Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 22, 2016

01/22 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Coordinated assault; Melanie Phillips: Iran for dummies

From Ian:

This brings us to the third insight of Polisar’s study. Twenty-five years of survey data make clear that most Palestinians believe that terrorism pays.
And the plain fact is that they are right. For the past generation, the Palestinians have only benefited from killing Israelis through terrorism.
The fact that Israeli concessions to the Palestinians have strengthened their conviction that terrorism pays rather than convinced them to make peace shows that all concessions in the face of terrorism are dangerous.
While the majority of Israelis have learned this lesson and so elected governments that oppose appeasement, the Palestinians have learned that the Israeli public does not have the final word on whether or not they will be rewarded for their crimes against humanity.
The Palestinians believe that Israel is dependent on Western goodwill. So to the extent that the West pressures Israel surrender to Palestinian demands, the US and the EU work hand in glove with Palestinian terrorists and prove that they are right to murder mothers in their homes in front of their children.
This week US Ambassador Dan Shapiro proved the Palestinians right, yet again.
...
Israel is under a coordinated assault by the Palestinians who hate us and the Europeans and Americans who are hostile to us.
Our options for dealing with this assault are not optimal. But they are formidable. If we make judicious use of them, we can flummox the White House and the EU, and at a minimum, we can begin to prove to the Palestinians that their faith in terrorism is no longer justified.

Caroline Glick shut down the debate with this bombshell speech

Melanie Phillips: Iran for dummies

Israel is counting the days until the American presidential election. It only needs, it says to itself, to get through this year, this month, this week.
It must just keep on ducking and feinting to protect its security and the lives of its citizens until the nightmare of this most hostile US president in memory finally ends. Just as it has been forced to do these past seven years.
For Iran, in stark contrast, President Obama’s remaining year in office offers a window of unparalleled opportunity. By gifting its regime more than $100 billion in sanctions relief, Obama has not only released funds with which the world’s most dangerous jihadist entity can ratchet up its terrorist and genocidal program, pumping money into its al-Quds force, Revolutionary Guards and Hamas.
These are also months during which the president of the most powerful country in the world has signaled that the Iranian regime can act with total impunity.
Obama is trapped by his fear that Iran might at any time renege on the nuclear deal and restart its manufacture of nuclear weapons – which a State Department official nevertheless tells us with a straight face the regime has abandoned for ever more. With this blackmail threat now paralyzing the Obama administration, Iran knows it can do what it wants.

Jennifer Rubin: Why it’s correct to label the Obama administration ‘anti-Israel’

This is disingenuous at best. As Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute observed: “This is completely consistent with all the administration’s other policies hostile to Israel. Labeling goods made by Israeli businesses in disputed territories but not goods made in other disputed territories like Kashmir, for example, is an example of blatant anti-Semitism.” She continued, “And while the administration would surely argue that forcing Jews to wear yellow stars is not a sign of discrimination but merely a diktat about clothing, it should be clear to Jews everywhere that the 1930s are returning.” (Let’s not forget that Secretary of State John Kerry has previously hinted that the U.S. would not be able to protect Israel from boycotts if it did not make more concessions to the Palestinians.)
When the E.U. acted late last year, Congress was not mute. TheTower.org reported: “Citing a concern that the European Union’s proposed guidelines to label goods produced by Israeli companies operating in the West Bank could ‘promote a de-facto boycott of Israel,’ senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D – N.Y.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Monday released an open letter, which was signed by 36 senators and addressed to the EU’s top diplomat, urging the European body to reconsider the discriminatory policy.” In the House, a bipartisan group introduced a resolution to condemn the E.U.’s action. (“New European Commission guidelines to single out Israeli products manufactured in the West Bank and other areas only encourage and prompt consumers to boycott all Israeli goods. This is counterproductive to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, harmful to U.S. national security interests, and contributes to the deeply misguided anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.”) Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), who led the House effort last year, tells Right Turn: “The Administration’s decision to support an EU policy of labeling Jewish products draws uncomfortable historical parallels and reveals a troubling lack of understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are over 200 territorial disputes all over the world, yet the State Department chooses to single out Jews for special treatment.” He adds: “Sadly, this behavior is what we’ve come to expect from the European Union. I find it deeply disturbing to see our own State Department now reading from the same script.”

Hundreds of firebombs aimed at Jews every month

Last Sunday, Arabs threw five Molotov cocktail firebombs at Jewish home in the Maalot Dovid neighborhood of Jerusalem.

It was barely reported anywhere.

This is not anomalous. According to the Shin Bet, in December there were 181 firebombs thrown in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria at Jewish targets. And that was an improvement over November, with 248.

In fact the vast majority of terror attacks are in the form of firebombs. They throw them at buses, at houses, at cars on the road.

Any one of these hundreds of firebombs could cause another Dawabshe story. And the intent is to burn Jews alive.

