Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 23, 2023

02/23 Links Pt1: American taxpayers should demand accountability from UNRWA; Biden Admin Is Blocking Attempts To Designate IRGC As A Terrorist Group

From Ian:

Republican Senators Introduce Bill to Halt Aid to Gaza

Senators Rick Scott (R-FL) and Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) on Tuesday announced the reintroduction of the Stop Taxpayer Funding of Hamas Act, which would prohibit US aid expenditures intended for Gaza so long as that aid continues to benefit Hamas and other terrorist groups.

“Israel is a country facing unyielding attacks from terrorist groups, like Hamas, who wish to destroy the Jewish state and its people,” Scott said in a statement. “Our bill, the Stop Taxpayer Funding of Hamas Act, requires the president to certify that any taxpayer money authorized to the territory of Gaza will not end up in the hands of Hamas terrorists, making clear that we will cut off ANY AND ALL ties, direct or indirect, to terrorist organizations that attack our allies.”

Critics of US aid to UNRWA – the UN agency that assists Palestinian refugees and their descendants – argue that by operating schools and hospitals in the Gaza Strip, the agency effectively benefits Hamas by relieving it of costs it would otherwise have to pay from its own budget.

“There is no circumstance in which taxpayer dollars should prop up terrorist organizations, especially when such an organization’s goal is the destruction of Israel, an important ally to us. Hamas is just such an organization,” Hyde-Smith said.

The bill follows the introduction on Monday of Republican-sponsored legislation that would cut funding to UNRWA entirely barring radical reforms to the agency.

Reviews by the State Department and independent watchdog groups routinely find UNRWA using school curricula promoting violent and antisemitic content.

American taxpayers should demand accountability from UNRWA

In July of 2022, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) thanked President Joe Biden for his financial support of Palestinian refugees, helping them “to live dignified lives (with) basic health, education and social protection services.” The funds, it said, “contribute to the human rights of Palestine refugees.”

To the average American who is not schooled in the Middle East or believes that media reporting is accurate, this sounds consistent with our values.

What was not stated was UNRWA’s educational programs, which incite violence and delegitimize and dehumanize Israelis. This is antithetical to creating an atmosphere of tolerance, respect and eventual peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) noted, “UNRWA is complicit in radicalizing schoolchildren through the glorification of terrorists, encouragement to violence and teaching of blood libels to Palestinian schoolchildren.”

“UNRWA’s Facebook pages have glorified suicide bombers, including Wafa Idris, a Red Crescent volunteer who drove an ambulance with explosives into the heart of Jerusalem, killing an elderly man and injuring more than one hundred civilians,” IMPACT-se pointed out. “Mathematical problems in UNRWA textbooks count terrorists, telling students to defend the motherland with blood. A spelling exercise condemns peace and normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states … while Israel is referred to as ‘the Enemy’ and is erased from maps of the region.”

Yet the Biden administration reinstated UNRWA funding to the tune of over $600 million in American taxpayer dollars since 2021. A White House official said UNRWA is committed to “zero tolerance for racism, discrimination and antisemitism.”

But is it?

Rights Groups Send Open Letter Demanding Re-Nomination of Axed Israel ‘Apartheid’ Activist

Dozens of human rights organizations and hundreds of individual activists on Wednesday sent an open letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanding that he reinstate the nomination of a human rights candidate who called President Biden a “senile gaffe machine.”

The Biden administration on Feb. 14th withdrew the nomination of Professor James Cavallaro to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) after The Algemeiner uncovered his history of incendiary social media posts.

The letter, published on openlettertoblinken.com in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Arabic, repeats Cavallaro’s claim that “the basis for the withdrawal of his nomination was his posts on Twitter about Israel and Palestine.”

“Withdrawing the candidacy of a distinguished human rights advocate for their criticism of human rights abuses in Israel/Palestine or any other context sets a dangerous precedent that impacts human rights advocacy across the globe,” the letter says.

Signatories to the letter include Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), CODEPINK, and Noam Chomsky.

It seems likely the three civilians killed yesterday in Nablus were killed by Palestinian fire (updates)

Palestinian government sources and media rushed yesterday to accuse Israel of "massacring" ten people in Nablus.

But how many of the dead were really killed by Israeli forces?

In an unusual tweet, an UNRWA official described the death of a former UNRWA teacher this way:

Abdelaziz Ashqar, 64 years old retired UNRWA staff was killed yesterday, a loving colleague who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was caught in a crossfire between Israeli military and armed residents in Nablus. Violence must stop. Civilians must always be protected.

If UNRWA doesn't blame Israel for the death of a colleague, that is a pretty good indication that they know that he was killed by Palestinian militants.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights seems to know the truth as well. Even though they accuse Israel of killing seven militants and three civilians, the circumstances for the deaths of the terrorists and civilians couldn't be more different:

According to PCHR’s investigations and eyewitnesses’ testimonies, at around 10:00 on Wednesday, 22 February 2023, an Israeli special force sneaked via a truck belonging to al-Sharq Company for Transportation into the eastern vegetables market in Nablus that is usually crowded at this time. The Force stationed near a 3-storey old house belonging to Waleed Riyadh Hussein al-Tawil and tightened the cordon off the house. Shortly after, IOF heavily armored by military vehicles and a drone moved into the city and started intensively shooting and firing projectiles at the cordoned house, where 3 members of the Palestinian armed group were fortified. Violent clashes broke out in the area and extended to several streets in the City. As a result, 10 Palestinians, including 3 civilians, were killed. The civilians were identified as Mohammed Farid Mohammed Sha’aban (16), ‘Abdel ‘Aziz Mohammed ‘Abdel ‘Aziz Ashqar (65), who were both shot in front of al-Rahma clinic: one in the left shoulder and chest and the other in the chest, and a 73-year-old elderly namely ‘Adnan Sabe’a B’arah (73), who was shot with 8 bullets in the neck, mouth, head and chest when he was in the vegetables market. Meanwhile, the armed group members were identified as Mohammed Khaled Majdi ‘Anbousi (24); Mos’ab Munir ‘Aweis (25); Tamer Nemer Ahmed al-Minawi (33); and Jaser Jamil ‘Abdel Wahab Kan’ir (22), who were all shot with several bullets in their heads during armed clashes.

