Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

02/16 Links Pt1: Zoabi in Newsweek: Israelis Not Entitled to Self-Defense; Palestinian “Sign Language”

From Ian:

JCPA: Interpreting Palestinian “Sign Language”

The attempted terror attack at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate on February 14, 2016 signifies that the effort to turn the “popular intifada” into armed terror does not only stem from Hamas, which opposed the popular struggle approach from the beginning, but also from the Fatah movement in the West Bank. It now appears that apart from the desire to strike at Israel, there are those in Fatah who also seek to thwart the policy of the organization’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas. Especially worrisome is the fact that Palestinian Authority security personnel have taken part in Fatah’s attempt to turn the popular struggle into an armed conflict.
The graphics of Fatah sites devoted to the intifada (or the “habba” or buzz) provide clues to the direction the winds are blowing.

First, the graphic (above) from the al-Aqsa – Jerusalem – Intifada site shows a young demonstrator with the Palestinian national flag waving behind him, indicating a Fatah, rather than Hamas, affiliation. The dominant color is black, suggesting identification with the radical ISIS or al-Nusra. The kuffiya is replaced by a cap in the form of the Dome of the Rock, colored in the black of radical Islam and the yellow of Fatah. A black crescent ornaments the top of the dome or cap. The image of the slingshot still connotes a connection with the popular intifada rather than the armed one.
The message of this graphic is that Fatah still follows the rules of the popular intifada as represented by a slingshot, but in the future this could change in the direction of black-colored Islamic terror. The site too – Intifada rather than Habba – indicates unwillingness to being confined to the “minimal” form of struggle. The struggle is also known as the Al-Quds [Jerusalem] Intifada, apparently coming from the same Fatah elements. At this stage, these appear to be rogue elements who are mounting a challenge to official Fatah leadership, while seeking to turn Jerusalem into the location where the intifada will move from the “popular, spontaneous” stage to real terror.

The Illegal-Settlements Myth

This left open the question of the sovereign authority over the West Bank. The legal vacuum in which Israel operated in the West Bank after 1967 was exacerbated by Jordan’s subsequent stubborn refusal to engage in talks about the future of these territories. King Hussein was initially deterred from dealing with the issue by the three “no’s” of Khartoum. Soon enough, he was taught a real-world lesson by the Palestine Liberation Organization, which fomented a bloody civil war against him and his regime in 1970. With the open support of Israel, Hussein survived that threat to his throne, but his desire to reduce rather than enlarge the Palestinian population in his kingdom ultimately led him to disavow any further claim to the lands he had lost in 1967. Eventually, this stance was formalized on July 31, 1988.
Thus, if the charge that Israel’s hold on the territories is illegal is based on the charge of theft from its previous owners, Jordan’s own illegitimacy on matters of legal title and its subsequent withdrawal from the fray makes that legal case a losing one. Well before Jordan’s renunciation, Eugene Rostow, former dean of Yale Law School and undersecretary of state for political affairs in 1967 during the Six-Day War, argued that the West Bank should be considered “unallocated territory,” once part of the Ottoman Empire. From this perspective, Israel, rather than simply “a belligerent occupant,” had the status of a “claimant to the territory.”
To Rostow, “Jews have a right to settle in it under the Mandate,” a right he declared to be “unchallengeable as a matter of law.” In accord with these views, Israel has historically characterized the West Bank as “disputed territory” (although some senior government officials have more recently begun to use the term “occupied territory”).
Because neither Great Britain, as the former trustee under the League of Nations mandate, nor the since deceased Ottoman Empire—the former sovereigns prior to the Jordanians—is desirous or capable of standing up as the injured party to put Israel in the dock, we must therefore ask: On what points of law does the case against Israel stand? (h/t Dave4321)

Yisrael Medad: Just One Short Statement That Demolishes

I learned that The Palestinian Museum is set to open on…May 15, 2016. Yes, the day when Israel was created, proclaimed as state in accordance with the original intent of the League of Nations decision to reconstitute a Jewish national Home and the United Nations decision to recommend a Jewish state and in accordance with the British decision to leave the country.
For the Museum
The decision to open the Museum on the 15th of May is designed to underline the enduring importance of the Nakba to the Museum’s work.”
Nakba, of course, means the rollback of any Zionist-Jewish achievement. It is not about 1967 but 1948. The Museum is
dedicated to preserving and celebrating the culture, society and history of Palestine over the past two centuries.
Two centuries only?
What happened to all that ancient history, a la Saeb Erekat? Here:
“I am the son of Jericho. I am 10,000 years old … I am the proud son of the Netufians and the Canaanites. I’ve been there for 5,500 years before Joshua Bin Nun came and burned my hometown Jericho. I’m not going to change my narrative”

Number of attacks in Israel steadily decreasing, but they are turning deadlier

Shin Bet published this graph in their latest monthly report:

Most of the attacks remain firebombs.

However, as we have seen in recent weeks, there has been an uptick in shooting incidents as opposed to stabbings and car rammings.

The number of people killed also went up in January - 5 murdered, versus 3 in December.

This is still better than the 10 murdered in November and 11 in October.

For those wondering, Shin Bet also counts extremist Jewish terror attacks: 4 in October, none in November, one in December (an attack on a house in Ramallah) and one in January (setting an Arab owned car wash on fire.)

