Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, June 28, 2013

Consumer Electronics Show coming to Israel

From YNet:

The international Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is coming to Israel. The major technology-related trade show, which takes place each January in Las Vegas, is also held in a smaller format in New York, Paris and London – and now in Tel Aviv too.

The CES exhibition is the central stage for displaying the year's most significant technological innovations in the world of electronics. It includes phones, computers, cameras and a slew of other technological devices, and is attended by more than 150,000 participants from all over the world.

According to CES representatives in Israel, the Tel Aviv exhibition will display 40 companies from Israel and the world and will include launches and announcements, the scale of which remains unclear.

The CES Unveiled Tel Aviv event will be held at the Hilton Hotel on Monday, October 7. Admission is free, although the event will only be open to members of the local high-tech industry and the media.

It appears that the major point of the show is to attract Israelis to CES Las Vegas in January 2014. 40 company exhibits is not very large compared to the 2000 that exhibit at the main show.

Even so, it is yet another BDSFail.

(h/t Herb)

6/28 Links Part 1: The Truth About the Peace Process and Egypt Now World’s Jihadist Training Ground

From Ian:

Barry Rubin: It’s Time to Tell the Truth About the “Peace Process”

Is the peace process after 40 years (if you count from its origins) or 20 years (if you count from the time of the “Oslo” agreement) at a dead end? Of course it is. That should be obvious.
In reality, the vast majority of Palestinian leaders favor establishing no Palestinian state unless it can continue the work of trying to wipe Israel off the map. They are in no hurry. They do not want to negotiate seriously. And, of course, in the case of Hamas, which controls or has the support of about one-half of the Palestinians, this violent and genocidal intention is completely in the open. You can’t negotiate seriously with those who are not–to recall the old PLO slogan–the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. I say this with deep regret but it is the truth.

Elliott Abrams: Kerry, Jerusalem, and the Palestinian concessions

I wonder what Kerry thinks. After all, the Palestinians should be jumping at the chance for serious negotiations, not creating obstacles for their resumption -- yet PLO and Palestinian Authority head Abbas does not appear anxious for talks to start. He seems to be satisfied with the status quo, and concerned above all with Palestinian internal politics -- right now, with appointing a new prime minister. After former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was forced out, the next appointee resigned after only 18 days in office and the power struggle continues.

Caroline Glick: Obama’s war of ideas

Obama has two ideas that inform his Middle East policy. First, the Muslim Brotherhood is good. And so his policy is to support the Muslim Brotherhood, everywhere. That’s his idea, and as long as the US continues to support the Brotherhood, its foreign policy is successful. For Obama it doesn’t matter whether the policy is harmful to US national security. It doesn’t matter if the Brotherhood slaughters Christians and Shi’ites and persecutes women and girls. It doesn’t matter if the Brotherhood’s governing incompetence transforms Egypt – and Tunisia, and Libya and etc., into hell on earth. As far as Obama is concerned, as long as he is true to his idea, his foreign policy is a success.
Obama’s second idea is that the root cause of all the problems in the region is the absence of a Palestinian state on land Israel controls. And as a consequence, Israel is to blame for everything bad that happens because it is refusing to give in to all of the Palestinians’ demands.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: 'Even if you give up all the land, it won't solve the problems in the Mideast'

An interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of "Infidel" "From the perspective of the Arab leaders, reaching a two-state solution is to betray God. If you want peace and not merely a process, you must make peace with the people. The negotiators themselves are of no importance."

Sarah Honig: Another Tack: Iran’s Latterday Goering

But the problem isn’t Rohani. It’s not even Khamenei. It’s the mindset of the world’s good-guys, the ones serially shy of confrontation, the ones forever in search of facile solutions and compromises, preferably only at the Jews’ expense.
The problem remains the failure of democracies to learn from history, to summon up minimal fortitude, not to fall for the fraud and to send the front-man packing.
Sadly, the odds in this instance too are that bumbling emissaries will continue their futile shuttles back and forth until they will be informed at 8:00 o’clock on one dark history-altering morning that as of 5:45 it’s too late, that they’re no longer of any use, that the chitchat is over.

Ha’aretz Columnist: ‘Benjamin Netanyahu Was Right’ on Iran

An unlikely voice is sounding the alarm on a nuclear Iran—the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, which is well known for its often diametrical opposition to official government policy.
Columnist Ari Shavit, taking as his source a recent article in The Economist that declares it will be impossible to stop Iran from going nuclear, warns “We’re out of time. We’re really out of time.”

