Monday, January 01, 2018

01/01 Links Pt1: Murderers of 179 Israelis honored by Fatah; The Regime Chants "Death to America", Iranians Chant "Death to Mullahs"

From Ian:
PMW: Murderers of 179 Israelis honored by Fatah including 4 female suicide bombers
The official Facebook page of Abbas' Fatah Movement celebrated Fatah's 53rd anniversary by glorifying eight terrorist murderers from its ranks, four of them female suicide bombers. Fatah posted photos of the killers with the same text and logo on Dec. 30, 2017:

"The Palestinian National Liberation Movement - Fatah
Mobilization and Organization Commission - Communications Office
The 53rd anniversary of the outbreak of the Palestinian revolution"

The following are the photos of the terrorist murderers posted on Fatah's official Facebook page, with PMW explanatory notes:

Khalil Al-Wazir - Abu Jihad - former head of the PLO's military wing, was responsible for the murder of at least 125 Israelis, according to the PA's news agency Wafa.
Text:
"Heroic Martyr (Shahid)
Fatah Movement Central Committee member,
Khalil Al-Wazir 'Abu Jihad'"

The number "53" represents the 53rd anniversary of the "Launch" of Fatah. In the upper right corner is the Fatah logo that includes a grenade, crossed rifles, and the PA map of "Palestine" that presents all of Israel together with the PA areas as "Palestine".
JPost Editorial: Support the Iranian people
There was a time not so long ago when Israel and Iran were allies. And if one day the Iranian political leadership will go, there is no reason why Israel and Iran cannot once again collaborate.

A free, democratic, and independent Iran would give full expression – not only to the richness of Persian culture, one of the oldest on the planet – but could also tap into the extraordinary talents and energies of this remarkable people. Imagine the synergies of combining Israeli and Iranian abilities.

The only way there is even an outside chance of this happening, however, is if the US under Trump’s leadership, along with other nations, make it clear to Iran that they will not tolerate continued repression of the Iranian people.

As part of restoring the deterrence lost during the Obama era, the US should meet every case of repression with clear consequences, whether in the form of renewed sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or the curtailing of imports, or the suspension of business ties.

You might not be able to tell by reading leading newspapers or watching the major TV news outlets, but we could be witnessing unprecedented signs of change in Iran. World leaders should, through both words and deeds, take advantage of this propitious time.
The Regime Chants "Death to America", Iranians Chant "Death to Mullahs"
Now, people are demanding not just limited reforms but regime change. After almost four decades of living under a theocracy -- with Islamist mullahs controlling them, rampant corruption, and the regime's persistent dissemination of propaganda -- the people have reached the boiling point. The government has been doing all it can to stoke the flames of hatred, but has been trying to deflect it to "Death to America" and "Death to Israel".

Protesters, risking their lives, have been chanting, "Death to Khamenei" -- a serious crime according to the clergy, and punishable, according to the Sharia law of the regime, with death.

People are also chanting, "Death to Rouhani", "Shame on you Khamenei, step down from power", "Death to the Dictator" and "Death to the Islamic Republic". Protesters are tearing down the banners of Iran's Supreme leaders, Khomeini and Khamenei.

Chants being heard all over the nation are, "Forget about Palestine, forget about Gaza, think about us", "Death to Hezbollah", "The people live like beggars / [Khamenei] lives like a God," and "Leave Syria alone, think about us instead".

The outcry leaves no question about the needs of the people, and the real voice of Iran. Demonstrators are making a clear distinction between the Iranian people's desired policies and those being carried out by the regime. All political and economic indications are that protests in Iran will continue to grow.

The Trump administration in the United States is taking the right side by supporting the Iranian people; they are the principal victims of the Iranian regime and its Islamist agenda.

  • Monday, January 01, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon

Haaretz shows once again what poor journalism is, believing Kuwaiti paper with no credibility (update)

From Haaretz:
Washington gave Israel a green light to assassinate Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, the overseas arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported on Monday.

Al-Jarida, considered an Israeli mouthpiece, quoted a source in Jerusalem as saying that "there is an American-Israeli agreement" that Soleimani is a "threat to the two countries' interests in the region."

The agreement between Israel and the United States, according to the report, comes three years after Washington thwarted an Israeli attempt to kill the general.

The report says Israel was "on the verge" of assassinating Soleimani three years ago, near Damascus, but the United States warned the Iranian leadership of the plan, revealing that Israel was closely tracking the Iranian general.

The incident, the report said, "sparked a sharp disagreement between the Israeli and American security and intelligence apparatuses regarding the issue."

I've looked at al-Jarida over the years, and not one of its spectacular scoops that have been picked up by mainstream media has been verified.

In 2012, a foiled assassination plot against Ehud Barak in Singapore.
In 2015, it reported that the US threatened to shoot down Israeli planes en route to bomb Iran.
It reported Gilad Shalit about to be released in 2009, two years before it happened.
It claimed Israel was about to bomb Iran in 2009.
It reported other Israeli assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas figures back in 2008.
It claimed to have had the first interview with  Egyptian president Sisi- ahead of any Egyptian media! (The interview was fiction and Egypt denied any such interview.)

Who considers Al Jarida to be an Israeli mouthpiece? Why would any Israeli want to leak information to an obscure Kuwaiti paper instead of one in Tel Aviv or the US? Why are Kuwaiti reporters, of all people, supposedly so well connected?

This is lazy, unethical journalism by Haaretz (and others have done the same with Al Jarida.)

Reporting on a story by another paper with no credibility isn't reporting. It is spreading lies.

UPDATE: I forgot that this "Israeli mouthpiece" reported in 2016 that "Jews are the biggest terrorists in history."

