Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, June 11, 2017

06/11 Links: UN rights chief compares ‘Palestinian suffering’ with Holocaust; Is Ramallah afraid of Wonder Woman?

From Ian:

Hillel Neuer: UN rights chief compares ‘Palestinian suffering’ with Holocaust

UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, a former Jordanian ambassador and member of the royal family, should apologize for profoundly offensive remarks (see below) in which he compared “Palestinian suffering” with the Holocaust, and Palestinian refugee camps with Auschwitz and Buchenwald. The odious analogy was immediately endorsed by Qatar.
While he disingenuously insisted that the two cases were different, and though he made a point of predicting that he would be criticized by those acting ‘mechanically almost’, the fact remains that Mr. Hussein not only unfairly singled out Israel by dedicating the opening part of a major UN speech to the Palestinian situation but repeatedly juxtaposed the alleged suffering of Palestinians at the hands of Israelis with Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis.
Hussein spoke on Tuesday to open the 35th session of the UN Human Rights Council. I took the floor to respond—see below.
While the high commissioner addressed the U.S. Holocaust Museum in 2015, his odious analogy — unless he fully apologizes — renders him unfit to be invited back.

Netanyahu urges UN refugee agency for Palestinians be shut down

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called for the closing of UNRWA, the United Nations’ agency dealing with Palestinian refugees, saying he had already urged the US envoy to the world body to consider pushing for it to be shuttered.
On Sunday, two days after the announcement of a tunnel that was discovered June 1 underneath a UNRWA-run school in Gaza, Netanyahu said he told US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley during her visit to Israel last week that it was time to reconsider the agency’s existence.
“Hamas uses schoolchildren as human shields. This is an enemy we have been fighting for many years and committing a double war crime: On the one hand, they deliberately attack innocent civilians, and on the other hand they also hide behind children,” Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu, who is also foreign minister, said he instructed the Foreign Ministry’s director-general, Yuval Rotem, to file an official complaint at the UN Security Council. On Saturday, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon wrote a letter of complaint to the president of the Security Council.

IsraellyCool: UNRWA’s Terror Tunnel Condemnation Rings Hollow

Leaving aside my incredulity that UNRWA did not suspect anything beforehand – terror tunnel construction tends to make a lot of noise and it is not like UNRWA is not aware of their existence in general – the condemnation, like the tunnels themselves, rings hollow.
Look at the wording again. UNRWA is condemning the violation of their supposed neutrality – the fact the tunnels ran under their premises – and not the general existence of these terror tunnels.
This reminds me of their flacid condemnation when rockets were found on their premises. Again, the condemnation was for the “violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law” and not the existence and use of these rockets against Israeli civilians.
Why won’t UNRWA condemn Hamas for siphoning of money earmarked as aid and using it to construct these tunnels and manufacture the rockets? Surely as a so-called relief agency, they should be outraged the money is being wasted in this way.
Unless….they are not.

From Asharq al-Awsat:

Hamas has rejected a request by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to reveal the fate of Israeli soldiers that have gone missing in the movement-controlled Gaza Strip.

Hamas spokesman Abdul Latif al-Qanou said: “The case of Israeli soldier prisoners is in the hands of the movement and it alone takes decisions over this issue.”

“It will not comply with such demands from the Red Cross,” he added.

The ICRC had called on Hamas to respect it commitments to International Humanitarian Law in regards to its Israeli soldiers. It had demanded that the movement submit a report on their fate.

Head of the ICRC delegation in Israel Jacques de Maio said that regardless if the prisoners were civilians or soldiers, they are all protected by International Humanitarian Law.

The pan-Arab newspaper doesn't mention that the people Hamas are presumably holding alive are not soldiers. They are Israeli civilians Hisham al-Sayed and Avraham Mengistu, both of whom seems to be mentally ill and who sneaked into Gaza. A third man, Jumaa Abu Ghanima, entered Gaza in July 2016, "but there is no further information on him and it is unclear if he was arrested or joined a militant group" according to TOI.

Hamas also commented on the tunnel found under an UNRWA school:

UNRWA said that the existence of the tunnels violates all UN privileges and immunities that are granted to it by International Humanitarian Law.

Hamas for its part rejected the UNRWA statement, saying that the movement is not performing any “resistance operations” near the schools.

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There was a very troubling sentence in the middle of another Haaretz article trying to spin Netanyahu's concessions for peace with Palestinians as somehow being evil:

In the course of negotiations with the Palestinians over the framework document at the beginning of 2014, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that the Obama administration insert a provision stating that Israeli settlers and settlements in the West Bank would be allowed to remain in a future Palestinian state under Palestinian jurisdiction. This is according to a working draft of the document obtained by Haaretz and from conversations with senior Israeli and U.S. officials who were involved in the talks at the time.

The Americans were willing at one point to insert the provision into the document, but ultimately it was removed at Netanyahu’s request due to political pressure from Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett, as well as from several senior members of the prime minister’s Likud party.

The senior Israeli officials noted that Netanyahu had asked the Americans to insert the provision into one of the principles provided in the framework agreement that Kerry was developing. In a draft of the document obtained by Haaretz from the beginning of February 2014, there was a provision stating that Israelis choosing to remain in the State of Palestine would live under Palestinian jurisdiction, without discrimination and with full rights and protections.

The prime minister’s position was the background for a notation in parenthesis stating: “[U.S.] negotiators need to check with PM [Netanyahu] on whether he wants to keep this section. They believe that if so he will push strongly for [keeping the Jewish residents] ‘in place.’ ‘In place’ is inconsistent with U.S. policy and therefore unacceptable to us as well as the Palestinians.”

That is an astonishing sentence. It says that allowing Jews to remain in their homes in Judea and Samaria, under Palestinian rule and jurisdiction, is against US policy!

There is a possibility that the US objections were to the specific term "in place" rather than explicitly saying "in the State of Palestine," but US officials quoted in the article said that the terms were practically the same thing and that Netanyahu wanted the "in-place" formulation for internal political reasons, not as a practical suggestion that the Jews would have any status besides being under Palestinian Arab rule.

If this is true, and the reporting seems sound, then this may be an incredible example where the US State Department policy is officially antisemitic, saying that Jews - not Israelis, but Jews - have no rights to live in the Biblical Jewish homeland.

