Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, January 28, 2016

01/28 Links Pt2: US Customs issues 'Reminder' WB Goods Cannot Be Marked 'Made in Israel'

From Ian:

US requires Judea-Samaria goods to be labeled

A mail from the Cargo Systems Messaging Service of the US Customs and Border Protection dated to this Saturday, and revealed by Channel 1's "Mabat" show on Thursday, shows the US is now required products from Judea and Samaria to be labeled differently.
In new instructions on marking requirements sent out to American importers, goods from Judea and Samaria are not to be marked "Israel." Those who do not comply are to be sanctioned.
"West Bank Country of Origin Marking Requirements," reads the title of the mail, which begins by clarifying that "the purpose of this message is to provide guidance to the trade community regarding the country of origin marking requirements for goods that are manufactured in the West Bank."
"Goods produced in the West Bank or Gaza Strip shall be marked as originating from 'West Bank,' 'Gaza,' 'Gaza Strip,' 'West Bank/Gaza,' 'West Bank/Gaza Strip,' 'West Bank and Gaza,' or 'West Bank and Gaza Strip.'"
"It is not acceptable to mark the aforementioned goods with the words 'Israel,' 'Made in Israel,' 'Occupied Territories-Israel,' or any variation thereof," warned the mail. It threatened that such goods that are marked as products of Israel "will be subject to an enforcement action carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection." (h/t Yenta Press)

Isi Leibler: The requiem for the Oslo Accords warrants a unity government

The controversy over the Oslo Accords, which bitterly divided the nation over the past quarter- century, is no longer a contentious issue.
The late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin personally told me on numerous occasions of his concern that the deal with Yasser Arafat, whom he despised as a murderer, was a gamble that Israel had to take in order to satisfy itself and the world that it had sought every opportunity to achieve peace.
In contrast, Shimon Peres, then foreign minister, in response to a few critical questions I posed in the days after the Oslo announcement, lost his cool and angrily stated, “They took Entebbe away from me, but they will never do the same with the peace process.” Today Peres is possibly the sole remaining senior politician who still maintains that the deal with Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization should be retained as the basis for a peace settlement.
The consensus, extending beyond right-wing politics, which recognizes the failure of the Oslo Accords, was articulated by the former director- general of the Foreign Ministry Prof. Shlomo Avineri, an esteemed intellectual doyen of the Zionist Left. In an article published last October in Haaretz, Avineri enumerated a host of reasons on both sides that contributed to the failure. But overriding these was the fact that the Palestinian position did not consider the conflict as territorial but regarded all of Israel as a colonial implant which had to be uprooted. Avineri concluded that we are obliged to face the reality that there is no way Israel could achieve any mutually acceptable peace agreement in the foreseeable future.

Accusing Others of Dishonest Language, Beinart Distorts an Ambassador's Words

To help push along his goal of turning readers against Israel, Peter Beinart erased the murder of Dafna Meir. He didn't gloss over it. He didn't fail to mention it. He actively erased it.
Beinart's Jan. 27 column in Haaretz is similar to most of his columns. It uses a hook from the news to make the case that Israel and its supporters should be blamed for the continuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In this particular piece, he seized on criticism of Israel by the US ambassador to Israel, and a follow-up statement by the ambassador about the poor timing of his comments, to rebuke not only Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, but also the US ambassador, Dan Shapiro.
Shapiro said during a Jan. 18 speech that "at times there seem to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law: one for Israelis and another for Palestinians."
Netanyahu responded harshly: "The ambassador's statements, on the day when a mother of six who was murdered is buried, and on a day when a pregnant woman is stabbed – are unacceptable and wrong." This and similar criticism prompted Shapiro's follow-up comments that in which he said that "the timing" of his criticism wasn't ideal, and that "if it has, god forbid, hurt the Meir family or other mourners then I sincerely regret it."
But however innocuous and appropriate the follow-up may have been, to Beinart it was an outrage. On Twitter, Beinart took Shapiro to task, insisting he had "apologized" for making a "mild" and "true" statement.

IsraellyCool: The Truth About Brian’s Facebook Video On Israeli TV

Last night the very popular Channel 10 Program “Hatzinor” ran a segment based on the video I made about Facebook. This is the one that was then taken down by YouTube and finally reinstated. With help from friends here is the segment with English subtitles.
The show is pretty huge: they shared this clip on Facebook mid morning and it’s had 71,000+ views in 8 hours. I’m glad this topic is getting widespread public attention here, especially today, the International Holocaust Memorial Day.
Huge thanks to D@rLin|{ and Rahel Jaskow for helping with translations and subtitles. If you need professional translation or copy editing in Israel please contact me

Brian John Thomas talks about Facebook hate on Israel Channel 10

UNRWA's existence and Arab intransigence allow EU to discriminate against Palestinians

Palestine News Network writes:

According to the Institute of Palestine studies, [Palestinian Syrians fleeing to Europe] often remain without legal status at first. Those who have family members in Europe may have an easier time attaining residency, but even many of those with family networks must find a way through the bureaucratic hell that characterizes both the asylum and family reunification procedures.

