Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, April 05, 2023

04/05 Links Pt1: Over 350 Arrests in Temple Mount After Clashes with Israel Police; Hackers attack Israeli media sites including Jerusalem Post; Netanyahu: ‘Iran responsible for 95% of security threats against us’

From Ian:

Shin Bet chief: Over 200 ‘significant’ terror attacks foiled so far this year

Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar on Tuesday said that security forces have foiled more than 200 terror attacks since the start of 2023.

Speaking at a pre-Passover toast alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Bar said that “only three months have passed, and this year more than 200 significant attacks have been thwarted, including about 150 shooting attacks, 20 bomb attacks, rammings, kidnappings and others.”

According to Bar, an elite unit that he described as “the last answer” to preventing impending attacks has been called up 14 times so far in 2023.

Bar also said that Israel is facing “a challenging time, both at home and abroad,” in a possible reference to the highly contentious debate surrounding the judicial overhaul.

Netanyahu vowed that “eventually we will get to every terrorist” and said “Iran is responsible for 95% of the security threats against us.”

“Those who come to harm us should know they will have their blood on their own head,” the premier said.

Tensions have spiked in the region over the past year as Israeli forces have ratcheted up arrest raids and other counterterror efforts in the West Bank following a series of terror attacks.

Palestinian terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank in recent months have left 15 Israelis dead and several more seriously hurt.

Over 350 Arrests in Temple Mount After Clashes with Israel Police

The Israel Police said on Wednesday that it had arrested more than 350 individuals who “violently barricaded” themselves in Jerusalem’s Temple Mount compound overnight.

Those detained that had locked themselves inside the Al-Aqsa mosque included “masked individuals, stone and firework throwers, and individuals suspected of desecrating the mosque,” the police spokesperson said. The clashes come nearly halfway through the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and as Jews prepare to celebrate Passover starting Wednesday evening.

“Overnight, many dozens of law-breaking and masked juveniles smuggled fireworks, clubs and stones into the mosque and violently barricaded themselves inside of it using iron rods, closets and other objects from the mosque, which they vandalized, aiming to disrupt the order while desecrating the mosque,” the police statement said.

In addition, they began to “chant incitement and riot inside the mosque, and locked its doors from the inside with obstacles and fortifications, blocking the doorways.” After repeated attempts to convince the rioters to leave the mosque failed, police “were forced to enter the compound in order to remove the individuals, allow the Fajr prayer to take place as planned and prevent a violent riot.”

The rioters attacked police forces with stones and fireworks, which led to two policemen receiving leg wounds. The rioters also caused damage to the mosque and desecrated it.

“In recent hours, all of the barricading individuals arrested tonight were transferred for questioning at the Jerusalem Precinct Operational investigation center. Following the removal of the violent rioters, Israel Police forces left the Temple Mount, and the mosque was cleaned after the rioters vandalized, defiled, and desecrated it,” the police spokesperson specified.

Following the arrests, the Fajr prayer was held at the Temple Mount as planned and a significant number of Muslim worshippers were able to attend it. However, more disturbances occurred after the prayer.

IDF Soldier Wounded by Gunfire in Beit Ummar Attack

An Israel Defense Forces soldier was wounded by gunfire early on Wednesday morning during an operation in Beit Ummar, located near Hebron in Judea.

According to the military, the soldier received medical treatment on the scene and was evacuated to the hospital.

Forces were searching the area for suspects, said the IDF.

During the mission, a violent disturbance erupted in which Palestinian burned tires and threw rocks and explosives at troops. At one point, terrorists opened fire on the soldiers, who returned fire, according to the military.

The incident comes after three Israeli soldiers were injured after being run over by terrorists on Saturday night near Beit Ummar.

On Tuesday morning, two Israeli soldiers were wounded in a terrorist stabbing near Rishon LeZion in central Israel.

Civilians on the scene subdued the Palestinian attacker from Hebron, who has since been transferred to authorities for questioning, according to police.

This video of Israeli police pushing worshipers away from the front of Al Aqsa Mosque this morning makes Israel look really bad, doesn't it?

The worshippers aren't acting aggressively. What could possibly justify this?

Here's why.

Have you ever seen Muslims worship at that place before? The mosque has been reopened since the events of this morning, there are people inside. So why are they worshipping and setting up their prayer rugs outside at that specific spot?

Because they aren't interested in prayer. They want to be human roadblocks.

Religious Jews who visit the Temple Mount must circumnavigate the entire area. They can only walk in areas where they are certain that the holiest parts of the Temple could not have been, according to Jewish law.

There is no way for them to visit the site without passing in front of the Al Aqsa mosque. And if there are people in the way, they cannot walk around them without coming unacceptably close to the place of the actual Temples.

These aren't worshippers. They are "Mourabitoun," meaning "sentinels," whose entire job is to stop Jews from visiting the site. They are paid by Islamist groups, including Hamas, to do what they can to frustrate any Jewish visitors.

In the past they would scream at and try to intimidate Jewish tourists that they saw. Now they are trying to physically block the Jews from being able to visit the site.

The Israel police are not violating the status quo - they are trying to enforce it, to allow all people to have access to the holy site, not only Muslims.

But the Mourabitoun know that videos create reality, so they positioned themselves where they knew that they would be forcibly removed, and they had the cameras ready.

To them, prayer is not an act of worship but ammunition in a weapon to remove human rights from Jews.

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!

The @NYTimes twists the facts about Al Aqsa this morning - and omits the most important one

This morning's New York Times article about the clashes at Al Aqsa mosque, written by Raja Abdulrahim and Patrick Kingsley, is filled with anti-Israel bias.

And it does not mention the single most important fact that would change the entire complexion of the article.

