Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, October 04, 2015

More @UNRWA employees who are fans of Hamas terror

Rafat Salhe is an UNRWA employee in Gaza. And even though UNRWA claims it will not hire Hamas members, it sure seems to hire a lot of Hamas fans.

Dalhe once had this as his profile picture on Facebook:

And he is a fan of individual terrorists as well:

When this "martyr" was first killed, though, Selhe was careful not to identify him with Hamas. He waited until after the war, because Hamas wanted everyone to appear to be a civilian.

Dhafer Abukishk is another UNRWA employee who is a big Hamas fan:

The series of UNRWA employees who violate UNRWA's supposed neutrality standards continues....

Celebrated "non-violent activist" supports murdering Jews and pushes blood libel

Manal Tamimi is a member of the family from Nabi Saleh who has been celebrated and romanticized by Amnesty International and media outlets as leaders of "non-violent resistance." Her husband Bilal videos every weekly demonstration there, and she is related to Bassam Tamimi whom Amnesty is sponsoring on a speaking tour through the US now.

Yesterday, Manal made it clear that while she personally might not murder Jews, she sure supports people who do:

There was more:

@IdoDaniel settlers r not civilians specilay the ones in jerusalem and Hebron so yes im proud of what this man did
— manal tamimi (@screamingtamimi) October 3, 2015

And finally:

Ah, "non-violent not peaceful." The perfect combination to fool peace-loving Westerners who cannot tell the difference.

And she says that Jews drink children's blood for good measure.

Manal's support for violence is exactly what her relative Bassem, Amnesty's darling, believes too:

In the already mentioned tribute to the Tamimis and their village Nabi Saleh that was featured as a New York Times Magazine cover in March 2013, Bassem Tamimi made clear that in his view, “[t]aking up arms wasn’t … a moral error so much as a strategic one.” Reportedly, Tamimi and everyone else in the village “insisted they had the right to armed resistance; they just don’t think it works” and “they resented being asked to forswear bloodshed.”
But it is apparently not necessary to forswear bloodshed and condemn terrorist attacks against civilians in order to win support from Amnesty International and praise from the European Union.
And quite obviously, neither Amnesty nor the EU or the media are much bothered by the fact that a “human rights defender” like Bassem Tamimi would send his young children in an almost weekly ritual, year after year, to provoke soldiers that he regularly denounces as brutal and trigger-happy.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are the Tamimis, whose ranks include some of the most notorious terrorists ever.

Yet Amnesty doesn't only support them - they support their propagandizing third graders in the US.

Abbas' biggest lie (poster)

It is tough competition to find Abbas' biggest lie, but I think this part of his UN speech is up there.

And in the few days since his speech, the number of deadly attacks on Jews by his people has increased dramatically.

Abbas himself condoned terror a couple of weeks ago:

His people understood his speech for what it was - a call for a new terror spree.

But the Western media didn't even call him on this obvious lie.

UPDATE: I made a new version of the poster.

10/03 Links: Making Sense of the Senseless; Bibi: World must condemn Palestinian lionizing of terrorists

From Ian:

Two Israeli men killed, 2 injured, in Jerusalem stabbing attack

Two Israeli men in their 40s died of their wounds Saturday night after being stabbed in Jerusalem’s Old City in a terror attack.
One of the men’s wife is in serious condition and their two-year-old baby was lightly wounded. The mother and toddler were taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center for treatment.
The men were stabbed in the upper body and were unconscious when paramedics arrived at the scene.
When the attack began, the injured woman managed to run and alert a group of Border Police forces nearby who arrived on the scene and shot and killed the attacker.
The baby was shot in the leg, although it is not yet entirely clear how. Police said the attacker may have grabbed a firearm the father was carrying but it is not clear if he managed to fire it.
The incident occurred near Lion’s Gate in East Jerusalem. (h/t Bob Knot)

