Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, April 19, 2015

04/19 Links: The fake sincerity of pro-Palestinian commentators; Beinart's neo-Neturei-Kartism

From Ian:

Chloe Valdary: The fake sincerity of pro-Palestinian commentators

This process usually occurs when the acolytes of armchair social justice mistake colloquy in echo chambers for sincere concern for the wellbeing of others. Politicians, professors and journalists alike carry on mindlessly suggesting untenable and, worse, immoral prescriptions that ostensibly help Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank but which in fact bring about their demise. The logic of these academics, when put to practical use, reads more like a satirical pamphlet than advice intended to be taken seriously:
• Let’s prove we love Palestinians by creating a state which, under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority, has already robbed them of international aid, persecuted their minority population, and withheld from them the dignity of basic civil liberties – such as the right to vote, and the right to choose one’s own religion.
– Every pundit on CNN (et al) who advocates for a Palestinian state, without fully comprehending what they are calling for.
• Let’s prove we love Palestinians by championing the tunnel complex built by Hamas – even though those tunnels were built with the blood of Gazan children who were deemed to be expendable by the Hamas regime.
– Al Jazeera (et al) which, when describing the tunnel system as a “Palestinian assertion of political autonomy and resistance” failed to realize that it was symbolically standing on the graves of innocent Gazans in order to push a brutal political agenda.
• “Let’s prove we love Palestinians by suggesting that Hamas was ‘resisting’ against oppressive Israeli policies in the 2014 conflict even though Hamas reigns brutally over its own people á la Joseph Stalin.
– Every member of the glib pep squad that is Students for Justice in Palestine (et al) who serve as proxies running interference on campus for regimes that persecute their own people.

Natan Sharansky: When did America forget that it’s America?

I am afraid that the real reason for the U.S. stance is not its assessment, however incorrect, of the two sides’ respective interests but rather a tragic loss of moral self-confidence. While negotiating with the Soviet Union, U.S. administrations of all stripes felt certain of the moral superiority of their political system over the Soviet one. They felt they were speaking in the name of their people and the free world as a whole, while the leaders of the Soviet regime could speak for no one but themselves and the declining number of true believers still loyal to their ideology.
But in today’s postmodern world, when asserting the superiority of liberal democracy over other regimes seems like the quaint relic of a colonialist past, even the United States appears to have lost the courage of its convictions.
We have yet to see the full consequences of this moral diffidence, but one thing is clear: The loss of America’s self-assured global leadership threatens not only the United States and Israel but also the people of Iran and a growing number of others living under Tehran’s increasingly emboldened rule. Although the hour is growing late, there is still time to change course — before the effects grow more catastrophic still.

PMW: "There were between one and two million Jewish victims" of the Holocaust, says official PA daily

On the occasion of the Israeli remembrance day for the victims of the Holocaust last week, a regular columnist in the official Palestinian Authority daily wrote an op-ed in which he recognized the fact that the Holocaust occurred and targeted Jews. But although the writer even called it "a catastrophe," he reiterated false statements that have long been part of PA policy regarding the Holocaust, minimizing its scope and blaming the Zionist movement for participating in evil.
The PA daily repeated the claim that Jews have exaggerated the number of victims and that it was not 6 million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, but only "between one and two million":
"Estimates regarding the number of Holocaust victims differ. The supporters of the Zionist movement have exaggerated the number of victims, claiming that it amounts to 6 million, whereas others, unbiased researchers, have estimated that there were between one and two million Jewish victims." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 18, 2015]
The writer hinted to an oft-repeated accusation that Jews were themselves at fault because their non-Jewish fellow citizens wanted to be rid of them due to the inherent Jewish evil:
"Regardless of the number, the bottom line is that a catastrophe that harmed the Jews in Europe occurred, due to matters concerning the relations between the European nations and the Jews living among them. "
The writer also repeated the claim that Zionists wanted "to increase the Jews' suffering" in the Holocaust in order to blackmail Europe into supporting Israel - "the Zionist colonialist project", to further Jewish immigration to Israel and to create more "compassion" for the Jews:
"The Zionist movement wanted to achieve a series of goals: First, to take advantage and use this [the Holocaust] to blackmail the European states financially and politically to make them support the Zionist colonialist project. Second, to bully the Jews to immigrate to the Israeli ethnic cleansing state, which was [then] in in the preparatory stages of establishment. Third, to increase the Jews' suffering and abuse in order to take advantage of the world's compassion for them."

There is much discussion, particularly after Benjamin Netanyahu's recent re-election, about Israel's continued slide politically toward the right. Anti-Zionists and Israel-Haters generally attribute this move rightward as a reflection of the inherent nefarious nature of Zionism, if not Jews. On the left, in the United States and Europe, Jews who care about the Jewish state are sometimes tolerated, and sometimes not, but always subject to charges of racism by the element on the left that dislikes Israel and Zionists and AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League and all other Jewish organizations that are not either anti-Zionist or contemptuous toward the Jewish state.

J Street is usually acceptable, but J Street is not a pro-Israel organization.

Leftists, however, who do not share the anti-Zionist contempt for Israel, and who know a thing or two about the Arab-Israel conflict, will usually acknowledge that the failure of the Oslo process and Arafat's unleashing of the Second Intifada played a big role in moving Israel toward the political right. Anyone who understands the history of the conflict knows that during the 1990s, when Arafat and Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton were sitting around the big table, there was considerable optimism within Israel that they would be able to broker a negotiated settlement with the local Arabs and thus bring peace to the region.

It all seemed so rational and sensible, after all. The notion of land for peace seemed like it should work. Give the Palestinian-Arabs 100 percent of Gaza, nearly 100 percent of Judea and Samaria in a contiguous area with land swaps, and the Arab sections of eastern Jerusalem as a capital. When Arafat rejected this more than generous offer, refused to make a counter offer, and unleashed the equivalent of 9/11 every two weeks for over three years upon the Jews of the Middle East, those Jews became demoralized with the non-peace process and thus began to move toward the right.

Would anyone expect anything else? It is just so easy to sit in our comfortable offices, houses, and apartments in the United States, almost completely safe within one of the largest and most powerful countries on the planet, and lecture those Jews, in that tiny beleaguered nation, on morality and politics. The Second Intifada destroyed the Israeli left because the Oslo peace process was the baby of the western left and it led to nothing but violence, death, and a furious denunciation of Israel. Between 2000 and 2005, the Palestinians launched a civil war against the Jews, featuring suicide bombings.

Thus it was that Israel turned away from Meretz and Labor and began to look more and more toward Likud and right-leaning political parties. What virtually no one acknowledges, however, is that a major part of the reason that Israelis rejected the left is because it was during the height of the Second Intifada, the height of the Palestinian orgy of violence and killing of Jews in the Middle East, that the left's hatred for Israel reached toward hysteria, as Paul Berman has pointed out. As Jews were being slaughtered in pizzerias by fools who wanted to die for their religion, western leftists were jumping up and down, pointing the trembling finger of blame at those Jews, and telling them that IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT!

Israelis, for the most part, are not stupid people. They know who their friends are and they know who their friends are not. When the western left turned against Israel and laid the entire blame for the conflict on the Jews of the Middle East, even as those Jews were being slaughtered in a frenzy of Palestinian violence, Israelis came to understand the international left was, if anything, their enemy. It came to look more and more like the western left was simply siding with the Arabs in their ongoing war against the Jews.

So, naturally Israelis moved to the right.

By essentially siding with suicide bombers and Jihadis and Hamas, the western left killed the Israeli left.

The question for left-leaning diaspora Jews today is, do we side with Israel or do we stick with left? It is, however, becoming increasingly difficult to do both. How does one support a political movement, or a political party, that is unjustly aggressive toward one's own people? Because, if I have to choose between the Jewish State of Israel and the western progressive-left, that choice could not be easier.

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.

Major Iranian news outlets publish updated antisemitic blood libel

Over the past two weeks, many Iranian websites have reproduced a long article accusing Jews of murdering gentile children in their synagogues, draining their blood and mixing it in their matzoh for Passover.

Perhaps the most prominent site was news site Alef, under the title "What group has been the biggest criminals in the history of mankind?"

The article includes the most grotesque artwork of Jews as murderers, both medieval and modern, including this one that they took from an antisemitic Arabic Facebook page:

It goes through many countries and lists every Jewish blood libel. It claims that the reason Jews were expelled from Spain was because of their habits of murdering Christian babies.

The article even reproduces a cover of Der Sturmer from 1939 showing the Nazi paper accusing Jews of ritual murder as evidence that it must be true!

(The article also include a video of a 1989 Oprah interview of a mentally ill woman named "Rachel" who made bizarre claims that her Jewish family was part of a cult that sacrificed babies and who raped her on a Torah scroll in a synagogue, among other things. I spent a little time researching this, and I don't want to have that story hijack this post, but from what I can gather all her "memories" had been prompted by a highly unethical therapist when the idea of reconstructing repressed memories was very popular. None of her stories have ever been corroborated by anyone she knows. Interestingly, she has become a prominent if controversial advocate against sexual abuse of children since then.)

Beyond that, the article claims that rabbis mix human blood with wine and place it on the lips of the infant boy during circumcision. It claims that the Talmud says "Anyone who kills a non-Jew, his reward is in heaven."

Other news sites that reproduced the article, verbatim, include Mashregh News, Asredena, Harfeakhar, Khabarist, Khabarkhoon, Habbe, and Ghatreh. From there it has spread to blogs and other secondary sites.

Most of the comments are virulently antisemitic as well.

Nothing gets published in Iranian websites without permission of the government, and this is a clear and conscious decision to promote Jew-hatred in Iran. Antisemitism is official Iranian policy.

Westerners who had guided tours of Iran and then claim that Iran has no antisemitism. like Roger Cohen, are once again shown to be useful idiots.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv and @RZimmt)

Haters fail to stop Israel-South Africa hockey game

From IOL News:

Cape Town - An international ice hockey match between South Africa and Israel at the Grand West Ice Rink was disrupted by an anti-Israel protest on Thursday night.

Cape Town activist, Bram Hanekom, a leader of the protest at the rink, said he was assaulted by security guards whom he alleged were part of the Israeli ambassador’s security detail.

However, Michael Farr, spokesman for Sun City International, denied the assault and said protesters threw marbles on the ice and had then been evicted.

[Hanekom] said he was certain that the security staff had a different uniform to that of the Grand West security staff and that he had heard one say over the radio that “their man was safe”. He believed this was a reference to the Israeli ambassador, who attended the match.

The Israeli embassy denied that their security had been at the venue.

The haters were proud that they managed to delay the game with marbles and red paint:

Palestinian activists, led by the NC4P, BDS South Africa, PSA, COSAS, the ANCYL and others successfully protested the Israeli Ice Hockey World Cup Game yesterday evening in Cape Town . Marbles were released on the ice as well as red colouring to reflect the blood of the thousands of Palestinians who suffer under Israel’s Apartheid government. The protests resulted in an embarassing over 45 min delay in the Israeli game.

Here is a video of Hatikvah being played before the game, with the crowd singing along.

Israel won the game, 6-3.

Gaza weekend: Bombs explode near UNRWA and Abbas' house, "work accident"

From TOI:

Two explosions targeted the offices of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA in Gaza City on Saturday night. There were no casualties in the blasts, according to UNRWA and Gaza security officials.

“A bomb exploded near the outer wall of the headquarters of UNRWA in Gaza, about ten feet from the door, causing no casualties or damage,” an agency spokesperson, Adnan Abu Hasna, told AFP.

The explosions come on the eve of a scheduled visit by the West Bank-based unity government to the Gaza Strip.

As of this writing, there was no mention of these explosions on UNRWA's website or on spokesperson's Chris Gunness' Twitter account.

Also:

An explosive device blew up near the Palestinian cabinet's headquarters in western Gaza City late Friday, said witnesses.

The explosion was heard near the old home of President Mahmoud Abbas, which was turned into the cabinet's headquarters.

And:

The al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, said Saturday that a fighter was killed while on duty.

The brigades said in a statement that Nafeth Said al-Mughni from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip was killed after being hit with a bullet in an accident, but did not give further details surrounding his death.

Obviously, all of these incidents are because of settlements.

04/18 Links: Israel shocked by Obama’s comments on sanctions, S-300 supply; Iran stonewalls IAEA

From Ian:

Israel analysts shocked by Obama’s comments on sanctions, S-300 supply

Israeli analysts expressed shock and amazement Friday night at US President Barack Obama’s stated openness to Iran’s demand for the immediate lifting of all economic sanctions, and his defense of Russia’s agreement to supply a sophisticated air defense system to Iran.
There was no immediate official Israeli response to the president’s comments, which were made after the start of Shabbat in Israel, when politicians generally do not work.
“Jaws dropped” around the studio, said the Channel 10 News diplomatic commentator Ben Caspit, as news broke of Obama’s declared empathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to supply Tehran with the S-300 missile defense system.
“Obama is something else,” Caspit added. “He’s decided to take America out of the wars…”
The station’s news anchor, Alon Ben David, chipped in, “He’s amazed that the Russians honored an agreement with him [for this long]? That’s what is astonishing.”
Responded Caspit, “This is the new America. We had better get used to it.”
Channel 10 also quoted unnamed senior Israeli diplomatic officials saying the prospect of Israel derailing the deal taking shape in US-led talks with Iran on its nuclear program was now zero. “The Iran issue is finished,” the officials were quoted saying.

US Taxpayers Paying Muslims Who Don’t Want to be Terrorists to Carry Out Terrorist Attacks

Here’s where the US funding of the PLO has taken us.
US taxpayers subsidize the PLO’s Palestinian Authority. The PA pays out handsome salaries to convicted terrorists. This encourages even those Muslims in the West Bank who don’t want to be terrorists to try and commit an act of terrorism in order to get a handsome salary and other perks when they’re actually released.
This latest terrorist was unenthusiastic about the terror part. He just wanted to be arrested.
The man approached the soldier and told him that he wanted to stab a soldier and then be arrested, and he then showed the soldier his folded knife.
The soldier pointed his gun at the man, and told him to not come any closer. The Golani soldiers nearby arrested the sort-of terrorist and took away his knife.
That would be the safe way to carry out a terrorist attack. And this happens all the time.

5 Australian teens arrested on charges of plotting ANZAC Day attack

Five Australian teenagers were arrested Saturday on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack at a Veterans' Day ceremony that included targeting police officers, officials said.
The suspects included two 18-year-olds who are alleged to have been preparing an attack at the ANZAC Day ceremony in Melbourne, Australian Federal Police Acting Deputy Commissioner Neil Gaughan told reporters.
Another 18-year-old was arrested on weapons charges and two other men, aged 18 and 19, were in custody and assisting police, police said.
ANZAC stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and commemorates the World War I battle in Turkey on April 25.
"I will say the attacks related to edged weapons," Victoria Police Acting Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton told The Australian. "We believe the attacks could have occurred at any time in the next week."

04/17 Links Pt2: Gideon Levy Spreads His Anti-Israel Poison Abroad; Postcard from the past

From Ian:

The bombing that wasn't

Seventy years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the question of why the Allies did not bomb the death facilities remains • The tremendous frustration felt by prisoners, who watched helplessly as bombers flew over them again and again, remains unabated.
Alongside military and tactical considerations, there were also very deep political and moral trends that precluded the bombing of the camps. The failure to intervene was the result of a tragic confluence of factors ranging from a lack of understanding, bureaucratic opposition, problematic timing and tense political circumstances. There was also the fear of sacrificing "precious" lives (those of the pilots) in order to save Jewish victims, who were thought of as less important by war planners.
Had Allied POWs been among those imprisoned in Auschwitz, "I think that they would have devoted much more thought to bombing the camps," Werrell said.
The tremendous frustration felt by the camp inmates -- who watched helplessly as the bombers flew over them time and again without dropping any explosives on the factories of death -- remains unabated. That frustration was compounded by the knowledge that even after Allied commanders refused to allocate forces for rescue mission, pilots did fly sorties to provide supplies to the combatants of the Warsaw Uprising (even while taking casualties). There was also the bombing of a French prison, a direct hit that was ordered in the hope of preventing the execution of 13 partisan fighters.
When it came to Auschwitz, there were no pilots available.