The Israeli police raided the most prominent holy site in Jerusalem early on Wednesday to detain scores of Palestinians who had barricaded themselves inside, prompting armed groups in Gaza to fire rockets into Israeli airspace and the Israeli Air Force to respond with strikes on military sites in Gaza.

The phrase "prompting armed groups in Gaza to fire rockets into Israeli airspace" is incredible.

Israel doesn't "prompt" deadly rocket fire. That decision is made solely by terror groups, and they will always have an excuse. But the "Newspaper of Record" shares the logic of terror groups that shooting rockets into the south of Israel is a "natural response" to events in Jerusalem.

And note the wording, "into Israeli airspace." Were they firing balloons? While some of the rockets were intercepted by Iron Dome, others hit the ground (a factory was damaged and others fell harmlessly in unpopulated areas.)

Why couldn't the NYT say that rockets were fired into Israel or towards Israeli residential areas - phrases which would be far more straightforward and accurate? Because that might make readers a little sympathetic to the victims of the rockets! Rockets that are fired into "airspace" aren't dangerous. If it wasn't for gravity, they wouldn't have hit anything at all!

The police forced their way into one of the two main prayer halls at the contested holy site, which is sacred to both Muslims and Jews. In the ensuing confrontations, police officers struck Palestinians with batons and Palestinians fired fireworks. Palestinian news outlets said the police had fired tear gas and sponge-tipped bullets.

Now, which came first - the batons or the fireworks? The Times implies that the fireworks were shot to defend against batons, which is clearly the opposite of the truth..

Here are some of the spent fireworks casings.

Clashes often occur at the Aqsa Mosque compound, which Jews call the Temple Mount, during periods of tension in the region. Officials and diplomats have been warning that the overlap of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish holiday of Passover, which begins on Wednesday evening, could make such clashes more likely.

The police said the Palestinians had locked the doors of the prayer hall, the Qibli Mosque, from the inside and barricaded the entrances, hours after the taraweeh prayers, which are held nightly during Ramadan. The police said they had raided the mosque after prolonged attempts to persuade the worshipers to leave.

...Some Palestinians had called for worshipers to go to Aqsa for itikaf, a tradition of staying overnight in a mosque for worship, which is practiced especially during Ramadan. They expressed concern that with Passover beginning, more Jewish worshipers would come to the site.

This is a gross perversion of the truth. And there is no doubt that Raja Abdulrahim is knowingly deceiving the readers.

Israel made an agreement with the Jordanian government, which controls the Waqf at Al Aqsa, that there would be no i'tikaaf at Al Aqsa on weeknights. The reason is because Palestinian and Islamist groups have urged Muslim youth to stay overnight in order to attack Jewish visitors the next morning.

Israel arranged that other nearby Jerusalem mosques would be able to accommodate any Muslims who want to adhere to the custom. In previous years, Al Aqsa did not allow i'tikaaf either.

The Waqf issued a memo confirming that no one was to stay overnight outside of Thursday and Friday nights, and the last ten days of Ramadan.

Israeli forces have been enforcing the agreement. Up until this morning, the worshipers have left peacefully. This frustrated the Islamists who have been trying to incite violence since Ramadan started. There were plenty of articles in Arabic claiming Israeli forces violently removed the worshippers, but there was no video that could incite the public.

The Islamists needed that video.

So last night, Palestinian youth barricaded themselves in the prayer hall hours after the last prayer of the night. They had already stockpiled fireworks and stones. And when they refused to leave, Israeli forces entered to enforce the Waqf agreement.

Now they had the video they wanted, as they shot fireworks and threw stones from within the holy site.

The New York Times purposefully omits anything about the agreement with the Waqf, and gives credence to the idea that Jews are the ones who are the aggressors here and Muslims have the right to block Jews from quietly praying on Judaism's holiest site:

For decades after capturing the site from Jordan in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, Israel prevented Jews from praying at the compound. But they have been tacitly allowed to do so in recent years, which has angered many Palestinians and Muslim states in the region.

And the Times further justifies the violence:

Some Jewish activists recently called for sacrificing a goat at the compound to observe Passover, something that the Israeli police have repeatedly said they would prevent.

The NYT desire to hide the fact about the agreement with Jordan to avoid events like that of this morning is clear here:

Since Ramadan began two weeks ago, the police have been forcing Muslims to leave the Aqsa compound after the nightly taraweeh prayers to ensure that they do not stay overnight. The police have also prevented many young Palestinian men from entering the mosque compound for morning prayers, according to Palestinian news outlets.

Without mentioning the Waqf memo, the reader is left with the impression that Israeli police want to disrupt an important and sacred Muslim tradition for no discernible reason.

This article may adhere to the New York Times' objectivity guidelines, but it is not objective. Every phrase is slanted to damn Israel, and the most crucial information that exonerates Israeli police actions is simply missing.

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

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An 1882 matzoh blood libel in Hungary

Here is the text of an 1883 newspaper article about a blood libel in Hungary at the time

THE PASSOVER MURDER.

Vienna, Austria, Aug. 13.—On the 3d day of August the Hungarian Jews who had been under trial on the charge of having killed a young Christian girl for the purpose of mixing her blood with the Passover bread were acquitted. The full text of the conclusion of the trial and of the judgment rendered by the public prosecution is now before me. The prosecutor frankly admitted that the prosecution had never any foundation for their charges, outside of prejudice and ignorant superstition.

