Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

09/24 Links Pt2: Eichmann Is Alive and Well and Living in the Middle East; Thousand Protest Opera

From Ian:

Adolf Eichmann Is Alive and Well and Living in the Middle East

After 50 years of controversy, and many paperback editions, Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem has now been consigned to the dustbin of history. The final nail in the coffin of Arendt’s thesis is Bettina Stangneth’s Eichmann Before Jerusalem, which appeared in German in 2011 and has just been released in English. She has produced an eloquent, riveting work of history, which supersedes even David Cesarani’s excellent Becoming Eichmann.
Stangneth, an independent scholar based in Hamburg, spent 10 years combing through the Eichmann archives, reading many hundreds of pages of his impossibly messy handwriting, and listening to the taped conversations that Eichmann made with Willem Sassen and other Nazi exiles while they drank wine, reminisced, and defended the goals of National Socialism. She argues that the real Eichmann is the one revealed in the 29 hours of interviews recorded in Argentina in 1957, while he made his living as a rabbit farmer called Ricardo Clement (though everyone in the large Nazi community in Argentina knew Eichmann’s real name and history).
The case against Arendt, and the portrait of Eichmann that she gave to the world, is by now familiar: She coldly insists that the Holocaust was not a Jewish tragedy but a general human one, even while she demands superhuman ethical standards from the Jews. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

At UN, Obama says too many Israelis ready to abandon peace

Declaring the world at a crossroads between war and peace, US President Barack Obama said at the UN on Wednesday that the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is not sustainable, and that Israelis must not give up on peace.
“The violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace,” he said. “That’s something worthy of reflection within Israel. Because let’s be clear: the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable.”
Obama also vowed to lead a coalition to dismantle an Islamic State “network of death” that has wreaked havoc in the Middle East and drawn the US back into military action in the region.
Speaking to the annual gathering of the United Nations General Assembly, Obama said the US would be a “respectful and constructive partner” in confronting the Islamic State militants through force. But he also implored Muslims in the Middle East to reject the ideology that has spawned groups like the Islamic State and to cut off funding that has allowed that terror group and others to thrive. (h/t MtTB)

Europe’s Anti-Semitism Comes Out of the Shadows

From the immigrant enclaves of the Parisian suburbs to the drizzly bureaucratic city of Brussels to the industrial heartland of Germany, Europe’s old demon returned this summer. “Death to the Jews!” shouted protesters at pro-Palestinian rallies in Belgium and France. “Gas the Jews!” yelled marchers at a similar protest in Germany.
The ugly threats were surpassed by uglier violence. Four people were fatally shot in May at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. A Jewish-owned pharmacy in this Paris suburb was destroyed in July by youths protesting Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. A synagogue in Wuppertal, Germany, was attacked with firebombs. A Swedish Jew was beaten with iron pipes. The list goes on.
The scattered attacks have raised alarm about how Europe is changing and whether it remains a safe place for Jews. An increasing number of Jews, if still relatively modest in total, are now migrating to Israel. Others describe “no go” zones in Muslim districts of many European cities where Jews dare not travel.

"Human rights organization says much of Middle East belongs to Israel"

The JordanZad Arabic website reports some astonishing news!

The Organization for Justice and Development for Human Rights stated that according to historical research, the existence of traces of Jewish temples in Jordan, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sinai and Palestine confirms that those countries were an integral part of the land of the kingdom of ancient Israel, which had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, which confirms a Jewish Israel.

The spokesman for the organization said that the Jews are indigenous to the Middle East and the Arab region, where they settled for thousands of years next to other peoples, including the Pharaohs, Chaldeans, Assyrians and Africans, Druze, Kurds and Armenians and Amazighs. They pointed out that the emergence of the Turks, Arabs and Persians in the area of the Middle East came through successive historical periods and they contributed to the expulsion of the indigenous people of the Middle East from their lands, including Jews, Kurds and Armenians and Amazigh.

As much fun as it is to read this in an Arab media outlet, it looks like there is no Organization for Justice and Development for Human Rights. This appears to be a very distorted version of this story (that was also in a recent linkdump):

An outspoken Moroccan poet has angered many of her countrymen by accusing the Arab world of imperialism and defending the Jewish people's right to a homeland in Israel.

In an interview with Med Radio last week Malika Mezzane, who is an ethnic Amazigh (or Berber), challenged the official line in the Arab world, where tiny Israel is accused of being "expansionist" and where Zionism - the movement for Jewish self-determination - is bizarrely equated with imperialism.

