Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 28, 2015

My very small part in restoring a synagogue in Kfar Hashiloach

For the first time in 77 years, festive Jewish prayers were held on Monday in one of modern Jerusalem's oldest synagogues: The long-hidden and inaccessible Hechal Shlomo of the Yemenite village.

Dozens of people took part in the joyous festivities, which marked the full circle of Jewish settlement in eastern Jerusalem. Minister of Agriculture Uri Ariel (Jewish Home) – amidst traditional Yemenite Jewish prayers, music and foods, and some Ashkenazim and Sepharadim as well – took part in the re-dedication of the synagogue. Affixing the mezuzah to the doorpost, he recited the traditional blessings, including "Blessed is He Who restores the borders of the widow."

It was back in 1885 that Yisrael Dov Frumkin founded the village, built the synagogue, and paved the way for some 65 Yemenite Jewish families to live on the slopes of the Mt. of Olives. Most of the land land had been contributed by a Zionist philanthropist known as Boaz HaBavli.

The settlement thrived, but in the 1930's, the Arab riots that engulfed the Land of Israel did not pass over the Yemenite Village. The British rulers told the Jews that they could not protect them and that they must leave, but promised to look after their property and that they could later return.

Daniel Luria of the Ateret Cohanim Association, which oversaw the modern return to the synagogue, explained what happened next: "A year later, Shlomo Ze'evi – father of the famous Rehavam (Gandi) Ze'evi – stood in this very synagogue, and was shocked and angered at the destruction that the Arabs had wrought here." There was also great bitterness at the British and their promises; the Jews were not allowed to return to their homes.

Now, years later, Ateret Cohanim and many happy Jews were able to return and celebrate another milestone in the national return of the Jewish People to their sacred homeland. This followed great efforts in re-purchasing the Jewish owned properties, resettling Jewish families in various buildings around the neighborhood, and carefully identifying each structure.

Luria emphasized very clearly: "People must understand that this neighborhood was built by Yemenite Jews 130 years ago - way before any Arabs ever lived here." He pointed to a photograph taken at the time: "This shows the Jewish houses, and the synagogue itself in which we are standing now – and nothing else around them." Now, of course, the houses are surrounded by dense Arab construction, much of it illegal.

I had a small part in bringing that photograph to light.

When researching an article about Kfar Hashiloach in 2010, I saw mention of this photograph, showing that only Jewish-owned houses were on that hillside, in a Wikipedia entry, but could not find the book that had it. I did see that five years earlier, Robert Avrech of Seraphic Secret had checked the book with the photo out of his local library. I asked him if he could scan it for me, and I published it along with an article about how the world considers Arabs the native residents of an area that was built wholly by Jews.

While the current "Arab Silwan" was built on top of a Biblical-era Jewish settlement and a large number of ancient Jewish graves, this specific area was first populated in the 1880s by Yemenite Jews.

Video report from Arutz-7:

Ma'an reports:

A Swedish company established in 2007 was used to cover up the sale and transfer of a West Bank church compound to settlers funded by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz, Israeli media reports.

Spotlight has been held on the church compound, located nearby the Palestinian refugee camp al-Arrub between Bethlehem and Hebron, for the last week due to contradicting allegations regarding the compound's ownership.

Pastor Keith Coleman, head of the church that originally owned the compound since the 1940's, told Haaretz that the compound was sold to a Swedish company called Scandinavian Seamen Holy Land Enterprises in March 2008.

While Coleman believed group was a church group based in Haifa planning to renew the use of the church, Haaretz reported that, "The Swedish group was established in Stockholm in 2007, and seems to have been used as a cover for transferring the ownership of the compound to the settlers. The group does not seem to have any offices."

After buying the property, the Swedish group registered the purchase with the Israeli Civil Administration in 2012 and received necessary approval, the report said.

Following registration with the Civil Administration, the Swedish company announced its dissolution. The group had no offices or assets except for this church compound at the time, Haaretz said.

Ownership was then passed to the nonprofit organization American Friends of the Everest Foundation. The American organization operates from occupied East Jerusalem. and its sole contributor is American millionaire Irving Moskowitz.

Isn't this awful? The good Christians who owned the building thought they were selling the land to another good Christian group, but it turned out that they were really selling it to scheming, ugly Jews!

Which is, of course, a war crime according to the Rome Statute, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Haaretz adds some pertinent details:

A young man named Emanuel was in charge of the contacts with the Palestinian workers at the site, and he presented himself as a Norwegian who wanted to renovate the church and return it to its former condition. This cover story was also told to the IDF, which knew nothing about the intended use of the site.

As a result of the publication by Haaretz, a source in the Gush Etzion Regional Council told Haaretz that the property “is owned by the Swedish church and belongs to them; it doesn’t belong to us.”

The massive reconstruction of the compound, which can house some 20 families, has been going on for the last few months to ready it for settlers to move in. There are several security guards on the site posing as workers. A new fence has been built, despite a stop-work injunction issued by the IDF’s Civil Administration in the West Bank, since no building permit for the fence has been issued. But no permit is needed for the refurbishing because the buildings, which stand at the side of Route 60, were constructed long ago, in the late 1940s.

The site contains eight buildings, including a large central structure and several smaller ones. Over the years, a Presbyterian church operated there. Twenty years ago the church was turned into a hostel, but the business venture failed and the place was abandoned and left in ruins – although a Palestinian from the Aroub camp stayed in one of the buildings.

How dare Jews buy some ruins that are being used for squatting by an Arab and intend to use them for something useful!

Everyone who cares deeply about peace and justice is spitting mad that Jews managed to buy some property in an area that is designated by the president of the Palestinian Authority to be Jew-free.

Arab media is also all over this story about how a Jewish American millionaire bought some dilapidated, abandoned buildings, obviously a grave violation of human rights law. Only Christians and Muslims are allowed to buy buildings in Palestine, not Jewish Shylocks! Everyone knows that!

True, these millionaire Jews did all of this behind the backs of the IDF, so there is no possible way that they can be considered to have violated even the skewed readings of the Geneva Conventions or the Rome Statute as it is currently written.

But everyone knows that this is not about international law. It is about justice and human rights - the human rights for people who hate Jews to not be fooled into selling Jews any real estate, even if those Jews would not object to living under Palestinian Arab rule.

It isn't as if HRW or Oxfam or Amnesty will ever issue a statement denouncing discrimination against Jews in real estate transactions in Palestine. No - these paragons of human rights support such discrimination.

Because, you know...Jews.

Jordanian MP says the conflict isn't Pal/Israeli but Arab/Zionist

One of the more phenomenal propaganda successes of recent decades was the idea that the conflict isn't between Arabs and Israelis, but between Israelis and Palestinians.

This single change of paradigm was what turned Israel from David to Goliath in the eyes of much of the world.

Do the Arabs really believe it? Of course not - they know that this paradigm is one of their biggest weapons against Israel, especially among Western nations who assume that the underdog is automatically righteous.

When Arabs are among themselves, they say something different:

On Sunday, Al Quds University hosted something called "The Islamic Jerusalem Conference." One of the sponsors for this conference with the strangely exclusionary title was none other than Mahmoud Abbas.

During the conference, Jordanian MP Al-Battoush admitted that the conflict in Palestine is not an Israeli-Palestinian conflict but a Zionist-Arab conflict.

Other speakers echoed the theme. Jordan’s Chief of Justice, Sheikh Ahmad Halil, said that that "Jordanian leadership supports Palestine and that the Palestinian cause is the cause of all Arabs."

Good to know that even they know that they are lying.

This also shows that the parallel idea that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is the root of the problems in the Middle East is equally a lie. Israel's existence is what Arabs won't accept, and their claims to want "peace" is a smokescreen for saying they want no Israel.

05/27 Links Pt2: Some Straight Talk About the BDS; Israeli Embassy slams ‘outrageous’ Dutch textbook

From Ian:

Some Straight Talk About the BDS

A case in point is the recent article from Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston, who seems to genuinely want the BDS to come clean about its goals:
What does BDS really want from Israel?
I’m not asking for much. And I am certainly not asking out of antagonism. I’m just asking for clear goals. And straight talk.
I want to know if BDS wants to encourage two states – for example, by concentrating on supporting labeling of products from the West Bank and East Jerusalem – or if the goal is a one-state Palestine.
One state or two? That’s the essence of Burston’s question. Very reasonable.
Burston seems to answer this question a few paragraphs later when he relates comments from a pro-BDS activist in a motion to boycott SodaStream at the Park Slope Co-Op. Burston notes that SodaStream is in the process of moving its factory from an area over the Green Line to the Negev, well within Israel proper.
“SodaStream is now moving onto land stolen from Palestinian Bedouins, who are also human beings,” said Anna Baltzer, national organizer of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.
Baltzer, a California-born Jewish woman who has said her grandparents narrowly escaped the Holocaust, and who was rather unfortunately described by the far-left Mondoweiss website as “The It-Girl of Anti-Zionism” continued, “We support the rights of indigenous Palestinians inside Israel, including the Bedouins. We can’t end our boycott when SodaStream is simply occupying new land of Palestinians.”

Occupying new land of the Palestinians? Inside the Negev? Sounds like some straight talk on the issue, right Mr. Burston? Doesn’t sound like it’s concentrating on product labeling, does it?

Israeli Embassy slams ‘outrageous’ Dutch textbook

Israel’s embassy in Holland condemned the appearance of anti-Israel statements in a textbook on history for high school students.
The embassy’s statement on Tuesday about the book “Geschiedeniswerkplaats,” or “History Workplace,” by the Noordhoff Uitgevers followed complaints by members of the country’s Jewish community.
About the establishment of the State of Israel, the book states that David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, declared statehood after “Jewish militias carried out murders in Arab villages, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled and settled in refugee camps across the border.”
The book fails to mention Arab atrocities against pre-state Israel’s Jewish population or the invasion of several Arab armies into Israeli territory after its declaration of independence with the stated intention of destroying it.
“We are acting on the subject in several areas,” the embassy said. “We are looking into the outrageous statements to identify any factual inaccuracies and the possibility of incitement.” (h/t Bob Knot)

Israeli school bus bombing survivor reunites with nurse who saved him – 45 years later

May 22, 1970 – The School Bus Attack
Moshav Avivim and another community down the road split the school grades because neither itself had enough few children to justify a school with all grades. So the older children from the other community would come by bus to Moshav Avivim, and the bus would then bring the younger children from Moshav Avivim to the other community.
That was what happened on May 22, 1970. The older children got off the bus at Moshav Avivim, and the younger children from Moshav Avivim boarded the bus.
Shimon Biton, then six and one-half years old, boarded the bus accompanied by his father, Machluf Biton, who was the parent designated to ride the bus that day. Several of Shimon’s cousins also were on the bus. The bus clearly was a school bus, and followed the same routine every day.
A few kilometers after the bus left Moshav Avivim, it was attacked with bazooka fire from three terrorist belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, who infiltrated from Lebanon.
Shimon’s father was killed in the attack, but Shimon initially was not severely injured since he was at the back. As he ran forward to check on his father, Shimon was shot several time by one of the terrorists. (He offered to show us the wounds, but we declined.)
Medics and the army quickly descended on the scene. Here is a photo of Shimon being carried away on a stretcher, cared for by a nurse from a neighboring kibbutz. Shimon keeps the photo on his phone, and provided it to me:

From Egypt's Al Ahram:

Over 560 Palestinians were able to leave Egypt for Gaza on Tuesday through the Rafah border crossing after it was opened for the first time in months, state news agency MENA reported.

A source at the crossing said that 564 Palestinians were permitted to pass through the crossing, the only gateway for Gazans to the blockaded strip.

He added that the crossing will remain open through Thursday, operating in one direction only from Egypt to Gaza.

The terminal had been closed since March.

And then they add:

Gaza, with a population of 1.5 million, has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007.

