Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, July 08, 2015

07/08 Links Pt1: 7/7 and Protective Edge; France Drops Pro-Palestinian UN Resolution

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: 7/7 and Protective Edge

Just one day after Israelis gathered on Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl Military Cemetery to mark a year since Operation Protective Edge, Britons held their own memorial service in London on Tuesday to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of a series of terrorist attacks on London’s Tube and bus networks.
These two seemingly arbitrary dates help to illustrate the common threat Israel and other Western states such as Britain face today as they come under attack by radical Islamists. France, Australia, Canada and Belgium have all seen acts of extreme violence that were directly or indirectly inspired by the ideology and aims of a violently reactionary stream of Islam.
A cult of death, a racist hatred of Jews, Hindus, Christians and “unbelievers” and the desire to restore a long-vanished, despotic empire ruled by a medieval Muslim jurisprudence are the common features of the groups that carry out these attacks. In this sense, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are no different than Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra or other al-Qaida-affiliated organizations in the Middle East, Europe or elsewhere.
It is common for the news media, foreign political leaders and other shapers of world opinion to attempt to “contextualize” the terrorist attacks directed at Israelis by Islamist groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. When Palestinians target civilians in driveby shootings or ambushes and when they fire rockets and mortar shells at residents of the South, the aggression is framed within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

France Drops Pro-Palestinian UN Resolution

France is back-pedaling from a decision to submit a resolution to the United Nations Security Council forcing Israel to renew negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.
PA foreign minister Fiyad al-Maliki told Voice of Palestine radio on Tuesday that France was instead advancing a suggestion to form a negotiations support committee.
The move follows a visit to Israel in early June, during which French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius urged the resumption of final status talks between Israel and the PA.
Netanyahu warned in remarks prior to his meeting with Fabius that the international community’s ideas for peace with the Palestinian Authority ignore the security needs of Israel.
Fabius subsequently discussed the issue in depth with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and a host of other top government officials.
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas had already rejected out of hand the most recent French proposal for a resolution in the UN Security Council giving both sides 18 months to reach an agreement. The reason: Under the French resolution, the PA would be required to recognize Israel as a “Jewish” state.

Released Clinton e-mail reignites question whether Obama reneged on Bush settlement commitments

Former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice told her successor Hillary Clinton there was no agreement between Israel and the US regarding where settlement construction was permitted, according to an email made public by the State Department last week.
Bloomberg columnist Eli Lake reported Monday that the email, part of the disclosure of Clinton’s personal emails stored on a private server, was dated June 7, 2009, and sent by Clinton to two aides.
The subject line of the email was “settlements,” and it read, “Condi Rice called to tell me I was on strong ground, saying what I did about there being no agreement between the Bush admin[istration] and Israel.”
Whether the Bush administration reached informal agreements with the Sharon government that it could build inside the construction lines of established settlements has long been a point of contention.
The issue was thrust into the headlines in 2009 because of the Obama administration’s demand for a complete settlement freeze and Israel’s counter claim that by making this demand the Obama administration essentially was reneging on commitments given to Israel under the previous administration.
Former ambassador Michael Oren, in his recent book, Ally: My Journey Across the American- Israeli Divide, said the Obama administration did walk back commitments made by the Bush administration and that this marked the “first time in the history of the US-Israel alliance” that the White House “denied the validity of a previous presidential commitment.”

UNESCO passes antisemitic resolution, world yawns (update)

JPost reports:

Israel slammed the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on Tuesday for adopting a “completely one-sided resolution” on the Old City of Jerusalem that “deliberately ignores the historical connection between the Jewish people and their ancient capital.”

The resolution, adopted by the World Heritage Committee meeting in Bonn, Germany, takes Israel to task for – among other grievances – the following allegations: engaging in “illegal excavations” in the Old City; causing damage to structures on the Temple Mount; impeding restoration work on the Temple Mount; and damaging the “visual integrity” of the Old City with the Jerusalem light rail.

It also deplored various Israeli projects in and around the Old City and the Western Wall Plaza, which it referred to as the “Buraq Plaza.”

Foreign Ministry director- general Dore Gold issued a statement saying that not only does the resolution gloss over any Jewish connection to Jerusalem, it also fails to acknowledge Christianity’s ties to Jerusalem and refers to the Temple Mount area only as a “Muslim holy site of worship.”

The resolution itself should be enough to discredit UNESCO as a serious institution.

Besides what is mentioned in the article, it includes this antisemitic paragraph 8:

The World Heritage Committee...Further regrets Israeli extremist groups' continuous incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound and urges Israel to take necessary measures to prevent such provocative abuses that violate the sanctity and integrity of the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound and inflame tension on the ground;

As I have documented countless times, Jews who visit the Temple Mount are uniformly quiet, respectful and peaceful. They are greeted by the Muslims there with barrages of insults, intimidation and physical abuse. In years of looking through Muslim websites, I have not seen a single instance of a single religious Jew on the Temple Mount doing anything that was disrespectful to the holy site.

