Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 07, 2014

10/07 Links Pt2: The Case for Israel Pulling out of the United Nations; Israel bashers’ phony contrition

From Ian:

UNfriend: The Case for Israel Pulling out of the United Nations

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN General Assembly last week took place in the Western world’s epicenter for the promotion, codification, and implementation of institutional anti-Semitism.
After all, it is no coincidence that behind every conflict Israel has ever fought there has been a failed United Nations resolution.
Simply scrape the gloss off the noble sentiments expressed in the Charter of the United Nations and you will discover that the world body’s Near East policy has from its inception fanned the flames of Arab nationalism, perpetuating regional conflicts that have effectively preserved a status quo sympathetic to authoritarian Arab regimes, at the expense of Israeli security and sovereignty.
The die was cast by Great Britain, which had occupied modern-day Israel from the end of the First World War until the 1947 UN partition. The European-based realpolitik that catered to Arab nationalism and authoritarian rule came at the expense of historical Jewish claims and contemporary Jewish interests.

Hillel Neuer, Director of UN Watch, Says UN Human Rights Council "Has the Power to Shame Abusers of Human Rights"

The UN Human Rights Council has been too welcoming to countries that abuse human rights, yet the inter-governmental body still “has the power to shame abusers of human rights,” Hillel C. Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said in a talk at the University of Michigan Law School.
“I've witnessed some of the most vicious tyrannies using every arrow in their quiver, every tool in their toolbox, to prevent their countries from being named in a resolution, from being targeted in an investigation, even to be so much as named on a watchlist—these countries will pull out all the stops, using all their political, economic, military influence, to ensure that they’re never named at all,” Neuer said in the talk on Oct. 1, presented by Jewish Law Students Association.
“Countries do not want to be shamed on the international stage—even powerful countries like China. … It harms their international prestige, it erodes their international standing, it can have economic and political consequences.”

EU walks out on anti-Israel UN debate * Arab states outraged * Hillel Neuer cheers "act for justice"

Caroline Glick: Israel bashers’ phony contrition

Dr. Richard Horton, the editor of the English medical journal The Lancet, was not transformed by his visit to Israel last week.
Horton came to Israel last week the guest of Rambam Medical Center in a bid to dig himself out of the hole he dug himself into. On August 19 Horton published a 1,600-word letter criminalizing Israel. In it, Israel was accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. The authors called for a boycott of Israel, including Israeli academia. Since its publication on Lancet’s website, the letter has garnered 20,000 signatures.
The letter made no mention of the fact that the war this summer was initiated by Hamas through its illegal missile, mortar and rocket offensive against Israeli population centers. The esteemed medical professionals who wrote the letter failed to mention that Hamas’s operational headquarters was located in Shifa hospital in Gaza. And of course, they ignored the underlying fact that Hamas’s entire campaign against Israel was a crime against humanity.
Immediately following its publication, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, the head of NGO Monitor, exposed that the letter’s principal authors are frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Semites. Dr. Paola Manduca and Dr. Swee Ang disseminated a video entitled, CNN, Goldman Sachs & the Zio Matrix. It was produced by the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke.
As Britain’s Telegraph reported, in disseminating the video, Ang exhorted her audience to understand that the Jewish threat outlined in the video is a threat to humanity. In her words, it “is not about Palestine – it is about all of us!” For her part, as the Telegraph reported, Manduca has accused Israel of responsibility for the Boston Marathon bombing. And she disseminated an article comparing Israel to a “strangler fig,” which as the Telegraph explained, “grows around other trees and takes their sunlight, often resulting in the deaths of the original trees.”

More from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Washington, October 8 - Aides to US President Barack Obama expressed displeasure today over not being informed of plans to assemble tens of thousands of makeshift residential structures over the last week in Jewish communities in areas both Israel and the Palestinians claim.

The huts mostly consist of wood panels, or of metal frames holding up canvas walls, with reeds or palm leaves as roofing. Satellite images and eyewitness reports alerted the Obama administration of the flurry of new construction activity, all of which appears to be taking place within the boundaries of existing Jewish communities in those contentious areas. The structures are apparently functioning as additional living space, as the inhabitants of those communities have been observed transferring tables, chairs, beds, and even rugs into the booth-like structures.

The administration stopped short of actively rebuking the Netanyahu government over the construction, as the effort has the hallmarks of a grass-roots initiative and not an officially sanctioned building spree of the kind that has infuriated White House officials in the past. In fact, hundreds of thousands of such structures have been hastily built over the last week even within the pre-1967 lines, indicating broad popular support for the initiative. However, Obama aides did communicate the president's concern over any kind of development on land claimed by Palestinians for a state.

Another factor contributing to the administration's muted response is the unlikelihood that the structures have been approved by Israeli government authorities. The addition of the booths - or, in many cases, simply the covering of an existing walled patio or terrace with the reed or leaf roofs - almost certainly constitutes a zoning violation wherever it occurs, and in the White House's assessment the Israeli authorities are almost certain to inform the residents of their obligation to dismantle the structures.

"We've had a few cases of a similar nature even in the US," said a White House staffer speaking on condition of anonymity. "We've had groups of Jews, sometimes entire communities, building these temporary structures that are in clear violation of building codes, zoning designation, and other municipal approvals necessary for the erection of such entities. People complain about it, the town or city gives the owners a couple of weeks' notice to take down the structure, and they comply. At this point we're going to assume the same process will play out over in the West Bank, though I imagine they'll have some difficulty notifying every single homeowner right away."

"It always seems to happen this time of year, too," mused the official. "I wonder if there's some way to predict the phenomenon?"

Roger Cohen's latest New York Times op-ed reveals that when it comes to treating Israel with a double standard, he has no equal:

Every human instinct recoils from the killing of children. It recoils even as Israel’s right to defend itself from rockets is clear; and the excruciating difficulty of waging war against an enemy deployed among civilians is acknowledged; and the readiness of Israel’s foes to kill any Jew is confronted. However framed, the death of a single child to an Israeli bullet seems to betoken some failure in the longed-for Jewish state, to say nothing of several hundred. The slaughter elsewhere in the Middle East cannot be an alibi for Jews to avoid this self-scrutiny.

Cohen throws in the perfunctory disclaimers, yeah, sure, I know that Hamas hides among civilians, sure I know they target civilians, yeah they aren't wonderful people. But the death of a single Gaza child is a failure in the Zionist project altogether!

If Cohen truly believed his blah-blah disclaimers, he would lay the blame on children's deaths in Gaza squarely where they belong: with Hamas. But he doesn't; the disclaimers are meant as a shield for Cohen against criticism that he is too one-sided, and not as an honest appraisal of the situation Israel faces.

To put it bluntly: waging war in an urban area without killing children is nearly impossible. Waging war in an area where the enemy knowingly places its military targets among children is literally impossible. And waging war in an area where the heavily armed enemy instructs its citizens not to evacuate when they are warned that the battle is coming to their homes - and where the enemy purposefully places major command centers inside civilian houses - is absolutely, 100% impossible.

To Cohen, Israel's failure to do the impossible is an indication of the failure of the Jewish state. Which means that to Cohen, after 66 years, Israel among all nations is still in a trial period to see if it is good enough to join the family of nations, and if it ever falls short of an impossible standard, it fails.

Never in a million years would Cohen say the same thing about the children being killed, today, in Syria and Iraq by his own country. He would never dream of asking whether children killed in recent wars by French or British or even Syrian warplanes indicates that they are failures as nations. Spain or Italy or Russia cannot be failures. Only Israel can be a failure, when it fails to pass a test that is rigged against it.

But Cohen's piece gets even more perverse, as he engages in the popular pastime of "Palestinians are the new Jews":

Of course, sermons are only part of the story. The High Holy Days are days to look inward, to be still. I found my eyes straying to a passage from Stefan Zweig’s “The World of Yesterday” reprinted in the prayer book. It read:

“Only now, since they were swept up like dirt in the streets and heaped together, the bankers from their Berlin palaces and sextons from the synagogues of Orthodox congregations, the philosophy professors from Paris, and Romanian cabbies, the undertaker’s helpers and Nobel prize winners, the concert singers, and hired mourners, the authors and distillers, the haves and the have-nots, the great and the small, the devout and the liberals, the usurers and the sages, the Zionists and the assimilated, the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim, the just and the unjust besides which the confused horde who thought that they had long since eluded the curse, the baptized and the semi-Jews — only now, for the first time in hundreds of years, the Jews were forced into a community of interest to which they had long ceased to be sensitive, the ever-recurring — since Egypt — community of expulsion. But why this fate for them and always for them alone? What was the reason, the sense, the aim of this senseless persecution? They were driven out of lands but without a land to go to.”

Two phrases leapt out: “community of expulsion,” and “driven out of lands but without a land to go to.” The second embodied the necessity of the Jewish state of Israel. But it was inconceivable, at least to me, without awareness of the first. Palestinians have joined the ever-recurring “community of expulsion.”

There is indeed something in common between the Jewish experience and the Palestinian Arab experience of diaspora - but it isn't what Cohen thinks.

Jews have been driven out of many lands over many centuries because of Jew-hatred. Whether it is because of jealousy or scapegoating or some other reason is not important for our purposes - antisemitism has been a fixture on the world stage forever.

The reason that several hundred thousand Palestinian Arabs found themselves without a place to live in 1948 is also because of Jew-hatred. Arab states made the conscious decision to not allow the Palestinians to become citizens because they wanted to ensure that they could be used as political pawns. The Arab nations, and indeed the current Palestinian leadership, have invested effort into maintaining the homelessness of millions of people because one day, they hope, these people kept in perpetual misery will be the vanguard in the effort to destroy the Jewish state. Every photo of child in a refugee camp is as valuable as every photo of a dead child in Gaza - they serve the exact same purpose, to use the innocent in order to turn world opinion against Israel (and, often, against Jews.)

Cohen shows here that he is quite susceptible to this nakedly cynical use of people's lives as propaganda.

Why has every single refugee community in the aftermath of World War II managed to disappear, while the Palestinian Arab "refugees" have increased more than tenfold? More importantly, why doesn't Cohen know the answer to this basic question?

To compare the suffering of Jews across millennia with the suffering of an artificial refugee population that is being cynically used for political purposes is outrageous. The Palestinian Arab "refugee" issue could be solved tomorrow if only the very people who pretend to care about them would treat them the way they treat all other Arabs. It isn't because they hate Palestinians, it is because they hate Jews.

This was a masterful propaganda initiative, the conscious use and maintenance of Palestinian suffering in order to make moral midgets like Cohen blame Israel for their plight instead of the Arab countries and Palestinian leaders who knowingly and explicitly perpetuated it for decades. (I'm not even talking about the reasons for their flight in 1948 to begin with; Even if Israel was 100% responsible - which it clearly wasn't - the responsibility for their welfare for the past six decades rests with the Arab countries they fled to. Just like every other refugee population in history.)

There we have it .To Roger Cohen, Israel doesn't deserve to exist unless it reaches impossible levels of perfection, and Israel is responsible for a community whose hosts will keep them stateless until Israel ceases to exist.

And, hey, Cohen can play the Jewish card, so these ridiculous ramblings have an aura of respectability!

10/07 Links Pt1: Bibi: ‘We Don’t Just Hand Over Territory, Close Our Eyes and Hope for the Best’

From Ian:

Netanyahu Says Stance on Security Requirements Has Become ‘Firmer’ — ‘We Don’t Just Hand Over Territory, Close Our Eyes and Hope for the Best’ (INTERVIEW)

Following the summer’s conflict between Israel and Hamas, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has declared, in a wide-ranging interview with The Algemeiner, that his long held position that the Jewish state will not transfer any territory to the Palestinian Authority in the absence of extensive security arrangements has “only become firmer.”
He also asserted that the possibility that any peace agreement with the PA might unravel is justification for his strong stance on security.
I met Netanyahu last Wednesday evening at an upscale New York City hotel shortly after he reiterated support for “two states for two peoples” in a meeting with President Obama at the White House.

2 IDF soldiers injured in explosion on Lebanese border

Two IDF soldiers were lightly injured when a Hezbollah bomb went off in their vicinity in the Har Dov region on Tuesday, the IDF Spokesman's Unit said.
The IDF said it shelled two Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon in response to the border bombing. Some 30 minutes after the incident a second explosion occurred on the border. There were no injuries or damage in the second blast.
The soldiers received initial emergency medical treatment on the spot, before being evacuated away from the Lebanese border to hospital for further treatment.
"The IDF sees this incident as a gross and violent violation of Israeli sovereignty, and sees the Lebanese government and Hezbollah as responsible for any attempt to harm Israeli soldiers or civilians," the military said in a statement. "The IDF reserves the right to act in any way, and at any time, to defend the citizens of the state of Israel."
Hezbollah later claimed responsibility for the blast.

Ebola and "Palestine" Recognition, Today's Two Most Dangerous International Epidemics

The Jerusalem Post has reported that people who have arrived from the "affected areas" are being searched for to make sure none are carrying the dreaded Ebola virus. Considering the amount of tourism to Israel and the number of illegal workers from Africa, this is a danger. Yes, it's a medical danger.
But there's a different sort of danger encroaching on Israel, and that's the growing de facto if not de jure recognition of "Palestine" as a nation by foreign countries and international bodies/organizations/NGOs.
There are two equally dangerous reasons for this, and by looking at the above map, you can see that although most Israelis try not to pay too much attention, this is no minor phenomena. Most of the world would be perfectly happy for "Palestine" to replace Israel, because the basis for their recognition is that they, and many world leaders, academics and ordinary people even in countries that haven't yet recognized this new Arab country firmly and sincerely believe that Israel/Jews invaded an ancient country called "Palestine" and imposed a "new" Jewish one now called Israel. This very popular and accepted fallacy is the most dangerous "disease" which we in Israel must fight. It's more dangerous than Ebola for sure.
Among the foreign leaders who firmly, religiously believe in the myth of Palestine is United States President Barack Hussein Obama. And unfortunately, Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who support the "two state solution," enabling the establishment of a state called "Palestine" are actually undermining the security and continued existance of the State of Israel. (h/t Bob Knot)

Another day, another NYT op-ed filled with lies

The New York Times has published another fsact-free anti-Israel op-ed. Which means this must be Tuesday.

