empress of Terror’ Fusako Shigenobu; On woke political indoctrination and antisemitism; U. Chicago SJP Condemns Pro-Israel Newsletter as 'Hate Speech'

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: A Palestinian Celebration of ‘Empress of Terror’ Fusako Shigenobu

Her champions, some of whom were waiting outside the jailhouse to cheer her newfound freedom, disagree. They don’t think that she has anything to regret.

On the contrary, the PFLP stated that the “Palestinian people will never forget the sacrifices of this freedom fighter and her comrades in the Japanese Red Army for Palestine and the cause. Their revolutionary and humane principles, and their anti-imperialist sentiment, led them to join the ranks of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and fight alongside its freedom fighters.”

The PFLP also lauded the JRA for committing the Lod Airport massacre.

Hamas joined the rhetorical festivities, with spokesperson Jihad Taha saying that “Shigenobu’s support for Palestine will forever be recorded alongside all the honorable and free people of the world that supported the just Palestinian cause and the rights of the downtrodden Palestinian people against the fascist, racist and criminal occupation.”

Then there’s the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM). The self-described “transnational, independent, grassroots movement of young Palestinians in Palestine and in exile worldwide” only rues the fact that Shigenobu is unable to continue her life’s work, as she is ill with cancer and says that she wishes to devote her time to her treatments.

“On this glorious occasion for Shigenobu and her loved ones, we uplift her as a shining example of the power of international solidarity and anti-imperialism to unite our struggles and defeat our oppressors, no matter where in the world they may be,” PYM tweeted.

The Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network chimed in, “express[ing] its strongest support and solidarity to Fusako Shigenobu, internationalist prisoner of the Palestinian liberation struggle.”

There is nothing novel about radical Palestinians heaping kudos on fellow killers. It won’t be long before the head dispatchers in Ramallah and Gaza start naming schools and sports arenas after this one. The only question is whether they’ll need to do it in Kanji.

BBC News erases PFLP from Lod airport massacre

On May 28th the BBC News website’s ‘Asia’ and ‘Middle East’ pages carried a report tagged ‘Israel’ and titled ‘Japanese Red Army founder Shigenobu freed after 20 years’ which was illustrated with a photograph of its topic draped in a keffiyeh.

No explanation of Shigenobu’s sartorial choice was provided and unlike other media outlets, the BBC did not report that some of those waiting for her outside the Tokyo prison were “waving Palestinian flags” or that Palestinian NGOs celebrated her release.

A caption to one of the other photographs in the BBC’s report informs readers that Shigenobu “spent 30 years living in the Middle East”. The report itself tells readers that:
“Her once-feared group had aimed to provoke a global socialist revolution through high-profile terror acts.

They carried out a series of hostage-takings and hijackings, as well as a deadly attack on an Israeli airport. […]

She has previously expressed regret for 26 deaths caused by an attack on Tel Aviv’s Lod Airport in 1972.”

At no point does the BBC’s report mention that the May 1972 terror attack at Israel’s international airport was carried out by Japanese Red Army members recruited by the PFLP. However archive material shows that the corporation is well aware of that fact:
“The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said they had recruited the gunmen from the Japanese Red Army and said they “came from thousands of miles away to join the Palestinian people in their struggle”.”

“The gunmen were hired by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who said they had recruited the trio from Japan’s Red Army terror group, to carry out the attack, in revenge for the killing of two Arab hijackers earlier in May.”

“It is 40 years since Japanese gunmen attacked the Lod airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. They were left-wing militants working for a Palestinian organisation.”

Indeed, just two days after this article was published, on the 50th anniversary of that terror attack, BBC World Service radio’s ‘Witness History’ aired a programme with the following synopsis:
“In May 1972, Japanese gunmen attacked Lod airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. They were left-wing militants working for a Palestinian organisation. Twenty-six people were killed that day and more than 70 others were injured.”

Terrorist attacks not surprising given Palestinian suffering, says EU envoy

Terrorist attacks against Israelis should not be surprising given the depth of Palestinian suffering from the 74 years of conflict with Israel, according to European Union Representative Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff.

“When you are a Palestinian child living next to the separation wall, what do you think this child will grow up with,” he said Tuesday at an Alliance for Middle East Peace conference in Jerusalem.

“What do you think a child who sees the houses of their parents, their brothers and sisters demolished because he or she was a suspected or real terrorist” will feel? he asked. “What kind of hatred will burn in this child? What do you think will happen?”

Burgsdorff cited the spate of terrorist attacks that have rocked the country since the start of the year.

