Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

How a single settlement apartment can be counted EIGHT TIMES by the media

In the Washington Post, Jimmy Carter wrote another of his ridiculous op-eds where he describes Hamas as the greatest thing since peanut butter while Israel is unequivocally evil.

Others have ripped it apart, but I want to concentrate on one of his factoids:

During the previous nine months of negotiation, 14,000 new Israeli settlement units were approved, more than 3,000 Palestinians were arrested and 50 were killed, provoking troubling examples of Palestinian retaliation, including the deaths of three Israelis.

Notice how in Carter's funhouse mirror universe only Israel is the aggressor and the Palestinians only "retaliate."

But let's look at the part that really gets the world upset: "14,000 new Israeli settlement units were approved." We've seen these numbers in the media as well.

Is it true?

Well, no. It depends on what you mean by "approved." Peace Now counted tenders for 4,868 units and "promotion of plans" for 8,983 units.

What exactly does this mean?

Peace Now helpfully explains it in another link.

Tenders:

A Tender is one of the last procedures before a construction can get started. The tender, which comes only after the approval and validation of a plan, is actually the governmental publication of a call for proposals to buy the rights to build the project. After the bidding process is completed and the contractor is elected, then he or she would apply for a construction permit from the municipality and after getting the permit, they can start the works.

However, not all tenders get turned into housing. Many of them don't go through. Peace Now says that 1,235 additional tenders during the nine-month period were re-issued because no one bid on them.

But when we talk about "approvals" or "promotion of plans" we really get into fuzzy math.

In West Bank settlements, almost every stage of the approval by the Civil Administration Planning Council must be approved by the Minister of Defense. There is no need for any Ministerial approval for plans in Israel or in East Jerusalem.
1) Approval at the local municipality committee - this stage is significant only in Israel and East Jerusalem. After this approval the plan is sent to the Regional Committee for Planning and Construction of the Ministry of Interior in Israel and in East Jerusalem or, in West Bank settlements, to the Settlement Subcommittee of the Higher Council for Planning in the Civil Administration.
2) Approval for “depositing” – the decision of the Regional Committee (in East Jerusalem) or of the Higher Council for Planning of the Civil Administration (in West Bank Settlements) to allow the publication of the plan for public objections. Takes few months until the plan is ready to be published – usually the committee will ask to make some changes before the publication. The Minister of Defense must approve that the plan will be discussed by the Higher Council for Planning of the Civil Administration.
3) Depositing - Publication an ad in three newspapers (two in Hebrew and one in Arabic) announcing that the plan is subject to public objections for 60 days. The Minister of Defense must approve the publication of plans that are deposited for West Bank settlements.
4) Discussion of the Objections – the Regional Committee (in Israel and in East Jerusalem) or the Settlement Subcommittee of the Higher Council for Planning in the Civil Administeration (in West Bank settlements) hears the objections and recommends whether to make changes in the plan or to reject it or not. Here too, the Minister of Defense must approve the Higher Council to convene.
5) Approval for validation – after all the changes are made, the Regional Committee (in Israel and in East Jerusalem) or the Settlement Subcommittee of the Higher Council for Planning in the Civil Administration (in West Bank settlements) again discusses the plan to allow its validation. The Minister of Defense approve the Higher Council to convene.
6) Publication of validation – a publication of an ad in three newspapers (two in Hebrew, one in Arabic) that the plan is valid. The Minister of Defense must approve the publication. 15 days following the final publication the plan is valid. Only after these publications can the plan be implemented.

Any one of these stages is considered "approvals" for the media. Peace Now claims that "in many cases " they are all done at once, but whether that means 20% or 80% of the cases they don't say.

There is another stage too:

When a plan is valid, any initiator who got the rights to build (either by winning a tender or by a private purchase), can apply for a construction permit from the Local Municipality. This is mainly a bureaucratical procedure - to make sure that the construction is according to the approved plan and that all safety, environment, infrastructure etc. requirements are met. Obtaining a construction permit might take a few months, and then the construction may begin.

How about this strange phrase "promotion of plans"?

In the media discourse almost all of the above stages can be described as: “the plan was approved” – sometimes it’s approved to be deposited, sometimes approved to be validated or approved at the local committee. Although the practical meaning of each stage is different, the political significance of each stage is the same: the plan is promoted, and that demonstrates an intention to move forward.

OK, let's count: how many times can a single apartment unit be "approved" or have "promotion of plans"?

According to Peace Now's own documentation, as many as 8 approvals go into every unit (including tenders.)

And not all tenders go through either.

But there is one number that cannot be disputed - the number of units for which construction actually began. Given that Netanyahu has been in power for a long time now, you would think that the pipeline of approvals has been pretty consistent, so the number of actual housing starts should be a bit more accurate than the double, triple and octuple-counting that left-wing Israeli groups are using. If there are 14,000 units "approved" over a nine month period, one would expect that certainly, say, over 10,000 would get built over the same time period several years later, right?

How many units were actually started? For the second half of 2013, Peace Now says the number was only 828.

Peace Now says that the amount of settlement development is "unprecedented." Yet from 2001-2007, some 10,000 units were built - about the same rate as now, and in percentage growth terms the earlier ones were much higher.

To do some back of the envelope calculations: If we generously assume 6 people per unit, and 1500 housing starts in 2013, this means that the rate of units built last year was only half the rate of the Jewish population growth in Judea and Samaria (based on 3% increase from 2009 to 2010).

In other words, the anti-settlement crowd will purposefully inflate the numbers, count a single unit multiple times, and downplay the true amount of construction to grossly exaggerate the idea that the settlers are taking over the West Bank.

But don't take my word for it. Just read the fine print in Peace Now's own reports.

Pallywood again? IDF denies using live fire during "Nakba Day" demonstration (updates - new videos)

Yesterday, a security video was released that seems to show the two Palestinian Arabs being shot and killed during "Nakba Day" demonstrations near Ofer Prison in Bitunia:

The ~~first~~ second one shot was Mohammed Udeh, wearing a green Islamist flag. Here are some close-up photos of him before and after the event, plus a video of him throwing rocks beforehand: (These photos are from AFP.)

I cannot figure out how the second photo above, which must have been taken in the two seconds before he was swarmed by people, lines up with any frame of the video. Similarly, in the video he is taken away immediately, while the photos indicate that he was lying there for at least a minute. (UPDATE: I mixed up the two people in the CCTV video. The videos and the photos are largely consistent.)

Here is video of him beforehand, according to Al Watan Voice. He is clearly seen at 0:17:

This heavily edited jumble of a video purports to show IDF soldiers shooting, but the editing does not allow anyone to determine if that portion was even taken that same day. The green-clad victim is also seen in this video.

Here are photos of the first victim:

Again, I cannot line up these photo with the CCTV video. I don't see the masked man above with the backpack, for example. At no point in the video is he alone, seemingly motionless, with his hand over his chest.

The inconsistencies between the photos and the video indicate that at least one of them was staged.

I see I mixed up the two, the video does seem to track the photos.

Now, the IDF has denied using any live fire that day: (received via email from CiFWatch)

Last Thursday, several violent demonstrations took place throughout Judea and Samaria. In the Bitunia area, a violent demonstration of approximately 150 Palestinians began in which acts of violence took place including the burning of tires and rock hurling.

Security forces arrived to disperse the demonstration using rubber bullets and riot dispersal means.

During the day it was reported that two Palestinians were killed by security forces. An initial investigation revealed that no live fire was discharged during the day.
The incident remains under an ongoing investigation.

