Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, April 18, 2014

Fighting BDS: Tips and Strategies (Honest Reporting)

A new slideshow by Honest Reporting:

Fighting BDS - Tips and Strategies from HonestReporting

Egyptian "expert" pushes Passover blood libel. Sponsored by Visa.

Hafzi

MEMRI translates an article from Egyptian magazine El Kibar by Firnas Hafzi, a supposed expert on Hebrew who also writes about fashion, beauty and health.

The article breaks new ground in the classic Passover blood libel, recycling the historic medieval blood libels as fact and adding new accusations against Jews.

The article, along with illustrations from antisemitic and even Nazi sources, is online.

Excerpts:

In another stage of the Passover celebrations, [the Jews] combined the preparation of matzas and the offering up of sacrifices with their enmity towards non-Jews, especially Christians, and mixed the blood of one of their victims into the matza [dough. This was done] especially on Passover, Purim and circumcision rituals. They also used blood in acts of sorcery and witchcraft...

...The draining of the victims' blood is done in [several ways. One method is] by means of a barrel lined with needles. This is a barrel the size of the victim's body, with sharp needles that stick into all his limbs when he is placed in it, so that his blood slowly trickles down from every part of his body. This entails excruciating torment, which gives pleasure to the Jews who become drunk with joy at the sight of the blood dripping from the victim's [body] to the bottom of the barrel and into a container placed there to collect it. [Another method] is to slaughter the victim like a sheep and collecting his blood in a vessel, or else slashing the victim's veins in numerous places so that the blood flows from the wounds into the vessels. Then the blood is handed to a rabbi who prepares a matza laced with human blood in order to please the Jewish god, Jehovah, who thirsts for blood. The Jews can rejoice in their holidays only if they eat matza laced with the blood of non-Jews.

Based on this false [narrative] in the Torah and this barbaric behavior anchored in delusions, we can understand what motivates the Zionist leaders to kill Arab children in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine. Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once said, insolently, 'whenever I hear of the birth of an Arab child I cannot sleep at night.'

...The Jewish crimes which came to light throughout history and which were investigated and tried are a drop in the ocean compared to the Jewish crimes that no one knows about. The thousands of children and others who vanish around the world are probably victims of Jewish rituals. Their blood surely lies in Jewish stomachs along with the holiday matzas.

The Jews have tried denying that they drain the blood of non-Jews and use it in their holiday matzas, and they continue to deny it. Rabbi Moussa Abu 'Afia [one of the Jews implicated in the 1840 Damascus blood libel] converted to Islam during the investigation into the [murder] of Father Toma in order to escape punishment. He gave important testimony regarding the Talmud and the directions it contains that hint at crimes and barbarity.

As part of the efforts to deny [the Jewish crimes], Jewish Americans wrote stories about vampires in the 1970s, in order to disassociate themselves from the accusation of sucking human blood and deceive [the mechanisms of] justice. During that period they spent millions on Dracula films, in order to deceive world public opinion. They claimed that those who slaughter children and adults and suck their blood are lunatics and that all this has nothing to do with them and their religious rituals. On February 14, 1964, the [Egyptian] magazine Al-Musawwar published a story about vampires in Colombia after many [Colombian] children had been slaughtered to shed their blood. Neither the magazine nor the investigators in Colombia dreamed that the vampires might be Jews, rather than [people who] sell blood to hospitals.

Out of hundreds of millions of Arabs, I cannot find a single one denouncing these lies and incitement.

We know from past experience that such naked antisemitism in Arab media cannot be solved by merely publicizing it. Most Arabs are not even aware that there is anything offensive about describing Jews as murderous bloodsuckers.

However, a major advertiser for Al Kibar is Visa, with this ad popping up on most articles and shown on the main page:

I emailed to Visa's media relations departments for Egypt (nbaradhy@visa.com) , the US (globalmedia@visa.com) and Europe (europeanmedia@visa.com).

Dear sir or madam,

Visa Middle East is a major advertiser for Egypt's El Kebar magazine. Every online article seems to pop up your ad for the FIFA World Cup promotion.

