Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, October 24, 2015

International law prohibits banning Jewish worship on the Temple Mount

TOI reports:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday restated a pledge to retain intact the custom of not permitting non-Muslim prayer on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, which has been at the center of a recent spike in unrest.

“Israel reaffirms its commitment to upholding unchanged the status quo of the Temple Mount, in word and in practice,” he said in a statement.

The compound, which houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, was the site of two ancient Jewish temples and is sacred to both Jews and Muslims. It was captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War.

“Israel will continue to enforce its longstanding policy: Muslims pray on the Temple Mount; non-Muslims visit the Temple Mount,” he said, following up on comments earlier by US Secretary of State John Kerry after meetings in Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Kerry said Israel had agreed on steps to calm tensions over the flashpoint site, including 24-hour security cameras, an idea not specified in Netanyahu’s statement.

The prime minister did confirm, however, that there would be “increased coordination between the Israeli authorities and the Jordanian Waqf, including to ensure that visitors and worshipers demonstrate restraint and respect for the sanctity of the area, and all this in accordance with the respective responsibilities of the Israelis authorities and the Jordanian Waqf.”

Tensions over Al-Aqsa have sparked a recent wave of violence that has seen knife and gun terror attacks by Palestinians against Israelis along with daily clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces.

Israel has repeatedly denied persistent Palestinian allegations to the effect that it seeks to change the arrangements at the site in order to allow Jews to pray there.

Bibi's' declaration to stop Jews from praying on the Temple Mount may be against international law.

It is time to expand a previous article of mine where I describe how international law supports Jewish worship on the Temple Mount - a point that you will never hear from "human rights" NGOs.

As far as I can tell, not only do Jews have the right to visit and to pray on the Temple Mount, but if they wanted to build a synagogue there I cannot find anything in international law that wouldn't support them wholeheartedly.

The overriding consideration in international law is the right to be treated equally, and barring Jews from the Temple Mount is about as discriminatory as possible.

Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says:

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.

In addition, Article 20 seems to prohibit the insults and incitement that Muslims engage in towards Jews on the Temple Mount:

1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.

2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

Moreover, the UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief is filled with articles that would prohibit banning Jews from the Temple Mount:

No one shall be subject to discrimination by any State, institution, group of persons, or person on grounds of religion or other beliefs.

For the purposes of the present Declaration, the expression "intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief" means any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on religion or belief and having as its purpose or as its effect nullification or impairment of the recognition, enjoyment or exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms on an equal basis.

Discrimination between human beings on grounds of religion or belief constitutes an affront to human dignity and a disavowal of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and shall be condemned as a violation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and enunciated in detail in the International Covenants on Human Rights, and as an obstacle to friendly and peaceful relations between nations.

All States shall take effective measures to prevent and eliminate discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief in the recognition, exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms in all fields of civil, economic, political, social and cultural life.

All States shall make all efforts to enact or rescind legislation where necessary to prohibit any such discrimination, and to take all appropriate measures to combat intolerance on the grounds of religion or other beliefs in this matter.

From these articles it appears that Israel is obligated to allow Jews to visit and pray there, and to protect them from those who want to take away their rights.

Here is where the codification of bloacking Jewish religious rights on the Temple Mount runs afoul of this Declaration:

All States shall take effective measures to prevent and eliminate discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief in the recognition, exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms in all fields of civil, economic, political, social and cultural life.

All States shall make all efforts to enact or rescind legislation where necessary to prohibit any such discrimination, and to take all appropriate measures to combat intolerance on the grounds of religion or other beliefs in this matter.

Blocking Jews from worshiping in their holiest place while allowing Muslims to do so is discrimination by any definition.

It is true that this same declaration says:

Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.

But this clause is referring to cases where the practitioners of the religion are the ones who are a danger to others, not when the others are so intolerant that they threaten violence. To invoke this paragraph to deny Jews' rights to the Temple Mount (which I suspect human rights organizations would do if pressed) would make the rest of that declaration a mockery. It would give veto power by any religious group over the rights of any other religious group by simply threatening violence.

Perhaps one can try to argue that limiting non-Muslim worship on the Temple Mount is similar to not allowing non-Christian worship in Christian holy places or prohibiting non-Jewish worship in synagogues. But that argument does not apply where the site itself has inherent sanctity for the group that wishes to worship.

In this case, one could argue that it is even worse, because the entire reason that Muslims consider this a holy spot is a derivative of the Jewish temples that were there first. But no one is seriously demanding that Muslims be banned from their mosques on the Temple Mount, just that Jews be given equal rights.

You remember equal rights, don't you? This isn't only a legal issue, but a moral one as well. Denying the rights of one party because of the threats of violence of another party is not something to celebrate. It is capitulation to blackmail.

In summary, not only is it outrageous to deny Jewish worship on the Temple Mount for Jews who wish to pray there, it is against the principles of international law, basic freedom of worship and equal rights that would be defended in every other circumstance and for every other religion.

Maintaining the "status quo" when the status quo is discriminatory is not a virtue. It is a travesty, and it gives justification and incentive for violence against those who fight for their religious rights. Those who are demanding equal rights are invariably described as extremists or worse.

Of course, we will never hear Human Rights Watch or Amnesty or the UN dare to defend the Jewish right to worship on the Temple Mount. Because Jews who want to do so are not considered to be worthy of protection by international law.

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10/24 Links: Jerusalem Synagogue Massacre claims sixth victim; BDS activists guilty of discrimination

From Ian:

11 months on, rabbi dies of wounds from Jerusalem synagogue massacre

Almost a year after Palestinian terrorists killed four worshipers and a policeman at a synagogue in Jerusalem, Rabbi Haim Yehiel Rotman, who was critically injured in the attack, died from his injuries Saturday evening.
Rotman had been in a coma ever since two East Jerusalem terrorists armed with a gun, axes and meat cleavers stormed the Bnei Torah Synagogue in Har Nof last November and began attacking worshipers.
Rotman, 55, suffered a number of blows to his head from an axe.
Rotman is survived by his wife and their 11 children. He was being laid to rest at 10 p.m. Saturday night at Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul cemetery.
“He was one of the most special people in our community who always had a smile on his face,” a member of the Bnei Torah Synagogue told Israeli daily Yisrael Hayom.
“He was so loved by everyone in the community, and his death represents another blow to the community that was broken almost a year ago.”

