Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, October 01, 2014

NYT Robert Mackey's "dismissive contempt"

I wrote in my last post about Mairav Zonszein's insulting and inaccurate NYT op-ed last week.

At Tablet, Liel Leibovitz wrote a response that demolished Zonszein's examples that she claimed proved that Israeli society suppresses (leftist) dissent.

As I noted, the Zonszein op-ed wasn't a criticism as much as an insult. Leibovitz's response definitely reflects that he was insulted, and it insults the New York Times (and Zonszein) in turn for publishing an argument that can be so easily dismantled with simple facts and many provable counter-examples. But Leibovitz at least backs up his angry reaction with facts.

The Twitter thread that followed between leftist writer Lisa Goldman, Zonszein and the New York Times' Robert Mackey is a truly great example of echo chamber thinking.

OK, let's go through the logic.

Lisa Goldman and Robert Mackey are idiots. And I just proved it with that very statement.

You see, if Goldman and Mackey respond to that statement with "dismissive contempt," that is actually validation. If they contemptuously dismiss it by ignoring it, that is actually validation. If they try to prove me wrong, then it shows that I "touched a nerve" - which is actually validation.

So according to the brilliant Goldman and Mackey, there is no possible response to a baseless insult that can disprove it.

Of course, that logic doesn't make sense - unless you are Lisa Goldman and Robert Mackey, which just goes to prove that they are idiots!

QED.

The irony, of course, is that this entire thread is one of "dismissive contempt" for an emotional but devastating rebuttal of Zonszein's article - which again, according to the participants own appalling "logic", proves Leibovitz is correct!

In the real world, proof is based on facts. Zonszein's facts were shown to be quite wrong. Not one of her pals in this thread could manage to disprove a single one of Leibovitz' points. Mackey concludes that "there is nothing of substance in these partisan ramblings."

Projection much?

Goldman at least gets something right. There is a pattern that emerges, and that pattern brings clarity - from the side that doesn't bother to answer real criticism.

It should be troubling to the New York Times management that Mackey so cavalierly dismissed well-documented criticism of the piece. It shows, yet again, that the New York Times is as biased as possible, truth be damned.

(h/t Brightside)

Mairav Zonszein's hate for Israel

During Rosh Hashanah, the New York Times published an op-ed by Mairav Zonszein called "How Israel Silences Dissent." The op-ed goes through various alleged examples of how "Israel" - which may be the government, but mostly Israeli society- have "silenced" Israel's radical Left during the summer war.

One example that Zonszein uses illustrates the problem with this essay nicely:

In July, the veteran Israeli actress Gila Almagor performed at Tel Aviv’s Habima Theater even though she had received threats that she would be murdered on stage. In an interview in the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot a few days earlier, she had expressed feeling ashamed after a 16-year old Palestinian, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, was kidnapped and burned alive by Jewish extremists.

Was the criticism of Almagor because she said she was ashamed?

On July 6, I published an open letter that unequivocally condemned the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir and included this sentence: "The idea that Jews could do such an act fills us with shame and horror."

I received essentially no criticism for the piece. I didn't receive any death threats. On the contrary, scores of Zionist bloggers, many of them the same right-wing Israelis that Zonszein is attempting to vilify, signed on to this letter.

That little fact is not very convenient for Zonszein's thesis.

What was the difference between Almagor's statement and mine?

Almagor was quoted in a Hebrew Yediot article as saying "I am ashamed to be an Israeli," which is a lot stronger than "feeling ashamed."

Whether the quote was accurate or not, the reaction of Israelis to this quote was not because they agree with the murder of Muhammed Abu Khdeir, as Zonszein disgracefully implies. It is because the Almagor was apparently saying that all of Israel is responsible for the murder - but she isn't, because she is above all that.

She insulted the entire Israeli people. (And, in reality, the Israeli Jews, because if an Arab had murdered Abu Khdeir she wouldn't have said anything like that.)

Obviously the death threat that she received is reprehensible and indefensible, but it was the act of a single hater, not an indication of how "Israel" silences dissent. And the larger reaction to the quote was an indication of how people react when they are insulted, not evidence of any supposed silencing.

As a Haaretz op-ed by a leftist notes, Israeli society heard plenty from all sides during the war, no one was silenced.

It turns out that all of Zonstein's examples of supposed silencing are equally cherry-picked or described inaccurately. The anti-leftist protests were organized by extremists that hardly represent Israel. She said that Gideon Levy "wrote an article criticizing Israeli Air Force pilots" but Levy's article was a bit more than criticism: he said that Israel's pilots were "perpetrating the worst, the cruelest, the most despicable deeds." Again, this is an insult to the country and its army, not mere criticism of the war. And it is not done out of love of Israel but out of hate.

Which is the entire point of Zonszein's piece. Like most in Israel's radical left, she is not interested in criticism of Israel out of love. No, Zonszein is saying that "Israel" and "Israeli society" themselves are guilty of repressing dissent, of silencing criticism, of only allowing the most right-wing opinions to be aired. By doing so, and by publishing this in the New York Times (where fact checking is a bit selective in anti-Israel op-eds,) Zonszein is placing herself above and outside Israeli society altogether. "Israel" is guilty of all these crimes - but Zonszein and her similarly thinking cabal are not. Israel isn't a flawed society that she wants to improve out of love, it is an evil society that she is better than.

A true lover of Israel would note that her examples don't even come close to representing Israeli society. A hater of Israel will choose examples that justify their pre-existing hate for Israeli society.

Israelis have no problem with self-criticism. In fact, that is the national sport. But to have self-righteous ideologues like Zonszein place themselves above virtually the entire Israeli public is to invite vitriolic criticism by that public.

Criticism that free-speech advocate Zonszein seems not to be too thrilled with.

The radical Israeli Left, represented by +972 magazine writers and others, always expresses frustration as to why Israelis don't seem to listen and to their arguments and take them to heart. The reason is simple: Like all humans, Israelis aren't going to listen to people who constantly insult them. They will not be receptive to those who act out of malice towards their own people.

There's a lesson there.

(A followup post is coming...)

A new poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research shows that while Gazans have grown more disillusioned with Hamas and terror over the past month, West Bank Palestinians are more enthusiastic about terror.

According to the summary provided by the center:

An overwhelming majority of 80% supports the launching of rockets from the Gaza Strip at Israel if the siege and blockade are not ended. Support for launching rockets drops in the Gaza Strip to 72%. This means that (if the poll weighted the populations of the two sectors properly) that the percentage of West Bankers who support rocket attacks against Israeli civilians is about 84%.

A majority of 57% believe that launching rockets from populated areas in the Gaza Strip is justified and 39% say it is unjustified. Among Gazans, belief that it is justified to launch rockets from populated areas drops to 48% while increasing in the West Bank to 62%.

Support for terror and armed conflict is still very high, but trending downwards, as disenchantment with Hamas grows. A large majority of 81% prefers "Hamas' way of resisting occupation." Support for Hamas’ way stood at 88% one month ago.

63% favor the transfer of Hamas’ armed approach to the West Bank and 34% oppose that. One month ago, support for this transfer stood at 72%. (I don't have details on the breakdown of populations for these questions.)

Other interesting findings:

The percentage of Gazans who say they seek immigration to other countries stands at 44%; in the West Bank, the percentage stands at 22%.

Only 23% say there is press freedom in the West Bank and an identical percentage say there is press freedom in the Gaza Strip.

Only 29% of the Palestinian public say people in the West Bank can criticize the authority in the West Bank without fear. By contrast, a larger percentage of 35% say people in the Gaza Strip can criticize the authorities in Gaza without fear.

The Western perception that Mahmoud Abbas' PA is more tolerant and liberal than Hamas is simply not reflected in these poll results.

Moreover, the relative intransigence of West Bank Palestinians compared to Gazans shows that the war didn't radicalize the Gazans as much as it radicalized the people who were not directly affected.

Saeb Erekat gets even nuttier (if that is possible)

From AFP:

A senior Palestinian official on Tuesday likened Benjamin Netanyahu to the leader of the Islamic State group, after the Israeli prime minister compared Hamas to the organization.

"Netanyahu is trying to disseminate fear of the Islamic State led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but Netanyahu forgets that he himself leads the Jewish state," said Saeb Erekat, the PLO's chief negotiator in peace talks with Israel.

"He wants us to call Israel the Jewish state and supports terrorist settlers who kill, destroy and burn mosques and churches... like Baghdadi's men kill and terrorize," Erekat told AFP.

Just as a reminder, the constitution of "Palestine" says "Islam is the official religion in Palestine."

By contrast, Israel has no state religion.

So by Erekat's definition, the PA is far closer in its laws to the Islamic State than Israel is.

(h/t Ronald)

09/30 Links Pt2: J Street's Beyoncé-Themed Anti-Israel Campaign; The Jewish Food Taste Test

From Ian:

In Depth: UK anti-Semitism continues unabated after Gaza war

The Israeli defensive war against Hamas in Gaza may have finished a month ago but its side effects are still reverberating abroad, not least of all in the UK.
While the range and level of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel activity in Britain has not matched that seen in parts of continental Europe such as France, the UK Jewish community still felt its effects as never before, as illustrated by near record levels of incidents reported by the organization responsible for the Jewish community’s defense, the Community Security Trust (CST).
Their monthly anti-Semitism figures told it all. In July, the CST recorded more than 302 incidents, while the provisional figure for August is already more than 150. The statistics are incomplete as the CST anticipate receiving more detailed information about incidents from the various regional police authorities and other sources, many of which, due to their other responsibilities and priorities, take their time in submitting reports. Each and every incident reported has to be assessed and, where necessary, duplicated reports must be eliminated.
But the overall figures do not lie. The CST points to a comparison of the July total of 302 incidents with the 304 incidents registered in the six-month period from January to June 2014.

The NBA To Be Hit With Anti-Israel Protests?

In his commentary posted by the far-left magazine, "The Nation" called "Are Gaza Protests Coming to the NBA Preseason?" Dave Zirin uses the possibility of the NBA being hit by protests to make a one-sided argument declaring the evil nature of Israel and the IDF. Zirin also ignores that the groups threatening to protest are not simply against Israeli policies but call for the destruction of the Jewish State, and implies that the NBA is a tool of Israel.
From the first paragraph Zirin misleads the reader:
"When Israeli sports teams travel to Europe, they are often met with protest. Palestinian solidarity and human rights organizations, such as Red Card Israeli Apartheid, have argued that such spectacles “normalize” the military occupation suffered by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. They also argue that it is fantasy to pretend that these games do not carry a strong political as well as symbolic weight."
Israel left Gaza on August 15, 2005. The greenhouses and other industry starters Israel left when it disengaged were turned into terrorist launching pads and missile launchers.
After explaining Israel Maccabi's Euroleague championship earned the team its preseason tour, Zirin offers a one-sided commentary about the recent Gaza war. Using the words of an Israeli expatriate who uses the Hamas-supplied casualty numbers, "The Nation" commentator argues that this is no time for "hoops" as usual. He neglects to tell the reader the source of the casualty numbers, and never mentions the Hamas rocket attacks or their use of human shields.

Anti-Israel activists perform “blood bucket challenge” at Yad Vashem

If you thought the “blood bucket challenge” performed by Megan Marzec, President of the Ohio University student senate, was a disgusting politicization of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, just wait.
A group calling itself “Jews Against Genocide” just performed the stunt at various locations in Israel, including at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial and Museum in Jerusalem.
The group’s Facebook page indicates it was formed in July 2014. That page also indicates it is a supporter of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement.
The stunt is promoted at the website of the anti-Israel The International Solidarity Movement where it is noted that the group claims inspiration from Marzec.

Israeli Socialist Movement Compares IDF to Nazis at Auschwitz

Parents of Israeli high school students from the coastal region were left furious, after a letter making the outrageous comparison between genocidal Nazi troops and IDF soldiers was read last week during an organized youth trip to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.
The letter was written by a 25-year-old educator and coordinator of Ha'ihud Hahakla'i (the Agricultural Union), a youth movement founded in 1978 from the socialist movement of the same name that has been active developing agricultural settlements since the 1920s. The movement on its website describes itself as "apolitical."
The coordinator of the socialist youth group sent the letter with several of the students in the high school class visiting Auschwitz who belong to the group. Reportedly after one of the students showed the letter to the teacher he was encouraged to read it to the class, which he did, according to Walla!.

Arabs terrorize Jewish kids next to Mount of Olives (video)

From The Jewish Press:

Terrified Jewish nursery school and kindergarten children were rushed into bomb shelters in Jerusalem’s Maaleh HaZeitim neighborhood after 10 masked Arabs attacked the Jerusalem neighborhood’s complex with Molotov cocktails, fireworks and stones on Tuesday.

The Arabs specifically targeted toddlers from a nursery “Mishpacton” who were playing outside.

The teachers rushed the children inside as the Arabs began throwing explosive and rocks at the children, an angry resident told JewishPress.com.

Two other schools also rushed their children indoors as explosives landed near the schools.

The neighborhood housing complex has 4 nursery and kindergarten schools.

The crying children were rushed into the school’s bomb shelters to protect them from the attack and the loud explosions.

The police took 7 minutes to arrive. But before responding, police asked residents if anyone was actually injured in the attack.

When they did arrive, the Arab attackers ran.

Arabs have been targeting Jews in the area, both dead and alive, quite a bit recently.

Maaleh HaZeitim is located across the street from the ancient, Jewish, Mount of Olives cemetery.

On Rosh Hashana, Arabs desecrated the Gur Hassidim section of the cemetery, destroying 40 graves.

Here's video of the attack:

Post by ‎אריה קינג - Arieh King‎.

I visited one of the apartment complexes the last time I was in Israel. You might wonder why Jews would want to live there, especially after looking at how the neighborhood looks from the angle of this video. But the view on the other side is what is stunning.

Here is a video of the view from one of the synagogues inside the complex:

The kids playing on the roof have an equally majestic view of Jerusalem:

(h/t Bob K, Ken K)

Villa Rouma is a film made by an Arab citizen of Israel. She tried to get funded by Arab sponsors, but they refused, so she got funded by the Israel Film Fund and the New Israel Fund:

Before film director and scriptwriter Suha Arraf approached the New Israel Fund (NIF) [sic - not the NIF - EoZ] to produce Villa Touma (2014)—her first fictional film as a director—she applied to a number of Arab corporations for funding, but didn’t even receive a reply.

“I knocked at many Arab and non-Arab doors. Had a single corporation responded, I would not have gone to that fund [NIF]. But what can I do? Arab donors seem to have no objection about me going to the NIF,” Arraf told Asharq Al-Awsat. She added: “As for the media, it is attacking the film aggressively for being funded by the Israeli state.”

This issue has affected other Palestinian film directors in the past, including Mohammad Bakri and Elia Suleiman. There seems to be no Arab cooperation or investment in Arab films directed by Palestinian filmmakers living in Palestine, yet there is a distinct readiness to accuse a film director of “selling themselves” for receiving Israeli funding.

It was shown in a number of film festivals, although Arraf insisted that it be called a "Palestinian" film rather than an Israeli film. Some film festivals decided to say that it did not come from any country.

Egypt, however, didn't like the taint of Israel that the film had:

Egyptian authorities have confiscated the film “Villa Touma” – which was written and directed by Arab-Israeli director Suha Arraf – preventing the film from being screened during the Alexandria Film Festival in Egypt.

The film was registered as Palestinian but was made with primarily Israeli public funds, including $400,000 from the Israel Film Fund.

“Egyptian Customs reserved the film’s copies, and we will not be able to display it within the festival,” said film critic and festival director Amir Abaza.

After the Alexandria Film Festival closed, officials explained its disappearance this way: "The festival's organisers were unable to secure a copy of Villa Touma by Israeli-Arab filmmaker Suha Arraf."

Meanwhile, the Israeli Film Fund is upset that a movie they funded is not being credited to their country, and they want their money back. Arraf argued back that she can define herself however she wants and that her tax dollars pay for the funding like any other citizen's.

(h/t Yoel)

09/30 Links Pt1: Kicking the PLO habit; PA honors murderers of 3 Israeli teens

From Ian:

David Horovitz: Bleak Netanyahu warns of militant Islam’s global ambition

There were no gimmicks. Few excruciating one-liners. Just a single visual aid: a photograph of three children in Gaza at play right next to a rocket launcher.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a no-nonsense address to the United National General Assembly on Monday — presenting himself as the leader of a “proud and unbowed” nation, charged with the “awesome responsibility” of ensuring his much-threatened people’s future in a brutal, unstable region.
It was not a speech entirely bereft of hope. He reached out “to Cairo, to Amman, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and elsewhere” and asserted that a rapprochement with Israel by such Arab players could in turn yield a peace agreement with the Palestinians, which, he also said, “will obviously necessitate a territorial compromise.”
But the outlook he presented was immensely grim, nonetheless. His bitter overview, he said toward the end of his remarks, “may fly in the face of conventional wisdom, but it is the truth. And the truth must always be spoken, especially here in the United Nations.”
As spoken by Netanyahu, the truth is that “militant Islam is on the march,” that its ambitions are global, and that all its many, sometimes competing factions are “branches of the same poisonous tree.” Thus it is ridiculous and self-defeating for countries to support the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State but criticize Israel for tackling Hamas. If not stopped in its tracks, he indicated, Islamic extremism would come for everyone.

Caroline Glick: Kicking the PLO habit

The signs are everywhere that the time has come for Israel to abandon the PLO.
So long as the PLO remains in power, the lives of Israelis and Palestinians will only get worse.
PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas’s speech last Friday at the UN General Assembly where he repeatedly accused Israel of committing genocide was not merely an abandonment of direct peace negotiations with Israel. Abbas abandoned the very concept of peaceful coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians.
Abbas called for the UN to pass a resolution that will require Israel to cede Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria in their entirety to the PLO within a set period of time. No Israeli consideration can be taken into account. No Israel concern can be attended to.
As he put it, “Palestine refuses to have the right to freedom of her people, who are subjected to the terrorism by the racist occupying Power and its settlers, remain hostage to Israel’s security conditions.”
As is always the case, the immediate victims of Abbas’s blood libels are the Israeli Left. The politicians and media elite that have hitched their horse to the PLO were again left stuttering by the wayside.
For some, like Meretz chair Zehava Gal-On, stuttering is a fine option. So she pushed out an endorsement of Abbas’s genocide speech.

Mahmoud Abbas’s dangerous grandstanding

For several years Mr. Abbas has oscillated between half-hearted participation in peace talks and attempts to advance the Palestinian cause through unilateral action at the United Nations. The latter initiatives have no chance of substantive success and risk being self-defeating, as the Palestinians should have learned from Mr. Abbas’s last such gambit in 2012. Then their lobbyists were unable to win enough support for a U.N. Security Council resolution even to force a U.S. veto, and a compensatory symbolic measure in the General Assembly provoked Israel to impose painful financial sanctions.
Mr. Abbas nevertheless is trying the Security Council again, after refusing to respond to a U.S. framework for peace talks painstakingly developed by Secretary of State John F. Kerry. He proposes a resolution that would mandate the creation of a Palestinian state based on Israel’s 1967 borders in a set period of time; when it is voted down or vetoed by the United States, the Palestinians hint that they will seek a war crimes investigation of Israel by the International Criminal Court. That, in turn, would almost certainly prompt retaliatory sanctions by Mr. Netanyahu’s government and possibly by Congress, which supplies the Palestinian Authority with much of its funding.
Mr. Abbas has repeatedly rejected violence, and he has convinced a series of U.S. and Israeli negotiators that he has a realistic view of the terms for a Palestinian state. Yet he has now rejected platforms for a settlement on two occasions from two U.S. presidents. He persists in grandstanding gestures that he must know will only delay the serious negotiations that must precede the creation of a Palestinian state and that undermine those in Israel who support such talks. He has spoken for years of retiring but, at 79, he clings to his post four years after his elected term expired. Hamas has done the most harm to Palestinians and their cause in recent years. But Mr. Abbas has done little good.

Sudanese news site Al Nilin reports that head of the Sudan Fatwa Authority Sheikh Abdul Rahman Hassan Ahmed Hamed issued a scathing criticism to the Sudanese government for allowing a young chess player to compete against an Israeli at the World Youth Chess Championships held recently in Durban.

Omar Eltigani faced Israeli Matan Poleg on September 25.

Abdul Rahman said that the country is in a state of war with the Jews, and to play against an Israeli is a tacit recognition of Israel. Rahman added that a Sudanese playing against a Jew in one table means "reconciliation and tolerance," saying that the meeting was a great disservice to the Muslims and the Sudanese, because the situation requires "not mixing with Jews" as he put it.

He also said that chess was not a game for Muslims to play, according to most authorities, although a minority felt that it had value.

Poleg won the match.

Meanwhile, the president of the Sudanese Chess Federation Tariq Zarrouk resigned from his position in protest of the match.

Yesterday, PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat added another to his long list of lies that he spouts to the media, and this one was a doozy:

Escalating the Palestinian leadership’s rhetorical assault on Israel, the chief Palestinian Authority negotiator, Saeb Erekat, on Monday claimed that 96 percent of Gazans killed in the summer’s Israel-Hamas conflict were civilians, reiterated PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s charge of Israeli “genocide,” and accused Israel of seeking to impose apartheid on the Palestinians.

Erekat, in the radio interview, defined genocide as “a direct attempt to eliminate, horrify, relocate, destroy a way of life” and claimed “Israel committed the killing of 12,000 and wounding 12,000 Palestinians; 96 percent of them are civilians.”

Not even the most extreme anti-Israel Gaza NGO claimed that 96% of those killed in Gaza were civilians, or that 12,000 were killed.

The radio interview is in English and these absurd lies can be heard at the 30 second mark here. He also says Israel "demolished" 50,000 homes (according to anti-Israel site Electronic Intifada, 15,670 homes were damaged, not demolished,) and that 500,000 Gazans are homeless (that is the maximum number displaced during the war but only about 50,000 remain in shelters as of a few weeks ago.)

I cannot remember a single interview of his or article he's written that was not filled with lies.

So how can Erekat continue to lie so openly and brazenly in literally every statement he ever makes in public? What is behind it?

It turns out that Erekat explains his strategy perfectly - in his response to Netanyahu's speech at the UN yesterday:

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said, “There’s a saying that if you don’t stop a man who is lying after 24 hours, the lies turn into facts. That’s what happened to Netanyahu.”

This saying is Erekat's credo!

He lies, not one reporter - even the interviewer from Israel Army Radio here - bothers to counter his lies in any timely fashion, and Erekat wins! His lies turn into facts for his audience, or at the very least they are considered a legitimate part of the "narrative." He literally lives his life by the saying "if you don’t stop a man who is lying after 24 hours, the lies turn into facts."

No one has the guts to tell him that he is a liar to his face and list all his lies, chapter and verse. And it is a very long list.

Erekat knows that once he puts his lies out there, no one will counter him - after all, he is a "moderate" and a "peacemaker," and reporters aren't conditioned to believe that a soft-spoken man in a suit who is considered a "moderate" will lie right to their faces.

There is literally no negative repercussion to Erekat's constant lies. So...why shouldn't he continue them?

(By the way, for all the PLO officials who railed against Bibi's "lies," not one of them actually cited any.)

Abbas spokesman says any "peace" must include banning Jews from holy places

The Times of Israel seriously botched up a news story:

Abbas spokesman says he’s ‘ready for historic compromise’

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is ready for a historic compromise for peace, his spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said on Monday.

After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fiery response to Abbas’s UN speech last week in which the Pa leader accused Israel of conducting a “war of genocide” in Gaza, Abu Rudeineh said that the solution must be based on UN resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative, Israel Radio reported.

He also said the solution would have to include a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem, an immediate end to settlement activity, and the lifting of the blockade in Gaza.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh did not say that Abbas is ready for a historic compromise. He was responding that Netanyahu's statement that Israel is ready to accept a historic compromise, insisting that Israel must include certain conditions in any peace plan.

And the Western media missed one of his conditions: to make holy places like the Temple Mount, Rachel's Tomb and the Ma'arat HaMachpela (Tomb of the Patriarchs) Judenfrei.

As Arabic media widely reports, Rudeineh said that any agreement must also include "stopping the activities of extremists in holy places."

Anyone who follows Arab media knows that to them, any Jews who want to visit their own holy sites, no matter how peacefully, are called "extremists." Abbas is saying that Jews must be banned from their holy spots.

When Netanyahu said he was ready for a "historic compromise," the response of the PA leadership was to add a new obstacle to peace, one that must disgust any truly peace-seeking Westerner, to ban Jews from their most sacred sites.

The Abbas' spokesman's response to Netanyahu's speech proves yet again that Palestinian hate is the obstacle to peace. This is the basic fact about the conflict that the Western media and governments adamantly refuse to believe..

The Star of David Molecule

From The University of Manchester:

Scientists at The University of Manchester have generated a new star-shaped molecule made up of interlocking rings, which is the most complex of its kind ever created.

Known as a ‘Star of David’ molecule, scientists have been trying to create one for over a quarter of a century and the team’s findings are published at 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern Time on 21 September 2014 in the journal Nature Chemistry.

Consisting of two molecular triangles, entwined about each other three times into a hexagram, the structure’s interlocked molecules are tiny – each triangle is 114 atoms in length around the perimeter. The molecular triangles are threaded around each other at the same time that the triangles are formed, by a process called ‘self-assembly’, similar to how the DNA double helix is formed in biology.

The molecule was created at The University of Manchester by PhD student Alex Stephens.

Professor David Leigh, in Manchester’s School of Chemistry, said: “It was a great day when Alex finally got it in the lab. In nature, biology already uses molecular chainmail to make the tough, light shells of certain viruses and now we are on the path towards being able to reproduce its remarkable properties.

“It’s the next step on the road to man-made molecular chainmail, which could lead to the development of new materials which are light, flexible and very strong. Just as chainmail was a breakthrough over heavy suits of armour in medieval times, this could be a big step towards materials created using nanotechnology. I hope this will lead to many exciting developments in the future.”

The team’s next step will be to make larger, more elaborate, interlocked structures.