Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, November 19, 2010

Israelis helping abandoned Bedouin women

Another example of heartless, bigoted Israelis, daring to empower Muslim women.

York University threatens rabbi for wanting to protest Galloway

From Richard Cravatts in Pajamas Media:

York University in Toronto, which has gained for itself the dubious distinction of being Canada’s epicenter of campus anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, is displaying once again the moral inversion that seems to have infected its student body and administration when the issues of the Middle East are discussed.

The issue at hand is a November 16th visit to the York campus by British MP George Galloway, as the invited guest of the York Federation of Students. In 2009, Mr. Galloway had been barred from entering Canada due to his public support of and donations to Hamas, a group designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the U.S. State Department, Canada, and the EU, but a court has since overturned that decision and given Galloway access to Canada once again.

Not everyone was thrilled with the prospect of having Galloway, who, according to wry commentator Christopher Hitchens is “100 percent consistent in support for thugs and criminals,” arriving on the York campus to spew forth his rabid fulminations against Zionism, Israel, and the West. In particular, Toronto-based Rabbi Ahron Hoch took it upon himself to post an announcement on his Aish web site in which he urged readers to proactively protest Galloway’s appearance, and to take specific steps to inform the greater community about the noxious speaker, including emailing York’s president, calling the dean’s office to lodge a formal complaint, and participating in a rally to be held on the York campus.

Feeling that the Galloway visit was one more contribution to the cesspool of anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian activism that has punctuated the York campus for years now, Rabbi Hoch took York’s president, Mamdouh Shoukri, to task for allowing Galloway to speak “under the pretext of freedom of speech,” even though it “was never meant to be used as a vehicle to spread support for terror, murder and genocide.”

And more relevant to Rabbi Hoch was that York’s president had again failed to take a strong stand to rid his campus of anti-Israelism that frequently has morphed into anti-Semitism. “Mr. Shoukri has again showed his amazing tolerance for anti-Semitism and lack of vigilance regarding the feeling of safety for Jewish students on campus,” Hoch wrote.

Rabbi Hoch did receive a response from the university, but not the one he had probably hoped for. In fact, what he received was a formal letter from Harriet Lewis, York’s general counsel, who ordered the rabbi, in no uncertain terms, to remove the announcement “from [his] web site and to direct [his] supporters to cease and desist” any further distribution of the online poster. Why was the university demanding these steps? Because it believed that Hoch’s comment about President Shoukri was “untrue, harmful to [him] and his reputation, and to that of the university.” More ominously, the university considered the rabbi’s words “actionable,”( read: criminal), and expected “a retraction and apology forthwith.”

The letter also warned Hoch that his request for individuals to come to the York campus to protest Galloway’s appearance “might disturb and provoke others to disturb the peace” and “that this too is actionable and may constitute criminal behavior.”

The article goes on to detail specific, abhorrent incidents at York where misozionistic speech is allowed and pro-Israel speakers are protested and stopped from speaking by the Israel-hating mob.

I managed to find a cached copy of the entire message posted by Rabbi Hoch. See if you think it is beyond the pale, compared to the vitriol and protests that York allows against pro-Israel speakers:

Urgent Message! George Galloway at York University
It has been brought to my attention that the York Federation of Students is presenting George Galloway at York University, Tuesday, November 16 • 7:00pm - 9:00pm.

George Galloway is a known supporter of Hamas and an activist for terrorist organizations.

Using the language of a humanitarian and an anti-war activist, he openly supports Hamas and Hezbollah, who are utterly committed to the destruction of Israel. They are movements who target civilians, have no compunction to commit atrocities for the sake of their cause, and to whom life is cheap!

Mamdouh Shoukri, President of York, defends the decision to allow him to speak under the pretext of Freedom of Speech. The concept of Freedom of Speech was never meant to be used as a vehicle to spread support for terror, murder and genocide.

Mr. Shoukri has again showed his amazing tolerance for anti-Semitism and lack of vigilance regarding the feeling of safety for Jewish students on campus. This needs to be strongly protested.

Here are some things we can do:

1) Write to the Mamdouh Shoukri, office of the President and Vice-Chancellor, York University Research Tower, Room 1050, 74 York Blvd, ON, M3J 1P3 or email mshoukri@yorku.ca.

2) Call the Dean’s office and make an official complaint - 416 736 5200.

3) Attend the rally against the event. This will take place on the York campus

Tuesday Nov 16 6:30-9:00pm
Outside the Price Family Cinema, Accolade East 102

4) Get 10 of your friends to do one of the above.
It is important that not only students but members of the general public take part in protesting this outrage.

In the words of Prime Minister Stephen Harper "we are morally obligated to take a stand [against anti-Semitism and the forces that want to see Israel destroyed]. Demonization, double standards, delegitimization [of Israel], the 3 D’s, it is a responsibility, to stand up to them."

Rabbi Ahron Hoch

York University is a cesspool.

Here is a radio interview with Rabbi Hoch.