Melanie Phillips: The British government's jihad against free thought

What an extraordinary thing to say. Geller and Spencer don’t go round calling for people to be killed, or preaching genocide or holy war, or spreading conspiracy theories and lies to foment hysteria and hatred. But when he was chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Tony Lloyd led a delegation to Gaza to meet leaders of Hamas, where he was photographed fraternally shaking the hand of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
So Lloyd is happy to meet with a group whose leader has called Israel a ‘cancerous tumour that must be removed’

New BBC style guide on ‘Israel and the Palestinians’

This new revised style guide provides no reason for optimism with regard to improvements in the accuracy or impartiality of BBC reporting on Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict. As was the case with the old ‘Key Terms’ guide, it is based upon partial and politically motivated interpretations of “international law” and refuses to acknowledge the existence of any history before 1967. The clear adoption of a specific political narrative is shown by the use of language such as “Israel says this is in response to rockets fired from Gaza towards Israel” in the section concerning the Gaza Strip and “[t]he presence of settlements is one of the most contentious issues of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict”. The notion that “[i]t is normally best to talk about ‘Jewish settlers’ rather than ‘Israeli settlers’ – some settlers are not Israeli citizens” is bizarre and the self-appointed quasi-divine authority reflected in the sentence “The BBC does not call Jerusalem the ‘capital’ of Israel” is frankly offensive.

UN Watch: Why the UN Scapegoats Israel: Hillel Neuer on CJAD Radio

News Editor Admits Media Bias after his Brother is Attacked

"Three dry sentences in the 10:00 p.m. news edition. Three sentences that do not convey the drama that took place there. This fire bomb was thrown at a car that was driven by my brother, Tal. At the last moment, he managed to see a person who was about to throw something at him, and stepped on the gas with full force. In the rear view mirror, he managed to see an explosion on the road behind him. There was a lot of luck here.
"Events like this take place numerous times, every day, in Judea and Samaria,” Barazani added. “Most of them are not reported. If my brother had not informed me, I am sure that the news would not be reported on Voice of Israel. As it is, I do not see a report about the fire bomb anywhere [else].

IDF deploys Iron Dome near Haifa amid heightened tensions in North

The IDF deployed an Iron Dome anti-rocket battery in the Haifa area early Friday morning, amid heightened tensions in the North stemming from the ongoing Syrian civil war.
The IDF Spokesman's Office stated that Iron Dome batteries are redeployed periodically in accordance with appraisals of the security situation.

IDF Seizes Large Weapons Stash

Among the weapons seized were handguns, M-16 assault rifle parts, dozens of magazines and a large variety of ammunition and military equipment. Three suspects were arrested in connection with the weapons and transferred to security forces for questioning.
Overall, 19 terror suspects were arrested overnight throughout the Jordan Valley and Judea and Samaria regions.

Hizbullah Connection to Judea Terror Shooting

Terrorist from Hevron points to PFLP-Hizbullah cooperation in planning terror.
The Shin Bet, working in cooperation with the IDF and police, has exposed a PFLP terror cell from Shechem and Hevron with links to a terror network abroad. A member of the cell, Aed Fahri Marka, carried out a shooting attack against Israeli hikers near Ein Prat (Wadi Kelt) in Judea, in early May.
Marka fired at a vehicle carrying Israelis. The bullets damaged the vehicle but did not cause injury. The weapon that was used to carry out the attack has been handed over to the authorities.

Amnesty International Calls for Campaign Against Gaza Executions

Amnesty International on Thursday called on the public to mail Gaza’s Hamas terrorist rulers in order to protest the hanging of two local men and to appeal against other executions, AFP reported.
Hamas hanged the two men accused of collaborating with Israel on Saturday.

'EU decision on blacklisting Hezbollah in late 2013'

Italian Deputy Foreign Minister for Development and Cooperation Lapo Pistelli said on Wednesday in Beirut that the EU is slated to make a decision in late 2013 on whether to include Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organizations.

Egypt’s security clampdown disrupts Gaza smuggling

Egypt’s military clamped down on the lawless Sinai Peninsula, which abuts Gaza, in the run-up to mass protests planned for Sunday by Egyptian opposition activists trying to force out the country’s president, Mohammed Morsi.