But mere attempts to murder Jews aren't even worth mentioning.

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Official PA news doesn't mention Abbas' supposed negotiation bid

There was some interesting doubletalk from Mahmoud Abbas yesterday.

Speaking to Israeli reporters on Thursday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that for the past two months his office and Prime Minister Netanyahu's office have been communicating in an attempt to arrange a meeting, but that Netanyahu did not respond to the latest message.

"There have been talks between my office and Netanyahu's office and the US was not in the picture at all," Abbas said Thursday. "Among other things, there were talks about a meeting between us." The Prime Minister's Office rejected the claims, saying: "This is not true. This is an attempt by Abbas to avoid his responsibility for the lack of negotiations. Today as well, in Davos, Netanyahu called for Abbas to come and negotiate without preconditions."

But in Palestinian Arab media, the news that Abbas claims to have tried to restart negotiations is virtually absent.

The PA's official Wafa news agency, which reports on every phone call Abbas makes, mentioned the meeting with Israeli jurnalists - but didn't say a word about this supposed initiative in either English or Arabic.

If Abbas is serious about negotiations, then why is he embarrassed to say so in his own official media?

It seems clear that Abbas' claim was nothing more than an attempt to speak the language of peace to the world while maintaining his intransigence - which he brags about to his people.

There is something very interesting on Abbas' Facebook page, in Arabic and English.

The second sentence seems to contradict the first, but assuming that the second sentence is his main point, it sounds like Abbas is telling his people that any criticism of him or his government is tantamount to treachery.

Too bad the Israeli journalists didn't ask him about that, or any of the many other questions that no one ever asks Abbas.

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Saeb Erekat freaks out at Bibi's overtures to Arabs (and justifies terror attacks)

Yesterday, at the World Economic Conference in Davos, Binyamin Netanyahu spoke about Israeli relations with Arab states:

Speaking with CNN's Fareed Zakaria at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Netanyahu said that "I have one request, that the EU policy vis a vis Israel and the Palestinians merely reflect now the prevailing Arab policy to Israel and the Palestinians."

"Saudi Arabia recognizes that Israel is an ally rather than an enemy because of the two principle threats that threaten them, Iran and Daesh," he said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State, adding "who can help us? they ask. Obviously Israel and the Sunni Arab states are not on opposite sides."

"There is a great shift taking place...we used to think that if we solved the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it would solve the larger Israeli Arab conflict. The more I look at it, the more I think it may be the other way around. That by nurturing these relationships that are taking place now with the Arab world, that could actually help us resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we're actually working towards that end," he said.

The PLO's Saeb Erekat freaked out at this.

From Ma'an Arabic:

Secretary of the Executive Committee of the PLO Dr. Saeb Erekat today reacted to the statements of the the Netanyahu government that claimed that the EU should improve its policies towards Israel to become equivalent to those of Arab countries [towards Israel.] Erekat stressed that Netanyahu's statements are incorrect and pure lies, and said: "I challenge Netanyahu to detect any improvement in Israel's relationship with any Arab country."

Erekat described the video that Netanyahu made at the Davos conference as a broken record and an inflammatory tool against our people and its leaders, part of attempts by the Israeli government to shift the world's attention from the war crimes committed by the occupying power against the Palestinian people.

Of course, Bibi is correct. JPost reported yesterday:

Israeli television reported that Yuval Steinitz, national infrastructure, energy and water minister, returned home several days ago after attending a conference on energy in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Channel 2 suggested that the real purpose of the delegation was to conduct secret strategic communications between Israel and the Gulf state. The principle reason for such a clandestine liaison is mutual distrust of Iran and concern for the general instabilities of the region, not least of which is the Islamic State (ISIS).

A decision by Steinitz’s office not to comment on the nature of the trip has only added fuel to the speculation.

And Israel is opening its diplomatic mission in Abu Dhabi.

For PLO leaders, the idea that Israel is cozying up to Arab nations is a nightmare. They have always relied on Arab opposition to Israel and unwavering support for their cause, even though Arabs have been sick of the Palestinian positions for years.

Erekat also said something else interesting, that the media will ignore:

He stressed that the Palestinian people are exercising their legitimate right to self-defense, while Israel is defending its settlement and occupation.

According to media darling Erekat, stabbing Israeli women is "legitimate self-defense."

But that's not newsworthy.

