Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 04, 2015

How the Arabs added specifically anti-Israel language to the Rome Statute of the ICC

The list of war crimes enumerated in Rome Statute of the ICC includes a section that is directly aimed at Israel, and no one else.

From The International Criminal Court: the making of the Rome Statute : issues, negotiations and results by Roy S. K. Lee

Article 8(2)(b)(viii), on deportation and transfer of population, also generated extensive discussions. The provision now reads:

The transfer. directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory.
The grave breach of “unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful continement" is already reflected in Article 8(l)(a)(vii). The violation in Article 8(2)(b)(vii) is based on the broader provision in Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, now recognized as a grave breach in Article 85(4)(a) of Additional Protocol 1. The scope of these prohibitions is broader, as they govern not only the transfer of population of the occupied territory to other parts of that occupied territory or to places outside the occupied territory. but also the transfer by the occupying power of parts of its own civilian population into occupied territory. The latter aspect was politically controversial during the negotiations. Israel was not a party to the Additional Protocol l, largely because of this provision, and emphatically disagreed that this aspect was part of customary international law. It stood, however, rather isolated in this position and was supported, to a certain extent, only by the United States.

During the December 1997 session, this provision generated heated debates, as a result of which four options were submitted for discussion at the Rome Conference.‘°' At Rome, it soon became clear that a large majority of delegations preferred a provision based on the wording of the Additional Protocol. However. the Arab delegations wanted to adapt this language. in order to make clear that an occupying power is not only responsible for this act if it deliberately organizes the transfer of its own population into occupied territory, but also if it does not take effective steps to prevent the population itself from organizing such a transfer. After some negotiations, the words “directly or indirectly" were added to this provision.

In other words,the drafting committee caved to Arab demands to expand the scope of existing international law specifically against a single state - a state that most of them were technically at war with..

Just for context, here are other crimes that the Rome Statute considers exactly as heinous as the crime of allowing one's citizens to voluntarily move to disputed territory:

* Intentionally attacking innocent civilians
* Intentionally attacking official people involved in humanitarian or peacekeeping missions
* Killing people who have surrendered
* Intentionally attacking churches, hospitals or museums for no military reason
* Subjecting the enemy to medical experiments or mutilation
* "Committing rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy..."
* Intentionally starving civilians

Israel commented at the time:

Israel has reluctantly cast a negative vote. It fails to comprehend why it has been considered necessary to insert into the list of the most heinous and grievous war crimes the action of transferring population into occupied territory. The exigencies of lack of time and intense political and public pressure have obliged the Conference to by-pass very basic sovereign prerogatives to which we are entitled in drafting international conventions, in favour of finishing the work and achieving a Statute on a come-what-may basis. We continue to hope that the Court will indeed serve the lofty objectives for the attainment of which it is being established.

The deck is stacked against Israel at the ICC because its foundational document was partially the result of political, specifically anti-Israel move by her enemies.

A court whose rules are created not for the purposes of justice but for the purpose of revenge against a single state is flawed from the start.

Why is "Palestine"'s ICC application retroactive to June 13, 2014?

Here is the letter from Mahmoud Abbas to the ICC:

Why is the application requesting it to be effective retroactively to June 13, 2014?

Because on June 12, 2014, Palestinian Arab terrorists kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teens, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah, from the supposed territory of "Palestine" which they claim to be part of "Palestine."

Which is a war crime under the Rome Statute.

So Mahmoud Abbas is saying that the application should only be retroactive to June 13, when Israeli forces started to frantically look for the teens still hoped to be alive. Because he isn't interested in justice - but he is interested in protecting his Hamas partner from being indicted for a war crime that they brag about..

The cynicism is breathtaking.

Not that Mahmoud Abbas is alone in this cynical use of dates to frame Israel as being guilty of war crimes without context.

The exact same thing was done by William Schabas, chair of the UNHRC investigation into the events of last summer - a mandate that explicitly excludes the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens but that includes Israel's response to the kidnappings by choosing to only investigate events from June 13th. .

Fatah claims that "skull" image was not done by them. OK, how about these?

And if you believe this one....

The political faction of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas distanced itself from an image of skulls adorned with Jewish stars posted on its official Facebook page.

The image, posted Wednesday on the Fatah Facebook page, also displays a rifle, the Fatah flag and the words “lingering on your skulls.” It was posted on the occasion of Fatah’s 50th anniversary.

A spokesman for Fatah told CNN on Friday that the group was not responsible for the image.

“Fatah did not design this image,” Mahmoud al-Aloul said, who added that the person who posted it “is currently being asked to remove it. The image and the text do not reflect the opinions of Fatah.”

The image was removed after al-Aloul’s comments were made to CNN.

OK, then lets see what else is posted on the official Fatah Facebook page.

December 13:

December 15:

November 19:

November 19 (Fatah claims they are against rocket attacks)::

November 18, celebrating the Haf Nof synagogue murderers:

November 2:("non-violence")

August 2, one of the Fatah terrorists killed in Gaza when Fatah supposedly doesn't support violence anymore:

A parade of the "dismantled" Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terror group in Qalandia, West Bank:

There are hundreds of photos that celebrate terror attacks, that say that Israel shouldn't exist, that glorify terror, that incite violence, that incite antisemitism.

Are these the official Fatah position? (Of course they are.) Will CNN ask them about that? (Of course not, they don't have piles of skulls so they are acceptable discourse for Israel's "peace partner.")

01/03 Links: Pro-Israel Student Activist Chloe Valdary Receives Death Threat; The Arabs are Semites fallacy

From Ian:

Gerard Henderson: There is no war between Israel and a nonexistent nation

Australia’s decision to vote in agreement with the US in the Security Council on the Jordanian resolution is not an example of Tony Abbott slavishly following Obama. Not at all. Australia has been a strong supporter of Israel’s right to exist within secure borders since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Also, the policy has been essentially bipartisan.
Australia’s support for Israel started when Labor’s Ben Chifley was prime minister. It continued after December 1949 under the Coalition prime ministers Robert Menzies, Harold Holt, John Gorton and William McMahon. Gough Whitlam was not as friendly to Israel as his predecessors, but his government lasted only three years. Malcolm Fraser is one of Israel’s most high-profile critics. But he did not manifest such a position during his nearly eight years as prime minister. Labor prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating were supportive of Israel, as was John Howard. Kevin Rudd essentially continued this position, as did Julia Gillard.
Viewed in this light, the position taken by the Prime Minister and his Foreign Minister reflects established policy. Moreover, it makes good sense.
It is fashionable among the left intelligentsia in the West to blame Israel for all the problems in the Middle East. However, the appalling civil war in Syria, which has seen about 200,000 Muslims killed by other Muslims, has nothing to do with Israel. Currently, authorities in Jerusalem want to see reconstruction in Gaza following Israel’s recent war with Hamas aimed at destroying missile sites and attack tunnels on the Israel-Gaza border. Neither Egypt nor the PA is supportive of this proposal, due to the hostility of the governments in Cairo and Ramallah to Hamas.
It is likely that the tension in the Middle East, as it affects Israel, will continue for some time. A long-term settlement seems a long way off. But this does not suggest a war between Israel and the Palestinians as depicted by O’Connor.
About 20 per cent of Israel’s population is made up of Muslims and Christians. Both groups enjoy full democratic rights. What’s more, as Arab-Israeli citizen Khaled Abu Toameh pointed out in The Australian yesterday, there is a lack of democracy in the PA areas on the West Bank — particularly with reference to female critics of Abbas.
While in Israel, I visited the Ziv hospital close to the Lebanese-Syrian borders, where Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze and other minorities work together. Here, Melbourne-born doctor Michael Harari looks after victims of the Syrian civil war who have been brought to the hospital by the Israel Defence Force. There were adult male and child victims. According to Harari, no one asks details about the patients. They receive the best attention possible. At the Ziv hospital, there is no war between Israelis and Palestinians or, indeed, Syrians. It’s a symbol of hope in a troubled region.

Pro-Israel Student Activist Chloe Valdary Receives Death Threat

Pro-Israel student activist Chloe Valdary received a death threat via a YouTube video titled "Pro Israel Chloe Valdary Murdered!"
The brief video was posted Dec. 31 by "Jackson Carter." Beneath Carter's post is the following statement:
"Rest in peace Chloe Valdary, no way burn in hell be' yatch. You make me black and ashamed. If there is any justice in the world you'll get yours and then some!"
The six-second video features ominous images, including a woman lying in a hospital bed, the words "Bang ya dead!" and a photo of Valdary holding an Israeli flag. It ends with the statement "The Planetary Patriot is here." (The epithet "Planetary Patriot" appears in some of his other videos.)

01/02 Links Pt2: Does the Israeli Left actually live here?; Anett Haskia: I am not a traitor

From Ian:

Anett Haskia: I am not a traitor

People often ask me: “But how many other Israeli Arabs support Israeli like you do?” All one needs to answer this question is to take a look at the latest polls on how many Israeli Arabs would live in a Palestinian state as opposed to Israel, to realize that if given the opportunity, the silent Israeli Arab majority would openly come out in support of Israel. Nearly every Israeli Arab would prefer to live in Israel over a Palestinian state and just 30 percent come out to vote for Arab parties in Knesset elections. The Arab-Israeli electorate has lost all faith in Arab MKs who do not represent their interests (when was the last time an Arab MK supported a bill to protect battered Arab women trying to flee their abusive husbands or took up the rights of child brides?!).
It comes down to this: the Arab MKs are the real traitors – not me. While I’m running for the Bayit Yehudi candidates list first and foremost in order to serve the best interests of Israeli Arabs, they’re creating further divisions in our society. We’re really no different from anyone else.
We want to lead quiet lives, earning a dignified living to support our families. The vast majority of us want to live in peace with the Jews without suffering from prejudice and discrimination. The Arab MKs want something entirely different. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

David Weinberg: A crystal ball on 2015

One year ago, I forecast -- accurately -- that in 2014 U.S. President Barack Obama would continue to fudge the nuclear issue with Iran. I also foresaw that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would agree to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's formula for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines, but that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would cut and run from the negotiations at the last moment. Easy predictions.
But I was wrong in expecting to see the hero of the social protest movement Professor Manuel Trajtenberg join Moshe Kahlon's new political party. Instead, he recently joined the ranks of Labor. I was also wrong in hoping and praying to see Natan Sharansky named the president of Israel, instead of Reuven Rivlin.
Looking into my crystal ball for the year ahead, this is what I see:

Top 10 Non-Jews Positively Influencing the Jewish Future, 2014

Five years have now passed since I first published my annual list of non-Jews who are worthy of recognition for their positive impact on Jewish lives and the Jewish state.
Looking back, it is fascinating to see how the list has evolved, with some personalities fading from prominence and others emerging to take their place. Some have remained constant throughout the years.
As I have pointed out in the past, my choices are by no means scientific and are primarily intended to prompt interest in this unique group of individuals. Hailing from various countries, ethnic backgrounds and religious groups, the list includes heads of state, business tycoons and spiritual and political leaders. While some of their contributions came through effort and sacrifice, for others they seemed like second nature, but all are surely worthy of our recognition. As such, I present my fifth annual list of the “Top 10 Non-Jews Positively Influencing the Jewish Future.”

Giles Fraser is quite anti-Israel. , But his latest column in The Guardian unwittingly reveals something interesting about his Arab (Christian) friends in the West Bank:

Liberation theology is back in business. After decades of official censure (including from the present pope, in earlier guise), the big narrative of Christian theology is once again one of liberation for the poor and the oppressed. Salvation is not some private transaction between the individual and God, it is a public story in which the oppressed find freedom in the here and now.

Theology, so liberation theologians insist, is a practical business and not an intellectual exercise. This is Jesus as half Marx and half Moses. Forget academic theory, angels dancing on pins, sterile arguments about God’s existence, the church’s obsession with clothes and buildings. Instead, think praxis: good news to the poor, freedom to the captive, sight to the blind. Doing is believing. And from the favelas of São Paulo to the shantytowns of Johannesburg, it rejuvenated Christianity by returning to its revolutionary roots.

So why was it that these Palestinian Christians were having none of it? We were sitting in a cafe in Ramallah, close by the Kalandia checkpoint. Despite the fact that my Palestinian friends were constantly on the lookout for hermeneutic resources that might aid in the struggle against Israeli occupation, they seemed extremely reluctant to align themselves with liberation theology.

It was only when we started talking about Moses that the scales fell from my eyes. From a western perspective, the Exodus story is the primary text of the biblical cry of freedom. The African slaves who sang spirituals in the cotton fields of America would link their suffering to that of the Jews under Ramses II. Thus, for instance, they sang: “Go down, Moses, Way down in Egypt’s land, Tell ole Pharaoh To let my people go.”

But from a Palestinian perspective, one person’s liberation is another’s slavery. The very story African slaves told each other as the story of their anticipated liberation is, according to Palestinians, at the root of their current occupation. The slaves come out of Egypt and into a land promised them by God. And, for Palestinians, this promise is responsible for their military subjugation, for walls and settlements.

Fraser almost gets it right. It isn't that Palestinians associate God's promise to the Jews with "settlements." It is that they cannot admit even to themselves that Jews ever lived in the Land of Israel because that means that they are the ones who are on someone else's land.

Don't take my word for it. Read this article that I quoted from in 2011 from by former PLO negotiator Ahmad Samih Khalidi, describing why believing in the Biblical story is antithetical to the core beliefs of Palestinian arabs, and therefore must be rejected:

[I]f Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, then the lands that it occupies today (and perhaps more, for there are as yet no borders to this “homeland”) belong to this people by way of right. And if these lands rightfully comprise the Jewish homeland, then the Arab presence there becomes historically aberrant and contingent; the Palestinians effectively become historic interlopers and trespassers—a transient presence on someone else’s national soil.

This is not a moot or exaggerated point. It touches on the very core of the conflict and its genesis. Indeed, it is the heart of the Zionist claim to Palestine: Palestine belongs to the Jews and their right to the land is antecedent and superior to that of the Arabs. This is what Zionism is all about, and what justifies both the Jewish return to the land and the dispossession of its Arab inhabitants.

Clearly, this is not the Palestinian Arab narrative, nor can it be. Palestinians do not believe that the historical Jewish presence in and connection to the land entail a superior claim to it. Palestine as our homeland was established in the course of over fifteen hundred years of continuous Arab-Muslim presence; it was only by superior force and colonial machination that we were eventually dispossessed of it. For us to adopt the Zionist narrative would mean that the homes that our forefathers built, the land that they tilled for centuries, and the sanctuaries they built and prayed at were not really ours at all, and that our defense of them was morally flawed and wrongful: we had no right to any of these to begin with.

The Biblical story from the Exodus through Joshua, David and Solomon - a story that the Quran largely accepts - undercuts the very foundation of Palestinianism. They know that, and this discomfort (and in the case of Arab Christians, cognitive dissonance) must be buried and pushed aside and forgotten.

A film like the Ridley Scott epic, as bad as it sounds like it is, still includes the basic storyline of a Jewish people chosen by God to be brought out of slavery and into the Promised Land - promised by none other than God Himself. And that is unacceptable.

So of course that cannot relate to the story of the Jews - because it undercuts and annuls their entire narrative.

This also explains why the discredited Khazare theory is so popular among Arabs - it is a very loose peg to hang their narrative on by claiming that ancient Jews have nothing to do with modern Jews. Similarly, it explains why Palestinian Christians embrace replacement theology, because that means that God's promise to the Jews is no longer relevant.

Defending their narrative is the driving force behind their beliefs, and truth is their enemy.

01/02 Links Pt1: Young Israeli Firebombing Victim’s Condition Improving; Hamas: Abbas can't join ICC

From Ian:

Young Israeli Firebombing Victim’s Condition Improving

Doctors treating 11-year-old Ayala Shapira, severely burned in a Palestinian firebombing attack last week, have brought her back to partial consciousness, Israel’s NRG News reported Thursday.
Ayala and her father, Avner, were driving home from enrichment lessons at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv to their community of El Matan in northern Samaria late Thursday night, when two Palestinians ambushed the vehicle, with one hurling a firebomb through her open window.
Shapira suffered third-degree burns to 30-40 percent of her body, including her face and chest, despite her father managing to get her out of the burning vehicle and carry her into their community, several hundred meters away.
On Thursday, her doctors decided to lower the dosage of anesthetic she was being given intravenously to numb the pain of her burns. As a result, Ayala entered a partially alert state, and can respond to her environment but has yet to speak, and is still on a respirator.
Doctors at Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv said she has a “long, complicated,” rehabilitation ahead due to her life-threatening injuries. (h/t Jewess)

Israeli security center publishes names of 50 killed terrorists 'concealed by Hamas'

An Israeli defense analysis center on Thursday released the names of 50 Gazan terrorists killed in combat with Israel this summer, whose identities were kept by Hamas from Palestinian casualty lists.
The Tel Aviv-based Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center said all of the combatant casualties were members of Hamas’s military wing, the Izzadin Kassam Brigades.
“The names did not show up on other casualty lists publicized by organizations affiliated with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority,” said the center, which is a part of the Israeli Intelligence and Heritage Commemoration Center, founded by leading members of the Israeli intelligence community.
According to the study, 52% of Palestinian casualties from the conflict were terrorists and 48% civilians.
A report released on Thursday said the newly identified combatant casualties belonged one of the following categories: some were terrorists left behind in Israel after being killed in fire fights with IDF units during the summer war; others were terrorists buried in tunnels or the ruins of buildings bombed by the IDF; and others were terrorists who died of their wounds in hospital and were not identified during hostilities.

From a Hamas leader, unusual introspection

Breaking ranks with his Islamist political movement, Hamas’s deputy foreign minister Ghazi Hamad has penned a rare op-ed of self-criticism, blaming both Hamas and Fatah’s shortsightedness for “losing Palestine.”
It is not often that a senior Hamas leader, a former chairman of the movement’s border crossings authority, bitterly accuses his group of “clapping with one hand at its festivals, singing of its heroism, listening to itself and describing the other as faltering.” It is even rarer for such a leader to allow his words, published in recent days in Arab media, to be translated for a wider, non-Palestinian audience.
Hamad’s op-ed, “Now I understand how and why the Palestinians lost Palestine,” published here [Times of Israel], is iconoclastic in two meaningful ways. Firstly, it tears the mask off the political deal reached last June between Fatah and Hamas in the form of a unity technocrat government, exposing it as no more than a charade for public consumption.
“Rather than focusing the struggle against the occupation, the struggle has become exclusively intra-Palestinian. It is a struggle in which each of the sides tries to prove that his option is best and the other’s has failed. How long has this battle lasted, undecided? Is it really necessary for us to do this?” he writes.
Secondly, the op-ed points to the shortcomings of Hamas’s policy of “armed resistance and nothing else,” arguing instead that military struggle and smart diplomacy are two essential aspects of a sound Palestinian strategy.
Nonetheless, what he does not do is suggest that “armed resistance” in the Palestinian cause is either morally or practically wrong, and neither does he explicitly suggest any acceptance of Israel.

"12,569 settlers stormed Al Aqsa Mosque in 2014"

The Al Asqa Foundation has been keeping statistics on how many evil "settler" Jews stormed the Al Aqsa Mosque in 2014, and they aren't happy.

According to their count, 12,569 "settlers" visited accompanied by security and police. Including political figures, it counts 14,952 Israelis in total "storming" the area.

This is an increase of 39% in terms of "settlers" visiting in 2013, when only 9,050 visited.

Nearly every Sunday through Thursday saw Jews visiting the site, although the Foundation happily reports that many times it managed to frustrate the settler's evil intentions of performing Talmudic rites or even visiting altogether with their well-planned riots.

Here are a couple of photos they published of the scheming Jewish settlers violently desecrating the mosque, as they see it.

NYT interviews a PFLP terrorist without revealing his history

Jodi Rudoren in the New York Times wrote a fairly interesting piece about the challenges that the PA would have in bringing up charges against Israel in the ICC.