“We saw, a few months ago and the last few weeks, terrible terror attacks perpetrated on Israeli territory,” he said. “Twenty Israeli innocents lost their lives. But don’t be surprised, because there is hatred burning in many of these young Palestinians.”

Burgsdorff gave a brief but impassioned speech about the overall toll the Israel-Palestinian conflict has taken on the lives of Palestinians and the particular danger that exists now, given the absence of any peace process.

He spoke to a gathering of diplomats and activists who gathered to explore the role civil society can have in ending the conflict.

Holocaust Survivor Lillian Riess Widess left Europe behind just two years before becoming an entrant in the 1948 Queen of the Palestine Emergency Show pageant. Both her parents were murdered in the Holocaust along with her older brother Alfred. The story goes that they were murdered in the streets during a Nazi-sponsored pogrom in Taurogge, Lithuania. Of the other members of the family, only Lillian’s sister Hilda escaped death, having married and moved to South America with her husband’s family in 1933.

Lillian, my husband’s paternal first cousin once removed, survived the Kovno Ghetto and two labor camps, before landing in a DP camp south of Munich, in Landsberg. In 1946, sponsored by her aunt and uncle, she was at last able to leave the blood-soaked ground of Europe for Chicago. She came with nothing—bereft even of the comfort of a family photo. Surviving relatives and friends embraced Lillian by gathering up and sending her all the pre-war family photos they could find. Because of this, Lillian was at least in part, able to recover a portion of her collection: faces to go with the memories of loved ones stolen by Hitler.

Lillian was a beauty. Even the war had not robbed her of that. No one knows how she ended up a contestant in the Queen of the Palestine Emergency Show pageant or even whether she won. But everyone acknowledges that she had what it took to compete.

Lillian Riess, circa 1946-1948, Chicago

Little could be found by this writer of the Palestine Emergency Show that featured the beauty pageant. The competition for "queen" was an obvious draw for residents of local Jewish neighborhoods, a way to encourage attendance at the rally, to be held in Chicago Stadium. Lillian Riess competed as a representative of the Southwest Side of Chicago.

Lillian Riess, at bottom right

What did the new Jewish State mean to someone like Lily Riess, who was caught and treated like vermin to be crushed, her family murdered in the streets, only because they were Jews? Was her participation in the pageant a statement of survival against all odds--her contribution to ensuring that her people could and would be restored to their homeland, never to be at the mercy of evil again? From this distance, we can only guess at Lillian's reasons for taking part in a 1948 beauty contest in Chicago. But there is no doubt that she once again felt a part of a community, and was glad to play an active role in local Jewish life.

After the tragedy in Europe, Lillian went on to have a full life in America. On her honeymoon in Carmel, 1948

Lillian, 1956

Late 1960s

At home with her daughter Karen, circa 1972.

As we can see in this full page ad from the Chicago Sentinel, the rally was definitely a big deal, with a slated appearance by renowned tenor Jan Pierce, a “gigantic” symphony orchestra, and not less than 50 cantors “in ceremonial dress.” The purpose of the event? Among other things, to protest against Britain’s furnishing of arms to the Arabs in their war of aggression against the Jews; to force the US to lift its embargo on supplying munitions to Israel; to raise funds for “the defense of the new Jewish State,” and to “unmask the sinister underlings in the State Department who defy the will of the American people."

The advertisement for the event refers to “Palestine” rather than Israel, possibly out of long habit and perhaps to ensure that prospective attendees understood what the demonstration was all about. Headed by a most frightening prediction, “A massacre is coming—unless . . ” followed by a list of dire possibilities threatening the fledgling nation state of the Jewish people, the advertisement could not fail to catch the eye. It was expected that tens of thousands would attend.

Did the event live up to the hype? It is difficult to say. I could find nothing more in the Sentinel archives, and nothing in the Chicago Tribune—nothing about the number of attendees, the amount of money raised, or who won the beauty pageant.* But there are still facts to be gleaned from an old newspaper clipping about a beauty pageant and a full-page ad for a rally held just one month before the end of Israel’s War of Independence, when things did not look so good for the Jews or their state:

Fact one: American Jews understood the ominous threat to the Jewish State and felt a deep kinship to their brethren there, to the point they were willing to go to bat for them against the State Department, Britain, Bevin, the Mufti, and anyone else who stood in their way.

Fact two: American Jews understood that Palestine was really Israel, indigenous Jewish territory; that the Jews had a right to self-determination in their homeland; and that the Arabs, and not the Jews, were the occupiers and aggressors.