Given that on the average day Israel allows some 800 people to leave Gaza and hundreds more to enter through the Erez crossing, not to mention over 500 truckloads of goods every day into Gaza, it sounds like Egypt is the country that is blockading Gaza, not Israel.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, trying hard not to upset Egypt even more than they already are with the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Hamas, called this a "good move" but not quite good enough, calling for the crossing to be open in both directions.

Herzog: Bibi's Response To Rockets Not Halfhearted Enough (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Tel Aviv, May 27 - Opposition leader Isaac Herzog laced into Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu late Tuesday, saying the premier's muted response to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip was not nearly as lackluster as the situation demanded, and that as prime minister, he would demonstrate a more robustly inadequate answer to the provocation.

Several rockets launched from the Gaza Strip struck rural area of southern Israel Tuesday night, causing no casualties or damage. The Islamic Jihad organization claimed responsibility for the barrage, and experts believe the group seeks to flex its muscles in the aftermath of Iran cutting off funding to the organization, in the hope of burnishing its anti-Israel credentials and attracting popular support that translates into material support from abroad.

Iran ceased its sponsorship of Islamic Jihad this week after the organization refused to explicitly side with pro-Iranian forced in the ongoing strife in Yemen. Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, are fighting against Saudi-supported forces. Islamic Jihad attempted to stay out of the political fray by remaining neutral, lest it offend potential Saudi allies, but Iran decided to punish the group for its failure to show support for the Houthis. Herzog similarly accused Netanyahu of insufficient commitment to halfhearted deterrent measures, and promised to fight for a stronger expression of waffling.

"Bibi has once again shown why he is ill-equipped to be properly ill-equipped to lead," said Herzog. "A weak, simpering reaction is hardly convincing when it comes from a decorated Special Forces soldier with a deep voice. What this nation needs is a person who projects the manner and voice of a genuine weakling, someone who lacks confidence even in his own vocal cords - in other words, someone like me." He added that his status as the best person to offer a pathetic response to rocket attacks was only made more pronounced by his party's unexpectedly poor showing in the March parliamentary elections.

"I wish to be clear that I have no issue with Bibi not ordering an immediate military operation in response to the rockets - that is exactly what I would have waited to do, with each passing hour eroding our deterrent capabilities," he elaborated. "The issue here is that Netanyahu seems to think an actual military response might be in order, and such a position I find irresponsible. How can we retain the already-scarce goodwill of the international community if we go defending ourselves at every opportunity?"

Herzog himself became a target of fellow leftists, who accused the Labor chairman of failure to commit to the complete disarmament of the IDF. "Only by laying down our weapons can we adequately demonstrate our commitment to a peaceful solution," said Meretz chairwoman Zehava Gal-On. "Just hink what would happen if we spent all that money on education instead of Iron Dome batteries."

05/27 Links Pt1: IMF Realism About the West Bank and Gaza; ISIS: The Borg of the Middle East

From Ian:

Michael Totten: The Borg of the Middle East

ISIS has conquered Syria’s spectacular Roman Empire city of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage site long known affectionately as the “bride of the desert,” and in all likelihood is gearing up to demolish it. We know this because they’ve done it before. ISIS used hammers, bulldozers, and explosives to destroy the ancient Iraqi cities of Hatra and Nimrud near Mosul, and they did it on video.
“These ruins that are behind me,” said an ISIS vandal on YouTube, “they are idols and statues that people in the past used to worship instead of Allah. The Prophet Muhammad took down idols with his bare hands when he went into Mecca. We were ordered by our prophet to take down idols and destroy them, and the companions of the prophet did this after this time, when they conquered countries.”
Muslims have ruled this part of the world for more than 1,000 years. All this time, they’ve been unbothered by the fact that Palmyra, Hatra, and Nimrud include pagan monuments, temples, statues, and inscriptions that predate Islam. Only now are these places doomed to annihilation. ISIS is more belligerently Philistine than any group that has inhabited the region for a millennium. The only modern analogue is the Taliban’s destruction of the ancient Buddhist statues at Bamiyan with anti-aircraft guns, artillery shells and dynamite in March 2001, mere months before their al-Qaida pals attacked New York City and Washington.
This attitude toward history harks back less to the seventh century than to the twentieth, when Pol Pot reset the calendar to Year Zero after the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, and when Mao Zedong’s Chinese Cultural Revolution murdered millions in the war against everything “old.”

JPost Editorial: Unhealthy resolution

WHO’s annual assembly last week condemned Israel for “violating the health rights of Syrians in the Golan.”
This is a travesty in every conceivable aspect. While the bloodbath in the region continues unabated, the international forum has found nothing else worth focusing upon but Israel. Only Israel was singled out by the WHO assembly.
This comes despite the fact that Israeli medics and hospitals provide indisputably altruistic treatment to spiraling numbers of civilians and enemy combatants from Syria, fleeing that country’s killing fields. The most cutting- edge medical care is given critically wounded victims who reach the Golan border.
But most disheartening of all is the fact that this disgraceful resolution was adopted in Geneva by a whopping majority of 104 to 4, with 6 abstentions and 65 no-shows. Israel, unjustly accused and unjustly convicted in another UN kangaroo court, was condemned even by European delegations, which purport to occupy the high moral ground – although they ought to know all about blood libel.
Gallingly, the Syrian government – which has been mass-murdering its own citizens – submitted a document that urged WHO to “intervene immediately and take effective measures to end inhuman Israeli practices that target the health of Syrian citizens.”