T'he circumstances of this case may be summarized as follows: Early in the month of March, lt042, a young girl named Esther Solymosi, in the service of a woman living near Tisza Eslaz, in Hungary, was sent by her mistress to the town to make some purchases, and went, but never returned. As excitement and inquiry grew concerning her dis-appearance, the story began to be circulated that the JEWS HAD KILLED THE GIRL to use her blood for ritual purposes. Samuel Scharf, a child of 5 years old, the son of the Jewish butcher, was induced by liberal gifts of candy to say that his father had called the girl into the synagogue and cut her throat. The child stated that his elder brother, Moritz, a boy of 15, had held the girls' hand while his father killed her. Moritz, however, denied all knowledge of the murder, but the next day, being examined by the police, said that his father and some other Jews killed the girl, and that he had seen the whole affair through the key-hole. Thereupon, the elder Scharf, and ten or twelve other Jews, were seized and thrown into prison.

In June, 1882, a body was found in the River Thetas, dressed in the lost girl's clothes. No marks of violence were visible upon It, and this should have settled the matter and released the Jews, but public feeling was. very strong against them, and few would believe that it was the missing Esther. The body was much disfigured from long immersion in the water, the girl 'a mother refused to recognize it, the village doctor declared it to be the body of a woman of 20, and the story was circulated that the Jews had dressed another body in Esther's clothes, to turn aside suspicion from themselves.

The suspected Jews were kept in prison, and subjected to every species of indignity until June 20, l883, when their trial began, at Nyireghyaza, Hungary. It ended, as has been stated Aug. 3, in the acquittal of the accused parties. Not that there was no evidence against them, there was, on the contrary, an enormous mass of it, but it was almost wholly unworthy of belief. The only motive for the alleged crime was that the blood was wanted to mix with the Passover bread., but as no evidence whatever could be given to show this to be a custom of the Jews, it was soon dropped by the court, and the public prosecutor dismissed it with a mere allusion from his final charge.

The story of the boy Moritz, completely broke down under cross-examination, although he had evidently learned it well, and repeated it as accurately as a parrot. In more than one detail the boy contradicted himself, and by actual test it was found that through the keyhole he could not have seen nearly all the movements that he described, even had they been going on within. Moreover, the Judge would not admit the boy to oath, not merely on account of his youth, but also because of his evident LACK OF MORAL PRINCIPLE, as shown in his abjuring his religion, and the hatred be manifested toward his parents The magistrate who conducted the preliminary Inquiry last year, who seemed to have been the principal agency in giving currency to the charge, and who no doubt instructed the boy Moritz to in the lesson he repeated in court, was found to have been a convict, and to have spent twelve years In an Austrian prison for a murder. His evidence, which was brought forward to strengthen that of Moritz, was thrown out by the court. The raftsmen who had testified that they had taken another body in Esther's clothes from a Jewish woman, and sunk it in the river, afterward confessed that it was false, and they were indicted for perjury. .

Indeed the amount of false swearing and lying by witnesses un both sides, was one of the most remarkable features of the trial, and raises the question whether men and women, in a certain stage of superstition, know when they are telling the truth. As the prosecution was forced to the admission that it had literally no reliable evidence, it had nothing to do but to let the prisoners go. So they were fully acquitted, and after being kept in prison over a year, on a base and groundless charge, and while there subjected to cruelties and insults without number, and kept under trial for thirty-three days, were dismissed with the kind injunction to harbor no bitter feeling against it Christian fellow subjects. If they can obey this injunction they will prove themselves far better followers of the meek-Nazarene than those who bear his name.

Tablet magazine published a horrendous postscript to this affair in 2012:

Last Thursday, Jobbik MP Zsolt Baráth delivered a five-minute speech from the floor of parliament commemorating a blood libel that took place 130 years ago. Several days before Passover in 1882, a young girl was murdered in the Hungarian village of Tiszaeszlár, and the local Jewish community was blamed. A group of 15 accused Jews were eventually acquitted in a court trial, but the murder victim, Eszter Solymosi, has since become a martyr figure for the Hungarian right. A memorial constructed in her honor several years ago is a pilgrimage spot for Jobbik members and other far-right activists. “As we can see, there is no clear explanation, we do not know what happened to Eszter,” Baráth said. “Nevertheless, there is one point common to the known variants: The Jewry and the leadership of the country were severely implicated in the case.”

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!

04/04 Links Pt2: Dara Horn: Is Holocaust Education Making Anti-Semitism Worse?; Howard Jacobson: Dayenu? Enough Already; A Celebration of Overlapping Faiths; The PA against FIFA

From Ian:

Dara Horn: Is Holocaust Education Making Anti-Semitism Worse?

I was stunned. Rarely in my journey through American Holocaust education did I hear anyone mention a Jewish belief.

“The Jews worship one God, and that’s their moral structure. Egyptian society has multiple gods whose authority goes to the pharaoh. When things go wrong, you can see how Jews as outsiders were perceived by the pharaoh as the threat.”

This unexpected understanding of Jewish belief revealed a profound insight about Judaism: Its rejection of idolatry is identical to its rejection of tyranny. I could see how that might make people uncomfortable.

Decoster moved on to a snazzy infographic of a wheel divided in thirds, each explaining a component of anti-Semitism: “Racial Antisemitism = False belief that Jews are a race and a threat to other races,” then “Anti-Judaism = Hatred of Jews as a religious group,” and then “Anti-Jewish Conspiracy Theory = False belief that Jews want to control and overtake the world.” The third part, the conspiracy theory, was what distinguished anti-Semitism from other bigotries. It allowed closed-minded people to congratulate themselves for being open-minded—for “doing their own research,” for “punching up,” for “speaking truth to power,” while actually just spreading lies.

This, she announced, “aligns with the TEKS.”

The teachers wrote down the information.

