Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

The really insane thing about Ban Ki Moon's speech

Yes, it is outrageous that Ban Ki Moon essentially called terror attacks a natural result of "occupation," and Netanyahu was right in slamming him for it.

But that wasn't the strangest part of the speech.

The title of Ban Ki-Moon's talk was "Secretary-General's remarks to the Security Council on the Situation in the Middle East."

There were 52 paragraphs in the speech according to the official UN record.

Of those 52, three were about Lebanon. Two referred to Syria - one about refugees and one about the Golan.

The entire rest of the speech was about Israel and the Palestinians.

The Secretary General of the UN gives an overview of the Middle East without mentioning Syrian atrocities, without mentioning Iraqi instability, without even mentioning ISIS.

Nothing about Iran. Nothing about Saudi Arabia, which is killing more civilians in Yemen than Israel did in Gaza. Nothing about Egypt or Libya. Not a word about Kurds.

On the contrary - Ban Ki Moon implied that if only Israel would just give some more concessions, then the rest of the region would be inspired to make peace. "As the wider Middle East continues to be gripped by a relentless wave of extremist terror, Israelis and Palestinians have an opportunity to restore hope to a region torn apart by intolerance and cruelty."

The word "obsession" hardly does justice to the single-minded Israel fetish at the UN.

But, yes, we must also be angry at the Secretary General's justification for terror.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

It happens every year, and sure enough this year is no exception.

Whenever there are heavy rains and snow that flood Gaza, the Palestinians blame Israel for "opening dams" that don't exist.

Al Watan Voice, Palestine News Network, Al Resalah, Palestine Times and many other Arab media outlets are saying:

"Israeli" occupation forces on Saturday evening opened rainwater dams towards the agricultural lands in the east of Gaza. Local sources reported that the occupation is opening rainwater dams in different areas east of the city which resulted in the flooding of tens of dunums of agricultural land.

Every winter, the Israeli occupation authorities deliberately open dams near their border with the Gaza Strip.

I've been documenting these spurious claims since 2010.

Last year the official PA news agency went beyond blaming Israel for opening dams to claiming that Israel is actively pumping water into Gaza just to flood them.

Some idiots hate Israel so much that they claim that since Israel does have a few tiny limans (mini-dams to create oases) and reservoirs in communities near Gaza (as I'd pointed out years before) that anyone pointing out that there are no dams with the capability of being opened towards Gaza is just an evil hasbarist. Since Gazans claim it, it must be true and Israelis are all liars.

But no less an organization than Al Jazeera issued a correction last year after they quoted one of the may dam accusations:

Proving that Al Jazeera is just another Zionist media outlet.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

01/26 Links Pt2: Brendan O’Neill: The violence of the Safe Space; EU decision contradicts Oslo Accords

From Ian:

Brendan O’Neill: The violence of the Safe Space

Consider some recent examples from Britain, where students have built what they call Safe Spaces but which look to me more like Unsafe Spaces for those judged to hold the wrong views or to have the wrong attitudes.
Last week at King’s College London, a meeting of pro-Israel students was invaded by anti-Israel activists. They smashed windows, set off a fire alarm, threw chairs around. They chanted “Nazis!” at the attendees of the meeting. Oh, the irony of activists shutting down a meeting of largely Jewish students while shouting “Nazis”: a serious self-awareness failure.
A key justification given by student radicals for shouting down pro-Israel meetings is that such events are “offensive” or “distressing” to certain students. That is, they violate the Safe Space. So in the name of maintaining safety on campus, certain events can be violently interrupted. It’s Orwellian: war is peace, freedom is slavery, violence is safety.
On two campuses in Britain — Cambridge and Goldsmith’s — feminist students have burnt the literature of far-left groups whom they accuse of rape apologism and of contributing to a hostile climate for female students. That is, these far-left groups make women feel unsafe and therefore their pamphlets must be publicly burnt. The use of fascistic menace to make students feel comfortable — the Orwellianism continues.
At a London university last year, the Iranian secularist Maryam Namazie was harassed by members of the Islamic Society who shouted at her: “You are violating our Safe Space!”

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: What Is Richard Branson’s Problem With Israel?

