Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 29, 2017

Facebook lies to Israelis reporting Holocaust denial pages; pages stay up outside Israel (update)

Adi Amsterdam, an Israeli activist, set up an event for Holocaust Remembrance Day on Facebook asking people to report antisemitic Holocaust-denial Facebook pages.

After first claiming that the pages didn't violate community standards, it looked like the campaign was a success. Facebook said that after reviewing the posts, they removed some 25 offensive, Holocaust-denying pages.

Facebook is lying.

When you go to these pages in Israel, you indeed get a message that the offensive posts have been removed:

But when you go to these sites outside Israel with the same link, the hate is still there:

Facebook is treating Holocaust denial as something that only some Jews are sensitive to, and not something that is objectively offensive.

The message that Facebook is giving is that the worst kinds of Jew hatred are fine, and some Jews are oversensitive to it so they should be shielded from being offended. They absolutely do not agree that these pages are incitement against Jews.

Holocaust denial isn't freedom of expression - it is hate speech, and as these example show, is associated with pure antisemitism.

Facebook's lies to its Israeli readers, claiming that they removed these posts, is extraordinarily offensive.

By not taking antisemitic hate speech seriously - indeed, by acting condescendingly towards those that report it - Facebook is making a statement that they support such speech.

This is outrageous and Facebook needs to answer why they lie to their Israeli members and why they treat Holocaust denial and antisemitism as acceptable speech when they claim to be against hate speech.

UPDATE: This was noted last year by Brian at Israellycool, and the reason given by the Online Hate Prevention Institute is that Facebook will only remove content that is illegal in the host countries, not merely for being "offensive." If it isn't illegal in the US - and the Arab world - it will remain visible there. Which shows that Facebook isn't trying to do the moral thing; just the minimum to avoid legal issues.

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.

We've had the new President for a week. What do we know?

Not a whole lot.

We certainly know that the amount of anti-Trump hysteria is off the charts. The amount of, yes, fake news meant to discredit him is crazy. "Fact checking" is as partisan as "news" is, and digging down to find the actual facts is a daunting task when the supposedly sober news sources are obsessed with what are really trivialities.

The new administration is certainly shaking things up, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. I have no problem with running the government more like a business; in my mind this is a welcome development.

But Trump has also done some undeniably weird things that cannot be explained in terms of a rational head of state nor a head of a major corporation. A business doesn't just shake things up for no reason; it has a transition plan so that the company will survive in the meantime. Also, the messaging from the new administration is anything but businesslike. It is chaotic. Just as American's allies were uneasy with the messages from the Obama administration, they cannot be happy with the out of control signals coming from Washington today.

On the other hand, putting things on hold - whether it is spending money or a temporary hold on immigrants (also badly misreported) - doesn't strike me as being the end of the world. It is actually sane to step back and formulate policies in a transition period.

Let's stick with the Israel/Jewish parts from the past week. There were four main stories.

One was that the silence from the White House when Israel announced new housing units in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer dodged a reporter’s question Tuesday on whether the administration supports the Israeli government’s decision to proceed with the construction of 2,500 housing units in the West Bank. Spicer said the administration was still forming its foreign policy team and that President Donald Trump would discuss settlements and other matters when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits next month.
The president “has asked his team to get together,” Spicer said. “Israel continues to be a huge ally of the United States. He wants to grow closer with Israel to make sure that it gets the full respect that it deserves in the Middle East and that’s what he’s going to do. We’re going to have a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu. We’ll continue to discuss that.”

It is to soon to have an opinion on this. After all, new UN ambassador Nikki Haley said that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria "can hinder peace" in the region. The Trump team does not seem to have decided on a position on this yet, and it may be premature to assume that the lack of a response to the new approvals is a real shift in policy. In all likelihood, this is just another subject where the Trump administration has not yet formulated a clear position. It is welcome to see that the US no longer sees settlements as the end of the world but the celebrations of the Israeli right in thinking that they can now build wherever they want without criticism do not seem warranted. My guess is that the administration will tacitly accept building in the major blocs that would be part of Israel in any agreement but not so keen on building elsewhere.

The second story was the seeming postponement (perhaps for a long time) of moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Asked about moving the embassy, a move he said he favored during the campaign, Trump said: “I don’t want to talk about it yet. It’s too early.”

This is a much different message from his position just days earlier, right before the inauguration, when Trump said, “Of course I remember what I said about Jerusalem. You know that I am not a person who breaks promises,”

So all we know is that nothing is going to happen soon, and we can guess that the massive Palestinian campaign of threats has affected the decision as well. This would be very unfortunate, caving to threats or even appearing to cave is never a good signal. At least in this case we will know the truth fairly soon: if Trump signs the waiver to stop the embassy move at the end of May then this is a promise that is not likely to be fulfilled. (Update: One pro-Trump source claims that the Israeli government is what is delaying the move, not the White House. In the current environment, without independent corroboration, I cannot believe anything. And Netanyahu denies it. [h/t Yoel])

The third story was the white House's apparent hold of $221 million that Obama earmarked for Palestinian Arab institutions in his last hours of office. I'm not certain that this is true; it was only reported second-hand.

The fourth story was the contents of the White House statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day:

It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.
Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest.‎ As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent.
In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my Presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world.”