The video which has been circulating online in the past hours has been edited and does not reflect the full incident, including the extent of the violence of the rioters in the demonstration.

One more thing: note that the demonstrators in the second video I show are throwing stones in the opposite direction of where the first person is supposedly shot in the CCTV video.

It is beginning to look like there is some serious Pallywood being done here. Where did the shots come from and where were the soldiers?

(h/t Joseph for pointing out my mistake)

UPDATE: Another video that expands on the second one above:

Also, I asked DCI-Palestine (who released the CCTV video) if they would release the entire unedited version, They replied that they gave the unedited version to news agencies.

UPDATE 2: B'Tselem released the entire video, along with the same scenes from the opposite angle. There is no apparent rock throwing at the time, only a burning tire in the street.

The fast reaction to the first incident, with the victim being carried away within seconds towards an ambulance that is only arriving immediately after he is shot in the second CCTV video is very strange (h/t Joe)

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)

UPDATE 3: Some footage I hadn't seen yet:

UPDATE 4: Yenta Press identified where the incident occurred on Google Maps:

UPDATE 5: Found one more video taken that day, heavily edited. I'm still trying to figure out where the IDF soldiers were, there are no videos showing them at the same time as any protesters or obvious landmarks. We can see the direction that the stones are being thrown but no idea of distance.

(All posts on this topic here.)

JPost reports:

The Jewish people will be allowed to pray freely at their holiest site, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, according to a controversial bill proposed by Labor MK and former Jerusalem city councilman Hilik Bar.

Currently, Jews are allowed to enter the Temple Mount but are watched closely to ensure that they do not pray there so as to not violate the status quo of the site as a Muslim prayer area with two large mosques. Visits to the mount by rightwing politicians have led to rioting and arrests.

“The love for the Jewish religion, the Torah, historic and Zionist values, and for Jerusalem and its holy sites is not the property of the Right even if sometimes tries to paint that picture,” Bar said. “The Right was allowed to take ownership of Zionism, Judaism and the attachment to Jerusalem for too long.

"Labor and I are part of the Zionist Center-Left that sees our holy sites as the basis of our existence and the essence of our history.”

Bar said Jews and Muslims praying at the same site was part of the coexistence and religious freedom that the Left believes in. He said the bill could be implemented gradually and carefully to allow people to adjust to it, noting that the Supreme Court had ruled that Jewish prayer should not be limited without concrete warnings of an immediate security risk.

“The time has come once and for all to neutralize the explosive political issue of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount,” Bar said. “There is no reason that every time a rightwing MK ascends the mount to pray there will be a political drama with a third intifada threatened. There needs to be a new order in which everyone respects the rights of the other side.”

Regev said Jews should be allowed on the mount with prayer shawls, phylacteries, and the four species on Succot.

Labor leader Isaac Herzog said he opposed the bill and would try to persuade Bar not to advance the legislation.

This is being heavily reported in Arabic media, which add that the bill would also allow Jews to ascend through other gates besides the Mughrabi (Rambam) gate that they use today.

Times of Israel says:

The Palestinian Authority response to a proposed Knesset bill that would allow Jewish prayer on Temple Mount may exacerbate the already fraught issue by apparently misrepresenting the bill as a bid to allow Jewish worship inside the Al Aqsa Mosque

Palestinian officials attacked the bill as an attempt to change the status quo inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque — a structure dating back to the seventh century and considered the third-holiest site in Islam — and warned of grave repercussions if such a law were to pass.

Mohammad al-Madani, chairman of the Palestinian Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society and a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, said in a message sent to journalists on Sunday that any permission Israel granted Jews “to pray in the Al-Aqsa mosque would direly escalate the situation in the region and may lead to fierce confrontation not only between Israel and the Palestinian people, but also between Israel and the Arab and Islamic worlds.”

“The Palestinian people as well as the Arab and Islamic worlds strenuously reject all Israeli violations of the sanctity of Islamic and Christian holy places,” the message read.

...Fayez Abbas, a spokesman for the Palestinian president, denied that the bill was being misrepresented by Palestinian commentators as referring to Jewish prayer inside the mosque rather than in Temple Mount as a whole. He said that the term Al-Aqsa is simply used by Palestinians as shorthand for the entire plaza, known in Arabic as Al-Haram A-Sharif.

“They mean the entire plaza,” he asserted.

It is funny how Arabs who are so eager to talk to the West about "rights" suddenly change their tune when the rights being talked about are Jewish rights.

It is also funny how so-called "human rights" NGOs will never, ever promote the simple right of Jews to worship in their own holiest spot - even though international law would seem to clearly support such a right.

PA police beat up - and then charge - BDS activists!

Human Rights Watch says:

Shortly before a scheduled performance on April 12 in Ramallah’s Al-Kasaba Theatre by a dance troupe visiting from India, a political activist, Zeid Shuaibi, 25, stood up in the audience and criticized the event. Shuaibi works with the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, a group that advocates a cultural boycott of Israel by foreign artists. Fifteen other protesters were also in the audience. Shuaibi told the audience that the committee had asked the Palestinian Ministry of Culture to cancel the performance because the dance troupe had performed in Tel Aviv, and criticized the Culture Ministry for allowing the performance to proceed, he and several witnesses told Human Rights Watch.

For 10 to 15 minutes, several other protesters voiced similar criticisms. Some audience members not affiliated with the protest voiced their agreement and some walked out of the theater. Other audience members objected to the protesters’ speeches, but no one used insults, harsh language, or violence, witnesses said.

Shuaibi said that men in civilian clothes ordered him to leave, then were joined by a policeman who restrained him while the other men beat him. Three of Shuaibi’s friends who were in the audience, only one of whom said he was involved in the protest action, tried to accompany him and shouted at the security officials to stop beating him, whereupon the officials assaulted them as well, they said.

Police put the four men into one of the three police vehicles parked outside the theater, they said, and assaulted a woman who tried to accompany them to the police station. The woman, Dr. Dima Amin, 43, a gynecologist who is not affiliated with the boycott activists, told Human Rights Watch that she was attending the performance with her husband and 6-year-old daughter and that police assaulted her when she tried to intervene.

In a statement published on April 13, the Culture Ministry accused the protesters of “violence” and using “insulting language,” and said police removed them to maintain “order and public safety.” The participants and other witnesses Human Rights Watch interviewed denied these claims. No violence or abusive language appears in two videos, viewed by Human Rights Watch, in which members of the audience and protesters filmed the incident on their mobile phones.

The four men said that the police drove them to the main Ramallah police station, where they saw several of the plain-clothes officers who had beaten them in the theater. For two hours, police officers refused to answer the men’s questions about whether they were under arrest and whether they had broken any laws. After midnight, the men said, the deputy director of the police detective unit told the men that they would be released if they signed pledges “not to violate Palestinian laws or participate in disobedience,” on pain of an unspecified fine. The men refused, seeing it as an admission of guilt, they said.

The police detained the men overnight and took them the next morning to Ramallah Magistrates Court, where a prosecutor charged the men with disturbing the peace and provoking a riot under the Jordanian Criminal Procedure Code, in force in the West Bank, according to the men and local news reports.

This happened over a month ago, yet the worldwide BDS movement has been strangely silent about their activists being beaten and charged by the people they pretend they are supporting.