Other “elders” in Branson’s organization include the notoriously anti-Israel, antisemitic Bishop Desmond Tutu, whom I have also met on several occasions, including at the Oxford Union. Tutu is a supporter of the BDS movement, calling for an economic and cultural boycott of Israel. His bigoted views have surfaced with statements such as, “The Jewish lobby is powerful — very powerful,” while accusing Jews of “an arrogance — the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support.” Tutu has stated that Zionism has “very many parallels with racism,” and has accused the Jewish state of subjecting the Palestinians to “Israeli Apartheid.” He believes that the Palestinians are suffering more than the Jews did during the Holocaust, stating that “the gas chambers” had made for “a neater death” for the Jews.
Clearly such views are not just a moral abomination but represent a deplorable and uncleansable stain on the reputation of a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Is this what Richard Branson had in mind when he stated in an interview, “And obviously after the Second World War, the world had enormous sympathy for the Jewish people. Over a number of decades, that sympathy has been lost…”?
I believe in my heart that Branson is a good and charitable man. So why say these things about the Jews?
Branson also tapped the corrupt former head of the UN, Kofi Annan, the same man who overruled UN General Romeo Dallaire in April 1994 and ordered him not to use his UN forces to disarm the Hutus in Rwanda and prevent them from hacking to death 800,000 Tutsis. Annan in the past declared that Saddam Hussein was a man he could do business with, and then sat down to smoke expensive cigars with the Butcher of Baghdad. He also declared himself “deeply moved” by the death of arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat and ordered the UN flag flown at half mast.
Also included in Branson’s Elders group is the man Kofi Annan appointed as United Nations special representative for Afghanistan and Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi. During Brahimi’s assignment he criticized Israel’s violence and suppression of Palestinians and called Israel “the big poison in the region.”

US rapper downplays Holocaust, suggests listeners read David Irving

A US rapper on Monday attempted to downplay the Nazi genocide, implicate US President Barack Obama in a Jewish conspiracy and suggest his listeners research infamous Holocaust denier David Irving after posting a song to his website, British based Internet publication The Jewish Chronicle reported Tuesday.
Bobby Ray Simmons Jr., better known as B.o.B., who has number one singles in both the US and UK, released his new song dubbed 'Flatlines,' in which he states: "Stalin was way worse than Hitler, that's why the POTUS (President of the United States) gotta wear a Kipper."
B.o.B. goes on to rhyme: "They nervous, but before you try to curve it, do your research on David Irving."
Irving is a notorious Holocaust denier and British historian who was was jailed in Austria in 2006.
The chart-topping recording artist also took umbrage with scientific claims concerning the spherical shape of the globe, posting dozens tweets claiming that the earth was in fact flat, and suggested renown astrophysicist Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson was being paid to maintain the lie crafted by the Department of Defense and NASA.

From TOI:

The Israeli cabinet on Sunday unanimously approved the appointment of an Arab woman, attorney Mariam Kabha, as national commissioner for equal employment opportunities within the Economy Ministry.

“This is an appointment with high symbolic and practical importance. We have two major missions in the field of employment – to increase employment among Arab women and ultra-Orthodox men. This appointment will serve to achieve a national goal. Mariam Kabha is capable and deserving, and I wish her success,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Sunday’s appointment makes Kabha the highest ranking Arab female in the civil service, business website Globes reported.

A search committee headed by Amit Lang, director general of the Economy Ministry, had been searching for a replacement for attorney Tziona Koenig-Yair, who served in the position for the past seven years.

Kabha was chosen for the position from among 60 candidates.

All posters in the series can be seen here.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

1001 Inventions is a travelling exhibit of 1001 scientific inventions and discoveries allegedly made in the Islamic world down the ages. Much hyped, and praised by various political leaders as well as Prince Charles, it has been on temporary display at a range of the world’s most prestigious science museums, including the National Geographic Museum in London and the Science Museum in the same city, the New York Hall of Science, and the California Science Center (where it was opened by Hillary Clinton). Since 2005 some 150,000,000 people around the world have viewed it.

Apart from the so-called “Arabic numerals” in universal use today (including the supremely important device of the zero, unknown to the Greeks and Romans), that Muslims produced any significant invention or discovery must surprise the average visitor to the exhibit. The total of 1001, a number that evokes the like number of fantasies comprising The Arabian Nights, such as Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, must astound, and suitably impress, them. (I know it has impressed and delighted anti-Israel leftists, who’ve triumphantly trumpeted the inventions on social media.)