Elliott Abrams: IMF Realism About the West Bank and Gaza

The report then usefully compares the Palestinian situation to that in other countries that were dependent on aid—but made real progress.
Several countries with similarly high aid flows have successfully reduced aid dependency. Examples include Ghana, Mozambique, Rwanda and Botswana. Ghana, Mozambique and Rwanda still receive very high aid flows today, but aid ratios to government spending have fallen in all three countries in recent years. Botswana was one of the poorest countries in the world at the time of its independence in 1966, when it relied on grants from Britain for development and most of its recurrent spending. Although aid provided critical resources in the early years of independence, its role declined over time, and by 2006/7 it accounted for less than 2 percent of GDP.
Why recount all of this?
In the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations the United States has sought a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the PLO, and failed to achieve this time after time. There has been a real opportunity cost from this search for a final status agreement complete with handshakes on the White House lawn and Nobel prizes. The cost has been that we focused solely on the diplomatic process and largely ignored real life as it is lived by Palestinians, and might be improved. The IMF report shows that much could be done, even within current constraints, to improve the Palestinian economy. It’s undramatic, the details are boring, and some of the analyses are technical. No prizes, no time on the evening news. But that is how Palestinian institutions will be built, and how the institutions of a state must come into existence—not at the State Department and not at the United Nations.
The IMF report is a reminder that speeches, great conferences, and dramatic donor pledges (that are never met) do not benefit the Palestinians. And of course efforts to hurt the Israeli economy through boycotts will not help but will actually harm the Palestinians as well. It is long past time to take a more serious approach, and the IMF’s report shows some ways this could be done if the genuine goal is progress rather than taking credit and casting blame.

Israeli Arabs in Nazareth are attempting to break some sort of Guinness World Record by creating a giant map out of fingerprints.

A map of "Palestine" that does not include Israel.

The project, which was launched on May 2, has the slogan "one nation... one blood ...one people", to address the basic idea that "the Arabs in the occupied territories of 1948 are part of this [Arab] nation from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf and are still clinging to their land and defending their Arab identity."

Hani Khoury is the 24-year old artist behind this initiative and he says that so far some 3000 fingerprints of Arabs from "the territories of 1948 and the West Bank have been added to the map."

The fingerprint colors are black, green and red, hte colors of the PLO flag.

The idea that Israeli Arabs want the entire area from the Atlantic to the Gulf should be Judenfrei does not seem to bother anyone.

Just in case you are wondering what Khoury's intent is, here is an illustration from the project Facebook page that shows how he views his artwork:

UPDATE: One of the sponsors of this racist initiative is the municipality of Nazareth!

EU-funded NGO fabricates the Israeli "murder" of a "journalist"

Mada is the "Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms."

It just released a report about alleged Israeli (and PA/Hamas) violations against women journalists.

The report says this:

Najla’ Mahmoud Al-Hajj (29 years old), media activist and a volunteer at Facebook radio station, was killed after the IOF shelled her family’s house in Khan Younis city, south of Gaza Strip, on 07/10/2014, this was no doubt the most severe among the total violations monitored against journalists during the past five years, especially because the bombing killed eight members of Alhaj's family too.

Najla’s sister, Fida’ Al-Hajj, reported to MADA, that their house had been shelled with two F-16 missiles with a short while between them, which killed her sister Najla’, her parents, 3 of her sisters and 3 of her brothers. The shelling also completely destroyed their house, affecting 30 other houses nearby with bombardment's shrapnel.

The report also repeatedly refers to Najla' Al Hajj's death as "murder."

First of all, Najla's writing for a Facebook page hardly qualifies her as being a "journalist." Mada says "She was a media activist on Facebook: she was the administrator of the page “Radya Rida Allah. Najla’".

UNESCO did not list her in their list of journalists killed in Gaza.

But what were the circumstances of her "murder"? Did Israel target her for death, which is the normal definition of murder?

Of course not. She was in her family house when it was targeted.

And her brother who was also in the house at the time, 20-year old Umar Mahmoud al Hajj, happened to be a Hamas Qassam Brigades terrorist.

Does that sound like "murder?"

Apparently, Mada's many funders and partners have no problem with their NGO making up lies. They include:

International Media Support (IMS)
EUROPEAN UNION (EU)
The Global Network Defending and Promoting Free Expression (IFEX)
The Open Society Foundations (OSF)
World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers(WAN-IFRA)
UNESCO office in Ramallah
Foundation For the Future (FFF)
The Geneva Centre for Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF)

That EU money keeps on funding anti-Israel lies. And they are quite happy about it.

(h/t Bob Knot, more in the comments)

Amnesty using Hamas crimes as another excuse to attack Israel

Some people were surprised that Amnesty International issued a report actually condemning Hamas for brutally killing "collaborators" during last summer's Gaza war.

Hamas forces carried out a brutal campaign of abductions, torture and unlawful killings against Palestinians accused of “collaborating” with Israel and others during Israel’s military offensive against Gaza in July and August 2014, according to a new report by Amnesty International.

‘Strangling Necks’: Abduction, torture and summary killings of Palestinians by Hamas forces during the 2014 Gaza/Israel conflict highlights a series of abuses, such as the extrajudicial execution of at least 23 Palestinians and the arrest and torture of dozens of others, including members and supporters of Hamas’s political rivals, Fatah.

“It is absolutely appalling that, while Israeli forces were inflicting massive death and destruction upon the people in Gaza, Hamas forces took the opportunity to ruthlessly settle scores, carrying out a series of unlawful killings and other grave abuses,” said Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International.

However, it is interesting to see how Amnesty talks about Israel in this report.

For starters, Amnesty must hang onto the illusion that Israel still occupies Gaza, even though they know very well that under international law, occupiers are responsible for maintaining the legal system of the occupied and Israel cannot do that. So it writes nonsensical passages like this:

The legal situation in Gaza is complex due to the applicability of several distinct and overlapping bodies of international law, which provide the framework for examining the duties and obligations of various authorities with regard to the abuses described in this report. Those parties include Israel as the overall occupying power, the Hamas de facto administration in Gaza, the Palestinian authorities based in Ramallah in the West Bank, and the unity administration agreed between all Palestinian factions to which president Abbas appointed ministers in June 2014. ...In legal terms, Gaza has remained under Israeli occupation since June 1967 and Israel’s actions as the occupying power are regulated by the law of occupation, notably the Fourth Geneva Convention.²⁶

Footnote 26:

The nature of that occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has shifted over the years, but Israel has maintained overall effective control – the sine qua non of belligerent occupation. Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza and continues to be bound by the law of occupation, particularly as regards the powers it continues to exercise over the population of Gaza. This does not negate the responsibilities of the Hamas authorities, who have had de facto administration over internal affairs in the Gaza Strip since June 2007, or those of the Palestinian authorities, which have jurisdiction over internal affairs in parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territories under the Oslo Accords.