Today's absurdity comes from Ali Jarbawi, political scientist at Birzeit University and a former minister of the Palestinian Authority.

The latest speech by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, before the United Nations General Assembly represented a significant departure in his thinking. Until last week, Mr. Abbas had been the firmest believer in and most loyal champion of direct negotiations with Israel under the exclusive sponsorship of the United States. He insisted constantly that these negotiations were the only way to reach a political settlement to the conflict.

For the past six years, Abbas has been doing everything possible to avoid direct negotiations with Israel.

Over the years, he was extremely conciliatory toward Israel, and offered up one concession after another on several key issues, presuming that that would enable him to appease Israel and convince it to end its occupation and work with him to achieve a political settlement, which would finally allow for the creation of the long-awaited Palestinian state.

Abbas has not made a single public concession to Israel - and he has bragged about his intransigence on multiple occasions.

None of Mr. Abbas’s conciliations or concessions to Israel ever bore fruit. In fact, over time, the country tilted increasingly rightward and its stubbornness and intractability toward the Palestinians grew.

Leftist hero Yitzchak Rabin was far more hawkish at the time of his murder than Bibi is today. The only rightward tilt in Israel were as responses to the Palestinian Arab decision to support terrorists in 2001 and in 2014.

Mr. Abbas’s speech before the United Nations was one of his best since he became Palestinian president nine years ago.

This is the speech where he said Israel was guilty of "genocide."

Really, the New York Times should at least pretend to publish op-eds that aren't so ridiculously easy to prove insane. Give me a little bit of a challenge, OK?

B'Tselem researcher denies and deflects his Holocaust denial

B'Tselem researcher Atef Abu Roub posted a rambling, incoherent denial of his calling the Holocaust a lie on his Facebook page in Arabic - even after B'Tselem finally admits it on its English Facebook page.

First he states unequivocally that the Holocaust is an undeniable fact, and that he is absolutely against the killing of any civilians, ever.

He then says that the undercover journalist Tuvia Tenenbom "exceeded all journalistic rules" by being an undercover reporter and gaining his trust. He whines that he acted as his translator, without charge.

Aroub then claims that he never knew what the English word Holocaust meant, which is funny because the word wasn't mentioned in the video.

Aroub also says that in the atmosphere of joking that was throughout the interview, is it even possible that he would joke about the Holocaust?

He then goes on to say that Tenenbom's use of material during the many hours they spent together is a betrayal, but at the same time he says that Tenenbom acted inappropriately with one of the Bedouin families he visited.

Aroub defends himself in Arabic only. If he would try to make these claims in English he would look even more ludicrous than he does already.

Here's my transcript of the video:

Interviewee through translator Abu Roub: ...That you support the Jewish state.

"Toby": Why? Why do you think so?

Abu Roub: Not you personally.

Interviewee through translator The Germans pay for the Jews, while they say that Hitler killed millions of those Jews.

Interviewee through translator Abu Roub: Because you pay money, you support....

"Toby": Ah, because we are Germans, we support the Jews.

Abu Aroub: Yes.

"Toby": But ask him if he remembers that we also killed them.

Abu Aroub (without asking interviewee): (Laughs) It's a lie. I don't believe it...Sometimes they kill tens of people (unintelligible) - they are resistance. Now there is strong media, and they are lying.

Now that we've determined that B'Tselem hires researchers who are quite at ease with lying through their teeth, what does this say about B'Tselem's research methodology?

We already know that it is a joke, but this proves that at least one of their researchers has no compunction about making things up.

Lilac Sigan posted a video from 1 October to her Timeline — with Sarit Michaeli.

(h/t Bob Knot)

That "moderate" Palestinian Hanan Ashrawi, member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, says that Israel has declared a religious war on Islam.

Why?

Because, as I reported yesterday, Israel's tourism minister is floating the idea of reducing long lines for non-Muslims to enter the Temple Mount by allowing them to use a second gate (out of 11).

Yes, allowing Jews to peacefully stroll around the Temple Mount unmolested by hordes of screaming, threatening Muslims is a declaration of war on Islam.

Ashrawi said that this plan "will eliminate the prospects for peace and finally drag the entire region toward disastrous confrontations."

She further described it as a "serious escalation," and added that the plan was a naked insult to the feelings of Muslims all over the world, calling on the Muslim states "to hold Israel accountable and to stop its aggression on the Islamic and Christian sanctities in Jerusalem and all the occupied Palestinian territories."

Ashrawi is a Christian.

So, which is more peaceful: allowing people of all religions to have equal access to holy places, or inciting hundreds of millions of Arabs to war?

The sad fact is that most of the world cannot answer that simple question correctly.

Muslims now claim ear-splitting calls to prayer are protected under international law

Muslims in Hebron are complaining that Israeli authorities prevented the Muslim call to prayer from the Tomb of the Patriarchs some 60 times in September.

The loud calls to prayer were disturbing the quiet prayers of Jews in what the Muslims call "usurped sections of the Ibrahimi Mosque."

In today's jaw-dropping example of Palestinian hypocrisy, Arabic media says that the decision to limit the calls to prayer "ignores the feelings of Muslims and international laws and conventions that protect holy sites and freedom of access."

If they controlled all of Hebron, guess who wouldn't have any access to the site?

If they had their way with Rachel's Tomb and the Temple Mount and the Western Wall and every other holy site, guess who would be banned altogether?

The Jews are the only ones that have allowed all religions to practice freely in the region. And they are the ones being accused of violating the exact thing they have done more successfully than anyone in the Middle East in history.

It is almost as if they just don't like Jews. (Shhhhh - you aren't allowed to say that.)

Here is an example, from 2011, showing how a rabbi giving a talk about Chanukah in the Maarat Hamachpela must use a PA system just to be heard above the din of the muezzin which starts at 0:17 and then gets louder.

Now, who's ignoring the feelings of members of other religions? Oh, sorry, I forgot - tolerance is only a one-way street for certain people.

By the way, in other Muslim nations, ordinary citizens sometimes complain about the volume of the muezzin call to prayer. It's happened in Cairo, Tunisia, Dubai and Morocco. But only Jews are supposedly violating international laws when they seek to limit the decibel level of these calls to prayer.

10/06 Links Pt2: The best speech an Israeli diplomat ever gave; Massive blast at Iranian nuke site

From Ian:

Forget the past, says Arab refugee's son

It's been billed "The best speech an Israeli diplomat ever gave."
Whatever its merits, what makes this 30-minute speech unusual is the giver: A Christian Arab-Israeli from Jaffa. George Deek is an Israeli diplomat posted in the prickly, if not downright hostile environment of Norway. Thankfully, the country still retains pockets of sympathy to Israel, such as the organisation MIFF, which hosted Deek's talk.
Deek's father was a Palestinian refugee in 1948 and his family are scattered all over the Arab world and the West. They responded to calls to flee Israel because of Arab warnings that the Jews would perpetrate a new Deir Yassin massacre. Deek sets his personal story in its context - the creation of millions of refugees as a result of 20th century conflicts. He is careful to mention the 850, 000 Jews forced out of Arab lands, most of whom were resettled in Israel.
Deek's speech is a call for Palestinian refugees to stop harping on about past grievances and rebuild their lives. He asks for a humanitarian solution to their plight rather than the solution favoured by Arab states who have forged out of the misery of Palestinian refugees a political weapon against Israel.

"The best speech an Israeli diplomat ever held" George Deek in Oslo

Russell Tribunal on Palestine is Just as Wrong as Russell Was in 1938

We live in strange times when it is becoming fashionable to criticize the Nuremberg Trials as unfair “victors’ justice” for condemning Hitler’s surviving high command. And now there is the Russell “people’s tribunal” dedicated to disarming Israel so that Hitler’s posthumous allied murderers can finish his work.
There is some historic symmetry here. Bertrand Russell is remembered as a human rights icon who campaigned for nuclear disarmament and was an early critic of the Vietnam War. What many have chosen to forget however, was a letter he wrote back in 1938, wherein he saw no reason to go to war with Hitler. A better idea would be to invite him to dinner! (The letter is now part of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s archives)
“If the Germans succeed in sending an invading army to England we should do best to treat them as visitors, give them quarters and invite the commander and chief to dine with the prime minister,” Russell wrote to British critic Godfrey Carter.
“We may win or we may lose,” Russell added, referring to the looming conflict with Nazi Germany.”If we lose obviously no good has been done. If we win we shall inevitably during the struggle acquire their bad qualities and the world at the end will be no better off than if we had lost.”
Russell later changed his tune, but in 1938, one of the great “moral” voices of his day was dead wrong about evil when it counted and the “eminent” members of the “people’s court” who invoke his name today are dead wrong about Israel and Hamas.

Massive blast reported at suspected Iranian nuke facility

Two people were killed in an explosion at a defense ministry plant east of Tehran for the production of explosives, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported Monday.
The Defense Industries Organisation, quoted by IRNA, said the fire broke out at the plant on Sunday night but it gave no further details.
The BBC, citing a report from the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), reported on Monday that the incident happened in an “explosive materials production unit” at the site south-east of the capital Tehran.
According to ISNA the blast was so powerful it shattered windows up to 12 kilometers away and the glare from the explosion lit up the night sky.
Several arms facilities and military bases are located east of the Iranian capital, including Parchin. UN nuclear inspectors have been seeking to visit the site to answer concerns about Iran’s atomic program.

Arabic media is upset over a reported plan to allow Jews to enter the Temple Mount through the Cotton Market Gate, in addition to the Rambam (Mughrabi/Morrocan) Gate that currently is the only way for non-Muslims to enter the holy site.

Jews who enter the Temple Mount generally walk counter-clockwise and exit through the Chain Gate, the gate which is immediately north of the Mughrabi gate. The Cotton Market Gate is further north still.

Arutz-7 posted the story as I was writing it:

A document published by Galei Tzahal (IDF Radio) on Monday morning reveals that the Tourism Ministry is considering opening the Cotton Merchant's Gate to the Temple Mount for Jewish visitors and tourists.

As the status quo stands, the Mughrabi Gate is the only point of entrance for Jews in visiting the holiest site in Judaism, and that point of access has repeatedly been targeted by Arab rioters for attacks as a means to force the closure of the site to Jews.

The large number of Jews and tourists trying to visit the holy site has led to long lines at the lone non-Muslim gate to the Temple Mount, which is located by the Kotel (Western Wall). Due to the backlog, the Tourism Ministry is apparently considering measures such as opening an additional gate.

Yehuda Glick, head of the LIBA Movement for Freedom of Movement on the Temple Mount, told Galei Tzahal that the status quo must be changed urgently.

"There are 11 entrances to the Temple Mount, ten of them open to Muslims, but only one open to tens of thousands of tourists and Jews who want to enter the Temple Mount," said Glick. "Each day the numbers waiting on line increase...this gate doesn't meet the needs."

The document was drafted in January, but the Tourism Ministry says it was not advanced mainly due to opposition by security sources to the move, given that it would require a heavy increase in security and likely spark further rioting and violence by Arab visitors to the Temple Mount.

Mahmoud Abbas reacted immediately to the report:

[Mahmoud Abbas] warned of the danger of statements and the Israeli Tourism Minister, who spoke about opening doors gate, especially for the Jews to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The presidency said in a statement on Monday that such statements are unacceptable and condemnable and unacceptable, because Jerusalem and its holy sites are a red line that may not be not allowed to be touched. He considers this step a unilateral move that destroy any chance for the return of the peace process.

Jews wanting to enter their holy spots are of course antithetical to peace. Barring Jews from worshiping in their sacred sites promotes peace. But banning Muslims from worshiping anywhere they want is against peace, and allowing them to usurp ancient Jewish holy spots is supremely supportive of peace.

No "human rights" groups have a problem with this double standard. Because the real rule is that whatever Jews want is to be opposed, and whatever Muslims want must be accommodated.

Hamas billboards in Gaza heralding an upcoming prisoner swap

Over the past two days, billboards have been erected in Gaza by Hamas telling people to prepare for another Shalit-style prisoner swap deal.

Hamas media is implying that the group is ghoulishly holding on to some body parts of a soldier or two who were killed in Gaza - or even a live soldier that somehow no Israelis know about.

The most likely body that Hamas has would be of Staff Sergeant Oron Shaul, whose death was determined but whose body was never recovered.

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas' "political bureau" vice president, has said that there will be a number of "surprises" in the next few days.

10/06 Links Pt1: The Palestinians squander another opportunity; The end of the Abbas era

From Ian:

Daniel Gordis: The Palestinians squander another opportunity

Pandering to his street’s basest instincts, Abbas proved that he cannot lead. Whatever the opposite of leadership is, is precisely what Abbas did at the UN.
In so doing, he reminded even left-wing Israelis why the centre and the right want nothing to do with him. In so doing, he reminded Israelis who might have been willing to overlook it, that he was an avid promoter of the unity government with Hamas. In so doing, he pushed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to suggest, in his response at the UN, that Israel would seek alliances with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In so doing, therefore, Abbas slammed the door on the possibility of any negotiated deal with Israel in the near future.
Israelis are nervous about the shifting sands all around them, but most understand that just as Israel is going nowhere, so too the Palestinians are here to stay. Just as Israelis had national aspirations some 70 years ago and would not relent until they were realized, so too with the Palestinians. The difference is that Israelis have often been led by people who were willing to change their positions. Menachem Begin, sought by the British as Terrorist No. 1, made peace with Egypt and returned the Sinai Peninsula — even though he had to battle his own cabinet to get the deal approved. Ariel Sharon, the controversial military leader of Unit 101, pulled Israel out of Gaza, despite the move’s unpopularity. Netanyahu, who used to reject the mere idea of a Palestinian state, has now openly accepted it — much to the chagrin of some of his party’s leadership.
But as Abbas reminded us during his UN speech, there has been no similar movement on the Palestinian side. There are many reasons the Palestinians do not have a state, but chief among them is that the Palestinians have never had a genuine leader. They have figureheads, fearful of leading and unwilling to goad their citizens into thinking differently about Israel, refugees and their own future. So, they watch and wait, as those who call themselves leaders make mistake after mistake, consigning Palestinians to a life that sadly, once again, seems unlikely to change.

An open letter to Mahmoud Abbas

Genocide, Mr. Abbas, is what was done to my three cousins, Abraham, Jacob and Mordechai, who were between the ages of six and 12. Who were forced, together with their mother, Sarah, into the gas chambers at Birkenau. Who slowly suffocated. Who tried to scratch their way out through a concrete wall with their little fingernails, and who breathed their last with the question “why” on their innocent faces.
This is genocide, Mr. Abbas.
Some people argue that the use of such obscene terms in your speech stems from ignorance. But I have known you for quite some time, and you are not an ignorant person. I therefore think that your characterization of myself, my children and the people of Israel as “war criminals” guilty of committing “genocide” was a pure, malicious and evil act.
I would like to take this opportunity to point out that part of the duty of the president of the Palestinian Authority is to prevent attacks against Israel civilians, and also to prevent the use of Palestinian women and children as human shields by Hamas. It was your duty as Palestinian president to prevent the launching of rockets and mortars from schools and hospitals.
Finally, Mr. Abbas, please note that your inappropriate speech, following your attempts to slander the Israeli people, won’t stop me and many other people in Israel from continuing to search each and every crack to bring peace to the region.
This is our duty as parents, as grandparents, as human beings.

The beginning of the end of the Abbas era

The gap between Israel and the Palestinians remains unbridgeably vast. Israel’s security needs almost certainly preclude full Palestinian sovereignty when it comes to defense. Meanwhile, the Palestinian need to have a peace agreement that addresses and in some measure reverses the narrative of dispossession and calamity suggests that no Palestinian leader can agree to a Palestine without the Temple Mount and an explicit Israeli statement of culpability for refugees — demands no Israeli leader can deliver.
Yet these gaps don’t change the harsh truth, the bitter pill that Palestinian politics faces: that the Jews are at once their enemy and their unavoidable future.
For many years, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict held pride of place in the foreign policy discourse in Washington and other Western capitals. Foreign policy realists propounded the theory of “linkage,” that the challenges faced by the broader Middle East are intimately tied to what happens in Jerusalem and Ramallah.
“Of all the policy myths that have kept us from making real progress in the Middle East, one stands out for its impact and longevity: the idea that if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all the other Middle East conflicts would melt away,” explained Dennis Ross and David Makovsky, whose 2009 book “Myths, Illusions, and Peace” took this theory to task.
The theory lost favor in the wake of the Arab Spring, which revealed vast tensions and processes underway in the region that had little to do with the tiny strip of Mediterranean coast shared by Palestinians and Jews.
Now, perhaps, a new theory of linkage is emerging — in reverse. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the key to the region’s troubles, but perhaps a troubled region will find a new reason to try to end this distraction, which stands in the way of an unprecedented alliance desperate to stem the chaos and violence that engulfs more of the region with each passing year.
At least, Netanyahu hopes so.

PM: For Palestinian state to emerge everyone needs to adjust concepts of sovereignty

If there is ever to be a Palestinian state, everyone is going to have to adjust their ideas of sovereignty, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview broadcast Sunday.
Netanyahu, who filmed the interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria during his stay last week in New York, said that the only way to ensure that territory ceded by Israel does not turn into a “third Iranian enclave around Israel’s border” is to have a long-term Israeli security presence inside a future Palestinian state.
The Palestinians, according to Netanyahu, “say: ‘Oh, you can’t do that. That offends our sovereignty. We can’t have the security presence or military presence of our former enemy on our soil. That doesn’t square with independence.’ I say: Really? How about American forces in Germany 70 years after the fact or in Japan or in South Korea?” While acknowledging that “no analogy is perfect and identical,” Netanyahu said that if Hamas takes over the West Bank, “they could stop our international airport with mortars, not rockets, not missiles.

Dutch police advise against allowing Sukkahs

From JTA:

Dutch police advised a municipality to forbid the public display of a sukkah out of concerns that it would be a target for vandalism, a Jewish resident said.

Fabrice Schomberg applied last month for a permit to erect a sukkah, a hut designated for meals during the holiday of Sukkot, outside his home in the predominantly Muslim neighborhood of Schilderswijk in The Hague.

On Tuesday, city official Karin Wilthagen told Schomberg that the police advised the city against allowing him to build the sukkah, warning that it could be vandalized, he told JTA.

Despite the objection from police, the city approved his request Friday.

Police declined to comment on the case and declined to say whether they considered Jewish symbols and the people who display them as being especially at risk. A city spokesperson told JTA Schomberg’s application is being processed.

In recent weeks, Schomberg has been featured in a series of articles about a Jewish-owned housing project of 200 apartments located among one of the Netherlands’ largest concentrations of Muslim immigrants. He is among only a dozen Jewish residents in the complex.

In one item, a news crew filmed Schomberg being verbally abused on the street outside his home because he put on a kippah. He usually conceals it to prevent such incidents.

Three times over the summer rioting took place in Schilderswijk, near the Jewish-owned area, and on each occasion there were flags identified with the ISIS Islamist group. Two of the rallies also featured calls to kill Jews, and in the third protesters hurled rocks at police and used municipal flowerbeds to barricade the neighborhood’s main street.

The rallies took place amid a series of attacks on Jews in the Netherlands in the wake of Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip with Hamas. Two people were physically assaulted for displaying an Israeli flag.

Separately, a Jewish man in the eastern city of Arnhem and identified in Dutch media only as Nathan was beaten on the street by seven men who heard him speaking on his cell phone in Hebrew, the De Telegraaf daily reported. He told the daily he would not speak the language in public again.

(Ian posted this story a couple of days ago)

During Yom Kippur I used the machzor (holiday prayer book) written by Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of Great Britain.

It is a very good machzor. Sacks uses it as an opportunity to highlight the contributions of Judaism to the world at large as a supremely moral religion.

One of the points he makes is that Judaism was the first guilt culture, as opposed to the shame culture of the rest of the world. He continues to make the case for the guilt culture today, as he writes here:

Judaism gets it right and the zeitgeist gets it spectacularly, dangerously wrong. Consider: guilt enters the world hand in hand with the spirit of forgiveness. God forgives: that is the message emblazoned all over Yom Kippur. God doesn’t expect us to get it right all the time. The greatest of the great, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, David, had their faults and failings, defeats and doubts. There is only one person in the Hebrew Bible who is said to have committed no sin: Job. And look what happened to him. So, because God forgives, we can be honest with Him and therefore with ourselves. Unlike a shame culture, a guilt culture separates agent from act, the person from the deed. What I did may be wrong, but I am still intact, still loved by God, still His child. In a guilt culture, acknowledging our mistakes is doable, and that makes all the difference.

Today’s secular environment is a shame culture. It involves trial by the media, or public opinion, or the courts, or economic necessity, all of which are unforgiving. When shame is involved, it’s us, not just our actions, that are found wanting. That’s why in a shame culture you don’t hear people saying, “I was wrong. It was my fault. I’m sorry. Forgive me.” Instead, people try to brazen it out. The only way to survive in a shame culture is to be shameless. Some people manage this quite well, but deep down we know that there’s something rotten in a system where no one is willing to accept responsibility.

Ultimately, guilt cultures produce strong individuals precisely because they force us to accept responsibility. When things go wrong we don’t waste time blaming others. We don’t luxuriate in the most addictive, destructive drug known to humankind, namely victimhood. We say, honestly and seriously, “I’m sorry. Forgive me. Now let me do what I can to put it right.” That way we and the people we offend can move on. Through our mistakes we discover the strength to heal, learn and grow. Shame cultures produce people who conform. Guilt cultures produces people with the courage to be free.

As we've noted many times before, the Arab world is suffused with the shame culture. And shame cultures value appearance over reality: they cannot separate the sin from the sinner, so instead of admitting mistakes all effort must be made to hide them.

We saw a perfect example of this yesterday. A senior researcher at B'Tselem, Atef Abu Roub, called the Holocaust a lie - on camera - but he insisted for over a month that he did no such thing. B'Tselem defended him for as long as it could until they could no longer deny the facts from the extended video that was released. (Even after the extended video was released, B'Tselem denied it for four more days, before grudgingly admitting it only in Hebrew.)

B'Tselem acted as part of the modern Western shame culture. Abu Roub acted as part of the long-standing Arab shame culture. The modern shame culture, when confronted with facts, reluctantly admits the truth; the Arab shame culture refuses to admit the truth no matter what, since admitting you are wrong is a fatal blow to one's honor.

The entire existence of "honor killings" is a reflection of a shame culture gone amok.

The guilt culture is morally superior to the shame culture. Guilt cultures allow individuals, and ultimately societies, to grow and improve, while shame cultures will remain stagnant and backwards.
If you wrong someone in a guilt culture, you can seek forgiveness and restore the relationship. If you wrong someone in a shame culture then the only solution is to suffer revenge, or to offer appeasement and abasement - there is no growth, no lessons learned. It is a culture based on appearance and not reality, and this is a paradigm that cannot be sustained.

Nominally, Western culture is mostly a guilt culture, although of course shame exists - one need only to look at how most famous actors, sports figures and politicians attempt to weasel out of accusations of misconduct. But even today's celebrities are slowly realizing that public reaction to them telling the truth and seeking forgiveness is much more positive than the reaction when they deny and try to cover it up. Those who continue to be brazen in the face of the facts look like fools and those who admit mistakes can move on - sometimes, even more successfully.

The shame culture has a major weakness: it itself can be shamed. When people from a shame culture are confronted with their shortcomings in a public way, and their lies cannot hold up in the glare of the spotlight, they are forced to change - to salvage what little honor they can, and to try to regain it. Within the shame culture the lies can be tolerated and expected, but from without they cannot and should not be.

This is how to defeat the honor-shame culture in the Arab world. And it is the exact opposite of what Western media and politicians and most "human rights" groups do. They are afraid to shame Arabs out of fear of causing a violent, shame-based reaction. The natural Arab reaction to being shamed is to threaten in response, to maintain their own honor. Those threats are almost always empty but they scare Westerners into adhering to the Arab rules of avoiding shame and shaming.

Yet there have been cases where shame has made an impact on the Arab psyche.

Immediately after 9/11, the Arab world was overwhelmingly supportive of terrorism. Al Jazeera openly praised Osama Bin Laden. But since then, polls have shown a steady decrease of support for suicide bombings and other terror acts throughout the Arab world. Part of the reason is, of course, that they have been the primary victims of terror since 9/11, but I think part of it is because of the Western disgust at terrorism and those who openly support it. People want to feel that their own culture is better than others', and it is hard to defend a culture that supports terror openly.

The culture changed, to a small extent. But it did change.

Another, almost comical example happened in 2008, when Hamas was publicly shamed by Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, in an interview, criticized Hamas for targeting children with its rockets. In response, Hamas denied aiming at civilians - and its press releases from then on pretended to be targeting soldiers with every rocket in Operation Cast Lead!

To be sure, Hamas' actual behavior didn't change, but it was forced to change its public position because of the shame of being berated by another terror group on grounds of morality. It is a small step, but when terrorists are forced to change their publicly stated positions there will be a trickle effect to the masses. Their people learn, over time, that lies are not acceptable.

Another example: Egyptian society now takes harassment against women seriously, something roundly ignored only a few years ago. The reason is because the story was highlighted in the West, especially when female Western reporters were assaulted. They were shamed into confronting it rather than pretending it doesn't exist, the first reaction by someone who is shamed.

The Western world needs to do a full-court press against the more repugnant aspects of the honor-shame culture - because it can be shamed into reforming. When the shame of being publicly exposed as immoral overwhelms the benefits of lying to hide your immorality, then a society can be shamed into abandoning the culture of shame altogether. But the pressure to do so from the West must be relentless, and each lie must be exposed and ridiculed, rather than accepted. The Arab shame society does not want to be publicly exposed as less moral than the hated West.

Imagine how different things could be if Palestinian Arab officials were forced to explain their obvious lies. Imagine if Hamas would be forced to justify every single rocket the way Israel is expected to account for every airstrike. Imagine if the world would automatically discount every statement made by Arab politicians who were already proven to have lied repeatedly and unabashedly.

Imagine if the Western world treated liars in a shame culture the same way it treats their own liars. They would have no choice but to admit to their lies - or look like fools, to even greater shame. The Arab world can be dragged, kicking and screaming, into a world where people take responsibility for their own actions when the alternative is feeling even more shameful.

A major reason that the West lets these lies slide is because the shame culture is being coddled, not confronted.

The shame culture can be shamed into behaving more morally - and it is the most effective, and least-used, weapon we have.

The Santa Claus Terrorists

In Gaza, Islamic Jihad terrorists are busy during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha giving out food, comfort and cheer for the poor Gazans, who seem quite happy to receive these items that are paid for by Iran.

This is of course how terror groups recruit new members. And it is how they convince clueless Westerners that they are "humanitarian organizations."

I would complain about the tiny portion size, but these guys are packing.

Where can I get one of those nifty ski masks?

The guy on the right seems a little too interested in these kids

"Watch your cholesterol."

We want to grow up to be just like them!

"You look just like my father!"

"One- two-three- Kill the Jews!"

"I might have a few daughters for you guys to marry, let me check"

"Open-air prison" news: 1500 Gazans going to Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem this week

1500 Gazans are going to Jerusalem on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to celebrate Eid al Adha at the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. 500 are going each day.

They are leaving Gaza via the Erez crossing and being transported to Jerusalem. The pilgrims are all over 60 years old.

When there, they may see this banner on top of the "religious" site, erected on Yom Kippur,

It says:

Our next war - the War of Independence.

The Islamic Movement in the Haram gives blessings to the Islamic nation in general, and our Islamic movement in Palestine in particular,

Because of the blessed Eid Al-adha, Allah will return to us and liberate us, and Al-Aqsa.

Allah accepts the obedient. Gaza won, and the truth won out over power!

Here's video of the benner being placed and the cheers from the crowd:

(h/t Bob Knot)

Major Muslim clerics write theological-based denunciation of ISIS

A couple of weeks ago, I asked,"Is there any theologically sound flavor of Islam that could win the ideological battle with ISIS fundamentalism that would convince young Muslims that ISIS is completely wrong?"

The good news is that this seems to have happened.

120 Muslim scholars, including the Grand Mufti of Egypt, the dean of Sharia and Law at al-Azhar University, director of the Fiqh Council in the US, and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem published an open letter to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi decrying his state’s un-Islamic behavior in three languages: Arabic, English and German.

The letter is here.

I find it interesting that some of their arguments against Al Baghdadi seem also to apply to Hamas and many other terror movements that are considered praiseworthy by avergae Muslims, such as a the prohibition of killing innocents, that Jihad is meant to be defensive war only, the prohibition to mistreat "people of the Scripture" (Muslims and Jews,) the prohibition to deny women and children their rights, and the prohibition against torture.

That little bit of hypocrisy might weigh against people believing these scholars. But it is definitely good news that this happened, and the response will be worth following.

Notably, the scholars only call on Al Baghdadi to repent.

UPDATE: Robert Spencer shows that the "moderate" clerics are not exactly moderate by normal standards. Even so, I like to see jihadis put on the defensive from their own people; the problem of Islamism altogether is a much bigger issue and one that is not at all addressed by this letter. (h/t Henrik)

Peace Now founder's company invests in "settlements"

Dani Dayan reports, from a NRG story, that a founder of Peace Now actually profits from "settlements."

Tzali Reshef is one of the founders of the anti-settlement group Peace Now. He is also CEO of . Arledan, Ltd, "one of Israel's leading investiment companies," which boasts on its home page:

1. Real Estate and Construction - Arledan acts as a developer with regard to properties it owns, and also rents out various commercial and residential properties, primarily in the city of Jerusalem. Some of the projects Arledan has successfully developed over the years include residential projects in the neighbourhoods of French Hill, Gilo, Givat Oranim and Mevaseret Zion, as well as residential and commercial projects in downtown Jerusalem.

French Hill and Gilo are considered "settlements" and have been denounced by Peace Now. This is a map from a presentation on their website showing all these awful, "illegal" Jewish neighborhoods..

And its founder profits from them!

Don't you just love people who are so principled?

Last week I noted that the New York Times mindlessly repeats lies propagated by Peace Now.

(h/t Bob Knot, Yoel)

10/05 Links: Navy intercepts weapons bound for Gaza; IDF fires on cell crossing from Lebanon

From Ian:

Navy intercepts weapons-building material bound for Gaza as Hamas bids to rearm

The Israel Navy has intercepted multiple attempts to smuggle weapons manufacturing material into Gaza since the end of the war in August, a senior navy commander told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
Cmdr. Eli Soholitski has commanded the navy’s Squadron 916 for two years. Squadron 916, the navy’s largest formation, is responsible for defending the whole sector from Ashdod to the Gaza Strip, and was involved heavily in the 50-day conflict with Hamas and Islamic Jihad last summer.
He is about to take command of Squadron 32, a missile-ship formation, that secures the northern naval sector.
“Our vessels are ready to go into offensive missions at any time. There have been more than a few attempts to infiltrate the naval closure. We’ve conducted activity against vessels that violated the closure,” Soholitski said.
Hamas fires rockets into the sea every few days, as part of its weapons upgrade program. The launches are used by Hamas arms designers to experiment with various projectile models.
The experiments naturally have attracted the attention of the Israel Navy.
“They are doing experiments and checking their rockets.
This is a part of their domestic weapons production. We did not doubt, at the end of the war, that their focus would be on building more weapons. We monitor every such launch, noting the quality of the rocket and its range,” Soholitski said.
This type of naval intelligence forms a central component of the IDF’s ability to map out future threats, he stated. “We won’t fight Operation Protective Edge again. The next war will be different. On any given day, we have intelligence-based targets that we can attack.”
“We continue to see attempts to smuggle weapons or material to build them. The sea is a very convenient platform for smuggling.

IDF opens fire on cell crossing into Israel from Lebanon

The IDF opened fire on a cell trying to infiltrate into Israel from Lebanon on Sunday.
The IDF said a unit dealing with operational border security identified the cell crossing the Israeli-Lebanese border (the Blue Line).
The unit opened fire with small arms fire, apparently striking one of the suspects.
"The cell fled back into Lebanese territory," the IDF added. "The circumstances of the incident are being checked. The IDF will continue to guard the state of Israel's sovereignty in the border region," it said.
According to Lebanese media reports, Israeli cross-border fire struck and injured a Lebanese soldier near Kfar Shouba.

Jerusalem court: Palestinian Authority must compensate families for 2001 terror attack

The Jerusalem District Court came out with a decision on Sunday that found the Palestinian Authority liable to pay compensation to the families of three people killed in a terror attack in 2001.
In 2009, the estates of Yaniv and Sharon Ben-Shalom, and that of Sharon's brother Doron Yosef Svari, who were killed in a shooting attack on highway 443 in August 2001, sued the PLO and the Palestinian Authority.
Justice Moshe's Drori's decision on Sunday held that the PA was legally obligated to pay damages to the victims' families and to those wounded in the attack.
Two daughters of Yaniv and Sharon Ben-Shalom were infants in 2001 and were wounded in the attack. The children have been adopted by their uncle.
"The weapons and the funding were transferred from the Palestinian Authority to the commanders in the terrorist organizations, and the PA knew and understood the purpose for these transfers," Drori stated in his decision that spanned some 1000 pages.

IDF Blog: Eleven Years Since the Maxim Restaurant Suicide Bombing

Eleven years have passed since Islamic Jihad terrorists attacked the Maxim Restaurant in Haifa. A suicide bomber exploded herself, indiscriminately killing Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike.
On October 4, 2003, two days before Yom Kippur – the holiest day of the Jewish calendar – several families gathered at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa for lunch. The restaurant was regularly described as the symbol of diversity in the metropolitan city of Haifa because Jewish and Arab Israeli customers frequently sat and dined together.
The day took a drastic turn as an Islamic Jihad terrorist armed with an explosive belt entered the restaurant and detonated the device. Twenty-one people were killed, including 3 children and a baby, and four Arab restaurant employees. Dozens of Jewish and Arab Israeli civilians were injured in the explosion.

The Obama administration has decided that while the Jews of the Middle East must put up with genocidally anti-Semitic barbarian Jihadis directly upon their doorstep, the United States has every right to bomb their ideological brothers half a world away, despite the fact that the Islamic State poses no direct threat to the United States.

The hypocrisy could hardly be more glaring.

It was the Obama administration, in the figure of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that inserted itself between the IDF and Hamas in the 2012 heinous go-around, known as Pillar of Defense, thereby ensuring that Hamas would live to fight another day... as it just did. This decision resulted in the deaths of thousands of Gazans even as it bolstered the influence of political Islam. And despite the fact that the western-left and its allies in the PLO and Fatah condemn Israel for committing a "genocide" in Gaza, the Gazan's themselves declare victory!

The Gazans and the other local Arabs cannot declare that Israel has committed a genocide upon them even as they rejoice in victory. Someone needs to let them know that it simply does not work that way. Hamas and its western allies need to get their stories straight if they wish for anyone who cares about rationality, not to mention Israel, to take them the least little bit seriously.

Responding to Benjamin Netanyahu's recent speech before the United Nations, US State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki made it very clear that if Israel wishes to defend its citizenry from Jihadi attack it will receive only pro forma support from the Obama administration, if that. In fact, as we have seen in the last two Gaza engagements, the Obama administration pressured Israel to spare the Islamists from the natural and foreseeable consequences of their own racist aggression against the Jews.

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Michelle Malka Grossman, tells us this:

The U.S. State Department said Monday in a press conference that it disagrees with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s assertion during his UN speech on Monday that “ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree.”

“Obviously, we’ve designated both as terrorist organizations, but ISIL poses a different threat to Western interests and to the United States,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki. “And that’s just a fact.”

Of course, it is a fact.

There is simply no question that Hamas and the Islamic State pose different threats to "Western interests" and the United States than they do to Israel. Hamas poses a direct and immediate threat to Israelis, including Muslim and Christian Israelis, while the Islamic State is primarily a security irritant to the United States and to "Western interests." Hamas is right next door to Israel and Gazans favor genocidal violence against Jews, while the head-choppers in the Islamic State have to mainly content themselves with slaughtering other Muslims because they have little capacity to get at Americans, or Israeli Jews, who do not come to them.

The real problem, however, remains Obama's failure to square the Jihadi circle.

The Obama administration favored the Muslim Brotherhood, while opposing al-Qaeda. It defended Hamas twice, by demanding Israeli ceasefires, yet it bombs the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. And it had, from the beginning, a schizophrenic view on the rise of political Islam. It continues to suggest that there are somewhat reasonable Jihadis, like the Muslim Brotherhood, and entirely bad Jihadis, like al-Qaeda.

This is false, yet in Ynet we read the following:

Psaki also rejected Netanyahu's assertion that Hamas, ISIS, Iran, Hezbollah, Boko Haram and other militant Islamist groups all want the same thing – a Muslim caliphate dominating the world.

Obama believes in good Islamists and bad Islamists. But the fact of the matter is that all of these groups wish to impose al-Sharia upon all of us and that means the caliphate. It means all non-Muslims as servile dhimmis, all women as servants, and all openly Gay people as dead.

Even as I write this Islamists are chasing Christians out of the Middle East .

The fact is, Benjamin Netanyahu is correct and Barack Obama and his Department of State are mistaken. While Obama keeps trimming Jihadis, like the Brotherhood, into the "reasonable" camp, Netanyahu, as someone who lives in the region, understands that while the desire to impose al-Sharia may take different shapes and forms throughout that part of the world, it is unquestionably part of the same violently racist and sexist theocratic project that all liberals and "progressives" should oppose.

Meanwhile, as the Jihad arrives in America, the Obama administration and its friends in the mainstream media pretend that the recent head-chopping in Oklahoma was merely a case of "work place violence." It was, we are to believe, something akin to the popular non-sectarian 1990s fad of "going postal," except with a brand-spanking-new, emphatically non-Islamist twist to it... just for spice.

In a piece for the Washington Post by Mark Berman entitled, After a beheading in Oklahoma, debate over what to call it, we read:

Yet these officials also said that the FBI had found no link to terrorism. They also said there was no indication that Nolen was copying the beheadings of journalists in Syria carried out by the Islamic State. Instead, the officials said, they are treating this as an incident of workplace violence.

The FBI found no link to terrorism.

Did Nolen not screech Alahu Akbar loud enough as he brutally separated Colleen Hufford's head from the rest of her body before her horrified and flabbergasted co-workers? Head-chopping is a form of theocratically-based ritual murder associated with the Jihad. We all know this. It goes back to the Koran and its injunction to follow "the Prophet" in all manners of behavior and we all know what a fan of head-chopping Muhammad was.

We also know that Nolen was a convert into the faith and that he extolled the virtues of Holy War on his Facebook page. To pretend that this grotesque act of Jihad was anything other than Jihad is to be either dishonest or ideologically blinded.

This was not only an act of Jihad, it may be the very first high-profile Jihadi head-chopping in the history of the United States. We've seen Jihadi head-chopping in Europe for awhile, now, and Jihadi-style head-chopping in the Middle East is something of a national sport, but Americans aren't so familiar with this particular religious-political tradition. Neither are Canadians, nor Australians, I feel reasonably certain.

The problem, of course, is that because we are all so terrified of words like "racist" or "Islamophobe" we tend to keep our mouths shut and just look the other way. We just whistle past the proverbial graveyard. To be a counter-jihadi in the United States takes bravery because one's reputation will always be dragged through the mud by politically-correct cowards and there is always some chance of violence coming at you from out of the blue. To be a counter-Jihadi in Europe, on the other hand, is to risk one's life entirely. The example of Theo van Gogh is lost on no one and while the Jihadi who killed him failed to take his head, it was not for lack of trying.

All through the Clinton years I assumed that talk of terrorism and Jihad was just so much political smoke and blather and primarily right-wing political smoke and blather, at that.

Prior to 9/11 I considered Osama bin Laden to be a living contemporary equivalent of Emmanuel Goldstein, the target of George Orwell's famous two minutes of hate from Nineteen Eighty-Four. Even after 9/11 I was part of the American ten percent who still despised George W. Bush as a populist con-man in a cowboy hat.

There comes a point, however, wherein we must acknowledge the obvious.

The obvious in this case comes in several packages. In one package we have the obvious fact that Islamism is the single most significant rising political movement in the world today and it has taken over large swaths of the Middle East, even as it nurtures our newly home-grown, lone Jihadis like Alton Nolen. In another package we have the ugly, but also obvious fact that president Obama actively assisted the rise of political Islam when he threw his weight behind the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

In doing so he legitimized the Jihad.

I, as a former Democrat who voted for him in 2008, will not forgive him for it.

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