Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Tikkun Olam and the First Jewish President (Mike Lumish)

In September of 2011 New York Magazine published a cover showing the back of what we are to assume is the kippa-wearing head of Barack Obama with the headline: "The First Jewish President": The Truth? Barack Obama is the best friend Israel has right now, written by John Heilemann.

I do not know about you, but when I first saw this cover I just rolled my eyes and shook my head.

In March of 2012 White House loyalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, published a piece in The Atlantic entitled, Barack Obama Is Such a Traditional Jew Sometimes in which we read this mind-boggling bit of nonsense:

"I'll grapple with the meaning of Obama's Jewishness later, but the dispute between the Jewish right and the Jewish left over Obama is actually not about whether he is anti-Jewish or pro-Jewish, but over what sort of Jew he actually is."

What kind of a Jew Obama actually is?

What insipid hogwash. Why is it that when right-wingers call Obama a Muslim they are branded as racist, but when left-wingers call him a Jew we're supposed to get that warm cozy feeling in our cockles, like hot chocolate on a cold winter night with just a little bit of peppermint schnapps before a roaring fire.

Today in a piece for the Times of Israel by Ilan Ben Zion and Rebecca Shimon Stoil, we read:

President Barack Obama on Friday called for the establishment of a free Palestinian state alongside Israel, saying it was necessary for the preservation of Israeli democracy and security, and integral to Jewish values.

Wearing a white kippah, Obama spoke to a crowd of about 1,000 at Washington DC’s Adas Israel Congregation, one of the largest in the capital, marking Jewish American Heritage Month.

He touted his pro-Israel policies and close ties with Jewish advisors, wishing the audience a “slightly early Shabbat Shalom” and peppering his speech with Hebrew terms such as “tikkun olam” — repairing the world.

I find this to be the worst sort of disingenuous pandering and he does it while lecturing Israel about "Jewish values." Who the heck is Barack Obama to hold forth on Jewish values to anyone, much less the Jewish people of the State of Israel?

Barack Obama has shown himself to be the least friendly President of the United States to the State of Israel since its inception. Even Jimmy Carter, who is widely regarded as a president unfriendly to Israel, never had the temerity to tell American Jewish leadership that they should inform their Israeli-Jewish counterparts to search their souls to see if they really wanted peace.

Of course, no American president ever openly embraced a genocidally anti-Semitic organization at a time when they were calling for the conquest of Jerusalem during campaign rallies, either.

But mainly what I want to address is this notion of tikkun olam, "repairing the world." It is no coincidence that Obama would breathe that bit of Hebrew to an American Jewish audience. In recent decades the idea of tikkun olam has moved from the fringe of Jewish national consciousness, at least in the diaspora, toward the center and is associated with ideals of universal human rights. For many people to be a good Jew one must practice tikkun olam, which means promoting ideals of social justice, which means supporting the Democratic Party.

We can, of course, take it one step further and suggest that in order to be a good Jew one must support tikkun olam, which means promoting ideals of social justice, which means supporting the Democratic Party, which means promoting Obama's policies on the Arab-Israel conflict, which means Israel must make "painful concessions" in order to induce the Palestinian-Arabs to finally accept a state for themselves on historically Jewish land.

Depending upon one's point of view, the ideal of tikkun olam can be interpreted as wholly noble and selfless. It can be seen as representing what is best in the religious traditions of the world. It can also be seen, of course, as a diamond from deep within the Jewish tradition, dredged up, washed-off, shinied up, and stripped of all deeper meanings in the service of left-leaning domestic American politics.

Whatever one's view of tikkun olam, however, we must not allow the generosity of spirit which animates the concept from preventing us from standing up for what is in the best interest of the Jewish people. For example, we should be generous in allowing people of all faiths access to Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount, but we should be not so generous that we allow one religious group privileged access while denying every other the right to even pray there.

We should be generous enough in spirit to avoid war when we can, but not so generous in spirit that we allow our enemies to gain in strength at the encouragement of alleged friends.

And, of course, the very last thing that we should do is to allow ourselves to get suckered by false friends who take on the trappings of Judaism and lecture us about Jewish values in order to extract counterproductive concessions.

Let Barack Obama worry about his own values.

The Jews will take care of themselves.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

05/26 Links Pt1: Hamas, Europe and How to Get a State; Obama Invents a 'Pro-Israel' Past

From Ian:

Hamas, Europe and How to Get a State

Denmark's Foreign Minister, Martin Lidegaard, did not of course address the question: If your neighbor is trying to import weapons while threatening to kill you, what are you supposed to do about that? He also did not address the similar blockade of Gaza by Egypt, which faces the same problem. The more terror tunnels Hamas members build, the more respect they get from the West.
As someone born and raised a Muslim in the Middle East, and still living there, I can assure Europeans officials that if they think the recognition of Hamas and Palestinian statehood would encourage Hamas to change its charter and abandon its terrorists attacks, they could not be more wrong. Why then should Hamas change its charter or tactics, or commit itself to a peaceful resolution, when its current terror tactics seem to be working so magnificently?
"We do not distinguish between what was occupied in the 1940s and what was occupied in the 1960s... We will continue until the very last usurper is driven out of our land." – Sheik Nizar Rayan, a Hamas leader, Gaza, 2005.
The EU authorities speak about "peace talks," and a "two-state solution;" Hamas does not. Hamas openly rejects them. If one compares the language these governments use with the language Hamas officials use, they would appear to live on different galaxies. To Hamas, and apparently to many countries in Europe, Israel as no right to defend itself and no right to exist. But Europe is ready to prop up, with unconditional support, racist, anti-humanitarian organizations such as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Is this really the spirit of pluralism, humanism and tolerance these "good," "moral" European governments and the Vatican support?

Palestinians reject Netanyahu bid to define settlement blocs

The Palestinian Authority refuses to resume negotiations with Israel without Israeli recognition of the pre-1967 borders as the basis for talks and of East Jerusalem as the future Palestinian capital, a PA spokesman said on Tuesday, nixing a reported bid by Jerusalem to resume talks aimed at defining the borders of settlement blocs.
Presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh was responding to comments attributed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a meeting with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini last week, in which the Israeli premier said his government was willing to define the boundaries of the main settlement blocs, within which construction would be allowed.
Abu Rudeineh countered that Israeli construction in the West Bank must stop entirely before peace talks can resume.
“Nothing relating to final status issues can be segmented or postponed,” Abu Rudeineh said in a statement published by official Palestinian news agency Wafa. “The basis for any negotiations must be recognition of the 1967 borders, Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestinian state… along with a complete halt to settlement [construction] and the release of the fourth group of [security] prisoners jailed before Oslo.”

Joel Pollak: In Speech to Jews, Obama Invents a 'Pro-Israel' Past

Obama’s many biographies–both his own memoirs, and the voluminous writings of others–mention no such early interest in Israel. In fact, those who knew Obama in his early years in Chicago describe a man who understood little about Israel. He had extensive contact with left-wing Jewish activists, and his home is across the street from a synagogue. But to the extent that he took an interest in the Middle East, it was in the Palestinian cause, and the larger Arab and Muslim world.
As Peter Wallsten wrote in April 2008, in the infamous Los Angeles Times article that revealed the existence of the still-secret “Khalidi tape,” Obama’s former Chicago allies and associates described a man whose personal sympathies lay more with the Palestinians, and who promised to pursue a more “evenhanded” policy. One of those who met him in those days, the radical anti-Israel activist Ali Abunimah, complained that a pro-Palestinian Obama had since “learned to love Israel.”
In Obama’s first memoir, Dreams from my Father, there is no recollection whatsoever of any kind of fascination with Israel–not even the left-wing, socialist icons Obama name-checked in his Adas Jeshurun speech. The word “Israel” only appears once, in the words of “Rafiq,” a somewhat adversarial character who admonishes the young community organizer that liberal American Jews really care more “’bout they relatives in Israel” than black children on the South Side of Chicago.
We may conclude that Obama’s supposed fascination with Israel is a fabrication–like the “composite” characters in his autobiographies, or the inaccurate stories he told about his mother’s death during the Obamacare debate, or the many other fibs he has told in the past for political purposes. The kibbutznik Obama is a bit of kitsch tailored to pander to the audience at Adas Jeshurun–many of whom, like journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, are die-hard members of the Obama fan club.