Amnesty is creating a legal framework that simply doesn't exist to ensure that Israel is considered an "occupier" of territory that Amnesty knows Israel doesn't have effective control over.

If Israel cannot dismiss a Gaza judge or a Gaza policeman, it is not the occupier. From the ICRC:

As legitimate State authority has now passed into the hands of the occupying power, the latter must take all measures in its power to restore and ensure, as far as possible, law and order and public safety.

This is expanded here:

One of the most pressing tasks faced by any military government is the maintenance of law and order. With government buildings, stores, hospitals, and cultural facilities being looted, revenge killings taking place, and general lawlessness preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid, this has become an omnipresent concern for the coalition forces in Iraq. Their responsibility in this regard is unambiguously set forth in the U.S. Army's Field Manual 27-10: "The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safetyâ€¦." Thus, although there have been assertions that the coalition forces are not police, in fact occupation law imposes policing responsibilities on them during an occupation.

Although occupation forces must maintain law and order, pre-existing civil and criminal laws of the occupied territory remain in effect to the extent they are apolitical, consistent with the maintenance of public order, and otherwise appropriate (e.g., discriminatory or inhumane laws are void); understandably, members of the occupying forces are immune from the jurisdiction of local law enforcement and judicial authorities. The Occupying Power may issue regulations, including penal regulations, necessary to meet its obligations under occupation law. ...Common examples include censorship of the media, limitations on public gatherings, and control over travel and means of transportation (whether private or public). Penal provisions cannot be retroactive and do not come into effect until published in the inhabitants' language. Overall, occupation law seeks a balance between the maintenance of order and the preservation of the pre-existing legal order.

Obviously all of these are impossible for Israel, meaning Israel isn't occupying Gaza. But Amnesty clings onto their absurd definition. (It does fall short of directly blaming Israel for not creating a judicial system that could prosecute Hamas war criminals, knowing that such a call would open it up to ridicule.)

At the end of the report, though, Amnesty reveals a possible reason why it issued this report ostensibly against Hamas - in order to pressure Israel to do what Amnesty wants!

TO THE ISRAELI AUTHORITIES

The Israeli authorities should co-operate with any independent and impartial international investigation, judicial or non-judicial, including the work of the Commission of Inquiry set up by the UN Human Rights Council in July 2014 and any follow-up mechanisms established by the Council, by offering complete access to relevant personnel, documents, and other material. They should seek to ensure that the cases documented in this report, among others, are investigated impartially and independently and that, wherever there is sufficient admissible evidence, any alleged perpetrator is brought to justice in proceedings that fully respect international fair trial standards.

They should also:
 Allow Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, as well as UN appointed investigators, including any follow-up mechanisms to the Commission of Inquiry and UN special rapporteurs, unrestricted access to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including the Gaza Strip, to investigate these and other suspected violations of international law by all parties to the conflict;

Because of Hamas crimes?

 Co-operate with any investigation of the International Criminal Court, or national courts undertaking investigations under domestic universal jurisdiction laws;

Is the ICC interested in prosecuting Hamas?

 Rescind any punitive measures taken following Palestine’s signature of the Rome Statute and refrain from imposing any additional punitive measures if the Palestinian authorities take further steps to pursue international justice for crimes under international law;

What does this have to do with the subject of the report?

 Completely lift the blockade on the Gaza Strip, including by permitting the unrestricted transfer of construction materials into the Gaza Strip and the transfer of goods from Gaza to Israel and the West Bank, subject only to necessary and proportionate security checks, as an essential step towards addressing the shelter and protection needs of Gaza’s 1.8 million civilians;

What does this have to do with the subject of the report?

 Accede to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and issue a declaration accepting the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction since 1 July 2002.

What does this have to do with the subject of the report?

Under the excuse of allowing any UN or international investigation into Hamas activity - investigations that simply will never happen - Amnesty is demanding that Israel open itself up to biased prosecutions, for example under the Rome Statute that includes text written specifically to damn Israel and no other country.

Amnesty isn't interested in justice for Hamas. It wants to use Hamas as a fig-leaf to issue more ultimatums against Israel.

05/26 Links Pt2: Truth under siege from Artists for Palestine; Israel is a global cyber superpower

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: How Anti-Israel Incitement Backfires

It is worth noting that PA officials regularly encourage Muslim worshippers to intercept Jewish visitors to the holy site. But last year, Habbash, who also serves as religious affairs advisor to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, was forced to flee the Temple Mount after angry Palestinians attacked him with shoes, stones and eggs.
Still, officials from the PA and Jordan do not seem to have learned the lesson -- mainly that their incitement against visits by Jews will ignite a fire that will also consume them. Both Habbash and Sheikh Helayel found themselves in the same situation as Jews who are confronted by hecklers during their visits to the Temple Mount.
Palestinian and Jordanian officials who incite their people against Israel on a daily basis should not be surprised when their constituents spit in their face, throw shoes at them or expel them from a mosque.
Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel, while the PA is conducting security coordination with the Israel Defense Forces. That is enough for their people to turn against them and accuse them of "collaboration" with the "Zionist enemy."
Anti-Israel incitement has once again proven to be counter-productive. But will the Palestinian Authority and Jordan draw conclusions from their mistakes and start educating their people about tolerance and peace with Israel? Sadly, that is unlikely to happen, at least not in the near future. The anti-Israel rhetoric has made it impossible even to talk about the possibility of peace with Israel.