Fact three: The Jews of Chicagoland didn’t just talk the talk but proved their devotion to their people through action, organizing a massive, logistically complicated, and likely expensive demonstration in Chicago Stadium.

Fact four: The organizers of the Palestine Emergency Show fully believed they could easily draw tens of thousands of attendees who cared enough about Israel and the Jews who were living and dying there, to buy a ticket and represent.

It could never happen today.

*Hoping my readers will uncover further details

In memory of Lillian Widess, 1927-2005. Her birthday would have been this week.

(All photos courtesy of Karen Widess)

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Everyone knows about Turkeys' occupation of Northern Cyprus.

But Turkey also occupied large swaths of territory in northern Syria, and the people who scream about the evil of Israeli "occupation" are silent.

Not only that, but Turkey is threatening to invade Syria, and - again - the people who are upset about countries like Russia invading their neighbors seem to not have much of a problem with this.

From AP:

Turkey's president told journalists that Ankara remains committed to rooting out a Syrian Kurdish militia from northern Syria.

"Like I always say, we'll come down on them suddenly one night. And we must," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on his plane following his Saturday visit to Azerbaijan, according to daily Hurriyet newspaper and other media.

Without giving a specific timeline, Erdogan said that Turkey would launch a cross-border operation against the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, which it considers a terrorist group linked to an outlawed Kurdish group that has led an insurgency against Turkey since 1984. That conflict with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, PKK, has killed tens of thousands of people.

However, the YPG forms the backbone of U.S.-led forces in the fight against the Islamic State group. American support for the group has infuriated Ankara and remains a major issue in their relations.

Ankara has launched four cross-border operations into Syria since 2016 and controls some territories in the north with the goal of pushing away the YPG and establishing a 30-kilometer (19-mile) deep safe zone where Erdogan hopes to "voluntarily" return Syrian refugees.

In 2019, an incursion into northeast Syria against the YPG drew widespread international condemnation, prompting Finland, Sweden and others to restrict arms sales to Turkey. Now Turkey is blocking the two Nordic countries' historic bid to join NATO because of the weapons ban and their alleged support for the Kurdish groups.

Oh, and Turkey is building settlements, too, to move Syrian refugees to areas under its control

The media seems strangely uninterested.

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06/01 Links Pt1: Why Is Israeli-Palestinian Violence Returning to Jenin?; Caroline Glick: Where were Hamas rockets on Jerusalem Day?; UN names Palestinian media program for slain Al Jazeera reporter

From Ian:

Joe Truzman: Why Is Israeli-Palestinian Violence Returning to Jenin?

All this started coming apart with the pandemic lockdowns in 2020 and the burgeoning internal rivalries of various Palestinian armed factions gearing up for an inevitable succession battle in the Palestinian Authority, as Abbas rounds out his ninth decade and begins the eighteenth year of a four-year term in office.

The Gaza conflict in May last year accelerated the return to violence. The escape of six militants (most of whom are members of PIJ) from a prison in northern Israel, just across the line from Jenin, also rallied fighters across the Palestinian territories. Lastly, IDF operations in the West Bank throughout 2021 resulted in an unusually high number of militant deaths.

These deaths prompted terrorist organizations in Jenin to reorganize and establish a joint operations room to respond to IDF incursions more effectively. The result was a marked increase in clashes with IDF troops.

Exacerbating the problem in Jenin was a wave of high-profile terrorist attacks deep inside Israeli territory beginning in late March this year. In some cases, the attackers were identified as residents of Jenin, which intensified both the almost daily IDF operations in the city and the militant’s response to the added incursions.

Though investigations are ongoing, the daytime raids by the IDF were a possible contributing factor in casualties, as the IDF usually operates at night, when fewer pedestrians are around. On several occasions, including when Aqleh and an Israeli counter-terrorism officer, Noam Raz were killed, the IDF operated in Jenin during the day.

At the extremes of violence and of (relative) quiet, Jenin, a city with little religious or symbolic importance to either Jews or Arabs, told its own story of conflict.

Once the nest of suicide bombers and Israel’s most aggressive military action in the West Bank, it became an island of calm. The combination of foreign training for Palestinian police, the evacuation of nearby Israeli settlements, and the continued presence of the IDF was something of an experiment in “managing the conflict.” Two months into a renewed wave of violence centered around Jenin again, that experiment might be nearing its end.