The next day, the teachers listened in silence to J. E. Wolfson of the Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Commission as he walked them through a history of anti-Semitism in excruciating detail, sharing medieval propaganda images of Jews eating pig feces and draining blood from Christian children. Wolfson clarified for his audience what this centuries-long demonization of Jews actually means, citing the scholar David Patterson, who has written: “In the end, the antisemite’s claim is not that all Jews are evil, but rather that all evil is Jewish.”

Wolfson told the teachers that it was important that “anti-Semitism should not be your students’ first introduction to Jews and Judaism.” He said this almost as an aside, just before presenting the pig-excrement image. “If you’re teaching about anti-Semitism before you teach about the content of Jewish identity, you’re doing it wrong.”

I thought about the caring, devoted educators in the room, all committed to stamping out bigotry, and knew from my conversations with them that this—introducing students to Judaism by way of anti-Semitism—was exactly what they were doing. The same could be said, I realized, for nearly all of American Holocaust education.

The Holocaust educators I met across America were all obsessed with building empathy, a quality that relies on finding commonalities between ourselves and others. But I wondered if a more effective way to address anti-Semitism might lie in cultivating a completely different quality, one that happens to be the key to education itself: curiosity. Why use Jews as a means to teach people that we’re all the same, when the demand that Jews be just like their neighbors is exactly what embedded the mental virus of anti-Semitism in the Western mind in the first place? Why not instead encourage inquiry about the diversity, to borrow a de rigueur word, of the human experience?

Back at home, I thought again about the Holocaust holograms and the Auschwitz VR, and realized what I wanted. I want a VR experience of the Strashun Library in Vilna, the now-destroyed research center full of Yiddish writers and historians documenting centuries of Jewish life. I want a VR of a night at the Yiddish theater in Warsaw—and a VR of a Yiddish theater in New York. I want holograms of the modern writers and scholars who revived the Hebrew language from the dead—and I definitely want an AI component, so I can ask them how they did it. I want a VR of the writing of a Torah scroll in 2023, and then of people chanting aloud from it through the year, until the year is out and it’s read all over again—because the book never changes, but its readers do. I want a VR about Jewish literacy: the letters, the languages, the paradoxical stories, the methods of education, the encouragement of questions. I want a VR tour of Jerusalem, and another of Tel Aviv. I want holograms of Hebrew poets and Ladino singers and Israeli artists and American Jewish chefs. I want a VR for the conclusion of Daf Yomi, the massive worldwide celebration for those who study a page a day of the Talmud and finally finish it after seven and a half years. I want a VR of Sabbath dinners. I want a VR of bar mitzvah kids in synagogues being showered with candy, and a VR of weddings with flying circles of dancers, and a VR of mourning rituals for Jews who died natural deaths—the washing and guarding of the dead, the requisite comforting of the living. I want a hologram of the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks telling people about what he called “the dignity of difference.”

I want to mandate this for every student in this fractured and siloed America, even if it makes them much, much more uncomfortable than seeing piles of dead Jews does. There is no empathy without curiosity, no respect without knowledge, no other way to learn what Jews first taught the world: love your neighbor. Until then, we will remain trapped in our sealed virtual boxcars, following unseen tracks into the future.

Howard Jacobson: Dayenu? Enough Already

One of the most enjoyable parts of the Passover ceremony is the singing, invariably full-throated in my experience, of all 15 verses of “Dayenu”:

Had he brought us out from Egypt, and not carried out judgments against them—Dayenu, it would have sufficed us! Had he carried out judgments against them, and not against their idols—Dayenu, it would have sufficed us! Had he destroyed their idols, and not smitten their first born, Dayenu …

… Enough already!

That, of course, though we thought our comical uncles blasphemous when they said it at the Seder table—“Enough already, when do we eat?”—is what the word Dayenu means. “It would have sufficed”; “it would have been enough”; “we can imagine a point at which we would have been satisfied”—except that as a people we are never satisfied.

In the midst of gratitude there is always a little something else we feel we have to ask for. Isn’t this what the Dayenu means? Hence the number of rogue, shopping-list Dayenus that spring up every day: feminist Dayenus, gay Dayenus, Zionist and anti-Zionist Dayenus, even, I recall reading, a Dayenu praising the invasion of Iraq—“If He had destroyed the Ba’ath party idols, and not smitten Uday and Qusay—Dayenu, it would have been enough for us.” The Dayenu is a please masquerading as a thank-you. We give thanks in order to ask for more.

We sing Dayenu at a solemn moment in the Seder service, soon after we have spilled a drop of wine from our glasses, one drop for each plague. It is a song of praise to the Almighty, thanking Him for our deliverance from slavery in Egypt and for the many gifts, including the Sabbath and the Torah, He bestowed upon us thereafter. As such, it is a spiritual high point of the service. Yet we sing it with immense gusto and, at many a Seder I’ve attended, mirth. A mirth that is over and above the pleasure we take in the inordinacy of God’s munificence. Why? Because we know that we are making a great joke at our own expense.

Without doubt it is owing to God’s bounty and protection that we are in a position to be making jokes at all. But, as with all good jokes, there is a whiff of terror in this one, too. How funny would it have been had God left the job half-done—and each verse pivots around a job half-done—how funny will it be when the things He doesn’t do outweigh the things He does?

Could we say that this dread is no less psychological than historical? We fear abandonment. What happens when the giving stops?

A Celebration of Overlapping Faiths

We have done the best we can to make this world not only bearable, but beautiful for our children, with Jewishness and Muslimness not only familiar, but an unwavering home for them and also, with them, an unwavering home—built by Noah and Yusuf, so many other prophets, so many surviving texts—for ourselves. Their both-ness has given us a shelter from the questions, the audacity of those who call my children, who are my everything, nothing, those small and painful daily storms.

