Sunday, February 23, 2014
Elder of Ziyon
ElderToons
Saturday, February 22, 2014Elder of ZiyonPoster
In total there are between 2 and 3 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan. Matar Saqar, press officer at UNRWA, believes that many of them don’t have equal rights as other citizens: “There is discrimination within certain areas of work. Palestinians don’t always have the same possibility to work within the government, police, security or social services. Our loyalty to the state is always under doubt”.In other words, the photo that White uses to somehow cast doubt on Israel's democracy was meant to show how Jordanians discriminate against their own citizens who happen to identify as Palestinian!
Speaking from Istanbul, Badie thanked those working to assist the Syrian people in their struggle.Chloe Valdary: Judith Butler & our will to survive
He added that Netanyahu’s pubic[sic] presence near the Syrian wounded was an “important message.”
On Tuesday, Netanyahu spoke at an IDF base where injured Syrians are receiving medical care. He said Israel’s humanitarian efforts to help the Syrian wounded highlighted the difference between Jerusalem and Tehran, which backed Assad. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
Butler states that authentic Jewishness is “itself an anti-identitarian project…” She has the audacity to believe she can speak for all of world Jewry and define something which she claims has no definition. She suggests that an ethnic group is merely a blob devoid of all identity.Judith Butler scraps museum talk over BDS support
The abject irony is that to assert that a people’s identity is meaningless and vile is itself expressing discrimination against that people. It is in essence saying that they as a distinctive people do not matter. That she would try to even speak at a museum labeling itself “Jewish” is to contradict the central premise of her treatise.
Butler, who teaches comparative literature and critical theory at the University of California, Berkeley, was set to speak at an event on March 6 about the writer Franz Kafka.
But supporters of Israel took issue with the museum’s decision to invite her, the Forward reported Thursday. The opponents cited her support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction movement, or BDS, and harsh criticism of Israel.
But my Oxfam Moment came one summer’s evening when a senior Oxfam executive invited me to dinner at his sumptuous home in the rolling Oxfordshire countryside. He was cultured, brilliant and cool. Every inch the top Foreign Office diplomat, which had indeed been his previous calling. Before dinner, he suggested we take drinks on the lawn. As an afterthought, he asked the butler to bring out his portable radio so that we could listen to the news. It was, after all, the first day of the Six Day War.Official PA daily crossword: Haifa is "a port in occupied Palestine"
The BBC faithfully reported claims by the Israelis that they had destroyed the air forces of Egypt and Syria on the ground. Then, the newsreader intoned the Arab claims that they had inflicted extensive damage on the Israeli army; that Egyptian tanks were advancing; that they were now 25 kilometres from Tel Aviv.
My urbane host lost his cultivated cool. His elderly body shot into the air, fists pumping at the skies: ‘Now the Jews are going to get it... Now they’re going to get it.’ Remember, Israel occupied no territories, nor had it constructed a single settlement. There could be only one explanation for his jubilation: the prospect of Israel’s imminent destruction. When he recovered his composure, he raised his glass and beamed at me: ‘Wonderful news. Simply wonderful.’ I stared back, shocked, not knowing how to respond. To my shame, I said nothing.
Palestinian Media Watch has documented numerous examples of the official PA daily's use of crossword puzzles to deny Israel's existence. Cities such as Acre, Safed, Lod and even Tel Aviv have been presented as "Palestinian" or "occupied."Dutch firm says Israel boycott not factor in port tender (paywall soz.)
The PA uses the many infrastructures of communication at its disposal to promote the message that there is no Israel, but only "occupied Palestine," and that it is only a matter of time and planning before Israel disappears and "Palestine" returns.
A report in TheMarker on Monday stating that at least two foreign companies dropped out of the Israeli government tender to develop private seaports due to anti-Israel boycotts has been disputed by two of the companies involved. (h/t Yenta Press)
Friday, February 21, 2014Elder of Ziyon
Japanese police are investigating after dozens of copies of Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl and scores of books about the young Holocaust victim were vandalised in Tokyo public libraries.
The damage was mostly in the form of dozens of ripped pages in the books. Librarians have counted at least 265 damaged books at 31 municipal libraries since the end of January.
Japan and Nazi Germany were allies in the Second World War, and though Holocaust denial has occurred in Japan at times, the motive for damaging the Anne Frank books is unclear. Police are investigating.
In the Nakano district libraries, the vandals apparently damaged the books while unnoticed inside reading rooms, according to city official Mitsujiro Ikeda.
"Books related to Ms Anne Frank are clearly targeted, and it's happening across Tokyo," he said. "It's outrageous."
At least one library has moved Anne Frank-related books behind the counter for protection, though they can still be checked out.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called the vandalism "shameful" and said Japan would not tolerate such acts.
In several key cases, supporting US allies will require fewer, rather than more, US oversees deployments.Sarah Honig: Happy days are (almost) here
For instance, as Israel’s leaders have stated since the founding of the state, Israel has no interest in having anyone else fight its wars for it. All it requires is the strength – military, economic, territorial and political – to defend itself by itself.
Rather than seek to weaken Israel by coercing it to recede to indefensible borders in order to make room for a Palestinian terrorist state in its historic heartland, the US should abandon its support for Palestinian terrorists and ensure that Israel has the power to defend itself in a region marked by unprecedented instability and danger.
A strong Israel will be a force for regional stability and so advance US security while forming the firm foundation of a renewed US alliance structure in the region.
We have news for Abbas. Jordan and Egypt, unlike the Palestinians, never sought to replace the Jewish state and the UN already granted us recognition, back on November 29, 1947 – when it divided this tiny land into two entities – one Jewish and one Arab.US: Peace framework will recognize Israel as Jewish state
The Jews rejoiced. The Arabs declared genocidal war to prevent the birth of a Jewish state. All that has transpired since is the continuation of that war and the ongoing conflict still stems from the refusal to abide a Jewish state.
In 1947 the Arab world didn’t want a Palestinian state – it wanted to destroy the Jewish state. It still does. A nondescript state, temporarily called Israel, will forever remain a candidate for Arabization – one way or another. As long as the legitimacy of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people is not accepted, the Arabs will continue to wage their war to do away with what they cannot accept.
That’s why Abbas’s honeyed blandishments and professions of peaceful intent are as convincing as were Hitler’s when he inveigled Neville Chamberlain to choose appeasement at Munich. The “painful sacrifices” of September 29, 1938 – all Germany claimed to be after – hardly sated Hitler’s appetites. On March 16 1939, he invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia. (h/t NormanF)
US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro asserted on Friday that the framework peace deal currently being negotiated by US Secretary of State of John Kerry will include Palestinian recognition of Israel as “the nation state of the Jewish people.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recognize Israel’s Jewishness has been a sticking point in negotiations, with the Palestinians refusing to accede to a demand that would tacitly do away with Palestinian hopes for a “right of return” for refugees and their descendants.
Friday, February 21, 2014Elder of ZiyonOne of the interviewers was Haaretz’s editor in chief, the other the paper’s senior diplomatic reporter. Both were first-class professionals with vast experience, and both were lily-white doves. Nevertheless, the two peace-seeking interviewers dared to ask the high-level interviewee a question that’s currently considered beyond the pale in these parts: Should Israel continue to be a Jewish state?This is sort of amazing.
Surprisingly, the evasive interviewee gave a decisive answer: “Definitely.” The two experienced interviewers doubled-checked: Definitely? “Definitely,” confirmed the interviewee, giving an expansive interpretation of the historic decision made by the Palestine National Council 16 years earlier.
Thus it’s no surprise that Haaretz’s lead headline on June 18, 2004 trumpeted his statement: “Arafat: Israel is Jewish.” On the basis of what the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization told David Landau and Akiva Eldar in Ramallah 10 years ago, the paper declared unambiguously that “Yasser Arafat ‘definitely’ understands that Israel must preserve its character as a Jewish state.”
Veteran journalist Amnon Abramovich says the Israeli media lives by the 90-day rule. Under this rule, any article published in the past can be republished as a fresh scoop as long as it hasn’t been published in the past 90 days. So in line with the Abramovich rule, I hereby seek to revive Haaretz’s dramatic scoop: Arafat recognized Israel as a Jewish state. The leader of the Palestinian revolution, president of the Palestinian Authority and commander of the armed struggle accepted the fact that Israel is a Jewish state, and must continue to be one.
There have been scores of articles official statements and articles in the Palestinian Arab press, in English and Arabic, explaining why recognizing Israel as a Jewish state is a non-starter, is unacceptable and is even racist. Despite the historical injustice done to the Palestinian Arab people in its displacement and in being deprived of the right to self-determination following the adoption of General Assembly resolution 181 (II) of 1947, which partitioned Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish State, that resolution nevertheless continues to attach conditions to international legitimacy that guarantee the Palestinian Arab people the right to sovereignty and national independence.If they are attaching their legitimacy to a non-binding UN resolution that they rejected - which is the very reason it has no legal validity - then perhaps one can say that in 1988 they accepted the concept of a Jewish state on the partition lines. Again, he was a master of deception and this seems more than tenuous.
Friday, February 21, 2014Elder of Ziyon
Thursday, February 20, 2014Elder of ZiyonKhalid Saleh, head of the Media Office, said that “the visit paid by Prime Minister of the Israeli occupation to one of the hospitals where injured Syrians are being hospitalized is nothing more than a publicity gimmick and a deliberate move to hint that there is a certain relationship between the Syrian revolution and the Zionist entity. Israel’s Prime Minister aims at whitewashing his tarnished image in the minds of the Arab and Islamic peoples.” Saleh denounces “Israel’s investment in the plight of the Syrian people and using them as tools to spruce up his besmirched image. Saleh stresses that “the Israeli entity stood against the Syrian uprising from the start when they repeatedly warned of the danger of the weapons falling in the hands of what they described as terrorists. These “terrorists” - wounded civilians who were forcedly taken to Israeli hospitals and are being employed today for marketing their political agenda.” Saleh points out that “forcing some of the wounded civilians to receive treatment in the hospitals of the Israeli occupation as a result of the crippling siege imposed by the Assad regime lays bare Assad’s claims about resisting the Israeli occupation.”This bizarre response did not go unnoticed by real Syrian refugees.
This one press release by the SNC may very well prove to be one of the most self-damaging statements ever released by a political organization. Not only did the SNC fall into a trap by reacting hastily to goading from its opponents, but by denouncing an act of charity that has saved so many Syrian lives, even from a country that has historically been an adversary to Syria, the SNC has very much called into question the Syrian political opposition’s ability to engage in any post-conflict reconciliation with those communities that stood with the regime during the war. If you can’t even bring yourself to say thank you to medical aid from Israel, how on earth are you ever going to bring yourself to meet the greater challenge of living and let live with those Syrians who fought for the regime over the years. To say nothing of the vindication of those parties very much against any sort of help to the Syrian opposition, whom those parties see as potential adversaries in the future.
Alas, the SNC’s position is by no means an isolated one among the Syrian opposition. Indeed, the coalition probably felt compelled to make a denunciation along these lines to maintain its credibility among the rank and file activists. This one statement is going to have some very far reaching repercussions, especially with respect to any further aid the opposition can expect to receive. Who in their right mind is going to provide MANPADs and advanced anti-tank missiles to an opposition that can’t even reconcile itself to medical aid from a perceived adversary. Frankly, this regrettable episode has demonstrated that the Syrian political opposition still has alot of growing up to do.
The idea that any Syrian should feel apologetic for seeking medical aid from an Israeli hospital is yet one more morally bankrupt notion in a conflict that has already laid bare the moral shortcomings of many formerly esteemed parties and movements. ...This is a regime that has targeted Red Crescent volunteers and murdered a British surgeon for giving the exact same aid the Israelis are providing wounded Syrians. Dr Abbas Khan was rightly hailed as a hero, and Israel’s contribution to treating hundreds of needy Syrians deserves no less praise and appreciation. The pro-regimists have no moral standing or high ground on this issue whatsoever. Far from condemning Benjamin Netanyahu for visiting wounded Syrians, the Assad supporters’ time would be better spent asking where their beloved leader has been hiding out these past months. It is shameful that Angelina Jolie has made more visits to Syrian camps and refugee hospitals than Assad and Asma have combined.
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Maybe Barack Obama and the naysayers were right after all, maybe they knew us better than we knew ourselves. There are some Israelis and in the West who want nothing whatsoever to do with Syria and its problems, and statements like the SNC’s have validated their worse suspicions, that any Syrian opposition group the West helps are only going to be adversaries after the war. It is an unfortunate fact, that Israeli medical teams have done more for Syrians in the south of the country than all the opposition groups put together, to say nothing of the murderous regime that caused them to seek help in the first place.
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Of course, nothing happens in the Middle East in a vacuum, and alot of other issues intrude to make any conflict that much more complicated. Some Syrians, and indeed Arabs, are of the opinion that one cannot reconcile even to the slightest degree with Israel and hope to remain loyal to our Palestinian brethren and their aspirations. Frankly, it would not be unfair to say that this sort of hardline stance is most popular among those who have in reality done crap-all in a practical sense for our Palestinian brethren. By all means, go and jump on the BDS bandwagon if it assuages your guilt, and I’m sure the fact that the BDSers have a very flexible and self-serving idea of who is worthy of a boycott makes it that much easier.
...When the war in Syria is over, one of the things that I as a (hopefully) former refugee would want to see addressed, is the disgraceful treatment of our Palestinian brothers and sisters in the Arab world. If it is solidarity with Palestinians that certain Arabs seek, then nothing can improve the Palestinians’ situation more quickly than by granting them the right to work, study, travel and private property ownership in the Arab countries they currently reside in. Because frankly, I doubt there is a single Palestinian in the Levant or North Africa who wouldn’t swap places with an Arab-Israeli in a heart beat.
....Personally, Israel’s kindness to Syrian refugees has demonstrated to me that Syrians and Israelis need not be adversaries in the future, that there is space and possibility for an accommodation on even the most seemingly intractable of issues. There is goodwill and humanity on the Israeli side, despite everything I have been taught to believe during my life.
I hope that in the future, those of the Syrian opposition who currently regard anything Israel does with hostility and suspicion, ask themselves what is to be gained by pandering to morally bankrupt pro-Assadists, whose beloved leader’s family could not, in forty years, regain the Golan Heights either through war or through negotiations. The whole point of an opposition is to give the country a different way of thinking. Knowing who our true friends are would be a good place to start.
Here, I want to say something about the revealing historical background to the apartheid smear. There have been three key moments. Each – whatever the sincere hopes of many of its supporters – was a cynical attempt to demonise Israel as a pariah state in order to prepare the ground for its eventual destruction.Following Scarlett Johansson Furor, Oxfam Threatened With Lawsuit for Providing Aid to Branches of Terror Group
The smear originated in "anti-Zionist" campaigns that were waged without let up by the Communist states during the Cold War. Seeking Arab allies, these campaigns frequently descended into antisemitism, the word "Zionist" understood by all as a fig-leaf for "Jew". Many ideas that have since spread around the world, especially amongst "progressives", began here: Zionism equals racism, Zionism equals imperialism. Israel is the USA's "watchdog" in the Middle East, Zionism is complicit with, or even promotes, antisemitism, and, of course, Zionism equals South African apartheid.
Global charity Oxfam has been threatened with criminal and civil lawsuits for its funding of branches of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terror organization, Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center said in a statement on Thursday. The move comes just weeks after actress Scarlett Johansson ended ties with the charity over a difference of opinion regarding her role as an ambassador for Israeli company SodaStream.Study: Arab-Israeli Conflict Source Of 85% Of World’s Bull$#!@ (satire)
Shurat HaDin, which “represents victims of Palestinian and Islamic terrorism in courtrooms around the world,” demanded that Oxfam sever its ties with the Union of Health Workers Committees (“UHWC”) and the Union of Agricultural Worker’s Committee (“UAWC”), two agencies of the terror organization which it said “were created by the PFLP” and “operate under the direct patronage and in close cooperation with the PFLP.”
The BS finds its way into the environment through such media as major news outlets that use the term “militant” instead of “terrorist,” for example, or “resistance to the occupation” instead of the more fact-based “attempts to destroy Israel.”
By far the most common type of this pollution involves the term “Palestinian,” a made-up nation with no discrete national history before the 1960′s except as derivative of Syrian, Jordanian, and Egyptian tribal loyalties. But other common types of BS can often outnumber those stool samples on any given day, such as the manifest misnomer “peace process” and an assumed “right” of return for Arab refugees. Still other common examples include “Israel’s blockade of Gaza,” which ignores the coastal strip’s border with Egypt; “1967 borders” as a reference to boundaries that were actually only a messily-defined ceasefire line from 1949, not a recognized national frontier; and anything that comes from a source that supports the BDS movement.
Thursday, February 20, 2014Elder of ZiyonAccording to an Al-Manar TV report, titled "Jews, Movies, Hollywoodism, and the American Dream" and broadcast on February 10, 2014, Hollywood was a Jewish invention, the goals of which were "to take over the greatest superpower in the world, to control all aspects of its daily life, and to harness it in the service of Jewish goals worldwide."
Following are excerpts:
Reporter: [The American Jews] felt rejected by real American society. Therefore, they tried to change society's opinion of them by inventing cinematic characters that would serve as role models. That's when it all began. Everybody wanted to be like Superman, the hero from outer space, who could not fit in society as Superman, so he invented a character that was better suited for American society – the feeble, bespectacled Clark Kent.
Farroukh Majidi, university professor and international photographer: If you hit the heart of somebody, the result is short term, but if you hit his brain, then the result is long term.
Reporter: Incidentally, Superman was invented by the Jew, Joe Schuster.
Farroukh Majidi: They try to make you believe that what you think comes out of yourself.
Reporter: Hollywood is a Jewish invention that changed the way Americans view America, and created dreams, rather than reality. They managed to make the Americans live the dream, divorced from reality. Undoubtedly, the goal was to take over the greatest superpower in the world, to control all aspects of its daily life, and to harness it in the service of Jewish goals worldwide. Whenever someone challenges this, Superman is ready to deal with him.
Farroukh Majidi: What is most dangerous is if you believe their culture. You should focus on that – not about a movie about a Jewish person who was the best, who was a savior, or a hero, or whatever. This is not going to touch us. What is touching us, what is ruining us, ruining our culture, is the penetration of their culture through mass media, through their movies, through this television. This is what we have to be aware of.[…]
Reporter: The Jews consider [Carl] Laemmle to have saved hundreds of people from the so-called "Holocaust." "Schindler's List" is perhaps one move that implies this. This film was produced and distributed by Universal Studios.
Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Studios, renounced his German identity for the sake of his Jewishness. He made money and used it for the Jewish enterprise. He worked to keep Hollywood in Jewish hands only. This influence continues to this day.[…]
Farroukh Majidi: I think we should think completely in another direction – to fight against what they want to do. Of course, this is their country, this is their culture, and they want to conquer all the world. As we want. But they know how to do it, and we don't.
[…]
With this technology, with this equipment, with this skillfulness of the people… In this way, you believe that they are different. They know exactly how to use it because they have a lot of specialists, who surround them for making a movie, and we don't have it. Just we think about the subject from a political point of view.
[…]
Thursday, February 20, 2014Elder of Ziyon
Dozens of Israeli settlers on Thursday morning stormed the Bilal bin Rabah mosque north of the city of Bethlehem, claiming it is the site of "Rachel's Tomb", and they performed Talmudic rituals inside.There is no record of Rachel's Tomb being called the Bilal bin Rabah mosque before the 1990s. It is complete fiction. Muslims freely acknowledged that this was Rachel's Tomb, and called it Khirbet Rahil and other names with the word "Rachel" in Arabic.
Local sources said that the settlers broke into the area near the Aida refugee camp, and performed provocative religious rituals inside, and that the settlers arrived by bus and were accompanied by patrols of the Israeli occupation.
They were there for several hours during which voices were heard screaming inside the mosque, while performing Talmudic rituals.
Sources reported that the mosque is located inside the wall of apartheid.
The settlers, under the pretext of performing Talmudic rituals, repeatedly desecrate the mosque.
Most of these neighborhoods were built and populated after Israel liberated them from largely unrecognized Jordanian control in the Six-Day War of 1967. Of course, they are all built upon the remains of ancient Jewish settlements, or have signs of Jewish life from the First or Second Temple periods. During the construction of Gilo, for instance, archaeologists discovered a fortress and other remains from the times of the first Beit HaMikdash, and a biblical town of Gilo, slightly further south, is mentioned in the Books of Joshua and Samuel II. In Talpiyot there have been discoveries of Second Temple-era graves, and winepresses, graves and more have been found under Pisgat Ze’ev.State Department Takes Issue with Erekat
But one of these neighborhoods stands out in this respect: The northernmost one, a fascinating area named Neve Yaakov – a full-fledged Jewish community up until 1948. Today it is once again a thriving neighborhood many times larger than it was several decades ago, with a population close to 30,000. Despite this, the Arabs claim that this old-new village is “illegal.
Modern-day Neve Yaakov was first established in 1924 on a 16-acre plot of land purchased by members of the American Mizrachi movement from the Arabs of Beit Hanina. First called Kfar Ivri, its name was soon changed to commemorate Mizrachi leader Rabbi Yitzchak Yaakov Reines, who had died a decade earlier.
The United States on Wednesday expressed concern over comments against Israel by the chief Palestinian Authority (PA) negotiator, Saeb Erekat.Yes Mr. Erekat, Jesus was a Jew
"We are of course concerned about the recent comments by Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters, hinting that Secretary of State John Kerry would raise the issue during his meeting in Paris with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
"We've said all along that it's important to create a positive atmosphere around these discussions. The personal attacks, quite frankly, are unhelpful, and the secretary will make clear that these kinds of comments are disappointing, that they are unhelpful, especially coming from someone involved in the negotiations, indeed the lead negotiator," said Harf.
The kindest thing one can say about Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian “negotiator,” is that he suffers, or pretends to suffer, from delusions or fantasies. How else can one explain his statement on January 31, 2014 at a conference in Munich when he specified the reason for the Palestinian refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish state? To do so, he said would be “asking me to change my narrative.”
That fabricated Palestinian narrative of victimhood has concocted hyperbolical and inaccurate commentaries about Middle East history and Israeli policies. Erekat has employed it, as so many other critics and boycotters of Israel have done, for political ends.
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