"Muslims Project Islam's Worst Traits onto Israel and the Jews"

A couple of years ago I came up with Elder's First Rule of Arab Projection which states that "Whenever Arabs accuse Israel of doing some crime, they are doing that exact crime, usually on a far grander scale than their accusations."

Raymond Ibrahim, writing in Hudson-NY, extends that rule onto Muslims as well:

...On September 7, Egyptian cleric Abdallah Samak made the following remarks on Al Rahma TV: "The Jews are known for their merciless, murderous, and bloodthirsty nature… The number one characteristic of the Jews – which appears in the Bible – is that they are always prepared for combat. They believe that it is their fate and destiny to be in a state of perpetual war. This is not what we want. We are seekers of peace and security. We seek to spread love. But we are dealing with a people, a society, that believes that its destiny is linked to war. The number one characteristic of the Jews is that they are a people that believes that its destiny is linked to war. They cannot live without war. They can only live if they attack others. They can only live through annihilation, revenge, and mercilessness."

The notion of "perpetual war," in fact, is straight out of Muslim doctrine and history — best recognized by the word "jihad"— and has no corollary in Judaism or any other religion. Even temporary truces are permissible only when Muslims are weak and incapable of going on the offensive: according to sharia, once Muslims are strong enough and have proper leadership (e.g., a caliph), they are obligated to expand the realm of Islam through offensive jihad until, in the words of the Koran, "all religion belongs to Allah" (8:39). History unequivocally attests to this approach. Moreover, while the Old Testament certainly contains many allusions to violence, these are of a historical, as opposed to doctrinal, nature. Conversely, Koranic verses dealing with violence have been codified in sharia law, and thus have a juridical and perpetual quality (note the word "until" in the most violent passages of the Koran, e.g., 9:5 and 9:29; see here for more on the differences between Judeo-Christian and Muslim violence). Finally, by quickly adding that Muslims "do not want" perpetual war, but instead seek "to spread love," Samak belies the fact that Muslims naturally came to his mind immediately after he evoked "perpetual war," evincing a rather telling train of thought.

...On October 10, Egyptian cleric Galal Al-Khatib, while comparing the Shi'as to the Jews, made the following comments on Al-Rahma TV: "Jews accuse all their enemies of being infidels… The Jews believe that all non-Jews will end up in the Hellfire for all eternity… Both the Jews and the Shiites sanction the killing of those who disagree with them. Like the Jews, the Shiites employ treachery and deception to kill those who disagree with them. They use the same methods to get rid of their opponents. The Jews allow the plundering of their opponents' property…"

First, few religions are as keen on dividing the world between believers and infidels as Islam is, which divides the world into the Abode of Islam (where sharia is enforced) and the Abode of War (where it is not), holding that the armies of the former must wage war upon the latter — as we have seen, whenever they can. Moreover, through the doctrine of "loyalty and enmity," Muslims are commanded to disassociate themselves from non-Muslims. As for the Jews "employ[ing] treachery and deception to kill those who disagree with them," as mentioned, this is straight out of Muslim doctrine: Muhammad himself ordered the assassination of several poets for simply offending him; more to the point, he permitted the assassins to lie to their victims -- in order to win their trust and get close enough to them to murder them. Finally, Islam unequivocally legitimizes plundering the infidel — a longtime source of motivation for the soldiers of Islam.

Read the whole thing.

(h/t Serious Black)

Fatah firefight - in Egypt

Who knew that our favorite moderate Arabs were also being peaceful in Egypt?

A number of Palestinian officers affiliated to Fatah movement living in the Egyptian town of El-Arish clashed with Egyptian citizens from the Al-Fawakhriyeh tribe in a northern Sinai brawl Thursday night.

The severity of the clash led to a closure of the road between the city and Rafah, the border town split between Egypt and Gaza, for more than two hours overnight. Police said several cars were damaged and one man injured before police and security forces arrived on the scene.

According to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masri, a Palestinian officer renting an apartment from one of the sons of the tribe in El-Arish got into a fight with his landlord, and was told to get out of the apartment immediately.

During the ensuing clash, which fellow Fatah-affiliates living in the region soon joined, the two sides exchanged gunfire, injuring one man from the Al-Fawakhriyeh tribe, who was evacuated to hospital for treatment, officers told Ma'an.

The life of a "Palestinian refugee"

Last June, during "World Refugee Day," Al Jazeera commemorated the occasion with an interview with what they called a "Palestinian refugee."

Here's the video:

A woman who lived her whole life under the generous rule of Saddam Hussein lost her protector. Her neighbors chased her out of the country where she lived comfortably - Iraq. Finally, she got the opportunity to move to the US where she hopes to become a citizen.

And she is referred to as a "Palestinian refugee."

Blood libel of the day

From Ha'aretz:

Dutch media this month published articles accusing Ariel Sharon of murdering Palestinian children in Lebanon. Former officials who worked with Sharon said the publications were false. The Israeli foreign ministry called the claim "a modern blood libel."