Elliott Abrams: The Obama Vendetta Against Netanyahu

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to the UN General Assembly this week, neither Secretary of State Kerry nor even our UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, was present.
Why not? The State Department has said Kerry was involved in some kind of conference call or video conference with the White House. OK, let’s call that plausible. What about Power?
Rick Grenell, for years the spokesman at the US Mission to the UN and a very well-informed observer, tweeted yesterday that Power was instructed to stay away.
Think of how petty that instruction, which can only have come from the White House, really is. To sit in the seat and listen to Netanyahu isn’t endorsing his remarks, it is the politeness we owe an ally. Deliberate absence recalls the years in which dozens of delegations, Arab and “Third World,” would leave the chamber when any Israeli rose to speak. This administration is still griping about diplomatic errors Netanyahu has made, but a refusal to have the US ambassador listen to his speech is petty and damaging, hinting to anti-Israel delegations that the United States may be willing to let all sorts of anti-Israel measures go without opposition or criticism.

Bibi Calls Out the U.N. for Discriminating Against Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called out the United Nations on Friday for its repeated resolutions criticizing Israel, noting that it often gives terrorist sponsors like Iran a free pass.
“It’s not living up to its great universal role of being a force for promoting peace because it’s bashing Israel,” Netanyahu told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren.
“Sixty percent of the resolutions of the U.N. Human Rights Council are directed not against Iran, not against Syria, and not against all the other places where this horrible carnage is taking place and where millions are being displaced and murdered—where hundreds of thousands are being murdered—,but against the one true democracy in the Middle East, Israel.”
Despite its role in the creation of the Jewish state following World War II, the U.N. has historically been an antagonist of Israel, passing resolutions like the infamous “Zionism is Racism” resolution in 1975 that was opposed and ultimately repealed by the United States.
Netanyahu noted that the U.N. should be applauding Israel’s consistent opposition to terrorism.
“Israel is standing in the breach there, protecting civilization, fighting the forces that ravage people,” Netanyahu said.
“Who’s standing there? Israel first. And who gets bashed in the U.N.? Israel,” Netanyahu said.

Colonel Richard Kemp: 'Russia is bombing Syria to advance Moscow's interests not to fight ISIS'

This Russian intervention makes the Middle East much more dangerous for the long term.
Putin’s empowerment of Iran and its Syrian allies will terrify countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the gulf states and makes a large-scale war more likely.
There are also more immediate dangers.
British and American advisers and special forces as well as humanitarian aid workers are on the ground in the areas that Russian planes are now attacking.
Russia launches fresh wave of air strikes in Syria
For the first time since the Second World War American and Russian planes are bombing the same country at the same time.
Then they were on the same side.
Today they are not.
The consequences of one side shooting down the other sides’s planes - most likely by accident - are incalculable.

Mondoweiss' sickening equivalence

A Mondoweiss writer named Avram Meitner, who pretends to be struggling with the question of whether his oh-so-moral anti-Israel friends should condemn the murder of parents of six young children, thinks he is being evenhanded when he describes how he thinks people should react to the murders:

An error made by the vast majority of people from all parts of the political compass – we are more accepting of killings perpetrated by those wearing uniforms or flying an F16 than by those not wearing such uniforms. The doctrinal systems tell us that for violence to be legitimate, it must be carried out by agents of state. In other words, state terror ceases to be terror simply by virtue of it having been perpetrated under the auspices of a government and its so-called armed forces. It’s important to note this – from a moral perspective, whether you kill a child’s parents at point blank range, or from a few thousand feet in the air, the acts are equivalent.

The slaughter of Eitan and Naama Henkin is terrorism in the same way that the slaughter of hundreds of innocent men, women and children in Gaza is terrorism. Either oppose both equally, or accept that you are led by primitive tribalism rather than principles.

Meitner is a sickening piece of trash. He cannot find it in himself to condemn the murders without a caveat.

Meitner claims that evil Zionists support murdering civilians as long as the murderers are wearing uniforms. But no sane Israeli supports murder, whether the perpetrator is a soldier or not.

There is a world of a difference - legally, morally and logically - between cold-blooded, targeted murder and the tragic deaths of people who are killed when the terrorists hiding among them are being targeted. (There is a reason that every legal system on the planet distinguishes between murder, manslaughter and accidental death.)

If the IDF wanted to target civilians, Gaza would be a smoldering crater and there would be hundreds of thousands killed in 50 days.

No military expert on the planet says Israel targeted civilians. They know what Israel could do.