Many criticized the statement for not mentioning Jews specifically, and I was willing to give the White House a little slack on that, thinking that they simply didn't think about the Jewish sensitivities to this topic, until they doubled down:

The White House statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day didn't mention Jews or anti-Semitism because "despite what the media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered," administration spokeswoman Hope Hicks told CNN on Saturday.
Hicks provided a link to a Huffington Post UK story noting that while 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, 5 million others were also slaughtered during Adolf Hitler's genocide, including "priests, gypsies, people with mental or physical disabilities, communists, trade unionists, Jehovah's Witnesses, anarchists, Poles and other Slavic peoples, and resistance fighters."
Asked if the White House was suggesting President Donald Trump didn't mention Jews as victims of the Holocaust because he didn't want to offend the other people the Nazis targeted and killed, Hicks replied, "it was our honor to issue a statement in remembrance of this important day."

To make Holocaust Remembrance Day into a universal theme that doesn't mention genocide is exactly the sort of thing that liberals have been trying to do to it in learning "lessons" from the day, and it is no more acceptable from a Trump administration. This clarification from Hope Hicks is awful. The Holocaust's uniqueness is exactly because it targeted Jews for extermination, and not mentioning the central aim of the Holocaust is outrageous.

The same Jewish groups who are insisting that this is not a slight would have rightly slammed President Obama if he would have released that exact same statement.

Which is the problem in a nutshell. Trump supporters are blind to his mistakes, while Trump opponents are blind to his potential successes. The number of people who are actually reacting to Trump's actions and words without blindly following the consensus of political alignments is vanishingly small (and the pundits that manage to do that are very valuable indeed.)

What is the final score? Too soon to tell, but the wild-eyed enthusiasm that some had for a Trump administration is shortsighted. It is a reasonable assumption that Trump's inaugural promise to put America's interests first will be the guiding policy for the next four or more years, and it is foolhardy to think that Israel's interests will be prioritized over what the president believes is best for the US. After all, the official Trumpian vision is "realpolitik" - and that is the stated position of many bitter foes of Israel as well. I'm not saying that Trump is like Walt and Mearsheimer but his admiration for Israel is not going to override his desire for reorienting American policy towards American interests. I am fairly certain this is why Netanyahu negotiated the ten year aid deal; he was hedging his bets against a potential Trump administration that could decide to freeze foreign aid altogether.

Outside of the unfortunately named "America First" policy, the other constant is that Trump is a negotiator. He is not going to just give things to Israel without getting something back. The embassy might be considered a chit for negotiating settlements or missile defenses or something else.

(This is also why Netanyahu's building up of Israel as a financial, energy, military, scientific and intelligence power is so important - as the West swings away from "doing what is right" to "looking out for Number One" Israel is in a better position to offer something of value in return for political gains. Israel is the moral choice; it needs to become the practical choice as well.)

The next four years are going to be a very interesting. Just don't forget that "interesting" is not always something to look forward to.

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: Netanyahu: Trump right about building wall, ‘great success’ in Israel; Meet the Jews in the Trump administration

From Ian:

Call it what you will

The Obama administration's hostility toward Israel made clear the danger of a two-state solution • The Palestinians do not want to live alongside us, they want to steal the entire land of Israel • It is time to revive Menachem Begin's autonomy framework.
1. The two-state solution is dead. Its chief undertaker was then-U.S. President Barack Obama and his emissary, Secretary of State John Kerry. The signal was given at the speech in Cairo in 2009, wherein Obama accepted the left-wing narrative, according to which the West is to blame for the ills of Islam. Because of colonialism, because of orientalism. The poor Arabs are not to blame. As part of his apology, Obama also accepted the Muslim stance (invented in the West) regarding Israel: Israel's right to exist stems from the persecution that the Jewish people have suffered, most notably in the Holocaust. The continuation of that idea -- which Obama did not say, but stems from it -- as it can be found in the writings of certain thinkers, is that the Palestinians are "the real victims of the Holocaust."
A year and a half after the speech, the Arab Spring erupted and the Middle East began to dismantle the nationalistic structures shaped by colonialist powers in favor of a return to tribal and clan structures. The Obama administration embraced the protesters in Egypt and supported the transfer of rule to a Muslim Brotherhood representative. He also embraced Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
On the other hand, he did not interfere with the 2009 election fraud in Iran, which took place about a week after the Cairo speech. About a year ago, I published a conversation with exiled Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who had been the spokesman for former Iranian Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the leader of the Green Revolution that protested the fraud. He spoke of the cry for help to Obama's people, who denied them as much: "The people who went out into the streets in Iran said to Obama: 'Are you with them or with us?' Obama was with them, because he did not care who was in power -- that is what I was told."
For Israel, the speech signaled an ominous change in the U.S. relationship with the struggle for this land. It is true that all the previous administrations supported a Palestinian state, but they did so out of geopolitical considerations and American interests. Obama's support for a Palestinian state was first and foremost conceptual, or perhaps ideological, and relied on moral claims. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Caroline Glick On American Jewry by Yiboneh Identify Jewishly (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Yiboneh Jerusalem 'Jerusalem shall be built' was honored to host and present to the Jerusalem community Caroline Glick who spoke about contemporary issues facing the identity of the Jewish nation in general and those of the west in particular.
Guaranteed to be an eye opener for many and a night to leave your comfort zone.