The claim first appeared in the Volkskrant, the third largest paper in the Netherlands, in an interview with the well-known Dutch-Jewish director George Sluizer. According to Sluizer, 78, he witnessed Sharon killing two Palestinian toddlers with a pistol in 1982 near the refugee camp Sabra-Shatilla while filming a documentary there.

“I met Sharon and saw him kill two children before my eyes,” said Sluizer, who lives in Amsterdam.

Sluizer repeated the accusation in an interview for Vrij Nederland, an intellectual magazine, published on November 13 ahead of a screening of his film at the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. “Sharon shot two children like you shoot rabbits, in front of my eyes,” he said.

The children, according to Sluizer, “were toddlers, two or three years old. He shot them from a distance of 10 meters with a pistol that he carried. I was very close to him.” Sluizer added he thought this happened in November, when Sharon was Israel’s minister of defense, but he was not sure of the month.

His account was published in a special Volkskrant supplement for the film festival, which opened on Wednesday. The festival featured Sluizer’s fourth and most recent film about Israel, in which he is filmed telling a Sharon effigy that he wished Sharon would have died at Auschwitz.

Ariel Sharon, of course, was born in what is now central Israel, not Europe. He is more Palestinian than Yasir Arafat or Ezzedeen Al-Qassam were.

Now, imagine a prominent film director coming forward in, say, 1965, saying that they witnessed Adolf Hitler personally shoot two Jewish toddlers at point blank range in public.

That claim would have met with a lot more skepticism than this one was by the Dutch press.

Luckily, Ha'aretz actually spent the time to show he is a liar:

Sharon’s successor as defense minister, Moshe Arens, said Sluizer’s account was “a lie.” According to Arens, “Sharon would never shoot a child and he was not in Lebanon in November of 1982. Thirdly, protocol prohibits ministers from wearing weapons. As civilians they are not allowed to carry firearms.”

In an interview for Haaretz, Sluizer said his cameraman Fred van Kuyk, who died a few years ago, also witnessed the shooting. Sluizer also said he had personally filed two complaints against Sharon in 1983, with the International Court of Justice in the Hague and the European Court of Human Right in Strasbourg.

Mr. Andrey Poskakukhin, head of the ICJ’s information department, said the court had no registration of a complaint by Sluizer. An administrator for the court in Strasbourg said his institution had no record of such a complaint either.

“By the time my complaints arrived at their destination and should have been processed, minister of defense Sharon had become prime minister and therefore he was free of prosecution,” Sluizer said. Sharon became prime minister in 2001, 18 years after Sluizer said he filed his complaints.

He added he began thinking more about the shooting after surviving a near-fatal aneurysm in 2007.

The most charitable explanation is that his hatred for Sharon caused him to create a false memory, or that his aneurysm messed up his brain. More likely - he is just a liar.

(h/t Elder of Lobby and Joel)

This photo shows the limitations of taking a photo with a low-quality camera phone. It is nearly impossible to take a good shot where the lighting is drastically uneven.

IMHO, it is still an interesting looking shot. What makes it more interesting is that it was taken at exactly the same latitude and longitude as my previous open-thread photo, on the same day, facing the same direction.

In other news, I had almost forgotten that I have a video page on the blog. I updated it this morning with my newest video (which I was hoping would be much more popular, but you never know) as well as some recent efforts as well as two videos made by others that I had subtitled.

UN slowly realizes Hezbollah is smuggling weapons!

From Ya Libnan:

Michael Williams, UN special coordinator for Lebanon, said that Hezbollah militia is smuggling large amounts of weaponry to south of the Litani river and stocking them there and warned ” this is a violation of UN resolution 1701″

On September 3, a suspected weapons cache exploded in the south Lebanon town of Shehabiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold.

Williams said there were concerns at the delay in which the UN peacekeeping force, UNIFIL, was given access to the site of the Shehabiyeh explosion.

“Many times the secretary general of Hezbollah has referred openly to the Hezbollah’s considerable armaments, sometimes in some detail, and has referred also to the replenishment of those armaments since the war of 2006, so I have to assume that this weaponry was smuggled into the country,” Williams said.

Gee, ya think?

The UN was only informed about that in March - 2008.

Much more from Daled Amos.

MUST READ: Robert Bernstein's fantastic speech

UN Watch published the full version of a speech given by Robert Bernstein, founder of Human Rights Watch, at the University of Nebraska at Omaha on November 10 on the subject of Human Rights in the Middle East.

It is long but it is a must-read.

Here are some parts:

You may wonder why a man just shy of his 88th birthday would get up at 5 in the morning to fly to Omaha to give a speech. Frankly, since accepting this kind offer, I’ve wondered myself. Here’s why. Having devoted much of my life to trying to make the Universal Declaration of Human Rights come alive in many places in the world, I have become alarmed at how some human rights organizations, including the one I founded, are reporting on human rights in the Middle East.

In reading about the discussions and actions of students on American campuses, I learned, of course, that the Israel-Palestine issues were very polarized, sometimes hostile, and that a lot of the hostility was by students angered over Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and the endless process of trying to establish a second state.