Truth under siege from Artists for Palestine

It is saddening that someone like Rylance should have so little credibility on issues concerning Israel. In rejecting the protests against The Siege, he forgot his own shameful behavior in April 2012 when he and Churchill were among the 37 personalities in the British theatrical world who called for the banning of a performance of the Israeli Habima Company, the most well known and respected Hebrew language company in the world, at the Shakespeare Festival at the Globe Theater in London.
By inviting the Habima Company, Rylance and his fellow stalwart advocates of freedom asserted, the Globe, that had also invited China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia among others to the Festival, was associating itself with policies of exclusion practiced by the Israeli state and endorsed by its national theater company.
He also forgot that while the protest in London against The Siege was peaceful and respectful, in contrast pro-Palestinian activists had disrupted the actual Habima performance by shouting and displaying banners of Palestinian flags.
The pro-Palestinian group also forget the many occasions when the reality of censorship, as well as the sprit of hatred and violence, has erupted in London and other cities against favorite targets, Israeli performers.

Witnesses to Iraq’s Farhud

Over the first two days of June 1941, countless numbers of Jewish women in Baghdad were raped, more than 2,000 Jews were injured — many of them mutilated — and 900 homes, as well as 586 Jewish-owned businesses, were looted. All told, according to Iraqi-born historian Elie Kedourie, 600 Jews, including children and infants, were slaughtered. This Nazi-inspired pogrom is known as the Farhud, which in Kurdish means violent dispossession, and it marked the beginning of the destruction of the Iraq’s 2,600-year-old Jewish community, which beforehand had numbered more than 75,000 in Baghdad and 120,000 throughout Iraq.
The Nazis’ influence in Iraq can be traced back to 1933, when Hitler first came to power, which was just a year after Iraq gained its independence from Britain. Excerpts from “Mein Kampf” began appearing serially in Iraqi’s newspaper Al-Alem Al Arabi (The Arabic World), which had been purchased by Germany’s ambassador to Iraq, Dr. Fritz Grobba. A youth organization, Al Fatwaa, similar to the Hitler Youth, was formed, and Radio Berlin began to broadcast anti-Semitic propaganda in Arabic.
Pro-Nazis had taken power of the Iraqi government just two months before in a coup staged by Gen. Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and four generals, called the Golden Square, with support from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a Nazi collaborator in exile in Baghdad. They overthrew the former, pro-British government and exiled the young King Faisal II and his regent, Prince Abdul Ilah.
Al-Gaylani, intent on controlling Iraq’s oil fields for Germany, staged the takeover, in league with the Nazis and the Grand Mufti. But Britain, dependent on Iraq’s oil, returned fire by sending in additional troops, and, after a month of fighting, emerged victorious. The British army then stationed itself outside Baghdad, and on May 30, al-Gaylani, his generals and the Grand Mufti fled the country.

Israel's Supreme Court rejects Bedouin have land right claims in Negev "Al Arakib"

Al Arakib is an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev that Israel has demolished over 50 times. It has become a cause celebre among Israel bashers.

The case has been in the courts for years.

In late 2006, seventeen Bedouin of the al-Uqbi family filed six land claims saying that the land they are on, including Al-Araqeeb, belongs to them. After five years of legal proceedings, the court heard extensive testimonies of experts and witnesses on the behalf of both sides, reviewed historical documents, and scrutinized land laws from the Ottoman period, the British mandate period and that of Israel. The country's leading experts in historical and political geography testified. For the plaintiffs spoke Ben Gurion University’s Prof. Oren Yiftachel, a critical geographer and a social scientist. Testifying for the state was Prof. Ruth Kark, a leading expert on the historical geography of Palestine and Israel from the Hebrew University.[5]

The plaintiffs argued that the state order to expropriate the land in 1951 was made on the erroneous assumption that under Ottoman law, the land was classified as Mawat (uncultivated and not adjacent to settled lands). They said that the land had been cultivated and owned by them, and so classified as Miri land under Ottoman legal terms. In an expert opinion filed to the court, Oren Yiftachel said that these “tribal areas” of scattered tent clusters were not at that time registered with the authorities, but were nevertheless considered settled and met the definition of a “village” in the 1921 Land Ordinance.[5]

The state’s expert witness, Prof. Ruth Kark, said that prior to 1858 there had been no fixed settlements on or near the disputed land. The first permanent settlement had been Beersheba, which the Ottomans founded in 1900 and which is 11 kilometers from Al-Araqeeb – refuting the Beduin’s claims that the land could not have been Mawat because it was both cultivated and next to a settlement.[5] The State presented an aerial shot of the place proving that the Al-Araqeeb area had no cultivated land during the British mandate period.[24]

The verdict was presented by Judge Sarah Dovrat in the Beersheba District court on March 15, 2012.[25] Based on the experts' testimony and the presented documents, the judge ruled in favor of the State, saying that the land was not "assigned to the plaintiffs, nor held by them under conditions required by law," and that they still had to "prove their rights to the land by proof of its registration in the Tabu" (Israel Lands Authority). The judge said that the Bedouin knew they were supposed to register but did not. She said, "The state said that although the complainants are not entitled to compensation, it has been willing to negotiate with them," and that "it is a shame that these negotiations did not reach any agreement." The court also ordered the Bedouin to pay legal costs of 50,000 NIS (approximately U.S. $13,500).[5]

In its ruling, the court criticized the expert on the behalf of the plaintiffs, stating that his testimony lacked a sufficient factual basis value and reliable basis.[26] In addition, the court held that the Bedouins' own internal documentation indicates they were well aware of the legal requirement to register the lands in the Land Registry, but chose not to do so.[5] The judge affirmed that the practice of removal of encroached settlements carried out by the State is acceptable and legal.[5]

Last week, Israel's Supreme Court ruled yet again that Israel was right and the haters are wrong.

From Israel Hayom:

Something happened in the legal world this week. The High Court of Justice rejected out of hand a petition filed by the Bedouin, backed by leftist organizations, about the village of Al-Arakib in the Negev desert. The place has become a symbol and a flashpoint for everything having to do with state lands. The Bedouin claim ownership of land in the northern Negev on the basis of "ancient rights." The petitioners spoke of "historical land" from which they had been banished, and argued that the Aloukabi clan had worked those lands at the beginning of the 19th century.

