Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, March 27, 2014

"I am the very model of a BDSbyterian" (Divest This!)

A truly brilliant music parody by Divest This!, to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Modern Major General:"

The Ballad of the BDSbyterians

I am the very model of a BDSbyterian

I’m open to all points of view (especially if they’re Syrian)

Don’t bother me if you’re a Kurd, Tibetan or Nigerian

I am the very model of a BDSbyterian

Don’t talk to him if you’re a Kurd, Tibetan or Nigerian

Because he is the model of a BDSbyterian

I’m also well acquainted too with Judith Butler’s fond advice,

I understand facts fed to me by Hezbollah and Mondoweiss

I’ll happily toe Barghouti’s line regarding stocks the Church should ban

Because I am the model of a BDSbyterian

He’ll do whatever Omar says, yet claim to be a thinking man

That shows he is the model of a BDSbyterian

I also am the model of a terrorist apologist

My power for projecting guilt would stun a trained psychologist

How could this be? I do not know! Go ask an anthropologist

I am the very model of a terrorist apologist

How could he warp his conscience so? Go ask a trained psychologist

I guess it’s cause he’s made himself a terrorist apologist

I wipe my mind of what they do to Jew or homosexual

By leveraging the force of all my powers intellectual

Hamas missiles bore me so, I’ve not regard for where they land

Because I am the model of a BDSbyterian

Once rockets launch he has no care for whom they hit or where they land

Because he is the model of a BDSbyterian

One last point which proves that I’m a BDSbyterian

The Church must do my bidding or I’ll simply make them vote again

Divestment voted down five times just a speedbump to my brilliant plan

And that’s why I’m the model of a BDSbyterian

He’ll make them vote a hundred times, or more because he know he can

And that’s why he’s the model of a BDSbyterian

My self-regard is buttressed by inflated moral vanity

My ego soaring while ignoring crimes against humanity

So IPMN writes pamphlets that are high-fived by the Ku Klux Klan

That’s not my problem cause I’m just a BDSbyterian

So what if David Duke is now his own committee’s biggest fan?

He doesn’t care because he is a BDSbyterian

This needs to be made into a video, preferably with full costume.

(h/t Barbara M)

03/27 Links Pt1: PA religious leaders say Jews must not pray at Western Wall; Is it 1947 or 2014?

From Ian:

PMW: PA religious leaders: Jews must not pray at Western Wall

The Palestinian Authority Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash and the former Chief Justice of the PA's Religious Court both recently declared that the PA's Islamic belief and political position is that Jews are prohibited from praying at the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the PA denies Israel's history and rights in Jerusalem, but these statements by top religious leaders go even further.
The PA claims that the area of the Muslim holy site, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, includes not only the mosque itself, but extends over the entire Temple Mount and includes Judaism's holy site - the Western Wall.

JPost Editorial: Recognition

Now it is official – again. The Arab League capped its two-day summit in Kuwait with the following statement: “We express our total rejection of the call to consider Israel as a Jewish state.” This was essentially a repeat of the second of the “three noes” issued at the 1967 Arab League summit at Khartoum.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas now has all the backing he needs to continue to refuse the Israeli demand to recognize the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. Abbas has consistently opposed such recognition, presenting it as a completely new, never-before mentioned, Israeli condition for peace.
The fact is, however, that defining Israel as a “Jewish state,” if for no other reason than to differentiate it from an Arab or a Palestinian state and to ensure that at least one country in the world is set aside for the Jewish people, dates back to Israel’s very inception. Palestinian rejection of this term happens to be just as old. The 1947 United Nations partition plan, which the Arab nations and the Palestinians rejected, and which the majority of the nations of the world as well as the Jewish leadership in Palestine affirmed, called for the creation of “Arab and Jewish states.”

1947 or 2014? Arabs reject Jewish State

1947: The United Nations General Assembly approved yesterday a proposal to partition Palestine into two states, one Arab and the other Jewish, that are to become fully independent by Oct.1. The vote was 33 to 13 with two abstentions and one delegation, the Siamese, absent….
The vote on partition was taken at 5:35 P. M. Representatives of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen, four of the six Arab member states, announced that they would not be bound by the Assembly’s decision and walked determinedly out of the Assembly Hall at Flushing Meadow. The Egyptian and Lebanese delegates were silent but walked out, too.
2014: The Arab League announced on Wednesday its full backing of a Palestinian refusal to meet Israel’s demand to be recognized as a Jewish state, a condition Jerusalem says it requires for peace.
“We express our total rejection of the call to consider Israel as a Jewish state,” read a statement from the final day of the Arab summit in Kuwait.

Today, at the Brookings Institution, a report about early childhood development in the West Bank and Gaza will be discussed. The report was written by the American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA.)

For the most part, the report is serious and well done. It talks about the importance of early childhood education and nutrition and where children in the territories fall short.

Yet even in a report like this, anti-Israel rhetoric manages to enter. I don't think it was deliberate; I think it is just that the authors of the report were not attuned to how anti-Israel activists will politicize facts and make up others.

The report says:

One of the most critical issues facing Palestinian preschool children (aged 3-6) is that of malnutrition. The combined effects of the Israeli siege and poverty in Gaza have resulted in the widespread development of anemia among women and children; consequently, stunting in Gaza’s children is on the rise, affecting about 31.4% of children under the age of two.16 The consequences of poor nutrition resulting in underweight, stunting, and anemia are enormous and seriously impair the child’s physical, cognitive, and social faculties.

The footnote to this statistic doesn't go to a scientific study or a World Health Organization report. No, the source is the Electronic Intifada hate site, in an interview with anti-Israel activist, terror supporter and serial liar Dr. Mads Gilbert. He said there:

As a result of the Israeli siege, there has been widespread development of anemia among children and women due to malnutrition as a result of siege and poverty. Stunting, where a child is more than two standard deviations shorter than what it should be, is sharply on the rise. In 2006, around 13.5 percent of children were stunted. In 2009, 31.4 percent under age two were stunted.

Where did these statistics come from? I have no idea. The closest I have found is this 2012 study that only discusses specific poor sections of North Gaza, which are known to be in much worse shape than the rest of Gaza. The BBC mentioned in 2009 that Gaza children have a 10% stunting rate but in portions of northern Gaza the rate approaches 30%. Gilbert, if he is not making up the numbers from thin air, seems to be comparing a study of poverty stricken north Gazans with Gazans as a whole.

In fact, the World Bank in 2011 looked at the stunting statistics of Gaza children and called the results "outstanding" compared to other countries. Indeed, Gaza is better off than most Arab countries in this regard.

Now, Gilbert says two things. One is the statistics, which seem dubious at best. The other is his opinion that this is "as a result of the Israeli siege." That is completely unsupportable, and provably false.

Because Israel has not had any restrictions on food into Gaza for years.

So this lying quote from Mads Gilbert, and his unsupported opinion, from an anti-Israel hate site, gets used as a scholarly source for a serious report on Palestinian Arab children.

To its credit, ANERA gives legitimate reasons for Gaza nutritional problems that have nothing to do with Israel. It notes that anemia in Gaza is actually significantly lower than in the West Bank which makes no sense if Israel's "siege" had anything to do with nutrition in Gaza. It mentions that giving children excessive amounts of tea to drink, a widespread practice in the territories, contributes to anemia.

Yet the anti-Israel narrative is so prevalent that no one at ANERA thought to check twice that their accusations about Israel were lies. It is simply a given that Gaza misery is associated with Israel, and not worth taking the time to verify.

(h/t Solomon2)

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?