(h/t Irene)

05/19 Links Pt2: The unorthodox priest who stands with the Jews; Why Modi matters; plus Basketball

From Ian:

The unorthodox priest who stands with the Jews

Speaking casually about the reasons for his call to service, Naddaf called the army “the melting pot” of Israeli society and “the ticket” to full integration. He talked about Christian mothers having to pay the same price as Jewish mothers and the need to equitably “share the burden” of service. But his quest goes well beyond integration.
Naddaf wants to carve out a new identity and a separate community. He believes that in the coming years he can rally 50,000 Arabic-speaking Christians in Israel to align themselves with the Jewish people and with Israel. The first order of business on the path toward that new identity, he said, was “breaking the fear” that has gripped the community. He likened the Arabic-speaking Christians in Israel, the minority of the minority, to the Jews of the Diaspora: good grades, pretty good jobs, few troubles. “Hostages,” he said, adding, “the only time they feel free to identify as Christians is when they are castigating me.”
In fact, he defined his religion as Jewish, his faith as Christian, and his citizenship as Israeli. Christians, he said, “have a bond with the Jews. We have an allegiance with the Jewish people; with the Muslims we are neighbors. There is no covenant there. None at all.”
This was brought into focus by the Arab Spring. Two hours north from Nazareth, he said, extremists are eager to kill Jews and Christians alike. “If the devils there would come in, you would be on Saturday and we would be on Sunday,” he said.

Of Nakbas, fools and fingers

Nakba week is over. The demonstrators have gone home. The Palestinian Authority have delivered their speeches and sounded their sirens. The Arab and ‘liberal’ western press and media have duly commiserated.
But while Palestinians marked the 66th anniversary of the ‘catastrophic’ mass flight of Arab refugees from Israel in 1948, the French historian Georges Bensoussan, on a visit to London, was focusing on a different nakba. He was asking a packed audience the rhetorical question: why do people, even when presented with incontrovertible proof, persist in their denial of the mass post-war exodus of Jews?
It was at the height of the second intifada in 2002, when two Jews a day were being beaten up on the streets of France, that Bensoussan decided to write about Jews from Arab countries. The antisemitism sweeping France then, as now, was being blamed on the Arab-Israel conflict. But Bensoussan, who left Morocco with his family as a six-year-old, had a nagging feeling that the problem had deeper root-causes.

The Audacity of Protesting Anti-Semitism

In their efforts to vindicate the Palestinians and other Muslim nations, Nevel and Neimark are forced to set the bar for anti-Semitism so high as to rid the term of all meaning. Indeed, in their article the authors complain of the ADL survey, “many of its questions are pointedly designed to skew the results because they have little to do with revealing actual anti-Semitism.” But overall the writers hardly give the sense of being genuinely concerned by whatever they consider “actual anti-Semitism” to be. In the wake of the precedent set by the Nazis, it seems that many are under the impression that if it doesn’t involve the mass extermination of the Jews, then it doesn’t really pass for serious anti-Semitism. In viewing the matter this way they risk legitimating the very demonization that makes such extermination possible.
Yet, demonizing Jews via the ADL is precisely what Nevel and Neimark are apparently prepared to do. Dismissing the severity of rising global anti-Semitism, and accusing the ADL of instigating paranoia, the authors reference a survey showing that there is more bias against Muslims and Roma in Europe than Jews, although it seems the authors were too pleased with the results of that survey to raise the formerly worrisome matter of leading questions. They then go on to level their final allegation: that the ADL shouldn’t simply concern itself with anti-Semitism, but rather all prejudices.

AP writes:

Despite years of security concerns and a harsh debate over Israeli passports, officials said Sunday the number of Jewish pilgrims taking part in an annual rite in Tunisia is up dramatically for the first time in years.

Rene Trabelsi, who helps organize the trek to the Ghriba synagogue, Africa's oldest, said 2,000 people, including 1,000 from abroad, took part in the three-day pilgrimage ending Sunday.

"The pilgrimage of 2014 has definitely been a success. It is a great day," he said, thanking security forces for protecting the event.

The pilgrimage to the island of Djerba, site of the synagogue, was canceled in 2011 after the revolution and in subsequent years there were only hundreds attending, down from a peak of 7,000 in 2000.

In 2002, al-Qaida militants set off a truck bomb near the synagogue, killing 21 people, mostly German tourists — and badly jolting the now-tiny Jewish community

This year was the first time that Israeli pilgrims have been allowed to use their passports rather than a special document issued by the Tunisian government, prompting an outcry among some lawmakers. Tunisia has no diplomatic relations with Israel.

The Tunisian tourism minister says that 2500 Jews arrived, compared to 350 last year. and hopes that in the coming year some 5000-6000 Jews will come.

Tunisia pulled out all the stops for this event, hoping that a successful pilgrimage by Jews will encourage other tourists to visit the country without fear. Tourism is a small but important component of Tunisia's economy and necessary for it to recover from the setback that occurred after the revolution.

In March, Tunisian authorities did not allow Israeli passengers to come ashore from a Norwegian Cruise Lines ship, causing the line to cancel all stops in Tunisia. The government responded with more liberal policies allowing Israelis to come to the country which led to this year's pilgrimage allowing Israeli passport holders to attend for the first time.

Palestinian Arabs once claimed to be...Amalekites!

We've heard Palestinian Arabs claim to be Canaanites, Natufians, Jebusites, Philistines and of course Arabs, which none of those other groups were.

It turns out that this historical revisionism has a long history - at least to 1921.

This book, quoting an out of print Yehoshua Porath book, says:

In an open letter to Winston Churchill on 16 March 1921, the Palestinian newspaper clearly stated: "The first to settle in Palestine in the earliest antiquity were none other than the Amalekite Arabs, our early ancestors."

It goes on to say

However, in official reports, the Palestinians admitted that Arabs had only settled in Palestine since the Muslim conquest in 634.

This was not an isolated incident. Here is a 1970 description of an annotated edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion published in Arabic in 1967 that makes the same point:

Well, they sure act like Amalekites!

(h/t EG)

05/19 Links Pt1: Chloé Valdary: "Nevertheless"; Want Peace? Change UNRWA's Refugee Policy

From Ian:

Chloé Valdary: "Nevertheless" - the Illness and the Remedy

I recognize that there are those who will still disagree with my position on this issue who say that it is “impossible” to seek alternative methods to negotiating with the PA because they are the lesser of the two evils. I seek to persuade the reader that this is not the case. It is also important to note, however, that the lesson of Zionism rejects the notion that anything is impossible.
There is nothing impossible for a people who have turned the desert into an oasis.
There is nothing impossible for a people who went to battle against seven conquering armies and defeated them all.
There is nothing impossible for a people who, with the help of the Almighty, crawled out from under the tyrannical clutches of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Spanish, Germans, British and Arabs to fashion once more for themselves their glorious nation-state.
This people has accomplished wonders before. Surely, they can accomplish wonders again.

Khaled Abu Toameh: The New Palestinian "Journalists"

The attack on Issacharoff and his friend did not come as a surprise to those who have been following the campaign waged by some Palestinian journalists against their Israeli colleagues during the past year.
The campaign began last year when some 200 Palestinian journalists signed a petition calling on the Palestinian Authority leadership to ban Israeli newsmen from entering Palestinian territories.
In April 2013, Gatestone ran an article about the campaign against the Israeli journalists. The article was entitled, "Palestinian Journalists Declare War On Israeli Colleagues."
This item, however, was ignored by the mainstream media in the West and even by most Israeli media outlets.
Israeli journalists explained back then that they preferred not to report about the threats against them so as not to escalate tensions with their Palestinian colleagues.