MEMRI: Palestinians Slam Hamas's Lack Of Response To Jerusalem Flag March: All You Do Is Sell Empty Slogans And Spew Baseless Threats

The Flag March held in Jerusalem on May 29, 2022 on the occasion of Israel's Jerusalem Day, passed with relatively little incident, despite concerns that it would result in an escalation of violence on the ground. These concerns were sparked by statements made in advance of the march by Hamas and other Palestinian elements, who threatened to carry out attacks during the march, to renew the rocket fire from Gaza and even to launch a "second Sword of Jerusalem" campaign that would be a continuation of the May 2021 round of Hamas-Israel conflict, which Hamas calls the "Sword of Jerusalem" campaign.[1]

Already in the evening of May 29 and on the morning after, many Palestinian elements in Gaza, the West bank and Jerusalem began voicing anger and criticizing Hamas and the other Palestinian resistance factions for failing to respond to the Flag March as they had threatened and promised to do. This criticism was expressed on social media, and later also in articles in the Palestinian and Arab press. The critics – including Palestinian journalists, analysts, citizens and an activist of the Murabitat organization at Al-Aqsa[2] – expressed disappointment with the Hamas leaders who, they said, had spewed slogans, made bombastic and boastful threats and created large expectations – and did nothing at all. Many of the responses specifically mentioned the statements made by Hamas' leader in Gaza, Yahya Al-Sinwar, in an April 30, 2022 speech, in which he called on the Palestinians to prepare for a large-scale campaign against Israel and even promised that this campaign would begin with a salvo of 1,111 rockets fired into Israel.[3]

The Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, which is close to Hizbullah, published a large article about the flagging of the Gazans' morale and about the Palestinians' disappointment and anger with Hamas for its failure to respond to the Flag March. In fact, the article criticized not only Hamas but the entire resistance axis, which includes Iran, Syria and Hizbullah, for "failing to lift a finger" in defense of Jerusalem, and this despite the fact that this axis has recently begun calling itself "the Jerusalem axis" and even promised to launch a regional war against Israel if it continued its actions.[4]

The Al-Hayat Al-Jadida daily, the mouthpiece of the Palestinian Authority, naturally joined the criticism of Hamas, and accused it, in its May 31 editorial, of making empty threats while coordinating and cooperating with Israel.

Caroline Glick: Where were Hamas rockets on Jerusalem Day?

In this week’s episode of the Caroline Glick Mideast News Hour, Caroline was joined by historian Gadi Taub. They discussed the successful Flag Parade in Jerusalem in the context of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Israeli government, and the previous Netanyahu-led government’s decision to cancel last year’s parade in the face of mass Arab Israeli violence and Hamas’s missile offensive. Caroline and Gadi talked about the increasingly palpable atmosphere of rebellion among Arab Israelis in the face of Israel’s elites who refuse to defend the country.

Palestinian cartoons inciting to violence

As mentioned, before Palestinian terror groups decided not to start a promised war to stop the Flag March on Yom Yerushalayim, Palestinian media was inciting to violence and psyching up the people for another war.

Here are some cartoons from Felesteen that are self-explanatory.

After the Palestinian terror group decision not to start a war, this cartoon expresses frustration over the lack of response by the rest of the Arab world towards Israel's actions in Jerusalem because of normalization:

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Hamas, Islamic Jihad spinning their decision not to attack Israel on Jerusalem Day

I noted last week that for a week before Yom Yerushalayim, Palestinian terror groups and media were in a frenzy anticipating a massive terror response to the Flag March, threatening a religious war if Jews would march through Jerusalem and all but promising that Gaza rockets would be fired and a new terror wave begun.

It appears that Israel contacted their Arab friends and those states pressured Hamas not to respond. It worked, and here is a case where the Abraham Accords - derided by "experts" as a meaningless agreement that doesn't affect the core conflict - actually helped avert a war.

However, Hamas and Islamic Jihad now have to explain to their audiences why they didn't attack after a week of inciting them to war.

And that is exactly what they are doing.

From Islamic Jihad:

Muhammad Al-Hindi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Jihad Movement and official in the political department, confirmed today, Sunday, that the battle with the enemy is open and long and takes different forms, and the resistance is the one who determines the appropriate time for its intervention.

Hamas' Al Resalah has a column directly addressing why Hamas didn't attack:

Whoever is aware of politics knows that the resistance in the Gaza Strip operates according to its assessments of the situation, and is not tempted or dragged behind passion or what the occupation plans.