And they, our children, have already made me, as a Jew, far more whole: connecting with my traditions, from the baking of hamantaschen to the recitation of Torah, in order to pass them on. They are the reasons that I joined a synagogue for the first time, and why I have crafted a life in Germany centered on the redemption of Jewish life.

On Passover, we conclude with the words “next year, in Jerusalem,” to describe longing for the Jewish homeland. Today’s Jerusalem is a place of conflict, but also one imbued with the cultures, the heritage, and the hopes of all three Abrahamic religions, together and apart. This year in Italy, we will celebrate Passover with an iftar on Easter, with the Four Questions of the youngest child, who will now be Sami, reading the Haggadah for the first time. My husband will break his fast not with bread but with matzo.

This day will be one of the only days on which we are not asked to choose: a day on which I, a Jewish mother, can celebrate with my Muslim husband, while remembering my Christian father. And if I hold this moment close, perhaps it will give me strength, so that the next time someone asks what we have chosen for our children, I can confront their uncertainty with stories of this Passover, this iftar on Easter in Italy. I may tell them that our Jewish-Muslim children are living, breathing proof that we are not all the same, but that we spring from the very same source. But I will also warn them that this does not make them nothing. Nor are we, my family, everything. We are simply at home in the intersections and overlaps of our traditions, not in-between, but knee-deep in the plurality that makes our world beautiful and also whole.

There is so much that we, in this simple togetherness, have and can overcome.

Official Palestinian propaganda, edited to reflect the truth

The official Wafa news agency published this report in its English edition today.

I have shown how the story would be marked up by any editor who was more interested in truth rather than anti-Israel propaganda.

JERUSALEM, Tuesday, April 4, 2023 (WAFA) – Israeli police this morning and since last night restricted entry of Muslim worshippers into Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, a site Muslims seek to hold all day and night prayer vigils during the holy fast month of Ramadan, in order to secure entry of Jewish fanatics into the Muslim holy compound. The Jordanian Muslim Waqf authorities had already agreed to restrict the all-night vigils, and those who are trying to spend the night are violating that agreement.
Local sources said the police checked the ID cards of people trying to hold the dawn prayers inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and turned back the young ones potential troublemakers at its gates.
Extremist Muslim groups like Hamas have encouraged Muslims to stay overnight to be in position to harass Jewish visitors the next morning.
At the same time, the police forcefully peacefully removed all worshippers from the Mosque following the late-night prayers and prevented worshippers from keeping an all-night vigil as per Israel’s agreement with Jordan, which the Waqf has publicized.
Meanwhile, dozens of Jewish fanatics stormed Jews visited the holy compound since today’s early hours, walking around its yards and some holding religious rituals in violation of the decades-old status quo that specifically ban non-Muslims from performing any kind of religious ritual inside the walled, 144-dunum holy compound that includes Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock along with several other prayer buildings. praying quietly and respectfully as Jews have been doing for years at their most sacred spot without incident.

Under international law, Jews have the right to worship in their holy spaces.

Muslim officials expressed concern that Jewish fanatics Jews intend to bring in animals to sacrifice inside the compound tomorrow as an offering with the start of the Jewish Passover holiday, a step they warned could spark serious trouble.
The fanatic These groups, encouraged by the presence of a far-right Israeli government that includes extremists ministers in key posts, have advertised rewards for anyone who can bring in animal offerings inside the compound to sacrifice for the religious holiday.
Israeli police have instructions to block any such attempt, and they have done so in previous years under other governments, so the stated fears of Muslim officials are baseless. Their statements of concern appear to be designed more to incite violence than to tamp it down.

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!

04/04 Links Pt1: Biden's Anti-Israel Policy Empowers Iran, Palestinian Terrorists; Left-wing Israeli group provides legal aid to PA terrorists; U.S., Iran Reportedly Discussing New Interim Nuclear Deal

From Ian:

Biden spares Iran and scolds Israel

The reference to “a fielded nuclear weapon” makes it clear that Biden will not use force to stop Iran from breaking its nonproliferation commitments and producing one or more nuclear weapons. He just wants Iran’s nuclear file off his agenda and out of the way—in other words, he seeks to kick the can down the road.

The Biden administration is certainly not going to let Israeli or other critics get in its way. It does not want Israel to strike Iran. The best route to ensuring Israeli compliance with U.S. policy on Iran, in practice if not in declaration, is by threatening U.S. distancing from Israel on matters of “democratic principle” or matters related to the Palestinians.

What is particularly sad here is that there are ways of halting Iran’s inexorable march toward a nuclear bomb and regional hegemony without necessarily arriving at war.

In an important article published this week in Newsweek, two top Israeli security experts (Meir Ben Shabbat of the Misgav Institute for Zionist Strategy & National Security and Eran Lerman of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy & Security) argued that a credible U.S. military threat against the regime of the ayatollahs would reduce the risk of actual war. It also could reverse the drift of regional players towards Russia and China. Without such a U.S. threat, the likelihood of a violent eruption in the Middle East will significantly increase, they say.

A real Biden administration roadmap for countering Iran would include the following, according to Ben Shabbat and Lerman: Snapback sanctions on Iran with tight supervision (especially of Iranian oil exports and dual-use technologies), terrorist designation of the IRGC across Europe, suspension of Iranian membership in international forums, sanctions and economic pressure on individuals and organizations involved in repressing human rights, penalties on key Iranian industries, covert disruptive measures against Iran’s nuclear program and, most saliently, articulation and demonstration of a credible military threat against the Iranian regime.

Making this even more precise, Mark Dubowitz and Orde Kittrie of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington have outlined more than 200 specific measures (in the military, cyber, financial, energy, legal and diplomatic spheres) that U.S. government agencies can take in “deploying multiple elements of national power” to confront threats from Iran.