On the flip side, if an IDF soldier would shoot a Palestinian family at point blank range for no reason except a sense of dignity and revenge, Israeli society would rightly condemn him.

Meitner wants to politicize this murder of Jews and turn it into an anti-Israel screed. What a disgusting excuse for a human.

Here is the real equivalence: the murder of the Henkins is like the murders of Mohammed Abu Khdeir or of the Dawabashe family. In those cases the victims were targeted.

And when you compare apples to apples, the difference between the morality of those Zionists h despises and the Palestinians he loves becomes crystal clear.

Because Israeli society, from the Prime Minister to the people on the street, rose as one to condemn the murder of Abu Khdeir.

Because Israelis raised cash to pay the victims of the Dawabashe arson/murder.

Because the vast majority of Israelis are naturally disgusted and ashamed at the thought that one of their own could be responsible for such depravity.

And how did Palestinians react to the murder of the Henkins? They celebrated. They shot off fireworks. The expressed uniform happiness on Facebook.

I could not find a single Arabic voice in any message board or social media. As of this moment, a single article from Al Quds about the attack - showing the faces of the victims - has 4,500 Likes and 650 Facebook comments, every one uniformly happy that they were murdered. (UPDATE: There are very few fortunate exceptions, h/t DH).

What does it say about Palestinian society that seemingly no one, from Abbas down to the streets of Nablus, can condemn the murders of the Henkins? What does it say about Palestinian society that the Khaled Abu Toamehs and the Bassam Eids and the Muhammad Zoabis and the Mohammed Dajanis, people who actually think of Jews as human beings, are so rare - and roundly hated?

This is the difference between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors.

This is the difference between a moral society and one that is perverted.

That is the difference between a society that deserves respect and one that demands it.

That is the huge moral difference between the people Mondoweiss despises and those it supports. And if you want to see that difference in detail, read the comments of anti-Israel bigots who are applauding the murders.

But credit where credit is due. I have to thank Avram Meitner for helping me crystallize the difference between him and me.

10/02 Links Pt2: Israel’s risk aversion problem; The truth about J Street; A Succot scorecard

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israel’s risk aversion problem

This delusional thinking is what caused the IDF’s General Staff to convene immediately after Operation Protective Edge ended and try to figure out how to rebuild Gaza.
Ever since the cease-fire came into force, Hamas has diverted all the assistance it has received from Israel and the international community not to rebuild Gaza, but to rebuild its military capacity to harm Israel. And yet, from the IDF’s perspective, ever since the war ended our most urgent task has been to save Hamas and the Palestinians alike from reckoning with the price of their aggression.
Likewise, Israel continues to insist that we have a strategic interest in peace with the PLO. Even if this is true in theory, chances are greater that unicorns will fall from the sky and prance through Jerusalem’s Old City than that the PLO will agree to make peace with Israel.
Our continued defense of the PLO as a legitimate actor harms our ability to secure other strategic interests that are achievable and can improve Israel’s regional position. These interests include securing transportation arteries in Judea and Samaria and strengthening Israel's military and political control over the areas. These interests have only grown more acute in recent years with the rise of jihadist forces throughout the region and among the Palestinians themselves.
This brings us back to McCain and his strategic wisdom.
Israel must not allow the risks of action to lure us into strategic paralysis that imperils our future.
The more Israel allows other actors to determine the nature of the emerging regional order, the less secure Israel will be. The more willing we are to take calculated risks today the greater our ability will be to influence the future architecture of regional power relations and so minimize threats to our survival in the decades to come.

Sarah Honig: That level of hatefulness

In all, during her inglorious State Department stint, Hillary functioned as an authentic representative of her boss, President Obama.
And now as a presidential candidate herself, she pretends to be far friendlier to Israel than she was. She is understandably after money and votes. Electioneering begets lots of affable blarney but the devil is in the details. As only expected, Hillary never mentions her chumminess with Suha Arafat and her failure to take Mrs. Arafat to task for odious propaganda that (in the words of Hillary’s own censure of trump) “not only was it out of bounds, it was untrue.”
There are no extenuating excuses for the fact that Hillary kept mum during her Gaza visit and especially afterwards. She didn’t object to outright lies about non-existent contaminants with which Suha insisted Israel literally polluted actual Palestinian wells.
Not to so much as intimate a suggestion of criticism lent a measure of legitimacy to Suha’s outlandish and ultra-false charges. It also subliminally lent the impression that somehow Israel is the figurative poison in the Mideastern well – an impression later wellhoned by Obama whose bias-laden diplomacy Hillary Clinton unflinchingly furthered and helped implement.
Clearly, owning up to even a faint trace of such skewed statecraft now would be politically super-stupid for her with elections in the offing. Besides, Hillary was anyhow never a remarkable stickler for the truth. That, though, doesn’t mean that we should forget her double standards.
Paraphrasing Hillary’s own sanctimonious admonition, she “should have from the beginning corrected that kind of rhetoric, that level of hatefulness.”

The truth about J Street (h/t Bob Knot)

Video: Molotov cocktail attack in Old City of Jerusalem (update)

Displayed At Proudly Al Quds Newspaper:

# Akadds_ alquds: # instant video targeting soldiers and settlers Molotov cocktails near the door of the chain in the Old City of Jerusalem # morning were lying bottles arrest at the age of 25 years from the Shuafat refugee camp
Posted by Jerusalem - Alquds On Friday, October 2, 2015

At commenters Of Hundreds That Facebook Site Happily Cheered The Murders Of The Henkins.

With not one person I could find disagreeing.

UPDATE: The terrorist was arrested. (H / t Bob K)

10/02 Links Pt1: Listen to the Deafening Silence; Win $1 Million If You Can Prove PLO Accepted Israel

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Grandnephew of ‘father of human rights law’ killed for being Jewish

Eitam and Naama Henkin, two Israeli civilians, were gunned down in a drive-by shooting on a road in the West Bank yesterday. Four of their children were in the backseat of their car at the time.
The name Henkin will be immediately familiar to those interested in international law, because of Louis Henkin. Prof. Henkin was one of the defining figures in post-World War II international law. In a five-decade career at Columbia University School of Law, he pioneered the modern field of international law and has been called “the father of human rights law.”
Eitam’s grandfather was Louis Henkin’s brother; his parents are prominent Orthodox figures, associated with liberal approaches to Judaism. Eitam himself was a graduate fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum, a Jerusalem think tank I am also associated with. My colleagues there describe Eitam as “an extremely impressive scholar and human being.” The Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has apparently admitted organizing the attack. I assume Eitam was a U.S. citizen (his parents both are).

Khaled Abu Toameh: Abbas's Trap: The Big Bluff

Those who rushed to declare the death of the Oslo Accords fell into Abbas's trap.
Abbas's threats are mainly designed to scare the international community into pressuring Israel to offer Abbas more concessions. He is hoping that inaccurate headlines concerning the purported abrogation of the Oslo Accords will cause panic in Washington and European capitals, prompting world leaders to demand that Israel give Abbas everything he asks for.
Abbas knows that cancelling the agreements with Israel would mean dissolving his Palestinian Authority, and the end of his political career.
The tens of thousands of Arab refugees now seeking asylum in Europe could not care less about the "occupation" and settlements.
Ironically, Abbas declared that, "We are working on spreading the culture of peace and coexistence between our people and in our region." But his harsh words against Israel, in addition to continued anti-Israel incitement in the Palestinian media, prove that he is moving in the opposite direction. This form of incitement destroys any chance of peace.

Jpost Editorial: Abbas’s speech

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas intended to escalate the tension with Israel when he declared on Wednesday that Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would no longer be bound by the Oslo Accords.
Perhaps his speech was a desperate attempt to gain the attention of a United Nations General Assembly rightly preoccupied with much bigger and more important issues, namely the sectarian bloodbath in Syria that has metastasized throughout the region and has created a major humanitarian crisis for Europe.
Whatever Abbas’s motivation, it is too early to know the operative ramifications of what he said. On the one hand, the Palestinian president was calling on the nations of the world to take punitive actions against Israel as a country that is supposedly illegally occupying another nation.
But, in what can be seen as a positive non-declaration, Abbas stopped short of calling for an end to security and economic cooperation between the PA and Israel. That’s because he understands that an end to such cooperation would lead to the collapse of the PA. And this would be a disaster for the Palestinians, as well as for Israel.
Tens of thousands of PA employees would stop getting paid. Everything from garbage collection to law enforcement would cease to function properly and Hamas and Islamic Jihad would take advantage of the situation.