I know we all believe in free speech. We believe in equality for women. We believe in tolerance of each other’s religious beliefs and in an open campus. When I go back to New York, tomorrow night, I will be attending the 150th anniversary of Bard College, a college very involved in the Middle East, as it has a combined degree program with Al-Quds, the Palestinian university in Ramallah. Here is what Leon Botstein, Bard’s President, says about education: “Education is a safeguard against the disappearance of liberty, but only if it invites rigorous inquiry, scrutiny, and the open discussion of issues.”

Believing in all these values and the others of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, what is taking place on American campuses puzzles me. It seems to me that the State of Israel has all the values we just outlined. It is surrounded by 22 Arab states occupying 99-1/2% of the land in the Middle East and these states do not share these values. Israel, which occupies less than ½ of 1%, does share these values. There is a battle about two things: First, the size of the 23rd state, the new Palestinian state, which at present has many of the same values as the other 22 states. Secondly, the claims of many Arab states, Iran and its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas, about the very legitimacy of the State of Israel. I don’t think human rights organizations alone can solve this mess but I do wonder about the discussions on many campuses, particularly about Israeli abuses, regardless of what you believe about them, and whether they are constructive. I don’t see how discussions of Israeli abuses can take such precedence over the kind of state that will be next to Israel. That is, not only internally, although human rights advocates should care about that more than they do, but in its foreign policy toward its neighbor Israel.

During my twenty years at Human Rights Watch, I had spent little time on Israel. It was an open society. It had 80 human rights organizations like B’Tselem, ACRI, Adalah, and Sikkuy. It had more newspaper reporters in Jerusalem than any city in the world except New York and London. Hence, I tried to get the organization to work on getting some of the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, particularly free speech, into closed societies – among them, the 22 Arab states surrounding Israel. The faults of democratic countries were much less of a priority not because there were no faults, obviously, but because they had so many indigenous human rights groups and other organizations openly criticizing them.

I continued to follow the work of Human Rights Watch and about six years ago became a member of the Middle East North Africa Advisory Committee because I had become concerned about what had appeared to me to be questionable attacks on the State of Israel. These were not violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but of the laws of war, Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law. There has been an asymmetrical war – you might call it a war of attrition in different ways involving Israel – not only with Palestinians but sometimes involving other Arab states, but of course, involving Iran and its non-state proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. In reporting on this conflict, Human Rights Watch – frequently joined by the UN – faulted Israel as the principal offender.

It seemed to me that if you talked about freedom of speech, the rights of women, an open education and freedom of religion – that there was only one state in the Middle East that was concerned with those issues. In changing the public debate to issues of war, Human Rights Watch and others in what they described as being evenhanded, described Israel far from being an advocate of human rights, but instead as one of its principal offenders. Like many others, I knew little about the laws of war, Geneva Conventions and international law, and in my high regard for Human Rights Watch, I was certainly inclined to believe what Human Rights Watch was reporting. However, as I saw Human Rights Watch’s attacks on almost every issue become more and more hostile, I wondered if their new focus on war was accurate.

In one such small incident, the UN Human Rights Commission, so critical of Israel that any fair-minded person would disqualify them from participating in attempts to settle issues involving Israel, got the idea that they could get prominent Jews known for their anti-Israel views to head their investigations. Even before Richard Goldstone, they appointed Richard Falk, professor at Princeton, to be the UN rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza. Richard Falk had written an article comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to Hitler’s treatment of the Jews in the Holocaust. Israel, believing this should have disqualified him for the job, would not allow him into the country. Human Rights Watch leapt to his defense, putting out a press release comparing Israel with North Korea and Burma in not cooperating with the UN. I think you might be surprised to learn the release was written by Joe Stork – Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch Middle East Division – whose previous job for many, many years, was as an editor of a pro-Palestinian newsletter.

Following this, Richard Goldstone resigned as a Board member of Human Rights Watch and Chair of its Policy Committee to head the UN Human Rights Council investigation of Gaza. Human Rights Watch has been, by far, the biggest supporter of the UN Council, urging them to bring war crimes allegations against Israel – based on this report. I don’t believe Human Rights Watch has responded to many responsible analyses challenging the war crimes accusations made by Goldstone and also challenging Human Rights Watch’s own reports – one on the use of phosphorous, one on the use of drones and one on shooting people almost in cold blood. A military expert working for Human Rights Watch, who seemed to wish to contest these reports, was dismissed and I believe is under a gag order. This is antithetical to the transparency that Human Rights Watch asks of others.

After five years of attending the Middle East Advisory Committee meetings, seeing the one board member who shared my views leave the organization, another supporter on the Middle East Advisory Committee who had joined at my request being summarily dismissed, and having great doubts about not only the shift in focus to war issues but also the way they were being reported, I wrote an op-ed in The New York Times questioning these policies. To me, the most important point in my op-ed was the following: “They (Human Rights Watch) know that more and better arms are flowing into Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet, Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.”