Online Al Jazeera Arabic poll shows 80% support for ISIS

An online poll up at Al Jazeera asks "Do you consider the advance/progress of ISIS to be in the interest of the region?" (The original question wording was "Do you support the victories of the ISIS organization?")

So far, over 80% have voted "Yes."

To be sure, one must include a number of caveats.

For one, online polls are subject to social media campaigns. Other Al Jazeera online polls don't get a fraction of the number of votes cast in this one, so clearly ISIS fans are pushing for people to stuff the ballot box.

Is it possible that some ISIS fans have hacked the poll as well? Could be, although Al Jazeera tries to stop multiple and automated votes by using cookies and a CAPTCHA string.

Nevertheless, 40,000 Arabic readers happily supporting ISIS in what would otherwise be an obscure online poll is something to be concerned about.

(h/t Martin, Ibn Boutros)

Taylan Can

Last year during the Gaza war there were a number of antisemitic rallies in Germany that shocked even members of Germany's Left.

In January, a leader of one such rally held in Essen, Taylan Can, was convicted of hate speech for saying "Death to Zionists." At that rally, he haters threw bottles at a pro-Israel demonstration, chanted "Adolf Hitler" and said "Fuck Jews" as well as "“Scheiss Juden!” (“Jewish shit”). That same leader had been known to chant "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas."

I'm not sure if this video is of that same rally, but it was also in Essen:

The judge said that when demonstrators said "Death to Zionists" they really meant "Death to the Jews." He sentenced the leader to three months probation and a small fine of 200 euros. He emphasized that criticizing Israel is okay but what they did was way over the line and was hate speech and incitement.

Taylan Can appealed the verdict. Observers were skeptical that the ruling would be upheld.

Last week, the appeals court indeed upheld the ruling and in fact increased his sentence to ten months probation.

(h/t Gastwirt)

Muslim countries the biggest deadbeats on Gaza reconstruction

From IRIN:

Gulf Arab states and Turkey have spectacularly failed to fulfill their pledges to Gaza, contributing to a two-thirds shortfall in promised assistance to the beleaguered enclave, a new report reveals.

As of late April, donors had given only 27.5 percent of the promised $3.5 billion, or $967 million.

However, only 35 percent of the aid pledged - or $1.2 billion - was actually fresh, with the majority coming from reallocated donations and emergency funding delivered as the bombs were still falling. Of this new aid, just 13.5 percent - or $165 million - has come through (see chart below).

Qatar pledged $1 billion for Gaza and has delivered 10 percent; Saudi Arabia has given only 10 percent of its promised $500 million. Turkey and Kuwait both pledged $200 million: the former has produced only $520,000, and the latter none.

Other top pledges included the United Arab Emirates’ $200 million, which the World Bank said no data was available for, the United States' $277 million pledge, which is 84 percent delivered, and the European Union's $348 million, with a 40 percent delivery rate.

We've seen this many times before. Arab countries are happy to pledge money to their Palestinian brethren but won't pay up.

Amazingly, the World Bank still blames Israel for the shortfall in building materials going into Gaza, and not the Arab nations that they document as having barely paid their pledges! Their report is in two parts, the first one is their normal report on how Israel is to blame for everything and the annex on how the Gulf states and Turkey aren't paying their pledges. The people who wrote the first part downplayed the statistics from the second part illustrated above, and they actually say:

It is noteworthy that good progress has been made so far to fulfill donor pledges for Gaza reconstruction, but it has to continue and—most importantly—solutions have to be found to enable faster inflow of construction materials into Gaza. By mid-April, almost USD 1 billion of the USD3.5 billion pledged for Gaza reconstruction and recovery at the October 2014 Cairo conference have been allocated by donors. The reconstruction and recovery process will require that all donors fulfill their pledges. However, currently the binding constraint on Gaza’s recovery is not financing, but the limitations on imports of construction materials into Gaza.Therefore, taking into account legitimate security concerns of neighboring countries, ways have to be found to drastically improve access to construction materials in Gaza.

I can find no statistics saying that funded projects in Gaza are waiting for materials.

05/25 Links: Abbas’ Fatah wants to destroy Israel; Could Israel Get Booted Out of Soccer?

From Ian:

PMW: Abbas’ Fatah wants to destroy Israel

On the occasion of Palestinian Nakba day - the day Palestinians commemorate "the catastrophe" of the establishment of the State of Israel - Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement posted a drawing on Facebook that encouraged the use of violence to destroy Israel.
"What was taken by force can only be regained by force, the 67th anniversary of the Nakba"
[Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page," May 14, 2015]
This statement appeared on an image showing the number 67 in Arabic numerals with the digit 7 made of a key, a rifle, and a map that includes the PA areas as well as all of Israel.
Fatah often reiterates its support for the use of violence and arms to gain statehood as Palestinian Media Watch has documented.
Another post by Fatah warned "the world's dwarfs" to "remain in their burrows" when "the storm" - the name of Fatah's military wing - "roars." This warning appeared on a photo of an armed member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades beside the Fatah logo, which also encourages the use of arms against Israel. The Fatah logo shows two rifles crossed over a map that includes the PA areas and all of Israel: (h/t Bob Knot)

'World encourages violence by condemning Israel constantly'

In an exclusive interview, Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, speaks about the conflict with Hamas, the ethics of war, the battle for public opinion, and the prospects for peace • Peace is far from breaking out, he says.
Col. Richard Kemp, CBE, has been spending time in Israel, where he spoke at Shurat Hadin's "Towards a ‎New Laws of War" Conference, and at Bar-Ilan University, which bestowed him with an honorary ‎doctorate in recognition of his stalwart battle against terrorism and terrorist organizations. Kemp, now ‎retired from the British Army, was commander of the British forces in Afghanistan in 2003 and served in ‎Iraq, the Balkans and Northern Ireland. For the last five years of his 30-year military career, Kemp ‎served as top adviser to the British prime minister on questions of intelligence and counterterrorism.‎

Moroccan authorities take down Israeli judo team

The Moroccan authorities blamed the delay on the Israeli team’s lack of visas but changed their story later on, saying that a gun had been found in one team member’s luggage, Ynet reported. Israel Judo Association chairman Moshe Ponti contacted Marius Vizer, the president of the International Judo Federation’s executive committee, and asked for his assistance. At Vizer’s intervention, which included a threat to cancel the entire competition unless the Israeli team was released, the Moroccan authorities permitted the Israelis to proceed to their hotel, under the protection of a unit of the king’s security guards.
Things went from bad to worse as the weekend progressed. The Israeli flag was absent from the venue where the event took place, prompting a representative from the International Judo Federation to demand that all the flags of the participating countries be taken down. The Israeli team was also not mentioned on the tournament’s website. The spectators waved Palestinian flags, shouted “We’re going to kill you,” and booed each time a member of the Israeli team appeared.
“What happened in Morocco is a shame,” judoka Yarden Gerbi wrote on her Facebook page. “As an Israeli I feel ashamed to wait 8 hours at the airport, I feel ashamed to hear the crowed [sic] boo me and my teammates and want us to lose — and why? Because we are Israelis. We came for sports, pure sport, not politics. It’s an embarrassment for Morocco and the organization. I hope us Israelis, and no one else, for that matter, ever has to experience such behavior again. It’s against sport in general, and judo in particular.”
The Israeli team won no medals in the competition. “I’m very disappointed — not with the results, but with the spectators’ behavior,” Ponti said.

Could Israel Get Booted Out of Soccer?

George Orwell was a brilliant man and a historically important writer, but the one thing he never truly understood was soccer.
In December 1945, Orwell wrote an essay called “The Sporting Spirit” for the London newspaper Tribune. The Soviet soccer club Dynamo Moscow had just completed a tour of the UK, playing matches against top British clubs like Arsenal and Rangers—matches that degenerated into rough play on the pitch and jingoism in the stands. Orwell, a fervent opponent of nationalism, was appalled. “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play,” he wrote. “It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.”
It is true that soccer can bring out the worst in, and of, humanity. It can enable racism, sexism, homophobia, corruption, and mob violence. It can enflame nationalist tensions and give legitimacy to authoritarian regimes. But soccer can also bring out the best in us. It can unify war-torn nations and lift the spirits of impoverished communities. It can impose 90 minutes of order on a world that has seemingly never been so chaotic.
It’s never wise—and perhaps not possible—to underestimate FIFA’s ability to hit a new moral low. But if FIFA votes against Israel, it will be its most shameful decision yet, because it will prove Orwell right—that the Beautiful Game is nothing more than a front in a decades-long battle, and its fans are merely its conscripts. (h/t Bob Knot)

05/22 Links Pt2: Robert Wistrich: Defender of the Jewish People; ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ Was a Zionist

From Ian:

Robert Wistrich: Defender of the Jewish People

Many scholars look away from the widespread anti-Semitism emanating from Muslim states and from parts of the Muslim population in Western countries. Despite the backlash, Robert remained outspoken when his post-9/11 essay on Muslim anti-Semitism, originally published in English, was updated and republished in German in 2011. Therein, Robert claimed that the hardcore anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim world is comparable only to that of Nazi Germany. Expressing such an opinion was far more than an academic judgment. It was an act of courage. Much more gentle criticism about extreme ugly phenomena in Muslim societies was already being labeled as Islamophobia. Such criticism is constantly stifled not only by Muslims but also by many “politically correct” Westerners. Robert explicitly stated that Muslim hatred for Israel and Jews is “an eliminatory anti-Semitism with a genocidal dimension”.
From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews, and Israel came out in 2012. The book includes the chapter, “Great Britain: A Suitable Case for Treatment?” Robert had studied in the UK, where the British literary classics on the school’s curriculum were almost all anti-Semitic in nature. Robert’s analysis started with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales from the late 14th century and Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta from the end of the 16th Century. He came out unequivocally against the whitewashing of the anti-Semitism of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
Probably more so than anyone else, Robert has proven that anti-Semitism is not only inherent in European history but that it is an integral part of European culture. I once persuaded him to lecture at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs about the long tradition of intellectual anti-Semitism. He illustrated how each change in the social environment brings about a mutation of anti-Semitism. In Europe, Catholic anti-Semitism laid down the ideological infrastructure from which much of the demonizing of the Jews, Judaism and the Jewish people developed. From Martin Luther and Protestantism to the Enlightenment, including Voltaire, from the great German idealist philosophers, the early French socialists, to Karl Marx – many intellectuals and innovative movements gave their own “contribution” to anti-Semitism.
Robert was a passionate and tireless fighter for his ideas. A comrade-in-arms against the many ugly enemies of the Jewish people, and a man of principle, I had the privilege of last speaking with him –a lengthy, and as always, stimulating and pleasant conversation – during the recent Global Forum for Combatting Anti-Semitism, a few days before his passing. His sense of purpose remained unabated until the very end. Like all great intellectuals, he will live on through the legacy of his profound work and original thought.

Col. Richard Kemp: The Amoral Revolution in Western Values, and its Impact on Israel

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: To fight for Israel on the international stage is also to fight for the values of democracy, freedom of speech and expression, and civilized social values everywhere. Unfortunately, the morality and values of the West have been transformed and undermined over the past thirty years almost beyond recognition. Judeo-Christian principles of honesty, honor, loyalty, family values, patriotism, religious faith and respect for the state have all been eroded; whereas negative values, such as the acceptance of betrayal, duplicity and deceit, have flourished. The Western media is chiefly culpable in advancing this deleterious values transformation. And this transformation is the basis for the growth of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist perspectives, and anti-Israel narratives.
What follows is the text of an address delivered by Col. Kemp CBE at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies on May 19, 2015. Kemp was Commander of the British Forces in Afghanistan. He subsequently worked for the Joint Intelligence Committee and the British cabinet national crisis management group. He testified in defense of Israel before the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, and the United Nations Human Rights Council in response to the Goldstone report. This week, he received an honorary doctorate from Bar-Ilan University in recognition of his stalwart defense of Israel.

Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies: Col. Kemp’s 40 minute address

British commander provides hope to turn back the tide against Israel

Flatly contradicting the nasty Goldstone Report, Kemp confidently asserted that “based on my knowledge and experience as a military commander, the IDF did more during Operation Cast Lead to safeguard the rights of civilians in the combat zones than any other army in the history of warfare.”
Kemp has been vilified ever since. “In social media, I have been the subject of sustained assaults by particularly virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic networks. In universities, I have been the subject of demonstrations that have sought to silence me. I have been accused of corruption and being in the pay of the Zionist entity. I have been deliberately denied business opportunities.
I have been placed on a terrorist death list,” Kemp told his BESA Center audience.
“This is not because I speak out against the moral bankruptcy, corruption, incitement to terrorism or oppression of the Palestinian Authority; or the murder, brutality and terrorist violence of Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. I have spoken out at least as much against al-Qaida, the Taliban, the Iranian regime, the IRGC and many other sponsors of terror and terrorist groups without anything like this level of attempted intimidation.
“Rather it is for one reason, and that is because I fail to falsely condemn Israel in circumstances where to even be neutral on the subject is itself a crime in the eyes of so many. It is because I have gone further, and used my military experience and my objective view to explain and defend Israel’s legitimate military actions.”

Chag sameach!

I will not be blogging until Monday night (or Tuesday morning) because of the upcoming holiday of Shavuot, the least well known of the major Jewish holidays.

Have a great holiday!

A visit to a southern Israeli kibbutz (Ido Daniel on Twitter)

Sometimes, you can find real journalism on Twitter. From Ido Daniel:

In Sderot today. Already met with mayor Alon Davidi, now heading to Kibbutz Nahal Oz
— Ido Daniel (@IdoDaniel) May 22, 2015

With Beni Sela, head of civil security of Nahal Oz, in a lookout to shuja'iyya, Gaza pic.twitter.com/hfccSkwLLB
— Ido Daniel (@IdoDaniel) May 22, 2015

Beni: after Protective Edge, #Hamas constructed a "Quarry". Its main target: making noise to cover the sound of tunnel digging toward Israel
— Ido Daniel (@IdoDaniel) May 22, 2015

shuja'iyya in #Gaza as seen from kibbutz Nahal Oz. The so called quarry is at front (white) pic.twitter.com/kOZK2G4jV5
— Ido Daniel (@IdoDaniel) May 22, 2015

Beni: in front of Nahal Oz there were 8 mosques before Protective Edge. Now only 1 left, rest were used as #Hamas weapon storage
— Ido Daniel (@IdoDaniel) May 22, 2015

Beni: at the beginning of Protective Edge, #Hamas has deliberately cut this main power line to #Gaza. pic.twitter.com/y4VvEiCEDP
— Ido Daniel (@IdoDaniel) May 22, 2015

Beni: their intentions in this act were pure propaganda: blaming Israel for cutting the power to Gaza. Electric teams were attacked too
— Ido Daniel (@IdoDaniel) May 22, 2015

Beni: that was an absurd situation. They shot at the power lines on purpose, Israel tried to repair it but the were shot at as well.
— Ido Daniel (@IdoDaniel) May 22, 2015

I'm as asking Beni if they're digging tunnels at the moment toward Kibbutz Nahal Oz. "yes they are". pic.twitter.com/6NVzojBu54
— Ido Daniel (@IdoDaniel) May 22, 2015

Beni: the Nahal Oz pillbox attack happened right here. #Hamas terrorists were hiding in this sunflower field pic.twitter.com/Oe5XpkdFQb
— Ido Daniel (@IdoDaniel) May 22, 2015

Beni is now telling us the story of the murder of 4yo Daniel Tregerman from a mortar shell. I'll spare the details pic.twitter.com/y8A3Doa3hI
— Ido Daniel (@IdoDaniel) May 22, 2015

This how a playground looks like inside Kibbutz Nahal Oz. pic.twitter.com/qPwozR2Is0
— Ido Daniel (@IdoDaniel) May 22, 2015

The sunflower fields of Kibbutz Nahal Oz. #ShabbatShalom from southern #Israel! pic.twitter.com/pp9dNQd0jH
— Ido Daniel (@IdoDaniel) May 22, 2015

05/22 Links Pt1: In Obama's Middle East there's only one problem -- Netanyahu; Palestinians’ Gun Culture

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The Israeli enablers in action

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has some explaining to do.
During Mogherini’s visit this week she spoke loftily of Europe’s concern for peace and desire to play a role in establishing a Palestinian state at peace with Israel. And that was very nice.
But what is the EU doing to promote these admirable goals? How do the millions of euros the EU and its member states shovel annually into the coffers of NGOs who exist to delegitimize Israel advance these goals? The timing of Mogherini’s visit this week was propitious. She came the same week as “Nakba Day,” the day Israel’s enemies mourn its coming into existence 67 years ago.
The concept of the “Nakba,” is an act of political war against the Jewish state. It was invented to deny Israel’s right to exist by propagating the libel that the state was born in sin. The explicit demand at the heart of the “Nakba” narrative is that Israel must be destroyed for justice to be achieved.
The EU generously funds groups that propagate this devastating slander.

A Century of Genocides: Next Trigger-Man, Iran

Seventy years after the fall of Dachau and Auschwitz, Israeli Jews, Christians and Arabs are threatened with a second Holocaust by people who deny the existence of the first Holocaust: Iran's leadership. The West, apparently willing to vote Iran nuclear breakout capability, pays no attention and acts as if Iran's continual threats had no meaning.
The first priority of most Western governments today seems to sign a deal with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei, who openly calls for Israel's and America's destruction.
The next priority of many European governments is to entrust a state to the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, a movement that does not hide its genocidal intentions. Political considerations are at work, full time and at open throttle.
Since the Armenian genocide, one hundred years have passed, marked by mass killings, massacres, and genocides. These culminated in the Holocaust, but did not end with it. The Communist killing fields of Cambodia took place during the 1970s. The Rwandan Genocide of the Tutsis was perpetrated just twenty-one years ago.
The twentieth century was appropriately described by historian Robert Conquest as a "ravaged century."
It is urgent that that ethical -- not political or monetary -- considerations receive priority. If not, this will be the second "ravaged century."

Who Can Attack Turkish Ships?

The vessel, the Tuna-1, was approaching Tobruk, a coastal city in Libya where the country's internationally-recognized government is headquartered, to deliver sheetrock cargo loaded in Spain, when it was shelled in international waters, 13 miles away from the Libyan port city. The Tuna-1 was then attacked twice from the air as it tried to leave the area. A Libyan military spokesman told Reuters that the Turkish vessel was bombed "after it was warned not to approach the Libyan city of Derna."
But this time there was no request for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council; no talks with the EU, NATO, Arab League, OIC, Obama or Merkel. No words flying in the air such as "terrorist state," "piracy," "massacre," "an attack on world peace." No "murderers." No threats to Libyans that "your security is being exposed to great risks." And, naturally, this is not "Turkey's own 9/11."
Instead, the Turkish Foreign Ministry on May 11 issued a weak protest note. It condemned the attack and demanded legal action. It called the attack a violation of international law. All Turkey's Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, could say was that Ankara had sent a frigate off the Libyan coast to escort the Tuna-1 back to Turkish waters.
President Erdogan's reaction to the attack on a civilian Turkish vessel by a foreign army was revealing. He said: "Things would have been different had the Turkish ship carried a Turkish flag." That would be Turkey's wrath on Libya, he simply meant, were the Tuna-1, owned by a Turkish company, not registered in the Cook Islands.
By the way, what flag did the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara carry? Comoros.
Still wondering why Turkey's voice was so loud after the Mavi Marmara incident? For Turkey's Islamists, "what was done" does not matter much. "Who did it" does.

Jibril Rajoub keeps playing FIFA like a fiddle

From Reuters:

The Palestine Football Association (PFA) has complained to world football's governing body FIFA that Israeli authorities held up a national team player as the squad travelled from the West Bank to Tunisia on Thursday.

The PFA said player Sameh Maraabah was temporarily detained by Israeli authorities at Allenby Bridge crossing between the West Bank and Jordan late on Thursday.

But Israel's FA (IFA) accused its Palestinian counterpart of "deliberately creating a needless provocation" and said it would make a formal complaint to FIFA.

"The PFA broke an agreement with FIFA and the IFA which requires prior notification and a list of names of the Palestinian athletes prior to their travel," the IFA said.

The team bus waited and Maraabah was eventually allowed to continue with his colleagues, who then flew from Jordan to Tunisia to attend a training camp, a PFA official told Reuters.

Israel jailed Maraabah for two months last year after he was convicted of being a courier for Islamist group Hamas.

Israel had accused Maraabah of returning from a team trip to Qatar in April 2014 bearing money, a mobile phone and messages given to him by a Hamas operative whom Israel had exiled to the Gulf state as part of a prisoner exchange.

An Israeli security official said Maraabah was questioned briefly about his travel plans and was warned by authorities not to engage in any more "forbidden activities against the state of Israel".

The incident occurred hours after FIFA president Sepp Blatter met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and football officials to address Palestinian complaints that Israel was hampering their football activities.

PFA president Jibril Rajoub wrote to Blatter saying Israel was not abiding by its own commitment to ease travel.

"The implications of this incident can only confirm the PFA's position on the promises given by the Israeli Government; that they are only words unless they are included in a solution that can only come through, and be guaranteed by, the FIFA Congress."

Rajoub deliberately sent someone with known terror ties through without clearing it with Israel as per their agreement, knowing that Israel would detain him and therefore using it as a pretext for a new complaint against Israel.

But the headlines say "Israel detains travelling Palestine player" rather than "Palestinians engineer an incident to demonize Israel."

The terrorist Jibril Rajoub wins again.

(h/t Bob K)

Iran threatens to kill 600,000 Jews

From Times of Israel:

Senior Iranian military official warned on Thursday that any Israeli attack would unleash a firestorm of missiles on its cities fired by the Islamic Republic’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.

The Shiite militia has more than 80,000 rockets ready to fire at Tel Aviv and Haifa, said General Yahya Rahim Safavi, military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Iran, with the help of Hezbollah and its friends, is capable of destroying Tel Aviv and Haifa in case of military aggression on the part of the Zionists,” he said, quoted on state television.

“I don’t think the Zionists would be so unintelligent as to create a military problem with Iran,” the general said. “They know the strength of Iran and Hezbollah.”

Tel Aviv has 404,000 people, Haifa another 267,000. The vast majority are Jewish. He isn't talking about targeting military facilities, he is threatening the murder of two thirds of a million people.

Last I checked, that was a war crime.

Maybe Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch will mention it among his hundreds of anti-Israel tweets.

Sure.

The FARS News version of the story includes a nice lie:

Top Military Aide to the Iranian Supreme Leader Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi described the recent statements of Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon about nuking Iran as an empty threat, warning that the Islamic Republic has tens of thousands of missiles ready to wreak havoc on Israel.

Did Yaalon threaten to nuke Iran?

Only in the fevered imaginations of the haters at Mondoweiss, where Iran apparently gets its news from.

Mondoweiss noticed a speech that Yaalon gave where he mentioned how Truman justified Hiroshima, but in no way did he threaten Iran. Here is what he said in context:

Now those who claim that this battle is not fair because democracy can't fight back tyrannical regimes, not [to mention] terror organizations, I don't agree with it.

In certain cases we might take certain steps that we believe ... should be taken in order to defend ourselves. I mentioned the discussion about the interception of the rockets positioned on civilian houses. We decided to do it. I can't imagine some other step that should be taken.

Of course, we should be sure that we can look [in] the mirror after the decision or operation. Of course, we should be sure that it is a military necessity. We should consider costs and benefits, of course, but at the end we might take certain steps.

I do remember the story of President Truman, who was asked, "how did you feel after deciding to launch the nuclear bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, causing at the end [200,000 fatalities]?" And he said, "when I heard from my officers that the alternative is a long war with Japan, with potential fatalities of a couple of million, I saw that it is a moral decision."

We are not there yet. But that's what I'm talking about: certain steps in cases in which we feel like we don't have the answer by surgical operations or something like that.

Yaalon was using Hiroshima as an extreme example of having to kill civilians to save a much larger number of people, and relating it back to his earlier mention that Hezbollah is hiding rockets in civilian houses on Israel's border and Israel will need to attack those locations in case of war.

He was not saying Israel was planning to nuke Iran. On the contrary, he was saying that any difficult decision must be a military necessity and the decisions must be made in the context of the laws of war, which do allow actions that would kill civilians sometimes. There are more tools in Israel's arsenal under international law than one would think from reading the false interpretations of that law given by Amnesty and HRW.

But Iran explicitly threatened to do the equivalent of 4 Hiroshimas in Israel.

Will any human rights defender condemn this threat of murdering hundreds of thousands of people?

Nah...they're only Jews in Israel. No one defends their human rights.

(h/t Yoel)

Joe Lieberman far more skeptical of Obama's feelings about Israel than Jeffrey Goldberg

Jeffrey Goldberg has just published another long interview with President Obama, and he once again does everything he can to praise him on his stance towards Israel.

For example, he stated that "Obama, when he talks about Israel, sounds like a rabbi in the progressive Zionist tradition." Goldberg doesn't seriously challenge the President when he is told again that Obama "has Israel's back."

Perhaps most glaringly, Goldberg doesn't ask a single question about what Obama is demanding of the Palestinians in his desire for peace. He doesn't ask a thing about Palestinian incitement to violence, about Arab antisemitism (although Obama implies it exists, it wasn't because of anything he was asked,) he didn't ask about why Israeli building in areas that are obviously going to remain par of Israel forever is condemned so vociferously, indicating that the US position towards the Green Line has changed significantly under Obama's watch.

The contrast between a Democrat who pretends to love Israel for the purpose of pushing a bad Iranian deal (which was the main purpose of this interview, and a speech Obama is giving to a "progressive" Jewish synagogue tonight) and a Democrat (turned independent) who truly loves Israel can be seen from a different interview with Joe Lieberman:

Former US Sen. Joseph Lieberman, in an interview with JTA in Jerusalem, surmised that the next US administration would be friendlier with Israel than the current one. He also expressed concern over America’s nuclear negotiations with Iran, saying they are “going in a bad direction,” and urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to embrace the long-shelved Arab Peace Initiative.

Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew and the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate in 2000, predicted that if the 2016 presidential election were held today, a higher percentage of Jewish Americans would vote Republican than in past races. But he noted that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the party’s front-runner for the Democratic nod, could reverse that trend through vocal support of Israel.

“I think there will be a friend of Israel in the White House,” he said, noting that both Clinton and the leading Republican candidates all have pro-Israel records. “It will be a new beginning, a new opportunity. Is it going to be better than it has been under President Obama? Probably, yeah.”

Lieberman expressed concern over support for Israel in the Democratic Party. While almost all Democratic lawmakers support Israel, he said, Lieberman worried that younger party activists are more skeptical of the Jewish state.

“It’s something people who care about Israel are really working at,” said Lieberman, a four-term senator from Connecticut, who won as an independent in 2006 after losing the Democratic primary — in part because of his continued support for the Iraq War. “Part of it is to remind people who are liberal Democrats that, without saying everything Israel ever does is perfect, Israel is by far the most liberal country and society.”

Even though I disagree strongly with Lieberman's attitude towards the possibility of peace and his pushing the Arab Peace Initiative, you can see that he has a real love of Israel. The difference between someone like him and a president who is saying what he needs to say in order to push an agenda is clear.

Archbishop Hanna admits Muslims persecute Christians but blames the messenger

Archbishop Atallah Hanna, of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, gave a speech to pilgrims about Palestinian Christian issues and concerns.

He said that Palestinian Christians cling stubbornly to every grain of holy Palestinian soil. According to Hanna, they are 100% Christian and 100% Palestinian in their contributions in the Palestinian national struggle. "The cause of the oppressed people is our cause, their suffering is our suffering, their pain is our pain, and their ambition for freedom is our ambition, too."

"We as a group reject extremism and hatred, violence and believe the Gospel, which calls for brotherhood, love and peace values. The Muslims are our brothers in every sense of the word, they are our brothers in humanitarianism and in belonging to a Palestinian Arab identity, and we are partners in the struggle for liberation and in the quest for our usurped rights and to liberate the land from occupation, racism and injustice."

However, Hanna then admitted that Muslims are persecuting Christians, saying that "there is a systematic liquidation of the Christian presence in the Arab region." But immediately afterwards he said that the people talking about it are "those who want to liquidate the Palestinian cause" who "want to destroy our homelands and our communities and tarnish the image of the Levant." Therefore, he says, "we must gather all clerics and thinkers, intellectuals and officials to work together to thwart this scheme, which aims to destroy our nation and our homelands and our communities."

Yes, Archbishop Hanna spent more time talking about how bad it is for people to publicize Muslim persecution of Christians than about the persecution itself.

Additionally, even though he mentioned that Jerusalem is holy to three religions, he only cares about the rights of one of them - and it isn't Christianity. He said, "The issue of Al-Aqsa is our cause, for all Christians and Muslims." But Muslims don't want Christians to visit the Temple Mount either!

05/21 Links Pt2: Robert Wistrich's last column: "Anti-Semitism and Jewish destiny"

From Ian:

Robert Wistrich: Anti-Semitism and Jewish destiny

On Sunday, Robert S. Wistrich – the director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – emailed the following column to ‘Jerusalem Post’ Editor-in-Chief Steve Linde, asking that it be published in the coming week. Wistrich died suddenly on Tuesday. We dedicate his last column to perpetuating his memory. May his words live on.
Today’s anti-Semitism is a product of a new civic religion that could be termed "Palestinianism."
There are few topics of more pressing concern today to Jewish communities around the world than the current resurgence of anti-Semitism. Thus, there could have been no more appropriate time for the 5th Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism to meet than last week in Jerusalem. It was a large and impressive gathering of participants from all over the world, initiated by the Foreign Ministry, together with its Diaspora Affairs Department.
In my own remarks to the conference I emphasized the need to free ourselves from certain outdated myths. My first point was that even today, Jews in Israel and the Diaspora are fixated on the dangers of far-right traditional anti-Semitism – whether racist, religious or nationalist. While neo-fascism has not altogether disappeared, it is in most cases a secondary threat.
Second, there is an illusory belief that more Holocaust education and memorialization can serve as an effective antidote to contemporary anti-Semitism. This notion, shared by many governments and well-meaning liberal gentiles, is quite unfounded. On the contrary, today “Holocaust inversion” (the perverse transformation of Jews into Nazis and Muslims into victimized “Jews”) all-too-often becomes a weapon with which to pillory Israel and denigrate the Jewish people. Hence the approach to this entire subject requires considerable rethinking, updating and fine-tuning.
Third, we must recognize much more clearly than before that since 1975 (with the passing of the scandalous UN resolution condemning Zionism as racism) hatred of Israel has increasingly mutated into the chief vector for the “new” anti-Semitism.

UK MediaWatch: In memoriam: Professor Robert S. Wistrich

Robert S. Wistrich, professor of Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, head of the Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, and perhaps the world’s foremost scholar of antisemitism, died of a heart attack yesterday in Rome.
He was 70.
Wistrich was born in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic in 1945, raised in Britain and educated in the US. He settled in Israel in 1982.
Professor Wistrich published dozens of books throughout his long career about the history of Jew hatred, including From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews and Israel, and his magnum opus, A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism — From Antiquity to the Global Jihad,” published in 2010.
Though he was an accomplished academic, Wistrich also possessed the unique ability within academia to communicate effectively to non-academics, and was able to speak clearly and plainly even when contextualizing the often complex dynamics of historical and contemporary antisemitism.
This writer was honored to share a panel with Professor Wistrich at a CAMERA event in Jerusalem earlier in the year, where he addressed the relationship between media coverage of Israel and rising antisemitism.

Remembering Robert Wistrich, The World’s Foremost Scholar of Anti-Semitism

It was with deep sadness that I learned last night of the passing of my dear friend and teacher, Professor Robert Wistrich, at the age of 70.
Robert was the world’s foremost scholar of anti-Semitism. Based at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he headed the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Robert was a prolific author and speaker, whose encyclopedic knowledge and unrivaled insight into the persistence of anti-Semitism was sought by academics, journalists, and politicians alike.
The news of Robert’s death was broken by the Italian newspaper La Stampa. He’d spent the day in Rome, where he was due to address the Italian Senate on the continuing rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. The cause of his passing was a sudden heart attack.
Robert’s death is an incalculable loss on many levels. At just the time that anti-Semitism has again become socially acceptable in Europe and elsewhere, we have been robbed of one of the few individuals whose voice on this topic underlined urgency, but not hysteria. Robert, moreover, was someone who intimately understood the historical provenance of today’s anti-Semitism, particularly in its insidious “anti-Zionist” guise.

Egyptian dresses up as a Jew and gets harassed, pushed, slapped

In this video an Egyptian dresses up as a Hasidic Jew and asks Egyptians how to get to the synagogue. At another point, without the costume, he shows Hebrew writing to people and says he is Israeli.

(h/t Tyler)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

Why are elites in Israel and the US helping their deadly enemies?

The phenomenon of Israel-hating Jews has been discussed a great deal, and there are some theories that go a long way toward explaining the prominence, even leadership, of Jews in BDS and other anti-Israel movements. The extremism of the Left in Israel, particularly among academics, is a case study in epidemic insanity.

Israel is a small country, and it has been fighting a continuous war in the military, diplomatic and information arenas since its inception. It isn’t helped by the activities of anti-State Jews, but they have been increasingly marginalized politically since the debacle of Oslo.

I have always liked Kenneth Levin’s “Oslo Syndrome” explanation for the perverse behavior of some Jews, a special case of the Stockholm Syndrome in which a victim finds himself identifying with and supporting his victimizer in the subconscious belief that it will keep him from harm. Oppressed by the endemic Jew-hatred of their Diaspora hosts, Jews begin to accept their anti-Jewish narratives themselves and try to mitigate the hatred by becoming ‘better’ (i.e., less Jewish or Zionist) and making concessions to their enemies. It rarely works.

The Christian majority in the US does not have an ‘Oslo Syndrome’. It never suffered the kind of persecution that Jews in Europe and Muslim countries in the Mideast and North Africa did — and yet, the plague of political correctness that includes the toleration of blatant subversion of Western ideals, and even the acceptance of calls to destroy the nation, has taken root in America just as deeply as in Europe and Britain.

One reason is that the culture of an organization — a corporation, a motorcycle gang or a nation — comes from the top.

Unlike Israel, the US and Europe haven’t marginalized their anti-Western extremists. Sometimes they hold the reins of power. The US elected a President — twice — who rejects the idea that the world should be led by the developed West, in particular the US.

His reaction to 9/11 is a case in point. Although we may be too close to see it, Sept. 11, 2001 was a historical inflection point of great significance.

George Bush responded in the traditional way, declaring war on those he perceived as the perpetrators. But Obama saw it differently, agreeing with Osama Bin Laden that the attack was a consequence of Western colonialism in the Middle East (especially support for Israel). While he still believed that those who were directly responsible and should be punished, he took the position that we ourselves are indirectly responsible, guilty of oppressing Muslims and meddling in their affairs. Like Charlie Hebdo or Pamela Geller, we brought it on ourselves.

It’s certainly true that the West has exploited the less-developed world, and that wealth has been removed — stolen, even — from it by amoral corporations. But the question is, should we therefore reject the principle that the world is better off under the enlightened (if sometimes coercive) leadership of the more developed cultures, and hand control to the ones that practice female genital mutilation, murder vaccinators, hang gays, and dream of genocide? The ruling Western culture might have its flaws, but there are far worse alternatives.

Unfortunately, it seems that the President of the US doesn’t agree.

Obama is a mystery that I don’t want to try to unravel today, but his attitude meshes with other things that are happening in the larger society. One of them is simple fear. There is nothing like a terrorist attack to make people think twice about doing or saying anything that might anger those prone to terrorism. Associated with the fear is the Stockholm Syndrome I mentioned before. Terror attacks are specifically intended to induce this syndrome.

There is also the idea, which I think is derived from Christian doctrine, that a ‘good’ person loves all humanity, even enemies. Conflict is seen as something that should be handled by making a greater effort to understand the other side and to help him to understand your own feelings. As you can imagine, negotiations with an enemy who does not share this mindset can easily be exploited.

All this combined with the normal human expectation that the near future will resemble the recent past creates a very dangerous situation. We assume that because the West is massively more powerful than the Islamic State or Iran, that we could crush them like a bug if they ever really challenged our supremacy. But don’t forget the dictum that civilization involves a tradeoff of many small inconveniences for a few major catastrophes. The more technologically advanced an entity is, the more vulnerable it is to disruption. Terrorism can be a weapon of mass destruction.

In other words, the West could lose.

Israel is smaller than the US or Europe, but although the fact is obscured by the noise generated by the Left, Israel may be more unified and focused on the challenges it faces (this will be hard to believe for media-consuming Israelis, but I think it’s true).

If the US falls, then the time of Western ascendance is over. The civilized world can’t afford the luxury of an anti-Western president in Washington.

05/21 Links Pt1: PA Adopts 'One State Solution' as Official Policy; How to meet ‘Palestinians’

From Ian:

In final days, Bin Laden urged followers to kill Jews

Documents swept up in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound portray a leader cut off from his underlings, disappointed by their failures, beset by their complaints and regretting years of separation from much of his extensive family.
Focus your fighting on America, not each other, the sidelined al-Qaeda chief exhorts his followers. In a videotaped will, he urges one of his wives, should she remarry after his death, to still choose to live beside him in paradise. He also directs her to send their son to the battlefield.
Despite some surprising quirks in the collection, the overall message of the 103 letters, videos and reports made public Wednesday hews to the terror group’s familiar mission: In the name of God, find a way to kill Americans. Kill Europeans. Kill Jews.
“Uproot the obnoxious tree by concentrating on its American trunk,” bin Laden writes in a letter urging al-Qaeda affiliates in North Africa to not be distracted by fighting local security forces and to avoid Muslim infighting.

How to meet ‘Palestinians’

Peter Beinart complains that Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker visited Israel and didn’t meet any ‘Palestinians':
The trips Jewish groups organize for American politicians include more Christian holy sights than the ones they organize for their own members. But what they have in common is that Palestinians are talked about, yet rarely spoken to. Which means that politicians like Scott Walker return to the United States thinking they know something about Palestinians when, in important ways, they know less than when they left.
Maybe I can help him learn more. What have ‘Palestinians’ been up to lately? Here is some data (slightly abridged) from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center:
During the past year there has been an increase in the number of vehicular attacks carried out in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, and they have become a frequent modus operandi of the campaign the PA and Fatah call the “popular resistance.” The campaign takes many forms, including the throwing of Molotov cocktails, rocks and stones, and stabbing and vehicular attacks. It enjoys the support of the PA and Fatah.
Since the beginning of 2015 there have been six vehicular attacks and/or attempted vehicular attacks; one Israeli civilian was killed and ten injured, eight of members of the Israeli security forces. Three attacks took place in Jerusalem and three in Judea and Samaria. The number of vehicular attacks began rising in the second half of 2014; during the year there were twelve vehicular attacks, half of them in Jerusalem (compared with two such attacks in 2013).

David Singer: Pope Francis Has Joined The Evil-Doers

Abbas – Israel's putative "partner for peace" – leads an Organisation that claims the entire territory of former Palestine as another exclusive Arab fiefdom – denying the Jews any political rights in their biblical, ancestral and internationally sanctioned homeland.
Abbas's continuing refusal to recognise Israel as the nation State of the Jewish people has been a major roadblock to the successful conclusion of negotiations between Israel and the PLO.
Pope Francis – like his predecessor Pope Benedict – is apparently prepared to ignore that Abbas and the PLO remain sworn enemies of the Jewish people - pursuing the total elimination of the Jewish State by armed struggle as documented in the 1968 PLO Charter.
The Pope has strayed from the eternal message of the Psalms - the key to the spirituality of the Old Testament and an essential and permanent part of Christian prayer.
Psalm 28 in the New Jerusalem Bible declares:
Do not drag me away with the wicked, with evil-doers, who talk to their partners of peace with treachery in their hearts.
Repay them as their deeds deserve, as befits their treacherous actions; as befits their handiwork repay them, let their deserts fall back on themselves.
They do not comprehend the deeds of Yahweh, the work of his hands. May he pull them down and not rebuild them!

PA TV says Jews control banks, media.. Will CNN consider it newsworthy?

From Palestinian Media Watch:

Another expression of Palestinian Authority Antisemitism appeared on government-controlled PA TV earlier this month. The host of a weekly program on Islam, Imad Hamato, who is also a professor of Quranic Studies at the University of Palestine in Gaza, stated that Jews engage in profiteering and control "the money, the press and the resources."

Hamato also stated that Israel, which he calls "a cancerous tumor," is trying to "Judaize" everything and influence the mind of "the Arab intellectual" so that he will accept Israel as "an entity that has a right to live":

Israel has worked hard to Judaize the land, [but] it did not stop at that. [Israel] worked to realize something else: the Judaization of culture, [so that] the Arab intellectual embraces the idea of acceptance of Israel as a recognized body and as an entity that has a right to live. Israel, the invading country, the cancerous tumor - which we have already called a cancerous tumor in the past - many intellectuals today talk about coexistence and offering our hands in peace, and [say] Israel is part of the region. The noblest Arabs in terms of their Arabness were those who spoke up and said: 'Israel does not exist!' Those who did not say that were ostracized. Now, whoever says that Israel should exist is met with approval... They [the Jews] are usurers. See, the usury money and usurer banks, those who control the money in the world can be counted on one hand - a few individuals - and all of them belong to the Jewish world. They control the media, the money, the press, the resources, the plans.

[Official PA TV, May 1, 2015]

If CNN feels that it is newsworthy to quote absurd stories from PA media about "settlers" chopping down and seizing 800 olive trees without any comment on the veracity of the source, then perhaps it will quote this Imad Hamoto as a source as well of Jewish world domination.

The one thing it won't do is report on this pervasive antisemitism in the "moderate" Palestinian Authority media. That topic is kryptonite for the mainstream media.

Different building hit by Saudi airstrikes

From IBTimes:

Shelling from Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces hit an international humanitarian aid office in Yemen on Thursday, killing five Ethiopian refugees and wounding 10, a local official said. The news comes amid growing concern about the Saudi-led military offensive's impact on Yemen’s civilians and infrastructure.

If you want to know the up-to-date statistics of how many civilians were killed since Saudi Arabia started their airstrikes, good luck. You won't find a scorecard attached to every story about the fighting the way that reporters in Gaza loved to include in their stories.

Also unlike Gaza, when civilians are killed it is assumed that not all of them were killed by the Saudis, while in Gaza all of the people killed were assumed to be from Israeli fire, even though well over a thousand Hamas rockets fell in civilian areas.

In fact, while reporters flocked to cover the Gaza war, secure in the knowledge that Israel wouldn't bomb the areas where they stayed, no reporters are trying to sneak into Yemen to file first-person reports. With rare exceptions, reporters aren't even trying to do anything original in their reporting.

The Gaza reporters happily accepted the Hamas talking points as fact, but no one (outside of Iranian media) is viewing the Houthi version of the story from Yemen as having any legitimacy.

Another point that is roundly ignored by the media is that the Saudis are relying on US intelligence when they choose their targets. NGOs that eagerly asserted with no evidence that Israel was engaging in indiscriminate bombing in Gaza based on civilians being killed are not pointing their fingers at any failure of US intel.

The double standards are clear to anyone who cares to look. Which doesn't, of course, include the media.

Why FIFA's president will never get the PLO to compromise

From Sky News, Tuesday:

FIFA President Sepp Blatter has held crisis talks in Jerusalem aimed at averting a Palestinian bid to have Israel suspended from international football.

The Palestinian Football Association is preparing to push a motion calling for Israel's suspension at the FIFA annual congress later this month.

Mr Blatter emerged "very hopeful" from talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mr Blatter did reveal that Mr Netanyahu had agreed to a "match of peace" between the national teams of Israel and Palestine, though no date has yet been put forward.

Last week FIFA issued a statement on behalf of Mr Blatter stating "any member association that is fulfilling its statutory duties should not be suspended. This would apply to the Israeli Football Association as long as they fulfil such duties".

But the head of the Palestinian FA, Jibril Rajoub, has outlined a number of complaints which he says demonstrate violations of FIFA's standards and ethics.

What Blatter doesn't realize is that Jibril Rajoub has no intention of compromise. The entire reason he heads the Palestine Football Association is political - he cares nothing about sports.

How do I know? Besides reading his own statements, there is lots about him in the Tuvia Tenenbom book "Catch the Jew":

Rajoub knows that sports stories make headlines and he wants to make Israel look like South Africa.

So I could have told Blatter that he was wasting his time trying to get the PLO to drop the threats against Israel. But Rajoub beat me to it:

The Palestinian Football Association will not drop its bid to have its Israeli counterpart suspended from FIFA, the organisation's chief said Wednesday after talks with the head of the world footballing body.

"We will keep the proposal on the agenda (of the upcoming FIFA Congress) for sincere and open discussions by the 208 FIFA member associations," Jibril Rajoub said at a joint press conference with FIFA chief Sepp Blatter.

"There will be no compromising on free movement of our athletes and officials."

Rajoub also welcomed the idea of an Israel-Palestine "match for peace" but said conditions were not yet ready for such a game.

"Yesterday, you raised a very great idea ... It's a creative idea, I like it," he told FIFA president Sepp Blatter at the press conference.

"But we have to pave the road for that, we have to prepare the environment. But this should be an endgame, this should be a purpose for you and I urge you not to give up," he said.

Oh, by the way, when Rajoub tells Blatter that he welcomes the idea of a "peace match," he is lying through his teeth. Because last year he said (in Arabic, naturally) that a friendly match between Palestinian arab and Jewish children was a "crime against humanity."

The entire issue is political, and has nothing to do with sports. FIFA should understand this and see Jibril Rajoub for what he is doing - cynically using football as a weapon.

By the way, Rajoub in 2005 said that after Israel's disengagement from Gaza, Gaza would become a model for a Palestinian state.

He got that right, but not the way he intended.

"Pro-Israel" J-Street tries to raise funds by saying Israel is racist

By now you have read the story about the shelved plan to force West Bank Arab workers to go back to their homes using buses that stop at checkpoints.

After criticism from the left and the right, much of which was misinformed by the original Haaretz story, Netanyahu himself said he would not implement the plan.

On one level at least, Israel proved that it is against discrimination in buses against Arabs, even Arabs who are not citizens.

That should make leftist groups that claim to be pro-Israel very happy, right? The democratically elected government chose not to implement this plan. Even though there were serious security issues that the plan was meant to address, the Government of Israel overrode the plan. Everyone should be happy.

But that isn't what happened.

J-Street sent out a fundraising email that tries to use this episode to paint Israel has a terribly racist society, and claiming that only pressure from American Jews can get Israel to be less racist, which it naturally is if it wasn't for the wonderful people at J-Street:

Last year, Israel's government considered a proposal that would have segregated key bus lines in the West Bank -- some for Jewish settlers, some for Palestinians. The American Jewish community spoke up, and with so many voices opposed, the proposal was cancelled.

Or so we thought.

Now, with Israel's new government, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon is once again advocating rules that would result in segregation. He wants to separate Jewish Israelis and Palestinians as they go from Israel back into Occupied Territory.

Under Ya'alon's plan, Palestinian workers going home at the end of the day would have to travel through the same checkpoints they used to enter Israel, forcing many far out of their way and onto Palestinian-only bus routes. His proposal is currently on hold, but he and others in Israel's new government are pushing to reinstate it -- permanently. That's why we have to raise our voices once again.

Our values matter, and so do our voices. If we remain silent, the costs are high: further erosion of democracy, and even more international isolation. For Israel's sake, it's critical that the American Jewish community speak out again.

Add your voice and stand up for the Israel we believe in: one that supports our Jewish and democratic values.

Segregated buses? That's just not okay.

- Jeremy Ben-Ami>

Of course, Israeli Arabs could ride on these buses, just as in last year's plan. No Israeli citizen is being discriminated against. But because Jeremy Ben Ami wants to use this episode to cynically manipulate his audience, he consciously compares this story with segregated buses in the US in the 1950s.

That's just not OK. And it proves that Ben-Ami does not love Israel at all, but instead goes out of his way to paint it in as horrible a light as possible.

That's just not OK.

05/20 Links Pt2: Re-liberating Jerusalem; Anti-Semitism scholar Robert Wistrich dies at 70

From Ian:

Re-liberating Jerusalem

It's been almost 50 years since Israel unified Jerusalem and turned it from a dusty and depressed backwater into a truly radiant international capital city sparkling with energy and creativity.
There is more to come. The dynamic vision for Jerusalem 2020 in the transportation, cultural, recreational and business fields unveiled this week by Mayor Nir Barkat is exciting and uplifting.
Yet as we approach Jerusalem Liberation Day this Sunday, hefty question marks hang over the city's future. These uncertainties stem from government hesitations in the face of international and Arab pressure for re-division of the city (Heaven forbid).
Instead of acting decisively to buttress Israel's sovereignty, security, economy and social vibrancy in Jerusalem, we have a stalemate in government decision-making.
In fact, the threats to Jerusalem as a living, breathing, growing, safe and open city -- and to Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state and the epicenter of the global Jewish community -- come mainly from neglect on Israel's part.
The fourth Netanyahu government, taking office this weekend, must rebuff deleterious foreign pressures, stop dithering and act to re-establish forward motion, Zionist momentum, in Jerusalem. Here's how: (h/t Bob Knot)

The state of Palestine? Still mired in Jew hatred

With the Palestinians taking Israel to the International Criminal Court and trying to kick Israel out of the international soccer league, FIFA, while still boycotting normal, constructive, personal, economic or cultural ties with Israel, their war against the Jews continues. Even if Pope Francis – whom I respect – has been seduced by Palestinian self-pity to recognize the “state of Palestine,” even if much of the world continues to blame Israel exclusively, the fact remains. Palestinian rhetoric and behavior reflect their honest intentions: their official organs and most of their leaders seek Israel’s destruction and hate the Jewish people – not just “Zionists” – so much, they keep their people miserable rather than make any accommodation with the Jewish state. The Palestinians’ self-destructive commitment to delegitimizing Israel rather than building their state or improving their lives proves they are motivated by bigotry.
Pope Francis ignored those realities, added to the Jewish people’s collective anguish, and showed he believed in ghosts by recognizing “the state of Palestine” – a phantom entity. Whether or not he called the BDS bully, stalemate king and terrorist cheerleader Mahmoud Abbas an “angel of peace” is irrelevant. The pope’s recognition discourages peace by encouraging Palestinian intransigence and extremism without encouraging Palestinian compromise and realism.
I understand the pope’s need to mollify Palestinians.
Palestinian Christians and churches are vulnerable to the whims of cruel neighbors, who have destroyed Christian religious sites, raped young Christian girls, brutalized Christian families. Flattering the Palestinian Authority is an attempt to help oppressed Christians, who are suffering en masse and leaving in droves.
Unfortunately, mollifying bullies encourages them, denying crimes legitimizes them and coddling Palestinians only feeds their all-or-nothing rigidity. Although it is fun to blame Israel’s “occupation” for all Palestinian Christians’ troubles, a 2012 report by the nonpartisan Gatestone Institute on “The Disquieting Treatment of Christians by the Palestinians” noted that the Christian Arab population plummeted between 1949 and 1967. When Jordan and Egypt illegally controlled the West Bank and Gaza, two-thirds of Palestinian Christians fled. The situation stabilized when Israel fully controlled the areas, then deteriorated with increased Palestinian autonomy since the 1990s’ Oslo Peace Accords.

Israeli national judo team detained at Morocco airport, passports confiscated

After Moroccan authorities refused to allow an armed Israeli escort
Members of Israel's national judo team were detained on Wednesday at a Morocco airport and had their passports confiscated by local officials, Israeli media reported. At the time of reporting the nature of the complication was unclear.
The seven-member Israeli national judo team flew to Morocco early Wednesday for an important tournament despite recommendations from Israel’s national security agency to avoid travel to the Arab nation without bodyguards.
According to the Ynet website, Moroccan authorities refused to grant permission for an armed Israeli security detail to accompany the 11-member delegation. The team decided nonetheless to attend the fifth annual World Judo Masters event May 23-24 in Rabat, Morocco since the event could provide the judokas with sufficient points to qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics. (h/t Bob Knot)

Zion Awakening: Back! But not with a bang! Natalie Bennett BDS supporter dodges the question on 'Boycott Israel'

Been a while. But no better place to resume duties on the front line than with the 'Queen of BDS' Natalie Bennett of the green party. Watch how she dodges my question. I then proceeded to disrupt the event just to make the evening uncomfortable for her and her minions.