Bassem Eid: Barbaric violence and the Palestinian failure of leadership

I am disheartened and worried about the violence being perpetrated in Israel by some of my fellow Palestinians. This latest wave of violence started at the Al Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem. It has extended to the rest of East Jerusalem, then to the West Bank, and then to all of Israel. My biggest worry is that we Palestinians appear to have no responsible leaders, neither in the Palestinian territories nor at the Knesset. These leaders, instead of calming the violence, are fanning its flames.
This wave of violence will not help the Palestinians’ economic situation. It will not help our ability to convince anyone, let alone Israelis, that we deserve a state. And it will not help grow our civil society which we badly need to do if we are to ever be taken seriously as a peace partner. All that this achieves is to push us further back. Yet our leaders are content to preach hate then sit back and enjoy their financial perks while Palestinian society is crashing and burning.
Not surprisingly, Hamas is engaged in inciting violence. The IDF reported that Hassan Yousef, a co-founder of Hamas, is “actively instigating and inciting terrorism and publicly encouraging and praising the execution of attacks against Israelis.” This is expected from Hamas unfortunately, but the problem does not stop at Hamas.
At the start of this wave of violence, Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas said “The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours… and they have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. […] We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing”. What kind of responsible leader would make such anti-Semitic and violent statements? The only conclusion one can draw from this is that Abbas is out of control and undeserving of the title he holds. Americans have denounced his rhetoric and so has the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who is not exactly known for his pro-Israel bias.

Bassam Tawil: The Palestinian Jihad: Lies, Lies and More Lies

First, we are not seeing anything "popular." We are not seeing, as before, thousands of Palestinians participating in the violence or protests.
It is just another wave of terrorism: targeting Jews for being Jews. The terrorists and their apologists do not distinguish between a Jew living in the city of Beersheba, and a Jew from a West Bank settlement. For the Palestinian leaders and media, these Jews are all "settlers" living in "occupied territories."
The appropriate term for the current wave of terrorism is "jihad". The attacks on Jews in Israel and the West Bank are part of the global jihad that has been waged for many years against Jews in particular, non-Muslims in general, and even against other Muslims who might not agree with a differing version of Islam.
This jihad is not aimed at "ending occupation" or protesting against misery and checkpoints. The terrorists do not see a difference between a "left wing Jew" and a "right wing Jew." They do not ask their victims about their political affiliation before knifing them.
In a grotesque rewrite of history, UNESCO declared that two Jewish holy sites, Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs, were Muslim holy sites.
This is a wave of terrorism based on lies. Palestinian leaders, including Abbas his officials in the Palestinian Authority and his Fatah faction, have been lying to us for months. They told Palestinians that the Jews are "invading" and "desecrating" Islamic holy sites with the purpose of destroying them. Abbas and his officials are urging Muslims to join the jihad against the Jews.
The leaders are now telling us that most of the terrorists were, in fact, innocent civilians who were shot dead by Israelis while on their way to buy food or going to work. Lying has become an integral part of the jihad against Jews. The campaign of lies, distortion and fabrications is not less serious than the terror attacks.
This is yet another phase of the worldwide jihad against all the "infidels" and "enemies of Islam." Those who are murdering Jews today do not hesitate to murder other non-Muslims tomorrow, especially those who are seen as Israel's friends, such as the U.S.

'The mufti planned to build crematorium in Dotan Valley'

The controversy over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks on Jerusalem Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini's role in the extermination of European Jewry has promoted veteran journalist Haviv Kanaan to recall the malicious plan the mufti devised.
Kanaan published an article in Haaretz in 1970 in which he reviewed the senior Muslim clergyman's actions in 1942, when the Jewish community in then-British Mandate Palestine was preparing for the possibility of a Nazi invasion. Kanaan said that in 1968, while researching his article, he met with Faiz Bay Idrisi, a senior Arab officer in the Mandate Police, who spoke of al-Husseini's intention to build a crematorium in the northwest Samarian hills.
"Even today, as I recall what I heard from police officials and mufti supporters, chills go through my body," Idrisi told Kanaan at the time, recalling how in case of a German invasion "Haj Amin Husseini was gearing to enter Jerusalem at the head of the Muslim Arab Legion squadron he'd created for the Third Reich. The mufti's plan was to build a huge Auschwitz-like crematorium in the Dotan Valley, near Nablus, to which Jews from Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and North Africa would be imprisoned and exterminated, just like the Jews in the death camps in Europe."
This should come as no surprise in light of al-Husseini's known views and actions during the Holocaust, and prior to it. (h/t blue sky)

10/23 Links Pt2: Israel breached Iran airspace in 2012 in dry run for strike; Bibi: Crazy like a fox

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Ted Cruz: A fresh approach to American foreign policy – and US-Israel relations

US Senator Ted Cruz, the conservative Republican firebrand from Texas, is running for president. Up until a few weeks ago, his candidacy was met with indifference as the media and political operatives all dismissed the viability of his candidacy. But that is beginning to change. The voices arguing that Cruz, the favorite of Tea Party fiscal conservatives and Evangelical Christians may have what it takes to win the Republican nomination have multiplied.
Since arriving in Washington four years ago, Cruz has arguably been Israel’s most avid defender in the Senate. During Operation Protective Edge in July 2014, Cruz used his authority as a member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee to force the Obama administration to end the Federal Aviation Commission’s ban on US flights to Ben-Gurion Airport. Cruz announced at the time that he would put a hold on all State Department appointments until the administration justified the flight ban.
Rather than defend its position, the administration restored flights to Israel after 36 hours.
Last summer Cruz led the national opposition to US President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. He brought thousands of activists to the Capitol to participate in a rally he organized calling for Congress to vote down the deal. Rather than use the rally as a means to promote himself, Cruz invited Republican front-runner real estate developer Donald Trump to join him at the rally. Trump’s participation ensured that the event received wide coverage from the national media.
I interviewed Cruz by telephone from the campaign trail earlier this week about his views on the purpose of American foreign policy, US-Israel relations, the Iran nuclear deal and the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