Greece and other European countries have created a special refugee status whereby Syrians may apply for and receive political asylum on the same day, but, for Palestinians, the process can be much more difficult because they do not have Syrian nationality. According to Professor Susan Akram, director of Boston University Law’s International Human Rights Clinic, there is considerable confusion and conflicting interpretations within and among European states about the status of Palestinian refugees in Europe under the 1951 convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Most European countries either do not recognize or incorporate Article 1D of the 1951 Refugee Convention into domestic law or interpret the article incorrectly, which cites:

“This Convention shall not apply to persons who are at present receiving from organs or agencies of the United Nations other than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees protection or assistance.” [meaning UNRWA - EoZ]

So while Palestine receives support and protection from organs such as the UN, displaced Palestinians may not receive this support:

“This excludes from the benefits of the 1951 Convention those Palestinians who are refugees as a result of the 1948 or 1967 Arab/Israeli conflicts, and who are receiving protection or assistance from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)”. “While paragraph 1 of Article 1D is in effect an exclusion clause, this does not mean that certain groups of Palestinian refugees can never benefit from the protection of the 1951 Convention”
The conclusion of the Convention is rather unclear:

“The position of Palestinian refugees under international refugee law is complex and continues to evolve. This Note clarifies some pertinent aspects of the position of such refugees and is intended to serve as guidance for use in refugee status determination.”
According to Badil, practically, this means that Palestinian refugees in Europe are placed outside of the international protection system for refugees worldwide. Palestinian refugees often face difficulties when they apply for asylum, residence based on family reunification, employment etc.

To me, the UNHCR convention and its note of clarification for Palestinians are pretty clear - if UNRWA cannot help them (for example, in Europe) then UNHCR can. But the interesting part is whether European countries accept that interpretation for their own asylum laws. And if we are to believe this article, they are not doing that.

This means that the exclusion cause for Palestinians not to fall under the remit of UNHRC - which was meant to keep them in refugee status forever - is now causing them even more grief as they attempt to rebuild their shattered lives.

The PNN article of course blames Israel, but it is obvious that 67 years of Arab national discrimination against their Palestinian residents has resulted in them being treated badly today even by non-Arabs. This is a direct result of what the Arab League codified in Resolution 1547 of March 1959: that Arab nations do not give citizenship to Palestinians "to avoid dissolution of their identity and protect their right to return to their homeland."

Syrian refugees of Palestinian origin are being discriminated against in Europe because of a combination of the entrenched UNRWA regime that create an exception to UNHRC rules on refugees plus Arab nations' explicit decision to keep them stateless.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.—Pericles (Athens, c. 430 BCE)

America hasn’t been invaded since 1812, and after the Civil War (which only peripherally involved other nations), all of its wars were fought on battlefields comfortably far away. The Imperial Japanese came the closest to striking America at home, but were not able to follow up their successful attack on Pearl Harbor with an invasion. Americans have been almost uniquely isolated from the rest of the world, and especially the tribal complexities of the Middle East until very recently, and in general they still tend to be remarkably ignorant about them. Even presidential candidates.

Andrew McCarthy noted recently that Donald Trump, for all his attitude, has trouble distinguishing his ass from a hole in the ground in this connection. Some of the other candidates, like Bernie Sanders are not much better. And Hillary Clinton, while she certainly is better acquainted with the players, may or may not be on the right team.

Here in Israel, security is the number one issue in politics, for obvious reasons. The US hasn’t reached that point yet, although its enemies are pushing it harder and harder. But the American in the street and some in Congress are often less well-informed than even The Donald.

Not that the Middle East is simple. Several years ago I asked the late Barry Rubin why Shiite Iran was helping the Sunni Hamas in Gaza, while it opposed the ideologically similar Muslim Brotherhood. This was despite the fact that Iran’s deadly enemy Saddam Hussein was close to both Hamas and the PLO. Arafat famously took Saddam’s side in the first Gulf war and got Palestinian guest workers kicked out of Kuwait, and the families of Hamas suicide bombers received stipends from Saddam. Rubin just laughed and said that when I understood that I would understand the Middle East.

The broad Sunni-Shiite struggle is reflected in American politics, too. Historically, the US has been on the Saudi (Sunni) side, a result of the Saudis’ massive purchases of influence with American politicians and academic institutions. Sometimes working through oil companies and sometimes by promising huge sums of money (payable after a politician leaves office) as in the case of Jimmy Carter and the Clintons, the Saudis seemingly locked up the US. Even the supposedly tough Israel lobby couldn’t beat the Saudis when they went head to head (as happened when the US sold AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s).

When Barack Obama was elected, everyone expected that he would maintain the cooperation with the House of Saud like Reagan, Clinton and the Bushes. But in a move that shocked many, Obama turned against the Saudis and toward Iran, making a deal that greatly strengthened the Islamic Republic in its bid to replace the US-Saudi axis as the dominant power in the region.

One explanation for this shift in policy is that Obama seems to have bought into the 2006 Iraq Study Group report, lock, stock and barrel. The report argued that in order to stabilize the Middle East, the US had to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by creating a Palestinian state in the territories, and engage with Syria and Iran. The report was wrong-headed, both in its misunderstanding of the objectives of Iran and its acceptance of the idiotic ‘Linkage Theory’, in which the root cause of Mideast problems is Israel’s occupation of territories captured in 1967. In any event, it became the keystone of his foreign policy.