After IOF’s withdrawal at around 13:00, three bodies were pulled from the targeted house, which sustained severe destruction. Those recovered were members of the Palestinian armed groups and identified as Walid Riyadh Hussein al-Dakhil (23), who was shot in the head and sustained fractures due to the house destruction; Husam Bassam Bashir Salim (23), who was shot in the neck and abdomen and sustained fractures as well; and Mohammed ‘Omer ‘Abdel Ghani ‘Abdel Fattah (23), who was shot with more than 20 bullets all over his body.

All of the terrorists killed were in the house. All of the civilians killed were outside, in the vegetable market or the clinic.

Palestinian groups were firing at the IDF from a several block radius.

What are the chances that the IDF, quite knowledgeable about the laws of armed conflict, shot at a vegetable market and clinic? Even if they were fired upon from those directions, one would expect their return fire would have hit at least one of the shooters - but the narrative is that they only hit civilians!

AP reported, "In the Old City of Nablus, people stared at the rubble that had been a large home in the centuries-old marketplace. From one end to the other, shops were riddled with bullets. "

The IDF is a professional army. They do not fire randomly at buildings. But Palestinian militants do indeed fire wildly. We've seen this many times.

It is far more likely that the shooters from around Nablus were firing indiscriminately and hit the Palestinian civilians. And the Palestinian propaganda machine made sure that the first story to reach the media was that Israel killed all of the ten.

Even UNRWA seems to know that this isn't true.

UPDATE 1: UNRWA took down the tweet after Palestinians were upset at the idea that it wasn't Israeli fire that killed civilians.

UPDATE 2: Joe Truzman shows video of militants wildly firing in Nablus, very close to civilians.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

"I love my mother!" Nablus terrorist said. Awww.

One of the targets that Israel attempted to arrest in Nablus yesterday, Hussam Aslim of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, went on Facebook live to tell the world that he was about to be "martyred" rather than allow himself to be taken alive.

In his final message, he included his love for his mother.

Naturally, that became a headline in Palestinian media.

The Palestinian Health Ministry also originally said that Tamer Nimer Ahmed Minawi, 14, was killed in Nablus. It turns out he was 31.

An eleventh "martyr" was added late Wednesday: a 66 year old man was said to have died from tear gas inhalation. While this is possible, it is unlikely: tear gas is designed to hurt but not to kill. While Palestinians have falsely claimed a number of victims of tear gas "suffocation" over the years, in reality people dying from tear gas that was shot in an open area is very rare.

Additionally, Palestinian officials like to attribute natural deaths to Israel when possible. In January 2009, during the Gaza war, there is evidence that many of the supposed victims of the war in fact died of natural causes - 400 are expected to die every month in Gaza.

As usual, the media doesn't bother to do the investigation to find out the truth.

(h/t Adin Haykin)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

02/22 Links Pt2: Ilan Ramon and the Words That Soared; The Arab Revolt against the British That Created the Israel-Palestinian Conflict; NYT Wins Award for Debunked Anti-Jewish Hit Piece

From Ian:

The Arab Revolt against the British That Created the Israel-Palestinian Conflict

For three years before World War II, Palestinian Arabs attacked Jews and fought against British rule—leaving roughly 500 Jews and 250 British dead. Oren Kessler, the author of a new book on the episode, explains how it laid the groundwork for much of what has transpired since then:

The Great Revolt of 1936 to 1939 was the crucible in which Palestinian identity coalesced. It united rival families, urban and rural, rich and poor, in a single struggle against a common foe: the Jewish national enterprise—Zionism—and its midwife the British empire. A six-month general strike, one of the longest anywhere in modern history, roused Arabs and Muslims worldwide to the Palestine cause.

Yet the revolt would ultimately turn on itself. A convulsion of infighting and score-settling shred the Arab social fabric, sidelined pragmatists for extremists, and propelled tens of thousands of refugees out of the country. British forces did the rest, seizing arms, occupying cities, and waging a counterinsurgency. . . . When the dust cleared, at least 5,000—perhaps more than 8,000—Arabs were dead, of whom at least 1,500 likely fell at Arab hands. More than 20,000 were seriously wounded. Arab Palestine’s fighting capacity was debilitated, its economy gutted, its leaders—above all, Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini—banished.

The revolt to end Zionism had instead crushed the Arabs themselves, leaving them crippled in facing the Jews’ own drive for statehood a decade on. . . . To the Jews the insurgency would leave a very different inheritance. It was then Zionist leaders began to abandon illusions over Arab acquiescence, to confront the unnerving prospect that fulfilling their dreams of sovereignty might mean forever clinging to the sword.

Phyllis Chesler: No one wants to hear this

Today, someone sent me an article about Iran’s plans to target Jewish leaders around the world if Israel dares attack Iran.The person who sent it my way is now worried. “What can we do?”

Yesterday, another person kept asking me: “What should we do, what can we do?”

“To stop Iran from “mapping” Jewish leaders everywhere or to educate all those, especially in the West, who might be pleased that Iran might do this?”

Merely rhetorical questions.

And so, rather recently, and rather suddenly, at least these two Jews were concerned with the lethal lies, the propaganda, that has now succeeded in turning what seems to be the entire world against the Jews and against Jewish Israel—aka, allegedly, the “Nazi, apartheid” state, the Jew of the world.

They are waking up—but do not know what to do. At least they understand that such hatred has always led to the humiliation and segregation of individual Jews, especially students and professors; to physical attacks against visible Jews globally; to the desecration and bombing of Jewish synagogues, cemeteries, schools, and centers; and, eventually, to all-out Jihad-style pogroms against Israeli civilians which consist of stabbing, car-ramming, shooting, exploding rockets, fire-kites, bombing, etc.