Elliott Abrams: A New Middle East Policy

Recently a group of Republican national security experts, mostly academics and former officials, joined to produce Choosing to Lead, a volume aimed at describing what a foreign policy for a new Republican administration in 2017 should look like. I contributed the chapter on Israel and the Arabs, and it can be found here.
Here’s one paragraph:
Sharing common enemies, Israel and its Arab neighbors have obvious common security interests. They face a dangerous enemy in Iran, newly enriched by the end of international sanctions and the unfreezing of more than $100 billion in assets. They also face a group of non-state and semi-state actors, the jihadis of al-Qaeda and ISIS, and the powerful Iranian-backed Hizballah. Meanwhile, the prospect of major conventional warfare between the Arab states and Israel is virtually nil. What is so striking now is that, although the United States managed to maintain balanced and friendly relations with Israel and the Arabs for decades, even when they were nearly at war (and sometimes even when they were at war), today we have poor relations with both sides just when their own relations are the least fraught in their history.

Israeli Journalist Under Fire From European Counterparts for Exposing Extent of French Antisemitism (INTERVIEW)

Israeli journalist Zvika Klein has recently become the target of hostile international media outlets and BDS activists for a feature he produced eight months ago.
Two France 2 reporters, Thierry Vincent and Julien Nativel, decided to put Klein’s thesis about French antisemitism to the test, by producing a video of their own, using the same model. Vincent, though not a Jew, donned a kippah and spent days wandering around Paris. The finished product was released last week.
Lo and behold, as Vincent said he had expected, the results were nothing like those of Klein.
“In the 12 days [I spent] with a kippah [on my head], I experienced no violence or insult,” Vincent asserted. “Antisemitism exists, as all the numbers say, but how is my video so different from that of Zvika Klein? Who is this journalist?”
Casting aspersions on Klein — whose newspaper is one of two media outlets owned by American-Jewish casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (the other one being Israel Hayom) – was easy for Vincent to do on political grounds. The left-wing leanings of his network, as well as its unfavorable coverage of Israel, are no secret.
Still, he did make a special trip to Jerusalem a few weeks ago to meet with Klein and interview him for a broadcast. It was during that session, Klein told The Algemeiner, that Vincent revealed he had created his own video, which yielded opposite results. Far from taunting him, Vincent showed, the public was friendly.
“I told him I was glad to hear that his experiences as a ‘Jew’ in Paris were positive, because all the French Jews I’ve spoken to say they’re afraid to be visibly Jewish,” Klein said. “And I stood by my own findings, which are more in sync with statistics about French antisemitism than his.”

What Harriet Sherwood didn’t tell you in her report on JK Rowling’s anti-BDS letter

However, there’s a striking omission in Sherwood’s own article. She failed to note her own support for boycotts against Israel, a position she made clear in her swan song at the Guardian in April of 2014.
Sherwood is of course entitled to her view that Israelis are “shielded from the [daily grind] of occupation”, and so perhaps only the “economic pain, isolation and global opprobrium” of boycotts will force Israelis “to take notice”.
However, Guardian readers, it seems, deserve to know that the author of a report critical of JK Rowling’s decision to prioritize Israeli-Palestinian co-existence over “discriminatory” boycotts is herself on record supporting a campaign of exclusion against the Jewish state.

"Legally obligated to resettle refugees?"

From Newsweek Europe:

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said in a statement issued on Wednesday that Britain must resettle more than a hundred Syrian asylum seekers who arrived at a British military base in Cyprus on boats after being abandoned by people smugglers.

The 114 Syrian refugees, including 28 children, arrived on two boats at the British base of Akrotiri on the southern Cypriot coast on Wednesday, after people smugglers left them at sea. They were permitted a temporary stay at the base despite arriving there illegally, as they had no legal permission to be present at the base. However, UNHCR says that Britain now has a legal responsibility to settle them.

Isn't that interesting? The official UN agency for refugees says that if they arrive in a country, or even a military base of a country, that country is legally obligated to take care of and resettle them.

Yet there are millions of people classified as "refugees" who get no such protection from the UN. Because they are Palestinian, UNHCR doesn't have any say over them, and UNRWA hasn't made such a demand in over fifty years for the host countries to resettle them.

Why does the world accept that Western nations must accept refugees against their will, while Arab nations that host fellow Arabs have no such obligation and can push the responsibility to another UN agency that is more interested in perpetuating the "refugee" problem rather than solving it?

10/23 Links Pt1: UNRWA Suspends Employees for Anti-Semitic FB Posts; Palestinian deformative years

From Ian:

Shmuley Boteach: Global silence as Jews are stabbed, slashed and murdered

Every day Jews are stabbed, slashed, shot, and murdered on the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Beersheba. And every day the world lies about “violence on both sides,” as if Netanyahu and Israel are calling for Jews to take knives and stab Palestinians. John Kerry will blame Israel for the murder of its own citizens because of settlements.
There can be only one conclusion. Jewish blood is cheap and getting cheaper by the day. I know of no other ethnic or religious group on Earth who face daily incitement to genocide with the world making not even a peep of an objection.
A friend of mine who is an elected official took issue with my sharp denunciations of the Iran nuclear agreement. He said it was the only way to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. I said that even if he believed that, surely he could have demanded of the president to postpone all negotiations with Iran by a month every time they threaten Israel with annihilation.
Iran was desperate for the deal. They would have stopped. And if they didn’t, at least Congress could disabuse itself of the notion that Iran had anything on its mind other than the extermination of the Jews.
But the administration’s refusal to even once condemn Iran’s threats to murder all of Israel’s Jews is an immoral omission destined to forever live in infamy, especially when Iran violates the agreement, which they have already begun to do.