One of the "experts" she interviewed, however, has a relevant history that Rudoren didn't bother to research or reveal:

Some experts say any incidents since the court was created are fair game, while others say the court can deal only with matters since the United Nations General Assembly upgraded Palestine’s status to nonmember observer in 2012, or perhaps only after the Palestinian Authority joins the court in March. Shawan Jabarin, director of the human rights group Al Haq, said the Palestinians would submit a request for retroactive jurisdiction to last June 13, to coincide with the period being considered by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s commission of inquiry.

Mr. Jabarin said the commission, with which Israel has refused to cooperate, would provide an initial report in March that could serve as a road map for the Hague court. Separately, his group and others have been documenting allegations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, and are working with the Palestinian Authority to prepare complaints about Israeli settlements.

“The crime is not just the rape and the widespread killing or something like that, but also to transfer civilians and to confiscate land and to destroy property,” Mr. Jabarin said. “It’s a different way of rape, it’s a different way of killing, it’s a different way of destruction.”

Forgetting the absurdity of equating building houses with rape and mass murder, Jabarin knows a little bit about terror.

He was, or is, an operative for the PFLP. And Israel's Supreme Court ruled multiple times that the evidence that he continued his terror activities even while pretending to be a "human rights" activist is overwhelming. From Case 1520/09, March 10, 2009, translated at Terrorism-Info:

1) "This is not the first time the appellant has appealed regarding his desire to leave the country. During previous appeals as well as during this one the Court examined classified material presented by the security authorities. All previous appeals were rejected. On June 6, 2007, the Court found that "[t]he appellant is apparently a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, some of his time spent in directing a human rights organization, and some as an activist in an organization which has no qualms regarding murder and attempted murder, which have no relation whatsoever to rights, quite the opposite, which reject the most basic right of all, without which there are no other rights, that is, the right to life..." On July 7, 2008, the Court found that "there is reliable information that the appellant is a senior activist in the Popular Front terrorist organization."

2) "Today the appellant again seeks to leave the country for the purpose of receiving an award from an organization in Holland. His representative requested that in making our decision we take into consideration the need to achieve a proper balance between the concerns voiced by the security authorities – and regarding which the appellant's representative does not have sufficient information because of the privilege protecting the factual material on the one hand – and the basic right of the appellant to freedom of movement on the other. The overall position of the security authorities, in the appellant's opinion, is a violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. The appellant claims that what must be taken into consideration is the increased right to movement which those who defend human rights should be allowed to enjoy.

3) "...To that end we met in chambers twice, and at each meeting we held thorough, comprehensive deliberations, examining the possibility to provide an immediate answer for security constraints. We found that the material indicating the appellant's involvement in the activities of terrorist groups is genuine and authoritative. Moreover, additional negative material regarding the appellant came to light after his previous appeal was rejected. This negative foundation confirms the position of the security authorities, according to which preventing the appellant from leaving the country was in punishment for his forbidden activity, but rather the result of relevant security considerations. Thus the Court has not found a way to intervene in the decision given not to permit the appellant to leave the country."

(Jabarin was allowed to leave in February 2013 to visit France.)

Combined with yesterday's revelation that Roger Cohen interviewed someone who lied to the new York Times about his brother's terrorist activities, it sure appears that the New York Times is willing to accept the supposed credentials and lie of its Arab interviewees without doing even a modicum of fact-checking.

A lack of skepticism about people who have a long history of lying to the media is a lack of basic journalistic practice. It is a shame that so many respected media outlets like the New York Times uncritically swallow everything they are told by accomplished liars and terrorists.

(h/t NGO Monitor)

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is a designated terrorist organization by the USA, Canada and other countries.

The EU confirmed their designation of the Al Aqsa Brigades as a terror group only this past July.

Yet they are part of Fatah which is headed by PLO head and PA president Mahmoud Abbas.

To be sure, there are offshoots of the group, and no central command. However, one of them this week - on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Fatah's first terror attack - confirmed that they are loyal to Mahmoud Abbas and abide by his decisions.

They are openly recruiting new members, according to this video released in November.

The Al Aqsa Brigades have been known to hold parades even the West Bank openly displaying their weapons, that someone has to pay for - and in the West Bank, the money trail must lead back to Mahmoud Abbas.

Yet for all the hundreds of hours that the US and EU have spent in talks, has anyone ever demanded that Abbas dismantle these terror groups that are loyal to him? Has it ever become a condition for continued aid?

It is one of those issues that everyone knows about yet no one wants to publicize, presumably not to embarrass our wonderful "peace partner" who condones the terrorist group operating under his rule and probably with his funds.

It is touching, how considerate the West is not to openly call out Mahmoud Abbas on his open violation of agreements and his role in keeping a terror organization funded and operational. But it doesn't exactly advance the cause of peace that they pay lip-service to.

Vote for best EoZ post of 2014

The year is over and award season is starting. Here are the nominations for best EoZ post (or series) of the year.

Why HRW is racist

Belgium's new poet laureate not happy I called him an antisemite. Too bad.

"Zionists trying to hide Canaanite-Palestinian civilization"

How PCUSA twists history to justify their hate of Israel

Muslims terrorize Jewish children on Temple Mount

Without understanding Arab/Muslim honor, you cannot understand the Middle East

An open condemnation of the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir

What reporters need to know during Operation Protective Edge

Review of Hamas violations of international law

The Ken Roth series

Fighting the honor/shame culture to save the world

Latest Amnesty report shows ignorance, bias and excuses Hamas war crimes

The entire bogus history of Palestinian Arab nationalism exposed by a stamp

So go ahead and vote! Click on the appropriate button in this form:

01/01 Links Pt2: New study of UN Resolution 242 could alter views of Israeli-Arab conflict

From Ian:

New study of UN Resolution 242 could alter views of Israeli-Arab conflict

As the UN Security Council and International Criminal Court return to focusing on Israel, a new about-to-be published study reveals new sides to UN Resolution 242, recognized as the key UN resolution relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict which could alter how many reveal the issues in dispute especially as regards to borders.
According to an article by Professor Eugene Kontorovich of Northwestern University to be published soon in the Chicago Journal of International Law, a brand new side has emerged in the unending debate over the meaning of UN Resolution 242 which relates, among other things, to setting Israeli borders and withdrawal from territories conquered in 1967.
Kontorovich's study compares UN Resolution 242 to all 18 other UN Security Council resolutions which dealt with territorial withdrawals and finds that the resolution was unique in its ambiguity as to how much territory Israel needs to withdraw from, with other resolutions being explicit about a full withdrawal.
In the article, Kontorovich writes that there has always been a debate as to whether the phrase in UN Resolution 242 "withdrawal from territories" obligates Israel to withdraw from the entire West Bank and Golan Heights, or merely some portion of them as agreed upon in negotiations.