The resistance didn't respond for considerations that it is more aware of than those who watch from the outside. The occupation forces were ready for the confrontation, through which they wanted to restore deterrence power, but the resistance ...is proceeding according to an integrated and extended plan, and it has its information and estimates, and if its assessment is otherwise. , the decision would have been different, because the scenes [of the Flag Msrch] were enough to make them rain the lava of the occupation’s rapists with their rockets, and turn Tel Aviv into a mass of flames.

I've also seen other articles spinning the fact that Hamas didn't attack: articles with pride that Israel was forced to keep planes in the air over Gaza based on only threats, stories pointing out that there were still lots of minor terror attacks over the weekend, pointing out that Israel had to deploy so many police to protect the Flag March which proves that it doesn't control Jerusalem, and saying that Israel begged Hamas not to attack so Hamas was the stronger party.

In honor/shame societies, backing down from a promised fight is a huge humiliation, and lots of ink is being spilled to turn this humiliation into a victory.

Which brings up another factor that helped convince Hamas not to launch an attack: Hamas leaders really liked getting all these phone calls from Arab national leaders asking them not to attack. This increased their prestige considerably, at the expense of Mahmoud Abbas, who was reportedly fuming at being left out of the loop. This pro-Hamas cartoon summarizes this:

The honor at being treated like the national leader of Palestinians outweighed the shame at not attacking Israel as promised.

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Eyewitnesses to Shireen Abu Aklehs''s death initially said she was shot by SNIPERS IN BUILDINGS. (The IDF wasn't shooting from buildings.)

More evidence keeps pouring in that Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Palestinian terrorists, not by the IDF, as my comprehensive video showed. The latest ones confirm what I have been saying and showing, that she was killed by Palestinian snipers on and in buildings to her southeast. More interestingly, they come from eyewitnesses - which Ap and CNN consider credible as to explain what happened.

This video from Abu Akleh's colleague, Shatha Hanaysha, who was next to her as she died, says it all:

Reporter: "Did you see the sniper who was shooting at you?"
Shatha Hanaysha: "We saw the crowd pointing at the building where the snipers were. What happened is that we were standing across from a building with snipers."

There were no IDF troops shooting from buildings. But as we have seen, some of the witnesses on the scene pointed out "shebab" snipers on and in buildings to the southeast of where Shireen was shot. The only buildings "across" from Shireen and Shatha are to the east and southeast.

In the full interview, she makes other references to the snipers/"soldiers" being opposite her, saying that "the soldiers were right across from us, they could see us" - not down the street but "across" - and "we were between a wall and the sniper" - the wall was parallel to the IDF convoy, the Islamist snipers were in the buildings across the street to the southeast.

Hanaysha was widely quoted after the killing as saying that Israel was responsible. She probably thought that there were Israeli snipers in buildings on the other side of the cemetery, between a hundred and two hundred meters away.

The second witness to see snipers in buildings is none other than Ali al-Samoudi, the first person shot, who was widely interviewed from his hospital bed:

We, the crew of Al-Jazeera TV, went to Jenin on May 6, 2022 [sic], after receiving news of the intention of the Israeli army to storm the camp. ...As soon as we reached the place of the event, we got out of the car after we took security and safety precautions, put the [flak jackets] and helmets bearing the word "PRESS" in Arabic and English. After a few minutes, we heard the sound of bullets raining down on us from the side of the occupation soldiers who were on the roofs of the buildings opposite us , amid the screams of Palestinian citizens who call out to us: Get down on the ground, snipers are targeting you. . I was hit in the lower back, and Shireen screamed: Ali was wounded, Ali was wounded.

I believe both of these interviews were on the same day as the shootings.

The next day, both of these eyewitnesses stopped talking about snipers in buildings.

These are actual witnesses seeing the Palestinian snipers in the buildings shooting directly at them - but they thought the snipers were Israeli so they told the truth. When they found out that there were no Israelis there, they changed their stories to being shot from the armored vehicles to the south.

The snipers they saw were, by definition, in line of sight to the reporters. Some easily could have beene the distance away from Shireen that the bullet acoustic analysis suggest the killers would be.

The fact that CNN and AP have ignored this evidence is damning to them. And they still refuse to correct their reports that say there were no militants in the area, let alone that they are the likely killers.

Keep in mind that if the snipers were far enough from the reporters not be be easily identified as Jenin militants, the helmet-wearing reporters may have been far enough from the snipers not to be easily identified as press. They were nearly two football fields away from each other.

If I had to guess which buildings the sniper who killed Abu Akleh was in, I think it would be one of these two, probably the more southern one. Both are tall enough, both roughly the right distance from Abu Akleh, and both "across" from the reporters.