Want Peace? Change UN’s Refugee Policy

One aspect of this problem is the sheer inconsistency of international standards with regards to different kinds of refugees. In 1948, the Palestinians were counting on defeating and/or wiping out the Jewish community in the Mandate and therefore rejected the UN partition resolution that would have created the independent Palestinian state they now clamor for. Were they treated like other groups whose leaders gambled on aggression and lost—the millions of Germans who were brutally forced out of their homes in Eastern Europe come to mind after 1945—the Palestinians would have been helped to find new homes in the rest of the Arab world. Instead they were kept in place to continue to fuel the war against the one Jewish state in the world. Significantly, the roughly equal numbers of Jews who fled or were forced to flee their homes in the Arab and Muslim world after 1948 were given no such sympathy or UN aid. Those refugees were resettled in Israel and the West by Jewish groups and are now ignored when talk turns to restitution for the Middle East conflict.
Aside from the double standard here, the net effect of this policy is that in doing so UNRWA is serving to fuel the conflict rather than to seek its solution. UNRWA’s manifold problems—including education programs that foment hate against Israel and employees who aid terrorists—are well known. But so long as the Palestinians believe they have the support of the world in their effort to undo the verdict of the war they launched in 1948, the millions who call themselves refugees will never give up their goal of eradicating Israel’s existence. During the last 15 years the Palestinians have rejected three offers of independence and peace from Israel as well as walking away from a fourth such initiative this year. It’s clear the leaders of the Palestinian Authority do not think they have the support of their people for any treaty that will recognize the right of a Jewish state to exist no matter where its borders are drawn.

The Simpsons Jewish Imperialist Conspiracy reaches even deeper!

A couple of weeks ago this story came out of Egypt:

The Simpsons was well known as a source of entertainment for generations worldwide, but in Egypt, a TV station has now claimed that a scene in the sitcom animation is showing that the Arab Spring is an American conspiracy.

The Tahrir TV anchor Rania Badwy presented evidence that “suggests what is happening in Syria today was premeditated.” All is set amidst conspiracy theories taking hold of society after three years of post-revolution turbulence and paranoia.

Badawy presented a 75-second clip of a Simpsons episode that first broadcast in 2001, showing a scene of soldiers dressed as Arabs, standing next to a jeep painted with a picture of a flag which is similar to the one used by the opposition Free Syrian Army during the ongoing civil war in Syria.

“The flag that appeared on the vehicle on which the bombs were dropped is the flag of the Syrian opposition. This is from 2001 – before the existence of the ‘Syrian opposition,’” the anchor commented on the clip in her report aired on Al-Tahrir TV on 4 May 2014.

“The flag was created before the opposition exists in reality. In 2001, there was no such thing as the flag of the Syrian opposition.” Badwy says “The appearance of the flag raises many question marks about what happened in the Arab Spring revolutions and about when this global conspiracy began.”

In response to the ridicule heaped upon her even in conspiracy-obsessed Egypt, Rania Badwy doubled down, claiming that the Simpsons' writers are also influential members of Washington think tanks and, naturally, the Jewish lobby, so they definitely were preparing the Syrian revolution since 2001.

TV Host Rania Badawi: To all those who conspire against our country, I say: we will not be intimidated by the terrorism of your media. We exposed your schemes, so you directed your poisoned arrows against us. We exposed your destructive Arab Spring conspiracies, so you devoted articles and TV shows to abuse us. Your attacks and criticism will never deter us from our path. Beware of the people who have shed the stupid subjugation, which has harmed us for so long. We shall continue to challenge you, for we do not fear the rustling of the trees in your jungles. Know that your autumn will forever be our spring.

[…]

[The Simpsons] is a very influential TV series in the U.S. This animated series is an American production, behind which are basically-Jewish lobbies. I'd like to tell you that this animated series is for adults, not children. It deals with political, social, international, and local issues through its animated characters.

Even more important is the fact that the writers of this series belong to groups of think tanks. They are not written by regular people, using their imagination and their dramatic ability. Instead, they are written by think tanks, by people working in research. They write this series, which is highly influential in America.

I can spend a week proving that Badwy is correct about the Simpsons being part of the worldwide Jewish conspiracy, but these examples will have to do:

Is the "Nakba" a terrible tragedy that causes Palestinian Arabs worldwide to weep at the horror that was inflicted on them, or a cynical political construct?

You decide:

KUNA, May 10: Palestinians have launched an international football tournament to the mark the Nakba, or catastrophe, with participation of national teams from Palestine, Jordan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan on Saturday.

The Palestinians commemorates the Nakba every year to remember the year 1948 when the Palestinian people were expelled from their homes by the Israeli occupying forces.

Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah inaugurated the tournament, held at Dora International Stadium in the West Bank city of Al-Khalil, and said the championship, dubbed "Al-Nakba," was a message of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

He said the tournament "is a very important mean to strengthen the steadfastness of the Palestinian people by informing countries around the world about the suffering of the Palestinian human being." President of the Palestinian football federation Jebril Al-Rujoub said the Palestinian people were marking the Nakba through a sport event despite the obstacles placed by the Israeli occupation authorities.

He said Israel banned five Jordanian players from entering Palestine, banned the coach of Pakistan and the entire Iraqi team from the event.

You remember the annual Auschwitz soccer tournaments? The Armenian Genocide basketball championships? The 2004 Tsunami cricket matches? The Bhopal disaster Bollywood movie festival?

If the Nakba was truly a human catastrophe, the very idea of a Nakba football tournament would be beyond tasteless.

As it stands, Arabic readers see sports reporters writing things like "Jordan's team reaches the Nakba finals."

I'm not seeing anyone protesting, though.

In real sports news, Maccabi Tel Aviv finished its Cinderella run to win the Euroleague basketball championship.

Iran's PressTV says:

In an exclusive interview with Press TV, renowned writer and film maker, Art Olivier, said the majority of Hollywood movie houses are owned by Zionist entrepreneurs.

He said for that reason no movie critical of the Israeli regime and its illegal occupation of Palestine will be made in Hollywood.

That is why he is turning to Iran for production of his latest movie about the life of Rachel Corrie, Olivier says.

Corrie was an American peace activist who was killed by an armored Israeli bulldozer in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip back in 2003.

C. “Art” Olivier, former mayor of Bellflower, California, was the Libertarian candidate for Vice President in the US presidential election in 2000 as the running mate of Harry Browne.

During the campaign for Vice President, Olivier advocated smaller government, saying “We have to reduce the size of the federal government back to the size of its constitutional limits.”

In 2012, Olivier wrote and produced the thriller film Operation Terror, which depicted a fictionalized version of the 9/11 attacks.

The plot centered on a group of American government insiders that organized and assembled a group of people to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Olivier claims that the FBI strip-searched him upon his return from Iran.

TV review: Avoda Aravit

I've been spending the last couple of weeks watching the popular and award-winning TV series Avoda Aravit ("Arab Labor," a Hebrew colloquialism for shoddy work).

I've watched the first season and a little of the third. Episodes with English subtitles are on LinkTV online, for some reason only snippets of Season 2 are available.

The show features an Arab journalist in Israel named Amjad. Amjad is a nice man who desperately wants to fit into Israeli society and is constantly frustrated by the discrimination against Arab Israelis.

His best friend and co-worker is a photojournalist named Meir.

As with most such sitcoms, wife Bushra is the voice of sanity, and in this case his daughter and mother are also the most sensible and practical people on the show. His father, Ismail, is far more comfortable in his Arab identity and also has a knack for scamming everyone around, including his own son.