Maybe that's why Haaretz finds them credible.

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  • Monday, January 01, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon

Newest outrage! Jews performing "SILENT Talmudic rituals" at "Al Aqsa"


Here's a new one.

 A company of ultra-extremist settlers, on Sunday, conducted silent Talmudic rituals in the closed section of Bab al-Rahma, located between the door of the tribes and the Marwani Mosque, inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

What is the difference between silent rituals and doing nothing?

Silent rituals make headlines in the Arab media! (I saw at least 6 stories about this.)

The more interesting part is that these "rituals" supposedly happened at  Bab al-Rahma, which is a building that Israel closed off this year because it was a Hamas stronghold.   If Jews are really allowed to visit the building while Muslims cannot, this might be a bigger story....

I believe this building abuts one of the southern gates of the Temple Mount.


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Palestinians really get upset when archaeology shows Jews controlled Jerusalem (update)


Haaretz reports:

A fantastically preserved seal impression made by the biblical Governor of Jerusalem during the First Temple era has been found by archaeologists where it fell 2,700 years ago.

Many dozens of seal impressions and seals themselves have been found in ancient Jerusalem, including in this area by the Temple Mount. Also, several seal impressions of the Jerusalem governor ("sar ha'ir"), who was the highest-ranking officer in  the city, have been making the rounds in the black market, Dr. Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah told Haaretz.

But this lump of baked clay, all of 1.3 by 1.5 centimeters in size and just over two millimeters thick, is unique in being of unquestionable provenance.

"Ours is special because this was the first time the seal of the Governor of the City of Jerusalem itself was found in the right place," Weksler-Bdolah says.

The upper part of the governor's seal impression shows two standing figures facing each other, though their potential identities are obscure, as their heads are depicted as dots, with no special features. The two are garbed in a striped, knee-length garment, say Ornan and Sass.

 The lower part has bears the inscription in ancient Hebrew script "sari'r" which the archaeologists are confident is ancient Hebrew for "sar ha'ir" or "governor of the city." Typical of the time, there is no space between the words.
The Governor of Jerusalem is mentioned twice in Hebrew Scripture, once in 2 Kings 23:7.

The Palestinian Arab Ma'an News Agency, which is touted as independent and objective, reports the story this way in Arabic:
Continuing the attempts of the Israeli occupation to write an imaginary history of its control over the city of Jerusalem, it continues to talk about the artificial history of  the temple and what it calls "its ancient history" in the city.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman for the Arab media, Ophir Gendelman, published photographs of relics that the Israeli Antiquities Authority allegedly found in excavations near the Al-Buraq Wall. The occupation claims that they confirm their "ancient history" in the city, and that the seals and artifacts date back to the period of the "First Temple"  2,700 years ago and to one of the "rulers of Jerusalem" mentioned in the Torah.
The article proves again that Palestinian media isn't objective. It is propaganda. 

The idea that Jews controlled Jerusalem, which Muslims freely admitted until recently, is now forbidden to be said. Because politics and hate of Israel is more important than facts or history. 

Whether Ma'an writes this way out of fear of repercussions if they reported the story accurately, or whether it simply regards itself as a propaganda arm for Palestinian anti-Israel narrative, is not important. What is important is that the world needs to understand that even "objective" Palestinian media is anything but,  that lying comes easily to them, and that they will not report anything that violates Palestinian political correctness. History and facts be damned. 

If you want to laugh, read how Ma'an describes itself:
 Ma'an News Agency takes the utmost neutrality in its news editorial policy, aimed at facilitating access to information and promoting freedom of opinion and pluralism in Palestine.
UPDATE: To give an idea of how much the official rules of propaganda must be adhered to - Palestinian Christians know that Jerusalem was a Jewish city and that the Temple was there, it is in their scriptures. Yet not once have I ever seen a Palestinian Christian denounce official Palestinian Temple-denial.

Regular Palestinians know what they are allowed to say to the media and to Westerners.


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  • Monday, January 01, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon

82% of Palestinians want to cancel Oslo. Goodbye, Palestinian Authority!


Palestine Today reports about a new poll of Palestinian Arabs where it is claimed that 81.8% of them want to cancel the Oslo Accords.

They probably aren't thinking this through.

The Palestinian Authority only exists because of Oslo. The autonomy they have in Areas A and B only exist because of Oslo.

Without Oslo, they all go back to being under Israeli control. There is no "State of Palestine."

And there are no legal claims to any territory.

Mahmoud Abbas reverts to the head of Fatah and the PLO, but no longer would have any territory, any police, any international aid for his budget.

This doesn't sound like it would be so bad.




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Sunday, December 31, 2017

  • Sunday, December 31, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

The differences between the "Jerusalem embassy" demonstrations and the Iranian protests

Arab anti-Trump Jerusalem protests
Iranian anti-government protests
Organized top-down by Palestinian leaders Organized bottom up by individuals
Anti-America and Israel Anti-Ayatollah
Predicted to set the Middle East on fire by experts.
They were wrong.		  Not predicted by experts at all.
Meaningless, could never accomplish anything. US and Israel wouldn't back down. A very big deal, even if violently put down it puts the mullahs on notice
Wall to wall media coverage hoping to find some violence that would justify the predictions  Media ignoring it (or, worse, covering pro-regime puppet rallies as legit)

The sad part is that since the "experts" and media were so invested in the Iranian deal and in supporting the regime at the expense of the majority of Arabs and Israel, they cannot now support a real grass-roots uprising against tyranny.