A Human Rights Watch Board member told The New Republic that they go after Israel because it is like “low-hanging fruit.” By that, I think he means that they have a lot of information fed to them by Israel’s own human rights organizations and the press, that they have easy access to Israel to hold their press conferences, and that the press is eager to accept their reports. The organization, most would agree, was founded to go after what I guess you would call “high-hanging fruit” – that is, closed societies, where it is hard to get in. Nations that will not allow you to hold press conferences in their country. Nations where there are no other human rights organizations to give you the information.

It has been over one year since the op-ed appeared. Little has changed. For example, within hours of the flotilla incident, Human Rights Watch was calling for an international investigation pointing out that any information coming from the Israeli Army was unreliable. That was before any of the facts were known. I spent the first week of October in Israel seeking out as many different views as I could. I was privileged to meet Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I spent a day at Al-Quds, the Palestinian university in the West Bank, with the university’s President Sari Nusseibeh, his staff, and students. I also met with NGOs including Jessica Montell of B’Tselem, passed an evening with my dear friends Natan and Avital Sharansky, and spoke with many journalists and government officials. I visited S’derot, the town most shelled by Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza. I came back convinced more than ever that Human Rights Watch’s attacks on Israel as the country tried to defend itself were badly distorting the issues – because Human Rights Watch had little expertise about modern asymmetrical war. I was particularly concerned that the wars were stopped but not ended – so they became wars of attrition.

...When I was in Israel, I went to the Gaza border and I learned that since the beginning of 2010, more than 11,000 patients with their escorts exited the Gaza Strip for medical treatment in Israel. Surprisingly and sadly, this policy has risks. I was told the Israelis make the Palestinians change cars at the border because cars had been rigged to explode. A woman on crutches was changing cars. She fell down. Three Israeli soldiers ran to help her get up. She blew herself up, killing the four of them. The Hamas government is preaching genocide of Israel, yet Israel is treating Gaza’s sick. It struck me as bizarre that in an asymmetric war of attrition, which we’re still learning about how to fight, a nation cares for the sick of a neighbor that is preaching genocide to its people and the only human rights comment has been that they are not doing it well enough.

This is only a small sample. Read the whole thing, now.

Soccer Dad retires from blogging (update)

Soccer Dad, one of the early "J-Bloggers" who has spent years building up the Jewish and Zionist blogosphere, has just announced his retirement from blogging.

He is best known for having founded and maintained the Haveil Havalim Jewish/Zionist blog carnival, through which he promoted and publicized many new blogs.

His blog was fantastic. One of his specialties was skewering the NYT's Thomas Friedman, a long time before Latma . His posts were always thoughtful and intelligent. Soccer Dad was quoted with respect by general political blogs, not just Zionist ones. His political sense is excellent, and his blog had recently gotten its millionth pageview.

I have been amazed at his prodigious memory and recall of old articles and posts from all over. Today, for example, he reminded me of a post of my own from 2007 that I had forgotten about that was relevant to the video I posted earlier today.

Soccer Dad would tirelessly work to expand the JBlogosphere, cajoling people to make sure that they use links effectively to spread the wealth. He is also a mensch, always thanking me when I linked to him.

In addition, he is the JBlogosphere's "Alfred," knowing the secret identity of many anonymous bloggers, including myself.

More recently, he had been the Watcher and administrator for the weekly Watcher of Weasels list of the best, generally conservative, blog posts of the week.

I am much indebted to him for his many links to this blog and email support, especially in my early years. I felt that he was my champion, but indeed he was the personal champion for many blogs and we would not be as successful without him.

His online presence will be sorely missed.

UPDATE: How could I forget that he inspired one of my better videos, Hello Martyr, Hello Fatah:

Nominations now being taken for the 2010 Hasby Awards!

The sponsors of my planned Hasbara 2.0 talk at Yeshiva University have been telling me that the turnout would be significantly higher if I speak on a weeknight, and if I go to the main YU campus rather than Stern College in midtown as I had hoped. Since my presentation is probably a one-time only deal, and I believe it is an important topic, I gave in. The new date is December 7, 2010 - "a date which will live in infamy" - at 8 PM, and I will shlep up to Washington Heights.

The sacrifices I make .... :-)

My presentation will introduce the 2010 Hasby Awards. Nominations for the best specific examples of hasbara for the year should be placed in the comments or emailed to me, and I will decide the winners. After all, the best way to teach what works in defending Israel is by going through and analyzing specific examples of what works, and why.

Anyway, without further ado - start nominating!

Helen Thomas receiving Arab "courage" award tonight in Washington

The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee is honoring an anti-semite tonight for her "courage":

The Detroit News reports:

Protests are expected today in Washington, D.C., when an Arab-American group honors Helen Thomas, the Detroit-raised journalist whose long career ended this year when she made inflammatory remarks about Israel.

Thomas, 90, is set to receive a "courage in journalism" award today by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

She resigned in May from Hearst News Service after telling an interviewer that Jews should "get the hell out" of the Palestinian territories and go to Germany, Poland or the United States.