To be fair to the authors of the report (one of which was Obama advisor Ben Rhodes), they may not have intended to translate ‘engagement’ as ‘surrender’. But that is how Obama sees it, with his ideology of apology, his belief that most of the world’s ills are due to the use of Western, particularly American, power. He wishes to engage in order to withdraw.

America’s abandonment of the Middle East is a major change in a policy that has been more or less constant since the end of the Second World War. It will probably be the one thing that students of history 50 years hence will know about the presidency of Barack Obama, in addition to the fact that he was the first ‘black’ president. But we will see the fruits of the deal much sooner, probably within the next five years, in the form of a regional war in the Middle East, a massive increase in worldwide terrorism, and perhaps even ‘man-made disasters’ in the US.

Although Hillary Clinton endorsed the Iranian nuclear deal and claims to favor ‘engagement’ with Iran, she did not actively campaign for it. She did not take part in the negotiations with Iran; she was replaced by John Kerry in February 2013, and the initially secret channel with Iran was opened in March of that year. Maybe she stepped down in advance because she did not want to participate in this process.

Why wouldn’t she? Well, the Clinton Foundation had recently received $25 million from Saudi Arabia, and multiple millions in grants and speaking fees from other Gulf states worried about Iran. Bill and Hillary Clinton have reported to have been paid over $125 million (and there may be more payments that were unreported) by companies and foreign governments since 2001, many in the Middle East. She is certainly in the Saudi corner.

She also might be smart enough to realize that nothing good can come from the deal, and doesn’t want to be associated with it when the fallout hits the fan.

She has been very guarded about what her actual policies would be if elected, and she is not – how can I put this delicately – someone known for excessive truthfulness anyway. From an Israeli point of view, some of her connections, like Sid Blumenthal, Thomas Pickering and of course Huma Abedin are troubling. And there is a long list of more-than-questionable things said and done by Ms Clinton in connection with Israel over the years.

The coming presidential election will be immensely important, because it may not be too late to reverse the course set by Obama. As an Israeli, I care that the American president be one that will reassert power in the Mideast – and one that will support Israel. And as an American, I want one that understands the danger that the civilized world faces from expansionist Islam of both the Sunni and Shiite variety, and who will keep America safe from the very real threats that Obama pretends not to see.

That certainly isn’t Trump, Clinton or Sanders. It might be Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. Choose wisely.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

01/28 Links Pt1: Another UN disgrace; Commemorating dead Jews while hating the living

From Ian:

Anne Bayefsky: UN fails to learn lessons of Holocaust. It focuses on showmanship

Analogizing Palestinians to the Jewish victims of the Nazis: that’s how the UN is marking this week’s “International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.” The epicenter of modern antisemitism on a global scale is not somewhere over there, but in the middle of Turtle Bay.
For public tour groups, and their busloads of impressionable American students from around the country, the UN ‘s permanent “Palestine” exhibit has now been arranged to be within a few feet of the UN’s permanent Holocaust exhibit.
This week’s activities follow suit.
On January 25, 2016, a temporary exhibit called “Holocaust by Bullets” was opened in the UN visitors’ lobby. The painstaking research of the French organization Yahad-In Unum substantiates how two million Jews were shot to death in the presence of normal folks all over Europe.
But “Holocaust by Bullets” follows the UN’s December exhibition, which is titled “Palestinian Children: Overcoming Tragedies with Hope, Dreams, Resilience and Dignity.” That month-long display in the visitors’ lobby consisted of scenes of Palestinian children suffering from “devastating” wanton, unprovoked Israeli “operations.”
Father Patrick Desbois opened Yahad-In Unum’s exhibit by explaining that his team locates the bodies of Nazi victims and then honors the dead. He is driven to ensure that Europe does not bury “all its values” by building its future on unacknowledged and unvalued human beings in mass graves.
Palestinian UN representative Riyad Mansour opened December’s exhibit with a different set of values – incitement for Palestinian children to kill more Jews. As Mansour explained: “we are so proud that in this popular uprising, the backbone of this uprising are the youth of Palestine.”

Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt: We have gone back to the Middle Ages and face religious war with the fascists of radical Islam

If the 20th century could be characterised as a battle between territories, then I believe the 21st century has seen a return to the religious wars of the Middle Ages. The rise of Isil has followed fifteen years since 9/11 where Islamic religious terrorism has become the premier menace to democracy. In fact, the attacks on 9/11 ended the 20th century, in which secular totalitarian ideologies, such as Nazism and Communism challenged the existing world order and world peace.
One of the many challenges this new war poses is that it goes against the tolerant, inclusive society that has developed in the Western World over the last fifty years. For that reason, the first reaction of many is to divorce terrorism from religion. Many feel that the only way to protect religious freedoms is to deny radical elements. We need to understand the fact that there are radicalised aspects within many faiths, in particular Islam. Its fascist offshoot, Isil, is a strain of Islam and must be treated as such. These interpretations of Islam must be denounced but we must realise that we have now entered a religious war.
Islam, as it is practised today in some parts of the Middle East, is similar to Christianity in the premodern times, it has not yet developed or learnt to integrate into society. Therefore, by definition, it is entirely medieval and contrary to the basic tenets of a liberal state or democracy. But it would be ridiculous to assume that more than one billion Muslims are radical and dangerous. Instead we need to learn to differentiate between those strains that have developed and those strains that are a genuine danger to the developed world.