Asserting that it was in fact the Arab world which had pursued expansionist policies, Mezzane quipped that according to their own definition of the term, "Arabs are more Zionists than the Jews."

The Arab world, she said, believed that it was "God’s chosen people, and they have the right to extend their territory, at the expense of other nations."

Mezzane's own people, the Amazigh, are one of the indigenous non-Arab nations of northern Africa which who were conquered and subjugated by the invading Arab armies during the Muslim conquest in the seventh century.

Since then they have been subjected to persecution and periodic campaigns of cultural and physical ethnic-cleansing at the hands of Arab rulers in the region. In some cases, Amazigh calls for self-determination have been rejected by Arab states as somehow representative of "western imperialism" - a perverse inversion of the reality similarly employed by anti-Zionists against the Jewish state.

Further infuriating her listeners, Mezzane insisted that the Jews were justified in establishing "their state in Palestine, since it’s their homeland."

Apparently an expanded version of this interview was reported elsewhere and through the usual Arab media game of "telephone" it morphed into this story.

It is most interesting that JordanZad, which is very anti-Israel, didn't choose to dispute the history it reported.

(A small story but it seems like an appropriate one to end the Jewish year with. Shana tova!)

More from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Damascus, Syria, September 23 - The leader of a state deeply enmeshed in the support and arming of groups violently targeting civilian populations as a means of achieving political aims told visiting dignitaries today that he backs US-led efforts to combat groups violently targeting civilian populations as a means of achieving political aims.

President Basher Assad of Syria, who hosts the headquarters of various Palestinian terrorist organizations, told an Iraqi official that he welcomes any international operation to oppose terrorism. The president, whose government is currently involved in bloody civil war that has so far claimed nearly 200,000 lives and left millions homeless, considers the various rebel groups fighting its forces terrorists, even as his air force and army have used chemical weapons and indiscriminately targeted civilian areas for firebombing.

One of the chief sponsors of the Lebanese terrorist militia Hezbollah was apparently trying to portray his regime as anti-terror as the mostly Arab coalition conducted air strikes in and around Raqqa, the de facto capital of the emerging Islamic State. He accused other Arab states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia of sponsoring terrorism, as they have backed some of Assad's foes instead of him.
Assad's remarks echoed those of Iran, also a Hezbollah sponsor, calling for action against terrorism. The regime in Tehran, which supports the Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad, also expressed interest in joining the effort against terrorism.

The statement is not the first case of a Middle East sponsor of terrorism speaking out against terrorism. Longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat continually denounced Israeli actions to neutralize Palestinian terrorism as "terrorism," while fomenting further terrorism against Israel. His successor Mahmoud Abbas takes a less active role in funneling funding and arms to terrorists in his organization's ranks, but continues to label Israel's actions terrorism and hold forth on the need to eliminate terrorism, while himself engaging in incitement to terrorism and in glorification of terrorists.

09/24 Links Pt1: U.S in Syria Parallels Israel in Gaza; Priest to UNHRC end witch hunt of Israel

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: United States Attack in Syria Parallels Israel's in Gaza

The air attack by American and Arab forces against ISIS and other terrorist targets parallels Israel's air attacks against Hamas terrorist targets in Gaza. According to retired General Wesley Clark, the United States air attacks are designed to degrade and destroy the infrastructure of the terrorist groups, including the electricity grid, the sources of their finance and other mixed military-civilian targets.
When Israel attacked Hamas military targets, including some that had mixed uses, it was condemned by the same Arab nations that participated in the joint United States-Arab attack in Syria. The difference of course is that the threat posed by ISIS is not nearly as imminent as the threats posed by Hamas. This is certainly true in relation to the United States and may also be true in relation to its Arab partners.
Among the most hypocritical nations participating in the US attack is, of course, Qatar, which not only condemned Israel for defending its civilians against Hamas rockets and tunnels, but actually funded the Hamas attacks and provided asylum for the Hamas terrorist leaders who ordered them. Hypocrisy is nothing new when it comes to the double standard applied by the international community against Israel. The United States and its Arab partners have the right to take preemptive action against terrorist groups without fear of UN condemnation, a Goldstone report, or threats to bring its leaders before the International Criminal Court. Yet everything Israel does, regardless of how careful it is to minimize civilian casualties, becomes the basis for international condemnation.
If the US attacks in Syria continue, there are likely to be civilian casualties, because ISIS will embed its fighters among civilians and the many hostages it has taken. When that happens, American and Arab bombs will kill some civilians. It will be interesting to compare the world's reaction to those civilian deaths with its reaction to deaths caused by Israeli rockets hitting human shields deliberately employed by Hamas. If the past is any predictor of the future, the ratio of civilian to terrorist deaths may be considerably higher in the American-led air attacks than it was in the Israeli air attacks. In past wars, such as those in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and the former Yugoslavia, the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths was far higher than the ratio brought about by Israeli firing into Gaza, where human shields are Hamas's tactic of choice.