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  • Sunday, December 31, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

EoZ top ten tweets of the year

Twitter has a number of metrics to determine the popularity of tweets (retweets, likes, clicking, and more general "engagement" which adds all of the others up.)

But in figuring out my most popular tweets of the year, I'm sticking with retweets.

All I have to say is, thanks Linda for helping me out so much!

10.



9.

8.


7.

6.

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.





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  • Sunday, December 31, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

Did the Likud vote to annex all of Judea and Samaria? Haaretz headline fail



Haaretz reports:

The Likud Central Committee voted Sunday to unanimously accept a resolution that calls on the party's leaders to move to formally annex the West Bank.
The vote by the ruling party is nonbinding and was called for in a letter signed by some 900 members of the central committee.
But that isn't what the resolution says.  Haaretz even quotes it:
“On the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the regions of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], including Jerusalem our eternal capital, the Likud Central Committee calls on the Likud’s elected officials to act to allow free construction and to apply the laws of Israel and its sovereignty to all areas of the liberated Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.”
This makes it sound like the Likud is calling to annex only the settlement blocs - areas that would remain under Israeli control in any possible peace plan anyway.

 Times of Israel gets it right with its headline "Likud top body votes to annex parts of the West Bank."

How will world media report this?

We will see whether Western journalists follow Haaretz' false headline or what the actual story is.

But it shows yet again how Haaretz reports what it wants, not reality.



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12/31 Links: Trump: Iranians tired of having wealth stolen, ‘squandered on terrorism’; OECD: Israel ranked 11th happiest country in the world

From Ian:
Trump says Iranians tired of having wealth stolen, ‘squandered on terrorism’
US President Donald Trump again encouraged the protesters in Iran on Sunday, saying that the Iranian people were no longer prepared to see the country’s resources “squandered on terrorism” as mass protests continued.

“The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism,” Trump tweeted, saying that it looks like the Iranians “will not take it any longer.”

“The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!” he said.

Trump’s tweets the previous day angered Iran’s government, leading the Foreign Ministry spokesman to say the “Iranian people give no credit to the deceitful and opportunist remarks of US officials or Mr. Trump.”

Trump’s remarks came with the Iranian interior minister cautioning that Israel, the US, and other regional powers do not understand the nature of the clashes and that their delight at anti-government demonstrations is misguided.

A third night of unrest in Iran overnight Saturday saw mass demonstrations across the country in which two people were killed, dozens arrested and public buildings attacked.


Stephen L. Miller: Iran's protests are powerful and real. Why are mainstream media outlets so hesitant to report on them?
How will the Obama Presidential Library wing look celebrating a nuclear deal with an oppressive Iranian regime that could possibly be deposed by security forces and the military joining with protesters, thirsty for democracy and a return to an Iran before the 1979 revolution?

More to the point, how will it look if the Trump administration, of all things, facilitates and encourages such change in Iran?

The prospect of this is not lost on the self-styled resistance and anti-Trump media, all too anxious to witness the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Obama Library or hand a Nobel Prize to former Secretary of State John Kerry.

Overseeing the fall of an oppressive, hardline Iranian regime that sponsors terror all around the globe – followed by the rise of a democratic Iran not interested in aggression against its neighbors – would be a foreign policy victory for President Trump, one of the biggest for a president since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

If the Iranian regime is ousted, the move would neuter Hezbollah’s primary source of funding. It would diminish Hamas at a time when the United States rightfully is moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in defiance of the United Nations.

Replacement of the Iranian government could signal that Assad’s days in Syria are finally coming to an end, without powerful bullies to back him up. A new Iranian government would also no doubt give Russia pause about meddling in Middle East affairs – a hesitancy it did not have when the Obama administration gave Russian President Vladimir Putin “flexibility.”

Combative media reluctant to give President Trump credit for any policy victories – along with reluctance by anti-Trump analysts on the right (this one included) – should not divert our attention from Iranian citizens risking their lives to take to the streets. These Iranians hope the United States and the rest of the world do not ignore them again.
Why Can’t the American Media Cover the Protests in Iran?
Selling the protesters short is a mistake. For 38 years Iranian crowds have been gathered by regime minders to chant “Death to America, Death to Israel.” When their chant spontaneously changes to “Down with Hezbollah” and “Death to the Dictator” as it has now, something big is happening. The protests are fundamentally political in nature, even when the slogans are about bread. But Erdbrink can hardly bring himself to report the regime’s history of depredations since his job is to obscure them. He may have been a journalist at one point in time, but now he manages the Times portfolio in Tehran. The Times, as Tablet colleague James Kirchik reported for Foreign Policy in 2015, runs a travel business that sends Western tourists to Iran. “Travels to Persia,” the Times calls it. If you’re cynical, you probably believe that the Times has an interest in the protests subsiding and the regime surviving—because, after all, anyone can package tours to Paris or Rome.

Networks like like CNN and MSNBC which have gambled their remaining resources and prestige on a #Resist business model are in even deeper trouble. Providing media therapy for a relatively large audience apparently keen to waste hours staring at a white truck obscuring the country club where Donald Trump is playing golf is their entire business model—a Hail Mary pass from a business that had nearly been eaten alive by Facebook and Google. First down! So it doesn’t matter how many dumb Trump-Russia stories the networks, or the Washington Post, or the New Yorker get wrong, as long as viewership and subscriptions are up—right?

The problem, of course, is that the places that have obsessively run those stories for the past year aren’t really news outfits—not anymore. They are in the aromatherapy business. And the karmic sooth-sayers and yogic flyers and mid-level political operators they employ as “experts” and “reporters” simply aren’t capable of covering actual news stories, because that is not part of their skill-set.