Win $1 Million If You Can Prove PLO Accepted Israel

New York businessman William Langfan has offered an unprecedented $1 million prize to anyone who shows that the Palestinian National Council (PNC) has ever changed the PLO charter to accept Israel's existence, as is widely believed.
The offer is particularly timely, less than 24 hours after Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced that he no longer sees himself as bound by the Oslo Accords.
Probably the most important obligation in the “Peace Process” was a promise to annul the onerous clauses of their 1964 Palestinian National Charter. “The importance of the charter to the Palestinians can not be exaggerated,” according to Langfan. “To the Palestinians, it is virtually their 'Junior Koran.' These clauses in the charter declared the establishment of Israel illegal and void and called for armed resistance until Palestine is liberated.”
In an exclusive interview with Arutz Sheva's Baruch Gordon, Langfan explained that in 1993, when Israel and the PLO were about to sign the Oslo Accords, then-PLO chairman Yasser Arafat sent a letter to then-Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, in which he agreed to cancel the clauses in the charter that called for an armed struggle against Israel, and promised to submit the matter to the PNC for approval.
That letter was then used for years as supposed proof that the PLO had recognized Israel.
However, Langfan noted that according to the charter itself, a two-thirds majority vote would be necessary to make changes in the charter.

The demand for undeserved "dignity" is part of the Arab honor/shame culture that drives nearly all of their actions.

The opposite of honor is shame, and one of the most potent ways to be shamed is to be ignored, to be shuffled aside as irrelevant.

In Mahmoud Abbas' interview with Al Quds two weeks ago, when he threatened to drop his bombshell at the UN, included his saying that the Arab world is preoccupied with their own problems and are no longer interested in prioritizing the Palestinian issue. The entire point of announcing his supposed bombshell was to redirect attention away from Yemen, Syria and the other major issues in the Arab world and to reclaim center stage.

To reclaim his sense of "dignity."

He is right - the Arab world increasingly doesn't give a damn about Palestinians. They are sick and tired of their tantrums. Some of the Arab nations paid lip service to the Palestinian issue at the UN but, significantly, the topic was ignored by Morocco, Iraq and especially Jordan.

If Arab nations are going to ignore their Palestinian brethren, then the PLO leaders need to ensure that the West still buys into the "linkage" argument that somehow their issue is linked to Syria, Yemen and ISIS.

Saeb Erekat was incensed that President Obama ignored the Palestinian issue in his UN speech, saying that ISIS cannot be defeated while Israel continues settlement activity and allowing Jews to ascend to the Temple Mount.

Being ignored by the Arabs is badm but being ignored by the West is an affront to their dignity.

Abbas' aide Mahmoud Habash announced only two days ago that if the world would ignore the issue of the Temple Mount in the UN meetings, it could spark "dire consequences" including World War III. Again, this is both a threat and a demand to be considered relevant by the world.

Arab coverage of the raising of the PLO flag at the UN was filled with happiness at the "dignity" that it supposedly brought to them.

Abbas' speech itself included a demand for his people's "human dignity." But his "bombshell" was a dud, and even the Palestinians recognized it as a worthless stunt.

So Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party upped the ante.

And all of these threats, incitement and demands for honor and dignity brings us to the horrific terrorist attack yesterday.

The Fatah group that took responsibility for the murder of the Henkins yesterday ended their statement with this:

Long live the unity of our people and our struggle to regain our dignity and homeland.

Note that they place "dignity" higher than "homeland." To them, murdering a Jewish couple was mostly an attempt to regain "dignity." They are relevant again! They are in the headlines! And some stupid Westerners will once again use this attack as a weapon against Israel by claiming that the "occupation" is what causes violence in the Middle East, just like Erekat said it did!

The Arab nations already know better, because they are seeing first hand that one cannot compare Syrian barrel bombs to Israeli roadblocks.

But the rest of the world has not yet caught on to the truth. Many non-Arab countries such as Japan and Italy dutifully mentioned "Palestine" in their UN speeches this week.

So the Palestinians demand their "dignity." Dignity can only be achieved by showing that they matter, that they are relevant.

And terror attacks - planned and financed by Mahmoud Abbas' own Fatah party - are the easiest and most efficient manner to achieve relevance and their twisted idea of "dignity."

(h/t Irene)

This @UNRWA deputy principal loves shooting rockets at Israeli civilians

Khaled Arjah works for UNRWA near Nablus. He is probably a math teacher and appears to be a deputy principal.

Here are some of the wonderful, peaceful things he has posted on Facebook:

"Breaking the Silence" (meaning, rockets are more powerful than words)

"If we were to reveal what (weapons) we have, both enemies and friends would be surprised"

The banners of our victory have appeared, and the singing of the weapons has risen high

Allah said: "Enter upon them by the gate, for when you have entered it, you shall surely be victorious." (Quran 5:23)

"The Mourabitoun at Al-Aqsa"

Of course, all of these violate UN and UNRWA principles.

Of course, nothing will happen to fix the problem.

I have started to put all of these examples in a single tag, UNRWA Hate.

(h/t Ibn Boutros, Bob K)

Times of Israel reports:

A unit within Fatah’s armed wing assumed responsibility for the murder of an Israeli couple near the West Bank settlement of Itamar.

The Abdel Qader al-Husseini Brigades, a group affiliated with Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, announced on Friday that its men on Thursday night opened fire on the car of Eitam and Naama Henkin, a couple in their 30s, while they were driving home with their four children, aged four months to nine. The children were not wounded in the attack.

Fatah, headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is the largest faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is the governing body in West Bank areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

The statement from the Husseini Brigades says:

With Allah’s help and in keeping with our people's right to struggle to recover our usurped homeland and our duty to sacred jihad, our forces on Thursday night carried out a necessary action in which they fired on a car of occupying settlers outside the Itamar settlement, built on Palestinian lands south of Nablus, firing directly on the car, killing a settler and wounding his wife according to enemy media, and the group returned to the safety of the camps.

We warn the enemy against carrying out any action against innocent civilians, wherever they are, because our troops will respond with similar attacks, and we will consider their actions to be war crimes.

Long live the unity of our people and our struggle to regain our dignity and homeland.

Brigades of the Martyr Abdul-Qader al-Husseini Storm Troopers

The Husseini Brigades also shot many rockets from Gaza last year, a fact that practically no media noted, as they want to pretend that Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah is a "moderate" group.

And the Al Aqsa Brigades of Fatah are not a rogue group. Their Abu Nidal Brigades has an article from yesterday about how the Fatah leadership thanked them for their work in general, reproducing the letter on Fatah stationery.

These Fatah groups are paid for and supported by Fatah, and Fatah is led by Mahmoud Abbas, who has never dissociated himself from their actions.

Which means that Mahmoud Abbas is a terrorist leader.

But world leaders, world media, NGOs and "Middle East experts" are so invested in the myth of Abbas as a peacemaker that they simply ignore the straight line from "Palestinian President" Mahmoud Abbas to depraved terror attacks like this one.

10/01 Links Pt2: The Progressive Left and Israel's Right to Exist; Finnish MP: Most of Europe is Anti-Israel

From Ian:

The Progressive Left and Israel's Right to Exist

At bottom, the bien-pensant view is that (a) Israel is wrong because it's strong; (b) Israel has no right to exist because it is a European state in the Muslim Middle East; and (c) Palestinians and fellow Muslims are not responsible for their fate, or their crimes, because they are oppressed victims.
The left hates Israel’s military strength and its willingness to use it for the same reasons it hates American power. As right-thinking cosmopolitans, they would never approve such brutality. Obama captured this perspective in a Freudian slip. “Whether we like it or not,” he explained, “we remain a dominant military superpower.” The left doesn’t like it. They don’t like it in America, and they don’t like it in Israel. As for Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea brandishing military threats, well, let’s not think about that. The threats may vanish from their minds, but they still threaten everybody else with working synapses.
Not only is Israel powerful, the left (like the Muslim world) sees Israel as a remnant of Europe's crimes: imperialism and the Holocaust. University faculties are preoccupied with imperialism and post-colonial legacies, which they blame for many of the world’s ills. They see Israel through that lens, as a colony of white settlers in an Arab-Muslim region. They blithely ignore the Jewish people’s age-old connection to the land, its continuous presence there, and its central religious significance. And they ignore how many Israelis were driven out of Arab countries, which have become virulently anti-Semitic.
The combination of Israel’s religious heritage, its nationalism, its prosperity, and its unapologetic self-defense combine virtually everything loathed by secular, cosmopolitan intellectuals. That’s why Obama's 2009 Cairo speech offered such a tepid “defense" of Israel's right to exist. Israel was needed, he said, because Jews needed somewhere to go after the Holocaust. That is the view of the average professor of French literature: Israel is the bastard child of Europe’s crimes.
In the left’s worldview, Palestinians and fellow Muslims are not seen as agents of their own history, for good or ill. They are righteous victims. This condescending view is grounded in Jean Jacques Rousseau's gauzy, romantic vision of "noble savages," not yet cursed by civilization. What can be expected of such people? Their crimes are merely "weapons of the weak.” And who are we, the oppressors, to criticize them? That would commit an unforgivable sin, blaming the victim.
For years, this coalition of anti-Zionists has marched across campuses shouting "Palestine, Palestine, must be free, from the Jordan [River] to the sea." The state they demand, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, means Israel should disappear completely. So, when Bernie Sanders says Israel has a right to exist, they sit on their hands. Their shameful silence says Israel's very existence is a no longer a "progressive position." (h/t Cliff)

MEMRI: In Eid Al-Adha Editorial, Qatari 'Al-Quds Al-Arabi' Daily Laments State Of Arab World: Muslims Are Slaughtering One Another, Export Nothing But Murder And Terror

The Eid Al-Adha (September 24, 2015) editorial of the London-based Qatari daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi discussed the current state of the Muslim world, and bemoaned how many Muslims are slaughtering their brethren in Arab and Islamic countries. It added that Muslims today are in the throes of an unprecedented catastrophe that surpasses even the loss of Andalusia and of Palestine.
The following are excerpts from the editorial:
"How sadly misleading is this picture, which does not reflect the true state of this nation: One million Muslims in simple white garb, symbolizing a state of abstinence and purity, equality and compassion, stand in a single place as one, praying and offering pleas to a single deity. Despite their differences in color, nationality, tongue, and cultural and political schools of thought, they help each other bear the effort of the pilgrimage to Mount Arafat at high noon...
"Are these pilgrims, these submissive believers, who praise Allah morning and night, among those Muslims who slaughter each other in more than one country, to the point that their lands are awash in blood and tens of thousands of them have been killed or wounded since the last Eid Al-Adha?...
"Have we reached a situation in which we must redefine the term 'Muslim'? Do we even remain an 'Islamic ummah'? And are we still 'the best nation established for mankind' [Koran: 3:110]? Or have we become 'a nation of refugees?' Are Muslims still 'a single body, in which if one organ complains the rest of them hasten to treat and protect it,' [as the hadith says]? Or have they become one body in which one organ kills another and conspires against it?

Is the Pope Ending Catholic Anti-Semitism?

"Nostre Aetate," released in 1965, called for friendship and dialogue between Catholics and Jews, instead of the centuries-long repudiation of Jews by Catholics; St Joseph's University became the first to respond by establishing the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations. Is Pope Francis picking up where Pope Paul VI left off?
Can Pope Francis' hopes and dreams for reconciliation of Catholics and Jews override some unfortunate but pressing realities, such the Church's desire to placate the Palestinians?
If Pope Francis is serious about a "journey of friendship" with the Jewish people, perhaps he would not be so quick to approve President Obama's Iran nuclear deal in the name of a hoped-for peace that will most certainly ignite an unhoped-for war between Iran and Israel.
By assisting the UN in establishing the "sustainable development platform," the Pope is offering his permission to the UN -- one of the most anti-Semitic, anti-Israel bodies on the face of the earth -- to usurp power on behalf of a shared utopian agenda. Sustainable development notwithstanding, the UN should be encouraged to clean up its own house before it tries to clean up the world.