Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 30, 2010

The Forward insults me (and many others)

The Forward published an absurd op-ed by Letty Cottin Pogrebin:

From the moment the Goldstone Report was released in September 2009, its lead author has been subjected to fierce, well-orchestrated attacks by Israeli and American Jews who purport to be defending the legitimacy of the Jewish state and the safety of the Jewish people. Rather than discuss the contents of the report — which concluded that during the 2008-2009 Gaza war, Israel (as well as Hamas) may have committed war crimes — Israel’s defenders launched an all-points campaign to bury it. But their strategy was complicated from the start by an inconvenient truth: Goldstone was one of them — a Jew, and not just any Jew, an exemplary one.

She goes on to cast Goldstone as a modern Jewish tzaddik and his detractors of being guilty of a multitude of Jewish sins.

I responded to the article this way:

I take personal offence to this article.

From the moment that Goldstone's report was released, I - along with other bloggers, prominent writers and others - have spent countless hours writing specific criticisms of the report. I personally wrote at least 25 articles on my blog cross-referencing Goldstone's assertions with reliable information available from other sources, proving Goldstone's pattern of bias and disregard for facts and international law.

I daresay that I read Goldstone's report with much greater care than Letty Cottin Pogrebin did.

To say that I and my fellow critics of Goldstone did not address the contents of the report is simply a lie. To say that we wanted to bury it is ridiculous - I quoted large swaths of the report in my articles. On the contrary, we wanted to highlight the report's lies and bias for the many people - including, sadly, most journalists - who themselves couldn't be bothered to actually read it.

I invite readers to look at the many weighty criticisms of Goldstone available at goldstonereport.org. I would invite Pogrebin to do the same, but it appears that she is guilty of what she accuses us - making false claims without actually reading the content.

Let's reward Syria for just being great guys

From AFP:

President Barack Obama on Wednesday bypassed Congress to name the first US ambassador to Syria in nearly six years, part of his Middle East engagement drive criticized by his Republican opponents.
Obama took the controversial step of forcing through the appointments of Ambassador Robert Ford and five other officials while the Senate -- which normally needs to confirm nominations -- was out of session.

A senior administration official traveling with Obama on vacation in Hawaii justified the recess appointments, which are certain to irritate Republicans after both sides spoke of bipartisanship in the waning days of the last Congress.

Barry Rubin comments:

Speaking of Syria, while the Saudis are so worried about the United States being too soft on Syria and Iran that they are trying to cut their own deal surrendering Lebanon to the Syrians, what does President Barack Obama do? Why, of course, he is in such a hurry to name a U.S. ambassador to Syria that he bypasses Congress and does a recess appointment! Even though he has gotten nothing from Syria after two years of engagement.

What this technique does, of course, is shield the Syrian dictatorship from any criticism by Congress. If this administration had more sense it could have used the harder line from Congress as a rationale to get tougher on Syria. But instead of a "good cop/bad cop" approach we get a Keystone cop approach. (Note below)

The administration has argued that sending a U.S. ambassador to Syria is not a gift to that dictatorship (which is helping to murder Americans in Iraq, sponsoring Hamas and Hizballah, and helping Iran in every possible way) but a necessity to have a channel through which the United States can communicate with Damascus. But since this U.S. government only wants to communicate flattery and concessions it is hardly worthwhile.

Indeed, have no doubt that everyone in the Arabic-speaking world will interpret this as a Syrian victory. That's why this action is also worthy of a Dopes of the Day award.

Or maybe the US is just a fan of Bashir Assad's comedy act.

How to Defame Israel - NPR edition

When it comes down to it, all of the anti-Israel agitators, protesters and complainers use the same method for their smears. It is easy, effective and sometimes even partially truthful.

The method is to simply compare Israel with their idea of perfection, and note where it falls short.

It is insidious, because when it is done well, it is difficult to argue against on a point by point basis, and that tends to make people think that Israel is guilty of horrendous crimes. It is criticism without context, calumnies without comparisons, arguments without considering the alternative.