Shaked: Anti-Semitism killing Jews, not stalled peace talks

Jews are being murdered today because of anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and incitement to terrorism, not because of Palestinian frustration over stalled peace talks, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked told foreign ambassadors in central Israel on Friday.
Her comments came on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marked on January 27 every year, the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in 1945.
Shaked, of the right-wing Jewish Home party, told attendees at a memorial service at Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak, near Netanya, that it is clear that Israel is not the problem in the troubled Middle East, but rather the solution, Israel Radio reported.
She urged the ambassadors to join the war against incitement, terrorism and racism.
“The fact that the world closes its eyes to Iranian aid to the genocide in Syria, and chooses to repeatedly condemn the only country in the Middle East that really values human life is a sign of the world’s double standard and its unwillingness to deal with evil,” she said.

The tragedy of the ‘Egoz’ and the story of Moroccan Jewry’s return to Israel

On January 10, 1961, 44 Jews stood in the freezing night on El-Hociema beach in northern Morocco, waiting for a boat. They had traveled from Casablanca, taking with them only the barest essentials, as they had been instructed by the Mossad. As the boat approached, they could barely make out the word “Pisces” – changed to “Egoz”in Hebrew, on the boat’s renovated hull. After 12 undercover voyages bringing Jews to Israel via Gibraltar, the boat had undergone massive renovations to make it seaworthy. Still, there were doubts it was fit for the journey, but there were no other boats to be had and the need was great. Forty-four men, women and children boarded the boat, dreaming of seeing Israeli shores. Forty-four men, women and children drowned two hours later.
The danger of the trip to Israel was not lost on the passengers of the Egoz. Thousands of Moroccan Jews had been making the perilous journey even before the reestablishment of the Jewish state. Throughout the centuries of Diaspora the yearning to return to Israel had been a central part of the ethos of the Muslim world’s Jews. After Israel’s decisive victory in the War of Independence, the Arab world intensified the persecution of Jews by seizing lands and properties, boycotting Jewish businesses and banning them from leaving the country lest they return to Israel. This wave of persecution created over 850,000 Jewish refugees who then became citizens of the young Jewish state.
In Morocco, the story was a bit different.
King Mohammed the Fifth, who some say had favorable views of his kingdom’s Jewry, continued to allow aliya. Moroccan Jews, raised on passionate Zionist ideals, had been making aliya in great numbers – over 72,000 Moroccan Jews made aliya between 1948 and 1955 – and still over 200,00 Jews remained in Morocco.
In 1956, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser began pressuring Morocco to stop allowing Jewish return, reportedly saying to king Mohammed “every Jew you allow to leave becomes a soldier.” In the days of the War of Attrition and rising Pan-Arabism, king Mohammed could not refuse president Nasser, and the aliya efforts went underground. Secret immigration continued, with Moroccan authorities unofficially adopting a very lax enforcement policy.
By 1961, over 30,000 more Jews made the perilous journey from Morocco to Israel, weathering freezing seas and subhuman conditions in their hope to reach the Promised Land.

Mahmoud Abbas' party celebrates their first female suicide bomber (update)

From the Fatah Facebook page:

This is Wafa Idris, the first female Palestinian suicide bomber, who detonated her backpack with a 22-pound bomb on January 28, 2002, killed an 80-year old Israeli Pinhas Tokatli and injured over 150 more.

Embed from Getty Images

Fatah celebrates Idris as a heroine, and the world continues to ignore the daily incitement and glorification of terror done by the "moderate" Palestinians.

Yesterday's New York Times had an op-ed celebrating the "non-violent resistance" of Palestinian activists, but of course no one asks these "non-violent" people if they support people like Wafa Idris or condemn her. Their answers wouldn't fit in with the image that the writers want to portray, and stories like this one of how Fatah explicitly celebrates the murder of an 81-year old amateur painter who was returning from buying supplies are simply not reported.

UPDATE: The official Palestinian Authority news agency Wafa has an article about the role of women in Palestinian society that mentions Idris (along with other female terrorists) as shining examples for women to follow. This is the voice of the PA, mirroring that of Fatah.

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 Links Pt2: Putting Jerusalem First; German Muslim students protest Holocaust remembrance, attack Israel

From Ian:

