Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

08/27 Links Pt2: Academic left and Islamists joined at the anti-Israel hip; Who Occupies Gaza?

From Ian:

Obama administration officials spent much of the spring and summer trying to position themselves as grand strategists. The president's West Point speech was the test drive of their revised national security strategy. It cautioned that "our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint, but from our willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences -- without building international support and legitimacy for our action, without leveling with the American people about the sacrifices required." The speech was panned by both the right and the left, precipitating a reconsideration of releasing the National Security Strategy on which it was based (the last was delivered in 2010); it sounds even more laughably self-satisfied in light of the costly mistakes their "restraint" has occasioned in Libya, Syria, and Iraq.
The White House likes to defend its inaction by reiterating that there are no good options. And that is true, although it is not newly true. Windows of opportunity open and close, as Helmut Kohl famously worried about German unification. Options get better and worse with time and with opportunities taken and missed. But the Obama administration's philosophizing is cold comfort to the people experiencing the consequences of our inaction. We should beware buying another whole generation of mistrust from the people of the Middle East by our callous indifference to their problems and solipsistic attempts to ennoble our inaction.
If there actually is an Obama Doctrine -- and it's a debatable point, given the contradictions in the administration's policies -- it is this: Step back, criticize others who step forward, and laud our own moral superiority for doing nothing. Meanwhile, Islamist militias have encircled Tripoli and taken control of the airport. The Western governments that signed the statement encouraging a cease-fire are setting Libya up for continued humanitarian catastrophe and themselves up for another rush-to-the-crime-scene intervention. America is not incapable of devising and executing grand strategy. But the Obama administration evidently is. (h/t Alexi)

Who Occupies Gaza?

There Is No Israeli Siege On Gaza

National Founder of SJP Calls To Silence Jewish Groups The Evening Before The Jewish New Year

University of California at Berkeley professor and founder of the national student group “Students for Justice in Palestine” (SJP) Hatem Bazian announced an “International Day of Action” to call for a complete academic and cultural boycott of Israel on September 23rd- the Eve before the Jewish New Year.
The anti-Semitic nature of the day included calls for “No joint research or conferences with Israeli Institutions, No to University Presidents' Visits to Israel, No Campus Police Training or Cooperation with Israeli Security” in addition to demanding the elimination of all study abroad programs in Israel. The effort is to prevent all academic interaction with the Jewish state and to limit people’s ability to interact with Israel and Israelis.
The attempt to isolate Israel extends to a boycott of Jewish and Israeli on-campus organizations as well. Professor Bazian has also commanded his group to demand “No to University Coordination and Strategizing with the ADL, JCRC, AJC, Stand With US, ZOA, Israeli Consulate to Limit Students Pro-Palestine Constitutionally Protected Activities.”

VIDEO: Gazan Children Cheer For Rockets To Hit America

A video from Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Israeli-Hamas war in July has recently circulated, showing footage that no mainstream American news outlet would dare cover: Gazan children cheering as rockets are fired into Israel, saying they wished the rockets would hit America instead.
CNS News reports:
For Al Jazeera's "America Tonight," foreign correspondent Nick Schifrin reported during an older segment entitled "Israel invades Gaza" on July 17. "Palestinian fighters fire a barrage of rockets," he noted, with two flying towards Tel Aviv. As the camera focused on children clapping and cheering, Schifrin translated, "They tell me they hope they land not on Israel, but in the United States."

Lebanese site Al Ankabout reports that Mufti of the Lebanese Republic, Sheikh Mohammad Rashid Qabbani, said that what Israel did in Gaza "exceeded what Hitler did in his alleged Holocaust against the Jews." He also called for the eradication of Israel for good measure.

For every day of the five years of the Holocaust, far more Jews were killed than the total killed in Gaza over the past 50 days.

But the next one, from Spain, seems to hate Jews even more. From MEMRI:

In a Friday sermon at Azuqueca De Henares, near Madrid, Sheik Saleheoldine El Moussaoui said that the "plundering Jews" were "the masters of treachery and betrayal," and prayed: "Oh Allah, the Most Merciful, count them one by one, and do not spare a single one of them." The sermon was posted on the Internet on August 25, 2014.