(h/t Avi B)

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Oh, so THIS is the horrible thing Gal Gadot wrote about Palestinians

I am idly reading an absurd pseudo-intellectual Mondoweiss piece about how terrible and Zionist Wonder Woman is, where the author writes:

During Operation Protective Edge, Gadot, just cast as Wonder Woman, used her new platform to defend direct attacks on civilians, including women and children. Gadot celebrated Israeli propaganda that every such casualty was Hamas’ fault for storing weapons close to them in the most densely populated open-air prison camp on earth. The most frustrating thing to me is how obviously this invalidates Gadot as a feminist icon, and Wonder Woman as well, when the character is brought to life by Gadot. If gender is shared by all racial groups, feminism cannot be Zionist, just as it cannot be neo-Nazi—feminism that doesn’t have an understanding of how it intersects with racial and ethnic oppression is simply a diversification of white supremacy.

I've seen this claim before. But they include a screenshot:

Where, exactly, is Gadot supporting killing civilians? (Later in the essay, the author characterizes Gadot's posts as "openly call[ing] for the death of women in a neighboring state.")

On the contrary, Gadot is - like Wonder Woman - trying to save civilians, and only wants to fight the bad guys!

Furthermore, Gadot's critics are showing that they are the ones who conflate Hamas with ordinary Palestinians - to them, being anti-Hamas is being anti-Palestinian. They are the ones who are implying that all Palestinians are terrorists, not Gadot!

Yes, we live in a world where self-defined "liberals" and "feminists" are more pro-terror than the decidedly anti-liberal and anti-feminist Arabs who have come out strongly against Hamas as a terror group.

It takes a special kind of perversion to take this short Facebook post about defending Israel from terror rockets and to twist it into support for murdering innocent people.

But the anti-Israel side is nothing if not perverted.

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06/10 Links: Dershowitz: Bernie Sanders: Knave or Fool?; Vogue: Israel’s ‘Stunning Beaches’ Have ‘Something for Every Type of Sand Lover’

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Bernie Sanders: Knave or Fool?

It is clear that if Corbyn were anti-black, anti-women, anti-Muslim or anti-gay, Sanders would not have campaigned for him. Does this make him a self-hating Jew? Or does he just not care about anti-Semitism? The answer to that question requires us to look broadly to trends among the hard left of which Sanders is a leader.
Increasingly, the "progressive wing" of the Democratic Party and other self-identifying "progressives," subscribe to the pseudo-academic theory of intersectionality, which holds that all forms of social oppression are inexorably linked. This type of "ideological packaging" has become code for anti-American, anti-Western, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic bigotry. Indeed, those who consider themselves "progressives" – but who are actually repressives – tolerate anti-Semitism as long as it comes from those who espouse other views they approve of. This form of "identity politics" has forced artificial coalitions between causes that have nothing to do with each other except a hatred for those who are "privileged" because they are white, heterosexual, male and especially Jewish.
It is against this backdrop that Sanders's cozying up to bigots such as Corbyn can be understood. Throughout the presidential campaign and in its aftermath, Sanders has given a free pass to those who are anti-Israel – which is often a euphemism for anti-Jewish. Consider, for example Sanders's appointments to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Platform Committee last summer. Seeking to satisfy his radical "Bernie or Bust" support base, Sanders appointed James Zogby and Cornell West -- both of whom have peddled anti-Semitic conspiracy theories throughout their careers. Professor Cornell West -- who was a Sanders surrogate on the campaign trail -- has said that the crimes of the genocidal terrorist group Hamas "pale in the face of the US-supported Israeli slaughters of innocent civilians," and is a strong advocate of trying to eradicate Israel through the vehicle a campaign of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions.
He has also repeatedly accused Israel of killing Palestinian babies -- an allegation that echoes historic attacks on Jews for "blood libel."
Mr. James Zogby of the Arab American Institute once described the motivations behind Israel's interventions in Gaza as "putting the natives back in their place," and has compared the "plight of Palestinians" to the experience of Jews during the Holocaust.

Sanders ‘delighted’ by Corbyn’s strong result in UK election

Former US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has congratulated Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour Party for winning unexpected gains in Britain’s snap general election on Thursday.
“I am delighted to see Labour do so well,” the Independent senator from Vermont said in a Facebook post Saturday.
“All over the world, people are rising up against austerity and massive levels of income and wealth inequality. People in the UK, the US and elsewhere want governments that represent all the people, not just the 1 percent,” Sanders said. “I congratulate Jeremy Corbyn for running a very effective campaign.”
According to a report in the UK’s The Guardian, members of Sanders’ campaign team helped Corbyn in campaigning ahead of the June 8 vote.
A number of Sanders’ campaign aides held training sessions for Labour activists to teach them how to effectively campaign.

‘Corbyn surge’ in London faltered in ‘bagel belt’ suburbs with strong Jewish vote

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has long been a bête noire for the British Jewish community. His anti-Israel activism, combined with the spate of allegations of anti-Semitism in the party on his watch, triggered a visceral reaction.
As the elections results Friday showed a drift back to Labour that cost Theresa May’s Conservative Party its parliamentary majority and left May battered and discredited, British Jews seemed to move sharply in the opposite direction. A poll last week for the Jewish Chronicle had indicated that 77 per cent planed to vote Tory and only 13 per cent Labour, and nothing in the results appeared to contradict those findings.
Corbyn’s surge in support during the campaign – evident as the results came in overnight – was powered by young people. Young Jews, however, remained largely immune to his appeal: the JC poll indicating that less than one-quarter of those aged 18-34 planning to vote Labour.
Given the closeness of the result, Jewish voters, who are concentrated in a small number of highly marginal seats, may potentially have helped preserve May’s premiership.
Early indications had predicted that – in line with its strong performance in the capital – Labour would pull off a number of upset victories in the north London “bagel belt”. Finchley and Golders Green, Hendon and Chipping Barnet were all slated to fall to Corbyn’s party. Finchley and Golders Green – where an estimated one in five voters are Jewish – and Hendon would have been particularly sweet victories for the party. Both were contested by leading lights in the Jewish Labour Movement who had faced criticism within the community for attempting to unseat pro-Israel Tory incumbents.