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01/21 Links Pt2: Progressivism’s New Hate on Campus; Satire: Iran Hires Btselem To Out Gays

From Ian:

Progressivism’s New Hate on Campus

The deck has long been stacked against Israel on America's college campuses. The Left's BDS movement-the subject of this report-aims at Israel and Israel alone. BDS seeks to cripple the Jewish state whose creation gave refuge for the world's Jews after Nazi Germany's Holocaust incinerated six million of them. The B, D, and S are the non-military weapons-boycotts, divestments, and sanctions-that Israel-haters use to undermine America's strongest Middle East ally.
The movement's activists mostly live on university campuses, dress themselves in moral garments, and self-righteously denounce Israel as racist, even genocidal, because it defends itself vigorously and refuses to die. No other country gets scolded by the nations of the world for protecting itself from aggression or for using "disproportionate" force-itself, a dubious concept-against its enemies. Those who abhor Israel ignore the fact that it is surrounded on all sides by Muslim nations, many of which would drive the Jews "into the sea" if they could.
Yet in the United States, anti-Israel campaigners appear as occupying the moral high ground. Fighting for its existence continuously since 1948, the media depicts Israel as a bully and a regional hegemon. Radical pseudojournalist Max Blumenthal capitalized on this perception in his 2013 book, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, which portrayed Israel as the "Little Satan," compared to the "Great Satan" (America). This kind of propaganda is the norm when it comes to Israel.
The BDS movement has managed to accomplish so much with so little money (or at least, so little money discoverable by the usual means). The movement is amazingly well organized. Its activists stir up much controversy, media coverage, and undergraduate angst, draining activist energy away from more worthwhile causes. The money the movement gets its hands on comes from relatively obscure foundations and from anonymous donors through donor-advised funds. We can only speculate whether Muslim oil barons overseas are secretly underwriting BDS operations.

Fred Maroun: Inside the minds of racists: the “war crimes” accusers of Israel

In June 2015, Israeli MK Tzipi Livni avoided arrest in London over accusations of war crimes. In August 2015, a petition with almost 112,000 signatures was presented to the British parliament demanding the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes. In December 2015, a retired IDF soldier was detained for questioning in Britain over allegations that he was involved in war crimes.
The accusers of Israeli politicians and soldiers claim that Israel did not take adequate precautions to avoid civilian casualties during the Gaza wars and that Israel chose to wage wars when none were necessary.
These accusations are phony. As Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of all British forces in Afghanistan, said, “No other army in the world has ever done more than Israel is doing now to save the lives of innocent civilians in a combat zone”.
A good friend of mine, who is a former IDF soldier, wrote to me, “Thousands of rockets and multitudes of incursions have come from Gaza which Israel left to promote peace. Despite this, no army in any conflict has done more than the IDF to alert civilians and avoid deaths: dropping leaflets, spending thousands of man-hours meticulously cataloguing cell phones from residents living in apartment blocks, training legions of Arab speakers to call residents and warn them, and developing “noise maker” munitions as a last resort to warn people to leave the premises before they are to be bombed. No other army has ever done this. No other army anywhere else in the world has willingly given up the element of surprise just to save lives on the enemy side, knowing very well that the warnings also reach the terrorists.”

Israeli Medical Association Says British Doctors Trying to Boot Israel From World Medical Association

British doctors have submitted a request to the World Medical Association to have the Israel Medical Association expelled, Israeli news website nrg reported on Wednesday.
Dr. Ze’ev Feldman, a representative of the Israel Medical Association, said 71 British doctors had reached out to the WMA asking for Israel’s membership to be revoked. He said British medical journals have published letters to the editor carrying accusations against Israeli doctors, including malpractice against Palestinian patients.
The information was brought to light during a hearing for the Knesset Science and Technology Committee, which discussed the academic boycott initiatives adopted by the American Studies Association, the American Anthropological Association and those considered by other groups.
Technion President and chairman of the university presidents board Professor Peretz Lavie said during the discussion, “We have no complaints about the academic leadership around the globe. Our problem is on campuses. When it started it was on marginal campuses, but quickly it spread to the leading US campuses. The students who are exposed to these kinds of actions, will be the next generation’s senators, and herein lies the great danger to the long term.”
“The American Anthropological Association wrote in a report that we are apartheid universities. The association decided to put to referendum a boycott of Israeli academia. We must reach each of the 12,000 members of this association. This is a symptom, and if we do not act the fire will spread. There needs to be one place to focus the issue,” he said.

Instead of defending @UNRWA, Chris Gunness is defending Hamas

Another inane tweet from UNRWA's Chris Gunness:

Connections between @UNRWA's funding crisis & regional stability continue 2 b felt https://t.co/G4migpBnTe RT
— Chris Gunness (@ChrisGunness) January 20, 2016

UNRWA slightly modifies its benefits program to no longer pay 100% of medical services to everyone who claims to be a "Palestine refugee" forever. They threaten violence. And UNRWA uses this an an opportunity to threaten the rest of the world by saying that if UNRWA isn't fully funded to give everything these fake refugees demand, the entire region is in danger.

In the article he is tweeting, the group that is threatening UNRWA is - Hamas!

Palestinians are considering civil disobedience if the United Nations Relief and Works Agency doesn’t back down on cuts to healthcare subsidies, Hamas Movement representative in Lebanon Ali Barakeh told The Daily Star. Barakeh also announced in an interview that Moussa Abu Marzouk, the deputy of Hamas’ political bureauwill visit Lebanon in early February to meet Lebanese officials.

“There will be a main protest Friday [that aims] to send a strong message to the international community that we will not [relent] until UNRWA goes back on its unjust decision, raises its hospitalization budget and allows Palestinian patients to receive treatment without restrictions or conditions,” Barakeh said.

A lot of the protests are being driven by lies:

Medicinal costs are unchanged — Aziz will still receive her prescriptions free of charge. But she doesn’t know that, thanks to an orchestrated campaign of misinformation by popular Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas, to drum up political support.

Zizette Darkazally, senior communications adviser and public information officer for UNRWA’s Lebanon branch, said in an interview with IBT: “[Palestinian] groups portrayed [the healthcare changes] in a bigger context … using inflammatory words like intifada [the Arabic word for uprising] and telling people, ‘UNRWA is going to disappear.’”

UNRWA's Darkazally is doing her job in trying to get the truth out - UNRWA only slightly limited benefits and it cannot afford to keep the gravy train running forever. And that is what she is telling the media.

Gunness, on the other hand, instead of defending UNRWA, is defending Hamas! He is using these threats by terror groups as a reason to shake down the world for more money.

It doesn't take a math genius to realize that as long as UNRWA maintains its absurd definition of "refugee" to include every descendant of anyone who claimed that they lived in British Mandate Palestine between 1946 and 1948, the funding problems are only going to get worse. Yet UNRWA has not attempted to reduce the number of "refugees" on its rolls since around 1951 - and even then it admitted that many of "refugees" really weren't, and were soaking UNRWA to get free food and medical care.

Instead of coming up with a plan to integrate "Palestinians" into the countries that they've lived in from birth, UNRWA ignores the issue and threatens the world with the specter of Palestinian terrorism if the crybabies don't get what they want.

Lebanon can treat their fellow Arabs like criminals, forcing them to live in the overcrowded camps and not letting them work at many jobs, and UNRWA doesn't say a word.

Because UNRWA doesn't care about Palestinians' long term prospects. They just want to use them to keep the international funding going for as long as possible.

The Arab nations have already woken up to this. The rest of the world will soon get sick of this welfare culture as well.

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Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

Israelis are used to waking up to news reports of horrific murders, sometimes mass murders, but the slaughter of 38-year old Dafna Meir, in her own home and in front of her children by a teenage Arab terrorist has been exceptionally painful for the nation. Meir, a mother of four who also had two foster children, was a nurse at a Beer Sheva hospital where she cared for all of her patients, Arab and Jew, with devotion and professionalism.

The murderer apparently sneaked into the community of Otniel in the south Hevron hills – a place that has seen more than its share of terrorism – on Sunday afternoon, saw the diminutive woman painting the front door of her house, pushed her inside and stabbed her multiple times while she fought and screamed. According to her 17-year old daughter Renana, who witnessed the murder, only their screams and the fact that the terrorist was unable to pull the knife out of Dafna’s body prevented him from attacking her and the younger children.

The terrorist Morad Bader Abdullah Adais, whose age is variously given as 15 or 16, fled home to the nearby village of Beit Amra, where he was arrested by IDF soldiers Monday night. Security forces released a video of the moments leading up to his arrest which shows the mansion – there’s no other word for it – that his family lived in (and which PM Netanyahu has promised will be destroyed). This particular terrorist was not driven to murder by grinding poverty!

This is prelude to what for me was the most significant part of this terrible story, which appeared in this morning’s newspaper (Israel Hayom, 20 Jan. 2016, p. 5 “הרוצח נשלף מהמיטה”). The father of the murderer told a reporter for Israel’s channel 2, that his son did not commit the crime, and if he had, the father would have turned him in himself. And then he turned around and said this to Palestinian media:

I am proud of my son. Every Palestinian must sacrifice for the sake of the homeland, and this is what my son did.

This is the Palestinian Arab Muslim culture of death and lies. This is the father and the culture that produced this vicious creature, like the 15-year old that stabbed a pregnant woman in Tekoa on Monday (she and her child will survive), like the 17 and 18-year old Awad cousins who killed five members of the Fogel family in 2011, the 16-year old girl Ashraqat Qatnani, who tried and failed to kill a Jewish girl (her father was proud of her too), the 11 and 14-year old Jerusalem Light Rail stabbers, and countless other young Palestinian Arabs who did what they have been taught is their duty to their people: to murder Jews. They are what I have called Terror Children:

The encouragement of children to become terrorists is not an accident. The Palestinian educational system is designed to do it. Child soldiers are nothing new, but their use as self-guided terrorist missiles is a Palestinian innovation. It can be counted along with the other Palestinian contributions to humanity, like the popularization of airplane hijacking, the Qassam rocket, and automotive terrorism.

From time to time in history a particularly interesting political entity with a unique culture arises. It can be based on religion like the Islamic State, a combination of peoplehood and religion like the State of Israel, or an ideology like the Soviet Union or the United States. But the ‘Palestinian people’ is the only one I can think of whose single unifying principle is hatred for another culture. Palestinian science, literature, art, politics, morality and economy only exist as expressions of hatred for the Jewish people and Israel. They like to say they are an “ancient people” tied to the land, and from a historical point of view this is nonsense. But it is wrong to say, as many Zionists do, that they are not a people at all. The ‘Palestinian people’ arose sometime after the State of Israel did, as its antithesis and would-be nemesis, unified by their rejection of Jewish sovereignty.

Its leaders, starting with al-Husseini and especially Arafat, understood that their power over the Arabs in the Land of Israel – as well as their ability to gain support from the rest of the antisemitic world depended upon, even flowed directly from, their population’s burning hatred and resentment. So they nurtured it, founded their institutions upon it, and educated their children to burn even brighter, to hate more strongly, even to subjugate their drive for self-preservation to the demands of hating and killing.

This is one reason that the Palestinians always rejected opportunities for statehood. All of the proposals put before them from the 1937 Peel Commission on have implied that there will be a counterpart Jewish state; and this of course directly contradicts their national essence. But it is also the case that a culture that is all hate leaves little room for constructive impulses, so – unlike the pre-state yishuv of the Jews – they have failed to create the political and economic structure needed for a state.

The Palestinians got the world’s attention for their cause with airplane and ship hijackings, terrorism, hostage-taking and murder. Arafat stole billions from the West intended to improve the lot of his people, stashed them in his Swiss bank accounts and bought arms to attack Israel. He destabilized Lebanon and tried to overthrow the king of Jordan, causing untold misery and at least two wars. Arafat, the most revered and loved of all Palestinian leaders, epitomized the culture of hate that he helped create.

So here we are in 2016, and almost the entire world believes that the Palestinians, who have been at the center of so much violence – and whose tactics served as a model for the terrorism of Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the Islamic state – are not perpetrators, but victims! And the world is falling over itself to ‘fix’ the problem at our expense. I have absolutely no doubt that Barack Obama will finally complete his betrayal of Israel before the end of his term by abstaining from a UN Security Council vote ‘establishing’ the state of Palestine.

One would think that the world would have noticed something amiss with the Palestinians by now. But – to a great extent because of their choice of enemies – most of it is sympathetic to them, terror children and all.

It should be obvious at this point that there cannot be a negotiated settlement that can reconcile one nation with another whose very reason for being is to hate and destroy the first. It should be obvious that in this situation the only way to stop the terrorism and the incitement that leads to it is to physically prevent it, which means to overthrow the elites that are leading it and to either control or disperse the population that is carrying it out.

It should be obvious, so what are we waiting for?

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01/21 Links Pt1: Western Media's Ignorance and Bias; PA official: Palestinian state in WB just a phase

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Western Media's Ignorance and Bias

Two Western journalists recently asked to be accompanied to the Gaza Strip to interview Jewish settlers living there.
No, this is not the opening line of a joke. These journalists were in Israel at the end of 2015, and they were deadly serious.
Imagine their embarrassment when it was pointed out to them that Israel had completely pulled out of the Gaza Strip ten years ago.
You have to have some pity for them. These foreign colleagues were rookies who aimed to make an impression by traveling to a "dangerous" place such as the Gaza Strip to report on the "settlers" living there. Their request, however, did not take anyone, even my local colleagues, by surprise.
These "parachute journalists," as they are occasionally called, are catapulted into the region without being briefed on the basic facts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sadly, correspondents such as these are more the rule than the exception. A particular clueless British reporter springs to mind:
When Israel assassinated Hamas's founder and spiritual leader, Ahmed Yasmin, in 2004, a British newspaper dispatched its crime reporter to Jerusalem to cover the event. To this reporter, the region, as well as Hamas, were virgin territory. His editors had sent him to the Middle East, he said, because no one else was willing to go.
Well, our hero reported on the assassination of Ahmed Yassin from the bar of the American Colony Hotel. His byline claimed that he was in the Gaza Strip and had interviewed relatives of the slain leader of Hamas.
Sometimes one feels as if one is some sort of a lightning rod for these tales. Another Ramallah-based colleague shared that a few years ago he received a request from a cub correspondent to help arrange an interview with Yasser Arafat. Except at that point, Arafat had been dead for several years. Fresh out of journalism school and unknowledgeable about the Middle East, the journalist was apparently considered by his editors a fine candidate for covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

PMW: Palestinian Greek Orthodox leader inadvertently honors murderer of Greek Orthodox monk

Last month, the Bethlehem municipality decided to honor 52 terrorist prisoners from Bethlehem - all of whom are serving life sentences. The unveiling of the exhibit “in honor of the [Bethlehem] district’s 52 prisoners sentenced to life,” was “a salute of loyalty and commitment,” speakers at the event stated. [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 31, 2015]
Among the participants in the unveiling “sponsored and supervised by the Bethlehem municipality” in honor of the murderers, was Palestinian Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Sebastia Atallah Hanna.
By his participation in the event, Archbishop Hanna inadvertently glorified a terrorist who murdered one of Hanna’s fellow clergy, Greek Orthodox monk Gur Pzipokatsatakis.
On June 12, 2002, Greek Orthodox monk Gur Pzipokatsatakis was murdered in a drive-by shooting near Maale Adumim. Palestinian terrorist and a member of the Tanzim (Fatah terror faction) Yasser Rabai’ah from Bethlehem participated in the attack and was later arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Amb. Alan Baker: Are There Double Standards in Israel’s Application of the Rule of Law in the Territories?

Regrettably, there would appear to be a lack of understanding – whether by Ambassador Shapiro himself or by those senior State Department and White House officials who instruct him – as to the legal situation prevalent in the West Bank areas of Judea and Samaria.
Indeed, there exist two legal frameworks.
The one applied by Israel’s Civil Administration vis-à-vis the Palestinian residents of Judea and Samaria is based on the international norms regarding the administration of territory occupied or administered following armed conflict and pending a peace agreement. These norms, set out in the 1907 Hague Rules and 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, enable an administering power, in administering a hostile local population, to impose various limitations on the basic freedoms that exist in any ordinary civil legal system. All this pending a permanent peace arrangement regarding the fate of the territory.
The second legal framework covers the Israeli residents of towns, villages and other forms of settlement within the territory, who, not being part of the local Palestinian population, are subject on an ad-personam basis to Israeli law. As such, they are not covered by those limitations that apply solely vis-à-vis the local population of the territory.
Unlike the insinuations in Ambassador Shapiro’s statement, this dual set of legal frameworks is not based on any double standards, but on a clear division of legal authorities dictated by both international humanitarian law and Israeli law. (h/t Yenta Press)

From TheJC:

The organisers of a pro-Israel rally claim they have been forced to postpone the event because the venue pulled out after “gross intimidation” from boycott activists.

North West Friends of Israel (NWFOI) said that despite the Sheridan Suite function rooms in Manchester “accepting the booking in full knowledge of the event purpose,” the venue had “fallen victim to an orchestrated campaign by specific pressure groups whose sole aim is to delegitimise the existence of the state of Israel.

“Sadly, by caving in to this external pressure, the Sheridan Suite has succumbed to gross intimidation and allowed itself to become a target of the antisemitic boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, all of which only serves to strengthen our resolve to do everything in our power to oppose their ongoing delegitimisation.”

Around 2,000 people had been expected to attend the “Say No To Terror: Stand With Israel” national rally, on January 31.

It had received support from the Chief Rabbi, Board of Deputies, Jewish Leadership Council, Zionist Federation and the Israeli embassy, as well as grassroots groups around Britain.

Board president Jonathan Arkush said: “I utterly condemn the decision of this venue to cave in to a few random voices calling for the event to be cancelled.

“They seem to have been browbeaten into this and have acted in a craven fashion."

The venue advertises itself as "a perfect venue for memorable Jewish weddings".

The Sheridan Suite has been contacted for comment, but has not yet responded to the JC.

The hotel tweeted a Mark Twain quote in response:

Yet it still has not commented about its side of the story, two days later.

Which sure makes it seem like the NWFOI is portraying this accurately - the venue caved to a handful of screeching haters on their Facebook page.

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This video, from January 10, shows Muslims using bulldozers being used to rip up areas of the Temple Mount adjacent to the Dome of the Rock, ostensibly to fix a water channel.

Where is the Israel Antiquities Authority which is supposed to supervise all excavations in archaeologically important areas (and there is no more important area in the world than this one)?

This is of course minor compared to the whole-scale destruction done by the Waqf in the 1990s, especially when they excavated tons of land containing priceless objects to illegally build an underground mosque.

Yet when a single Jewish couple visits the Temple Mount, they must be protected by several police from being murdered - and the Arab media says that the Jews are the ones desecrating the holy site.

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Bushinsky

It started in Ha'aretz:

A former advisor of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the derogatory Hebrew term “Yehudon” - loosely translated as “little Jew boy” to characterize remarks by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro.

On a Tuesday morning political panel show, on Israel’s Channel 2, commentator Aviv Bushinsky reacted to remarks Shapiro made in his speech to the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) conference. Shapiro said "too much Israeli vigilantism in the West Bank goes on unchecked," adding that "there is a lack of thorough investigations… at times it seems Israel has two standards of adherence to rule of law in the West Bank - one for Israelis and one for Palestinians."

After viewing a clip of Shapiro’s remarks, Bushinsky declared, “To put it bluntly, it was a statement typical of a little Jew boy (Yehudon).”

How could the media resist tying Netanyahu, through his former advisor, to a stupid slur on a TV show where people are rewarded for saying outrageous things?

Within hours, Reuters picked it up. So did The Financial Times. Time magazine. The Huffington Post.

What most of the Western media didn't bother reporting was that Bushinsky had not worked for Netanyahu for nearly twelve years.

His relationship with Netanyahu is quite tenuous. His top level description in Wikipedia doesn't even mention his political career:

Aviv Bushinsky (born April 13, 1967) is a journalist, CEO, business man and an undergraduate program communications lecturer. He is the chairman of the Israel Squash Association. He served as chairman of Maccabi Tel Aviv F.C. and as chairman of the Israeli Chess Federation.

The implication that Ha'aretz made, that this slur is somehow emblematic of the Israeli political right when Bushinsky has literally nothing to do with them, has been swallowed whole by the mainstream media in record time.

Ha'aretz, always looking to denigrate its country, can write whatever it wants and it knows that while few in Israel will read it, their inane stories will often get amplified by the world's reporters who are too lazy to bother to check the context. In this sense, the Jews at Ha'aretz really do control the media - - filled with journalists too lazy and ignorant to bother to check the facts.

A stupid comment by a person with literally no connection to the government receives worldwide attention.

But statements condoning terrorism made by the current leader of the Palestinian Arab government get routinely ignored by that same media.

There is a much bigger story here than a pundit making a stupid comment on a TV show. The story is why Bushinsky is a story while the bile and threats and lies and hate that are said by current Palestinian leaders are ignored by Reuters and Time and the Financial Times and the Huffington Post.

But the media won't cover stories about why the media won't do their jobs.

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.@Amnesty starts a petition for a terror-loving clown (EoZTV)

Amnesty USA has another wonderful cause to rally people behind:

.@Amnesty ACTION Cirucus performer, Mohammad Abu Sakha, held w/out charge, trial by Israel. https://t.co/qkXISLaXHj https://t.co/dd0J8uIanD
— AIUSA Israel/OPT/PA (@IOTPA) January 20, 2016

But Abu Sakha is not exactly the most peaceful clown.

For example, he advocates using violence to ethnically cleanse Jews from Israel on his Facebook page.

Watch the entire story on EoZTV, the fledgling videocast from me and Mrs. Elder.

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01/20 Links Pt2: Police called to anti-Israel riot at London Uni; ‘Death To Israel’ Prof an ISIS Recruiter

From Ian:

Richard Millett: Disruption at Kings College shows there’s no ‘safe space’ for Israeli Jews at UK universities

I was patiently queuing for Ami Ayalon’s joint KCL and LSE Israel Society’s’ talk outside the Norfolk Building of King’s College, London tonight. I had arrived early and was near the front of the queue but soon the doors were closed as the room held only 50.
Some 50 to 60 people were left shut outside on the street, among them 15 fuming anti-Israel activists who had planned to get in and disrupt the talk.
These activists from SOAS, KLC and LSE Palestine Societies had already handed out leaflets attacking Ami Ayalon and Israel. But with their being shut outside chaos ensued, and the police had to be called.
Ayalon was head of Israel’s Shin Bet between 1996 and 2000 and then served as a Labour MK. He also launched a peace initiative called The People’s Voice. He’s now in the UK being whisked around by Yachad to give various talks, the gist of which seem to be Israel needs to mend its ways.
The activists’ leaflets, after incriminating Ayalon and Shin Bet in war crimes, accused Ayalon of being “overtly racist” for supporting a two state solution because this implies “Israeli Jews must always be a majority…due to a fear of losing the ethnic and colonial supremacy Israel has enjoyed since 1948”.
As soon as the doors shut the frustrated anti-Israel activists pounded the doors and the windows looking into the talk. They screamed “Free Free Palestine”, “Viva Viva Palestina” and “From the River to the Sea Palestine will be free” and smashed a window.
They then climbed the windows to unfurl a banner. A fire alarm was set off and eventually police vans and police cars pulled up and 20 police constables protected the building.

Assassin's aid: British taxpayers' cash given to group accused of helping Middle East death squads

BRITISH AID was paid to left-wing activists in the Middle East accused of helping death squads torture and kill Palestinians, The Sun can reveal.
The Foreign Office were under fire last night after giving £227,988 of taxpayers’ cash to the B’Tselem group – who are accused by the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu of sending “innocents” to “torture and execution”.
An activist from the “human rights group” was exposed for helping the Palestinian Authority’s secret police detain, beat up and even kill Palestinians caught selling land to Israeli Jews.
But last night the British government came under attack for funding the group who are at the centre of a political storm in Israel following an TV exposé of their activities.
Secret footage of B’Tselem employee Nasser Nawaja and another activist Ezra Nawi was broadcast last week by Israel’s Uvda programme.
In the explosive film, Nawi boasted he would send “pictures and phone numbers” of Palestinians who sold land to Israelis “to the Palestinian security services,” who “catch these guys and they kill them”.
Chillingly, he added: “But before it kills them, they get beat up a lot.” (h/t Bob Knot)

Shocker: ‘Death To Israel’ Prof Investigated As Possible ISIS Recruiter

A professor at Kent State University (KSU) in Ohio famous for his anti-Israel outbursts is now being investigated by the FBI for possibly being an Islamic State recruiter.
An unnamed FBI special agent told KentWired, KSU’s student newspaper, that associate history professor Julio Pino has been under investigation for about a year and a half.
According to KentWired, several faculty members and over 20 students have been interviewed about Pino’s behavior. The FBI is looking into possible connections between Pino and ISIS, as well as allegations that Pino attempted to recruit Kent State students to join the extremist group.
The investigation was confirmed by a Kent State official.
In 2002, Pino, a convert to Islam, wrote a column praising a teenaged Palestinian suicide bomber as a martyr, saying her actions should be “pronounced ‘justice’ and spelled C-O-U-R-A-G-E.'” At the time, a colleague of Pino’s noted that he enjoyed wearing military-style camouflage around town, but described it as a “fashion statement.”
In 2011, Pino attracted national attention when he shouted “Death to Israel!” during a lecture on campus by an Israeli diplomat.

It looks like Hezbollah thinks it has exacted revenge for Samir Kuntar

In the weeks after Israel apparently eliminated arch-terrorist Samir Kuntar, Hezbollah threatened terror attacks in retaliation.

Usually Hezbollah follows through with its threats.

But from reading Hezbollah's media, it appears that they believe that they have already avenged Kuntar's death, with this January 4 incident as recounted in Long War Journal:

At 3:15 PM on Jan. 4, Hezbollah targeted an Israeli military patrol with an IED attack across the Blue Line on the Zabadeen-Kafra road in the Shebaa Farms. Hezbollah quickly claimed responsibility, sayingits “Martyr Samir Quntar Group” carried out the attack. The group’s statement alleged that the explosive had damaged one Israeli Humvee and completely destroyed another, killing its four occupants. A “security source” told Hezbollah’s Al-Manar that the destroyed vehicle was carrying a high-ranking Israeli officer. However, Israeli sources said that the attack targeted two heavy-armored vehicles (one of which was a D-9 bulldozer), not a Humvee, and did not result in any Israeli casualties.

Hezbollah's Al Manar website was quite proud with two articles on the attack:

It looks like Hezbollah really only wanted a symbolic victory and not an escalation, despite its rhetoric.

It is true that Hezbollah is also working on creating terror cells in the West Bank but that is not in response to Kuntar's death, but rather on the command of Iran.

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Dark Chocolate Snobs Preferred Marah Water When It Was Bitter (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Marah, Sinai Peninsula, January 20 - Aficionados of high-percentage cocoa-solid chocolates expressed disappointment this week after Moses sweetened the lakes here for the benefit of the Israelites, Hebrew representatives reported this afternoon.

A group of Hebrews consisting of those who insist unsweetened, or, in a pinch, bittersweet, chocolate is the only acceptable form in which to consume the confection voiced disdain for the millions of Israelites who complained the waters at Marah were so bitter as to be undrinkable. The group asserted that anyone with a modicum of good culinary taste would agree that only Philistines prefer the non-bitter flavor.

Marah took its name from the bitterness of its water, as "Marah" is one form of the term for "bitter" in Semitic languages. When the Hebrews camped there in the aftermath of crossing the Sea of Reeds, they complained to Moses of the water's quality. The Lord instructed Moses to sweeten the waters by throwing a tree into them, and the masses were able to drink. Dark chocolate aficionados scoffed at such hoi polloi sensibilities, and insisted that Moses and God should not have catered to those Plebeian aesthetics.

"We know that God has big plans for this people, given the unprecedented wonders involved in His redemption of us from bondage," explained Anin Taam, a spokesman for the group. "Would it not be more fitting, then, to require that this people destined for greatness develop and demonstrate the most refined sensibilities? We cannot have a 'treasured nation' charged with revealing God's plan for humanity walking around with the culinary tastes of five-year-olds. Next you'll tell me God wants us to arrange the Song at the Sea as an 80's glam-rock ballad," he added with a grimace.

"I hope this doesn't presage what awaits us in the Land of Milk and Honey," echoed fellow aficionado Baal Gaava. "It better not be cow milk, which anybody who's anybody knows is crap. Goat milk is the way to go. Anyway, so many of us are lactose intolerant - lactose tolerance is a northern European thing, don't you know? And the dates - if they're not Medjoul dates, there's nothing to talk about. Might as well call the whole operation off."

Similar minor protest occurred before the Hebrews' departure from Egypt. At the time, the Lord had commanded the people to prepare a paschal lamb or kid in a specific manner, one that notably did not allow for the preparation and application of a proper marinade. The culinary snobs balked at the oversight, and only grudgingly ate of the roasted animals.

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