"By honoring Helen Thomas, who is clearly an anti-Jewish bigot, that makes a mockery of the ADC's ludicrous claim that the ADC fights discrimination," said Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, a New York group organizing the protests.

Of course, Thomas didn't say that Jews should get out of the territories, she said they should get the hell out of Palestine, which obviously includes Israel in her mind (she didn't say they should go to "Israel" - to her, Israel is part of Palestine populated by Polish colonizers.)

More interesting is exactly when she was slated to receive this award. There was a Mehdi award winner in 2009 - Ray Hanania - but the one before that was in 2002. I could find no news of a nomination process for the 2010 award as there was in 2009.

It seems clear that her award, and probably the idea of offering the award altogether for 2010, was decided after her anti-semitic remarks, not before. Certainly the people who decide on the award didn't feel that Thomas was deserving of such an award for "courage" in the years 2003-2008 when they decided to forgo the awards altogether.

Her "courage in journalism" award seems to be for a single act of "courage:" telling the world that she wants all Jews to be driven out of Israel.

The ADC says:

ADC National Board Chair, Dr. Safa Rifka, states, "It is befitting to have this award presented at the Gala celebrating the achievements and courage of Helen Thomas. Like Dr. Mehdi, Ms. Thomas is a courageous pioneer who is proud of her heritage and pursues the truth."

ADC President, Sara Najjar-Wilson, stated that, "No one deserves the Courage in Journalism award more than Helen Thomas. Helen's unwavering dedication to her work, love for her country, and courage in asking the tough questions that no other person dared ask, are a source of pride to all Americans."

It appears that mainstream Arabs - ironically, especially the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee - are not the least bit embarrassed by Thomas' bigotry, and in fact they are celebrating it under the rubric of suddenly calling her "courageous."

12 acres of West Bank land burned - by "peace activists"

From YNet:

Twelve anarchists – five Israelis and seven foreign nationals – were arrested by security forces Thursday morning on suspicion that they had set fire to a field owned by Jewish settlers.

The fire consumed some 50 dunams (about 12 acres) of land near the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin.

The incident began at around 8 am when a group of 30 anarchists, accompanied by a number of photographers from the Al-Jazeera television network, arrived at the site. The anarchists set the field on fire and planted olive trees in the torched soil.

According to the settlers, the method is commonly used to take over land. "When the olive trees grow the Civil Administration has a difficult time determining who the land belongs to," one of them said.

The grove has been set on fire three times over the past few weeks by anarchists.

The disputed land is located some 100 meters (330 feet) from Bat Ayin. "These lands have been under Jewish ownership since 1934," said Yaki Morag, the head of security at the settlement. "However, we have no claims to these fields and we do not plan on cultivating them or settling on them. So we don’t understand what the frenzy is about or why they repeatedly target us.

"This has been going on for a year and a half now, on an almost weekly basis," he said. "Yesterday and the day before anarchists burned 90-year-old trees on land that belongs to the Jewish National Fund near Kfar Etzion."

In a related story, the "peace activists" denied earlier reports that they were setting fires in state lands in order to blame Jews. Instead, they said they have video showing that they are setting fires to clear land for Arabs to plant.

But they didn't deny that the fields did not belong to Arabs or that they use this as a land-grab.

Now, especially during a drought, what happens when one of those "controlled fires" gets out of control? The same people call the media and blame the Jews!

In that earlier story, Ma'an posts a bizarre video meant to support allegations of Jewish arson - but the video shows a few Jews doing absolutely nothing. If you want to waste 79 seconds of your life, check out Ma'an's evil settlers:

(h/t EoL)

Morning links

WaPo: [t]he Obama administration's efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks are less evocative of true grit than of desperate improvisation.
Toameh: Why Many Palestinian Arabs don't miss Arafat
YNet: A small victory against an anti-Israeli boycott
Middle East Forum: Islamists' twin assaults on free speech
The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure

My Right Word in a new series of photos from pre-state Israel. Here are the British engaging in some collective punishment.
And, if you have a few hours to spend, you can read the 162-page October issue of Strategic Assessment, from Israel's Institute for National Security Studies. It looks really good.

PMW: PalArab kids on TV saying "The Jews killed Arafat"

(h/t Silke, Israel Matzav, JCPA's Daily Alert)

New EoZ video: The horrors of refugee camps

Special thanks to Richard Falk (yes, that Richard Falk) for providing the narration.

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I had missed this picture:

A Palestinian child points his toy gun at a mural daubed with red paint giving the impression of the character being shot in the heart, at an amusement park on the outskirts of Gaza City, on the second day of the Eid al-Fitr, as Muslim families continue to celebrate the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, on September 11, 2010.

Nice shooting

From Ma'an:

Israeli aircraft targeted Gaza's most populous city Wednesday, killing two Palestinian men.

Witnesses said a drone strike targeted a white Subaru just off central Gaza City's Al-Wehda street, leaving a hole in the ground.