Professor Oren Yiftachel lent his assistance to the plaintiffs by serving as an expert witness, arguing that there had been an ancient Bedouin settlement in the area of Al-Arakib, but all his arguments were rejected. Both the district and the High Court of Justice criticized him severely. Judge Sarah Dovrat wrote: "It became clear that he [Yiftachel] was relying on sources and quoting them without having taken the trouble to read them." In the High Court ruling, Justice Esther Hayut wrote: "An analysis of the evidence reveals that Professor Yiftachel's argument is not supported by objective perspective." A Bedouin tribe might have stopped at the place in question during its peregrinations, but this does not prove that there was ever a pre-existing settlement there.

The interesting thing was the discussion about the desolation of the Negev in the 19th century. The expert witness for the prosecution, Professor Ruth Kark, argued that the plots of land at Al-Arakib were not settled and farmed with any regularity until the start of the British Mandate. She made her case using land surveys, historical maps, official documents, and travel logs. The importance of the legal debate goes beyond the individual story of Al-Arakib and pertains to the historic claim to the land of Israel as a whole, which was mostly wilderness, both in terms of agriculture and population.

An important piece of evidence was the British Palestine Exploration Fund survey map, a thorough mapping survey conducted from 1871-1877 and published in seven volumes. The map was so detailed that it was printed in 26 issues (which are available today online.) The PEF people delineated every wadi, every settlement, tree, and home. They crisscrossed the territory, and an examination of the map shows how empty and barren the land was, and how few people lived there.

The Bedouin plaintiffs claimed a right to the lands in question because they were "native sons," but the court cast doubt on that argument, because according to their own version of events the clan had arrived in the Negev after it was already under the control of the Ottoman Empire, and therefore were not a native minority that had been conquered by a foreign regime. The verdict makes it clear that the Bedouin who filed the suit testified that their tribe, the Aloukabi clan, had fought alongside Arab armies against Israel in the War of Independence. After they lost, some of the tribe were dispersed to the Gaza Strip and Jordan. At no stage was a deed of ownership presented -- not even a record that the land had been registered to the tribe under the Ottomans. Nor was any evidence presented that either the Ottomans or the British Mandate government had acknowledged that the Bedouin had any native rights. The High Court struck down in principle the attempt to "generate rights out of nothing."

This is a ruling of unparalleled importance and it should serve as a basis for settling the matter of Bedouin lawsuits over Negev land. This is a powder keg that has ramifications for our linkage to the land of this country. This issue can't be left hanging. The new government should take note.

Israel-haters have been using the Bedouin issue over the past few years to delegitimize Israel within the Green Line in the same way that they use spurious Palestinian Arab claims to delegitimize Israel from without. There are dozens of NGOs that pretend to advocate for Bedouin in the Negev when in fact they are simply looking for excuses to bash Israel.

(h/t Yoel)

In September of 2011 New York Magazine published a cover showing the back of what we are to assume is the kippa-wearing head of Barack Obama with the headline: "The First Jewish President": The Truth? Barack Obama is the best friend Israel has right now, written by John Heilemann.

I do not know about you, but when I first saw this cover I just rolled my eyes and shook my head.

In March of 2012 White House loyalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, published a piece in The Atlantic entitled, Barack Obama Is Such a Traditional Jew Sometimes in which we read this mind-boggling bit of nonsense:

"I'll grapple with the meaning of Obama's Jewishness later, but the dispute between the Jewish right and the Jewish left over Obama is actually not about whether he is anti-Jewish or pro-Jewish, but over what sort of Jew he actually is."

What kind of a Jew Obama actually is?

What insipid hogwash. Why is it that when right-wingers call Obama a Muslim they are branded as racist, but when left-wingers call him a Jew we're supposed to get that warm cozy feeling in our cockles, like hot chocolate on a cold winter night with just a little bit of peppermint schnapps before a roaring fire.

Today in a piece for the Times of Israel by Ilan Ben Zion and Rebecca Shimon Stoil, we read:

President Barack Obama on Friday called for the establishment of a free Palestinian state alongside Israel, saying it was necessary for the preservation of Israeli democracy and security, and integral to Jewish values.

Wearing a white kippah, Obama spoke to a crowd of about 1,000 at Washington DC’s Adas Israel Congregation, one of the largest in the capital, marking Jewish American Heritage Month.

He touted his pro-Israel policies and close ties with Jewish advisors, wishing the audience a “slightly early Shabbat Shalom” and peppering his speech with Hebrew terms such as “tikkun olam” — repairing the world.

I find this to be the worst sort of disingenuous pandering and he does it while lecturing Israel about "Jewish values." Who the heck is Barack Obama to hold forth on Jewish values to anyone, much less the Jewish people of the State of Israel?

Barack Obama has shown himself to be the least friendly President of the United States to the State of Israel since its inception. Even Jimmy Carter, who is widely regarded as a president unfriendly to Israel, never had the temerity to tell American Jewish leadership that they should inform their Israeli-Jewish counterparts to search their souls to see if they really wanted peace.

Of course, no American president ever openly embraced a genocidally anti-Semitic organization at a time when they were calling for the conquest of Jerusalem during campaign rallies, either.

But mainly what I want to address is this notion of tikkun olam, "repairing the world." It is no coincidence that Obama would breathe that bit of Hebrew to an American Jewish audience. In recent decades the idea of tikkun olam has moved from the fringe of Jewish national consciousness, at least in the diaspora, toward the center and is associated with ideals of universal human rights. For many people to be a good Jew one must practice tikkun olam, which means promoting ideals of social justice, which means supporting the Democratic Party.

We can, of course, take it one step further and suggest that in order to be a good Jew one must support tikkun olam, which means promoting ideals of social justice, which means supporting the Democratic Party, which means promoting Obama's policies on the Arab-Israel conflict, which means Israel must make "painful concessions" in order to induce the Palestinian-Arabs to finally accept a state for themselves on historically Jewish land.