Mordechai Kedar: Putting Jerusalem First

We are at fault
The truth has to be said: Israel did not do enough to establish the fact that Jerusalem is its capital, to entrench that fact in world consciousness. There are several proofs of this: important government offices, among them the Defense Ministry, work out of Tel Aviv. As a result, just two weeks ago, we heard Trump's intended secretary of defense say at his congressional hearing that Israel's capital is Tel Aviv. After all, his meetings with the defense establishment of Israel take place in Tel Aviv. Israel spent billions on building the Defense Department complex in Tel Aviv, hardly an unimportant ministry.
Most visitors to Israel come by air. The main international airport is called Ben Gurion and on world flight maps, that airport is placed in Tel Aviv. The top of the terminal building should have "Welcome to JSM" on it in different languages, because Jerusalem is serviced by this airport. Instead, its symbol is TLV.This may seem inconsequential, simply technical, but it has significance, especially among decision makers who tend to do a great deal of flying.
And if we are already on the subject of Ben Gurion airport, may I point out a most embarrassing fact to Israel's decision makers: everyone who arrives at the airport walks along the terminal to passport control, passing through a long circular hall whose walls are covered with gigantic advertisements for beer. In Hebrew the word "bira" means an alcoholic beverage known as beer, but when pronounced emphasizing the second syllable, "bira" means capital city. How shameful!! Is this the way Israel should welcome visitors? Is this the message Israel wants them to get with their first steps in the holy land? Beer? That's what counts? Why not photos of the bira, Jerusalem? Or Israel's beautiful landscapes? Its people, cities, streets? Is there a shortage of things to be proud of? Just beer? That's the highest rung of the ladder? It was the Prophet Isaiah who said: "Woe to that wreath, the pride of Ephraim's drunkards..."
There are other things Israel could do to establish the motif of Jerusalem as its historic capital in the minds of its own citizens and those of the world. For example, one could hold an annual commemoration of the First Temple's dedication on the Sukkot holiday during King Solomon's reign (Kings I, 8), letting the world know that Israel was not established in 1948 but when King David moved the capital of the Jewish monarchy from Hevron to Jerusalem (Samuel I, 5), making the Jewish state and its capital over 3000 years old.
Another very important step is to change the Arabic name for Jerusalem on Israel's road signs. They now say "Al Quds," a relatively recent appellation. The classic name for Jerusalem, appearing countless times in the Muslim Hadith (Oral Law), is "Beit al Maqdes," and anyone who looks at the name realizes that it is taken from the words Beit Hamikdash, the Holy Temple. Israel has every right to use that name as it is the one that appears in the earliest Islamic sources. And Israel could simply transliterate the word "Jerusalem" into Arabic letters. After all, that is the city's name. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

On Holocaust remembrance day, warnings of rising xenophobia

Dozens of Auschwitz survivors began a day of commemorations by placing wreaths and flowers at the infamous execution wall on the 72nd anniversary of the camp’s liberation by Soviet soldiers. The United Nations recognized January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2005, and many commemorative events were taking place across the world on Friday.
“Tragically, and contrary to our resolve, anti-Semitism continues to thrive,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in statement made in New York Thursday, and which was read out at the UN headquarters in Geneva on Friday. “We are also seeing a deeply troubling rise in extremism, xenophobia, racism and anti-Muslim hatred. Irrationality and intolerance are back.”
Guterres vowed to “be in the front line of the battle against anti-Semitism and all other forms of hatred.”
In Germany, outgoing Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said his nation sticks by its obligation to take responsibility for the crimes committed by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hiltler.
Noting the political instability in the world today, Steinmeier said, “History should be a lesson, warning and incentive all at the same time. There can and should be no end to remembrance.”

German Muslim students protest Holocaust remembrance, attack Israel

Muslim students with Arab and Turkish origins protested participation in an International Holocaust remembrance event for the liberation of the German extermination camp Auschwitz on January, 27 while the school management showed understanding for their criticism of Israel.
“Some Muslims students said they would not participate in the action,” said Florian Beer, a teacher at the school in the city of Gelsenkirchen in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, reported the paper Der Westen on Thursday.
The Holocaust Remembrance event is part of a global commemoration action to take selfie photographs with a sign saying “I Remember“ or “We Remember.“ A remembrance plaque at the school was desecrated with the sentence: “F*** Israel, free Palestine.” The school was not able to identify the perpetrator or perpetrators.
Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the head of the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post on Friday, “First, Muslims students are greatest in need of Holocaust education, so it would be unfortunate if they were excused from those activities.”
Zuroff, who is the Wiesenthal’s chief Nazi-hunter, added “Given that Holocaust consciousness is a central idea of civic identity in the Federal Republic, it [Holocaust remembrance] is doubly important for families that come from countries with deep antisemitic traditions and no knowledge of the Holocaust and the destruction of European Jewry.”

I hadn't seen this in at least 20 years.

The kid is adorable.

RIP, Mary!

(h/t Daled Amos)

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 Links Pt1: Glick: Israel’s moment of decision; Palestinians Will Pay a Price for Peace Rejectionism

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israel’s moment of decision

Over the past week we were given new evidence of what many assumed for years. Former president Barack Obama and his administration weren’t interested in bringing peace to the Middle East. They were interested in harming Israel.
Last Friday, Makor Rishon published an interview with former Foreign Ministry director general Dore Gold. Gold told the paper that Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice once said, “Even if Israel and the Palestinians reach an accord, it’s possible that the US will oppose it.”
Rice said the US would oppose any deal that it felt didn’t do justice to the Palestinians.
Rice’s statement is significant not merely because it shows the depth of Obama’s hostility. It is important because it tells us the truth about the so-called “two-state solution.”
Rice’s statement showed that Western pressure for Israeli concessions to the PLO isn’t geared toward making peace between the parties at all. It is about retribution.