Jews who want to worship on their holiest site are expelled. Muslims who want to celebrate terror attacks are welcomed.

UNESCO, by explicitly condemning the Jewish right to worship or even visit the Temple Mount, is pushing an explicitly antisemitic agenda.

Oh, and this paragraph goes against international law.

As bad as that is, there is something even more outrageous than UNESCO's explicit antisemitism.

The real outrage is that there was no outrage. Other nations voted for this resolution without blinking. A resolution that calls all Jews who want to peacefully visit their most sacred site "extremists" doesn't raise any eyebrows. A resolution that insists that Jews have no religious rights is passed without the least bit of controversy. Diplomats who are supposed to be attuned to bigotry are voting for anti-Jewish bigotry.

That is the outrage.

UPDATE: Here is what it is like for a Jew to walk on the Temple Mount, today. Who are the extremists? Who is practicing abuse of a holy spot? Who is violating its sanctity? Who is inflaming tension? (h/t Bob Knot)

Palestinian insistence on fake "right of return" may sink UNRWA

From UN's IRIN news agency:

Facing what its commissioner-general Pierre Krähenbühl called its “most serious financial crisis ever,” this week the UN agency for Palestinian refugees announced it would let go around 100 foreign employees on short-term contracts, roughly half of all its international employees.

Dealing with emergencies in Syria and Gaza and having lost $25 million to currency exchange fluctuations overnight, UNRWA is $101 million in debt and faces a $330 million shortfall in its $680 million annual budget.

Financial woes have plagued the agency, which is responsible for the medical care, education, and welfare of registered Palestinian refugees, since it was formed in 1950 as a temporary measure, but this crisis is the worst to date.

What, if anything, can be done to fix the frequently broke agency?

The most straightforward approach might appear to be to search for additional sources of funding.

...But, barring a major Gulf splurge, any new funding is unlikely to be sufficient.

[T]he next target for cuts is one of the agency’s core services: education.

UNRWA runs more than 700 schools in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan and Lebanon. They are the only option for many Palestinians, but take up 60 percent of UNRWA’s regular budget.

The obvious solution, which I have mentioned a number of times, is to align UNRWA's definition of "refugee" with that of the rest of the world. At the very least, no Jordanian citizen should be considered a refugee, since being a refugee and a citizen of a state is an oxymoron.No citizen of the Palestinian Authority - someone living in their own supposed homeland - should be considered a "refugee." (For now, I'm not going to talk about defining descendants of refugees as refugees themselves.)

But that idea is not tenable, according to UNRWA's apologists:

There are even more radical solutions, which would likely involve a renegotiation of UNRWA’s mandate.

Among them has been phasing out services to the nearly two million Palestinian refugees who have become citizens of Jordan since 1948. This proposal was floated by James G. Lindsay, UNRWA general counsel from 2002-2007, in his 2009 report for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy - “Fixing UNRWA.”

Already hosting refugees from Iraq and Syria, it would place a heavy burden on Jordananian hospitals and schools. Lindsay, however, proposes this could be balanced with targeted foreign aid.

There are reasons to doubt such a solution is viable. For many Palestinians, the option is politically untenable. Many consider registration and affiliation with UNRWA as symbolic placeholder for the “right to return.” Likewise, while donor countries and Israel may have their disagreements with UNRWA, many see it as a stabilizing force and would probably object to a withdrawal from Jordan. As an important ally of Israel and the west that is facing its own battle with Islamic radicalisation, Jordan’s objections would likely be heard. For his part, [UNRWA apologist Rex] Brynen calls the Jordan option “politically impossible.”

Of course, Jordan could have integrated its Palestinian population many years before it accepted Iraqi and Syrian refugees.

The implication is that Jordanian citizens with Palestinian ancestry are less deserving of services from their own country than real refugees from neighboring countries. This proves how endemic Jordan's discrimination against Palestinians is, and how accepted this discrimination is to the rest of the world. No one is insisting that Jordan treat its Palestinian citizens equally.

Isn't that apartheid?

Jordanian citizens aren't clamoring to become citizens of "Palestine." But the Arab world's bigotry against Palestinians, and UNRWA's own core education curriculum that discourages Palestinian integration into the countries that they have lived for over 60 years and instead insists on the destruction of Israel via this false "right of return," is what is ultimately killing UNRWA. The numbers of fake "refugees" continues to grow and keeping them in that artificial status is what is killing UNRWA.

The signs have been there for years. The refusal to deal with the core problem of UNRWA's mandate that is designed to exacerbate the "refugee" issue is the very issue that will destroy UNRWA, and they have no one to blame but themselves.

Amnesty's true colors revealed with fake civilians, even fake children, in their "Gaza Platform" tool

Yesterday I reported that Amnesty International is releasing today an online application, The Gaza Platform, to do graphical analysis on Israeli attacks in Gaza.

And that Amnesty's partners in gathering data were, to be blunt, liars.

The official release of the Gaza Platform is today, with a free event at Amnesty UK this evening.

Perhaps no example shows how unreliable this tools isi than the incident recorded by the tool here:

At around 1:50 am on Saturday, 19 July 2014, Israeli warplanes targeted a group of civilians sitting in front of their houses in Al Ladadwa Street in Khan Younis city. Nine people, including three children, were killed and another two were moderately injured. Three of those who were killed were brothers; Mohammed Reda Salhiyya, 22; Mustafa Reda Salhiyya, and 21, and Wasseem Reda Salhiyya, 15. Another two brotherswere killed: Yahya Al Surry, 20, and his brother Mohammed, 17. The other four were residents of the area and were identified as: Mohammed Mostafa Salhiyya, 32; Ibrahim Jamal Nasser, 13; MohammedAwad Nasser, 25, and Rushdy Nasser, 25.
SOURCE:
Al Mezan

PCHR has the same description of victims as civilians with similar ages within the application.

Only one problem: every victim was a terrorist..

Here is a martyr poster for every victim.

According to this poster, every single one of these people were members of the Abu Rish Brigades. Including the 15-year old boy and 17-year old boy.

What about the 13-year old Ibrahim Jamal Nasser? Well, he wasn't really 13:

I reported on all of these last August. But Amnesty apparently spent much more time and money to create an application to bash Israel than to Google the names of the "civilians" - a simple exercise that would prove that the Al Mezan Center and PCHR are completely unreliable when they claim that dead Gazans are civilians.

The identification of victims as civilians is the key for Amnesty's stated use of this tool as a means to prove that Israel engaged in war crimes. As I have just again proven, the application is based on completely unreliable data where the number of civilians and children were inflated by these "human rights organizations" for their own political purposes.

Every reporter that parrots Amnesty's press release should be emailed and tweeted with this post as well as my post from yesterday to show Amnesty's true colors.

There are scores of people I documented as being members of terror groups that PCHR and Al Mezan called "civilian." The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has done a much more rigorous job documenting how many of these supposed civilians were really members of terror groups.

Amnesty ignores any evidence that contradicts its pre-determined verdict. Amnesty's release of the Gaza Platform is proof that Amnesty's goal is pure anti-Israel propaganda, and truth is the victim.

Iran breaks the cruel Israeli siege of Gaza!

If Iran is distributing food in Gaza, it must mean that thsy have successfully broken the siege! I wonder why they didn't detail the adventures that they must have gone through to evade the evil Israelis hell-bent on blockading Gaza from all humanitarian needs.

It couldn't be as easy as just shipping them through Israel to the the Kerem Shalom crossing, could it?

The report makes it clear that the purpose of the Imam Khomeini Foundation is political, not charitable.

(h/t B.)

07/07 Links Pt2: EU negotiator on Gaza resolution is married to UN inquiry member; RyanAir €30 to Eilat

From Ian:

EU official who negotiated on UN Gaza resolution is married to UN inquiry team member

A European Union official involved in negotiating on behalf of the EU over the text of Friday’s UN Human Rights Council resolution that condemned Israel for last summer’s Gaza War is married to a staff member of the UNHRC commission that investigated the war.
The link between EU policy officer Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan, who was tasked with reviewing the Gaza war report and helping advise EU representatives on how to vote on it, and McGowan Davis Commission staffer Sara Hamood was known to the EU but not made public.
David Harris, the head of the American Jewish Committee, protested what he called a “conflict of interest.” Harris told The Times of Israel on Monday that he took particular exception to the failure of the EU to disclose the marital connection between one of its key officials involved in dealing with the UNHRC report and a UNHRC staffer who worked for the commission.
Only on Tuesday, in response to a Times of Israel question, did the EU publicly acknowledge the connection for the first time. It denied there was a conflict of interest. (h/t Yenta Press)

9 Successful Anti-Academic BDS Strategies to Defeat Academic BDS

In recent weeks and months, I have watched academics, students, major donors and Israel advocacy organization leaders in Israel and in the Diaspora try to counter the growing menace of both overt and silent academic boycotts. Several well meaning, but misguided, efforts are apparent to me, as one who had significant success in helping Israeli scholars and academic institutions thwart academic boycotts from Europe, Canada, South Africa and elsewhere the mid-2000s, long before American Jewish leaders believed there was a crisis.
I would like to share some successful strategies based on successes of the past, prior to BDS reaching America’s shores, to the relative newcomers to this struggle, since this has been an ongoing international struggle since 2003 when a UK faculty union first started boycott campaigns against targeted Israeli universities. My suggestions fly in the face of the way most big donors and mainline Jewish groups operate, but these are ways which have deflated academic BDS before and could once again be successful.
1) Develop anti-academic BDS strategies around academic principles and not ideological pro-Israel strategies. There is precedent for this from such prestigious groups as the American Association of University Professors whose anti-academic boycott position is articulate and clear as well as the statement crafted by Alan Dershowitz, myself, Nobel Laureates Steven Weinberger and Roger Kornberg and a committee of distinguished academics serving the now-defunct, but very successful, SPME BDS Task Force which was signed by 44 Nobel Laureates.

Clinton issues missives against Israel boycott movement

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton expressed concern regarding efforts to boycott Israel in letters to Jewish leaders, calling for legislative action to support the Jewish state.
Writing to Israeli tycoon Haim Saban and Jewish communal leader Malcolm Hoenlein, Clinton asked for their help in devising a plan to counter the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
“I am seeking your advice on how we can work together […] to reverse this trend with information and advocacy,” the former secretary of state wrote in identical letters last week.
Clinton said she was concerned by attempts to compare Israeli policies to South Africa’s apartheid regime, which was successfully boycotted by the world community in the 1980s in a campaign seen as an inspiration for Israel boycott advocates.
“Particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world — especially in Europe — we need to repudiate forceful efforts to malign and undermine Israel and the Jewish people,” she wrote.

Hillary: George Soros is NO Friend of Israel

While Hillary Clinton is claiming that she will be better for Israel than President Obama was, its noteworthy that George Soros, the world’s most dangerous billionaire donated $1 Million this week to Priorities USA Action, a super PAC dedicated to supporting Hillary Clinton in her Presidential bid. Soros is someone who has long supported causes which are harmful to the State of Israel.
Soros is a prominent donor to J Street, and made a speech in front of the Jewish Funders Network where he said “European anti-Semitism is the result of the policies of Israel and the United States.” He has said that “America is the gravest threat to world freedom” and generally stands against many Western interests.
Let’s review further what George Soros did during World War II which has sparked controversy, courtesy of an interview on ‘60 Minutes’
Former United States Senator Joe Lieberman has said that Soros’s views on America are “so negative, so critical, and so often anti-American.” Simply, this man who is a major funder of Hillary is no friend of Israel. Hillary must dis-associate from the world’s most dangerous billionaire.

The double standards of Gaza and Yemen continue

The NYT reports that more civilians have now been killed in Yemen this year than were killed last year in Gaza, even according to the UN's inflated Gaza figures:

Yet Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, which flatly and repeatedly declared Israel's actions in Gaza last year to be violations of the laws of war, are still reluctant to say the same about Saudi Arabia.

I've previously shown comparisons of how HRW described Israel in much harsher and categorical terms when reporting on airstrikes then they did for Saudi Arabia. But even this past week, HRW and Amnesty continued to put caveats around calling Saudi actions illegal.

HRW:

While many coalition airstrikes were directed at legitimate military targets in the city, Human Rights Watch identified several attacks that appeared to violate international humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war, and resulted in numerous civilian deaths and injuries.

Coalition attacks struck at least six residential houses not being used for military purposes. One attack killed 27 members of a single family, including 17 children. The airstrikes also hit at least five markets for which there was no evidence of military activity. Aerial attacks on an empty school and a crowded petrol station appear also to have violated the laws of war.

Amnesty:

These eight cases investigated by Amnesty International must be independently and impartially investigated as possible disproportionate or indiscriminate attacks. The findings of any investigation must be made public, and those suspected of responsibility for serious violations of the laws of war must be brought to justice in fair trials.

On the other hand, Amnesty declared after only a couple of weeks of the Gaza war that Israel was guilty of "serious violations of international humanitarian law [and] serious human rights abuses" as it called on the US and other countries to suspend all shipments of weapons to Israel.

In both Yemen and Gaza, these NGOs do not have access to information from the army commanders have, and that information si essential to knowing whether there were violations of the laws of armed conflict. When Amnesty and HRW flatly declare Israel violated those laws, they are lying. But when Saudi Arabia acts with less precision, less care and more lethality, suddenly these organizations are sticklers for accuracy.

It really is a sickening double standard.

(h/t Yoel)

As many of Elder’s readers will be aware, London lawyer Herbert Bentwich (1856-1932), the son of a jeweller and rabbi from Eastern Europe, was an early and lifelong Zionist, active in, among other organisations, Chovevei Zion and – until he flounced out owing to a perceived snub – the English Zionist Federation. The uncle, incidentally, of Sir John Monash’s Australian mistress Lizzie Bentwitch [sic], he was involved in the talks at Whitehall that culminated in the Balfour Declaration.

His son, Norman de Mattos Bentwich (1883-1971), also a lawyer, authored a memoir of Herbert and an autobiography, as well as other works relevant to Zionism. From 1918-22 Norman was Legal Secretary to the British Military Administration in Palestine, and from 1922-29 Attorney-General in Mandate Palestine. Professor of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1932-51, Norman also served as Director of the League of Nations High Commission for Refugees from Germany (1933-35).

In my previous column on this site, I quoted from his article in the Jewish Chronicle of 31 December 1948, pertaining to Israel’s safekeeping of discarded Arab books. Below, as foreshadowed, I quote the remainder of the article, entitled “Arabs in Israel,” which is not as well-known as it might be.

In printing it, the Jewish Chronicle observed that the non-partisan "strictly factual account" was "a much needed corrective to the tendentious reports which the traducers of Jewry have so widely circulated".

Here’s what Norman Bentwich had to say, with no further comment from me, except in square brackets:

‘The attention of the world has been drawn to the plight of the half-million Arab refugees from Israeli territory and from Jerusalem. But little attention has been paid to the treatment of the 70,000 (or, according to later reports, 100,000) Arabs who have remained in Israel or who have returned to their homes. Yet the story is worth telling. For the young Israeli Government is setting an example of care for its minorities. As soon as it was constituted, it set up a special Ministry of Minorities with the function of securing equal rights for all citizens and freedom of religion, language, education, and culture. The Minister is a native-born Jew from Tiberias, from an Oriental family; he was for many years an officer in the Palestine Administration, first in the Police, and then a magistrate. Mr Shitreet* is at the moment also the Minister for Police, but he gives his heart and mind to his other portfolio.

[*Bechor (or Bekhor) Shitreet – sometimes transliterated Shitrit – was born in Tiberias in 1897 to a long-settled Sephardi family of Moroccan background. A rabbi by training, he taught in the Alliance Israélite Universelle school in Tiberias, joined the police in 1919, and became head of the Tel Aviv police force in 1927. A future Mapai Party member, he was a signatory to Israel's Proclamation of Independence, and from 1948 until 1966, the year before his death, he sat in successive Israeli Cabinets.]

Of the Arabs who are in Israeli territory, the majority are in the northern area. They live partly in towns: Haifa, 6,000; Acre, 4,000; Nazareth, 5,000; etc, and partly in the villages of the occupied territory of Western Galilee. In the south, three to four thousand are in Jaffa, a smaller number in Ramleh, and Lydda, which was captured in July, some thousands of Beduin [sic] in the Negev, who have given their promise of loyalty, and a few hundreds [sic] in the Jewish-controlled part of Jerusalem.

In the towns of mixed population and in places near the front line, the Arabs are restricted for security reasons to one area, and can only move outside it with a permit. In fact, they are still narrowly confined. In the villages they are much less restricted. The stress of war has led to the occupation of many Arab homes, which were quite deserted, and of whole quarters of outer Jerusalem. Those homes and quarters have been largely occupied by the new immigrants, who are entering the country with amazing rapidity. One of the tasks of the Conciliation Commission of the United Nations will be to aid in bringing about some settlement of the displaced persons of both nations.

The Ministry of Minorities is concerned with the well-being of the Arabs who did not flee, or who returned from flight, and with the assurance of their political, economic, and cultural rights. The Arabs who registered in the census will be entitled to vote in elections for the Constituent Assembly, and may, if they wish, have their own candidates and their own electoral list. So far, only the combined two Communist parties have put forward Arabs as well as Jews. In one municipality, Haifa, the Arabs still remain members of the Municipal Commission with the Jews, and in Nazareth an Arab magistrate has been appointed. Arabs who are willing to work on the roads or in other public enterprises are employed by the State, and receive the same wage as a Jew doing that kind of labour. The simple labourer gets a wage of nearly thirty shillings a day, which is far higher than anything he had in the days of the British Administration, even allowing for the great rise of prices. A few Arabs who are regarded as trustworthy are in the Israeli Army. The Ministry has been concerned in the last months to bring Arab port workers from Acre to Jaffa, where they are needed; and also to organise the Arab cultivators (fellahin) for the gathering of the orange crop. It has, too, encouraged other fellahin to cultivate vegetables, of which there has been a great scarcity in the country.

The Health Ministry, working with the Minority Ministry, has established a clinic for Arabs in the southern and northern areas, and has carried out recently a vaccination of all the Arab population in order to check an epidemic of smallpox which threatened. A few Arab doctors who remained in the country are employed; and there is a demand that more shall be given the opportunity.

Perhaps the most striking work in the Ministry is its effort to develop cultural life, in the midst of the uneasy truce, for the Arab population. It has already established some fifty primary schools in the towns and villages, with free education. A former Jewish Inspector of the Mandatory Education Department is in charge of the schools; another, an Oriental Jew, with a thorough knowledge of Arabic, assists him. The Ministry has also established one or two Arab clubs for reading and recreation, and has promoted a daily Arabic newspaper, El Yom (The Day). This is the first Arabic daily to appear in Israel. Several of the staff are Arabs, who have full freedom of expression; and some educated Arabs write to the Palestine Post, the English daily, voicing grievances about rent and employment, and the like…

It is notable that the proportion of Arabs to the total population of Israel (one-tenth) is about the same as the proportion of the Jews to the total population of Palestine in 1920, when the British Mandate was given. It is to be hoped that the protection and well-being of the minorities, which is inevitably conditioned by the circumstances of the war, will become more and more a constructive activity of the Government of Israel, and so prepare the way for happier relations. What is being done today is in striking contrast to the treatment of the Jewish minorities in Arab states.'

07/07 Links Pt1: The Iran Delusion - A Primer for the Perplexed; Obama has become Iran’s Lawyer

From Ian:

Michael Totten: The Iran Delusion: A Primer for the Perplexed

The chattering class has spent months bickering about whether or not the United States should sign on to a nuclear deal with Iran, and everyone from the French and the Israelis to the Saudis has weighed in with “no” votes. Hardly anyone aside from the Saudis, however, seems to recognize that the Iranian government’s ultimate goal is regional hegemony and that its nuclear weapons program is simply a means to that end.
The Middle East has five hot spots—or “shatter zones,” as Robert D. Kaplan called them in his landmark book, The Revenge of Geography—which are more prone to conflict than others, where borders are either unstable or porous, where central governments have a hard time keeping everything wired together, and where instability is endemic or chronic.
Gaza, where Hamas wages relentless rocket wars against Israel, is one such shatter zone. The Lebanese-Israeli border, where Hezbollah does the same on a much more terrifying scale, is another. Yemen, which is finally falling apart on an epic scale, has been one for decades. Syria and Iraq have merged into a single multinational shatter zone with more armed factions than anyone but the CIA can keep track of.
What do these shatter zones have in common? The Iranian government backs militias and terrorist armies in all of them. As Kaplan writes, “The instability Iran will cause will not come from its implosion, but from a strong, internally coherent nation that explodes outward from a natural geographic platform to shatter the region around it.”
That’s why Iran is a problem for American foreign policy makers in the first place; and that’s why trading sanctions relief for an international weapons inspection regime will have no effect on any of it whatsoever.

Has the Obama Administration Become Iran’s Lawyer?

The smart money here in Vienna is on the likelihood of a nuclear deal between the U.S. and Iran being finalized at any moment. Maybe it will happen today with the White House showing the good manners to wait until after Americans have returned from their July 4 vacations to announce that they’ve cleared the way for Iran to get a bomb. Or maybe the Iranians will get the bomb in a little more than a decade, as the president of the United States has explained, but it will probably happen much sooner. And when the clerical regime does finally break out, the chances are they’re the Iranians will be the ones who are going to let the American public know because our elected officials seem to be keeping information from us and our allies when it comes to all things Iran.
Indeed, it looks like the Obama administration has become Iran’s lawyer. In both making Tehran’s case to U.S. allies (from the White House’s P5+1 negotiating partners, to Middle East friends like Israel and Saudi Arabia), and shaping public perception of Iranian actions, the White House has made itself an indispensable friend to the clerical regime. Iran doesn’t have to worry about justifying its behavior—like its failure to meet obligations under the interim nuclear agreement and its outright lies—because it knows the administration will do all the heavy lifting.
Consider how the White House has managed to explain away Iran’s illicit nuclear activities. In the first place, the Joint Plan of Action is a somewhat weak document. It fails to prohibit the sorts of things you might expect to be banned if Iran’s program was really “frozen,” like the White House says. For instance, even though there are UN security council resolutions regarding Iran’s procurement of parts and equipment for illicit nuclear work, the JPOA has sidestepped the issue. The resulting framework is that when the Iranians get caught violating those resolutions, the State Department can declare that Iran is not in technical violation of the JPOA.
There’s also the issue of Iran coming clean about its past nuclear activities in order to disclose the possible military dimensions of the program. Despite the fact that the Obama administration has repeatedly assured skeptics that Iran would address the question of PMDs, the IAEA has reported that Iran fails to address outstanding questions or allow inspections of certain sites. But since PMDs are not in the JPOA, the State Department can brush away such concerns.

Dennis Ross: On Iran, Worry About the Deal, Not the Deadline

Just as June 30 turned out not to be a true deadline for the Iranian nuclear talks, it would be wise to treat July 7 — the extended deadline — much the same way. The Obama administration should make clear that it is prepared to conclude a deal at any time, provided it is fully consistent with the framework understanding from April; anything less, and there will be no deal. If the Iranians insist on trying to walk back or redefine the framework understanding, they will not only stretch out the negotiations but will lead us to harden our own position and impose new conditions.
Taking such a stance is all the more critical now, with Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, seemingly laying down conditions that are inconsistent with the framework understanding — no access to military sites or scientists, immediate sanctions relief upon signing of the agreement, no limits on research and development, and rejection of any restrictions on its program lasting 10-12 years. Was the supreme leader signaling that he does not want a deal? Was he posturing so his negotiators could seek more concessions? Was he playing domestic politics and trying to assuage hard-line opponents of a deal?
My bet is on posturing. Of course, his revolutionary ideology and hostility toward the United States, as well as the reality that there are hard-line opponents of an agreement, mean that he might not only be posturing to influence the negotiations. It may, in fact, be difficult for him to conclude a deal. Still, Khamenei has allowed these negotiations to continue and permitted his negotiators — whom he continues to defend — to conclude the framework understanding. Clearly, he decided Iran has much to gain from an agreement. And the fact is that an agreement consistent with the framework understanding offers Iran a lot.

Egypt dictates that reporters don't use word "Islamic" when describing ISIS. David Cameron agrees.

CBS News reporter Alex Ortiz reveals on Twitter that Egypt's Foreign Ministry is imposing its nomenclature on reporters:

Egypt's Foreign Ministry issues foreign press corps a style guide for how we should describe terrorist groups. pic.twitter.com/AAn9MNcLxC
— Alex Ortiz (@azortiz) July 4, 2015

Ironically, Ortiz himself uses the word "terrorist groups" instead of the usual "militants" to describe ISIS, indicating that he is acquiescing to Egypt's demands to some extent.

Last week's attacks on the Egyptian army in the Sinai was generally described as being done by "militants" in the world media, only Egyptian and some Israeli media referred to the groups as "terrorist."

These are not only recommendations. Restrictions on press freedom are becoming Egyptian law.

Egypt Independent reports:

The draft anti-terrorism law approved by Egypt's cabinet last week includes "dangerous articles" which threaten media and press freedoms, the press syndicate said on Monday.

The syndicate's board discussed the draft law during a meeting on Monday, when it stressed that it stands by the armed forces in its fight against "terrorist attacks".

The cabinet passed the draft on Wednesday and referred it to the State Council, after militants in Sinai escalated their attacks on security forces in the peninsula.

The syndicate's board said in a statement issued after the meeting it would contact with other syndicates, political parties and civil society organisations to agree on a unified stance to "face the articles which restrict press freedoms" in the draft. The syndicate listed five articles in the draft as such.

Among the most controversial articles is Article 33, which punishes by a minimum of two years in prison the publishing of "false news or data" which contradict official data on "terrorist operations".

Heneidi said the article would come into effect only if four conditions are met: if the case is related to "terrorism", if it is deliberate, if it involves publishing false news, and if such news contradicts official data.

This means, for example, that if Egyptian forces kill civilians and blame terrorists, reporters could go to jail for reporting it.

Amazingly, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and other UK pols seem to agree with Egypt's anti-media mindset:

Prime Minister David Cameron recently joined the growing chorus of British politicians who argue that the name "Islamic State" is offensive to Muslims and should be banned from the English vocabulary.

During an interview with BBC Radio 4's "Today" program on June 29 — just days after a jihadist with links to the Islamic State killed 38 people (including 30 Britons) at a beach resort in Tunisia — Cameron rebuked veteran presenter John Humphrys for referring to the Islamic State by its name.

When Humphrys asked Cameron whether he regarded the Islamic State to be an existential threat, Cameron said:

"I wish the BBC would stop calling it 'Islamic State' because it is not an Islamic state. What it is is an appalling, barbarous regime. It is a perversion of the religion of Islam, and, you know, many Muslims listening to this program will recoil every time they hear the words 'Islamic State.'"

Humphrys responded by pointing out that the group calls itself the Islamic State (al-Dawlah al-Islamiyah, Arabic for Islamic State), but he added that perhaps the BBC could use a modifier such as "so-called" in front of that name.

Cameron replied: "'So-called' or ISIL [the acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] is better." He continued:

"But it is an existential threat, because what is happening here is the perversion of a great religion, and the creation of this poisonous death cult, that is seducing too many young minds, in Europe, in America, in the Middle East and elsewhere.
"And this is, I think, going to be the struggle of our generation. We have to fight it with everything that we can."

I have no problem with the media choosing to call Islamic terrorists "militants" but when governments start to tell the media what to do, then that is a major problem. Not only because of the intimidation that accompanies such demands, but also because readers will not know that the coverage is being slanted by the government. This happened countless times in Gaza, in Lebanon and elsewhere, and the media refusing to push back and publicize these efforts to muzzle them makes it complicit to some extent.

Bashing Israel? Amnesty has an app for that (update x2)

Tomorrow, Amnesty plans to officially release a graphical tool that has no purpose except to bash Israel.

From the leaked press release:

An investigative online tool mapping Israeli attacks in Gaza during the conflict of July and August 2014 has been unveiled by Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture today. Its purpose is to help push for accountability for war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law.

The Gaza Platform enables the user to explore and analyse data about Israel’s 2014 military operation in Gaza. The preliminary data currently plotted on the Platform, which will be updated over the coming months, already highlights a number of patterns in the attacks by Israeli forces that indicate that grave and systemic violations were committed.

“The Gaza Platform is the most comprehensive record of attacks during the 2014 conflict to date. It allows us to piece together more than 2,500 individual attacks, illustrating the vast scale of destruction caused by Israel’s military operations in Gaza during the 50-day war last summer,” said Philip Luther, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

“By revealing patterns rather than just presenting a series of individual attacks, the Gaza Platform has the potential to expose the systematic nature of Israeli violations committed during the conflict. Our aim is for it to become an invaluable resource for human rights investigators pushing for accountability for violations committed during the conflict.”

The platform is a map of Gaza where you can graphically zoom in on many Israeli strikes, or search for names or specific types of attacks.

The data comes from PCHR, Al Mezan Center and Amnesty.

We've already documented many cases where all of those groups defined people killed in Gaza last summer as civilians even when terror groups have claimed them as fighters.

Which means that this is putting a pretty face on biased, flawed and often lying data.

But its slick interface means that causal users will not doubt that the actual research behind it is based on lies.

For example, Amnesty says that Israel struck the house of Alaa Barda without saying that he was a Hamas terrorist.

And the only purpose for the huge investment by Amnesty into this project is to flatly accuse Israel of war crimes - something that even the biased UNHRC Davis commission was careful not to say:

While a vast amount of multimedia information, including testimony, photos, videos and satellite imagery, is still being processed, the Gaza Platform currently shows that more than 270 Israeli attacks were carried out using artillery fire during the 2014 conflict, killing more than 320 civilians. The repeated use of artillery, an imprecise explosive weapon, in densely populated civilian areas constitutes indiscriminate attacks that should be investigated as war crimes.

The press release also includes this howler:

“We see this project as a first step towards more effective conflict monitoring efforts, supported by collaborative platforms that facilitate the sharing of data between witnesses on the ground, organizations, and citizens worldwide.”

Yet Israel is always the first and usually only target of these "innovative" tools. Will Amnesty do the same research into Saudi airstrikes in Yemen? Of course not, because they don't put the same resources into Yemen, and it is more dangerous to be there than it was to be in Gaza last summer.

Unless Amnesty incorporates data that comes from the Meir Amit Terrorism Center and from the IDF that responds to these accusations of indiscriminate attacks, it is nothing bu a propaganda tool. Amnesty is not interested in the truth - all the data comes from biased, anti-Israel sources and there is no mechanism to impartially investigate them. As Amnesty itself says, they have already determined that Israel is guilty, now they are working hard to manufacture slick presentations to fool people into thinking that their Israel bashing is based on real science and statistics and not hate.

One more thing: earlier this year, Amnesty decided that they can't mount a campaign against antisemitism because, well, they don't have the resources to campaign on everything. But they have the money and time to spend on a slick anti-Israel application that is based on data that is inherently and provably biased.

(h/t Daniel)

UPDATE:
Amnesty's tool says:

At approximately 21:00, an Israeli warplane launched a missile at a number of Palestinian civilians in Khuza’a village, east of Khan Yunis, killing 2 of them: Mohammed Barham Abu Draz, 24; and ‘Essam Ibrahim Abu Ismail, 23.

This is Mohammed Barham Abu Draz, a member of the Al Qassam Brigades:

UPDATE 2: Here's Amnesty's video touting the product:

Their assertion that the Gaza Platform "proves' Israeli war crimes is another lie. It adds no new information to what has been known and it parrots flawed information.

The only thing it proves is that Amnesty is knowingly dishonest.

Yesterday, a small group of Jews ascended to the Temple Mount, most sacred spot in Judaism. A huge group of Muslims chanted and blocked their way from going beyond the Moroccan (Rambam) Gate and police forced them to exit immediately through the neighboring Chain Gate.

Today, the Temple Mount is closed to all Jews until July 20, "Eid al-Fitr.".

Some Arab media say that it is closed to all non-Muslims, others say it is closed to Jews only. The Arab media freely admits that the Muslims were "deployed" to stop all Jews from entering the Mount.

While the area of the Jewish Temples is now Judenrein, Hamas terrorists and their supporters are free to visit.

On Friday, Hamas flags were prominently displayed on the Temple Mount without a word of protest from any "moderate" Muslims.

The ban on Jews corresponds with the beginning of a three-week period that Jews mourn for the destroyed Temples that have been replaced with Muslim supremacist structures.

People who pretend to support peace in the Holy Land are consistently silent about the discrimination against Jews and open support for terrorism on Judaism's holiest spot.

To them, "peace" means that Jews may not assert any of their rights while extremist Muslims must be allowed to use intimidation and threats to impose their antisemitic agenda..