Depending upon one's point of view, the ideal of tikkun olam can be interpreted as wholly noble and selfless. It can be seen as representing what is best in the religious traditions of the world. It can also be seen, of course, as a diamond from deep within the Jewish tradition, dredged up, washed-off, shinied up, and stripped of all deeper meanings in the service of left-leaning domestic American politics.

Whatever one's view of tikkun olam, however, we must not allow the generosity of spirit which animates the concept from preventing us from standing up for what is in the best interest of the Jewish people. For example, we should be generous in allowing people of all faiths access to Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount, but we should be not so generous that we allow one religious group privileged access while denying every other the right to even pray there.

We should be generous enough in spirit to avoid war when we can, but not so generous in spirit that we allow our enemies to gain in strength at the encouragement of alleged friends.

And, of course, the very last thing that we should do is to allow ourselves to get suckered by false friends who take on the trappings of Judaism and lecture us about Jewish values in order to extract counterproductive concessions.

Let Barack Obama worry about his own values.

The Jews will take care of themselves.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

05/26 Links Pt1: Hamas, Europe and How to Get a State; Obama Invents a 'Pro-Israel' Past

From Ian:

Hamas, Europe and How to Get a State

Denmark's Foreign Minister, Martin Lidegaard, did not of course address the question: If your neighbor is trying to import weapons while threatening to kill you, what are you supposed to do about that? He also did not address the similar blockade of Gaza by Egypt, which faces the same problem. The more terror tunnels Hamas members build, the more respect they get from the West.
As someone born and raised a Muslim in the Middle East, and still living there, I can assure Europeans officials that if they think the recognition of Hamas and Palestinian statehood would encourage Hamas to change its charter and abandon its terrorists attacks, they could not be more wrong. Why then should Hamas change its charter or tactics, or commit itself to a peaceful resolution, when its current terror tactics seem to be working so magnificently?
"We do not distinguish between what was occupied in the 1940s and what was occupied in the 1960s... We will continue until the very last usurper is driven out of our land." – Sheik Nizar Rayan, a Hamas leader, Gaza, 2005.
The EU authorities speak about "peace talks," and a "two-state solution;" Hamas does not. Hamas openly rejects them. If one compares the language these governments use with the language Hamas officials use, they would appear to live on different galaxies. To Hamas, and apparently to many countries in Europe, Israel as no right to defend itself and no right to exist. But Europe is ready to prop up, with unconditional support, racist, anti-humanitarian organizations such as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Is this really the spirit of pluralism, humanism and tolerance these "good," "moral" European governments and the Vatican support?

Palestinians reject Netanyahu bid to define settlement blocs

The Palestinian Authority refuses to resume negotiations with Israel without Israeli recognition of the pre-1967 borders as the basis for talks and of East Jerusalem as the future Palestinian capital, a PA spokesman said on Tuesday, nixing a reported bid by Jerusalem to resume talks aimed at defining the borders of settlement blocs.
Presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh was responding to comments attributed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a meeting with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini last week, in which the Israeli premier said his government was willing to define the boundaries of the main settlement blocs, within which construction would be allowed.
Abu Rudeineh countered that Israeli construction in the West Bank must stop entirely before peace talks can resume.
“Nothing relating to final status issues can be segmented or postponed,” Abu Rudeineh said in a statement published by official Palestinian news agency Wafa. “The basis for any negotiations must be recognition of the 1967 borders, Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestinian state… along with a complete halt to settlement [construction] and the release of the fourth group of [security] prisoners jailed before Oslo.”

Joel Pollak: In Speech to Jews, Obama Invents a 'Pro-Israel' Past

Obama’s many biographies–both his own memoirs, and the voluminous writings of others–mention no such early interest in Israel. In fact, those who knew Obama in his early years in Chicago describe a man who understood little about Israel. He had extensive contact with left-wing Jewish activists, and his home is across the street from a synagogue. But to the extent that he took an interest in the Middle East, it was in the Palestinian cause, and the larger Arab and Muslim world.
As Peter Wallsten wrote in April 2008, in the infamous Los Angeles Times article that revealed the existence of the still-secret “Khalidi tape,” Obama’s former Chicago allies and associates described a man whose personal sympathies lay more with the Palestinians, and who promised to pursue a more “evenhanded” policy. One of those who met him in those days, the radical anti-Israel activist Ali Abunimah, complained that a pro-Palestinian Obama had since “learned to love Israel.”
In Obama’s first memoir, Dreams from my Father, there is no recollection whatsoever of any kind of fascination with Israel–not even the left-wing, socialist icons Obama name-checked in his Adas Jeshurun speech. The word “Israel” only appears once, in the words of “Rafiq,” a somewhat adversarial character who admonishes the young community organizer that liberal American Jews really care more “’bout they relatives in Israel” than black children on the South Side of Chicago.
We may conclude that Obama’s supposed fascination with Israel is a fabrication–like the “composite” characters in his autobiographies, or the inaccurate stories he told about his mother’s death during the Obamacare debate, or the many other fibs he has told in the past for political purposes. The kibbutznik Obama is a bit of kitsch tailored to pander to the audience at Adas Jeshurun–many of whom, like journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, are die-hard members of the Obama fan club.

Online Al Jazeera Arabic poll shows 80% support for ISIS

An online poll up at Al Jazeera asks "Do you consider the advance/progress of ISIS to be in the interest of the region?" (The original question wording was "Do you support the victories of the ISIS organization?")

So far, over 80% have voted "Yes."

To be sure, one must include a number of caveats.

For one, online polls are subject to social media campaigns. Other Al Jazeera online polls don't get a fraction of the number of votes cast in this one, so clearly ISIS fans are pushing for people to stuff the ballot box.

Is it possible that some ISIS fans have hacked the poll as well? Could be, although Al Jazeera tries to stop multiple and automated votes by using cookies and a CAPTCHA string.

Nevertheless, 40,000 Arabic readers happily supporting ISIS in what would otherwise be an obscure online poll is something to be concerned about.

(h/t Martin, Ibn Boutros)