MEMRI: For International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei Publishes Holocaust Denial Video

Today, January 27, 2016, International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei published on his official website a three-minute video clip titled "Are The Dark Ages Over?" In it, he expresses doubt about whether the Holocaust actually happened, rages about Europe's ban on public questioning of the validity of the Holocaust, and hints at a conspiracy on the part of Western Europe and the U.S. – which champion freedom of speech yet at the same time prevent open discussion of whether the Holocaust happened, and rages about Europe's ban on denying the Holocaust.
Khamenei attacks what he calls the hypocrisy of the West that champion the value of freedom of speech yet prevent any discussion of whether the Holocaust actually happened. This silence about the Holocaust that is imposed by the West on their citizens, he hints, is a conspiracy by the Western countries and the Zionist regime, aimed at establishing falsely, justification for Israel's existence, as it expels the Palestinians.
He then calls on the Muslim ummah, in a religious message, to come together to fight Israel and her Western patrons, because it is they who are perpetrating the real "Ignorance" – Jahiliyya – a reference to the era of ignorance that preceded the advent of Islam.
The clip also features images of leading European Holocaust deniers such as Roger Garaudy, Robert Faurisson, and David Irving, and highlighted the alleged persecution of them by Western authorities.

Supreme leader of Iran marks Holocaust Memorial Day by publishing Holocaust denying video

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, has marked Holocaust Memorial Day by publishing a Holocaust denying video on his official website.
While nations around the world remembered the millions of people who were killed in Auschwitz and other concentration camps, Iran’s hardline leader questioned whether the Holocaust “is a reality or not”.
Khamenei's website promotes the video with a banner across its homepage, featuring a montage of images, including one of Adolf Hitler.
Wednesday was also the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland where more than one million people were killed during World War Two. The majority were Jews and the former extermination camp is the world's biggest Jewish cemetery.
Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazis attempted to annihilate all of Europe’s Jews. In one of the largest genocides in history, approximately six million Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and its collaborators.
Khamenei's message comes as President Hassan Rouhani tours Italy and France, attempting to drum up trade and diplomatic links after his country signed a historic deal to limit its nuclear ambitions.

Qatari newspaper Al Sharq published an article yesterday that says that the Jewish issue is the most serious issue today, especially the danger posed by Jews to the Islamic nation.

Mustafa al-Maleh cites the Quran to say that the Jews have no religion nor ideology nor ethics nor humanity.

Jews, we are told, only care about Jews and want to kill everyone else. They are racist selfish arrogant bloodsuckers, as can be seen in their Torah.

Jew throughout history are the very model of corrupt rotten morality, and the evil attributes have become hereditary, part of the Jewish genetic code in every time and place.

The Jews are liars and sly traitors but the Jews are also fools and cowards and misers and keen to break agreements, quick to do sins and transgressions and make mischief in the land and divert men from the way of God.

Finally, we are told that the Jews play a huge secret role to achieve their goals no less what they do in public. They commit conspiracy, murder, espionage and they ignite revolutions using multiple methods including creating strife, controlling the media, assassinations and a psychological war against Islam and Muslims.

As far as I can tell, none of the world leaders who spoke at Holocaust Memorial Day ceremonies yesterday said anything about the major source of today's antisemitism - the incitement being published daily in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

A video response to a small part of Vox's "history of ME conflict" video

Recenly, Vox.com released a video that claimed to explain the "Israel-Palestine" conflict in simple terms.

It is filled with deceptions, omissions and lies. Others have taken it apart nicely in print.

This was an experiment to see how easily I could create a video to critique another video in near real time. Yet even though I only look at the first 3 minutes of Vox's video, my response clocks in at 17 minutes - way longer than I expected. And I still didn't say everything I wanted to (I didn't mention the Mufti, or Arab ethnic cleansing of Jews especially in Jerusalem, for example.)

I'm not certain I will create parts 2 and 3, because I don't know who will want to spend maybe 45 minutes listening to a critique of a ten minute video. Literally every ten seconds I needed to stop to respond to another distortion or lie. But let me know what you think.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Facebook removes EoZ poster for "violating community standards"

Yesterday I posted a report that showed that well over half of the antisemitic posts on Facebook remain even ten months after complaints are lodged.

Yet it only took Facebook a day or so to remove a poster I created this week that was reposted by the Israel's Voice organization:

Posts by the people who call these murderers heroes permeate Facebook, but pointing out that fact violates the rules!

I just looked at a thread from Shehab News Agency mentioning that the Jew who was stabbed yesterday in Givat Ze'ev was in serious condition, and the righteous Arab Facebook commenters are wishing that he dies and goes to hell.