Ruthie Blum: The ‘Optics’ of Dead Jews

Columnist Peter Beinart warned this week that “unless they change course, [US ‎President] Donald Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu are going to ‎get Jews killed.”‎
Writing in The Forward about Palestinian threats of violence in response to Israel’s ‎authorization of 2,500 new housing units in existing settlements, and discussions in ‎Washington over a possible move of the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to ‎Jerusalem, Beinart hastily added that, “of course,” neither leader wants Jewish blood to ‎flow. ‎
Nor, he said, was he “trying to detract from the primary moral responsibility of those ‎Palestinians who detonate bombs or shoot guns or stab with knives. Palestinian terrorism ‎is inexcusable. It always has been. It always will be.”‎
And then he got to the crux of the piece: If Netanyahu ignores the assessments of ‎Israeli security experts — as well as the saber-rattling of a member of the Jordanian ‎government and chief Palestinian “peace” negotiator Saeb Erekat — he will be just as ‎guilty of the terrorism that is sure to ensue as those who perpetrated it.‎

Edgar Davidson: Muslim and Jewish refugees: spot the difference

Given the media's renewed obsession for claiming that the current 'refugee crisis' is just like the Jewish refugees of the 1930's I thought it was important to update this previous post/graphic.
The current migrant crisis is terrible and tragic, but has been caused exclusively by Muslim wars and violence*****. Moreover, for reasons I pointed out in this article, attempts to draw analogies to Jewish refugees during the holocaust are wrong and insulting, as are exhortations that Jews must be especially welcoming of the refugees. Perhaps this table (click to enlarge) will make things clearer for those who do not understand the reality.

From MEMRI:

The Birzeit University "Shabiba" student movement marked the 52nd anniversary of the establishment of Fatah with military parades and festivities. Armed and masked men in fatigues marched and shouted slogans, such as "Blow up the head of the settler!"

The New York Times has an advertising campaign built around the word "truth,"

Why can none of the 1000+ journalists report on this public rally supporting terror in a major Palestinian university? Is it not the truth?

Is it not newsworthy that an organization that Mahmoud Abbas heads has scores of its members dress up, in public, as masked terrorists, and the Abbas- led organization explicitly calls to murder Jews?

Is it not newsworthy that a university allows students, apparently with weapons, to march on campus with the purpose of glorifying violence?

Why are Abbas and Fatah given a free pass by the media and NGOs who all claim that they speak "truth to power"?

Why is this not considered the "truth" by the New York Times?

Or is it not the version of the truth that the New York Times and other media deem that its readers should know?

Because when you select your own truth and deliberately choose to hide the rest of the story, it is not
"truth." It is propaganda.

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 Palestinian Ministry of Information has called on the UN Security Council to declare an educational NGO called "The Jewish Shepherd" a terrorist organization.

Here is what it said:

The Ministry of Information calls on the UN Security Council to include the so-called "Jewish Shepherd" organization on its terrorism list; by supporting settlement practices. It was created to help those who are failing academically and dropouts from Israel educational institutions to work in the outposts, which ravage our land.

The Israeli Ministry of Education publicly supports these settlements by coordinating with the terrorist organization "Jewish Shepherd."

This comes at a time that the occupation repeats like a broken record claims that the Palestinian curriculum incites and supports terrorism, while its education arm is perpetuating settlements and land alienation!

And it urges UNESCO to use its role to pressure on the Israeli Ministry of Education to stop violations of UN Security Council resolution, which condemned the settlements and demanded it stop in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The organization finds dropouts, teaches them skills and gets them back into school, but Haaretz reported a few days ago that it works out of a settlement that is considered illegal by Israel, Hill 387. In fact, there are demolition orders against buildings on that hill.

Here's the ironic part: the main purpose of "Jewish Shepherd" is to stop Jewish teens in Judea and Samaria from attacking Arabs! It is meant to reach out to the at-risk, hardcore Jewish "hilltop youth" who have been linked to "price tag" attacks and give them alternatives to violence.

In the Orwellian world of the Palestinian Authority, an organization to stop anti-Arab terror is itself considered "terrorist."

The real reason why the PA wants to go to the UN is because it wants to blunt any criticism against its own explicit support for terror in schools. By throwing the charge that Israel's Education Ministry is also supporting what it calls terror, it blurs its own culpability. After all, the UN could now credibly say "both sides support what the other side considers terror." The PA understands that the world wants to blame Israel for everything. they just need to give excuses, no matter how flimsy, for the world to grab onto.

This episode is yet more proof that the Palestinians value symbol over substance, politics over facts. They don't care about protecting their own people - they only care about finding an excuse to demonize Jewish Israelis, and the pretense of caring about their own people is simply an cover story for attacks.

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.

Numbers, in and of themselves are innocuous, it is the actions of people that imbue them with meaning.

The teenager wasn’t asked when the Nazis tattooed a number on his arm. A decision made by men declared that men, women and children could be catalogued, used and discarded. Numbers labeled them as less than human.

Unlike so many others beside him, by some miracle (or many small ones) the teenager survived Auschwitz. He moved to America, got married and had a family. Over the years, throughout all his activities, no matter what he accomplished, Gerhard Maschkowski always carried with him the reminder that once he was less than human: the number that branded him a Jew.

71 years after liberation from Auschwitz the numbers on Gerhard’s arm have faded, less clear but always there. Time has not, cannot, erase the numbers from his arm or the memories that accompany them.

Sometimes numbers are a lot more than just numbers.

Sometimes the contrast between one set of numbers and another is nothing short of breathtaking.

Militaries worldwide issue their soldiers identification tags: “dog tags.” Each army decides to put different pieces of information on the tag. IDF tags have the soldier’s first and last name and their military identification number which, interestingly, is different from the civilian social security number issued to all Israeli citizens.

Now try to imagine yourself in Gerhard Maschkowski’s shoes. After being transformed into nothing but a number, what would it be like to hold in your hand dog tags given to a different Maschkowski? A Maschkowski, young and tall and strong. A Maschkowski born in the land of the Israel, who has now joined the Israel Defense Forces.

Here the number is added to the name, it does not come instead of the name.

Here the number is a badge of freedom, not a mark of freedom stripped away.
The young Gerhard had no one to defend him and no tools to defend himself. Now Maschkowski’s can defend themselves and other Jews as well.

The IDF means that never again will Jews remain defenseless against those that wish to exterminate us. Never again will it be necessary to count on the mercy of another for our protection. History has taught us that there is no one else that can be relied on. We must save ourselves. The ability to do so is the freedom of Israel.

Just ask Gerhard. He knows.

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.

Caption contest: The masked terrorist seamster

A photo at the Fatah Facebook Page shows how patriotic the masked terrorists are - they sew their own flags!

It can't be easy to sew when your eyes are nearly covered, but if Hamas seamstresses in full burqa can do it, then by Allah, so can Fatah terrorists wearing keffiyeh masks!

Of course they have to wear the masks, because otherwise those Zionists would arrest the guy for sewing a flag. They are that petty!

I wonder if Fatah members exhibit the same amount of care for the many Israeli flags that they create for the purposes of burning them.

Anyway, here's your chance to come up with a caption. Put it in the comments!

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: Collier: The Dhimmi Jews of SOAS; The Left Lost Its Logic On Israel; Beware of Linda Sarsour

From Ian:

Never again

This Friday, Jan. 27, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the day ‎the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was liberated. ‎
It is also worth noting that last week marked 75 years since the infamous Wannsee ‎Conference in Germany, where the Nazis came together to form the Final Solution.‎
Incredulously, a week earlier, a German court ruled that the firebombing of a synagogue just ‎outside Dusseldorf was not an act of anti-Semitism but a legitimate form of political ‎protest against Israel. This same synagogue had previously been damaged during ‎Kristallnacht.‎
This is the unfortunate and very dangerous reality facing Jewish communities across ‎Europe today, many of which are forced to live their lives in the shadows, under fear of anti-Semitism.‎
This week, Israel's Diaspora Affairs Ministry published a new report detailing the alarming ‎increase in global anti-Semitism, most notably in Germany, where the number of anti-Semitic ‎incidents doubled in the past year, and the United Kingdom, which saw a 62% rise.‎
The fact is, we know the situation is bad. The Jewish communities of Europe ‎know it is bad. We need another report to tell us that about as much as we need another ‎report to say that smoking is bad for your health.‎

David Harris: Remembering the Holocaust, Once Again

The UN designated January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This was the day, in 1945, when the Soviet army liberated Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi German death camp that has come to symbolize the demonic depths to which the Third Reich descended in the “industrialization” of genocide.
In the Jewish tradition, we are commanded to remember (zachor) and not to forget (lo tishkach).
Let us remember...
...the six million Jews, including 1.5 million children, who were exterminated in the Holocaust (in Hebrew, Shoah).
...the entirely new alphabet created by the Nazis for the Final Solution — from the letter “A” for Auschwitz to the letter “Z” for Zyklon-B.
...not only the tragic deaths of the six million Jews, but also their vibrant lives—as shopkeepers and craftsmen, scientists and authors, teachers and students, parents and children, husbands and wives.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day: New Film Documents ‘Butterfly Project’ to Honor Each of 1.5 Million Children Killed by Hitler

A documentary about a unique memorial for the children who perished at the hands of the Nazis premiered at the Manhattan Jewish Community Center this week, ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday.
“Not The Last Butterfly” – co-produced and -directed by Joe Fab of “Paperclips” fame — follows the path of a special project using ceramic butterflies to honor and remember each of the 1.5 million children who were murdered during World War II.
The film documents the journey that The Butterfly Project has taken since it was created in 2006 by clay mosaic artist Cheryl Rattner Price and Jan Landau, a former teacher at the San Diego Jewish Academy, who was looking for a new way to teach the kids in her class about the Holocaust.
The decision to use butterflies for the project was inspired by Frederika “Friedl” Dicker-Brandeis, an Austrian artist who, before being sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau – was deported in 1942 to what the Nazis called the “model ghetto” of Terezin, where she used drawing and painting as a therapeutic tool to help the frightened and victimized children around her to express their emotions. She also taught them to see the butterfly as a symbol of hope – the way it is in many cultures: confined to an oppressive cocoon before it can spread its colorful wings and fly freely away.

West Bank unemployment not much different from Jordan's

From Ammon News:

The unemployment rate in Jordan reached 15.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2016, the Department of Statistics (DOS) reported Wednesday.

The DOS said the unemployment rate among males stood at 13.8 percent and 24.8 per cent among females in the same period.

In the West Bank, unemployment among males was 15% and among women 26.7%, which is not too much different.

So why does the world make such a big deal over the Palestinian economy and ignoring Jordan's?

Admittedly, in Gaza it is a mess, but the numbers in Gaza would be similar to the West Bank if it wasn't run by Hamas.

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

Like many American Jews, I was born in Brooklyn, NY. As a young man I was interested in electronics and radio, which got me a job as a broadcast engineer that, along with scholarships, paid for my college education. But I had my heart set on an academic career and studied philosophy, specializing in logic. I ultimately decided that I did not want to be a teacher and would be a bad one, but before that I experienced the strange world of the academy.