Douglas Murray: Are Syria air strikes legal? Perhaps not, but why should we care?

‘Are Syria air strikes legal?’ asks the BBC as part of its lead story today. The answer is that nobody is very sure. But personally I do wonder: ‘Why should we even care?’
Is beheading people legal? Is crucifying people illegal? Probably not. But aside from some vague talk last month of international inspectors being sent in to Isis-controlled areas to try to collate evidence of war-crimes I have seen very little written about this.
This debate over the ‘legality’ of hitting Isis reminds me of nothing so much as the conversation after Osama bin Laden was shot in the head. I recall back then being on an edition of Question Time where, rather than expressing relief that a very bad man had been killed, everybody started talking about the legality or otherwise of the operation and then – save us – whether American forces had or had not buried the carcass of the dead terrorist with the proper Islamic funeral rites. Soon the conversation was not about the thousands of victims but about the niceties of Islamic sea-burial, whether they were wholly followed through and so on.
Personally I am not particularly bothered about whether it is ‘legal’ to strike Isis. International law is very far from being the set of Sinai-like tablets which young people in particular now seem to think it is. It is a very new, very flexible and completely evolving concept. Besides, lots of good things are not legal under international law. The campaign to save thousands of Kosovan Muslims in 1998 was not ‘legal’. In fact it was very much ‘illegal’ under international law. But it was still the right thing to do.

Priest tells UNHRC to ‘end witch hunt’ of Israel

A Greek Orthodox priest from Israel defended the Jewish state before the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday, arguing that it is the only country in the Middle East where Christians are not persecuted, and imploring the 47 member nations to “end your witch hunt of the only free country in the region.”
“In the Middle East today, there is one country where Christianity is not only not persecuted, but affectionately granted freedom of expression, freedom of worship and security,” Father Gabriel Naddaf said.
“It is Israel, the Jewish state. Israel is the only place where Christians in the Middle East are safe.”

Jihadi relative of Toulouse killer walks free after police bungle

Confusion reigned Tuesday over the whereabouts of three suspected French jihadists arrested in Turkey who include the brother-in-law of Toulouse Jewish school killer Mohammed Merah after an apparent bungle by authorities.
The French interior ministry had announced that the three men, including the 29-year-old husband of Merah’s sister Souad, Abdelhoued Bagadhali, had been arrested by French police on their arrival at Paris’s Orly airport after being sent back from Turkey.
But it later turned out that the men had not landed in Paris at all, but were put on a flight to the southern city Marseille where they were — to their apparent surprise — able to walk freely from the airport.
The ministry claimed that after the pilot of the Paris-bound flight refused to allow them on board, the Turkish authorities put them on the flight to Marseille. But it insisted that Paris did not become aware of the change until after the men had landed on French soil.

NYT: US and Hezbollah are allies. Nasrallah: "US is source of terrorism."

The New York Times wrote:

They are sworn enemies who insist they will never work together, but in practice, Hezbollah and the United States are already working — separately — on a common goal: to stop the extremist Islamic State from moving into Lebanon, where Hezbollah is the most powerful military and political player and currently shares with Washington an interest in stability.

Weeks after Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group and political party, helped repel an Islamic State attack on the town of Arsal on the Syrian border, new American weapons are flowing to help the Lebanese Army — which coordinates with Hezbollah — to secure the frontier. American intelligence shared with the army, according to Lebanese experts on Hezbollah, has helped the organization stop suicide attacks on its domain in southern Beirut.

Hassan Nasrallh gave a speech yesterday that mentioned his opinion of the US:

On Hizbullah's position from the US-led coalition, Sayyed Nasrallah declared: "We are against the US's military intervention and against the international coalition, whether the target is the regime or the ISIL."

"Our principled stance does not change from one arena to another and we don't accept that Lebanon become a member of this coalition."

His Eminence explained that Hizbullah is against this coalition because America is the mother and source of terrorism and because it is the ultimate supporter of Zionist entity's terrorism.

"The US played a role in creating the Takfiri movements and it is not in an ethical position that qualifies it for leading a war against terrorism. The side that struck Japan with nuclear bombs, committed atrocities in the Vietnam war and stood against Gaza in the 50-day war is not ethically eligible to present itself as a fighter of terrorism."

According to Hizbullah Secretary General: "Based on Obama's statements, this coalition, is aimed at defending the US interests and this is not our business. All peoples in the region have the right to question America's motives."

On this level, Sayyed Nasrallah went back to the first days of July 2006 war: "They asked us to deliver our resistance arms and to accept the existence of multinational forces in the south of the border, in the airport and on the Lebanese territories."

" We rejected and toppled this scheme by the blood of our martyrs."

Notice that Nasrallah is bragging about violating UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

Some ally!

Arabs try to hijack IAEA meeting for anti-Israel agenda

Times of Israel reports:

Arab countries have circulated a resolution at a nuclear meeting that singles out Israel for special attention over its alleged nuclear arsenal.

The draft echoes previous such resolutions at annual meetings of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.

Backed by 18 Arab states, including Syria, the resolution expresses concern “about the Israeli nuclear capabilities” and calls on Israel to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“Israel alone possesses nuclear capabilities which are undeclared and not subject to international control, thus constituting a permanent threat to peace and security in the region,” the resolution states.

Israel has never acknowledged that it owns nuclear weapons.

The IAEA rejected a similar initiative, which the US spoke out against, in September 2013 by a vote of 51 to 43 at its annual meeting in Vienna, in which 32 nations abstained.

But that wasn't the only attempt by Arabs to politicize what would otherwise be an important conference.

The PLO representative had other things to accuse Israel of.

Salah Abdel Shafi spoke about the need to "validate reports that indicate the use of Israeli weapons containing radioactive materials against the Palestinian people during the recent aggression on Gaza."

The canard that Israel uses depleted uranium in war has been around since Lebanon in 2006, and even the UN found it to be baseless.

Abdul Shafi also said he was concerned for the effects that an Israeli nuclear accident might have. He said that there were "fears and anxiety because of the damage a disaster would have on the Palestinian people and the peoples of the surrounding Arab countries."

He expressed no concern for the fate of any Israeli Jews in case of such a nuclear accident.

To Arabs, the IAEA isn't an international organization that is meant to solve urgent issues that affect the entire world. It is just another tool to bash Israel.

Shiite Houthis take over Yemen's capital. Their logo says "Damn the Jews."

The fun in the Middle East continues:

Yemen's Houthi fighters have tightened their grip on the capital Sanaa after seizing much of the city in a lightning advance and signing an overnight deal to win a share of power, capping a decade-long uprising against the government.

On Monday, the heavily armed rebels raided the house of General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar and set up checkpoints across Sanaa, as the general and his allies fled and went into hiding.

They also raided the Suhail TV channel's headquarters in the capital, a day after the signing of a UN-brokered peace deal between the government and the Shia rebel group.

Here is the Houthi logo that they spray paint all over Yemen:

It says:

God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Damn the Jews, Power to Islam."

(Some translate the fourth line as "Curse the Jews.")

Isn't that lovely?

Yemen's president has long claimed that Iran was behind the Houthi insurgency. He said that this capture of Sanaa was a "conspiracy is beyond any imagination. We were stabbed, and we were betrayed. . . . It is a cross-border plot where many forces allied together.”

But they hate Al Qaeda, so they must be out allies!

09/23 Links Pt2: Judea Pearl denounces Klinghoffer Opera; SJP Rutgers Calls for an 'Intifada'

From Ian:

Taking on the Terror Trio: Israel’s Strategy vs. Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic State

Following Israel’s Operation Protective Edge this summer, Hamas continues to control the Gaza Strip and openly considers any truce with Israel as a time to re-arm for the next conflict. Across Israel’s northern border, Hezbollah has been fighting to preserve the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but still poses a danger to the Jewish state. Meanwhile, the Islamic State has exploded across Iraq and Syria in a spectacle of unprecedented brutality that could one day also knock on Israel’s door.
What should Israel’s strategy be regarding this triumvirate of terror groups? JNS.org took the pulse of three Middle East and terrorism experts on the issue.
Where things stand with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic State Hezbollah and Hamas “pose a very particular threat to Israel but also a very special dilemma,” said Natan Sachs, a fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Students For Justice In Palestine At Rutgers Calls For 'Intifada'

The Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at Rutgers University tabled in accordance with the "International Day of Action" against Israel and called for an intifada. Palestinian intifadas have included bus bombings, suicide bombers and the murders of hundreds of men, women and children by Islamic extremists.
The sign calling for an intifada read, "From Ferguson to Gaza, Intifada Intifada" while a second sign falsely accused Israel of being an apartheid state in the same vein as South Africa.
SJP's table on campus also encouraged the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel which attempts to isolate the Jewish state and strangle its economy.

Demonstrators protest Klinghoffer opera at Met season opening

Protesters calling for the Metropolitan Opera to cancel its production of “The Death of Klinghoffer” rallied outside the Met on its opening night Monday.
“We are going to be back here — everyone here and many, many more — every night of the Klinghoffer opera until the set is burned to the ground,” Rabbi Avi Weiss said in an address to demonstrators.
A coalition of groups in a statement called for the Monday afternoon protest at Lincoln Center, across from the Lincoln Center Plaza in Manhattan. Organizers say thousands are expected for the demonstration against a production that they contend promotes terrorism and anti-Semitism.
The opera depicting the 1985 murder by Palestinian terrorists of Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Jewish-American man in a wheelchair, is set to premiere in October.
A letter written by Judea Pearl, the father of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by militants in Pakistan in 2002, will also be read.
It reads, in part: “Choreographing an operatic drama around criminal pathology is not an artistic prerogative, but a blatant betrayal of public trust. We do not stage operas for rapists and child molesters, and we do not compose symphonies for penetrating the minds of ISIS [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, also known as the Islamic State] executioners.”

Moderate Fatah group says "Death to Israel"

I spent a bit of time during the Gaza war pointing out that Fatah was shooting rockets at Israel just as enthusiastically as Hamas.

This is apparently a completely taboo subject. The Israelis don't want to embarrass Fatah leader Abbas, the media doesn't want to complicate their twin memes of "Israel vs. Hamas" and "Hamas bad, Fatah good."

But just in case you thought that there might be a slight difference between Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah members, here is what the cover image on the Fatah Abu Rish Battalions Facebook page was exactly one month ago, August 23:

"Death to Israel" in Arabic and Hebrew.

It doesn't quite sound like this moderate Fatah group accepts a two-state solution.

Will reporters ask Abbas any hard questions? Here are some.

Mahmoud Abbas is in New York this week. No doubt he will allow a couple of interviews.

Here are some questions that a decent reporter would ask this great pseudo-peacemaker (expanded from an earlier post of mine):

What, specifically, have you done to prepare your people for peace with Israel?

Followup: Twenty years after Oslo, 60% of your people say the five year goal of the PA should be the destruction of Israel. Isn't this from your own state-run media and school curricula?

Why does the PA name institutions after terrorists who targeted innocent civilians? Isn't that inconsistent with the message you are giving to the West?
Why is there still daily incitement on PA TV against Israel?
Do you believe, as Arafat did, that there was never a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem? Do you realize that this position is at odds with what Muslims said openly before 1967?
Describe your position on "normalization" with Israelis today. Can Israeli pro-peace groups visit Ramallah? Would you allow an Palestinian-Israeli sports camp?
Why did you threaten your citizens who dared to shop in a Jewish-owned supermarket that has low prices?
Recently you said that you believe that the Holocaust occurred. You wrote a book that claimed that it was exaggerated.Were you lying then, or are you lying now?
Do you really believe that Jews are raising dogs and wild boars and training them to attack Arab farms, as you have stated?
Do you really believe that Hamas would accept Israel's existence if you reconcile with them? Do you believe that Hamas still subscribes to its charter? Why or why not?
As leader of Fatah, why do the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group still exist? How do they get funded? Why didn't you denounce their shooting hundreds of rockets to Israeli civilians? Aren't you against that?

If they do not report to you, then why do you not distance yourself from them? And why did you say they were dismantled when they clearly weren't? Why did you allow them to hold an armed parade recently in Ramallah?

Do you agree with the Fatah platform that terrorism is legal under international law?
Why does some 6% of the PA budget go towards terrorist prisoners and released terrorists?
Do you consider the Mufti of Jerusalem who collaborated with Hitler to be a hero?
If you are so interested in peace, why did you go out of your way to meet with child-murderer Samir Kuntar?
You have publicly praised terrorists released from Israeli prisons, even embracing murderers. How do you reconcile that with your claims to be against terror?
Why did you, last week, praise a terrorist who targeted Jewish children at a circus?
What percentage of the PA budget goes, directly or indirectly, to Hamas?
Can you explain your statement in 2013 that "it's better [Syrian Palestinians] die in Syria than give up their right of return"? How many Syrian Palestinians have died because of that position?
Do you support the rights of Lebanese Palestinians, if they choose, to become citizens of Lebanon? Why or why not?
Why are there still Palestinian "refugee" camps in the West Bank? Do you not consider their residents to be full citizens of Palestine? Are you keeping them away from having permanent homes in your country for a reason?

In 1950, Israel told UNRWA that it would be insulted to have an outside organization be the primary support for refugees, and it mainstreamed Arabs into becoming full citizens within a couple of years, negating their need for perpetual UN support. Do you disagree with that sentiment?

Please send/tweet these questions to any New York based reporter who seems likely to interview Abbas. It is way past time the media stops giving him a free pass.

09/23 Links Pt1: IDF kill terrorists who murdered 3 Jewish teens; Arab Bank convicted of funding Hamas terrorism

From Ian:

Senators: Take Gaza Away From Hamas

Many Israeli politicians have begun pushing for slow-motion regime change in Gaza. Perhaps it’s a coincidence that the vast majority of the U.S. Senate now is in a similar mood.
Over the summer, the Obama administration supported a draft cease-fire plan that would have strengthened the Hamas position in Gaza. Now 88 senators are urging the Obama administration to take a very different approach to the group: gradual regime change. Over time, they want to hand Gaza over to the more moderate Palestinian Authority, which oversees the West Bank today.
In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry obtained by The Daily Beast, the 88 senators write, “we must support efforts to enable the Palestinian Authority to exercise real power in Gaza. Hamas has demonstrated conclusively both that it has no interest in peace with Israel and that it has no concern for the well-being of Gaza residents.”

PM Benjamin Netanyahu on ABC Australia
'We want to make peace' with Palestinians says Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu

Netanyahu to ‘Post’: Saudi peace initiative is for a bygone era

The Saudi peace initiative of 2002 is no longer relevant in the much-altered Middle East of 2014, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu indicated this week, in a Rosh Hashana interview with The Jerusalem Post that will appear in full in Wednesday’s paper.
“The question is not the Saudi peace initiative,” Netanyahu said, asked if he would accept the proposal now.
“If you read it carefully, you’ll see it was set up in another period, before the rise of Hamas; before Hamas took over Gaza; before ISIS [Islamic State] took over chunks of Syria and Iraq, effectively dismantling those countries; before Iran’s accelerated nuclear program,” he said.
Obviously referring to the Saudi proposal’s call for a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, including returning the Golan Heights to Syria, Netanyahu noted that this plan was made “before the takeover of Syria by al-Qaida on the Golan Heights.”

US jury convicts Arab Bank of financing Hamas terrorism

In a landmark decision, a New York jury on Monday found the Jordan-based multinational Arab Bank liable on 24 counts of supporting terrorism by transferring funds to Hamas.
The verdict came after the jury deliberated for nearly two full days after a month-long trial at the eastern district court in Brooklyn.
“This is an enormous milestone,” said Gary Osen, a lawyer on the team representing around 300 American relatives and the victims of 24 attacks carried out in Israel and the Palestinian territories during the Second Intifada. The federal lawsuit was filed in 2004.
“For the first time a financial institution is liable for supporting terrorism. The question now is to see how other financial institutions, regulators will deal with their banks and this decision,” he added.

File photo

Yesterday, Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech at Cooper Union Hall in New York to hundreds of American students.

As usual, it was filed with his usual hypocrisy, as he pretended that the Palestinian Arab nationalism movement was an ultra-liberal initiative and that Israel was uniquely evil.

Here are some of the more outlandish things he said:

I come here today to convey to you the greetings of my people in Palestine who aspire for peace and justice. Palestine is a country in the heart of the Middle East, a country in the Middle East where Christians and Muslims live in harmony, a country in the Middle East, the birth place of Jesus Christ, in Bethlehem, where I pray with my follow Palestinian Christians three times every year, a country that hopes to live in peace and security side by side with its neighbor the State of Israel.

Christians in the West Bank have been fleeing ever since the PA took control. Muslims have forced Christians out of Bethlehem. Abbas has done nothing to help. In Gaza, Christians have been threatened and attacked as well. Abbas goes to church for his photo-ops but he has not lifted a finger to help Christians under siege, instead he blames their flight on Israel.

But today in Cooper Union I stand on the same place where Abraham Lincoln stood over 150 years ago and condemned the scourge of slavery, to state, loud and clear, that we the Palestinian people condemn terrorism, we condemn what happened on 9/11, we condemn the treatment of Christians and non-Christians by ISIS (Daaish) I am speaking on behalf of 99 percent of the Muslim peoples around the world Here, today, nearly in the shadow of Ground Zero, I state to the world: the barbarians of ISIS (Daaish) and Al Qaeda who kill innocent people are not faithful Muslims. And to the children and families of the victims of 9/11, I say as a Palestinian Muslim, I am sorry for your pain. These murderers do not represent Islam, we all stand against them to defeat their evil plans. At the same time we must work to end the Israeli occupation and establish a Palestinian state, for we cannot fight terror only by the gun.

We haven't forgotten that PAlestinians (and Arabs in general) celebrated 9/11. Quite publicly.

A poll this month showed 86% of Palestinians support and justify rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. That is terrorism. A 2003 poll found that 40% of Palestinians found suicide bombings sometimes justified, the highest percentage in the entire Muslim world.

The 99% figure is absurd. A survey in 2008 showed that fully 36% of Muslims worldwide thought that 9/11 was fully or partilly justified.

Abbas is a liar.

As you may know, Jews, Christians and Muslims have lived peacefully together in Palestine for centuries. So peace between religions runs through the heart of the most sacred City in the world, Jerusalem. Peace between the world’s religions runs through Jericho the Oldest City on Earth. Peace between the world’s religions runs through Palestine.

No, there was no peace. There was relative tolerance by Muslims of Jews and Christians as long as they didn't think of themselves as equals. But as travelogues from the 19th century showed, Jews were hated by Muslims and Arab Christians as well. Sometimes things got much worse. That is not peace.

On behalf of the brave Palestinian people, in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, I still come here to deliver a message of peace and justice to Israel and the rest of the world.

Most Palestinian Arabs say that their national goal is to destroy Israel. Abbas has done nothing to stop the incitement against Israel and Jews in his classrooms and newspapers. There is no desire for peace, there is no real denunciation of terror and this speech is a sick joke.

Abbas himself regularly praises terrorists who target children. He did it just last week.

I made a prayer for an America that is a real friend of Israel, not a false friend. And just as real friends do not let friends drive drunk, so too a real friend of Israel would not let them engage in the widespread killing of women and children, including bombing United Nations schools and hospitals, such as we just saw in Gaza.

Oh, please. His own Fatah members were shooting hundreds of rockets at Israeli women and children and he did not say a word against it. Abbas supports terror, at least tacitly.

Security requires justice and an end of occupation. We cannot understand how the Israeli government can be misguided as to fail to understand that the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza that kills thousands of women and children only sows more hate?

The official transcript says "hundreds of women and children" - Abbas changed it to "thousands." This is of course a deplorable lie.

Not to mention that Abbas' media and speeches in Arabic and statements by other officials who report to him are what creates the hate. While Israel spends hundreds of millions to save lives, Abbas doesn't really care whether his own people live or die as long as his cause is furthered. The cynicism is sickening.

In Maine every summer, young Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, Arabs, and others meet in a camp called seeds of peace, founded in 1993. They build the very world I am calling for in Palestine. It works. It's real. It's the future. To those who say peace between Israelis and Palestinians is impossible, I say, let them visit America. I say, let them visit Maine.

The hypocrisy here is incredible. Abbas is 100% against any similar programs for people under his rule - because these peace programs, such as the ones funded by the EU and sponsored by the Peres Center, are considered "normalization" with Israel. Even the most pro-Palestinian groups are barred from coming to Ramallah if they are Israeli. Supporting coexistence in Maine while opposing it in one's on backyard shows exactly how much Abbas cares to live in peace with Israel.

If you can stomach 35 minutes of lies, here is the video. The introduction by William Clark is especially risible, pretending that Abbas has been working for peace all his life. (No need to mention the Olympics massacre, is there?)

(h/t Miguel for a link)