Haaretz's Gideon Levy Spreads His Anti-Israel Poison Abroad

The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz has a minimal following in Israel. According to a recent Target Group Index (TGI) survey, Haaretz‘s readership amounted to only 5.8% of the news market. And even this minimal share is higher than it was last summer during the IDF's Operation Protective Edge to stop Hamas rocket fire. At that time, numbers were even lower due to a slew of cancellations that were prompted by columnist Gideon Levy's Op-Ed demonizing Israeli pilots for carrying out their military orders. Most Israelis recognize Haaretz for what it is, an ideological newspaper with a far-left editorial policy that appears more interested in advocacy than in objective news gathering.
Gideon Levy serves on Haaretz's editorial board, penning a weekly column, "Twilight Zone," as well as political editorials for the newspaper. He is known in Israel as an acrimonious, anti-Israel ideologue and activist, recently arrested for spitting and cursing at IDF soldiers, who often invents his own facts to support his radical agenda. His fan base consists primarily of fellow Israel haters and activists, while mainstream Israelis and journalists dismiss him as a dishonest propagandist.
Discredited by the mainstream in his own country, Levy has taken to spewing his vitriol and promoting boycotts against the Jewish state in foreign countries where he can try to influence uninitiated audiences with dishonest calumnies against Israel. He sells himself as a heroic truth-teller who has "made it his mission," as one recent Canadian interviewer described him, "to bear witness to Palestinian life in the occupied territories." Levy acknowledges his countrymen's disdain for him, but does not attribute this to his libelous fabrications. Rather, he tries to cultivate an image of himself as a whistle blower who has incurred the hatred of his countrymen for allegedly exposing the nasty truth about them. He is aided and abetted in this task by anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic organizations and foreign journalists all too ready to believe the worst about Israel and grant this dishonest ideologue the platform from which to disgorge propaganda against his country.

Verdict on judicial review of Southampton conference cancellation: The anti-Semites lose.

The conference organisers own barrister suggested that terrorists would not strike at the conference because it would be an ‘own goal’ ( at least it shows they are aware whose side they are on).
The conference organisers attempted to discredit Sussex Friends of Israel. Firstly by stating they are not a Jewish group (and therefore imply they could not be a target for a terror attack) and secondly by continually connecting them with the EDL as two groups ‘working together’. SFoI were the only referenced element of the Jewish protests. It was a dirty tactic they repeated several times
The conference organisers astonishingly commented that the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen were in no way related to Israel or Palestine. Whilst anti-Semitism predates Israel and exists away from it, I do not know of any sane person that does not believe there is a correlation between events in Israel and the amount of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe.
The conference organisers argument was known to be weak. They had been warned there was little chance of success. They were therefore ordered to pay partial defence costs.
The conference organisers were battered; there was no a single point they attempted to put across that was accepted.
In the end it was so one-sided I almost began to feel sorry for them (okay, not quite).

Arab paper does everything it can to downplay Holocaust

Arab newspaper Vetogate had a series of articles about Holocaust Remembrance Day.

One says that Palestinians were paying the price for a crime committed in Europe.

Another says that Israel uses the event to blackmail the world, that it is grossly exaggerated ,and anyway the Zionists cooperated with the Nazis.

A third says that while everyone remembers the alleged Holocaust, Jews did equally terrible things to the Palestinians, such as the Kafr Qasim massacre, Deir Yassin, Sabra and Shatila, the Gaza war and the Mavi Marmara.

Just for comparison's sake, more Jews were gassed on an average day in Auschwitz (about 6000) than Arabs killed in all those events combined, assuming the more reliable estimates of deaths at Sabra and Shatila (which wasn't done by Jews)to be several hundred.

Friday open thread

Since no one reads the blog on Friday afternoons anyway!

04/17 Links Pt1: A Hamas State of Palestine in Gaza (For Now); Hamas: It’s ‘our right’ to abduct Israelis

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas's Plan: A Hamas State of Palestine in Gaza (For Now)

Palestinian political analysts believe that it is only a matter of time before Hamas succeeds in fulfilling its scheme to turn the Gaza Strip into an independent state.
"The discussion is no longer whether there is a separationist plan for the Gaza Strip, but when and how it would be implemented," said Hassan Asfour, a former Palestinian Authority minister affiliated with Fatah. "It is the duty of the Palestinian Authority leadership to say what it intends to do to foil this plan."
Addressing the Palestinian Authority president, Asfour added: "Mr. Mahmoud Abbas, it is not enough to talk on television about [Hamas's] separation plan. Think of ways to thwart it. Otherwise, no one will say that Hamas 'hijacked' the Gaza Strip; instead everyone will be talking about how the Palestinian Authority leadership abandoned the Gaza Strip."
If and when Hamas carries out its plan and establishes its own sovereign state in the Gaza Strip, the international community, primarily the U.S. and EU, will have to come to terms with the fact that the two-state solution has finally been realized; the Palestinians ended up with two states of their own -- an Islamist emirate in the Gaza Strip and a PLO-controlled state in the West Bank.
The Americans and Europeans will also have to listen very carefully to what Hamas is saying: namely, that a Palestinian state in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, or any part of the Palestinian territories, would not end its struggle to destroy Israel and replace it with the State of Greater Palestine.

Melanie Phillips: Out of Obama’s frying-pan into Hillary’s fire?

During her nine years as a senator for New York state, which includes arguably the most Jewish city in the world outside Israel, she posed as a friend of Israel and the Jewish people. Yet this hardly matched her previous or subsequent attitudes.
In November 1999, on a visit to the Middle East while Bill Clinton was in the White House, Hillary publicly appeared with Yasser Arafat’s wife, Suha. Mrs. Arafat proceeded maliciously and falsely to accuse Israel of using poison gas against the Palestinians and contaminating with chemicals Palestinian water sources.
Having impassively listened to a simultaneous translation, Hillary gave the terrorist’s wife when she finished a hug and a kiss. After all hell subsequently broke loose, Hillary belatedly criticized all inflammatory rhetoric, dismissed the kiss as the Middle East equivalent of a handshake and claimed that the translation – which reporters who were also listening to it reproduced correctly – was “unclear” and “incomplete.”
There is much evidence of where her real sympathies lie. In his book American Evita: Hillary Clinton’s Path to Power, Christopher Anderson wrote: “At a time when elements of the American Left embraced the Palestinian cause and condemned Israel, Hillary was telling friends that she was ‘sympathetic’ to the terrorist organization and admired its flamboyant leader, Yasser Arafat.”
Her hostility to Israel has been revealed in her own words and deeds. In her memoir Hard Choices, she accuses Israel of being an occupying force and claims that it denies “dignity and self-determination” to Palestinians in the West Bank. But these claims are malicious distortions employed by Israel’s enemies.

Inside Obama’s Meeting With Jewish Leaders

For 36 years now, Iranian officials have threatened to annihilate Israel. As Basij commander Mohammad Reza Naqdi said recently, “Destroying Israel is non-negotiable.” There may be different centers of power throughout the regime, as Iran experts posit, but everyone agrees with the Supreme Leader that Israel—the “Zionist cancer”—has got to go. Middle East experts and experienced Iran watchers in the West typically dismiss such threats as instrumental rhetoric intended to thrill local bigots and separate the Arab and Persian masses from their rulers. So why take such rhetoric seriously? The Iranians wouldn’t ever really use the bomb. In fact, they’re very clever, rational people.
Of course, if you’re a leader in the American Jewish community, you can’t help but hear Iran’s exterminationist rhetoric in a different frame. So maybe the legacy of Rabbi Stephen Wise was on the mind of American Jewish leaders Monday when President Barack Obama called them to a meeting at the White House. It being Holocaust Remembrance Week, who wants to be remembered as the contemporary version of Wise, who chose to protect his relationship with Roosevelt rather than criticize a president who did nothing to save European Jews from extermination?
“It was one of the tensest meetings I can ever remember,” said one participant who has been invited to many White House sit-downs over the years and requested anonymity. “The president spoke for 25 minutes, without notes,” he told me. “It was very impressive. Some people said very nice things, others expressed concerns, and talked about the role of Congress, and he talked about presidential prerogative, and cited other precedents for it. Lots of people challenged him very strongly, like about taking the threats of dictators seriously when Khamenei says death to America, death to Israel, death to the Jews. The president said he knows what the regime is, which is why he is trying to take away their weapons. He didn’t dismiss what the Iranians say, he just didn’t really address it.”

Muslim on Temple Mount really tries to disrupt Jewish tour guide (videos)

This is pretty funny.

It shows a deranged Muslim man trying mightily to shout over a calm Jewish tour guide who ignores him completely.

As he gets ignored, he starts grunting like an animal. He then walks around aimlessly while shouting, unsure if he wants to be filmed or not.

Meanwhile, while Jews aren't allowed to silently pray on the Temple Mount, Hamas terror rallies are perfectly acceptable, as this video from this morning shows:

People on Facebook call themselves "Death to Jews"

Earlier today there was a rumor, found out later to be false, that the Arab who murdered a Jewish man with his car yesterday had a Facebook page that gave, as his secondary name, "Death to Jews" - in Hebrew.

It was another Arab from Jerusalem:

(This page has since been taken down.)

One other person, a woman from Gaza, uses the same parenthetical name:

When you look in Arabic, you find a number of others (some of which seem to have changed recently):

This person is Italian, and there is nothing about Israel on his page. It seems he just wanted to tell the world he hated Jews but hide it from Facebook.

Most of the people who use "Death to the Jews" as their parenthetical name are, of course, Arab:

This one claims to have actually worked at Facebook.

This one is probably just anti-Zionist, right?

Here's a Facebook page called "Death to the Jews - We are all Palestine" hiding as a concert venue. I don't think he means those across the Green Line.

Other Facebookers try to show off their Jew-hatred in other languages:

Supposedly, Facebook recently tightened up its standards. But they don't seem to look very hard for some kinds of hate.

Fatah terrorists appropriate iconic Iwo Jima image

From the Fatah Facebook page,

This is, of course, appropriated from the famous iconic photo of US Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945, as this comparison of the mirror image of Fatah's poster with the original picture shows:

There is one change, though: US Marines are replaced with masked terrorists.

There is nothing that they won't steal and claim as their own.

IsraAID to Vanuatu after Cyclone Pam (video)

Cyclone-washing, as some Israel-haters would call this.

(h/t Irene)

04/16 Links Pt2: Israel comes to a standstill as sirens blare for Holocaust Remembrance Day

From Ian:

Israel comes to a standstill as sirens blare for Holocaust Remembrance Day

At 10 a.m. on Thursday morning, Israel came to a standstill as sirens blared throughout the country to commemorate the 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazi regime. During the two minute siren, traffic came to a standstill and people stopped working to remember the Holocaust.
The siren will be followed by a wreath-laying ceremony at Yad Vashem’s Warsaw Ghetto Square attended by President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and other senior governmental, military, and political figures.
Afterward, at the Hall of Remembrance, a ceremonial reading of the names of Holocaust victims will take place.
On Thursday, Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog will speak at a memorial at the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum.
Also Thursday, the Jewish National Fund and B’nai B’rith will hold a memorial at Jerusalem’s Martyrs’ Forest to posthumously honor a Greek rabbi who led partisans against the Nazis.

JPost Editorial Holocaust remembrance

Even those who were tiny babies then – hidden from the Nazi extermination apparatus that hunted diligently for every last Jew – are elderly today, 70 years after the Third Reich was vanquished.
Soon no one who was alive then will be around to help counter the lies of Holocaust-deniers or the deliberate trivialization and kitschy universalization of the lessons the Holocaust ought to impart to our nation of survivors.
The inexorable march of time is already leaving its stamp even on attitudes here, in Israel, including on Holocaust Remembrance Day. This morning, as we stand in silent vigil for the 6,000,000, there will be those among us tempted to ascribe it all to a one-off regime from long ago, not particularly relevant to today and now.
But, all around us, the hate still thrives and that there are no bounds to the lengths that haters will go to rationalize and justify it.
The falsehoods disseminated by the Nazis and their avid collaborators have been adapted to mutating historical agendas, but the grotesque displays of hypocrisy are no different. The Jewish state is as defamed and demonized as the so-called “Jewish race” had been in order to pave the way for industrialized genocide.
Like their predecessors, the Jewish state’s would-be annihilators posture as morally upright members of the international community and blame the victim for a monstrously magnified set of “unforgivable” sins.

March of the Living begins in Auschwitz

Thousands of young people from at least 45 countries participated in the March of the Living in Poland at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex of camps.
The 27th International March of the Living took place Thursday on Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. Each country’s delegation was accompanied by a survivor to tell his or her personal story.
Yad Vashem chairman Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv-Yaffo and former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, led the two-mile march from the Auschwitz concentration camp to the Birkenau extermination camp. Lau told the participants how he survived the Holocaust, and he showed a Torah scroll that had survived and required extensive repair.
Survivor Sigmund Rolat recalled his Polish nanny, Elka, who remained with him in the Czestochowa ghetto in order to protect him.

Two tweets from Iran's Supreme Leader yesterday show that the US has lost its perch as being Great Satan to Israel's Little Satan.

If US officials act agnst Zionists' wishes,they threaten to make them resign or create scandal for them.That’s why they’re Zionists’ yes-men
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) April 15, 2015

US govt has entrusted its economic power & national status to Zionist capitalists’ network & it's them who decide for the US.11/27/14
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) April 15, 2015

Congratulations to Israel on this much deserved honor. Thanks also go to those "Zionist capitalists" for their integral role in controlling the US.

Drinks all around! (Oh, sorry...that's insensitive of me.)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust remembrance day. It’s a day to honor the Jews who fought their murderers and those who were unable to, and to note the dishonor of those who, while in no danger themselves, failed to act to protect their people.

It’s not enough to have a big emotional catharsis on Yom Hashoah, to cry about the children, mothers, fathers, poets, Torah sages and others who were murdered because of their Jewish blood.

It’s not enough for well-meaning Jewish organizations to put on plays and presentations to bring a sense of the Holocaust to safe and well-fed Jews who otherwise would have little understanding of it.

It’s not enough to present programs about lost shtetl life, Yiddish culture, Jewish food and hazzanut (I guarantee that NPR will broadcast segments full of pathos that will tear out the hearts of their listeners — before they cut to the news program in which they will misrepresent the efforts of today’s Jewish state to keep bloody history from repeating itself).

These things are perhaps necessary, but they are not sufficient. Especially for American Jews, who while refreshing their memories of what happened 75 years ago, need to ask themselves hard questions about how they are responding to what’s happening today. Here are two lessons from the Holocaust and their modern-day applications.

1. You can’t depend on other nations not to endanger themselves for your sake, or even to lift a finger. With a few exceptions (Denmark, Bulgaria) any place that fell under Nazi influence became a furnace for its Jews. Roosevelt didn’t want to be bothered, perhaps, or maybe he thought a few less Jews in the world wouldn’t be a big disaster. The British government made the conscious decision to prioritize the maintenance of colonial control over its route to India over the lives of the Jews that could have been saved had they been allowed to go to Palestine.

2. Listen to your enemies and take them seriously. The Iranian regime talks daily about destroying Israel. It is ‘non-negotiable’, according to an Iranian militia leader. Hamas agrees and so do the supposedly ‘moderate’ elements in Ramallah. Don’t kid yourself. They mean it, just as Hitler meant it.

Today there is a Jewish state, in which about half of the world’s Jews live. It may be the last recourse for European Jews when Europe becomes Eurabia. A few years ago, many would have said that I was being overly dramatic, but not today. But Israel faces growing military threats on every one of its borders, while the modern manifestation of traditional Jew-hatred, anti-Zionism, is tearing at it economically, socially, legally and diplomatically — perhaps not as concrete a threat as the Iranian bomb, but potentially as dangerous.

Do you, American Jew, care about those Israeli and European Jews? If so, you should be fighting your administration’s initiative to ally itself with the Iranian regime and to remove the obstacles to its acquiring nuclear weapons. At the same time, you should be standing up aggressively against the delegitimization and demonization of Israel in your media and universities. Otherwise, you are morally equivalent to those American Jews — including Jewish leaders — who preferred not to rock the boat while the Holocaust was burning in Europe.

Jews in the US have their vision obscured by the thick fog that inundates thinking about Israel, a fog that is pumped out as if by huge machines powered by massive amounts of money, petrodollars from Arab countries, cash from George Soros and his affiliated fund-raising organs (e.g., MoveOn.org), and even money donated to organizations like the New Israel Fund and J Street by naive Jews. The fog is one part Arab narrative, one part vicious lies about Israel’s actions and one part pure Jew-hatred.

Blow away the fog and you find that there really is no hard moral question about whether to support the ‘oppressive, racist apartheid state’ of Israel because it is none of those things. The truth is exactly the opposite: Israel faces hateful, racist, genocidal enemies.

Blow away the fog and look at your president. Look at those he surrounds himself with. Look at what he does, not what he says. You will see a man who is slandering Israel and its leaders, trying to weaken the state while empowering its enemies. America supports Israel, but the Obama Administration does not, and only the American people and its Congress can hold him back from doing even worse.

Let me close with one more point: don’t be smug in your safety, far from Hizballah’s missiles and the Iranian bomb, without a population of extremist Muslims to make your daily life hell, as is happening in Europe.

American Jews have had it very good since the end of WWII and especially since about 1960. That is unlikely to last. Antisemitic incidents are multiplying, and the university campuses are bubbling with Jew-hatred. Even your physical security is not guaranteed, with the infiltration of ISIS and Hizballah into your hemisphere.

There are signs of decay in your political institutions, your middle-class is under pressure, your family structure is cracking up, your government is becoming more authoritarian. All of these things are not good for the maintenance of a free, open, creative society that will also be tolerant of Jews.

Some day you, too may need a strong Israel to fight for your rights in the international arena. Don’t laugh — things change more rapidly than you may imagine. You may even need a refuge.

04/16 Links Pt1: Violence and terror is Fatah’s way; Iran "Deal": West's Surrender Triggering War

From Ian:

PMW: Fatah: Violence and terror is Fatah’s way

A recent post by Fatah on Facebook made it clear that fighting Israel militarily with weapons is still a central Fatah policy. A photo of Fatah members in military uniforms armed with automatic weapons, with the Palestinian flag in the background, featured the following text:
“My enemy, I swear you will not escape the people and the revolution”
[Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page," April 11, 2015]
The message that violence and terror is legitimate was also highlighted in a video posted on Fatah's Facebook page, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the launching of Fatah. The video commemorated five suicide bombings and a shooting attack against Israeli civilians, in which a total of 55 people were murdered. The video also honored suicide bombers and showed scenes from attacks blended with footage of Fatah terrorists firing rockets

Fatah glorifies terrorists and suicide bombings that killed dozens of Israelis

Iran "Deal": West's Surrender Triggering War

Not only have Western leaders given the Iranian regime the opportunity to acquire nuclear weapons; they have let Iran initiate and sanctify a nuclear arms race to destabilize an already volatile region. They have also given Iran the opportunity to get billions of dollars to accelerate its nuclear weapons programs – and they are negotiating to lift all sanctions either early or late so that Iran can get still more.
They also allowed Iran to keep four American hostages: Jason Rezaian, Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmati and Robert Levinson, who has not been heard from for years and may be dead. The State Department has said that "their freedom should not be linked to negotiations," so their release was not even discussed. Their immediate release was the first matter that should have been discussed.
What Western leaders have deliberately ignored is the nature of the Iranian regime: Totalitarian regimes never abide by the agreements they sign. Islamists often refer to Muhammad's treaty of Hudaybiyyah. In 628, Muhammad agreed to a 10-year truce with the Quraysh tribe of Mecca. Two years later, when Muslim forces had gathered strength, Muhammad broke the treaty and marched into Mecca. Since then, in Islam, no treaty can be made for more than ten years, and even then, it is not a treaty, it is a truce -- to be broken again if Islam's side is strong.

At Memorial, Netanyahu Says Iran Nuke Deal Shows that Lesson of Holocaust Not Learned

Speaking at a ceremony commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a speech delivered Wednesday evening at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum that the nuclear deal being negotiated with Iran showed that the West had not learned the lessons of the Holocaust, Ynet reported:
The Israeli prime minister used the opportunity to remind those watching of the role of democracies in stopping tyrannical regimes. “Leaders of the enlightened countries understood that it was a window of opportunity to establish a new world order based on protecting freedom, eradicating evil, and opposing tyranny. In a loud and clear voice, they pronounced the central lesson of the Second World War for democracies – we must not turn a blind eye to the expansionist intentions of tyrannical regimes. Appeasement of such regimes increases their propensity for aggression, and if this aggression is not curbed in time, humanity could endure much more difficult wars.”
“Many in the world declare that the lessons learned are also valid today. They declare ‘never again’. But as long as these words are not heeded in practice, they are meaningless,” said the prime minister. “I wish I could stand here and tell you the world truly learned from this incomprehensible tragedy. Just as the Nazis hoped to crush a civilization, so Iran strives to take over the region and from there spread onwards, with the stated intention of destroying the Jewish state.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin also appeared to refer to Iran in his speech at Yad Vashem.
“We will not belittle any threats. Nor belittle shameful statements calling for the extinction of the Jewish people. Yet, while we are prepared, we are not scared.”

Egypt's destruction of smuggling tunnels on the Gaza border is having an economic impact - on the price of guns and ammunition.

Firas Press reports that Gaza arms dealers are frustrated by Egypt's actions of destroying tunnels with either explosives or by flooding them with waste water.

Arms dealer "Abu Mohammed" said that arms smuggling operations have been suspended since mid-February and this has had an impact on the availability of weapons, missiles and ammunition which has led to higher prices in the market.

He said that the price of one bullet has gone from between 3-4 shekels up to 7- 9 shekels.

An Egyptian Kalashnikov rifle has gone from $900 up to $ 1,300, and Chinese Kalashnikovs from $1200 to $2000,and Russian versions are now going for $3000.

"The smuggling operations have ceased almost entirely; rarely does one succeed in smuggling very light weapons and ammunition here," he said.

The arms dealer added that the heavy and medium missile smuggling operations completely stopped since the last war on Gaza.

This is just more evidence of the dire economic situation in Gaza, Perhaps the UN and Oxfam can release reports about how much more difficult it is for Gaza terrorists to obtain their basic necessities, and how Israel must therefore lift its "blockade."

Wait - they are already demanding that!

I have always been skeptical of Egyptian claims that Gaza is the source of weapons, explosives and fighters in the jihadist terror in the Sinai. It never made sense that material that had to be smuggled into Gaza from Libya and the Sudan - through the Sinai - were being smuggled back. The jihadists can get weapons far more easily directly from the same sources Hamas was getting them from. The Egyptian government and army simply can't stand the Muslim Brotherhood aligned terror groups in Gaza and use the Sinai terror as their excuse to isolate the sector.

Haaretz columnists seem to be competing with each other as to who can write the most offensive pieces.

Today's entry comes from Ariel Rubinstein, where he enumerates twelve reasons why Israel should abolish Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It is a perfect example of how a brilliant person (Rubinstein is an expert on game theory and a winner of the Israel Prize on Economics) can also be very, very ignorant.

For example he starts off with "Holocaust Remembrance Day should be canceled, because the few who do have someone to remember will not forget those who died, and those who do not cannot truly remember."

In other words, national or institutional memory is meaningless. Why even teach history to begin with? Most of those things happened more than 50 years ago!

Rubiinstein seems to really hate religious Jews, and he wants to distance himself from those that were murdered by the Nazis as not being like him. He writes "anyone who genuinely wants to remember the destroyed Jewish study halls in Poland has no need to take part in the March of the Living at Auschwitz, they can see them in Jerusalem’s Mea She’arim."

Jews in Europe also had libraries and shops and doctor's offices. But anyone can find those things today as well! Why bother to remember them? In fact, they had lives, too - which can presumably also be replicated.

"Holocaust Remembrance Day should be canceled, because a large proportion of the victims of the Holocaust were ultra-Orthodox Jews, and their followers in Israel and abroad do not accept the day as a fitting date to mark the destruction. It would be better to adopt the tradition and to append the lamentation for the Holocaust to the Tenth of Tevet or the Tisha B’Av fast days, on which in accordance with Jewish tradition all of the bitter tragedies of our people are mourned."

But all the other events that Tisha B'Av and 17 Tammuz and 0 Tevet and Tzom Gedalyah happened before anyone today was born! Why remember them when no one alive remembers them?

His most offensive reason, though, is this one:

Holocaust Remembrance Day should be canceled, because it is an unnecessary opportunity for an unapologetic peek at the pornography of death. Anyone who feels compelled to look at pictures of executions or a final glimpse of victims before they die are invited to watch the colorful videos of Islamic State.

What an obscene statement. ISIS wants people to view their videos for a specific reason: to cause fear and to gain recruits from sick people, today. Holocaust films are not meant to be titillating, If Rubinstein reacts to Holocaust films the same way he reacts to ISIS videos, then we have revealed exactly how sick he is.

It is no surprise that his last reason makes a comparison between Jews and Nazis, by saying "The danger of turning into beasts also looms over members of the chosen people."

What a disgusting man.

I wonder how game theory deals with players who are so filled with hate and spite that they cannot be considered rational.