The car was ripped in half, the back blown 10 meters from the front with other pieces littering the street. Power lines were damaged in the blast. Black stains from smoke and fire could be seen on an adjacent building.

The strike came at sundown on the second night of the Eid Al Adha holiday, in a busy section of the city.

Awful! Terrible! Israel targeting random brothers just going for a drive, and in a busy section of the city!

But...did anyone else even get injured? Apparently not.

And were they just innocent civilians? Apparently not, as Ma'an reluctantly goes on to say:

An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed the assassination, which was the second in two weeks.

She said "a senior operative belonging to the terrorist group Army of Islam was targeted" because the group, a radical Islamist organization, was plotting to attack Israeli citizens in the Sinai.

Medics also said the two casualties were likely members of the Army of Islam.

Last week Egypt arrested some 25 members of the same group in the Sinai, not only because of threats to Israelis but also threats to US peacekeeping troops in the Sinai.

Juxtaposition

Salam Fayyad - the most moderate Palestinian leader ever, untainted by terror - gave a speech on the twin occasions of Eid al Adha and the 22nd anniversary of the PLO's declaration of a Palestinian Arab state in 1988.

He gave a brief history of the "struggle", and in Ma'an's words:

Fayyad stressed that the Declaration of Independence came as a message of Palestinian peace addressed to the whole world, saying that in Palestine, people want to live in peace and security on the territory of an independent state. This was a historic and painful concession for self-determination, with the return of its refugees to their homes from which they were displaced, and the establishment of an independent state on the borders of June 1967 with its capital Jerusalem, a state of all the Palestinians to develop a national identity and cultural rights, and enjoy full equality of rights and duties, maintained by religious and political beliefs and human dignity, in a democratic system based on freedom of opinion, freedom to form political parties.

Before Fayyad juxtaposed the concepts, I had never before put together the "historic concession" of recognizing Israel and the insistence of the "right to return" as starkly as Fayyad did. In reality, they are intertwined.

In 1988, when the PLO said it supported a two-state solution, not too many people spoke about the "right of return" in the West. Even though people were very skeptical about Arafat and the PLO, it was assumed that the idea of millions of Arabs moving to Israel is simply rhetoric and that if one day peace would be at hand, that issue would easily be resolved.

To Arafat, though, the concept of "return" was the Trojan horse that allowed him to make his "historic concession."

It is now 22 years later. Arafat is dead and a supposedly new "moderate" leadership has taken over the West Bank. In those 22 years, the number of "refugees" has more than doubled. Yet for about two-thirds of those 22 years, the Palestinian Arabs have had some measure of autonomy to be able to not only mainstream the "refugees" in their territory but also to champion the idea that the Palestinian Arabs living in camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan should want to move to their state. The so-called "moderates" have not publicly moderated their daily public calls for their brethren to move back to their nonexistent homes that they never lived in.

For 22 years, they have not been trying to solve that problem - they have been trying, and succeeding, to exacerbate it.

And even if a state is erected in the West Bank, and even if agreements are signed for a symbolic number of people to "return" and the rest get compensated, these same moderate leaders will not object one bit when their more radical brethren insist that the agreement is null and void and a new campaign of terror must be initiated against Israel to correct that injustice. (Very possibly that campaign will start from within Israel.) The playbook that has worked for them once will be tried again - a couple of decades of terror followed by more world pressure on the terrorized.

If you ask even the most moderate Palestinian Arabs their true feelings, most will tell you that Israel is a temporary blip of history, something that will come and go like the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the Crusades. They regard their eventual takeover of the land as inevitable, and their supposed rights to that land as inviolable. They might sign a paper to temporarily set aside that right as a stepping stone to obtaining it in full, but they will never, ever give it up.

When Fayyad or Abbas talk about the influx of millions of people to Israel, they are not posturing. They really mean it. And it is not necessarily a conscious implementation of Arafat's "stages" plan to destroy Israel; they regard it as a historic tsunami that will eventually result in Jews in what they regard as their natural state - being chased from country to country, begging for dhimmi status in exchange for their lives.

The 1988 Time article I linked to above has a section that is bitterly humorous:

If the Palestinians reject an offer reasonable people can identify as forthcoming and courageous -- as they have rejected every attempt at compromise for almost a century -- no one could fault Israel for then saying, "Shalom. Come to talk to us again when you've grown up."

As Abbas proudly pointed out last week, the so-called "moderates" have not moved one inch in their positions since the mass murderer Arafat first made his "historic concessions" in 1988. The extreme positions on "return," Jerusalem and 1949 armistice lines are identical. Yet by dint of repetition, they are still considered "moderate."

Meanwhile, Israel has done exactly what Time recommended, multiple times. And the result is the exact opposite of Time's assumption. Everyone faults Israel for not being forthcoming and courageous enough, and no one faults the Palestinian Arabs for their intransigence.

So what has changed since 1988?