I don’t want to demoralize those new to the fight, but I also won’t lie.

I, and a handful of precious others, have been trying to warn Jewish and Israeli civilians, academics, human rights activists, friends, the heads of Jewish organization, UN personnel, European NGOS, anti-Islamist Muslims, about what Jew hatred is and what it does. For this, I (and others) have been dis-invited, denounced, defamed—or never even invited. Still, we all kept trying.

Itamar Ben Gvir caused a furor when he visited the Temple Mount back in January. But not really. All the umbrage regarding his “provocation”—walking while Jewish—was manufactured by bored reporters who have nothing else to write about; by left-wing reporters who lust to smear Israel in print; by Hamas, the PA, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and yes, the United States of America. The latter, of course, demanded that Israel maintain the “status quo” at holy sites, which means that the Jordanian Waqf remains in charge; Arabs get the full run of the Temple Mount; but Jews are rushed through the compound under guard and may not linger or pray. The thrust of all this is that Jews are somehow intruders in their own land, in their holiest city, on their holiest spot, and that they are stealing them from the Arabs.

It’s not a new accusation. As Alex Sternberg noted in a recent piece, ‘Al-Aqsa is in danger’ The history of a 100-year-old lie, the libel that Jews are taking over the Al-Aqsa Mosque is old. The falsehood, motivated by politics, originates with Haj Amin El-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem:

An early enemy of Zionism, Husseini regularly engaged in incitement against the Jews of then-Palestine. In 1920, this resulted in five deaths and 211 injured. In 1929, Husseini used the occasion of Tisha B’Av to tell an Arab crowd that the Jews were coming to destroy Al-Aqsa and rebuild the Temple in its place. “Al-Aqsa is in danger!” he shouted, pointing to throngs of Jews squeezing into the narrow alleyway at the Western Wall to commemorate the Temple’s destruction.

Angry mobs surged through the Jewish communities of then-Palestine, attacking peaceful Jews and raping, killing and looting. Hundreds were killed in Hebron, Safed and Jerusalem.

Husseini was jailed by the British, released shortly after and then appointed Mufti of Jerusalem. This new title gave him a coveted position within the Arab community.

Dr. Sternberg goes on to discuss Ariel Sharon’s infamous visit to the Mount which has long been said to be the catalyst for the Second Intifada, also known as the “Al-Aqsa Intifada”:

Following [Sharon’s] visit, the Palestinians launched a terrorist war that resulted in thousands of Israeli and Palestinian deaths.

Despite the claim that Sharon started the intifada, the truth was revealed years later and confirmed by Arafat’s wife and Nabil Shaath, a Fatah Central Committee member.

Sternberg’s otherwise excellent account of the events here falters. The truth was not revealed later, but immediately after the peace talks. Or at least to the Israeli army, who sent IDF representatives to brief the members of the small Judean hilltop settlement where I resided at the time, Metzad.

Sternberg description of events taking place at that time offers us the background for that briefing:

In July of 2000, Arafat returned from peace talks at Camp David with then-President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak had offered Arafat 97% of Judea and Samaria, which Arafat refused.

One of the sticking points was sharing the Temple Mount with the Jews. While Clinton considered this reasonable, it was a condition Arafat was unwilling to accept. Clinton was furious and blamed Arafat for the breakdown of the talks. Needing a diversion to deflect Clinton’s anger, Arafat ordered his underlings to plan the new intifada. Sharon’s trip to the Temple Mount took place two months later, providing a convenient excuse to launch the wave of terror.

Here too, Sternberg’s account appears to miss a crucial point: that Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount was an annual visit. This fact was well known to all, up to and including “Arafat and his underlings.” Sharon went up to the Temple Mount every year before the High Holidays—and that yearly visit was factored into the planning of the intifada from its very inception.

I know this because the same July that Arafat returned from Camp David in a tizzy, I sat among the other 30-some residents of Metzad, waiting to hear why we had been assembled. We soon learned that the army had come to warn us of a large and serious wave of Arab terror planned for September, around the time of the High Holidays (and my due date). The IDF not only had intelligence that the intifada would occur, but they had that intelligence already in July, when the intifada would have been in the earliest stages of its planning.

Already then, the Israeli army knew the Arabs would justify their unbridled slaughter of the Jews by blaming it on Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount. This was alluded to by the IDF at that meeting of July 2000 on Metzad. You might have called it a guess—the prediction that terrorists would use the annual Sharon Temple Mount visit as a pretext for violence. It wouldn’t have been a difficult guess, considering it was Sharon’s custom to visit the Temple Mount every year before the holidays. But the army didn’t need to guess, because they had cold, hard intelligence. Right from the very beginning, as things were going down.

For argument’s sake however, let’s stipulate that my memory is faulty. Let’s say the army did not know and did not actually tell us that Ariel Sharon’s impending, regularly scheduled visit to the Mount would be used to justify the slaughter. It would still have come as no surprise: El-Husseini did it 100 years ago when he incited the mobs to slaughter Jews by telling them that the “Yahud” were taking over Al-Quds. That same 100-year-old excuse was still going strong in 2000 when Sharon dared walk on the Temple Mount and it is still strong now in 2023, when Ben Gvir does the same.

Terrorists like to accuse Jews of taking over the Mount and the mosque. As much as many Jews wish that were true, the reality is that the Temple Mount is administrated by the Jordanian Waqf; and Jews aren’t even allowed to pray on the Mount, let alone enter or even go near the mosque.

Ariel Sharon, for example, did not enter the mosque or even approach it. Yet this is how his visit—the planned excuse for the intifada—was reported by the Guardian (emphasis added wherever the Guardian fudged the truth, outright lied, engaged in hyperbole, or omitted salient facts—the “people” are JEWS, the “riots” are TERROR, the “West Bank” is Judea and Samaria, the “Haram” is the Jewish Temple Mount, and so on and so forth):

Dozens of people were injured in rioting on the West Bank and in Jerusalem yesterday as the hawkish Likud party leader, Ariel Sharon, staged a provocative visit to a Muslim shrine at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Surrounded by hundreds of Israeli riot police, Mr Sharon and a handful of Likud politicians marched up to the Haram al-Sharif, the site of the gold Dome of the Rock that is the third holiest shrine in Islam.

He came down 45 minutes later, leaving a trail of fury. Young Palestinians heaved chairs, stones, rubbish bins, and whatever missiles came to hand at the Israeli forces. Riot police retaliated with tear gas and rubber bullets, shooting one protester in the face.

The symbolism of the visit to the Haram by Mr Sharon - reviled for his role in the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in a refugee camp in Lebanon - and its timing was unmistakable. "This is a dangerous process conducted by Sharon against Islamic sacred places," Yasser Arafat told Palestinian television.

All of this was and remains a lie. There was no provocation resulting in a “riot.” The intifada and its pretend catalyst had all been meticulously planned two months earlier. You might even say 100 years earlier, when El-Husseini launched the time-honored tradition of Arab terrorists blaming their Jewish victims for getting dead, a popular sport for more than 100 years.

Ben Gvir should have sold tickets.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

75 years ago: Eleanor Roosevelt urges the world to allow Jews in Palestine to get arms

From The Palestine Post, February 20, 1948:

From JTA, February 19, 1948:

New York City’s effort on behalf of the $250,000,000 national United Jewish Appeal campaign was launched today by 2,500 community leaders at the annual Women’s Division rally held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Speakers included Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, former Governor Herbert H. Lehman, Max Lerner, and Mrs. Jerome I. Udell, chairman of the Women’s Division in the 1948 campaign.

Mrs. Roosevelt, a member of the American delegation to the United Nations, told the gathering that “we must ask our government to allow the importation of arms into Palestine and to raise its embargo.” The added that “the Arab leaders have done themselves a great harm in saying that they would fight a decision of the United Nations.”

I cannot find the transcript of her speech to the United Jewish Appeal. However, she also spoke there in 1946, where she described the conditions of Jews in the displaced persons camps of Europe, and said:

On the day that I was in the Jewish camp, the main meal was some powdered eggs—scrambled eggs. The people have such a longing to create a sense of home that they would take the powdered eggs from the kitchen and take them back to the one little room that they might have.

You feel a kind of desperation about the dignity of the individual, the right to some privacy. They have done such pathetic things. The remnants of the families try so hard to make a home. I looked at these powdered eggs that were going to be carried back, and I thought, "Oh, Heavens, how horrible—the eggs will be cold when they get them back to their rooms." And yet, they would take them back, simply because—even though you ate and you slept and you sat in the same little place—that little place was home.

There is a building in this camp where children are kept who have wandered in off the road and have no older people with them. One little boy sang for me; he sang a Jewish song. Of course, these children are much smaller than they should be for their age. This little, tiny, curly-haired thing was ten years old, but he didn't look much more than six or seven. The director told me that this little boy had just wandered in with a younger brother one day, and they had been at the camp ever since. He said that this little boy always sang for them. They called him their "singer" in the camp. But he had all the appearance of a worried, old man, because the care of his younger brother and himself weighed on his shoulders.

What those children have gone through is just indescribable.

There was one old woman there whom I don't think I will ever forget, because you looked at her and you felt that this was the end of life, and that life must have been so terrible to bring one at the end to what this poor old thing faced.

It is true they want to go back to Palestine. They want to go back because that represents to them some roots.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

02/22 Links Pt1: The Gigantic Scam of the ‘Occupied Territories’; Biden administration funds anti-Netanyahu protest group; Peter Beinart’s Deceptive Attack on Israeli Democracy

From Ian:

There is no alternative to Israeli victory

Our enemies look to the past for proof of their eventual victory, often referring to the Crusades and figures like Saladin, convinced that time is on their side.

They will also know that history proves that victors do not concede or compromise until they have won and vanquished their enemies. This has been true for millennia. Our enemies see an Israel that denies this historical truth, trying to negotiate away the conflict through concessions and compromises, and failing miserably.

A country that wants victory does not act like this. A nation that wants to defeat its enemies must force them to give up any hope of ultimate victory. It must crush its enemies’ will to continue fighting.

Israel should listen carefully to Nasrallah’s words and understand their ramifications. They are the words of someone who believes in ultimate victory over Israel, even if his timeline is somewhat optimistic.

These are the words of our enemies, heard regularly in Tehran, Ramallah, Gaza, Beirut and elsewhere. Our enemies believe them and act accordingly.

People regularly ask how we can win this war against our enemies.

History has the answer: You pressure them militarily, economically, diplomatically and politically until they give up. Then they admit defeat and accept the terms of their loss.

Only then is it possible to talk about what peace might look like; a peace that might actually benefit the defeated.

Israel has tried multiple ways to end the wars waged against it, but the words of Nasrallah and others demonstrate that Israel has not succeeded.

There appears to be no alternative to an Israeli victory.

The Gigantic Scam of the ‘Occupied Territories’

I don’t even dare to think what would have happened to those Jewish fugitives from Europe and from Arab countries.

But before all that, is there in this world, a people who occupy their country of origin? There are none! All of them have been invaded, conquered, subjugated… and replaced… at the present time, this is still going on in the majority of Western countries.

So why should Israel, which has lived on this piece of land more than 5000 years ago, returns and seizes it – in fact snatches it from the hands of the usurpers who call themselves Palestinians, and be perpetually accused of occupying territories that do not belong to it?

All those invaders and settlers who to this day occupy countries that don’t belong to them should also sit in the dock, but not Israel.

Israel has only taken back what is rightfully his.

+972Mag writes an obituary for Yossi Gurvitz:

It is impossible to imagine Israeli anti-occupation writing without thinking of Yossi Gurvitz. A relentless, fearless, incredibly knowledgeable, prolific, and sharp writer, Yossi passed away last week at the age of 53.....

Yossi’s roots were as far from the left as one could imagine. He was born to a national-religious family and educated at Nehalim Yeshiva, an Orthodox boarding school...Yossi hated religious studies, and even more so the racism and nationalism he encountered at school, including among the rabbis. Gradually, he began to lose his faith. “I started devouring philosophy books,” he would later write: "By the time I started grade 11, I was Orthodox in name only. Earlier, I rejected Jewish law as racist; now I could no longer believe in a deity which was managing the world and interested in our lives … "

I only wrote about Gurvitz twice, over a decade ago, but he stuck in my mind as an exemplar of everything a journalist shouldn't be: a bigot, a liar, and an antisemite.

In 2012, Gurvitz claimed that a person wrote a halachic question to a rabbi essentially asking whether it is permitted for Israeli soldiers to rape women, and that the answer was that they could. He completely misrepresented the question and answer - as well as the rabbi's clarification after the fake story exploded. The question was about how horrible the thought of such a thing was, and the rabbi agreed. It was obvious the rabbi was saying that such an act is forbidden today, the exact opposite of Gurvitz's claim.

Gurvitz let his inner antisemite out in his original text: "Those texts were written mostly in a barbaric period by ignorant people, fuelled by the hatred of mankind which is endemic to Judaism." It leaves no doubt that Gurvitz could not be trusted to write about Judaism at all. (The +972 editors quickly changed that when they realized how bigoted Gurvitz's words were.)

In the +972 obituary, they say, "During his time at +972, his writings on the racism found in some Jewish religious texts was a constant source of editorial frustration. No matter how much the other editors and I explained that some phrases that worked in Hebrew would not translate well into English, and could lead to accusations of antisemitism (or that we should simply pick our battles), Yossi would hear none of it. What made matters worse was that none of us had the depth of knowledge to argue with him."

Notice that not one of the "journalists" at +972 even considered that Gurvitz's hate of Jews and Judaism, which he didn't hide, might color his reporting. Not once did they fact check his lies against what a knowledgeable religious Jew would say.

That is the state of +972's "journalism."

But the other time I looked at Gurvitz's work was perhaps even more damning to him and to +972. Gurvitz repeated the lie,that there were Israelis dancing in celebration of 9/11 in New Jersey. He wrote this in context of claiming that Israelis are all inherently supportive of international terrorism, a truly libelous and absurd assertion, based entirely on a couple of comments in a news article.

Again, the professional editors at +972 didn't bother to fact check Gurvitz. And again, Gurvitz's own bigotry drove the story - not the facts. The only place to find the "dancing Israelis" lie is on the very same right-wing conspiracy theory websites that +972 readers would consider antisemitic in any other context.

Why was Gurvitz reading them? Because he shared their opinion of Jews.

Yes, Gurvitz wrote thousands of other articles. I haven't read any of them. Once I saw these two, why assume that they are anomalous? It isn't like Gurvitz or 972 apologized for the lies they published.

I'm sorry Gurvitz is gone. But I am not mourning the loss of a bigot and antisemite whose hate of Jews that started when he was a teen informed his entire adult life.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

AIPAC delegation meets PLO Executive Committee head. It looks like a set up.

Hussein Al Sheikh, the secretary general of the PLO's executive committee, met with a delegation from AIPAC on Tuesday.

He tweeted, "I discussed with them Palestinian - US relations and many regional and international issues, and stressed the need for a political horizon leading to the 2SS based on international legitimacy."

These contacts began last September, when another AIPAC delegation met Al Sheikh.

AIPAC did not tweet about this meeting.

It seems that Al Sheikh, seen as a potential successor to Mahmoud Abbas, is trying to raise his profile as an international figure. While Abbas holds all the power in the PA and the PLO, arguably Al Sheikh is more powerful than the PA prime minister Mohamed Shtayyeh, since the PA only reports to the PLO.

As far as the AIPAC delegation itself, it is hard to think that they are getting anything out of these meetings. While I can understand their desire to be involved in meetings like this, and not to cede this role to J-Street which also meets with PLO officials, clearly they have no influence over any Palestinian official.

Worse, the photos of the meetings make them look like dupes. In front of the room where they met Al Sheikh are portraits of not only Abbas but murderous terrorist Yasir Arafat:

In the back of the room we can see The Map That Lies:that has been thoroughly debunked; MSNBC, McGraw Hill and others have been forced to apologize for publishing it.

But AIPAC was forced to sit submissively in a room with propaganda lies on one side and a terrorist responsible for killing thousands on the other.

Zionists should never be seen in a room like that.

While I am a supporter of AIPAC, they should have realized how they would be played and insisted on a meeting room that cannot be used as propaganda against them. Especially since they met in the very same room last September!

If AIPAC is going to meet with PLO and PA officials, they should be up front about not only the meetings themselves but also what they want to accomplish with those meetings. Without that, the only narrative is the Palestinian one, and it makes AIPAC look like star-struck puppets of the Palestinian leadership..

The PLO gains a lot politically from meetings like this on the international stage. The powerful Jewish Lobby wants to pay respects to them!

AIPAC - as far as I can tell - gains nothing.

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Credit card companies block donations to terror-supporting Samidoun via their money launderer AfGJ

In January, I reported that terror-linked groups which openly support terrorism, like Samidoun and Within Our Lifetime, fundraise through third party organizations that ensure that any donations are tax deductible.

I wrote,

The Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network was founded and is led by members of the PFLP terror group. It proudly promotes the PFLP which recruits children to attack Jews. Yet donors to Samidoun get a tax deduction, as it launders the donations through the Alliance for Global Justice, which claims to support "peace, anti-war and liberation." But AfGJ happily partners with a group that openly advocates terror.

It seems to me that IRS rules against terrorist organizations are general enough to include any of these groups that say they support violence against civilians as a legitimate means of "resistance." The organizations that launder the money, Wespac and the Alliance for Global Justice, should be examined and put on notice - the contents of these groups' websites should be enough to make an initial determination that they support terror.

It turns out that I was not the only one raising the alarm.

Also in January, the Zachor Legal Institute filed a complaint to the IRS against the Alliance for Global Justice for acting as a fundraiser for Samidoun as well as its sister French group Collectif Palestine Vaincra.

Last week, as a result of Zachor's campaigning against terror financing, the Alliance for Global Justice announced that it can no longer accept credit card donations.

Samidoun only uses AfGJ to launder their donations because they themselves were blacklisted by credit card companies and payment processors in 2019 and 2020

AfGJ claims that they do not support terrorism but Samidoun's own "By Any Means Necessary" campaigns prove otherwise - there is no other way to interpret that phrase except to say that they support and encourage terrorism against Jews in Israel.

AfGJ and Samidoun are now begging their donors to send in paper checks, which for now is still allowed. AfGJ is trying to portray writing checks as resistance: "When you make out a check to AfGJ, you are engaging in direct action, in frontline resistance to a concerted effort by the most extreme right-wing groups to stop justice in its tracks."

It will be interesting to see how the IRS responds to the complaint by Zachor Legal. By their own rules, sending money to an organization founded by and supporting PFLP terrorists should not be tax deductible.

In fact, it should be illegal.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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02/21 Links Pt2: US Supreme Court turns down appeal to Arkansas Israeli boycott law; Princeton Fetes an Anti-Semite; ‘South Park’ delivers a strong satire of Kanye West’s antisemitism

From Ian:

US Supreme Court turns down appeal to Arkansas Israeli boycott law

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to revive a newspaper's challenge on free speech grounds to an Arkansas law requiring state government contractors to pledge not to boycott Israel, a policy the publication's lawyers called a threat to a constitutionally protected form of collective protest.

The justices turned away an appeal by the Arkansas Times, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, of a lower court's ruling dismissing its lawsuit that claimed that the measure punishes participation in political boycotts based on the viewpoint expressed in violation of the US Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of free speech.

The Arkansas law, passed in 2017, requires public contracts to include a certification that the contractor is not engaged in a "boycott" of Israel, which includes "actions that are intended to limit commercial relations" with Israel or "Israeli-controlled territories." It applies to contracts worth at least $1,000.

More than half of US states have similar laws barring contractors that refuse to do business with Israel, including as part of the international "boycott, divestment and sanctions" movement that seeks to pressure Israel economically over its treatment of the Palestinians including Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Israel has called such boycotts discriminatory and antisemitic.

The Arkansas Times sued in 2018 after it was informed that in order to run advertisements for the University of Arkansas Pulaski Technical College, an institution with which it had advertising contracts for years, it would have to sign the certification.

Princeton Fetes an Anti-Semite

A dust-up at Princeton University is revealing precisely what it takes to turn campus censors and paragons of "antiracism" into champions of free speech.

The root of the controversy is the English department's decision to host, for its Edward Said Memorial Lecture, the anti-Semite Mohammed El-Kurd. No, there is no reason you would know him. As "Palestine correspondent" for The Nation, he has distinguished himself chiefly for his slanders of the Jewish people and the Jewish state, including the claim that Israelis "harvest organs" of martyred Palestinians to "feed their warriors."

On stage at Princeton—after university professor Zahid Chaudhary heralded him as a "truth teller," according to audio of the remarks reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon—El-Kurd told the crowd that Palestinians have no choice but to resort to violence against Israelis. "What else would you do if there is an occupying power in your backyard beating the shit out of your family? Of course you're gonna throw stones," he said to raucous applause. "I can just see that as a headline: 'Of course you're gonna throw stones.'"

El-Kurd is allowed to be a bigot and a moron, and Princeton to celebrate and honor his work.

But his presence on campus, and his reception by some of the school's professors and administrators, are hard to square with their devotion to "antiracism." In a statement signed by acting department chairman Jeff Dolven, the English department has pledged "to investigate racist beliefs and practices with rigor and compassion." Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber sounded a similar note when he told Princetonians, in the wake of George Floyd's murder in 2020, "We all have a responsibility to stand up against racism, wherever and whenever we encounter it."

Minters cuts ties with Adelaide Festival over Palestinian writers

Australia’s largest law firm, MinterEllison, will cut ties with the Adelaide Festival over the inclusion of two Palestinian writers with a track record of hostility against Jewish people and Ukraine.

Minters chief executive Virginia Briggs said in statement on Tuesday morning that the firm had not only withdrawn its support for the Writers’ Week part of this year’s festival, but also the entire program which covers all areas of the arts.

She also said the firm would boycott all festival events.

“We have made the decision to remove our presence and involvement with this year’s Writers’ Festival program,” Ms Briggs said.

“In addition, as these speakers are associated with the festival, we will be removing our branding from the broader festival program [where feasible] and not be attending any events of the festival.”

Louise Adler: “I don’t want us to be party to cancel culture.”

Minters has been under pressure since it emerged that Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd and Palestinian writer Susan Abulhawa were invited to speak at Adelaide Writers’ Week, which begins on March 4.

Writers’ Week director Louise Adler has resisted pressure from South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas and Jeremy Leibler, a partner of law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler and president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, to drop Mr El-Kurd and Ms Abulhawa from the program. “I don’t want us to be party to cancel culture,” Ms Adler said.

The Adelaide Festival, which runs from March 3-19, has backed Ms Adler. This led to Minters broadening its stance on the full festival.

On the festival website, MinterEllison is listed as a major partner along with the University of Adelaide, aged care provider Askech and The Adelaide Advertiser. Presenting partners include Nine, publisher of The Australian Financial Review, and The Australian newspaper.