German Intelligence: Egypt Now World’s Main Jihadist Training Ground

A new German intelligence report presented on Tuesday showed that Egypt had replaced Waziristan as the main centre for the training of militants. German intelligence voiced concern over the growing number of ultra-conservative Islamic extremists in the country, some of whom are swelling militant ranks abroad, while warning of an increasingly violent German extreme right.

Amnesty thinks terrorists can reform from email campaigns. Um, look in the mirror.

Amnesty International rightly condemns the recent execution of two Gazans alleged to be spies and warns about many others who face hanging for the same charge.

But their proposed solution is so naive, it is painful.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 08 AUGUST 2013 TO:
Minister of Interior and National Security
Fathi Hamad
Hamas de facto administration in Gaza
Fax: + 972-8-288 1994 / 970 8 288 1994
Fax before 2pm Palestine time (GMT+2)
Email: info@moi.gov.ps
Salutation: Dear Mr Hamad

Head of the High Council of Justices
Abdel Raouf al-Halabi
Email: hjc27117@moj.ps
Salutation: Dear Judge al-Halabi

I especially like the generic "info@" address for Fathi Hammad. I'm sure he checks out all the generic email going to the interior ministry website personally.

I mean, if Amnesty itself doesn't acknowledge over a thousand emails and tweets along with a petition on a human rights issue, how can they expect Hamas to react?

UPDATE: If only Bin Laden had an email address, thousands of lives could have been saved!

From The Algemeiner:

A petition urging human rights groups to condemn an anti-Semitic mini-series due to air throughout the Arab world in July is gathering momentum, with over 1200 people from 47 countries having signed it thus far.

The petition, spearheaded by the anonymous pro-Israel blogger Elder of Ziyon, was hand delivered to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International earlier this week.

Read the whole thing and tell your friends to sign the petition!

Egypt concerned with Israeli ties in Africa

Al Ahram has an article warning about close Israeli ties with sub-Saharan Africa.

Under Nasser, Egypt used to be in the forefront of cultivating relationships with many African nations, sending engineers, teachers and other experts to help build up Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria and Congo (Zaire.) Nasser also used his influence to block Israeli initiatives in Africa in the 1950s and 60s.

But now Israel has taken the lead in offering services for African nations, and Egypt is only watching helplessly.

Meanwhile, the article details Israeli help towards Africa in health service, agriculture, dairy farming, and shipping, to name a few examples. In return, Israel is reaping the benefits of Africa's natural resources.

The article does not have an angry tone. It is more upset that Egypt has ceded these lucrative ties to Israel and, to a smaller extent, to Iran, India and Turkey who also have flourishing trade with African states.

Especially since Egypt is on the same continent.

New UN counter-terrorism head doesn't know what terrorism is

From the UN:

– Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today [June 20] confirmed the appointment of French criminal justice veteran Jean-Paul Laborde as the new Executive Director of the Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED), following the concurrence of the Security Council.

Mr. Laborde, who will serve at the level of Assistant Secretary-General, will succeed Mike Smith of Australia, who held the position since 2007 and to whom the Secretary-General expressed his deep gratitude for his dedication and able leadership.

The position was established by the Security Council in 2004 to bolster the 15-member body’s ability to monitor the implementation of a landmark resolution adopted in the wake of the September 2001 attacks on the United States, which calls on countries to adopt a number of measures to enhance their ability to counter terrorist activities nationally, regionally and globally.

During his 17 years of United Nations service, Mr. Laborde held positions as Senior Advisor to the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Department of Political Affairs, in Charge of Counter-Terrorism Affairs (2009-2010); and Director and Chairperson of the Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force (2010-2011). He also served as Interregional Advisor on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice at the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC).

There are major problems with Laborde as the lead person to combat terrorism.

He is on the record as saying that Hamas and Hezbollah are not terrorist organizations and he holds the absurd view that somehow international terrorism would decrease if there was a peace agreement:

A senior UN official says the threat of terrorism will be diminished in the Middle East once the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved. Jean Paul Laborde, adviser to the UN Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs, said on Thursday that terrorism has deteriorated since the September 11 attacks and will not diminish unless the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved.
He rejected the idea that the Islamic Resistance Movement of Hamas is a terrorist organization and called for talks and dialogue with this Palestinian entity.

“Hamas is not a terrorist organization in the United Nations…we should talk to Hamas because once the Israeli-Palestinian issue is resolved, the threat of terrorism will diminish.”

“The UN sets universal norms and has many mechanisms to fight terrorism…Some 30 UN agencies work together to implement the UN counter-terrorism strategy…which is based on preventing and resolving conflicts and supporting victims of terrorism,” he said.

He also says that defining terrorism is not very important to combating it:

I would also like to clarify one popular misperception that the absence of a definition of terrorism hampers the international legal framework on countering terrorism. That is not true. There is an often expressed desire to have a general definition of terrorism. However, it is important to point out that, due to the principle of legality which is fortunately very strict in criminal law and international criminal law, we need to speak more specifically of defining the acts of terrorism, thereby covering all the aspects of the terrorist activities.

To provide you with a comparison, there is no general definition of transnational organized crime. Yet, the international community agreed on a comprehensive Convention against Transnational Organized Crime by defining specific acts that constitute the phenomenon of transnational organized crime. In the same vein, we have no general definition of corruption and still we have a comprehensive United Nations Convention against Corruption. In both conventions, specific acts covering all the aspects of the criminal activities undertaken in transnational organized crime or in corruption are criminalized. A similar approach in the field of countering terrorism would be pragmatic.

Laborde is essentially saying that terrorism is like crime. He has no interest in the philosophical or religious justifications for terrorism, only that the acts themselves must fought - which is the same thing as crime, his other field of interest. If there is no difference between a jihadist killing someone with a bomb or a burglar killing someone with a knife, then there is really no reason for the UN to have a separate counter-terror group to begin with. Indeed, the speech that this section was taken from was from a conference on 'Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Systems and their Development in a Changing World.’

From what I can tell, the UN calls out only Al Qaeda and the Taliban as being groups that should be proscribed - and even they are not specifically defined as terror groups!

Moreover, one would hope that the UN counter-terrorism head would concentrate on fighting terror, and letting other UN groups fight for human rights. But Laborde is more concerned with the possibility that counter-terror actions might impede on human rights than in fighting the terrorism itself.

Laborde is a poor choice for being at the forefront of international fight against terror.

(h/t Anne Bayefsky)

Human Rights Watch condemns incitement against Shiites, but not Jews

From Human Rights Watch:

The lynching of four Shia by a mob apparently led by Salafi sheikhs in the village of Abu Musallim in Greater Cairo on June 23, 2013, came after months of anti-Shia hate speech at times involving the ruling Muslim Brotherhood and its political party, Human Rights Watch said today. The episode shows that the government needs to recognize that Shia in Egypt are at risk and to take protective measure to ensure their protection and equal rights.

“The brutal sectarian lynching of four Shia comes after two years of hate speech against the minority religious group, which the Muslim Brotherhood condoned and at times participated in,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

The anti-Shia hate speech by Salafis, who consider Shia Muslims heretics, and the Muslim Brotherhood has been going on for two years, Human Rights Watch said. Muslim Brotherhood members and officials at Al Azhar, Egypt’s main center of Islamic learning and authority, have publicly called for an end to the spread of Shiism in Egypt.

Look at that - HRW has the ability to condemn hate speech that could lead to people being killed!

But Arab antisemitism has never been condemned by HRW, or Amnesty. Not once.

Even though there are still Jews living in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and elsewhere. Even though the Arab antisemitism is being spread among Muslims in Europe and results in attacks against Jews there. Even though there happens to be a Jewish state in the midst of the Arab world.

The Khaybar miniseries is being broadcast throughout the Arab world in July. The entire point of the series is to instill hatred of Jews under the guise of entertainment. Despite repeated calls for HRW and Amnesty to condemn it, and the delivery of a petition this week to their offices in New York, these "human rights groups" remain silent about incitement against Jews that will be seen by tens, or perhaps hundreds, of millions of Arabs.

HRW is showing its hypocrisy with its belated denunciation of the Egyptian incitement against Shiites. Yet how was this incitement framed? By saying that Shiites are even worse than Jews. In other words, for Muslims, Jews are the standard against which all hate must be compared.

HRW and Amnesty apparently have no problem with this.

They are happy to condemn white European antisemitism. They are happy to condemn Arab hate against other Arabs. But direct Arab incitement against Jews?

Nothing.

(You can still sign the petition demanding HRW and Amnesty condemn Arab antisemitism and the Khaybar series in particular - all signatures get emailed to them. Now including Joe Stork.)

Al Aqsa Foundation declares all Biblical archaeology to be lies

The Al Aqsa Foundation issued a statement today saying that every piece of evidence that points to the existence of any Jewish Temple - first or second - on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is a lie.

The group says that it rejects these myths and confirma the Islamic and Arab character of the area.

According to the statement, they say that all the experts in the Israel Antiquities Authority who claim they found stones and jewelry and seals in the area of the Al Aqsa Mosque, claiming they are archaeological discoveries of Jewish objects dating from the time of the First and Second Temples, are lying, since there were no Temples. The group said "these lies and myths are a figment of the imagination," and said that international and even Israeli archaeologists have confirmed through research and vigorous exploration that was scientific and objective that there were no structures in the area that were Jewish temples.

They stressed that Arabs Canaanites were the first residents who built Jerusalem, with Jebusites and Amorites living there for thousands of years, while "the Jews" were there for only a short time.

The Al-Aqsa Foundation says that the Israel Antiquities Authority and other groups are trying desperately to fabricate history of Hebrew presence in Jerusalem, through the myths and legends of the alleged phantom structure in the place of or under the Al Aqsa Mosque, to the point of wanting to demolish the mosque. The groups asserted that the real history is clear and it has proved beyond a doubt that the al-Aqsa mosque is for Muslims alone,

The foundation even says that relics found by sifting through the tons of debris that were criminally excavated from the site by the Islamic Waqf and dumped outside Jerusalem were really not from the Temple area at all.

They even illustrate the article with some of these lying relics.

It is true that there is only fragmentary yet intriguing archaeological evidence so far of the First Temple, because it was replaced by the Second Temple and no one is allowed to dig underneath the Temple Mount to look for it. But lots of the Second Temple is still there, as Wikipedia summarizes:

After 1967, archaeologists found that the wall extended all the way around the Temple Mount and is part of the city wall near the Lion's Gate. Thus, the Western Wall is not the only remaining part of the Temple Mount. Currently, Robinson's Arch (named after American Edward Robinson) remains as the beginning of an arch that spanned the gap between the top of the platform and the higher ground farther away. This had been used by the priests as an entrance. Commoners had entered through the still-extant, but now plugged, gates on the southern side which led through beautiful colonnades to the top of the platform. One of these colonnades is still extant and reachable through the Temple Mount. The Southern wall was designed as a grand entrance. Recent archeological digs have found thousands of mikvehs (ceremonial bathtubs) for the ritual purification of the worshipers, as well as a grand stairway leading to the now blocked entrance. Inside the walls, the platform was supported by a series of vaulted archways, now called Solomon's Stables, which still exist and whose current renovation by the Waqf is extremely controversial. The temple itself was constructed of imported white marble that gleamed in the daylight.

On September 25, 2007 Yuval Baruch, archaeologist with the Israeli Antiquities Authority announced the discovery of a quarry compound which may have provided King Herod with the stones to build his Temple on the Temple Mount. Coins, pottery and an iron stake found proved the date of the quarrying to be about 19 BCE. Archaeologist Ehud Netzer confirmed that the large outlines of the stone cuts is evidence that it was a massive public project worked by hundreds of slaves.[30]

Moreover, there is a significant and growing collection of artifacts that verify specific parts of the Biblical narrative.

But I guess they are all fake too.

Also, as I learned during my tour of the Temple Mount earlier this year, the Al Aqsa Mosque itself was constructed on top of the Herodian extensions of the Mount, meaning that the Temple was not underneath it - the Temple was where the Dome of the Rock is.

6/27 Links Part 2: Karsenty’s conviction, EU Hypocrisy and the ‘blue and white’ moonshot

From Ian:

Amona and the Lie of ‘Private Land’

Until the liberation of Judea and Samaria in the 1967 Six-Day War, the Jordanian king had fictitiously registered most of the land in the Benjamin region. It is easy to differentiate between authentic Arab ownership of land in Judea and Samaria, which is registered in the Turkish-era registry, and the registration that took place after the Jordanian conquest. For some reason, the state of Israel decided to ignore the authentic deed. It has chosen to ignore the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations’ decision that earmarked the territory for the Jews and to recognize the foreign Jordanian conquest and the way it allocated the spoils of the land of the Jews. This has created the situation in which Amona, like many other towns in the Benjamin region, is sitting on “private” land.

Leading critic of French al-Dura coverage convicted

A French media analyst was convicted Wednesday of defamation for accusing a state television network of staging a video that depicted a young boy being killed in a firefight between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers.

What Karsenty’s conviction doesn’t prove

To prove that Israel was not responsible may have been enough. Israel is held up to higher and sometimes impossibly high standards by the rest of the world. The burden of proof is always greater when Israel is forced to address falsehoods and libels thrown its way.
So to prove that not only was the IDF not responsible for al-Dura’s death but also that the boy had not even died during that incident was perhaps a step too far. That’s not to say that this possibility was not worth investigating.

Philippe Karsenty on Al-Dura Verdict: ‘A Dark Day for French Democracy and a Dark Day for the Truth’ (INTERVIEW)

Shortly after a French court found him guilty of defamation over his work to expose the now infamous al-Dura hoax, Phillipe Karsenty spoke to The Algemeiner and shared his reaction to the verdict.

Richard Millett: History lecturer: “Britain should apologise for Balfour Declaration.”

A little known history lecturer is quickly becoming the new poster boy of the anti-Israel movement. Last night at SOAS James Renton detailed why he thinks the British government should apologise for the Balfour Declaration. He was invited to speak by Jews for Justice for Palestinians.
The thrust of Renton’s argument is that there should be such an apology because the Balfour Declaration lacked clarity on the meaning of “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, which, he said, unleashed an expectation of statehood amongst Jews that was never intended. He blames the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on this “misconceived, ill thought through policy of the British government”.

BDS Momentum Quashed at UC Santa Barbara

The anti-Israel, boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement has infiltrated numerous state universities in California and has spread untruthful propaganda about the State of Israel. Unfortunately, the anti-Israel movement’s scare tactics have worked by persuading student government associations at UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and UC Irvine to boycott Israeli products and to divest from Israeli companies. Many thought that other California state schools such as UC Santa Barbara would adopt nearly identical BDS policies, however they haven’t fallen into the trap, yet.

Jewish leader blasts EU’s ‘discriminatory’ policies

European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor told European Union leaders that moves to label goods from the West Bank without labeling Hezbollah a terrorist group is “discriminatory.”
In a letter sent to the leaders of EU member states, Kantor said the EU “appears to be singling out one disputed territory of the world for special treatment, whereas the European Union has no similar policies for the other tens of territories that are the subject of international disputes.”

McDonald's roasted over Ariel boycott

The Big McInsult
The refusal of Israel's McDonald's franchise owner to open a branch at the new mall in Ariel just because it is located across the Green Line is an unfortunate decision that discriminates against residents of the city and the surrounding area, both Jews and Palestinians.

Revelation: King George VI Blocked Escape of German Jews

According to the Guardian:
"Some documents from the period have already entered the public domain, giving an indication of the royal couple’s views. In the spring of 1939 George VI instructed his private secretary to write to Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax. Having learnt that ‘a number of Jewish refugees from different countries were surreptitiously getting into Palestine,’ the King was ‘glad to think that steps are being taken to prevent these people leaving their country of origin.’ Halifax’s office telegraphed Britain’s ambassador in Berlin asking him to encourage the German government ‘to check the unauthorized emigration’ of Jews."

When Helen Keller Confronted the Nazis

The outcry around the world included this moving letter from Keller, addressed to “the Student Body of Germany.”
“History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas,” Keller wrote. “Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them. You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels, and will continue to quicken other minds. I gave all the royalties of my books to the soldiers blinded in the World War with no thought in my
heart but love and compassion for the German people.”

New Yad Vashem exhibit honors Holocaust heroes

The exhibition, “I Am My Brother’s Keeper,” features five 8-minute-long, animated video presentations of rescue stories projected in a dark, cavernous hall.
Yad Vashem broke down the rescuers into five different categories:
“In the cellars, pits and attics” describes those who offered shelter and cared for those they hid. “Under the benefaction of the cross” pays tribute to rescuers who were members of the Christian clergy. “Paying the ultimate price” is dedicated to those who were killed as a result of their actions. “The courage to defy” honors those who refused their bureaucratic orders to help Jews. And finally, “Parting once again” tells the stories of those hidden children, like Heller, who lost their identities.

Ukraine’s President: Anti-Semitism Will Not be Tolerated

Much has been made of the Svoboda (“Freedom”) political party, whose overtly anti-Semitic platform reached a crescendo earlier this year when one party official verbally attacked Ukrainian-born actress Mila Kunis. In the Ukraine’s 2012 Presidential election, Svoboda won a surprising 10.44 percent of the national vote and 38 out of 450 parliamentary seats.
But Yanukovych stressed the warm relations between the country and its Jewish population, which numbers more than 70,000.

UN holds Israel-led panel on entrepreneurship

The conference — which is the result of the passing last year of an Israeli resolution calling on member states to promote entrepreneurship — is part of an effort by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to steer away from conflict-oriented issues and brand itself as a world-leader in using innovation as a means of battling poverty, creating jobs, and increasing growth.
“Israel is a young, dynamic, and creative state. We have decided to go public, not on Wall Street, but at the UN Headquarters on 1st Avenue,” said Israeli envoy to the UN Ambassador Ron Prosor. “This initial public offering has 141 signatories. It is important that the whole world can enjoy Israel’s knowledge, technology, and innovation.”

The Future of High-Tech Warfare and Israel’s Role Within It

Cohen predicted that in the future, Israel would be able to neutralize enemy weapons systems and units with “a single keystroke.” Unit 8200, besides serving as the Israeli equivalent to America’s NSA, is also considered one of the breeding grounds for the talent behind Israel’s “start-up nation” society of innovators and entrepreneurs, which most recently made headlines with Google’s $1.3 billion acquisition of the Israeli navigation start-up Waze.

Inspiration, via the ‘blue and white’ moonshot

People have looked to the skies for inspiration from time immemorial – and in a start-up nation twist on that notion, the heads of SpaceIL, an Israeli group that is actively planning a “blue and white” moonshot, delivered a shot of inspiration to a group of Jerusalem entrepreneurs about the challenges they face and how they overcome them.

This is the Land (A collection of fantastic photos of Israel)

On her first visit to Israel recently, Dr. Qanta Ahmed saw the country ‘as God sees it.’ The Muslim physician and daughter of Pakistani immigrants was smitten by the natural beauty, history and modern achievements that came into vivid focus.

Abu Dhabi builds its own "Dome of the Rock"

A UAE citizen, perhaps with a lot of extra cash lying around, has built his own Dome of the Rock which he plans to open as a mosque.

I hope he builds an Al Aqsa Mosque next to it .

Then they can ban Jews from visiting.

JPPI report on European Jewry is very well done

The Jewish People Policy Institute release a report, European Jewry - Signals and Noise, which seems to do a very good job in only 12 pages of describing the situation of Jews in Europe and the reasons things are the way they are today.

The paper is more nuanced than the reporting about it has been.

For their part, European Jews, on the whole, enjoy comfortable day-to-day lives, and their representative bodies have not felt the necessity to launch any emergency pan-European or even local strategic thinking process in response to these developments. Since they do not encounter state-sponsored anti-Semitism or barriers to their social and professional fulfillment, they trust their governments to protect them and believe that – provided they lower their Jewish profile – they can comfortably remain in Europe.

...Beside this apparent ‘business as usual’ discourse, it may, however, be possible that Jews are much more pessimistic about the future than they claim. According to a large-scale survey on Jewish people’s experiences and perceptions of anti-Semitism commissioned by the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), the official results of which have to be published in October 2013, Jews all over Europe feel insecure.

More than one in four (26%) of Jewish respondents claim to have experienced anti-Semitic harassment at least once in the 12 months preceding the survey and one in three (34%) had experienced anti-Semitic harassment over the past 5 years. 5% of all Jewish respondents said that their property had been deliberately vandalized because they were Jewish while 7% of respondents had experienced some form of physical attack or threats in the last 5 years.

In three of the nine states surveyed (namely Belgium, France and Hungary), between 40 and 50% of respondents said they had considered emigrating from their country of residence because they did not feel safe there.

The paper notes that many specific initiatives that make practicing Jews feel disenfranchised are put forward as being anchored in universal values. Cumulatively, however, they make normal Jewish life impossible:

* The attempt to ban circumcision in Germany (so-called ‘intactivist’ movements have also pushed for a ban in Denmark, Austria, the United Kingdom, and other European countries – resting on children’s rights and medical claims;
• The attempt to ban ritual slaughter (Shechita, along with Halal) in Holland, Poland and France, which is already proscribed in Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Iceland – resting on animal rights claims;
• The abolition of eternal cemeteries (in Switzerland and Belgium) – resting on environmental claims;
• The rejection of requests to accommodate conflicts with the Jewish calendar in scheduling public examinations (in France and Switzerland) – resting on a claim of church/state separation;
• The rejection of requests by Shabbat observant Jews for non-electric entry access in private condominiums (in France) – resting on security claims;
• The reconsideration of traditional public funding of Jewish cultural institutions (in France and other countries) – resting on equity claims;
• The increasing interference in the internal operation of Jewish day schools (all over Europe) – resting on ethnic non-discrimination claims, and more.

The report discusses several reasons why Europeans push this anti-religious agenda.

One is that economic decline and political turmoil often increases antisemitism.

Another is because Europeans believe religious freedom is far less important than loyalty to the nation:

The opposition to religious dress, rituals, and practices is not an incidental conflict between the value of religious freedom and the bodily integrity of children or animal rights that can be resolved by conciliation. Instead, these rituals will be increasingly perceived as threats to the national ethos and to its core values of Equality (secular neutrality inthe public sphere), Liberty (individual autonomy and emancipation) and Fraternity (civic loyalty to the community of citizens), especially as conceived in the French political tradition. According to the French conception of the Social Contract (Rousseau), one gives all of one's powers and rights to the volonté génerale and one receives back civic rights, not natural rights. In the predominant political philosophy in America, that of John Locke and Jefferson, in contrast, one retains one's natural rights and only gives the state the power to protect them. In response to the massive influx of Muslims, the state secularist attitude has been strengthened in France as cultural patrimony.

A third reason is that, while the tiny Jewish community's adherence to brit milah and shechita would not bother anyone, the much larger Muslim community's insistence on similar accommodation and the resulting cultural shift forces a pushback against Islam and towards "European core values" - and Jews get caught in the middle.

The fourth, related reason is that Europe does not trust religious particularism:

Built following centuries of bloody ethno-religious and national conflicts, the founding ethos of the European Union is that strong ethno-religious and national identities are better avoided. Jewish particularism is perceived with suspicion. Nicolas Sarkozy's successor as leader of the UMP liberal party and current French opposition leader, Jean-François Copé, whose mother is of Jewish Algerian descent and whose father is of Jewish Romanian ancestry, illustrates this pressure to disengage from ‘assigned' Jewishness in order to make one's way to national political leadership. He felt the need to declare, "[his] community of reference is not the Jewish one but the French one." Whereas Judaism as a culture is sometimes praised and celebrated, the ethnic, collective, and communitarian dimensions of Jewishness are repudiated. All over Europe, Jews are increasingly encouraged to privatize their identity and avoid emphasizing their Jewishness. This has already been the rule for the last two hundred years, but with the demographic shifts and the massive influx of Muslim populations, this expectation of "voluntary amnesia" is becoming mandatory in the public sphere.

All of this has major impact in the lives of practicing Jews:

All over Europe but especially in the United Kingdom and France, which are home to 80% of Western Europe's Jews, we find the expression of this polarization In order to avoid friction with their environment, Jews take various steps – the more practicing Jews relocate in self-segregated neighborhoods, the more idealistic ones make Aliyah, and the most ambitious ones quit Europe for more promising horizons.

The analysis seems to me to be on the money.

(h/t Irene)

Egypt's siege of Gaza tightens (a headline you'll never see in the media)

Palestine Today reports that there are severe diesel and construction material shortages in Gaza.

Egyptian security forces have managed to stop nearly all the smuggling traffic to Gaza, in a new crackdown before the planned June 30 demonstrations in Egypt. Egyptians themselves are suffering from a huge petrol shortage (see here for a video of a miles-long line to get fuel) so it is doubtful that there is much cheap fuel available for Gazans.

Israel does provide some diesel as well, but at normal market prices, not the subsidized Egyptian fuel prices. But even that is running out in Gaza as people are hoarding fuel, anticipating a potential meltdown in Egypt.

The sudden shortage of construction material smuggled from Egypt has caused building in Gaza to be at a virtual standstill. Dozens of workers are losing their jobs, and with Ramadan coming up in a couple of weeks they are nervous.

Tunnel owners are calling the current crackdown on smuggling "unprecedented."

Israel did stop shipping goods earlier this week in the wake of a barrage of rockets from Gaza, but it seems to have resumed Wednesday and continued today.

I am looking for stories about Egypt's inhumane siege of Gaza, but I'm having trouble finding them.