Taken together, these measures will enhance American deterrence and prevent war. They will obviate the need for Israel to strike Iran. Alas, Biden prefers to make allowances for Iran and reprimand Israel—to spare the ayatollahs and scold Netanyahu.

Bassam Tawil: Biden's Anti-Israel Policy Empowers Iran, Palestinian Terrorists

US President Joe Biden appears more worried about the Israeli government's plan for judicial reform than the growing support among Palestinians for terrorism against Israel.

He seems more concerned about a plan to fix the deeply broken judicial system in Israel than about Palestinian threats to destroy Israel and kill as many Jews as possible.

We did not see Biden raise any objection over the Palestinians' "Pay for Slay" policy, which rewards terrorists and their families for the murder of Jews. We did not see Biden raise any objection over the Palestinian leaders' glorification of terrorists, who are being celebrated as "martyrs" by a majority of Palestinians. We did not see Biden raise any objection over the thousands of Palestinians who regularly take to the streets to celebrate the murder of Jews in terror attacks perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists.

As Biden was criticizing the democratically elected prime minister of Israel, senior (unelected) Palestinian officials were continuing to use every available podium to spread more libels against Israel.

Has Biden ever shown any concern that the Palestinians are living under highly undemocratic regimes, with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip? Has Biden or anyone from his administration ever asked the Palestinians why they do not have a functioning parliament?

The crisis Biden has triggered with Israel because of his recurring criticism of a badly-needed judicial reform plan is great news for Iran and its Palestinian proxies, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), two of the many Islamist terror groups that openly call for the elimination of Israel.

By sparking a crisis with Netanyahu and the Israeli government, Biden has succeeded in bringing happiness to the enemies of both Israel and the US, perhaps in an effort that will be fruitless, to appease them. The message the Biden Administration is sending is that you are rewarded if you are an enemy of the US but punished if you are a friend.

Biden has placed himself alongside the mullahs of Iran who are expressing hope that the protests against the Netanyahu government will lead to the "collapse of the Zionist regime."

Report: Left-wing Israeli group provides legal aid to PA terrorists

A watchdog organization on Sunday released undercover hidden camera footage showing senior Palestinian Authority officials referring families of terrorists who murdered Jews to HaMoked, an Israeli organization, for legal assistance.

The undercover footage was released by the group Ad Kan, which works to expose far-left organizations which work against the IDF and the State of Israel.

HaMoked’s budget is based primarily on funding from European governments and the New Israel Fund.

Ad Kan also revealed Sunday that families of terrorists and terrorists themselves claim that when they decide to carry out an attack, they feel supported by the assistance of HaMoked, which allows them to make the decision to commit a terrorist attack.

The report showed that every year, thousands of Palestinian Arabs turn to HaMoked and receive free legal assistance and representation from the organization. The vast majority of applications come from terrorists, terrorist suspects and their families. HaMoked doesn’t differentiate between the terrorists to whom it gives free legal counsel even if the applicant is a mass murderer of Israeli children.

In an in-depth audit conducted into the activities of HaMoked in 2017, it was determined that the organization helps Palestinian Arabs only, and therefore does not meet its stated objectives (which enable it to be classified as a charity) - assistance to every person in need. As a result, the objective and mission of the organization were changed to include aid to Palestinian Arabs only.

The absolute majority of funding for HaMoked's activities comes from abroad, from foreign funds and political entities that transfer millions of dollars and Euros a year to HaMoked. Between the years 2007 and 2018, HaMoked for the Protection of Individuals received a total of 20 million dollars, mostly from foreign entities and governments. Among the countries funding HaMoked between the years 2007 - 2018 are Norway, Spain, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Finland, Switzerland, the European Union and United Nations. In addition, the New Israel Fund, and the Ford Foundation donated more than a million dollars to HaMoked during those years.

Israel to increase funds for monitoring illegal Arab Area C construction

From Haaretz:

The Israeli ministry that oversees settlements intends to double the budget allocated to settlers for drones and inspectors to monitor Palestinian construction. The National Missions Ministry intends to allocate a total of 40 million shekels ($11.1 million) for this purpose.

In 2020 the National Missions Ministry – then the Settlement Ministry, and headed by Likud lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi – announced for the first time that it would allocate 20 million shekels ($5.5 million) to these departments, to be disbursed among the settlements. The funds were eventually transferred much later, under the Bennett-Lapid government.

Under the leadership of National Missions Minister Orit Strock, that budget is projected to double. A recently published call for tenders stresses that the budget will only be allocated after the state budget is approved.

Good!

There are lots of Western NGOs who put everything Israel does in Area C under a microscope - while they ignore, or encourage, Arabs to build in the same area.

The EU even puts its own name and logos on these illegal settlements, built nowhere near any infrastructure, positioned specifically to stop Jews from building - or to stop the IDF from being able to use existing military zones.

In 2016, I created this animation of satellite images showing a bunch of illegal structures being built. I've gone on tours and seen these structures up close - often with EU logos.

Masafer Yatta, which is a favorite topic among the anti-Israel woke, is likewise a new community built in Area C - not an ancient Palestinian village being threatened.

It is hard to describe how prevalent this illegal building is without seeing it yourself. So this modest increase of funding to help document the many, many illegal Palestinian structures is a welcome development.

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!

Guess who wanted to see Arabs transferred out of Palestine in the 1940s?

Zachary Foster of Princeton University tweets a "gotcha:"

This appears to be an accurate representation of what Weitz wrote in his diary in 1941. But what Foster leaves out is that David Ben Gurion rejected Weitz's desire to create a transfer committee in 1948, during the actual fighting.

Was the idea of population transfer mainstream in Zionist thought? It wouldn't be a huge surprise if there were prominent Zionists who felt that this was the best possible solution to avoid huge amounts of bloodshed. What the critics of Israel don't want people to realize is that while transfer is considered a war crime today, up until the 1940s it was considered a viable solution for many conflicts (see India/Pakistan for a classic example, as well as some 20 million Europeans transferred in the years after World War II.) Before World War II there were mass population transfers also to avoid ethnic conflict that were approved by the League of Nations.

Jews at the time are being subject to the international law of today. That is yet another form of antisemitism.

In 1944, a prominent group of people promoted the idea of population transfer of Arabs out of Palestine.

The British Labour Party.

The Palestine Post⁩, 26 April 1944⁩

If anything, based on all available evidence, the Labour Party was far more enthusiastic with the idea of population transfer of Arabs than the Zionist Jews were.

Yet no one today damns the British Labour Party as promoting ethnic cleansing in the 1940s. Only the Jews of the 1940s are tarred with that particular brush. And they still are today, despite all the evidence showing it is a lie.

Without context of how the world not only accepted but promoted all kinds of population transfers in that time period, the charge against Zionist Jews of the 1940s is deceptive at best, and a malicious slander at worst.

Which goes to show yet again that antisemitism never went away - it just morphed into new and sophisticated forms.

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!

For the past week, Palestinian Arabic media have been filled with stories about how a Jewish extremist group planned to offer a Passover sacrifice on the Temple Mount.

Most of them never mention that the same group has made the same or similar plans in previous years, and they were always stopped well before any potential scary lamb would be brought anywhere close to the Al Aqsa Mosque or any other Muslim site on the esplanade.

Then, on Monday:

The head of the Returning to the Mount movement, Rafael Morris, was detained on Monday on suspicion that he was going to try and sacrifice the Paschal sacrifice on the Temple Mount, as police completed their preparations ahead of the Passover holiday, which will begin on Wednesday evening.

Two activists from the movement were arrested last month after putting up notices in Arabic in the Old City of Jerusalem offering payment to anyone willing to store lambs near the Temple Mount for the Paschal sacrifice.

As of this writing, a day after the arrest, I do not see a single Palestinian news site mention this - even as they continue to write extensively about the "threat" of an animal sacrifice at Al Aqsa.

In fact, Hamas announced today that the stabbing of two Israeli soldiers in Israel are a "response" to the planned sacrifice that will never happen as well as to Jews visiting the Temple Mount normally.

If they really were so frightened of the worldwide repercussions of a lamb appearing on the site, wouldn't they consider this arrest to be good news, or at least newsworthy?

But one would not expect to see any coverage of Israeli arrests and Israeli forces physically blocking any Jews from breaking the law if the point of the coverage is to incite violence against Jews on Ramadan.

They want anger and hate towards Israel and Jews, and any news stories that blunt their accusations must be censored.

They are trying to provoke the very religious war that they love to warn the West that Israel is provoking.

And then, when Passover comes and goes with no sacrifice, they will claim that it was their steadfastness that blocked the Jews from their attempts to slaughter the lamb, and not Israeli policy.

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!

04/03 Links Pt2: World Vision, Prominent U.S. Evangelical Charity, Caught Funding Jihadis; How J Street Turned Democrats Against Israel; Telling a Story Founded the Jewish Nation

From Ian:

World Vision, Prominent U.S. Evangelical Charity, Caught Funding Jihadis

When U.S. officials discovered that World Vision was funding a designated terror group, they ordered WV to stop paying ISRA, but WV maintained its relationship with the organization. In January 2015, WV said it had "discontinued any future collaboration." Yet almost a year later, WV posted a job position working with ISRA in December 2015, apparently indicating it had not ceased collaborating as it claimed.

Around the same time, World Vision partnered with yet another group that "has helped fund the Hamas military wing," the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH).

In 2012, World Vision was exposed using Australian government dollars to fund a terrorist front group operating in the West Bank. World Vision was funding the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), a front group for the U.S. terror designated Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Australian Solicitor Andrew Hamilton, who worked with the Israel Law Center which exposed the funding, told the Jerusalem Post that, "The Union of Agricultural Work Committees is an integral part of the proscribed terror organization, the PFLP, that Australian citizens and corporations are prohibited from providing support to."

In an email to FWI, Hamilton called on the recently elected Australian Government "to initiate a detailed criminal investigation into the Halabi scandal."

"For more than a decade, World Vision Australia has avoided justice in Australia for its criminal activities in funding PFLP terrorism using Australian taxpayer money obtained by deception," Hamilton told FWI.

"It would be reasonable to assume that if a smaller organization, whose CEO [Tim Costello] was not the brother of a former federal Treasurer [Peter Costello], had similarly deceived the Australian Government to obtain taxpayer funds which were then sent to terrorists, then they would have been prosecuted to the full extent of the law." (FWI has attempted to obtain a response from the Costellos and from World Vision Australia, but has been unsuccessful.)

In 2010, World Vision partnered with a group headed by a PFLP operative, Khaled Yamani, who led the Palestinian Children and Youth Foundation in Lebanon. And a few years prior to that, WV signed joint memoranda with the U.S. designated terror group Interpal, a financial supporter of Hamas.

WV responded to FWI's inquiry regarding the claims made by Cliff Smith in an email declaring, "We remain adamant we are committed to a positive relationship with Israel in our humanitarian work and we do not now, and never have, supported terrorism."

World Vision portrays itself as a "global Christian humanitarian organization." McDonnell asks how WV's support of Islamist terrorists is really in line with the Gospel message it presents. "To see this activity from World Vision in Sudan and then continuing in Israel too—it just makes me wonder: 'What kind of Christians are supporting a group that is funding terrorists?'"