Law firm @minterellison already pulled support ??. A list of Partners & Donors are on the festival's website. Please let them know that they are helping mainstream "Jew-hate". TA https://t.co/An2n9b4Rw7 pic.twitter.com/2CY2A7LFGO
— GnasherJew®????? (@GnasherJew) February 21, 2023

Extraordinarily dishonest headline and article. The ‘boycott’ was because of those writers’ antisemitism, not their identity. And doesn’t mention @sjabulhawa’s hatred, such as this example ?? https://t.co/XHgbPZer7f pic.twitter.com/Ho1x44Ug3O
— Dr Bren Carlill (@BBCarlill) February 21, 2023

[ A journalism academic defends El Kurd ]
Are calls to cancel two Palestinian writers from Adelaide Writers’ Week justified? Denis Muller Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne:

El-Kurd’s case is more complex: some of what he has tweeted has been denounced by the Anti-Defamation League as antisemitic.

In particular, the league has objected to his accusing Zionists of eating the organs of Palestinians and of lusting for Palestinian blood, and to his comparison of the State of Israel to the Nazi regime.

Some of what Mohammed El Kurd has tweeted has been denounced by the Anti-Defamation League as antisemitic.

By any objective test, these accusations are grossly offensive to a reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities, and civilised societies are rightly vigilant to challenge speech that creates any equivalence with the Holocaust.

However, are they antisemitic? The Anti-Defamation League says they are, and the league’s point of view must be respected.

But a counterview is that El-Kurd’s comments are directed at Zionists and at the State of Israel specifically, rather than at Jews as a people, and that therefore they are political in nature rather than racist.

This is a distinction on which people of goodwill can differ.

Two young Palestinian men were shot and killed in a family clan clash in the town of Jayyous, east of Qalqilya, in the northern part of the West Bank.

The news stories about it use a single word: "Unfortunate."

Press sources stated that forces from the security services went to the town of Jayyous and imposed a curfew to control the unfortunate events that took place in the town.

And the Directorate of Education in Qalqilya decided to close the schools in the town of Jayyus tomorrow, Wednesday, because of the unfortunate events that took place in the town this evening.

Palestine Today described the fighting as an "unfortunate quarrel."

Two young men were murdered and the only word they can use is "unfortunate?"

There's no anger. There are no calls to limit access to weapons. No, families targeting each other is as Palestinian as can be. Maybe it will be celebrated in the next exhibition of the Palestine Museum.

But if a Jew can be blamed for the death of a Palestinian, no matter how indirectly, it is "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" and sometimes a "holocaust."

Apparently, being murdered is no biggie. No one cares if a Palestinian isn't killed by the right person.

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Palestinian security prisoners in 2005

No, this isn't parody. From Amira Hass in Haaretz:

Four minutes of shower time for every Palestinian prisoner, the master has ordered, and in doing so he has opened an old-new front in our war for Jewish supremacy.
For now, the new rule can only be applied in two wings of Nafha Prison in the south because the showers are outside the cells and the guards can turn off the water main whenever they want. But the Jewish mind can be expected to devise ways of imposing the new restriction on all Palestinian political/security prisoners.
Is the idea to return to the 1960s and '70s? “Upon entering the common shower, the guard would warn the prisoners that they had to undress, shower and get dressed in very little time. He would count to 10, and during that time the prisoners had to finish showering and get dressed,” Ghazi Abu-Jiab writes about Ashkelon Prison, which served as a laboratory for incarcerating Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
Limiting shower time to four minutes is one of Nationalist Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's many moves to reduce the fabricated prisons’ five-star rating. Not three minutes, not five or six, but exactly four; the minister must have consulted with experts and mathematicians. This is the kind of applied math that we in Israel excel at and that the bureaucracy of control and subjugation needs.
For the past 10 days Palestinian inmates have been protesting the new measures, and the prison service responds with reprisals to satisfy its master. This is not a new front. Whether it's throwing a stone, writing a post online or killing Israelis, their actions are in the context of a people under occupation that is doing what any other oppressed people under foreign rule has done and that has reached indescribable levels of despair.
But in prison, Palestinian inmates become a collective “enemy” for the authorities and are punished not only by denying them their freedom but by humiliating them and denying them their humanity.

Oh, the humanity! The four minute shower is merely a gateway to a 10-second "shower and get dressed" story that cannot possibly be true!

Ms. Hass ignores one small fact: Palestinian prisoners have, for years, been wasting huge amounts of water to hurt Israel.

The practice seems to have started in the early 2000s, when Israel was suffering from a severe water shortage. "The Prisons Service in recent years has said that security prisoners leave the showers running for hours at a time. In 2007, the service said security prisoners consumed around 1,000 liters of water per day, while criminal prisoners consumed 500 liters, and civilians used 250 liters."

In 2018, the problem was just as bad:

The Israel Prison Service is reportedly exploring ‎the possibility of limiting Palestinian security ‎prisoners’ time in the shower, after learning that ‎they are wasting water on purpose.‎
Israel is grappling with a five-year drought, and the ‎public has been asked to use the precious resource ‎wisely, but according to religious news website ‎Hakol Hayehudi, security prisoners are wasting ‎‎hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of water on ‎purpose to undercut Israel’s water supply. ‎
According to the report, IPS data shows that ‎security prisoners’ wards use up far more water than ‎the criminal wards, whose inmates spend less time in ‎their cells.‎
The discrepancy between the wards’ water use is so ‎great, that it led the IPS to believe that ‎Palestinian inmates leave their showers running for ‎hours on purpose, to waste water.‎
An analysis of the data shows that ‎security prisoners use about 3.5 times more water a ‎year than the average Israeli—250 cubic meters ‎‎(‎8,830 cubic feet‎) compared to 70 cubic meters ‎‎(2,472 cubic feet).‎
As there are currently 5,800 Palestinian security ‎prisoners in Israeli jails, they seem to waste an ‎average of 750,000 cubic meters (26,486,000 cubic ‎feet) of water a year, costing taxpayers some 5.6 ‎million shekels ($1.5 million).‎

For some reason, the environmentalists at Haaretz have never felt that the purposeful waste of over a billion liters of water a year is anything to be concerned over. In fact, it is "resistance" and must be encouraged.