Avoda Aravit is, first and foremost, hilarious. It tackles topics that no one ever touched upon before in a comedy and it pokes fun at everyone in Israeli society, both Arab and Jew. The writing is top-notch.

The underlying message of latent and explicit anti-Arab bigotry in Israel is serious, and the show manages to deal with it in a funny way that still lets people understand the difficulty of being a minority group. At a time when the Supreme Court rules that there is no problem with explicit Christian prayers in government meetings I have a keen appreciation for how is feels to be in the minority.

Where the show falls short is that (at least for the episodes I've seen) all Israeli Jews are seen as bigots of one kind or another. Some are overly solicitous towards Arabs but most are out-and-out racists. Even Meir shows his latent bigotry, in a very funny episode where he ends up in a private Arab car service and mistakenly thinks that he is being kidnapped, singing "We Are the World" and invoking his leftist credentials to gain his freedom from Arabs who don't understand a word of Hebrew.

Meir is perhaps the most problematic part of the show. Midway through Season 1, he meets and falls for a friend of Bushra's named Amal, a radical Palestinian Arab nationalist and feminist lawyer (played by famous singer Mira Awad.) While Amal has great reservations about Meir, who serves in the army reserves, Meir has no national, cultural or religious principles. His first date with Amal was on Passover night so he could avoid going to a seder (Amjad does attend one given by Reform Jews.) Within weeks, Meir tells Amal that he would move to any Arab town anywhere to be with her..."and even Sderot." As the inevitable drama about their parents play out, Meir even tells her he is willing to convert to Islam for her. (In a later episode a potential Arab romantic rival to Meir tells him, "That's what I love about you Jews. You have no self-respect.")

In the world of Avoda Aravit, every Jew is a hypocrite, a bigot and/or a fanatic, all of them roadblocks for Amjad to be accepted in Israel as an equal but none who actually think of him as truly human. Even after he moves to a Jewish neighborhood he is confronted with nothing but suspicion and disrespect, and his landlord asks him to disappear when he is showing houses to prospective buyers.

In this sense, Avoda Aravit is antisemitic. But to air a TV show that mocks the dominant culture is forgivable. After all, in the 1970s American audiences laughed to Sanford and Son and The Jeffersons - groundbreaking shows that described how blacks try to adapt in a white majority society. The popularity of Avoda Aravit in Israel, as well as the awards it is given, shows that Israelis don't mind the message.

On the other hand, notoriously anti-Israel LinkTV's decision to have this be the only Israeli TV show that they broadcast indicates that they are interested in the anti-Jewish themes of the show more than in the show helping to be a bridge to understanding.

There are some exceptions to the portrayal of Jews as nothing but resentful of Arabs. At times, Amjad is celebrated for being a "good Arab," such as in season 3, when Amjad briefly becomes a celebrity for his appearance on Big Brother in a brilliant episode. Afterwards, Israeli Jews suddenly love him for his fame - and his ability to pretend to be a Jew, as that was his challenge on the show. His fame is short-lived, as on the next episode he accidentally urinates on a Jewish memorial stone, turning him from a hero to a villain, while he is then embraced by Arab radicals.

I will continue to watch Avoda Aravit, as it is as funny as virtually anything on American TV. But I'm hoping as I catch up to this season I will see the creator (who is an Arab journalist for Haaretz) reduce the stereotyping of Jewish characters.

Given that his success is predicated on keeping them one-dimensional, however, I am not holding out much hope.

Something dawns on Bakir Oweida in the middle of an Al Arabiya op-ed about the "Nakba":

The West Bank and the Gaza Strip were under the sovereignty of two Arab states, so wasn’t it possible to declare a Palestinian state with its capital as Jerusalem? Yes. It was possible to do so but there was no will. Perhaps some would also say that international will wouldn’t have allowed this to happen just like it wouldn’t currently allow establishing an independent Palestinian state. However, I think all this aims to justify a dereliction that nothing could ever justify.

Well, well, well. An Arab notices a glimmer of truth.

It is doubtful that Oweida is brave enough to go further down that path. For example, to ask why the original 1964 PLO charter explicitly excluded the West Bank and Gaza from its desired homeland.

This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.

If the PLO didn't want a state on those lands before 1967, why should the Arab states have given it to them?

But that brings up the deeper question: why didn't the PLO want a state in the West Bank and Gaza, part of what they today claim as "historic Palestine"?

Why did they then only want land that wasn't "occupied"?

The answer, as anyone who has ever perused newspapers before 1967 knows, is that the PLO and the Arab states all shared the same goal, destroying Israel. No one cared about a "Palestinian state" and the Palestinian issue was only created as a means to create world pressure on Israel. It never had anything to do with Palestinian nationalism.

If Oweida would bother to do some more research, he would realize that the PLO was originally an Egyptian creation. It changed after 1967 when Fatah took it over. Fatah's number one goal in its charter is "Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.

Today, the PLO is still not interested in a state. If it was, it would have one. Even if a Palestinian Arab state would be created tomorrow in all the territories, the battle wouldn't be over - the battlefield would just shift to Israel itself, as the Palestinian Arabs would then demand "right to return" to a state that they never lived in, a swath of land between Gaza and the West Bank that would divide Israel in half, the right to build an army that could threaten Israel itself, and they would create new border disputes (as Hezbollah did) to keep their people good and angry.

If Mr. Oweida would honestly look at the history of the "nakba," he would see how Arab nations have been the ones perpetuating the misery and statelessness of Palestinian Arabs - and he would realize that if a Palestinian Arab state would suddenly appear, most Arab states would not hesitate to kick out the millions of Palestinian Arabs they have been barely tolerating for 66 years.

Not too many Arabs are willing to notice all of these obvious truths, let alone say them out loud. Maybe Mr. Oweida will find the bravery to research his topic a little further.

05/18 Links: The villainization of Ayaan Hirsi Ali; The Guardian's problem with anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Robert Fulford: The villainization of Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Much of the commentary treated this decision as unfair, a case of a frightened university surrendering to political correctness. As Ruth Wisse, a distinguished Harvard professor, wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “In Nigeria, Islamists think nothing of seizing hundreds of schoolgirls for the crime of aspiring to an education. Here in the United States, the educated class thinks nothing of denying an honorary degree to a fearless Muslim woman who at peril of her life, and in the name of liberal democracy, has insisted on exposing such outrages to the light.”
But lately, much of the discussion has turned against Hirsi Ali. She now stands accused of a crime against multiculturalism: She has failed to be moderate. She has overstated her case, possibly even made a mistake or two. She once called Islam “a destructive, nihilistic cult of death.” She believes democracy and Islam are at war. No doubt about it, she’s not afraid to be harsh.
As a result, journalistic opinion has transformed her from victim to villain. The New Republic has said that her various statements are so extreme they make her unworthy of honour. Salon magazine argued that her view of Islam is the same as the bigotry that informs U.S. foreign policy. The Economist stated what it considers a rule: “Wholesale condemnations of existing religions just aren’t done in American politics.” Apparently they violate some sort of national code of ethics.

European Union, you stand accused of funding terrorism and subversion. How do you plead?

