Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 11, 2013

WaPo's Max Fisher gets it wrong

The Washington Post was one of the major media outlets, along with the BBC, that gave extensive coverage to the death of Omar Mishrawi, blaming it on Israel.

Now that the evidence that the boy was killed by Hamas has come out, WaPo's Max Fisher tries to contextualize the incident.

His contextualization is the problem.

A conflict in which two armed groups exchange fire across a populated area is probably bound to kill civilians. So why the heated debate, still ongoing, over whose army inadvertently killed an 11-month-old infant who was the enemy of neither?

Both sides, of course, were arguing about more than just the fate of this one boy. They were, and are now, continuing the same argument about blame, responsibility and victimhood that has run parallel to the Israel-Palestine conflict for years. Omar Mishrawi’s death and his photo, like so many incidents before it, are treated as a microcosm of the much larger conflict that took his life. But, as I wrote in November when reports suggested that an Israeli strike had killed Mishrawi, does knowing which military’s errant round happened to have landed on this civilian home really determine the larger narrative of one of the world’s thorniest and most complicated conflicts? Does assigning blame for Mishrawi’s tragic death, awful as it may be, offer us any real insight into who holds the blame for 60 years of fighting? And is partitioning blame really going to serve either side particularly well?

It’s difficult to see how knowing whose rocket or missile killed Mishrawi would resolve the larger questions for which that debate is a proxy: responsibility for continuing the long-term conflict, for sparking the latest round of fighting in November, and for the Israeli and Palestinian civilians who suffer as a result. But these are notoriously thorny debates. As with so many protracted geopolitical conflicts, neither side comes out looking as angelic or demonic as its partisans might wish. In many ways, something as isolated as a single photo of a wounded or killed child offers a purer, cleaner, lower-risk way to talk about issues too messy to engage with directly. They’re a great way to win arguments, but not necessarily to end them.

No, Max. The importance of Omar Mishrawi's death isn't that it is a microcosm of the conflict.

The importance is that the world's major news media organizations completely and thoroughly screwed up.

Nearly all of them stated, as fact or near-fact, that an Israeli missile killed baby Omar. The BBC even returned to the scene, without any experts in military explosives, and "verified" that the son of their colleague was killed by Israel.

And they were, as we see, wrong.

Fisher says, perhaps referring to me:

[S]ome observers sympathetic to the Israeli strikes pointed out, with what may have been prescience, that Hamas rockets often miss and might have landed on Mishrawi’s house.

Forgetting the odd phrase "sympathetic to the Israeli strikes," what Fisher is glossing over is that those observers knew something that the world's media didn't and should have.

It doesn't take a prophet to know that many of the rockets from Gaza have always landed inside Gaza. In fact, right before the outset of Cast Lead, when Hamas declared its own operation Oil Stain, two Gaza girls were killed by a Qassam rocket. It was reported by Reuters.

That was hardly an isolated incident, although the world media ignored the many injuries and damaged houses that Gaza rockets inflicted on Gaza.

The problem, that Fisher is trying to deflect, is that the reporters from his newspaper and all the other media purposefully ignored this fact that bloggers like me knew very well. They assumed that any civilian killed in Gaza must have been killed by Israel. Any other thought did not even cross their minds.

That is why this story is so popular on social media. It has nothing to do with this case being being a microcosm of the conflict. It is entirely about people being sick of being lied to by an arrogant media. It is about the fact that the supposed expert reporters on Gaza didn't consider a simple fact about Qassam rockets that they should have known intimately. It is because they were too lazy to think critically - which is their job.

After years of seeing that Palestinian Arab spokespeople routinely lie, that they try to manipulate the media, that they would never admit any mistake on their side - and after years of seeing that practically every time the Israeli side of the story ends up being proven correct - the media still reflexively blames Israel, time and time again, for things that aren't Israel's fault.

It doesn't take prescience to know this. It takes simple observation.

This is why this story strikes a chord, Max - because the media dropped the ball, in a way that it has dropped it countless times beforehand. Sadly, instead of learning that lesson, you are engaging in a magician's redirection trick to take the focus away from the truth.

And that is why people are upset over this story.

Monday Links Part 2

From Ian:

Co-existence workshop ends with rock hurling
Students from Sakhnin throw stones at a Yokneam school bus, ending Arab-Jewish cooperation project on a sour note

A group of young students from a school in the Western Galilee city of Sakhnin threw stones at a bus full of students from an elementary school in Yokneam, after the two groups concluded a co-existence project in Sakhnin aimed at encouraging Arabs and Jews to live harmoniously.
No one was injured in the incident, but a number of Yokneam parents told Channel 10 News that they did not intend to allow their children to take part in the project again anytime soon.

Lesson plan for Israeli Apartheid Week won’t include the truth

It’s Israeli Apartheid Week in Canada, but perhaps the ignoramuses who waste their time protesting the non-existent apartheid in Israel could add a Gender Apartheid Week to their busy schedules, as well.
After all, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has just announced it’s cancelling the annual marathon in Gaza because Hamas refuses to let women run in the race.

Huckabee: Israelis Have Made Many Sacrifices for Peace

Former governor Mike Huckabee at the Gush Katif Museum Dinner: You don’t negotiate with those who don't believe you have the right to exist.
Huckabee said that instead of asking the Israelis to stop building bedrooms for their children in Judea and Samaria, the President should “demand that the Iranians stop building bombs” that threaten Israel.

French town honors killer of Israeli minister

A suburb of Paris made the killer of Israeli minister Rehavam Ze’evi an honorary resident.
Bezons awarded the title last month to Majdi Al-Rimawi, according to the March edition of its official newsletter, Bezons Infos. The motion to recognize Rimawi passed unanimously at a special council vote of the municipality, which is northwest of Paris and nearly eight miles from the city's center.

Historians: Former Vienna Philharmonic Chief was SS Member

A former head of Vienna's Philharmonic Orchestra was a member of Nazi Germany's SS, historians say.
Helmut Wobisch, a member of the Nazi party since 1933 when it was still illegal in Austria, was the orchestra's managing director between 1954 and 1968 even though he had been dismissed at the end of World War II because of his ties to the Nazi regime.

Greek Neo-Nazis Set Sights on Indoctrinating Preschoolers

The Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, which already has a presence in the country’s elementary and high schools, is planning to open nursery schools aimed at indoctrinating toddlers with vehemently anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant and ultra-nationalistic views.

Volunteer who Opposed Dutch Hitler Admirers in Hiding
Mehmet Sahin, a doctoral student, has had to go into hiding with his family after he received death threats.

A few weeks ago, he interviewed several Dutch-Turkish youngsters on the Nederland 2 TV station. They said that they admired Hitler and the Holocaust and regretted that Hitler had not finished exterminating the Jews. Sahin reprimanded them. Apparently, people in the neighborhood where he lives are collecting signatures to make Sahin leave the area. The municipality has announced that the prosecution is investigating the matter.

The first time Hollywood exposed the Holocaust
Exactly 70 years ago, Hollywood’s top stars got together to expose the Holocaust.

Claiming “frustration over American policy and outrage at Hollywood’s fear of offending its European markets,” Hecht spent one month scripting a Hollywood extravaganza to expose the Holocaust and urge rescue action.
Evoking the Hebrew prophet Habakkuk’s “They shall never die” prophecy, Hecht called his show We Will Never Die. Featuring hundreds of performers and a 50-piece NBC orchestra, the production’s six-city tour was Hollywood’s first political protest en masse.

Keeping your mobile virus-free
A hacker sitting just a table away could be hopping onto your device as you check your email, but Israel’s Skycure has you covered.

And then, one by one, members of the audience discovered that their smartphones and tablets were being hacked in real time – in plain sight. Their screens were suddenly swiping without their control; emails were being written without permission; apps opened and photos changed.
Amit and Sharabani were the benign perpetrators and no data was stolen or deleted. Still, the audience learned an unforgettable lesson about just how vulnerable mobile networks can be.

The Lancet publishes another error-filled hit piece on Israel

We've looked at the Lancet's coverage of Israel before.

Once it blamed Israel for Palestinian Arab men who beat their wives. Yes, really. And that study used some very biased sources as well, and was far from scientific.

Another time the Lancet stated, as fact, the Palestinian Arab claim that “We cannot take care of health and education as long as we live under occupation”. Amazing how Jews managed to build world-class hospitals and universities in Palestine when it was under Ottoman and British rule!

So why should we be surprised that the Lancet ignores Israeli findings - by independent pathologists - that Arafat Jaradat was not tortured and, instead accept the claims of Palestinian Arabs who habitually lie in matters like these?

To add some lies on top of the lies, the Lancet publishes the provably false statistic that Israel has arrested 800,000 Palestinian Arabs since 1967.

Curiously, the Lancet fully accepts the initial charge of Israeli torture of Jaradat as fact, but ignores the later - equally ludicrous - claim that Jaradat was actually beaten to death by Arab "collaborators." No, that Palestinian Arab lie is not judged to be believable by the Lancet, presumably because Israel is not directly blamed.

Finally, Jaradat is described as a "30-year old petrol attendant" in this article, but not as a member of the Al Aqsa Brigades terrorist group.

The Lancet used to be automatically prefixed with the term "prestigious." A more appropriate adjective might be "discredited" or "laughably biased."

(h/t YS)

Monday Links Part 1

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Who Are These Moralists?

With Israel, every death is investigated, every movement protested against. Yet when it comes to the wholesale slaughter in Syria, there is just a single global shrug. People cannot be wholly surprised if some of us choose to observe that many of those who comment with fury about Israel have revealed themselves to be neither humanitarians nor journalists but pure and simple anti-Israel political activists.

Hamas on the defensive

In desperation, some Hamas men are looking to Israel to let Gaza freely export its produce, reopen its port, and allow its businessmen and labourers to cross the buffer zone, as they did before Hamas took over in 2007. The longer the ceasefire, the more Israel has eased the flow of trade. But for Hamas this is a mixed blessing. Overland traffic only partially compensates for the shortfall through the tunnels. It also makes Hamas more dependent on—and subservient to—Israel, to ensure vital supplies continue. Hamas’s security forces have begun acting on Israeli intelligence passed via Egypt about wayward militants planning attacks, say Western officials.

Love letter to Hamas - Paul McGeough's front-page profiles of Khaled Meshal

This looks far more like advocacy than journalism. In exchange for access, Mr. McGeough appears to be willing to act basically as Hamas' advocate and lobbyist in Australia. The obvious question is why his employers at Fairfax are so ready to help him do so.

Americans said to be training Syrian rebels in Jordan

Der Spiegel says 200 opposition fighters have been trained by uniformed US personnel; Washington declines to comment on report

What’s Wrong with the US Embassy in Egypt?

Here’s the kicker: Guess who seems to be a finalist under Secretary of State John Kerry for a promotion to become assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs? That’s right, Anne Patterson. If Samiragate was truly the result of incompetence, then Patterson could use her new position to bring that quality to the broader Middle East. Conversely, if it really was illustrative of the cultural and political bubble that Patterson imbued or let develop in her
staff, then get ready for several more years of self-inflicted wounds.

Afghan leader alleges US, Taliban are colluding

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday accused the Taliban and the U.S. of working in concert to convince Afghans that violence will worsen if most foreign troops leave - an allegation the top American commander in Afghanistan rejected as "categorically false."

Christian protesters decry Muslim mob's arson spree following blasphemy charge

Demonstrators denounced the burning of more than 100 homes of Christians on Saturday -- a spree spurred by allegations that a Christian man made remarks against the Muslim prophet Mohammed.

Danes use game as Syria fill-in

Head of division admits employee mistakenly thought image from Assassin’s Creed was the Damascus skyline, and used it for a backdrop
TV2 Head of News Jacob Nybroe said Sunday the picture that was used as a backdrop behind news anchor Cecilie Beck on Feb. 26 came from adventure game Assassin’s Creed.

Putin’s patriotic Israeli army rip-off
Local blogger identifies image on patriotic billboard for Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party as picture of Israeli tank from IDF’s official Flickr account

Russia’s ruling party put up patriotic billboards around the city of Orel last month showing an image of a soldier in a tank and wishing residents a Happy Defender of Fatherland Day. Rather than showing a Russian soldier and tank, however, the photo actually featured an Israeli soldier in an Israeli-made Merkava III tank.

My UN scoop makes it to AP! (UPDATE 3: BBC and WaPo reports on it)

This is what news blogging is all about.

My scoop showing that the UN exonerated Israel for the killing of baby Omar Mishrawi, son of a BBC employee in Gaza, was been picked up by various outlets.

The groundswell continued, reaching outside Israeli and Zionist media and being published by Bild and DPA (Germany) and Free Beacon - which did real reporting in following up with the UN and WaPo.

Now, at 10:31 EDT today, AP has picked it up!

A U.N. report indicates an errant Palestinian rocket, not an Israeli airstrike, likely killed the baby of a BBC reporter during fighting in the Hamas-ruled territory last November.

The death of Omar al-Masharawi, the 11-month-old son of BBC stringer Jihad al-Masharawi, became a symbol of what Palestinians see as Israeli aggression during eight days of fighting that killed more than 160 Palestinians and six Israelis. A woman was killed alongside the baby.

Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes to stop Palestinian rocket salvos.

The U.N. office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a March 6 report that the incident was caused by "what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel."

Hamas had no response Monday. BBC officials were not immediately available for comment.

It will be a bit harder for the BBC, WaPo and other outlets to ignore this if AP reporters are asking them questions.

Although it is a shame that their interest in the truth is so low that they don't re-check their facts before the point that they would be embarrassed by not addressing them.

Let's hope that the pressure continues to have news outlets (and NGOs) admit that they made false assumptions, and that they realize that those assumptions were based on nothing more than anti-Israel bias. After all, people who carefully monitor Gaza would have known ahead of time that many Gaza rockets fall short - and that Gaza authorities, and Gaza NGOs, routinely lie about it.

There are lessons to be learned for bloggers and blog-readers as well. Sometimes our efforts do break through, and for that to happen we need lots of retweets and forwards, directed at the people who are guilty of media bias to begin with, as well as to journalists who still care about the truth. When there is clearly interest in a story like this it makes it harder for the paid media to ignore it. Thanks so much to the hundreds of people who "Liked" and Tweeted this story.

Let's keep it going.

UPDATE: The BBC finally acknowledged the story, although it is doing everything it can to cast doubt on the UN version of the events:

The son of a BBC journalist and two relatives killed in last November's war in Gaza may have been hit by a misfired Palestinian rocket, a UN agency says.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said its conclusions were based on a visit to the site a month after the attack.

At the time, human rights groups blamed the deaths on an Israeli air strike.

The Israeli military says it never denied carrying out the strike because it was not clear what had happened.

UN officials visited the house four weeks after the strike.

They said they did not carry out a forensic investigation, but said their team did not think the damage was consistent with an Israeli air strike.

However, the UN said it could not "unequivocally conclude" it was a misfired Palestinian rocket.

A UN official said it was also possible the house was hit by a secondary explosion after an Israeli air strike on Palestinian weapons stores.

Jehad Mashhrawi dismissed the UN findings as "rubbish".

He said nobody from the United Nations had spoken to him, and said Palestinian militant groups would usually apologise to the family if they had been responsible.

An Israeli military spokesman said he could not comment on the accuracy of the UN's findings but said it would not be the first time a Palestinian rocket had misfired.

He said that, in the intense first hours of the conflict, it was not always clear what was happening.

It is quite plausible that the damage came from shrapnel from a secondary explosion of a terrorist weapons depot. In fact, initial interviews with Jihad himself indicated that it was "shrapnel," not a rocket - he changed his story after the photo became famous. And we do know that there were terror targets in the area.

At least the BBC is not as unequivocal that this was an Israeli missile, as it was previously.

UPDATE 2: The Washington Post, which was equally guilty, has posted a more expansive AP report:

Matthias Behnke, head of OHCHR office for the Palestinian territories, cautioned he couldn’t “unequivocally conclude” that the death was caused by an errantly fired Palestinian rocket. He said information gathered from eyewitnesses led them to report that “it appeared to be attributable to a Palestinian rocket.”

He said Palestinian militants were firing rockets at Israel not far from the al-Masharawi home. Behnke said the area was targeted by Israeli airstrikes, but the salvo that hit the al-Masharawi home was “markedly different.”

He said there was no significant damage to the house, unusual for an Israeli strike. He said witnesses reported that a fireball struck the roof of the house, suggesting it was a part of a homemade rocket. Behnke said the type of injuries sustained by al-Masharawi family members were consistent with rocket shrapnel.

All in all, with major world media reporting on the UN report, this is a major win for the truth.

UPDATE 3: The BBC lies:

The UN report concluded that at least 169 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks during the offensive.

It said more than 100 were civilians, including 33 children and 13 women.

The actual report says:

During the crisis, 174 Palestinians were killed in Gaza. At least 168 of them were killed by Israeli military action, of whom 101 are believed to be civilians, including 33 children and 13 women.

The UN is properly saying that 101 may be civilian, but it is not certain. The BBC - so eager to seize on the UN's uncertainty about the rockets - does not notice the same uncertainty about identifying the victims as being civilian.

There seems to be a pattern here.

Remember that the Meir Amit Intelligence Center identified 101 terrorists, and 68 civilians, killed in the fighting.

(h/t Elias, Gary, Silke, Omri)

Al Watan Voice reports that the Palestinian embassy in Chile celebrated International Women's Day by celebrating female terrorists.

At a ceremony in Santiago on Friday, the ambassador gave a speech extolling the role of Palestinian women in the "struggle" and specified master terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, "martyr" Shadia Abu Ghazaleh (member of the PFLP, who died while preparing a bomb that prematurely exploded in 1968,) and hijacker Leila Khaled.

Today is the 35th anniversary of the Coastal Road Massacre that Mughrabi had led, which killed 38 Israeli civilians including 13 children. She is being honored in numerous Palestinian Arab events and articles.

US Attorney General shows enthusiasm about Saudi justice system

WTF?

US Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. has shown interest in examining the Saudi Munasaha (Counseling) counter-terrorism program so as to apply it in the United States.

“Too many of our young people are disaffected and attracted to violent ideologies and so we want to work with our Saudi allies and examine the program and see how we might apply that in the United States,” he told a press conference at the US Embassy here Sunday.

“I’m more concerned about the threat from inside the US and people who turn to violent extremism,” he said, underscoring the importance of cooperation with the Saudi government to ensure the safety of both nations.

“We must work together, as equal partners, with a shared commitment to pursuing a world with more opportunity and less violence.”

Holder also expressed his enthusiasm for building programs supporting the Kingdom’s enactment of legal reforms and the continued dialogue between the two nations on the subjects of judicial and legal progress.

“I’ve also been impressed by the Justice Minister’s efforts with regard to the justice system here in this great nation. We have exchanged ideas and thoughts,” he continued, “and my hopes would be that some of the things we’ve tried in the United States may be useful here in Saudi Arabia and some of the ideas that the Justice Minister shared with me, I think, will be productive in the United States as well.”

Which ideas did the Saudis share with their US counterpart? Religious police, perhaps, to ensure that men and women don't eat together or go into cars?

Or perhaps it was Saudi Arabia's advanced criminal justice system, based on Islamic law, which includes public beheading, stoning, amputation and lashing. The death penalty can be given out for the crimes of adultery, apostasy, and sorcery. Its legal system also includes the ability, if a victim chooses, for retaliatory justice - a literal "eye for an eye."

But don't worry - they are advanced enough to considering replacing beheadings with firing squads, due to a shortage of qualified swordsmen.

I'm anxious to know which of these progressive Saudi practices interest the esteemed Mr. Holder.

(h/t Arnold. Al Gharqad)

A Hungarian blog noticed this girl wearing a T-shirt,showing the iconic entrance to Auschwitz, captioned "Auschwitz Holiday Camp."

Underneath it says "there is a pool, and ovens as well. "

(h/t BES, Al Gharqad)

Israeli Arab requests political asylum in Egypt!

From Egypt Independent:

Security forces had arrested an Israeli citizen named Ahmed Gamal Daief, an Arab citizen of Israel who tried to enter the Egyptian border from Taba and requested political asylum to Egypt, explaining that he is Muslim and faces persecution and repression by Israeli authorities because of religious practices.

Now, that's weird.

UNRWA teaches hate (Video)

An important video from David Bedein:

As I noted when I discovered UNRWA school websites extolling jihad and martyrdom last year, UNRWA's educational vision is:

An UNRWA education system which develops the full potential of Palestine Refugees to enable them to be confident, innovative, questioning, thoughtful, tolerant and open minded, upholding human values and religious tolerance, proud of their Palestine identity and contributing positively to the development of their society and the global community.

Obviously, UNWRA falls short of those lofty goals as it is teaching anything but peaceful co-existence.

(h/t Josh K.)

Long range rocket fired in Sinai - Egyptians say it is from 1973?

Bizarre:

Jihadist groups operating in Egypt's Sinai peninsula on Sunday fired a long range missile during a military drill, Egyptian security sources said.

The missile, believed to have a range of 45 kilometers, was fired from Nekhel in central Sinai towards the direction of Suez, Egyptian military sources told Ma'an.

The missile landed in a desert area and left a crater three meters deep and two meters wide.

Egyptian military experts said it is likely that the missile was an unexploded Israeli ordnance left behind from wars in the Sinai peninsula.

A forty year old Israeli rocket that is finally being fired - during a military drill?

Given that hundreds of Grad and other rockets with that range have traversed the Sinai in recent years on their way to Gaza, this claim seems ludicrous.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)

A conference to address the absurd UNRWA definition of refugees

From JPost:

At a small conference at the Harvard Club in Manhattan on Thursday, a host of dignitaries and experts, including Israel’s envoy to the UN Ron Prosor, addressed the UN’s classification of Palestinian refugees as the principal stumbling block to a peace agreement between Israel and the PLO.

The conference was the opening salvo in the direction of drafting of US legislation meant to end the automatic transmission of refugee status to the descendents of Palestinians that has been taking place since 1948, just as Filippo Grandi, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), prepared to hold a press conference on Monday on Palestinian refugees becoming a “forgotten population” in an increasingly turbulent region.

Dr. Daniel Pipes, a leading international expert on the Middle East, opened the conference, declaring that the Palestinian refugee situation is broken, sick, and detrimental to all involved. The current approach by UNRWA “creates a narrative of victimhood and leads to extremism,” said Pipes.

The Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank where Pipes serves as president, organized the conference, titled Changing US Policy on UNRWA and the “Palestine Refugees.”

“No one will admit it... the real obstacle [to a two-state solution] is the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees,” Prosor said. The “refugees problem is the main obstacle to peace, not settlements.”

There need to be many more such conferences. The problems with UNRWA are endemic and nothing can be solved unless Palestinian Arabs are treated like every other refugee or former refugee population in the world.

This means pressuring host countries to naturalize them, to automatically give citizenship to those born in their countries, and to stop calling people who either live in their homeland or have citizenship elsewhere "refugees."

Sunday Links Part 2

From Ian:

When liberal Protestants were Zionists
Jewish Ideas Daily: Given the way intellectual fashions have turned against the Jewish state, it is now very difficult to imagine a prominent liberal Christian theologian defending Zionism.

In his recent book Reinhold Niebuhr and His Circle of Influence, Daniel F. Rice includes a chapter on the eminent Protestant theologian’s relationship with Felix Frankfurter, one of the most prominent American Jews of the 20th century.
One of the foundations of their friendship was their shared belief in the Zionist project. Indeed, Niebuhr not only helped found the Christian Council on Palestine, an association of pro-Zionist Christian clergy, but wrote impassioned defenses of the Jewish state for important periodicals like The Nation and The New Republic. Frankfurter so esteemed Niebuhr’s writings on Zionism that he was at a loss to find any written work that, in his words, “faces the Jewish problem more trenchantly and more candidly.”

Israel feared Soviets sunk sub in 1968, papers reveals
Documents released by state archives on 45th anniversary of disaster detail confusion at highest levels following loss of Dakar

Sixteen documents cleared for publication last week by the state archives document the confusion in the minutes and days after the sub was lost, as officials attempted to grapple with the tragedy while carrying out search and rescue missions. The papers do not shed further light on the exact cause of the loss of the Dakar, which remains undetermined.

Muslims accuse Jerusalem cop of defiling Quran, threaten his life

The event which sparked the controversy took place this past Sunday. A group of female Muslim worshippers at the entrance to the Temple Mount were disrupting visitors from entering through the Jewish entrance. Police on site attempted to move the group of women and during the ensuing commotion a Quran fell out of one of the women's bags.
A police officer standing next to the woman in question became the subject of an intense smear campaign; he was accused of throwing the Quran to the ground, kicking it and even stomping on it. As a result of the ensuing death threats against the policeman, Jerusalem police have had to take measures to ensure his safety.

BBC Watch: BBC blames torture of African migrants in Sinai on Egypt-Israel peace treaty

Rather than blindly repeating the inaccurate information he was “told” by an either uninformed or interested party, Thomson should have checked the accuracy of that claim before including it in his report. His obvious failure to do so means that his assertion that the failure to deal with the kidnapping and torture of African migrants in Sinai is related to the terms of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty becomes nothing more than a gratuitous and misleading inaccuracy which prevents audiences from understanding the real factors at play.

2 in 5 Austrians say life under Hitler ‘not all bad’
Survey finds that majority of country feel they’ve sufficiently dealt with their Nazi past, would prefer strongman leader

The Simon Wiesenthal Center regularly grades Austria among its lowest-scoring countries for prosecuting Nazi war criminals.
The poll found that 61% of Austrians feel the country has dealt with its Nazi past sufficiently and 57% feel the Nazi’s victims have been compensated in full.
The survey also found that 61% of respondents, mostly the same people who said life under Hitler had some good aspects, would be happy with a strong-armed leader that did not have to contend with rival lawmakers or elections. A similar poll in 2008 found only one in five Austrians in favor of a strongman.

Paris police probing use of Nazi symbols against Jews
Swastika painted on door of Jewish student union; man performs Nazi salute in front of the city’s rabbinate

The swastikas on the offices of the UEJF at Paris’ Université Panthéon-Assas “prove that universities are also affected by the rise in anti-Semitic incidents in France,” the union’s president, Jonathan Hayoun, said in a statement.

Israeli Company Hopes to be First to Put 3D Printed Cars on the Road (VIDEO)

Israeli company Stratasys, already a major player in the 3D printing field and its subsidiary, RedEye On Demand, plan on putting the first 3D printed car–named the URBEE 2– on the road within two years, in partnership with KOR EcoLogic.

Operation Pillar of Defense: Israel Battles Hamas for Information Control

The IDF’s primary goal in the operation was to eliminate the threat of rockets being launched from the Gaza Strip against Israel. Using old and new media platforms, the IDF’s information operations (IO) sought to disrupt Hamas’ IO, to warn and / or intimidate, and influence public opinion. The first three elements focused on Hamas and the residents of Gaza. The final goal included not only them but public opinion world-wide. (h/t Teddy)

Another pseudo-scholarly attempt to delegitimize Israel in NYT

The New York Times Opinionator column yesterdayis from Joseph Levine, professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

He argues that Jews, as a people, have no right to a state.

The core of his argument:

So, when we consider whether or not a people has a right to a state of their own, are we speaking of a people in the ethnic sense or the civic one? I contend that insofar as the principle that all peoples have the right to self-determination entails the right to a state of their own, it can apply to peoples only in the civic sense.

After all, what is it for a people to have a state “of their own”? Here’s a rough characterization: the formal institutions and legal framework of the state serves to express, encourage and favor that people’s identity. The distinctive position of that people would be manifested in a number of ways, from the largely symbolic to the more substantive: for example, it would be reflected in the name of the state, the nature of its flag and other symbols, its national holidays, its education system, its immigration rules, the extent to which membership in the people in question is a factor in official planning, how resources are distributed, etc. If the people being favored in this way are just the state’s citizens, it is not a problem.

But if the people who “own” the state in question are an ethnic sub-group of the citizenry, even if the vast majority, it constitutes a serious problem indeed, and this is precisely the situation of Israel as the Jewish state. Far from being a natural expression of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, it is in fact a violation of the right to self-determination of its non-Jewish (mainly Palestinian) citizens. It is a violation of a people’s right to self-determination to exclude them — whether by virtue of their ethnic membership, or for any other reason — from full political participation in the state under whose sovereignty they fall. Of course Jews have a right to self-determination in this sense as well — this is what emancipation was all about. But so do non-Jewish peoples living in the same state.

Any state that “belongs” to one ethnic group within it violates the core democratic principle of equality, and the self-determination rights of the non-members of that group.

I conclude, then, that the very idea of a Jewish state is undemocratic, a violation of the self-determination rights of its non-Jewish citizens, and therefore morally problematic. But the harm doesn’t stop with the inherently undemocratic character of the state. For if an ethnic national state is established in a territory that contains a significant number of non-members of that ethnic group, it will inevitably face resistance from the land’s other inhabitants.

If we accept that Levine's arguments are correct, every single state in the Western Hemisphere, as well as Australia and others, have no right to exist - because there is a minority (no matter how small, in Levine's characterization) who are indigenous residents whose own self-determination is fatally wounded by the existence of these states.

Apparently, Levine he feels that only Jews are violating the rights of other peoples.

By Levine's definition, Kurds and Armenians and Tibetans and anyone else who wants to exercise self-determination would also be acting illegitimately if there is even a small group of people not belonging to those groups on the lands they claim.

In fact, if you follow his bizarre logic, while "of course Jews have a right to self-determination," in no practical way can that right be exercised. What kind of a right is it when it is hamstrung by definition?

Levine's logical fallacy is that one's right to self-determination is illegitimate if it happens to compete with anyone else's similar right. This is something he simply made up. A people's right to self-determination is independent of others' rights. Unless there is a new continent that is discovered, by definition everyone's rights to self-determination is going to interfere with others'.

Given this reality, what can a people who aspire to self-determination do? They grant the maximum rights possible to the minority population, without giving up on their own rights. The minority population can make a decision to live with these rights - and fight to increase them within a society that hopefully is democratic and tolerant - or, if appropriate, they can choose to move to an area where they are the majority and can practice their own rights to self-determination freely, similarly granting maximal rights to their own minority groups.

Levine is essentially engaging in a sophisticated form of anti-semitism, where by his definition only the Jewish people's rights must be subsumed to the rights of others; the others are not limited by any means that he sees fit to mention.

Also unmentioned by Levine is the small fact that every Arab country defines itself as either "Arab" or "Muslim" or both in their constitutions, thus being just as guilty as Israel of infringing on minority rights - and therefore being just as non-deserving of statehood.

Levine lets the veil fall from his own pretense of objectivity when he states

[I]f an ethnic national state is established in a territory that contains a significant number of non-members of that ethnic group, it will inevitably face resistance from the land’s other inhabitants. This will force the ethnic nation controlling the state to resort to further undemocratic means to maintain their hegemony. Three strategies to deal with resistance are common: expulsion, occupation and institutional marginalization. Interestingly, all three strategies have been employed by the Zionist movement: expulsion in 1948 (and, to a lesser extent, in 1967), occupation of the territories conquered in 1967 and institution of a complex web of laws that prevent Israel’s Palestinian citizens from mounting an internal challenge to the Jewish character of the state.

This statement is so a-historic, and so wedded to the anti-Israel narrative, that Levine's anti-Israel bias is revealed in all its ugliness.

Only the most rabid anti-Zionist claims that Israel forcefully expelled Arabs in 1948 in order to maintain a Jewish majority - in fact, the vast majority of Arabs fled on their own.

There were essentially no expulsions in 1967 to outside the territories.

Moreover, Levine absurdly characterizes the attacks on Israel from Jordan and Syria in 1967 as "resistance," which would be laughable if he weren't a professor at a prestigious institution.

Finally, Israeli efforts to maintain itself as a Jewish state - practicing that very same self-determination that Levine pretends that Jews have - is described negatively, a "complex set of laws" meant only to make Arabs into second-class citizens.

As the Arabs so, Levine is looking at everything Israel does through an anti-Israel lens, not even considering the idea that Jews indeed do have national rights on their historic homeland. Even worse, he does not admit that Israel bends over backwards to give rights to its Arab minority beyond those given in states where they are the majority. No, to Levine, Jewish nationhood (and apparently only Jewish nationhood) is inherently racist.

Sorry, but this is not a serious essay that advocates for equal rights. This is a hate-filled screed that is dressed up in academic garb. the NYT's decision to run this shows that they are easily seduced by quasi-academic arguments that are simply disguises for anti-Israel hate.

Peaceful worshipers at Al Aqsa on Friday (photos)

On Friday, there were riots on the Temple Mount, as Arab "worshipers" threw stones and Molotov cocktails towards Israeli police, injuring several.

(h/t Yisrael Medad)

Hamas: "Egyptian newspapers accept bribes from Israel to criticize us"

For several months, there have been articles in the Egyptian media critical of Hamas. Most recently Egyptian security sources have told Egyptian media that Hamas members were definitely involved in the fatal attack on the Egyptian army last year, that Hamas stole a printing press that could print Egyptian identity cards, and a number of articles about Hamas undermining the security of the Sinai.

Now, Hamas spokesman Salah Bardawil, on his Facebook page, blames these articles on - Israel bribing Egyptian media!

Again the Egyptian media has reverted to an onslaught on Hamas and the resistance and to Gaza and to the Palestinian people without evidence and no basis, not even thinking and without conscience or fear of God - instead they accept enormous bribes from Israel and enemies of the Palestinian people and enemies of the Brotherhood and the resistance. They are exploiting the chaos in Egypt by malicious hands and do not want what is best for the people of our beloved Egypt. We are confident that Egypt will remain safe and that Hamas will be victorious despite the yellow bribed media.

Yup - Egyptian media is pro-Israel and against the Egyptian people because of those Israeli bribes.

Sunday Links Part 1

From Ian:

Envoys work to end UN's Palestinian refugee status
Prosor: Real obstacle to peace is right of return for Palestinian refugees, not settlements; adds transfer of status "misguided."

At a small conference at the Harvard Club in Manhattan on Thursday, a host of dignitaries and experts, including Israel’s envoy to the UN Ron Prosor, addressed the UN’s classification of Palestinian refugees as the principal stumbling block to a peace agreement between Israel and the PLO.
The conference was the opening salvo in the direction of drafting of US legislation meant to end the automatic transmission of refugee status to the descendents of Palestinians that has been taking place since 1948, just as Filippo Grandi, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), prepared to hold a press conference on Monday on Palestinian refugees becoming a “forgotten population” in an increasingly turbulent region.

Israeli envoys promote anti-incitement accord at UN
Dore Gold tells 'Post:' There is a global interest in addressing problem of terrorism; Prosor presents draft accord.

Speaking to the Post, Gold recalled that two of the biggest failures of the international community during the 1990s were the genocide in Rwanda and the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia. In both conflicts, “incitement was cited as a trigger for the wars that broke out,” he asserted.

'Abbas, Fayyad dispute could cause fall of gov't' By Khaled Abu Toameh
Sources say conflict between PA president, PM arose over resignation of Qassis, who is said to have quit over unions.

Qassis recently decided to quit the PA government – a move that was rejected by Abbas. Qassis was Abbas’s choice for finance minister – a job that Fayyad held for the past four years.
A few days later, however, Fayyad, in a surprise move, announced that he had accepted Qassis’s resignation.
Fayyad’s announcement was seen by Palestinians as a direct challenge to Abbas.

Freed UN peacekeepers cross from Syria to Jordan
After four days being held by Syrian rebels in village near Israeli border, all 21 Filipino captives reach safety

The abduction and the tortured negotiations that ended it highlight the disorganization of the rebel movement, which has hindered its ability to fight Assad and complicates vows by the US and others to provide assistance.
It also has raised concerns about the future of UN operations in the area. The Filipino peacekeepers were abducted on Wednesday by one of the rebel groups operating in southern Syria near the Jordanian border and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, where a UN force has patrolled a ceasefire line between Israel and Syria for nearly four decades.

UN peacekeepers on Syrian border halt night patrols

International teams fear more kidnappings, violence; Israel beefs up border security

In Jordan, desperate Syrian refugees turn to prostitution

‘Given the vulnerability of women, the camp’s growing population and the lack of resources, I’m not surprised,’ says UN official

Egypt protesters torch buildings, target Suez Canal
Two people die in Cairo from tear, gas and rubber bullets as court ruling on deadly soccer riot sparks rage.
Syria

The ruling enraged residents of Port Said, at the northern entrance of the Suez Canal, by confirming death sentences imposed on 21 local soccer fans for their role in the riot last year when more than 70 people were killed.
But the court also angered rival fans in Cairo by acquitting a further 28 defendants that they wanted punished, including seven members of the police force which is reviled across society for its brutality under deposed autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt wants to lure Israelis back to the Sinai
Once a prime vacation destination, revolution, terrorism and general lawlessness have kept tourists away from the Peninsula’s pristine beaches

Channel 2 news accompanied a group of Israeli travel agents who were invited by Egyptian tourism operators to tour the restive peninsula, in hopes of reversing the trend and bringing Israelis and their shekels back to the luxury resort towns of Taba and Sharm el Sheikh.

HRW equally guilty in blaming Israel for Mishrawi baby's death

Last week I revealed that the UN verified that, Omar Mishrawi, the 11-month old son of a BBC employee, was killed by a Hamas rocket during Operation Pillar of Defense. The BBC and other media outlets flatly blamed his death on Israel with no caveats.

The scoop has been tearing through cyberspace, with over 1000 Facebook "Likes" and well over a hundred retweets, many to the BBC demanding a retraction.

More problematic than even the BBC denial that this could have been a Hamas rocket is how Human Rights Watch reported the same incident, in lurid detail:

Israeli strikes on November 14 killed at least four Palestinian civilians, including a man in his 60s, a 20-year-old woman, a 7-year-old girl, an 18-month-old boy, and an 11-month-old boy, and severely wounded a girl, aged about 5, according to news reports and witnesses who spoke to Human Rights Watch. An 18-month old boy injured on November 14 died the following day, Palestinian media reported.

Abeer Ayyoub, a freelance journalist reporting from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, told Human Rights Watch that she viewed the body of the 11-month-old, and that the 5-year-old girl was “totally burned with blood coming from her mouth.” Medical staff said the infant had been wounded in an Israeli strike.

BBC journalists tweeted that those killed in an Israeli airstrike included the sister-in-law and 11-month-old son of a BBC Arabic Service journalist, and that the journalist’s brother was seriously wounded. Palestinian media reported that Ranan Arafat, the 7-year-old girl, was killed in the Zeitun neighborhood of Gaza City, and that the 11-month-old, Ahmed Masharawi, was killed by a tank shell at his family’s home in Shajai’ya.

Now we know that at least two of these victims were killed by Hamas (and a third died later) but HRW has not issued a correction. Nor has it issued any reports about Hamas endangering Gaza civilians with its own rockets. Even a month after the fighting, in HRW's perfunctory report condemning Hamas rocket attacks, there is no mention of Gazans killed by Hamas rockets or even of Hamas rockets falling short - even though by then these facts were well known. (They only say that the rockets being fired from civilian areas endanger civilians open to Israeli reprisals, not the direct danger from the rockets. Yet at that time it was already known that about a hundred rockets had fallen short in Gaza.)

Does HRW know the truth? There is evidence it does. When it released its February report/smear "Gaza Airstrikes Violated Laws of War" it did not mention either the Mishrawi case, or the other case of a known Hamas rocket that killed Gazans, the Sadallah incident. And the OCHA-OPT report at the end of November says:

[I]nformation collected by human rights organizations suggests that up to six Palestinian civilians, including one woman and three children, may have been killed by Palestinian rockets falling short within Gaza.

I don't know if HRW is one of these organizations, but the knowledge that some of the Gaza victims were actually killed by Hamas rockets was well-known by human right organizations during the fighting - and virtually unreported. it seems beyond belief that HRW, among the most prestigious human rights organizations, could have missed this information.

More likely, it simply ignored it, and never bothered correcting its earlier report.

It is bad enough for the media to get it wrong. But HRW still has some gravitas among certain people and their refusal to ever correct their mistakes, and their lack of transparency on how they generate their reports altogether, is far worse.

Arab world's "Perfect Mother" is the wife, mother of terrorists

From Al Monitor:

Aisha Abu Shannab, or Om Hassan, a woman in her 50s from the Gaza Strip, was awarded the Mother of the Year prize on Feb. 28. She received the honor from the Ex-Warriors Association, a local chapter affiliated with the Arab League.

Om Hassan is also the widow of late Hamas leader Ismail Abu Shannab...

"My husband Ismail left us for his final rest in 2003, and since then, I have been taking care of our seven children, including two little daughters. Besides being a widow and mother, I began taking care of this association since 2004,” she told Al-Monitor at the office of her non-profit organization in Gaza City, Lighting Candles.

"Abu Hassan (Ismail) was such a great husband and his greatness also showed in several life experiences, particularly when the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority would arrest him. Once I shouted some prayers against those who came to arrest him, but he responded by telling me: ‘Please do not pray against them, but rather pray for them, so that they could get better.’ He was such a great educator and a man of tolerance,” Om Hassan recalled.

She was once again struck with agony during Israel’s Cast Lead offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip in 2008-2009, when an Israeli airstrike targeting the Jawazzat police compound killed her eldest son, Hassan.

It was not the first time Om Hassan was tasked to care for her children alone. Ismail also served seven years in Israeli jails after being arrested in 1989 during the first intifada.

With Ismail behind bars, the family no longer received his salary from UNRWA, where he was employed. Om Hassan raised her children for those seven years on regular stipends by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which set aside funds for families of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

Here's what the Al Monitor article doesn't say:

Ismail Abu Shannab, her husband, was a top Hamas leader second only to Sheikh Yassin.

Her son was also a Hamas Al Qassam Brigades member, and apparently part of a music group meant to "be a blow in the heart of the enemy." Here's one of his promotional photos:

The "Perfect Mother," as her title is named in Arabic, also was interviewed by the Hamas "Palestine Times" where she says that an ideal mother should educate her sons on is "love of jihad and martyrdom".

So the "ideal mother" of the entire Arab world is an enthusiastic supporter of Islamist terror.

(h/t JW, Al Gharqad)

Saturday Links

From Ian:

Sarah Honig: Another Tack: Why it matters
Peace cannot begin to be made before the malignant characterization of Jewish statehood as a casus belli is recanted convincingly and comprehensively once and for all.

In other words, rather than be accepted as rightfully a Jewish state, Israel is regarded at most as a multinational temporary entity and a candidate for impending Arabization. It wouldn’t be left in peace unless it submits meekly to said Arabization and the eradication of its Jewishness.
This is a surefire recipe for perpetuating the conflict (albeit by mutating means) rather than ending it, as presumed pursuers of peace would ostensibly wish to do. The refusal to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state is tantamount to affirming an enduring Arab aspiration to obliterate the Jewish state, subsequent to an arrangement that would falsely parade as peace.

Barry Rubin: Good News; War Postponed: Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Angry at Hamas, Cuts Off Weapons

Something both positive and revealing has just happened and while it undermines one prediction of mine it reinforces another. I’m delighted to see it.
I predicted that since Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is a radical, Islamist group that wants to wipe Israel off the map and the ruling Hamas group in the Gaza Strip is part of the Muslim Brotherhood and is a radical Islamist group and wants to wipe Israel off the map that the Egyptian regime would cooperate with Hamas in fomenting terrorism against Israel and that the Egyptian government would facilitate the flow of arms, money and terrorists to the Gaza Strip for that purpose.

CIF Watch: Guardian & BBC got the death of Omar Misharawi wrong: But, nothing will change.

Sela, in her Nov. 25 post, argued that, “The tragic story of Omar Misharawi [was] used and abused to advance a very specific narrative of Israel as a killer of children.”
In short, when it comes to the activist media’s mad rush to judgement on every alleged Israeli sin, regardless of whether new facts contradicting the original conclusions are eventually revealed, nothing will be learned.

Hamas’s blockade on women’s rights in Gaza
Guardian contributors and editors are simply indefatigable in their efforts to run interference for the reactionary movement in control of 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Guardian reporters and contributors have implicitly blamed the Israeli blockade for spousal abuse in Gaza, and even on one Palestinian man’s suicide, so a recent first person account by Najah Ayash (titled ‘Life in Gaza on International Women’s Day‘) addressing her life as a women in Gaza, which completely ignored Hamas’s violation of women’s human rights, was not surprising.

Hamas’ Haniyeh Says Obama Visit a “Trap”

Haniyeh also urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to not fall prey to Obama during their visit, which is scheduled to take place while Obama is in the region, saying he should “not fall into the trap of Obama’s visit to the region and shut the door to reconciliation.”

Hamas: Obama Visit to Temple Mount - a Declaration of War
Hamas and Islamic Jihad say that a visit by Obama to the Temple Mount will be a declaration of war on the Islamic world.

The Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups threatened on Friday that a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama to the Temple Mount during his upcoming visit to Israel will be a declaration of war on the Arab and the Islamic world.

Palestinians throw petrol bombs at cops from inside Temple Mount mosque
Jerusalem police calls violence from within al-Aqsa ‘a new escalation’; nine officers and dozens of rioters lightly injured in riots

Israeli police entered Jerusalem’s Temple Mount compound on Friday to disperse hundreds of Palestinians who, for the second Friday in succession, emerged from prayers to throw rocks at security forces near the entrance to the compound.
Rioters also threw two molotov cocktails at officers from inside the al-Aqsa Mosque, in what Jerusalem police chief Yossi Pariente said was “a new level of escalation.” Both petrol bombs exploded, and one of them set fire to the foot of an Israeli policeman, who quickly put out the blaze without serious injury.

Exclusive: Calling for Intifada on the Streets of Washington

Anti-Israel groups often use terms such as “justice” and “pro-peace” to hide their true agenda which, as the video shows, is really “intifada.” There is a new push to claim that a new "intifada" may be non-violent, but history suggests otherwise.
Israelis are all too familiar with the Palestinian calls for violence and death; the call for an “intifada” has now reached the streets of Washington, D.C. and is being openly celebrated.

Op-Ed: EXPOSÉ:Something is Rotten in a Denmark Unsafe for Jews
It’s just as unsafe in 2013 to be a Jew in Copenhagen as it is to be a Jew in an Arab country. In 2001, a poster in Arabic was pinned up on the notice board at a Copenhagen college. It promised a reward of $35,000 to anybody who would kill a Jew.

As my late friend Oriana Fallaci once wrote, “I find it shameful that in Denmark the youth flaunt the kaffiah as Mussolini’s avant garde flaunted the fascist badge”.
Anti-Semitism has become socially acceptable in Europe once again. Seventy years ago the Nazis had a word to say for it: “Salonfähig" (i.e.socially acceptable in polite society) . It is all in those two little dots of the German diaeresis . Scratch it and under the vowel you find the capital letter “J”. Jude. Jøde. Jew.

France posts documents from Dreyfus trial online
Notorious case proved pivotal in establishing political Zionism

The historical department of the French Ministry of Defense, SHD, placed online this week the entire military file that was used to convict Dreyfus of spying for Germany in 1894. The documents include items like investigative notes, witness statements, letters and documents stolen from foreign embassies.

Appeals court to reconsider Jerusalem passport case
Jewish groups press courts to hear petition of man determined to list country of birth as Israel

A U.S. court of appeals will again hear arguments on whether Americans born in Jerusalem can have “Israel” listed as their birthplace in their passports.
Nathan Lewin, the lawyer who last year won a Supreme Court decision requiring lower courts to resolve the issue, this week said that new hearings will begin on March 19 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Minister Kenney issues statement regarding 'Israel apartheid week'

“Operating under the guise of academic freedom, Israel Apartheid Week is a misleading attempt to delegitimize and demonize the only true liberal democracy in the Middle East. IAW’s organizers choose to promote inflammatory propaganda over civil and enlightening debate. Their approach is at odds with the Canadian values of tolerance and mutual respect, and prevents meaningful dialogue from taking place.
“As Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, I encourage Canadians to speak out against all forms of discrimination, intolerance and anti-Semitism.”

Miliband declares himself a Zionist in Q&A with UK Jews
Riding high in the polls, Labour leader says he may not agree with every Israeli policy, but he owes the Jewish state a ‘debt’

Asked whether he was a Zionist, Miliband responded, “Yes. I consider myself a supporter of Israel… It doesn’t mean I support everything Israel’s government does.”
Not only would he oppose boycotts of Israel, he was prepared to say so to trade union members who have been at the forefront of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign in the UK, but who were also largely responsible for his election as Labour leader. Boycotts “are totally wrong,” Miliband said. “I have no tolerance for boycotts. I will say it to any trade union member who asks me. You don’t create a two-state solution with boycotts.”

Armless Combat Soldier Provides Inspirational Message

One of the participants at this year’s AIPAC policy conference was Izzy Ezagui, a 24-year-old combat reserves officer.
Ezagui lost his arm in a mortar shell explosion but continues to serve as a reservist in special forces for the IDF’s Paratroopers Brigade.

EoZ Interview with editors of Mida (video)

After Mida wrote their great story on me, it is only fair for me to do the same.

Mida is a conservative leaning, but non-religious, magazine that came onto the Israeli scene late last year. It has already broken major stories and made some waves.

For a startup, they have a really beautiful office in Jerusalem, with a great view (not seen in this video unfortunately.) I'm very, very jealous.

Friday Links Part 2

From Ian:

LATMA: The media's greatest detective, and Europe remains focused on what is truly important

AIPAC conference highlights Canada-Israel ties
Analysis: Canadian FM Baird earned accolades from experts on Israel, leading to a crystallization of Canadian-Israeli ties into a non-formal special relationship.

Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird electrified the massive pro-Israel crowd at this week’s AIPAC’s policy conference with his straight-talking affirmation of Israeli-Canadian shared values.
Known for his no-nonsense anti-terror policies toward Iranian- sponsored terrorism and its main proxy – the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah – Baird earned accolades from experts on Israel, leading to a crystallization of Canadian-Israeli ties into a non-formal special relationship.

Daphne Anson At UNSW, Will The Chocolatier Conquer Campus?

An article in University of New South Wales student newspaper Tharunka, with the heading "Hot Chocolate and War Crimes," reports that a Max Brenner franchise will in all likelihood soon be opening on campus:
"[T]he move to allow a Max Brenner store on campus comes after the chocolate shop was identified in the top three food and beverage outlet suggestions by students and staff in the 2011 Retail Survey conducted by UNSW.
The survey was completed by nearly 7000 students and staff, the most successful participation rate of any survey conducted by UNSW," the report notes.
However, the usual suspects are predictably unhappy:

Leviticus, the Video Game
A new iPhone game turns the Bible’s most detailed book into fast-paced, educational entertainment

Titled Leviticus!, the game, as its title suggests, is both irreverent and deeply faithful to the source text—all that business about doves and cows and purity is right there in the book. But whereas Leviticus is too thick with rules to make for a very compelling read, it’s perfect when played.

How do you say ‘Fire’ in Hebrew?
Some 500 immigrants serving in the IDF graduate a crash course in the national language

Almost 500 new immigrants enlisted in the IDF graduated from a special Hebrew course on Wednesday. Many of the soldiers who finished the course are set to join combat units, while the remainder will serve in various posts throughout the army.
Some 40 percent of the graduates, 190, are “lone soldiers” — a term applied to those in Israel without their families — who moved to Israel from 25 countries around the world. About 100 of those lone soldiers, who hail from locales as diverse as Cuba, Denmark and Azerbaijan, will head on to serve in combat units.

IDF Blog: Newly-Revealed Letter from David Ben-Gurion: Women Must Play Equal Part in the IDF

"The army is the supreme symbol of duty and as long as women are not equal to men in performing this duty, they have not yet obtained true equality. If the daughters of Israel are absent from the army, then the character of the Yishuv will be distorted.”
—David Ben-Gurion, first Israeli Prime Minister

IDF Most Female-Friendly Army on Earth

The IDF is the world’s most female-friendly army according to new numbers compiled by the Manpower Directorate.
34 percent of IDF soldiers are women – a figure unparalleled among other militaries. 57% of all officers are women, 28% of career officers are women, and 92% of all army positions are open to women.

Mixed-Gender Caracal Battalion Beret March

Watch the young men and women of the Caracal combat battalion march towards their coveted beret. This is their last step before joining the battalion as full-fledged combat soldiers.

Playboy goes to Gaza. Really.

This seems appropriate for International Women's Day.

Playboy has a report on how the Islamist surge in North Africa has affected sexual mores.

It provides a few insights into the underground club scene in Tunisia and elsewhere, but it ends in Gaza:

1.7 million people live under the rugged rule of Hamas, the Islamist movement that won power through a combination of ballots and bullets in 2006 and 2007. It has clung to power religiously ever since, and despite being pummeled by Israeli sieges, incursions and most recently a bombardment waged from land, sea and air, Hamas succeeded in forming and preserving the first Islamist government on the Mediterranean. Initially, God squads scoured the beaches, searching for female skin. Vigilantes interrupted lovers and hauled them into court. “When a man and a woman are together, their first thoughts are of fornication, so we have to take care,” explains a guard outside rows of beach chalets where, he claims, Hamas’s corrupt secular predecessors—Yasir Arafat’s security guards—had swapped wives by locking them in their chalets, dropping the keys in a bucket and playing lucky dip.

And yet once ensconced, the Islamists slowly relaxed. Despite the frowns of the religious affairs minister, Gaza clothes shops fill their windows with scarlet dresses and heart-shaped cushions to celebrate Valentine’s Day, or as Palestinians call it, the Love Fest. Gazans call Hamas women “two jays” because they wear jeans beneath their jilbabs. Long bereft of cinemas and bars, Gaza at night bubbles with the honks of wedding parties touring the streets; the beaches where a few Gaza girls once dared to wear bikinis are now lined with resorts that celebrate mass weddings. Most curious of all, I discovered that what claims to be the Mediterranean’s largest polygamous dating agency is government-subsidized—it sports a photograph on its walls of Gaza’s Islamist prime minister, Ismail Haniya, handing over a $100,000 check. The agency’s owner, Fahmi al-Atiri, cites Hamas’s stocky interior minister, who was reputed to have found at least one of his six wives through the agency (to keep within Islam’s statutory limits, he divorced two). Having put me in a sufficiently sympathetic frame of mind, al-Atiri gives me a guided tour of his “marriage-facilitation charity,” proudly plying me with albums of the women on offer. He suggests I assuage my wife’s doubts by letting her choose the second, in the name of equal opportunity. It had worked for him, he says, noting with relief that his wife had selected a pretty divorcée 12 years his junior.

Friday Links Part 1

From Ian:

Palestinians Plan "Warm" Welcome for Obama by Khaled Abu Toameh

One plan being discussed among Palestinian activists includes staging anti-US demonstrations in Palestinian cities, particularly outside the place Obama is scheduled to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Activists in Ramallah said they would try to block the roads leading to the location of the Obama-Abbas meeting to protest against US "bias in favor of Israel."
Some activists have even prepared American flags and portraits of Obama that would be set on fire in front of TV crews covering the visit.
Palestinian activists say they are also hoping to humiliate Obama when and if he decides to visit the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
Many Palestinians have already called on Obama to refrain from visiting the holy site, especially if he would be escorted by Israeli policemen and security officials.

NYT OpEd: End the Arab Boycott of Israel By Ed Husain

I abandoned Muslim groupthink and went to Israel because there is a new momentum in the region. Egypt’s former grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, and the prominent scholar Habib Ali al-Jifri, broke ranks with Qaradawi and went to Jerusalem last April. They justified their visit on scriptural grounds, citing the Prophet Muhammad’s encouragement for believers to visit the Holy Land. Their trip was facilitated by Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal of Jordan, the principal religious adviser to King Abdullah II.
Muslim leaders in Jerusalem welcomed both men and Palestinian imams called for the end of the Arab boycott on Al Jazeera Arabic and other media outlets. This was a direct challenge to radicals like Qaradawi and his supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo and the Islamist party Ennahda in Tunis. Why do they want to continue the boycott?

CIF Watch: The inevitable CiF essay using nixed Gaza marathon as fodder to demonize Israel

So, evidently, Ramdani’s primary concern is that Hamas made a tactical mistake by forcing the cancellation of a charity marathon (raising money for Gaza’s children) which would have had the effect of exposing Israeli oppression. Note also that Ramdani falsely characterizes Israel’s blockade as illegal when, in fact, the UN Palmer Report definitively concluded that the blockade was indeed legal under international law.
Further in the essay, Ramdani even manages to implicitly blame Israel for Hamas’s misogynistic and repressive policies against its own citizens.

Israel prepares for next war with Hezbollah
While tensions along Israel’s northern border run high, the army is down south, simulating battles with its Lebanese arch-foe

As the Syrian civil war intensifies, military planners are growing increasingly jittery that the fighting could spill over into Israel, potentially dragging the Islamic militant group that is allied with President Bashar Assad into the fray. After battling Hezbollah to a stalemate in 2006, the Israeli military says it has learned key lessons and is prepared to inflict heavy damage on the group if fighting begins again.

Company Whose Cranes Were Used for Public Hangings Withdraws From Iran

After the revelation that its cranes were being used for executions in Iran, Austrian company Palfinger has communicated to United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI) that it is no longer doing business in the country.
In fact, the company hadn’t been doing business in Iran for some time. In a letter sent by Palfinger’s CEO, Herbert Ortner, to UANI in response to its February appeal that the company withdraw from Iran, Ortner made it clear that Palfinger had made attempts to cut ties with Iran since 2011.

Syria releases photos of alleged Israeli spy devices
Equipment designed to photograph, register and transfer data, state TV claims

Syrian state-run TV released pictures on Thursday of the Israeli espionage equipment Damascus claimed to have found on Wednesday.
Authorities near the country’s coast were said to have found Israeli devices designed to photograph, register and transfer data, according to a brief report in the regime-run Syrian Arab News Agency.

Wiesenthal Centre Urges Investigation after Report Shows Anti-Semitic Hungarian Political Party Moves Closer to Iran

After a three-day visit to the country by officials, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is urging the Hungarian government–as well as the European Parliament– to investigate reports of a growing relationship between Iran and the anti-Semitic Jobbik Hungarian political party.
“Hungarian leaders we met confirmed that the Jobbik party and the Iranian regime share a hatred for Jews, Israel, the European Union and the United States,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper associate Dean and Dr. Shimon Samuels Director of International Relations of the Centre reported, adding that “a Socialist Party MP told them that Jobbik’s increasingly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attacks can be linked in part to the growing connection.”

Ohio buys $42 million of Israel Bonds
CJN EXCLUSIVE: Treasurer Mandel makes largest such purchase in United States history

“We believe this is a sound investment for the taxpayers of Ohio and consistent with our strategy of investing in safe and strong securities,” Mandel said in a telephone interview March 4.

SingTel opens tech center in Israel
Singapore giant’s partnership with Amdocs to help local startups get footing in Asia market.

“We have been extremely satisfied with the wealth of talent in Israel. We experienced this through our recently acquired global mobile advertising company Amobee which has a technology center in Israel, as well as through our venture capital investments in two Israeli companies in the mobile Internet business. This has propelled us to open this new development center to scout for new growth engines for SingTel,” said Allen Lew, Chief Executive Officer of Group Digital L!fe, SingTel.

Source

For many Muslims, the "one state solution" is the Caliphate

Virtually wandering around some Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem on Google Street View, I came across this graffitum in Silwan/Kfar HaShiloach:

The flag is effectively the Saudi flag, with its Muslim declaration of faith.

Underneath, the Arabic writing says "We pray to Allah that next year's hajj will be under the shadow of the Caliphate."

The end game for Islamists isn't a one-state solution in "Palestine" - that is merely a stage, and they are happy to recruit people who pretend to love democracy and human rights and the rule of law to get to that stage. Their goal - as stated explicitly in the Hamas charter - is to establish a single Muslim state in the entire Middle East.

What believing Muslim would publicly disagree?

(h/t Al Gharqad for translation)