The other restrictions being proposed are equally reasonable. Fox News has an article that describes the unbelievable freedom that Palestinian murderers have in prison - far more than in most other countries.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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02/21 Links Pt1: Israel, PA said to have been conducting secret talks for months; U.S. Ambassador to Israel: 60% of My Time Is Helping Palestinians

From Ian:

Bassam Tawil: Killing Jews Brings Light into The Hearts of Palestinians

Just last week, the head of [Fatah], Mahmoud Abbas, received a phone call from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who reportedly promised to put pressure on Israel to halt its "unilateral measures." Needless to say, Blinken did not complain to Abbas about Fatah's incitement or the celebration of terror attacks by many Palestinians.

What makes a human being say intentionally crushing an infant beneath the wheels of a car makes the perpetrator a "hero"? What makes them call the car-ramming murder of 8- and 6-year-old brothers a "heroic commando operation"?

This is the result of decades of anti-Israel incitement and brainwashing by Palestinian leaders, which their funders have never told them to stop. As far as most Palestinians are concerned: 1) All Jews are "settlers," and 2) Israel is one big settlement that must be eliminated.

Furthermore, finding humor in a cartoon of a terror attack victim's head on a platter about to be eaten as part of a traditional Palestinian feast is hard to comprehend. Why do we keep hearing Palestinians claim that terror and glorification of the murder of innocent civilians is a "natural response"?

There is nothing "natural" about murdering Jewish children waiting at a bus stop. There is nothing "natural" about murdering unarmed civilians outside a synagogue. There is nothing "natural" about dancing and handing out candy to celebrate terrorism and the murder of Jews, or of anyone.

The EU, the US, and other international funders of the Palestinians continue to finance a government that refuses not only to condemn terror, but that actually grows it like a lucrative slave-farm for terrorists. For some Palestinians, such as the leaders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, that even includes sending women and children to blow themselves up and using babies as human shields. The leaders do not, of course, send out members of their own families for this "achievement."

Sadly, these funders do not even ask the Palestinian leaders, as a condition of their funding, to stop calling for violence and to stop rewarding murder. One has to ask: Why not? If you go to a bank and request a mortgage, the bank will stipulate conditions. That is "natural."

Considering the undisguised vitriol of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in support of terrorism -- with both words and money -- how could Israel seriously be expected to engage in any fruitful peace talks with the Palestinians?

As a New Round of Fighting Seems Poised to Begin, Palestinians Must Ask Themselves What They Have Gained from Violence

Despite the wave of terrorist attacks in the past several weeks, and the various raids the IDF has conducted on the West Bank to apprehend the perpetrators or to prevent further terror, there has not been, in Shany Mor’s view, a “spiraling escalation.” Nonetheless, Mor worries that the situation of relative peace that has held since the quashing of the second intifada is more tenuous than ever. He also warns against pending legislation that would legalize the Jewish village of ?omesh in Samaria, which was built in contravention of Israeli law:

The proposed law . . . essentially tells the armed thugs who violated Israeli law for the past few years, commandeered private property, engaged in violent scuffles with the Israel police and the IDF, and were linked repeatedly to harassment of Palestinian civilians nearby, that this is and was a legitimate way to pursue political interests.

At the same time, writes Mor, one must also look to the other side of the conflict to understand the present tensions:

Any serious discussion of the Palestinian state should ask whether or not life has improved since the Palestinians rejected statehood at the end of the Oslo process in 2000 and opted instead for violent confrontation with Israel. This isn’t a rhetorical question for Israeli public diplomacy, but one the Palestinians should be asking their leadership.

Yet to pose this question would be to acknowledge a kind of agency that exalted victimhood doesn’t allow for. It is now nearly 23 years since Yasir Arafat rejected Ehud Barak’s Camp David Summit and instead gambled on a violent terror campaign in the hope of better terms. There was no way of knowing then that this gamble would turn out so badly. At the time, it wasn’t viewed as a particularly controversial decision; what’s striking, however, is how that perception hasn’t changed.

PFLP-linked NGOs Whitewash Terror in COI Submission

On February 2, 2023, three European-funded Palestinian NGOs with clearly documented links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization – Addameer, Al-Haq, and Al-Mezan – published a submission to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC)’s permanent “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel” (COI).1 The document again accuses Israel of “Policies to Maintain and Entrench its Settler-Colonial Apartheid Regime: Violent Suppression of Demonstrations and Ensuing Wilful Killing and Injuries, Arbitrary Detention, Torture, and Smear and Delegitimisation Campaigns against Human Rights Defenders and Organisations.”

In their submission, in addition to the false accusations regarding Israel, the NGOs whitewash acts of violence by Palestinians, omitting core evidence linking Palestinians to the terror and terrorist organizations that maintain the conflict.

The following analysis provides key information omitted by these NGOs, highlighting their lack of credibility and misleading presentation. If the commissioners were genuinely motivated to independently investigate, as they claim, the COI would conduct a serious and independent investigation into the incidents, and not merely copy and paste reports from its ideological NGO allies.

European-funding
Since 2021, Al-Haq has received funding from the EU, France, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Norway, and Sweden.
Since 2021, Al-Mezan has received funding from the EU, the Netherlands, Sweden
Since 2021, Addameer has received funding from Ireland and from various local governments in Spain.

Death of Said Odeh
The NGO submission states that 16 year-old Said Yousef Mohammed Odeh was shot by IDF forces when “Palestinian protesters, who threw stones at the IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces], were met with Israeli excessive use of force, including the firing of tear gas canisters, and live ammunition.”

In contrast, according to the IDF, Odeh was shot dead by Israeli forces responding to “a number of suspects [who] hurled firebombs at troops,” near Beita, on May 5, 2021.

The NGO submission makes no mention of firebombs, nor does it indicate Odeh’s apparent access to weapons – as seen in this picture posted on Facebook. The NGOs, obscuring this essential evidence, instead used an innocuous image of Odeh to erase the reality.