However, “Arabic numerals” were actually invented in India around 500 AD (or CE if you will), before Mohammed was born and well before he made his impact. There seems to be a much stronger claim to be made about the Islamic origin of algebra, a term coined by the great Baghdad-based mathematician Al-Khwarizmi around 800 AD; nevertheless, there are indications that this remarkable man of Persian family may have been of Zoroastrian background.

Beyond this, however, even the most erudite of visitors to the exhibit must surely have been hard-pressed to name a single invention or discovery made by a Muslim scholar or inventor before viewing that collection of 1001.

Although there are over one billion Muslims in the world, only three Muslims have won a Nobel Prize for science – a Pakistani, an Egyptian American, and a Turk. By contrast, over 150 Jews have done so. Virtually all of the world’s greatest inventions – from the telescope, the microscope, and the steam engine to the computer – were created by Europeans or persons of European descent outside Europe, especially in the United States. It’s safe to say that 95 per cent of the world’s significant inventions of the last 1000 years were devised by such persons, with nearly all the rest originating in China (including gunpowder).

The Islamic contribution to the list of great inventions is in all likelihood very strictly limited.

So how does one go about putting together an exhibit of 1001 Muslim inventions? The blunt answer is “by sleight of hand,” as many reviewers of this farcical exhibit have in effect pointed out [see some examples cited at the end of this account https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1001_Inventions].

The exhibit claims that Muslims invented the camera. This, of course, is pure malarkey. The first photograph was taken about 1826 by the Frenchman Nicéphore Niépce. By “camera” the exhibit means a camera obscura, a box with a hole in it on which an image is projected. But even here the exhibit tells whoppers, since the camera obscura was known to the ancient Chinese and Greeks, and was described by Aristotle and Euclid.

Visitors to the exhibit learn that “the first person who tried to fly” was Abbas ibn Firnas, who “leapt from the minaret of the Great Mosque in Cordoba” with some kind of primitive kite-like glider. Yet the concept of human flight had occurred to the ancient Greeks, as seen in their legend of Icarus, who tried the same thing 2000 years earlier than ibn Firnas with unfortunate results.

And so on.

These tales about Islamic inventions are reminiscent, of course, of similar claims made under Stalin as to how Russians invented everything, from the airplane to baseball.

The exhibit was accompanied by a propagandistic film “produced in association with the Jameel Foundation” starring the great actor Sir Ben Kingsley (who is not a Muslim though of part-Muslim descent). (There’s a copy on YouTube marked “Not for Reproduction”.) Presumably Sir Ben, who plays a magical Muslim inventor wowing a group of British schoolchildren with his insights into the wonders wrought by “Muslim civilisation,” doesn’t work for free, and this raises the question of just who paid for an exhibit which toured the world. Its website [http://www.1001inventions.com/] includes a long list of “partners and collaborators,” including the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, Saudi Arabia; the Abu Dhabi Education Council; and the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science. Who actually signed the cheques remains, however, opaque.

An even more basis question is: Why is this codswallop of an exhibit, with its obvious political agenda, displayed by any reputable institution?

Political correctness?

Or does money talk?

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

01/26 Links Pt1: Stop the incitement, stop the killing; PA TV: Knife attacks are not terror

From Ian:

David Horovitz: Stop the incitement, stop the killing

Op-ed: Relentless Palestinian extremism has now even managed to persuade the center-left opposition that Israeli readiness for compromise is insufficient. What’s needed is a unified effort to stop the Palestinians filling their people’s heads with murderous hostility
Meanwhile, the Fatah hierarchy he heads has been openly encouraging attacks on Israelis, and the Hamas terror group with which he seeks to partner in government is again plotting suicide bombings, developing more sophisticated rockets, and digging tunnels under the Gaza-Israel border ahead of its next planned war.
Abbas may well be deploying his forces to keep a lid on clashes in the West Bank, but he’s presiding over an ongoing, strategic demonizing of Israel and Israelis — via his education system, political and spiritual leadership and mainstream and social media — that positively guarantees Palestinian violence and terrorism. So effective is this process that, nowadays, when a young Palestinian has a row at home, feels depressed, or wants to make a name for him or herself, the default response is to grab a knife and go kill the nearest vulnerable Jew.
And so, last week, we buried Dafna Meir.
And today, we buried Shlomit Krigman.
Israel paid for Abbas’s last ostensible readiness for peace talks, in 2013-14, with the release of dozens of killers and other Palestinian terrorists from our jails. Prior to that, in 2008, Abbas spurned Ehud Olmert’s extraordinary readiness to give him everything he purportedly sought: We were gone from Gaza, and Olmert offered to leave the West Bank — with one-for-one land swaps — and to divide Jerusalem, including relinquishing sovereignty in the Old City. If that wasn’t good enough for Abbas, then obviously nothing we can offer will be.
While the United States and much of the international community refuse to internalize this, the simple, bleak fact is that everything Arafat, Abbas and Hamas have done since the collapse of the Bill Clinton-hosted Camp David 2000 attempt at forging a deal has persuaded Israelis that they dare not relinquish territory to the Palestinians, despite the imperative to separate in order to maintain a Jewish, democratic Israel.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Is Abbas Losing Control?

If Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas loses control of his Fatah faction, who gets to comfort him? Could it be his erstwhile rivals in Hamas?
Abbas seems firm in his refusal to pave the way for the emergence of a new leadership in the West Bank. A split within Fatah in the West Bank seems the inevitable result. Gaza's Fatah leaders are furious with Abbas. The deepening divisions among Fatah could drive Fatah cadres in the Gaza Strip into the open arms of Hamas.
"The talk about Fatah-Hamas reconciliation is nothing but a smokescreen to conceal the growing discontent with President Abbas's autocratic rule." — Palestinian official.
Fatah is Israel's purported "peace partner" -- the faction spearheading efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state. Decision-makers in the U.S. and Europe might wish to keep abreast of the solvency of Abbas's Fatah faction when they consider the wisdom of the two-state solution.

Israeli woman murdered in Beit Horon terrorist attack

A 24-year-old Israeli woman was stabbed to death by two Palestinian terrorists on Monday evening outside a minimarket in the community of Beit Horon, located on Route 443 in Samaria between Modiin and Jerusalem.
Shlomit Krigman died on Tuesday morning at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem. She had been brought there in critical condition following the attack.
Krigman was laid to rest on Tuesday afternoon at the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem.
A statement released by the Beit Horon community said, "Shlomit was loved and well-known. She did her national service with Bnei Akiva in Beit Horon and during the past year she lived with her grandfather and grandmother in the community."
A second Israeli woman, age 58, was also wounded in the attack and was transported to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem in moderate but stable condition.
The two terrorists, both male, were shot dead outside the minimarket by a security guard who sprinted to the scene after being alerted to the attack.

‘Gentle’ and ‘kind’ stabbing victim Shlomit Krigman laid to rest

Hundreds of people on Tuesday attended the funeral of 23-year-old Shlomit Krigman, who sustained serious injuries during a stabbing attack in the West Bank settlement of Beit Horon Monday and died of her wounds Tuesday morning.
Krigman was buried at Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul cemetery, in a plot near that of Dafna Meir, an Israeli mother of six stabbed to death in her home in Otniel last week.
Speaking at the ceremony, which was closed to the press, Krigman’s teacher remembered her for her “great curiosity” and gentle demeanor.
“She was open to the world and had great curiosity,” said Eitan Bnaya, one of Krigman’s teachers at the Ariel University, according to the Ynet news website. “She was interested in many areas. Everything got cut off in a single moment, a young woman whose life was ended.”
Bnaya said that Krigman, an industrial design student, was an “amazing, quiet and kind person” and “very interesting.”

Times of Israel and JSpacenews reports:

An Israeli Holocaust survivor may be the world’s oldest man at 112, Guinness World Records confirmed Thursday, providing he can find the documents to prove it.

Yisrael Kristal’s family say he was born in Poland on September 15, 1903, three months before the Wright brothers took the first airplane flight.

He lived in the country until the Nazi occupation during World War II, when he was eventually sent to the Auschwitz death camp.

Robert Young, senior consultant for gerontology at Guinness World Records, confirmed that if proven, he would become the oldest man currently on record.

To do so, however, Kristal would have to produce documents from the early years of his life. Currently, the family have said the oldest document they have is from his wedding aged 25.

“We have standard rules and it would be unfair on other people if we bent the rules,” Young told AFP, while expressing sympathy for Kristal’s circumstances.

Born on Sept. 15, 1903, in the town of Zarnow, Kristal moved to Lodz in 1920 to work in his family’s candy business. He continued operating the business after the Nazis forced the city’s Jews into a ghetto, where Kristal’s two children died. In 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz, where his wife, whom he had married at age 25, was killed.

In 1950, he moved to Haifa with his second wife and their son, working again as a confectioner.

Kristal’s daughter Shula Kuperstoch told The Jerusalem Post that he has been religiously observant his whole life and continues to lay tefillin each morning.

“The Holocaust did not affect his beliefs,” Kuperstoch said. “He believes he was saved because that’s what God wanted. He is not an angry person, he is not someone who seeks to an accounting, he believes everything has a reason in the world.”

TOI concludes:

The previous oldest man, Yasutaro Koide of Japan, died on Tuesday at the age of 112.

The oldest living woman, at 116 years old, is Susannah Mushatt Jones, who was born on July 6, 1899.

Jeanne Louise Calment, who died in 1997, was the oldest verified person ever — passing away in France aged 122 years and 164 days.

Not according to the Palestinians.

Last week Arab media reported that the oldest person in the world had just died - and he was 127 years old.

Haj Recep Toum was supposedly born in 1885 in Jabalya, Gaza and his grandchildren claim to have his birth certificate.

He also claims to have married one of his relatives who died only ten years ago, which may mean that he had the longest marriage in history as well.

Somehow that information hasn't made it to the folks at Guinness.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

From the Arab Organization of Human Rights (UK):

Arab Organisation for Human Rights In the UK (AOHR UK) on Monday 25/01/2016 submitted two communications to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) inviting the Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute both the deliberate infiltration of seawater into the territory of Gaza by Egyptian forces, and the closure of the Rafah crossing during Operation Protective Edge and the months that followed the hostilities.

The AOHR is of the opinion that both acts are constitutive of war crimes and crimes against humanity and are therefore acts under the subject-matter jurisdiction of the ICC.

The ICC also enjoys temporal and territorial jurisdiction over the crimes exposed in both communications because the State of Palestine acceded the Rome Statute in January 2015 and issued a declaration under article 12(3) of the Statute accepting the Court’s jurisdiction since 13th June 2014.

With these filings, the AOHR seeks to put an end to the oppressive and criminal policy of the Egyptian authorities at the border and hold those responsible accountable before an international court.

The subtext of these filings is that Egypt is legally at war with Gaza:

Toby Cadman, International Criminal Law expert and head of legal team advising AOHR, notes, the Egyptian policy in the border constitutes “a clear violation of the laws of war and shows evident criminal features”. He added that the International Criminal Court should analyse the situations presented in both communications and demonstrate that there are criminal methods to cause great suffering and serious injuries in entire populations that, nevertheless, do not require the use of guns and tanks. Mr. Cadman argues that “the conditions of life derived from the Egyptian policy in the Rafah border constitutes per se a violent action that affects the entire Strip in a widespread manner. It demonstrates that the heinousness of a crime does not depend on the size of an Army, or on the length of hostilities, but on the cruelty of the policy behind the actions and the party’s desire to capitalize on its position of superiority and the vulnerability of a defenceless region”.

The point of the communications isn't so much to win - I don't see how that is possible - but to pressure Egypt to change its policies both towards Gaza and towards its own people:

A future ICC investigation on these two topics would have extraordinarily positive consequences.

First, it could serve to loosen what are effectively siege conditions in Gaza, and consequently, change the lives of the 1.8 million citizens of Gaza, who have been suffering a years-long humanitarian crisis. As a matter of fact, the UN has predicted that Gaza won’t be a habitable place by 2020, and the closure and flooding of the border only exacerbates this tragic situation and accelerates the process of destruction.

Second, an investigation from the ICC would bring the long-awaited accountability to Egyptian authorities, which have proven to be immune from prosecution in their own jurisdiction despite the serious and widespread nature of the human rights violations committed in Egyptian territory.

The irony is that the entire point of the PA accepting the Rome Statute was to be able to prosecute Israel, but the AOHR is using it to attack a fellow Arab country.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Fatah says Mahmoud Abbas inspired Palestinians to start their murder spree

The official Fatah Facebook page published "an important announcement" heaping praise on the current wave of attacks on Jews.

It is couched in religious terms, starting off with "In the name of Allah the Merciful: The Almighty said: 'And We desired to show favor unto those who were oppressed in the earth, and to make them examples and to make them the inheritors.'"

The article then went on to praise Mahmoud Abbas for his speech on September 30 at the UN General Assembly, which was, in their words, "the launch of a new phase is in the development of the decisions of the [Fatah] Central Council into action, activating the popular resistance on the ground, in conjunction with the diplomatic offensive and political fights in all arenas of the United Nations and international organizations."