06/09 Links Pt2: Hamas tunnel discovered underneath UNRWA school; There Were Once Jews Here

From Ian:

UNRWA uncovers Hamas-dug tunnel under school in Gaza

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees uncovered a tunnel belonging to Hamas under a boys’ elementary school in the Gaza Strip, according to a statement released by the organization on Friday.
The tunnel was discovered by workers of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on June 1 under the school, which is part of a compound comprising other schools in the Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip near the city of Deir al-Balah.
The tunnel, between two and three meters underground, passes under the Maghazi Elementary Boys A&B School and the Maghazi Preparatory Boys School, and was built both eastward into the Palestinian enclave and westward toward the security fence with Israel, according to UNRWA.
“The discovery was made during the summer vacation, at a time when the schools are empty, and in the course of work related to the construction of an extension of one of the buildings,” UNRWA said in a statement, adding that the tunnel “has no entry or exit points on the premises nor is it connected to the schools or other buildings in any way.
The agency said it condemns “the existence of such tunnels in the strongest possible terms,” adding that it was “unacceptable that students and staff are placed at risk in such a way.”
“We demand they desist from any activities or conduct that put beneficiaries and staff at risk and undermine the ability of UN staff to provide assistance to Palestine refugees in safety and security,” the agency said.

Hamas member killed, 6 wounded in clashes with IDF soldiers near Gaza border

A Hamas fighter was killed and six were wounded during clashes with IDF troops on Friday near the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip.
“Aeid Jumaa, 35, was killed and six other Palestinians were wounded during clashes along the Gaza border (with Israel) north of Jabalia,” the Hamas-run Interior Ministry’s spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.
The terror group issued a statement saying that Jumaa was one of its members.
The group said he was killed by Israeli gunfire, a charge the IDF could not confirm.
An Israeli army spokeswoman, contacted by AFP, said hundreds of Palestinian demonstrators had burned tires and been throwing stones the length of the security fence between Israel and Gaza.
“Our forces had to arrest suspects to prevent damage to the security fence,” she said, but was unable to confirm the casualties from gunfire.

UK Board of Deputies' '10 Commitments' include Palestinian State

British Jewish leaders urged both candidates for British premiership to support Palestinian statehood and get Jewish votes in return, Israel National News has learned. Israeli members of government, most of whom strongly oppose this request have expressed their displeasure privately.
The Board of Deputies is considered the main representative body of British Jews. Yesterday, the Board distributed an email linking to videos sent to the Jewish community by the two prime-ministerial candidates, Conservative candidate Theresa May and Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The Board’s email explains the video messages were “sent in response to the Board of Deputies'...10 Commitments we have asked all prospective parliamentary candidates to sign up to” - that is, before trying to get the Jewish community's vote.
The “10 commitments” drafted by the Board of Deputies were obtained by Israel National News. They mainly relate to “issues of concern to Jewish voters” such as kashrut, Shabbat observance, anti-Semitism, Holocaust remembrance, faith schools and culturally sensitive youth and social care services.
However, “Commitment 5” insists that the British leaders accommodate their Jewish constituents by advocating for a “viable” Palestinian state.

From Arutz-7:

A Hamas terrorist tunnel was discovered under a school in Gaza run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), Israeli media reported on Friday.

The tunnel was discovered a week and a half ago, according to the reports.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, confirmed the discovery of the tunnel in a post on his Facebook page in Arabic.

“The tunnel was discovered underneath a school for boys in Al-Maazi...It is clear that the entire Arab world understands that it is the Hamas terror organization that destroys Gaza and eliminates any chance of a good future for Gazans,” wrote Mordechai.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon reacted harshly to the revelation of the existence of the terror tunnel.

“This tunnel verifies what we have always know, that the cruelty of Hamas knows no bounds as they use the children of Gaza as human shields. Instead of UN schools serving as centers of learning and education, Hamas has turned them into terror bases for attacks on Israel,” said Ambassador Danon.

COGAT points to the Facebook page of the Maghazi Boys Prep School B in Gaza. The page hasn't been updated since 2014.

The school also had its own UNRWA school webpage, but UNRWA took all of those down after I discovered that they sometime posted antisemitism.

I don't know if UNRWA discovered this or it was discovered some other way. Waiting to hear the statement from UNRWA about this.

UPDATE: UNRWA condemned it, and the condemnation was not bad, mentioning Hamas by name.

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Fatah official admits that Palestinians never abandoned violence

From MEMRI:

Top Fatah Official Nabil Shaath: No Problem with Engaging Simultaneously in Armed Struggle and Diplomatic Efforts

Former chief Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath, who is the Commissioner for International Relations for the Fatah movement and Advisor to President Abbas on Foreign Affairs, said in an interview that he had "never thought that there was any problem with engaging in armed struggle, and at the same time, engaging in political and diplomatic efforts in support of your cause." Speaking on the Palestinian Awda TV channel on May 29, Shaath said that the Palestinians’ right to engage in armed struggle is "indisputable."

Nabil Shaath: "Our cause is just, and our right to engage in armed struggle is indisputable. The Israelis have not come here through negotiations. It is not that they got our permission to come here. They are plunderers who have come here through weapons and killing, attempting to banish… and they succeeded in banishing a large part of our people by force. So our right to engage in armed struggle is indisputable.

Everyone that follows Fatah knows this. But no one reports it.

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06/09 Links Pt1: Palestinians: Crocodile Tears and Terrorism; Glick: Qatar, Trump and double games

From Ian:

Palestinians: Crocodile Tears and Terrorism

Adding to the hypocrisy, Abbas and his PA leadership often point an accusing finger at Israel for killing the terrorists who are carrying out attacks. Instead of condemning the perpetrators, Abbas and the Palestinians regularly accuse Israel of carrying out "extra-judicial killings" of the terrorists. In other words, Palestinian leaders save their condemnation for Israeli soldiers and policemen, for defending themselves and firing at those who come to stab them with knives and axes or try to run them over with their cars.
How would the British or French governments react if someone condemned them for killing the terrorists on the streets of Paris and London?
Has anyone in the West noticed Abbas's double standards in dealing with terrorism against civilians?
But Abbas not only stays silent when his own people mow down Israelis: he names streets and squares after such "heroes." Moreover, he rewards them and their families financially, with the help of American and European taxpayer money.
Perhaps it is time for Westerners to realize that there is no difference between a terrorist who sets out to kill Jews and a terrorist who kills British, French and German nationals. In fact, it has become clear that the terrorists in Europe have copied the tactics of the Palestinians in carrying out stabbings and vehicular and suicide-bombing attacks.
Abbas's crocodile tears are intended to disguise tears of joy that terrorism is alive and well -- certainly when it comes to the Israeli blood that his own people spill in the name of Allah.

Caroline Glick: Qatar, Trump and double games

US President Donald Trump has been attacked by his ubiquitous critics for his apparent about-face on the crisis surrounding Qatar.
In a Twitter post on Tuesday, Trump sided firmly with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the other Sunni states that cut diplomatic ties with Qatar and instituted an air and land blockade of the sheikhdom on Monday.
On Wednesday, Trump said that he hopes to mediate the dispute, more or less parroting the lines adopted by the State Department and the Pentagon which his Twitter posts disputed the day before.
To understand the apparent turnaround and why it is both understandable and probably not an about-face, it is important to understand the forces at play and the stakes involved in the Sunni Arab world’s showdown with Doha.
Arguably, Qatar’s role in undermining the stability of the Islamic world has been second only to Iran’s.
Beginning in the 1995, after the Pars gas field was discovered and quickly rendered Qatar the wealthiest state in the world, the Qatari regime set about undermining the Sunni regimes of the Arab world by among other things, waging a propaganda war against them and against their US ally and by massively funding terrorism.
The Qatari regime established Al Jazeera in 1996.
Despite its frequent denials, the regime has kept tight control on Al Jazeera’s messaging. That messaging has been unchanging since the network’s founding. The pan-Arab satellite station which reaches hundreds of millions of households in the region and worldwide, opposes the US’s allies in the Sunni Arab world. It supports the Muslim Brotherhood and every terrorist group spawned by it. It supports Iran and Hezbollah.
Al Jazeera is viciously anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.

Melanie Phillips: The West’s most fundamental and lethal divide

The Jewish community is not exempt from this madness. The president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jonathan Arkush, this week called on British Muslims to “stand up and be counted.” “Every British mosque should be holding its own protest against terrorism, proclaiming ‘Not in our Name,’” he wrote.
More than 80 people from synagogues and communal organizations as well as unaffiliated individuals promptly signed an open letter accusing Arkush of “fanning the flames of intercommunity hatred.” This despite the fact that he also said the terrorists were “not representative of British Muslims” and that the attacks were “a perversion of Islam.”
“We particularly reject the assertion,” wrote the signatories, “that members of a religious or ethnic group must quickly and publicly denounce any members of that group who act repugnantly. We hope you will remember that this has been used to persecute Jews in living memory. Just as we as Jews have no responsibility for the actions of Jewish terrorist groups, Muslims are not personally responsible for the actions of groups such as ISIS.”
Presumably, this was a reference to the Jewish terrorists of the Irgun and Lehi (the Stern Group) in pre-Israel Palestine. If so, the analogy was singularly inappropriate. The mainstream Zionist leadership at that time not only denounced these Jewish terrorists but actively helped the British hunt them down to kill or jail them.
By contrast, Islamist terrorists are at the extreme end of a continuum of attitudes that themselves pose a threat to Britain. In a 2015 poll of British Muslims, nearly a quarter said Islamic Shari’a law should replace British law in areas with large Muslim populations; 4% – equivalent to more than 100,000 British Muslims – sympathized with suicide bombers; and only one in three would contact the police if that person believed a close contact was involved with jihadists.
While most British Muslims are against violent extremism, their community therefore helps swell the sea in which terrorism swims.
More and more Muslims are now saying they have to tackle this. Yet the Jewish signatories wrote: “We stand with all our Muslim sisters and brothers, and all people of faith and no faith, in love and healing from these atrocities – together.”

From Hamas' Qassam website:

Ezzedeen Al Qassam Brigades mourned, on Wednesday evening, one of its field leaders from Rafah city southern Gaza Strip, who was martyred in an accidental explosion during preparation work for resistance.

The Brigades said in a statement that the Qassam leader Ibrahim Hussein Abu Naja, 51 years, from Rafah, martyred, on Wednesday evening, 07/06/2017 in an accidental explosion.

The Brigades added: "Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades mourns the death of the mujahed, reaffirms the commitment and determination to continue the resistance against the belligerent occupation forces".

Haaretz reports that this was no ordinary Hamas terrorist, but "a senior figure in Hamas' explosives division" who had survive three Israeli assassination attempts.

His funeral was attended by hundreds:

May there be many more such martyrs.

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Today, the second Friday of Ramadan, sees hundreds of thousands of Muslims converging on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest site.

And Israel lets them in.

Israel even allowed over 100 Gazans to enter the compound.

As a point of comparison, Palestinian Muslims, who obsessively count this, say that 2649 "settlers" (plus several hundred police and security officials to protect them) "stormed the Al Aqsa Mosque" during the entire month of May.

Which is the highest number ever. (The numbers were higher because of Jerusalem Day and Yom Haatezmaut.)

Dozens of Jews at the holiest Jewish site in a day is cause for anger. 200,000 Muslims at the holiest Jewish site usurped by Muslims to erase Jewish history is - nothing much.

Maybe Jews should learn to get angry every once in a while.

It is worth mentioning that when the Temple Mount was controlled by Jordan, the numbers of visitors to the site during Ramadan was significantly smaller than today. It is hard to know from newspaper stories at the time but it sounds like perhaps several thousand would pray there, rather than hundreds of thousands seen today.

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The Palestinian Arabs show once again that the entire point of their existence as an official entity in international fora is to purely to bash Israel.

Yesterday was International Oceans Day and the UN is holding a four-day conference with the unwieldy name of "United Nations Conference to Support the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development." in New York.

Celebrities, national leaders and prominent environmentalists and scientists are addressing the conference. Nations are committing to short- and long-term goals.

And when the Palestinian representative to the UN, Riyad Mansour, addressed the conference, he used his time to attack Israel.

After a perfunctory introduction about how important oceans are, Mansour went into his main topic, saying that as a "natural result of the three wars waged by Israel,"Palestinians cannot properly treat their water and are forced to dump sewage into the Mediterranean. He falsely charged Israel with deliberately attacking Gaza's power plant which stops water treatment operations and of preventing crucial wastewater equipment from entering Gaza.

Of course, he said nothing about the real reason of the electricity shortage in Gaza, which is that his Palestinian Authority is refusing to pay for fuel for the power plant and electricity that Israel provides.

Mansour also complained about Israel's naval blockade of the Hamas-controlled terrorist entity in Gaza, saying that fishermen cannot do their jobs and unemployment is increasing, and calling on the UN to pressure Israel.

There is literally not a single international conference that Palestinians participate in that they do not attempt to hijack for their own ends - and their ends are never to positively contribute to the world,. but rather exclusively to attack Israel.

Every single time.

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Israel paid compensation for those killed on the Mavi Marmara.. Turkey never gave their families the money.

Turkish media are talking about the news that the government of Turkey never paid the families the $20 million that Israel gave for compensation for the incident where the Mavi Marmara ship was intercepted in 2010 and 10 people were killed as they were attacking the Israeli paratroopers.

Israel refused to apologize and agreed to pay the money only after there were assurances that there would be no further legal claims.

According to the reports, Turkey never paid the families the money they were due, coming up with various insulting excuses.

Fun stuff!

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06/08 Links Pt2: Why The Jewish Left Laments The Six-Day War; the K.G.B. Started the War That Changed the Middle East

From Ian:

David Collier: ‘The only good Jew is a dead Jew’ (the Suarez – Barkan threshold)

‘The only good Jew is a dead Jew’. A horrific statement not so openly suggested in Europe or the USA in 2017. In reality, this line is actually being propagated in almost every university campus in the west. Yes, it is camouflaged, but do not let that distract us from the sickening message underneath. Let me explain.
Thomas Suarez recently published a work of revisionist history titled ‘State of Terror’. What Suarez did is simple. He engaged in research using the British archives in Kew as a way of proving what he already believed, that Israel is a nasty little state created by nasty people, who did awful things. With a highly distorted personal radar, careful document selection, and an unerring ability to misinterpret intentions, Suarez produced a piece of writing far removed from both historicity and context.

Because therein lies the rub, part of the missing context of the book is the Holocaust.
When I pointed this out on Twitter, I received a response from anti-Zionist Jew and founder of ‘Boycott from within’ Ronnie Barkan:

It is a stock response from the Jewish anti-Zionist camp. Telling me, a Zionist, not to mix Zionism with being Jewish. To add insult to injury, Barkan even called me an antisemite. Perhaps this empty rhetoric plays well to antisemites and anti-Israel activists in 2017, although I find the argument highly offensive. He is, like Suarez, suggesting ‘the only good Jew is a dead Jew’.

Tunisian Court Suspends 'Wonder Woman' Viewings Due To Lawsuit Calling Gal Gadot A 'Champion Zionist'

Tunisia is the latest country to ban the hit movie Wonder Woman because they don't like that the star of the movie is an Israeli.
According to Variety, all viewings of the film in the country were blocked on Monday when Tunisia's Young Lawyers Association filed a lawsuit against Wonder Woman. The association cited the star of the movie, Gal Gadot, as being Israeli, her vocal support for Israel during the 2014 conflict with Hamas, and her prior service in the Israeli military, as reasons to block the movie from being shown in the country. The lawsuit also refers to Gadot as a "champion Zionist."
The Tunisian court suspended any future showings of Wonder Woman until the lawsuit is resolved, including a Wednesday premiere in 3D that 237 people were planning to attend, according to a Facebook event page.
Tunisia is not the only country to suspend viewings of Wonder Woman; Lebanon has banned the film altogether due to pressure from the Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel in Lebanon. Rana Masri, an organization for the group, told the Associated Press that the main reason for their opposition to the movie was the fact that Gadot is Israeli.
"We don’t distinguish between a good Israeli and a bad Israeli," Masi said.

ICRC: Missing Israeli nationals: Hamas must abide by international humanitarian law

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) urges the Hamas authorities to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law to the five Israeli nationals who went missing in Gaza between July 2014 and 2016, and remain unaccounted for.
Missing persons, regardless of their status – fallen or captured soldiers during fighting, or civilians taken captive by an adverse party – are protected by humanitarian law. They and their families must be shown due regard under the law.
"Persons captured alive must be accounted for and treated humanely. Human remains, too, must be handled with dignity, identified and returned to the families concerned," said Jacques de Maio, the head of the ICRC's delegation in Israel and the occupied territories. "These are among the most widely accepted rules of warfare."
The ICRC has consistently reminded the Hamas authorities, at the highest level, of their legal and humanitarian obligations, and told them that intentionally withholding information about missing persons is acting in violation of humanitarian law.

Palestinians join anti-Qatar bandwagon, claim it is pro-Israel

After many Arab nations cut off or downgraded ties with Qatar for its allegedly pro-Iran stance, the Palestinian leaders are jumping on the bandwagon - but with a twist.

An essay by Bakr Abu Bakr was published in many Palestinian news sites yesterday, and also in the official Fatah Facebook page, where it described Qatar as a two-faced, scheming nation with close ties to Israel and terrorist groups in Iraq as well as Hamas. Clearly Mahmoud Abbas' regime is trying to paint itself as a team player but also trying to add an anti-Israel angle while pushing the anti-Hamas narrative as well.

The ironic thing is that Qatar has traditionally tried to stay in everyone's good graces, a tightrope act that is near impossible in the volatile region.

And this essay, which reflects the position of the PA, is doing the same.

Because there is one word missing from this essay: Iran.

The major reason that the Saudis led the anti-Qatar initiative is because of Qatar's ties with Iran. But the PA does not want to antagonize Iran, just like Qatar.

So instead the PA pretends to be gung-ho about being against Qatar.

But the Arab states have noticed and will continue to notice the PA's ambivalent attitude towards Iran, and they are keeping tabs on every statement and omission in how Abbas acts.

Because the PA could easily find itself to be the next Qatar.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

If you haven’t heard about Roy Larner yet, he’s the British football fan that is being called a hero for his actions last week at the Borough Market near London Bridge. When three terrorists entered the Black and Blue Steakhouse waving knives and shouting “Islam! Islam!” Larner charged them, throwing stools and glasses and swinging at them with his fists. Ultimately they left the restaurant, with Larner in pursuit and bleeding from at least 8 stab wounds (he is presently recovering in hospital). He may have saved numerous lives by his actions.

Larner wasn’t the only unarmed civilian or police officer that fought with the terrorists, who killed 7 and injured 48 before they were finally and permanently stopped by armed police. But what seems to have placed Larner in the eye of the media is what he said to the terrorists:

“I took a few steps towards them and said, ‘F*** you, I’m Millwall’. So they started attacking me.”
Mr Larner added: “I stood in front of them trying to fight them off. Everyone else ran to the back.
“I was on my own against all three of them, that’s why I got hurt so much.
“It was just me, trying to grab them with my bare hands and hold on. I was swinging.
“I got stabbed and sliced eight times. They got me in my head, chest and both hands. There was blood everywhere.
“They were saying, ‘Islam, Islam!’. I said again, ‘F*** you, I’m Millwall!’

Millwall is a football club in South London whose fans are known for their pugnacity, a nicer word than “hooliganism,” of which they are sometimes accused.

On Good Morning Britain, presenter Piers Morgan, a fan of rival London club Arsenal, told viewers: “Millwall fans get a very bad rap, a lot of it very deserved, but there are times when you really want a lot of Millwall fans, and that was one of them.”

So, do I think that the solution to Islamic terrorism is to deputize or even arm English football fans? Not necessarily, although civilian response to terrorism has sometimes saved the day here in Israel. But there is an important clue in Larner’s statement to the terrorists.

“I’m Millwall,” he said. Or in other words, I’m from here, standing my ground and protecting my people on my land. Don’t come in here with your knives and your Islam crap, not on my home turf.

Part of what motivated Roy Larner to risk his own life and limb, perhaps in addition to the “four or five pints” he admits to having consumed, was the very basic human drive to defend one’s home and family against foreign invaders; the tribal instinct, so disapproved of by the post-modern John Lennon fans who moved to the back of the restaurant when Roy confronted the terrorists.

As long as Western society tries to suppress the tribal instinct, which provides the emotional drive behind nationalism, patriotism and national solidarity, we will continue to be defeated and humiliated by the Islamic jihad, which is also strongly tribal (although it sees itself as a conqueror rather than a defender).

So-called “populist” leaders, like Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders, Donald Trump and others, have in common an appeal to tribal feelings, regardless of the details of their programs. And one of the reasons people find them attractive at this historical moment is because they see it as a powerful response to the threat of the Islamic jihad against the West.

In order to protect herself from the jihad, Britain (and the rest of Europe and ultimately the US) will have to adopt tribalist policies, such as limiting immigration from significantly different cultures – in this case, Muslim ones – and perhaps expelling the known bad actors among imams, activists and politicians. Maybe the most radical mosques should be closed altogether. The UK should probably arm all of its police officers, too. But in the end, no number of police on the street, armed or not, can prevent terrorism, only respond to it more quickly. Only the elimination of potential terrorists from the population can actually end it.

Here in Israel one often sees T-shirts with nonsensical, silly or embarrassing things written on them in “English.” Today we saw one that made a lot of sense, and I think Roy Larner would agree. It read:

DEFEND YOUR TURF

Have another pint or five, Roy. You’ve certainly earned it.

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06/08 Links Pt1: 50 Years of Palestinian Rejection; Phillips: What must be done to stop terror in Londonistan

From Ian:

Evelyn Gordon: 50 Years of Palestinian Rejection

In other words, there’s one very simple reason why Israel still controls the West Bank: The Palestinians have consistently refused repeated offers to give it to them.
But there’s an important supporting reason as well: Palestinians feel they can get away with serial rejectionism because the world always responds by blaming Israel, as the Obama Administration did.
Addressing the Senate in April 2014, for instance, Kerry famously declared that Israel’s announcement of new construction in Jerusalem had caused the talks to go “poof,” carefully neglecting to mention that by this point, the talks were dead anyway since Abbas had already rejected the administration’s best offer. The excuses administration officials gave Tibon were equally ridiculous. Abbas, they said, was “disappointed” that Netanyahu had delayed releasing some two dozen Palestinian prisoners—as if that were ample grounds for rejecting an offer of statehood. They also said Abbas wasn’t sure Obama could “deliver” Netanyahu. But Netanyahu said yes to the February proposal without being sure Obama could deliver Abbas – which it turns out he couldn’t; why was it unreasonable to expect Abbas to go out on a similar limb?
The problem isn’t just Palestinian rejectionism. It’s that the rest of the world actually encourages this rejectionism by ensuring that the diplomatic price is always paid by Israel, and never the Palestinians themselves. The Palestinians have quite reasonably concluded that they can play this game ad infinitum, until the world eventually pressures Israel to accept even those Palestinian demands that would entail committing national suicide, like the “right of return.”
If the Palestinians actually wanted peace, they’d do a deal regardless of how the rest of the world behaved. If the world behaved differently, the Palestinians might eventually conclude that a deal was in their interests. But as long as neither of these two conditions is met, there’s every reason to think that in another 50 years, we’ll be reading more hand-wringing articles about why Israel still controls the West Bank.

PMW: Abbas appointment of murderer to Fatah Central Committee means salaries to terrorists will not stop

Despite the fact that the Palestinian Authority is being pressured by the international community to stop glorifying murderers and stop paying salaries to terrorists, Abbas and the Fatah Movement recently appointed imprisoned murderer Karim Younes as member of Fatah's Central Committee, as documented by Palestinian Media Watch.
Now Fatah official Jamal Muhaisen has explained that the appointment is in fact a message to all those pressuring the PA, and who call for a stop of the terrorist salaries:
"The value of the decision lies in the fact that it was made at a time when pressures are being applied to [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas to stop the prisoners and Martyrs' salaries (rawatib). The selection of the most veteran prisoner in the prisons [Karim Younes] as a member of the [Fatah] Central Committee is a message to them that they should not think that one day the prisoners or Martyrs' salaries will be stopped."
[Falestinona, the website of Fatah's Information and Culture Commission in Lebanon, May 31, 2017]
Muhaisen, who is also a member of Fatah's Central Committee, justified the salaries, calling the imprisoned terrorists "our pride and the knights of the Palestinian people," and reiterated the Palestinians' claim that international bodies have affirmed the Palestinians' right to use "all means" in the fight against Israel. A term Palestinians interpret to permit the use of violence and terror:
"This is because the decisions of the international bodies permit the Palestinian people and every people in the world to fight with all means (i.e., term used by Palestinians, which also refers to the use of violence) against the occupation, and our prisoners and Martyrs are our pride and the knights of the Palestinian people, and not terrorists."

PMW: Fatah spokesman presents Protocols of the Elders of Zion as authentic document

In an interview on official Palestinian Authority TV, a Fatah spokesman cited the Antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an authentic source followed by Israel. Fatah spokesman Osama Al-Qawasmi stated that The Protocols instructs "the Zionists" to create extreme Islamic religious streams in order to cause internal disputes among the Arabs. This would keep the Arab regimes occupied and prevent them from dealing with important issues like "arming [themselves] against the enemy":
Fatah Spokesman Osama Al-Qawasmi: "The second protocol of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion says: Extremist [Islamic] religious streams must be created, as a complete contrast to the ruling regime [in Arab countries], regardless of which regime it is - be it national, Arab, secular, communist, or Marxist - so that the priorities of these regimes will change in a manner that fits the Zionists. Instead of dealing with health, education, society, and arming [themselves] against the enemy - they will be dealing with internal disputes."
[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, April 16, 2017]
Palestinian Media Watch has exposed that Palestinians present The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an authentic document. In fact, The Protocols is an antisemitic forgery prepared by the Russian secret police describing how Jews allegedly plan to subjugate the world under Jewish rule. It was published in Russia in 1903 and translated into multiple languages. In 1921, The Protocols was conclusively exposed as a false document.

Fatah presents The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as authentic Jewish document

This is worth reading.

Remarks at the Graduate Institute of Geneva on “A Place for Conscience: the Future of the United States in the Human Rights Council”

Ambassador Nikki Haley
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
U.S. Mission to the United Nations
Geneva, Switzerland

June 6, 2017

AS DELIVERED

I’d like to thank the Graduate Institute and for everyone that came today. Before we get started, I think it’s important that we remember the senseless lives that were lost in London. The United States stands strongly with London with these careless acts and we are committed to helping fight terrorism as it continues to go forward.

The first chairman of the United Nations organization dedicated entirely to human rights was a chairwoman.

Eleanor Roosevelt was elected to head the Human Rights Commission when it first met in January, 1947. She was a natural choice. Mrs. Roosevelt was already well known for her heartfelt advocacy for universal human rights.

She was a woman of deep faith. Her nightly prayer asked God to quote, “make us sure of the good we cannot see, and of the hidden good in the world.” Eleanor Roosevelt was an idealist. But she was no pushover.

The first item on the Commission’s agenda was drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. During the debate, the United States and the Soviet Union clashed repeatedly in some of the opening skirmishes of the Cold War.

The Soviet delegate taunted Mrs. Roosevelt: How could the United States call itself a champion of human rights when African Americans were still discriminated against? To which Mrs. Roosevelt acknowledged that yes, the United States still had problems, and progress was being made.

And then she proposed a deal that quieted the Soviet delegate: She said the Soviets could send a delegation to observe the United States – if the United States could do the same to the Soviet Union.

Of course, the Soviets never did and never would give free reign to a U.S. delegation. She was making a point. She was calling out a fellow commission member for using human rights as a cover for its political agenda.

Mrs. Roosevelt’s vision of the Human Rights Commission was bigger than any one country. She saw the Commission as a place for conscience, not politics. She knew that if it was allowed to become a forum for hypocrisy and political point-scoring, it would do more to hurt the cause of human rights than to help it.

My country has a unique beginning, founded on human rights, holding self-evident the truth that all men are created equal with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of course America did not invent these rights – God did. Simply by our birth, human beings are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. These rights belong to all of us. They are not the gift of any government. They cannot legitimately be taken away by any government.

The American idea is that government exists to serve the people, not the other way around. Government should secure our rights, not violate them.

We continue striving to achieve this principle through self-government, using elections and the rule of law to hold our leaders accountable. The inherent dignity of the individual is not secured by words but by actions. This is the standard by which we judge ourselves as a nation – and by which we invite others to judge us as well.

It is this commitment to the equal worth of all human beings that leads the United States to support universal human rights. And of course we are not alone. There are many other nations, both on the Council and off, that affirm universal human rights and act to protect and extend them.

When the Human Rights Council has acted with clarity and integrity, it has advanced the cause of human rights. It has brought the names of prisoners of conscience to international prominence and given voice to the voiceless.

At times, the Council has placed a spotlight on individual country violators and spurred action, including convening emergency sessions to address the war crimes being committed by the Assad regime in Syria. The Council’s Commission of Inquiry on North Korea led to the Security Council action on human rights abuses there.

The Council is at its best when it is calling out human rights violators and abuses, and provoking positive action. It changes lives. It pushes back against the tide of cynicism that is building in our world. And it reassures us that it deserves our continued investment of time and treasure.

But there is a truth that must be acknowledged by anyone who cares about human rights: When the Council fails to act properly – when it fails to act at all – it undermines its own credibility and the cause of human rights. It leaves the most vulnerable to suffer and die. It fuels the cynical belief that countries cannot put aside self-interest and cooperate on behalf of human dignity. It re-enforces our growing suspicion that the Human Rights Council is not a good investment of our time, money, and national prestige.

Tragically, we’ve been down this road before.

In 2005, then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan disbanded the precursor to the Human Rights Council, the Human Rights Commission. He blamed what he called its “credibility deficit.” The description was well-earned.

Many of the world’s worst human rights offenders were elected to the seats on the Commission. They used those positions, not to advance human rights, but to shield themselves from criticism or to criticize others.

In short, the Commission had lost the world’s trust. It had stained and setback the cause of human rights.

These problems were supposed to have been fixed when the new Council was formed. Sadly, the case against the Human Rights Council today looks an awful lot like the case against the discredited Human Rights Commission over a decade ago.

Once again, over half the current member countries fail to meet basic human rights standards as measured by Freedom House.

Countries like Venezuela, Cuba, China, Burundi, and Saudi Arabia occupy positions that obligate them to, in the words of the resolution that created the Human Rights Council, “uphold the highest standards” of human rights. They clearly do not uphold those highest standards.

And once again, as with the disgraced and disbanded Human Rights Commission, the victims of the world’s most egregious human rights violations are too often ignored by the very organization that is supposed to protect them.

In Venezuela, the government has systematically destroyed civil society through arbitrary detention, torture, and blatant violations of freedom of the press and freedom of expression. Children are starving to death. Mothers dig through trash cans to feed their families. This is a crisis that has been 18 years in the making. The Venezuelan people have been robbed of their human rights.

And yet, not once has the Human Rights Council seen fit to condemn Venezuela. Quite the contrary – the Council chose to showcase Venezuela’s work while protestors were being beaten in the streets. Just two years ago, President Maduro was invited to address the Council, just weeks after Venezuela was re-elected as a member.

In Cuba, the government continues to arrest and detain critics and human rights advocates. The government strictly controls the media and severely restricts the Cuban people’s access to the internet. Political prisoners by the thousands continue to sit in Cuban jails. Yet Cuba has never been condemned by the Human Rights Council. It, too, is a member country.

In fact, Cuba uses its membership in the Council as proof that it is a supporter of human rights, instead of a violator that it is. The Cuban deputy foreign minister called Cuba’s 2016 re-election to the Human Rights Council, “irrefutable evidence of Cuba’s historic prestige in the promotion and protection of all human rights for Cubans.”

This is a reversal of the truth that would make George Orwell blush.

The list goes on.

In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine and took over Crimea. This illegal occupation resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and injuries as well as arbitrary detentions. No special meeting of the Human Rights Council was called, and the abuses continue to mount.

Robert Mugabe continues his decades-long campaign of repression in Zimbabwe. Nothing from Geneva. Instead, human rights violators Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea, took advantage of a Council review to commend Mugabe’s so-called “promotion and protection of human rights.”

The Human Rights Council has been given a great responsibility. It has been charged with using the moral power of universal human rights to be the world’s advocate for the most vulnerable among us. Judged by this basic standard, the Human Rights Council has failed.

In case after case, it has been a forum for politics, hypocrisy, and evasion – not the forum for conscience that its founders envisioned. It has become a place for political manipulation, rather than the promotion of universal values. Those who cannot defend themselves turn to this Council for hope but are too often disappointed by inaction.

Once again, the world’s foremost human rights body has tarnished the cause of human rights. The United Nations must now act to reclaim the legitimacy of universal human dignity.

For all of us, this is an urgent ask. Human rights are central to the mission of the United Nations. Not only are they the right thing to do, they’re the smart thing to do.

I dedicated the U.S. presidency of the Security Council in April to making the connection between human rights and peace and security.

This is a cause that is bigger than any one organization. If the Human Rights Council is going to be an organization we entrust to protect and promote human rights, it must change. If it fails to change, then we must pursue the advancement of human rights outside of the Council.

America does not seek to leave the Human Rights Council. We seek to reestablish the Council’s legitimacy.

There are a couple of critically necessary changes.

First, the UN must act to keep the worst human rights abusers from obtaining seats on the Council. As it stands, elections for membership to the Council are over before the voting even begins. Regional blocs nominate slates of pre-determined candidates that never face any competition for votes.

No competition means no scrutiny of candidates’ human rights records. We must change the elections so countries are forced to make the case for membership based on their records, not on their promises.

Selection of members must occur out in the open for all to see. The secret ballot must be replaced with open voting. Countries that are willing to support human rights violators to serve on the Human Rights Council must be willing to show their faces. They know who they are. It’s time for the world to know who they are.

Second, the Council’s Agenda Item Seven must be removed. This, of course, is the scandalous provision that singles out Israel for automatic criticism. There is no legitimate human rights reason for this agenda item to exist. It is the central flaw that turns the Human Rights Council from an organization that can be a force for universal good, into an organization that is overwhelmed by a political agenda.

Since its creation, the Council has passed more than 70 resolutions targeting Israel. It has passed just seven on Iran. This relentless, pathological campaign against a country that actually has a strong human rights record makes a mockery not of Israel, but of the Council itself.

The Council’s effort to create a database designed to shame companies for doing business in Israeli controlled areas is just the latest in this long line of shameful actions.

Blacklisting companies without even looking at their employment practices or their contributions to local empowerment, but rather based entirely on their location in areas of conflict is contrary to the laws of international trade and to any reasonable definition of human rights. It is an attempt to provide an international stamp of approval to the anti-Semitic BDS movement. It must be rejected.

Getting rid of Agenda Item Seven would not give Israel preferential treatment. Claims against Israel could still be brought under Agenda Item Four, just as claims can be brought there against any other country. Rather, removal of Item Seven would put all countries on equal footing.

The Council is no more justified in having a separate agenda item on Israel than it is on having one for the United States, or Canada, or France, or the United Kingdom. More appropriate would be to have an agenda item on North Korea, Iran, and Syria, the world’s leading violators of human rights.

These changes are the minimum necessary to resuscitate the Council as a respected advocate of universal human rights.

For our part, the United States will not sit quietly while this body, supposedly dedicated to human rights, continues to damage the cause of human rights.

In the end, no speech and no structural reforms will save the members of the Human Rights Council from themselves. If they continue to put politics ahead of human rights, they will continue to damage the cause that they supposedly serve.

All those years ago, Mrs. Roosevelt understood this. She was engaged in building an institution to bring the nations of the world together to protect the most vulnerable. But she knew the good she was seeking would not come from that institution, but from the hearts of men and women who would work in it. Every night, she prayed: “Save us from ourselves and show us a vision of a world made new.”

I believe that vision is still achievable. I believe we can come together. I know there are many who share the belief.

The status quo is not acceptable. It is not a place for countries who champion human rights.

I call on all likeminded countries to join in making the Human Rights Council reach its intended purpose.

Let the world be on notice: We will never give up the cause of universal human rights. Whether it’s here, or in other venues, we will continue this fight.

Thank you.

(h/t David G)

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More photos of Muslim neglect of their "third holiest site" in 1967

The Washington Post has a story about a young American reporter in Jerusalem who witnessed Israel's capture of the Temple Mount.

The photos accompanying the article are striking.

The first one shows, as we have noted many times, the weeds sprouting through the plaza in front of the Dome of the Rock that shows how neglected the "Haram al-Sharif" was when Muslims had exclusive control.

The other one compares what a section of the Temple Mount looked like when Israeli soldiers used it to hold some Jordanian soldiers, and compares it to what it looks like today:

At the time, under Muslim rule, is was a bare area. Today, it is filled with grass and trees.

The Washington Post cannot resist some revisionist history in the caption of these two photos:

"Palestinian prisoners of war?" Did they have an army we are not aware of?

And I wonder: What is the fourth holiest site in Islam, and is it overgrown with weeds as well?

I've seen at least three answers to that question: the Ummayad Mosque in Damascus , the Eyup Sultan Mosque in Istanbul and the Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, all of which are/were kept in pristine condition (the Damascus mosque was destroyed in 2013.

Funny how the "third holiest site" was kept in such terrible condition when the fourth, fifth and sixth had been lovingly taken care of.

(h/t Irene)

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