A classic example is being broadcast today on NPR, on the very real problem of tens of thousands of illegal African immigrants who are sneaking into Israel:

In Israel, No Welcome Mat For African Migrants

Israeli officials have stepped up efforts to stem the flow of African asylum seekers and migrant workers into Israel. With numbers reaching into the tens of thousands, Israeli officials are pressed to find a policy to combat the ever-increasing flow of people.

Israeli construction workers are battling against the blustery wind and sandstorms to build a fence across one stretch of desert.

The $270 million fence will cover 87 miles of Israel's southern border with Egypt. African refugees are smuggled through this area almost daily. They travel thousands of miles and often spend their life savings to try to reach Israel, a country they see as their doorstep to the West.

Israel, however, is far from laying down the welcome mat.

Sigal Rosen is an organizer at the Hotline for Migrant Workers, an advocacy group for refugees, in Tel Aviv. She says that though Israel signed the Geneva Convention relating to refugees, it regularly violates it.

"During the last years, Israel is sending a very clear message to all asylum seekers: Beware. We are not interested in your presence here. We will do whatever is in our power to prevent you from being here, even if the price is violating our legal commitments," Rosen says.

...On Nov. 22, the same day that work began on the fence along the Egyptian border, Yishai presented his four-part plan to make Israel a less desirable locale for refugees.

In addition to the fence, Israel is building a detention center that will operate as a yet undefined "open facility" for any would-be refugee who decides to remain in Israel.

The third step in Yishai's plan is to punish any employer who hires African migrants or supports their employment.

The last step is the repatriation of refugees who are already in Israel. Israel took that step for the first time — last week — when it removed 150 southern Sudanese who agreed to leave voluntarily in exchange for some pocket money and a flight home in time to vote in the upcoming referendum on the region's independence.

...At the Hotline for Migrant Workers, Rosen says she knows many more who would consider leaving Israel if they were given a similar deal. Most of them, she says, have become fed up.

"Actually, Israel doesn't have an immigration policy. What we have is a big mess," she says.

Now for some context.

Let's start with the headline: Israel does not roll out the "welcome mat" for African migrants.

Is there any country in the world that actively seeks or welcomes migrants from Africa? Has a single country gone to Israel and said "We would love to take them in?" The idea is absurd, but to NPR, Israel is to be castigated for not openly allowing itself to be overrun with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

Not all of the migrants are refugees. In fact, there is a process that must be gone through to determine whether they can legally seek asylum. UNHCR in Israel used to do it, but a couple of years ago Israel took over that function partially because UNHCR was getting overwhelmed.

Many of the African migrants are not fleeing persecution and personal danger, but simply seeking a better life in the nearest Western-style state. Which means that they are not "refugees." It gets complicated though because once many of them step foot in Israel they really cannot go back to their own countries. In those cases Israel has a very good reason to discourage them from coming to begin with.

Notice that these African migrants usually pass through Egypt on their way to Israel. That indicates that they are not simply escaping persecution but illegally seeking a better life. (There are also a significant number from West Africa who visit Israel on religious pilgrimages and then never leave.)

Israel really is a tiny nation, While Israel in the past has welcomed small numbers of refugees in need (Vietnamese "boat people" in 1977, Bosnian Muslim refugees in 1993, southern Lebanese Christians in 2000) it simply cannot have the open door policy that NPR seems to demand. Even the US, 450 times the size of Israel, cannot survive with such a policy. It is a matter of national survival.

Moreover, UNHCR credits Israel with great strides in improving its policies on dealing with asylum seekers, creating a program from scratch in only a few years.

The UNHCR itself is concerned not only in resettlement when necessary but in repatriation when possible, meaning that Israel's attempts to send migrants back to their original homes is quite consistent with preferred international standards.

Not only that, but Israel now has a serious crime problem from these illegal African immigrants.*

One doesn't even have to mention the fact that Egyptian policies are to shoot migrants on sight.

All of these facts are easily ascertained and they took me only a few minutes to learn. But NPR's Sheera Frenkel could not be bothered to find out the facts.

