Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Latest Richard Falk slander: "IDF sexually abuses PalArab kids"

Richard Falk has outdone himself again in his never ending quest to demonize Israel.

His latest report to the UN Human Rights Council includes this passage:

The continued reports of inhumane and degrading treatment, including sexual assault, of children in detention is further deplorable....In the Ariel settlement in the occupied West Bank, children reported that they had been given electric shocks by Israeli interrogators in the settlement. The children, one as young as 14 years of age, were each accused of throwing stones at a settler bypass road in the occupied West Bank. Following the electric shocks, the boys provided their interrogators with confessions, although they maintained their innocence. In May 2010, a 14-year-old boy reported that his interrogator in the Israeli settlement block of Gush Etzion, in the occupied West Bank, attached car battery jump leads to the boy’s genitals and threatened to electrify the cable. After further abuse, the boy confessed to throwing stones, although he maintains his innocence.

The footnotes for these accusations come from DCI-International Palestine where they simply ask children who were detained by Israeli authorities whether they were abused, and the kids happily answer with what the Israel-haters want to hear.

The accusations are so ridiculously lurid and absurd that only people who are already convinced of Israel's pre-determined guilt could possibly believe them.

Hence, Richard Falk quotes them approvingly.

DCI-PS counted some 40 more children killed in Cast Lead than PCHR did. Invariably, any of the children who were known to have been killed while fighting (and even those that PCHR admitted were combatants) their deaths were described by DCI-PS this way: “Despite DCI-Palestine’s best endeavours to collect affidavits from eyewitnesses to [the child’s] death, no reliable evidence could be gathered.”

More evidence of DCI-PS's disregard for the truth comes from their descriptions of the fictional "massacre" in Jenin in 2002, from April 12th and 16th, the second being copied in a separate report to the UN on the 19th after it was already becoming obvious that there was no massacre:

Reports emanating from residents of the Jenin refugee camp indicate hundreds of dead, a significant percentage undoubtedly children, as well as mass destruction of homes, businesses, and vital infrastructure.

With a limited number of journalists finally allowed entry into Jenin refugee camp, the picture of the massacre that occurred there has become increasingly clear. Testimony from survivors of this massacre present a harrowing picture of a bloody military offensive designed to destroy a civilian population and raze Jenin refugee camp to the ground. Survivors estimate that 1/3 of the camp has been completely destroyed. Moreover, eyewitnesses from the camp describe how Israeli soldiers dug mass graves for those killed in an attempt to hide evidence of the massacre. Thousands of residents have been made homeless and are now seeking refuge in neigbouring villages while desperately trying to seek missing family members.

It is estimated that several hundred residents of the camp were killed during the Israeli attack, including a large proportion of children. Video documentation and photographs from the camp are images of horror that no words can ever describe. They overwhelming illustrate the mass destruction wreaked on the camp and its residents. Journalists in the camp are describing that the air is filled with a noxious stench of rotting bodies that remain lying in the street or buried under rubble. There are also reports of summary executions carried out by Israeli soldiers in the centre of the camp.

As far as I can see, DCI-PS never retracted their lurid claims of a massacre in Jenin that killed possibly hundreds of children. And this report also shows how DCI will happily swallow any lies being given to them by "eyewitnesses" who make up stories.

Just like the kids who claimed to be given electric shocks by Israel.

In other words, the group has no compunction about lying, and they certainly would have no hesitation to ask kids released by Israel leading questions to indicate abuse when there was none. It is no surprise that they support BDS and that they do not say a word about Hamas' abuse of children and use of child soldiers.

So DCS-PS is a really great fit for Richard Falk, for whom facts that contradict his beliefs are ignored and for whom absurd rumors that confirm his beliefs are God-given truth.

Real Liberals Love Israel #5: Solar Energy

Entire poster series here.

Iranian site recruiting "martyrdom volunteers" for Bahrain

A website called rahil.ir, based in Iran, is recruiting people to be "martyrdom volunteers" to fight in Bahrain. Presumably this means suicide bombers.

The site helpfully describes the Bahraini government as being "a puppet of the Great Satan America and Israel."

So far, according to the site, 1938 people have pledged to sacrifice their lives for the cause.

It points out how Iran has been supportive of the other Arab revolutions, no matter if the demonstrators were Shi'a or Sunni. For obvious reasons, they don't mention supporting the people who are being shot in Syria.

(h/t O)

I unfortunately had to make this poster a bit taller and skinnier than the others; I prefer to keep things in proportion but I couldn't do that with this wonderful photo.

(photo credit IDF Spokesperson Flickr page)
(h/t David G for the idea)

Arab discrimination against Palestinians: How to fix it

Today is the Arab Mothers' Day.

To commemorate the occasion, hundreds of Egyptian mothers who are married to Palestinian Arab men are demonstrating in Tahrir Square to give Egyptian citizenship to their children.

An Egyptian law passed in 2004 allowed Egyptian mothers to pass their citizenship to their children with foreign spouses - except Palestinians.

The reason given is the usual excuse. As Al Ahram wrote when discussing the law in 2006:

Also, children of Palestinian fathers are not eligible for Egyptian citizenship. While this seems unfair, asserted Diaaeddin, it is in accordance with Arab League Decree 1547 for 1959. The decree calls for the preservation of the Palestinian identity as an integral part of the Palestinian cause, and prevents it from assimilating into the identity of the host country.

The Egyptian Supreme Administrative Court in 2006 ruled that the law should apply to Palestinian Arab fathers as well, but that ruling has been completely ignored by Egyptian authorities.

There is a Facebook page for the mothers in this predicament, called The Ugly Duckling's Sons. The group claims that the law could allow hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs to become Egyptian citizens, although that number seems to be exaggerated.

This is only one example of the state-supported discrimination against Palestinian Arabs, and Palestinian Arabs alone, in every Arab state.

The mothers' protest shows that the excuse given by every Arab leader - including Palestinian Arab leaders, and even parroted by UNRWA - that Palestinian Arabs do not want to become citizens of their host countries, is a complete lie. When given the opportunity, many if not most of them would jump to gain the equal rights that citizenship affords them.

There is a simple thing that could be done that could help galvanize the world to help these victims of Arab discrimination. It would not cost much and could be done by a private organization.

Commission an independent poll of Palestinian Arabs living in Arab countries, and ask them these simple questions:

Do you feel legally discriminated against in your host country because you are a Palestinian?
Do you feel that the citizens of your host country discriminate against Palestinians?
If you had the option, and if it would not impact your status as a Palestinian, would you want to become a citizen of the country you live in?
If you had the option to become a citizen of your host country but it meant that you would lose your status as a Palestinian, would you still want to become a citizen of your host country?
If given a choice, would you like to move to another Arab country and become a citizen there? If so, which one?
If given a choice, would you prefer to become a citizen of your host country or to move your family to the Palestinian Authority-controlled areas?

Never has anyone dared poll Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia or elsewhere to ask them if they would take advantage of citizenship if it was offered. It is impossible to know how bad the problem is without simply asking them.

Once the poll results are known, assuming that most Palestinian Arabs are like the protesting mothers in Tahrir Square and the poll is done without bias and without governmental pressure, the issue of systematic discrimination against Palestinians in Arab countries can be tackled properly.

Human rights groups like HRW who bend over backwards to pretend that the problem doesn't exist would be forced to acknowledge that there is a problem and that the Arab governments must be pushed to stop their discrimination.

We need to expose the truth. And it would not be that hard; to commission a poll like this can't possibly cost that much money.

For decades, the world has been fed lies about how the Palestinian Arabs feel about their own lives. Isn't it time to simply ask them what they think?

And then shouldn't every Western nation and human rights group mobilize to give Palestinian Arabs the simple human right to become citizens of any Arab country, under the same rules as any other Arab?

Anti-Semitism 2.0 (Mudar Zahran)

From Hudson-NY:

The concept of the "evil Jew" has made a well-disguised comeback: Criticizing Israel and Zionis, is now deemed a legitimate option to cursing Jews and Judaism. Not only is it open, socially acceptable and legal, but it can actually bring prosperity and popularity.

Why would a Palestinian be writing this? The answer is simple: The Palestinians have been used as fuel for the new form of anti-Semitism; this has hurt the Palestinians and exposed them to unprecedented and purposely media-ignored abuse by Arab governments, including some of those who claim love for the Palestinians, yet in fact only bear hatred to Jews. This has resulted in Palestinian cries for justice, equality, freedom and even basic human rights being ignored while the world getting consumed with delegitimizing Israel from either ignorance or malice.

Worse, just as the old form of anti-Semitism has proven itself a threat as poisonous to its supporters, as it was to the Jews, the new form of anti-Semitism 2.0 could prove itself the same -- all the more likely as we see the world tolerating Iran's nuclear ambitions not necessarily out of love for the Mullah's regime, but instead because of mental fixation against Israel.

Such bias against Israel cannot be "accidental" or merely "unfortunate." No other nation has received the amount of scrutinizing, criticism, coverage, demonization and delegitimization. In fact the question to be asked is not whether there is bias against Israel; but rather why there is bias against Israel?

...Media bias against Israel dies not harm only Israelis; it comes at very dear price to us, the Palestinians. In July of 2010, for example, a seasoned journalist Robert Fisk interviewed a group of right-wing ultra-conservative East Bank-Jordanians who were calling on King Abdullah of Jordan to strip the Palestinian majority of their citizenship and property. The group, mostly made up of retired Jordanian servicemen and journalists were also calling for ending the peace treaty with Israel and "establishing it as an enemy state." Despite my attempts to contact Mr. Fisk –-along with another Jordanian-Palestinian journalist---to warn him of the people he was going to meet, he nonetheless, published an article entitled, "Why Is Jordan Occupied by Palestinians?" -- Which was mainly a manifesto for those with whom he had met. They then publicized the article as a global media victory for themselves, and drove the Palestinians of Jordan into even deeper fear for their own safety in a country where they are already oppressed by security agencies; virtually barred from any government or local authority positions, excluded from state universities, despite paying "a university tax", as well as other taxes and tariffs --which their fellow Jordanians of Bedouins heritage are exempted from-- and regularly and openly insulted by the government-run Jordanian media calling for them to be expelled.

The day before Mr. Fisk met with the extremist group, one of their members, a retired intelligence officer now turned writer, published an article calling on the Jordanian intelligence service to "chop off Mudar Zahran's head in the UK without any observance of diplomatic restraints;" would Mr. Fisk have met with an Israeli journalist calling for the Mossad to behead a Palestinian on British soil?

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: A good idea from G:

Entire poster series here.

New poster series idea: Real Liberals Love Israel

An idea I've been kicking around:

My main problem is coming up with appropriate photos. How best to illustrate freedom of the press, or of assembly, or a top-notch justice system? (Diversity is a bit easier.) I want this one to be a positive campaign.

By the way, the New York Jewish Voice published 13 of my posters in their current edition (they apologized to me for not putting my URL anywhere on the page...)

Just a Molotov cocktail

Palestine Today quotes Israeli news as saying that a Molotov cocktail was thrown at an Israeli bus near Qalqilya on Sunday evening. Thankfully, no one was injured.

But this is not an isolated incident. A single well-aimed firebomb could kill many people, and Palestinian Arabs attack Israelis with firebombs a lot.

Yet the English-language media - even the Israeli English media - almost always ignores these attacks.

A quick glance at Hebrew media shows that there were two Molotov cocktails thrown at a soldier post near Rachel's Tomb a couple of weeks ago, and an Egged bus was shot at.

Last Friday, in Silwan, a Molotov cocktail was thrown towards an Israeli officer, and he briefly was set on fire. He is only lightly injured, but supposedly a video of the attack is making the rounds of Palestinian Arab media. (You can see a number of photos here, taken by Reuters but not picked up by any major newspaper that I could find.)

From reading the media, you would think that Palestinian Arabs merely throw small stones in their protests. You never hear about shootings, or firebombs. Yet they happen quite often.

They attempt to immolate and shoot Jews to death. Regularly.

But they don't usually succeed.

The Israeli media is used to this, so to them it is not news. The Western media doesn't care, so they don't allow it to be news.

And scenes like this are all but invisible to the world.

Syria says protesters in Daraa were "Palestinian extremists"

Syrian media is claiming that the instigators of the Dara'a protests on Friday, which resulted in Syrian forces killing a number of demonstrators, were "Palestinian extremists."

Syria's Al Watan writes that

The majority of those who participated in the chaos and devastation were Palestinian extremists...In the capital Damascus, an official Palestinian source confirmed the rejection of the riots triggered by some Palestinians in the Daraa camp, pointing out that the Palestinians in Syria ...will not hesitate to address those who violate security in Syria.

He emphasized that these are outside of the Palestinian consensus and will be prosecuted.

Al Watan attended a meeting that was held yesterday afternoon with all the Palestinian factions and the a delegation went to the Daraa camp with a clear message that any departure from the ["refugee"] camps would be faced by the Palestinian security first without mercy and they confirmed the complete rejection of any acts of sabotage carried out by extremist elements.

There are two UNRWA camps in Daraa.

If the protesters were really Palestinian, then Syria is apparently not the pro-Palestinian Arab paradise it styles itself to be. If they weren't, then it is very notable that Syria wants to blame its Palestinian population for the demonstrations.

Either way, it will take time for the Western media to mention this detail about the deadly protests, because the pro-democracy meme is easy to digest, but Syrians shooting members of its own Palestinian population is a little more complicated and detracts from the idea that Palestinian Arabs' only enemy is Israel.

J-Street Baby-in Chief whines that Netanyahu won't meet him

From Ha'aretz:

Ben-Ami added that although he has asked to meet with Netanyahu during his stay in Israel "to introduce ourselves and explain how we can work together as allies," he was rejected.

"Yet, as you may have read, while the Prime Minister doesn’t have time to meet a movement that now represents over 170,000 pro-Israel, pro-peace supporters, he has time to host Sarah Palin for dinner Monday night," Ben-Ami wrote.

As Yaacov Lozowick points out:

I don't know in what way J-Street represents 170,000 people, and he doesn't explain; nor am I convinced they're all pro-Israel in any recognizable way. So far as I can tell, however, there are tens of millions of pro-Israel people who listen approvingly to much of what Sarah Palin says, and will be eager to hear her tell about her trip, including the meeting she had with Netanyahu.

So who's the numerically-challenged one in the story?

I also have no idea how Ben-Ami came up with 170,000 people who feel that he represents them, but for fun I just compared J-Street's and Elder of Ziyon's traffic.

According to Alexa, J-Street's site is ranked 551,962 of all Internet sites, and Elder of Ziyon is ranked 172,095. (Within the United States, J-Street is slightly ahead of me, 112,217 vs. 118,793. In Israel, J-Street ranks 11,801 and EoZ ranks 2,457.)

I get roughly three times the number of global readers that J-Street does.

So, I guess I have triple the right to visit Binyamin Netanyahu the next time I'm in Israel. Hell, I think he should make a stop to the Elder Manor the next time he comes to the US! I demand a one-on-one meeting!

I really need to learn how to whine better, like Ben-Ami. It could do wonders for my traffic. Maybe Ha'aretz will quote me as well!

I have a piece of advice for Ben-Ami: When the leader of Israel doesn't think you are pro-Israel, perhaps you aren't pro-Israel.

Nasrallah supports Arab/Muslim uprisings - except for two

From Ya Libnan:

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah appeared again today on TV via video link to praise the revolutionaries and protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and Yemen for their “faith and high spirituality.”

Addressing the protesters he said : “We are with you and we are ready to help you “

He did not mention anything about the protests in Iran and Syria, despite the fact that several protests have taken place in Iran against the regime and 6 protesters were killed Friday by Syrian security forces and dozens were injured.

I'm sure it was an oversight. After all, Nasrallah is so interested in democracy!

Anti-semitism at SOAS; Israel supporter bitten

From TheJC:

A pro-Israel protester has been taken to hospital after being bitten on the cheek outside SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies, today. Police arrested two men on suspicion of affray and they were being held in custody at a north London police station.

Four supporters of Stand With Us had decided to go to SOAS after learning that a Celebrate Palestine event was taking place as part of Israel Apartheid Week. Two of them, Tony Coren and Gili Brenner, went inside the university and had a number of conversations with the student participants. Mr Coren said: "We had placards and some information packs, and we had some very interesting and civilised discussions."

But suddenly, Mr Coren said, the atmosphere turned hostile. "About four or five people were standing around Gili, Ro'i Goldman, and the fourth member of our group. One man began to say some extremely unpleasant things about Jews. He said that the best thing the Jews had ever done was to go into the gas chambers. One asked if he could film him. The man said yes, adding that 'these things should be heard.'"

Another man then came forward and told the abusive man that he did not have to be filmed or interviewed. Despite the abusive man agreeing to be filmed, Mr Coren said, the second man, who was "big and burly and of Middle East appearance," allegedly launched himself at one of the counterprotesters, grabbing at his camera, punching him and then biting him on the cheek.

"There was a struggle and the university security guards came out. A number of other people then began to say we shouldn't be there. The president of the union came out and said we had made our point. A policeman strongly advised us to leave."

Ro'i Goldman, who plans to study in the UK next year, said he was very shocked by the experience. But Tony Coren said he was not shocked, but was angry that the university authorities had indicated that by their very presence, the Stand With Us protesters had possibly provoked the attack.

The alleged victim was taken to University College Hospital.

These are the same protesters that were using my "Apartheid?" posters.

(h/t many who sent this to me)

Benny Morris owns Ilan Pappe (link to full TNR article)

Benny Morris exposes Ilan Pappe as a fraud in a quite definitive way.

From TNR (thanks to TNR for giving a pass-through link beyond the paywall for EoZ readers):

At best, Ilan Pappe must be one of the world’s sloppiest historians; at worst, one of the most dishonest. In truth, he probably merits a place somewhere between the two.

Here is a clear and typical example—in detail, which is where the devil resides—of Pappe’s handiwork. I take this example from The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. On February 2, 1948, a young Jewish scientist named Aharon Katzir came to see David Ben-Gurion, the chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive and the leader of the Jewish community in Palestine.

Two months earlier, the General Assembly of the United Nations had recommended the partition of the country into two states. The Zionist establishment had accepted Resolution 181, but the Palestinian Arab leadership, and the surrounding Arab states, had rejected it—and Palestinian militiamen began to shoot at Jewish traffic, pedestrians, and settlements. The first Arab-Israeli war had begun.

Katzir had come to report to the man managing the Jewish war effort (Ben-Gurion also held the defense portfolio in the Jewish Agency Executive) about an experiment that he and his team in the Haganah’s “science branch” had been conducting. As was his wont, Ben-Gurion jotted down in his diary what his visitor told him. (Ben-Gurion’s diary, a major source on Israeli and Middle East history, consists almost entirely of his summaries of reports by people coming to see him; very few entries actually enlighten the reader about what Ben-Gurion thought or said.) The entry reads:

Aharon: ‘Shimshon’ [the operation’s codename], an experiment was conducted on animals. The researchers were clothed in gas masks and suit. The suit costs 20 grush, the mask about 20 grush (all must be bought immediately). The operation [or experiment] went well. No animal died, the [animals] remained dazzled [as when a car’s headlights dazzle an oncoming driver] for 24 hours. There are some 50 kilos [of the gas]. [They] were moved to Tel Aviv. The [production] equipment is being moved here. On the laboratory level, some 20 kilos can be produced per day.

This is the only accessible source that exists, to the best of my knowledge, about the meeting and the gas experiment, and it is the sole source cited by Pappe for his description of the meeting and the “Shimshon” project. But this is how Pappe gives the passage in English:

Katzir reported to Ben-Gurion: “We are experimenting with animals. Our researchers were wearing gas masks and adequate outfit. Good results. The animals did not die (they were just blinded). We can produce 20 kilos a day of this stuff.”
The translation is flecked with inaccuracies, but the outrage is in Pappe’s perversion of “dazzled,” or sunveru, to “blinded”—in Hebrew “blinded” would be uvru, the verb not used by Ben-Gurion—coupled with the willful omission of the qualifier “for 24 hours.” Pappe’s version of this text is driven by something other than linguistic and historiographical accuracy. Published in English for the English-speaking world, where animal-lovers are legion and deliberately blinding animals would be regarded as a barbaric act, the passage, as published by Pappe, cannot fail to provoke a strong aversion to Ben-Gurion and to Israel.
Such distortions, large and small, characterize almost every page of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. So I should add, to make the historical context perfectly clear, that no gas was ever used in the war of 1948 by any of the participants. Pappe never tells the reader this. Raising the subject of gas is historical irrelevance. But the paragraph will dangle in the reader’s imagination as a dark possibility, or worse, a dark reality: the Jews, gassed by the Nazis three years before, were about to gas, or were gassing, Arabs. I note also, for accuracy’s sake, that, apart from the 1917 battle for Gaza in World War I, the only people in the Middle East who have used poison gas against their enemies in the past century have been Arabs—the Egyptians in Yemen in the 1960s, the Iraqis in Kurdistan in the 1980s. So there can be no escaping the conclusion that Pappe introduced the subject, and perverted the text, for one purpose only: to blacken the image of Israel and its leaders in 1948. This is also among the purposes of The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty and Out of the Frame.

...Those who falsify history routinely take the path of omission. They ignore crucial facts and important pieces of evidence while cherry-picking from the documentation to prove a case.

Pappe is more brazen. He, too, often omits and ignores significant evidence, and he, too, alleges that a source tells us the opposite of what it in fact says, but he will also simply and straightforwardly falsify evidence.

...About the 1929 “Temple Mount” riots, which included two large-scale massacres of Jews, in Hebron and in Safed, Pappe writes: “The opposite camp, Zionist and British, was no less ruthless [than the Arabs]. In Jaffa a Jewish mob murdered seven Palestinians.” Actually, there were no massacres of Arabs by Jews, though a number of Arabs were killed when Jews defended themselves or retaliated after Arab violence. Pappe adds that the British “Shaw Commission,” so-called because it was chaired by Sir Walter Shaw (a former chief justice of the Straits Settlements), which investigated the riots, “upheld the basic Arab claim that Jewish provocations had caused the violent outbreak. ‘The principal cause ... was twelve years of pro-Zionist [British] policy.’

It is unclear what Pappe is quoting from. I did not find this sentence in the commission’s report. Pappe’s bibliography refers, under “Primary Sources,” simply to “The Shaw Commission.” The report? The deliberations? Memoranda by or about? Who can tell? The footnote attached to the quote, presumably to give its source, says, simply, “Ibid.” The one before it says, “Ibid., p. 103.” The one before that says, “The Shaw Commission, session 46, p. 92.” But the quoted passage does not appear on page 103 of the report. In the text of Palestinian Dynasty, Pappe states that “Shaw wrote [this] after leaving the country [Palestine].” But if it is not in the report, where did Shaw “write” it?

Actually, the thrust of the “Report of the Commission on the Palestine Disturbances of August, 1929,” which appeared in 1930, is completely contrary to what Pappe asserts (though it does list some non-lethal Jewish provocations—peaceful demonstrations, a newspaper article—as among the immediate triggers of the eruption of the Arab violence). The report states: “The fundamental cause, without which in our opinion disturbances either would not have occurred or would have been little more than a local riot, is the Arab feeling of animosity and hostility towards the Jews consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future.” As to the riots themselves, the report states: “The outbreak in Jerusalem on the 23rd of August [the start of the riots] was from the beginning an attack by Arabs on Jews for which no excuse in the form of earlier murders by Jews has been established.” The disturbances “took the form, for the most part, of a vicious attack by Arabs on Jews accompanied by wanton destruction of Jewish property.... In a few instances, Jews attacked Arabs and destroyed Arab property. These attacks, though inexcusable, were in most cases in retaliation for wrongs already committed by Arabs in the neighborhood in which the Jewish attacks occurred.”