To somehow alleviate that poverty and enable the ‘moderate’ Palestinian leadership to function, the European Union (and also many European governments, including that of United Kingdom) donates considerable amounts of taxpayer money to the PA. In fact, the EU (not oil-rich Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates or Qatar) is the PA’s largest donor. Ostensibly, European funds are not used to pay the ‘contracts’ of jailed terrorists, but the salaries of Palestinian civil servants; for instance, the Gazan teachers who, having been sacked by Hamas following its takeover of the Strip, are now being paid by the PA (with EU funds) to… not teach. But the issue is much more serious than just wasting European taxpayers’ hard-earned money. In fact, the fact that those funds cover civil servants’ salaries allows the PA to free-up other funds to pay the jailed terrorists.
Funding terrorism is illegal; paying for teachers’ salaries isn’t. But the effect is the same – in practice Europe’s ‘generous donation’ contributes to rewarding and incentivising terror.
And that’s not the only way in which European politicians misuse our money. Both the EU and several European governments also fund extremist organisations in Israel. Let’s examine, for instance, the case of the so-called Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). This organisation cites among its donors the EU Commission and the Government of Spain.

The Guardian's problem with anti-Semitism

Let's imagine that an authoritative survey found evidence of widespread prejudice against black people. Let's suppose it found countries where a majority of people bought into anti-black stereotypes and prejudices, the kind promoted by the KKK or other white supremacist groups. We would be rightfully horrified and appalled by such attitudes, and would abhor those who sought to justify them.
But such is the Guardian's fanatical obsession with Israel that when it comes to anti-semitism, a different set of rules applies. Apparently Jewish victims of prejudice don't deserve sympathy and, in some ways, deserve the opprobrium heaped upon them.
That is the only conclusion one can draw from an appalling op-ed that appeared in the paper yesterday. The article, 'Anti-Semitism should not be waved around like a propaganda tool', by Donna Nevel and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark was a response to a survey from the Anti Defamation League which found that roughly 1 in 4 adults around the world held deeply anti-Semitic beliefs. It was based on polling more than 50,000 adults in over 100 countries, representing nearly 90 percent of the world's adult population.

Intermission (Michael Lumish)

Michael Lumish, of the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under, continues his weekly column here at EoZ.

In my recent Sunday pieces for the Elder we have discussed the western-left's betrayal of its core values and constituency. We have discussed its betrayal of women in the Middle East, its betrayal of Gay people in the Middle East, its betrayal of the dying-out Christian minority in the Middle East, and its betrayal of the besieged Jewish minority there.

My argument is that there is a generally unacknowledged tension between the twin progressive pillars of universal human rights and the multicultural ideal and that the latter has won out, organically, and is now in the process of strangulating the former.

That is, within progressive-left venues, the movement for universal human rights - which stands at the very heart of progressive-left ideology - is currently being eroded by the multicultural ideal because the two are logically incompatible. The movement for multiculturalism in the West comes out of the finest ideals of western liberalism. The animating spirit behind the movement was "live and let live." Countries do not need to be "melting pots" in which assimilation wipes out cultural distinctions, but can be "salad bowls" in which cultures come together while maintaining their delicious differences.

The problem, of course, is that multiculturalism depends upon a certain type of cultural sensitivity which discourages criticism of previously subordinate cultures. It is fine and good for western Europeans to castigate their own cultures and societies for any number of crimes and shortcomings, both real and imagined, but there is very little place for the grandchildren of white "imperialists" and "colonialists" to criticize the grandchildren of their former servants within progressive-left venues for reasons that are entirely obvious.

Thus post-colonialist sensitivities trump concerns over misogyny, gender or religious apartheid, or the kind of violent homophobia typical of political Islam. And in this way the ideal of universal human rights is eroded in the west - while being virtually non-existent in the Muslim Middle East - because it cannot be championed within a spirit of multiculturalism. Universal human rights is a concept that ultimately derives from the western political Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe and the North American continent. To insist that it be applied elsewhere is often discussed as a form of cultural imperialism and therefore good progressives avoid doing so.

Who are we, after all, us children of white privilege, to push our allegedly "enlightened" agendas upon the rest of the world?

In other words, we are witnessing a crash of ideologies within the western-left, itself, and I landed on the Elder's yard simply as one individual fall-out from that crash.

It is precisely because of this conflict between the ideal of universal human rights and the ideal of multiculturalism within the progressive-left soul that we are currently witnessing the betrayal of women in the Muslim Middle East, the betrayal of Gay people in the Muslim Middle East, the devastation of millenia-old Christian communities in the Muslim Middle East, and the never-ending siege of the Jewish minority in that part of the world.

We have touched upon the ways in which the so-called "Palestinian Narrative" has colonized Jewish minds and the manner in which Palestinian-Arab nationalism blatantly seeks to erase actual Jewish history for the purpose of replacing it with some fake and insidious historical doppleganger in which all things Jewish magically become "Palestinian." Jesus, therefore, becomes the first "Palestinian shaheed," for example. Or we get images of Anne Frank in a keffiyah, with the clear implication that just as the "Palestinians" are the New Jews, so the Jews are the New Nazis.

The point in introducing these concepts and this material is to lay out some relevant progressive-left ideological trends, and thus backdrop, to the behavior of the Obama administration viz-a-viz the State of Israel and Middle East policy, more generally.

All of this, of course, needs to be fleshed out far more thoroughly and fairly articulated objections need to be considered.

All Acknowledge the Obvious is is the beginning of an outline.

The Elder was kind enough to give me a space within which to discuss such things and I appreciate it very much. Beyond that what I want is for people who care about Israel, and the well-being of the Jewish people, to begin the process of rethinking what I sometimes call the Oslo Delusion. This is the idea that the Jews of the Middle East have not made nearly enough concessions to the Arab majority and if they would only make more concessions and, perhaps, release more murderers of Jews from Israeli prisons, then maybe we can have honest peace deal.

What I will consider next, therefore, will primarily be Obama administration behavior concerning the peace process and its relationship to the State of Israel. We will also discuss the Obama administration's reaction to the "Arab Spring" and its failure to force the Muslim Brotherhood down the throats of unwilling Egyptians. We will discuss how the Obama administration had Hamas's back during Operation Pillar of Defense and the ways in which the Obama administration leads from behind in the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction the Jewish State.

An early outline of what I am up to might look something like this:

On Settlements and Stupidity:

The Progressive-Left Betrayal of the Jews and Human Rights in the Age of Obama

A Personal Introduction: Defaming the Jews on the Progressive-Left

The Betrayal: Stating the Problem
9/11 and America Gone Crazy
The Blogs and Bush Hatred
Progressive-Left Anti-Zionism
Universal Human Rights encounter the Multicultural Ideal
Jewish Stockholm Syndrome and My Departure

The Progressive-Left and the Democratic Party

Chapter 1: The Backdrop of BDS and Anti-Semitic Anti-Zionism
Traditional Islamic Jew Hatred
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
The New Historians and Edward Said
The Mavi Marmara and the Red-Green Alliance

Chapter 2: Erasing Jewish History
Language and Propaganda
“Jesus was the First Palestinian Shaheed”
Pallywood and the Fabrication of History through Fake Journalism
The Social Construction of Palestinian National Identity

Chapter 3: The Palestinian Colonization of the Progressive Jewish Mind
Post-Modernity and Neo-Colonial Theory
The Oslo Syndrome
Friends as Enemies, Enemies as Friends
The Palestinian Narrative

Chapter 4: Multiculturalism and the Betrayal of Universal Human Rights
The Betrayal of Women
The Betrayal of Gays
The Betrayal of Jews
The Betrayal of Christians

The Obama Administration

Chapter 5: Killing Oslo and Validating Arab Anti-Jewish Racism
“Total Settlement Freeze”
Biden’s Outrage and Hillary’s Tongue-lashing
A Judenrein Palestinian State

Chapter 6: The “Arab Spring” and the Rise of Political Islam
Befriending the Muslim Brotherhood
Syria and the American Retreat

Chapter 7: Saving Hamas and the Birth of the State of Palestine
Operation “Pillar of Defense”
Mr. Abbas Goes to the United Nations
The Failure of Talks and Delegitimization "on steroids"

Conclusion:

Chapter 8: Moving On

Filmed at Ariel University by students of the Film/TV track of the Moskowitz School of Communication, “Sound of Ariel” showcases a side of the city that is often overshadowed in the media by the city’s geo-political significance.