Meanwhile, the Felesteen newspaper has a fawning article about a girl in Gaza who paints stones to celebrate attacks on Jews:

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

01/27 Link Pt2: The Holocaust started with words, not mass killings; Why a Kippah Generates Hate

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Lessons for today

Lessons for today International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorated today, is an occasion not just to reflect on the past but to marvel at the persistence and adaptability of Jew-hatred.
The day falls on the anniversary of the liberation by Soviet troops of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest German death camp. But Holocaust remembrance ceremonies – particularly in Europe – tend to focus as much on current events as on the horrors of Nazi genocide.
It is no secret that Jew-hatred is rampant in Europe.
The number of anti-Semitic incidents in London rose more than 60 percent during the 12-months ending November 15 over the same period a year earlier. Incidents in France were up 84 percent in the first quarter of 2015, compared to the same period in 2014.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke this week of the dangers of Jew-hatred, particularly among “youth [from] countries where hatred of Israel and Jews is widespread.”
A new book based on surveys of 724 French Jews called L’an prochain à Jérusalem? (“Next Year in Jerusalem?”) found the French-Jewish community is “living with a strong feeling of insecurity.” Sixty-three percent of those polled reported being insulted for being Jews, and more than half reported being subjected to anti-Semitic threats.
Europeans have struggled to combat anti-Semitism but have met with little success. Why? Part of the answer has to do with longstanding, deep-rooted anti-Semitism.

The Holocaust started with words, not mass killings

Today, against the new propaganda of hatred, our challenge is to harness the power of new communication technologies to empower pluralism and human dignity for all, to combat anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.
This new war for hearts and minds can be won only if we update and upgrade the tools of education, culture, science, and communication. Unesco was created 70 years ago for this purpose, and it leads a global programme for Holocaust education and genocide prevention, working with governments and teachers to instill this history in classrooms.
Bombs and bullets alone cannot defeat political poison. We must also win the battle of ideas. Schools, museums, and the media must help young people develop critical thinking skills.
Intellectuals, artists, and public figures must highlight the danger of indifference toward groups espousing intolerance and exclusion. Political leaders should encourage social integration and mutual understanding. This is how we can pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust — not only to lament the dead, but also to empower the living.
Sara Bloomfield is director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Irina Bokova is director general of Unesco.

Netanyahu: World must stand with Israel ‘not for our sake, for theirs’

Jews are again being targeted for being Jews, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of International Holocaust Memorial Day.
“Preserving the memory of the Holocaust is more important today than ever, for in this period of resurgent and sometimes violent anti-Semitism, it is commemorations like this that remind us all where the oldest and most enduring hatred can lead,” Netanyahu said in a statement released Tuesday evening.
“Around the world, Jewish communities are increasingly living in fear. We see anti-Semitism directed against individual Jews, and we also see this hatred directed against the collective Jew, against the Jewish state. Israel is targeted with the same slurs and the same libels that were leveled against the Jewish people since time immemorial.”
Netanyahu said that “Islamic extremists incorporate the most outrageous anti-Semitism into their murderous doctrines,” citing the Gaza Strip, Syria and Iran. He also criticized the “obsession with the Jews – the fixation on the Jewish state.”
He said the fact that there is an independent Jewish state means “we can protect ourselves and defend our freedom.”
“When a state like Iran and movements like Daesh (Islamic State] and Hamas openly declare their goal of committing another Holocaust, we will not let it happen,” Netanyahu concluded. “But Europe and the rest of the world must stand up together with us. Not for our sake, for theirs.”

Social media sites allow 80% of antisemitic content to be posted

From the Online Hate Prevention Institute:

A major new report prepared for the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism, “Measuring the Hate: The State of Antisemitism in Social Media”, highlights that not enough is being done to combat antisemitism in social media. The report, based on tracking over 2,000 items of antisemitism over the last 10 months, found that only 20% of the items were removed.

Breakdown of antisemitism by category

Traditional antisemitism made up almost half the sample and covered content such as conspiracy theories, racial slurs, and accusations such as the blood libel. The report also outlines where each type of antisemitism occurs, with content promoting violence against Jews far more likely to be found on Twitter (63% on Twitter, 23% on YouTube and 14% on Facebook), while content promoting Holocaust denial was more likely to be found on YouTube (44% YouTube, 38% Twitter, 18% Facebook).

The report highlights significant variations in the responses of the social media companies to online antisemitism. More significantly, the response by each company was found to vary depending on the nature of the antisemitism.

Overall percent of items remaining online by platform over time

The best response rates came from Facebook where content promoting violence against Jews has a 75% chance of eventually being removed. The worst case was YouTube videos containing New Antisemitism, that is antisemitism related to the State of Israel, where only 4% has been removed after more than 10 months.

Here is the entire report.

MeasuriMeasuring the Hate: The State of Antisemitism in Social Mediang the Hate

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Boy Who Stabbed Cites UN Chief: 'Human Nature To React To Homework' (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Kfar Sava, January 27 - Inspired by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon's refusal to condemn Palestinian stabbing attacks on Israelis, a high school senior accused of attacking his teacher today also characterized his act as legitimate resistance, saying it is human nature to react to too much homework.

Amos Doker, 18, was arrested Tuesday after attempting to stab his mathematics instructor. Witnesses said the two had an altercation regarding the burden of assignments given to the students to complete outside class time, during which the senior pulled a kitchen knife from his book bag and lunged at her. The teacher, a 40-year-old from nearby Hod HaSharon who was not named in the police report, managed to move away in time and called for help, and several other students subdued the youth. When police arrived, the assailant loudly proclaimed his right to defend himself from unjust assignments.

"You control my life - you're occupying my world," accused the teen, addressing himself to all the adults present. "I have to resist by all possible means to assert my independence and individual sovereignty. Just ask the Secretary General of the UN! He says it's human nature to do this! You can't arrest me! Arrest her!" he yelled at police, gesturing to the teacher.

Eyewitnesses reported that as police bundled the suspect into a patrol car, he continued to proclaim his right to stab his teacher. "She's oppressing me with homework! She denies my freedom of movement and association! They all do! All the teachers and the principal too! I have no choice but to fight back with random violence! Ban Ki-Moon said so!" The rest of his words were muffled after the arresting officers shut the door.

The boy's attorney, Zehavi Gal-Un, blamed the Minister of Education for the incident. "Naftali Bennett and his right-wing minions continue to oppress the students of this country by making them complete onerous assignments and sit for brutal exams, and to what end?" he challenged. "It's not as if anyone is going to get a job in this economy. The students legitimately have no other option than resistance, and yes, sometimes there is no choice but violet resistance. The blame lies squarely in the lap of those who created this situation."

Ministry officials dismissed the accusation. "It is fundamentally bigoted to say the students have no choice," said a ministry spokesman. "Millions of students around the world face similar circumstances and for some reason do not go around stabbing people. Students have a choice in whether or not to attack faculty, and to act as if they have no volition is to remove their individuality and humanity."

At press time, this reporter was considering stabbing his managing editor for refusing the raise he'd requested.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

01/27 Link Pt1: The Last Chance for Peace Fantasy; 300 attackers are not 'lone'

From Ian:

David Horovitz: Rather than despair at the awfulness of it all

As we look at the fresh graves of Dafna Meir and Shlomit Krigman, we must insist on seeking the most effective means to prevent the unconscionable loss of more wonderful people
Dafna Meir and Shlomit Krigman. Two Israeli women — one a mother of six in her late 30s; the other about to turn 24, just setting out in life. Dafna, stabbed to death by a Palestinian teenager at her home in the settlement of Otniel on January 17. Shlomit, stabbed to death by two Palestinians near the grocery store at the settlement of Beit Horon, where she lived with her grandparents, on January 25.
Dafna and Shlomit, now buried one next to the other at Jerusalem’s Har Hamenuhot cemetery.
Dafna and Shlomit smile at us from our TV screens and news sites and newspapers — smile at us incongruously, immortalized in snapshots of unremarkable happiness, alongside the tearful features of the loved ones from whom they have been murderously torn.
Dafna could not have had an easy childhood. Adopted at age 13, she became a foster mother herself, raising two foster children along with her and husband Natan’s own four. Even from the superficial familiarity that Israel now has with the world Dafna and Natan built, this is plainly a wonderful family, warm and selfless, moral and generous. Natan invited an old friend to their shiva, a Palestinian who lives nearby and who, it so happens, is a distant relative of the despicable youth who murdered his wife. And the friend came, “with tears in his eyes,” said Natan.
Shlomit’s friends tell of an intellectually curious, quiet but determined young woman, a creative force, a voracious reader. Who knows what she would have gone on to achieve with her life?
This has to stop. This killing has to stop.

What would happen if Israel withdrew from the West Bank and ended the ‘siege’ of Gaza

Americans relate to Israel on shared values, and the occupation is undermining the long-term American commitment to Israel. They don’t know that the 3 billion per year American investment in Israel returns more vital intelligence and saved more American soldier lives than all of NATO combined.
If I were to council the next American President, I would recommend the following:
• Announce that American stands with the one and only democracy in the region, Israel, which is essential for American national security
• Publicly place the onus for the failure of a two-state solution primarily with the Palestinians who have repeatedly refused to sign an end-of -conflict resolution, or accept a Jewish state, as evidenced by their rejection of the Clinton and Olmert offers
• I would recommend that America stop considering the Palestinians victims, as much of their struggles are self-imposed, choosing ideology over economic independence
• Unless the Palestinians agree in advance to sign an end-of-conflict resolution with a demilitarized state, America will publicly state that it won’t push for anything more than a more sustainable ceasefire and ground-up economic development
• Ask Israel as a gesture and to affirm its rule of law, to uproot all illegal settlement outposts
• Israel as a gesture for the future time when the Palestinians are ready for a final deal, should limit their building over the Green line to the environs of the major settlement blocks
• Make clear that with ISIS just over the Jordan, Israel must for the foreseeable future control the security of the Jordan River Valley
• Demand transparency, an uncorrupt Palestine government ending incitement, and a preparation of Palestinians for their share of painful compromises.
Realistic? Actually yes! One of the reasons the peace process has failed is that almost nothing is ever asked of the Palestinians, and worse, no consequences are imposed for their rejection of every deal that allows Israel to exist. They need to see sticks as well as carrots to prompt them to come to the table and do more than take what they can and then walk out, as they have every single time so far.

The Last Chance for Peace Fantasy

That is why even Israeli left-wingers understand that while Abbas may actually be the most moderate imaginable Palestinian leader, that is a meaningless compliment. Given the fact that Palestinian public opinion remains stuck in a mindless cycle of rejectionism that views Israel’s existence as illegitimate and violence against Jews laudable, there’s simply no chance for him or anyone more or less moderate than Abbas to deliver any sort of a peace agreement. If even he, the man President Obama has called a “champion for peace,” can’t be persuaded to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders might be drawn, then hopes for peace must be put on hold until a sea change in Palestinian culture happens to make it possible.
Perhaps someday two states will be possible. But so long as Abbas is the best Israel can hope for, the overwhelming majority of Israelis will continue to believe that any withdrawals from the West Bank will merely result in a repetition of Ariel Sharon’s Gaza experiment that created a terrorist enclave for Hamas. Abbas’s last years in power aren’t a “last chance” because he has been as much of an obstacle to an agreement as his Hamas rivals.
As the Times of Israel’s David Horovitz notes in an important column today, this doesn’t mean nothing can be done to halt the bloodshed. Those that claim to be friends of Israel or the Palestinians and lovers of peace can do something. They can advocate for an end to the sort of incitement to murder that is routine in the Palestinian media controlled by Abbas and by the PA and its leadership. They can also stop pretending Abbas is a “last chance” and, finally, start holding him accountable for torpedoing peace. Until the remaining last-ditch members of the peace camp in the press and the foreign policy establishment start doing those two things, we shouldn’t take their advocacy for more pressure on Israel or the two-state solution seriously.

From The National (UAE):

Eight members of the militant group Hamas were missing Wednesday after the collapse of a tunnel in the Gaza Strip caused by rain and flooding, a security source said.

The tunnel collapsed overnight in the area of Jabalia in the north of the Palestinian enclave after several days of rainfall, the security source in the area said on condition of anonymity.

“The resistance tunnel collapsed last night due to the weather and flooding,” the source said, adding that the tunnel belonged to Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip.

“There were 11 resistance men inside. Three of them escaped in the first hour after the accident, but the security operation ... continues to search for the eight others.”

Al Hadath reports that the tunnel was in the north of Gaza, meaning that it was not a smuggling tunnel. Heavy rains caused the collapse. It adds:

The Ministry of Health in Gaza and did not declare the existence of injuries or deaths, but media sources confirmed the loss of eight people who were inside the tunnel out of 11 people.

Official sources in Gaza continue to keep quiet about the situation, announced the closure of the area and prevented journalists from filming.

Indeed, Hamas media had not mentioned this story until the last couple of hours, and now says that all 11 trapped men were saved, denying that anyone was taken to Shifa Hospital or any other details reported.

If it wasn't a smuggling tunnel, what kind of tunnel was it?

This might be the answer:

Residents of various Israeli communities along the southern border of the Gaza Strip have renewed complaints of reverberating, underground drilling sounds possibly linked to the construction of infiltration tunnels by Palestinian terrorists, Channel 10 reported Tuesday night.

The residents told the Israeli news channel that at first they believed the middle of the night excavation sounds were caused by rain storms that hit the country earlier this week, however when the sounds desisted at 4 a.m. they realized their source was not the precipitation.

One resident, Tzila Pitusi, said it felt as if someone was breaking into her home.

"We started hearing things like concrete cracking, we felt that the concrete was rising up. We heard booms and bangs from the kitchen," another local, Esther Naim, told Channel 10.

In light of the reported issue, the southern Eshkol Regional Council head Gadi Yarkoni called on the government to act quickly to remove the threat that could lead to the possible infiltration into Israel by Gazan terrorists.

According to the report, an IDF official responded to the complaints, saying that after examination it was determined that no underground tunnels existed in Israeli territory.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

The really insane thing about Ban Ki Moon's speech

Yes, it is outrageous that Ban Ki Moon essentially called terror attacks a natural result of "occupation," and Netanyahu was right in slamming him for it.

But that wasn't the strangest part of the speech.

The title of Ban Ki-Moon's talk was "Secretary-General's remarks to the Security Council on the Situation in the Middle East."

There were 52 paragraphs in the speech according to the official UN record.

Of those 52, three were about Lebanon. Two referred to Syria - one about refugees and one about the Golan.

The entire rest of the speech was about Israel and the Palestinians.

The Secretary General of the UN gives an overview of the Middle East without mentioning Syrian atrocities, without mentioning Iraqi instability, without even mentioning ISIS.

Nothing about Iran. Nothing about Saudi Arabia, which is killing more civilians in Yemen than Israel did in Gaza. Nothing about Egypt or Libya. Not a word about Kurds.

On the contrary - Ban Ki Moon implied that if only Israel would just give some more concessions, then the rest of the region would be inspired to make peace. "As the wider Middle East continues to be gripped by a relentless wave of extremist terror, Israelis and Palestinians have an opportunity to restore hope to a region torn apart by intolerance and cruelty."

The word "obsession" hardly does justice to the single-minded Israel fetish at the UN.

But, yes, we must also be angry at the Secretary General's justification for terror.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

It happens every year, and sure enough this year is no exception.

Whenever there are heavy rains and snow that flood Gaza, the Palestinians blame Israel for "opening dams" that don't exist.

Al Watan Voice, Palestine News Network, Al Resalah, Palestine Times and many other Arab media outlets are saying:

"Israeli" occupation forces on Saturday evening opened rainwater dams towards the agricultural lands in the east of Gaza. Local sources reported that the occupation is opening rainwater dams in different areas east of the city which resulted in the flooding of tens of dunums of agricultural land.

Every winter, the Israeli occupation authorities deliberately open dams near their border with the Gaza Strip.

I've been documenting these spurious claims since 2010.

Last year the official PA news agency went beyond blaming Israel for opening dams to claiming that Israel is actively pumping water into Gaza just to flood them.

Some idiots hate Israel so much that they claim that since Israel does have a few tiny limans (mini-dams to create oases) and reservoirs in communities near Gaza (as I'd pointed out years before) that anyone pointing out that there are no dams with the capability of being opened towards Gaza is just an evil hasbarist. Since Gazans claim it, it must be true and Israelis are all liars.

But no less an organization than Al Jazeera issued a correction last year after they quoted one of the may dam accusations:

Proving that Al Jazeera is just another Zionist media outlet.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

01/26 Links Pt2: Brendan O’Neill: The violence of the Safe Space; EU decision contradicts Oslo Accords

From Ian:

Brendan O’Neill: The violence of the Safe Space

Consider some recent examples from Britain, where students have built what they call Safe Spaces but which look to me more like Unsafe Spaces for those judged to hold the wrong views or to have the wrong attitudes.
Last week at King’s College London, a meeting of pro-Israel students was invaded by anti-Israel activists. They smashed windows, set off a fire alarm, threw chairs around. They chanted “Nazis!” at the attendees of the meeting. Oh, the irony of activists shutting down a meeting of largely Jewish students while shouting “Nazis”: a serious self-awareness failure.
A key justification given by student radicals for shouting down pro-Israel meetings is that such events are “offensive” or “distressing” to certain students. That is, they violate the Safe Space. So in the name of maintaining safety on campus, certain events can be violently interrupted. It’s Orwellian: war is peace, freedom is slavery, violence is safety.
On two campuses in Britain — Cambridge and Goldsmith’s — feminist students have burnt the literature of far-left groups whom they accuse of rape apologism and of contributing to a hostile climate for female students. That is, these far-left groups make women feel unsafe and therefore their pamphlets must be publicly burnt. The use of fascistic menace to make students feel comfortable — the Orwellianism continues.
At a London university last year, the Iranian secularist Maryam Namazie was harassed by members of the Islamic Society who shouted at her: “You are violating our Safe Space!”

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: What Is Richard Branson’s Problem With Israel?

Other “elders” in Branson’s organization include the notoriously anti-Israel, antisemitic Bishop Desmond Tutu, whom I have also met on several occasions, including at the Oxford Union. Tutu is a supporter of the BDS movement, calling for an economic and cultural boycott of Israel. His bigoted views have surfaced with statements such as, “The Jewish lobby is powerful — very powerful,” while accusing Jews of “an arrogance — the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support.” Tutu has stated that Zionism has “very many parallels with racism,” and has accused the Jewish state of subjecting the Palestinians to “Israeli Apartheid.” He believes that the Palestinians are suffering more than the Jews did during the Holocaust, stating that “the gas chambers” had made for “a neater death” for the Jews.
Clearly such views are not just a moral abomination but represent a deplorable and uncleansable stain on the reputation of a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Is this what Richard Branson had in mind when he stated in an interview, “And obviously after the Second World War, the world had enormous sympathy for the Jewish people. Over a number of decades, that sympathy has been lost…”?
I believe in my heart that Branson is a good and charitable man. So why say these things about the Jews?
Branson also tapped the corrupt former head of the UN, Kofi Annan, the same man who overruled UN General Romeo Dallaire in April 1994 and ordered him not to use his UN forces to disarm the Hutus in Rwanda and prevent them from hacking to death 800,000 Tutsis. Annan in the past declared that Saddam Hussein was a man he could do business with, and then sat down to smoke expensive cigars with the Butcher of Baghdad. He also declared himself “deeply moved” by the death of arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat and ordered the UN flag flown at half mast.
Also included in Branson’s Elders group is the man Kofi Annan appointed as United Nations special representative for Afghanistan and Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi. During Brahimi’s assignment he criticized Israel’s violence and suppression of Palestinians and called Israel “the big poison in the region.”

US rapper downplays Holocaust, suggests listeners read David Irving

A US rapper on Monday attempted to downplay the Nazi genocide, implicate US President Barack Obama in a Jewish conspiracy and suggest his listeners research infamous Holocaust denier David Irving after posting a song to his website, British based Internet publication The Jewish Chronicle reported Tuesday.
Bobby Ray Simmons Jr., better known as B.o.B., who has number one singles in both the US and UK, released his new song dubbed 'Flatlines,' in which he states: "Stalin was way worse than Hitler, that's why the POTUS (President of the United States) gotta wear a Kipper."
B.o.B. goes on to rhyme: "They nervous, but before you try to curve it, do your research on David Irving."
Irving is a notorious Holocaust denier and British historian who was was jailed in Austria in 2006.
The chart-topping recording artist also took umbrage with scientific claims concerning the spherical shape of the globe, posting dozens tweets claiming that the earth was in fact flat, and suggested renown astrophysicist Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson was being paid to maintain the lie crafted by the Department of Defense and NASA.