Pappe repeatedly asserts, in order to demonstrate an Arab readiness for conciliation, that the Palestinian leadership in 1920-1922, including Hajj Amin, was “ambiguous” about Zionism and “was willing to compromise.” This is nonsense. Indeed, Hajj Amin was tried and convicted in absentia by a British court for helping to incite the murderous riots of April 1920.
Some of Pappe’s “historical” assertions are, quite obviously, politically motivated, but they are mistakes nonetheless. He refers to “statements made by Jewish and Zionist leaders about the need to build the ‘Third Temple.’” Husaynis often leveled that charge against the Jews, in order to incite the Muslim masses. But which important Zionist leader in the 1920s advocated the construction of a Third Temple? None whom I can name. Later Pappe reinforces this lie by remarking that “Palestinian historiography, including recent work that draws on newly revealed materials, suggests that the mufti’s concern was not baseless, and that there really was a Jewish plan to seize the entire Haram [Temple Mount].” Pappe offers no evidence for this extraordinary assertion.

Pappe repeatedly refers to “Harry Lock” of the British Mandate government secretariat in the 1920s—but the chief secretary’s name was Harry Luke. Pappe obviously encountered the name in Hebrew or Arabic and transliterated it, with no prior knowledge of Luke against which to check it: if he had consulted British documents, he would have known the correct spelling. Pappe refers to “the Hope Simpson Commission”—there was no such commission, only an investigation by an official named John HopeSimpson. He refers to “twenty-two Muslim ... states” in the world in 1931, but by my count there were only about half a dozen. He refers to “the Jewish Intelligence Service”—presumably the Haganah Intelligence Service—and then adds, “whose archive has been opened to Israeli historians but not to Palestinians.” To the best of my knowledge, this is an outright lie. All public archives in Israel, including the Haganah Archive in Tel Aviv, which contains the papers of its intelligence service, are open to all researchers.

Read the whole thing, which also shows that Pappe has no problem making up facts about his own history as well!

(h/t Folderol and Mr. K. Dilkington)

Hamas deploying wire-guided anti-tank missiles?

The Palestinian Arab media is quoting Israeli sources (which I cannot find*) that Hamas is deploying a wire-guided anti-tank system.

According to the reports, on Friday the IDF for the first time faced a Russian-made 9K111 Fagot (AT-4 Spigot) anti-tank system, as they were fired upon near the security fence. No damage was reported.

Hezbollah has more sophisticated wire-guided missiles.

The Spigot has a range of up to 2.5 kilometers.

Israel recently successfully deployed in the field the Trophy tank anti-missile system, and it was used this morning to neutralize an anti-tank missile.

*UPDATE: Since I queued this post this morning, two Grad rockets have slammed into Ashkelon and two people were treated for shock. In the JPost article it says

Hamas’s so-called “return to direct terror activity” began Friday with the firing of a guided anti-tank missile at an IDF jeep on patrol along the Gaza border.

This is the second time in a month that a guided anti-tank missile has been fired from the Gaza Strip. The IDF believes that Hamas and possibly other organizations have a significant arsenal including Kornet, Faggot and Sagger-guided anti-tank missiles.

Purim open thread!

Who has time to post?

But for those not familiar with Purim, here's the beginning of the story, sung by a three year old:

Where in Gaza would Abbas stay?

From Ma'an:

President Mahmoud Abbas has sent three delegates to the Gaza Strip in order to arrange for his stay in the besieged enclave, Palestinian officials said Saturday.

Abbas announced Wednesday that he was ready to travel to Gaza to negotiate a unity agreement with his rival party Hamas, which has been in control on the coastal strip since 2007.

Immediately after the announcement, the Hamas leadership welcomed the initiative saying they would make the needed arrangements for the visit.

But given that most the Palestinian Authority’s institutions in Gaza are under Hamas’ control including the presidential headquarters, Abbas may have a hard time finding a place to stay.

May I suggest the Grand Palace Hotel, which may be visited at www.grandpalace.ps?

The Grand Palace features Internet access, luxury accommodations, well-appointed meeting rooms and easy access to the beautiful beach. It even has redundant generators for when the power goes out from Hamas not paying their bills.

Elbaradei stoned by Islamists (video)

From AFP:

Islamists hurled stones and shoes at Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel Peace laureate and a secular contender for Egypt's presidency, as he tried to vote Saturday in a referendum on constitutional amendments.

ElBaradei was hit in the back by a stone thrown from the crowd of hundreds but managed to escape unhurt and slammed as "irresponsible" the holding of a referendum without adequate law and order.

"We don't want you," the mob shouted, throwing stones, shoes and water at the former UN nuclear watchdog chief as he turned up at a Cairo polling station, five weeks after president Hosni Mubarak was ousted by mass protests.

"He lives in the United States and wants to rule us. It's out of the question," one of them said.

"We don't want an American agent," said another.

ElBaradei beat a retreat to his car and left without voting at the polling station in Muqattam, a largely poor district in south Cairo.

"Went 2 vote w family attacked by organized thugs. Car smashed w rocks. Holding referendum in absence of law & order is an irresponsible act," he wrote on Twitter.

Members of the crowd interviewed by AFP before the assault identified themselves as Islamists without elaborating on their precise allegiance.

An official from the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and most organized opposition movement, denied members of his group were involved.

Egyptian democracy. Doesn't it just fill you with pride?

Hamas attacks journalists - again

From CNN:

Violence erupted in and around Gaza on Saturday, as Hamas security forces roughed up demonstrators and journalists, and five people were wounded in cross-border fighting.

Security forces stormed the offices of international news organizations after the violent break-up of a small demonstration in Gaza City on Saturday, witnesses said. Journalists covering that event were roughed up, they said.

They raided the offices of CNN, Reuters and Japanese broadcaster NHK, all in the same building where international news operations are located.

Reuters bureau chief for Israel and the Palestinian territories, Crispian Balmer, said one employee was beaten with an iron rod and another was threatened with being thrown out the window. He said a camera was confiscated but was later returned. A TV and a computer keyboard were destroyed by the security forces.

The forces forcibly entered the CNN office, demanding to see whether there was any television equipment and asking if anyone had been shooting video footage from the office.
NHK Jerusalem bureau chief Disuke Iijima said videotape had been confiscated.

And, surprisingly, from Ma'an:

A Palestinian journalist in the Gaza Strip said Saturday that she received threats of violence from Hamas authorities over her participation in demonstrations.

The journalist told Ma'an that Hamas police threatened her and her son if she wrote anything on Facebook or her blog about the pro-unity protests that have been dispersed violently throughout Gaza in recent days.

She said authorities sent the head of her family a text message saying, "We will kill her the next time she blogs against us or uses Facebook to organize anything ... If you won't do it, we'll do it for you."

The journalist, who requested anonymity due to fear of reprisal, said she was detained and that while in jail, police referenced her son by name and indirectly threatened to take action against him over her work.

"I deactivated my Facebook account and can't write anything on my blog" due to the threats against him, she told Ma'an by phone from Gaza, adding that Hamas security was following her.

Other journalists told Ma'an that authorities were taking unprecedented measures against press in the wake of the demonstrations. Cameras and recording equipment have been confiscated and data erased.

"The situation for journalists is really terrible; it's unbelievable," she said. "In the past they treated people from Fatah like this but now they are targeting ordinary civilians, including journalists."

She added: "This is the first time I'm afraid to use my name."

Interestingly, CNN and Reuters were silent when Hamas attacked other journalists only two days earlier.

Outside of press associations, I have yet to see any condemnation of Hamas for these acts.

For Purim: Fiddler/You Got Served trailer mash-up

Funny!

(h/t Yerushalimey)

Elder posters appear opposite London anti-Israel hatefest

From Richard Millett's blog:

A small pro-Israel protest was held outside the “Celebrate Palestine” festival at SOAS today, but it wasn’t long before the organisers complained to security who called the police to have the protest removed.

While the pro-Israel protesters were outside arguing their case to remain, inside Lowkey was rapping to the students about Israel being an apartheid, supremacist, colonialist state.

Back outside the police eventually relented after realising how ridiculous it would be to remove a peaceful, static protest.

The protesters then moved on to Ahava in Covent Garden outside of which an anti-Israel mob had congregated for their usual Saturday hate-fest.

Well done to Stand With Us UK which produced the placards, leaflets and very eye-catching “We support a two-state solution” stickers.

From another source

V'nahafoch hu!

(h/t Silke, Folderol, Joel)

Repost of my 2008 Purim Torah - Rock and Roll

I am re-posting this Purim Torah I wrote in 2008 because I was very proud of it, and I have no time this year to even consider writing something original.

It was written at the request of the beautiful and talented Daughter of Ziyon - now also known as Mrs. Inventor - to give in a speech when she spent a year in Israel.

Hmmm...maybe I'll use it during the Shabbos Sheva Brachos....

There are two types of entities in the world, the eternal and the temporary. While there is only one true Eternal, Hashem has given us symbols of tangible objects that also can be considered "permanent" because they last for very long periods of time.

To see what Hashem is designating for us to consider "permanent" we need to see how Hashem Himself is described. And one of the most famous descriptions of Hashem is "Hashem Tzuri v'Goali", Hashem is my Rock and my Redeemer. The reason Hashem is described as a Rock is because rocks are permanent features in our lives; by referring to Hashem as a "Rock" we mean that He is eternal and reliable, just as huge stones are permanent in our lifetimes.

So we see that the concept of a Rock is associated with permanence, with eternity.

What object would be most associated with transience? The Gemara talks about two different kinds of kinyanim, those for things that are immovable - like land (kinyan karka) - and those for things that are portable (kinyan metaltilin).Even very heavy objects would be considered metaltilin, movable, because, in theory, one can place them on wheels and roll them somewhere else. In a sense, the best symbol for something that is not permanently in place would be the wheel. Indeed, in Kabbalistic thought we have the concept of "gilgul neshamos", that our own temporary lives roll from one instance to another as if they are all part of a wheel, a gilgul. Things that are temporary are things that can roll on wheels.

So we have these two concepts: permanence and transience, of the constant and the temporary - of the Rock, and the Roll.

Rock and roll represents the synthesis of these two diametrically opposed concepts; it is the place where the Eternal meets His lowly subjects, and we can only get a glimpse of His power by listening to an electric guitar powered by a thousand-watt amp cranked up to 11. Just as the Bnei Yisrael "saw" the kolot at Har Sinai, the sense of hearing being transformed into the sense of sight, so we can "feel" the sounds from a good rock and roll band, transforming sound into feeling, and giving us an experience as similar as possibly to Maamad Har Sinai.

And rock and roll artists understand their role in this synthesis. For example, when The Who proclaims "Long Live Rock" notice how they are only talking about the permanent part of the equation, the Rock, and not the temporary Roll, which would be nonsensical. But it makes perfect sense for Joan Jett to declare "I Love Rock and Roll" as she is proclaiming her love of all of Creation as well as the Creator.

Perhaps the best proof of this dialectic (a perfect word that I've never used in my life before!) is in the halachos of Purim itself.

We all know that we celebrate Purim on the 14th of Adar - except in walled cities, when we celebrate it on the 15th. The walls of the walled cities symbolize the permanence of the Rock - indeed, the walls were constructed out of rocks - while the Purim of everyone else is the Purim of galus, or temporary existence, of the Roll from one place to another. Shushan Purim is mainly celebrated in Yerushalayim nowadays, which houses the Even Shesiyah - the Foundation Stone, the Rock of all rocks. Together, Shushan Purim and Purim are the Rock and the Roll.

But there is a hidden aspect of this concept that both proves it and makes us understand it better.

So far, we have discussed the "Rock" and the "Roll" of "Rock and Roll." But we have ignored the "and", the small word that connects the two, In fact, that "and" is terrifically important in understanding the synthesis of the Rock and the Roll.

This year (2008), Purim and Shushan Purim are not next to each other, but we have a Purim MeShulash here in Eretz Yisroel, a three-day Purim that is separated by Shabbos. Just as Rock and Roll are connected by the "and", so is the triple Purim of this year connected by the Shabbos. And this hidden aspect of the "and" - the hester astir - shows us the importance of the Shabbos.

Shabbos has aspects both of the permanent Rock - it is eternal and always there - and the transient Roll - it only rolls around once a week. Indeed, in Olam Haboh, it will be "yom shekulo Shabbos u'menuchah" - it will be truly permanent. But in this world it only gives us a taste of permanence, but it is not permanent itself. Yet is is certainly also not temporary.

So Shabbos is the bridge between the eternal and the temporary, between the Purim and the Shushan Purim, between the Rock and the Roll.

But this still leaves a major question: if Purim precedes Shushan Purim, then why is it called Rock and Roll, and not Roll and Rock?

The answer is simple. In Hebrew, "and" is not a word, but a mere letter - the letter vav. And, in this case, specifically on the day that is v'nehepach hu, it is a vav hamehapeches, a vav that turns Roll and Rock into the proper Rock and Roll.

May we always learn from Purim Hameshulash, and from Rock and Roll how to run our very temporary lives with a constant awareness of the Eternal.

Helen Thomas exposes herself in Playboy...

...as being just as ugly inside as she is on the outside:

Don't buy Playboy for this interview

Of course I don't condone any violence against anyone. But who wouldn't fight for their country? What would any American do if their land was being taken? Remember Pearl Harbor. The Palestinian violence is to protect what little remains of Palestine. The suicide bombers act out of despair and desperation. Three generations of Palestinians have been forced out of their homes – by Israelis – and into refugee camps."

Yes, she really compares terrorists blowing up an ice cream parlor filled with kids to Americans fighting in the Pacific in World War II.

And that's only a tiny part of this interview that exposes Thomas as a thoroughly despicable human being, and those who defend her as being hypocrites of the highest order.

UPDATE: Newsbusters actually wades through the interview. It is even worse than the PR Newswire link I posted. She makes it very, very clear she is anti-semitic.

When quoted a criticism she doesn't like, she automatically asks "Did a Jew write that"? Classic.

Read it.

Why the media silence over Hamas attacks of journalists? (Toameh)

Expanding on a theme I wrote about yesterday, from Khaled Abu Toameh:

In the past few days, at least eight journalists were severly beaten with clubs or summoned for questioning while doing their job in the Hamas-cointrolled Gaza Strip when Hamas policemen in civilian clothes began attacking demonstrators.

Other journalists have had their cameras and notepads confiscated while covering various events that were deemed "provocative" by the Hamas authorities.

Hamas believes that intimidation of the media will prevent the truth from coming out. Like most Arab dictatorships, Hamas does not tolerate stories that reflect negatively on its radical regime in the Gaza Strip - the reason the Hamas government has been cracking down on local journalists who fail to toe the line.

Although some of the journalists who were assaulted work with international news organizations, many of these foreign media outlets ignored the story, apparently out of fear of retribution by the Hamas authorities.

These journalists who chose to defy Hamas should be supported not only by their foreign colleagues, but also by Western governments and human rights organizations.

Otherwise, the day will come when the world will never know what is really happening inside Hamas's Gaza Strip.

Haaretz' coverage of the events in Shushan (Josh Lipsitz)

I received a spoof edition of Haaretz PDF credited to Josh Lipsitz. Here are some of the stories:

Haaretz Interview: Haman "the wicked" –Up Close and Personal

Sitting with a relaxed Haman and sipping cappuccino in his balcony with its stunning view of the Persian kingdom I found myself wondering how this kind, engaging man received such a bad rap from so many other journalists. Over that long afternoon, I felt we formed a special bond.

Little did I know that this would, tragically, be Haman's last interview.

Haaretz: Haman, I hope I am not being presumptuous but I heard a rumor that you occasionally enjoy reading Haaretz.

Haman: Occasionally—that is not true! I read Haaretz every day! It is a great paper. The writing is crisp and engaging. The editorials are thoughtful and provocative. Your view of Mordechai and Esther is balanced and fair – not like those other Jewish papers. I draw liberally from Haaretz when I need to make my case against the Jews. I really don't know where I would be without you.

Haaretz: Wow. That comes as something of a surprise coming from a person who is usually thought of as a "hater of Jews."

Haman: (laughter) Ah yes, I expected that to come up at some point. The Jewish lobby is very powerful here in Persia and you can't talk about certain things without being pulled out on the daybed so to speak.

The truth is that I have no special hatred for Jews. I hate some Jews just as I hate some non-Jews. The arithmetic is not really important. You see I sit with you and drink coffee even though you are Jewish.

Haaretz: And you do have a beautiful place here and I feel like we can really connect. It's a shame that the Mordechai and Esther never took the time to establish this kind of dialogue with you.

Haman: I try to ignore these things and focus on initiatives that can bring positive change for Persia and stability to the Middle East.

Haaretz: The decree to kill all the Jews of Persia on the 14th of Adar. Please forgive me asking, but many have said that this is a little extreme.

Haman: Yes, well there has been a great deal of misinformation. The truth is that I was simply looking for a leisure activity for the good citizens of Persia. You see they have been very frustrated since Simon Cowell left American Idol. They need some outlet for their sadistic feelings. We all have needs you know. It was not that I had meant anything personally against the Jews. They were simply in the right place at the right time.

Haaretz: So you deny that there was something personal against Mordechai for failing to bow?

Haman: (laughing). Oh - so much has been made of that little incident by the Jewish lobbyists and by Fox News. The truth is that I barely notice whether people are bowing or not. My wife
Zeresh was more offended than I and she was offended on behalf of the honor of the King and the people of Persia. I am merely a public servant.

Haaretz: Do you think there is hope for peace with Mordechai and the Jewish fanatics?

Haman: I pray that soon when we think of the Jews we will think not just of peace but of many, many pieces.

Roger Waters to play benefit concert for Persian victims of Jewish terrorism

Visionary musician, creator of legendary rock band Pink Floyd, and moral compass for many Haaretz readers, Roger Waters, has voiced his strongest possible condemnation of Jewish violence especially against Haman, his ten sons, and the 800 innocent martyrs of Shushan. Waters has announced that Pink Floyd will hold a benefit concert in Shushan's Vashti Memorial Stadium for the families of the Victims Of Mordechai, and other Israeli Terrorists (VOMIT). They will perform works from two of Pink Floyd's best known albums: Wish Jew Were Not Here and Dark Side of the Jew. The event will be co-sponsored by the following Israeli human rights groups, Haman Achshav, Rabbis for Human Blights, B'chelem, and Machsochism Watch.

J Street to hold first "alternative" Purim celebration

J Street, the Jewish lobbying group launched by philanthropist George Tzaros, has announced plans for an alternative Purim celebration which will involve fasting, mourning, and donning of sackcloth.

J Street director Jeremy Benzonah beamed as he made the announcement, "As Jews we will celebrate Purim, but we choose to celebrate the true Purim, which we pronounce, "Poor-him" (meaning Haman).

In attendance will be the newly elected Chicago Mayor, Wrong Emanuel and there will be a videotaped greetings from US President Barak Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Edrogan. Special journalism awards will be given to Helen Thomas, who was fired from her job for speaking her mind about Israel and Jews and to New York Times columnist “Uncle” Tom Friedman.

Benzonah flatly rejected the criticisms leveled at J Street was anti-hamantaschen. These criticisms emerged recently in conservative Jewish circles after J Street backed an international Arab boycott of the triangle-shaped cake. They also sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration requesting that Hamantaschen be
made illegal in the United States. "J Street is absolutely, and proudly prohamantaschen" says Benzonah.
"However, this does not mean that we agree with everything that the Hamatashen represents." "For example, we would be much more comfortable if the Hamantashen were smaller, round, and filled with chocolate chips or crushed pecans rather than the offensively ethnic poppy seed and jelly fillings often used by our right wing counterparts."

"As you know, friends can criticize friends."

Guiltsone Commission to investigate Jewish war crimes in Persia

The United Nations has appointed honorable Judge Richard Guiltstone to head the investigation of war crimes committed by Mordechai, Esther and gangs of right wing Jewish fanatics in Persia. Guiltstone was eager to begin the important work of the investigation. “Mordechai, Esther, and other Jewish terrorists clearly exploited the alleged extermination plan to justify widespread and disproportionate violence against Persian non-combatants.” “Many of these atrocities have been documented on film we received from Al Jazeera, the BBC and CNN.”

“Thus we are already sure that war crimes were committed. However, we need to pay lip service to some form of investigation to quiet the very powerful pro-Jewishl lobby.” Guiltstone’s committee will begin their work in Shushan where the Jews reportedly killed 800 Persians and hung Haman and his 10 sons on trees which were 50 cubits high “in a clear violation of all conventions of war.” Those trees have been brought to the Hague where they will form a permanent exhibit of man’s inhumanity. Queen Esther has been warned that if she visits the United Kingdom she will be arrested immediately which has put a damper on her Spring shopping plans.

(h/t Menachem L)

See also Joe Settler's similar Purim spoof of HaMa'an. With comments!

Some "non-violence"

Today the IDF spokesperson tweeted a message similar to messages tweeted nearly every Friday ever since they started their Twitter account:

~200 rioters near Bil'in, ~30 Ni'lin currently hurling rocks @ security forces who are responding w/riot dispersal means

And we know that stones are thrown every Friday because every once in a while the wire services decide to show the stone throwers:

Yet, invariably, the "pro-Palestinian" community pretends that these weekly protests are non-violent. In fact, there is no shortage of people who claim that they are against violence in any form. Amnesty International's blog last year featured an article claiming that Palestinian Arab non-violent resistance has its roots from the early 1900s and continues today, and that terrorism was an anomaly from the 1970s and 80s. (The is of course a ridiculous lie, as Palestinian Arab terror is exactly as old as Zionism itself.)

Yet the Bil'in protests occur every week, and every week there are rock throwers.

So either these self-described Gandhis consider throwing rocks non-violent, or they are doing nothing to discourage the stone-throwers at their most visible weekly protests.

Either way, the claim of "non-violent resistance" rings very, very hollow.

Latest Latma (3/18/11)

This is a good one.

A response to Tikkun's Michael Lerner's comment

In response to my posting yesterday saying that leftists are silent about Hamas abuses of freedom of expression and freedom of the press - where I listed a number of those who were silent, including Tikkun magazine - I received this comment:

Rabbi Michael Lerner (unregistered) wrote:

We at Tikkun totally condemn Hamas' human rights abuses, commend Justice Goldstone for condemning them also, condemn all forms of Palestinian and Israeli violence, "one standard shall you use," and have no sympathy for anyone who uses violence or who tries to distort the Biblical notion of a rodeph from someone standing in front of you with the means to kill you into a general legitimation of violence against an entire people, and pray everyday that Israel should be safe and secure.
--Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor, Tikkun www.tikkun.org

It is nice to see that Tikkun condemns Hamas' human rights abuses.

Some of Lerner's other comments deserve a response, though.

The main one is important in the wake of Tikkun's honoring Richard Goldstone (and Lerner himself!) in their recent 25th anniversary dinner. Lerner asserts here that Goldstone condemned Hamas in his report.

He didn't.

As I wrote one of in my many critiques of the Goldstone report - a report that Tikkun and Lerner absolutely loves - Goldstone studiously avoids condemning Hamas in his report, instead using nebulous terms like "armed groups" and making a clear and totally artificial distinction between Hamas and its own Al Qassam Brigades.

In fact, as I wrote, Goldstone praises Hamas in his false and slanderous report. As I conclude in my analysis:

The only recommendations in the report to "Gaza authorities" are to release political detainees and to "continue to enable the free and independent operation of Palestinian non-governmental organizations."

Hamas is not given a single recommendation to stop rocket attacks. Hamas is not told to stop incitement. Hamas is not told to release Gilad Shalit (as if he is being held against Hamas' wishes!).

No wonder Hamas is thrilled about the report. In the entire 450 page report, Hamas is not singled out once for condemnation.

And all the news stories and Goldstone interviews that claim that the report condemns Hamas are wrong.

It is also necessary to respond to Lerner's comment that "anyone who uses violence or who tries to distort the Biblical notion of a rodeph from someone standing in front of you with the means to kill you into a general legitimation of violence against an entire people." For those who do not know, the Torah explicitly allows one to kill someone who is in hot pursuit of another with the intent to kill, and that person is known as a "rodeph" (pursuer.)

Lerner is implying in his comment that Israel's justification for defending itself is the Jewish legal definition of rodeph.

There are at least three major problems with this formulation.

Firstly, Israel is not a theocracy, so it is unclear why Lerner is implying that the State of Israel is using Biblical law to justify its actions to defend itself - actions that every single state in the world, bar none, would do when faced with similar threats. By bringing up "rodeph" Lerner is slyly putting Israel in a category of a state that is relying on Old Testament justice in a modern world, and therefore this is a dig at the State of Israel itself.

Secondly, Lerner is saying that Israel attacks "an entire people" - and this is simply a lie, and also slanderous. No doubt he thinks of Operation Cast Lead as an attack against all Palestinian Arabs, but one wonders - why are the Arabs in the West Bank doing so well lately economically, even with Jewish communities in their midst? Why aren't they being attacked if Israel routinely practices violence "against an entire people"? In fact, why are there any Palestinian Arabs left alive today when Israel's awesome war machine could have eradicated them decades ago? Lerner here is accusing Israel of attempted genocide, and that is something that must be shown to be a baldfaced lie, no matter how many times people like Lerner repeat it. It is a disgusting and false charge and Lerner ought to be ashamed.

Thirdly, even according to Jewish law, "Rabbi" Lerner is wrong. The halachic justification for Israel is that a war to defend Jews is a "milkhemet mitzvah," , which is a much different topic than the law of a rodeph. Lerner should learn some halacha before spouting on topics that he knows nothing about.

So while I appreciate Lerner's taking the time to (apparently) paste a comment here, and his condemnation of Hamas, he is deeply wrong on many levels and his sickening formulations of using Judaism to justify his positions that are fundamentally antithetical to both Judaism and to Israel's own security must be refuted over and over again.

After all, Lerner doesn't even understand basic concept of "Tikkun Olam" - the fundamental underpinnings of his entire life's work and the basis for what he named his magazine.

One of those sentences that makes you shake your head

The Jerusalem Post has an interesting article that shows that Jordan is granting citizenship to very, very few Palestinian Arabs over the past decade.

But it includes one of those sentences that makes absolutely no sense - and that the world accepts as normal:

Some two million Palestinian refugees are registered by United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Jordan, mostly as Jordanian citizens.

If they are citizens...then they aren't refugees.

But when we are dealing with Palestinian Arabs, and only Palestinian Arabs, they apparently are.

And if you thought that this makes no sense, try to wrap your head around this, from UNRWA's website:

The West Bank is home to 771,000 registered refugees... Over two-thirds of [Gaza's] 1.5 million residents are refugees registered with UNRWA.

Yes, some 1.8 million Palestinian "refugees" are living in British Mandate Palestine, inside what the world considers...their own country.

Two Glenn Beck followups on Itamar

These follow up Beck's first piece on the Itamar massacre.

Again, whatever you think of Beck or Fox News...you won't see anyone on CNN or MSNBC ever doing a segment like this.

Saudi university to confiscate women's short. tight skirts

Al Watan reports that a new edict has been given to girls who attend the women-only Princess Noura Abdel Rahman University.

From now on, if their skirts are deemed too tight or too short, they will be confiscated.

It appears that they will replace it with one that is more modest, but that is not so clear.

I hope that Saudi men reading this can control themselves at the mention of "tight skirts."

A Ziophobic article becomes a great piece about Israel-Polish relations

You know the old joke, first told about Nazis and now about Arabs:

A story is told of a Jewish man who was riding on the subway reading an Arab newspaper. A friend of his, who happened to be riding in the same subway car, noticed this strange phenomenon. Very upset, he approached the newspaper reader. "Moshe, have you lost your mind? Why are you reading an Arab newspaper?"Moshe replied, "I used to read the Jewish newspaper, but what did I find? Jews being persecuted, Israel being attacked, Jews disappearing through assimilation and intermarriage, Jews living in poverty. So I switched to the Arab newspaper. Now what do I find? Jews own all the banks, Jews control the media, Jews are all rich and powerful, Jews rule the world. The news is so much better!"

As a public service, I will now publish an article by Israel-hater Ewa Jasiewicz in the rabidly anti-Zionist rag The Electronic Intifada. Once you cut out Jasiewicz's dripping, psychotic hate, which I have, it is a really great article: (I did very little editing - I just deleted the many anti-Israel phrases and sentences.)

"There is no more reliable and loyal adherent of your stance and aspiration for a better and a fairer world order in the European Union than Poland."
- Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, 9 April 2008

"We cannot pretend that Iran's behavior is normal and that a terrorist is a freedom fighter. You have a real friend in Europe and it is important that both countries will strengthen each other's image."
- Prime Minister Tusk at a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 23 February 2011

"The Jewish people are an indelible part of Polish history, and Poland is an indelible part of Jewish history ... Our deep bilateral cooperation is based on common values and a shared history, as well as on the aspiration to a common future in which we want to achieve the same goals."
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Tusk, 23 February 2011

Last month witnessed the launch of the first Polish-Israeli governmental forum held in Jerusalem. The biannual dialogue accelerates an existing partnership between the two countries which includes trade agreements, joint military training exercises and arms deals under an ongoing "Polonization of Israeli Technology" drive.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's 55-strong delegation included the ministers of education, health, foreign affairs and defense, as well as senior intelligence, culture, environment and finance ministry representatives. All met their counterparts in the Israeli government.

Both states signed deals for the Israeli military to train Polish special forces as well as pilots of Poland's fleet of 48 Lockheed Martin F-16 war planes. Further agreements included developing joint water and sustainable energy resource management projects; ongoing cultural cooperation with Polish "Year in Israel" events; research and development in health and medicine; Polish lobbying for an upgrade of relations between the EU and Israel; a deal on sharing access to national libraries; and initiatives to be taken between 2011 to 2013 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the start of the Holocaust in Poland.

Poland is Israel's freshest market in Europe and one of its most lucrative. Israeli companies have found a green zone in the Eastern European country.

The firm ASBUD, for example, listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, is majority-owned by Ashtrom, Shikun and Binui Group and STR Development & Construction Group. While having built housing complexes in the neighborhoods of Konstancin, Tarchomin and Piaseczno in Warsaw, Ashtrom also supplies construction materials for the Israeli Ministry of Defense and is building housing units in Nof Zion, Jerusalem.

Egged, Israel's oldest and largest bus company, bought Poland's Mobilis in 2006. In Poland, Egged's operations cover urban bus routes in Warsaw, Krakow and Bydgoszcz as well as suburban services, totaling some 240 buses.

Israeli water company Eden Springs Ltd. is the second-largest distributor of bottled water in Poland.

Last December, the Polish Ministry of Defense signed a $16 million deal with Israel's Elbit Systems to provide multi-sensor monitoring and surveillance systems for the Polish army.

In Jerusalem last month Netanyahu gave his Polish counterpart a gift -- a reproduction of an 1850 painting by British artist William Henry Bartlett. He told Tusk: "It's a depiction of Jerusalem, the heart of the Jewish people. It is an expression of our longing to restore our ancient land and to restore our life as a sovereign people in our ancestral homeland. This is precisely Poland's aspirations over the years, so I give this to you as a symbol of friendship and as a symbol of our hopes for a common future of peace and prosperity and security."

Former foreign minister and honorary Israeli citizen Wladyslaw Bartoszewski recently told journalists "All political forces in our country are friendly toward Israel ... Name any other country in Europe where over the past two decades three heads of diplomacy ... were of Jewish descent, one has an honorary citizenship of Israel, and the current one's wife is Jewish"

He was referring to former foreign ministers Stefan Meller, Adam Daniel Rotfeld and Bronislaw Geremek. Current Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski's wife is Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Washington Post columnist.

Szewach Weiss, a former Israeli ambassador to Poland and now a lecturer based in Poland, wrote in Poland's second biggest daily Rzeczpospolita: "Why are Polish-Jewish relations so special? The answer is simple. If you share the same land for 800 years, it cultivates a special bond that even a long separation is unable to break."

Speaking of the first Israeli parliament he comments: "Almost all the ministers of Israel [were of Polish descent] and were well aware of the language. Even today, Polish visitors walking the boulevards of Tel Aviv will hear the Polish language. Elderly ladies spend evenings playing cards in the terraces, gossiping in Polish. Just as they used to in Warsaw, Bialystok, Lvov and Vilnius"

Poland, which takes up the rotating presidency of the EU in July, has been one of the staunchest defenders of Israel within Europe.

In 2005, a year after Poland joined the European Union, the state co-instigated a campaign by members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to have Hizballah included on the EU terrorist list. When Israel was facing accusations of war crimes in Lebanon, then Polish Prime Minister Lech Kaczynski was the first European leader to visit Israel, his handshakes and embrace of Ehud Olmert intended to signify Poland's unshakeable support.

In August 2007 Polish MEPs supported Israel's assertion that a conference was "anti-Israel" and boycotted the event. MEP Bronislaw Geremek argued that the conference was biased and called for the EU to stop being so "completely pro-Palestinian." Konrad Szymanski accused the conference organizers, the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, of providing "a platform for activity of various extremists," while Boguslaw Sonik, another Polish MEP, said, "This is not the first such initiative. [The] Pro-Palestinian lobby is very active here. If in fact, the conference will become propagandist, Israelis can count on the Poles."

Poland voted against the UN General Assembly Resolution on the Goldstone report on war crimes committed during Israel's attack on Gaza, and along with five other European countries, refused to participate in the Durban II conference (the 2009 Durban Review Conference or the United Nations World Conference Against Racism) or ratify its resolutions.

In 2008 the Polish Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Foreign Affairs embarked on a campaign of cultural cooperation, spearheaded by the "Poland in Israel Year" of initiatives timed to coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of Israel's declaration. Organized by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute -- funded by the Ministry of Culture -- the Year involved, according to its website, 110 cultural events "including film showings, operas, theatre festivals, seminars and conferences," and "aimed to strengthen cultural, economic, scientific and tourism-related contacts, as well as to initiate a long-term cooperation between institutions of the two countries." The Polish government also sponsored the twinning of twenty Israeli and Polish towns and cities over the years 2008 to 2009, building on 15 already twinned. Only two Polish towns -- Poznan and Czestochowa -- are twinned with a Palestinian towns - Nablus and Bethlehem respectively.

The Polish Year in Israel merged Polish Jewish heritage and cultural identity with Israeli identity and the political and economic interests of the Polish with those of their Israeli counterparts. In a 2008 piece written about the initiative for the economic portal Polish Market, titled "Special Relations," then Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said "There is something special about relations between Poland and Israel. Even though the two countries lie on different continents, and in spite of their very different geopolitical circumstances, any Pole visiting Israel, and indeed many Israelis visiting Poland, are instantly struck by how much at home they feel in the respective countries."

Last month in Jerusalem, the foreign minister took the Zionist-Polish mutuality narrative further. Referring to Poland and Israel, he said "Both nations have lost their independence in the past, and we know what a painful experience that is ... In Poland, the term 'solidarity' has great significance. We identify profoundly with your pain, as we too have lived in condition of occupation, of loss of statehood and under the threat of cultural and physical annihilation. So we know how precious it is to have your own state to express your interests."

And the "love-in" continues with Haaretz English Edition Editor Adar Primor's waxing lyrical on "a love story -- the surprising, against-all-odds love affair between Poland and Israel" during the state visit last month.

See what great stuff you can sometimes learn from those who hate Israel the most?

Lebanese Druze leader apologizes for calling Saudi women "trash bags"

From Ya Libnan on Tuesday:

Druze religious leader Sheikh el Aql Naim Hassan condemned on Tuesday Wiam Wahab’s description of veiled Saudi women as “black trash bags, ” Future News reported

Future News also reported that Hassan, who is the highest Druze spiritual authority called President Michel Suleiman earlier in the day to condemn the comments made by Wahab, who is a Druze.

Wahab , a staunch ally of Syria and Hezbollah told OTV on Monday “Saudi women are black trash bags we see nothing of,” in reference to their attire. He also slammed outgoing Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Saudi Arabia.

In a related development angry protesters took to the streets and blocked North Lebanon’s international road in protest against Wahab’s comments on Saudi women.

Around 500 protesters gathered and chanted “There is no God but God” and “Wiam, you pig; you should be chained down.

National News Agency (NNA) reported that the northern Abboudiyeh road that links Lebanon to Syria was blocked by burning tires.

Now he is apologizing:

A Lebanese politician has apologized for calling veiled women in Saudi Arabia "trash bags."
Wiam Wahhab said Wednesday he did not mean to insult Muslim women but aimed to highlight "injustice" against Saudi women who are forced to wear abayas, a head-to-toe black robe.

Even though I posted this video only last week, how can I not show it again?

Reports: WMD components intercepted en route to Iran

From The Sun Daily (Malaysia):

Police quizzed 34 people after seizing parts and equipment believed meant for making weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear warheads, from two containers on March 8.

The parts were from China and bound for Iran, said Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Ismail Omar.

He said the ship and crew were allowed to resume their journey after the containers were seized by police at Northport. Asked to elaborate on the equipment, he said: “We are not really sure what it is for but we are trying to find out.

“It appears to be a sort of a mixer or boiler but we should not jump to any conclusion. We are liaising with Interpol and checking with all relevant parties,” he told a press conference at the Marine Police Operations Centre.

It is learnt that the freight forwarder who shipped the equipment had declared it as two units of “agitating mixer machine” and the other as a “stainless steel storage tank”.

Ismail said the contraband was picked up by the Bunga Raya I from China and the shipment was bound for Iran.

Global Security Newswire reminds us:

In 2004, a Sri Lankan national residing in Malaysia was imprisoned for exporting nuclear warhead parts to Libya and suspected of affiliation with Pakistani atomic scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's proliferation ring.

Israel-boycotting band breaks up

Last month I mentioned how some music group called Faithless, which apparently had a couple of hits in England in the 90s, had said they would boycott Israel for even more hypocritical reasons than most BDSers use.

Well, this band just disbanded.

All together now:

"Awwwwwwwww."

(h/t Aparatchik)

Hamas attacks journalists. Leftists silent.

Palestine Press Agency quotes an Arab journalist organization, listing 25 journalists who were attacked by Hamas police during the "unity" rallies on March 15th in Gaza.

Some were stabbed, others were beaten, and many had their cameras confiscated.

The Western media has ignored this story. There is nothing about it in the Reporters Without Borders site. Israel's Foreign Press Association did put out a statement.

In a related story, a new AWRAD survey shows that 61% of Gazans believe that they have no freedom of expression (as opposed to 28% of the West Bank Arabs.)

Of course, the far left apologists for Hamas who style themselves as liberals - the Mondoweiss crowd, the Jewish Voice for Peace, Richard Silverstein, Tikkun magazine, George Galloway, Free Gaza - are completely silent on Hamas abuses of freedom of the press and freedom of expression.

Video: When a Qassam is fired towards Ben Gurion Airport

Here is one of those inconvenient facts that the adherents of the "peace process" religion willfully ignore:

If Israel withdraws from most of the West Bank, then Israel's entire economy is under threat from a single, cheap Qassam rocket aimed towards the airport.

(h/t My Right Word)