Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 24, 2016

2016 Hasby Award Winners - Best Article

The Hasby Award for best article of 2015 goes to...

This past week Rabbi Ronnie Greenwald passed away at the age of 82.

Outside Orthodox Jewish circles, most people have not heard of him, but he led an amazing life that was often as much cloak-and-dagger as being a community leader.

Greenwald worked tirelessly to free Jews who were in prison throughout the world. From Wikipedia, here are four of them:

Natan Sharansky

Rabbi Greenwald taking to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, with whom he worked closely in a series of hostage release efforts, including the Sharansky case

In perhaps his highest profile case, Rabbi Greenwald worked closely with Representative Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) and East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel to secure the release Soviet dissident and Refusenik Natan Sharansky from Soviet prison in the late 1970s. He made more than 25 trips across the "Iron Curtain" to East Germany as part of that effort.^[5] The Rockland Journal News reported that Rabbi Greenwald was the "man behind the talks" that freed Sharansky.^[6]

Miron Markus

In conjunction with Representative Gilman, Rabbi Greenwald negotiated the rescue a 24-year-old Israeli citizen named Miron Markus in 1978 who was living in Zimbabwe. Markus was captured when an airplane piloted by his brother-in-law, Jackie Bloch, was forced to land in Mozambique, where Mr. Bloch was killed and Markus taken hostage. Rabbi Greenwald, Congressman Gilman and others arranged for a complex swap that involved four countries Mozambique, Israel, the UnS and East Germany, convicted East German spy Robert Thompson and U.S. student Alan van Norman.^[5]

Raul Granados

Granados was kidnapped by leftist guerillas in November, 1979 while at a soccer game in Guatemala City. Rabbi Greenwald, working again with Representative Gilman, helped broker the exchange of Mr. Granados in exchange for a ransom payment of $4,000,000.^[7]

Vladimir Raiz

Vladimir Raiz, a Soviet molecular biologist, had been denied permission to leave the former Soviet Union for 18 years before Greenwald entered the picture. According to Steve Lieberman in the Rockland Journal News, Greenwald secretly met with Raiz in Lithuania in 1989. Following negotiations with Soviet authorities, Raiz and his family were permitted to emigrate in 1990.^[8]

But Greenwald was very busy besides flying all over the world to gain prisoner releases. He founded a girl's high school and a popular summer camp. He was involved in helping victims of sexual abuse in the community and he also founded a network of homes for mentally handicapped girls and women. He was the Jewish liaison for the Nixon administration and used that position to help get government aid for the Jewish poor.

I have heard him talk and it is hard to imagine such an unassuming man to be involved in such high-stakes international intrigues.

He will be sorely missed.

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01/24 Links: Fading Truth on the New York Times Editorial Page; Erekat: PA 'waging a war' with Israel

From Ian:

Honest Reporting: Fading Truth on the New York Times Editorial Page

The Fading Two State Solution is a New York Times editorial that makes the observation that “even truth telling can ignite a firestorm.” Quite a claim considering the lack of truth-telling in the editorial itself.
The editorial begins by defending U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro’s speech in which he accused Israel of having double standards when administering law and order in the disputed territories.
Palestinians have been victims of assaults and acts of vandalism by Jewish extremists, including an arson attack in July that killed a toddler and his parents in the West Bank village of Duma. None of this is acceptable.
The reality is that in the case of the Duma arson, the security establishment has been pursuing the case with the same sense of urgency and tools that would be used against Palestinian terrorists. Many would argue that the state is using more resources to bring the perpetrators to justice than in other cases.
Yet this is one egregious case of an attack in which the victims are Palestinians. The Times implies that there are more attacks that are comparable to the terrorist attacks in which Jews have been the victims. But the numbers prove this is not the case.
Since 13 September 2015, 29 people have been killed (including a Palestinian, a foreign worker and a U.S. citizen), and 289 people injured in Palestinian terrorist attacks. These attacks include 110 stabbing attacks, 38 shootings, and 22 vehicular (ramming) attacks. During the same period, there have been no stabbing, shooting, or vehicular attacks against Palestinians. This, of course, does not include cases where Palestinians have died in the course of committing these attacks. Is the Times claiming that there is no difference between self-defense and unprovoked attempts at murder?

PMW: PA daily: US suspected of causing the 9-11 attacks to create anarchy in Arab world

An op-ed in the official PA daily accuses the US of being behind all the turmoil and civil wars in the Muslim and Arab world, even the Sunni-Shiite fighting. Moreover, the writer claims that this turmoil, which the US is allegedly orchestrating, is the direct result of the 9-11 attacks on the US. The US utilized this attack to create "an imaginary enemy called 'terror,' and it supervised the cultivation of the idea until it ripened into what is known today as the Islamic State organization," the writer states. Moreover, the writer claims that the evidence and facts indicate that the US itself is the number one suspect in the 9-11 bombings.
The accusation that the US is behind all the crises and wars in the Middle East, sometimes in collaboration with Israel, has been voiced often in the official PA daily and documented by Palestinian Media Watch, as well as the claim that US and Israel are behind and controlling the Islamic State terror organization.

Terrorist killed by own bomb during attempted attack on security forces

An 18-year-old male Palestinian died late Saturday night after a pipe bomb he intended to throw at Border Police officers stationed at a security checkpoint near Abu Dis, adjacent to Jerusalem, exploded in his hands.
“He had a pipe bomb that he was planning on throwing at security personnel in Abu Dis and it accidentally exploded before he threw it, and he died of his wounds,” said Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld on Sunday.
“He was not a suicide bomber,” Rosenfeld added, noting inaccurate media reports claiming the teen was wearing an explosive vest. “We’re talking about a Palestinian with a small explosive.”
None of the officers were wounded in the explosion, he said.
The body of the suspect, identified by Arab media as Muhammad Halbiya, was transferred by Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics to a nearby medical clinic.

Edgar Davidson: Terrorist death creates crisis for world media

The story tonight from Israel that a terrorist has been killed by his own bomb without any intervention of any Israeli during an attempted attack (as reported in the Jerusalem Post) is causing panic and hysteria among the international media.
They are searching frantically for a headline that can make Israel the aggressor (earlier today after a female terrorist was shot dead in the act of stabbing a security guard the New York Times led with the headline shown at the bottom of this post).
Assuming that even they will not fall for the inevitable Arab spin on the story ("Israel kills Palestinian with planted bomb") my bet is that the media will come up with one of the following compromises:
"Palestinian killed in Israel bomb attack"
"One Palestinian killed, no Israelis killed in latest Israel violence"
For the time being the entire Western media seems to playing safe and doing what they do when only Israelis are killed in terrorist attacks: refusing to report the attack at all.

I don't know, Kate.

Sometimes it just seems pointless.

Sorry to be downbeat, but I feel like I am glaring into a howling thunderstorm. In California we could use the weather, but I worry about my friends elsewhere.

You may be aware that the Washington Post just published an infographic on displaced peoples around the world since WWII and while they cover the Palestinian-Arab displacement after '48 they do not reference the Jewish displacement from "Arab lands" at that time. In 1948 the Jews in "Arab lands" outside of Israel posed no threat to their Muslim neighbors. Nonetheless, they were driven out of their homes with only the clothing on their backs and somehow this has been removed from the dominant narrative. The Washington Post thereby erases Jewish history on land that Jews have lived upon for millennia.

I find this kind-of passive-aggressive stance by "the powers that be", as represented by the Washington Post, to be both depressing and antagonistic.

I expect this kind of mierde from the New York Times, but the Times has never been a friend of the Jewish people. They buried the Holocaust, while it was happening, in the back pages of the publication as you are probably aware, and for which I will never forgive them. As I write this I am looking at a copy of a 1986 book by Deborah E. Lipstadt entitled Beyond Belief: The American Press & the Coming of the Holocaust 1933 - 1945.

Lipstadt documents the various ways in which the American press, following the New York Times, downplayed the Holocaust to the back-pages, when they even bothered to discuss it. This little piece of American history is, in my opinion, grotesque. Because Sulzberger did not want the Times thought of as part of the Jewish press - you know, the little rags coming out Brooklyn - he failed to cover the Shoah for the wider audience within the United States.

On a daily basis I scan the Israel-Jewish headlines and read articles - many pointed out by you and many pointed out by Ian - and it can be just overwhelming. The EU wants to boycott Israeli goods. Many western academics want to boycott Jewish-Israeli academics. "Crybullies" on American college campuses demand "safe spaces" from conflicting opinions even as they spit hatred at, and threaten violence toward, Jewish kids who support the Jewish state.

The hypocrisy is profound. As you know, the Jerusalem Post recently published an article entitled, Uproar on Trump’s Muslim ban; silence on Abbas’s Jewish ban, by Morton Klein and Daniel Mandel of ZOA fame.

They write:

Last week, Abbas described the daily onslaught of stabbings, car-rammings and other murders, claiming the lives of 24 Jews, as “justified popular unrest.”

Had Abbas’ words, suitably adjusted, been uttered by an Israeli leader, newspapers around the world would carry detailed reports on their front pages; parliaments around the world would vote to condemn him and the society that tolerated such words; human rights organizations would organize petitions and rallies condemning Israel; international leaders would issue statements of condemnation and the United Nations would surely be called into special session to consider formally condemning Israel in the harshest terms.

So, we have a racist American administration that objects to Jews building housing for themselves in Judea and Samaria, the very place that Jewish people come from. Yet they could not care less that Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority will not even allow Jews to live on that land if, and when, the Palestinian-Arabs ever accept a state for themselves.

I am sometimes reminded of a scene from Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle where a rotund black man, quietly reading a book on civil disobedience, has this exchange with Harold, his cell-mate:

HAROLD

So what are you in here for?

TARIK

For being black.

HAROLD

Come on. Seriously.

TARIK sits up. He looks at OFFICER PALUMBO who, with his Walkman on, is oblivious to their conversation.

TARIK

I am serious. You wanna know what happened?

Harold nods.

TARIK

I was walking out of a Barnes and Noble, and a cop stops me. Evidently, a black man robbed a store in Newark. Therefore,since I’m black, it was probably me, right?

Harold shrugs his shoulders.

TARIK

Well that was the logic the cop used. I told him I haven’t even been to Newark in months. Then he pointed a gun at me and told me to stop resisting arrest. I said, “Hey, I’m not resisting anything.”

So he starts beating me with his gun, screaming at me, telling me to stop resisting.

The analogy only goes so far, but I think that you get the point. No matter how often Israel agrees to a Palestinian-Arab state on Jewish land, and no matter how many times the Palestinian-Arabs refuse to accept such a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish people, the western cops keep smacking around the Jews.

The situation is fundamentally unjust yet it never ends and the Jews are perpetually in the dock.

Unlike poor Tarik, however, the Jewish people are not entirely without resources or options.

Israel must act unilaterally because negotiations with the Arabs are entirely pointless, as has been proven over and over again during the last one-hundred years, and the West, particularly the EU, is growing more and more hostile and, therefore, more and more toxic as a negotiating partner or interlocutor.

What we need to see, in my not so humble opinion, is greater aliyah out of ugly neighborhoods... such as Sweden, Germany, France, and Britain. The Jews who remain in Europe in the coming decades will not likely face another Holocaust, but they will face continued harassment by Arab-Muslim émigrés from North Africa and the Middle East, making life for them exceedingly uncomfortable within the countries of their birth.

Israel should also declare its final borders and remove the IDF to behind those borders. What those borders will be, given that the Palestinian Authority refuses to accept a Jewish state on any bit of Jewish land, should be entirely up to the Jewish people of the Middle East via the government of Israel.

Finally, Israel needs to look eastward for commercial and scientific partnership. The international economic center of gravity is falling upon the Far East Asian Pacific Rim and, therefore, Israel is developing mutually beneficial economic ties with countries like China, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam.

Israel will continue to maintain good relationships with the United States, particularly upon the forthcoming departure of the malicious Obama administration, but Europe is looking more and more like a lost cause.

This may sound hard and insensitive coming from an American Jew to a British Jew, but the coming generations of European Jewry will survive under two possible conditions.

Either they hide their Jewish identity or they fight the hell back.

And, make no mistake, the kids need martial arts... particularly the girls.


Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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EU and US-funded Ma'an praises a teenage terrorist who blew himself up

i24News reports:

A Palestinian assailant was killed late Saturday at a military checkpoint at the entrance to East Jerusalem after a botched attempt to hurl the explosive he was carrying at Israeli border policemen, Israeli media reported.

No Israelis were hurt in the incident, which apparently saw the terrorist detonate the explosive prematurely.

The botched attack took place near the town of Abu Dis. The terrorist was named as Muhammad Halbiya, 18.

Ma'an Arabic has flowery praise for the would-be terrorist whom they claim was 14 years old, saying that "Muhammed was the fruit of the spirit of resistance and firmness planted by his grandparents to the next generation" and repeatedly referring to him as a "martyr."

Ma'an is funded by an array of Western sources, as its 2014 financial statement shows:

Remember, Halbiya was not killed by Israeli forces. He accidentally killed himself when trying to attack. Even so, he is praised as a "martyr," showing that for the supposedly moderate and independent Western-funded Ma'an, attacking Jews is in itself a praiseworthy event. Ma'an believes that blowing oneself up prematurely is a heroic act as cause as long as the target is Israeli.

In the past, Ma'an has defended itself for using the term "martyr" in Arabic as just the vernacular of its readers. But this story shows that Ma'an isn't using the word as a neutral term but to praise the bomber.

Do the Dutch, Swedish and Americans who fund Ma'an agree that Halbiya should be described in such glowing terms? Does Catholic Relief Services believe that an institution that praising terrorists is a worthy grant recipient? What does "Save the Children" think about a (possible) child who blows himself up in an attempt to kill others?

Arab media, including Jordanian and official PA media, are angry at a delay in allowing Red Crescent ambulance to reach the dead teen. None of them are upset at the idea that a teenager wants to throw bombs at Jews.

The funeral for the terrorist shows anger, not sadness. Since Israel had nothing to do with his death, the anger is instructive.

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Israeli journalists don't call Abbas out on his lies (update)

Avi Issacharoff in Times of Israel writes a detailed description of the meeting last week between Israeli journalists and Mahmoud Abbas, and for the most part he is admiring of Abbas' performance:

Abbas’s meeting with the Israeli press was one of his more impressive appearances of recent years. He was at ease, sharp, confident (not always the case) and good-humored.

What was disappointing was that even Israeli journalists seemed reluctant to ask him hard questions (I have a list of dozens of them), and when he answered the few that were halfway decent, they didn't follow up showing his lies.

Abbas came well-prepared for the Israeli reporters’ critiques. “They say that I incite (against Israel)? Okay then,” he said, and proposed the convening of the long defunct joint Israeli-Palestinian-American committee on incitement. He did not deny that there is incitement, but proposed an ostensibly simple mechanism to deal with it: “Let the American representative (on the committee) decide what to do about incitement. And let them show me where exactly I incite.”

The amount of incitement on official PA media outlets in recent months has been documented very well by Palestinian Media Watch. So is the amount of incitement on official Fatah websites and social media, all under Abbas' control. The idea that reporters didn't come prepared with specific examples to counter his claim is unconscionable.

He was also asked why he had accused the Jews of desecrating the Al-Aqsa mosque with their presence. He claimed to have been referring only to those who go to the compound to stir up trouble.

Let's go back to Abbas' official Wafa news agency, were we have read news stories like this:

Tens of settlers, under Israeli forces’ protection, desecrated on Sunday Al-Aqsa mosque yards, according to witnesses.

One of the guards of the mosque told WAFA “settlers’ entry to the yards started early morning by small groups and continues till now.”

Is this "desecration" according to Abbas? Do they have "filthy feet?" And how does he know that they were 'settlers," anyway? Are all religious Jews "settlers?"

Once again, reporters seemed so star-struck by the Holocaust-denying Abbas that they let him off far more than they would have treated any Likud politician. Questions about corruption in the PA, about why the PA doesn't seem to support the Palestinian city of Rawabi, about why there are still "refugee camps" in the areas of British Mandate Palestine - none of them were asked.

Societies depend on journalists to do their jobs. In this case, the Israeli reporters fell far short.

UPDATE: Here is the video of the meeting, can anyone determine if there are any good questions and evasive answers?

Lahav Harkov of the Jerusalem Post thought that the Channel 2 reporter asked some good questions, including two from my list.

@elderofziyon I thought @usegal asked good Qs, from what he said on air. Abbas dodged em, but in a presser u dont always get a follow-up
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) January 24, 2016

@elderofziyon @usegal If I remember correctly, he mentioned questions 3 and 14 from your list https://t.co/BceoSjbtUU
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) January 24, 2016

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EoZTV: The PLO map that proves it is Jewish land

The webpage of the Negotiations Affairs Department of the PLO includes an interesting map:

It doesn't show what the PLO wants you to think it shows.

Mrs. Elder and I discuss it in the latest episode of EoZTV:

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The Palestinian Authority supports the occupation and settlements (of Western Sahara)

Hypocrisy abounds:

In a working visit to Morocco, a Palestinian delegation met with the leader of opposition party l’Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires, known as USFP, according to Arabic daily Al Ittihad Al Ichtiraki in its Friday issue.

USFP leader Driss Lachgar discussed the Moroccan Sahara with Abbas Zaki, member of the Fatah Central Committee.

According to the daily, both leaders agreed that “the issue of the Moroccan Sahara and that of Palestine will now be at the center of their diplomatic cooperation.”

The meeting was held in presence of the Ambassador of Palestine to Morocco, Amine Ahmed Mohamed Abou Hassira, as well as three other Fatah leaders alongside Abba Zaki.

The working visit of the Palestinian delegation comes just weeks after Palestinian Foreign Minister Ryad El Maliki visited Morocco and declared Palestine’s support for Morocco’s territorial integrity.

According to the same source, Minister El Maliki stated Palestine’s position in favor of “a settlement of the conflict within the framework of Morocco’s sovereignty.”

“There is no need to make any comparison between the Palestinian cause and the Moroccan Sahara issue,” El Maliki stressed.

“We struggle against the Israeli occupation since 1948 and Morocco struggles for the achievement of its territorial integrity,” he added.

The Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara is about as clear-cut example of occupation as you can imagine. In 1975, the International Court of Justice ruled that Morocco and Mauritania has no legal claims on the land and that the native Sahrawi had the right to self-determination. Immediately afterwards, Morocco took over two thirds of the country and Mauritania the other third. In 1978, Mauritania made a peace deal with the Sahrawi and gave them their third of the land - and Morocco took that over as well (although a percentage of the and is controlled by the Sahrawis.) . Hundreds of thousands of Moroccan settlers have moved to the territory under army protection, and they now outnumber the natives by as much as 3-1.

Most nations consider Morocco's annexation of western Sahara to be illegal. .

For Palestinians to side with the occupiers and settlers in Western Sahara shows that their claims to be on the side of international law (and on the side of people under occupation) is a joke.

Notice also that while the Sahrawis make no claim against Morocco itself, this Palestinian foreign minister says explicitly that Israel is occupying Palestinian territory since 1948 - meaning that he admits that the PLO goal is to gain all of Israel. The claims of "occupation" to the West are a smokescreen.

(h/t Daled Amos)

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01/23 Links: Police suspect left-wing activist of Palestinian’s murder; The problem with Open Hillel

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Iran’s long arm

If anyone needed proof how the lifting of sanctions on Iran will hurt Israel’s security, this week provided two examples.
Just days after implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement, we received a reminder that Iran and its proxies remain dangerous enemies of Israel.
Five Palestinians from the Tulkarm area were arrested for planning to carry out terrorist attacks under instructions from Hezbollah, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said on Wednesday.
The head of the cell, Mahmoud Za’alul, had been recruited through social media networks. Using encrypted messages, he enlisted five more men from the Tulkarm area; they were ordered to gather intel and plan terrorist attacks, including preparing explosive vests for suicide bombings.
Hezbollah funded their operation by sending them $5,000 through money changers.
Now that the “crippling” economic sanctions on Iran have been removed, the resources at its disposal – and as an extension at Hezbollah’s – will be significantly greater.
In Lebanon, meanwhile, Hezbollah is consolidating its political power. On Monday, in a development that is nothing short of earth shattering, Samir Geagea, leader of the Christian Lebanese Forces party, publicly endorsed his rival, the formal general Michel Aoun, for president of Lebanon.

Canadian wanted on terrorism charges in Bulgaria for alleged role in Hezbollah bus bombing

Bulgarian authorities have indicted a Canadian for his alleged role in a 2012 Hezbollah bus bombing that killed five Israeli tourists and their driver, a local newspaper reported on Friday.
Hassan El-Hajj Hassan, 27, a Lebanese-born Canadian from Vancouver, is wanted by Bulgarian prosecutors for terrorism and documents fraud, according to a notice on the Interpol website.
The Chasa daily in Sofia reported that Australian Meliad Farah had also been charged but that neither had been arrested. Both returned to Lebanon shortly after the July 18, 2012 attack.
Bulgarian officials could not be reached to confirm the report.
A suspected cell of Hezbollah operative sent from Lebanon placed the bomb on the bus at Sarafova airport in Burgas. Thirty-five were also injured in the blast and one of the terrorists died.

Police suspect left-wing activist of involvement in Palestinian’s murder

Police suspect left-wing activist Ezra Nawi of involvement in the murder of a Palestinian who lived near the Hebron Hills, Haaretz has reported. Nawi’s attorneys claim the man, nicknamed Abu Halil, died naturally in his sleep.
Nawi was arrested earlier this month, shortly after a TV expose on Channel 2 showed him boasting that he helps the Palestinian Authority capture Palestinians trying to sell their land to Jews — an offense they are often killed for.
A judge on Friday extended Nawi’s remand until Sunday to allow police to conduct a clandestine investigation regarding Nawi, the nature of which was revealed to the judge in a classified document.
In the investigative report, aired by Channel 2’s Uvda program, Nawi can be heard speaking about four Palestinian real estate sellers, whom Nawi said mistook him for a Jew interested in buying their property. “Straight away I give their pictures and phone numbers to the Preventive Security Force,” Nawi is heard saying in reference to the Palestinian Authority’s counterintelligence arm. “The Palestinian Authority catches them and kills them. But before it kills them, they get beat up a lot.”
One of the men in whose death Nawi claims to have been involved in the video is Abu Halil, who according to official records died of a stroke in 2014.

01/22 Links Pt2: The BBC Palestinian propaganda machine at work; Saving The Forgotten Jews

From Ian:

David Collier: The BBC Palestinian propaganda machine at work

These Tweets are from the 9th October, at the time of clashes on the Gaza border between Israelis and Palestinians. They are several tweets announcing that there have been clashes, that the casualties are arriving at the hospital and everyone is on high alert. The tweets cover a full hour. He carried on posting beyond this. Does anyone else know of a doctor working in such conditions, who at the height of the clashes, at the very point that the injured get brought into hospital, spends his time on Twitter? He received photos, uploaded them and posted them at the same time as the dead and dying were waiting to be treated in his hospital?
The empty claims from his Twitter feed are incessant. But so is his support for the terrorists.
Most of the faces in this picture are of people who walked down streets armed with a knife, looking for vulnerable civilians to murder. The Doctor calls them the ‘stars who light the dark nights’. And then of course there is Dr-Abu Rayan Ziara’s LinkedIn Page
Our good doctor is a PR man. Below is a screenshot of another of his campaigns. Raising money to help him become a doctor in Germany. One wonders where the money for such campaigns end up.
There are 1000’s of activists such as this online. Their activity is as full of lies as it is relentless. This one is particularly prolific and innovative. Reading his timeline, Dr-Abu Rayan Ziara is clearly part of the factory that outputs the anti-Israel propaganda. And at sometime on the 12th January, he had an idea. He scrawled a note on a piece of paper, grabbed a couple of his friends, picked up a camera and sent out the tweet in the hope that someone, anyone would be stupid enough to pick it up. And along came Mario Cacciottolo from the BBC, from the pen of a Hamas PR man to the pages of the BBC website.
The damage has been done. A terrorist supporting propagandist, has elicited more sympathy for the Palestinian cause simply because the BBC have become willing and blind accomplices. They fell for a PR trick and spread the work of a PR man for the Palestinian cause, undiluted. The ‘reporters’ who regurgitate the spin do not perform even the most cursory of background checks. Our taxes funded unfiltered Hamas propaganda without the BBC even blinking.

Vox Distorts History In 10-Minute Video About Arab-Israeli Conflict

Vox.com, which purports to “explain” things, has turned its attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The results are not pretty. Truth takes a backseat to revisionism and a combination of ignorance and propaganda forces out knowledge.
Here’s the video, but be sure to read the explanation below as to how it misleads:
In general the content can be divided in two: anything that makes Israel look bad or the Palestinians sympathetic is described in (often incorrect) detail; anything that makes the Palestinians (or Arabs generally) look bad is described only generally. Israel is active; Palestinians are passive.
Another way this is manifest is that in the post-1967 portion of the video, Vox uses the term “terror” once, but some form of the word “occupy” six times. (It’s true that the video acknowledges that Hamas seeks to destroy Israel, but the term “terror” is used once.)
The video starts one hundred years ago and it talks about how Arabs in what is now Israel and its surroundings were starting to develop a national identity as political Zionism started to gain currency among the Jews in Europe. Immediately you see the way its framed: Indigenous Arabs vs. European usurpers.
Of course what this doesn’t tell you is that at that time the area now called Israel was called Palestine, and the Palestinian identity of the time was not an Arab one.

The Israel-Palestine conflict: a brief, simple history

On the Logic and Illogic of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions

In a recent essay titled “The Logic of the Beneficiary,” my Columbia colleague English professor Bruce Robbins, wreathes the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement with laurel leaves, but while making a spotty argument he does succeed in clarifying some of what’s at stake.
Robbins notes that a few American academic associations—small left-wing ones, as he doesn’t note—have passed academic boycott resolutions. (More accurately, as Jeff Weintraub has noted, what they call for are blacklists.) Robbins observes that some Israeli companies that manufacture on the West Bank have either relocated inside the Green Line or announced their intention to do so. He rejoices that some entertainers consider Israel the only nation in the world so vile as to warrant refusing to cross its border to bestow their in-person gifts. (Whether they turn down royalty checks for Israeli purchases of movies and music I do not know.)
Robbins shrewdly refrains from a straight-out defense of BDS’s evasive and purposively disingenuous core principles. He is committed to a version of BDS that he can support, so he overlooks the purposive slipperiness of the group’s founding principles, which operate on a false syllogism that goes something like this: a) Israel oppresses Palestinians (true); b) many Palestinians oppose a two-state solution (true); therefore c) everyone should join BDS in its equivocation about whether the Israeli state of 1948 is legitimate.
For Robbins, BDS is not a utilitarian enterprise but a straightforward campaign for justice. He claims that “the movement explicitly restricts the demand to lands colonized since 1967, in other words to the West Bank.” To a hasty reader, that “explicitly” has a resounding ring, but it’s more than a bit of a stretch. In fact, BDS specializes in strategic equivocation. The proposition Robbins cites does appear on a web page called “Introducing the BDS Movement.” When it first arrived on the BDS site, I do not know. (I find no references to it online predating 2013.) What I do know is that on its home page, BDS continues to link to its earlier “Call,” which demands that Israel “end its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands”—the boundary of such lands left unspecified. So far as I can see, the qualification “since 1967” does not appear on a single other page attached to the site. The new language is jammed into a single location, like a pro forma denial of what the rest of the site proclaims—that Israel is an apartheid state. If it in fact were that, why should any BDS supporter think it has a right to exist even within 1967 borders? Moreover, if the Introduction supersedes the Call, why feature the Call at all?

Middle East Memo mentioned last week:

According to unofficial estimates, the number of Gazan Palestinians living in Jordan ranges from between 700,000 and 900,000. They do not enjoy full citizenship rights, and they are not allowed to work in the official state institutions or study in government schools and universities. Rather, they study under the "parallel" education system or the international system applied in Jordanian state universities.

Gazans in Jordan are given identity cards and a passport without a national number.

The story was about parliament said Gazans should be exempt from a new fee for work permits - but in the end Gazans in Jordan will now have to to live in Jordan:

The Lower House on Tuesday passed the 2015 amendments to the Residency and Foreigner Affairs Law under which personal numbers will be assigned to foreigners.

Under MPs' amendments to the 1973 law, foreigners residing in the country will be given personal numbers to regulate their entry, exit, registration, residency permits and the duration of their stay.

Lawmakers also set JD50 as the fee foreigners have to pay annually to have their residency permits renewed.

In response to some deputies' demand to exempt Gazans living in Jordan and Palestinians holding a temporary passport from residency permits, Interior Minister Salameh Hammad ...told the 150-strong House that no specific category of residents in Jordan shall be exempted from residency permits, saying that such issues lie at the heart of the country's sovereignty and are of "dangerous political dimensions".

How come no one calls Jordan an apartheid state for its laws against hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have lived there for nearly fifty years?

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01/22 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Coordinated assault; Melanie Phillips: Iran for dummies

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Coordinated assault

This brings us to the third insight of Polisar’s study. Twenty-five years of survey data make clear that most Palestinians believe that terrorism pays.
And the plain fact is that they are right. For the past generation, the Palestinians have only benefited from killing Israelis through terrorism.
The fact that Israeli concessions to the Palestinians have strengthened their conviction that terrorism pays rather than convinced them to make peace shows that all concessions in the face of terrorism are dangerous.
While the majority of Israelis have learned this lesson and so elected governments that oppose appeasement, the Palestinians have learned that the Israeli public does not have the final word on whether or not they will be rewarded for their crimes against humanity.
The Palestinians believe that Israel is dependent on Western goodwill. So to the extent that the West pressures Israel surrender to Palestinian demands, the US and the EU work hand in glove with Palestinian terrorists and prove that they are right to murder mothers in their homes in front of their children.
This week US Ambassador Dan Shapiro proved the Palestinians right, yet again.
...
Israel is under a coordinated assault by the Palestinians who hate us and the Europeans and Americans who are hostile to us.
Our options for dealing with this assault are not optimal. But they are formidable. If we make judicious use of them, we can flummox the White House and the EU, and at a minimum, we can begin to prove to the Palestinians that their faith in terrorism is no longer justified.

Caroline Glick shut down the debate with this bombshell speech

Melanie Phillips: Iran for dummies

Israel is counting the days until the American presidential election. It only needs, it says to itself, to get through this year, this month, this week.
It must just keep on ducking and feinting to protect its security and the lives of its citizens until the nightmare of this most hostile US president in memory finally ends. Just as it has been forced to do these past seven years.
For Iran, in stark contrast, President Obama’s remaining year in office offers a window of unparalleled opportunity. By gifting its regime more than $100 billion in sanctions relief, Obama has not only released funds with which the world’s most dangerous jihadist entity can ratchet up its terrorist and genocidal program, pumping money into its al-Quds force, Revolutionary Guards and Hamas.
These are also months during which the president of the most powerful country in the world has signaled that the Iranian regime can act with total impunity.
Obama is trapped by his fear that Iran might at any time renege on the nuclear deal and restart its manufacture of nuclear weapons – which a State Department official nevertheless tells us with a straight face the regime has abandoned for ever more. With this blackmail threat now paralyzing the Obama administration, Iran knows it can do what it wants.

Jennifer Rubin: Why it’s correct to label the Obama administration ‘anti-Israel’

This is disingenuous at best. As Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute observed: “This is completely consistent with all the administration’s other policies hostile to Israel. Labeling goods made by Israeli businesses in disputed territories but not goods made in other disputed territories like Kashmir, for example, is an example of blatant anti-Semitism.” She continued, “And while the administration would surely argue that forcing Jews to wear yellow stars is not a sign of discrimination but merely a diktat about clothing, it should be clear to Jews everywhere that the 1930s are returning.” (Let’s not forget that Secretary of State John Kerry has previously hinted that the U.S. would not be able to protect Israel from boycotts if it did not make more concessions to the Palestinians.)
When the E.U. acted late last year, Congress was not mute. TheTower.org reported: “Citing a concern that the European Union’s proposed guidelines to label goods produced by Israeli companies operating in the West Bank could ‘promote a de-facto boycott of Israel,’ senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D – N.Y.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Monday released an open letter, which was signed by 36 senators and addressed to the EU’s top diplomat, urging the European body to reconsider the discriminatory policy.” In the House, a bipartisan group introduced a resolution to condemn the E.U.’s action. (“New European Commission guidelines to single out Israeli products manufactured in the West Bank and other areas only encourage and prompt consumers to boycott all Israeli goods. This is counterproductive to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, harmful to U.S. national security interests, and contributes to the deeply misguided anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.”) Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), who led the House effort last year, tells Right Turn: “The Administration’s decision to support an EU policy of labeling Jewish products draws uncomfortable historical parallels and reveals a troubling lack of understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are over 200 territorial disputes all over the world, yet the State Department chooses to single out Jews for special treatment.” He adds: “Sadly, this behavior is what we’ve come to expect from the European Union. I find it deeply disturbing to see our own State Department now reading from the same script.”

Hundreds of firebombs aimed at Jews every month

Last Sunday, Arabs threw five Molotov cocktail firebombs at Jewish home in the Maalot Dovid neighborhood of Jerusalem.

It was barely reported anywhere.

This is not anomalous. According to the Shin Bet, in December there were 181 firebombs thrown in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria at Jewish targets. And that was an improvement over November, with 248.

In fact the vast majority of terror attacks are in the form of firebombs. They throw them at buses, at houses, at cars on the road.

Any one of these hundreds of firebombs could cause another Dawabshe story. And the intent is to burn Jews alive.

But mere attempts to murder Jews aren't even worth mentioning.

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Official PA news doesn't mention Abbas' supposed negotiation bid

There was some interesting doubletalk from Mahmoud Abbas yesterday.

Speaking to Israeli reporters on Thursday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that for the past two months his office and Prime Minister Netanyahu's office have been communicating in an attempt to arrange a meeting, but that Netanyahu did not respond to the latest message.

"There have been talks between my office and Netanyahu's office and the US was not in the picture at all," Abbas said Thursday. "Among other things, there were talks about a meeting between us." The Prime Minister's Office rejected the claims, saying: "This is not true. This is an attempt by Abbas to avoid his responsibility for the lack of negotiations. Today as well, in Davos, Netanyahu called for Abbas to come and negotiate without preconditions."

But in Palestinian Arab media, the news that Abbas claims to have tried to restart negotiations is virtually absent.

The PA's official Wafa news agency, which reports on every phone call Abbas makes, mentioned the meeting with Israeli jurnalists - but didn't say a word about this supposed initiative in either English or Arabic.

If Abbas is serious about negotiations, then why is he embarrassed to say so in his own official media?

It seems clear that Abbas' claim was nothing more than an attempt to speak the language of peace to the world while maintaining his intransigence - which he brags about to his people.

There is something very interesting on Abbas' Facebook page, in Arabic and English.

The second sentence seems to contradict the first, but assuming that the second sentence is his main point, it sounds like Abbas is telling his people that any criticism of him or his government is tantamount to treachery.

Too bad the Israeli journalists didn't ask him about that, or any of the many other questions that no one ever asks Abbas.

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Saeb Erekat freaks out at Bibi's overtures to Arabs (and justifies terror attacks)

Yesterday, at the World Economic Conference in Davos, Binyamin Netanyahu spoke about Israeli relations with Arab states:

Speaking with CNN's Fareed Zakaria at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Netanyahu said that "I have one request, that the EU policy vis a vis Israel and the Palestinians merely reflect now the prevailing Arab policy to Israel and the Palestinians."

"Saudi Arabia recognizes that Israel is an ally rather than an enemy because of the two principle threats that threaten them, Iran and Daesh," he said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State, adding "who can help us? they ask. Obviously Israel and the Sunni Arab states are not on opposite sides."

"There is a great shift taking place...we used to think that if we solved the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it would solve the larger Israeli Arab conflict. The more I look at it, the more I think it may be the other way around. That by nurturing these relationships that are taking place now with the Arab world, that could actually help us resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we're actually working towards that end," he said.

The PLO's Saeb Erekat freaked out at this.

From Ma'an Arabic:

Secretary of the Executive Committee of the PLO Dr. Saeb Erekat today reacted to the statements of the the Netanyahu government that claimed that the EU should improve its policies towards Israel to become equivalent to those of Arab countries [towards Israel.] Erekat stressed that Netanyahu's statements are incorrect and pure lies, and said: "I challenge Netanyahu to detect any improvement in Israel's relationship with any Arab country."

Erekat described the video that Netanyahu made at the Davos conference as a broken record and an inflammatory tool against our people and its leaders, part of attempts by the Israeli government to shift the world's attention from the war crimes committed by the occupying power against the Palestinian people.

Of course, Bibi is correct. JPost reported yesterday:

Israeli television reported that Yuval Steinitz, national infrastructure, energy and water minister, returned home several days ago after attending a conference on energy in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Channel 2 suggested that the real purpose of the delegation was to conduct secret strategic communications between Israel and the Gulf state. The principle reason for such a clandestine liaison is mutual distrust of Iran and concern for the general instabilities of the region, not least of which is the Islamic State (ISIS).

A decision by Steinitz’s office not to comment on the nature of the trip has only added fuel to the speculation.

And Israel is opening its diplomatic mission in Abu Dhabi.

For PLO leaders, the idea that Israel is cozying up to Arab nations is a nightmare. They have always relied on Arab opposition to Israel and unwavering support for their cause, even though Arabs have been sick of the Palestinian positions for years.

Erekat also said something else interesting, that the media will ignore:

He stressed that the Palestinian people are exercising their legitimate right to self-defense, while Israel is defending its settlement and occupation.

According to media darling Erekat, stabbing Israeli women is "legitimate self-defense."

But that's not newsworthy.

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