Following are excerpts:

Sheik Saleheoldine El Moussaoui: Dear brothers, what is being done to the Muslims in Palestine, in Gaza, as well as in the other Muslim countries – we would have been surprised if it were done by anyone other than the Jews.

But that is their nature. The Jews are by nature treacherous and war-mongering. There can be no peace with the Jews. What peace are you talking about?!
[...]
This is their way of life. The Jews and the Zionists have treachery and killing as their way of life. They are a people of enmity and jealousy, the masters of treachery and betrayal. As Allah described them in the Quran: They want to spread corruption in the land.

The Zionists do not feel alive if they don't spread corruption. They spread corruption in the land. They cannot live without corruption, treachery, and betrayal.
[...]
[Allah] described them as killers, so their killing of our brothers in Gaza and in Palestine should come as no surprise. They killed the prophets, the best among mankind. The best people in the eyes of Allah are the prophets and messengers. Yet they killed them, showing no regard for pacts of protection. Allah said [to the Jews]: "Taste the punishment of the burning fire." This is what awaits them: the torments of the burning fire.
[...]
Oh Allah, support Islam and the Muslims everywhere, and humiliate polytheism, heresy, and the infidels everywhere. Oh Allah, destroy the plundering Jews. Oh Allah, the Most Merciful, count them one by one, and do not spare a single one of them.

Will Spain treat this as seriously as Italy did when one of their imams went on a similar genocidal rant?

More from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Also, check out their new Facebook page.

By Mahmoud A-Zahar, Hamas Leader

Zionist leader Binyamin Netanyahu tried to get the West to believe that the murderous, brutal Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is cut from the same cloth as our noble Resistance. I am here to tell you that such an analogy misses the mark egregiously, because the two organizations are completely different kinds of genocidal, power-seeking, barbaric movements.

For one thing, ISIS seeks to establish a new Caliphate based in Iraq and Syria, whereas Hamas sees our emerging Caliphate as centered on Palestine. That means we do not seek the immediate overthrow of Assad or whichever American puppet claims to run Iraq. We can get to that later. What we seek is the destruction of every Jew between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, and maybe a few hundred thousand more for good measure. The difference is staggering.

Another plane on which we differ involves the identity of our enemies. ISIS has been brutalizing Shiites, Kurds, and Yazidis, while we focus on killing and maiming Jews. It's totally different.

To the uneducated, perhaps the sight of one set of Islamic fundamentalists trying to kill as many of those who do not subscribe to the same exact belief system as possible looks the same as the sight of a different set of Islamic fundamentalists trying to kill as many of those who do not subscribe to the same exact belief system as possible. But there the similarity ends, because our beliefs differ from those of ISIS in a profound way: we claim that the Islamic Palestinian Resistance will liberate Jerusalem from the oppressor crusader Zionists, whereas they claim the honor will be theirs.

In this they are mistaken, but that is beside the point: the point is that there is no comparison between a movement that routinely decapitates and crucifies captives and one that parades suspected traitors through broad daylight and executes them before crowds that include children. We also occasionally drag the bodies of those suspected traitors from the backs of motorcycles, clips of which you will be hard pressed to find ISIS doing on YouTube.

So enough with the facile comparisons of our noble killing machine with the misguided brutes of ISIS. We're a completely different kind of monster.

08/27 Links Pt1: Hamas's "Victory"; UN, How Did Hamas Rockets End Up In Your Gaza Facilities?

From Ian:

Hamas's "Victory"

What is sad is that the Gazans have not yet been able to free themselves from the yoke of Hamas.
The world seems not to understand that Hamas, like ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood, does not exist in a vacuum. It is one cog in the radical Islamist wheel that threatens the Arab and Muslim world and the major cities of Europe.
The Western world also seems not to understand that it has to incapacitate or totally neutralize the countries funding terrorism, such as Iran, Qatar and Turkey, for whom the Palestinian problem is only a pretext on the way to destroying the Western world as we know it and replacing it with only Islam.

Caroline Glick: Embracing the obvious truth

It isn’t hard to understand the truth about Israel and Hamas.
Four-year-old Daniel Tragerman was murdered on Friday afternoon in his home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz by Hamas terrorists.
They shot him with a mortar launched from a school in Gaza’s Zeitoun neighborhood. At the time of the launch, the school was filled with civilians who had fled to the school for shelter.
They fled to the school for shelter because they were forced to vacate their homes.
They were forced to vacate their homes because Hamas terrorists were launching mortars and rockets at Israeli civilian sites, like Daniel Tragerman’s home, from their apartment buildings.
The moral and ideological divide between Israel and Hamas is so self-evident that the only way to ignore it is by embracing and cultivating ignorance.

Times of Israel Live Blog: Ceasefire holds; Israeli officials say Hamas dealt heavy blow

Wednesday, August 27, the first day since an open-ended truce was agreed by Israel and Hamas. Hamas killed two Israelis in a mortar attack just before the truce took effect Tuesday evening, bringing the Israeli death toll in Operation Protective Edge to 70, and Israel struck targets in Gaza including several high-rises where it said Hamas had command centers. Hamas hailed victory in the conflict; Israel’s cabinet was divided on the truce terms, but was not asked to vote on the deal.

"UN, How Did Hamas Rockets End Up In Your Gaza Facilities?" European Group Demands

The European Center for Law & Justice (ECLJ)—the international affiliate of the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ)—today called on the Secretary-General of the United Nations to conduct an independent investigation to determine why UN facilities in Gaza were used to support Hamas operatives in their attacks on Israel. It has been widely reported that Hamas terrorist rockets were unlawfully stored in United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) facilities.
"The law-abiding member nations of the UN deserve the facts—deserve the truth—about why Hamas was permitted to use UN facilities in its unlawful attacks on Israel," said Jay Sekulow, who serves as Chief Counsel of the ECLJ as well as the ACLJ. "The very reputation and legitimacy of the UN and its various arms and agencies are at stake, especially since Hamas is widely recognized as a terrorist organization. What's worse—the return to Hamas of the rockets unlawfully stored in UNRWA facilities strongly suggests that UNRWA employees may be acting in concert and/or cooperating with Hamas operatives in unlawfully attacking a UN member state. That cannot be tolerated and may, in fact, constitute a war crime. At a minimum, it places in question the legitimacy and impartiality of all UNRWA operations in Gaza." (h/t Yenta Press)

89% of Gazans support shooting rockets at Israeli civilians, 16% of French support ISIS (update)

The latest Palestinian Center for Public Opinion poll, released today, asks this question from adults in Gaza.

”Would you please tell us your opinion about the issue of firing rockets at Israel?”

60.3 % said “I strongly support that”

28.6 % said “I support that”

1.4 % said “I oppose that” and

1.0 % said “I strongly oppose that”

8.7% were undecided or answered "I don't know."

Peace is at hand.

Speaking of polls,

One in six French citizens sympathises with the Islamist militant group ISIS, also known as Islamic State, a poll released this week found.

The poll of European attitudes towards the group, carried out by ICM for Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya, revealed that 16% of French citizens have a positive opinion of ISIS. This percentage increases among younger respondents, spiking at 27% for those aged 18-24.

Here's the bizarre part: According to most, only about 10% of France is Muslim.

So even if every single Muslim in France supports Islamic extremists - one in 15 non-Muslims in France do as well!

Either the poll is very flawed, there are many more Muslims in France than being reported, or France is one-messed up country.

(h/t K)

UPDATE: Commenters are pointing out that the source of the poll of France is more than suspect it is the Russian government news agency.

If you go through the mainstream news media during the past month, you will be hard pressed to find the word "Jihadists" or "Islamic extremists" or "Islamists" in reference to Gaza terror groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Even though Hamas seeks an Islamic caliphate. Even though every jihadist group in Gaza wants to destroy Israel completely. Even though they are just as anti-American and anti-West as any of the groups throughout the Middle East. Even though they have been targeting civilians almost non-stop for years.

It doesn't appear to be because ISIS has crowded out the "extremist" label. These terms are used frequently to describe Muslim fighters not only in Syria and Iraq but also in the Sinai and in Libya.

If Hamas would be "resisting" in any Arab country - and in Egypt, their closely related groups are - they would be called "extremist" and "juhadist." Hell, Islamic Jihad calls itself "Jihadist."

But the media refuses to use those labels.

The only possible reason is because the media doesn't want to admit that Israel is facing a jihadist threat. If they did, then what follows is that Israel's response is just as appropriate as any response against jihadists throughout the region. That is unacceptable when the media wants to place responsibility on Israel for reacting to the same types of groups that threaten the entire region.

If there is a more charitable explanation for why groups that are dedicated to terror and destruction and who happily admit targeting women and children aren't being called "extremists," I'd love to hear it.

Yesterday I reported on an unnamed Gaza woman killed, and 20 injured, as Hamas fans shot bullets in the air in celebration of their "victory."

Now a second person has been killed by celebratory gunfire - in Lebanon:

A Palestinian man was killed by stray bullet after celebrations broke out in refugee camps across Lebanon over a long-term truce that ended 50 days of fighting in Gaza, security sources told The Daily Star.

The accidental death of Omar Mohammad, 32, Tuesday night stirred tensions in the sprawling Ain al-Hilweh, the largest of the 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, as the family of the victim started shooting guns in the air in reprisals.

It's a cycle of ~~violence~~ celebration!

Meanwhile, the AP article I linked to yesterday about the first victim has been scrubbed to not mention it anymore. You can still find it in older versions.

Hamas pressure, anyone?

Arabic media says the first victim was 19 and that 50 were injured in Gaza from the gunfire.

(h/t Binyamin)

Woman killed in Gaza - by celebratory gunfire

From AP:

In Gaza City, a 20-year-old woman was killed and several dozen people were wounded by celebratory gunfire after the truce was announced.

The Gaza NGO Safety Office elaborates:

1 Palestinian fatality and 20 injuries as a result of celebratory heavy shooting in the air.

These terrorists sure know how to throw a party!

But wouldn't it be even better if they shoot mortars and Qassam and Grad rockets in the air? After all, as we know, they are only ineffective firecrackers anyway.

I wonder if any of the remaining news crews in Gaza will interview the relatives of the dead woman, and show the maimed victims in the hospital, along with sad music and tearful parents raging against the heartless people who did such a thing. Because every life is equally precious, and it is the journalist's duty to create a compelling story around each one, so such things should never happen again.

I mean, it would be racist to say that Arabs killing Arabs isn't as tragic as Jews killing Arabs, and Western journalists are definitely not racist - they are progressive! Civilians accidentally killed during celebrations are even more tragic and ironic than civilians accidentally killed while terror targets are being hit, aren't they? They wouldn't just leave the victims nameless - that would be cruel!

Any journalist would line up to document such a perfect, made for TV story.

Right?

(h/t Irene)

08/26 Links Pt2: Exposing Edward Said as academic fraud; Survivors for Hamas – Really?

From Ian:

Exposing Edward Said as academic fraud

In Making David Into Goliath, Joshua Muravchik dissects many of the myths and frauds that Edward Said built up around himself. And yet the myths can never be entirely destroyed because of the crucial role that he played in the alliance between the New Left and Third World nationalists. His ideas helped assign intellectual credibility to the intertwining of two reactionary totalitarian movements struggling to remain relevant by denouncing every newer system of government and thought.
Like many racists, Edward Said’s denunciations of others were really expressions of his own limitations. Said condemned his academic enemies for failing to see the diversity of the east, when it was Said who refused to see the diversity of the west. Edward Said reduced his opponents to crude stereotypes while accusing them of reducing Arabs and Muslims to crude stereotypes.
Edward Said accused his opponents of constructing colonialist myths, but his obsession with Israel led him to promote a colonialist myth in which his imperialist ancestors were the true indigenous people and the Jews, the majority of whom were Middle Eastern refugees, were foreign usurpers.

Anti-Israel Activist Ali Abunimah Accused of ‘African-Hating’ After Comparing President Obama to White Supremacist

An outspoken anti-Israel activist has found himself in the cross-hairs after comparing comments made by President Obama to white supremacist rhetoric.
Late last week, Ali Abunimah, the founder of the controversial Electronic Intifada blog, tweeted, “When Obama says Israel is in a ‘tough neighborhood,’ he’s echoing the white supremacist rhetoric that justifies the killing of Black men.”
Responding to the tweet in a Facebook post, Dumisani Washington, Director of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, said Abunimah was himself guilty of racism.
“In typical Arab supremacist, African-hating fashion, Electronic Intifada founder Ali Abunimah compares ‘Black men’ to genocidal, misogynistic, child slaughtering jihadists like Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” Washington wrote, “Maybe he thought we were too stupid to notice.”
In an email to The Algemeiner Washington added, “Thank you, Mr. Abuminah for proving once again that there is no difference between White supremacists and Arab supremacists – right down to the enslavement and subjugation of Black people. Oh yes, go find your own narrative and stop trying to steal ours.”
Another African-American activist and commentator, Chloé Valdary, also took exception to Abunimah’s assertion.
Describing Abinumah’s comment as “extremely offensive,” Valdary told The Algemeiner, “Unless Abunimah doesn’t think racist bigoted organizations like Hamas and ISIS threaten Jews, he’s essentially justifying Arab supremacism by claiming that its victims are racists.”
“But in the same way blacks were threatened by white supremacists,” Valdary said, “Jews are also threatened by Arab supremacists. Abuminah’s inversion of reality and colonialist revision of history does not change that fact.” (h/t MtTB)

Finance Minister Yair Lapid at the dock 17 in Germany (h/t dabney)

Arab writer claims "Zion" is Arab

Salah al-Sayer, writing in Al Arabiya, says that "Zionism" refers to the Jews wanting ownership of Mount Zion, that ancient Arab mountain.

He says that there are Arab families with the name "Zion" who originally lived on the mountain.

So I researched further and found an article by an apparent member of that family, insisting that it is an ancient Arab name and that there is also a "Zion" castle on the Syrian coast. The Jews, under the name of the Elders of Zion, usurped the honorable Arabic name of Zion.

There is indeed a castle in Syria known today as the Citadel of Saladin, but originally called Sahyun, the Arabic equivalent to Zion. It was apparently built by the Byzantines on an old Phoenician fortress site and much enlarged by the Crusaders; I cannot determine who named it Sahyun or when.

Wikipedia notes that while the Mount Zion did apparently have that name before it is mentioned first in Samuel II 5:7, it is pretty clear that the Muslims took the name from the Jews well over a thousand years later, and not from the Jebusites.

In fact, Mohammed referred to the Kaaba in Mecca as "Zion" to supplant Jerusalem as "the new Zion."

It is always amusing to see Muslims - whose religion is based more on Judaism than anything else - claiming that Judaism stole from them.

The "genuine facts" of Mira Bar Hillel

Mira Bar Hillel is a reporter about property or something like that for The Evening Standard. Yet her self-avowed anti-semitism and crazed hate for Israel has also apparently qualified her for writing at The Independent as well, as some sort of expert, since she has a Hebrew name.

She trolls me often and I ignore her, since it is clear that she is starved for attention. But a little Twitter conversation from today caught my eye.

This supposed journalist re-tweeted a Photoshopped, fake IDF tweet created by one of the many Israel-hating liars on the Internet:

Of course, many people pointed out to her that she fell for a hoax. But to Bar Hillel, the truth isn't important: it is "truthiness." She actually defended her propagating a lie this way:

A genuine fact! From a pseudo-journalist!

Others asked her where she got this "fact" from, and she answered:

@MarcsWords UN/Gaza Ministry of Health. Are you also disputing the 560 children Israel killed over the past few weeks?
— Mira Bar-Hillel (@mirabarhillel) August 26, 2014

So I went to PCHR, which records every incident in Gaza, real or imagined. I looked at every incident that happened during the night of August 20 and early morning of August 21.

Guess what? Not a single child was killed in Gaza during the time period that this idiot claimed 20 children were killed. (At 2:30 AM on Thursday, the IDF attack that killed 3 major Hamas leaders also killed 3 children who were being used as human shields for the terrorists.)

I'm certain that the Gaza Ministry of Health did not say that 20 kids were killed that night either. Bar-Hillel, when forced to defend her lie, just made up another one.

There you have it: the truth is completely irrelevant to the hateful, bigoted anti-Israel crowd.

See also CifWatch.

CORRECTION: I had written that Bar Hillel wrote for The Guardian. She hasn't.

08/26 Links Pt1: Israeli killed by mortar; Hamas Terrorists Admit Using Civilian sites for Attacks

From Ian:

Over a Dozen Hamas Terrorists Admit to Use of Hospitals, Kindergartens and Mosques for Military Activity

A number of Hamas operatives who were arrested and detained by Israel during Operation Protective Edge admitted to the use of civilian establishments, such as mosques, schools and hospitals, as covers for terrorist activity, according to a report released on Monday by the Israel Security Agency (ISA).
The report cites extensive and detailed testimony from the Hamas members to support Israel’s long maintained assertion that the group operates behind human shields, which often accounts for civilian casualties as it exchanges blows with the Jewish state.
The report came as the Hamas controlled Gaza religious affairs ministry claimed Israeli fire throughout Monday destroyed four mosques, raising to 71 the alleged total number of mosques targeted over the past seven weeks.
Khan Yunis native Muhammad Alqadra told ISA that mosques in his hometown were used to conceal war material such as RPGs, heavy PKC machine guns and AK-47s. Additionally, he confirmed that local schools and hospitals, including the Nasser and Halal hospitals, are used as weapon arsenals. It is also well known that senior Hamas leaders and their armed bodyguards, who usually wear police uniforms, use hospitals as hideouts, he said.
According to Alqadra, guards are stationed at the admission department in the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis. He also believes the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip, including senior official Ismail Haniyeh, is hiding in Gaza City’s Shifa hospital in an area closed off to civilians and guarded by plainclothes armed men.

IDF hits Gaza school used in mortar attack that killed 4-year-old

A Gaza school cited as the source of mortar fire that killed an Israeli 4-year-old was hit by Israeli forces early Tuesday.
The Israel Defense Forces said on Tuesday that it hit over 15 targets in the Gaza Strip during overnight airstrikes, and Palestinians said two high-rise apartment buildings were hit and badly damaged by airstrikes.
The IDF said it targeted several Hamas command and control sites, including two schools in the central and northern Strip. Terrorists had been firing rockets at Israel from within the compounds.
On Friday, Daniel Tragerman, 4, was killed when a mortar shell exploded near his home on Kibbutz Nahal Oz, near the Gaza border. The army said the mortar was fired from inside a Gaza school.

David Horovitz: On Day 50 of war with Hamas, much diplomatic ado about nothing

A delegation led by retired US Marines Gen. John Allen is in Israel, meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. Since Allen is the man who drew up American security proposals designed to enable an Israeli withdrawal from much of the West Bank under a peace accord — proposals publicly and privately castigated by Israeli leaders – his visit has sparked speculation of a renewed push for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority as part of the endgame for the current conflict.
The sense of imminent drama was enhanced by PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s mysterious promise, in an Egyptian television interview on Sunday, that he would shortly unveil a “surprise initiative” to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that it would be one the Americans — and thus, by extension, Israel — wouldn’t like.
Various unnamed Palestinian officials have been quoted intimating that this initiative, timed to capitalize on Abbas’s return to center stage as a potential key player in resolving the Gaza conflict, will involve seeking a UN-mandated timetable for the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 lines, with the threat of filing war crimes allegations against Israel at the International Criminal Court if the Palestinians’ demands are not met. The Yedioth Ahronoth daily reported on Tuesday that Abbas “has made clear to all sides that he has no intention of taking any responsibility for Gaza unless there is a simultaneous diplomatic process aimed at culminating in a two-state solution based on the ’67 lines.” According to this report, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is backing Abbas’s bid to utilize the Gaza crisis in order to advance a new, comprehensive diplomatic bid.
All very dramatic, and all firmly played down in Jerusalem.