Thursday, April 03, 2014

  • Thursday, April 03, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
The World Bulletin reports:
Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said on Wednesday that his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had vowed to "keep his promise" to work on easing Israel's eight-year-long siege of the Gaza Strip.
Trend.az reports:
Davutoglu added that Turkey is making progress to normalize relations with Israel, which have been tense since nine Turks aboard a Gaza-bound aid flotilla were killed by Israeli soldiers in 2010.

Israel's apology to Turkey last year marked the beginning of improvement of relations. Turkey is expecting "positive developments" in the coming days on its second requirement - compensation to the families - Davutoglu said. The third demand from Turkey is the lifting of the Gaza blockade.
Felesteen.ps amplified this a little, saying that Davutoglu said that the compensation negotiations have seen "significant progress" and that there are negotiations between Israel and Turkey on "lifting the siege" of Gaza.

It is significant that these statements are being made after the Turkish elections, when many assumed that the AKP-led government would harden its position on negotiating with Israel.

I would guess that Israel can help increase exports from Gaza - maybe to the West Bank - and perhaps allow some more construction materials into the sector with restrictions, but  I cannot see much more than that without severely compromising Israel's security.

Peter Beinart is certainly at home at Haaretz, where stupidity can be masked as serious opinion.

On Wednesday, Beinart made one of those dumb "substitute X for Y" analogies while going after Sheldon Adelson:

Imagine this. Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Elizabeth Warren and multiple lesser Democratic notables travel halfway across the country to kiss the ring of a Palestinian-American billionaire who has shown himself willing to spend tens of millions of dollars subsidizing presidential campaigns.

The billionaire has some provocative views. Six months earlier, he suggested that if Israel does not end its nuclear weapons program, America should drop an “atomic weapon…in the middle of the [Negev] desert that doesn’t hurt a soul.” If that doesn’t work, America should drop “the next one…in the middle of” Tel Aviv.

The billionaire insists that there is no such thing as the Jewish people. It’s a hoax; the Jews “have fooled the world very successfully.” And he declares that “There isn’t a” Jew “alive who wasn’t raised on a curriculum of hatred and hostility toward the” Palestinians.

Change the words “Democrat” to “Republican,” “Israel” to “Iran” and “Palestinian” to “Jewish,” and that’s exactly what just happened. Leading contenders for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination spent last weekend wooing and feting a billionaire, Sheldon Adelson, whose views - if directed at Jews—would put him in the company of Louis Farrakhan and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
I am not thrilled with an election system that gives great power to any billionaire, whether it is Sheldon Adelson or George Soros, who has wooed Democrats just as Adelson woos Republican politicians.

Some of the stuff Adelson says is wrong. Some of it is even admittedly offensive.

But there is a huge difference between the thought experiment Beinart gives here and what Adelson actually said, a difference that shows that Beinart has fallen for one of the biggest fallacies in the Middle East: the fallacy that there is equal value in the Zionist and anti-Zionist narratives.

I am not a logician and do not know of a formal name for this fallacy, but let's call it the Assumed Symmetry Fallacy: the assumption that two sides - by virtue of their opposition - are falsely assumed to be symmetric.

In 2008, when Tel Aviv University’s Shlomo Sand published a book called “The Invention of the Jewish People,” he was widely called anti-Semitic. When Adelson says the same about Palestinians, he’s a Republican rock star.
The Palestinian Arabs are a recently invented people. They exist today, to be sure, but they were not a "people" before 1948 at the very earliest. Westerners who drew the borders after World War I created what today's Palestinian Arabs laughably call "historic Palestine" - arbitrary lines that surrounded a people who had as much in common with those across those lines as with those within them. Arabs in the Galilee had more in common with those in Damascus than those in Bethlehem. Tribes and families trumped geography (and they often still do.) They became a "people" because of how their Arab brethren refused to allow them to integrate into their countries, forcing them to suffer as a separate group that eventually did turn them into a people. Arabs themselves admit freely that they kept Palestinian Arabs in miserable conditions in order to foster their nascent "unity." (It was for their own good, in Arab logic.)

But any analogy between the brand new people now called Palestinians and the Jewish people is, simply, obscene. There is no comparison in terms of history, in terms of culture, in terms of faith or in terms of the depth of feelings that have been felt towards the land for millennia. (This doesn't negate the fact that some Palestinian Arabs do have ties to the land. But as a people, there is simply no comparison, especially since a majority of Palestinian Arabs do not trace their ancestry to the region but rather from Arabian tribes and elsewhere.)

The nuclear analogy is similarly obscene. While Adelson's suggestion can certainly be considered offensive, Beinart's comparison is sickening. Israel does not threaten other nations with its nuclear arsenal. In fact, Israel apparently has had the bomb since the 1960s and has gone through a few wars without using them. Iran, however, shows videos on its TV about the joys of nuking Israel. Israel's nuclear program is not a danger to the world, Iran's is.