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So why aren't Palestinians stabbing Lebanese?

From Now Lebanon:

Death by a thousand cuts
Behind recent Palestinian protests is a profound despair that has pushed thousands to risk the maritime “journey of death”

In a barbershop near Burj al-Barajneh’s Furqan Mosque, NOW met camp residents who had participated in the recent demonstrations.

“Of course we’ll continue our protests,” said Abu Ammar, a father in his early thirties, telling NOW the issue had united the camp’s often feuding factions as well as youth activist networks. There were cases, he said, of people being asked to fork out as much as $30,000 for medical operations. Three refugees had already died, he claimed, as a result of their inability to make the necessary payments

The more Abu Ammar spoke, however, the more apparent it became that the healthcare changes were merely the latest in an accumulating series of setbacks for Palestinians in Lebanon, especially those, such as himself, who were previously based in Syria until fleeing the war.

“Last summer, we lost our monthly accommodation stipend of $100 per family,” he said – a stipend that UNRWA’s Lebanon Director Matthias Schmale described at the time as forming “the main source of income for over 95 per cent” of refugees, along with a monthly food allowance of $27 per person (which is still provided). On top of healthcare and accommodation expenses, Abu Ammar complained of the annual residence permit cost of $200, payable to the Lebanese government. How refugees largely barred from employment are expected to come up with such sums has never been clear.

Of all the statistics Abu Ammar and his friend, Abu Shadi, cited to demonstrate how much harder life in the camps has become, one alone perhaps conveyed more than all others combined: from a peak of as many as 60,000 in 2013, the number of Palestinian refugees from Syria in Lebanon has since plummeted to 20,000, they said. What accounts for the dramatic difference? A mass exodus from the country via the now-notorious smuggling boats to Europe.

Hijra (“emigration”), indeed, is the new buzzword in the camp, mentioned repeatedly by every resident to which NOW spoke. Though fully aware of the enormous risks involved in what they themselves dub “the journey of death,” many describe it as their only remaining hope for a better life.

“If I had the money, I would do it tomorrow,” said Abu Ammar, explaining the total cost came to around $6,000.

“If I could pack myself into a tiny box and be put on one of the boats, I would,” said Nasir. “We see no other solution: emigration, or nothing.”

By any yardstick, Palestinians in Lebanon have it worse than Arabs in the West Bank. And as this article makes clear, they certainly have more despair and frustration than those who live in Hebron or Ramallah.

But we have been told incessantly by Western experts that the impetus for the stabbing, shooting and car ramming attacks is frustration.

So why aren't Lebanese being murdered by these frustrated victims? This is how oppressed Palestinians are expected to act! Even the UN Secretary General expects oppressed people to act violently - it is human nature! The mainstream media says every day that Palestinians are stabbing and shooting Jews because of frustration.

Yet instead of stoning, stabbing and shooting Lebanese leaders, Palestinians are silent - and save their protests for UNRWA. Instead of a Lebanese intifada, they dream of emigrating to Europe (which tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, have already done.)

Perhaps the reason is that they know that the Lebanese government would expel them in a minute if they caused trouble. Perhaps they know that if they stabbed random Lebanese, then Lebanese militias would invade their government-enforced ghettos and start slaughtering them.

Which is not really a worry under that horrible "occupation."

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Aminat Naseer is a professor of religion and philosophy and former dean of the Faculty of Humanities of Al-Azhar University in Alexandria, Egypt. She is also a member of the Committee of Religious Affairs in Egypt's House of Representatives. She has been an outspoken opponent of allowing female students to wear the niqab that covers their faces.

On the other hand, she is a staunch defender of Islam, combating those who claim it is a religion of violence and misogyny.

Naseer gets interviewed from time to time about the niqab, and since she is so against the idea of veiling women, she must explain how the practice has become so widespread in Islam. After all, she notes correctly, women in Mohammed's time did not cover their faces.

So what is the source of the veil? Jews!

Recently, Cairo University banned the use of niqab for women, and Naseer praised the decision. She said that the veil is not Islamic at all, but came from Jewish tribes in the Arabian peninsula.

Moreover, she said that the great rabbi Maimonides ruled that Jewish women should never show their faces, even when they go into their own backyards.

This is not the first time that Naseer blamed Jews for the niqab.

The professor of religion is speaking nonsense; Maimonides said no such thing.

But when Muslims don't like something, it is easiest to get their point across when they associate the object of their hate with Judaism.

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EoZTV: Apes and pigs and Jews, oh my!

The latest episode of EoZTV talks about the widespread Muslim belief that Jews are the descendants of apes. (Pigs too, but not nearly as much as apes.)

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02/15 Links Pt2: Ten years since Ilan Halimi's murder; Vassar students sell Leila Khaled T-shirts

From Ian:

MEMRI: Article In Radical Islamist Pro-AKP Turkish Daily: Gorillas, Chimps Are Cursed, Mutated Jews

In his January 31, 2016 column in the pro-AKP government, radical Islamist daily Vahdet, journalist Seyfi Sahin wrote that the evolutionary theory of "the Jew" Darwin contradicts Allah's word in the Koran. Claiming to be a physician, Sahin argued that humans did not evolve from monkeys, but rather that monkeys evolved from perverted Jews whom Allah cursed and punished. The column was widely criticized by Turkey's independent opposition media.
Following are excerpts from Sahin's article, titled "Monkeys Evolved from Humans."
"Chromosomal Anomalies" In Monkeys "Have Never Led To The Birth Of Human Beings Or Of Monkeys Resembling Human Beings"
"Monkeys are animals that look like humans. Humans have 46 chromosomes and monkeys have 48. Since these chromosomes are similar in structure, these species can transfer from one to the other. When we, physicians, examine anomalies in chromosomes, we find that human chromosomal anomalies lead to the birth of humans similar to monkeys, as in cases of microcephaly, in which newborns resemble monkeys in form, intelligence, behavior, and social life. Such [deformed humans] must be kept under strict control. The numbers of such cases is not negligible.
"In monkeys too there are chromosomal anomalies, but these have never led to the birth of human beings or of monkeys resembling human beings. We understand from this that humans are not derived from monkeys, but that monkeys come from humans. There are many factors in the creation of such anomalies, among them divine, environmental, and chemical."

Ryan Bellerose: Unassailable

The reason Jewish identity is so integral to this struggle is simple – the other side is claiming that Israelis are not indigenous, that they are “white colonisers” who stole “Arab ancestral lands”. Now this claim is patently ridiculous to anyone with a 3rd grade education and a commensurate reading level, but sadly often the Jewish people’s own actions and reactions suggest that they themselves are not quite decolonized enough to claim their birthright and heritage. Many of them still see their identity through a white European lens, rather than a Middle Eastern lens, and this leads not only to massive confusion but lost opportunities such as the Temple Mount and now in Judea and Samaria.
I have documented Jewish indigenous status beyond any reasonable doubt. I have given you the language and hopefully the knowledge to defend the position, but YOU must internalize your identity. YOU must decide to decolonize and then YOU must decide what that means to YOU and your people.
Its really simple – you are Jews, your culture is ancient, your traditions date back three thousand years and your spirituality is intertwined with both. Only you can decide what you should be keeping and what you need to lose, but ask yourself, what would my ancestors say? Would they say “You needed those things in diaspora, but now you are home again and it’s time to evolve and become who you are meant to be” or would they say “Stay as the diaspora made you out of necessity”? I believe you are meant to be a Light unto the Nations, to show us the way that indigenous people are supposed to evolve while maintaining the core of your identity. You have fought so hard to stay Jewish – literally hundreds of generations have lived and died to bring you to this point. Your ancestors fought, bled and died for you to remain Jews and even more recently for you to be able to go home as Jews to your ancestral lands. They didn’t do that so that you could be the end of it. They did it so that you could be the beginning, the beginning of a brave new world, one that is unassailable.
Now be invulnerable in your identity, then be invincible.
THAT is your birthright.
Unassailable.

Palestinian Envoy to the UNHRC Suggests that Jews Should Return to Their Countries of Origin

An older cartoon

Cairo Portal has an article that pretends to be anti-Zionist, but the cover is blown with sections like this (after assertions of Israeli desires to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates):

Zionist ideology includes direct incitement to murder and bloodshed, with no distinction between men, women and children. Killing Muslims and Christians is a religious duty sacred to Jews, to gain the blessing and enter heaven.

There's lots of stuff there, like "The crimes of Mossad against Palestinians includes the killing of insurgents and wiping them out and tracking them to wipe them out in all countries of the world and killing everyone who carries the banner of resistance. Do not forget the killing of Sheikh-ul-Mujahideen martyr Ahmed Yassin as he left the mosque after the performance of dawn prayers and finally they killed President Yasser Arafat poisoned with radioactive polonium.

Felesteen has an article that says that Zionism is a virus, far worse than Zika.

The settlement virus in Palestine is more important to get rid of it, to rid mankind of this virus that has been rampant for years. The duty of the international institutions is to do their part to combat the racist policies of the Zionists completely, just as they are also working on the "Zika" virus. "Zika "could disappear if there are intensified efforts to counter it, but the Zionist virus needs an international effort to confront and uproot it, first and foremost with Arab and Islamic support, it is more important than the alliances that form between now and then, and forget about everything else. The Zionist virus is an important cause of what is happening in the region. Palestine is the mother of Arab issues and it is central, if we can eradicate this cancerous virus in the region then the [Middle East] will be an upright region without the need for wars or alliances to confront the system here or groups there. The Palestinians are continuing their resistance to fight the virus, the third intifada is the way towards that, and we will not wait for a lot of international institutions and other alliances to get rid of the occupation.

Gee, you think that they mean the West Bank and Gaza when they say "occupation"?

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Hasby Award - Best Humor/Satire

The winner for the Best Humor/Satire site Hasby award is....

02/15 Links Pt1: No neo-colonialism for Gaza Strip; Damascus Gate shooter was PA policeman

From Ian:

No neo-colonialism for Gaza Strip

The received wisdom about Gaza and Hamas is always a fascinating tour of illogic.
Why do the people who want to “help” Gaza have so little interest in the input from the people there? In the old days they relied on the “strongman” Dahlan, even as they claimed Hamas benefited electorally from allegations that Fatah was corrupt. The one thing you will never hear from a Gaza “saver” is the concept that perhaps Gazans supported Hamas because of its religious and extremist chauvinist militarist appeal. It’s always because it was “progressive” and “built hospitals” and was part of the global Left, or even because it was supposedly founded and supported by Israel. If it was founded by Israel and it is part of the global Left, then isn’t Israel part of the global left too? No, of course not.
People want to rewrite history so that Israel “gave” Gaza to Hamas. No one wants to remember the war between Hamas and Fatah, the people thrown off buildings, or dragged to death behind motorcycles.
The answer to Gaza’s problems are always some sort of ill-conceived colonization of the place, as if Israel hasn’t done enough for the Strip in that regard.
The fact is Gaza cannot be saved. Its people cannot be turned into something they are not. Hamas is not a progressive movement, it is an extremist, right-wing fundamentalist religious movement. The Strip is caught in a brutal cycle of war with Israel, and Hamas’ relations with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has isolated it further. All of this is a tragedy for civilian life in Gaza.
Why aren’t Gaza’s friends in the Gulf suggesting the Strip look more like their societies? Because they want to use it against Israel? Good-natured “saving” of the Strip won’t help, it has to be confronted as an adult, not an object, and a way must be found to present it with alternatives for the future. Involving Turkey or the Gulf in that discussion would be good. But pretending it’s run by the socialist party and needs re-colonization is not a path forward. It’s not Singapore. It’s Gaza. Get used to it.

Ben-Dror Yemini: The new Palestinian people

MK Anat Berko says there is no such thing as a Palestinian people, and MK Azmi Bishara calls Palestinian nationality 'a colonial invention'. It may be historically true that there once was no such thing as a Palestinian people, but that doesn't mean there isn't one now.
Needless to say, a Palestinian state was not established. Why? There was no occupation. King Hussein of Jordan made it clear during those years that “Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan," and that “Jordan in its two parts is the homeland of all the Palestinians."
Actually, the Six Day War and the Israeli conquest were the biggest catalysts for the development of a separate Palestinian national identity. The fact that there was no Palestinian people in the past does not mean that there is no Palestinian people today. Indeed, it is not clear what the difference is between Jordanians, Palestinians and the Syrians themselves. They have same language, religion, culture, and often shared tribal or familial kinship. But identity is a flexible matter sometimes. In any case, it is self-defined.
Logic says there is no need for a separate Palestinian state. Jordan already exists. And the one-state solution is unworthy of Jews and Palestinians. It is worthy of both banks of the Jordan River, east and west. Palestinian leaders, even the last two decades, have made every effort to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. So Berko is right about the past. At present there is no need to deny Palestinian nationalism, because whoever denies it now will find themselves in a binational state in the future.

PMW: How to properly beat your wife, according to the PA Mufti in Gaza

During a weekly Palestinian Authority TV program on social issues, the Mufti of Gaza Hassan Al-Laham discussed divorce in Islam. He explained that Allah directed men to take four steps to resolve conflicts with one's wife before resorting to divorce:
"Allah said: Warn them [the wives], and separate from them, and hit them, and bring an arbitrator from his family and an arbitrator from her family." [Official PA TV, Feb. 8, 2016]
His essential message is that while "she became your wife, and she is under your command," nonetheless, hitting is to be used only after warning her and separating from her "in the bedroom" has failed to achieve the desired result. And then, when hitting is being used at the proper time, it should not be a severe beating:
"Not hitting that will bring the police, and break her hand and cause bleeding, or hitting that makes the face ugly."
Indeed, the hitting should "be like a joke," even reinforcing "the love and friendship" between the couple:
"This hitting is a kind of reminder that the love and friendship that Allah commanded, is still found between us (i.e., the couple)."

PA Mufti of Gaza explains how to hit your wife: "Not hitting that will bring the police

The Palestinian leadership just said that there will be no negotiations with Israel. And no one will castigate them.

In a striking rejection of relentless international efforts to broker new talks, Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said Monday that the Palestinians will “never” return to direct negotiations with Israel.

Peace talks collapsed in April 2014 and since then, the situation has deteriorated, with the prospects of fresh dialogue appearing more remote than ever. But Malki said that one-on-one talks with Israel were out of the question.

“We will never go back and sit again in a direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations,” Malki told a press conference. He is visiting Japan with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who was due to meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe later Monday.

Malki stressed that a multilateral framework to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is needed and he praised an initiative discussed late last month by France to revive plans for an international conference to end the conflict.

Just imagine the international reaction if an Israeli official says that they have no intention to negotiate again, ever, with Palestinians. And compare it with the utter silence that this assertion gets.

Thanks to years of coddling, the Palestinians now insist that the world impose a solution where they do not have to make any concessions. They just keep saying "no" - and launch a violent uprising every decade or so - because that strategy has helped them reach a better political position than actual pesky negotiations that involve a give and take.

But in case the world needs more of a push, Malki adds a little threat:

And he warned that without international involvement, a vacuum will be left that may end up being filled by the Islamic State jihadist group.

“If Daesh take advantage of lack of any brokers… then of course, they might come and try to fill it,” he said, referring to Islamic State.

“This is very dangerous,” he added.

“If the Americans are giving up and the Europeans don’t have the courage to do anything and Arabs are really worried about their own problems, what do you expect? Extremists around might take over.”

If anyone takes the time to actually think about this threat that a lack of brokers will lead to a takeover of the territories by ISIL, they would realize that this is the best argument to maintain Israel's military presence in those areas!

Malki is also admitting that his people are susceptible to radicalization, meaning that the school curricula and official PA media is doing nothing to combat radical Islam. In fact, they are instrumental in encouraging extremism, because in Arabic the message is all about Al Aqsa and fire and blood.

But clueless reporters and politicians will not think too hard about this and simply accept that Arabs become radical Islamists naturally.

Malki then moves onto the other myth that the media has been feeding:

Malki said the new surge in violence has its roots in the Palestinians’ humiliation and desperation after decades of occupation.

I've debunked this before. In Arabic, there have been only two reasons given for the violence: Jews on the Temple Mount and Jews killing those who try to kill them. That's it. The "humiliation" and "frustration" excuses are only given to gullible Westerners.

Malki pointed to the ongoing Israeli control of the West Bank, which began in 1967, saying Palestinians born under it have seen nothing “but humiliation, soldiers’ check-points, deaths and killing.”

And the establishment of 14 universities, where none existed before 1967.

And a life expectancy rate being raised from 48 to 72.

And the adult literacy rate going up from 88% to 94%, with the youth literacy rate at nearly 100%.

And an infant mortality rate plummeting from 60/1000 to about 15/1000.

And virtually everyone joining the electrical grid.

And the establishment of a "state" recognized by most countries.

And an independent police force.

And an Olympic team.

And international awards for films and art.

But for the purposes of speaking to the Western media, they have had nothing since 1967 besides death and humiliation.

These guys will keep lying and threatening and trying to blackmail the West as long as the West doesn't push back and call them out to be liars. Which will never happen, because you never know how violently they would react when they really are humiliated.

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Last night I met someone who met Josef Mengele

Last night my wife and and I went to a wedding and we took an elderly lady with us who needed a ride. I'll call her Edna.

On the way home she told me a story.

There is a special prayer said on the Sabbath before a new moon, asking for health and peace for the upcoming month. Edna's father (she reflexively says "alav hashalom," may he rest in peace after mentioning him) always told his family that it was very important to go to shul on the last Sabbath of the month in order to make this blessing, saying that the blessing protects them for the coming month. If the prayer is not said, no one knows what will happen.

Hungarian Jews arriving in Auschwitz three days after this story

In May 1944, when Edna was 14, the Jews of her town in Hungary were rounded up and placed in a temporary ghetto. On Saturday, May 20, they were herded out to the courtyard of the synagogue. There were no prayers that day. Instead, they were chased from that courtyard to cattle cars.

Edna said that of course there were no seat in the cattle cars, everyone had to lie on the floor. There were two holes to use as toilets but no privacy.

Three days later they arrived at Auschwitz.

First the males were separated from the females, and then there was the "selection." Edna and her younger sister were holding their mother's hand.

Mengele

Edna says an SS officer, a good looking blonde man, told her to go one way while her mother would go the other. She said she didn't want to leave her mother, and the man - Josef Mengele - used his baton to hit her hand that she was using to hold her mother's hand, and she was forced to let go out of pain. Then she was separated from her mother and sister (her older sister had already been separated.)

That was the last that Edna saw of her mother. Both her parents were murdered on May 23, 1944, the first day of the new month of Sivan.

Edna still associates their deaths with not being able to pray to God for a safe new month the Sabbath beforehand when she was herded from the ghetto.

Edna is one one the few people left alive who had seen pure evil, face to face.

(Edna only told me that her parents were killed on Rosh Chodesh Sivan. I looked up the dates based on that and the history of the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. Mengele was known to use a baton to signal which prisoners would be put to death and which would get a reprieve, as described in Elie Wiesel's Night.)

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It is well known that most international reporters in Israel do not understand Hebrew or Arabic, and as a result most of them lazily copy stories from their favorite English-language local news sources - mostly Haaretz from the Israeli side and Ma'an from the Palestinian side.

Ma'an has a story in both English and Arabic about how Egypt opened up the Rafah border crossings over the weekend.

The English story mostly mirrors the Arabic one which was written first, although it adds some color:

Egyptian Authorities will extended the opening of Rafah crossing for a third day on Monday, the department of borders and crossings in Gaza Strip said.

Egyptian authorities exceptionally opened the crossing Saturday, after 70 consecutive days of closure.

This is the first time Egyptian authorities opened the crossing this year, a rare move given that Egypt has upheld an for the majority of the past three years an Israeli military blockade on the Gaza Strip.

On Sunday, Gaza’s Ministry of Interior spokesman Iyad al-Bazam urged Egypt to extend the opening of the Rafah crossing for a few more days to ease the crisis in Gaza, where more than 25,000 people with urgent needs -- including around 3,500 medical cases -- are registered and waiting to cross.

The ministry said that more than 700 Palestinians were allowed to go through the Rafah crossing on Saturday, and more than 700 others were allowed to come in from Egypt, after being stuck in the country for more than 70 days since the last time the crossing was opened.

Ma'an English added the highlighted part above, tying the Egyptian closure to Gaza with Israel, even though Israel has nothing to do with it.

And it then adds, again in English:

The nine-year Israeli blockade has plunged the Gaza Strip’s more than 1.8 million Palestinians into poverty. The destruction from three Israeli offensives over the past six years and slow reconstruction due to the blockade led the UN in September to warn that Gaza could be “uninhabitable” by 2020.

Ma'an knows that its audience is Westerners, and especially Western reporters. So in English it makes sure to somehow tie Egypt's decision to severely limit Gazan travel and trade to Israel.

Gazans know the truth and they rgularly and bitterly complain about Egypt's treatment of them. But that is muted in English reporting because the meme of Israeli "occupation" and control of Gaza is paramount, and must be emphasized every time Egypt and Gaza are mentioned.

And this propaganda method happens to work quite well. Sure enough, UPI's story about the Rafah crossings adds this:

Gaza is home to about 1.8 million Palestinians blocked from leaving the region due to strict blockades by Israel.

The implication is what the Arabs want the world to believe: that Israel makes the decision and Egypt implements it. Yet it is Egypt that controls that border and Egypt that is blocking Gazans from leaving the region.

There was one other fact about this weekend's opening of Rafah that the Western media didn't mention because it also contradicts the meme of Israeli control. Al Ahram, which is an Egyptian site and therefore not monitored by Western reporters in Israel, mentions "Twenty-four trucks transporting 2,265 tonnes of cement needed for Gaza’s reconstruction crossed the border from Egypt on Saturday."

Really? So Egypt can be a source of construction material for Gaza as well? Is Israel somehow responsible for aid coming from Egypt too? Why won't the Western media say that Egypt can provide building materials to Gaza - and decides not to except for these exceptional and symbolic occasions?

But Western media would have to upend their meme about pure Israeli control of Gaza.. Ma'an won't mention it, so why should Reuters or AP?

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Historians against history and the dogma of anti-Israelism

Yaacov Lozowick, head of Israel's archives, writes:

Last week I was e-mailing back and forth with Prof. Donna Robinson Divine of Smith College about an upcoming academic event. Along the way we detoured into a discussion of the sorts of things one can hear these days at academic conferences. Prof. Divine has given me permission to post the relevant segments of our correspondence for public consumption:

DRD:
The panel on Israeli Archives at the American Historical Association meetings placed a great deal of emphasis on Yishuv period and on the War of Independence with one panelist actually stating that if she and others had access to the documents, they might be able to show that policymakers planned the displacement of Palestinians. Then, she added that if they could prove that a so-called policy of elimination [of the indigenous read Palestinians], they could secure the return of all the refugees in accordance with international law.
YL:
Whoever the panelist was, she was not adhering to the truth. By and large, the documentation of that period is open. All she needs to do is come and use it. And if there's a specific file which has been sealed – here and there, there are such files – she should request of the State Archivist that he look into the matter so as to open it.
The documentation shows very clearly that there was no such policy. Since that's the case, she's reverting to falsehoods. In essence what she's saying is that although the record shows that what she wishes were historically true isn't historically true, she's claiming that the record must be wrong; and the reason the record must be wrong is that the evil Zionists are falsifying it.
DRD:
...From my reading of the field of Middle East Politics [US, England, Canada] the people who embrace this kind of so-called intellectual perspective are the ones gaining tenure and academic prestige. It is probably worse for the academy than for Israel but I am committed to do what I can try to reverse the course.
So, to summarize: it is now acceptable for a panelist at a prestigious academic conference to claim that the lack of documentation of Israeli crimes proves not only that Israel committed the crimes, but that it's being devious and hiding the documentation. This, at a time when the archives are open, the documents in them have been searched exhaustively, and they do not support the thesis the academics wish they would support.

Update: Dr. Divine sends in a comment on the aftermath of her encounter with researchers who blame Israel in spite of, or even because, there isn't any evidence for their thesis. It gets even worse:

DRD: After completing the Archives Panel, I turned to finish another of the panels I developed on the topic of the 'settler colonialist perspective'. I asked some of the very people who embrace this view of Israel--and who charge Israel with denying them or those adopting this view access to relevant archives--to participate in a panel that would interrogate this approach. In fact, with one particular person, I pointed out that there would be archivists at the conference holding out the possibility of determining whether or not Israeli archives are indeed 'open'. The academician who already has charged Israel with denying access to those challenging the country's legitimacy refused my offer because of a strong commitment to the boycott movement. Charge Israel with denying access and then prove it by ever refusing to gain access. Wonderful!

It is one thing if some fringe conspiracy theorists claim that Israel is hiding information in its archives. But these are professional historians whose entire careers are supposedly dedicated to using archives like these to uncover the truth.

Yet their hate is so deep that they choose their facts first and then fit all evidence - or supposed lack of evidence - to fit their bias.

The entire field of historical research is sullied because of these historians who are, quite literally, anti-history. This should be a scandal within the community of historians, but as far as I can tell, this dedication to being against research is not hurting anybody.

Of course, the deranged hate that people have for the Jewish state doesn't stop with the conspiracy theory that any evidence that doesn't support a pre-ordained result must be evidence of a coverup. The charge of "pinkwashing" - also supported by supposedly respected academics - says that evidence that contradicts their thesis of Israeli depravity in fact supports their thesis of such depravity!

At this point, Israel-hate (what I like to call misoziony) has gone way beyond any logic and even any pseudo-logic. It has crossed the line into dogma, where facts simply are not as important than feelings, and feelings of irrational hate for Israel are assumed to be true simply because they are so strong.

It does sound a lot like traditional antisemitism, doesn't it?

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JVP: "The occupation is responsible for climate change"

From the "Jewish Voice for Peace" Boston webpage:

Actually, note the subtle cynicism: they aren't saying directly that Israel is responsible for climate change - they are saying that they made that absurd connection during a "Tu B'shevat seder" so that the idiots that attend their events would draw that conclusion.

Because if climate change - like racism, homophobia, and genocide - is bad, then the Jewish state must be blamed for it!

And it is more cynical that that. This one paragraph proves that to the haters at "Jewish Voice for Peace," Jewish ritual - indeed, Judaism itself - is meaningless except as an excuse to attack the Jewish state.

(h/t Daniel Gordis via Pro Israel Bay Bloggers)

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02/14 Links: The schizophrenia of Palestinian NGO’s; Three Myths About Israel, Exposed

From Ian:

David Collier: The schizophrenia of Palestinian NGO’s

These days, barely an hour goes by without a piece of news about the brutal ‘Israeli occupation’. 1000’s of outlets, whether NGOs, reputable media sources or random blogs, have their output disseminated on social media by an active group of people who simply hate Israel.
With this crowd displaying an insatiable thirst for the gruesome and inhumane, market pressures result in a spiral towards higher quantity and lower quality. With Israel already guilty in their minds, little of the readership care about the veracity of the individual claims. So bad has this become, that any article that fails to hit the ‘high note’ in claims about ‘Israeli war crimes’, does not even get passed around. If you want to make the grade as a writer on the conflict these days, the only way you will get ‘shares’ or ‘retweets’ is by casting aside any worries about accuracy and striving for the ever-more shocking.
As the permanently hungry anti-Israeli crowd swallowed any brutal occupation story they could find, the Palestinian groups that deliver the stories soon realised nobody was questioning their output. Whatever they say, whatever they claim, becomes news, and the tastier the story, the more chance it has of going viral. It has become a virtual feeding frenzy of stories that are for the most part, simply full of lies.
The NGOs operating in Palestinian areas face a particularly complex situation. These aid agencies are in a constant competition for attention, driven by the clamour for donations and funding. In essence the situation has to be dire for them to justify existence, and a failure to continually convince people of the urgency of their cause would result in financial disaster. ‘Palestinians’ have to stay on the front pages.
In the real world, for 68 years, the humanitarian aid agencies have perpetuated the Palestinian suffering. Firstly, by acquiescing to the Arab regimes refusal to push the refugees towards a permanent solution, then by accommodating the ‘no-to-normalisation’ banner. For the last 30 years it has got progressively worse, and almost all of these organisations have become politically active on the Palestinian’s behalf. Staffed on the ground almost exclusively by Palestinians and with nobody worrying about the veracity of the output, many of these NGOs have simply become another mouthpiece for highly politicised and ever-increasingly dubious claims.

PEN Canada ignores Max Blumenthal’s antisemitism and support for terrorism

Under the title “Embattled Truths: Reporting on Gaza with Max Blumenthal,” PEN Canada recently announced on Facebook that on February 24, they will host “acclaimed US journalist Max Blumenthal, author of The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza on the challenges of sifting truth from propaganda when reporting on conflict in the Gaza Strip.”
The announcement further asserts: “Searching for truth within the fog of war is particularly consequential in dispatches from Israel’s occupied territories. Depending on where we get our news, Gaza is either a terrorist haven and a legitimate military target, or a zone of unjustified violence against a captive civilian population.”
So PEN Canada isn’t quite sure what to think of Gaza, but they are apparently sure that Max Blumenthal is the right person to help with “searching for truth.” In an additional post, PEN Canada responded to some critical reactions to their decision to host Blumenthal: “As an organization that advocates for free speech, we are committed to open dialogue. Max Blumenthal has been invited to speak due to his extensive experience as a journalist in Gaza with articles appearing in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, and Al Jazeera English.”
It seems PEN Canada could use some help in their search for truth – and since I have extensively documented Max Blumenthal’s antisemitism and support for terrorism in the past few years, I will try to help out with a short summary of relevant information and links.

Suspect in restaurant machete attack was on FBI’s radar

Police have identified the suspect who was shot and killed following a violent machete attack at a northeast Columbus restaurant.
Police say Mohamed Barry, 30, walked into the Nazareth Restaurant and Deli on North Hamilton Road and attacked four people using a machete. He then fled the scene in a white vehicle.
A police helicopter located the vehicle, and officers were then able to maneuver the suspect off the road. Sgt. Rich Weiner said Barry then attempted to get out of the passenger side of the vehicle, and an officer Tased him with no effect.
When Barry lunged at an officer with a machete and a knife in his hand, Columbus Police Officer John Johnson, a 25-year veteran of the force, fired two shots from his duty weapon, striking and killing Barry.
Law enforcement officials say the FBI was looking at Barry for expressing radical Islamic views four years ago. For an unknown reason, the FBI moved on from him in their investigation.

Jewish woman throwing a grenade

in the Israeli War of Independence

The long Arab-Muslim war against the Jewish people goes on and on... but the Jews are winning.

We need to acknowledge that the conflict is an ongoing expression of Arab-Muslim religious hatred toward Jews as manifested since the time of Muhammad and embedded within the Koran and the Hadiths. Further, it is promoted and prolonged by western-progressive hostility toward Israel, and thus toward Jews, more generally, veiled within profoundly hypocritical notions of social justice and universal human rights.

Some will speak of a semi-historical / semi-mythological Islamic "Golden Age" wherein ascending Islam led the world in science and was amicable toward non-Muslims, including the Jewish minority.

This is false.

Islam, historically, has most often not been friendly toward non-Muslims and their scientific contributions, aside from the advancement of Algebra, have been negligible for many centuries.

The truth is that long before the rise of the Western Enlightenment - long before Galileo pointed his little refracting telescope at Venus and proved the heliocentric view of the solar system - the Islamic world was a civilizational leader.

It conquered vast territories from Christians and Jews and others throughout the Middle East, suppressed those around them, and made a few scientific advances during a period of human stupidity, backwardness, and blindness.

Islam, however, seems to have nowhere to go but down and one major reason for this is the ongoing and violent hatred toward the Jewish minority and all other infidels or apostates or "wrong" kinds of Muslims. Islam, after all, beats on nobody so much as it beats on its own.

What I would argue is that if Islam, in general, and the Islamic states, in particular, would stop harping on the fact that the Jewish people have independence on the small historic Jewish homeland, perhaps Middle Eastern Arabs could begin the process of moving into the modern world. They could - in my fondest imagination - give up old hatreds in favor of cultivating interest in the sciences and arts, building businesses and advancing local economies, bolstering the well-being of the world rather than seeking to tear it down through the Jihad.

{That would be nice.}

But the fact of the matter is that the Jews have basically won the Long Arab War.

The Long Arab War Against the Jews in the Middle East has taken the following phases in its contemporary iteration.

The Phases of the Long Arab War:

Phase 1, 1920 - 1947: Riots and Massacres

Phase 2, November 1947 - April 1948: The Civil War in Palestine

Phase 3, 1948 - 1973: Conventional Warfare

Phase 4, 1964 - Present: The Terror War

Phase 5, 1975 - Present: The Delegitimization Effort

Given the fact that the Jews in that part of the world represent a tiny minority and their Arab-Muslim enemies represent a far larger majority - and given the fact that the EU, the UN, and the United States, under the Obama administration, is hostile to that small minority - it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that the Jewish people are losing the Long War.

The fact of the matter, however, is that the Jews have survived all their historical enemies and the Arab-Muslim world, while a far larger demographic in the Middle East, is a mess. The Muslims of the Middle East suppressed and abused the Jewish minority there, not to mention the beleaguered Christians, from the time of Muhammad until the fall of the Ottoman Empire early in the twentieth-century following World War I. They conquered the Jews and they conquered the entirety of eastern Christendom and now honestly believe that such imperial conquests give them moral rights to the land that they plundered and continue to occupy and harass indigenous populations throughout the area.

However, from that moment until this the indigenous Jews have consolidated their position economically, scientifically, diplomatically, and militarily. Furthermore, they did so while under constant violent pressure from their inhospitable neighbors and while enduring the snide contempt of the European states who generally side with the Arabs against the Jews.

This is a remarkable accomplishment and it should be celebrated.

As has often been remarked, if you were to go back in time and tell a Jew in 1916 that by 2016 a reconstituted Israel would be among the most powerful nations on the planet he would certainly have thought you bonkers.

This is, of course, not to suggest that the long war is over because the Jews have defeated our enemies. We have not, and we will not any time soon, for the simple reason that our numbers are far too few and our enemies are far too many.

Nonetheless, when looking at contemporary Arab-Muslim hostility toward the Jewish people we need to teach them that they are beat.

The sooner that they realize this the better for everyone.

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.

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Somehow, Gaza received enough concrete build a huge auditorium and more

UNRWA brags:

On 4 February 2016, under the supervision of the UNRWA Infrastructure and Camp Improvement Programme (ICIP), the casting work of the cement raft foundation of the two major buildings (Auditorium Building and Faculty of Arts& Human Sciences building) at the new Al-Azhar University campus in Gaza city started. The concrete raft is the largest ever constructed in Gaza to date. 4,600 cubic meters of concrete were used in the casting of the foundation of the auditorium, and another 2,700 cubic metres of concrete for the casting of the foundation of the Arts building; over 180 skilled and unskilled labourers were involved in the casting. A total of six concrete pumps were active simultaneously to make the casting possible, and the casting work lasted for 35 consecutive hours for the Auditorium Building and for 24 consecutive hours for the Faculty of Arts & Human Sciences building. The ICIP engineers took into consideration the expected stormy weather where the rainfall might affect the quality of the concrete. Four teams of engineers from the UNRWA ICIP were constantly monitoring the concrete pouring and the pumps, taking samples of concrete and monitoring the process of mixing concrete in the factories. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, through the Saudi Fund for Development (SFD), generously contributed US$24.1 million for the construction of these two buildings. Given its technical expertise, UNRWA is fulfilling a supervisory role throughout the construction which began in September 2015.

700 tons of steel were also used.

Here's another building at Al Azhar:

(h/t Irene)

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