The methodology of the report is also very biased. Only one side is humanized; the Israeli policies are presented purely as malicious. You won't find Frenkel interviewing Israeli victims of crimes by Africans, nor Israeli officials who are dedicating their lives to making the lives of the Africans as bearable as possible while keeping within Israeli policies and respecting Israel's citizens, and not even UNHCR officials in Israel. Instead she interviews only two people - an advocate for the illegal migrants and an actual migrant - whose views are hardly unbiased.

In other words, NPR is presenting a hatchet job, solely for the purpose of demonizing Israel.

The methods are familiar, because we have seen countless similar articles from the media that use the same format: find people who are unhappy with some aspect of Israeli society, de-contextualize it while humanizing only one side of the story and making the Israeli side seem cold and heartless, and highlighting where Israel is supposedly falling short to some idealized standards that are literally impossible or that would cause worse human rights problems in themselves.

This is merely one of thousands of examples of how the media slyly and subtly tries to undermine Israel.

(h/t Jim)

*CORRECTION: While the Israeli media had widely reported about crimes committed by the migrants, statistics show this is not true.(h/t Frankie)

Al Aqsa Brigades declares a truce with Israel?

Palestine News Network reports that the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in Gaza - the military wing of Fatah - has declared a truce with Israel.

The leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades Mekdad Ehab said on Wednesday that the declaration of a truce with the occupation comes unilaterally to ensure the national interest, and in order to avoid giving pretexts for the occupation to wage a new war on the sector [Gaza.]

Other groups were in the meeting as well.

Mahmoud Khalaf, a member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that the meeting was intended to close ranks and confront the Israeli threats, adding that the factions had agreed to many of the most important issues to emphasize that the resistance is a natural right to defend the Palestinian people

The meeting was organized by Hamas. Hamas has been keeping all other terror organizations mostly in line, and the recent increase in rockets and Israeli reactions seem to have spooked the group.

This is mostly cosmetic. The Al Aqsa Brigades are close to non-existent in Gaza ever since Hamas took over. They've shot a few token rockets but if any member shows allegiance to Fatah in Ramallah, Hamas is there to perform some gentle physical persuasion.

It does show that Hamas, for all its rhetoric, is not looking for a war now, and that can only be a good thing.

Burqa Woman - the video

From Pakistani comedian Said Haroon, who naturally is getting death threats:

(h/t Solomonia)

Dismantle UNRWA for peace (Commentary)

Michael Bernstam in Commentary writes an important article that lays out the major problems of UNRWA:

UNRWA’s mandate created, in effect, a multigenerational dependency of an entire people—a permanent, supranational refugee welfare state in which simply placing most Palestinians on the international dole has extinguished incentives for work and investment. It has succeeded with a vengeance. It has thwarted economic development, destroyed opportunities for peace in the Middle East, and created, along the way—both metaphorically and literally—a breeding ground for international terrorism. The great-grandchildren of East Prussian refugees do not blow up pizzerias in what used to be Konigsberg and is now the Russian city Kaliningrad. But the great-grandchildren of the original UNRWA refugees do blow up pizzerias in Jerusalem.

It is this open-ended refugee status—which necessarily envisions a victorious return to the Israeli part of the former British Mandate Palestine—that puts bread on the table in the rent-free house, together with an array of social services. Only the triumphant return of the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren to the ancestral land will mark the final deliverance in this ideology. Until then, the permanent refugee welfare state means permanent war. It is no longer the epitome of former British prime minister Clement Attlee’s dichotomy of warfare state and welfare state: it is both.

The permanent refugeeism of the UNRWA welfare state generates a particular “right of return” claim—the argument that Palestinians should be given title to the land they occupied before Israel’s independence—that fuels perpetual warfare. To see its pernicious demographic and physical meaning, consider what this claim is not, and then what it is. First, it is not the right of return of actual refugees (as opposed to descendants) that was created by international conventions since 1948 to prevent deportations and to mitigate the conditions of concurrent refugees who fled the ravages of war. Nor is it the right of return of historical ethnic diasporas to their own nation-states that Germany extends to all Germans, Armenia to all Armenians, Greece to all Hellenes, and Israel to all Jews. Nor is it the establishment of new nation-states where there were none, such as the partition of British Mandate Palestine into the Jewish and Arab states or the partition of the British Raj into India and Pakistan. Rather, the claim of the Palestinian right of return is intended for one historical ethnic diaspora of the descendants of perennial refugees to repopulate another people’s existing nation-state, Israel.

This is not the right of return to a country; this is the right of return of a country, a reconquest after a lost war. In Europe, a similar claim would apply to the right of the Germans to a return of the Sudetenland from the Czech Republic, Farther Pomerania and Silesia from Poland, and East Prussia from Russia. In Asia, it would mean the right of the Pakistanis to parts of India.

This is not the right of return; this is a claim of the right of retake. In the world of historical ethnic diasporas, the right of return-cum-retake means a Hobbesian war of all against all. More than being detrimental to Israel, it is destructive for the Palestinians because it gives more belligerent groups, such as Hamas, an upper hand and prevents reunification of the two potential Palestinian nation-states. It converts what was meant to be a civil right into a civil war, on top of the war with Israel.

It gets better:

UNRWA has been one of the most inhuman experiments in human history. Since UNRWA creates incentives for war and disincentives for peace, conditions for Palestinian misery and disincentives for economic development, it cannot be reformed and must be removed. The change in the Palestinian incentive structure is necessary for both peace and statehood. Palestinian sovereignty will only be achieved by liberation from UNRWA and, like peace, cannot be truly achieved without this liberation. The first order of business, then, is to dismantle the UNRWA welfare-warfare state.

...The end of UNRWA would automatically nullify the pernicious issue of the right of return-cum-retake. It is unsolvable in the presence of UNRWA, because it implies the repopulation of Israel with millions of perennial paramilitary refugees. But once UNRWA is discarded, the refugee status expires instantaneously or after a transition period, and the right of return becomes a non-issue due to immediate and actually pressing needs.

Though its defenders may claim that criticisms of this agency are ill-intentioned or biased against the Palestinians, the phasing out of UNRWA is not only the Palestinians’ sole hope of finding a viable future. It also fits well with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s hope of creating a viable independent state. Though supporters of the Palestinians and even some friends of Israel have come to believe that UNRWA is indispensable, nation-building from within is the only viable form of nation-building. Instead of perpetuating the dead end that the international welfare state for the Palestinians represents, ending UNRWA’s horrific six-decade reign would instantly create the conditions for an honest, meaningful, and viable peace process to begin in the Middle East.

Read the whole thing - and tweet it.

(h/t Joshuapundit)

Attention Tel Aviv U: Saudi Arabia found your bird

An article in Saudi Arabia's al-Weeam discusses the discovery of a large, injured bird in the Ha'il region of the country.

The bird was not frightened of people, and it had really, really bad breath making it difficult to approach.

It had an electronic device attached which said "Ariel" and a metal bracelet that says "H1 - Ho5," on the wing it says "x63" and another bracelet says "Israel - Tel Aviv University."

One of the commenters named Mahmoud Nassar, who says that he works in a nature reserve in the north of "Palestine", says that the bird is one of some eagles that TAU has been monitoring since 2008. Others agree that this is likely.

But some other commenters aren't so sure, convinced that it is an Israeli spy bird of some sort.

Israel's Flash Mobs, 2010

Jerusalem, New Year's Day 2010:

Jerusalem, January:

Tel Aviv, January:

Haifa, February:

Tel Aviv, March:

Jerusalem, April:

Haifa, April (Freezing for three minutes flashmob:)

Tel Aviv, April:

May:

Haifa Cinemall, May:

Holon, July:

Tel Aviv, September:

Rishon LeTzion Beach, September:

Tel Aviv, November:

Hadera, November:

Jerusalem, December:

I'm sure I missed a few.

Deputy PM: Iran's nuke program delayed three years

From Reuters:

The United States and its allies have up to three years to curb Iran's nuclear programme, which has been set back by technical difficulties and sanctions, a senior Israeli official said on Wednesday.

Saying Iran remained his government's biggest worry, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon did not mention possible unilateral military strikes by Israel, saying he hoped U.S.-led action against Tehran would be successful.

"I believe that this effort will grow, and will include areas beyond sanctions, to convince the Iranian regime that, effectively, it must choose between continuing to seek nuclear capability and surviving," Yaalon told Israel Radio.

"I don't know if it will happen in 2011 or in 2012, but we are talking in terms of the next three years."

Yaalon, a former armed forces chief, noted Iran's uranium enrichment plan had suffered setbacks. Some analysts have seen signs of foreign sabotage in incidents such as the corruption of Iranian computer networks by a virus.

"These difficulties postpone the timeline, of course. Thus we cannot talk about a 'point of no return'. Iran does not currently have the ability to make a nuclear bomb on its own," Yaalon said.

"I hope it won't succeed at all and that the Western world's effort will ultimately deny Iran a nuclear capability."

This is a bigger delay than anything I had heard before from Stuxnet, at least (there might have been other successful operations that delayed the program further.)

Morning links

Sultan Knish writes "Who's Afraid of Israeli Democracy?", slamming Jeffrey Goldberg for his essay "What if Israel Ceases to Be a Democracy?"

Yochanan Visser in YNet on "Biased Dutch reporting on Arab-Israeli conflict leads to drastic rise in anti-Semitism"

On a related note, we have JPost's 'Norwegians in UNIFIL causing negative view of J'lem' based on a Wikileaks cable.

NGO Monitor goes after NGOs and Goldstone for uncritically believing Palestinian Arab statistics about civilian casualties in the Gaza war, a theme we have written extensively about.

Daphne Anson discusses Israel's new tough line against the London-based "Palestinian Return Center" saying it is a front for Hamas. The PRC denies this, according to Middle East Monitor - which is itself suspect.

US blacks have higher unemployment rates than WB PalArabs

From the Washington Post:

Unemployment for African Americans is projected to reach a 25-year high this year, according to a study released Thursday by an economic think tank, with the national rate soaring to 17.2 percent and the rates in five states exceeding 20 percent.

Better not tell human rights organizations, or else they will start writing a whole lot of reports about how the US is oppressing blacks to cause this high unemployment rate.

After all, they kill countless trees crying over Palestinian Arab unemployment, blaming Israel for it, when the rate for West Bank Palestinian Arabs is actually lower than blacks in the US.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in the second quarter of 2010 the unemployment rate for everyone aged 15 and above was 15.2%, and for both Gaza and the West Bank together it was 22.9%.

If you don't count the Palestinian Arabs aged 15-17 the unemployment rate would be lower (the rate for 15-19 year olds is 22.6% in the West Bank and 72% in Gaza.)

What would happen if Israel would stop employing West Bank Palestinian Arabs?

13.5% of all West Bank Palestinian Arabs are employed in Israel or "settlements," according to the survey, so that means that the WB unemployment rate would go from 15.2% to 26.6% if Israel would unilaterally disengage altogether from the territory.

Before the Palestinian Arabs started the terror war of 2001, the unemployment rate in the West Bank was under 10%.

So it is obviously not Israeli policies that are keeping Palestinian Arabs from working, but Palestinian Arab actions and policies.

(h/t Zach)

A good question from an unlikely source

"Kaffir" put my Trivia Question post from yesterday on Reddit, and the first commenter asked:

Wow dude, what the hell is your angle, Israel is never going to get a more peaceful Palestinian leader than Abbas. Is that why you don't like him?

And in that single sentence, the commenter encapsulated the entire argument between the left and the right.

Should Abbas be judged on his words and actions, or relative to other Palestinian Arab leaders?

One side, that likes to say that you only make peace with your enemies, see Abbas as, at worst, flawed, but as the best chance for peace. Without him, peace is "doomed."

The other side looks at it in absolute terms, not relative terms. If Israel's most promising "peace partner" shows zero interest in compromise and has no problem publicly celebrating the most disgusting terrorists, why should he be considered a peace partner to begin with?

The question boils down to: what kind of peace can Abbas deliver? If he continues to insist on the "right to return" and on no territorial compromise, then he is not a peace partner by any definition - and he is proving that his interest in a state is less important than in what he calls "principles."

Realization of Palestinian Arab self-determination does not in itself necessarily compromise Israel's security. But Abbas' "principles" are about far more than a state - they are fundamentally opposed to Israel's existence as a Jewish state and to the very idea of Jewish self-determination. The human rights of Israelis to live in security and for the Jewish nation to practice its own right to self-determination are more important than Abbas' "principles," a point that the world does not understand.

Abbas conflates the right of Palestinian Arab self-determination - which does not necessarily mean statehood, incidentally - with his "principles" of 1949 armistice lines and "right to return" and, most probably, the right to have an army and invite Iran over for some tea and missiles.

His actions indicate that self-determination is not his goal, but the "principles" are - "principles" that were designed by Arafat to destroy Israel.

In other words, Abbas seems to look at "peace" as a Trojan horse to fulfill the wishes of his predecessors Arafat and the Mufti, not as a means to create a Palestinian Arab state.

Abbas' "peace" is in exact contradiction to real peace. It would result in more bloodshed on both sides than the status quo.

So the question is not whether to consider Abbas a peace partner because there is no more moderate alternative. The question is whether Abbas really is a peace partner to begin with and what his goals are - questions that he answers very explicitly and very often.

Just none of the advocates for "peace" are listening to his answers.

Hamas continues to arrest and beat political opponents

Today, Hamas raided and closed the headquarters of a group called the Democratic Union of Palestine in Rafah, confiscating some of the group's files and arresting and beating its leaders.

Hamas also detained and beat 14 Fatah members.

These sort of events are happening pretty much every day, yet one would have to look long and hard to find any Western so-called "human rights for Gaza" organization mentioning them, let alone condemning them. Nothing from Free Gaza, or Viva Palestina, or IHH, or any of the other groups who so publicly claim to care about the human rights of Gazans.

Which just goes to prove that there is no such thing as a "pro-Palestinian" activist. They are anti-Israel agitators, period. And that is how they should be referred to.

EoZ Hasbara 2.0 video now available

The video of my Hasbara 2.0 lecture at Yeshiva University on December 7 (audio plus slides) is now available.

The lecture enumerates 11 Rules of Hasbara and 14 ways that anyone can be a reporter - i.e., find news that the media misses - in the Internet age. I also discuss how to amplify and publicize the news that the mainstream media misses, with simple methods that anyone can and should do.

I believe that the video can be very helpful to people and groups who are interested in helping Israel's cause, as I discuss the barriers that we face and many specific ideas that could be effective in making our case.

It is hosted on a site called MovieLocker, and the cost is $12 to view it (3 day rental.) The lecture is about 90 minutes long (I didn't include the Hasby Awards) and it is followed by about 30 minutes of videos I've made that hopefully illustrate the principles I spoke about.

The video requires Microsoft Silverlight to view.

The license is for private viewing, for public showings please contact me.

It is best viewed full-screen.

Here is a sample of one of my topics, and of part of the video.

I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to contact me with questions.

Hey, Abbas: Would "Palestine" allow conversions to Christianity?

From Al Masry al-Youm:

In June 2009, an Egyptian court declined a request by [Christian convert Maher] al-Gohary to register his current religion in his identity documents. The verdict said that "conversion from Islam is unacceptable since it contradicts the prevailing order and because society has a Muslim majority," adding that "conversion is at odds with Article 2 of the Constitution which says that Islam is the primary source of legislation."

Islam prohibits conversion to Christianity, even for Muslim coverts originally belonging to the Christian faith.

Al-Gohary’s request to be recognized as a Christian is the second to be turned down. In January 2008, the administrative court dismissed another request by Mohamed Haggay, who later named himself Bishoy.

So the legal reasons given by the Egyptian court to not accept al-Gohary's conversion is because the Egyptian constitution says "Islam is the Religion of the State. Arabic is its official language, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia)."

Now, it just turns out that the constitution of Palestine has virtually identical wording ("The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be the main source of legislation.")

So, as the world continues to rush to provide recognition for the state of "Palestine," Mahmoud Abbas should answer a simple question:

Would a Muslim be allowed to convert to Christianity in Palestine?

(To make it even more interesting, change "Christianity" to "Hinduism," which Islam abhors.)