My time as a graduate student in Pittsburgh and a college teacher in California straddled the great revolution in higher education that took place in the late 1960s – the period of grade inflation and politicization, and the introduction of race and gender studies as academic disciplines. The experience was invaluable in understanding the nature of political correctness and other academy-birthed neuroses that are endemic in American culture today.

I found myself interested in computers, and little by little moved away from the academic world. This was still the day of massive mainframes, before personal computers and the Internet. I liked programming in assembly language, as close to the metal as I could get. It was a good fit for a person with a logical mind who was not especially good at dealing with humans (Mr. Spock would understand). It was an honest way to make a living, too.

The important part of my life started in 1979, when my wife and three children and I made aliyah. I had the honor of being drafted for reserve duty in the IDF, which – after I explained all my experience and technical skills, basically said “here is an M16, go guard things for 6 weeks every year.” We lived on two kibbutzim – one of them a leftist kibbutz of the Hashomer Hatzair movement at which I learned something about carpentry, tractor repair, and unfortunately totalitarianism. The other was a somewhat more reasonable place politically, but kibbutz living didn’t agree with me and after nine years we returned to our home town, Fresno, California. We almost immediately began to compensate for being yordim (leaving the country) by becoming passionate supporters of Israel from the Diaspora.

I started blogging more than ten years ago, because I was frustrated at my inability to get people to listen to me. The local newspaper would publish a 200-word letter from me every few weeks, and – very rarely – a longer piece. But they wanted stuff of local interest, not political articles about Israel. I sent emails to the members of the Jewish community about matters that I thought should be of concern to them, but the reaction ranged from amusement to irritation to anger. Everyone, from editors to synagogue board members to university officials (they had, and continue to have, regular bash-Israel programs) got really tired of me.

My wife and I and some of our friends counter-demonstrated at every anti-Israel demonstration and program at the university, with signs and leaflets. In 2002, I had a somewhat surreal struggle with the management of the public radio station about my offer to buy a “day sponsorship” which would include several announcements “in remembrance of the 526 (and counting) Israeli men, women, and children who were murdered by Palestinian terrorists since September 2000.”

They did not take my money. “How do we know it’s true?” they said. So I gave them names and dates. “Too political,” they said. So I gave them examples of other sponsorships that they did accept, such as one “...in honor of the Stonewall riots, the beginning of the Gay and Lesbian civil rights movement.” “That’s different,” they said. We went round and round for a while until they stopped talking to me.

Toward the end of 2006, the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study report came out, in which Ben Rhodes, a committee staffer who would later become one of Barack Obama’s close confidants on Middle East policy, argued that the way to rescue the US from the quagmire of Iraq was to appease Iran and Syria (there was still a Syria then) by letting them have their way with Israel. Give Syria the Golan – and by all means establish a Palestinian state as quickly as possible, because ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (as if a Palestinian state would end it!) will solve all the region’s problems. Not.

I was invited by a local TV station to be on a panel “to discuss the report.” It turned out that the other guy was a member of a “peace” group who was opposed to how America was blowing all its money bombing Iraq while people were hungry at home; and they wanted me to be the hawk who was in favor of America blowing all its money by bombing the crap out of Iraqi kids. When I mentioned the report and Israel, everyone looked at me blankly (in general, the TV reporters were astonishingly ignorant. Apparently the newspaper people were the ones that did well in their Journalism classes at Fresno State, and the rest went into TV).

Unable to keep my thoughts to myself (and my long-suffering wife), I began a blog called FresnoZionism.org. I used “.org” because my idea was that I would start a Zionist organization that would fight back against the constant flow of anti-Israel propaganda coming from activists at the university, from the local Pacifica radio station, from NPR, and from the various left-wing and “peace” groups. I inaugurated my blog with a post about the Iraq Study Report.

I am not much of an organizer, it turns out, and the Zionist group did not come into existence (although in one of my letters to the university president, which he didn’t answer, I claimed to be the president of it).

Two out of three of my children went back to Israel at age 19 to serve in the army (the oldest served before we left), and as often happens, met their spouses and stayed. Now they each have four children of their own. As soon as my wife and I sold our business and retired in 2014, we joined them. It was a relief to be able to stop trying to make Zionists out of our Jewish friends, many of whom are far more dedicated to liberal causes than to Jewish ones.

When I got back to Israel, I started a new blog, AbuYehuda.com. Sometimes I write philosophical or historical essays about Zionism, and sometimes I write indignantly about the latest example of hypocrisy by liberal American Jews (from whom I have finally come to expect absolutely nothing). Sometimes I write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how there is no possible diplomatic solution to it. Sometimes I write about the subhuman cruelty of Arab terrorists, and sometimes I speculate about the coming war with Iran and Hezbollah (we’ll win it, at great cost). During the past 8 years I wrote a great deal about Barack Hussein Obama, whose deep animus against the Jewish state will (I think) only begin to fully become clear to us in the future.

Sometimes I write about American culture or politics, although that is becoming less frequent as I am no longer a first-hand observer. It is also true that the extreme anger and irrationality that are coming to characterize them are hard to understand. The recent election and the reactions to it are beyond anything in my experience. Some of my old friends are truly angry with me for seeing Trump as an improvement over Obama (despite everything wrong with him, I still think he is).