Yisrael Medad: Update on Cordoba: "cultural reductionism"

Spanish Church ‘accused of glossing over Muslim identity of Cordoba’s Great Mosque’

February 28 2023,
The Catholic Church has been accused of glossing over the Muslim identity of the Great Mosque of Cordoba with a visitor centre that emphasises its Christian origins.

The Church’s planned centre for the mosque, which has served as a cathedral since the Spanish city’s reconquest by Christian forces in 1236, aims to “correct” what it deems to be an overly Islamic vision of the city’s past.

“The need to redesign the entire space [of the mosque area] derives from the finding that Cordoba is marked with a very powerful cultural label: that of a Muslim city,” said a report by Demetrio Fernandez, the Bishop of Cordoba.

The mosque has served as a cathedral for hundreds of years and is used for traditional processions at Easter

“The cultural reductionism is so strong that it has the capacity to eclipse the brilliant Visigoth, Roman and Christian [periods]..."

So, Muslims are engaged in cultural reductionism of Jerusalem as the capital of Judea, where the Temple stood on Mount Moriah?

Telling a Story Founded the Jewish Nation

Many of the basic fundamentals of the seder—not only eating matzah and bitter herbs, but also relating the story of the liberation from Egyptian bondage to one’s children—can be found in Exodus 12, which is set in Egypt just before the tenth plague. By imagining what this archetypal seder might have been like, Cole Aronson explores the ritual’s meaning for Jewish history:

You don’t tell the children they were once slaves in Egypt, because that’s all they know. But it wasn’t always so, you tell them—long ago, their ancestors enjoyed over a century of freedom under God. God chose to raise the patriarchs up from the idolatry of their native culture and gave them a covenantal life. A famine some generations later compelled the chosen family to live in Egypt, first as guests and then—until now—as slaves. Tonight, God will keep His promise to the patriarchs and restore the Israelites to His service.

What the parents of the Exodus told their children was the very first maggid the first “telling” of Passover night. But the story as originally told didn’t commemorate the founding of the Jewish nation. Telling the story founded the Jewish nation.

Until the Exodus, the before-time of the patriarchs was a rumor whispered by strangers subjugated in a strange land. On the Exodus night, teaching the children about God’s choice of Abraham converted his descendants into his self-conscious heirs. A free nation was created by restoring a memory of itself. The pageantry of the seder is often and correctly said to recreate the Exodus night in order to tell a story. The reverse is also true. Jews recreate the Exodus night in part by telling a story that the Exodus parents must have told their own children 3,500 years ago, and with the same function—initiating youngsters into the chosen people of God.

A year ago, I went through the history of the scurrilous "apartheid" charge against Israel and showed how the same playbook could be used to accuse Israel of "genocide" - twisting the definition of the term, socializing the charge starting with the extremists and then getting more mainstream Israel haters to write pseudo-academic papers "proving" Israel is engaging in it, and then finally having mainstream NGOs pretend to look at the issue objectively while perverting the meaning of the term.

My prediction is coming true.

Michael Barnett, Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at George Washington University, wrote an absurd article for a blog called "Political Violence at a Glance" where he asks, "Is Israel on the precipice of genocide?"

He knows that Israel isn't guilty of genocide now - instead, he says that it has all the risk factors in place today:

Genocide is impossible to predict: there is no agreement on how the combination of preconditions, contingent paths, triggers, and entrepreneurs produce a form of violence once unimaginable. But research on genocide over the past several decades has provided insight into the preconditions, which provide a reasonable starting point.

Preconditions are not predictors. If we use them to predict genocides, we will overpredict. But a look at the UN’s report on atrocity crimes, which lists risk factors for genocide and “lesser” forms of organized violence, is illuminating. It lists eight common and six specific risk factors. The eight common factors are situations of armed conflict or other forms of instability; record of serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law; weak state structures; motives or incentives; capacity to commit atrocity crimes; absence of mitigating factors; enabling circumstances or preparatory action; and triggering factors. These are, as the document states, general risk factors. Many states might qualify. Israel ticks all the boxes.

Really? Israel has weak state structures? Israel has motives or incentives to destroy all Palestinians? Israel has "triggering factors" for genocide? Israel has no mitigating factors???

Barnett makes these pronouncements as if they are beyond dispute - but anyone who knows anything about Israel knows they are fiction.

Anyone who believes that is already an antisemite ab initio.

I don't think Barnett actually believes any of this. He once taught at Hebrew University. No, this is worse than stupidity - this is malicious.

Notice also that while the UN report is concerned with all war crimes - a far more expansive terrain - Barnett represents this already flawed list as proof that Israel is readying for the worst possible crime, genocide.

He did this knowingly.

Barnett's intent was to write an article saying Israel is on its way to the crime of genocide, and he then cherry picked third rate evidence to pretend to prove his thesis and ignored anything that shows it is garbage. His main example is Huwara, which was widely condemned across Israeli society, yet he positions it as mainstream and government policy.

It isn't scholarship. It is deceit cloaking as scholarship.

And, by the way, applying those criteria to Hamas or the Palestinian Authority shows that they are much closer in checking off all the boxes than Israel is. The only missing one is the capacity - and the only reason they haven't gotten that capacity is because Israel constantly frustrates Iranian attempts to give them that capacity.

And Iran checks off every single box. Including openly creating a weapon with the single purpose of murdering millions of Jews.

Barnett appears to be trying to set the stage so that accusing Israel of genocide in five or ten years doesn't sound so outlandish. People hear the words "Israel" and "genocide" together for a few years and they start to figure where there's smoke, there's fire. It is exactly what happened with "apartheid."

We'll be seeing more articles like this - not because they have any basis in reality, but because there are enough modern antisemites today to want to create that perception of reality.

UPDATE: Ian notes in the comments: