Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 09, 2017

05/09 Links Pt2: Hungry Hungry Hypocrite; Ayaan Hirsi Ali: 'Anti-Semitism Is Back. Because Of Islam'

From Ian:

Marwan Barghouti is hungry no more.
Last month, the Palestinian terrorist currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for his role in planning three attacks that claimed the lives of five civilians, took to the pages of The New York Times to tell the world that he will join with many of his fellow incarcerated terrorists and starve himself in protest for what he described as “Israel’s inhumane system of colonial and military occupation.”
Like so much of Palestinian nationalism, however, Barghouti’s protest turned out to be just a piece of bad theater, lacking any candor, courage, and conviction. Yesterday, Israel’s prison authority released videos that clearly show the allegedly suffering Barghouti enjoying cookies and candy bars in the privacy of his own cell. Talk about a hungry, hungry hypocrite: as soon as he’s done wolfing down the treat, Barghouti rushes to the toilet and flushes away the evidence, like a furtive smoker in an airplane bathroom.
Having gone on a prolonged hunger strike myself some decades ago, I know what forgoing food does to your mind and your body. I know how hard it can be, which is why I’m not at all surprised to learn that Barghouti just didn’t have what it takes to transcend. Men who have no qualms about murdering innocents are not and can never be resilient leaders, just as national movements focused on advertising and exaggerating their victimhood are not and can never be committed to true reconciliation. Barghouti, poetically, is the perfect embodiment of Palestinian officialdom: speaking of virtue to a gullible international audience before retiring to a corner and indulging in vice. Bon appetite, Marwan, and if you’d like some more snacks, Israel’s inhumane system of colonial and military occupation will be happy to provide.

Ben-Dror Yemini: It’s Israel’s duty to expose Barghouti as a crook

Perhaps one day, Marwan Barghouti will lead the Palestinians to a historic compromise. In the meantime, however, he is a Hamas collaborator and an enemy of the possibility to renew the peace process. Weakening him, under the current circumstances, is the right thing to do.
We want peace. We fight for peace. But in the meantime we must remember that we are in a state of war. Not one war, but two wars. One is taking place on the battlefield. Hamas drags us there every few years. This war is being waged on a lower key, both through the knifing and stone-throwing terror attacks and through different other measures targeting Israel nonstop.
The second war is a war on the collective consciousness. A war of demonization. A war that seeks to present Israel as a monster. This war has had quite a lot of achievements.
The jailed terrorists, from Fatah and Hamas, have become full partners in both wars. Some of them try to launch and plan terror attacks from prison. Others try to present themselves as martyrs fighting for “an end to the occupation” or for “liberation.” Every other prisoner tries to present himself as a freedom fighter, and every other prisoner is actually Nelson Mandela. It’s true that they murdered civilians and babies and women and elderly people. And it’s true that when they say “an end to the occupation,” they are referring to Tel Aviv as well. And it’s true that their liberation is sort of like the Islamic State is liberating Iraq and Hamas is liberating Gaza. But in the war on the collective consciousness, they are winning.

Gerald M. Steinberg: Media 'misleading' on Palestinian prisoners

Allegations regarding Israeli treatment of Palestinian prisoners- a group that includes many convicted terrorists guilty of murder, bombings of buses and cafes, and other atrocities- gain international visibility through hunger strikes.
The current hunger strike follows in that tradition, with the participation of members of terrorist organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Islamic Jihad, and Fatah terror groups.
As in previous years, a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) joined the public relations campaign, promoting the hunger strikers while failing to acknowledge the reasons for their jail sentences- conviction for violent crimes.
The NGOs leading this media campaign also support discriminatory BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) against Israel, and have alleged ties to terror groups.

This article from Iran's Abna is notable for its value as short fiction. It certainly fails as propaganda.

It is the trembling curse that hits the Zionist soldiers who are chosen to serve in the occupied Lebanese Kfarshouba Heights and Shebaa Farms.

... Zionist soldiers deployed in the Shebaa Farms live a permanent state of war, considering themselves the loser party at all times due to previous confrontations in the area, which were in favor of the resistance. The Israeli forces know that when resistance fighters decide to attack any post or patrol, or to plant an explosive device anywhere inside the so-called “secure” depth, they succeed most of the times, and the Israeli reaction comes later after counting the casualties and losses.

There is no doubt that such an impression will influence the psychological abilities and the initiative of the occupation forces. Something that the Israeli army has been trying to divert attention from, through raising the dose of its drills, exaggerating the show of force in operating Merkavas and shelling when any doubts emerge that a breach has happened in some place in the occupied farms. Besides, the occupation army has been preceding the shifting and routine movements of its forces by combing the overlooking sites towards the routes that the vehicles shall pass over with medium and heavy submachine guns. This all happens in parallel with unstopping deployment of spy drones and sometimes helicopters, depending on the importance of the moving convoy.

Moreover, Shepherds, who walk with their herds to some areas along the blue line in Shebaa Farms and Kfarshouba Hills, expose a source of concern for the Israeli forces serving in the sites spread along the confrontation line.

The Zionists consider that the shepherds aren’t but monitoring devices for the resistance, no matter whether they are young or old. Therefore, the plan to set ambushes for shepherds is one of the Zionist army’s priorities. And recently the occupation army has intensified its attempts to detain shepherds and kidnap their herds even if this required breaching the blue line, and that what always happens in the Saddaneh, Berket al-Naqqar, Bustra and Jabal al-Shahl. However, the occupation forces often fail to capture the shepherds due to the latter’s experience in escaping after successive Israeli attempts. Occupation soldiers, hence, take revenge by retaining numbers of the cattle to extort the Lebanese side and demand to drive the shepherds away.

As for the dawn and morning fog on the heights and highlands occupied by the Israeli enemy, there is another story. First of which is the nightmare of the resistance men’s ghosts behind the trees and the rocks. The Zionist soldiers protecting their spots chase those ghosts with heavy fire, under a complete curfew all over the occupied territory! Not to mention, they spend hard times with the breakdown of tracking and thermal monitoring devices, as well as lack of vision of cameras, something that prompts the artillery to shell all forests and areas surrounding their spots and military routes until the nightmare is over, to be followed with a nightmare of waiting. It is because the fog would have carried some “undesired guests”!!

The scene repeats almost on a daily basis in the high occupied mountains overlooking the Arkoub villages...

Until the last Zionist soldier is moved out of a land whose people seek to clean it up from the occupation with all possible means, occupation soldiers who desecrate this land will remain a legitimate target, and they will remain terrified, concerned and horrified.

You (Zionist soldiers) shall be waiting for the angels of Rudwan* whenever wind blows… whenever fog reigns… You shall be waiting, until you see their ghosts behind every rock and behind every tree.

*: Rudwan is the nom de guerre of Hezbollah’s senior military commander, Hajj Imad Mughniyeh.

*Who is, of course, dead.

The entire article is a laughable attempt at psy-ops. The only level is succeeds in is how bad it is. Bu tit might be a warning that Hezbollah is up to something.

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A piece of paper with writing on it brought the complexities of my grandfather’s personality, rushing back to me, from beyond the grave. I don’t believe he placed much importance on what he wrote. How could he know that his words, so clearly would make him vivid to me, once more?

I can see him standing, quietly leaning on the window ledge. Looking at his expression, few would be able to conceive the depths of his thoughts. How many.

I always thought of my grandfather, my Saba, as having the soul of a scientist.

Read his words and you will see the soul of a poet.

“From a balcony on the northern edge of Jerusalem, Israel’s Memorial Day begins like many others, the sun splashing on ice-blue sky with improbable color as it thrusts through the haze over the Judean Hills. The traffic in the street below is desultory; today it moves between flag-draped buildings to stop, at a distant signal, for the moment when Israel recalls her dead with quiet mourning and her life with quiet joy.

In the playground of the school across the street the soccer balls and other games are put away for now. A file of children, dressed in their best, unfurl small flags and are marshalled for a ceremony of their own. A loudspeaker reviews the purpose of the day, and the children pace, to music, around the familiar field in unfamiliar dignity.

Fifteen children with fifteen flags:

The moving circle of flags is answer to Hitler, to Mussolini, to Horthy and Petain and Mosley; to all of those who said to their momentary masters, here are the Jews, take them; to the Mufti, Haj Amin el Husseini, to John Glubb’s Arab Legion, and to all the dark legion of others who denied, denied, denied.

Fifteen children with fifteen flags in a very un-military march, circling in the Jerusalem sun: what kind of answer can they be to a world convulsed before they were born? They are an answer, some of them by being born at all, all of them by making their circle where it is, in a world which – too often – still denies them. They are an answer because they are an affirmation.

The children disperse, and now their circle cannot be seen. But it is still there.”

He knew the secret. “It is still there.”

My grandfather was extraordinary. Here was a man who chose the Jewish people - not because he was born into the Nation of Israel, nor out of religious conviction. He did it because he believed in the “American way”. He believed in truth and justice. He believed that the strong should protect the weaker and that freedom means everything.

The conviction that “Jewish blood was worth more than Arab oil” is what brought him to my grandmother and changed his life forever.

He did it for love.

Now it is his “circle” that can no longer been seen. But it is still there.

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05/09 Links Pt1: Jerusalem is holy to Jews, not Muslims; Erdogan calls for Muslims to flood Temple Mount

From Ian:

Jerusalem is holy to Jews, not Muslims

No matter UNESCO, no matter the Islamic world, Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish people.
Jerusalem is the only city in the world in which Jews have formed a majority since the 1880s. Today, Jerusalem, in addition to being home to Judaism’s greatest sanctuaries, is the seat of Israel’s government, the Knesset, the Supreme Court, the National Library and the Hebrew University. Its population is two-thirds Jewish.
It is only under unified Israeli rule since 1967 that the city as a whole has been revitalized, enjoyed stunning growth and also, at last, full freedom of religion for its mosaic of faiths ––precisely what would be threatened by its redivision, as is already obvious in the Christian exodus from Palestinian-controlled Gaza and Bethlehem.
Whatever form a final peace settlement might one day take, there is no morally just or legally sound reason inflate or fabricate Muslim claims while denying Jerusalem’s Jewish primacy and history.
The Trump Administration rightly condemned the UNESCO resolution. It should now defund UN bodies that practice this form of delegitimizing political warfare, starting with UNESCO.
Morton A. Klein is National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). Dr. Daniel Mandel is Director of the ZOA’ s Center for Middle East Policy and author of H.V. Evatt & the Establisment of Israel (Routledge, London, 2004).

Reuters chief slams US Ambassador for desecrating 'Nakba Day'

Newly-appointed US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman is set to arrive in Israel next Monday, beginning his service in the Jewish state a week ahead of President Trump’s first visit to Israel since taking office in January.
On Tuesday, a Twitter account in Friedman’s name confirmed that he would be heading to Israel on May 15th.
“I am arriving in Israel on May 15 to represent the United States as Ambassador to Israel. I hope to work out of Jerusalem very soon!”
The post, which was retweeted by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, appears to be fraudulent and the account fake.
The faux Friedman announcement drew consternation, from at least one senior journalist, who criticized the timing of Friedman’s departure for Israel.
Luke Baker, Israel bureau chief for Reuters, expressed disapproval that Friedman would be beginning his service in the US Embassy in Israel on May 15th, coinciding with “Nakba Day”.

Palestinians Use Deception for Greater Acceptance

While the Fatah-affiliated PA likes to present itself as more moderate than Hamas, its rejection of Israel is essentially the same. "The Fatah Movement never demanded that Hamas recognize Israel," said Fatah Central Committee member and Commissioner of Treasury and Economy Muhammad Shtayyeh, on official Palestinian Authority TV last March. "To this moment, Fatah does not recognize Israel. The topic of recognition of Israel has not been raised in any of Fatah's conferences."
Abbas also didn't let truth get in the way of his breathtakingly false statement, made before Trump and the U.S. media, that the Palestinians "are the only remaining people in the world that still live under occupation." The Tibetans, Kurds, and Cypriots are just a few of the many groups who would disagree.
Trump "raised concerns about the payments to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails who have committed acts of terror," said White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. But a senior PA official rejected the idea as "insane," claiming that PA payments to imprisoned terrorists are like salaries paid to IDF soldiers. Just days before Abbas met Trump, senior Fatah leader Rawhi Fattouh even argued that donor countries should welcome PA payments to terrorists because this practice promotes peace by keeping the Palestinian terrorists from joining "ISIS or any other extremist party."
A few weeks before the Trump-Abbas meeting, the Palestinian Information Center called Tel-Aviv a "settlement" in a tweet, implying that even Israel's commercial capital – considered well within Israel proper by international consensus – should be part of a future Palestine. Josh Block, head of The Israel Project, uncovered the tweet, which was released on Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Palestinian Information Center tweet referred to the "so-called Holocaust."

A few days ago, Noah Pollak wrote that in his meeting with the president Abbas Lies to Trump, Big Time:

There was only one remarkable moment in the otherwise formulaic remarks to the press Wednesday by President Trump and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas: a claim by Abbas so audacious and dishonest that he may have damaged his credibility with the president:

"Mr. President, I affirm to you that we are raising our youth, our children and grandchildren, in a culture of peace."

Abbas and Trump Credit: Whitehouse.gov

Pollak goes on to show that on the contrary, based on his previous statements, Trump is well aware of Abbas's dishonesty.

Let's hope that Trump is also aware of Abbas's deception in rigging negotiations with Israel.

During that same meeting, Abbas Told Trump: Peace Talks Should Resume From Where 2008 Negotiations With Israel Left Off

The Palestinians showed Trump the details of the negotiations with Olmert. “At the time, we presented land swaps of 1.9 percent [of the West Bank] and Olmert offered 6.3 percent, and this is where things ended because Olmert left politics, and we told [Trump] and his staff that the differences are not so great and that is a good starting point for any negotiations on borders, which is a critical issue and which will have implications for all the core issues and the permanent agreement,” said the official.

There are 2 claims made here:

The implied offer to Olmert of land swaps of 1.9% and Olmerts offer of 6.3%.
The breakdown in negotiations was due to Olmert leaving office under scandal

Back in 2011, these same 2 claims were made by Abbas himself, with a slight difference:

Abbas also contended that he and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were "very, very close" to reaching a peace agreement in 2008, before the Israeli leader left office under a cloud of corruption allegations.

"It was a very good opportunity," he said. "If he stayed two, three months, I believe that time we could have concluded an agreement."

He confirmed Olmert's account that the Israeli leader was prepared to withdraw from 93.5 percent of the West Bank. The Palestinians, Abbas added, responded by offering to let Israel retain 1.9 percent of the West Bank.

The difference is that Abbas explicitly states that the Palestinian offer of 1.9% of the land was in response to Olmert's offer, not before.

So on this basis -- Olmert's leaving office early and the Palestinian last counter-offer of 1.9% -- Abbas wants to begin the negotiations on borders from this point and go forward from there.

Abbas, French then-President Sarkozy and Olmert Credit: Israeli Prime Minster's Office

But this suggestion by Abbas is simply not true.

The Abbas version of events is directly contradicted by the Palestine Papers, a collection of confidential documents about the Israeli–Palestinian peace process leaked by Al Jazeera between 23 and 26 January 2011. They were authenticated by Al Jazeera and The Guardian, and a media adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also affirmed their authenticity.

According to those papers, Abbas never presented Olmert with a counter-offer.

Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East has carefully reviewed the "Palestine Papers," which Al Jazeera says are Palestinian Authority documents memorializing a decade of Israeli/Palestinian peace talks. If these documents are authentic, they offer significant clues to one reason why the process has thus far failed.

Sr. Ruth Lautt, O.P., Fair Witness National Director, says "What the documents from the post-Annapolis talks reveal is that members of the respective negotiating teams shared pragmatic talk about borders, Jerusalem and refugees. While there was not complete agreement on core issues, there was hope of reaching a compromise. A 'Palestine Paper' dated August 31, 2008, memorializes Israeli Prime Minister Olmert's peace proposal package. But there is no indication that Palestinian President Abbas ever came back with a counteroffer."

The "Palestine Papers" reflect claims about an alleged counteroffer, but no evidence that one was ever relayed to Olmert. A December 14, 2008 memo shows Saeb Erekat telling Israeli negotiator Udi Deckel that the Palestinian counteroffer had been 1.9%. It appears, however, that 1.9% was a number Palestinian negotiators had been discussing with the Israeli negotiators prior to the Olmert offer. And, as Deckel points out, "discussions on territory" between negotiators do not constitute a leader's response to a comprehensive peace offer.

An internal Palestinian document reveals that Abbas never intended to respond to the offer at his September 16, 2008 meeting with Olmert, which he regarded as merely "ceremonial." A memo drafted in preparation for that meeting states:

In order to avoid the blame game, the President [Abbas] today is going with a positive attitude, where he will ask more questions from Olmert on his offer, and he will tell him that the Palestinians will respond later.
There is no record of a subsequent response from Abbas.

Rev. Thomas Prinz, pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Leesburg, Virginia, notes that "Talk amongst negotiators is very different from an actual peace proposal agreed upon by leaders." [emphasis added]

This version of events, that Abbas did not provide a counter-offer to Olmert is confirmed by none other than Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat himself:

Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Ereqat reveals that PA President Mahmoud 'Abbas refused an offer by the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert to establish an independent Palestinian on an area equal in size to the West Bank and Gaza, with a 6.5% land swap to accommodate the settlement blocs.

Ereqat said that the late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat had instructed him to uphold the Palestinians' full rights, including their right to all the West Bank and Gaza, as well as Jerusalem, 37 kilometers of dead sea coast, 46 kilometers of no man's land between Latrun and Jerusalem, the right of return for the refugees and a safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza. Ereqat added that 'Abbas had given him similar instructions, and emphasized that no Palestinian would give up these rights. If Israel rejects the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, he concluded, it will be left only with the option of a bi-national state. [emphasis added]

Source: Al-Hayat (London), November 17, 2010

Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat.
Credit: Wiki Commons

Abbas is moving the goal posts by trying to talk Trump into starting the talks from a point in time that never existed. If Abbas really is unable to be an honest negotiator, then Trump will have to either have to find a way to pressure Abbas in order to keep him honest, or admit that peace talks at this time are simply not possible.

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In 2012, I reported that Cloudflare, a company that protects websites from denial of service attacks, was protecting Hamas websitesm which appears to be a violation of the US Patriot Act.

EoZ readers created enough of a stir that Reuters interviewed Cloudflare, where they defended their decision on freedom of speech grounds. Cloudflare's CEO, Matthew Prince, claimed that the company wasn't doing anything wrong: "We're not providing material support for anybody. We're not sending money, or helping people arm themselves."

The words "material support" are important, because that is what is prohibited to give to terrorists under the US Patriot Act. But the Patriot Act itself defines what "material support" is:

The term “material support or resources” means any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (1 or more individuals who may be or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials.

The way that Cloudflare works is that all traffic that is meant to go to these websites first goes through Cloudflare servers which decide if it is legitimate or not, and then it gets passed through to the actual website. This means that Cloudflare is providing communications equipment and services, as well as intangible property and facilities in the form of a front end to the target webservers. Their technical support teams may even be considered "personnel" under this definition if they ever work together the webmasters of terrorist organizations.

ProPublica had an article on Cloudflare recently that concentrated on a different topic: Cloudflare would provide personal information of people who complained about various white supremacist organizations to the organizations themselves, which then proceeded to harass the complainants mercilessly.

However, the article also said:

In 2015, the company came under fire from the hacker collective Anonymous for reportedly allowing ISIS propaganda sites on its network. At the time, Prince, the company’s CEO, dismissed the claim as “armchair analysis by kids,” and told Fox Business that the company would not knowingly accept money from a terrorist organization.
[CloudFlare counsel Doug] Kramer, in an interview with ProPublica, reiterated that the company would not accept money from ISIS. But he said that was not for moral or ethical reasons. Rather, he said, Cloudflare did not have dealings with terrorists groups such as ISIS because there are significant and specific laws restricting them from doing so.

The same laws that prohibit Cloudflare from giving services to ISIS are the ones that prohibit it from providing services for Palestinian terror groups.

And Cloudflare protects Hamas website Hamas.ps, the English site of the Al Qassam Brigades as well as the Arabic site, the website of Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine site, and the Nedal Brigades website of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. (Look up the Name Server section of each of the WHOIS links provided to see for yourself that CloudFlare protects these sites.)

All of these are designated foreign terrorist organizations by the US State Department.

The penalty is $50,000 per violation, and arguably every single time someone surfs to a terrorist website and Cloudflare intercepts and inspects the traffic it is a separate violation (a "service") - which would be billions of dollars in fines.

So why has Cloudflare not been fined by the US for what appears to be clear violations of the Patriot Act?

(h/t Ben)

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Pro-Hamas "rabbi" seemingly trying to sneak into Israel from Egypt

David Mivasair is the "rabbi" of a synagogue in Vancouver named Ahavat Olam. Judging from its website, the synagogue has no address outside a post office box and has not planned any events since announcing services last Rosh Hashanah which may or may have not actually occurred. Mivasair seems to make his living doing weddings and teaching kids their bar/bat mitzvah portions.

At one point he was on J-Street's rabbinic council, although I'm not sure he still is. He is active in Jewish Voice for Peace.

He is on the record supporting Hamas rockets to Sderot.

Whenever we read about … I have to say about a puny, ineffective rocket fired into some place like Sderot, something to think about is very likely that very likely the people firing it are the children or grandchildren of people who perhaps once lived in Sderot. But it wasn’t Sderot, it was a Palestinian village that had existed there for centuries that had several hundred people who were forcibly expelled at gunpoint and when the place was empty, then Jews moved in and built a town…

Mivasair also implicitly justified 9/11 by saying that Israel and the US are to blame for radical Islam in critiquing a sermon by another rabbi:

The sermon identifies radical Islam as “the enemy” of our time just as Nazism was so disastrously the enemy three-quarters of a century ago. Further, it says that for Jews not to recognize this today is parallel to Jews in Europe in the 1930's not accepting the reality of the threat posed by the Nazis in their time – which only makes the threat of radical Islam more threatening and largely the fault of those Jews who don't think so.
The writer avoids any mention that both the US and Israel might have done something to elicit such enmity. It is as if it arose spontaneously, a completely irrational aberration in human thinking, with no relationship whatsoever to anything that the USA and Israel have ever done.
On Rosh ha-Shanah, of all days, we need to look at our own failures and misdeeds. ...
... It is not Israel’s mere existence which has led to growing enmity but rather Israel's actions. Similarly, the reader is expected to forget current US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and decades of history, for instance, that the dictatorial regime in Saudi Arabia which produces Wahabi extremists and exports “radical Islam” is itself a direct creation British imperialism at the end of World War I and would not have survived without United States support.

This year, Mivasiair hosted a seder themed around Deir Yassin in a church.

In other words, Mivasair is a disgusting excuse for a human, let alone a Jew or a "rabbi."

Mivasair created a GoFundMe page to raise funds to go to "Palestine" this month, joining a group of Israel-haters in Hebron to protest "50 years of Occupation" with the anti-Israel group called the Center for Jewish Nonviolence whose activities are planned for May 14 – 22.

Yesterday, a week before the "direct actions" in the territories, he flew to the Middle East - but not to Israel.

On his Facebook page he wrote:

In my seat in Egypt Air 996 to Cairo. Announcer welcomes us "as-Salaam aleikum wa-rahmat-Allah wa-birkathu" -- peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessing. We will be in Cairo in 11 hours inshaAllah -- if God wills it.

It appears that Mivasair knows that Israel is cracking down on anti-Israel activists at the airport and is trying to sneak into Israel through the Taba crossing in Egypt instead, hoping that the Israelis aren't looking as hard at that crossing.

I doubt he came up with this idea himself, chances are that many of the planned protesters have come up with this way to sneak in as well.

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Tunisian Nobel Peace Prize winners urge Israel to release murderers. For "peace."

In 2015, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet "for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011".

These noble Nobel winners now have a new cause: to allow terrorist murders to be released, because some of them are on a hunger strike.

They sent a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations saying they want to draw his attention "to the deterioration of the health situation of Palestinian prisoners who are engaged in a hunger strike for the past seventeen days."

"We appeal to you to help mobilize the international community to pressure Israel to release Palestinian sisters and brothers detained illegally in Israeli prisons and to put an end to their suffering and the suffering of their families."

Well, if they actually took their hunger strike seriously, they'd end their suffering soon enough.

Peace doesn't mean the same thing it used to.

(I'm surprised they didn't get Jimmy Carter to join them.)

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05/08 Links Pt2: Deborah Lipstadt: Behind the lies of Holocaust denial; More Lies from the UN

From Ian:

Entire platoon calls commander who claims he beat Palestinians a 'liar'

Former members of a platoon in the IDF's Nahal Brigade who served with Dean Issacharoff, spokesman for the nongovernmental organization Breaking the Silence, which publicly and often anonymously criticizes IDF conduct in Judea and Samaria, are furious with their former comrade over public claims that while serving in the army, he beat a Palestinian he had been sent to arrest while his fellow platoon members watched.
Issacharoff made the allegation on camera at an event hosted by Breaking the Silence, a group whose aim is to collect recorded testimonies of IDF misconduct in Judea and Samaria.
Issacharoff 's former platoon comrades went on record calling his "testimony" an outright lie, and are even threatening to sue him for slander.
On Thursday, the Reservists at the Front organization, which is devoted to countering false or distorted narratives about IDF conduct, posted a video on its Facebook page in which 11 former members of Issacharoff 's platoon, as well as company commander Omri Synar, face the camera -- their full names appearing on screen -- and deny his claims. The video went viral, racking up about 270,000 views and thousands of likes and shares. The post was also translated into English.
"When I saw his testimony, I was just astonished," Synar told Israel Hayom.
"I talked to the war room, the command center, and all the soldiers. Maybe there had been something I hadn't seen. No one understood what he was talking about. I'm willing to take any lie detector test. It never happened. It's a completely made-up story," the company commander said. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Behind the lies of Holocaust denial

"There are facts, there are opinions, and there are lies," says historian Deborah Lipstadt, telling the remarkable story of her research into Holocaust deniers — and their deliberate distortion of history. Lipstadt encourages us all to go on the offensive against those who assault the truth and facts. "Truth is not relative," she says.

Undercover at a secret ‘neo-Nazi’ meeting with Holocaust denier David Irving

Holocaust denier David Irving spoke alongside other anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists at a secret meeting of the “neo-Nazi, white supremacist” London Forum, where it was claimed Auschwitz was “like Disneyland” and that the Holocaust was “gossip”, “propaganda” and a “rumour", The Independent can reveal.
Mr Irving, whose defeat in a libel trial is dramatised in 2017 blockbuster Denial, began by praising the organisers for ensuring there were “only white faces in the audience”.
Fellow speakers delivered anti-Semitic jokes and coded references to Adolf Hitler to a receptive crowd of around 100 at the meeting, which was attended by an undercover reporter.
One attendee told this reporter the murder of MP Jo Cox was “cheery news”. Another claimed there were Jews controlling “all 193 states” and a third said life for African-Americans was “better before the end of slavery”.
Far-right luminaries appearing alongside Mr Irving included Vincent Reynouard, a Frenchman who like Mr Irving has been imprisoned for Holocaust denial; Alison Chabloz, whose anti-Semitic songs have seen her banned from the Edinburgh Fringe; and David Shayler, an MI5 agent turned 9/11 truther who has claimed he is the Messiah.

Those non-indigenous Zionist pigs strike again!

From the Palestinian Authority's official "news" agency, Wafa:

A wild pig attacked on Friday night a 10-year-old child in the town of Yamoun, west of Jenin, causing her injury in her hand, according to local sources.

They said Alaa Houshieh was admitted to hospital after she as bit in her hand by a pig.

Palestinians say Israeli settlers let wild pigs run loose in the fields to attack farmers and villagers as a way to keep them off their land.

The residents, who say they never before had wild pigs in the West Bank until the settlers came there, have urged the Palestinian Authority to help get rid of the wild pigs in their areas, which have become a threat to them, particularly children.

From Baedecker, 1906 " Palestine and Syria with the chief routes through Mesopotamia and Babylonia: handbook for travellers"

From "Palestine," Josiah Conder, 1830:

From Psalms 80:13:

Why hast Thou broken down her fences, so that all they that pass by the way do pluck her? The boar out of the wood doth ravage it, that which moveth in the field feedeth on it.

Yes, the wild boars are more indigenous to the region than....Palestinian Arabs.

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There are a number of NGOs that report on checkpoints that Israel places to protect Israeli citizens from being, you know, murdered. Machsom Watch, B'Tselem, Amnesty, the Al-Quds Center for Israeli and Palestinian Studies, EAPPI and others eagerly watch for alleged human rights abuses at these flashpoints where many Palestinian attacks occur.

Hamas security just issued a statement recommending that all Gaza residents carry their identity cards at all times.

The reason? "The cards would facilitate the passage of citizens through security and traffic barriers."

Meaning, Hamas sets up arbitrary checkpoints throughout Gaza. Not at the border: inside Gaza itself, for whatever reasons.

You know what to do, NGOs who pretend to be concerned about human rights abuses: Ignore Hamas as you always do and pretend that the only terrible checkpoints are the ones that actually, provably save lives.

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05/08 Links Pt1: Abbas's "Culture of Peace"; To Pursue Peace, Stop Rewarding Palestinian Terrorists

From Ian:

The PA's quandary

Lately, there have been numerous reports that U.S. President Donald Trump is demanding that Abbas stop his payments to imprisoned terrorists. It is unlikely he will succeed where the EU has failed. Sources in the EU claim that in recent years, Abbas has cunningly put a billion dollars in donations aside to be used for welfare payments to imprisoned "martyrs" and their relatives. A senior Fatah official, Rawhi Fatthouh, told Europeans who are not well-versed on the topic: "These are innocent civilians who were living peacefully in their homes and were suddenly arrested by Israel. ... Entire families were killed in the 2014 operation [Operation Protective Edge]."
Trump's advisers would be wise to clarify to him that Abbas, the ruler of the "Palestinian entity," governs something of a hybrid between a failed state and a third-world country. In this strange body, the national agenda is dictated to the rulers by imprisoned terrorists. During the great crisis between Fatah and Hamas in 2006, Abbas and former Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal authorized the prisoner leadership to pen the settlement document. Imprisoned terrorists top the lists of donation recipients. Thousands of terrorists -- some would even say tens of thousands, if you include the security forces and "reserves" -- have adopted a policy of "I have earned this with my sacrifice."
Raising the demand that Abbas halt the payments to terrorists and their families is therefore more likely to embarrass the person making the demand than the Palestinian leader himself. Abbas will refuse. He faces no greater threat than the threat of imprisoned terrorists.
In Israel, every home needs a balcony. In the territories, every home needs a prisoner. In the war over the Palestinian street, the one with the most prisoners on his side wins. Abbas could threaten to resign and "hand back the keys," or even flee the region. It would be easier for Abbas to resign and escape than it would be to go down in history as the man who made Palestine a normal country, free of terror and incitement. Abbas would rather refuse Trump than be remembered as the Palestinian leader who forced Hamas to beat its swords into plowshares and made PLO operatives turn their spears into pruning hooks.

PMW: Abbas refuses to stop salaries to terrorists

PA Chairman Abbas and numerous other Palestinian Authority leaders have rejected the demands of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump, and many other governments and legislators to stop the payments of salaries to imprisoned terrorists.
Following the demand made by Israel and just before Abbas' meeting with Trump last week, Director of the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake announced Abbas' "absolute refusal":
"The President [Abbas] emphasized his absolute refusal of the Israeli demands to stop the allowances of the families of the prisoners and Martyrs (Shahids), and emphasized his absolute support for them (i.e., for the payments).'"
[Amad, independent Palestinian news website, April 29, 2017]
There are two recurring Palestinian defenses of the payments. (See additional sources below.) The first is that the prisoners are not terrorists but "freedom fighters" and therefore rightfully are being rewarded. The second claim is that the payments are actually "social welfare for the families," and therefore not a reward for terror. Both of these claims are false.

Who's telling the truth, Abbas or Netanyahu?

Palestinians: Abbas's "Culture of Peace"

Thanks to Abbas's falsehoods, his media continues to this day dishonestly to talk about "Jewish invaders and settlers storming" Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. This and this alone is the source of the knife and car-ramming attacks against Israelis.
Perhaps by a "culture of peace" Abbas means calling -- as he and his top officials regularly do -- Israel an apartheid and racist state. Or maybe "culture of peace" means calling all Jews "occupiers" and "colonists" -- or denouncing and threatening Palestinian children who play soccer with Israeli kids. Or naming schools and electoral lists after convicted murderers?
Under Abbas, anti-Israel incitement and indoctrination is a business that has expanded exponentially. It has, in fact, grown to the point that a new generation has been raised on the glorification of jihadists -- a generation impatient to draw yet more Jewish blood. If this is Abbas's "culture of peace," one has to wonder what he would consider a culture of war?

Elder summarized an interesting article that talked about how societal norms change not due to decisions made by the majority, but as an accommodation to an inflexible minority.

This phenomenon can be thought of in economic terms. For example, the fact that most commercial beverages are kosher is not because that choice was forced or imposed upon the drink industry by the Orthodox. Rather, the fact that those who don’t keep kosher wouldn’t care (or even notice) whether the beverages they drink are kosher or not means going 100% kosher gives a beverage manufacturer access to 100% of the market without the cost of creating and maintaining separate product lines.

This idea can also be thought about in light of evolutionary theory. For instance, which religion is likely to have more staying power in terms of natural selection: one that is indifferent to (or even encourages) members to explore alternatives, or one that exacts a high price (up to and including death) on those who leave he faith?

There are some confounding variables which prevent this idea from morphing into a theory of inevitability. For instance, a faith that is intolerant to apostates might apply that term to people within the faith who stray from orthodoxy, leading to the kind of population-reducing religious civil wars we’ve seen throughout history. But the theory does demonstrate the power an intransigent and even irrational minority can have over a culture – for good or for ill.

I’d like to explore the ill side by looking at the concept of the BDShole – you know who I’m talking about – in light of a book I read a while back called Assholes: A Theory by philosopher Aaron James. Behind the amusing title is an idea of a unique type of unpleasant person – the asshole – which is distinct from the jerk, the shmuck or other types associated with rude or unpleasant behavior. For the asshole (quoting from James) uniquely combines the following characteristics:

1. He allows himself to enjoy special advantages and does so systemically.

2. He does this out of an entrenched sense of entitlement.

3. He is immunized by his sense of entitlement against the complaints of other people.

As an aside, James prefers “he” in the belief that the majority of assholes are male (which he explores from a sociological perspective), although in the case of BDSholes I think it’s safe to say this is a gender-neutral term.

If you buy into James’ descriptive list, you can see why the asshole’s behavior is particularly infuriating. For a jerk cutting into a line in front of you because he’s in a hurry is annoying. But when an asshole does the same thing, he (or she) is informing everyone they cut in front of that they do not matter – a message all of us react to with anger and resentment. This might explain why we might fight with or avoid the asshole, even if we forgive a rude friend for the same misbehaviors.

Looking at the BDSholes behavior in light of James’ three characteristics, consider a phenomenon discussed frequently on this site: the fact that BDS advocates (and anti-Israel activists generally) demand we take them seriously as human rights activists and insist we respond to their accusations (usually illustrated with bloody photographs) of Israeli “atrocities” in the name of human dignity and justice.

But when confronted by the fact that the Palestinians and their Arab nation-state supporters are guilty of these same crimes a hundred fold, the BDSer becomes angry – even furious - ignoring any appeal to the same humane values they insist we use when considering their accusations.

This behavior makes sense, however, in light of James’ description of the asshole. For the BDShole insists that title of human-rights champion as well as the vocabulary of justice and virtue belongs exclusively to them, and does so in a consistent (actually permanent) manner. The BDShole does so out of a sense of entitlement that they, and they alone, are part of an all-seeing vanguard that understands the world in ways all others do not. And this entitlement allows them to say and do whatever they like, whenever they want to, despite the harm their words and actions routinely cause others.

Why would the boycotters cause mayhem and misery on campus after campus, church after church, civic organization after civic organization for paltry real-world political gain? Why would the coopt every campaign and organization genuinely dedicated to human rights, decimating those institutions’ ability to actually fight on behalf of the poor and weak, just to use them as weapons to harm their political foes? What are they even thinking when they scream their heads off at the mere mention of the violence and misogyny and bigotry of those with whom they are allied?

It is because they systematically assign to themselves the privilege of defining both themselves and others out of a fantasy-driven sense of entitlement which immunizes them against any and all criticism.

In short, they are assholes. And if the general tone on campus is any indication, other political groups have been taking notes about the power such assholiness has over others and are starting to act upon what they’ve written down.

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B'Tselem writes in a January backgrounder:

Israel prevents the repair and restoration of the power station it bombed in 2006, keeping it from operating at full capacity.

The people who run the Gaza power plant disagree.

From the Palestine Electric Company 2016 Report:

Palestine Electric Company was invited to participate in an open meeting held in Gaza by the Palestinian Institute of Communication and Development, titled “ The facts behind the electricity crisis in Gaza strip” on 8 March 2017, which brought together all parties interested in inquiring about any aspect related to the power plant’s technical performance, government agreements, signed contracts, company vision and goals and financial matters.

The purpose of this important meeting was to clarify any matter that has been mishandled by the local media in recent affairs amidst many unjustified claims. Palestinian press and media were invited to record and take notes of the happenings.

PEC’s Executive Managing Director was happy to answer all questions along with the power plant’s managers of the different departments. Palestine Electric Company has always advocated full transparency in all its affairs from inception to date.

The following are the main points that were highlighted and discussed:
[...]
- The clarification that the power plant is capable of generating the full capacity of 140MW if fuel is available.
[...]
- The company is very vigilant in carrying out the necessary maintenance work on a regular basis to ensure the continuity and peak performance of the power plant at all times.

The report says that the power plant has been able to provide its full capacity since February 2015. Not half capacity, as Gisha and other NGOs insist - full capacity.

Whether Gaza's electricity infrastructure can handle the full 140 MW is a different question. It is also unclear whether the fuel tank damaged by an errant Israeli shell in July 2014 has been fully repaired. But all of the media and NGOs that claim that Israel is to blame for the power plant not operating at full capacity are, quite simply, lying. The only real limitation, with the report makes quite clear, is lack of fuel, and Israel pumps all the fuel that is paid for (which is at the moment, zero, because of infighting between Hamas and Fatah.)

B'Tselem and Gisha, not to mention the numerous other NGOs and media that depend on these biased sources, are not telling the truth - because they want everything to be blamed on Israel.

(h/t Irene)

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From AFP, in its article on the video footage of Marwan Barghouti eating cookies during the hunger strike that he pretends to lead:

Some 850,000 Palestinians have been incarcerated since the Israel's occupation of their territories 50 years ago, Palestinian leaders say.

Palestinian leaders usually say that between 850,000 and 1 million Palestinians have been "detained" or "arrested" since 1967. (Sometimes they slip and say "imprisoned" as well.)

Those numbers are lies. I have never found any actual study that claims to count anything close to that many people arrested; on the contrary, Palestinian NGOs who actually keep track of arrests and detentions count only several thousand a year at most (and some of those are suspect.)

As far as I can tell, the number of pretend arrests has been inflated over the years with the reported total Palestinian population so that the propaganda NGOs can consistently claim that 20% of all Palestinians, and 40% of all Palestinian men, have been arrested. (See Addameer from 2004 2008 and 2015 reporting that exact ratio with numbers of 650,000, 700,000 and 800,000.)

AFP is going further than most of the bogus Palestinian statistics, however. It claims that there have been 850,000 people incarcerated, not just those arrested or "detained" as the lying Palestinian NGOs usually say.

It would be bad enough if AFP just parroted easily debunkable statistics without comment. But in this case they are creating their own!

This is quite literally fake news.

(h/t Yair)

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How are terrorists treated in Israeli prison?

COGAT has a backgrounder on how Israel treats convicted terrorists and other political prisoners.

Security prisoners in Israel are entitled to a number of basic rights, as well as receiving additional benefits. Under the basic conditions, inmates are entitled to meet with an attorney (within a professional framework), receive medical treatment, religious rights, basic living conditions (such as hot water, showers and sanitation), proper ventilation and electric infrastructure. They also receive regular visits from the Red Cross and education as well.

Apart from these basic conditions, security prisoners in Israel's are entitled to receive newspapers, send and receive letters and read and keep their own books. Prisoners are even permitted to buy goods from the prison's canteen, which is run by the inmates themselves. If that is not enough,relatives of prisoners can deposit money for them at the post office's bank. As a part of the living conditions, prisoners receive family visitations, television watching hours and even electrical appliances, such as kettles and mosquito killers. On top of it all, many security prisoners receive monthly salaries, which can sometimes reach up to 12,000 NIS a month, from the Palestinian Authority for carrying out their murderous crimes. COGAT recently posted a report describing the funding by the Palestinian National Fund to Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails. This report can be found here.

Using this information, it can be determined that it is better to be behind Israeli prison bars than it is to be in the streets of Hamas controlled Gaza. Israel grants all these rights to prisoners who, more often than not, attempt even from their prison cells to carry out attacks against Israel's citizens.

COGAT adds that of the 6,100 Arab security prisoners, fully one third of them were directly involved in murdering Israelis.

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Liberal rabbis, defending Sarsour, say terrorist Rasmea Odeh may be innocent

The New York Daily News has an op-ed by rabbis Ellen Lippman and Barat Ellman, fully supporting Linda Sarsour's activities and defending her from accusations of antisemitism and supporting terror.

How they treat and downplay the most damning piece of evidence of Sarsour's support for murderers shows how intellectually dishonest Sarsour's supporters are:

Still others point to her friendship with and support of Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted of involvement in a 1970 supermarket bombing in Israel that killed two people. They ignore Odeh’s claim that she was tortured and coerced into confessing guilt, a contention worth exploring.

This is simply disgusting.

There is overwhelming evidence of Odeh's guilt, not the least from her friend bragging about it in a film that is sympathetic to Palestinian terrorists..

There is also overwhelming evidence that Odeh was not tortured, as she confessed only one day after her arrest, not after "25 days of torture" as she claims.

Legal Insurrection has the entire story of Odeh in great detail, and no one can credibly claim that she is not a terrorist after reading that. She herself admits another attempted terrorist bombing, of the British Consulate.

Lippman and Ellman care more about supporting those who would destroy Israel than the truth. More sickeningly, they give credibility to proven terrorists over justice system of the State of Israel, whose trial of Odeh was transparent and fair, even according to the ICRC.

Sarsour is a supporter of Odeh, and therefore a supporter of terror. This is to be expected.

But Lippman and Ellman are more perverse, They are Jews who are willing to spit on the memories of Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner, the two people Odeh murdered in the 1969 supermarket attack, in order to show support for a person who supports terror (and Shari'a law, and the destruction of Israel, and who claims that feminists cannot be Zionist...)

These "rabbis" don't give a damn about the facts of the case. They will support their anti-Israel friend no matter what, and the evidence that she explicitly supports a proven and convicted terrorist - who has admitted belonging to a terror group and the attempted British Consulate bombing - is just something to be swatted away with an airy "oh, maybe she's innocent, the evil Israelis probably tortured her into confession" - an accusation with no merit or an iota of proof.

They are beneath contempt.

Joffe and Kanner

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