And comparing Adelson with Farrakhan and Ahmadinejad is equally obscene. Adelson  clearly doesn't have a grasp of the nuances of the Middle East as those of us who are immersed in it all day do, but there have been plenty of US politicians and pundits and even "experts" who say stupid and ignorant things every day. Beinart would never compare them to Farrakhan or Ahmadinejad (unless they are Republican), just as he would never compare Adelson with Soros, the closest analogy, because Soros' politics are far more acceptable to Beinart.

Beinart further quotes Adelson:
“There isn’t a Palestinian alive who wasn’t raised on a curriculum of hatred and hostility toward the Jews,” he told the Jewish Press in 2011.
Adelson was not careful with his words the way a journalist would be, but if he would have said "Palestinians are routinely taught to hate Jews" - does Beinart disagree? He is more upset at Adelson's generalization, eagerly branding him as having a "culture of hate," without acknowledging the elephant in the room that Palestinians really do have a culture of hate. Not one person - an entire people. While there is racism on the Jewish side, there is nothing remotely similar to the pervasiveness of hate on the Palestinian Arab side. But Beinart doesn't care about that because an old rich Jewish man is unacceptably generalizing, oh, at least 95% of Palestinian Arabs to include the 5% that Beinart likes to pretend represents reality.

In other words, Beinart proves here with his Assumed Symmetry Fallacy  thought experiments that he is at least as biased as Adelson is.

Recently, Palestinian Arab politicians claimed that their police found a secret Israeli lab that turned marijuana into heroin to give to Palestinian Arab youths. Mahmoud Abbas' aides have said that the Temple never existed. Abbas himself accused Israeli Jews of raising wild boars just to attack Arab farmers.

This is part of the Palestinian Arab "narrative." Zionists (and any sane people) would say that these stories are nonsense.

Do the two sides of "narratives" have equal value? Apparently, in Beinart's universe, the truth is not as important as what people believe the truth to be. Both sides are the same! Feelings trump facts, and fake history is just as valid as real history because favoring truth over lies can make the liars upset.

 Beinart's fallacious thought experiments and use of false analogies are a lazy rhetorical method that good writers and thinkers know to avoid. Beinart is neither a good writer nor a thinker.

  • Thursday, April 03, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
Hamas, which has suffered tremendously since the fortunes of the Muslim Brotherhood had changed by the Egyptian coup last year, has been ecstatic that Tayyip Erdogan's AKP party won most of the local elections in Turkey this week.

The Islamist party just erected this billboard in Gaza:


It shows Erdogan, Hamas leaders Meshal and Haniyeh, and previous and current Qatari leaders Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad.

The words on the sign say "Jerusalem is waiting for men."

The sign betrays wishful thinking that Turkey and Qatar are in the forefront of trying to "liberate" Jerusalem from Jews along with, of course, Hamas.

It is also an insult to the rest of the Arab world - always overly concerned with machismo - by implying that current leaders of the PA, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other countries that have marginalized Hamas are not being led by real men.

Hamas has a third message as well with this billboard. It is trying to regain its lost prestige from the microwar in February between Israel and Islamic Jihad and other terror groups, a flare-up that Hamas pointedly avoided participating in, making it look less "manly" than the Iranian-supported Islamic Jihad.

After all, there is little that is more phallic than the pervasive parades and posters of rockets in Gaza and from Islamists in the West Bank.  And Hamas refused to unsheathe its rockets to rape the weak, feminine Israeli enemy civilians in Sderot and Ashkelon. Which is unforgivable.


Wednesday, April 02, 2014

From Ian:

Real satisfaction: Rolling Stones choose Israel over BDS boycott
The father of the failed boycott is Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, who not long ago compared playing for Israeli audiences with appearing in Nazi Germany. His main recruit is Elvis Costello (a fact that would have dismayed the original Elvis, an ardent Zionist).
Annie Lennox has also said she won’t play here again, but her ex-husband is an Israeli, so she probably has her reasons. Other boycotters proudly claimed by the BDS are nonentities; stars like Oi Palloi, which sings in Scottish Gaelic; Gorillaz Sound System, whose last hit was in 2001 and which no longer exists; a few anonymous jazz musicians (invariably described as “legendary”); and, most recently, Pal Moddi Knudsen, a self-taught Norwegian accordion player. Audiences in Tel Aviv would pay to see Costello, Lennox and maybe even Waters (Israeli fans tend to be tolerant). As for the others, they are like pimply teenage boys bragging about how they turned down a night on the town with Angelina Jolie.
Survey: Judea, Samaria and Gaza Arabs Reject Normalization
The vast majority of Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza support a boycott of joint activities with Israelis, according to a recent public opinion survey conducted by the Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD).
Seventy percent of the respondents opposed joint cultural and sports activities with Israelis, while 55% said they wouldn't agree to cooperate with Israel in the fields of science, environmental protection and health.
Despite the wide calls for a boycott on activities with Israel, 78% said they had not heard about the Ramallah-based Palestinian BDS National Committee. Of those who were aware of the organization, which leads boycotts to delegitimize Israel, only 51% (in Gaza, Judea and Samaria) were familiar with its activities.
Hevron Arabs Kick Out Leftist Activists near Peace House
Roughly 20 extreme-left activists and Arab protesters arrived at Hevron in Judea this week, but their plans to spark a confrontation with Jewish residents of the 'Peace House' and IDF soldiers were upset, as local Arab residents kicked them out of the city.
The activists had arrived with cameras and the flags of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), hoping to spark clashes with Jews in Peace House, the Hevron building that in early March finally was recognized by the Supreme Court as having been duly purchased by its Jewish owners, after a six-year-long trial and a ten-year-long struggle.

  • Wednesday, April 02, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
From WAFA:

President Abbas signed letters of accession to the following 15 multilateral treaties and conventions:

  1. The Four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and the First Additional Protocol
  2. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations
  3. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations
  4. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in armed conflict
  5. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
  6. The Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land
  7. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
  8. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties
  9. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
  10. The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
  11. The United Nations Convention against Corruption
  12. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
  13. The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid
  14. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
  15. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Of course, in areas under Palestinian Arab control most of these treaties are routinely and egregiously violated. Racial discrimination, violation of children's rights, women's rights, torture, and corruption? Check, check, check, check and check.

But, of course, Abbas doesn't intend to protect his citizens from their Arab leaders, but to use these conventions as an excuse to slam Israel. We've seen this numerous times, as they use the language of human rights to damn Israel while denying their own people those same rights.

Palestinian Arabs are the world's foremost experts at weaponizing human rights.


  • Wednesday, April 02, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
Every year, Americans for Peace Now adds  its own bizarre Haggadah inserts to be read by its fanatic members at their Seders.



This year's includes "This Pesach, let us learn to love living within the lines -- Green Lines, and other necessary boundaries. Let us embrace the spirit of dayenu. By ensuring “enough” for everyone, may our own abundance endure."

Yes, the Peace Now Haggadah demands hundreds of thousands of Jews to leave their homes and virtually every single Jewish holy site, like the Kotel, which is outside the "Green Line" that they have decided is "necessary." Much of the very land that God brought the Children of Israel to - celebrated in the very same "Dayenu" song - is off-limits to the "rabbis" of Peace Now.

No land swaps here!

Last year's was worse. It includes:
Victims of abuse often become abusers themselves. The Torah commands us "No!" Don't be an abuser. 36 times the Torah tells us "do not oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

Despite all those warnings, our national homeland, Israel, has become an oppressor to another people. Palestinians living in the West Bank do not have freedom of movement. Israel rules their lives with checkpoints, refusing to allow construction in Area C, subjecting them to arbitrary military law. They have no representation and no voice in the government that controls their lives.

Some Palestinians compare the Israeli Occupation to a Nazi regime. We know that's not true. We know that such a comparison is ignorant.

But what if they compare us to Pharaoh?

Pharaoh ruled over us with a harsh hand in Egypt. We must not do the same to others.

We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. We must not become Pharaoh in Palestine.
Pharaoh, let us remember, tried to kill all Jewish boys and thereby destroy the Jewish people. He enslaved an entire people, quite literally, forcing them to do hard labor. He behaved virtually exactly like the Nazis. Why is comparing Israel to Pharaoh an appropriate analogy while the one to Nazi Germany is out of bounds?

Perhaps because Peace Now "rabbis" aren't above twisting the words of the Torah for their own political ends.

This isn't as bad as the "Jewish Voice for Peace Haggadah" but clearly the Peace Now Haggadah inserts - which used to at least acknowledge Arab terror attacks during the intifada - is moving in that direction.
From Ian:

In Dramatic Gambit, Abbas Dumps U.S.-Brokered Talks and Heads to UN
Back in the Middle East, Palestinian gambits at the UN have been seen as corroding the basic framework of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The land-for-peace formula requires the Israelis to give up tangible, functionally irreversible concessions in exchange for Palestinian commitments. The fear has always been that the Palestinians will negotiate only as long as they can extract territory or prisoners, and that they will then pocket what they’ve gained and walk away. Abbas’s moves seem set to confirm those fears.
The bait-and-switch – pocketing three releases and then walking away – seems to prove the point, and had actually been flagged as a possibility by Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon in recent days. Unilateral moves at the UN also by definition violate Palestinian commitments under the Oslo Accords, which prohibit “any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.” Israel bought and sealed those obligations at the cost of both territory and other functionally irreversible concessions.
The upshot is that the Palestinians seem to be abandoning not just current negotiations, which the Israelis sought to secure with prisoner releases, but the entire Oslo framework, for which the Israelis gave up territory over decades. The result risks deepening skepticism toward the fundamental peace process framework.
Kerry should 'drop the delusions,' says prominent US journalist
Washington Post editorial page deputy editor Jackson Diehl penned a piece Monday titled "John Kerry’s departure from reality."
Among other things, Diehl said the U.S. should "concede that a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace isn’t possible now and look for more modest ways to build the groundwork for a future Palestinian state."
"In short, drop the delusions," Diehl writes.

Diehl's words come several months after Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon found himself in hot water following comments about Kerry's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In January, Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Ya'alon as deriding Kerry's Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts as naive and foolhardy, and calling Kerry "obsessive" and "messianic."
This Arab man is against the release of Israel's Palestinian prisoners
Easy-going and quiet-spoken, Orhan Turk, 37, is an unlikely hard-liner. But as diplomats work feverishly around the clock to salvage the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which would include the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, Turk is fervently hoping they’ll fail.
Turk is an Arab Israeli. "We're Muslims," he says, "but just regular" — he prays but is not particularly observant.
Sabriya, his older sister, was Israel's heavy-weight boxing champion, "just like Mike Tyson," Turk says proudly. When he was 12 and she was 21, Sabriya was one of seven people killed by Mahmud and Muhammad Halaby, Gazan brothers dispatched by Hamas to Tel Aviv with explicit instructions to kill Arabs and Jews.

  • Wednesday, April 02, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
My RSS feeds were broken over the past few days. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of EoZ fans who use newsreaders like Feedly and who subscribe to email digests did not get to see some good and important posts, and this weekend in particular had some very notable ones.

Here is a roundup of what you may have missed.

A fun Twitter conversation with a terror apologist/anti-Israel leftist 

And its followup:
Where a prominent anti-Israel ideologue makes the mistake of insulting me on Twitter.
Because it would be terrible to actually sponsor something that makes Jews look like they ever suffered.
A tour de force by Bob Knot, and the most popular post of the week.
Saving the world, again.

The paper of record.
Amazing how that works out.
Darn sheep!

But I thought they had nothing against Jews!







But who listens to what they say, anyway?






  • Wednesday, April 02, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
The International Criminal Court has a list of crimes that are within its mandate to prosecute. The general categories of these crimes are:


  • The crime of genocide;
  • Crimes against humanity;
  • War crimes;
  • The crime of aggression. (this has not yet been defined.)


The Rome Statute details the specific crimes that are applied. For genocide:

  • Killing members of the group;
  • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
  • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
  • Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
  • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The first seven crimes against humanity:
  • (a) Murder;
  • (b) Extermination;
  • (c) Enslavement;
  • (d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
  • (e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
  • (f) Torture;
  • (g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;

War crimes include such obvious examples as:

  • Wilful killing;
  • Torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments;
  • Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health;
  • Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly;
  • Compelling a prisoner of war or other protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power;
  • Wilfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial;
  • Unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement;
  • Taking of hostages.
  • Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities;
  • Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives;
  • Intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, as long as they are entitled to the protection given to civilians or civilian objects under the international law of armed conflict;
  • Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;
  • Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives;
  • Killing or wounding a combatant who, having laid down his arms or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion;

You can see a pattern - the worst most heinous war crimes are listed.

But among all these terrible crimes that are spelled out explicitly by the Rome Statute is this one:


  • The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.


Keen eyed observers will note that this is a huge amplification of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which stated "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." By adding "directly or indirectly" it is obvious that the Rome Statute has changed what was originally intended to put a stop to the WWII practice of states actively moving part of their unwilling population into a territory, and instead it was designed for one reason only: to explicitly call Jews moving to their ancestral lands a war crime.

There is no better example of a sui generis law than this.

How did the idea of Jews voluntarily moving to almost completely empty spaces and building houses turn into a war crime on the par of torture or taking hostages? How could  the writers of the Statute allow, as far as I can tell, this to be the only part that is not mentioned explicitly by the Geneva Conventions?

It all started in 1999, when the Rome Statute was being drafted. On August 10, 1999, a group of Arab nations -Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen - drafted this text to be added to the Statute:

The perpetrator, directly or indirectly:
(a) Induced, facilitated, participated or helped in any manner in the transfer of civilian population of the Occupying Power into the territory it occupies.
Given the source, it is quite obvious that this was meant to create an international law that would only be used against Israel....when the time was right.

 The US fought against it and proposed its own wording that would limit it to real war crimes:

1. That the act took place in the course of a military occupation with respect to territory where authority of a hostile army was actually established and exercised.
2. That the accused intended to effect the compulsory transfer, on a large scale, of parts of the population of the Occupying Power into such occupied territory.
3. That the accused effected such transfer of nationals of the Occupying Power into such occupied territory.
4. That the accused intended that such transfer would endanger the separate identity of the local population in such occupied territory.
5. That the transfer worsened the economic situation of the local population and endangered their separate identity. 
6. That the transfer was without, and the accused knew it was without, lawful justification or excuse. 
The US is clearly interpreting the Fourth Geneva Convention Article 49  according to its original written intent, not the joke interpretation that Israel-haters have been using that has now gained currency.

Being a committee, the US text was rejected and the Arab text was watered down, with the result being the wording we showed above.

The Geneva Convention definition  was never tested in any international court as to whether it could apply to Israel and the disputed territories. The ICC's Rome Statute, however, has elevated what was clearly not the intent of Geneva into defining "Jews building houses" as a war crime.

The Arab countries that sponsored this change to Geneva couldn't directly prosecute Israel in the ICC, because it is not their right to do so. Only a state member of the ICC that is the victim of "war crimes" can do that.

Now when you fast forward to today, where Mahmoud Abbas is renewing his threats to go to the ICC, we see the culmination of a process that began in 1999 - during the Oslo process, when it appeared that there might be a Palestinian Arab state sooner rather than later. But even so, the moves by the PLO to get accepted as a state by the UN had this specific idea in mind.

Anyone looking at the situation today can see how the Arab initiative of 1999 was meant to play out eventually - a goal that is now in reach.

It is obvious that this was a long-term strategy by the Arab states to damn Israel. This is only one example of Arab strategy and patience, attributes that the West doesn't understand.

Their goal to destroy Israel is not meant to play out in months or years, but over decades. Western-style democracies think instead in terms of sound bites and election cycles, and they simply cannot think the way that Arabs do.

Over time, this proves to be a fatal shortcoming.
  • Wednesday, April 02, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
From AFP:
More than 150,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011, a monitoring group said in a new toll released on Tuesday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had documented the deaths of 150,344 people, 51,212 of them civilians, including nearly 7,985 children.

The group said 37,781 members of the armed opposition had been killed in the fighting, including militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front.

A total of 58,480 regime forces, including more than 35,000 soldiers had also been killed.

Among those killed fighting on the government side were 364 members of Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement, the Observatory added.

Another 2,871 people were recorded as having died but their identities remained unknown, the group said.
But it isn't a high priority. Much more important to pressure Israel to release murderers for "peace."

Tuesday, April 01, 2014

  • Tuesday, April 01, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Egypt Independent:

Omar Abul Maged, a 31-year-old farmer, never imagined he would one day be in prison for naming his donkey after the defense minister.

However, the Qena Misdemeanor Court has now sentenced him to a year over charges of “humiliating the military” for naming his donkey “Sisi,” after the recently resigned military chief Abdel Fatah al-Sisi who is due to run for presidential elections after overthrowing Egypt's first democratically elected president Morsy on 3 July.

Abdul Maged's satirical way of protesting against the military-led government began in 20 September 2013 when the pro-Morsy Abul Maged was riding his donkey through his village, called Ashraf in Qena province, covering the donkey’s body with a poster of al-Sisi and putting a military-style cap over the donkey’s head.

The police, when notified of this act from anti-Morsy villagers, arrested Abul Maged along with his donkey and after six months in custody, the court issued its verdict on Sunday.
What is the donkey's sentence?
From Ian:

The ISM: Now Recruiting Human shields
If you've got a hankering to be used , abused and even sacrificed by terror supporters, this is your chance. Training will be held (where else?) in Berkeley.
The head of the Northern California International Solidarity movement Paul Larudee has been under fire recently by his anti-Israel peers, who have accused him of everything from financial impropriety, to political showboating. He has been kept at arms length by those alarmed by his allegiance to Iran, his support of violence as well as his ties to notorious anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon. Its not clear whether the disagreement is truly philosophical in nature, or if its simply politically expedient to distance oneself from those with clear ties to terror.
Paul has been desperately trying to recapture a place for himself in the anti-Israel movement Its hard to feel sorry for Larudee, who helped organize the failed Flotilla, and the failed Global March to Jerusalem.
Anne Bayefsky: Obama's foreign policy failures lead to disaster at UN
Then consider the Council’s resolution on the “Syrian Golan.” The Council declared that it was “deeply concerned at the suffering of Syrian civilians in the occupied Syrian Golan due to the…violation of human rights by Israel.” The resolution didn’t mention the suffering of Syrian civilians due to the violation of human rights by Syria.
The fact that Syrians flee to the Golan in order to be saved by Israeli doctors from the wounds inflicted by their own government was also mysteriously missing. The Syrian Golan resolution even complained that because of Israel, Syrians are failing to visit “their relatives in the Syrian motherland.” In the UN human rights world, only the United States voted against.
Behavior at the Council does clarify that the demonization of Israel at the U.N. is really about denying Jewish self-determination and encouraging the ultimate destruction of a Jewish state.
Carlos the Jackal fined for anti-Semitic comments
The international terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal was ordered to pay a fine for anti-Semitic comments directed at a prison official in France.
The Venezuelan, whose name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, was fined $3,500 on Monday for calling the female prison official “Israeli,” a “Zionist” and a “dirty Jew” during his appeal last May. He denies using the term dirty Jew, the French news agency AFP reported.

  • Tuesday, April 01, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
Literally every day that a few dozen Jews talk a tour of the Temple Mount, the Arab press has front-page headlines about how "extremists" and "settlers" are 'storming," "breaking into Al Aqsa" or "desecrating" the area.

Today's quiet visit was decried by Ma'an and Free Palestine as well as media in Egypt and the UAE - dozens of articles altogether.

Here are some of the photos of the terrible event:


I especially like the three violent extremists in the front of this group:

One Arab press source said that the "settlers" were walking around "provocatively"and that as soon as they exited the area they erupted in "Talmudic dances."

As reported in the last linkdump, a Waqf official reportedly assaulted one of these "stormers".

  • Tuesday, April 01, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
PMW reports:

The Palestinian Authority's only reason for agreeing to and continuing the peace negotiations with Israel is to bring about the release of prisoners, Fatah's spokesman Ahmad Assaf has indicated. Stating that the PA "blackmailed" Israel to release the prisoners, Assaf explained that by virtue of the PA's membership in the UN, the PA is able to threaten Israel with taking it to the International Criminal Court. Assaf maintains that to prevent the PA from doing so, Israel agreed to release 104 prisoners, most of them serving life sentences for murder.



Our membership in the UN is also a weapon. And that's an important card. It's a weapon that's in our pocket. I didn't use it on day one. I didn't say as soon as I got membership in the UN, that I want to go to the International Criminal Court - no. We've been waving it around for two years now: We've obtained the release of the prisoners, we blackmailed [Israel], that is, in quotation marks, and we've taken important positions because we have a card that we're waving around.
[Official PA TV, March 19, 2014)

Nabil Shaath, Fatah MP and Central Committee member and Commissioner of International Relations stated in November 2013 that "due to the prisoners (of whom only half have been released) [parentheses in source], we haven't stopped negotiations and haven't petitioned the UN." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 30, 2013]

Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Shaath said that [the day] the State of Palestine obtained recognition as a non-member state of the UN was without doubt a day that led to a great development in the world's view of our people's rights, after this [Palestinian] people decided to declare its statehood in the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital. Likewise, he noted that there is much to gain from this recognition, from which we will strive to benefit soon, by joining all international agreements and institutions that require no more than a request to join, and this will be translated shortly into a request to join 35 international conventions, the first of which is the Rome Convention.

Shaath emphasized that the leadership did not move forward on joining international organizations [until now] for one reason - which is ensuring the release of the remaining veteran prisoners who were arrested by Israel before the Oslo Accords, and that the leadership is awaiting their release."

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 2, 2013]

We pretty much knew all this already:


But that won't stop the US from pressuring Israel to continue the facade.


From Ian:

Kerry’s “Last Chance” Diplomacy Implodes
Continually crying that this is the “last chance” for peace is not only inaccurate—diplomats have been saying the same thing for decades and have always been wrong, since peace will come the day the Palestinians give up their illusions about re-writing history and not one day sooner—it is also the sort of sentiment that rationalizes the actions of extremists who don’t want peace on any terms.
It is true that many Israelis worry about the long-term consequences of the current impasse which leaves the West Bank in limbo while Hamas-ruled Gaza functions as the independent Palestinian state in all but name. But as Diehl says, the alternative to Kerry’s apocalyptic warnings was an embrace of the reality of a conflict that couldn’t be solved but might be managed. Measures aimed at giving the Palestinians a bigger stake in an improved economy and better governance wouldn’t have cut the Gordian knot of Middle East peace but would have provided Abbas and his Fatah Party a reason to keep a lid on the territories as well as more of an incentive to think about preparing the way for eventual peace. Instead, Kerry has brought Abbas to the brink where he feels he has no alternative but to give the back of his hand to a negotiation that he never wanted to be part of in the first place. If violence in the form of a third intifada (perhaps funded in part by Iran via aid to Islamic Jihad or Hamas) follows, then it should be remembered that it was Kerry who set a potentially tragic series of events in motion.
Peace process as an obstacle to peace
The "peace process" has been turned – by the Israelis, Palestinians, Americans and in some sense the Europeans too – into a sort of independent diplomatic entity, whose ethical and political rhetoric is more important than its deeds, whose outward appearance conceals not only real inaction but sometimes even worse – deeds which clearly contradict peace itself. The peace process deludes us, and therefore calms us too, to believe that peace will certainly come. It induces tolerance which is eventually complete passivity.
For the sake of illustration, let us recall the short and efficient peace process between Israel and Egypt, two countries which waged major, bloody wars against each other. This peace process began dramatically with Egyptian President Sadat's visit to Israel in November 1977,and less than a year later the sides already agreed upon the main principles at Camp David. A withdrawal, demilitarization, uprooting communities and opening embassies. The agreement itself was signed several months later. And this peace agreement has lasted more than 35 years now.
Suddenly, it’s 1947
Recently I had a discussion with a visitor from Mars. He said that he found it difficult to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It went like this:
VFM: What do the Israelis want?
Me: They want the Palestinians to stop trying to kill them. In return, they will give them some of their very small homeland for a new Arab state. But they can’t get the Palestinians to agree to take it.
VFM: The Palestinians want a state, and the Israelis want to give it to them? But why won’t the Palestinians take it?
Me: Because they won’t take it unless the Israelis agree that the part that they don’t give them belongs to the Palestinians too.

VFM: That doesn’t sound fair. I suppose the Palestinians must be very powerful in order to demand so much.
Me: No, actually Israel is much stronger militarily and economically.
VFM: Then what’s the point in talking to them?
Me: Ask John Kerry.

  • Tuesday, April 01, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
A writer for Jordan's Addastour has discovered that Jews have been wrong all along.

Ismail al-Sharif reveals to the world that Solomon's Temple was never in Jerusalem. It was built halfway around the world, in the Solomon Islands.

His proof?

There is a video of the islanders saying Shema, which i found:



And some people say that Solomon's Temple is in the middle of a jungle in the island of Malaita.



Al-Sharif notes that this is not so far-fetched. After all, the Koran tells us, King Solomon controlled demons who could whisk him to anywhere in the world.

The writer notes that there are other theories as to where the Temple was - Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and he claims a Jewish encyclopedia his father read once said it was on Mount Zion outside Jerusalem built of wood covered in fabrics (which sounds like someone got the Temple and the Mishkan/Tabernacle mixed up.) Either way, he asserts, the idea of a Temple in Jerusalem is a complete myth and the Jews made it up in order to expel the Muslims from their third holiest spot.

So he wouldn't mind if archaeologists explore the area, right?

Well, not quite. Al Sharif's suggestion is that the Arab League pay for archaeologists to find proof of the Temple anywhere in the world outside Jerusalem, in order to prove once and for all that Jews are liars.

Arab media - where every day is April Fools Day.

In case you are interested, a journalist went to the Solomon Islands a couple of years ago to track down the story:

There's one man in particular, named Frank Diafae , who lives in a village called Fuondo, a little north of the capital, and he considers himself to be a keeper of this archaeological site that he thinks contains evidence of some Jew that might have arrived, he says some 2,700 years ago or so - it's quite an elaborate theology, ethno-theology. But he's probably the most vocal proponent of the idea that some Jew arrived on the island a long time ago. He doesn't have specific archaeological, what we would call modern scientific evidence of this, but he certainly believes it. And what's interesting, when you travel across the island, is to find it echoed in other places, similar mythologies or things that where people talk about ancestors. And it's easy to understand with Jews having a kind of a lineal descent and an oral history that's very powerful. The idea of ancestors which is common in many religions. But I just felt that they had quite an affinity.

I went with Frank who led me to his Temple site, which is definitely an archaeological site. There are rocks piled up there, about four hours walk into the jungle, a very difficult walk in fact and there was clearly a settlement there or some kind. Really nobody credible has spent any time looking at it, but it was certainly striking to see that there was something there that he was convinced was evidence of a mythological past.

...
  • Tuesday, April 01, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
In 2011, the Egyptian government banned export of palm fronds, claiming that it was meant to protect the trees from overharvesting. However, it was obvious from the statements of officials at the time that the move was aimed specifically at Jews who require the branches, called lulavim, for the fall holiday of Sukkot.

At the time the harvesters of palm trees complained at how much money they would lose.

It appears that they decided to do something about it.

According to Egyptian media today, a lulav smuggling ring has been busted.

The Agriculture Ministry found evidence that lulavim were smuggled to Jordan, under the label "mangoes" or "accessories." From Jordan they were then sent to either Israel or to something called the "Israeli Center" in New York.

Six officials responsible for quarantining illegal exports have been suspended from their jobs.

The articles explain, quite wrongly, that Jews decorate their homes and synagogues with the palm fronds, which they say symbolize the palm fronds the Jews took with them out of Egypt.


  • Tuesday, April 01, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
During these past few months, BDS has jumped the shark.

Last month's "Israel Apartheid Week" was a bust; the tide on college campuses is turning against the Israel-hating fanatics, a major campaign to stop The Rolling Stones and Neil Young from playing in Israel failed miserably, the Sodastream/Scarlett Johansson episode blew up in BDSers' faces, and the major players who keep pushing BDS have found themselves more marginalized. Even Israel's most strident critics are also criticizing BDS fanatics.  Hell, even Islamic Jihad wants to do business with Israel.

Up until now, the PA leadership has been against BDS as well.

But the same leaders who realized 50 years too late that they should have accepted the 1947 partition plan, with their exquisite sense of timing, may be about to board the BDS ship - right when it is starting to sink.

From Middle East Monitor:

Mohammed Shtayyeh, a member of Fatah's Executive Committee, has called for a full local, regional and international economic boycott of Israel to oblige it to withdraw from the occupied Palestinians territories.

"Israel has to pay the price for its occupation in order to feel its burden," he said while delivering a speech at a conference held to support the Palestinian crops against settlement food production in the local market.

Since the Palestinian and Israeli economies are interrelated, Shtayyeh called upon the Palestinian Authority leadership to take tangible steps regarding the boycott. "It is not possible for us to call for the world to boycott Israel, while our annual imports from Israel are worth $5 billion," he said.

This means that, "We import 90 per cent of our needs from Israel." He also said that 70 per cent of Palestinian exports go to Israel.

Shtayyeh gave examples of other boycotts from recent history, such as Indians who boycotted British goods, African Americans who boycotted buses in Montgomery in the state of Alabama, as well as the Arab boycott of Israel during the 1987 Intifada.

For the time being, Shtayyeh called for spreading awareness among Arab businessmen who invest in Israel without knowing that it harms Palestinian interests. He said that there are 596 international firms, including many owned by Arabs, investing in Israel.

He also hailed the popular international efforts in raising the tactic of boycott. "This has started to give positive responses," he said. "Dozens of European and American firms have announced their boycott of Israel," adding that, "a large number of artists have refrained from performing in Israel."

Shtayyeh is getting his news from the BDS dinosaur sites. Indeed, in 2010, the Pixies canceled their show in Israel as a protest of Israeli policies, in what was hailed as a major BDS victory.

This year, they are playing in Israel.

Timing is everything, but since Fatah leaders refuse to read any news from sources that contradict what they want to believe, they are always going to be a few years behind in seeing what is happening right in front of them.


Monday, March 31, 2014

  • Monday, March 31, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon
I noted in February that only ten nations sent their congratulations to Iran on the anniversary of its revolution.

April 1 is the anniversary of the actual establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran. (No fooling.) And so far, only one nation seems to have congratulated Iran on this occasion - Jordan:

King Abdullah II sent two cables to Iranian Supreme Leaders Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani congratulating them on the anniversary of the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The King wished the Iranian leaders continued good health and the Iranian people further progress and prosperity.
One really has to conclude that Jordan simply does not trust the United States to curb Iran's nuclear and geopolitical ambitions, and that King Abdullah has decided that he needs to play nice with Iran. If Iran/Syria/Hezbollah wins the Syrian civil war, Jordan will be on the front lines, and Abdullah knows a thing or two about surviving in the Middle East.

Trusting the US to commit to helping its allies is no longer part of Jordan's calculus.


From Ian:

Peres: Israel a living monument to the six million
The State of Israel is a living memorial to the lives of six million Jewish men, women and children who were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, President Shimon Peres said Sunday during a ceremony in the Austrian capital.
“The Judenplatz was at the heart of a vibrant, thriving Jewish community, [but] from the 176,000 Jews of Vienna, only 5000 remained after the dark chapter of the Holocaust,” Peres said.
“The State of Israel is our victory. A fortress of triumph against the dark hand of the Nazis. A home to the memory of our six million brothers and sisters. A promise to the survivors of the horrors. A hope for the future of the Jewish People.”
Why are Feminists not Standing up for Israel?
Beyond all this legal and social inequality there is the matter of domestic violence against women. Rape is usually not seen as a criminal offense. Honor killings exist in many of the Arab societies, including that of the Palestinian Authority. It is legal for women to be beheaded, burnt alive, stoned, and tortured for “immoral” behavior such as adultery or having sexual relations with a non-Muslim man. They are also forbidden to marry non-Muslims. On the other hand, polygamy is legal in a number of Arab countries.
Given her scholarship on the history of sexuality, Professor Duggan must surely be familiar with the sad condition of women in all Middle East countries except Israel, where women have full social and political rights. Can we expect her as the leader of ASA, to organize a conference on that sad condition and to call for equality and justice for women in the Arab countries? If not, she may be judged guilty of indifference to the problems of women.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians Condemned for Visiting Nazi Death Camps
But there is also good news. Many readers came to the defense of Professor Dajani and the students who visited the Nazi camps to learn about the Holocaust.
Responding to the criticism, one reader wrote, "Frankly, these responses are theatrical. Academics went on a tour and that's all. There's no need to politicize an insignificant visit."
Another reader who voiced support for the visit said, "We have politicized everything expect for the embezzlement of public funds. Is it okay to steal millions of dollars from the people and not okay to have an academic study mission?"

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 14 years and 30,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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