Mordechai Kedar: Summing Up 2014 in the Middle East

The Palestinians are turning to the international stage, trying with all their might to get a recognized state. The Arab world, distracted by problems such as ISIS, has neither the time or the patience to deal with the Palestinian issue, leading the PA to turn to the world for recognition. European politicians are falling over themselves to recognize a Palestinian state so as to please Muslim voters. Israel may find itself facing a Palestinian state – which will without doubt become a Hamas state – just because some unemployment-frightened European politicians vote for establishing that state on the hills of Judea and Samaria, the birthplace of the Jewish people.
The world is still impressed by the existence of a Palestinian nation, created just recently, partly as a result of the idea of some holier-than-thou Israelis. Jerusalem is considered part of the Palestinian state for one reason only – so as to uproot the holy city from the Jewish entity, knowing full well that without Jerusalem, the entire state will cease to exist. The world must awaken, understand the problem and realize that if Israel falls to Islam, Europe will be next - and not much later.
In summary: the year 2014 was a challenging one for Israel, Europe and the rest of the world. These challenges will only get bigger, crises deepen, disputes spread, Iran will obtain nuclear arms, ISIS will grow, America will not have the first place it held until four years ago and Europe will continue sinking under waves of Islamic immigration that are turning European culture into something that is a far cry from liberal values, openness, modernity and democracy.
The challenges facing the state of Israel are becoming more and more complex. Syria's demise has lessened the threat on Israel, but other threats are on the horizon: Iran and ISIS gaining strength on the one side, Europe and America getting weaker and weaker on the other.
The soon to be elected Israeli leadership will have to give its attention to all of them. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Iconoclast Arab supporter of IDF seeks Knesset seat

The bid by iconoclast Anett Haskia, a 45-year-old hairdresser and mother of three, comes after she gave a series of bombastic television interviews in support of Israel’s military this summer during its war against Hamas in Gaza. Now she is the lone Arab vying for a spot on the Jewish Home party’s list ahead of its January primary.
Arab citizens of Israel, who make up 20 percent of the country’s population, strongly identify with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. They generally oppose Israeli military actions, do not serve in the Israeli army and complain of deep-seated discrimination.
Haskia’s children, however, voluntarily enlisted in the Israeli army — including one son who served in an elite unit in Gaza during the summer war.
“Just because I was born in the Jewish state doesn’t mean a Jew is better than me,” Haskia recently told The Associated Press in Hebrew. “I sent the children to war, and nobody can tell me that I, Anett, the Arab, am second class.” (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Richard Millett: And I only asked why Jews can’t live next to Palestinians on the West Bank….

The panel consisted of Sara Apps, Campaigns Officer for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Martin “tentacles” Linton, chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, Murad Qureshi, a Labour Party Member of the London Mayoral Assembly and, finally, a representative from the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS – UK).
The panel was chaired by Dr. Dibyesh Anand, Head of Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster.
As ever there were repeated calls from the panel for a boycott of Israeli “settlements”. When it came to the Q&A I raised my arm and asked one simple question:
“Isn’t it racist to call for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank especially when considering that 1.7 million Muslim and Christian Arabs reside fairly happily in Israel ?”
Chaos ensued.
I was then referred to as “the enemy” by a man who walked out while giving me a rather unpleasant look. He also said, referring to me, “We are fighting these people”. Here’s the clip:

A number of Arab media outlets published an extended harangue on how evil Jews are.

Dr. Mustafa Yusuf Leddawi, who lives in Gaza, uses the holiday season to say that Jewish rabbis hate Christmas and Christians. How can it be any other way, since Jews persecuted and crucified Jesus? Not only that, but he informs us that Jews tortured early Christians with iron combs, ripped out their limbs, gouged out their eyes and cut off their tongues?

Christians, we are told, know about how much Jews hate them, and about how Jews murder their children to get blood for their matzoh. Even today, Jews are stopping Christians from getting to Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas!

There are root causes, of course.

"Jews today are not happy and elated, but they angry and disgruntled and envious and disgusted, and Christians of all denominations know it," Leddawi says. "Jews do not give up their habits, they do not like the goodness of others, nor hopefulness in others."

But some Jews are happy during Christmas season. These are the greedy Jewish businessmen who take advantage of this holiday to earn more money, and sell a lot of products, and take advantage of tourist traffic, renting out their Jew hotels, and promoting their Jew goods, and increasing the income of their airlines, greedy and insatiable, and with their greedy monopolies, and seamy exploitation and ill-treatment of gentiles, reflecting their ugly habits which has caused enlightened Europeans who suffered under these Jews and complained of their behavior, and have tasted the bitterness of Jewish treachery.

Unfortunately some Christians have been brainwashed not to hate Jews, but most Christians are aware of how evil Jews are, and "the Palestinians are hoping to win these honest Christians over to their cause, and to stand by their side, and to support their steadfastness, and support the resistance, as we believe [that Jesus] was the first Palestinian fedayeen, who called to resist injustice to counter the aggression and called for he who does not have a weapon to sell his cloak and buy a sword.

One of the media outlets that published this hate is based in Sweden.
\
UPDATE: Bob Knot identified him as a Hamas representative in Lebanon and Syria, see the comments.

Writing in Al Riyadh, Fahd Amir Ahmadi fondly recalls his trip to Mecca as a child to perform Hajj.

During the long bus trip he needed reading material and he chose to read Mein Kampf, with Hitlers photo and the swastika on the cover, causing an Indian Muslim colleague of his father on the bus to smile.

Not that Ahmadi is unaware of the racism in the book. In fact, he points out that it is ironic how popular the book is among many in Third world countries, even though they had no place in Hitler's worldview as non-Aryans. But, he insists, it is still an important book to read to understand Nazi poitical philosophy, just as the works of Karl Marx and Mao Zedong and Adam Smith are important.

Clearly, this liberal Saudi is against censorship. Although I don't know how he would feel about allowing children to watch Exodus: Gods and Kings or Noah, two of the movies censored this year in the Arab world.

As a humorous postscript, Ahmadi adds that he read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on the return trip. He doesn't have anything negative to say about that book.

01/01 Links Pt1: J Street laments failure of Palestinian UN bid; The PA should fear the ICC

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Palestinian interests

Most important, the Jewish state was led by an honest, selfless political leadership with a vision of the Jewish people living in freedom as a sovereign, self-sufficient people in its historical homeland. Thanks to a combination of meticulous planning and ambitious goals and against tremendous odds, Israel has become an amazing success story. Few, if any, other nations born into the 20th century as a third-world countries have risen to be on par with the most developed Western nations as Israel has, with one of the world’s most innovative economies and most vibrant democracies that protects freedom of the press, gay rights, religious rights and women’s rights.
Those countries in the UN Security Council that voted in favor of the Palestinian motion – France and Luxembourg particularly – should ask themselves if they want to bring into being a corrupt Palestinian state in which basic human rights are trampled and the institutions capable of protecting them are nonexistent.
Palestinians have received hundreds of billions of dollars in aid, which, if used properly, could have laid the foundation for a stable, free Palestinian state-in-the-making that would have broken with the direction taken by the 21 existing Arab states.
Perhaps it is still not too late. But by pushing for the creation of yet another failed Arab state that would become an existential threat to a thriving, successful liberal democracy – the only in the Middle East – France, Luxembourg and the other countries that voted in favor of Tuesday’s proposal (such as those luminaries of human rights China and Russia) are not just working against the interests of Israel, they are working against the interests of the Palestinian people.

J Street laments failure of Palestinian UN bid

The US liberal Jewish group J Street said Wednesday that the failure of an attempt to pass a UN Security Council resolution aimed at establishing a timetable for a Palestinian state lay with the international community and the US for not drafting a text with broader appeal.
In Tuesday’s vote the Palestinians were unable to muster the support of nine out of the 15 Security Council members, with eight voting in favor, two opposing and five abstaining.
“It was the failure of the United States and the international community to take a positive step toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict diplomatically by crafting a resolution that could have gained broad international consensus,” J Street said in a statement.
The group stressed that it had not taken a stance on the validity of the draft in the form in which it was submitted but noted “alternative drafts did a better job of balancing Israeli and Palestinian concerns, particularly around security.”

Netanyahu: The Palestinians have more to fear from the ICC than Israel

Netanyahu, in his initial reaction to the move, said the Palestinian Authority, which is in a unity government with Hamas, should be more concerned about the ICC than Israel. Netanyahu said that Israel would respond – though he did not give any indication of how it would do so – and would defend the soldiers of the IDF, which he called “the most moral soldiers in the world.”
By contrast, Netanyahu said Hamas was an avowed terrorist organization that – like Islamic State – commits war crimes. “We will rebuff this additional effort to impose a diktat on us, just as we rebuffed Palestinian efforts in the UN Security Council,” he said.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman was more blunt in his response, saying that even a “deaf, blind and mute judge” knows that the Palestinians are responsible for the “indiscriminate murder of men, women, children and babies for the last 100 years.”
Abbas can sign onto all the treaties he wants to, Liberman said in a Facebook post, “the only ones committing war crimes in this conflict are the Palestinians themselves.”

'Abbas Only Able to Go to ICC as a Defendant'

Ministers and MKs have strongly condemned Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's application to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) Wednesday, with many remarking that it is the Palestinian Arabs, not the Israelis, who are liable to be found guilty of war crimes.
"Abbas, a leading inciter of terror and a long-time Holocaust denier, would only be able to come to the ICC as a defendant," Jewish Home Chairman and Economics Minister Naftali Bennett stated. "Someone with terrorism spread on his head should not come out into the sunshine."
Tekuma Chairman and Housing Minister Uri Ariel (Jewish Home) added, "it's time to dispel the Palestinian lie and to declare - loud and clear - that the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel."
"Judea and Samaria are not occupied territories, and it is Israel's right and duty to continue building there and in Jerusalem," Ariel continued. "Freezing construction only encourages Arab greed, while building, on the other hand, proves that we have returned to our country to stay."

Abbas' choice of which conventions to sign says volumes

While the headlines announce that Mahmoud Abbas signed the Rome Statute today in order to be able to join the International Criminal Court, we can learn a lot about the PLO's real goals from some of the other statutes that he is said to gave signed on Wednesday.

They include the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II), plus a Convention on the Safety of UN and Other Personnel.

It appears that these specific conventions, protocols and treaties were chosen for one reason only: to attack Israel diplomatically by bringing up accusation upon accusation, using the procedures around these treaties for the PLO's narrow political aim of demonizing Israel.

This is exactly what the PLO did with the previous groups it joined or has proxies doing its bidding. It has pushed UNESCO into introducing anti-Israel resolutions, and has even used UNESCO to erase Jewish history, irreversibly politicizing that organization. Its Arab League partners have turned the UN Human Rights Council into a joke with its obsession with Israel.

Based on this list, it seems clear that the PLO is planning to accuse Israel of war crimes, of nuclear proliferation, of endangering UN employees, and of using prohibited weapons, effectively hijacking the agendas of organizations and groups that don't have the political will to fight back for fear of how Arab nations might retaliate.

One can only imagine how thrilled the many people who have worked for years to create these protocols and treaties are to know that their hard work is about to be subverted by the PLO. Since the committees behind these treaties never thought about how their official rules and procedures could be used to subvert the purposes of these treaties, they don't have any defenses against being hijacked.

This is the fruit of rewarding terrorists. While Fatah is today celebrating the 50th anniversary of their first terror attack, the government it heads is using diplomatic terrorism using the legitimacy that nations conferred upon it - to avoid being blackmailed by terror and the oil weapon.

Abbas' signing these treaties is an exact diplomatic equivalent of what the Palestinians have been doing since 1948: doing nothing to build a state but doing everything to destroy one.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv, Grant Rumley)

Haaretz' Gideon Levy says he loves Israel - with a catch

From Gideon Levy in Ha'aretz:

Here comes the new Israeli, a man’s man; with a tiny skullcap, service in an elite army unit, high-tech, English and a swimming pool, with the coolest and most up-to-date message: “Stop apologizing, we love Israel” (rhymes in Hebrew); the poster is already in evidence on several balconies.

On Monday night, at a meeting convened by Ayelet Shaked (Habayit Hayehudi), the most successful politician in Israel at present explained: “This election is between those who apologize and those who are proud ... those who are objective and those who are in favor of the State of Israel.” Drum roll.

Well, [Habayit Hayehudi chairman] Naftali Bennett, I apologize and I love Israel (of course not your Israel and not the present Israel); I’m objective and I’m in favor of (a just) State of Israel; I apologize and I’m proud.

Levy has an interesting definition of "love."

Let's see how he might apply it to his Swedish girlfriend whom he starred with in a reality TV show a couple of years ago:

Clueless Roger Cohen in Gaza unwittingly interviews a Hamas terrorist's brother

Roger Cohen once again shows that he is way out of his depth in his latest clueless New York Times op-ed.

This paragraph is intended to be a showcase for his astuteness yet it reveals the opposite:

Nobody wants to talk about Gaza because it reeks of failure — the failure of Israeli withdrawal; the failure of a long-ago election that ushered Hamas to power; the failure to achieve the Palestinian unity necessary for serious peace talks; the failure to prevent repetitive war; the failure of the Arab Spring that led to that sealed Egyptian border; the failure to be coherent about Hamas (negotiated with by Israel to end the war and to secure the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit but otherwise viewed as a terrorist group with which negotiation is impossible); the failure to offer decency to 1.8 million trapped human beings.

Nobody wants to talk about Gaza?

The New York Times search engine estimates that Gaza was mentioned in its pages 9,500 times in 2014, ten times the number of, say, the Central African Republic which is in the middle of a devastating civil war - and a place that Roger Cohen would never consider visiting, when going into Gaza for a day is so much easier.

The failure of the Israeli withdrawal? But Cohen wants Israel to do a similar withdrawal from the West Bank!

But most ignorant is his characterization of negotiations with Hamas. Israel didn't directly negotiate with Hamas over Shalit just as Israel did not directly negotiate with Hamas over the many cease fire agreements over the summer that Hamas broke. But beyond that, Hamas' leadership, quite explicitly and nearly daily, calls to utterly destroy Israel. Cohen even admits this in his next paragraph.

Just what exactly is Israel supposed to directly negotiate with Hamas over - the timeframe of its destruction?

He goes on:

My Gaza road ended at the Shuhadaa al Shejaeya Secondary School for boys. ...Hasan al-Zeyada, a psychologist, showed me around. He lost six close relatives, including his mother and three brothers, in an Israeli airstrike on July 20. Of the students at the school, he said that they had no need to be taught history: “They have lived it. They can teach it to me.”

Hasan al-Zeyada's house was almost certainly a terrorist base and his brother Omar was a Hamas terrorist.

Here is screenshot from Omar Ziyada's martyr video:

Here's a Hamas "martyr" poster of Mohammed Mahmoud al-Maqadma who was killed in the same airstrike:

Two unrelated Hamas terrorists being killed in the same house indicates that they weren't exactly having tea there. The Zeyada house was being used as a control center or weapons depot.

And as we've documented, two of Zeyada's other siblings enthusiastically posted his "martyr video" on their Facebook pages, showing that they knew quite well that he was a Hamas terrorist. which means that Hasan knew this as well.

But this same Hasan lied and told the same New York Times that none of his relatives were militants!

This is the third time the NYT is uncritically quoting Hasan Zeyada. Not once did they check out any of this publicly available information about his Hamas brother, which casts considerable doubt over Hasan's own believability.

If Roger Cohen were a journalist, he would have done a little research, perhaps asked Hasan about why he lied to Cohen's own newspaper. Maybe probe him as to what else he knows about Hamas activities in Gaza during the war.

But Cohen is no journalist. He doesn't travel to Gaza in order to investigate anything; He goes to Gaza to confirm the myths that have been in his head beforehand and ignore everything else. He wants to be duped by the people he interviews, because that way he pretends to have more evidence to support his ignorant theories about Israel and Gaza.

(h/t Ronald, EBoZ)

Red Klotz died this year at 93

Last night I went to a Harlem Globetrotters game. It was enjoyable, although they did not seem to be quite as skilled as the Globetrotters I had seen on TV decades ago when they had Curly Neal and Meadowlark Lemon. There was some excellent passing and alley-oops, but not too much of the trick shots or dazzling dribbling that I recall seeing as a kid.

But I also watched their opponents, the team that always loses, the Washington Generals.

During this year's tour, the shtick is that the Generals have regrouped and are thirsting for revenge, wanting to recapture the glory of their last win, in 1971. It is called the "Washington Generals Revenge Tour."

Of course, the Generals lost. That's what they are meant to do. They are booed when they are introduced, and in this particular show, they openly "cheated" and lost (of course) anyway.

But I was interested in their history, and the history of the Generals has an interesting tie to US Jewish sports history.

The original owner of the Washington Generals was Louis Herman "Red" Klotz, Klotz was an early basketball star in Philadelphia high schools and colleges, winning player of the year in 1939 and 1940. He was part of the Baltimore Bullets championship team in 1948, making him - at 5'7" - the shortest player ever to win an NBA championship.

Afterwards, Klotz bought one of the original basketball teams, the Philadelphia Sphas. of the now defunct American Basketball Association.

"SPHA" was an acronym for South Philadelphia Hebrew Association. Their original uniforms even had those initials in Hebrew!

In the late 1920s and 1930s, the Sphas were the best basketball team in the world.

The original owner and coach, Eddie Gottlieb, sold the Sphas so he could buy the Philadelphia Warriors in the new NBA, and the ABL became a minor league.

In the early 1950s, the Sphas played the Globetrotters a couple of times:

[Klotz] won many games with the Sphas, and one day on the ballroom at the old Broadwood Hotel in Philadelphia they beat the Harlem Globetrotters in a straight up game. The great Goose Tatum, the first clown prince of basketball, the man who invented the skyhook, met Klotz at half-court and said in a threatening voice: “That will never happen again.” And the next time they played, the Sphas won again. And that is about the time when Globetrotters owner Abe Saperstein approached Klotz and asked him to put together a team that would play the Globetrotters night after night all over the country, all over the world. Of course, there would be an understanding. People were coming, after all, to see the World Famous Harlem Globetrotters. It was one of those moments in a man’s life. Red Klotz loved to play basketball. He loved to coach basketball. And he loved to win. The Globetrotters would give him a chance to do the first two.

“We’ll give you a run for your money,” Red Klotz said to Saperstein.

“I’m counting on it,” Saperstein said in return.

Klotz then borrowed some cash to buy a Green De Soto — the Green Hornet, they would all call it — and he began his life as a player, owner, coach, driver, psychiatrist, motivator and inspirational leader for a team he decided to name after Dwight D. Eisenhower: The Washington Generals.

Besides owning and coaching the Generals, Red Klotz was also a player. He would willingly allow the Globetrotters to make a fool out of him. But he always took his role seriously.

There are rules for being a Washington General (to use their most general name).

1. The Generals are allowed — expected, even — to play completely legit on offense. There are no limitations. If they can beat the Globetrotters defense, they can score every single time down the court.

2. The Generals are allowed to play defense as hard as they want when the Globetrotters are not in one of their reams. For about 40% of every Globetrotters game, the basketball is straight up.

3. When the Globetrotters DO go into one of their reams, it is the Generals’ responsibility to play the stooge and make the Globetrotters look as good as possible. They are expected to play their roles with gusto and verve. Red Klotz had his pants pulled down thousands of times — he would always take pants duty first few games of every tour to give the other players time to settle in. He always tried to look as shocked and embarrassed as possible. In his mind, Red often said, his job was to play Ginger Rogers to the Globetrotters’ Fred Astaire, that is to do everything the Globetrotters did with the same joy and expertise but to do it going backward.

Then there was that now legendary game in January, 1971, in Martin, Tennessee - the last game the Generals ever won (possibly under the name the New Jersey Reds; they had a number of different team names even as they never had a home game).

Klotz’s place was not in the paint. He was a shooter, still is a shooter, and on that day in Tennessee he started to make a few long jumpers. Eddie Mahar, a shooting guard from Brooklyn, made a few shots. Sam Sawyer, a forward from Atlantic City and someone who would become one of Klotz’s closest friends, worked hard inside. The Globetrotters seemed weary or uninterested. And nobody noticed the scoreboard.

Nobody noticed, that is, except for Red Klotz.

The game stayed close. The Globetrotters did not do as much show as usual that day in Martin, Tenn. The great dribbler Curly Neal wasn’t playing — he apparently had an injury of some sort — and the showman Meadowlark Lemon seemed to Klotz and others to be in a bit of of a fog. So they played basketball. In the fourth quarter, the New Jersey Reds got hot. Every one of their shots seemed to drop. The Globetrotters kept missing. This much everyone agrees upon. The score tightened.

The Globetrotters could have gone into their show at any point, scored every time down the floor, and put an end to the drama. The Reds would not have been able to do a thing to stop it. But for reasons that were never revealed, and perhaps never quite understood, the Globetrotters played the final minutes straight up. There were 3,600 people in the stands that day, and not one of them was quite sure what was happening. The players themselves were not quite sure what they were doing. Maybe the monotony had simply crumbled their resolve. Maybe they all just wanted something different, something that was unlike the day before and the day before that and the day before that. Whatever, the game grew close.

And then … well, nobody would ever seem to remember the details. In one version of the story, the Reds built a startling 12 point lead in the final minutes and the Globetrotters had to stage a furious comeback. In another, the game was tied at the end of regulation and went into overtime. Fairy tales, you know, have different endings in different parts of the world. The only thing anyone seems certain about is that the Globetrotters led 99-98 with scant seconds left when Red Klotz got the ball about 25 feet away from the basket and fired one of those two-handed set shots that had made him the best in the city and won him the girl and carried him through a war and landed him the childhood dream of traveling around the world. It went in of course, like it went in when he was 12 years old. The Reds led 100-99.

There were, according to the newspapers, three seconds on the clock. The timekeepers stalled the clock long enough for Meadowlark Lemon to take the game-winning shot, a hook shot, the sort he had made about as many times as Red Klotz’s set shot. The buzzer sounded. The ball bounced away. The New Jersey Reds or Washington Generals or International All-Stars or whatever you would like to call them had won the game. It was, mathematically, the greatest upset in the history of sport. Red Klotz and his team ran off the court in triumph. The crowd’s reaction was some mix of shock and uncertainty. In time, Red Klotz would remember them booing (“It was like killing Santa Claus,” he would say many, many times), and certainly most did boo. But in the days afterward, when he talked to the small-town reporters who asked, he would remember that some people cheered too.

Klotz was 50 years old when he made that game-winning shot.

He died this past July, at the age of 93, and I hadn't seen his name in any of the lists of notable people we lost this year. But while he holds the record for the most basketball games lost, he knew exactly what he was doing.

12/31 Links Pt2: CAMERA's Top Ten Media Mangles for 2014; Lydda '48: The Dog That Didn’t Bark

From Ian:

CAMERA's Top Ten MidEast Media Mangles for 2014

1. Hate-Indoctrination and Incitement Ignored
No issue was more glaringly and indefensibly neglected by most of the media than theoften grotesque demonizing of Israel and the Jewish peopleby the Palestinians and the wider Muslim/Arab world. Instead of reporting the hate-indoctrination prominently and continuously for what it is -- a central driving force for violence and fundamental threat to peace -- media outlets such as The New York Times typically ignored the phenomenon orcharacterized it as merely an accusation by Israelis rather than an objective reality.
Few instances of such media malpractice were as blatant as The Times' censoring of Secretary of State John Kerry's strong denunciation of incitement as the cause of the massacre of Jews at prayer in Jerusalem's Har Nof synagogue. Kerry's emphatic statement was first included in an online version of the New York Times story but later entirely excised by the time the printedaccount reached readers.

Lydda 1948: The Dog That Didn’t Bark

In his July 2014 Mosaic essay, Martin Kramer dismantled Ari Shavit’s assertion that “Zionism carrie[d] out a massacre” at Lydda in 1948 – a claim Shavit has spread not only in his book, My Promised Land, but in his New Yorker article, “Lydda, 1948: A City, a Massacre, and the Middle East Today.” Kramer recently presented his findings to an Israeli audience that included Lydda veterans and others intimately familiar with the 1948 war – who expressed surprise and anger at Shavit’s allegation. This post provides still another reason to doubt Shavit’s claim: in 1948, The New York Times covered the April “massacre” at Deir Yassin and the later operation at Lydda – but reported no “massacre” at Lydda. And for the reasons set forth below, it is virtually certain that the Times would have reported it if it had occurred at Lydda.
Currivan and his editors would have considered a Lydda “massacre” the following day “news fit to print” – to put it mildly. But Currivan’s next report on Lydda, datelined July 12 (published on July 13) reported the capture of Lydda and Ramleh “on this all-important front” and noted that Lydda “had offered considerable resistance at first and suffered heavy casualties as a result.” Currivan’s succeeding report, datelined July 13 (published July 14) reported “the complete capture of Lydda,” with the exception of a holdout of Arab fighters at the police station, and noted that Arab civilians had suddenly departed Lydda after its capture. In none of his reports did Currivan report anything remotely approaching a “massacre.”
This is the journalistic equivalent of the non-barking dog: (1) the Lydda operation occurred three months after Deir Yassin, which the Times had covered; (2) Lydda was a significant strategic site; (3) the Times had an experienced war correspondent covering the Lydda operation; and yet (4) the Times reported no “massacre” there. A massacre at Lydda would have been a major development and important news. But there was no bark from the Times.

Lies and Falestine

A while ago I came across a paper written by Jeremy R. Hammond entitled “The Myth of the U.N. Creation of Israel.” In his diatribe he begins his bitter prolonged discourse based on the assumption, purveyed by those ever so sad losers of Nachba fame, that there was an entity, a “country” if you may, called “Palestine”. So allow me to debunk the false claim of a existence of a country whose sole inhabitants were “unjustly” usurped of “their” land known as “Falestine”.
Here are true historical facts.
The word ‘Palestinian’ is never found in Scripture. The term ‘Palestine’ is used four times in the King James Version (Exodus 15:14) Philistia (פְּלָשֶׁת); Isaiah 14:29, 31 (O Philistia) but never as synonymous with either the land of Canaan or the land of Israel. The Hebrew word is פְּלִשְׁתִּים, Plištim and referred to a small region also known as Philistia (Psalms 60:10, 87:4, 108:10), the land of the Pelishtee, or Philistines. It occurs 286 times in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew bible (of which 152 times in Samuel 1), whereas in the Greek Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible, the equivalent term phylistiim occurs only 12 times, with the remaining 269 references instead using the term “allophylos” (“of another tribe”).
“In the New Testament, the term Palestine is never used. The term Israel is primarily used to refer to the people of Israel, rather than the Land. However, in at least two passages, Israel is used to refer to the Land: (Matt. 2:20-21)