Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Video of huge Gaza terror tunnel

A couple of days ago the IDF revealed the discovery of a major terror tunnel that was dug deep into Israel from Gaza.

The military said the tunnel began near the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis and reached an Israeli kibbutz.

The tunnel, reported on March 20, was said to be the longest and deepest discovered by the Israel Army.

The source said the 2.5 kilometer tunnel, believed to have been constructed over the last six months, penetrated several hundred meters into Israel. They said parts of the tunnel, lined with cement and containing tools, reached a depth of 20 meters.

Israel's Channel 2 shows video of the tunnel, all built with that concrete that we are told is in such shortage in Gaza.

It includes electricity and phone lines.

Palestine Today says that thousands of Gazans want a referendum to become part of the new Russian empire!

According to the article, some 50,000 Gazans are actually Russian citizens (perhaps from Russian women who married Palestinian Arabs, the number seems greatly exaggerated.) They are looking at how Russia annexed Crimea with the apparent approval of its citizens. Putin used the excuse that Russians in the Ukraine requested protection from Russia, and Putin was happy to help.

Similarly, these Gazans say, they want Russia to protect them from Israel! So Gazans who claim to represent the heretofore unknown Gaza Russian community are asking Ismail Haniyeh for a referendum to become a satellite Russian colony.

The activists said "Moscow announced its intention to defend its citizens everywhere, and here we are exposed to the worst forms of torture and murder by Israel....[If the] Gaza Strip joins Russia it will provide us with protection and deter the Israelis."

I think that if there was a choice between Gaza run by Islamist terrorists or Russia, Israel would jump at the opportunity to let Russia have it.

They are rational actors, Avigdor Lieberman already has good relationships with many Russian diplomats, Israel and Russia could work together on offshore gas drilling, Russia wouldn't tolerate Islamists in their borders, smuggling of weapons would disappear and therefore the blockade could be lifted, Russians could build decent hospitals and staff them with competent doctors, and there are already a million Israelis who speak Russian for trade purposes across the Gaza border.

Of course, people who want to live in an independent state would never consider requesting such a thing. But whoever said Palestinian Arab want a state of their own? Their actions never supported such an idea since they first appeared on the scene last century.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

Jordanian court rules that women without hijab are considered "sluts"

From Albawaba:

The Jordanian Women’s Union, along with lawyers across the Hashemite Kingdom, expressed shock last week after a ruling discriminating against women who do not wear the Islamic hijab was issued by the Amman Sharia Court of Appeal, according to Al Medanah News.

The court announced late last week that it agreed with one lawyer's statement - based on a fatwa - that says a woman who does not cover up or wear a hijab is considered a “slut” and shouldn't be allowed to testify in court.

In response, The Women’s Union released a statement published on Amman net that describes the court’s decision as discrimination against women and a violation of the Jordanian Constitution, which considers all Jordanian men and women as equals.

On a purely unrelated note, here is a photo of Jordan's Queen Rania:

(h/t Marc)

EoZ Interview with Benjamin Weinthal

Benjamin Weinthal is a European correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, based out of Berlin, Germany. He has also written for Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and even Haaretz. Weinthal is also a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

I caught him tonight after he gave a lecture in Manhattan about antisemitism in Europe, and I asked him a few questions. I asked him whether there were any European capitals that a Jew could freely walk around with a kippah (he also answered about whether one can walk around with an Israeli T-shirt.) I also asked him whether European attitudes towards Israel were comparable to how they viewed apartheid South Africa, what EU leaders think about Israel within the pre-1967 lines, and whether he felt that the current anti-circumcision and anti-ritual slaughter campaigns in Europe were animated by anti-Islamism or antisemitism.

Ben's a real nice guy. After the interview we had a discussion about, well, everything, from BDS to the role of trade unions in anti-Israel activity and how that can be countered, to university anti-Zionism and antisemitism, to HRW and the Marc Garlasco episode I was involved with back in 2009.

Enjoy:

03/26 Links Pt2: Saudi shame; Hate Speech Illustrates True Face of BDS

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Saudi shame

It seems the Saudis are interested in keeping up the false impression – particularly before the greater Sunni world – that it has never stopped ostracizing Israel. They do this in a feeble attempt to cover up the cooperation between the two countries. This time it was the Post’s Wilner who was the fall guy for the Saudis’ cowardly foreign policy.
Indeed, there seems to be an inverse correlation between clandestine and formal relations: The more the Saudis secretly cooperate with Israel to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining nuclear weapons capability, the more the kingdom takes pains to show the world – especially the Sunni world – how it snubbed a reporter who works with an Israeli daily. Ultimately, this entire sorrowful episode is yet another depressing example of how much of decision-making in this region is guided by irrational fears and prejudices, not real shared interests, and of how hatred of Israel continues to be a rallying call for Muslims.

White House Expresses “Deep Disappointment” That It Has No Balls (satire)

In a statement, the White House said it had “deep disappointment” over Saudi Arabia’s decision and its own apparent lack of testicles. Having such anatomical features might have enabled the administration to call the kingdom on its unacceptable behavior, but as the White House has no balls, it was rendered incapable of summoning of the courage to defend the principles it claims to have.
The same lack of cojones has plagued the Obama administration in its dealings with other Middle East figures, notably Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has continually refused to commit to a formula that would leave Israel secure as a Jewish state. Instead of taking a courageous stand and displaying integrity by drawing an actual line, the White House has highlighted its own emasculated position by letting a corrupt, incitement-fueling autocrat pretending to democratic authority scuttle prospects for a meaningful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, allowing Abbas not to concede a thing and laying the onus on Israel to compromise on points crucial to its survival. (h/t Mightier than the Pen)

White House Thinks Anti-Semitism Is “Disappointing”

Wilner is not Israeli, but in such cases one is often told that this is not really about Jews or Jew hatred, but simply about Israelis. Just such thinking is promoted by the boycott movement. Yet, even if we were to buy into the notion that this is simply about Israelis–Wilner, after all, works for an Israeli newspaper–what are Israelis other than Jews who live in the Jewish state? Such moves never target Arabs living in Israel. This notion that it is not as bad to target an Israeli Jew not only promotes the belief that it is perhaps not quite right that Jews should have a state, but also that there are certain places that it is permissible to forbid Jews from living. This is the logic that imprisons Jews in ghettos, that says that certain places are off-limits for Jews.
President Obama may have bowed before the king of Saudi Arabia, but this is a country where the most vicious hatred of Jews is deeply entrenched in the national culture. As Eli Lake highlights in today’s Daily Beast, there are still serious concerns about the kind of incitement to hatred being promoted in Saudi school textbooks. As Lake notes, the State Department is refusing to release its most recent report on these books, yet it assures us that the Saudis are making promising progress on this matter.

US Hiding Report on Radical Saudi School Textbooks

US President Barack Obama stands poised to visit Saudi Arabia later in the month, to discuss "countering violent extremism" among other things. However, a report has revealed the US has kept secret an extensive study of Saudi textbooks, traditionally rife with Islamic extremism, since the end of 2012 - casting doubts over the seriousness of the administration to tackle the root causes of Islamic extremism.
The study, commissioned in a reported $500,000 State Department contract in 2011, was the most comprehensive ever commissioned. Completed in late 2012, the findings with their implications on radical indoctrination and anti-Semitism have been kept hidden from the public.
However, a new report published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think-tank, quoting sources familiar with the hidden study, notes Saudi textbooks still “create a climate that fosters exclusivity, intolerance, and calls to violence that put religious and ethnic minorities at risk.”

Abbas' idea of a "peace agreement" is to continue to wage war (ElderToons)

This story has been out for a few days (and in a recent linkdump) but it hasn't received the coverage it deserves:

Abbas “went to the White House and said ‘no’ to Obama,” Channel 2 news reported, quoting unnamed American and Israeli sources.