The historic speech of the President in the UN constituted a turning point and a new dawn which manifested itself in the popular uprising, “The Rage of Jerusalem”, that started in the capital Jerusalem and expanded to Hebron and (to the other) the provinces of the homeland, in a heroic and spectacular implementation which restored to the national cause its radiance and status, as all the crimes of the occupation failed to hurt it and deter it, and the popular uprising even succeeded in spreading terror and bringing about a lack of personal security for the colonists, and the streets of Jerusalem and the Palestinian (West) Bank became places of constant friction and clashes…

The Fatah announcement ends off with "It's a revolution until victory ... until victory ... until victory."

And it then shows this photo of a young woman wearing a headband for a youth organization in Fatah called "The Sisters of Dalal," referring to terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, who was responsible for murdering 38 Israelis including 13 children.

The choice of Abbas' September 30 speech as the launching point of the murder spree is significant. The very next day was the day that Eitam and Na'ama Henkin were murdered.

Palestinian newspapers are quoting this statement.

At the same time that the media is claiming that Abbas is condemning violence, the organization that he leads is bragging that he is inspiring the murders of Jews.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Vote for Hasby Award - Best Speech

The nominees for Best Speech Hasby award are:

The shocking words of this pro-Israel pastor

Bibi's UN speech - with 45 seconds of "deafening silence"

Matti Friedman's speech to BICOM dinner

Mayor Giuliani's speech at Iranian American Community of Arizona event

Ron Dermer at Israel Bonds event

Marco Rubio Speech on Obama's Assault on Israel
The Reason I'm an Israeli-Arab Diplomat Not a Palestinian Refugee - George Deek
Col. (ret.) Richard Kemp "The Amoral Revolution in Western Values, and its impact on Israel" (text)

Vote by Saturday night, January 30.

polls

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

01/25 Links Pt2: How to Spot a Fake Siege; The Disgrace of Associating Toni Morrison With Primo Levi

From Ian:

How to Spot a Fake Siege

I can’t help noticing that the “siege of Gaza” has largely disappeared from the headlines. I’d like to think it’s because, having finally seen what a real siege looks like in Syria, many well-meaning folks who used to decry the “siege” of Gaza have realized that Gaza was never actually besieged at all. But for anyone who’s still confused about the difference between a real siege and a fictitious one, here are two simple tests: First, in real sieges, people die of starvation, because the besieger stops food from entering; in fake ones, the “besieger” sends in 2,500 tons of food and medicine per day even during the worst of the fighting. Second, real sieges get swept under the carpet by the UN; only the fake ones merit massive UN publicity. And if you think I’m joking, just compare the actual cases of Madaya and Gaza.
In the Syrian town of Madaya, which is besieged by the Assad regime’s forces, people were reduced to living on grass because no other food was available. Rice, a staple that costs $1.25 per kilogram in other war-ravaged Syrian towns, was so scarce in Madaya that it sold for 200 times that price – an astounding $256 per kilogram, according to a report by Roy Gutman in Foreign Policy. Women were so hungry their breast milk dried up, leaving them unable to feed their babies. At least 32 people have starved to death so far, and hundreds more are at risk of starvation. One man told Gutman everyone in his family had lost 45 pounds – and they are the lucky ones; they’re still alive.
In Gaza, in contrast, even when the “siege” was regularly making headlines, there were never any reports of people dying of hunger, living off grass or unable to feed their babies. That’s because in contrast to Syrian forces, which prevented food and other humanitarian goods from entering Madaya, Israel allowed thousands of tons of such goods into Gaza every day. Even during the 50-day war with Hamas in summer 2014, while Hamas was regularly firing rockets at the only border crossing between Israel and Gaza, Israel managed to get 122,757 tons of food, medicine and fuel into Gaza through that crossing; in normal times, the volume is much higher. Indeed, Gaza’s life expectancy exceeds the global median, surpassing that in 114 countries worldwide. In places that are really besieged, life expectancy tends to be low.

David Singer: European Union Becomes Irrelevant In Resolving The Jewish-Arab Conflict

This fundamental disconnect between the EU and Israel over the Arab Peace Initiative continues to detrimentally impact on their relationship.
Full Israeli withdrawal from these territories – or even equivalent land swaps as suggested by the EU in its July 2014 manifesto – is a pipe dream – given that the creation of Islamic State since then has seen it:
1. conquer an area of Syria and Iraq larger than Great Britain – resulting in millions of Arabs being brutally slayed, injured, traumatised and physically displaced into Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and even the EU.
2. become a distinct security threat to Israel and its Arab neighbours
The Arab Peace Initiative has been effectively consigned to the dustbin of history as a result.
Stubbornly continuing to support these key elements of the Arab Peace Initiative has led a clearly frustrated EU to take action to unilaterally end Israel’s total lawful control of Area “C” in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) by instigating the following intemperate actions:
1. Requiring Israel to specifically identify goods, products and services originating from Jewish settlements in Judea,Samaria,the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem
2. Funding and actively supporting illegal Arab housing construction in Area “C”
Israel reportedly considers that such actions by the EU give the Palestinian Arabs false hope that if they just hold out long enough – the EU will somehow be able to “deliver” Israel.
EU policy and its conduct since July 2014 has exacerbated the Jewish-Arab conflict rather than playing a constructive role in its resolution.
In reaffirming that policy in 2016 – despite total chaos occurring among Arab States in the region – the EU has clearly become irrelevant and can no longer have any meaningful role in resolving the Jewish-Arab conflict.

The Disgrace of Associating Toni Morrison With Primo Levi

A side benefit of reviewing books is that I often get books I otherwise might not splurge on. A week ago, I received the handsome three-volume set of the collected writings of Primo Levi, Italian survivor of Auschwitz. The set is edited by arguably his best translator, Ann Goldstein, and published by Liveright. I will write a thorough and conscientious book review in due course.
But I am writing this blog post in protest at the inexplicable and offensive fact that the publishers asked the American novelist Toni Morrison to write an introduction. Of all people, they had to choose such an outspoken and biased critic of Israel. Why invite a person who shows such animus towards the homeland of the Jewish people to write an introduction to the work of a man who suffered under a real genocidal regime determined to destroy him simply for being Jewish, given that, for all his criticisms and alienation, Levi remained an avowed Jew?
It’s not just the banality of her introduction, her cold words, her use of “throngs” to describe — impersonally — those who died. She cannot bring herself to mention Jews. She stands for poisonous revisionism. She, together with her partners in prejudice, have accused Israel of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide. Inevitably this leads to comparisons with Nazis. Which is precisely what the primitive, mentally challenged bullies who use such an abusive slogan in protests love to do. If any of that were true, how come after 65 years of Israel’s existence the Arab population of Israel continues to grow and thrive? Why haven’t they all been gassed? And why are denizens of the Occupied Territories and Gaza still expanding in number?
Why have they not all been killed or expelled? Are the Israelis so incompetent?  It seems that Morrison was contacted and asked to consider the invitation because Primo Levi was a left-wing secular Jew who criticized the State of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and disliked the, albeit democratically elected, right-wing governments (criticisms I too would agree with, incidentally). The presumably liberal, left-wing publishers thought her stamp of approval on this edition would attract like-minded readers and librarians. But that does not put Primo Levi and Toni Morrison on the same moral page. (h/t Jewess)

From Ha'aretz:

Israel Approves New West Bank Homes, Marking End of Informal Building Freeze

Israeli planning authorities approved the construction of 153 new apartments in West Bank settlements last week, effectively putting an end to an informal construction freeze that has lasted about 18 months.

For almost two years now, the government has largely refused to advance new building plans in the territories, due to fear that the U.S. administration would retaliate by refusing to veto anti-Israel resolutions in the UN Security Council. The only plans that did move forward involved either legalization of existing outposts or master plans for areas where petitions to the High Court of Justice spurred the government to act.

There was an 18 month settlement freeze? That must have been big news. No doubt John Kerry celebrated the fact, right?

Well, except in October, when he said, "there’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years" and linked settlements to violence against Israelis.

And except for when Kerry said in December, "The continued settlement growth raises honest questions about Israel’s long-term intentions and will only make separating from the Palestinians much more difficult."

Israel had a settlement freeze, yet the Obama administration and J-Street and Haaretz and Peace Now all the others who insist that Israel stop settlement construction were all but silent. Israel gained nothing politically from making that decision - on the contrary, it was treated as if settlement construction was accelerating. Netanyahu couldn't argue because of coalition politics, but certainly all of the players who follow the issue knew this very well - and chose to excoriate Israel anyway for implementing a policy that it didn't have.

So what incentive does Israel have to continue the freeze when it is treated like a criminal when it does?

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.