(h/t DigFind)

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05/31 Links Pt2: The U.S. State Department and Antisemitism; Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s Silence Openly Approves Violence Against Jews; 'Acceptable' antisemitism now targets AIPAC

From Ian:

CAMERA Op-Ed: The U.S. State Department and Antisemitism

On April 12, 2022, the State Department published its 2021 “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Israel, West Bank and Gaza.” As the Jewish Insider, among others, noted, the document relied extensively on Amnesty International, an NGO that has accused Israel of “apartheid.” But as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) has highlighted, Amnesty’s accusations are steeped in shoddy research, double standards, and baseless claims.

The head of Amnesty’s US office, Paul O’Brien, has said that the organization is opposed to the existence of the world’s sole Jewish state. And, as NGO Monitor and CAMERA have documented, several Amnesty employees have made antisemitic comments and openly supported the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which singles out Israel for opprobrium and seeks its destruction.

In February 2022, the US Ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, even called Amnesty’s libel “absurd.”

Yet, none of this stopped the State Department from citing Amnesty. Indeed, in some quarters, it may have recommended it.

The American foreign service, it must be said, is filled with hardworking and talented professionals who, no doubt, reject hate in all its forms. There is no evidence to suggest that the majority hold views that are anti-Israel or even antisemitic. One must not paint with a broad brush. But there is evidence to suggest that anti-Israel bias, and even antisemitism, isn’t foreign to the US diplomatic corps. There was replete evidence of antisemitism during much of the 20th century, but it certainly still exists today.

One State Department official even has ties to an organization that propagates antisemitism. As the Washington Free Beacon reported in February 2021, the then-nominee for the post of Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights, Uzra Zeya, had previously worked for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA). As a WRMEA staffer, Zeya had helped compile research for a book that argues that “the Israel lobby has subverted the American political process to take control of US Middle East policy.”

Accusations of undue and pernicious Jewish power meet the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been adopted by numerous governments and entities—including the US State Department. She was later confirmed to her position.

As CAMERA highlighted, WRMEA has, among other things, implied that Israel was connected to the JFK assassination and the Sept. 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks, and has published books with chapters that warn about “Jewish Power in the Formulation of US Middle East Policy.”

WRMEA has also accused Israel of profiting from the sale of human organs — a modern-day incarnation of the antisemitic blood libel.

US insists it’s committed to reopening consulate after officials tell ToI otherwise

The US is still committed to reopening its consulate in Jerusalem, State Department spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday, after US and Palestinian officials told The Times of Israel otherwise.

During a press briefing, Price was asked to respond to a Sunday Times of Israel report revealing that the Biden administration has settled on a number of steps aimed at boosting ties with the Palestinians in lieu of reopening the US Consulate in Jerusalem.

Price did not deny the report, but insisted that the US is still “committed to [re]opening a consulate in Jerusalem” — a line Biden officials have reiterated dozens of times since Secretary of State Antony Blinken first made the announcement over a year ago. The Israeli government has pushed back against the move, arguing that it is an encroachment on its sovereignty, and Washington has subsequently held off on the step, not wanting to engage in a fight with its Israeli allies.

“We continue to believe [reopening the consulate] can be an important way for our country to engage with and provide support to the Palestinian people. We’re continuing to discuss this with our Israeli and Palestinian partners and will continue to come up to consult with members of Congress as well,” Price said, refusing once again to offer a timeline for when Blinken’s pledge might be seen through.

“Meanwhile, at this very moment, we have a dedicated team of colleagues working in Jerusalem in our Palestinian Affairs [Unit] focused on engagement with an outreach to the Palestinian people,” he added, acknowledging that “there are some… unique sensitivities to [reopening] this particular facility.”

According to two US and Palestinian officials who spoke to The Times of Israel last week, US President Joe Biden will elevate Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr to the role of special envoy to the Palestinians. Amr will remain in Washington but will make regular trips to the region and work closely with the Palestinian Affairs Unit (PAU), which currently is a branch within the US Embassy to Israel and is housed in the old Jerusalem consulate building.

Gil Troy: Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s Silence Openly Approves Violence Against Jews

In an America wracked by violence, apparently it is okay to call people out to “fight with stones … fight with guns … fight with planes, drones, and rockets,” as long as the targets are Jews, and you end your call for bloodshed with those magic, cleansing words: “Free, free Palestine.”

That certainly is the impression Representative Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan Democrat, left by her silence on May 15 at a Dearborn “Nakba Day” rally she attended.

During the rally, the publisher of the Arab American News — Osama Siblani, clad jarringly in a fashionable Boss shirt — was not subtle at all in blessing the bloody, horrific axe murders, knifings, and shootings in Israel that have killed nearly 20 in the last few months — including fellow Arabs, although I count all the victims of terrorism as innocent, be they Jews or Arabs, Ukrainians or Druze.

“Do you see what is happening in Palestine?” he said. “They are striking them with their knives and with their bare hands, and they are victorious.”

Lovely. Some victory.

What kind of victory is it when a Palestinian in B’nai Brak aims at a two-year-old, but the dad turns the attempted infanticide into a mere homicide by throwing his body between the murderer and his toddler?

What kind of victory is it when that same shooter kills a Christian-Arab police officer with a Jewish girlfriend, who was probably doing more to cross lines and build bridges in the Middle East than the entire US Congress?

And what kind of victory is it when two Palestinians, using the same Jewish driver they have used before to get to work, pull out axes in Elad and start smashing his skull and others’ — murdering the driver and two other dads, while leaving others with shattered skulls housing wounds that will torment them for the rest of their lives?

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib at 2021 Nakba Day Rally in Dearborn, MI: We Have the Right to Fight Against Israeli Apartheid (Archival) #Palestinians @RashidaTlaib pic.twitter.com/LgNdhGETTf
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) May 31, 2022

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The Committee of the National and Islamic Forces in Gaza is holding an "emergency meeting" today because of a comment made last month by the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, last month.

What was the terrible thing Lazzarini said?

He suggested that UNRWA outsource some of its functions to other UN agencies (that have consistent budgets.)

He pointed out the obvious fact that UNRWA's expenses can only go up as they keep adding new "refugees" to their rolls and never take any off, nor do they have a mechanism to take anyone off. Right now UNRWA goes begging for donations every few months because otherwise it would close down.

Palestinians went crazy, saying that this would be the first step towards UNRWA's dissolution. Why does that matter if they continue to get their services? Glad you asked:

UNRWA is “not just about the delivery of services,” said Muhammed Shehada from the Swiss-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

“As long as UNRWA is there, it’s a reminder that the international community has a responsibility to solve the issue of Palestinian refugees,” he told AFP.

UNRWA is just a symbol of keeping the Palestinian "refugee" issue alive forever, as opposed to every single other refugee issue in history.

The arguments that Palestinians are using against UNRWA allowing others to provide services are delusional. They say that this is a violation of UNGA Resolution 302 that created UNRWA to begin with, which they claim gives UNRWA exclusivity in providing services.

UNGA 302 (1950) says no such thing. In fact, it days the opposite!

18. Urges the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, the International Refugee Organization, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and other appropriate agencies and private groups and organizations, in consultation with the Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, to furnish assistance within the framework of the programme;

It also anticipates that UNRWA will only last a few years and that in the future the host countries would provide the same services UNRWA does. one of its two stated purposes in UNGA 302 is, "To consult with the interested Near Eastern Governments concerning measures to be taken by them preparatory to the time when international assistance for relief and works projects is no longer available."

As usual, the Palestinians are lying. UNRWA is not sacred and was never meant to be. It was meant to help the 1948 refugees until they were resettled and then disappear.

It isn't that asking other agencies for additional help violates UNGA 302. The very existence of UNRWA today, 42 years later, violates UNGA 302!

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05/31 Links Pt1: Meir Y. Soloveichik: ‘These Stones Are Not Silent’; Israel, UAE Boost Ties With Free Trade Pact; China threatens to downgrade Israel ties over 'Post' Taiwan interview

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: ‘These Stones Are Not Silent’

Begin’s point is at once simple and profound, and what he wrote about the Western Wall is all the more true about the top of the Temple Mount itself, the site of “the great flame” and “the house that once stood” on that site. Are the stones silent or are they not? Is there still a profound Jewish connection to this site or not? If these stones are not silent, if they still whisper, “sending out their light across the generations,” how could a Jew possibly visit the sacred without being moved to prayer? And if the stones of the Temple Mount are indeed dead, silent, no longer linked to a living Judaism—if reverence for them is mere “old fashioned prejudice—then it makes sense to allow Jewish visitors as mere tourists, uttering nary a word, their silence paralleling those of the stones themselves. But then, why is the Western Wall itself a site of Jewish longing, and why should Jerusalem itself be of importance to Jews?

The question of what the Temple Mount embodies is bound up with the identity of the Jewish people, and of the State of Israel. Norman Podhoretz has suggested that the quest to divide Jerusalem is an attempt to assault the “scandal of Jewish particularity,” the notion that Jews have a unique destiny linked to one land on the earth. In the Bible, this “scandal” is made most manifest on the Temple Mount, where a universal God is described as choosing one mountain, among one people, as His eternal dwelling place.

It is just this that many seek to assault, denying the Jewish link to the land by seeking to ensure that the Mount remain devoid of Judaism if not of Jews. Begin similarly described the motivations of those who attempted to limit the sounding of the shofar and the singing of “Hatikvah” at the Wall: “Living testimony to a glorious past? A charter of rights hewn in ancient stone? Precisely for these reasons must the stones of the wall be taken from the Jews.” Thus a study of Jewish history reveals that the debate about Jewish rights in ancient Jerusalem, now as then, is linked to something larger: whether the Jewish reverence for this site, and the expressed longing for all that once occurred there, is mere “superstition,” or whether such faith is reified by the very stones that whisper still.

In the days before the May 6 Jewish pilgrimage, the newspapers of Israel, from the right-leaning Israel HaYom to the leftist Haaretz, published a poll revealing that at least 50 percent of Jewish Israelis believe that Jews should be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount. By the end of Independence Day, around 1,000 Jews had ascended to the Temple Mount, four times as many as those who had ascended on the last Independence Day before the pandemic. They were celebrated online by another minister of the government, Ayelet Shaked, heightening the contradictions in this coalition regarding a matter central to Israel’s identity. One fact is clear: The ancient stones are not silent, and the argument over the Temple Mount has only begun.

Jerusalem isn't unified until the Temple Mount is ours - opinion

When we promise not to forget Jerusalem, what is it that we conjure up in our minds and hearts? What is it that we associationally capture in order to never forget Jerusalem?

While we might have idealized visions of what the place might have looked like, we also have extensive descriptions of how the heart of the city appeared. That heart, that crown, was the Temple, of course. It was resplendent, magnificent and beckoning, yet also aloof.

If, as we learn, the nations of the world flocked to Jerusalem, it was not to visit the existing rendition of the Mahaneh Yehuda shuk (outdoor market). It was to be awestruck and moved by the presence of God’s abode on Earth: The Temple.

The Temple was the epitome of the magnificence of Jerusalem and Jerusalem as a place was indistinguishable from the Temple that crowned it. Today, we have been blessed to once again be part of the life of the city that we have sworn eternal association with. We can marvel at its old walls and we can explore, with head-shaking wonder, the newly unearthed tunnels and passages that link us to Davidic times.

But, alas, that which made Jerusalem the great city is no more, and even worse, we are hard-pressed to even visit the site of its crown. Today, those who respectfully wish to visit the Temple Mount, the enormous Herodian creation on which the Temple was built, will undergo a process of humiliation and debasement for their loyalty.

Ironically, while we triumphed miraculously some 55 years ago against an array of genocidal enemies and recaptured the Old City of Jerusalem, we almost immediately surrendered our greatest prize: the unfettered control of the Temple Mount. What ensued has been one of the greatest failures and embarrassments of the state of Israel: the willing severance of the connection of the Jewish people from its holiest site.

The Abraham Accords continues to fuel levels of cooperation between Israel and the Arab world that could not have been dreamed of two years ago.

Today, Israel and the UAE signed a free trade agreement - the first between Israel and an Arab country.

But even more amazing is that Saudi Arabia is now inviting Israeli businesspeople to the Kingdom, using their Israeli passports - and deals are being signed:

"Globes" has learned that, for months, Saudi Arabia has been permitting Israeli businesspeople - mainly representatives and managers of Israeli technology companies invited by the Saudis - to enter its territory on Israeli passports with special entry visas. The change that has taken place in recent months is the lifting of the blanket ban that had been in place, and easing of the special visa issue process.

Dozens of businesspeople have taken advantage of this opportunity and visited Riyadh, the economic center of Saudi Arabia, and also other places like Neom - the city of the future being built not far from the Red Sea coast.

These visits have spawned quite a few deals, including two desert agriculture deals worth millions of dollars....

These projects have significance for the entire Middle East, as they also demonstrate to other countries in the region Israel’s ability to assist in areas especially important to countries suffering from food shortages.

Saudis have been doing clandestine deals with Israeli companies for years, but those deals have been signed in other countries.

The article also notes that the Saudis have soured on the Palestinian cause, and there was outrage among the people at photos of Palestinians stockpiling and throwing stones and fireworks from the Al Aqsa Mosque in April.

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