DVD coming out in 2011: "Iranium"

Trailers:

British scientists resign from "anti-semitic" union

From the Washington Post education blog:

Denis Noble is an Oxford University biologist with a global reputation in the scientific community. He resigned from England’s University and College Union, saying the organization was either anti-Semitic or tolerated it.

Noble held the Burdon Sanderson Chair of Cardiovascular Physiology at Oxford University from 1984-2004 and is now professor emeritus and co-director of Computational Physiology. He is one of the pioneers of Systems Biology and developed the first viable mathematical model of the working heart in 1960. Here is Noble’s open resignation letter, addressed to Sally Hunt, general secretary of the union, and published in the Oxford magazine:

Dear Sally

I joined the AUT nearly 50 years ago as a young assistant lecturer at University College London. When I retired from my Oxford professorship in 2004 I chose to retain my membership – although I no longer stood to gain from the union’s negotiating any improvements in salary or conditions of service – because I believe in trade unions and thought that by remaining a member I would, in some small measure, help colleagues. But the behaviour of UCU over the past several years has made it impossible for me to continue, and I now resign my membership.

In a letter I wrote to you over a year ago, which has remained unanswered and unacknowledged, I said that UCU’s repeated conference decisions to discriminate against certain colleagues (Israelis) on the grounds of their nationality were unacceptable. Such discrimination is contrary to the universally recognised norms of academic practice, as set out (for example) in the Statutes of the International Council of Science (ICSU). I also sent a letter as President of IUPS, which adheres to ICSU. Nobody in the world of learning can take seriously a professional organisation that purports to represent academic staff but which entertains proposals to discriminate whether it be on grounds of sex, race, national origin or other characteristics that are irrelevant to academic excellence. Nonetheless our union has voted repeatedly in favour of such discrimination, and those who have been discriminated against are always Israelis. The wording of the discriminatory resolutions has sometimes been contorted for legal reasons, but the intention has been transparent: to hold Israeli colleagues responsible for, and punish them for, the actions of their government via a type of reasoning (guilt by association) that is never applied to the academics of any other country. Of course, I accept that the Israeli government is guilty of human-rights violations, and I accept that the union is entitled to criticise it. But many other governments in the world are also guilty of human-rights violations, often far more egregious than those committed by Israel, and yet Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) have never been endorsed by the Annual Congress of UCU against any other country.

It is instructive to compare the motion about China adopted by Congress at its 2010 meeting with one of those about Israel. (I choose these examples because both countries have been in occupation of the territories of a different ethnic group for many years and both have encouraged their citizens to settle in the territories thus occupied). The motion on China, while asserting that UCU “will continue to condemn abuses of human rights of trade unionists and others”, recognised “the need to encourage collegial dialogue” with Chinese institutions. By contrast, a motion on Israel approved in the same session of Congress reaffirmed its support for BDS, sought to establish an annual international conference on BDS and a BDS website, and severed all relations with the Histadrut, the Israeli counterpart to the TUC. There are many countries in the world whose governments are guilty of atrocities: there is no other country in the world whose national trade union organisation is boycotted by UCU.

I find it impossible not to ask myself why UCU exhibits this obsession with Israel. The obvious explanation – that the union is institutionally anti-semitic – is so unpleasant that I have till recently been unwilling to accept it, but I changed my mind after witnessing the fate at the 2010 Congress of the motion of my local branch (University of Oxford) about Bongani Masuku. As you know, Masuku was invited to a meeting on BDS hosted by the union in London last December. Some months earlier, he had made a speech during a rally at the University of the Witwatersrand. This speech has been described by the South African Human Rights Commission (the body set up by the Constitution to promote inter-racial harmony after the end of apartheid) as including “numerous anti-semitic remarks which were seen to have incited violence and hatred”. The Oxford motion debated at Congress did not allege that the union invited Masuku despite knowing his views; instead it merely invited Congress to dissociate itself from Masuku’s views. This was the minimum that UCU could be expected to do to reassure members like me that we still belong. That this motion was rejected by a large majority makes it clear to me that the union either regards anti-semitic views as acceptable or, at least, has no objection to their being expressed in public by the national official of a fraternal trade union organisation. I do not wish to remain a member of such a union.

Yours sincerely

Denis Noble CBE, FRS

Michael Yudkin and David Smith, also Oxford scientists with global reputations, have joined their colleague in resignation, with a letter in the Oxford magazine:

Sir – Like Denis Noble, we have been a member of UCU and its predecessor AUT, for more than 40 years. Like him, we remained a member after retiring a few years ago from our University posts.

The facts set out in Denis’s letter to Sally Hunt show beyond dispute that UCU is now institutionally anti-semitic. We too have resigned our membership of the union.

Yours Sincerely
Michael Yudkin, Kellogg College
David Smith, Department of Pharmacology

Another earlier speech to the UCU, by David Hirsh, spells out in great detail many, many examples of institutional anti-Israel and anti-semitic actions and words by the UCU as well as excerpts from others who have resigned because of its policies.

(h/t Callie)