The current media landscape was shaped by years of an Obama administration that made the nuclear deal its second-term priority. Talking points on Iran were fed to reporters by the White House—and those who veered outside government-approved lines could expect to be cut off by the administration’s ace press handlers, like active CIA officer Ned Price. It’s totally normal for American reporters to print talking points fed to them daily by a CIA officer who works for a guy with an MA in creative writing, right? But no one ever balked. The hive-mind of today’s media is fed by minders and validated by Twitter in a process that is entirely self-enclosed and circular; a “story” means that someone gave you “sources” who “validate” the agreed upon “story-line.” Someone has to feed these guys so they can write—which is tough to do when real events are unfolding hour by hour on the ground.

  • Sunday, December 31, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

Heritage Theft: A Response to Dani Ishai Behan (Michael Lumish)


"We say to him [Netanyahu], when he claims that they [Jews] have a historical right dating back to 3000 years B.C.E.—we say that the nation of Palestine upon the land of Canaan had a 7,000-year history B.C.E. This is the truth, which must be understood, and we have to note it, in order to say: 'Netanyahu, you are incidental in history. We are the people of history. We are the owners of history.'" - Mahmoud Abbas, May 14, 2011.

Dani Ishai Behan has a blog post for the Times of Israel entitled, Jesus Was Not A Palestinian, Or Even An Arab in which he argues that Jesus was not a Palestinian... or even an Arab.

He is, of course, correct and the very fact that he feels it necessary to remind us is because many Palestinian-Arabs do make ridiculous claims such as that "Jesus was the first Palestinian shaheed" and do so as part of the larger project of heritage theft against the Jewish people.

They also do so out of a not unjustified assumption concerning the idiocy and ideological blinkertude of the humanitarian racist West that enjoys blaming Jewish people for the violence against us.

This is no small matter, but it is the kind of thing that travels beneath the awareness of typical mainstream reporters.

Those who are less familiar with the Long Arab / Muslim War against the Jews of the Middle East then is Behan might wonder why he feels it necessary to acknowledge the obvious? The reason that he does so is because the war against the Jews is as much a propaganda campaign - a campaign for delegitimization - as it is a campaign of violence, terrorism, and physical intimidation for the purpose of driving Jews back into diaspora and, thus, helplessness.

The Phases of the Long Arab / Muslim War against the Jews include:
Phase 1, 1920 - 1947: Riots and Massacres

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

 Phase 3, 1948 - 1973: Conventional Warfare

 Phase 4, 1964 - Present: The Terror War

 Phase 5, 1975 - Present: The Delegitimization Effort
When Palestinian-Arabs claim the Jewish historical figure of Jesus as a "Muslim martyr" they are engaged in the process of heritage theft.

The purpose of this cultural thievery is to displace the indigenous Jewish population with Arab colonists, both physically and culturally and to do so as a matter of self-righteous "social justice."

This is the insidious irony of the entire project. They are seeking to turn Palestinian-Arabs into the New Jews while transforming the Jewish people into the New Nazis. But most importantly it is to sew confusion in the minds of interested and well-meaning outsiders.

Parisian intellectuals, for example, have about as much collective knowledge of the Long Arab / Muslim War against the Jews as I have about Parisian intellectuals. That is, although such people have no idea about the conflict they are constantly encouraged to view it as one between a racist, colonialist, imperialist, apartheid, Jewish, war-machine versus a small, bunny-like, native population that wants nothing more than to be left in peace to tend their sacred olive groves.

The enemies of the Jewish people, throughout the Middle East and Europe, therefore fabricated the propagandistic illusion that the Jews are interlopers on historically Jewish land while the Arab colonists are the persecuted indigenous population.

Heritage theft is part of this process.

Although transforming the historical figure of Jesus into a Palestinian-Arab is probably the most ridiculous and audacious of such examples, it is certainly not the only one.

After all, if the Arabs can abscond with Jesus they can certainly take Anne Frank which is why we sometimes see her in a keffiyeh within circles associated with antisemitic anti-Zionism.

Another obvious example, as Behan points out, is the obscuring of Jewish history on Jewish land through the widely accepted usage of "West Bank" for Judea and Samaria. The truth is that the tiny bit of land along the eastern Mediterranean was known as Judah and Samaria for millennia.

As Behan writes:
Judaea is the Roman/Latin cognate of Judah, which is itself the Anglicized version of the Hebrew name for the land: ‘Yehudah’. We are called Jews/Yehudim because we come from Judea/Judah. The languages spoken there – Hebrew and Aramaic – formed part of the basis for diaspora tongues such as Yiddish.
Yet another example - one that I find particularly toxic and obnoxious - is the effort to equate the "Nakba" with the Holocaust.

The effort is to always balance the historical claims of the Jewish side with the ahistorical claims of their Palestinian-Arab enemies.

As Bashir Bashir, professor of Political Science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and co-editor, along with Amos Goldberg of The Holocaust and the Nakba: Memory, National Identity and Jewish-Arab Partnership tells us concerning their edited volume:
Zionism tries to treat the Holocaust as both universal and particular: it is supposed to be significance to all of humanity, but it is also the patrimony of Zionism, which has the right to decide how it is invoked and understood. Putting the Holocaust and the Nakba together in a common frame disrupts this exceptionalism and is meant to provoke new thinking that exceeds the rigid, dichotomous, and oppositional boundaries of ethno-nationalism.
To be clear, neither Bashir, nor Goldberg, seek equivalence between the slaughter of the millions of Jews in Europe and the fact that some Arabs fled Israel, and some were driven from Israel, after launching a war against the Jews in November of 1947.

But, nonetheless, they are walking an exceedingly tight rope and it is not the least bit obvious that "putting the Holocaust and the Nakba together in a common frame" does anything other than draw an ethical equivalence, despite their suggestions otherwise.

What Dani Ishai Behan very well understands, but what most observers of the conflict do not, is that there is not the slightest ethical correspondence between the Nazi slaughter of the Jews in Europe and the efforts among Jewish Holocaust survivors to save themselves and their families from the Long Arab / Muslim War that long preceded the existence of Nazis and that continues to this day.

Following the death of Muhammad in the seventh-century, the Muslims of the Arabian Peninsula conquered the Byzantine Empire and almost went forward to conquer the entirety of Europe.

I am afraid that in doing so they do not also get to conquer either Jewish or Christian history.

Jesus was a Jew and everyone knows it.

When Palestinian-Arabs claim otherwise they make themselves look like fools.


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  • Sunday, December 31, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

Feminism, Palestinian style: Celebrating 53 years of female suicide bombers and terrorists

The Fatah Facebook page is gearing up for the 53rd anniversary of its first terror attack, and it has created posters for its heroes.

Heroes like Zainab Abu Salem, who murdered two Israelis in 2004 with a suicide bomb.


 The photo of her severed head, still in a hijab, was considered a wonderful thing by Fatah.


Another Paleastinian hero, according to Mahmoud Abbas' party:  Andalib Takatka.


She blew herself up at the Mahane Yehuda market in 2002, killing 6 innocent people.

Next is Wafa Idris, the first female suicide bomber.


She killed an 81-year old man in Jerusalem.

Dalal Mughrabi, responsible for the murder of 37 in the Coastal Road Massacre:


Ayat al-Akhras, who killed two at the entrance to a supermarket:


Fatah also commemorates Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, a PFLP member who died in 1968 while preparing a bomb:



This is who Mahmoud Abbas' party is teaching Palestinian children are heroes.

But don't blame him for no peace - he is a moderate, you see.



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When American Protestants blamed Jesus' crucifixion on Zionism

I am just starting to read an excellent but fairly obscure book called The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel by Caitlin Carenen.

It goes through how mainstream and other strains of American Protestants dealt with Jews and Israel from about 1930-2000.

The book is well researched - and every page illuminates the thinking of Protestants in America, in sometimes shocking ways.

During the 1930s, mainstream Protestants were antisemitic. They regarded Jews as people who must be assimilated into American society, meaning to become Christians. They protested Jewish immigration to the US. Many of their charismatic leaders openly touted the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as being legitimate.

Carenen documents all of this in scholarly detail.

The Christian Century, a mainstream Protestant periodical, was one of the more influential publications of the period. (It still exists.)

In this section from the book, we see how the Christian Century looked upon Zionism - in the same way that antisemitic Christians had traditionally looked at Jews.

It is obvious that this new reading of the crucifixion was meant to apply to modern Zionism. This is perhaps the first Christian theological argument against Zionism, and it is essentially a modern twist on blaming Jews for deicide - now they were blaming Zionists.

This is an early example of what has become part of today's accepted discourse, replacing the old, bad antisemitism with the new, progressive anti-Zionism.

This mainstream view changed, in fits and starts, from Kristallnacht and through the Holocaust, to the point that the leading Protestant Zionists had a huge impact on US policy (much to the consternation of the Arabist State Department.)

But before that happened, you will find that the next article I write about the Christian Century is mind-boggling.



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Saturday, December 30, 2017

12/30 Links: Iranians Shatter a New York Times Myth; The Islamic Brew of Racism, Apartheid, and Slavery; Lorde Is Swimming in Antisemitic Waters

From Ian:
Khaled Abu Toameh: How Palestinians Silence Palestinians
The talk that Al-Dayeh would soon be prosecuted before a Palestinian Authority "military" court aroused further surprise. Was the former bodyguard arrested, many wondered, for committing a serious security-related offense?

Speculation on the Palestinian street even reached the point of considering whether Al-Dayeh was being charged with spying for Israel. Or, perhaps this was the man who had put the "poison" in Arafat's soup and which, according to the conspiracy theorists, led to the death of their beloved leader and hero – Arafat.

For years, Palestinian leaders and officials have been telling us, without any evidence, that Israel was behind the "assassination" of Arafat and that it was carried out with the help of a Palestinian, whose identity remains unknown to this day. Could it be, they wondered, Al-Dayeh?

None of the above. Al-Dayeh apparently did not commit any crime against Palestinian security. Nor was he involved in the "assassination" of his father figure and boss.

According to Al-Dayeh's lawyer, Rawya Abu Zuheiri, her client is suspected of "bad-mouthing" senior officials and criticizing corruption of Palestinian leaders on Facebook. Al-Dayeh, she said, has been under interrogation on suspicion of establishing and managing two Facebook pages – "Sons of the Martyrs" and "No to Corruption." The Palestinian Authority claims that both accounts were used to wage a smear campaign against top Palestinian officials and accuse them of financial and administrative corruption.

Such are the main charges against Al-Dayeh; they are not related to any security issues, according to his lawyer. He has been ordered remanded into custody for 15 days for violating the Palestinian Authority's controversial Electronic Crimes Law. His lawyer, however, says there is only one small problem regarding the charges against Al-Dayeh: The man cannot read or write, and as such there is no way he could have posted the offensive remarks on Facebook. In other words, the lawyer is telling is that the man who was entrusted with the personal security of Arafat and was his closest confidant is illiterate.
Sohrab Amari: Iranians Shatter a New York Times Myth
So much for the New York Times theory that, thanks to Trumpian and Saudi bellicosity, the Iranian people have closed ranks behind their rulers. In November, the paper’s Tehran bureau chief, Thomas Erdbrink, devoted an extended feature to making this case, and it proved wildly popular with the pro-nuclear deal crowd in Washington.

“After years of cynicism, sneering or simply tuning out all things political,” wrote Erdbrink, “Iran’s urban middle classes have been swept up in a wave of nationalist fervor.” He went on: “Mr. Trump and the Saudis have helped the government achieve what years of repression could never accomplish: widespread public support for the hard-line view that the United States and Riyadh cannot be trusted.”

Erdbrink’s argument echoed rhetoric from Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Responding to October’s announcement of new U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Zarif tweeted: “Today, Iranians–boys, girls, men, women–are ALL IRGC.”

Or not.

This week, tens of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to register their anger, not at Donald Trump or the House of Saud, but at the mullahs and their security apparatus. It was economic grievances that initially ignited the protests in the northeastern city of Mashhad. But soon the uprising grew and spread to at least 18 cities nationwide. And the slogans shifted from joblessness and corruption to opposition to the Islamic Republic in toto. These included:

“Death to [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei!”

“Death to Hezbollah!”

“Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, Our Life Only for Iran!”

“We Will Die to Get Our Iran Back!”

“Clerics Out of Our Country!”
Elliott Abrams: The Iran Protests -- and The New York Times
The Times story is written by its bureau chief in Tehran, Thomas Erdbrink, one of the very few Western reporters (he is Dutch) accredited to report for U.S. media. Must he pull punches for fear of being expelled from Iran? After all, this is a regime that has invaded embassies (most recently, for example, the British Embassy in 2011) and in 2009 the entire BBC bureau there was shut down and the BBC’s correspondent expelled. In 2014, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian was arrested and then imprisoned for 18 months. He and his wife are now suing the government of Iran for their maltreatment and torture while in captivity.

So perhaps it is wise for reporters in Tehran to watch what they say. But the Times’s report and headline that these are merely economic protests are misleading. Both should be corrected.

Meanwhile the U.S. Department of State issued a very strong statement on these protests—which rightly regards them as political:

We are following reports of multiple peaceful protests by Iranian citizens in cities across the country. Iran’s leaders have turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos. As President Trump has said, the longest-suffering victims of Iran's leaders are Iran’s own people.

The United States strongly condemns the arrest of peaceful protesters. We urge all nations to publicly support the Iranian people and their demands for basic rights and an end to corruption.

On June 14, 2017, Secretary Tillerson testified to Congress that he supports “those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of government. Those elements are there, certainly as we know.” The Secretary today repeats his deep support for the Iranian people.

The Iranian people rose up against their oppressors in June 2009. Now we are again seeing that this regime rules by brute force, is widely despised, and would be dismissed by the people if ever they got a chance to vote freely.

Friday, December 29, 2017

12/29 Links Pt2: Who Truly Occupies Whom?; Defining ‘Occupied’ — and the Semantic Battle for Peace; An open letter to the ANC from a South African Jew

From Ian:
Who Truly Occupies Whom?
Who truly occupies whom?
Palestinians occupy Jewish land.

Jews are the true indigenous people and owners of the land of Israel.
The ancient Philistines have long disappeared from the earth, and current Palestinians have absolutely no connection to them.

On September 19 2015, Obama’s then-White House Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough said: “an [Israeli] occupation that has lasted for almost 50 years must end.”

Jerusalem was always the capital of a Jewish State, never an Arab one.
Jerusalem is mentioned 687 times in the Hebrew Bible.
Jerusalem is mentioned 146 times in the New Testament.
Jerusalem is not mentioned — not even once — in the Koran.
Jerusalem is the Jewish holy place.
Rome is the Christian holy place.
Mecca is the Muslim holy place.

Jews have always maintained a presence in all the land of Israel — including Gaza and the West Bank — despite being oppressed, persecuted and murdered, by world empires like Babylonia, Persia, Assyria, Greece, Rome, etc.

To find these cultures today, you need bulldozers to dig up the sands of time.

Palestinians are an “invented” people — their origin stamped into their family names: al-Masri (the Egyptian), al-Djazair (the Algerian), el-Mughrabi (the Moroccan), al-Yamani (the Yemenite) and even al-Afghani are so common among those claiming to be Palestinians.

Yasser Arafat himself was Egyptian.
Yisrael Medad: What Was That "Whole"
Pro-Arab advocates who seek to deny the Jews a state in the area that was the Palestine Mandate usually point to the White Paper of 1922, the Churchill White Paper.

And they note it draws

attention to the fact that the terms of the Declaration referred to [that is, the Balfour Declaration - YM] do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded `in Palestine.'

To comment:
Palestine included the territory both West and East of the Jordan River but as a result of British machinations, all the areas east of the Jordan River were to have the application of the articles of the League of Mandate Mandate postponed. Not cancelled. Simply postponed.

Here:
In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those conditions...

Therefore, to establish a Jewish state in all of Western Palestine is quite an appropriate interpretation to this document.
Defining ‘Occupied’ — and the Semantic Battle for Peace
In a demonstration of how completely at odds his views are from those of the foreign policy establishment, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman reportedly asked the State Department to stop using the term “occupied territories” and instead refer to the area as the “West Bank.”

According to accounts that have filtered out of Foggy Bottom, the State Department said no. But we are also told that after pressure “from above” — i.e. President Donald Trump — the issue has yet to be decided.