Every day I am more and more convinced that a Jewish state – not some kind of state of its citizens, but a state that is truly an expression of the national feelings of the Jewish people – is essential for the survival of that people. This is something that most American Jews don’t understand, and which is anathema to the Left in this country, which would like to make Israel a tiny version of the US or perhaps Sweden. Perhaps they don’t understand that their success would mean the end of the Jewish people. Or perhaps they do, and consider that desirable.

I’ve done many jobs in my life, in electronics, broadcasting, teaching, software, carpentry, tractor mechanics, industrial maintenance and more. Some have paid more or been more interesting than others. But probably the most important job that I’ve had is what I am doing with my writing today: defending the concept of the sovereign, Jewish state of Israel.

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 Pt1: Saudi Journalist: The Palestinians' Reliance On Armed Resistance Is Political Suicide; The Losers of 2016: The Palestinians

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Council of Europe Report on Gaza – Another NGO Echo Chamber

Jansson also fails to support her claims with verifiable sources, often referring to unnamed “NGOs” with no proper citation. For example she states, “As I was told by Palestinian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) during my visit to Jerusalem and Ramallah, those who do manage to cross the borders are sometimes arrested by the Israeli authorities or incited to collaborate with them”. She further fails to provide a source for the claim, “According to Palestinian NGOs, 51% of children in Gaza are suffering from physical and mental traumas”.
In one place, Jansson names and cites a severe and unverifiable allegation from the Palestinian political NGO known as the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, regarding “a massive and exceptional escalation in Israel’s attacks and harassment of Palestinian fishermen, including use of live fire, arbitrary arrest employing humiliating and degrading practices and use of physical violence and verbal abuse”. Al-Mezan regularly describes Israel’s policies as “apartheid,” accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “war crimes,” and promotes the “Nakba” narrative, and these allegations should be seen in that context.
Jansson’s report further cites The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) extensively. OCHA also repeatedly publishes reports, factsheets, and informational databases that rely on and repeat NGO claims, thereby lending credence and credibility to highly misleading accusations. For example, on December 29, 2015, OCHA published a “2016 Syrian Arab Republic Humanitarian Response Plan.” According to media reports, after consulting the Syrian government, OCHA “altered dozens of passages and omitted pertinent information to paint the government of Bashar al-Assad in a more favorable light.” (For more on OCHA bias and politicization, see NGO Monitor’s report UNOCHA-oPt: Politicized Activities and Funding in the Arab-Israeli Conflict.)
The Council of Europe document highlights the lack of credibility resulting from reliance on claims of political NGOs, without independent verification. The Council of Europe and other organizations repeatedly overlook the abuse of human rights rhetoric by groups that disperse misinformation in the service of radical political agendas. Thus, instead of suggesting “practical recommendations to improve the situation” in Gaza, this publication simply restates the biases and unfounded claims of NGOs, fueling the conflict and doing nothing to address the humanitarian concerns.

The Losers of 2016: The Palestinians

In 2016, supporters of the Palestinian cause clung to one symbolic victory at year’s end: the passage of a UN resolution (passed with a crucial abstention from the U.S.) condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal. But the fact that this toothless declaration from a UN echo chamber, passed with the help of a lame duck American presidential administration in its death throes counts as the Palestinians’ main accomplishment in 2016 only underscores how much trouble the Palestinian cause is in.
The problem for the Palestinians is this: organizationally and economically they remain weak compared to their Israeli opponents and rivals, and the gap between the capabilities of the Palestinian movement and the Israeli state widens every year. The Palestinian movement has attempted to counter this growing disparity by building alliances with external actors who, for a variety of reasons, either dislike and fear the Israelis, or, for a mix of religious, ethical, or cultural reasons are disposed support the Palestinian cause.
Over the years, the Palestinians have gradually managed to build significant alliances with the wealthy Gulf Arab states, the European Union, and liberal Democrats in the United States. Those alliances have resulted in significant diplomatic and economic support, to some degree offsetting the underlying weakness of the Palestinian movement considered in itself.
These external alliances do things for the Palestinians that the Palestinians cannot do for themselves. The Palestinian Authority, for example, could not pay its bills, operate educational or health systems, police its territory or provide for its civil servants without recurring annual subsidies from donor governments. The Palestinian Authority has no ability to meet the needs of Palestinian refugees outside the West Bank; such aid as they receive comes from international donors.

MEMRI: Saudi Journalist: The Palestinians' Reliance On Armed Resistance Is Political Suicide; The Palestinian Cause Is No Longer The Arabs' Primary Concern

In his January 2, 2017 column in the official Saudi daily Al-Jazirah, titled "The Palestinians Have No [Choice] But Peace," journalist Muhammad Aal Al-Sheikh criticized Palestinian factions that advocate armed resistance, such as Hamas and radical left-wing factions, on the grounds that relying on such resistance and rejecting the option of peace is political suicide. He called on these factions to realize that the two-state solution is the only option that is feasible and is backed by most of the world's countries – especially given the existing circumstances, with the U.S. Congress expressing pro-Israel positions, and the Arab world, preoccupied with more pressing crises, no longer intensely concerned with the Palestinian cause. A stubborn insistence on armed resistance will only end up hurting the Palestinians themselves, he concluded.
Aal Al-Sheikh's column sparked diverse responses on Twitter, some supporting his opinion and others opposing it. The following are excerpts from his column, and a sampling of the reactions.