Specifically, the report said, Abbas rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that he recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He also refused to abandon the Palestinian demand for a “right of return” for millions of Palestinians and their descendants — a demand that, if implemented, would drastically alter Israel’s demographic balance and which no conceivable Israeli government would accept. And finally, he refused to commit to an “end of conflict,” under which a peace deal would represent the termination of any further Palestinian demands of Israel.

If a "peace agreement" doesn't mean an end to conflict, then what the hell is it supposed to mean?

Those who aren't blinded by wishful thinking know exactly what his aim is.

Back in 1948, the Arabs also liked to use the word "peace" when speaking to the West, confident that no one would figure out that their definition of "peace" was to eliminate Israel.

Nothing has changed.

Shurat HaDin just came out with a report documenting how Oxfam is illegally funding the Palestinian Arab terror group PFLP. Excerpts:

A Shurat HaDin investigation indicates that even as Oxfam was attacking Scarlett Johansson and Israel for violating international law, the organization was itself violating both international law and the laws of many sovereign nations. Specifically, Oxfam’s involvement with two Palestinian NGOs — the Union of Health Workers Committees (UHWC) and the Union of Agricultural Workers Committees (UAWC) — violates numerous laws against giving material and financial aid to terrorist organizations.

Both the UHWC and the UAWC are well-known for their close connections to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), one of the oldest and most violent terrorist organizations in the world. The PFLP is guilty of subsidiary organizations and numerous suicide bombings, airplane hijackings, and assassinations; including some of the most notorious terror attacks of the 1970s. Our investigation has revealed that the UHWC and UAWC are not merely close to the PFLP but branches of the PFLP, founded, staffed, and operated by this designated terrorist group.

...The evidence against UHWC and UAWC leads inexorably to the conclusion that the groups are essentially subsidiary organizations of the PFLP. In effect, the UAHC is the PFLP’s health organization and UAWC is the PLFP’s agricultural organization. They share leadership, funding, assets, and political goals with their parent organization; and appear to be, in turn, largely controlled by it. As a result, by providing financial and material aid to the UAHC and UAWC, Oxfam directly or indirectly makes these assets available to the PFLP.

It is a crime under international law, as well as US, UK, Israeli, and EU law, to provide material and financial Palestinian support to terrorist groups, including ostensibly benign branches of terrorist groups. It is our conclusion that Oxfam is currently in direct international violation of these laws, and is liable for both criminal and civil penalties as a result.

The report documents recent terror attacks by the PFLP, including the Itamar massacre of the Fogel family.

(h/t Yosef X)

03/26 Links Pt1: Peace Now legitimizes Assad at UN Meeting; The Mythical Moderate Abbas

From Ian:

Peace Now legitimizes Assad at dictator-run UN parley

Israel’s Peace Now, represented by campaigns manager Yaniv Shacham, delivered a speech today at an international conference in Quito, Ecuador, that claims to be about peace, but which is in fact organized by a rabidly anti-Israel UN committee dominated by Syria’s Assad regime and other like-minded murderous, misogynistic and homophobic dictatorships.
Is Peace Now unaware that this latest “UN International Meeting on the Question of Palestine,” taking place today and tomorrow under the innocuous-sounding theme of “Engaging for peace – the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” is run by the UN’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, whose member and observer states include the mass-murdering Syrian Arab Republic, slave-holding Mauritania, women-hating Saudi Arabia, along with tyrannies large and small such as China, Belarus, Cuba, Algeria and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic?

Peace Now's Tweet 'Supports Terror on Israel'

The terrorist, identified by Ma'an News Agency as 19-year-old Yousef Shawamrah, but reported in other sources as 15-years-old, was shot while sabotaging Israel's security fence near Hevron with two accomplices. Shawamrah ignored IDF soldiers' commands to stop and warning shots in the air, leading them to eventually shoot him, inflicting a wound he later died of at Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva.
Regardless of the context, Oppenheimer opined on Twitter "another unarmed Palestinian child was killed today by soldiers' fire at the fence. If he isn't Israeli or at least a Jordanian judge, it doesn't matter to anyone."
The tweet, with its whitewashing of Shawamrah's activities, sparked ire among dozens of internet users who wrote back sharp responses.

The mythical moderate Mahmoud Abbas

When Abbas is gone, the Israeli Left will sorely miss him. There will be those who will remember him as a kindly, quiet and smiling grandfather figure and mourn his absence. Others, perhaps more sage, will remember other grandfather figures, whom at their demise, the police dug in the backyards of the deceased only to find the skeletons of young children, victims of secret acts of violence, pragmatically hidden to avoid accountability.
We are no closer to Peace today than we were nine years ago when Mahmoud Abbas became president of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas still demands the “right of return” and still refuses to recognize Israel as a the Jewish homeland and is not willing to declare the end of the conflict. In the almost prescient words of Abunimah from 2005:

Israel shoots at "fishermen" smuggling arms from Egypt (photos)

YNet reports:

Israeli naval troops in the Mediterranean Sea opened fire in the early hours of Wednesday morning on suspected Palestinian smugglers travelling in two boats from Sinai to the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians said that four people on the boats had been wounded.

It is not clear what exactly the boats were carrying, but the IDF said that the boats were damaged, and that they had heard secondary explosions after they had opened fire.

During the incident, gunmen on the Gaza coast opened fire on the Israeli vessels. There were no injuries to the Israeli troops, who returned fire.

The incident occurred at around 3 am, several hundred meters from the Gaza coastline.

Soldiers from a nearby naval base were patrolling the area when they noticed two small boats making their way back from the Sinai coast to southern Gaza. The IDF is still unclear as to what the boats were carrying, but the secondary explosions have raised suspicions that the two vessels were carrying weapons.

Arab media, however, are claiming that Israel shot only at innocent fishermen.

Time to play everyone's favorite game, "Who's telling the truth?"

Do fishermen often have armed friends waiting for them to return to shore at 3 AM?

Moreover, does this fire look like it came from Israeli shooting or from some explosively flammable materials already on the boat still burning several hours later after sunrise?

Sorry, this game is too easy. But then again, it always is.

It's been months since we have seen the claims of Palestinian Arabs that Israel releases wild boars specifically to attack their crops. (Mahmoud Abbas made the same claim in a much heralded 2011 speech and the media ignored it.)

Apparently, Jordan is plagued with being attacked by these boars, so they now know who to blame!

Mustaqila quotes Jordanian media outlets as saying that Israel sends wild boars to Jordanian territory to sabotage their crops of Jordanians, and destroy the agriculture of Jordan.

The author says that Israel used to attack Jordan with planes, but now it attacks the nation with pigs.

Similarly, we are told, after Israel signed the peace agreement with Egypt, they conspired to destroy Egypt economically by releasing starving hamsters and albino mice into Egypt to ravage their crops.

The climax of the article:

According to the views of experts in science and epidemiology, the Israeli pigs' sabotage mission is a cornerstone of the Talmud and the Torah, which says in one of the texts: "Send diseases to your neighbors," and the neighbor here means a non-Jew, because Jewish law forbids damaging fellow Jews but they can attack non-Jews.

Ah, so raising wild pigs to attack gentiles is a Talmudic edict! I missed that the first time I went through Talmud, but I'll keep an eye out for it this time. It's good to know these obscure mitzvot.

UMich student govt soundly defeats BDS resolution

From Michigan Daily:

After hours of discussion and debate, the Central Student Government reversed the indefinite postponement of the controversial divestment resolution and subsequently voted to not pass it in a 25-9 vote with five abstentions early Wednesday morning.

Hundreds of students lined the second floor of the Michigan Union and entered the Rogel Ballroom on a first-come, first-served basis Tuesday evening, and more than 2,000 viewers watched CSG’s live-stream of the six-hour-long event. University Police regulated the large crowd that formed both inside and outside the Union and organized the crowds to line up on State Street. Students allowed into the meeting were given tickets and encouraged not to leave the room once they entered. When the meeting began, the number of people in the room exceeded its 375-person capacity. An additional 200 students were seated in the nearby Pendleton Room as an overflow space.

It was voted on in a secret ballot, an amendment to the rules decided by the assembly to ensure the safety of individual representatives.

Pro-Israel students were insulted and threatened for opposing the BDS resolution, so the student government felt it had to vote secretly to ensure their own safety. It is obvious which side they were afraid of. This pretty much explains how the anti-Israel crowd works in a nutshell - with threats, intimidation and creating a toxic environment.

I watched part of the livestream of the debate. The haters brought in Max Blumenthal who didn't address the actual issues of the resolution so much as he launched a 30 minute anti-Israel screed filled with half-truths, slanders and lies about supposed Israeli crimes going back to 1947. He hilariously described himself as a "professor" in a university in Gaza that was a victim of Israeli "scholasticide." He mentioned his book many, many times and even displayed it a few times as he was talking.

He was followed by a Hillel representative who, while effectively calling Blumenthal out for challenging Israel's existence rather than working for peace, often attacked Israel herself by distancing herself from its policies and history, saying at least twice that Israeli actions she disagreed with were "shameful."

A few law students then described in detail why the resolution should not pass according to the criteria within student law itself, and one pointed out a number of historic lies within the resolution.

This was followed by a professor who gave a lecture about the history of the conflict. It was reasonably even-handed, if poorly organized and somewhat boring, but the anti-Israel crowd attacked him mercilessly in their tweets as being pro-Israel for saying things like Israel's 1967 war was defensive and the only violations of international law in that war were from the Arabs who intended to mass murder Israelis. In the end, answering a question, he said that he felt the BDS movement had made impressive gains.

Then the pro-divestment crowd sent out a large set of anti-Israel speakers, who instead of addressing the resolution simply rehashed anti-Israel rhetoric.

As usual, the pro-Israel side appealed to logic, law, even handedness and real peace, the anti-Israel crowd simply appealed to emotions.

No one, as far as I saw, attacked Palestinian Arab rejectionism, antisemitism, corruption, misogyny, honor killings or infighting.

My poster made for the occasion was retweeted a few dozen times by those following the proceedings, and then it was attacked by the haters as well.

Palestinian Arab "honor killings" have doubled and redoubled

From Al Jazeera:

Two teenage Palestinian girls were killed in separate incidents last month in so-called "honour killings", revenge attacks carried out most often by family members against women suspected of "immoral sexual conduct".

The deaths sparked protests with more than 100 people assembling outside the general attorney's office in Gaza on March 3, demanding violence against Palestinian women come to a halt. Five women died in honour killings in the Palestinian territories in 2011. That number rose to 13 in 2012 and doubled to 26 last year.

...[A]nother woman, Samah Bader, was stabbed to death by her husband in their apartment in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. She became the eighth woman killed in the Palestinian territories since the beginning of the year - raising concerns the deadly trend will continue to spiral upwards.

...A survey by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics from 2011 showed that 35 percent of married women in Gaza had been exposed to physical violence by their husband within the past year, and that 40 percent of unmarried women had been physically abused by a household member.

When this trend became apparent last year, the Palestinian Minister of Women's Affairs Rabiha Diab blamed....Israel: "The Israeli occupation is the one practising the utmost violence ... it's the main thing keeping us from advancing."

I would argue that the main thing keeping them from advancing is their refusal to take responsibility for anything, and to blame Israel reflexively no matter what.

"Let's Boycott Israel" (poster)

A few months ago, the New York Times reported:

The American Studies Association has never before called for an academic boycott of any nation’s universities, said Curtis Marez, the group’s president and an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego. He did not dispute that many nations, including many of Israel’s neighbors, are generally judged to have human rights records that are worse than Israel’s, or comparable, but he said, “one has to start somewhere.”

I finally figured out how to make a poster out of that supremely idiotic comment.

So since tonight the BDSers are going crazy trying to intimidate the student government of the University of Michigan to symbolically boycott Israeli products, here's the poster. It is already being widely retweeted:

03/25 Links Pt2: Saudi Arabia denies visa to JPost correspondent; Stones confirm concert date

From Ian:

White House expresses 'deep disappointment' after Saudis deny visa to 'Post' journalist

Riyadh on Monday denied a visa to Michael Wilner, The Jerusalem Post’s Washington bureau chief. Wilner, who was the only journalist denied access to the president’s trip, despite firmly-worded requests from US National Security Advisor Susan Rice and assistant to the president Tony Blinken to Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the US, Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir.
"We are deeply disappointed that this credible journalist was denied a visa," US National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said on Tuesday. "We will continue to register our serious concerns about this unfortunate decision."

On the theft of indigenous struggles

I see people claiming commonalities with my people all the time. They tell me “My people are just like yours,” but the reality is quite different. I hear people telling me “My people have similar experiences to yours,” when the reality is that they have undergone nowhere near the marginalisation or oppression that my people have somehow survived.
When someone invokes the experiences of Native North Americans in order to claim commonalities with us, it’s almost always in order to demonise another country. In the majority of cases I see, it’s Arabs or white people trying to demonise Israel, first by calling them colonisers, and second by inferring that they stole the land on which they built their state. The irony should be obvious. (h/t Alexi)

New Anti-Semitism Tailored for Evangelicals

Despite the attempt to shroud the real agenda of the "Christ at the Checkpoint" conference, its manifesto is revealing . It "condemns all forms of violence unequivocally," yet states that "Christians must understand the global context for the rise of extremist Islam" and furthermore "blames the 'occupation' as the core issue of the conflict;" and although CATC boasts a mandate of dialogue and reconciliation between Israeli and Palestinian believers, there are still those voices that are seemingly rejected from the conference. In a report released by Israel Today, entitled, "The Message 'Christ at the Checkpoint' Didn't Want to Hear," it is argued that CATC organizers do not want to hear from those Israeli voices that have been victimized by Palestinian terrorism or able to expose the Palestinian nationalist agenda.
One case has been highlighted: in late 2010, Israeli tour guide Kay Wilson and her visiting Christian friend, Kristine Luken, were attacked by Palestinian terrorists outside Jerusalem. Luken was killed and Wilson suffered severe injuries. Wilson approached one of the CATC speakers about speaking at the 2012 convocation, but was told that her story was "not what the Lord wants," a phrase that is sadly abused by some Christian leaders to exercise control -- akin to a kind of spiritual or psychological extortion -- over the follower. Wilson then expressed dismay about "how any Israeli.... Messianic believer, could justify participating in a conference that has chosen to associate itself with theologians advocating Replacement Theology and Palestinian officials with clear ties to recognized terrorist organizations." She further stated, "For any self-respecting person, and especially for Israelis such as myself, the endorsement of terror by association, at a Christian conference, is obscene."

In January, I reported about a sociology textbook that was being used at the University of Calgary that had many libelous inaccuracies about Israel and Zionism, as well as (also inaccurate) excuses for Osama Bin Laden's terrorism. I noted a number of its false anti-Israel claims in detail.

As soon as the news about this textbook was publicized, the Calgary Jewish Federation met with university officials while many concerned people emailed to them about this egregious use of anti-Israel propaganda in a college textbook.

Today, I received an email from Calgary United with Israel that because of the complaints by people concerned about the integrity of college texts - and specifically my write-up showing its lies - this book will no longer be used at the University of Calgary.

Great job, all!

(h/t Sarah)