Ariel has long been the beacon of culture in Samaria, with the Ariel Regional Center for Performing Arts founded in 2010 to host the finest of Israeli and international culture. With a population of 20,000, Ariel counts among its residents many immigrants from the former Soviet Union who came with a strong background in music, song and dance.

The “Sound of Ariel” flashmob brings together a multi-generational ensemble of the city’s musical groups, including Ariel’s violin ensemble, the “Sound of the Heart” senior choir, and the Piccicata children’s choir. The Atzil Nativ-Masa program for Russian-speaking students at Ariel University have rounded out the “Sound of Ariel” ensemble with a student contingent. The musical track was recorded by the Sound Engineering department at Ariel University’s Design and Technology Center of Samaria.

Ariel University has been the subject of one of my posters.

(h/t Lenny Ben David)

Admitted Palestinian terrorist may be deported from US (updated)

From YNet:

A Chicago activist might plead guilty in Detroit to failing to tell US immigration officials about her conviction in a deadly bombing in Israel in 1969, her attorney said Saturday. If convicted, she may face deportation.

A court hearing is scheduled Wednesday for Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, associate director at the Arab American Action Network in Chicago.

"We are engaging in serious negotiations, which could lead to a guilty plea," defense lawyer William Swor told The Associated Press. "If she enters a guilty plea, she will likely have to leave the country."

Odeh, who is in her 60s, entered the US from Jordan in 1995 and became a naturalized citizen in 2004. She is charged with not disclosing her past when she applied for citizenship in Detroit.

Odeh was convicted of an attack that killed two people at a Jerusalem market in 1969. An Israeli military court sentenced her to life in prison in 1970, but she was released 10 years later in a prisoner swap with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The government hasn't said how it learned about Odeh's record.

The indictment refers to her as Odeh, but she's commonly known as Rasmea Yousef in Chicago. Hatem Abudayyeh, head of the Arab American Action Network, called her an "icon" in the community after her arrest last year. She's been free on bail.

Here are some details on the bombing from JTA, February 24, 1969:

Many housewives brought bouquets of flowers today to the employees of Supersol, Israel’s largest supermarket, but the bright spring colors could not overcome the evidence of grisly destruction wrought by a terrorist bomb last Friday. The two victims of the Supersol bombing, Leon Kaner, 21 of Netanya, and Edward Jaffe, 22, or Kiron, a Tel Aviv suburb, were buried Sunday side-by-side as thousands stood by. They were friends, room-mates and students together at Hebrew University. They had been buying canned food for a botanical field trip when they were blown to bits.

The supermarket re-opened for business today and was thronged, mostly by Israelis who wanted to view the damage to the rear of the store, which is part of a chain in several municipalities. Nine persons were injured in the blast–the eighth terrorist bombing since the 1967 war. All told 15 persons have died and 151 have been injured in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv bombings.

About 150 persons, mostly women and children, were in the store doing their pre-Sabbath shopping–at 11 A.M., one of the peak shopping hours–when the explosion sent goods flying and broke glass. They ran screaming into the streets. Police said that the explosives consisted of “primitive gelignite charges” placed in coffee cans on a shelf among oil cans.

About 15 minutes after the store had been cleared, a second somewhat smaller bomb was found and de-fused. A third one was found in front of the British Consulate in East Jerusalem and detonated in a field. The explosion recalled the dynamiting of the Mahane Yehuda marketplace in Jerusalem last November which killed 12 persons and wounded 55.

The PFLP took responsibility for the attack, and Odeh never hid the fact that she was a member of that terrorist group. In fact, she admitted to Israeli police that she carried out the attacks.

Jerusalem police said today that they had confessions from three suspects directly involved in planting bombs that wrecked the Supersol supermarket in West Jerusalem on Feb. 21, killing two Hebrew University students and injuring nine other persons. About 40 members of the gang responsible for the supermarket blast and subsequent bomb plantings at the British Consulate in East Jerusalem have been arrested. Today police said that all members of the gang were in custody.
Police said the bombs were planted by two girls who received the explosives from a third saboteur. They were concealed in shopping bags. The crime has been reconstructed with the aid of the suspects, according to police.

Even though the facts of the case are clear, and no one disputes that Odeh lied on her application to become a US citizen, anti-Israel groups have been whitewashing her role and pretending that this is some sort of US witch-hunt against Arabs. Here's part of a petition, signed by 1500 people, from last November:

On October 22, the Department of Homeland Security arrested Rasmea in her home for alleged immigration fraud as part of an ongoing witch-hunt that targets Arabs and Muslims who criticize U.S. and Israeli policy and labels them “terrorists.”

Rasmea has been demanding justice for Palestinians for most of her life. Like the experience of approximately 20% of the total Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza, she spent time as a political prisoner in Israeli jails in the 1970’s. There, she was violently tortured and humiliated-- despite the international legal prohibition on torture and ill-treatment.

What evidence is there of torture? Zero*. Ray Hanania writes in her defense:

An Israeli military court convicted Odeh and three others “for membership in an illegal organization,” (the PFLP) and as such she was accused of participating in all three bombings. Odeh’s supporters insist she was tortured by Israeli interrogators who are notorious for their brutality, and she was forced to make an admission of guilt.

Odeh’s supporters insist she was not involved in the attack and was convicted the same way all Palestinians are convicted in the Israeli court system, without justice or the right to defend themselves. Odeh has refused to discuss the incident and declined several interview requests on the issue. At the time of the attack, Israel was arresting and killing Palestinians as a part of a campaign to eliminate critics in the West Bank which it had occupied only 21 months earlier.

So if Odeh has never spoken publicly about why she pleaded guilty in Israel for the terror attack or about her allegedly being tortured, how do her supporters "know" she was tortured?

They don't. They made it all up. They are just interested in damning Israel, not the truth.

Hanania of course doesn't mention the other terrorist bombings in Israel at the time, by pretending that she was just arrested as a critic in the West Bank. But he does say that it is not right for people to blow up other people, so that makes him a "moderate."

The idea that Odeh was tortured into this admission - yet told police exactly how she placed the bombs - is ridiculous.

(Hanania also makes the completely absurd claim that "For every one Israeli who has tragically died in this ongoing conflict, 400 Palestinians have died at the hands of Israeli settlers, extremists in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and as part of Israel’s official policy of 'extra-judicial killings'." This is another obvious lie. There have been over 3700 Israelis killed by Palestinian Arab terror [not counting other Arab attacks] since 1948, which would mean that 1.5 million Palestinian Arabs have been killed, an absurd number. The real number is closer to 20,000, a lie of 2 orders of magnitude.)

At a Milwaukee "Nakba Day" rally last week, the Israel-haters held several signs to "free Rasmea."

Naturally, Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada have had articles in support of Odeh and ignoring her role in the cold blooded murder of two young men.