Palestinian deformative years

Lord Michael Grade and former Communities Secretary Sir Eric Pickles nailed it this week when they accused the British media and Foreign Office, in turn, of “promoting equivalence between the Palestinians perpetrators and their victims” and “turning a blind eye to the Palestinian propagators of vile ideology.”
Can we fix it? Well, probably no, we can’t. It’s always been this way. From early childhood, Jews are made the object of hatred and disgust, responsible for the failures in the Muslim world. It was as true before 1948 as it is today. Palestinians are not taught to hate Israelis because of Israel. They are taught to hate Jews because they are Jews.
Golda Meir, one of the founders of the State of Israel, knew this half a century ago, when she said: “Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.”
Of course Palestinians are entitled to a country of their own -- even one that will, inevitably, like other Arab states, persecute other faiths and gays and women who drive and people on Twitter. A state like Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Libya, Oman, Algeria, Iran and 10 more where Israelis are forbidden.
It will be tyrannical, oppressive and pose a clear and present danger to the region. But, yes, the Palestinians deserve to call it their own. Israelis know and respect this. Because you have to be a grown up to make compromises, to see the bigger picture and plan for the future. You don’t throw tantrums and stones. You make adult choices.
At ominous times like this, with Israelis forced to use umbrellas and selfie sticks to defend themselves from brainwashed savages -- and incidents of Islamic anti-Semitism across Europe at record levels -- wishy-washy responses to Jew-hate and distorted media coverage of Israel’s plight only serves to fan the flames of ignorance and intolerance in this interminable conflict.

UNRWA Suspends Employees for Anti-Semitic Facebook Posts

The United Nations has taken disciplinary action against at least 22 employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) who used social media to promote anti-Semitism, the watchdog organization UN Watch reported Thursday. The employees’ misconduct was initially exposed in reports published by the watchdog organization in September and October.
The spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon quietly announced on the UN website that UNRWA employees have, “in a number of cases,” [been] subject to disciplinary action, including suspension and loss of pay, following an investigation that verified evidence published by UN Watch — in one report last week, and another in September — of incitement to anti-Semitic violence committed by at least 22 UNRWA employees.
UN Watch noted that the disciplinary actions, which were communicated within a transcript of a press briefing and not a standalone announcement, were taken despite several vehement denials of misconduct by UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness.
In light of the above, UN Watch is now demanding a full apology from UNRWA spokseman Chris Gunness for his McCarthyite tirade against what he called UN Watch’s “baseless allegations about antisemitism.”
Blogger “Elder of Ziyon,” working in parallel, uncovered many similar instances of UNRWA employees posting anti-Semitic material on their social media pages and inciting violence against Jews. In one instance, he found that a UNRWA employee changed his profile picture on Facebook into an image of the “Like” icon superimposed on a knife.

Abbas’s brother-in-law gets life-saving heart surgery in Israel

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s brother-in-law underwent life-saving heart surgery at a private hospital in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Hebrew media reported Thursday.
He was hospitalized at the Assuta Medical Center in northern Tel Aviv’s Ramat Hachayal neighborhood. The surgery was successful and he was said to be recovering in intensive care.
Despite recent tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel approved the entry of Abbas’s wife’s brother to receive treatment in Tel Aviv, Walla reported. The report didn’t name Abbas’s brother-in-law. (h/t Bob Knot)

Five more workers who violate @UNRWA policies

So when can I expect my paycheck from UNRWA for doing the job that they are supposed to be doing?

Basem Arram, UNRWA teacher, promotes violence:

Ahmed Banat, UNRWA teacher, promotes violence:

Hazem Mitchell, UNRWA teacher, supports Hamas in this cover photo:

Halla Moh, UNRWA worker, is another fan of jihadist terror groups:

"Abou al Baraa," probably really named Yousef Zanhar, UNRWA worker, is yet another fan of the Hamas terror group:

Explicitly supporting violence, terror and terror groups must be the criteria UNRWA uses when hiring. (Ahmed Banat, above, only started teaching at UNRWA last week, showing how much UNRWA checks its employees.)

Unfortunately, all of those are against UNRWA's neutrality policy for which employees supposedly could be docked for pay or suspended or fired. We have no evidence that this has happened outside of UNRWA's tepid statement this week with no details.

Tour guides can't say "Temple Mount" on Temple Mount

From Ha'aretz:

This British-born Israeli tour guide may have one of the hardest jobs on earth these days. On the guided tours he leads up to the Temple Mount several times a week, Emmanuel Kushner is under instructions to keep politics out of the conversation — and when it can’t be avoided, at least make sure that whatever he says is politically correct.

With tensions over this Jewish and Muslim holy site boiling over in recent weeks, that can be a daunting task.

Kushner has developed some tricks for avoiding confrontation when entering the eye of the storm. “You guys all know Voldemort, the character from the Harry Potter books, as in ‘he-who-must-not-be-named,’” he begins his pep talk, as the group lines up outside the Temple Mount entrance gate designated for tourists. “Well, that’s gonna be our code. When we’re up there, and I say ‘Voldemort,’ I mean the Temple Mount. I just can’t use those words.”

Muslims refer to the site as the Noble Sanctuary, and language is critical in the current battle of conflicting narratives, all the more so when reference is made to its most salient symbols. These days, when many Palestinians have convinced themselves that Israel is determined to harm the historic mosques located on this site, the last thing a tour guide needs to do is rub in their faces the fact that this is also the site of the ancient Jewish temples.

Do Jews have the right to be equally upset when people call the area "Al Aqsa Mosque" or "Haram al Sharif"? Or are only Muslim sensibilities worthy of being protected?

And might that have to do with the fact that Muslims threaten violence if they become uncomfortable with facts, where even Jewish reporters consider the usage of the normative term for the holy site to be "rubbing it in their faces"?

NYT notices incitement to violence - in "nationalistic" music

The New York Times has an interesting article that describes how Palestinian Arab youth are addicted to violent, inciting songs and music videos:

The Palestinian teenagers who came one after another into the True Love gift and music shop on a recent afternoon all had the same request: nationalistic songs — the new ones.

The proprietor quickly handed over the CDs that he had just started keeping at the checkout counter, like “Jerusalem Is Bleeding,” featuring the track “It’an, It’an” — “Stab, stab” — with its ominous backbeat.

“When I listen to these songs it makes me boil inside,” said one customer, Khader Abu Leil, 15, explaining that the thrumming score has helped pump him up for near-daily demonstrations where he hurls stones at Israeli soldiers.

Notice the euphemism used for songs like "Stab, stab" - that they are merely "nationalistic."

“Stab the Zionist and say God is great,” declares one, a reference to the spate of knife attacks since Oct. 1. “Let the knives stab your enemy,” says another. A third is called “Continue the Intifada” and comes with a YouTube warning — the video shows the Palestinian woman who pulled a knife at an Afula bus station surrounded by Israeli soldiers pointing guns.

“Resist and carry your guns,” the song urges. “Say hello to being a martyr.”

New tunes pop up online every day, many by little-known artists and with low production values — the YouTube video for “Intifada of Knives” is a crude collage showing the Dome of the Rock with fire underneath and a man with a kaffiyeh covering his face holding a slingshot, then a dagger that eventually is stained with blood. Several simply lay spoken-word rants over Arabic percussion.

The NYT then mentions the song I reported on by Arab Idol winner Mohammad Assaf, but it downplays its message of violence and destroying Israel:

Popular stars have also joined the fray: Mohammed Assaf, the Gazan who became a United Nations good will ambassador after winning “Arab Idol” in 2013, released “Ya Yumma” on Saturday on YouTube, where by Thursday afternoon it had more than 365,000 views. Mr. Assaf’s contribution is more lyrical, less explicit, but also draws from recent events with lines like, “There is no perseverance like yours in Jerusalem and Afula.”

The day after UNRWA admits that some of its teachers indeed spew hatred on social media - and the NYT cannot point out that their very own "youth ambassador" is violating UN policy.

One songwriter lies to the newspaper without being called out on it:

Mr. Balaweneh of “Continue the Intifada” is a 37-year-old father of three whose day job is writing for a Palestinian Authority military-style music troupe. He, too, threw rocks in the first intifada. By the second, which started in 2000, he said he was active “with my poems and with my songs.” Now, he does weddings and political events with his trio, “The Storm,” which he said is based in the West Bank town of Nablus. He said they were “against violence.”

“Our songs are not telling people to go and carry out attacks, our songs are more concentrated on telling people to stand up for their rights, their country, their land,” said Mr. Balaweneh, who lives in Nablus. “Now, because of the current situation, our songs need to have a lot of action in them, in order to make the blood flow and boil.”

This is the song with the lyric "say hello to being a martyr."

Older political songs, Mr. Al Arayas said, mixed protests of Palestinian oppression with dreamy, more optimistic yearnings. He sees the new ones as more blunt.

“This music is made as a way to make the Palestinian people get up and resist,” he said. “The words of these songs, and the music involved with these songs, is a lot more powerful.”

He was interrupted by another young customer, asking, “Do you have any nationalistic songs?”

Mr. Al Arayas asked if he was looking for anything specific.

“I want something hard-core and new,” came the reply. The teenager handed over 20 shekels for two CDs and was gone.

For Palestinian Arabs, there is no distinction between "nationalism" and terrorism.

This article shows that to Palestinians, "nationalism" is simply a code word for eliminating Jews. Which is really what it has always been.

Bernard Lewis implies Mufti sought "Final Solution" in the 1930s

From Bernard Lewis' 1999 book, "Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry Into Conflict and Prejudice", pages 146-7:

The footnote, unfortunately, applies to several pages of text so it is difficult to examine what the specific source was for this last paragraph. But for those who want to try:

This doesn't mean that Hitler was influenced by the Mufti in any way for his own genocidal agenda, but it does show that the Mufti did not merely want to get rid of Zionists from Palestine but to eliminate Jews from the planet - and that this desire may very well have pre-dated the rise of Nazism.

Based on what we know about how he incited Arabs to murder Jews in Palestine, it is not far-fetched.

(h/t Yisrael Medad)

WaPo, HuffPo, NYT all whitewash the genocidal Mufti

It is sort of amazing.

24 hours after Netanyahu withdrew his remarks about the Mufti of Jerusalem and clarified them with specific citations of the Mufti's importance to the Nazi's efforts to destroy all of European Jewry, major media are ignoring his later statements - and doing so while whitewashing a Jew-hating war criminal.

At the Washington Post, an article by Ishaan Tharoor says that the Mufti had little to do with the Holocaust, and his alliance with Nazi Germany had nothing to do with antisemitism but with his antipathy towards Great Britain:

While a convenient ideological scarecrow, it totally obscures the real forces that drew someone like Husseini into the Nazi orbit around World War II.

At the time, Palestine was under British mandate, a colonial context that Palestinians feared would lead to their dispossession. The British were themselves well aware of Arab grievances in the face of Jewish migration.

...The mufti's meeting with Hitler was really about Husseini's own desire to secure national status for his people and be recognized as a future Arab leader.

So simple! Just a convenience. Nothing about the Mufti's virulent antisemitism, nothing about his role in pogroms against Jews in 1920, 1921 and 1929, nothing about his explicitly antisemitic broadcasts or his role in the deaths of hundreds of Jewish children who would have been able to escape Europe if it wasn't for the Mufti.

(Tharoor's bias shines through when he describes the Peel Commission plan, which would have given the Jewish state a tiny, indefensible sliver of land on the coast and in the north, as it "would give the new Jewish state most of the coastline and the country's most fertile agricultural lands. ")

This is a disgraceful whitewash. But not the only one.

The New York Times wrote a major editorial for Friday's paper slamming Bibi for his original, flawed speech - and without mentioning his later words on that topic two days previous, for which they have no retort.

The claim by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that a Palestinian persuaded Adolf Hitler to exterminate the Jews of Europe is outrageous.

It is outrageous because the Holocaust is far too terrible a crime to be exploited for political ends, especially in the state linked so closely to the tragedy of the Jewish people. It is outrageous because the only apparent purpose is to demonize the Palestinians and the current leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and to give the impression that their resistance is based solely on a longstanding hatred of the Jews, and not on their occupation by Israel or any other grievance. And it comes at a time of renewed tension in Israel, with a wave of lone-wolf attacks on Jews by knife-wielding Palestinians.

Yet there is a clear line between Haj Amin Husseini's incitement to kill Jews in the 1920s based on his lies that Jews were planning to take over the Al Aqsa Mosque and Mahmoud Abbas' words last month that the blood of Palestinians to "defend" the Al Aqsa Mosque from the hated Jews with their "filthy feet" was "holy."

Just as Jews were murdered in the 1920s based on the lies pushed by the Mufti, so are Jews in 2015 being murdered directly because of the lies and incitement by Mahmoud Abbas and others.

The only way to make this line clearer would be to note that Mahmoud Abbas considers the genocidal Mufti to be a hero.

But the only incitement that the NYT can find is not Abbas' words but rather Netanyahu's pointing out the nearly perfect analogy between the Mufti and Abbas.

This editorial is knowingly trying to cover up Netanyahu's main point by disparaging his earlier statement - and by extension, whitewashing the Mufti's crimes.

The Huffington Post also seized on the Netanyahu speech and the criticism of it without mentioning his later, perfectly accurate comments. Even though that wasn't the focus of the article - a smarmy putdown of members of Congress who were against Palestinian incitement of the type that the Mufti excelled at - the overall effect is to make the readers think that the Mufti was not nearly as bad as Netanyahu made him out to be.

To criticize Bibi's speech without mentioning his correction, and without doing a fact check of the Mufti's crimes, is irresponsible and shows a deep bias on the part of the media.

The Mufti may not have influenced Hitler to murder millions of Jews, but he was an enthusiastic cheerleader for the effort which was consistent with his actions in British Mandate Palestine. And any attempt to downplay that fact is at least as bad as Bibi's initial accusations were.

(h/t Jordan, GLR, Alyssa)

10/22 Links Pt2: JK Rowling: Israel needs cultural bridges, not boycotts; Being pro-peace means being pro-Israel

From Ian:

Israel needs cultural bridges, not boycotts – letter from JK Rowling, Simon Schama and others

We will be seeking to inform and encourage dialogue about Israel and the Palestinians in the wider cultural and creative community. While we may not all share the same views on the policies of the Israeli government, we all share a desire for peaceful coexistence.
Cultural boycotts singling out Israel are divisive and discriminatory, and will not further peace. Open dialogue and interaction promote greater understanding and mutual acceptance, and it is through such understanding and acceptance that movement can be made towards a resolution of the conflict.
Ultimately we all believe in a two-state solution so that the national self-determination of both peoples is realised, with the state of Israel and a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security.
Cultural engagement builds bridges, nurtures freedom and positive movement for change. We wholly endorse encouraging such a powerful tool for change rather than boycotting its use.

UK Court refers Western Sahara imports case to EU Court

Two EU Member States have a strong position on the subject of Western Sahara imports. The Dutch government has stated on more than one occasion that products from Western Sahara cannot enter the EU market labelled as from Morocco, a position shared with the Swedish government. Similarly, the EFTA countries do not interpret their Free Trade Agreement with Morocco to apply to Western Sahara. The United States explicitly excludes Western Sahara from its free trade cooperation with Morocco.
At present, the European Court of Justice is reviewing the legality of both the EU-Morocco Fisheries Partnership Agreement and the EU-Morocco Free Trade Agreement covering agricultural products, precisely because they allow Western Sahara products to enter the EU market as if they were Moroccan.
Western Sahara, in north-west Africa, is the subject of a decades-long dispute between Morocco and the Saharawi people. In October 1975 the International Court of Justice rejected Morocco’s territorial claims over Western Sahara and recognised the Saharawi people's right to self-determination. Since 1975 Morocco has supported the settlement of its citizens in Western Sahara, arguably in breach of Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions, which states: ‘The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.’ The United Nations and NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Norwegian Refugee Council have found evidence of human rights abuses.

Fred Maroun: Being pro-peace means being pro-Israel

As an Arab, I proudly support Israel, and I believe that it is the duty of every fair-minded person to support Israel. I have tremendous respect for the Jewish culture, and I believe in the right of Jews to be independent on a land where they have had continuous presence for longer than any other group. I also proudly support the goal of a democratic and peaceful Palestinian state.
Not only is there no contradiction between these two goals, but just as I believe that Israel would benefit from the existence of a peaceful Palestinian state (see “The one-state delusion”), I know that the creation of such a state hinges on Palestinians fully accepting the existence of the Jewish state.
Some Arabs and even some Palestinians understand this. Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid wrote, “Despite what we tell ourselves, Israel is here to stay. What’s more, it has a right to exist. It is the nation of the Jews but also a nation for Israeli Arabs who have better lives than Arabs anywhere in Arab countries. We must accept these facts and move on. The anti-Semitism promoted by Hamas, Fatah, and the BDS movement is not the answer for us Palestinians.” Sadly Arabs such as Eid are few.
Palestinian thugs who are currently engaged in attacks against Jews in Israel are not building a Palestinian state. They are the product of a Palestinian hate culture, and their actions entrench that hate culture even more, further pushing away the dream of Palestinian statehood.
To achieve peace and eventually dignity and statehood for the Palestinians, there is one path and one path only, and it is to denounce terrorism and unequivocally support Israel. (h/t Cliff)

"PA demands Muslim oversight on Temple Mount - or else"

From TOI:

The Palestinian Authority has warned Israel that it will soon halt security coordination with the IDF in the West Bank unless the Muslim authorities on the Temple Mount are given full administrative control over Jewish groups visiting the holy site, PA officials told The Times of Israel on Thursday. The PA is also demanding that Israel take action to stop what it claims is escalated violence against Palestinians by settlers in the West Bank.

“Israel must restore control of the Temple Mount to the Waqf (Muslim trust),” said one official close to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. “This is one of the only measures that can help calm the current situation.”

What a great idea!

The Muslims will give exactly the same rights to Jews who want to visit the holy site as they did before 1967 (none), as they did for the Tomb of the Patriarchs before 1967 (not allowed past the seventh step outside the building), as they did for the Western Wall between 1948 and 1967 (none) or if they are particularly generous, the amount they gave before 1948 (Jews not allowed to bring tables, blow shofars, put up even temporary partitions.)

I hope that the official Israeli response is a gigantic and sincere wish for Abu Mazen to do something anatomically impossible.

.@UNRWA admits that employees post antisemitism on Facebook

From UN Watch:

The spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon quietly announced on the UN website that UNRWA employees have, “in a number of cases,” beeen subject to disciplinary action, including suspension and loss of pay, following an investigation that verified evidence published by UN Watch — in one report last week, and another in September — of incitement to anti-Semitic violence committed by at least 22 UNRWA employees.

Curiously, the following statement was made public only as a bracketed addition buried deep in a UN transcript, and not posted as a stand-alone statement by the UN, or indeed anywhere at all on the UNRWA website:

UNRWA takes all allegations of violations of UN principles as well as its neutrality and established social media policies very seriously. UNRWA condemns and will not tolerate anti-Semitism or racism in any form. Every allegation brought to our attention has either been or is being assessed, and where there are prima facie facts to support the allegation, in accordance with due process. Some allegations have been found to be authentic, others not.

Already, working closely with Facebook’s legal team, UNRWA has brought about the removal of more than 90 imposter or unauthorized Facebook pages. In some cases, it has determined the alleged ‘UNRWA staff’ are not in fact UNRWA employees or are no longer UNRWA employees.

However, and very regrettably, in a number of cases so far, the Agency has found staff Facebook postings to be in violation of its social media rules. These postings have been removed and the staff have been subject to both remedial and disciplinary action, including suspension and loss of pay. The remaining allegations are under assessment.

In light of the above, UN Watch is now demanding a full apology from UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness for his McCarthyite tirade against what he called UN Watch’s “baseless allegations about antisemitism.”

This is of course not enough. UNRWA was forced, kicking and screaming, to even get to this point. They need to be transparent about who was suspended, who was fined and who used UNRWA's name when they weren't really employees. UNRWA needs to publicly inform its employees about this policy. They do not appear to be taking this seriously if they don't even issue a stand-alone statement about this.

I will continue to post daily examples of UNRWA employees posting hate and terror-supporting messages. But this is also something UNRWA should be doing themselves. They clearly aren't taking this seriously if they aren't looking for the offensive posts.

Moreover, UNRWA should explain clearly why it allows its own school logos to erase Israel. This is also against UNRWA's stated policies, but nothing has been done against that. By only focusing on the worst antisemitic and pro-terror messages, UNRWA is giving the impression that it has no problem with other posts that are not as extreme are perfectly OK according to UNRWA rules. We need to know where they draw the line, and why these logos are still being used.

10/22 Links Pt1: Fatah: Stab the Israelis! PA: Stone the Israelis!; PATV Praises Terrorists as "Heroes"

From Ian:

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Things We Need to Stop Hearing About the ‘Stabbing Intifada’

Intolerable and inapplicable, too, is the cliché of the “cycle” or “spiral” of violence, which, by putting the kamikaze killers and their victims on the same footing, sows confusion and amounts to an incitement to further action.
Intolerable, for the same reason, are the rhetorical appeals “for restraint” and disingenuous pleas “not to inflame the street,” which, as with the “spiral of violence,” reverse the order of causality by implying that a soldier, police officer or civilian acting in self-defense has committed a wrong equal to that of someone who chooses to die after spreading as much terror as he possibly can.
Strange indeed, how tepid are the condemnations of the stabbings of innocent passers-by and rammings of bus stops — condemnations that I have to think would be less half-hearted if the acts had occurred on the streets of Washington, Paris or London.
More than strange — disturbing — is the difference in tone between the equivocal reaction to the recent killings and the unanimous and unambiguous international outpouring of emotion and solidarity elicited by the fatal hatchet attack on a soldier on a London street on May 22, 2013, a scenario that was not very different from those unfolding today in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Intolerable, again, that most of the major media have paid the grieving Israeli families only a fraction of the attention they have paid the families of the perpetrators.
Intolerable, finally, the minor mythology growing up around this story of daggers: The weapon of the poor? Really? The weapon one uses because it is within reach and one has no other? When I see those blades, I think of the one used to execute Daniel Pearl; I think of the beheadings of Hervé Gourdel, James Foley and David Haines; I think that the Islamic State’s videos have clearly gained a following, and that we stand on the threshold of a form of barbarity that must be unconditionally denounced if we do not want to see its methods exported everywhere. And I mean everywhere.

PMW: Fatah: Stab the Israelis! PA: Stone the Israelis!

While Mahmoud Abbas assures the world in English that he advocates only "peaceful resistance," both his government and members of his political party, Fatah, openly promote terror and murder of Jews, as Palestinian Media Watch has shown. The following cartoons are examples of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah promoting stabbings and encouraging rock throwing. The cartoons were published in the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, on Fatah's official Facebook page and in the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam.
The above image of a Jew screaming in pain with a knife stuck in his shoulder was posted on Fatah's Facebook page. The Palestinian flag is on the blade of the knife and in the background is Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Dome of the Rock.
The text in Arabic and in Hebrew on top of the image says:
"Here is Jerusalem, you crazies, beware!"
[Official Facebook page of the Fatah Movement, Oct. 4, 2015]
A few days after this cartoon appeared, and following the murder of 4 Israelis in shooting and stabbing attacks, and several other instances of Palestinians attacking Israelis with knives, Abbas Zaki, a member of Fatah's Central Committee, referred to stabbings and rock throwing as Palestinian "defense":
"We are defending ourselves today, and will continue to defend ourselves. We are not in favor of escalation. However, the occupation is the one that kills, destroys, and attacks our cities and villages. Of course the defense differs from Palestinian to Palestinian, and there are some among us who defend with a rock, and those who defend with a knife."
[Anadolu Agency, a Turkish news agency, Oct. 9, 2015,
Fatah's European Information and Culture Commission website, Oct. 9, 2015]

Indyk & Axelrod Support Organization Encouraging Stabbing of Israelis

Martin Indyk, Vice President and Director for Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution & former U.S. Special Envoy for Israeli–Palestinian Negotiations from 2013 to 2014 under the Obama Administration, is the head of the International Council of an organization which is blaming the Israeli government, the police and even Israeli citizens for the current round of violence in the Middle East.
The New Israel Fund (NIF) has a long-documented history of bigotry towards Israel, and among their followers are numerous close Obama & Hillary Clinton advisors, including David Axelrod (pictured above), who every year from 1991 to 2002 was a donor to the New Israel Fund. Karen R. Adler, a former Hillary Clinton chief aide who remains close to Hillary is a NIF donor and President of the Jewish Communal Fund.
NIF’s rhetoric and incitement is apparent during this most recent wave of the conflict. The +972 Blog, for example – an anti-Israel blog which NIF funds – has encouraged and justified violence and stabbings:
Here: “Yesterday I learned a nice quote attributed to Edward Said…’The underlying dimension in the Palestinian struggle throughout its history is the desire to be seen’… Jabbing a potato peeler into the stomach of an Israeli is not going to end the Occupation, but it guarantees a breakaway moment… So grab a potato peeler! I think that anyone who is not a complete introvert should be able to identify with this.”
And here: “…a controllable level of violence in Jerusalem is actually good for the right. The goal is to collect blood – blood that can be sold to the public as an appropriate national response, and this can certainly be achieved by shooting children.”

Tapper Corrects PLO Rep: If I Run At A Cop With A Knife, I’m Going To Get Shot

Jake Tapper corrected chief PLO representative Maen Rashid Areikat Wednesday after Areikat condemned Israeli police for shooting a camouflaged Palestinian who charged Israeli police with a knife.
Tapper questioned Areikat’s statement that a “very large” amount of Palestinians are “executed on the field after they were wounded,” pointing out that many of those who are “executed” are killed because they are committing acts of terror.
“Isn’t Abbas out there saying that two innocent Palestinian teenagers were murdered by Israel, when there is actually videotape showing one of the Palestinian teens charging at Israeli police with a knife before being shot? And the other teen is alive — isn’t Abbas out there saying that?” Tapper asked.
Areikat did not bend to Tapper’s question.
“Does this change the fact that one of them was shot and killed by the Israeli police?” he asked back.
“But there’s tape of them with a knife,” Tapper said and proceeded to play the tape on air.
“This is–this is–this is the problem–OK, well,” Areikat said.

Tapper Corrects PLO Rep: If I Run At A Cop With A Knife, I'm Going To Get Shot

Israel haters reveal their support of terror

Last Friday, students at Boston University held a "Vigil for the Victims of Terrorism" on campus.

There was nothing at the event that was anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian. It was simply an event to stand in solidarity with Israel and to mourn victims of terror.

You must read the reaction from "Students for Justice in Palestine."

We, students, alumni and, community members at Boston University, condemn Boston University Students for Israel (BUSI) and Hillel’s event “Vigil for Victims of Terrorism” and call on Boston University administration to take strong measures to address the misleading and inciting rhetoric that these groups are using.

The event held on October 16th was an example of the one-sided, manipulative propaganda present on our campus. The event was co-hosted by outside organizations such as Israel Campus Roundtable, Zionists Of America, StandWithUs, The Hasbara Fellowships, The David Project, the National Hillel organization, and the Jewish Agency for Israel. The presence of these organizations is both alienating to Palestinians on campus and divisive to the greater BU community.

... While we agree all lives should be mourned, the ultra-nationalistic event rejected to mourn the Palestinian lives by urging on their Facebook event, “come and support Israel this Friday.”

The deliberate use of the word “terrorism” to refer to the Palestinians is an attempt to dehumanize them. This serves to divide our campus by triggering families and students at BU, who are deeply connected to Palestine and the experiences of living under the ongoing occupation. We are calling for a condemnation of this inexcusable political agenda that cannot coincide with the mission of inclusivity and cultural diversity at BU. We urge BU students, professors, and administration to foster an inclusive environment and prevent outside organizations from propagating toxic rhetoric that destructs the common ground this community is built on.

Statement by Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine

By condemning terror against Jews, the event organizers are guilty of hate speech!

The subtext is clear: Jews deserve to be axed and stabbed to death, and any expression of outrage is offensive to these self-appointed arbiters of political correctness.

These people who are so concerned about being "inclusive" and the feelings of all people on campus are of course the same people who sponsor the annual "Israel Apartheid Week" there. I don't think they mention Jewish victims of terror in that "inclusive" event.

If there is a silver lining in the current terror spree, it is that people who pretend to be against violence are outing themselves as supporting whatever outrage Arab terrorists decide to do. They are writing articles justifying the attacks as a reasonable response to "occupation" or "settlements."

They are revealing, quite clearly, that their support for "Palestine" is really a front for their hate for Israeli Jews and a Jewish state.

(h/t JW)