If this strikes you as a lot of bother about mere words, you’re wrong. These words are part of a high-stakes battle to determine the outcome of the debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For some observers, Friedman’s request demonstrated anew that he was a bad choice for ambassador — since he has a record of support for the Jewish presence in the West Bank. But Friedman is correct that using the term “occupied” isn’t neutral. It backs up the Palestinian narrative that Israelis are alien colonists in territories where only Arabs should have rights.

Israel’s position is that the ultimate disposition of the West Bank — or, to use the biblical as well as geographic term that was applied to the area before 1949, “Judea and Samaria” — is a matter of dispute in which both sides have a legitimate argument. To call the territories Judea and Samaria is also a political statement, just like “occupied territories.”

But the use of words as weapons can lead to a muddle. The term “West Bank” is itself geographic nonsense. It is a relic of the illegal Jordanian occupation of this area, as well as the Old City of Jerusalem from 1949-1967. At that time, the Hashemite kingdom had two “banks,” with an East — the area currently known as Jordan — as well as the West, which was taken by Israel during the Six-Day War.

  • Friday, December 29, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

EoZ top posts of the year

This is based on Blogger's algorithm, which I don't understand, but it appears to include readers across all platforms - Facebook, LinkedIn, email list and so forth.

#5 is a linkdump!


5. 12/07 Links Pt1: Trump’s truth-telling on Jerusalem marks an all-new Middle East; 20 reasons why every foreign embassy should move to Jerusalem

4. "10 Jewish dishes Arabs eat every day"

3. Hypocrisy alert: Lebanon almost finished building a wall, with 4 watchtowers, around 100,000 Palestinians

2. Mufti of Jerusalem says 90% of all worldwide terror incentive would disappear if only the Jews would be killed

1. Palestinians show Holocaust-era images as photos of "Israeli massacres" (update)




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12/29 Links Pt1: Glick: Facing a Tamimi government; The Palestinian masquerade; U.S. Envoy: Palestinian Reaction to Trump Announcement Is Ugly, Anti-Semitic

From Ian:
Caroline Glick: Facing a Tamimi government
As Arnold Roth, whose daughter Malki was among the seven children murdered at Sbarro, reported on his website, Jordanian Prince Ali’s wife, former CNN reporter Princess Rym Ali raised donations from the governments of Europe, Australia and Canada to establish a journalism school in Amman. On every page of the Jordanian Media Institute’s website, Ahlam Tamimi is presented as a “Success Model.”

Three of Ahlam’s victims were US citizens. King Abdullah has rejected repeated US requests to extradite her for trial.

Back in Nabi Saleh, Nariman and Bassem and their kids man the barricades against Israel, for their sponsors.

In 2012, Bassam was convicted of inciting a riot against IDF soldiers. An observer from the EU was present throughout his trial.

Then-EU foreign affairs commissioner Catherine Ashton touted Bassem as a “human rights defender.”

Bassem and Nariman are “volunteers” in B’Tselem’s “camera project.”

B’Tselem, an anti-Israel political warfare group funded by the EU, EU member governments, the State Department and far-left American groups, distributes video cameras to Palestinians and trains them to use them. It then posts their films online to advance its one-sided propaganda offensive against Israel.

In 2015, a consortium of anti-Israel groups including Amnesty International, Code Pink and Jewish Voices for Peace brought Bassem Tamimi to the US on a speaking tour.

In one particularly hair-raising episode, reported by Legal Insurrection at the time, Tamimi addressed an audience of third-graders in Ithaca, New York.

He urged the children to support terrorism against Israel and to join the war against the Jewish state.

Videos of Ahed were a prominent component of his presentation.

The Turkish government is also a big supporter of the Tamimi brood. After a past video of Ahed hitting and cursing Israeli forces was posted online, she and her parents were brought to Ankara to receive recognition from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In a very real sense, the Tamimi family is at the nexus of a global war against Israel.

The Tamimis have connections with nearly every government and group involved in that war. The Israeli and American Left, the EU, Jordan and Turkey and of course Hamas and the PLO all support them. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
The Palestinian masquerade
As part of his diplomatic-political address, Abbas presented his captive audience with his take on the historical and theological basis for the war between Islam and the Jews. His remark, outlining the raison d'etre of this conflict, was tacked on to his main address like a footnote.

"This land is the birthplace of Jesus," he said. "Jesus Christ was a Palestinian, take note of that."

"Yes, believe in our right and God's promise to us, that this holy Palestinian city, since it was founded by the Canaanite Jebusites 5,000 years ago, was and will be the only capital of our independent state, under the sovereignty of the state of Palestine."

"This is also a good opportunity to note that I don't want to discuss history or religion, because there is no one better at falsifying history or religion than them [the Jews]. But if we read the Torah, it says that we, i.e., the Canaanites, lived here before Abraham and haven't left since that time. It hasn't been interrupted. That's in the Torah. If they want to fabricate, 'to distort the words from their [proper] usages,' as God said [a reference to Sura 4 of the Quran that mentions Jews who falsified the Torah]. I don't want to get into religion. We don't want the issue to become a religious issue. We just want to prove that we are here, and we have an eternal right to this city [Jerusalem] and to other cities."

3.
So according to Abbas, Jesus was Palestinian and Jebusite Jerusalem was never the capital city of any nation other than the Palestinians since time immemorial. Furthermore, the Palestinians are actually Canaanites, and God promised them this holy city before Abraham came along, and so on.

We are laughing now, aren't we? It's not just one lie, but a culture of lies. The Arab leader's simple ability to stand in front of the world and lie in a way that almost seems like he is trying to convince himself. Jerusalem has always been the capital of the Palestinian nation? Really? But no nation ever ruled here other than the Jewish nation and its various Jewish kingdoms!
MEMRI: Senior Jordanian Columnists Warn Against Cancelling Peace Treaty With Israel
U.S. President Donald Trump's December 6, 2017, announcement of U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and his plan to move the American embassy there ignited a vast wave of protests against the U.S. and Israel across Jordan. These demonstrations included calls to cancel the agreements signed by Jordan and Israel, including the peace treaty.[1]

Loud calls to revoke the peace agreement with Israel and to cease normalization with it were also voiced in the Jordanian parliament. In its session on December 10, 2017, which was dedicated to Trump's announcement, the parliament empowered its legal committee to reexamine the agreements with Israel, including the peace treaty, and to document all of Israel's legal violations and present them to parliament so that a decision may be taken on this issue. On the following day (December 11), the committee met with Justice Minister 'Awad Abu Jarad to request all the material on the signed agreements with Israel,[2] and one day later it reconvened to discuss the matter.[3]

At the same time, 14 MPs submitted to the government a memorandum calling to "promote legislation to cancel the Jordan-Israel peace agreement due to Israeli violations of it" and due to the American announcement about Jerusalem.[4] On December 17, several MPs signed another memorandum calling on the government to terminate the leasing to Israel of the Al-Bagoura and Ghamar areas on the Jordan-Israel border, claiming that it is an infringement of Jordanian sovereignty and the rights of its citizens in those areas.[5]

Calls to revoke all agreements with Israel were also posted on social media, under existing hashtags such as "#Wadi Araba [peace agreements] will be cancelled" and "#boycott the Zionists," which were brought back into use, and under a new hashtag, "#Cancel it," which went viral within hours.[6] One Jordanian tweeted: "Jordanian members of parliament and decision-makers! Cancel the Araba [peace] Agreement, cancel the gas [import] agreement [with Israel], and sever all overt and covert relations [with it]. Out! Out, the Zionist embassy."

Celebrating miracles in Israel (Forest Rain)



Have you ever turned the corner and found yourself in the middle of a street party? Men dancing in the street, women carrying babies standing, smiling and watching, loud music and vehicles lit up all colors of the rainbow… happy people, celebrating.

What a beautiful thing.

It was the last night of Hanukah and we were walking in a religious neighborhood of Haifa. After that experience, this was even more special.

It wasn’t just any party. This was the celebration of the dedication of a new Torah scroll for a synagogue.
Hanukah is a celebration of Jewish persistence, of the victory of the few over the many, of the regaining of sovereignty in the land of Israel from an occupier much larger and more powerful. Hanukah is a celebration of faith when there is no logical reason to retain faith – the miracle of the light that was not extinguished, although the laws of nature say it should have been.

How fitting to celebrate a new Torah scroll on the last night of Hanukah.

Every Torah scroll is written by hand. Every letter must be perfect, otherwise the scroll cannot be used. God used words to create the universe, thus words, every individual letter has power that must be treated with respect and the appropriate awe. The words of the Torah, the content are the guidelines that have led our people, defined us and kept us together for centuries. This makes each scroll a precious treasure, adorned with its own decorations and carried lovingly like one would carry a baby.

On the holiday of Jewish sovereignty these Jews were celebrating the continuation of Jewish legacy in the land that the Maccabees freed. They brought the other Torah scrolls the synagogue already had as if bringing them to greet the new scroll, dancing with all of them together, in the street. Police blocked off the road to make sure everyone was safe from cars while they celebrated.

As I watched the celebration I looked at the faces of the people and noted that this was a Chabad synagogue with a community of Russian Jews. These are people who, in Russia had been disconnected from their Jewish roots. Nevertheless, when they could, they made aliyah, coming back to the land of their ancestors and found a way to return to the practice of Judaism. Against all odds, these Jews came back to their roots, retook their legacy. A miracle.

You never know what you will see in Israel. This is a land of surprises. Ours are a people who love to celebrate and we have many reasons to do so.





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  • Friday, December 29, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

Kuwaiti writer calls on peace with Israel and Jews

Sultan Al-Zubani, a self-described Kuwaiti media person who welcomes debate, put out  a series of tweets about Israel and Jews that raised eyebrows in that country which has a boycott against dealing with any Israeli.

He started the series by saying that Tel Aviv is an amazing, clean and tidy city.

He went on to say that he wanted to enter Israel, the land of the Prophets, but not with violence and bloodshed.


His next tweet says that it is not allowed to curse Israel since Israel is the name of one of Allah's prophets.

He goes on to describe a vision of peace: "People from the Gulf lounging in the streets of Tel Aviv, shopping from their malls and sitting in their cafes sipping coffee and going to their restaurants, eating halal meals from Palestinian-owned restaurants and praying in Jerusalem in safety and security. # Israel"

And then "If others entered Jerusalem with weapons, we will enter it with a visa and peace, away from fighting and bloodshed and destruction. # Israel_Nabi_Allah. "

He sums it up with a stunning indictment of Arab hate:

We curse #Israel although Israel is Jacob, the prophet of God, peace be upon him.
We curse the State of Israel , which is the land of prophets.
We curse the Jews , who are the people of the book and neighbors of the Prophet ...
We abhor the star of Prophet Dawood [David] peace be upon him
And we then claim that we are Muslims, the people of mercy And tolerance!
The reactions on Twitter as more muted than one might expect. But Al-Zubani doesn't have a huge Twitter following, I don't know how popular he is. I've only found one article about this tweetstorm, and its tone is more bemused than angry, pointing out that Kuwait has always been in the forefront of boycotting Israel and any company that deals with Israel, having recently rejected a major deal with French company Veolia since it does work for Israel. 


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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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