(UPDATE: Additional info from Bob K)

*UPDATE 2: Bob found a video where Odeh does say she was tortured. I don't know how truthful her testimony is, she claims that the Israelis tried to force her father to sleep with her. Her friend in the video who says she witnessed the torture says that it prompted her to show the Israelis "where the weapons were hidden" meaning that they do not deny that they were terrorists.

Starting at about 10:00 Odeh's partner describes their role in placing the bomb in the SuperSol, so there is no doubt that Odeh is guilty, even if what she claims about being tortured is true.

BNP video blames "heartless Zionists," bankers, gays for British woes

From Jake Wallace Simons at The Telegraph:

Earlier this week, BNP Youth released a campaign video entitled Fight Back (above). It is in equal part worrying and comical. Beginning with music that evokes a Death Star fascist aesthetic, it is presented by a handful of (white) teenagers, all of whom look awkward, pimply, nerdy and gauche – the sort of kids who would be stalwart members of the Dungeons and Dragons society if they hadn't been quite so politically aware. And the message they promote, which targets "militant homosexuals", "cultural marxists", bankers, "heartless Zionists", the media, UK immigration policy and (bizarrely) Doreen Lawrence, comes across as little more than unreconstructed fascism.

That's a pretty accurate description:

The BNP leader defended the video:

BNP leader Nick Griffin has defended a video by his party's youth wing which refers to "heartless Zionists" and "militant homosexuals".

The MEP said he stood by the film, which also accused the media of "pandering to the likes of Baroness Lawrence", whose son Stephen was stabbed to death in an unprovoked racist attack in 1993.

Mr Griffin insisted the video had been entirely the idea of the children, but admitted when pressed one of those taking part was his own daughter.

Despite the views expressed in the video, Mr Griffin claimed he was not anti-Semitic or anti-gay.

05/17 Links: Max Blumenthal Attracts Jew Haters of All Stripes; Soros buys SodaStream & Teva Shares

From Ian:

Max Blumenthal Attracts Jew Haters of All Stripes

Given Blumenthal’s own conduct, there is also every reason to assume that he fully agrees with the praise by a Stormfront member who declared that by exposing Israeli evils, “Max Blumenthal has done a great service for all of humanity here, and we WNS [i.e. white nationalists], and the rest of the world, ought to be grateful to him.”
Since the publication of my documentation in February, it has emerged that in addition to the sites I mentioned, Blumenthal’s writings were also posted on the neo-Nazi forum used by the arrested suspect in last month’s fatal Overland Park, Kansas, shootings. The shooter targeted Jewish institutions and reportedly shouted “Heil Hitler” when he was taken into custody. While the suspect’s interest in one of Blumenthal’s articles certainly doesn’t justify sinking to the level of Blumenthal himself – who tried to present the 2011 massacre in Norway as inspired by writers cited in the perpetrator’s deranged “manifesto” – William Jacobson rightly argues in a related blog post that the shocking attack in Kansas provides yet another illustration of “the intersection between neo-Nazi and anti-Zionist conspiracy theories.”
Moreover, given Blumenthal’s popularity on so many reactionary and anti-Semitic sites, it is utterly disingenuous when he now complains about being “smeared” with such racist associations only on the basis of the Kansas shooter’s interest in his work. With his relentless efforts to demonize Israel, Blumenthal has certainly done his part to show over and over again that supposedly left-wing “pro-Palestinian” activists and far-right reactionaries have no problem finding their lowest common denominator in their shared enthusiasm for anti-Semitic material.

The firebomb attack (you never heard about) on a bus of Jewish schoolgirls

There is plenty of news about Palestinian “protests” and the Israeli killing of two “protesters.”
But you never hear what those “protests” involve.
It’s not just holding signs and shouting. It’s often potentially lethal firebombing, as happened to this busload of Israeli girls on a Bat Miztvah visit to a Jewish holy site in Hebron. Hebron had one of the oldest continuous Jewish communities in the world until the Jews were driven out and massacred in 1929 during Arab riots. The return of Jews to Hebron is deemed a “settlement.”
You probably never heard about the firebombing of the bus. Neither had I, until I saw a tweet linking to this story at
an Israeli newspaper, Firebombs on Bat Mitzva Girls’ Bus, Only Arutz Sheva Reports It:

Mike Lumish: Obama Backed Boko Haram

Joel Gehrke of the Washington Examiner writes the following:

When congressional leaders asked the State Department to tailor American assistance to Nigeria in a way that would protect Christians from religious persecution at the hands of Boko Haram, an extremist group that kidnapped hundreds of Christian girls last month, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s team dismissed the idea on the theory that the organization was not motivated by religion.
“This religious tension, while real, should not be mistaken as the primary source of violence in Nigeria,” David Adams, assistant secretary of legislative affairs, wrote to Congress in an Oct. 4, 2012 letter. “Similar to the United States, Nigeria’s religious diversity is a source of strength, with communities working across religious lines to protect one another.”
In other words, as late as 2012 the Obama administration considered Boko Haram to be just another religious group that comprised the rich tapestry of spiritual life in Nigeria and that, as part of the splendid diversity of the country, it represented a source of strength.
Of course, not everyone agrees with this sunny assessment.

05/16 Links Pt2: Repulsive Guardian op-ed justifies Palestinian antisemitism; The summer of BDSFails

From Ian:

Repulsive Guardian op-ed justifies Palestinian antisemitism

Yesterday we posted on the results of a new international antisemitism poll by ADL, which demonstrated that Palestinians are the most antisemitic people among the 100 countries surveyed. We noted that Palestinians are even more antisemitic than citizens in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan and Iran.
It would seem that true anti-racists would have a pretty difficult time defending such views – as some of the tropes are indistinguishable from the notorious Czarist forgery, Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
To boot, a Guardian op-ed published today by pro-Palestinian activists Donna Nevel and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark begins with this headline and photo:
"Anti-Semitism should not be waved around like a propaganda tool"
The photo is surreal. An op-ed about antisemitism doesn’t depict Jews, but Palestinians, who, we are told, are denied their basic human rights.
It gets worse, much worse.

Hating the Jew you’ve never met

The question is put into sharp relief by the finding that fully 27% of people who have never met a Jew nevertheless harbor strong prejudices against him. Or, indeed, that a huge majority, 77%, of those who hate Jews have never met one. Even more starkly, the survey found an inverse relationship between the number of Jews in a country and the spread of anti-Semitic attitudes there. As a general rule, the fewer the Jews in a particular country, the more numerous the anti-Semites.
This should not surprise us. We already understood that anti-Semitism is skyrocketing in precisely those parts of the world where Jews fled from or perished in the last century, primarily the Middle East and Eastern Europe. But by giving numbers to these beliefs, the study allows us to think more carefully about the sources of the phenomenon. (h/t Bob Knot)

Can’t stop the rock: a summer of #BDSFails

The Rolling Stones. Neil Young. Justin Timberlake. Kansas. Jay Leno. All coming to Israel this summer.
How’s that BDS working out for you?
Since the incredible failure of the campaign to force Scarlett Johansson to quit SodaStream, the news has not been good for the Israel haters this year. After making a splash at the end of 2013 with the American Studies Association leadership being hijacked by anti-Israel, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists, 2014 has seen one major anti-BDS push back after another. From the viral campaigns supporting Neil Young and Scarlett Johansson to a cavalcade of statements from universities distancing themselves from the ASA statements, to anti-Israel resolutions failing at Michigan, UCLA and Loyola, 2014 has so far been a very positive time to be a pro-Israel activist – especially after the disappointments of 2013.