The current issue includes a sickeningly antisemitic article by Firnas Hafzi that calls Jews "vampires," that claims that Jews kill Christian children to drink their blood and mix them with Passover matzah, and that the Dracula story was made up by Jews to deflect from people realizing that they are the ones who suck people's blood.

And that is just the beginning.

The article is here, the translation is here. Your ad is linked from the front page of the El Kebar website and pops up when viewing this vile antisemitic article.

I would hope that now that you are aware that your brand is being associated with the most disgusting kinds of incitement, that you will not only drop all sponsorship of this magazine but also demand that El Kebar issue a strong apology for publishing this filth.

What do you plan to do about this, and when?

I am a news blogger with thousands of readers, and I am writing about this article and your sponsorship of it.

I look forward to your speedy reply.

I urge you to write to Visa as well.

Here is a chance to make a difference.

(h/t Irene)

UPDATE: Visa responds.

04/17 Links Pt2: Ed Miliband is No Friend of Israel; More Flights to T.A.; SodaStream Stocks Surge (update)

From Ian:

A perplexing rewriting of history

“The Encyclopaedia of Jewish-Muslim relations from their origins to the present day” was launched in November 2013. There is a more modest English version, published by Princeton.
Critics such as the authority on Sephardi Jews, Professor Shmuel Trigano, have charged that the encyclopedia is nothing but a work of propaganda. It is all the more insidious because so much money has been spent on its promotion. Unusually for a book, the encyclopedia has a website all to itself and was the subject of a TV series on the French channel Arte.
Among the sponsors are The Alliance of Civilisations (co-sponsored by Spain and Turkey, and adopted as a UN initiative which excludes Israel from its Council of Friends), whose task is to change the ‘narrative’ by promoting the Spain of the Three Religions, the Andalusian Golden Age, and so forth.
As far as Arab collaboration with the Nazis is concerned, Dr. Roth accuses Henry Laurens, the author of the two pages on the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, of minimizing his role. There is no mention, says Roth, of the pro-Nazi Palestinian leader Fawzi al Qawuqj, or the Mufti’s broadcast calls for genocide on Radio Berlin, nothing on the Mufti’s creation of the SS Handschar division staffed by Bosnian Muslims, nothing about the part he personally played in condemning 20,000 European Jewish children to the death camps, and nothing about the Mufti having contact with the Nazis as early as 1936.
Regrettably, the Encyclopaedia is typical of the politicization of the study of Islam and its treatment of non-Muslims. Young minds are being brainwashed by a sanitized version of history with a huge promotional budget – replete with distortion, minimization and omission. Are we going to sit back and let it happen?

Iraqi Writer: The Jews Are Behind All Confrontations Worldwide

In an antisemitic article titled "Al Qaeda – a Zionist Product," Iraqi writer 'Amr Hadi Al-'Issawi argued that the Jews viewed other peoples with arrogance, following the directives of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and that they have deceived other peoples –the Arabs in particular – and fed them poison for decades. Al-'Issawi added that the Jews and the Hebrew state are responsible for stoking conflict in all the world's hotspots, and are behind all major events in the world, including the toppling of the constitutional monarchies and the deposing of Arab dictatorships – this, in a bid to transfer control to political Islam and set the entire region ablaze as a prelude to the establishment of Greater Israel.

Obama Apologizes To Muslims For Anti-Jewish Kansas Attacks (satire)

“In is unconscionable that in twenty-first century America a man can, with the pull of a trigger, manage to generate solidarity, even empathy, for non-Muslims,” read the statement. “In the name of all Americans of conscience, we beg the forgiveness of our Muslim countrymen and resolve to work diligently to prevent any cause for sympathy for anyone else, especially Jews.”
Muslim representatives welcomed the apology as a necessary first step. “We would have liked to see a more comprehensive expression of solidarity with our worldview,” said the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Mahder Fahkir. “But this is at least a suitable preliminary indication that we are headed in the right direction, that eventually the non-Muslim establishment will acknowledge that no other religious or ethnic group is worthy of protection. We encourage our non-Muslim co-citizens to embrace their status as dhimmi.”
Other leaders said the statement did not go nearly far enough. “Where is the open condemnation of Israel? Where is the naked justifying of the act as a natural consequence of Jewish behavior?” wondered influential political commentator Max Blumenthal, whose Jewish followers number at least in the teens. “The president squandered a golden opportunity to state openly that violence against Jews can only be blamed on Jews, since nobody else has any agency.”

Lucknow, India shows how entrenched Muslim antisemitism is

Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi is an Indo-Judaic Studies Scholar and Muslim-Jewish Relations Activist, employed as an Assistant Professor in the School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Gautam Buddha University, Greater NOIDA, India.

He writes in Café Dissensus:

I grew up in Lucknow, a major centre of Muslim scholarship and culture, home to prestigious institutions of Islamic studies, Nadwātul Ulamā and Firangi Mahal. Except for a Jewish writer from Ahmedabad, Sheela Rohekar, who publishes in Hindi and has settled in Lucknow, and a few American and Israeli Jewish converts to Hinduism, there are no Jews in the city. Yet they find frequent mention in the Muslim discourse there. The mention is almost always negative in nature. Anti-Israel protests are common in the city and, during the American led invasion of Iraq, flags of Israel and America were drawn on the floor at the entrance to the biggest tourist attraction there, the Shia Muslim monument, Asafi Imambara (also called Bara Imambara), so that nobody could enter it without trampling the flags.

The attitudes of the Muslims of Lucknow towards Jews, like anywhere else in India, except in Mumbai, where they happen to be neighbours, are shaped by secondary sources of information and not as a result of any direct contact with them. The Muslim press in Lucknow is openly prejudiced against them. Its bias against Jews can be illustrated by a number of examples.

My doctoral research on “The Indian Jewry and the Self-Professed ‘Lost Tribes of Israel’ in India”, was misrepresented in the Urdu (the lingua franca of a large number of South Asian Muslims) press as a Zionist conspiracy against Islam aimed at depriving it of its bravest followers, the Pathans/Pashtuns, as they see themselves, by convincing them of their Israelite roots and then persuading them to migrate to Israel and populate the disputed territories there. The Freemason Temple in Hazratganj in Lucknow is perceived by Muslims to be Jewish-owned and that is exactly how it is represented by the Muslim journalists in Lucknow. A movement has been initiated to liberate its building, which used to be an imāmbārā before being leased to the Freemasons, from the alleged Jewish control....

While a Holocaust film retrospective, the first ever in South Asia, was in progress at two universities in Lucknow – the Bābāsāhéb Bhīmrāo Ambédkar University and the University of Lucknow – in September – October 2009, the two most popular Urdu daily newspapers there, Rāshtriya Sahāra and Aag, published stories denying the Holocaust. The articles were largely based on the arguments made by the well-known Holocaust deniers, viz., David Irving, Harry Elmer Barnes, David Hoggan, Paul Ressinier, and Arthur R. Butz. A large section of South Asian Muslims deny that the Holocaust ever took place, or raises doubts about its magnitude and scale, and even if it does acknowledge it as a historical fact, any serious reference to the Holocaust is often accompanied by a comparison with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Maulana Kalbé Sādiq, the veteran Shia cleric, once said in an interview, “…the Bush administration certainly is anti-Islam. This owes, in large measure, to the power of the Zionist lobby in America. Pro-Zionist Jews control large banks, many industries and much of the media in America, and if they leave America, the country will collapse. And it is this lobby, in addition to the extreme right-wing Christian lobby, that is behind the clearly anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim policies of the Bush government.”
...

Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, who was the rector of Nadwatul Ulama in Lucknow and Founding Chairman of the Trustees of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, wrote in his book, Islam and the World (u.d.): “…they [Jews] were destined always to live in subjection to other nations and ever to be exposed to injustice, oppression, chastisement, extradition, troubles and hardships. Political serfdom, oppression and anguish suffered indefinitely had produced in them a typical racial character. They were notorious all over the world for excessive pride of blood and greed. Meek and submissive in distress, they were tyrannical and mean when they had the upper hand. Hypocrisy, deceit, treachery, selfishness, cruelty and usuriousness had become the normal traits of their nature. In the Qur’an we find repeated references to the extent to which they had sunk into degradation in the sixth and the seventh centuries” (pp.22-3).

Because of wonderful organizations like MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch, Muslims in the Arab world are a bit more careful about openly espousing hatred for Jews, instead pretending that they are only against Zionists. When you get out of the Middle East, however, you can often see that Muslim hatred of Jews is endemic.

Aafreedi does end his piece on an optimistic note mentioning a few Indian Muslims who are reasonable and open-minded about Jews. It is always nice to see that there are some Muslims who can think independently and who can shake off the hatred they grew up with, even to a small extent. The New York Times just featured one such tiny group in Gaza which is somewhat more moderate than their fellow Gazans. Certainly such people should be applauded, if for nothing else than their bravery.

But no one should mistake the existence of such small, anomalous pockets of sanity as a trend.

From the World Council of Churches:

Observing Palestinian Prisoners’ Day on 17 April, the World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary expressed solidarity with some 5000 Palestinian men, women and children, languishing in Israeli jails.

Palestinian Prisoners’ Day arises in response to a call from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. In an open letter to the WCC’s member churches issued on Thursday, 17 April, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, the WCC general secretary, said, “As people of faith, we are called to pray for, visit, and tend to the needs of all prisoners, no matter the reason for their detention. For Israel and Palestine, prisoners have taken on even greater significance than in the past.”

“We were disappointed when the government of Israel cancelled the scheduled release of prisoners who have been in Israeli jails even before the Oslo Agreement of 1993,” he said.

Tveit encouraged the WCC member churches to join in calling United Nations member states to insist Israel end arbitrary detentions and torture, and provide medical care to Palestinian detainees. In the letter UN member states were also urged to persuade Israel to abide by the 1955 standard rule of prisoners’ treatment, respect the 4th Geneva Convention and ratify other human right conventions.

In commemoration of the Palestinian Prisoners Day, Tveit invited the churches in the Holy Land to remember Palestinian prisoners through “prayers and acts of solidarity that restore to them their freedom with justice and dignity”.

Every single slander about how Israel treats prisoners is repeated here without any skepticism. And if you look at Tveit's actual letter, you learn even more outlandish things - like this:

Some prisoners have been in Israeli jails since 1948.

Wow, people in Israeli prison for nearly 66 years? How many? What are their names? I'm dying to know how they got that little nugget of information and how much effort they went through to verify that. Because Jesus emphasized how important truth is so it is inconceivable that the World Council of Churches would lie. It would mean that they are a bunch of hypocrites, and that would cause a huge scandal among Christians. So of course it is true. QED.

The WCC also repeats the absurd claim that 750,000 Palestinian Arabs have "faced detention in Israeli jails" since 1967.

The WCC is not merely talking about improving the conditions of Israeli prisons, which are already better than those of most countries. They want Israel to release the prisoners irrespective of their crimes. The WCC has not the slightest concern that some of the prisoners they want to see freed are convicted mass murderers.

Yet surely, the WCC must care about prisoners worldwide, right? I mean, they say "As people of faith, we are called to pray for, visit, and tend to the needs of all prisoners, no matter the reason for their detention," so undoubtedly they have similar press releases about the 2.2 million prisoners in the US, or the 1.5 million in China, or even the 60,000 in Turkey or Egypt or Cuba. Certainly they aren't singling out Israel's less than 5,000 security prisoners, are they?

Oh, yes, they are. Except for letters written on behalf of a couple of dozen Argentinian prisoners in 2000, the WCC has been silent about 99.95% of the prisoners "languishing" in jails worldwide.

What can explain this obsession with Israel, to not only single it out but to lie so egregiously about it? What would make a world church body decide that only the Jewish state is guilty of these laughably inaccurate accusations? How could a church group - men and women of God - write such egregious lies, distortions and blatant discrimination?

It is a real mystery.

(h/t Dexter Van Zile)

04/17 Links Pt1: Daniel Pipes: Antisemite Max Blumenthal Incites Murder of Three in Kansas

From Ian:

Daniel Pipes: "Antisemite Max Blumenthal Incites Murder of Three in Kansas"

Daniel Greenfield suggests that Miller referred here to "a Blumenthal interview on Putin's propaganda channel RT, which he has since defended, in which he claimed that Netanyahu was targeting Ron Paul and Obama." (That interview, from January 2012, can be seen on YouTube.)
Greenfield found in total 382 results for "Max Blumenthal" on vnnforum.com. One discussion is titled "Max Blumenthal is insightful & sometimes funny." Participants at Stormfront, the premier American Neo-Nazi site, mentioned Blumenthal 80 times, often approvingly.
Breivik, it is now clear, intentionally sought to discredit counter-jihadis like me; but Miller gives every appearance of being a true believer inspired in part by Blumenthal's ravings. And so, applying Blumenthal's own standards to him, I wrote the headline of this weblog entry as "Antisemite Max Blumenthal Incited the Murder of Three in Kansas."
Next is for Blumenthal's fellow leftists to denounce him and shun him. But will they?

Two in Thai custody over possible Hezbollah ties

Two Lebanese men suspected of having ties with the terror group Hezbollah were detained in Thailand this week by authorities apparently skittish over possible plans to attack Israelis during the Passover holiday.
Lebanese-French citizen Daud Farhat and Lebanese-Philippine citizen Yousef Ayyad, both who have been on the Thai immigration watch list for possible Hezbollah ties, were taken from their homes in the Bangkok district of Sukhumvit for questioning on Tuesday, Thai daily The Nation reported.

Merah affair: Sister and mother of Islamist terrorist arrested

Most of the suspects have been released, except for three that are still under arrest: Abdelkader Merah, the older brother of the killer, Muhammad Mounir Miskine, a friend, and Fetha Malki, the arms supplier.
The website of the local daily, La Depeche du Midi, reported on Tuesday that the sister was arrested on Monday evening in Toulouse.
The sister, Souad, had been arrested once before for condoning terrorism, after she was secretly recorded – in a conversation with another one of her brothers – saying she was proud of Muhammad. Following the arrest she condemned the seven murders.
The national radio station, Europe 1, said that the mother, Zoulikha Aziri, had also been interrogated for by police two weeks ago, for 24 hours, then released.

Why did Haaretz take down its article on Kansas killer's admiration for Max Blumenthal?

Haaretz, picking up on a piece in the Washington Free Beacon, briefly posted this article yesterday:

According to the Washington Free Beacon, an online news source that describes itself as being "dedicated to uncovering the stories that the professional left hopes will never see the light of day, Frazier Glenn Cross, the Hitler admirer and Klansman who is accused of the murders, often praised Blumenthal's work.

According to the report, a search of the VNN Forum – a prominent white supremacist website run by Cross – finds over 300 references praising Blumenthal's criticism of the State of Israel and American-Jewish support of Israeli policy.

There is no doubt that leftist Israel-haters like Blumenthal give lots of material - and inspiration - for right wing antisemites like Frazier Glenn Cross. Both groups claim, disingenuously, that their criticisms of Israel are meant to defend human rights when it is the other way around - they use the language of human rights to attack the Jewish state, a nation whose record on human rights would be the envy of any other nation at war in history.

Some antisemites see no contradiction between the extreme right and extreme left manifestations of Jew-hatred. Someone named "Rehmat1", for example, has hundreds of comments both on Cross' VNN forum and on Mondoweiss, both linking back to his own blog.

The only difference is that the right-wing antisemites are more willing to admit that they hate Jews. The leftist antisemites prefer to use Israel as a proxy for Jews and are, too often, Jews themselves, which all stripes of Jew-haters love to quote to give their hate an air of authenticity.

Haaretz took down this article very quickly after it was posted online. Why?

Perhaps the reason is that Haaretz has provides at least as much comfort and aid to the VNN antisemites as Blumenthal does!

While Haaretz doesn't seem to be as explicitly praised as Blumenthal was by Cross, according to Mondoweiss, Haaretz itself is mentioned on the VNN site over 11,000 times and Cross mentions Haaretz himself scores of times in his antisemitic rants! (I did not check either the Free Beacon's or Mondoweiss' claims about the number of citations of Blumenthal/Haaretz.)

Haaretz provides at least as much of aid and comfort to antisemites as Blumenthal does, and perhaps that is what prompted it to silently pull this story.

The UN has responded to Israel Ambassador Ron Prosor's letter I reported on demanding that Rima Khalaf be fired:

Rejecting Israeli criticism of Jordanian Rima Khalaf, Head of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), a UN official on Tuesday said Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has "full confidence" in her and in her work.

"The Secretary General has full confidence in her and her ability to do her work," UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric told the daily press briefing.

Israeli UN Ambassador Ron Prosor demanded in a letter to Ban Khalaf's suspension from ESCWA, following her recent public statements and the release of a UN official report which "promotes anti-Israel incitement and anti-Semitism." The 200-page ESCWA report, Prosor claimed, "systematically mentions Israel in almost every chapter, blames it for the failings of the Arab world in all spheres of life, and claims that Israel is the main cause for the divisions among Arab states." Prosor also said the report draws an implicit comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany, arguing that "Israel propagates the concept of the religious or ethnic purity of states, a concept that inflicted on humanity the worst crimes of the last century.

"These accusations represent the epitome of modern day anti-Semitism and cannot be condoned under any circumstances. Ms. Khalaf may have a Ph.D. in Systems Science, but she deserves a Ph.D. in science fiction for her 200-page report filled with conspiracy theories," Prosor said in his letter.

He added "it is unacceptable that inflammatory anti-Israel messages continue to be produced under the banner of the United Nations and using UN resources. By demonizing Israel, Ms. Khalaf is advancing a personal agenda rather than furthering the cause of peace or advancing regional Arab development. Senior UN officials should lead by example and demonstrate tolerance rather than prejudice".

It's easy to have full confidence in her work when she is parroting how the UN has been acting towards Israel since the early 1970s.

On Wednesday, a reporter tried to follow up on the issue, only to be shot down by the open, liberal, transparent UN:

Q: Okay, so something more current, Rima Khalaf? Yesterday you said that the Secretary-General stands behind her, but her… the gist of her argument was that she objects to Israel’s definition as a Jewish State since this is a General Assembly resolution since 1947, does the Secretary-General stand behind that?

Spokesman: I have nothing to add to what I said yesterday.

Work accident! 3 Hamas members killed! Candy time!

From Ma'an:

Three Palestinian men were killed and four others injured in an explosion in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, medical sources said.

A spokesman of the Hamas-run Gaza ministry of health told Ma’an that the circumstances behind the explosion were not clear.

Ashraf al-Qidra added that ambulances evacuated two dead men and one critically injured person. The third victim was pronounced dead shortly after he arrived at the European Hospital in Kahn Younis.

Eight others sustained minor wounds caused by shrapnel. They were in stable condition.

Hamas sources told Ma'an that the victims were members of the group's al-Qassam Brigades militant wing, and were killed while preparing explosive devices.

They were identified as Rami Mishmish, Yousif Thabit and Abu Ashour Hajji.

Hamas' Al Qassam website freely admits that they were killed in a "jihadist military manufacturing unit."

Note that the Gaza ministry of health, which is run by Hamas, knows very well how they were killed but they prefer to say that "circumstances were unclear" in case they can find a way to blame Israel. Sometimes they claim that leftover Israeli ordnance causes injuries and deaths when they don't want to admit that it is from their own people.

Their faces must have been ripped apart by the explosion, because unlike in most cases of "martyrs," the photos of the bodies do not show their faces but only their weapons.

This makes at least 15 Gazans killed by work accidents or Hamas rockets this year, more than have been killed by the IDF.

Anti-Israel resolution fails - in Dearborn!

Dearborn is the epicenter of the Arab community in the US - it was 30% Arab in 2000 and estimated to have a much higher percentage today - so this is pretty impressive. And completely ignored by the Israel-haters.

From The Arab-American News:

The University of Michigan-Dearborn Faculty Congress voted on Monday, March 7 [sic, should be April 7] against a resolution that calls for forming a divestment committee to look into the human rights records of companies that do business with the Israeli military.

After a 30-minute debate, the faculty struck down the resolution in a 23-17 vote with two abstentions. Present faculty members voted via ballot box. The faculty also voted 32-7 against a resolution calling for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The yearly meeting, which was open to the public, was almost exclusively attended by UMD faculty.

The Student Government (SG) had passed the divestment proposal last week. [Actually, the student proposal was to create a committee to look at the topic, there was no call to divestment in the SG resolution, much to the consternation of SJP. - EoZ] According to campus newspaper, the divestment initiative was proposed by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and endorsed by eight student organizations. SG has called for divestment on four previous occasions in 2005, 2006, 2010, and 2012, according to campus newspaper The Michigan Journal.

Dr. John Poster, the chair of the Faculty Senate told The Arab American News that the resolution approved by SG is not reflective of the opinion of the student body because most students are not involved in the student government.

"It is difficult for us to focus on this, while [Syrian President Bashar] Assad has killed more than 100,000 of his own people, while the military in Egypt overthrew a democratically elected government," Poster said. "There is a number of problems in the world, and it is hard for us to focus on Israel only."

The tide has decisively turned against BDS on college campuses, venues that were considered lost causes only a year ago. It is clear that the Israel-haters are noisy and know how to get publicity, but their stunts have no substance behind them.

(h/t Dan C.)

04/16 Links:Dershowitz 'Extreme Left and Extreme Right Have One Thing in Common, They Hate Jews'

From Ian:

Lead, Netanyahu, lead

When Frazier Glenn Cross is convicted of murder for gunning down physician William Corporon, his 14-year-old grandson Reat Griffin, and occupational therapist Terry LaManno, at the Jewish community facilities of Kansas City on Sunday, he will, at the very least, be jailed for life with no possibility of parole. The capital murder charge with which he has been indicted also carries the possibility of the death penalty.
When the gunman who opened fire indiscriminately on Israeli vehicles outside Hebron on Passover eve a day later, killing Baruch Mizrahi, is tracked down and arrested — as he almost certainly will be, given the Israeli security forces’ astounding record of locating West Bank terrorists — he will face a very different set of consequences.

Alan Dershowitz: 'Extreme Left and Extreme Right Have Only One Thing in Common -- They Hate Jews'

Monday on MSNBC's "Ronan Farrow Daily," Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz discussed Sundays tragic shooting outside a Jewish community center in Kansas City:
“When we were kids we learned sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never harm you. That’s a lie, Names hurt. They are horrible, and we shouldn’t be tolerating them in society. But the law under our Constitution can’t move against people simply for expressing views.”
"They praise Hitler and they praise Farrakhan and of corse Farrakhan was one of this guy's heroes along with Hitler and David Duke. Here you have a problem with the extreme left and extreme right have only one thing in common, they hate jews. The extreme left preaches this kind of bigotry as well, people like Farrakhan people within Hamas and Hezbollah and the extreme right."

Why aren’t mainstream Israel critics defending Max Blumenthal?

Max Blumenthal is experiencing what goes around coming around.
Having blamed various critics of radical Islam as well as international Zionism for the 2011 mass murder in Norway, unfairly, Blumenthal now is in focus because the Overland Park shooter was a big fan of Blumenthal’s Jewish money and Israel Lobby conspiracy theories. The shooter was a Neo-Nazi and KKK leader for whom Jewish control of the media and international money was a core belief motivating hatred of Jews. That’s a shared space for anti-Zionists of multiple political ideologies and religions.
Specifically, the shooter focused on Blumenthal’s theory that Jewish campaign donors were trying to buy the 2012 U.S. presidential election for Bibi Netanyahu, as expressed by Blumenthal in a lengthy article and a Russia Today television interview, to which the shooter linked. It’s ugly stuff, but the type of ugly stuff for which Blumenthal has become known.

CNN National Security Analyst: Right More Deadly Than Al Qaeda

Without mentioning reports that the man accused of shooting up a Jewish Community Center over the weekend was apparently a fan of the left's Max Blumenthal, CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen exploited the murders to claim the American Right is more deadly than jihadists.
Today, April 15, just so happens to be the one-year anniversary of Bergen using CNN's airwaves to speculate that right-wing groups might be behind the Boston Marathon bombing. Bergen is apparently using today's hysterical piece of selective, anti-science analysis to balm that embarrassment.
By publishing this junk, CNN is merely doing what CNN has been doing all throughout the failed Zucker-era: trolling the bottom of the barrel for attention. (h/t Alexi)

Chag Sameach!

Wishing a Chag Sameach to my readers!

I will not be blogging until Wednesday night/Thursday morning.

Here is some previous original EoZ artwork from previous Passovers, usually created in less than a half hour: